amabel channice by anne douglas sedgwick author of "the rescue," "paths of judgement," "a fountain sealed," etc. new york the century co. copyright, , by the century co. _published october, _ the de vinne press amabel channice i lady channice was waiting for her son to come in from the garden. the afternoon was growing late, but she had not sat down to the table, though tea was ready and the kettle sent out a narrow banner of steam. walking up and down the long room she paused now and then to look at the bowls and vases of roses placed about it, now and then to look out of the windows, and finally at the last window she stopped to watch augustine advancing over the lawn towards the house. it was a grey stone house, low and solid, its bareness unalleviated by any grace of ornament or structure, and its two long rows of windows gazed out resignedly at a tame prospect. the stretch of lawn sloped to a sunken stone wall; beyond the wall a stream ran sluggishly in a ditch-like channel; on the left the grounds were shut in by a sycamore wood, and beyond were flat meadows crossed in the distance by lines of tree-bordered roads. it was a peaceful, if not a cheering prospect. lady channice was fond of it. cheerfulness was not a thing she looked for; but she looked for peace, and it was peace she found in the flat green distance, the far, reticent ripple of hill on the horizon, the dark forms of the sycamores. her only regret for the view was that it should miss the sunrise and sunset; in the evenings, beyond the silhouetted woods, one saw the golden sky; but the house faced north, and it was for this that the green of the lawn was so dank, and the grey of the walls so cold, and the light in the drawing-room where lady channice stood so white and so monotonous. she was fond of the drawing-room, also, unbeautiful and grave to sadness though it was. the walls were wainscotted to the ceiling with ancient oak, so that though the north light entered at four high windows the room seemed dark. the furniture was ugly, miscellaneous and inappropriate. the room had been dismantled, and in place of the former drawing-room suite were gathered together incongruous waifs and strays from dining- and smoking-room and boudoir. a number of heavy chairs predominated covered in a maroon leather which had cracked in places; and there were three lugubrious sofas to match. by degrees, during her long and lonely years at charlock house, lady channice had, at first tentatively, then with a growing assurance in her limited sphere of action, moved away all the ugliest, most trivial things: tattered brocade and gilt footstools, faded antimacassars, dismal groups of birds and butterflies under glass cases. when she sat alone in the evening, after augustine, as child or boy, had gone to bed, the ghostly glimmer of the birds, the furtive glitter of a glass eye here and there, had seemed to her quite dreadful. the removal of the cases (they were large and heavy, and mrs. bray, the housekeeper, had looked grimly disapproving)--was her crowning act of courage, and ever since their departure she had breathed more freely. it had been easier to dispose of all the little colonies of faded photographs that stood on cabinets and tables; they were photographs of her husband's family and of his family's friends, people most of whom were quite unknown to her, and their continued presence in the abandoned house was due to indifference, not affection: no one had cared enough about them to put them away, far less to look at them. after looking at them for some years,--these girls in court dress of a bygone fashion, huntsmen holding crops, sashed babies and matrons in caps or tiaras,--lady channice had cared enough to put them away. she had not, either, to ask for mrs. bray's assistance or advice for this, a fact which was a relief, for mrs. bray was a rather dismal being and reminded her, indeed, of the stuffed birds in the removed glass cases. with her own hands she incarcerated the photographs in the drawers of a heavily carved bureau and turned the keys upon them. the only ornaments now, were the pale roses, the books, and, above her writing-desk, a little picture that she had brought with her, a water-colour sketch of her old home painted by her mother many years ago. so the room looked very bare. it almost looked like the parlour of a convent; with a little more austerity, whitened walls and a few thick velvet and gilt lives of the saints on the tables, the likeness would have been complete. the house itself was conventual in aspect, and lady channice, as she stood there in the quiet light at the window, looked not unlike a nun, were it not for her crown of pale gold hair that shone in the dark room and seemed, like the roses, to bring into it the brightness of an outer, happier world. she was a tall woman of forty, her ample form, her wide bosom, the falling folds of her black dress, her loosely girdled waist, suggesting, with the cloistral analogies, the mournful benignity of a bereaved madonna. seen as she stood there, leaning her head to watch her son's approach, she was an almost intimidating presence, black, still, and stately. but when the door opened and the young man came in, when, not moving to meet him, she turned her head with a slight smile of welcome, all intimidating impressions passed away. her face, rather, as it turned, under its crown of gold, was the intimidated face. it was curiously young, pure, flawless, as though its youth and innocence had been preserved in some crystal medium of prayer and silence; and if the nun-like analogies failed in their awe-inspiring associations, they remained in the associations of unconscious pathos and unconscious appeal. amabel channice's face, like her form, was long and delicately ample; its pallor that of a flower grown in shadow; the mask a little over-large for the features. her eyes were small, beautifully shaped, slightly slanting upwards, their light grey darkened under golden lashes, the brows definitely though palely marked. her mouth was pale coral-colour, and the small upper lip, lifting when she smiled as she was smiling now, showed teeth of an infantile, milky whiteness. the smile was charming, timid, tentative, ingratiating, like a young girl's, and her eyes were timid, too, and a little wild. "have you had a good read?" she asked her son. he had a book in his hand. "very, thanks. but it is getting chilly, down there in the meadow. and what a lot of frogs there are in the ditch," said augustine smiling, "they were jumping all over the place." "oh, as long as they weren't toads!" said lady channice, her smile lighting in response. "when i came here first to live there were so many toads, in the stone areas, you know, under the gratings in front of the cellar windows. you can't imagine how many! it used quite to terrify me to look at them and i went to the front of the house as seldom as possible. i had them all taken away, finally, in baskets,--not killed, you know, poor things,--but just taken and put down in a field a mile off. i hope they didn't starve;--but toads are very intelligent, aren't they; one always associates them with fairy-tales and princes." she had gone to the tea-table while she spoke and was pouring the boiling water into the teapot. her voice had pretty, flute-like ups and downs in it and a questioning, upward cadence at the end of sentences. her upper lip, her smile, the run of her speech, all would have made one think her humorous, were it not for the strain of nervousness that one felt in her very volubility. her son lent her a kindly but rather vague attention while she talked to him about the toads, and his eye as he stood watching her make the tea was also vague. he sat down presently, as if suddenly remembering why he had come in, and it was only after a little interval of silence, in which he took his cup from his mother's hands, that something else seemed to occur to him as suddenly, a late arriving suggestion from her speech. "what a horribly gloomy place you must have found it." her eyes, turning on him quickly, lost, in an instant, their uncertain gaiety. "gloomy? is it gloomy? do you feel it gloomy here, augustine?" "oh, well, no, not exactly," he answered easily. "you see i've always been used to it. you weren't." as she said nothing to this, seeming at a loss for any reply, he went on presently to talk of other things, of the book he had been reading, a heavy metaphysical tome; of books that he intended to read; of a letter that he had received that morning from the eton friend with whom he was going up to oxford for his first term. his mother listened, showing a careful interest usual with her, but after another little silence she said suddenly: "i think it's a very nice place, charlock house, augustine. your father wouldn't have wanted me to live here if he'd imagined that i could find it gloomy, you know." "oh, of course not," said the young man, in an impassive, pleasant voice. "he has always, in everything, been so thoughtful for my comfort and happiness," said lady channice. augustine did not look at her: his eyes were fixed on the sky outside and he seemed to be reflecting--though not over her words. "so that i couldn't bear him ever to hear anything of that sort," lady channice went on, "that either of us could find it gloomy, i mean. you wouldn't ever say it to him, would you, augustine." there was a note at once of urgency and appeal in her voice. "of course not, since you don't wish it," her son replied. "i ask you just because it happens that your father is coming," lady channice said, "tomorrow;--and, you see, if you had this in your mind, you might have said something. he is coming to spend the afternoon." he looked at her now, steadily, still pleasantly; but his colour rose. "really," he said. "isn't it nice. i do hope that it will be fine; these autumn days are so uncertain; if only the weather holds up we can have a walk perhaps." "oh, i think it will hold up. will there be time for a walk?" "he will be here soon after lunch, and, i think, stay on to tea." "he didn't stay on to tea the last time, did he." "no, not last time; he is so very busy; it's quite three years since we have had that nice walk over the meadows, and he likes that so much." she was trying to speak lightly and easily. "and it must be quite a year since you have seen him." "quite," said augustine. "i never see him, hardly, but here, you know." he was still making his attempt at pleasantness, but something hard and strained had come into his voice, and as, with a sort of helplessness, her resources exhausted, his mother sat silent, he went on, glancing at her, as if with the sudden resolution, he also wanted to make very sure of his way;-- "you like seeing him more than anything, don't you; though you are separated." augustine channice talked a great deal to his mother about outside things, such as philosophy; but of personal things, of their relation to the world, to each other, to his father, he never spoke. so that his speaking now was arresting. his mother gazed at him. "separated? we have always been the best of friends." "of course. i mean--that you've never cared to live together.--incompatibility, i suppose. only," augustine did not smile, he looked steadily at his mother, "i should think that since you are so fond of him you'd like seeing him oftener. i should think that since he is the best of friends he would want to come oftener, you know." when he had said these words he flushed violently. it was an echo of his mother's flush. and she sat silent, finding no words. "mother," said augustine, "forgive me. that was impertinent of me. it's no affair of mine." she thought so, too, apparently, for she found no words in which to tell him that it was his affair. her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her eyes downcast, she seemed shrunken together, overcome by his tactless intrusion. "forgive me," augustine repeated. the supplication brought her the resource of words again. "of course, dear. it is only--i can't explain it to you. it is very complicated. but, though it seems so strange to you,--to everybody, i know--it is just that: though we don't live together, and though i see so little of your father, i do care for him very, very much. more than for anybody in the world,--except you, of course, dear augustine." "oh, don't be polite to me," he said, and smiled. "more than for anybody in the world; stick to it." she could but accept the amendment, so kindly and, apparently, so lightly pressed upon her, and she answered him with a faint, a grateful smile, saying, in a low voice:--"you see, dear, he is the noblest person i have ever known." tears were in her eyes. augustine turned away his own. they sat then for a little while in silence, the mother and son. her eyes downcast, her hands folded in an attitude that suggested some inner dedication, amabel channice seemed to stay her thoughts on the vision of that nobility. and though her son was near her, the thoughts were far from him. it was characteristic of augustine channice, when he mused, to gaze straight before him, whatever the object might be that met his unseeing eyes. the object now was the high autumnal sky outside, crossed only here and there by a drifting fleet of clouds. the light fell calmly upon the mother and son and, in their stillness, their contemplation, the two faces were like those on an old canvas, preserved from time and change in the trance-like immutability of art. in colour, the two heads chimed, though augustine's hair was vehemently gold and there were under-tones of brown and amber in his skin. but the oval of lady channice's face grew angular in her son's, broader and more defiant; so that, palely, darkly white and gold, on their deep background, the two heads emphasized each other's character by contrast. augustine's lips were square and scornful; his nose ruggedly bridged; his eyes, under broad eyebrows, ringed round the iris with a line of vivid hazel; and as his lips, though mild in expression, were scornful in form, so these eyes, even in their contemplation, seemed fierce. calm, controlled face as it was, its meaning for the spectator was of something passionate and implacable. in mother and son alike one felt a capacity for endurance almost tragic; but while augustine's would be the endurance of the rock, to be moved only by shattering, his mother's was the endurance of the flower, that bends before the tempest, unresisting, beaten down into the earth, but lying, even there, unbroken. ii the noise and movement of an outer world seemed to break in upon the recorded vision of arrested life. the door opened, a quick, decisive step approached down the hall, and, closely following the announcing maid, mrs. grey, the local squiress, entered the room. in the normal run of rural conventions, lady channice should have held the place; but charlock house no longer stood for what it had used to stand in the days of sir hugh channice's forbears. mrs. grey, of pangley hall, had never held any but the first place and a consciousness of this fact seemed to radiate from her competent personality. she was a vast middle-aged woman clad in tweed and leather, but her abundance of firm, hard flesh could lend itself to the roughest exigences of a sporting outdoor life. her broad face shone like a ripe apple, and her sharp eyes, her tight lips, the cheerful creases of her face, expressed an observant and rather tyrannous good-temper. "tea? no, thanks; no tea for me," she almost shouted; "i've just had tea with mrs. grier. how are you, lady channice? and you, augustine? what a man you are getting to be; a good inch taller than my tom. reading as usual, i see. i can't get my boys to look at a book in vacation time. what's the book? ah, fuddling your brains with that stuff, still, are you? still determined to be a philosopher? do you really want him to be a philosopher, my dear?" "indeed i think it would be very nice if he could be a philosopher," said lady channice, smiling, for though she had often to evade mrs. grey's tyranny she liked her good temper. she seemed in her reply to float, lightly and almost gaily above mrs. grey, and away from her. mrs. grey was accustomed to these tactics and it was characteristic of her not to let people float away if she could possibly help it. this matter of augustine's future was frequently in dispute between them. her feet planted firmly, her rifle at her shoulder, she seemed now to take aim at a bird that flew from her. "and of course you encourage him! you read with him and study with him! and you won't see that you let him drift more and more out of practical life and into moonshine. what does it do for him, that's what i ask? where does it lead him? what's the good of it? why he'll finish as a fusty old don. does it make you a better man, augustine, or a happier one, to spend all your time reading philosophy?" "very much better, very much happier, i find:--but i don't give it all my time, you know," augustine answered, with much his mother's manner of light evasion. he let mrs. grey see that he found her funny; perhaps he wished to let her see that philosophy helped him to. mrs. grey gave up the fantastic bird and turned on her heel. "well, i've not come to dispute, as usual, with you, augustine. i've come to ask you, lady channice, if you won't, for once, break through your rules and come to tea on sunday. i've a surprise for you. an old friend of yours is to be of our party for this week-end. lady elliston; she comes tomorrow, and she writes that she hopes to see something of you." mrs. grey had her eye rather sharply on lady channice; she expected to see her colour rise, and it did rise. "lady elliston?" she repeated, vaguely, or, perhaps, faintly. "yes; you did know her; well, she told me." "it was years ago," said lady channice, looking down; "yes, i knew her quite well. it would be very nice to see her again. but i don't think i will break my rule; thank you so much." mrs. grey looked a little disconcerted and a little displeased. "now that you are growing up, augustine," she said, "you must shake your mother out of her way of life. it's bad for her. she lives here, quite alone, and, when you are away--as you will have to be more and more, for some time now,--she sees nobody but her village girls, mrs. grier and me from one month's end to the other. i can't think what she's made of. i should go mad. and so many of us would be delighted if she would drop in to tea with us now and then." "oh, well, you can drop in to tea with her instead," said augustine. his mother sat silent, with her faint smile. "well, i do. but i'm not enough, though i flatter myself that i'm a good deal. it's unwholesome, such a life, downright morbid and unwholesome. one should mingle with one's kind. i shall wonder at you, augustine, if you allow it, just as, for years, i've wondered at your father." it may have been her own slight confusion, or it may have been something exasperating in lady channice's silence, that had precipitated mrs. grey upon this speech, but, when she had made it, she became very red and wondered whether she had gone too far. mrs. grey was prepared to go far. if people evaded her, and showed an unwillingness to let her be kind to them--on her own terms,--terms which, in regard to lady channice, were very strictly defined;--if people would behave in this unbecoming and ungrateful fashion, they only got, so mrs. grey would have put it, what they jolly well deserved if she gave them a "stinger." but mrs. grey did not like to give lady channice "stingers"; therefore she now became red and wondered at herself. lady channice had lifted her eyes and it was as if mrs. grey saw walls and moats and impenetrable thickets glooming in them. she answered for augustine: "my husband and i have always been in perfect agreement on the matter." mrs. grey tried a cheerful laugh;--"you won him over, too, no doubt." "entirely." "well, augustine," mrs. grey turned to the young man again, "i don't succeed with your mother, but i hope for better luck with you. you're a man, now, and not yet, at all events, a monk. won't you dine with us on saturday night?" now mrs. grey was kind; but she had never asked lady channice to dinner. the line had been drawn, firmly drawn years ago--and by mrs. grey herself--at tea. and it was not until lady channice had lived for several years at charlock house, when it became evident that, in spite of all that was suspicious, not to say sinister, in her situation, she was not exactly cast off and that her husband, so to speak, admitted her to tea if not to dinner,--it was not until then that mrs. grey voiced at once the tolerance and the discretion of the neighbourhood and said: "they are on friendly terms; he comes to see her twice a year. we can call; she need not be asked to anything but tea. there can be no harm in that." there was, indeed, no harm, for though, when they did call in mrs. grey's broad wake, they were received with gentle courtesy, they were made to feel that social contacts would go no further. lady channice had been either too much offended or too much frightened by the years of ostracism, or perhaps it was really by her own choice that she adopted the attitude of a person who saw people when they came to her but who never went to see them. this attitude, accepted by the few, was resented by the many, so that hardly anybody ever called upon lady channice. and so it was that mrs. grey satisfied at once benevolence and curiosity in her staunch visits to the recluse of charlock house, and could feel herself as lady channice's one wholesome link with the world that she had rejected or--here lay all the ambiguity, all the mystery that, for years, had whetted mrs. grey's curiosity to fever-point--that had rejected her. as augustine grew up the situation became more complicated. it was felt that as the future owner of charlock house and inheritor of his mother's fortune augustine was not to be tentatively taken up but decisively seized. people had resented sir hugh's indifference to charlock house, the fact that he had never lived there and had tried, just before his marriage, to sell it. but augustine was yet blameless, and augustine would one day be a wealthy not an impecunious squire, and mrs. grey had said that she would see to it that augustine had his chance. "apparently there's no one to bring him out, unless i do," she said. "his father, it seems, won't, and his mother can't. one doesn't know what to think, or, at all events, one keeps what one thinks to oneself, for she is a good, sweet creature, whatever her faults may have been. but augustine shall be asked to dinner one day." augustine's "chance," in mrs. grey's eye, was her sixth daughter, marjory. so now the first step up the ladder was being given to augustine. he kept his vagueness, his lightness, his coolly pleasant smile, looking at mrs. grey and not at his mother as he answered: "thanks so much, but i'm monastic, too, you know. i don't go to dinners. i'll ride over some afternoon and see you all." mrs. grey compressed her lips. she was hurt and she had, also, some difficulty in restraining her temper before this rebuff. "but you go to dinners in london. you stay with people." "ah, yes; but i'm alone then. when i'm with my mother i share her life." he spoke so lightly, yet so decisively, with a tact and firmness beyond his years, that mrs. grey rose, accepting her defeat. "then lady elliston and i will come over, some day," she said. "i wish we saw more of her. john and i met her while we were staying with the bishop this spring. the bishop has the highest opinion of her. he said that she was a most unusual woman,--in the world, yet not of it. one feels that. her eldest girl married young lord catesby, you know; a very brilliant match; she presents her second girl next spring, when i do marjory. you must come over for a ride with marjory, soon, augustine." "i will, very soon," said augustine. when their visitor at last went, when the tramp of her heavy boots had receded down the hall, lady channice and her son again sat in silence; but it was now another silence from that into which mrs. grey's shots had broken. it was like the stillness of the copse or hedgerow when the sportsmen are gone and a vague stir and rustle in ditch or underbrush tells of broken wings or limbs, of a wounded thing hiding. lady channice spoke at last. "i wish you had accepted for the dinner, augustine. i don't want you to identify yourself with my peculiarities." "i didn't want to dine with mrs. grey, mother." "you hurt her. she is a kind neighbour. you will see her more or less for all of your life, probably. you must take your place, here, augustine." "my place is taken. i like it just as it is. i'll see the greys as i always have seen them; i'll go over to tea now and then and i'll ride and hunt with the children." "but that was when you were a child. you are almost a man now; you are a man, augustine; and your place isn't a child's place." "my place is by you." for the second time that day there was a new note in augustine's voice. it was as if, clearly and definitely, for the first time, he was feeling something and seeing something and as if, though very resolutely keeping from her what he felt, he was, when pushed to it, as resolutely determined to let her see what he saw. "by me, dear," she said faintly. "what do you mean?" "she ought to have asked you to dinner, too." "but i would not have accepted; i don't go out. she knows that. she knows that i am a real recluse." "she ought to have asked knowing that you would not accept." "augustine dear, you are foolish. you know nothing of these little feminine social compacts." "are they only feminine?" "only. mere crystallised conveniences. it would be absurd for mrs. grey, after all these years, to ask me in order to be refused." there was a moment's silence and then augustine said: "did she ever ask you?" the candles had been lighted and the lamp brought in, making the corners of the room look darker. there was only a vague radiance about the chimney piece, the little candle-flames doubled in the mirror, and the bright circle where lady channice and her son sat on either side of the large, round table. the lamp had a green shade, and their faces were in shadow. augustine had turned away his eyes. and now a strange and painful thing happened, stranger and more painful than he could have foreseen; for his mother did not answer him. the silence grew long and she did not speak. augustine looked at her at last and saw that she was gazing at him, and, it seemed to him, with helpless fear. his own eyes did not echo it; anger, rather, rose in them, cold fierceness, against himself, it was apparent, as well as against the world that he suspected. he was not impulsive; he was not demonstrative; but he got up and put his hand on her shoulder. "i don't mean to torment you, like the rest of them," he said. "i don't mean to ask--and be refused. forget what i said. it's only--only--that it infuriates me.--to see them all.--and you!--cut off, wasted, in prison here. i've been seeing it for a long time; i won't speak of it again. i know that there are sad things in your life. all i want to say, all i wanted to say was--that i'm with you, and against them." she sat, her face in shadow beneath him, her hands tightly clasped together and pressed down upon her lap. and, in a faltering voice that strove in vain for firmness, she said: "dear augustine--thank you. i know you wouldn't want to hurt me. you see, when i came here to live, i had parted--from your father, and i wanted to be quite alone; i wanted to see no one. and they felt that: they felt that i wouldn't lead the usual life. so it grew most naturally. don't be angry with people, or with the world. that would warp you, from the beginning. it's a good world, augustine. i've found it so. it is sad, but there is such beauty.--i'm not cut off, or wasted;--i'm not in prison.--how can you say it, dear, of me, who have you--and _him_." augustine's hand rested on her shoulder for some moments more. lifting it he stood looking before him. "i'm not going to quarrel with the world," he then said. "i know what i like in it." "dear--thanks--" she murmured. augustine picked up his book again. "i'll study for a bit, now, in my room," he said. "will you rest before dinner? do; i shall feel more easy in my conscience if i inflict hegel on you afterwards." iii lady channice did not go and rest. she sat on in the shadowy room gazing before her, her hands still clasped, her face wearing still its look of fear. for twenty years she had not known what it was to be without fear. it had become as much a part of her life as the air she breathed and any peace or gladness had blossomed for her only in that air: sometimes she was almost unconscious of it. this afternoon she had become conscious. it was as if the air were heavy and oppressive and as if she breathed with difficulty. and sitting there she asked herself if the time was coming when she must tell augustine. what she might have to tell was a story that seemed strangely disproportionate: it was the story of her life; but all of it that mattered, all of it that made the story, was pressed into one year long ago. before that year was sunny, uneventful girlhood, after it grey, uneventful womanhood; the incident, the drama, was all knotted into one year, and it seemed to belong to herself no longer; she seemed a spectator, looking back in wonder at the disaster of another woman's life. a long flat road stretched out behind her; she had journeyed over it for years; and on the far horizon she saw, if she looked back, the smoke and flames of a burning city--miles and miles away. amabel freer was the daughter of a rural dean, a scholarly, sceptical man. the forms of religion were his without its heart; its heart was her mother's, who was saintly and whose orthodoxy was the vaguest symbolic system. from her father amabel had the scholar's love of beauty in thought, from her mother the love of beauty in life; but her loves had been dreamy: she had thought and lived little. happy compliance, happy confidence, a dawn-like sense of sweetness and purity, had filled her girlhood. when she was sixteen her father had died, and her mother in the following year. amabel and her brother bertram were well dowered. bertram was in the foreign office, neither saintly nor scholarly, like his parents, nor undeveloped like his young sister. he was a capable, conventional man of the world, sure of himself and rather suspicious of others. amabel imagined him a model of all that was good and lovely. the sudden bereavement of her youth bewildered and overwhelmed her; her capacity for dependent, self-devoting love sought for an object and lavished itself upon her brother. she went to live with an aunt, her father's sister, and when she was eighteen her aunt brought her to london, a tall, heavy and rather clumsy country girl, arrested rather than developed by grief. her aunt was a world-worn, harassed woman; she had married off her four daughters with difficulty and felt the need of a change of occupation; but she accepted as a matter of course the duty of marrying off amabel. that task accomplished she would go to bed every night at half past ten and devote her days to collecting coins and enamels. her respite came far more quickly than she could have imagined possible. amabel had promise of great beauty, but two or three years were needed to fulfill it; mrs. compton could but be surprised when sir hugh channice, an older colleague of bertram's, a fashionable and charming man, asked for the hand of her unformed young charge. sir hugh was fourteen years amabel's senior and her very guilelessness no doubt attracted him; then there was the money; he was not well off and he lived a life rather hazardously full. still, mrs. compton could hardly believe in her good-fortune. amabel accepted her own very simply; her compliance and confidence were even deeper than before. sir hugh was the most graceful of lovers. his quizzical tenderness reminded her of her father, his quasi-paternal courtship emphasized her instinctive trust in the beauty and goodness of life. so at eighteen she was married at st. george's hanover square and wore a wonderful long satin train and her mothers lace veil and her mother's pearls around her neck and hair. a bridesmaid had said that pearls were unlucky, but mrs. compton tersely answered:--"not if they are such good ones as these." amabel had bowed her head to the pearls, seeing them, with the train, and the veil, and her own snowy figure, vaguely, still in the dreamlike haze. memories of her father and mother, and of the dear deanery among its meadows, floating fragments of the poetry her father had loved, of the prayers her mother had taught her in childhood, hovered in her mind. she seemed to see the primrose woods where she had wandered, and to hear the sound of brooks and birds in spring. a vague smile was on her lips. she thought of sir hugh as of a radiance lighting all. she was the happiest of girls. shortly after her marriage, all the radiance, all the haze was gone. it had been difficult then to know why. now, as she looked back, she thought that she could understand. she had been curiously young, curiously inexperienced. she had expected life to go on as dawn for ever. everyday light had filled her with bleakness and disillusion. she had had childish fancies; that her husband did not really love her; that she counted for nothing in his life. yet sir hugh had never changed, except that he very seldom made love to her and that she saw less of him than during their engagement. sir hugh was still quizzically tender, still all grace, all deference, when he was there. and what wonder that he was little there; he had a wide life; he was a brilliant man; she was a stupid young girl; in looking back, no longer young, no longer stupid, lady channice thought that she could see it all quite clearly. she had seemed to him a sweet, good girl, and he cared for her and wanted a wife. he had hoped that by degrees she would grow into a wise and capable woman, fit to help and ornament his life. but she had not been wise or capable. she had been lonely and unhappy, and that wide life of his had wearied and confused her; the silence, the watching attitude of the girl were inadequate to her married state, and yet she had nothing else to meet it with. she had never before felt her youth and inexperience as oppressive, but they oppressed her now. she had nothing to ask of the world and nothing to give to it. what she did ask of life was not given to her, what she had to give was not wanted. she was very unhappy. yet people were kind. in especial lady elliston was kind, the loveliest, most sheltering, most understanding of all her guests or hostesses. lady elliston and her cheerful, jocose husband, were sir hugh's nearest friends and they took her in and made much of her. and one day when, in a fit of silly wretchedness, lady elliston found her crying, she had put her arms around her and kissed her and begged to know her grief and to comfort it. even thus taken by surprise, and even to one so kind, amabel could not tell that grief: deep in her was a reticence, a sense of values austere and immaculate: she could not discuss her husband, even with the kindest of friends. and she had nothing to tell, really, but of herself, her own helplessness and deficiency. yet, without her telling, for all her wish that no one should guess, lady elliston did guess. her comfort had such wise meaning in it. she was ten years older than amabel. she knew all about the world; she knew all about girls and their husbands. amabel was only a girl, and that was the trouble, she seemed to say. when she grew older she would see that it would come right; husbands were always so; the wider life reached by marriage would atone in many ways. and lady elliston, all with sweetest discretion, had asked gentle questions. some of them amabel had not understood; some she had. she remembered now that her own silence or dull negation might have seemed very rude and ungrateful; yet lady elliston had taken no offence. all her memories of lady elliston were of this tact and sweetness, this penetrating, tentative tact and sweetness that sought to understand and help and that drew back, unflurried and unprotesting before rebuff, ready to emerge again at any hint of need,--of these, and of her great beauty, the light of her large clear eyes, the whiteness of her throat, the glitter of diamonds about and above: for it was always in her most festal aspect, at night, under chandeliers and in ball-rooms, that she best remembered her. amabel knew, with the deep, instinctive sense of values which was part of her inheritance and hardly, at that time, part of her thought, that her mother would not have liked lady elliston, would have thought her worldly; yet, and this showed that amabel was developing, she had already learned that worldliness was compatible with many things that her mother would have excluded from it; she could see lady elliston with her own and with her mother's eyes, and it was puzzling, part of the pain of growth, to feel that her own was already the wider vision. soon after that the real story came. the city began to burn and smoke and flames to blind and scorch her. it was at lady elliston's country house that amabel first met paul quentin. he was a daring young novelist who was being made much of during those years; for at that still somewhat guileless time to be daring had been to be original. his books had power and beauty, and he had power and beauty, fierce, dreaming eyes and an intuitive, sudden smile. under his aspect of careless artist, his head was a little turned by his worldly success, by great country-houses and flattering great ladies; he did not take the world as indifferently as he seemed to. success edged his self-confidence with a reckless assurance. he was an ardent student of nietzsche, at a time when that, too, was to be original. amabel met this young man constantly at the dances and country parties of a season. and, suddenly, the world changed. it was not dawn and it was not daylight; it was a wild and beautiful illumination like torches at night. she knew herself loved and her own being became precious and enchanting to her. the presence of the man who loved her filled her with rapture and fear. their recognition was swift. he told her things about herself that she had never dreamed of and as he told them she felt them to be true. to other people paul quentin did not speak much of lady channice. he early saw that he would need to be discreet. one day at lady elliston's her beauty was in question and someone said that she was too pale and too impassive; and at that quentin, smiling a little fiercely, remarked that she was as pale as a cowslip and as impassive as a young madonna; the words pictured her; her fresh spring-like quality, and the peace, as of some noble power not yet roused. in looking back, it was strange and terrible to lady channice to see how little she had really known this man. their meetings, their talks together, were like the torchlight that flashed and wavered and only fitfully revealed. from the first she had listened, had assented, to everything he said, hanging upon his words and his looks and living afterward in the memory of them. and in memory their significance seemed so to grow that when they next met they found themselves far nearer than the words had left them. all her young reserves and dignities had been penetrated and dissolved. it was always themselves he talked of, but, from that centre, he waved the torch about a transformed earth and showed her a world of thought and of art that she had never seen before. no murmur of it had reached the deanery; to her husband and the people he lived among it was a mere spectacle; quentin made that bright, ardent world real to her, and serious. he gave her books to read; he took her to hear music; he showed her the pictures, the statues, the gems and porcelains that she had before accepted as part of the background of life hardly seeing them. from being the background of life they became, in a sense, suddenly its object. but not their object--not his and hers,--though they talked of them, looked, listened and understood. to quentin and amabel this beauty was still background, and in the centre, at the core of things, were their two selves and the ecstasy of feeling that exalted and terrified. all else in life became shackles. it was hardly shock, it was more like some immense relief, when, in each other's arms, the words of love, so long implied, were spoken. he said that she must come with him; that she must leave it all and come. she fought against herself and against him in refusing, grasping at pale memories of duty, honour, self-sacrifice; he knew too well the inner treachery that denied her words. but, looking back, trying not to flinch before the scorching memory, she did not know how he had won her. the dreadful jostle of opportune circumstance; her husband's absence, her brother's;--the chance pause in the empty london house between country visits;--paul quentin following, finding her there; the hot, dusty, enervating july day, all seemed to have pushed her to the act of madness and made of it a willess yielding rather than a decision. for she had yielded; she had left her husband's house and gone with him. they went abroad at once, to france, to the forest of fontainebleau. how she hated ever after the sound of the lovely syllables, hated the memory of the rocks and woods, the green shadows and the golden lights where she had walked with him and known horror and despair deepening in her heart with every day. she judged herself, not him, in looking back; even then it had been herself she had judged. though unwilling, she had been as much tempted by herself as by him; he had had to break down barriers, but though they were the barriers of her very soul, her longing heart had pressed, had beaten against them, crying out for deliverance. she did not judge him, but, alone with him in the forest, alone with him in the bland, sunny hotel, alone with him through the long nights when she lay awake and wondered, in a stupor of despair, she saw that he was different. so different; there was the horror. she was the sinner; not he. he belonged to the bright, ardent life, the life without social bond or scruple, the life of sunny, tolerant hotels and pagan forests; but she did not belong to it. the things that had seemed external things, barriers and shackles, were the realest things, were in fact the inner things, were her very self. in yielding to her heart she had destroyed herself, there was no life to be lived henceforth with this man, for there was no self left to live it with. she saw that she had cut herself off from her future as well as from her past. the sacred past judged her and the future was dead. years of experience concentrated themselves into that lawless week. she saw that laws were not outside things; that they were one's very self at its wisest. she saw that if laws were to be broken it could only be by a self wiser than the self that had made the law. and the self that had fled with paul quentin was only a passionate, blinded fragment, a heart without a brain, a fragment judged and rejected by the whole. to both lovers the week was one of bitter disillusion, though for quentin no such despair was possible. for him it was an attempt at joy and beauty that had failed. this dulled, drugged looking girl was not the radiant woman he had hoped to find. vain and sensitive as he was, he felt, almost immediately, that he had lost his charm for her; that she had ceased to love him. that was the ugly, the humiliating side of the truth, the side that so filled amabel channice's soul with sickness as she looked back at it. she had ceased to love him, almost at once. and it was not guilt only, and fear, that had risen between them and separated them; there were other, smaller, subtler reasons, little snakes that hissed in her memory. he was different from her in other ways. she hardly saw that one of the ways was that of breeding; but she felt that he jarred upon her constantly, in their intimacy, their helpless, dreadful intimacy. in contrast, the thought of her husband had been with her, burningly. she did not say to herself, for she did not know it, her experience of life was too narrow to give her the knowledge,--that her husband was a gentleman and her lover, a man of genius though he were, was not; but she compared them, incessantly, when quentin's words and actions, his instinctive judgments of men and things, made her shrink and flush. he was so clever, cleverer far than hugh; but he did not know, as sir hugh would have known, what the slight things were that would make her shrink. he took little liberties when he should have been reticent and he was humble when he should have been assured. for he was often humble; he was, oddly, pathetically--and the pity for him added to the sickness--afraid of her and then, because he was afraid, he grew angry with her. he was clever; but there are some things cleverness cannot reach. what he failed to feel by instinct, he tried to scorn. it was not the patrician scorn, stupid yet not ignoble, for something hardly seen, hardly judged, merely felt as dull and insignificant; it was the corroding plebeian scorn for a suspected superiority. he quarrelled with her, and she sat silent, knowing that her silence, her passivity, was an affront the more, but helpless, having no word to say. what could she say?--i do love you: i am wretched: utterly wretched and utterly destroyed.--that was all there was to say. so she sat, dully listening, as if drugged. and she only winced when he so far forgot himself as to cry out that it was her silly pride of blood, the aristocratic illusion, that had infected her; she belonged to the caste that could not think and that picked up the artist and thinker to amuse and fill its vacancy.--"we may be lovers, or we may be performing poodles, but we are never equals," he had cried. it was for him amabel had winced, knowing, without raising her eyes to see it, how his face would burn with humiliation for having so betrayed his consciousness of difference. nothing that he could say could hurt her for herself. but there was worse to bear: after the violence of his anger came the violence of his love. she had borne at first, dully, like the slave she felt herself; for she had sold herself to him, given herself over bound hand and foot. but now it became intolerable. she could not protest,--what was there to protest against, or to appeal to?--but she could fly. the thought of flight rose in her after the torpor of despair and, with its sense of wings, it felt almost like a joy. she could fly back, back, to be scourged and purified, and then--oh far away she saw it now--was something beyond despair; life once more; life hidden, crippled, but life. a prayer rose like a sob with the thought. so one night in london her brother bertram, coming back late to his rooms, found her sitting there. bertram was hard, but not unkind. the sight of her white, fixed face touched him. he did not upbraid her, though for the past week he had rehearsed the bitterest of upbraidings. he even spoke soothingly to her when, speechless, she broke into wild sobs. "there, amabel, there.--yes, it's a frightful mess you've made of things.--when i think of mother!--well, i'll say nothing now. you have come back; that is something. you _have_ left him, amabel?" she nodded, her face hidden. "the brute, the scoundrel," said bertram, at which she moaned a negation.--"you don't still care about him?--well, i won't question you now.--perhaps it's not so desperate. hugh has been very good about it; he's helped me to keep the thing hushed up until we could make sure. i hope we've succeeded; i hope so indeed. hugh will see you soon, i know; and it can be patched up, no doubt, after a fashion." but at this amabel cried:--"i can't.--i can't.--oh--take me away.--let me hide until he divorces me. i can't see him." "divorces you?" bertram's voice was sharp. "have you disgraced publicly--you and us? it's not you i'm thinking of so much as the family name, father and mother. hugh won't divorce you; he can't; he shan't. after all you're a mere child and he didn't look after you." but this was said rather in threat to hugh than in leniency to amabel. she lay back in the chair, helpless, almost lifeless: let them do with her what they would. bertram said that she should spend the night there and that he would see hugh in the morning. and:--"no; you needn't see him yet, if you feel you can't. it may be arranged without that. hugh will understand." and this was the first ray of the light that was to grow and grow. hugh would understand. she did not see him for two years. all that had happened after her return to bertram was a blur now. there were hasty talks, bertram defining for her her future position, one of dignity it must be--he insisted on that; hugh perfectly understood her wish for the present, quite fell in with it; but, eventually, she must take her place in her husband's home again. even bertram, intent as he was on the family honour, could not force the unwilling wife upon the merely magnanimous husband. her husband's magnanimity was the radiance that grew for amabel during these black days, the days of hasty talks and of her journey down to charlock house. she had never seen charlock house before; sir hugh had spoken of the family seat as "a dismal hole," but, on that hot july evening of her arrival, it looked peaceful to her, a dark haven of refuge, like the promise of sleep after nightmare. mrs. bray stood in the door, a grim but not a hostile warder: amabel felt anyone who was not hostile to be almost kind. the house had been hastily prepared for her, dining-room and drawing-room and the large bedroom upstairs, having the same outlook over the lawn, the sycamores, the flat meadows. she could see herself standing there now, looking about her at the bedroom where gaiety and gauntness were oddly mingled in the faded carnations and birds of paradise on the chintzes and in the vastness of the four-poster, the towering wardrobes, the capacious, creaking chairs and sofas. everything was very clean and old; the dressing-table was stiffly skirted in darned muslins and near the pin-cushion stood a small, tight nosegay, mrs. bray's cautious welcome to this ambiguous mistress. "a comfortable old place, isn't it," bertram had said, looking about, too; "you'll soon get well and strong here, amabel." this, amabel knew, was said for the benefit of mrs. bray who stood, non-committal and observant just inside the door. she knew, too, that bertram was depressed by the gauntness and gaiety of the bedroom and even more depressed by the maroon leather furniture and the cases of stuffed birds below, and that he was at once glad to get away from charlock house and sorry for her that she should have to be left there, alone with mrs. bray. but to amabel it was a dream after a nightmare. a strange, desolate dream, all through those sultry summer days; but a dream shot through with radiance in the thought of the magnanimity that had spared and saved her. and with the coming of the final horror, came the final revelation of this radiance. she had been at charlock house for many weeks, and it was mid-autumn, when that horror came. she knew that she was to have a child and that it could not be her husband's child. with the knowledge her mind seemed unmoored at last; it wavered and swung in a nightmare blackness deeper than any she had known. in her physical prostration and mental disarray the thought of suicide was with her. how face bertram now,--bertram with his tenacious hopes? how face her husband--ever--ever--in the far future? her disgrace lived and she was to see it. but, in the swinging chaos, it was that thought that kept her from frenzy; the thought that it did live; that its life claimed her; that to it she must atone. she did not love this child that was to come; she dreaded it; yet the dread was sacred, a burden that she must bear for its unhappy sake. what did she not owe to it--unfortunate one--of atonement and devotion? she gathered all her courage, armed her physical weakness, her wandering mind, to summon bertram and to tell him. she told him in the long drawing-room on a sultry september day, leaning her arms on the table by which she sat and covering her face. bertram said nothing for a long time. he was still boyish enough to feel any such announcement as embarrassing; and that it should be told him now, in such circumstances, by his sister, by amabel, was nearly incredible. how associate such savage natural facts, lawless and unappeasable, with that young figure, dressed in its trousseau white muslin and with its crown of innocent gold. it made her suddenly seem older than himself and at once more piteous and more sinister. for a moment, after the sheer stupor, he was horribly angry with her; then came dismay at his own cruelty. "this does change things, amabel," he said at last. "yes," she answered from behind her hands. "i don't know how hugh will take it," said bertram. "he must divorce me now," she said. "it can be done very quietly, can't it. and i have money. i can go away, somewhere, out of england--i've thought of america--or new zealand--some distant country where i shall never be heard of; i can bring up the child there." bertram stared at her. she sat at the table, her hands before her face, in the light, girlish dress that hung loosely about her. she was fragile and wasted. her voice seemed dead. and he wondered at the unhappy creature's courage. "divorce!" he then said violently; "no; he can't do that;--and he had forgiven already; i don't know how the law stands; but of course you won't go away. what an idea; you might as well kill yourself outright. it's only--. i don't know how the law stands. i don't know what hugh will say." bertram walked up and down biting his nails. he stopped presently before a window, his back turned to his sister, and, flushing over the words, he said: "you are sure--you are quite sure, amabel, that it isn't hugh's child. you are such a girl. you can know nothing.--i mean--it may be a mistake." "i am quite sure," the unmoved voice answered him. "i do know." bertram again stood silent. "well," he said at last, turning to her though he did not look at her, "all i can do is to see how hugh takes it. you know, amabel, that you can count on me. i'll see after you, and after the child. hugh may, of course, insist on your parting from it; that will probably be the condition he'll make;--naturally. in that case i'll take you abroad soon. it can be got through, i suppose, without anybody knowing; assumed names; some swiss or italian village--" bertram muttered, rather to himself than to her. "good god, what an odious business!--but, as you say, we have money; that simplifies everything. you mustn't worry about the child. i will see that it is put into safe hands and i'll keep an eye on its future--." he stopped, for his sister's hands had fallen. she was gazing at him, still dully--for it seemed that nothing could strike any excitement from her--but with a curious look, a look that again made him feel as if she were much older than he. "never," she said. "never what?" bertram asked. "you mean you won't part from the child?" "never; never," she repeated. "but amabel," with cold patience he urged; "if hugh insists.--my poor girl, you have made your bed and you must lie on it. you can't expect your husband to give this child--this illegitimate child--his name. you can't expect him to accept it as his child." "no; i don't expect it," she said. "well, what then? what's your alternative?" "i must go away with the child." "i tell you, amabel, it's impossible," bertram in his painful anxiety spoke with irritation. "you've got to consider our name--my name, my position, and your husband's. heaven knows i want to be kind to you--do all i can for you; i've not once reproached you, have i? but you must be reasonable. some things you must accept as your punishment. unless hugh is the most fantastically generous of men you'll have to part from the child." she sat silent. "you do consent to that?" bertram insisted. she looked before her with that dull, that stupid look. "no," she replied. bertram's patience gave way, "you are mad," he said. "have you no consideration for me--for us? you behave like this--incredibly, in my mother's daughter--never a girl better brought up; you go off with that--that bounder;--you stay with him for a week--good heavens!--there'd have been more dignity if you'd stuck to him;--you chuck him, in one week, and then you come back and expect us to do as you think fit, to let you disappear and everyone know that you've betrayed your husband and had a child by another man. it's mad, i tell you, and it's impossible, and you've got to submit. do you hear? will you answer me, i say? will you promise that if hugh won't consent to fathering the child--won't consent to giving it his name--won't consent to having it, as his heir, disinherit the lawful children he may have by you--good heavens, i wonder if you realize what you are asking!--will you promise, i say, if he doesn't consent, to part from the child?" she did look rather mad, her brother thought, and he remembered, with discomfort, that women, at such times, did sometimes lose their reason. her eyes with their dead gaze nearly frightened him, when, after all his violence, his entreaty, his abuse of her, she only, in an unchanged voice, said "no." he felt then the uselessness of protestation or threat; she must be treated as if she were mad; humored, cajoled. he was silent for a little while, walking up and down. "well, i'll say no more, then. forgive me for my harshness," he said. "you give me a great deal to bear, amabel; but i'll say nothing now. i have your word, at all events," he looked sharply at her as the sudden suspicion crossed him, "i have your word that you'll stay quietly here--until you hear from me what hugh says? you promise me that?" "yes," his sister answered. he gave a sigh for the sorry relief. that night amabel's mind wandered wildly. she heard herself, in the lonely room where she lay, calling out meaningless things. she tried to control the horror of fear that rose in her and peopled the room with phantoms; but the fear ran curdling in her veins and flowed about her, shaping itself in forms of misery and disaster. "no--no--poor child.--oh--don't--don't.--i will come to you. i am your mother.--they can't take you from me."--this was the most frequent cry. the poor child hovered, wailing, delivered over to vague, unseen sorrow, and, though a tiny infant, it seemed to be paul quentin, too, in some dreadful plight, appealing to her in the name of their dead love to save him. she did not love him; she did not love the child; but her heart seemed broken with impotent pity. in the intervals of nightmare she could look, furtively, fixedly, about the room. the moon was bright outside, and through the curtains a pallid light showed the menacing forms of the two great wardrobes. the four posts of her bed seemed like the pillars of some vast, alien temple, and the canopy, far above her, floated like a threatening cloud. opposite her bed, above the chimney-piece, was a deeply glimmering mirror: if she were to raise herself she would see her own white reflection, rising, ghastly.--she hid her face on her pillows and sank again into the abyss. next morning she could not get up. her pulses were beating at fever speed; but, with the daylight, her mind was clearer. she could summon her quiet look when mrs. bray came in to ask her mournfully how she was. and a little later a telegram came, from bertram. her trembling hands could hardly open it. she read the words. "all is well." mrs. bray stood beside her bed. she meant to keep that quiet look for mrs. bray; but she fainted. mrs. bray, while she lay tumbled among the pillows, and before lifting her, read the message hastily. from the night of torment and the shock of joy, amabel brought an extreme susceptibility to emotion that showed itself through all her life in a trembling of her hands and frame when any stress of feeling was laid upon her. after that torment and that shock she saw bertram once, and only once, again;--ah, strange and sad in her memory that final meeting of their lives, though this miraculous news was the theme of it. she was still in bed when he came, the bed she did not leave for months, and, though so weak and dizzy, she understood all that he told her, knew the one supreme fact of her husband's goodness. he sent her word that she was to be troubled about nothing; she was to take everything easily and naturally. she should always have her child with her and it should bear his name. he would see after it like a father; it should never know that he was not its father. and, as soon as she would let him, he would come and see her--and it. amabel, lying on her pillows, gazed and gazed: her eyes, in their shadowy hollows, were two dark wells of sacred wonder. even bertram felt something of the wonder of them. in his new gladness and relief, he was very kind to her. he came and kissed her. she seemed, once more, a person whom one could kiss. "poor dear," he said, "you have had a lot to bear. you do look dreadfully ill. you must get well and strong, now, amabel, and not worry any more, about anything. everything is all right. we will call the child augustine, if it's a boy, after mother's father you know, and katherine, if it's a girl, after her mother: i feel, don't you, that we have no right to use their own names. but the further away ones seem right, now. hugh is a trump, isn't he? and, i'm sure of it, amabel, when time has passed a little, and you feel you can, he'll have you back; i do really believe it may be managed. this can all be explained. i'm saying that you are ill, a nervous breakdown, and are having a complete rest." she heard him dimly, feeling these words irrelevant. she knew that hugh must never have her back; that she could never go back to hugh; that her life henceforth was dedicated. and yet bertram was kind, she felt that, though dimly feeling, too, that her old image of him had grown tarnished. but her mind was far from bertram and the mitigations he offered. she was fixed on that radiant figure, her husband, her knight, who had stooped to her in her abasement, her agony, and had lifted her from dust and darkness to the air where she could breathe,--and bless him. "tell him--i bless him,"--she said to bertram. she could say nothing more. there were other memories of that day, too, but even more dim, more irrelevant. bertram had brought papers for her to sign, saying: "i know you'll want to be very generous with hugh now," and she had raised herself on her elbow to trace with the fingers that trembled the words he dictated to her. there was sorrow, indeed, to look back on after that. poor bertram died only a month later, struck down by an infectious illness. he was not to see or supervise the rebuilding of his sister's shattered life, and the anguish in her sorrow was the thought of all the pain that she had brought to his last months of life: but this sorrow, after the phantoms, the nightmares, was like the weeping of tears after a dreadful weeping of blood. her tears fell as she lay there, propped on her pillows--for she was very ill--and looking out over the autumn fields; she wept for poor bertram and all the pain; life was sad. but life was good and beautiful. after the flames, the suffocation, it had brought her here, and it showed her that radiant figure, that goodness and beauty embodied in human form. and she had more to help her, for he wrote to her, a few delicately chosen words, hardly touching on their own case, his and hers, but about her brother's death and of how he felt for her in her bereavement, and of what a friend dear bertram had been to himself. "some day, dear amabel, you must let me come and see you" it ended; and "your affectionate husband." it was almost too wonderful to be borne. she had to close her eyes in thinking of it and to lie very still, holding the blessed letter in her hand and smiling faintly while she drew long soft breaths. he was always in her thoughts, her husband; more, far more, than her coming child. it was her husband who had made that coming a thing possible to look forward to with resignation; it was no longer the nightmare of desolate flights and hidings. and even after the child was born, after she had seen its strange little face, even then, though it was all her life, all her future, it held the second place in her heart. it was her life, but it was from her husband that the gift of life had come to her. she was a gentle, a solicitous, a devoted mother. she never looked at her baby without a sense of tears. unfortunate one, was her thought, and the pulse of her life was the yearning to atone. she must be strong and wise for her child and out of her knowledge of sin and weakness in herself must guide and guard it. but in her yearning, in her brooding thought, was none of the mother's rapturous folly and gladness. she never kissed her baby. some dark association made the thought of kisses an unholy thing and when, forgetting, she leaned to it sometimes, thoughtless, and delighting in littleness and sweetness, the dark memory of guilt would rise between its lips and hers, so that she would grow pale and draw back. when first she saw her husband, augustine was over a year old. sir hugh had written and asked if he might not come down one day and spend an hour with her. "and let all the old fogies see that we are friends," he said, in his remembered playful vein. it was in the long dark drawing-room that she had seen him for the first time since her flight into the wilderness. he had come in, grave, yet with something blithe and unperturbed in his bearing that, as she stood waiting for what he might say to her, seemed the very nimbus of chivalry. he was splendid to look at, too, tall and strong with clear kind eyes and clear kind smile. she could not speak, not even when he came and took her hand, and said: "well amabel." and then, seeing how white she was and how she trembled, he had bent his head and kissed her hand. and at that she had broken into tears; but they were tears of joy. he stood beside her while she wept, her hands before her face, just touching her shoulder with a paternal hand, and she heard him saying: "poor little amabel: poor little girl." she took her chair beside the table and for a long time she kept her face hidden: "thank you; thank you;" was all that she could say. "my dear, what for?--there, don't cry.--you have stopped crying? there, poor child. i've been awfully sorry for you." he would not let her try to say how good he was, and this was a relief, for she knew that she could not put it into words and that, without words, he understood. he even laughed a little, with a graceful embarrassment, at her speechless gratitude. and presently, when they talked, she could put down her hand, could look round at him, while she answered that, yes, she was very comfortable at charlock house; yes, no place could suit her more perfectly; yes, mrs. bray was very kind. and he talked a little about business with her, explaining that bertram's death had left him with a great deal of management on his hands; he must have her signature to papers, and all this was done with the easiest tact so that naturalness and simplicity should grow between them; so that, in finding pen and papers in her desk, in asking where she was to sign, in obeying the pointing of his finger here and there, she should recover something of her quiet, and be able to smile, even, a little answering smile, when he said that he should make a business woman of her. and--"rather a shame that i should take your money like this, amabel, but, with all bertram's money, you are quite a bloated capitalist. i'm rather hard up, and you don't grudge it, i know." she flushed all over at the idea, even said in jest:--"all that i have is yours." "ah, well, not all," said sir hugh. "you must remember--other claims." and he, too, flushed a little now in saying, gently, tentatively;--"may i see the little boy?" "i will bring him," said amabel. how she remembered, all her life long, that meeting of her husband and her son. it was the late afternoon of a bright june day and the warm smell of flowers floated in at the open windows of the drawing-room. she did not let the nurse bring augustine, she carried him down herself. he was a large, robust baby with thick, corn-coloured hair and a solemn, beautiful little face. amabel came in with him and stood before her husband holding him and looking down. confusion was in her mind, a mingling of pride and shame. sir hugh and the baby eyed each other, with some intentness. and, as the silence grew a little long, sir hugh touched the child's cheek with his finger and said: "nice little fellow: splendid little fellow. how old is he, amabel? isn't he very big?" "a year and two months. yes, he is very big." "he looks like you, doesn't he?" "does he?" she said faintly. "just your colour," sir hugh assured her. "as grave as a little king, isn't he. how firmly he looks at me." "he is grave, but he never cries; he is very cheerful, too, and well and strong." "he looks it. he does you credit. well, my little man, shall we be friends?" sir hugh held out his hand. augustine continued to gaze at him, unmoving. "he won't shake hands," said sir hugh. amabel took the child's hand and placed it in her husband's; her own fingers shook. but augustine drew back sharply, doubling his arm against his breast, though not wavering in his gaze at the stranger. sir hugh laughed at the decisive rejection. "friendship's on one side, till later," he said. * * * * * when her husband had gone amabel went out into the sycamore wood. it was a pale, cool evening. the sun had set and the sky beyond the sycamores was golden. above, in a sky of liquid green, the evening star shone softly. a joy, sweet, cold, pure, like the evening, was in her heart. she stopped in the midst of the little wood among the trees, and stood still, closing her eyes. something old was coming back to her; something new was being given. the memory of her mother's eyes was in it, of the simple prayers taught her by her mother in childhood, and the few words, rare and simple, of the presence of god in the soul. but her girlish prayer, her girlish thought of god, had been like a thread-like, singing brook. what came to her now grew from the brook-like running of trust and innocence to a widening river, to a sea that filled her, over-flowed her, encompassed her, in whose power she was weak, through whose power her weakness was uplifted and made strong. it was as if a dark curtain of fear and pain lifted from her soul, showing vastness, and deep upon deep of stars. yet, though this that came to her was so vast, it made itself small and tender, too, like the flowers glimmering about her feet, the breeze fanning her hair and garments, the birds asleep in the branches above her. she held out her hands, for it seemed to fall like dew, and she smiled, her face uplifted. * * * * * she did not often see her husband in the quiet years that followed. she did not feel that she needed to see him. it was enough to know that he was there, good and beautiful. she knew that she idealised him, that in ordinary aspects he was a happy, easy man-of-the-world; but that was not the essential; the essential in him was the pity, the tenderness, the comprehension that had responded to her great need. he was very unconscious of aims or ideals; but when the time for greatness came he showed it as naturally and simply as a flower expands to light. the thought of him henceforth was bound up with the thought of her religion; nothing of rapture or ecstasy was in it; it was quiet and grave, a revelation of holiness. it was as if she had been kneeling to pray, alone, in a dark, devastated church, trembling, and fearing the darkness, not daring to approach the unseen altar; and that then her husband's hand had lighted all the high tapers one by one, so that the church was filled with radiance and the divine made manifest to her again. light and quietness were to go with her, but they were not to banish fear. they could only help her to live with fear and to find life beautiful in spite of it. for if her husband stood for the joy of life, her child stood for its sorrow. he was the dark past and the unknown future. what she should find in him was unrevealed; and though she steadied her soul to the acceptance of whatever the future might bring of pain for her, the sense of trembling was with her always in the thought of what it might bring of pain for augustine. iv lady channice woke on the morning after her long retrospect bringing from her dreams a heavy heart. she lay for some moments after the maid had drawn her curtains, looking out at the fields as she had so often looked, and wondering why her heart was heavy. throb by throb, like a leaden shuttle, it seemed to weave together the old and new memories, so that she saw the pattern of yesterday and of today, lady elliston's coming, the pain that augustine had given her in his strange questionings, the meeting of her husband and her son. and the ominous rhythm of the shuttle was like the footfall of the past creeping upon her. it was more difficult than it had been for years, this morning, to quiet the throb, to stay her thoughts on strength. she could not pray, for her thoughts, like her heart, were leaden; the whispered words carried no message as they left her lips; she could not lift her thought to follow them. it was upon a lesser, a merely human strength, that she found herself dwelling. she was too weak, too troubled, to find the swiftness of soul that could soar with its appeal, the stillness of soul where the divine response could enter; and weakness turned to human help. the thought of her husband's coming was like a glow of firelight seen at evening on a misty moor. she could hasten towards it, quelling fear. there she would be safe. by his mere presence he would help and sustain her. he would be kind and tactful with augustine, as he had always been; he would make a shield between her and lady elliston. she could see no sky above, and the misty moor loomed with uncertain shapes; but she could look before her and feel that she went towards security and brightness. augustine and his mother both studied during the day, the same studies, for lady channice, to a great extent, shared her son's scholarly pursuits. from his boyhood--a studious, grave, yet violent little boy he had been, his fits of passionate outbreak quelled, as he grew older, by the mere example of her imperturbability beside him--she had thus shared everything. she had made herself his tutor as well as his guardian angel. she was more tutor, more guardian angel, than mother. their mental comradeship was full of mutual respect. and though augustine was not of the religious temperament, though his mother's instinct told her that in her lighted church he would be a respectful looker-on rather than a fellow-worshipper, though they never spoke of religion, just as they seldom kissed, augustine's growing absorption in metaphysics tinged their friendship with a religious gravity and comprehension. on three mornings in the week lady channice had a class for the older village girls; she sewed, read and talked with them, and was fond of them all. these girls, their placing in life, their marriages and babies, were her most real interest in the outer world. during the rest of the day she gardened, and read whatever books augustine might be reading. it was the mother and son's habit thus to work apart and to discuss work in the evenings. today, when her girls were gone, she found herself very lonely. augustine was out riding and in her room she tried to occupy herself, fearing her own thoughts. it was past twelve when she heard the sound of his horse's hoofs on the gravel before the door and, throwing a scarf over her hair, she ran down to meet him. the hall door at charlock house, under a heavy portico, looked out upon a circular gravel drive bordered by shrubberies and enclosed by high walls; beyond the walls and gates was the high-road. an interval of sunlight had broken into the chill autumn day: augustine had ridden bareheaded and his gold hair shone as the sun fell upon it. he looked, in his stately grace, like an equestrian youth on a greek frieze. and, as was usual with his mother, her appreciation of augustine's nobility and fineness passed at once into a pang: so beautiful; so noble; and so shadowed. she stood, her black scarf about her face and shoulders, and smiled at him while he threw the reins to the old groom and dismounted. "nice to find you waiting for me," he said. "i'm late this morning. too late for any work before lunch. don't you want a little walk? you look pale." "i should like it very much. i may miss my afternoon walk--your father may have business to talk over." they went through the broad stone hall-way that traversed the house and stepped out on the gravel walk at the back. this path, running below the drawing-room and dining-room windows, led down on one side to the woods, on the other to lady channice's garden, and was a favourite place of theirs for quiet saunterings. today the sunlight fell mildly on it. a rift of pale blue showed in the still grey sky. "i met marjory," said augustine, "and we had a gallop over pangley common. she rides well, that child. we jumped the hedge and ditch at the foot of the common, you know--the high hedge--for practice. she goes over like a bird." amabel's mind was dwelling on the thought of shadowed brightness and marjory, fresh, young, deeply rooted in respectability, seemed suddenly more significant than she had ever been before. in no way augustine's equal, of course, except in that impersonal, yet so important matter of roots; amabel had known a little irritation over mrs. grey's open manoeuvreings; but on this morning of rudderless tossing, marjory appeared in a new aspect. how sound; how safe. it was of augustine's insecurity rather than of augustine himself that she was thinking as she said: "she is such a nice girl." "yes, she is," said augustine. "what did you talk about?" "oh, the things we saw; birds and trees and clouds.--i pour information upon her." "she likes that, one can see it." "yes, she is so nice and guileless that she doesn't resent my pedantry. i love giving information, you know," augustine smiled. he looked about him as he spoke, at birds and trees and clouds, happy, humorous, clasping his riding crop behind his back so that his mother heard it make a pleasant little click against his gaiter as he walked. "it's delightful for both of you, such a comradeship." "yes; a comradeship after a fashion; marjory is just like a nice little boy." "ah, well, she is growing up; she is seventeen, you know. she is more than a little boy." "not much; she never will be much more." "she will make a very nice woman." augustine continued to smile, partly at the thought of marjory, and partly at another thought. "you mustn't make plans, for me and marjory, like mrs. grey," he said presently. "it's mothers like mrs. grey who spoil comradeships. you know, i'll never marry marjory. she is a nice little boy, and we are friends; but she doesn't interest me." "she may grow more interesting: she is so young. i don't make plans, dear,--yet i think that it might be a happy thing for you." "she'll never interest me," said augustine. "must you have a very interesting wife?" "of course i must:--she must be as interesting as you are!" he turned his head to smile at her. "you are not exacting, dear!" "yes, i am, though. she must be as interesting as you--and as good; else why should i leave you and go and live with someone else.--though for that matter, i shouldn't leave you. you'd have to live with us, you know, if i ever married." "ah, my dear boy," lady channice murmured. she managed a smile presently and added: "you might fall in love with someone not so interesting. you can't be sure of your feelings and your mind going together." "my feelings will have to submit themselves to my mind. i don't know about 'falling'; i rather dislike the expression: one might 'fall' in love with lots of people one would never dream of marrying. it would have to be real love. i'd have to love a woman very deeply before i wanted her to share my life, to be a part of me; to be the mother of my children." he spoke with his cheerful gravity. "you have an old head on very young shoulders, augustine." "i really believe i have!" he accepted her somewhat sadly humorous statement; "and that's why i don't believe i'll ever make a mistake. i'd rather never marry than make a mistake. i know i sound priggish; but i've thought a good deal about it: i've had to." he paused for a moment, and then, in the tone of quiet, unconfused confidence that always filled her with a sense of mingled pride and humility, he added:--"i have strong passions, and i've already seen what happens to people who allow feeling to govern them." amabel was suddenly afraid. "i know that you would always be--good augustine; i can trust you for that." she spoke faintly. they had now walked down to the little garden with its box borders and were wandering vaguely among the late roses. she paused to look at the roses, stooping to breathe in the fragrance of a tall white cluster: it was an instinctive impulse of hiding: she hoped in another moment to find an escape in some casual gardening remark. but augustine, unsuspecting, was interested in their theme. "good? i don't know," he said. "i don't think it's goodness, exactly. it's that i so loathe the other thing, so loathe the animal i know in myself, so loathe the idea of life at the mercy of emotion." she had to leave the roses and walk on again beside him, steeling herself to bear whatever might be coming. and, feeling that unconscious accusation loomed, she tried, as unconsciously, to mollify and evade it. "it isn't always the animal, exactly, is it?--or emotion only? it is romance and blind love for a person that leads people astray." "isn't that the animal?" augustine inquired. "i don't think the animal base, you know, or shameful, if he is properly harnessed and kept in his place. it's only when i see him dominating that i hate and fear him so. and," he went on after a little pause of reflection, "i especially hate him in that form;--romance and blind love: because what is that, really, but the animal at its craftiest and most dangerous? what is romance--i mean romance of the kind that jeopardizes 'goodness'--what is it but the most subtle self-deception? you don't love the person in the true sense of love; you don't want their good; you don't want to see them put in the right relation to their life as a whole:--what you want is sensation through them; what you want is yourself in them, and their absorption in you. i don't think that wicked, you know--i'm not a monk or even a puritan--if it's the mere result of the right sort of love, a happy glamour that accompanies, the right sort; it's in its place, then, and can endanger nothing. but people are so extraordinarily blind about love; they don't seem able to distinguish between the real and the false. people usually, though they don't know it, mean only desire when they talk of love." there was another pause in which she wondered that he did not hear the heavy throbbing of her heart. but now there was no retreat; she must go on; she must understand her son. "desire must enter in," she said. "in its place, yes; it's all a question of that;" augustine replied, smiling a little at her, aware of the dogmatic flavour of his own utterances, the humorous aspect of their announcement, to her, by him;--"you love a woman enough and respect her enough to wish her to be the mother of your children--assuming, of course, that you consider yourself worthy to carry on the race; and to think of a woman in such a way is to feel a rightful emotion and a rightful desire; anything else makes emotion the end instead of the result and is corrupting, i'm sure of it." "you have thought it all out, haven't you"; lady channice steadied her voice to say. there was panic rising in her, and a strange anger made part of it. "i've had to, as i said," he replied. "i'm anything but self-controlled by nature; already," and augustine looked calmly at his mother, "i'd have let myself go and been very dissolute unless i'd had this ideal of my own honour to help me. i'm of anything but a saintly disposition." "my dear augustine!" his mother had coloured faintly. absurd as it was, when the reality of her own life was there mocking her, the bald words were strange to her. "do i shock you?" he asked. "you know i always feel that you _are_ a saint, who can hear and understand everything." she blushed deeply, painfully, now. "no, you don't shock me;--i am only a little startled." "to hear that i'm sensual? the whole human race is far too sensual in my opinion. they think a great deal too much about their sexual appetites;--only they don't think about them in those terms unfortunately; they think about them veiled and wreathed; that's why we are sunk in such a bog of sentimentality and sin." lady channice was silent for a long time. they had left the garden, and walked along the little path near the sunken wall at the foot of the lawn, and, skirting the wood of sycamores, had come back to the broad gravel terrace. a turmoil was in her mind; a longing to know and see; a terror of what he would show her. "do you call it sin, that blinded love? do you think that the famous lovers of romance were sinners?" she asked at last; "tristan and iseult?--abélard and héloise?--paolo and francesca?" "of course they were sinners," said augustine cheerfully. "what did they want?--a present joy: purely and simply that: they sacrificed everything to it--their own and other people's futures: what's that but sin? there is so much mawkish rubbish talked and written about such persons. they were pathetic, of course, most sinners are; that particular sin, of course, may be so associated and bound up with beautiful things;--fidelity, and real love may make such a part of it, that people get confused about it." "fidelity and real love?" lady channice repeated: "you think that they atone--if they make part of an illicit passion?" "i don't think that they atone; but they may redeem it, mayn't they? why do you ask me?" augustine smiled;--"you know far more about these things than i do." she could not look at him. his words in their beautiful unconsciousness appalled her. yet she had to go on, to profit by her own trance-like strength. she was walking on the verge of a precipice but she knew that with steady footsteps she could go towards her appointed place. she must see just where augustine put her, just how he judged her. "you seem to know more than i do, augustine," she said: "i've not thought it out as you have. and it seems to me that any great emotion is more of an end in itself than you would grant. but if the illicit passion thinks itself real and thinks itself enduring, and proves neither, what of it then? what do you think of lovers to whom that happens? it so often happens, you know." augustine had his cheerful answer ready. "then they are stupid as well as sinful. of course it is sinful to be stupid. we've learned that from plato and hegel, haven't we?" the parlour-maid came out to announce lunch. lady channice was spared an answer. she went to her room feeling shattered, as if great stones had been hurled upon her. yes, she thought, gazing at herself in the mirror, while she untied her scarf and smoothed her hair, yes, she had never yet, with all her agonies of penitence, seen so clearly what she had been: a sinner: a stupid sinner. augustine's rigorous young theories might set too inhuman an ideal, but that aspect of them stood out clear: he had put, in bald, ugly words, what, in essence, her love for paul quentin had been: he had stripped all the veils and wreaths away. it had been self; self, blind in desire, cruel when blindness left it: there had been no real love and no fidelity to redeem the baseness. a stupid sinner; that, her son had told her, was what she had been. the horror of it smote back upon her from her widened, mirrored eyes, and she sat for a moment thinking that she must faint. then she remembered that augustine was waiting for her downstairs and that in little more than an hour her husband would be with her. and suddenly the agony lightened. a giddiness of relief came over her. he was kind: he did not judge her: he knew all, yet he respected her. augustine was like the bleak, stony moor; she must shut her eyes and stumble on towards the firelight. and as she thought of that nearing brightness, of her husband's eyes, that never judged, never grew hard or fierce or remote from human tolerance, a strange repulsion from her son rose in her. cold, fierce, righteous boy; cold, heartless theories that one throb of human emotion would rightly shatter;--the thought was almost like an echo of paul quentin speaking in her heart to comfort her. she sprang up: that was indeed the last turn of horror. if she was not to faint she must not think. action alone could dispel the whirling mist where she did not know herself. she went down to the dining-room. augustine stood looking out of the window. "do come and see this delightful swallow," he said: "he's skimming over and over the lawn." she felt that she could not look at the swallow. she could only walk to her chair and sink down on it. augustine repelled her with his cheerfulness, his trivial satisfactions. how could he not know that she was in torment and that he had plunged her there. this involuntary injustice to him was, she saw again, veritably crazed. she poured herself out water and said in a voice that surprised herself:--"very delightful, i am sure; but come and have your lunch. i am hungry." "and how pale you are," said augustine, going to his place. "we stayed out too long. you got chilled." he looked at her with the solicitude that was like a brother's--or a doctor's. that jarred upon her racked nerves, too. "yes; i am cold," she said. she took food upon her plate and pretended to eat. augustine, she guessed, must already feel the change in her. he must see that she only pretended. but he said nothing more. his tact was a further turn to the knot of her sudden misery. * * * * * augustine was with her in the drawing-room when she heard the wheels of the station-fly grinding on the gravel drive; they sounded very faintly in the drawing-room, but, from years of listening, her hearing had grown very acute. she could never meet her husband without an emotion that betrayed itself in pallor and trembling and today the emotion was so marked that augustine's presence was at once a safeguard and an anxiety; before augustine she could be sure of not breaking down, not bursting into tears of mingled gladness and wretchedness, but though he would keep her from betraying too much to sir hugh, would she not betray too much to him? he was reading a review and laid it down as the door opened: she could only hope that he noticed nothing. sir hugh came in quickly. at fifty-four he was still a very handsome man of a chivalrous and soldierly bearing. he had long limbs, broad shoulders and a not yet expanded waist. his nose and chin were clearly and strongly cut, his eyes brightly blue; his moustache ran to decisive little points twisted up from the lip and was as decorative as an epaulette upon a martial shoulder. pleasantness radiated from him, and though, with years, this pleasantness was significant rather of his general attitude than of his individual interest, though his movements had become a little indolent and his features a little heavy, these changes, to affectionate eyes, were merely towards a more pronounced geniality and contentedness. today, however, geniality and contentment were less apparent. he looked slightly nipped and hardened, and, seeming pleased to find a fire, he stood before it, after he had shaken hands with his wife and with augustine, and said that it had been awfully cold in the train. "we will have tea at half past four instead of five today, then," said amabel. but no, he replied, he couldn't stop for tea: he must catch the four-four back to town: he had a dinner and should only just make it. his eye wandered a little vaguely about the room, but he brought it back to amabel to say with a smile that the fire made up for the loss of tea. there was then a little silence during which it might have been inferred that sir hugh expected augustine to leave the room. amabel, too, expected it; but augustine had taken up his review and was reading again. she felt her fear of him, her anger against him, grow. very pleasantly, sir hugh at last suggested that he had a little business to talk over. "i think i'll ask augustine to let us have a half hour's talk." "oh, i'll not interfere with business," said augustine, not lifting his eyes. the silence, now, was more than uncomfortable; to amabel it was suffocating. she could guess too well that some latent enmity was expressed in augustine's assumed unconsciousness. that sir hugh was surprised, displeased, was evident; but, when he spoke again, after a little pause, it was still pleasantly:--"not with business, but with talk you will interfere. i'm afraid i must ask you.--i don't often have a chance to talk with your mother.--i'll see you later, eh?" augustine made no reply. he rose and walked out of the room. sir hugh still stood before the fire, lifting first the sole of one boot and then the other to the blaze. "hasn't always quite nice manners, has he, the boy"; he observed. "i didn't want to have to send him out, you know." "he didn't realize that you wanted to talk to me alone." amabel felt herself offering the excuse from a heart turned to stone. "didn't he, do you think? perhaps not. we always do talk alone, you know. he's just a trifle tactless, shows a bit of temper sometimes. i've noticed it. i hope he doesn't bother you with it." "no. i never saw him like that, before," said amabel, looking down as she sat in her chair. "well, that's all that matters," said sir hugh, as if satisfied. his boots were quite hot now and he went to the writing-desk drawing a case of papers from his breast-pocket. "here are some of your securities, amabel," he said: "i want a few more signatures. things haven't been going very well with me lately. i'd be awfully obliged if you'd help me out." "oh--gladly--" she murmured. she rose and came to the desk. she hardly saw the papers through a blur of miserable tears while she wrote her name here and there. she was shut out in the mist and dark; he wasn't thinking of her at all; he was chill, preoccupied; something was displeasing him; decisively, almost sharply, he told her where to write. "you mustn't be worried, you know," he observed as he pointed out the last place; "i'm arranging here, you see, to pass charlock house over to you for good. that is a little return for all you've done. it's not a valueless property. and then bertram tied up a good sum for the child, you know." his speaking of "the child," made her heart stop beating, it brought the past so near.--and was charlock house to be her very own? "oh," she murmured, "that is too good of you.--you mustn't do that.--apart from augustine's share, all that i have is yours; i want no return." "ah, but i want you to have it"; said sir hugh; "it will ease my conscience a little. and you really do care for the grim old place, don't you." "i love it." "well, sign here, and here, and it's yours. there. now you are mistress in your own home. you don't know how good you've been to me, amabel." the voice was the old, kind voice, touched even, it seemed, with an unwonted feeling, and, suddenly, the tears ran down her cheeks as, looking at the papers that gave her her home, she said, faltering:--"you are not displeased with me?--nothing is the matter?" he looked at her, startled, a little confused. "why my dear girl,--displeased with you?--how could i be?--no. it's only these confounded affairs of mine that are in a bit of a mess just now." "and can't i be of even more help--without any returns? i can be so economical for myself, here. i need almost nothing in my quiet life." sir hugh flushed. "oh, you've not much more to give, my dear. i've taken you at your word." "take me completely at my word. take everything." "you dear little saint," he said. he patted her shoulder. the door was wide; the fire shone upon her. she felt herself falling on her knees before it, with happy tears. he, who knew all, could say that to her, with sincerity. the day of lowering fear and bewilderment opened to sudden joy. his hand was on her shoulder; she lifted it and kissed it. "oh! don't!"--said sir hugh. he drew his hand sharply away. there was confusion, irritation, in his little laugh. amabel's tears stood on scarlet cheeks. did he not understand?--did he think?--and was he right in thinking?--shame flooded her. what girlish impulse had mingled incredibly with her gratitude, her devotion? sir hugh had turned away, and as she sat there, amazed with her sudden suspicion, the door opened and augustine came in saying:--"here is lady elliston, mother." v lady elliston helped her. how that, too, brought back the past to amabel as she rose and moved forward, before her husband and her son, to greet the friend of twenty years ago. lady elliston, at difficult moments, had always helped her, and this was one of the most difficult that she had ever known. amabel forgot her tears, forgot her shame, in her intense desire that augustine should guess nothing. "my very dear amabel," said lady elliston. she swept forward and took both lady channice's hands, holding them firmly, looking at her intently, intently smiling, as if, with her own mastery of the situation, to give her old friend strength. "my dear, dear amabel," she repeated: "how good it is to see you again.--and how lovely you are." she was silken, she was scarfed, she was soft and steady; as in the past, sweetness and strength breathed from her. she was competent to deal with most calamitous situations and to make them bearable, to make them even graceful. she could do what she would with situations: amabel felt that of her now as she had felt it years ago. her eyes continued to gaze for a long moment into amabel's eyes before, as softly and as steadily, they passed to sir hugh who was again standing before the fire behind his wife. "how do you do," she then said with a little nod. "how d'ye do," sir hugh replied. his voice was neither soft nor steady; the sharpness, the irritation was in it. "i didn't know you were down here," he said. over amabel's shoulder, while she still held amabel's hands, lady elliston looked at him, all sweetness. "yes: i arrived this morning. i am staying with the greys." "the greys? how in the dickens did you run across them?" sir hugh asked with a slight laugh. "i met them at jack's cousin's--the nice old bishop, you know. they are tiresome people; but kind. and there is a grey _fils_--the oldest--whom peggy took rather a fancy to last winter,--they were hunting together in yorkshire;--and i wanted to look at him--and at the place!--"--lady elliston's smile was all candour. "they are very solid; it's not a bad place. if the young people are really serious jack and i might consider it; with three girls still to marry, one must be very wise and reasonable. but, of course, i came really to see you, amabel." she had released amabel's hands at last with a final soft pressure, and, as amabel took her accustomed chair near the table, she sat down near her and loosened her cloak and unwound her scarf, and threw back her laces. "and i've been making friends with your boy," she went on, looking up at augustine:--"he's been walking me about the garden, saying that you mustn't be disturbed. why haven't i been able to make friends before? why hasn't he been to see me in london?" "i'll bring him someday," said sir hugh. "he is only just grown up, you see." "i see: do bring him soon. he is charming," said lady elliston, smiling at augustine. amabel remembered her pretty, assured manner of saying any pleasantness--or unpleasantness for that matter--that she chose to say; but it struck her, from this remark, that the gift had grown a little mechanical. augustine received it without embarrassment. augustine already seemed to know that this smiling guest was in the habit of saying that young men were charming before their faces when she wanted to be pleasant to them. amabel seemed to see her son from across the wide chasm that had opened between them; but, looking at his figure, suddenly grown strange, she felt that augustine's manners were 'nice.' the fact of their niceness, of his competence--really it matched lady elliston's--made him the more mature; and this moment of motherly appreciation led her back to the stony wilderness where her son judged her, with a man's, not a boy's judgment. there was no uncertainty in augustine; his theories might be young; his character was formed; his judgments would not change. she forced herself not to think; but to look and listen. lady elliston continued to talk: indeed it was she and augustine who did most of the talking. sir hugh only interjected a remark now and then from his place before the fire. amabel was able to feel a further change in him; he was displeased today, and displeased in particular, now, with lady elliston. she thought that she could understand the vexation for him of this irruption of his real life into the sad little corner of kindness and duty that charlock house and its occupants must represent to him. he had seldom spoken to her about lady elliston; he had seldom spoken to her about any of the life that she had abandoned in abandoning him: but she knew that lord and lady elliston were near friends still, and with this knowledge she could imagine how on edge her husband must be when to the near friend of the real life he could allow an even sharper note to alter all his voice. amabel heard it sadly, with a sense of confused values: nothing today was as she had expected it to be: and if she heard she was sure that lady elliston must hear it too, and perhaps the symptom of lady elliston's displeasure was that she talked rather pointedly to augustine and talked hardly at all to sir hugh: her eyes, in speaking, passed sometimes over his figure, rested sometimes, with a bland courtesy, on his face when he spoke; but augustine was their object: on him they dwelt and smiled. the years had wrought few changes in lady elliston. silken, soft, smiling, these were, still, as in the past, the words that described her. she had triumphantly kept her lovely figure: the bright brown hair, too, had been kept, but at some little sacrifice of sincerity: lady elliston must be nearly fifty and her shining locks showed no sign of fading. perhaps, in the perfection of her appearance and manner, there was a hint of some sacrifice everywhere. how much she has kept, was the first thought; but the second came:--how much she has given up. yes; there was the only real change: amabel, gazing at her, somewhat as a nun gazes from behind convent gratings at some bright denizen of the outer world, felt it more and more. she was sweet, but was she not too skilful? she was strong, but was not her strength unscrupulous? as she listened to her, amabel remembered old wonders, old glimpses of motives that stole forth reconnoitring and then retreated at the hint of rebuff, graceful and unconfused. there were motives now, behind that smile, that softness; motives behind the flattery of augustine, the blandness towards sir hugh, the visit to herself. some of the motives were, perhaps, all kindness: lady elliston had always been kind; she had always been a binder of wounds, a dispenser of punctual sunlight; she was one of the world's powerfully benignant great ladies; committees clustered round her; her words of assured wisdom sustained and guided ecclesiastical and political organisations; one must be benignant, in an altruistic modern world, if one wanted to rule. it was not a cynical nun who gazed; lady elliston was kind and lady elliston loved power; simply, without a sense of blame, amabel drew her conclusions. there were now lapses in lady elliston's fluency. her eyes rested contemplatively on amabel; it was evident that she wanted to see amabel alone. this motive was so natural a one that, although sir hugh seemed determined, at the risk of losing his train, to stay till the last minute, he, too, felt, at last, its pressure. his wife saw him go with a sense of closing mists. augustine, now more considerate, followed him. she was left facing her guest. only lady elliston could have kept the moment from being openly painful and even lady elliston could not pretend to find it an easy one; but she did not err on the side of too much tact. it was so sweetly, so gravely that her eyes rested for a long moment of silence on her old friend, so quietly that they turned away from her rising flush, that amabel felt old gratitudes mingling with old distrusts. "what a sad room this is," said lady elliston, looking about it. "is it just as you found it, amabel?" "yes, almost. i have taken away some things." "i wish you would take them all away and put in new ones. it might be made into a very nice room; the panelling is good. what it needs is jacobean furniture, fine old hangings, and some bits of glass and porcelain here and there." "i suppose so." amabel's eyes followed lady elliston's. "i never thought of changing anything." lady elliston's eyes turned on hers again. "no: i suppose not," she said. she seemed to find further meanings in the speech and took it up again with: "i suppose not. it's strange that we should never have met in all these years, isn't it." "is it strange?" "i've often felt it so: if you haven't, that is just part of your acceptance. you have accepted everything. it has often made me indignant to think of it." amabel sat in her high-backed chair near the table. her hands were tightly clasped together in her lap and her face, with the light from the windows falling upon it, was very pale. but she knew that she was calm; that she could meet lady elliston's kindness with an answering kindness; that she was ready, even, to hear lady elliston's questions. this, however, was not a question, and she hesitated for a moment before saying: "i don't understand you." "how well i remember that voice," lady elliston smiled a little sadly: "it's the girl's voice of twenty years ago--holding me away. can't we be frank together, now, amabel, when we are both middle-aged women?--at least i am middle-aged.--how it has kept you young, this strange life you've led." "but, really, i do not understand," amabel murmured, confused; "i didn't understand you then, sometimes." "then i may be frank?" "yes; be frank, of course." "it is only that indignation that i want to express," said lady elliston, tentative no longer and firmly advancing. "why are you here, in this dismal room, this dismal house? why have you let yourself be cloistered like this? why haven't you come out and claimed things?" amabel's grey eyes, even in their serenity always a little wild, widened with astonishment. "claimed?" she repeated. "what do you mean? what could i have claimed? i have been given everything." "my dear amabel, you speak as if you had deserved this imprisonment." there was another and a longer silence in which amabel seemed slowly to find meanings incredible to her before. and her reception of them was expressed in the changed, the hardened voice with which she said: "you know everything. i've always been sure you knew. how can you say such things to me?" "do not be angry with me, dear amabel. i do not mean to offend." "you spoke as though you were sorry for me, as though i had been injured.--it touches him." "but," lady elliston had flushed very slightly, "it does touch him. i blame hugh for this. he ought not to have allowed it. he ought not to have accepted such misplaced penitence. you were a mere child, and hugh neglected you shamefully." "i was not a mere child," said amabel. "i was a sinful woman." lady elliston sat still, as if arrested and spell-bound by the unexpected words. she seemed to find no answer. and as the silence grew long, amabel went on, slowly, with difficulty, yet determinedly opposing and exposing the folly of the implied accusation. "you don't seem to remember the facts. i betrayed my husband. he might have cast me off. he might have disgraced me and my child. and he lifted me up; he sheltered me; he gave his name to the child. he has given me everything i have. you see--you must not speak of him like that to me." lady elliston had gathered herself together though still, it was evident, bewildered. "i don't mean to blame hugh so much. it was your fault, too, i suppose. you asked for the cloister, i know." "no; i didn't ask for it. i asked to be allowed to go away and hide myself. the cloister, too, was a gift,--like my name, my undishonoured child." "dear, dear amabel," said lady elliston, gazing at her, "how beautiful of you to be able to feel like that." "it isn't i who am beautiful"; amabel's lips trembled a little now and her eyes filled suddenly with tears. tears and trembling seemed to bring hardness rather than softening to her face; they were like a chill breeze, like an icy veil, and the face, with its sorrow, was like a winter's landscape. "he is so beautiful that he would never let anyone know or understand what i owe him: he would never know it himself: there is something simple and innocent about such men: they do beautiful things unconsciously. you know him well: you are far nearer him than i am: but you can't know what the beauty is, for you have never been helpless and disgraced and desperate nor needed anyone to lift you up. no one can know as i do the angel in my husband." lady elliston sat silent. she received amabel's statements steadily yet with a little wincing, as though they had been bullets whistling past her head; they would not pierce, if one did not move; yet an involuntary compression of the lips and flutter of the eyelids revealed a rather rigid self-mastery. only after the silence had grown long did she slightly stir, move her hand, turn her head with a deep, careful breath, and then say, almost timidly; "then, he has lifted you up, amabel?--you are happy, really happy, in your strange life?" amabel looked down. the force of her vindicating ardour had passed from her. with the question the hunted, haunted present flooded in. happy? yesterday she might have answered "yes," so far away had the past seemed, so forgotten the fear in which she had learned to breathe. today the past was with her and the fear pressed heavily upon her heart. she answered in a sombre voice: "with my past what woman could be happy. it blights everything." "oh--but amabel--" lady elliston breathed forth. she leaned forward, then moved back, withdrawing the hand impulsively put out.--"why?--why?--" she gently urged. "it is all over: all passed: all forgotten. don't--ah don't let it blight anything." "oh no," said amabel, shaking her head. "it isn't over; it isn't forgotten; it never will be. hugh cannot forget--though he has forgiven. and someday, i feel it, augustine will know. then i shall drink the cup of shame to the last drop." "oh!--" said lady elliston, as if with impatience. she checked herself. "what can i say?--if you will think of yourself in this preposterous way.--as for augustine, he does not know and how should he ever know? how could he, when no one in the world knows but you and i and hugh." she paused at that, looking at amabel's downcast face. "you notice what i say, amabel?" "yes; that isn't it. he will guess." "you are morbid, my poor child.--but do you notice nothing when i say that only we three know?" amabel looked up. lady elliston met her eyes. "i came today to tell you, amabel. i felt sure you did not know. there is no reason at all, now, why you should dread coming out into the world--with augustine. you need fear no meetings. you did not know that he was dead." "he?" "yes. he. paul quentin." amabel, gazing at her, said nothing. "he died in italy, last week. he was married, you know, quite happily; an ordinary sort of person; she had money; he rather let his work go. but they were happy; a large family; a villa on a hill somewhere; pictures, bric-à-brac and bohemian intellectualism. you knew of his marriage?" "yes; i knew." the tears had risen to lady elliston's eyes before that stricken, ashen face; she looked away, murmuring: "i wanted to tell you, when we were alone. it might have come as such an ugly shock, if you were unprepared. but, now, there is no danger anymore. and you will come out, amabel?" "no;--never.--it was never that." "but what was it then?" amabel had risen and was looking around her blindly. "it was.--i have no place but here.--forgive me--i must go. i can't talk any more." "yes; go; do go and lie down." lady elliston, rising too, put an arm around her shoulders and took her hand. "i'll come again and see you. i am going up to town for a night or so on tuesday, but i bring peggy down here for the next week-end. i'll see you then.--ah, here is augustine, and tea. he will give me my tea and you must sleep off your headache. your poor mother has a very bad headache, augustine. i have tried her. goodbye, dear, go and rest." vi an hour ago augustine had found his mother in tears; now he found her beyond them. he gave her his arm, and, outside in the hall, prepared to mount the stairs with her; but, shaking her head, trying, with miserable unsuccess, to smile, she pointed him back to the drawing-room and to his duties of host. "ah, she is very tired. she does not look well," said lady elliston. "i am glad to see that you take good care of her." "she is usually very well," said augustine, standing over the tea-tray that had been put on the table between him and lady elliston. "let's see: what do you have? sugar? milk?" "no sugar; milk, please. it's such a great pleasure to me to meet your mother again." augustine made no reply to this, handing her her cup and the plate of bread and butter. "she was one of the loveliest girls i have ever seen," lady elliston went on, helping herself. "she looked like a madonna--and a cowslip.--and she looks like that more than ever." she had paused for a moment as an uncomfortable recollection came to her. it was paul quentin who had said that: at her house. "yes," augustine assented, pleased, "she does look like a cowslip; she is so pale and golden and tranquil. it's funny you should say so," he went on, "for i've often thought it; but with me it's an association of ideas, too. those meadows over there, beyond our lawn, are full of cowslips in spring and ever since i can remember we have picked them there together." "how sweet"; lady elliston was still a little confused, by her blunder, and by his words. "what a happy life you and your mother must have had, cloistered here. i've been telling your mother that it's like a cloister. i've been scolding her a little for shutting herself up in it. and now that i have this chance of talking to you i do very much want to say that i hope you will bring her out a little more." "bring her out? where?" augustine inquired. "into the world--the world she is so fitted to adorn. it's ridiculous this--this fad of hers," said lady elliston. "is it a fad?" augustine asked, but with at once a lightness and distance of manner. "of course. and it is bad for anyone to be immured." "i don't think it has been bad for her. perhaps this is more the world than you think." "i only mean bad in the sense of sad." "isn't the world sad?" "what a strange young man you are. do you really mean to say that you like to see your mother--your beautiful, lovely mother--imprisoned in this gloomy place and meeting nobody from one year's end to the other?" "i have said nothing at all about my likes," said augustine, smiling. lady elliston gazed at him. he startled her almost as much as his mother had done. what a strange young man, indeed; what strange echoes of his father and mother in him. but she had to grope for the resemblances to paul quentin; they were there; she felt them; but they were difficult to see; while it was easy to see the resemblances to amabel. his father was like a force, a fierceness in him, controlled and guided by an influence that was his mother. and where had he found, at nineteen, that assurance, an assurance without his father's vanity or his mother's selflessness? paul quentin had been assured because he was so absolutely sure of his own value; amabel was assured because, in her own eyes, she was valueless; this young man seemed to be without self-reference or self-effacement; but he was quite self-assured. had he some mental talisman by which he accurately gauged all values, his own included? he seemed at once so oddly above yet of the world. she pulled herself together to remember that he was, only, nineteen, and that she had had motives in coming, and that if these motives had been good they were now better. "you have said nothing; but i am going to ask you to say something"; she smiled back at him. "i am going to ask you to say that you will take me on trust. i am your friend and your mother's friend." "since when, my mother's?" augustine asked. his amiability of aspect remained constant. "since twenty years." "twenty years in which you have not seen your friend." "i know that that looks strange. but when one shuts oneself away into a cloister one shuts out friends." "does one?" "you won't trust me?" "i don't know anything about you, except that you have made my mother ill and that you want something of me." "my dear young man i, at all events, know one thing about you very clearly, and that is that i trust you." "i want nothing of you," said augustine, but he still smiled, so that his words did not seem discourteous. "nothing? really nothing? i am your mother's friend, and you want nothing of me? i have sought her out; i came today to see and understand; i have not made her ill; she was nearly crying when we came into the room, you and i, a little while ago. what i see and understand makes me sad and angry. and i believe that you, too, see and understand; i believe that you, too, are sad and angry. and i want to help you. i want you, when you come into the world, as you must, to bring your mother. i'll be waiting there for you both. i am a sort of fairy-godmother. i want to see justice done." "i suppose you mean that you are angry with my father and want to see justice done on him," said augustine after a pause. again lady elliston sat suddenly still, as if another, an unexpected bullet, had whizzed past her. "what makes you say that?" she asked after a moment. "what you have said and what you have seen. he had been making her cry," said augustine. he was still calm, but now, under the calm, she heard, like the thunder of the sea in caverns deep beneath a placid headland, the muffled sound of a hidden, a dark indignation. "yes," she said, looking into his eyes; "that made me angry; and that he should take all her money from her, as i am sure he does, and leave her to live like this." augustine's colour rose. he turned away his eyes and seemed to ponder. "i do want something of you, after all; the answer to one question," he said at last. "is it because of him that she is cloistered here?" in a flash lady elliston had risen to her emergency, her opportunity. she was grave, she was ready, and she was very careful. "it was her own choice," she said. augustine pondered again. he, too, was grave and careful she saw how, making use of her proffered help, he yet held her at a distance. "that does not answer my question," he said. "i will put it in another way. is it because of some evil in his life that she is cloistered?" lady elliston sat before him in one of the high-backed chairs; the light was behind her: the delicate oval of her face maintained its steady attitude: in the twilit room augustine could see her eyes fixed very strangely upon him. she, too, was perhaps pondering. when at last she spoke, she rose in speaking, as if her answer must put an end to their encounter, as if he must feel, as well as she, that after her answer there could be no further question. "not altogether, for that," she said; "but, yes, in part it is because of what you would call an evil in his life that she is cloistered." augustine walked with her to the door and down the stone passage outside, where a strip of faded carpet hardly kept one's feet from the cold. he was nearer to her in this curious moment of their parting than he had been at all. he liked lady elliston in her last response; it was not the wish to see justice wreaked that had made it; it was mere truth. when they had reached the hall door, he opened it for her and in the fading light he saw that she was very pale. the grey's dog-cart was going slowly round and round the gravel drive. lady elliston did not look at him. she stood waiting for the groom to see her. "what you asked me was asked in confidence," she said; "and what i have told you is told in confidence." "it wasn't new to me; i had guessed it," said augustine. "but your confirmation of what i guessed is in confidence." "i have been your father's life-long friend," said lady elliston; "he is not an evil man." "i understand. i don't misjudge him." "i don't want to see justice done on him," said lady elliston. the groom had seen her and the dog-cart, with a brisk rattle of wheels, drew up to the door. "it isn't a question of that; i only want to see justice done _for_ her." all through she had been steady; now she was sweet again. "i want to free her. i want you to free her. and--whenever you do--i shall be waiting to give her to the world again." they looked at each other now and augustine could answer, with another smile; "you are the world, i suppose." "yes; i am the world," she accepted. "the actual fairy-godmother, with a magic wand that can turn pumpkins into coaches and put cinderellas into their proper places." augustine had handed her up to her seat beside the groom. he tucked her rug about her. if he had laid aside anything to meet her on her own ground, he, too, had regained it now. "but does the world always know what _is_ the proper place?" was his final remark as she drove off. she did not know that she could have found an answer to it. vii amabel was sitting beside her window when her son came in and the face she turned on him was white and rigid. "my dear mother," said augustine, coming up to her, "how pale you are." she had been sitting there for all that time, tearless, in a stupor of misery. yes, she answered him, she was very tired. augustine stood over her looking out of the window. "a little walk wouldn't do you good?" he asked. no, she answered, her head ached too badly. she could find nothing to say to him: the truth that lay so icily upon her heart was all that she could have said: "i am your guilty mother. i robbed you of your father. and your father is dead, unmourned, unloved, almost forgotten by me." for that was the poison in her misery, to know that for paul quentin she felt almost nothing. to hear that he had died was to hear that a ghost had died. what would augustine say to her if the truth were spoken? it was now a looming horror between them. it shut her from him and it shut him away. "oh, do come out," said augustine after a moment: "the evening's so fine: it will do you good; and there's still a bit of sunset to be seen." she shook her head, looking away from him. "is it really so bad as that?" "yes; very bad." "can't i do anything? get you anything?" "no, thank you." "i'm so sorry," said augustine, and, suddenly, but gravely, deliberately, he stooped and kissed her. "oh--don't!--don't!" she gasped. she thrust him away, turning her face against the chair. "don't: you must leave me.--i am so unhappy." the words sprang forth: she could not repress them, nor the gush of miserable tears. if augustine was horrified he was silent. he stood leaning over her for a moment and then went out of the room. she lay fallen in her chair, weeping convulsively. the past was with her; it had seized her and, in her panic-stricken words, it had thrust her child away. what would happen now? what would augustine say? what would he ask? if he said nothing and asked nothing, what would he think? she tried to gather her thoughts together, to pray for light and guidance; but, like a mob of blind men locked out from sanctuary, the poor, wild thoughts only fled about outside the church and fumbled at the church door. her very soul seemed shut against her. she roused herself at last, mechanically telling herself that she must go through with it; she must dress and go down to dinner and she must find something to say to augustine, something that would make what had happened to them less sinister and inexplicable. --unless--it seemed like a mad cry raised by one of the blind men in the dark,--unless she told him all, confessed all; her guilt, her shame, the truths of her blighted life. she shuddered; she cowered as the cry came to her, covering her ears and shutting it out. it was mad, mad. she had not strength for such a task, and if that were weakness--oh, with a long breath she drew in the mitigation--if it were weakness, would it not be a cruel, a heartless strength that could blight her child's life too, in the name of truth. she must not listen to the cry. yet strangely it had echoed in her, almost as if from within, not from without, the dark, deserted church; almost as if her soul, shut in there in the darkness, were crying out to her. she turned her mind from the sick fancy. augustine met her at dinner. he was pale but he seemed composed. they spoke little. he said, in answer to her questioning, that he had quite liked lady elliston; yes, they had had a nice talk; she seemed very friendly; he should go and see her when he next went up to london. amabel felt the crispness in his voice but, centered as she was in her own self-mastery, she could not guess at the degree of his. after dinner they went into the drawing-room, where the old, ugly lamp added its light to the candles on the mantel-piece. augustine took his book and sat down at one side of the table. amabel sat at the other. she, too, took a book and tried to read; a little time passed and then she found that her hands were trembling so much that she could not. she slid the book softly back upon the table, reaching out for her work-bag. she hoped augustine had not seen, but, glancing up at him, she saw his eyes upon her. augustine's eyes looked strange tonight. the dark rims around the iris seemed to have expanded. suddenly she felt horribly afraid of him. they gazed at each other, and she forced herself to a trembling, meaningless smile. and when she smiled at him he sprang up and came to her. he leaned over her, and she shrank back into her chair, shutting her eyes. "you must tell me the truth," said augustine. "i can't bear this. _he_ has made you unhappy.--_he_ comes between us." she lay back in the darkness, hearing the incredible words. "he?--what do you mean?" "he is a bad man. and he makes you miserable. and you love him." she heard the nightmare: she could not look at it. "my husband bad? he is good, more good than you can guess. what do you mean by speaking so?" with closed eyes, shutting him out, she spoke, anger and terror in her voice. augustine lifted himself and stood with his hands clenched looking at her. "you say that because you love him. you love him more than anything or anyone in the world." "i do. i love him more than anyone or anything in the world. how have you dared--in silence--in secret--to nourish these thoughts against the man who has given you all you have." "he hasn't given me all i have. you are everything in my life and he is nothing. he is selfish. he is sensual. he is stupid. he doesn't know what beauty or goodness is. i hate him," said augustine. her eyes at last opened on him. she grasped her chair and raised herself. whose hands were these, desecrating her holy of holies. her son's? was it her son who spoke these words? an enemy stood before her. "then you do not love me. if you hate him you do not love me,"--her anger had blotted out her fear, but she could find no other than these childish words and the tears ran down her face. "and if you love him you cannot love me," augustine answered. his self-mastery was gone. it was a fierce, wild anger that stared back at her. his young face was convulsed and livid. "it is you who are bad to have such false, base thoughts!" his mother cried, and her eyes in their indignation, their horror, struck at him, accused him, thrust him forth. "you are cruel--and hard--and self-righteous.--you do not love me.--there is no tenderness in your heart!"-- augustine burst into tears. "there is no room in your heart for me!--" he gasped. he turned from her and rushed out of the room. * * * * * a long time passed before she leaned forward in the chair where she had sat rigidly, rested her elbows on her knees, buried her face in her hands. her heart ached and her mind was empty: that was all she knew. it had been too much. this torpor of sudden weakness was merciful. now she would go to bed and sleep. it took her a long time to go upstairs; her head whirled, and if she had not clung to the baluster she would have fallen. in the passage above she paused outside augustine's door and listened. she heard him move inside, walking to his window, to lean out into the night, probably, as was his wont. that was well. he, too, would sleep presently. in her room she said to her maid that she did not need her. it took her but a few minutes tonight to prepare for bed. she could not even braid her uncoiled hair. she tossed it, all loosened, above her head as she fell upon the pillow. she heard, for a little while, the dull thumping of her heart. her breath was warm in a mesh of hair beneath her cheek; she was too sleepy to put it away. she was wakened next morning by the maid. her curtains were drawn and a dull light from a rain-blotted world was in the room. the maid brought a note to her bedside. from mr. augustine, she said. amabel raised herself to hold the sheet to the light and read:-- "dear mother," it said. "i think that i shall go and stay with wallace for a week or so. i shall see you before i go up to oxford. try to forgive me for my violence last night. i am sorry to have added to your unhappiness. your affectionate son--augustine." her mind was still empty. "has mr. augustine gone?" she asked the maid. "yes, ma'am; he left quite early, to catch the eight-forty train." "ah, yes," said amabel. she sank back on her pillow. "i will have my breakfast in bed. tea, please, only, and toast."--then, the long habit of self-discipline asserting itself, the necessity for keeping strength, if it were only to be spent in suffering:--"no, coffee, and an egg, too." she found, indeed, that she was very hungry; she had eaten nothing yesterday. after her bath and the brushing and braiding of her hair, it was pleasant to lie propped high on her pillows and to drink her hot coffee. the morning papers, too, were nice to look at, folded on her tray. she did not wish to read them; but they spoke of a firmly established order, sustaining her life and assuring her of ample pillows to lie on and hot coffee to drink, assuring her that bodily comforts were pleasant whatever else was painful. it was a childish, a still stupefied mood, she knew, but it supported her; an oasis of the familiar, the safe, in the midst of whirling, engulfing storms. it supported her through the hours when she lay, with closed eyes, listening to the pour and drip of the rain, when, finally deciding to get up, she rose and dressed very carefully, taking all her time. below, in the drawing-room, when she entered, it was very dark. the fire was unlit, the bowls of roses were faded; and sudden, childish tears filled her eyes at the desolateness. on such a day as this augustine would have seen that the fire was burning, awaiting her. she found matches and lighted it herself and the reluctantly creeping brightness made the day feel the drearier; it took a long time even to warm her foot as she stood before it, leaning her arm on the mantel-piece. it was saturday; she should not see her girls today; there was relief in that, for she did not think that she could have found anything to say to them this morning. looking at the roses again, she felt vexed with the maid for having left them there in their melancholy. she rang and spoke to her almost sharply telling her to take them away, and when she had gone felt the tears rise with surprise and compunction for the sharpness. there would be no fresh flowers in the room today, it was raining too hard. if augustine had been here he would have gone out and found her some wet branches of beech or sycamore to put in the vases: he knew how she disliked a flowerless, leafless room, a dislike he shared. how the rain beat down. she stood looking out of the window at the sodden earth, the blotted shapes of the trees. beyond the nearest meadows it was like a grey sheet drawn down, confusing earth and sky and shutting vision into an islet. she hoped that augustine had taken his mackintosh. he was very forgetful about such things. she went out to look into the bleak, stone hall hung with old hunting prints that were dimmed and spotted with age and damp. yes, it was gone from its place, and his ulster, too. it had been a considered, not a hasty departure. a tweed cloak that he often wore on their walks hung there still and, vaguely, as though she sought something, she turned it, looked at it, put her hands into the worn, capacious pockets. all were empty except one where she found some withered gorse flowers. augustine was fond of stripping off the golden blossoms as they passed a bush, of putting his nose into the handful of fragrance, and then holding it out for her to smell it, too:--"is it apricots, or is it peaches?" she could hear him say. she went back into the drawing-room holding the withered flowers. their fragrance was all gone, but she did not like to burn them. she held them and bent her face to them as she stood again looking out. he would by now have reached his destination. wallace was an eton friend, a nice boy, who had sometimes stayed at charlock house. he and augustine were perhaps already arguing about nietzsche. strange that her numbed thoughts should creep along this path of custom, of maternal associations and solicitudes, forgetful of fear and sorrow. the recognition came with a sinking pang. reluctantly, unwillingly, her mind was forced back to contemplate the catastrophe that had befallen her. he was her judge, her enemy: yet, on this dismal day, how she missed him. she leaned her head against the window-frame and the tears fell and fell. if he were there, could she not go to him and take his hand and say that, whatever the deep wounds they had dealt each other, they needed each other too much to be apart. could she not ask him to take her back, to forgive her, to love her? ah--there full memory rushed in. her heart seemed to pant and gasp in the sudden coil. take him back? when it was her steady fear as well as her sudden anger that had banished him, he thought he loved her, but that was because he did not know and it was the anger rather than the love of augustine's last words that came to her. he loved her because he believed her good, and that imaginary goodness cast a shadow on her husband. to believe her good augustine had been forced to believe evil of the man she loved and to whom they both owed everything. he had said that he was shut out from her heart, and it was true, and her heart broke in seeing it. but it was by more than the sacred love for her husband that her child was shut out. her past, her guilt, was with her and stood as a barrier between them. she was separated from him for ever. and, looking round the room, suddenly terrified, it seemed to her that augustine was dead and that she was utterly alone. viii she did not write to augustine for some days. there seemed nothing that she could say. to say that she forgave him might seem to put aside too easily the deep wrong he had done her and her husband; to say that she longed to see him and that, in spite of all, her heart was his, seemed to make deeper the chasm of falseness between them. the rain fell during all these days. sometimes a pale evening sunset would light the western horizon under lifted clouds and she could walk out and up and down the paths, among her sodden rose-trees, or down into the wet, dark woods. sometimes at night she saw a melancholy star shining here and there in the vaporous sky. but in the morning the grey sheet dropped once more between her and the outer world, and the sound of the steady drip and beat was like an outer echo to her inner wretchedness. it was on the fourth day that wretchedness turned to bitter restlessness, and that to a sudden resolve. not to write, not even to say she forgave, might make him think that her heart was still hardened against him. her fear had blunted her imagination. clearly now she saw, and with an anguish in the vision, that augustine must be suffering too. clearly she heard the love in his parting words. and she longed so to see, to hear that love again, that the longing, as if with sudden impatience of the hampering sense of sin, rushed into words that might bring him. she wrote:--"my dear augustine. i miss you very much. isn't this dismal weather. i am feeling better. i need not tell you that i do forgive you for the mistake that hurts us both." then she paused, for her heart cried out "oh--come back soon"; but she did not dare yield to that cry. she hardly knew that, with uncertain fingers, she only repeated again:--"i miss you very much. your affectionate mother." this was on the fourth day. on the afternoon of the fifth she stood, as she so often stood, looking out at the drawing-room window. she was looking and listening, detached from what she saw, yet absorbed, too, for, as with her son, this watchfulness of natural things was habitual to her. it was still raining, but more fitfully: a wind had risen and against a scudding sky the sycamores tossed their foliage, dark or pale by turns as the wind passed over them. a broad pool of water, dappling incessantly with rain-drops, had formed along the farther edge of the walk where it slanted to the lawn: it was this pool that amabel was watching and the bobbin-like dance of drops that looked like little glass thimbles. the old leaden pipes, curiously moulded, that ran down the house beside the windows, splashed and gurgled loudly. the noise of the rushing, falling water shut out other sounds. gazing at the dancing thimbles she was unaware that someone had entered the room behind her. suddenly two hands were laid upon her shoulders. the shock, going through her, was like a violent electric discharge. she tingled from head to foot, and almost with terror. "augustine!" she gasped. but the shock was to change, yet grow, as if some alien force had penetrated her and were disintegrating every atom of her blood. "no, not augustine," said her husband's voice: "but you can be glad to see me, can't you, amabel?" he had taken off his hands now and she could turn to him, could see his bright, smiling face looking at her, could feel him as something wonderful and radiant filling the dismal day, filling her dismal heart, with its presence. but the shock still so trembled in her that she did not move from her place or speak, leaning back upon the window as she looked at him,--for he was very near,--and putting her hands upon the window-sill on either side. "you didn't expect to see me, did you," sir hugh said. she shook her head. never, never, in all these years, had he come again, so soon. months, always, sometimes years, had elapsed between his visits. "the last time didn't count, did it," he went on, in speech vague and desultory yet, at the same time, intent and bright in look. "i was so bothered; i behaved like a selfish brute; i'm sure you felt it. and you were so particularly kind and good--and dear to me, amabel." she felt herself flushing. he stood so near that she could not move forward and he must read the face, amazed, perplexed, incredulous of its joy, yet all lighted from his presence, that she kept fixed on him. for ah, what joy to see him, to feel that here, here alone of all the world, was she safe, consoled, known yet cared for. he who understood all as no one else in the world understood, could stand and smile at her like that. "you look thin, and pale, and tired," were his next words. "what have you been doing to yourself? isn't augustine here? you're not alone?" "yes; i am alone. augustine is staying with the wallace boy." with the mention of augustine the dark memory came, but it was now of something dangerous and hostile shut away, yes, safely shut away, by this encompassing brightness, this sweetness of intent solicitude. she no longer yearned to see augustine. sir hugh looked at her for some moments, when, she said that she was alone, without speaking. "that is nice for me," he then said. "but how miserable,--for you,--it must have been. what a shame that you should have been left alone in this dull place,--and this wretched weather, too!--did you ever see such weather." he looked past her at the rain. "it has been wretched," said amabel; but she spoke, as she felt, in the past: nothing seemed wretched now. "and you were staring out so hard, that you never heard me," he came beside her now, as if to look out, too, and, making room for him, she also turned and they looked out at the rain together. "a filthy day," said sir hugh, "i can't bear to think that this is what you have been doing, all alone." "i don't mind it, i have the girls, on three mornings, you know." "you mean that you don't mind it because you are so used to it?" she had regained some of her composure:--for one thing he was beside her, no longer blocking her way back into the room. "i like solitude, you know," she was able to smile. "really like it?" "sometimes." "better than the company of some people, you mean?" "yes." "but not better than mine," he smiled back. "come, do encourage me, and say that you are glad to see me." in her joy the bewilderment was growing, but she said that, of course, she was glad to see him. "i've been so bored, so badgered," said sir hugh, stretching himself a little as though to throw off the incubus of tiresome memories; "and this morning when i left a dull country house, i said to myself: why not go down and see amabel?--i don't believe she will mind.--i believe that, perhaps, she'll be pleased.--i know that i want to go very much.--so here i am:--very glad to be here--with dear amabel." she looked out, silent, blissful, and perplexed. he was not hard; he was not irritated; all trace of vexed preoccupation was gone; but he was not the sir hugh that she had seen for all these twenty years. he was new, and yet he reminded her of something, and the memory moved towards her through a thick mist of years, moved like a light through mist. far, sweet, early things came to her as its heralds; the sound of brooks running; the primrose woods where she had wandered as a girl; the singing of prophetic birds in spring. the past had never come so near as now when sir hugh--yes, there it was, the fair, far light--was making her remember their long past courtship. and a shudder of sweetness went through her as she remembered, of sweetness yet of unutterable sadness, as though something beautiful and dead had been shown to her. she seemed to lean, trembling, to kiss the lips of a beautiful dead face, before drawing over it the shroud that must cover it for ever. sir hugh was silent also. her silence, perhaps, made him conscious of memories. presently, looking behind them, he said:--"i'm keeping you standing. shall we go to the fire?" she followed him, bending a little to the fire, her arm on the mantel-shelf, a hand held out to the blaze. sir hugh stood on the other side. she was not thinking of herself, hardly of him. suddenly he took the dreaming hand, stooped to it, and kissed it. he had released it before she had time to know her own astonishment. "you did kiss mine, you know," he smiled, leaning his arm, too, on the mantel-shelf and looking at her with gaily supplicating eyes. "don't be angry." the shroud had dropped: the past was gone: she was once more in the present of oppressive, of painful joy. she would have liked to move away and take her chair at some distance; but that would have looked like flight; foolish indeed. she summoned her common-sense, her maturity, her sorrow, to smile back, to say in a voice she strove to make merely light: "unusual circumstances excused me." "unusual circumstances?" "you had been very kind. i was very grateful." sir hugh for a moment was silent, looking at her with his intent, interrogatory gaze. "you are always kind to me," he then said. "i am always grateful. so may i always kiss your hand?" her eyes fell before his. "if you wish to," she answered gravely. "you frighten me a little, do you know," said sir hugh. "please don't frighten me.--are you really angry?--_i_ don't frighten you?" "you bewilder me a little," amabel murmured. she looked into the fire, near tears, indeed, in her bewilderment; and sir hugh looked at her, looked hard and carefully, at her noble figure, her white hands, the gold and white of her leaning head. he looked, as if measuring the degree of his own good fortune. "you are so lovely," he then said quietly. she blushed like a girl. "you are the most beautiful woman i know," said sir hugh. "there is no one like you," he put his hand out to hers, and, helplessly, she yielded it. "amabel, do you know, i have fallen in love with you." she stood looking at him, stupefied; her eyes ecstatic and appalled. "do i displease you?" asked sir hugh. she did not answer. "do i please you?" still she gazed at him, speechless. "do you care at all for me?" he asked, and, though grave, he smiled a little at her in asking the question. how could he not know that, for years, she had cared for him more than for anything, anyone? and when he asked her this last question, the oppression was too great. she drew her hand from his, and laid her arms upon the mantel-shelf and hid her face upon them. it was a helpless confession. it was a helpless appeal. but the appeal was not understood, or was disregarded. in a moment her husband's arms were about her. this was new. this was not like their courtship.--yet, it reminded her,--of what did it remind her as he murmured words of victory, clasped her and kissed her? it reminded her of paul quentin. in the midst of the amazing joy she knew that the horror was as great. "ah don't!--how can you!--how can you!" she said. she drew away from him but he would not let her go. "how can i? how can i do anything else?" he laughed, in easy yet excited triumph. "you do love me--you darling nun!" she had freed her hands and covered her face: "i beg of you," she prayed. the agony of her sincerity was too apparent. sir hugh unclasped his arms. she went to her chair, sat down, leaned on the table, still covering her eyes. so she had leaned, years ago, with hidden face, in telling bertram of the coming of the child. it seemed to her now that her shame was more complete, more overwhelming. and, though it overwhelmed her, her bliss was there; the golden and the black streams ran together. "dearest,--should i have been less sudden?" sir hugh was beside her, leaning over her, reasoning, questioning, only just not caressing her. "it's not as if we didn't know each other, amabel: we have been strangers, in a sense;--yet, through it all--all these years--haven't we felt near?--ah darling, you can't deny it;--you can't deny you love me." his arm was pressing her. "please--" she prayed again, and he moved his hand further away, beyond her crouching shoulder. "you are such a little nun that you can't bear to be loved?--is that it? but you'll have to learn again. you are more than a nun: you are a beautiful woman: young; wonderfully young. it's astonishing how like a girl you are."--sir hugh seemed to muse over a fact that allured. "and however like a nun you've lived--you can't deny that you love me." "you haven't loved me," amabel at last could say. he paused, but only for a moment. "perhaps not: but," his voice had now the delicate aptness that she remembered, "how could i believe that there was a chance for me? how could i think you could ever come to care, like this, when you had left me--you know--amabel." she was silent, her mind whirling. and his nearness, as he leaned over her, was less ecstasy than terror. it was as if she only knew her love, her sacred love again, when he was not near. "it's quite of late that i've begun to wonder," said sir hugh. "stupid ass of course, not to have seen the jewel i held in my hand. but you've only showed me the nun, you darling. i knew you cared, but i never knew how much.--i ought to have had more self-conceit, oughtn't i?" "i have cared. you have been all that is beautiful.--i have cared more than for anything.--but--oh, it could not have been this.--this would have killed me with shame," said amabel. "with shame? why, you strange angel?" "can you ask?" she said in a trembling voice. his hand caressed her hair, slipped around her neck. "you nun; you saint.--does that girlish peccadillo still haunt you?" "don't--oh don't--call it that--call me that!--" "call you a saint? but what else are you?--a beautiful saint. what other woman could have lived the life you've lived? it's wonderful." "don't. i cannot bear it." "can't bear to be called a saint? ah, but, you see, that's just why you are one." she could not speak. she could not even say the only answering word: a sinner. her hands were like leaden weights upon her brows. in the darkness she heard her heart beating heavily, and tried and tried to catch some fragment of meaning from her whirling thoughts. and as if her self-condemnation were a further enchantment, her husband murmured: "it makes you all the lovelier that you should feel like that. it makes me more in love with you than ever: but forget it now. let me make you forget it. i can.--darling, your beautiful hair. i remember it;--it is as beautiful as ever.--i remember it;--it fell to your knees.--let me see your face, amabel." she was shuddering, shrinking from him.--"oh--no--no.--do you not see--not feel--that it is impossible--" "impossible! why?--my darling, you are my wife;--and if you love me?--" they were whirling impossibilities; she could see none clearly but one that flashed out for her now in her extremity of need, bright, ominous, accusing. she seized it:--"augustine." "augustine? what of him?" sir hugh's voice had an edge to it. "he could not bear it. it would break his heart." "what has he to do with it? he isn't all your life:--you've given him most of it already." "he is, he must be, all my life, except that beautiful part that you were:--that you are:--oh you will stay my friend!"-- "i'll stay your lover, your determined lover and husband, amabel. darling, you are ridiculous, enchanting--with your barriers, your scruples." the fear, the austerity, he felt in her fanned his ardour to flame. his arms once more went round her; he murmured words of lover-like pleading, rapturous, wild and foolish. and, though her love, her sacred love for him was there, his love for her was a nightmare to her now. she had lost herself, and it was as though she lost him, while he pleaded thus. and again and again she answered, resolute and tormented:--"no: no: never--never. do not speak so to me.--do not--i beg of you." suddenly he released her. he straightened himself, and moved away from her a little. someone had entered. amabel dropped her hands and raised her eyes at last. augustine stood before them. augustine had on still his long travelling coat; his cap, beaded with raindrops, was in his hand; his yellow hair was ruffled. he had entered hastily. he stood there looking at them, transfixed, yet not astonished. he was very pale. for some moments no one of them spoke. sir hugh did not move further from his wife's side: he was neither anxious nor confused; but his face wore an involuntary scowl. the deep confusion was amabel's. but her husband had released her; no longer pleaded; and with the lifting of that dire oppression the realities of her life flooded her almost with relief. it was impossible, this gay, this facile, this unseemly love, but, as she rejected and put it from her, the old love was the stronger, cherished the more closely, in atonement and solicitude, the man shrunk from and repulsed. and in all the deep confusion, before her son,--that he should find her so, almost in her husband's arms,--a flash of clarity went through her mind as she saw them thus confronted. deeper than ever between her and augustine was the challenge of her love and his hatred; but it was that sacred love that now needed safeguards; she could not feel it when her husband was near and pleading; augustine was her refuge from oppression. she rose and went to him and timidly clasped his arm. "dear augustine, i am so glad you have come back. i have missed you so." he stood still, not responding to her touch: but, as she held him, he looked across the room at sir hugh. "you wrote you missed me. that's why i came." sir hugh now strolled to the fire and stood before it, turning to face augustine's gaze; unperturbed; quite at ease. "how wet you are dear," said amabel. "take off this coat." augustine stripped it off and flung it on a chair. she could hear his quick breathing: he did not look at her. and still it seemed to her that it was his anger rather than his love that protected her. "he will want to change, dearest," said sir hugh from before the fire. "and,--i want to finish my talk with you." augustine now looked at his mother, at the blush that overwhelmed her as that possessive word was spoken. "do you want me to go?" "no, dear, no.--it is only the coat that is wet, isn't it. don't go: i want to see you, of course, after your absence.--hugh, you will excuse us; it seems such a long time since i saw him. you and i will finish our talk on another day.--or i will write to you." she knew what it must look like to her husband, this weak recourse to the protection of augustine's presence; it looked like bashfulness, a further feminine wile, made up of self-deception and allurement, a putting off of final surrender for the greater sweetness of delay. and as the reading of him flashed through her it brought a strange pang of shame, for him; of regret, for something spoiled. sir hugh took out his watch and looked at it. "five o'clock. i told the station fly to come back for me at five fifteen. you'll give me some tea, dearest?" "of course;--it is time now.--augustine, will you ring?" the miserable blush covered her again. the tea came and they were silent while the maid set it out. augustine had thrown himself into a chair and stared before him. sir hugh, very much in possession, kept his place before the fire. catching amabel's eye he smiled at her. he was completely assured. how should he not be? what, for his seeing, could stand between them now? when the maid was gone and amabel was making tea, he came and stood over her, his hands in his pockets, his handsome head bent to her, talking lightly, slightly jesting, his voice pitched intimately for her ear, yet not so intimately that any unkindness of exclusion should appear. augustine could hear all he said and gauge how deep was an intimacy that could wear such lightness, such slightness, as its mask. augustine, meanwhile, looked at neither his mother nor sir hugh. turned from them in his chair he put out his hand for his tea and stared before him, as if unseeing and unhearing, while he drank it. it was for her sake, amabel knew, that sir hugh, raising his voice presently, as though aware of the sullen presence, made a little effort to lift the gloom. "what sort of a time have you had, augustine?" he asked. "was the weather at haversham as bad as everywhere else?" augustine did not turn his head in replying:--"quite as bad, i fancy." "you and young wallace hammered at metaphysics, i suppose." "we did." "nice lad." to this augustine said nothing. "they're such a solemn lot, the youths of this generation," said sir hugh, addressing amabel as well as augustine: "in my day we never bothered ourselves much about things: at least the ones i knew didn't. awfully empty and frivolous. augustine and his friends would have thought us. where we used to talk about race horses they talk about the absolute,--eh, augustine? we used to go and hear comic-operas and they go and hear brahms. i suppose you do go and hear brahms, augustine?" augustine maintained his silence as though not conceiving that the sportive question required an answer and amabel said for him that he was very fond of brahms. "well, i must be off," said sir hugh. "i hope your heart will ache ever so little for me, amabel, when you think of the night you've turned me out into." "oh--but--i don't turn, you out,"--she stammered, rising, as, in a gay farewell, he looked at her. "no? well, i'm only teasing. i could hardly have managed to stay this time--though,--i might have managed, amabel--. i'll come again soon, very soon," said sir hugh. "no," her hand was in his and she knew that augustine had turned his head and was looking at them:--"no, dear hugh. not soon, please. i will write." sir hugh looked at her smiling. he glanced at augustine; then back at her, rallying her, affectionately, threateningly, determinedly, for her foolish feints. he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. "write, if you want to; but i'm coming," he said. he nodded to augustine and left the room. ix it was, curiously enough, a crippling awkwardness and embarrassment that amabel felt rather than fear or antagonism, during that evening and the morning that followed. augustine had left the room directly after sir hugh's departure. when she saw him again he showed her a face resolutely mute. it was impossible to speak to him; to explain. the main facts he must see; that her husband was making love to her and that, however deep her love for him, she rejected him. augustine might believe that rejection to be for his own sake, might believe that she renounced love and sacrificed herself from a maternal sense of duty; and, indeed, the impossibility of bringing that love into her life with augustine had been the clear impossibility that had flashed for her in her need; she had seized upon it and it had armed her in her reiterated refusal. but how tell augustine that there had been more than the clear impossibility; how tell him that deeper than renouncement was recoil? to tell that would be a disloyalty to her husband; it would be almost to accuse him; it would be to show augustine that something in her life was spoiled and that her husband had spoiled it. so perplexed, so jaded, was she, so tossed by the conflicting currents of her lesser plight, that the deeper fears were forgotten: she was not conscious of being afraid of augustine. the rain had ceased next morning. the sky was crystalline; the wet earth glittered in autumnal sunshine. augustine went out for his ride and amabel had her girls to read with. there was a sense of peace for her in finding these threads of her life unknotted, smooth and simple, lying ready to her hand. when she saw augustine at lunch he said that he had met lady elliston. "she was riding with marjory and her girl." "oh, she is back, then." amabel was grateful to him for his everyday tone. "what is lady elliston's girl like?" "pretty; very; foolish manners i thought; marjory looked bewildered by her." "the manners of girls have changed, i fancy, since my day; and she isn't a boy-girl, like our nice marjory, either?" "no; she is a girl-girl; a pretty, forward, conceited girl-girl," said the ruthless augustine. "lady elliston is coming to see you this afternoon; she asked me to tell you; she says she wants a long talk." amabel's weary heart sank at the news. "she is coming soon after lunch," said augustine. "oh--dear--"--. she could not conceal her dismay. "but you knew that you were to see her again;--do you mind so much?" said augustine. "i don't mind.--it is only;--i have got so out of the way of seeing people that it is something of a strain." "would you like me to come in and interrupt your talk?" asked augustine after a moment. she looked across the table at him. still, in her memory, preoccupied with the cruelty of his accusation, it was the anger rather than the love of his parting words the other day that was the more real. he had been hard in kindness, relentless in judgment, only not accusing her, not condemning her, because his condemnation had fixed on the innocent and not on the guilty--the horror of that, as well as the other horror, was between them now, and her guilt was deepened by it. but, as she looked, his eyes reminded her of something; was it of that fancied cry within the church, imprisoned and supplicating? they were like that cry of pain, those eyes, the dark rims of the iris strangely expanding, and her heart answered them, ignorant of what they said. "you are thoughtful for me, dear; but no," she replied, "it isn't necessary for you to interrupt." he looked away from her: "i don't know that it's not necessary," he said. after lunch they went into the garden and walked for a little in the sunlight, in almost perfect silence. once or twice, as though from the very pressure of his absorption in her he created some intention of speech and fancied that her lips had parted with the words, augustine turned his head quickly towards her, and at this, their eyes meeting, as it were over emptiness, both he and she would flush and look away again. the stress between them was painful. she was glad when he said that he had work to do and left her alone. amabel went to the drawing-room and took her chair near the table. a sense of solitude deeper than she had known for years pressed upon her. she closed her eyes and leaned back her head, thinking, dimly, that now, in such solitude as this, she must find her way to prayer again. but still the door was closed. it was as if she could not enter without a human hand in hers. augustine's hand had never led her in; and she could not take her husband's now. but her longing itself became almost a prayer as she sat with closed eyes. this would pass, this cloud of her husband's lesser love. when he knew her so unalterably firm, when he saw how inflexibly the old love shut out the new, he would, once more, be her friend. then, feeling him near again, she might find peace. the thought of it was almost peace. even in the midst of yesterday's bewildered pain she had caught glimpses of the old beauty; his kindly speech to augustine, his making of ease for her; gratitude welled up in her and she sighed with the relief of her deep hope. to feel this gratitude was to see still further beyond the cloud. it was even beautiful for him to be able to "fall in love" with her--as he had put it: that the manifestations of his love should have made her shrink was not his fault but hers; she was a nun; because she had been a sinner. she almost smiled now, in seeing so clearly that it was on her the shadow rested. she could not be at peace, she could not pray, she could not live, it seemed to her, if he were really shadowed. and after the smile it was almost with the sense of dew falling upon her soul that she remembered the kindness, the chivalrous protection that had encompassed her through the long years. he was her friend, her knight; she would forget, and he, too, would forget that he had thought himself her lover. she did not know how tired she was, but her exhaustion must have been great, for the thoughts faded into a vague sweetness, then were gone, and, suddenly opening her eyes, she knew that she had fallen asleep, sitting straightly in her chair, and that lady elliston was looking at her. she started up, smiling and confused. "how absurd of me:--i have been sleeping.--have you just come?" lady elliston did not smile and was silent. she took amabel's hand and looked at her; she had to recover herself from something; it may have been the sleeping face, wasted and innocent, that had touched her too deeply. and her gravity, as of repressed tears, frightened amabel. she had never seen lady elliston look so grave. "is anything the matter?" she asked. for a moment longer lady elliston was silent, as though reflecting. then releasing amabel's hand, she said: "yes: i think something is the matter." "you have come to tell me?" "i didn't come for that. sit down, amabel. you are very tired, more tired than the other day. i have been looking at you for a long time.--i didn't come to tell you anything; but now, perhaps, i shall have something to tell. i must think." she took a chair beside the table and leaned her head on her hand shading her eyes. amabel had obeyed her and sat looking at her guest. "tell me," lady elliston said abruptly, and amabel today, more than of sweetness and softness, was conscious of her strength, "have you been having a bad time since i saw you? has anything happened? has anything come between you and augustine? i saw him this morning, and he's been suffering, too: i guessed it. you must be frank with me, amabel; you must trust me: perhaps i am going to be franker with you, to trust you more, than you can dream." she inspired the confidence her words laid claim to; for the first time in their lives amabel trusted her unreservedly. "i have had a very bad time," she said: "and augustine has had a bad time. yes; something has come between augustine and me,--many things." "he hates hugh," said lady elliston. "how can you know that?" "i guessed it. he is a clever boy: he sees you absorbed; he sees your devotion robbing him; perhaps he sees even more, amabel; i heard this morning, from mrs. grey, that hugh had been with you, again, yesterday. amabel, is it possible; has hugh been making love to you?" amabel had become very pale. looking down, she said in a hardly audible voice; "it is a mistake.--he will see that it is impossible." lady elliston for a moment was silent: the confirming of her own suspicion seemed to have stupefied her. "is it impossible?" she then asked. "quite, quite impossible." "does hugh know that it is impossible?" "he will.--yesterday, augustine came in while he was here;--i could not say any more." "i see: i see"; said lady elliston. her hand fell to the table now and she slightly tapped her finger-tips upon it. there was an ominous rhythm in the little raps. "and this adds to augustine's hatred," she said. "i am afraid it is true. i am afraid he does hate him, and how terrible that is," said amabel, "for he believes him to be his father." "by instinct he must feel the tie unreal." "yet he has had a father's kindness, almost, from hugh." "almost. it isn't enough you know. he suspects nothing, you think?" "it is that that is so terrible. he doesn't suspect me: he suspects him. he couldn't suspect evil of me. it is my guilt, and his ignorant hatred that is parting us." amabel was trembling; she leaned forward and covered her face with her hands. the very air about her seemed to tremble; so strange, so incredibly strange was it to hear her own words of helpless avowal; so strange to feel that she must tell lady elliston all she wished to know. "parting you? what do you mean? what folly!--what impossible folly! a mother and a son, loving each other as you and augustine love, parted for that. oh, no," said lady elliston, and her own voice shook a little: "that can't be. i won't have that." "he would not love me, if he knew." "knew? what is there for him to know? and how should he know? you won't be so mad as to tell him?" "it's my punishment not to dare to tell him--and to see my cowardice cast a shadow on hugh." "punishment? haven't you been punished enough, good heavens! cowardice? it is reason, maturity; the child has no right to your secret--it is yours and only yours, amabel. and if he did know all, he could not judge you as you judge yourself." "ah, you don't understand," amabel murmured: "i had forgotten to judge myself; i had forgotten my sin; it was augustine who made me remember; i know now what he feels about people like me." again lady elliston controlled herself to a momentary silence and again her fingers sharply beat out her uncontrollable impatience. "i live in a world, amabel," she said at last, "where people when they use the word 'sin,' in that connection, know that it's obsolete, a mere decorative symbol for unconventionality. in my world we don't have your cloistered black and white view of life nor see sin where only youth and trust and impulse were. if one takes risks, one may have to pay for them, of course; one plays the game, if one is in the ring, and, of course, you may be put out of the ring if you break the rules; but the rules are those of wisdom, not of morality, and the rule that heads the list is: don't be found out. to imagine that the rules are anything more than matters of social convenience is to dignify the foolish game. it is a foolish game, amabel, this of life: but one or two things in it are worth having; power to direct the game; freedom to break its rules; and love, passionate love, between a man and woman: and if one is strong enough one can have them all." lady elliston had again put her hand to her brow, shielding her eyes and leaning her elbow on the table, and amabel had raised her head and sat still, gazing at her. "you weren't strong enough," lady elliston went on after a little pause: "you made frightful mistakes: the greatest, of course, was in running away with paul quentin: that was foolish, and it was, if you like to call foolishness by its obsolete name, a sin. you shouldn't have gone: you should have stayed: you should have kept your lover--as long as you wanted to." again she paused. "do i horrify you?" "no: you don't horrify me," amabel replied. her voice was gentle, almost musing; she was absorbed in her contemplation. "you see," said lady elliston, "you didn't play the game: you made a mess of things and put the other players out. if you had stayed, and kept your lover, you would have been, in my eyes, a less loveable but a wiser woman. i believe in the game being kept up; i believe in the social structure: i am one of its accredited upholders"; in the shadow of her hand, lady elliston slightly smiled. "i believe in the family, the group of shared interests, shared responsibilities, shared opportunities it means: i don't care how many lovers a woman has if she doesn't break up the family, if she plays the game. marriage is a social compact and it's the woman's part to keep the home together. if she seeks love outside marriage she must play fair, she mustn't be an embezzling partner; she mustn't give her husband another man's children to support and so take away from his own children;--that's thieving. the social structure, the family, are unharmed, if one is brave and wise. love and marriage can rarely be combined and to renounce love is to cripple one's life, to miss the best thing it has to give. you, at all events, amabel, may be glad that you haven't missed it. what, after all, does our life mean but just that,--the power and feeling that one gets into it. be glad that you've had something." amabel, answering nothing, contemplated her guest. "so, as these are my views, imagine what i feel when i find you here, like this"; lady elliston dropped her hand at last and looked about her, not at amabel: "when i find you, in prison, locked up for life, by yourself, because you were lovably unwise. it's abominable, it's shameful, your position, isolated here, and tolerated, looked askance at by these nobodies.--ah--i don't say that other women haven't paid even more heavily than you've done; i own that, to a certain extent, you've escaped the rigours that the game exacts from its victims. but there was no reason why you should pay anything: it wasn't known, never really known--your brother and hugh saw to that;--you could have escaped scot-free." amabel spoke at last: "how, scot-free?" she asked. lady elliston looked hard at her: "your husband would have taken you back, had you insisted.--you shouldn't have fallen in with his plans." "his plans? they were mine; my brother's." "and his. hugh was glad to be rid of the young wife he didn't love." again amabel was trembling. "he might have been rid of her, altogether rid of her, if he had cared more for power and freedom than for pity." "power? with not nearly enough money? he was glad to keep her money and be rid of her. if you had pulled the purse-strings tight you might have made your own conditions." "i do not believe you," said amabel; "what you say is not true. my husband is noble." lady elliston looked at her steadily and unflinchingly. "he is not noble," she said. "what have you meant by coming here today? you have meant something! i will not listen to you! you are my husband's enemy;"--amabel half started from her chair, but lady elliston laid her hand on her arm, looking at her so fixedly that she sank down again, panic-stricken. "he is not noble," lady elliston repeated. "i will not have you waste your love as you have wasted your life. i will not have this illusion of his nobility come between you and your son. i will not have him come near you with his love. he is not noble, he is not generous, he is not beautiful. he could not have got rid of you. and he came to you with his love yesterday because his last mistress has thrown him over--and he must have a mistress. i know him: i know all about him: and you don't know him at all. your husband was my lover for over twenty years." a long silence followed her words. it was again a strange picture of arrested life in the dark room. the light fell quietly upon the two faces, their stillness, their contemplation--it seemed hardly more intent than contemplation, that drinking gaze of amabel's; the draught of wonder was too deep for pain or passion, and lady elliston's eyes yielded, offered, held firm the cup the other drank. and the silence grew so long that it was as if the twenty years flowed by while they gazed upon each other. it was lady elliston's face that first showed change. she might have been the cup-bearer tossing aside the emptied cup, seeing in the slow dilation of the victim's eyes, the constriction of lips and nostrils, that it had held poison. all--all had been drunk to the last drop. death seemed to gaze from the dilated eyes. "oh--my poor amabel--" lady elliston murmured; her face was stricken with pity. amabel spoke in the cramped voice of mortal anguish.--"before he married me." "yes," lady elliston nodded, pitiful, but unflinching. "he married you for your money, and because you were a sweet, good, simple child who would not interfere." "and he could not have divorced me, because of you." "because of me. you know the law; one guilty person can't divorce another. no one knew: no one has ever known: he and jack have remained the best of friends:--but, of course, with all our care, it's been suspected, whispered. if i'd been less powerful the whispers might have blighted me: as it was, we thought that bertram wasn't altogether unsuspecting. hugh knew that it would be fatal to bring the matter into court;--i will say for hugh that, in spite of the money, he wanted to. he could have married money again. he has always been extremely captivating. when he found that he would have to keep you, the money, of course, did atone. i suppose he has had most of your money by now," said lady elliston. amabel shut her eyes. "wasn't he even sorry for me?" she asked. lady elliston reflected and a glitter was in her eye; vengeance as well as justice armed her. "he is not unkind," she conceded: "and he was sorry after a fashion: 'poor little girl,' i remember he said. yes, he was very tolerant. but he didn't think of you at all, unless he wanted money. he is always graceful in his direct relations with people; he is tactful and sympathetic and likes things to be pleasant. but he doesn't mind breaking your heart if he doesn't have to see you while he is doing it. he is kind, but he is as hard as steel," said lady elliston. "then you do not love him any longer," said amabel. it was not a question, only a farther acceptance. and now, after only the slightest pause, lady elliston proved how deep, how unflinching was her courage. she had guarded her illicit passion all her life; she revealed it now. "i do love him," she said. "i have never loved another man. it is he who doesn't love me." from the black depths where she seemed to swoon and float, like a drowsy, drowning thing, the hard note of misery struck on amabel's ear. she opened her eyes and looked at lady elliston. power, freedom, passion: it was not these that looked back at her from the bereft and haggard eyes. "after twenty years he has grown tired," lady elliston said; and her candour seemed as inevitable as amabel's had been: each must tell the other everything; a common bond of suffering was between them and a common bond of love, though love so differing. "i knew, of course, that he was often unfaithful to me; he is a libertine; but i was the centre; he always came back to me.--i saw the end approaching about five years ago. i fought--oh how warily--so that he shouldn't dream i was afraid;--it is fatal for a woman to let a man know she is afraid,--the brutes, the cruel brutes,"--said lady elliston;--"how we love them for their fear and pleading; how our fear and pleading hardens them against us." her lips trembled and the tears ran down her cheeks. "i never pleaded; i never showed that i saw the change. i kept him, for years, by my skill. but the odds were too great at last. it was a year ago that he told me he didn't care any more. he was troubled, a little embarrassed, but quite determined that i shouldn't bother him. since then it has been another woman. i know her; i meet her everywhere; very beautiful; very young; only married for three years; a heartless, rapacious creature. hugh has nearly ruined himself in paying her jeweller's bills and her debts at bridge. and already she has thrown him over. it happened only the other day. i knew it was happening when i saw him here. i was glad, amabel; i longed for him to suffer; and he will. he is a libertine of most fastidious tastes and he will not find many more young and beautiful women, of his world, to run risks for him. he, too, is getting old. and he has gone through nearly all his own money--and yours. things will soon be over for him.--oh--but--i love him--i love him--and everything is over for me.--how can i bear it!" she bent forward on her knees and convulsive sobs shook her. her words seemed to amabel to come to her from a far distance; they echoed in her, yet they were not the words she could have used. how dim was her own love-dream beside this torment of dispossession. what--who--had she loved for all these years? she could not touch or see her own grief; but lady elliston's grief pierced through her. she leaned towards her and softly touched her shoulder, her arm, her hand; she held the hand in hers. the sight of this loss of strength and dignity was an actual pain; her own pain was something elusive and unsubstantial; it wandered like a ghost vainly seeking an embodiment. "oh, you angel--you poor angel!" moaned lady elliston. "there: that's enough of crying; it can't bring back my youth.--what a fool i am. if only i could learn to think of myself as free instead of maimed and left by the wayside. it is hard to live without love if one has always had it.--but i have freed you, amabel. i am glad of that. it has been a cruel, but a right thing to do. he shall not come to you with his shameless love; he shall not come between you and your boy. you shan't misplace your worship so. it is augustine who is beautiful and noble; it is augustine who loves you. you aren't maimed and forsaken; thank heaven for that, dear." lady elliston had risen. strong again, she faced her life, took up the reins, not a trace of scruple or of shame about her. it did not enter her mind to ask amabel for forgiveness, to ask if she were despised or shrunk from: it did not enter amabel's mind to wonder at the omission. she looked up at her guest and her lifted face seemed that of the drowned creature floating to the surface of the water. "tell me, amabel," lady elliston suddenly pleaded, "this is not going to blacken things for you; you won't let it blacken things. you will live; you will leave your prison and come out into the world, with your splendid boy, and live." amabel slightly shook her head. "oh, why do you say that? has it hurt so horribly?" amabel seemed to make the effort to think what it had done. she did not know. the ghost wailed; but she could not see its form. "did you care--so tremendously--about him?"--lady elliston asked, and her voice trembled. and, for answer, the drowned eyes looked up at her through strange, cold tears. "oh, my dear, my dear," lady elliston murmured. her hand was still in amabel's and she stood there beside her, her hand so held, for a long, silent moment. they had looked away from each other. and in the silence each knew that it was the end and that they would see each other no more. they lived in different planets, under different laws; they could understand, they could trust; but a deep, transparent chasm, like that of the ether flowing between two divided worlds, made them immeasurably apart. yet, when she at last gently released amabel's hand, drawing her own away. lady elliston said: "but,--won't you come out now?" "out? where?" amabel asked, in the voice of that far distance. "into the world, the great, splendid world." "splendid?" "splendid, if you choose to seize it and take what it has to give." after a moment amabel asked: "has it given you so much?" lady elliston looked at her from across the chasm; it was not dark, it held no precipices; it was made up only of distance. lady elliston saw; but she was loyal to her own world. "yes, it has," she said. "i've lived; you have dreamed your life away. you haven't even a reality to mourn the loss of." "no," amabel said; she closed her eyes and turned her head away against the chair; "no; i have lived too. don't pity me." x it was past five when augustine came into the empty drawing-room. tea was standing waiting, and had been there, he saw, for some time. he rang and asked the maid to tell lady channice. lady channice, he heard, was lying down and wanted no tea. lady elliston had gone half an hour before. after a moment or two of deliberation, augustine sat down and made tea for himself. that was soon over. he ate nothing, looking with a vague gaze of repudiation at the plate of bread and butter and the cooling scones. when tea had been taken away he walked up and down the room quickly, pausing now and then for further deliberation. but he decided that he would not go up to his mother. he went on walking for a long time. then he took a book and read until the dressing-bell for dinner rang. when he went upstairs to dress he paused outside his mother's door, as she had paused outside his, and listened. he heard no sound. he stood still there for some moments before lightly rapping on the door. "who is it?" came his mother's voice. "i; augustine. how are you? you are coming down?" "not tonight," she answered; "i have a very bad headache." "but let me have something sent up." after a moment his mother's voice said very sweetly; "of course, dear." and she added "i shall be all right tomorrow." the voice sounded natural--yet not quite natural; too natural, perhaps, augustine reflected. its tone remained with him as something disturbing and prolonged itself in memory like a familiar note strung to a queer, forced pitch, that vibrated on and on until it hurt. after his solitary meal he took up his book again in the drawing-room. he read with effort and concentration, his brows knotted; his young face, thus controlled to stern attention, was at once vigilant for outer impressions and absorbed in the inner interest. once or twice he looked up, as a coal fell with a soft crash from the fire, as a thin creeper tapped sharply on the window pane. his mother's room was above the drawing-room and while he read he was listening; but he heard no footsteps. suddenly, dim, yet clear, came another sound, a sound familiar, though so rare; wheels grinding on the gravel drive at the other side of the house. then, loud and startling at that unaccustomed hour, the old hall bell clanged through the house. augustine found himself leaning forward, breathing quickly, his book half-closed. at first he did not know what he was listening for or why his body should be tingling with excitement and anger. he knew a moment later. there was a step in the hall, a voice. all his life augustine had known them, had waited for them, had hated them. sir hugh was back again. of course he was back again, soon,--as he had promised in the tone of mastery. but his mother had told him not to come; she had told him not to come, and in a tone that meant more than his. did he not know?--did he not understand? "no, dear hugh, not soon.--i will write."--augustine sprang to his feet as he entered the room. sir hugh had been told that he would not find his wife. his face wore its usual look of good-temper, but it wore more than its usual look of indifference for his wife's son. "ah, tell lady channice, will you," he said over his shoulder to the maid. "how d'ye do, augustine:" and, as usual, he strolled up to the fire. augustine watched him as he crossed the room and said nothing. the maid had closed the door. from his wonted place sir hugh surveyed the young man and augustine surveyed him. "you know, my dear fellow," said sir hugh presently, lifting the sole of his boot to the fire, "you've got devilish bad manners. you are devilishly impertinent, i may tell you." augustine received the reproof without comment. "you seem to imagine," sir hugh went on, "that you have some particular right to bad manners and impertinence here, in this house; but you're mistaken; i belong here as well as you do; and you'll have to accept the fact." a convulsive trembling, like his mother's, passed over the young man's face; but whereas only amabel's hands and body trembled, it was the muscles of augustine's lips, nostrils and brows that were affected, and to see the strength of his face so shaken was disconcerting, painful. "you don't belong here while i'm here," he said, jerking the words out suddenly. "this is my mother's home--and mine;--but as soon as you make it insufferable for us we can leave it." "_you_ can; that's quite true," sir hugh nodded. augustine stood clenching his hands on his book. now, unconscious of what he did, he grasped the leaves and wrenched them back and forth as he stood silent, helpless, desperate, before the other's intimation. sir hugh watched the unconscious violence with interest. "yes," he went on presently, and still with good temper; "if you make yourself insufferable--to your mother and me--you can go. not that i want to turn you out. it rests with you. only, you must see that you behave. i won't have you making her wretched." augustine glanced dangerously at him. "your mother and i have come to an understanding--after a great many years of misunderstanding," said sir hugh, putting up the other sole. "i'm--very fond of your mother,--and she is,--very fond of me." "she doesn't know you," said augustine, who had become livid while the other made his gracefully hesitant statement. "doesn't know me?" sir hugh lifted his brows in amused inquiry; "my dear boy, what do you know about that, pray? you are not in all your mother's secrets." augustine was again silent for a moment, and he strove for self-mastery. "if i am not in my mother's secrets," he said, "she is not in yours. she does not know you. she doesn't know what sort of a man you are. you have deceived her. you have made her think that you are reformed and that the things in your life that made her leave you won't come again. but whether you are reformed or not a man like you has no right to come near a woman like my mother. i know that you are an evil man," said augustine, his face trembling more and more uncontrollably; "and my mother is a saint." sir hugh stared at him. then he burst into a shout of laughter. "you young fool!" he said. augustine's eyes were lightnings in a storm-swept sky. "you young fool," sir hugh repeated, not laughing, a heavier stress weighting each repeated word. "can you deny," said augustine, "that you have always led a dissolute life? if you do deny it it won't help you. i know it: and i've not needed the echoes to tell me. i've always felt it in you. i've always known you were evil." "what if i don't deny it?" sir hugh inquired. augustine was silent, biting his quivering lips. "what if i don't deny it?" sir hugh repeated. his assumption of good-humour was gone. he, too, was scowling now. "what have you to say then?" "by heaven,--i say that you shall not come near my mother." "and what if it was not because of my dissolute life she left me? what if you've built up a cock-and-bull romance that has no relation to reality in your empty young head? what then? ask your mother if she left me because of my dissolute life," said sir hugh. the book in augustine's wrenching hands had come apart with a crack and crash. he looked down at it stupidly. "you really should learn to control yourself--in every direction, my dear boy," sir hugh remarked. "now, unless you would like to wreak your temper on the furniture, i think you had better sit down and be still. i should advise you to think over the fact that saints have been known before now to forgive sinners. and sinners may not be so bad as your innocence imagines. goodbye. i am going up to see your mother. i am going to spend the night here." augustine stood holding the shattered book. he gazed as stupidly at sir hugh as he had gazed at it. he gazed while sir hugh, who kept a rather wary eye fixed on him, left the fire and proceeded with a leisurely pace to cross the room: the door was reached and the handle turned, before the stupor broke. sir hugh, his eyes still fixed on his antagonist, saw the blanched fury, the start, as if the dazed body were awakening to some insufferable torture, saw the gathering together, the leap:--"you fool--you young fool!" he ground between his teeth as, with a clash of the half-opened door, augustine pinned him upon it. "let me go. do you hear. let me go." his voice was the voice of the lion-tamer, hushed before danger to a quelling depth of quiet. and like the young lion, drawing long breaths through dilated-nostrils, augustine growled back:--"i will not--i will not.--you shall not go to her. i would rather kill you." "kill me?" sir hugh smiled. "it would be a fight first, you know." "then let it be a fight. you shall not go to her." "and what if she wants me to go to her.--will you kill her first, too--"--the words broke. augustine's hand was on his throat. sir hugh seized him. they writhed together against the door. "you mad-man!--you damned mad-man!--your mother is in love with me.--i'll put you out of her life--"--sir hugh grated forth from the strangling clutch. suddenly, as they writhed, panting, glaring their hatred at each other, the door they leaned on pushed against them. someone outside was turning the handle, was forcing it open. and, as if through the shocks and flashes of a blinding, deafening tempest, augustine heard his mother's voice, very still, saying: "let me come in." xi they fell apart and moved back into the room. amabel entered. she wore a long white dressing-gown that, to her son's eyes, made her more than ever look her sainted self; she had dressed hastily, and, on hearing the crash below, she had wrapped a white scarf about her head and shoulders, covering her unbound hair. so framed and narrowed her face was that of a shrouded corpse: the same strange patience stamped it; her eyes, only, seemed to live, and they, too, were patient and ready for any doom. quietly she had closed the door, and standing near it now she looked at them; her eyes fell for a moment upon sir hugh; then they rested on augustine and did not leave him. sir hugh spoke first. he laughed a little, adjusting his collar and tie. "my dear,--you've saved my life. augustine was going to batter my brains out on the door, i fancy." she did not look at him, but at augustine. "he's really dangerous, your son, you know. please don't leave me alone with him again," sir hugh smiled and pleaded; it was with almost his own lightness, but his face still twitched with anger. "what have you said to him?" amabel asked. augustine's eyes were drawing her down into their torment.--unfortunate one.--that presage of her maternity echoed in her now. his stern young face seemed to have been framed, destined from the first for this foreseen misery. sir hugh had pulled himself together. he looked at the mother and son. and he understood her fear. he went to her, leaned over her, a hand above her shoulder on the door. he reassured and protected her; and, truly, in all their story, it had never been with such sincerity and grace. "dearest, it's nothing. i've merely had to defend my rights. will you assure this young firebrand that my misdemeanours didn't force you to leave me. that there were misdemeanours i don't deny; and of course you are too good for the likes of me; but your coming away wasn't my fault, was it.--that's what i've said.--and that saints forgive sinners, sometimes.--that's all i want you to tell him." amabel still gazed into her son's eyes. it seemed to her, now that she must shut herself out from it for ever, that for the first time in all her life she saw his love. it broke over her; it threatened and commanded her; it implored and supplicated--ah the supplication beyond words or tears!--selflessness made it stern. it was for her it threatened; for her it prayed. all these years the true treasure had been there beside her, while she worshipped at the spurious shrine. only her sorrow, her solicitude had gone out to her son; the answering love that should have cherished and encompassed him flowed towards its true goal only when it was too late. he could not love her when he knew. and he was to know. that had come to her clearly and unalterably while she had leaned, half fallen, half kneeling, against her bed, dying, it seemed to her, to all that she had known of life or hope. but all was not death within her. in the long, the deadly stupor, her power to love still lived. it had been thrown back from its deep channel and, wave upon wave, it seemed heaped upon itself in some narrow abyss, tormented and shuddering; and at last by its own strength, rather than by thought or prayer of hers, it had forced an outlet. it was then as if she found herself once more within the church. darkness, utter darkness was about her; but she was prostrated before the unseen altar. she knew herself once more, and with herself she knew her power to love. her life and all its illusions passed before her; by the truth that irradiated the illusions, she judged them and herself and saw what must be the atonement. all that she had believed to be the treasure of her life had been taken from her; but there was one thing left to her that she could give:--her truth to her son. when that price was paid, he would be hers to love; he was no longer hers to live for. he should found his life on no illusions, as she had founded hers. she must set him free to turn away from her; but when he turned away it would not be to leave her in the loneliness and the terror of heart that she had known; it would be to leave her in the church where she could pray for him. she answered her husband after her long silence, looking at her son. "it is true, augustine," she said. "you have been mistaken. i did not leave him for that." sir hugh drew a breath of satisfaction. he glanced round at augustine. it was not a venomous glance, but, with its dart of steely intention, it paid a debt of vengeance. "so,--we needn't say anything more about it," he said. "and--dearest--perhaps now you'll tell augustine that he may go and leave us together." amabel left her husband's side and went to her chair near the table. a strange calmness breathed from her. she sat with folded hands and downcast eyes. "augustine, come here," she said. the young man came and stood before her. "give me your hand." he gave it to her. she did not look at him but kept her eyes fixed on the ground while she clasped it. "augustine," she said, "i want you to leave me with my husband. i must talk with him. he is going away soon. tomorrow--tomorrow morning early, i will see you, here. i will have a great deal to say to you, my dear son." but augustine, clutching her hand and trembling, looked down at her so that she raised her eyes to his. "i can't go, till you say something, now, mother;"--his voice shook as it had shaken on that day of their parting, his face was livid and convulsed, as then;--"i will go away tonight--i don't know that i can ever return--unless you tell me that you are not going to take him back." he gazed down into his mother's eyes. she did not answer him; she did not speak. but, as he looked into them, he, too, for the first time, saw in them what she had seen in his. they dwelt on him; they widened; they almost smiled; they deeply promised him all--all--that he most longed for. she was his, her son's; she was not her husband's. what he had feared had never threatened him or her. this was a gift she had won the right to give. the depth of her repudiation yesterday gave her her warrant. and to amabel, while they looked into each other's eyes, it was as if, in the darkness, some arching loveliness of dawn vaguely shaped itself above the altar. "kiss me, dear augustine," she said. she held up her forehead, closing her eyes, for the kiss that was her own. augustine was gone. and now, before her, was the ugly breaking. but must it be so ugly? opening her eyes, she looked at her husband as he stood before the fire, his wondering eyes upon her. must it be ugly? why could it not be quiet and even kind? strangely there had gathered in her, during the long hours, the garnered strength of her life of discipline and submission. it had sustained her through the shudder that glanced back at yesterday--at the corruption that had come so near; it had given sanity to see with eyes of compassion the forsaken woman who had come with her courageous, revengeful story; it gave sanity now, as she looked over at her husband, to see him also, with those eyes of compassionate understanding; he was not blackened, to her vision, by the shadowing corruption, but, in his way, pitiful, too; all the worth of life lost to him. and it seemed swiftest, simplest, and kindest, as she looked over at him, to say:--"you see--lady elliston came this afternoon, and told me everything." sir hugh kept his face remarkably unmoved. he continued to gaze at his wife with an unabashed, unstartled steadiness. "i might have guessed that," he said after a short silence. "confound her." amabel made no reply. "so i suppose," sir hugh went on, "you feel you can't forgive me." she hesitated, not quite understanding. "you mean--for having married me--when you loved her?" "well, yes; but more for not having, long ago, in all these years, found out that you were the woman that any man with eyes to see, any man not blinded and fatuous, ought to have been in love with from the beginning." amabel flushed. her vision was untroubled; but the shadow hovered. she was ashamed for him. "no"; she said, "i did not think of that. i don't know that i have anything to forgive you. it is lady elliston, i think, who must try and forgive you, if she can." sir hugh was again silent for a moment; then he laughed. "you dear innocent!--well--i won't defend myself at her expense." "don't," said amabel, looking now away from him. sir hugh eyed her and seemed to weigh the meaning of her voice. he crossed the room suddenly and leaned over her:--"amabel darling,--what must i do to atone? i'll be patient. don't be cruel and punish me for too long a time." "sit there--will you please." she pointed to the chair at the other side of the table. he hesitated, still leaning above her; then obeyed; folding his arms; frowning. "you don't understand," said amabel. "i loved you for what you never were. i do not love you now. and i would never have loved you as you asked me to do yesterday." he gazed at her, trying to read the difficult riddle of a woman's perversity. "you were in love with me yesterday," he said at last. she answered nothing. "i'll make you love me again." "no: never," she answered, looking quietly at him. "what is there in you to love?" sir hugh flushed. "i say! you are hard on me!" "i see nothing loveable in you," said amabel with her inflexible gentleness. "i loved you because i thought you noble and magnanimous; but you were neither. you only did not cast me off, as i deserved, because you could not; and you were kind partly because you are kind by nature, but partly because my money was convenient to you. i do not say that you were ignoble; you were in a very false position. and i had wronged you; i had committed the greater social crime; but there was nothing noble; you must see that; and it was for that i loved you." sir hugh now got up and paced up and down near her. "so you are going to cast me off because i had no opportunity for showing nobility. how do you know i couldn't have behaved as you believed i did behave, if only i'd had the chance? you know--you are hard on me." "i see no sign of nobility--towards anyone--in your life," amabel answered as dispassionately as before. sir hugh walked up and down. "i did feel like a brute about the money sometimes," he remarked;--"especially that last time; i wanted you to have the house as a sort of salve to my conscience; i've taken almost all your money, you know; it's quite true. as to the rest--what augustine calls my dissoluteness--i can't pretend to take your view; a nun's view." he looked at her. "how beautiful you are with that white round your face," he said. "you are like a woman of snow." she looked back at him as though, from the unhesitating steadiness of her gaze, to lend him some of her own clearness. "don't you see that it's not real? don't you see that it's because you suddenly find me beautiful, and because, as a woman of snow, i allure you, that you think you love me? do you really deceive yourself?" he stared at her; but the ray only illumined the bewilderment of his dispossession. "i don't pretend to be an idealist," he said, stopping still before her; "i don't pretend that it's not because i suddenly find you beautiful; that's one reason; and a very essential one, i think; but there are other reasons, lots of them. amabel--you must see that my love for you is an entirely different sort of thing from what my love for her ever was." she said nothing. she could not argue with him, nor ask, as if for a cheap triumph, if it were different from his love for the later mistress. she saw, indeed, that it was different now, whatever it had been yesterday. clearly she saw, glancing at herself as at an object in the drama, that she offered quite other interests and charms, that her attractions, indeed, might be of a quality to elicit quite new sentiments from sir hugh, sentiments less shadowing than those of yesterday had been. and so she accepted his interpretation in silence, unmoved by it though doing it full justice, and for a little while sir hugh said nothing either. he still stood before her and she no longer looked at him, but down at her folded hands that did not tremble at all tonight, and she wondered if now, perhaps, he would understand her silence and leave her. but when, in an altered voice, he said: "amabel;" she looked at him. she seemed to see everything tonight as a disembodied spirit might see it, aware of what the impeding flesh could only dimly manifest; and she saw now that her husband's face had never been so near beauty. it did not attain it; it was, rather, as if the shadow, lifting entirely for a flickering moment, revealed something unconscious, something almost innocent, almost pitiful: it was as if, liberated, he saw beauty for a moment and put out his hands to it, like a child putting out its hands to touch the moon, believing that it was as near to him, and as easily to be attained, as pleasure always had been. "try to forgive me," he said, and his voice had the broken note of a sad child's voice, the note of ultimate appeal from man to woman. "i'm a poor creature; i know that. it's always made me ashamed--to see how you idealise me.--the other day, you know,--when you kissed my hand--i was horribly ashamed.--but, upon my honour amabel, i'm not a bad fellow at bottom,--not the devil incarnate your son seems to think me. something could be made of me, you know;--and, if you'll forgive me, and let me try to win your love again;--ah amabel--"--he pleaded, almost with tears, before her unchangingly gentle face. and, the longing to touch her, hold her, receive comfort and love, mingling with the new reverential fear, he knelt beside her, putting his head on her knees and murmuring: "i do so desperately love you." amabel sat looking down upon him. her face was unchanged, but in her heart was a trembling of astonished sadness. it was too late. it had been too late--from the very first;--yet, if they could have met before each was spoiled for each;--before life had set them unalterably apart--? the great love of her life was perhaps not all illusion. and she seemed to sit for a moment in the dark church, dreaming of the distant spring-time, of brooks and primroses and prophetic birds, and of love, young, untried and beautiful. but she did not lay her hand on sir hugh's head nor move at all towards him. she sat quite still, looking down at him, like a madonna above a passionate supplicant, pitiful but serene. and as he knelt, with his face hidden, and did not hear her voice nor feel her touch, with an unaccustomed awe the realisation of her remoteness from him stole upon sir hugh. passion faded from his heart, even self-pity and longing faded. he entered her visionary retrospect and knew, like her, that it was too late; that everything was too late; that everything was really over. and, as he realised it, a chill went over him. he felt like a strayed reveller waking suddenly from long slumber and finding himself alone in darkness. he lifted his face and looked at her, needing the reassurance of her human eyes; and they met his with their remote gentleness. for a long moment they gazed at each other. then sir hugh, stumbling a little, got upon his feet and stood, half turned from her, looking away into the room. when he spoke it was in quite a different voice, it was almost the old, usual voice, the familiar voice of their friendly encounters. "and what are you going to do with yourself, now, amabel?" "i am going to tell augustine," she said. "tell him!" sir hugh looked round at her. "why?" "i must." he seemed, after a long silence, to accept her sense of necessity as sufficient reason. "will it cut him up very much, do you think?" he asked. "it will change everything very much, i think," said amabel. "do you mean--that he will blame you?--" "i don't think that he can love me any longer." there was no hint of self-pity in her calm tones and sir hugh could only formulate his resentment and his protest--and they were bitter,--by a muttered--"oh--i say!--i say!--" he went on presently; "and will you go on living here, perhaps alone?" "alone, i think; yes, i shall live here; i do not find it dismal, you know." sir hugh felt himself again looking reluctantly into darkness. "but--how will you manage it, amabel?" he asked. and her voice seemed to come, in all serenity, from the darkness; "i shall manage it." yes, the awe hovered near him as he realised that what, to him, meant darkness, to her meant life. she would manage it. she had managed to live through everything. a painful analogy came to increase his sadness;--it was like having before one a martyr who had been bound to rack after rack and still maintained that strange air of keeping something it was worth while being racked for. glancing at her it seemed to him, still more painfully, that in spite of her beauty she was very like a martyr; that queer touch of wildness in her eyes; they were serene, they were even sweet, yet they seemed to have looked on horrid torments; and those white wrappings might have concealed dreadful scars. he took out his watch, nervously and automatically, and looked at it. he would have to walk to the station; he could catch a train. "and may i come, sometimes, and see you?" he asked. "i'll not bother you, you know. i understand, at last. i see what a blunder--an ugly blunder--this has been on my part. but perhaps you'll let me be your friend--more really your friend than i have ever been." and now, as he glanced at her again, he saw that the gentleness was remote no longer. it had come near like a light that, in approaching, diffused itself and made a sudden comfort and sweetness. she was too weary to smile, but her eyes, dwelling gently on him, promised him something, as, when they had dwelt with their passion of exiled love on her son, they had promised something to augustine. she held out her hand. "we are friends," she said. sir hugh flushed darkly. he stood holding her hand, looking at it and not at her. he could not tell what were the confused emotions that struggled within him; shame and changed love; awe, and broken memories of prayers that called down blessings. it was "god bless you," that he felt, yet he did not feel that it was for him to say these words to her. and no words came; but tears were in his eyes as, in farewell, he bent over her hand and kissed it. xii when amabel waked next morning a bright dawn filled her room. she remembered, finding it so light, that before lying down to sleep she had drawn all her curtains so that, through the open windows, she might see, until she fell asleep, a wonderful sky of stars. she had not looked at them for long. she had gone to sleep quickly and quietly, lying on her side, her face turned to the sky, her arms cast out before her, just as she had first lain down; and so she found herself lying when she waked. it was very early. the sun gilded the dark summits of the sycamores that she could see from her window. the sky was very high and clear, and long, thin strips of cloud curved in lessening bars across it. the confused chirpings of the waking birds filled the air. and before any thought had come to her she smiled as she lay there, looking at and listening to the wakening life. then the remembrance of the dark ordeal that lay before her came. it was like waking to the morning that was to see one on the scaffold: but, with something of the light detachment that a condemned prisoner might feel--nothing being left to hope for and the only strength demanded being the passive strength to endure--she found that she was thinking more of the sky and of the birds than of the ordeal. some hours lay between her and that; bright, beautiful hours. she put out her hand and took her watch which lay near. only six. augustine would not expect to see her until ten. four long hours: she must get up and spend them out of doors. it was too early for hot water or maids; she enjoyed the flowing shocks of the cold and her own rapidity and skill in dressing and coiling up her hair. she put on her black dress and took her black scarf as a covering for her head. slipping out noiselessly, like a truant school-girl, she made her way to the pantry, found milk and bread, and ate and drank standing, then, cautiously pushing bolts and bars, stepped from the door into the dew, the sunlight, the keen young air. she took the path to the left that led through the sycamore wood, and crossing the narrow brook by a little plank and hand rail, passed into the meadows where, in spring, she and augustine used to pick cowslips. she thought of augustine, but only in that distant past, as a little child, and her mind dwelt on sweet, trivial memories, on the toys he had played with and the pair of baby-shoes, bright red shoes, square-toed, with rosettes on them, that she had loved to see him wear with his little white frocks. and in remembering the shoes she smiled again, as she had smiled in hearing the noisy chirpings of the waking birds. the little path ran on through meadow after meadow, stiles at the hedges, planks over the brooks and ditches that intersected this flat, pastoral country. she paused for a long time to watch the birds hopping and fluttering in a line of sapling willows that bordered one of these brooks and at another stood and watched a water-rat, unconscious of her nearness, making his morning toilette on the bank; he rubbed his ears and muzzle hastily, with the most amusing gesture. once she left the path to go close to some cows that were grazing peacefully; their beautiful eyes, reflecting the green pastures, looked up at her with serenity, and she delighted in the fragrance that exhaled from their broad, wet nostrils. "darlings," she found herself saying. she went very far. she crossed the road that, seen from charlock house, was, with its bordering elm-trees, only a line of blotted blue. and all the time the light grew more splendid and the sun rose higher in the vast dome of the sky. she returned more slowly than she had gone. it was like a dream this walk, as though her spirit, awake, alive to sight and sound, smiling and childish, were out under the sky, while in the dark, sad house the heavily throbbing heart waited for its return. this waiting heart seemed to come out to meet her as once more she saw the sycamores dark on the sky and saw beyond them the low stone house. the pearly, the crystalline interlude, drew to a close. she knew that in passing from it she passed into deep, accepted tragedy. the sycamores had grown so tall since she first came to live at charlock house that the foliage made a high roof and only sparkling chinks of sky showed through. the path before her was like the narrow aisle of a cathedral. it was very dark and silent. she stood still, remembering the day when, after her husband's first visit to her, she had come here in the late afternoon and had known the mingled revelation of divine and human holiness. she stood still, thinking of it, and wondered intently, looking down. it was gone, that radiant human image, gone for ever. the son, to whom her heart now clung, was stern. she was alone. every prop, every symbol of the divine love had been taken from her. but, so bereft, it was not, after the long pause of wonder, in weakness and abandonment that she stood still in the darkness and closed her eyes. it was suffering, but it was not fear; it was longing, but it was not loneliness. and as, in her wrecked girlhood, she had held out her hands, blessed and receiving, she held them out now, blessed, though sacrificing all she had. but her uplifted face, white and rapt, was now without a smile. suddenly she knew that someone was near her. she opened her eyes and saw augustine standing at some little distance looking at her. it seemed natural to see him there, waiting to lead her into the ordeal. she went towards him at once. "is it time?" she said. "am i late?" augustine was looking intently at her. "it isn't half-past nine yet," he said. "i've had my breakfast. i didn't know you had gone out till just now when i went to your room and found it empty." she saw then in his eyes that he had been frightened. he took her hand and she yielded it to him and they went up towards the house. "i have had such a long walk," she said. "isn't it a beautiful morning." "yes; i suppose so," said augustine. as they walked he did not take his eyes off his mother's face. "aren't you tired?" he asked. "not at all. i slept well." "your shoes are quite wet," said augustine, looking down at them. "yes; the meadows were thick with dew." "you didn't keep to the path?" "yes;--no, i remember."--she looked down at her shoes, trying, obediently, to satisfy him, "i turned aside to look at the cows." "will you please change your shoes at once?" "i'll go up now and change them. and will you wait for me in the drawing-room, augustine." "yes." she saw that he was still frightened, and remembering how strange she must have looked to him, standing still, with upturned face and outstretched hands, in the sycamore wood, she smiled at him:--"i am well, dear, don't be troubled," she said. in her room, before she went downstairs, she looked at herself in the glass. the pale, calm face was strange to her, or was it the story, now on her lips, that was the strange thing, looking at that face. she saw them both with augustine's eyes; how could he believe it of that face. she did not see the mirrored holiness, but the innocent eyes looked back at her marvelling at what she was to tell of them. in the drawing-room augustine was walking up and down. the fire was burning cheerfully and all the windows were wide open. the room looked its lightest. augustine's intent eyes were on her as she entered. "you won't find the air too much?" he questioned; his voice trembled. she murmured that she liked it. but the agitation that she saw controlled in him affected her so that she, too, began to tremble. she went to her chair at one side of the large round table. "will you sit there, augustine," she said. he sat down, opposite to her, where sir hugh had sat the night before. amabel put her elbows on the table and covered her face with her hands. she could not look at her child; she could not see his pain. "augustine," she said, "i am going to tell you a long story; it is about myself, and about you. and you will be brave, for my sake, and try to help me to tell it as quickly as i can." his silence promised what she asked. "before the story," she said, "i will tell you the central thing, the thing you must be brave to hear.--you are an illegitimate child, augustine." at that she stopped. she listened and heard nothing. then came long breaths. she opened her eyes to see that his head had fallen forward and was buried in his arms. "i can't bear it.--i can't bear it--" came in gasps. she could say nothing. she had no word of alleviation for his agony. only she felt it turning like a sword in her heart. "say something to me"--augustine gasped on.--"you did that for him, too.--i am his child.--you are not my mother.--" he could not sob. amabel gazed at him. with the unimaginable revelation of his love came the unimaginable turning of the sword; it was this that she must destroy. she commanded herself to inflict, swiftly, the further blow. "augustine," she said. he lifted a blind face, hearing her voice. he opened his eyes. they looked at each other. "i am your mother," said amabel. he gazed at her. he gazed and gazed; and she offered herself to the crucifixion of his transfixing eyes. the silence grew long. it had done its work. once more she put her hands before her face. "listen," she said. "i will tell you." he did not stir nor move his eyes from her hidden face while she spoke. swiftly, clearly, monotonously, she told him all. she paused at nothing; she slurred nothing. she read him the story of the stupid sinner from the long closed book of the past. there was no hesitation for a word; no uncertainty for an interpretation. everything was written clearly and she had only to read it out. and while she spoke, of her girlhood, her marriage, of the man with the unknown name--his father--of her flight with him, her flight from him, here, to this house, augustine sat motionless. his eyes considered her, fixed in their contemplation. she told him of his own coming, of her brother's anger and dismay, of sir hugh's magnanimity, and of how he had been born to her, her child, the unfortunate one, whom she had felt unworthy to love as a child should be loved. she told him how her sin had shut him away and made strangeness grow between them. and when all this was told amabel put down her hands. his stillness had grown uncanny: he might not have been there; she might have been talking in an empty room. but he was there, sitting opposite her, as she had last seen him, half turned in his seat, fallen together a little as though his breathing were very slight and shallow; and his dilated eyes, strange, deep, fierce, were fixed on her. she shut the sight out with her hands. she stumbled a little now in speaking on, and spoke more slowly. she knew herself condemned and the rest seemed unnecessary. it only remained to tell him how her mistaken love had also shut him out; to tell, slightly, not touching lady elliston's name, of how the mistake had come to pass; to say, finally, on long, failing breaths, that her sin had always been between them but that, until the other day, when he had told her of his ideals, she had not seen how impassable was the division. "and now," she said, and the convulsive trembling shook her as she spoke, "now you must say what you will do. i am a different woman from the mother you have loved and reverenced. you will not care to be with the stranger you must feel me to be. you are free, and you must leave me. only," she said, but her voice now shook so that she could hardly say the words--"only--i will always be here--loving you, augustine; loving you and perhaps,--forgive me if i have no right to that, even--hoping;--hoping that some day, in some degree, you may care for me again." she stopped. she could say no more. and she could only hear her own shuddering breaths. then augustine moved. he pushed back his chair and rose. she waited to hear him leave the room, and leave her, to her doom, in silence. but he was standing still. then he came near to her. and now she waited for the words that would be worse than silence. but at first there were no words. he had fallen on his knees before her; he had put his arms around her; he was pressing his head against her breast while, trembling as she trembled, he said:--"mother--mother--mother." all barriers had fallen at the cry. it was the cry of the exile, the banished thing, returning to its home. he pressed against the heart to which she had never herself dared to draw him. but, incredulous, she parted her hands and looked down at him; and still she did not dare enfold him. "augustine--do you understand?--do you still love me?--" "oh mother," he gasped,--"what have i been to you that you can ask me!" "you can forgive me?" amabel said, weeping, and hiding her face against his hair. they were locked in each other's arms. and, his head upon her breast, as if it were her own heart that spoke to her, he said:--"i will atone to you.--i will make up to you--for everything.--you shall be glad that i was born." the spinners by eden phillpotts author of "old delabole," "brunel's tower," etc. contents book i i the funeral ii at 'the tiger' iii the hackler iv chains for raymond v in the mill vi 'the seven stars' vii a walk viii the lecture ix the party x work xi the old store-house xii credit xiii in the foreman's garden xiv the concert xv a visit to miss ironsyde xvi at chilcombe xvii confusion xviii the lovers' grove xix job legg's ambition xx a conference xxi the warping mill xxii the telegram xxiii a letter for sabina xxiv mrs. northover decides xxv the woman's darkness xxvi of human nature xxvii the master of the mill xxviii clash of opinions xxix the bunch of grapes xxx a triumph of reason xxxi the offer declined book ii i the flying years ii the sea garden iii a twist frame iv the red hand v an accident vi the gathering problem vii the walk home viii epitaph ix the future of abel x the advertisement xi the hemp breaker xii the picnic xiii the runaway xiv the motor car xv criticism xvi the offer of marriage xvii sabina and abel xviii swan song xix new work for abel xx ideals xxi atropos xxii the hiding-place book i sabina chapter i the funeral the people were coming to church and one had thought it sunday, but for two circumstances. the ring of bells at st. mary's did not peal, and the women were dressed in black as the men. through the winding lanes of bridetown a throng converged, drawn to the grey tower by a tolling bell; and while the sun shone and a riot of many flowers made hedgerows and cottage gardens gay; while the spirit of the hour was inspired by june and a sun at the zenith unclouded, the folk of the hamlet drew their faces to sadness and mothers chid the children, who could not pretend, but echoed the noontide hour in their hearts. all were not attired for a funeral. a small crowd of women, with one or two men among them, stood together where a sycamore threw a patch of shade on a triangular space of grass near the church. there were fifty of these people--ancient women, others in their prime, and many young maidens. some communion linked them and the few men who stood with them. all wore a black band upon their left arms. drab or grey was their attire, but sun-bonnets nodded bright as butterflies among them, and even their dull raiment was more cheerful than the gathering company in black who now began to mass their numbers and crane their heads along the highway. bridetown lies near the sea in a valley under a range of grassy downs. it is the centre of a network of little lanes with cottages dotted upon them, or set back behind small gardens. the dwellings stood under thatch, or weathered tile, and their faces at this season were radiant with roses and honeysuckles, jasmine and clematis. pinks, lilies, columbines made the garden patches gay, and, as though so many flowers were not enough, the windows, too, shone with geraniums and the scarlet tassels of great cactus, that lifted their exotic, thorny bodies behind the window panes. not a wall but flaunted red valerian and snapdragon. indeed bridetown was decked with blooms. here and there in the midst stood better houses, with some expanse of lawn before them and flat shrubs that throve in that snug vale. good walnut trees and mulberries threw their shadows on grass plat and house front, while the murmur of bees came from many bright borders. south the land rose again to the sea cliffs, for the spirits of ocean and the west wind have left their mark upon bride vale. the white gulls float aloft; the village elms are moulded by zephyr with sure and steady breath. of forestal size and unstunted, yet they turn their backs, as it were, upon the west and, yielding to that unsleeping pressure, incline landward. the trees stray not far. they congregate in an oasis about bridetown, then wend away through valley meadows, but leave the green hills bare. the high ground rolls upward to a gentle skyline and the hillsides, denuded by water springs, or scratched by man, reveal the silver whiteness of the chalk where they are wounded. bride river winds in the midst, and her bright waters throw a loop round the eastern frontier of the hamlet, pass under the highway, bring life to the cottage gardens and turn more wheels than one. bloom of apple and pear are mirrored on her face and fruit falls into her lap at autumn time. then westward she flows through the water meadows, and so slips uneventfully away to sea, where the cliffs break and there stretches a little strand. to the last she is crowned with flowers, and the meadowsweets and violets that decked her cradle give place to sea poppies, sea hollies, and stones encrusted with lichens of red gold, where bride flows to one great pool, sinks into the sand and glides unseen to her lover. "they're coming!" said one of the crowd; but it was a false alarm. a flock of breeding lambs of the dorset horned sheep pattered through the village on their way to pasture. the young, healthy creatures, with amber-coloured horns and yellow eyes, trotted contentedly along together and left an ovine reek in the air. behind them came the shepherd--a high-coloured, middle-aged man with a sharp nose and mild, grey eyes. he could give news of the funeral, which was on the way behind him. an iron seat stood under the sycamore on the triangular patch of grass, and a big woman sat upon it. she was of vast dimensions, broad and beamy as a dutch sloop. her bulk was clad in dun colour, and on her black bonnet appeared a layer of yellow dust. she spoke to others of the little crowd who surrounded her. they came from bridetown spinning mill, for work was suspended because henry ironsyde, the mill owner, had died and now approached his grave. "the ironsydes bury here, but they don't live here," said sally groves. "they lived here once, at north hill house; but that's when i first came to the mill as a bit of a girl." the big woman fanned herself with a handkerchief, then spoke a grey man with a full beard, small head, and discontented eyes. he was levi baggs, the hackler. "we shall have those two blessed boys over us now, no doubt," he said. "but what know they? things will be as they were, and time and wages the same as before." "they'll be sure to do what their father wished, and there was a murmur of changes before he died," said sally groves; but levi shook his head. "daniel ironsyde is built like his father, to let well alone. raymond ironsyde don't count. he'll only want his money." "have you ever seen mr. raymond?" asked a girl. she was nancy buckler, a spinner--hard-featured, sharp-voiced, and wiry. nancy might have been any age between twenty-five and forty. she owned to thirty. "he don't come to bridetown, and if you want to see him, you must go to 'the tiger,' at bridport," declared another girl. her name was sarah northover. "my aunt nelly keeps 'the seven stars,' in barrack street," she explained, "and that's just alongside 'the tiger,' and my aunt nelly's very friendly with mr. gurd, of 'the tiger,' and he's told her that mr. raymond is there half his time. he's all for sport and such like, and 'the tiger's' a very sporting house." "he won't be no good to the mills if he's that sort," prophesied sally groves. "i saw him once, with another young fellow called motyer," answered sarah northover. "he's very good-looking--fair and curly--quite different from mr. daniel." "light or dark, they're henry ironsyde's sons and be brought up in his pattern no doubt," declared mr. baggs. people continued to appear, and among them walked an elderly man, a woman and a girl. they were mr. ernest churchouse, of 'the magnolias,' with his widowed housekeeper, mary dinnett, and her daughter, sabina. the girl was nineteen, dark and handsome, and very skilled in her labour. none disputed her right to be called first spinner at the mills. she was an impulsive, ambitious maiden, and mr. best, foreman at the works, claimed for her that she brought genius as well as understanding to her task. sabina joined her friend, nancy buckler; mrs. dinnett, who had been a mill hand in her youth, took a seat beside sally groves, and mr. churchouse paced alone. he was a round-faced, clean-shaven man with mild, grey eyes and iron grey hair. he looked gentle and genial. his shoulders were high, and his legs short. walking irked him, for a sedentary life and hearty appetite had made him stout. the fall of henry ironsyde served somewhat to waken ernest churchouse from the placid dream in which he lived, shake him from his normal quietude, and remind him of the flight of time. he and the dead man were of an age and had been boys together. their fathers founded the bridetown spinning mill, and when the elder men passed away, it was henry ironsyde who took over the enterprise and gradually bought out ernest churchouse. but while ironsyde left bridetown and lived henceforth at bridport, that he might develop further interests in the spinning trade, ernest had been well content to remain there, enjoy his regular income and live at 'the magnolias,' his father's old-world house, beside the river. his tastes were antiquarian and literary. he wrote when in the mood, and sometimes read papers at the mechanics' institute of bridport. but he was constitutionally averse from real work of any sort, lacked ambition, and found all the fame he needed in the village community with which his life had been passed. he was a childless widower. mr. churchouse strolled now into the churchyard to look at the grave. it opened beside that of henry ironsyde's parents and his wife. she had been dead for fifteen years. a little crowd peered down into the green-clad pit, for the sides, under the direction of john best, had been lined with cypress and bay. the grass was rank, but it had been mown down for this occasion round the tombs of the ironsydes, though elsewhere darnel rose knee deep and many venerable stones slanted out of it. immediately south of the churchyard wall stood the mill, and benny cogle, engineman at the works, who now greeted mr. churchouse, dwelt on the fact. "morning, sir," he said, "a brave day for the funeral, sure enough." "good morning, benny," answered the other. his voice was weak and gentle. "when i think how near the church and mill do lie together, i have thoughts," continued benny. he was a florid man of thirty, with tow-coloured hair and blue eyes. "naturally. you work and pray here all inside a space of fifty yards. but for my part, benny cogle, i am inclined to think that working is the best form of praying." mr. churchouse always praised work for others and, indeed, was under the impression that he did his share. "same here," replied the engineman, "especially while you're young. anyway, if i had to choose between 'em, i'd sooner work. 'tis better for the mind and appetite. and i lay if mr. ironsyde, when he lies down there, could tell the truth, he'd rather be hearing the mill going six days a week and feeling his grave throbbing to my engines, than list to the sound of the church organ on the seventh." "not so," reproved mr. churchouse. "we must not go so far as that. henry ironsyde was a god-fearing man and respected the sabbath as we all should, and most of us do." "the weaker vessels come to church, i grant," said benny, "but the men be after more manly things than church-going of a sunday nowadays." "so much the worse for them," declared mr. churchouse. "here," he continued, "there are naturally more women than men. since my father and henry ironsyde's father established these mills, which are now justly famous in the county, the natural result has happened and women have come here in considerable numbers. women preponderate in spinning places, because the work of spinning yarn has always been in their hands from time immemorial. and they tend our modern machinery as deftly as of old they twirled the distaff and worked the spinning-wheel; and as steadily as they used to trudge the rope walks and spin, like spiders, from the masses of flax or hemp at their waists." "the females want religion without a doubt," said benny. "i'm tokened to mercy gale, for instance; she looks after the warping wheels, and if that girl didn't say her prayers some fine morning, she'd be as useless as if she hadn't eat her breakfast. 'tis the feminine nature that craves for support." a very old man stood and peered into the grave. he was the father of levi baggs, the hackler, and people said he was never seen except on the occasion of a funeral. the ancient had been reduced to a mere wisp by the attrition of time. he put his hand on the arm of mr. churchouse and regarded the grave with a nodding head. "ah, my dear soul," he said. "life, how short--eternity, how long!" "true, most true, william." "and i ask myself, as each corpse goes in, how many more pits will open afore mine." "'tis hid with your maker, william." "thank god i'm a good old man and ripe and ready," said mr. baggs. "not," he added, "that there's any credit to me; for you can't be anything much but good at ninety-two." "while the brain is spared we can think evil, william." "not a brain like mine, i do assure 'e." a little girl ran into the churchyard--a pretty, fair child, whose bright hair contrasted with the black she wore. "they have come and father sent me to tell you, mr. churchouse," she said. "thank you, estelle," he answered, and they returned to the open space together. the child then joined her father, and mr. churchouse, saluting the dead, walked to the first mourning coach and opened the door. it was a heavy and solid funeral of victorian fashion proper to the time. the hearse had been drawn by four black horses with black trappings, and over the invisible coffin nodded a gloomy harvest of black ostrich plumes. there were no flowers, and some children, who crept forward with a little wreath of wild roses, were pushed back. the men from the mill helped to carry their master into the church; but there were not enough of them to support the massive oak that held a massive man, and john best, levi baggs, benny cogle and nicholas roberts were assisted by the undertakers. from the first coach descended an elderly woman and a youth. the lady was miss jenny ironsyde, sister of the dead, and with her came her nephew daniel, the new mill-owner. he was five-and-twenty--a sallow, strong-faced young fellow, broad in the shoulder and straight in the back. his eyes were brown and steady, his mouth and nose indicated decision; the funeral had not changed his cast of countenance, which was always solemn; for, as his father before him, he lacked a sense of humour. mr. churchouse shook hands and peered into the coach. "where's raymond?" he asked. "not come," answered miss ironsyde. she was a sturdy woman of five-and-fifty, with a pleasant face and kindly eyes. but they were clouded now and she showed agitation. "not come!" exclaimed ernest with very genuine consternation. daniel ironsyde answered. his voice was slow, but he had a natural instinct for clarity and spoke more to the point than is customary with youth. "my brother has not come because my father has left him out of his will, mr. churchouse." "altogether?" "absolutely. will you take my aunt's arm and follow next after me, please?" two clergymen met the coffin at the lich-gate, and behind the chief mourners came certain servants and dependents, followed by the women of the mill. then a dozen business men walked together. a few of his co-workers had sent their carriages; but most came themselves, to do the last honour to one greatly respected. mr. churchouse paid little attention to the obsequies. "not at his father's funeral!" he kept thinking to himself. his simple mind was thrown into a large confusion by such an incident. the fact persisted rather than the reason for it. he longed to learn more, but could not until the funeral was ended. when the coffin came to the grave, mary dinnett stole home to look after the midday dinner. it had weighed on her mind since she awoke, for miss ironsyde and daniel were coming to 'the magnolias' to partake of a meal before returning home. there were no relations from afar to be considered, and no need for funeral baked meats in the dead man's house. when all was ended and only old william baggs stood by the grave and watched the sextons fill it, a small company walked together up the hill north of bridetown. daniel went first with mr. churchouse, and behind them followed miss jenny ironsyde with a man and a child. the man rented north hill house. arthur waldron was a widower, who lived now for two things: his little daughter, estelle, and sport. no other considerations challenged his mind. he was rich and good-hearted. he knew that his little girl had brains, and he dealt fairly with her in the matter of education. of the ironsyde brothers, raymond was his personal friend, and mr. waldron now permitted himself some vague expression of regret that the young man should have been absent on such an occasion. "yes," said miss ironsyde, to whom he spoke, "if there's any excuse for convention it's at a funeral. no doubt people will magnify the incident into a scandal--for their own amusement and the amusement of their friends. if raymond had enjoyed time to reflect, i feel sure he would have come; but there was no time. his father has made no provision for him, and he is rather upset. it is not unnatural that he should be, for dear henry, while always very impatient of raymond's sporting tastes and so on, never threatened anything like this." "no doubt mr. ironsyde would have made a difference if he had not died so suddenly." "i think so too," she answered. then waldron and his daughter went homewards; while the others, turning down a lane to the right, reached 'the magnolias'--a small, ancient house whose face was covered with green things and whose lawn spread to the river bank. mrs. dinnett had prepared a special meal of a sort associated with the mournful business of the day; for a funeral feast has its own character; the dishes should be cold and the wine should be white or brown. mr. churchouse was concerned to know what daniel meant to do for raymond; but he found the heir by no means inclined to emotional generosity. daniel spoke in a steady voice, though he showed a spark of feeling presently. the fire, however, was for his dead father, not his living brother. "i'm very sorry that raymond could have been so small as to keep away from the funeral," he said. "it was petty. but, as aunt jenny says, he's built like that, and no doubt the shock of being ignored knocked him off his balance." "he has the defects of his qualities, my dear. the same people can often rise to great heights and sink to great depths. they can do worse things--and better things--than we humdrum folk, who jog along the middle of the road. we must forgive such people for doing things we wouldn't do, and remember their power to do things we couldn't do." the young man was frankly puzzled by this speech, which came from his aunt. he shrugged his shoulders. "i've got to think of father first and raymond afterwards," he said. "i owe my first duty to my father, who trusted me and honoured me, and knew very well that i should obey his wishes and carry on with my life as he would have liked to see me. he has made a very definite and clear statement, and i should be disloyal to him--dishonest to him--if i did anything contrary to the spirit of it." "who would wish you to?" asked ernest churchouse. "but a brother is a brother," he continued, "and since there is nothing definite about raymond in the will, you should, i think, argue like this. you should say to yourself, 'my father was disappointed with my brother and did not know what to do about him; but, having a high opinion of me and my good sense and honesty, he left my brother to my care. he regarded me, in fact, as my brother's keeper, and hoped that i would help raymond to justify his existence.' don't you feel like that?" "i feel that my father was very long-suffering with raymond, and his will tells me that he had a great deal more to put up with from raymond than anybody ever knew, except my brother himself." "you needn't take up the cudgels for your father, dan," interposed miss ironsyde. "be sure that your dear father, from the peace which now he enjoys, would not like to see you make his quarrel with raymond your quarrel. i'm not extenuating raymond's selfish and unthinking conduct as a son. his own conscience will exact the payment for wrong done beyond repair. he'll come to that some day. he won't escape it. he's not built to escape it. but he's your brother, not your son; and you must ask yourself, whether as a brother, you've fairly got any quarrel with him." daniel considered a moment, then he spoke. "i have not," he said--"except the general quarrel that he's a waster and not justifying his existence. we have had practically nothing to do with each other since we left school." "well," declared mr. churchouse, "now you must have something to do with each other. it is an admirable thought of your aunt jenny's that your father has honoured your judgment by leaving the destiny of raymond more or less in your hands." "i didn't say that; you said it," interrupted the lady. "raymond's destiny is in his own hands. but i do feel, of course, that daniel can't ignore him. the moment has come when a strong effort must be made to turn raymond into a useful member of society." "what allowance did dear henry make him?" asked mr. churchouse. "father gave him two hundred a year, and father paid all his debts before his twenty-first birthday; but he didn't pay them again. raymond has told aunt jenny that he's owing two hundred pounds at this moment." "and nothing to show for it--we may be sure of that. well, it might have been worse. is the allowance to be continued?" "no," said miss ironsyde. "that's the point. it is to cease. henry expressly directs that it is to cease; and to me that is very significant." "of course, for it shows that he leaves raymond in his brother's hands." "i have heard henry say that raymond beat him," continued miss ironsyde. "he was a good father and a forgiving father, but temperamentally he was not built to understand raymond. some people develop slowly and remain children much longer than other people. raymond is one of those. daniel, like my dear brother before him, has developed quickly and come to man's estate and understanding." "his father could trust his eldest son," declared mr. churchouse, "and, as i happen to know, daniel, you always spoke with patience and reason about raymond--your father has told me so. it was natural and wise, therefore, that my late dear friend should have left raymond to you." "i only want to do my duty," said the young man. "by stopping away to-day raymond hasn't made me feel any kinder to him, and if he were not so stupid in some ways, he must have known it would be so; but i am not going to let that weigh against him. how do you read the fact that my father directs raymond's allowance to cease, uncle ernest?" mr. churchouse bore no real connection to the ironsydes; but his relations had always been close and cordial after he relinquished his share in the business of the mills, and the younger generation was brought up to call him 'uncle.' "i read it like this," answered the elder. "it means that raymond is to look to you in future, and that henceforth you may justly demand that he should not live in idleness. there is nothing more demoralising for youth than to live upon money it doesn't earn. i should say--subject to your aunt's opinion, to which i attach the greatest importance--that it is your place to give your brother an interest in life and to show him, what you know already, the value and dignity of work." "i entirely agree," said jenny ironsyde. "i can go further and declare from personal knowledge that my brother had shadowed the idea in his mind." they both regarded daniel. "then leave it there," he bade them, "leave it there and i'll think it out. my father was the fairest man i ever met, and i'll try and be as fair. it's up to raymond more than me." "you can bring a horse to the water, though you can't make him drink," admitted mr. churchouse. "but if you bring your horse to the water, you've done all that reason and sense may ask you to do." miss ironsyde, from larger knowledge of the circumstances, felt disposed to carry the question another step. she opened her mouth and drew in her breath to speak--making that little preliminary sound only audible when nothing follows it. but she did not speak. "come into the garden and see magnolia grandiflora," said mr. churchouse. "there are twelve magnificent blossoms open this morning, and i should have picked every one of them for my dear friend's grave, only the direction was clear, that there were to be no flowers." "henry disliked any attempt to soften the edges at such a time," explained the dead man's sister. "he held that death was the skeleton at the feast of life--a wholesome and stark reminder to the thoughtless living that the grave is the end of our mortal days. he liked a funeral to be a funeral--black--black. he did not want the skeleton at the feast to be decked in roses and lilies." "an opinion worthy of all respect," declared mr. churchouse. then he asked after the health of his guest and expressed sympathy for her sorrow and great loss. "he'd been so much better lately that it was a shock," she said, "but he died as he wanted to die--as all ironsydes do die--without an illness. it is a tradition that never seems to fail. that reconciled us in a way. and you--how are you? you seldom come to bridport nowadays." mr. churchouse rarely talked about himself. "true. i have been immersed in literary work and getting on with my _magnum opus_: 'the church bells of dorset.' you see one does not obtain much help here--no encouragement. not that i expect it. we men of letters have to choose between being hermits, or humbugs." "i always thought a hermit was a humbug," said jenny, smiling for the first time. "not always. when i say 'hermit,' i mean 'recluse.' with all the will to be a social success and identify myself with the welfare of the place in which i dwell, my powers are circumscribed. do not think i put myself above the people, or pretend any intellectual superiority, or any nonsense of that sort. no, it is merely a question of time and energy. my antiquarian work demands both, and so i am deprived by duty from mixing in the social life as much as i wish. this is not, perhaps, understood, and so i get a character for aloofness, which is not wholly deserved." "don't worry," said miss ironsyde. "everybody cares for you. people don't think about us and our doings half as much as we are prone to fancy. i liked your last article in the _bridport gazette_. only i seemed to have read most of it before." "probably you have. the facts, of course, were common property. my task is to collect data and retail them in a luminous and illuminating way." "so you do--so you do." he looked away, where daniel stood by himself with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the river. "a great responsibility for one so young; but he will rise to it." "d'you mean his brother, or the mill?" "both," answered ernest churchouse. "both." mrs. dinnett came down the garden. "the mourning coach is at the door," she said. "daniel insisted that we went home in a mourning coach," explained miss ironsyde. "he felt the funeral was not ended until we returned home. that shows imagination, so you can't say he hasn't got any." "you can never say anybody hasn't got anything," declared mr. churchouse. "human nature defeats all calculations. the wisest only generalise about it." chapter ii at 'the tiger' the municipal borough of bridport stretches itself luxuriously from east to west beneath a wooded hill. southward the land slopes to broad water-meadows where rivers meet and brit and asker wind to the sea. evidences of the great local industry are not immediately apparent; but streamers and wisps of steam scattered above the red-tiled roofs tell of work, and westward, where the land falls, there stand shoulder to shoulder the busy mills. from single yarn that a child could break, to hawsers strong enough to hold a battleship, bridport meets every need. her twines and cords and nets are famous the world over; her ropes, cables, cablets and canvas rigged the fleet that scattered the spanish armada. the broad streets with deep, unusual side-walks are a sign of bridport's past, for they tell of the days when men and women span yarn before their doors, and rope-walks ran their amber and silver threads of hemp and flax along the pavements. but steel and steam have taken the place of the hand-spinners, though their industry has left its sign-manual upon the township. for the great, open side-walks make for distinction and spaciousness, and there shall be found in all dorset, no brighter, cheerfuller place than this. bridport's very workhouse, south-facing and bowered in green, blinks half a hundred windows amiably at the noonday sun and helps to soften the life-failure of those who dwell therein. off barrack street it stands, and at the time of the terror, when napoleon threatened, soldiers hived here and gave the way its name. not far from the workhouse two inns face each other in barrack street--'the tiger' upon one side of the way, 'the seven stars' upon the other; and at the moment when henry ironsyde's dust was reaching the bottom of his grave at bridetown, a young man of somewhat inane countenance, clad in garments that displayed devotion to sport and indifference to taste, entered 'the tiger's' private bar. behind the counter stood richard gurd, a middle-aged, broad-shouldered publican with a large and clean-shaven face, heavy-jaw, rather sulky eyes and mighty hands. "the usual," said the visitor. "ray been here?" mr. gurd shook his head. "no, mr. ned--nor likely to. they're burying his father this morning." the publican poured out a glass of cherry brandy as he spoke and mr. neddy motyer rolled a cigarette. "ray ain't going," said the customer. "not going to his father's funeral!" "for a very good reason, too; he's cut off with a shilling." "dear, dear," said mr. gurd. "that's bad news, though perhaps not much of a surprise to mr. raymond." "it's a devil of a lesson to the rising generation," declared the youth. "to think our own fathers can do such blackguard things, just because they don't happen to like our way of life. what would become of england if every man was made in the pattern of his father? don't education and all that count? if my father was to do such a thing--but he won't; he's too fond of the open air and sport and that." "young men don't study their fathers enough in this generation, however," argued the innkeeper, "nor yet do young women study their mothers enough." "we've got to go out in the world and play our parts," declared neddy. "'tis for them to study us--not us them. you must have progress. the thing for parents to do is to know they're back numbers and act according." "they do--most of them," answered mr. gurd. "a back number is a back number and behaves as such. i speak impartial being a bachelor, and i forgive the young men their nonsense and pardon their opinions, because i know i was young myself once, and as big a fool as anybody, and put just the same strain on my parents, no doubt, though they lived to see me a responsible man and done with childish things. the point for parents is not to forget what it feels like to be young. that i never have, and you young gentlemen would very soon remind me if i did. but the late mr. henry ironsyde found no time for all-round wisdom. he poured his brains into hemp and jute and such like. why, he didn't even make a minute to court and wed till he was forty-five year old. and the result of that was that when his brace of boys was over twenty, he stood in sight of seventy and could only see life at that angle. and what made it worse was, that his eldest, mister daniel, was cut just in his own pattern. so the late gentleman never could forgive mr. raymond for being cut in another pattern. but if what you say is right and mister raymond has been left out in the cold, then i think he's been badly used." "so he has--it's a damned shame," said mr. motyer, "and i hope ray will do something about it." "there's very little we can do against the writing of the dead," answered mr. gurd. then he saluted a man who bustled into the bar. "morning, job. what's the trouble?" job legg was very tall and thin. he dropped at the middle, but showed vitality and energy in his small face and rodent features. his hair was black, and his thin mouth and chin clean-shaven. his eyes were small and very shrewd; his manner was humble. he had a monotonous inflection and rather chanted in a minor key than spoke. "mrs. northover's compliments and might we have the big fish kettle till to-morrow? a party have been sprung on us, and five-and-twenty sit down to lunch in the pleasure gardens at two o'clock." "and welcome, job. go round to the kitchen, will 'e?" job disappeared and mr. gurd explained. "my good neighbour at 'the seven stars'--her with the fine pleasure gardens and swings and so on. and job legg's her potman. her husband's right hand while he lived, and now hers. i have the use of their stable-yard market days, for their custom is different from mine. a woman's house and famous for her meat teas and luncheons. she does very well and deserves to." "that old lady with the yellow wig?" mr. gurd pursed his lips. "to you she might seem old, i suppose. that's the spirit that puts a bit of a strain on the middle-aged and makes such men as me bring home to ourselves what we said and thought when we were young. 'tis just the natural, thoughtless insolence of youth to say nelly northover's an old woman--her being perhaps eight-and-forty. and to call her hair a wig, because she's fortified it with home-grown what's fallen out over a period of twenty years, is again only the insolence of youth. one can only say 'forgive 'em, for they know not what they do.'" "well, get me another brandy anyway." then entered raymond ironsyde, and mr. gurd for once felt genuinely sorry to see his customer. the young man was handsome with large, luminous, grey eyes, curly, brown hair and a beautiful mouth, clean cut, full, firm and finely modelled in the lips. his nose was straight, high in the nostril and sensitive. he resembled his brother, daniel, but stood three inches taller, and his brow was fuller and loftier. his expression in repose appeared frank and receptive; but to-day his face wore a look half anxious, half ferocious. he was clad in tweed knickerbockers and a norfolk jacket, of different pattern but similar material. his tie was light blue and fastened with a gold pin modelled in the shape of a hunting-horn. he bore no mark of mourning whatever. "whiskey and soda, gurd. morning, neddy." he spoke defiantly, as though knowing his entrance was a challenge. then he flung himself down on a cushioned seat in the bow window of the bar-room and took a pipe and tobacco pouch from his pocket. mr. gurd brought the drink round to raymond. he spoke upon some general subject and pretended to no astonishment that the young man should be here on this day. but the customer cut him short. there was only one subject for discussion in his mind. "i suppose you thought i should go to my father's funeral? no doubt, you'll say, with everybody else, that it's a disgrace i haven't." "i shall mind my own business and say nothing, mister raymond. it's your affair, not ours." "i'd have done the same, ray, if i'd been treated the same," said neddy motyer. "it's a protest," explained raymond ironsyde. "to have gone, after being publicly outraged like this in my father's will, was impossible to anybody but a cur. he ignored me as his son, and so i ignore him as my father; and who wouldn't?" "i suppose daniel will come up to the scratch all right?" hazarded motyer. "he'll make some stuffy suggestion, no doubt. he can't see me in the gutter very well." "you must get to work, mr. raymond; and i can tell you, as one who knows, that work's only dreaded by them who have never done any. you'll soon find that there's nothing better for the nerves and temper than steady work." neddy chaffed mr. gurd's sentiments and raymond said nothing. he was looking in front of him, his mind occupied with personal problems. neddy motyer made another encouraging suggestion. "there's your aunt, miss ironsyde," he said. "she's got plenty of cash, i've heard people say, and she gives tons away in charity. how do you stand with her?" "mind your own business, ned." "sorry," answered the other promptly. "only wanted to buck you up." "i'm not in need of any bucking up, thanks. if i've got to work, i'm quite equal to it. i've got more brains than daniel, anyway. i'm quite conscious of that." "you've got tons more mind than him," declared neddy. "and if that's the case, i could do more good, if i chose, than ever daniel will." "or more harm," warned mr. gurd. "always remember that, mister raymond. the bigger the intellects, the more power for wrong as well as right." "he'll ask me to go into the works, i expect. and i may, or i may not." "i should," advised neddy. "bridetown is a very sporting place and you'd be alongside your pal, arthur waldron." "don't go to bridetown with an idea of sport, however--don't do that, mister raymond," warned richard gurd. "if you go, you put your back into the work and master the business of the mill." the young men wasted an hour in futile talk and needless drinking while gurd attended to other customers. then raymond ironsyde accepted an invitation to return home with motyer, who lived at eype, a mile away. "i'm going to give my people a rest to-day," said raymond as he departed. "i shall come in here for dinner, dick." "very good, sir," answered mr. gurd; but he shook his head when the young men had gone. others in the bar hummed on the subject of young ironsyde after his back was turned. a few stood up for him and held that he had been too severely dealt with; but the majority and those who knew most about him thought that his ill-fortune was deserved. "for look at it," said a tradesman, who knew the facts. "if he'd been left money, he'd have only wasted the lot in sporting and been worse off after than before; but now he's up against work, and work may be the saving of him. and if he won't work, let him die the death and get off the earth and make room for a better man." none denied the honourable obligation to work for every responsible human being. chapter iii the hackler the warehouse of bridetown mill adjoined the churchyard wall and its northern windows looked down upon the burying ground. the store came first and then the foreman's home, a thatched dwelling bowered in red and white roses, with the mill yard in front and a garden behind. from these the works were separated by the river. bride came by a mill race to do her share, and a water wheel, conserving her strength, took it to the machinery. for benny cogle's engine was reinforced by the river. then, speeding forward, bride returned to her native bed, which wound through the valley south of the works. a bridge crossed the river from the yard and communicated with the mills--a heterogeneous pile of dim, dun colours and irregular roofs huddled together with silver-bright excrescences of corrugated iron. a steady hum and drone as of some gigantic beehive ascended from the mills, and their combined steam and water power produced a tremor of earth and a steady roar in the air; while a faint dust storm often flickered about the entrance ways. the store-house reeked with that fat, heavy odour peculiar to hemp and flax. it was a lofty building of wide doors and few windows. here in the gloom lay bales and stacks of raw material. italy, russia, india, had sent their scutched hemp and tow to bridetown. some was in the rough; the dressed line had already been hackled and waited in bundles of long hemp composed of wisps, or 'stricks' like horses' tails. the silver and amber of the material made flashes of brightness in the dark storerooms and drew the light to their shining surfaces. tall, brown posts supported the rafters, and in the twilight that reigned here, a man moved among the bales piled roof-high around him. he was gathering rough tow from a broken bale of russian hemp and had stripped the archangel matting from the mass. levi baggs, the hackler, proceeded presently to weigh his material and was taking it over the bridge to the hackling shop when he met john best, the foreman. they stopped to speak, and levi set down the barrow that bore his load. "i see you with him, yesterday. did you get any ideas out of the man?" baggs referred to the new master and john best understood. "in a manner of speaking, yes," he said. "nothing definite, of course. it's too soon to talk of changes, even if mister daniel means them. he'll carry on as before for the present, and think twice and again before he does anything different from his father." "'tis just bridetown luck if he's the sort to keep at a dead parent's apron-strings," grumbled the other. "nowadays, what with education and so on, the rising generation is generally ahead of the last and moves according." "you can move two ways--backward as well as forward," answered best. "better he should go on as we've been going, than go back." "he daren't go back--the times won't let him. the welfare of the workers is the first demand on capital nowadays. if it weren't, labour would very soon know the reason why." mr. best regarded levi without admiration. "you are a grumbler born," he said, "and so fond of it that you squeal before you're hurt, just for the pleasure of squealing. one thing i can tell you, for mister daniel said it in so many words: he's the same in politics as his father; and that's liberal; and since the liberals of yesterday are the radicals of to-morrow, we have every reason to suppose he'll move with the times." "we all know what that means," answered mr. baggs. "it means getting new machinery and increasing the output of the works for the benefit of the owners, not them that run the show. i don't set no store on a man being a radical nowadays. you can't trust nobody under a socialist." mr. best laughed. "you wait till they've got the power, and you'll find that the whip will fall just as heavy from their hands as the masters of to-day. better to get small money and be free, than get more and go a slave in state clothes, on state food, in a state house, with a state slave-driver to see you earn your state keep and take your state holidays when the state wills, and work as much or as little as the state pleases. what you chaps call 'liberty' you'll find is something quite different, baggs, for it means good-bye to privacy in the home and independence outside it." "that's a false and wicked idea of progress, john best, and well you know it," answered levi. "you're one of the sort content to work on a chain and bring up your children likewise; but you can't stand between the human race and freedom--no more can daniel ironsyde, or any other man." "well, meantime, till the world's put right by your friends, you get on with your hackling, my old bird, else you'll have the spreaders grumbling," answered mr. best. then he went into his home and levi trundled the wheelbarrow to a building with a tar-pitched, penthouse roof, which stuck out from the side of the mill, like a fungus on a tree stem. within, before a long, low window, stood the hand dresser's tools--two upturned boards set with a mass of steel pins. the larger board had tall teeth disposed openly; upon the smaller, the teeth were shorter and as dense as a hair brush. in front of them opened a grating and above ran an endless band. behind this grille was an exhaust, which sucked away the dust and countless atoms of vegetable matter scattered by levi's activities, and the running band from above worked it. for the authorities, he despised, considered the operations of mr. baggs and ordained that they should be conducted under healthy conditions. he took his seat now before the rougher's hackle, turned up his shirt sleeves over a pair of sinewy arms and powerful wrists and set to work. from the mass of hemp tow he drew hanks and beat the pins with them industriously, wrenched the mass through the steel teeth again and again and separated the short fibre from the long. presently in his hand emerged a wisp of bright fibre, and now flogging the finer hackling board, he extracted still more short stalks and rubbish till the finished strick came clean and shining as a lock of woman's hair. from the hanks of long tow he seemed to bring out the tresses like magic. in his swift hand each strick flashed out from the rough hank with great rapidity, and every crafty, final touch on the teeth made it brighter. giving a last flick or two over the small pins, mr. baggs set down his strick and soon a pile of these shining locks grew beside him, while the exhaust sucked away the rubbish and fragments, and the mass of short fibre which he had combed out, also accumulated for future treatment. he worked with the swiftness and surety of a master craftsman, scourged his tow and snorted sometimes as he struggled with it. he was exerting a tremendous pressure, regulated and applied with skill, and he always exulted in the thought that he, at least, of all the workers performed hand labour far more perfectly than any machine. but still it was not the least of his many grievances that government showed too little concern for his comfort. he was always demanding increased precautions for purifying the air he breathed. from first to last, indeed, the hemp and tow are shedding superfluities, and a layman is astonished to see how the broad strips and ribbons running through the machines and torn by innumerable systems of sharp teeth in transit, emerge at the last gasp of attenuation to trickle down the spindles and turn into the glory of yarn. from mr. baggs, the long fibre and the short which he had combed out of it, proceeded to the spinning mill; and now a girl came for the stricks he had just created. their future under the new master was still on every tongue at bridetown mill, and the women turned to the few men who worked among them for information on this paramount subject. "no, i ain't heard no more, sarah," answered the hackler to miss northover's question. "you may be sure that those it concerns most will be the last to hear of any changes; and you may also be sure that the changes, when made, will not favour us." "you can't tell that," answered sarah, gathering the stricks. "old mrs. chick, our spreader minder, says the young have always got bigger hearts than the old, and she'd sooner trust them than--" mr. baggs tore a hank through the comb with such vigour that its steel teeth trembled and the dust flew. "tell granny chick not to be a bigger fool than god made her," he said. "the young have got harder hearts than the old, and education, though it may make the head bigger for all i know, makes the heart smaller. he'll be hard--hard--and i lay a week's wages that he'll get out of his responsibilities by shovelling 'em on his dead father." "how can he?" asked sarah. "by letting things be as they are. by saying his father knew best." "young men never think that," answered she. "'tis well known that no young man ever thought his father knew better than himself." "then he'll pretend to for his own convenience." "what about all that talk of changes for the better before mister ironsyde died then?" "talk of dead men won't go far. we'll hear no more of that." sarah frowned and went her way. at the door, however, she turned. "i might get to hear something about it next sunday very like," she said. "i'm going into bridport to my aunt nelly at 'the seven stars'; and she's a great friend of richard gurd at 'the tiger'; and 'tis there mister raymond spends half his time, they say. so mr. gurd may have learned a bit about it." "no doubt he'll hear a lot of words, and as for raymond ironsyde, his father knew him for a man with a bit of a heart in him and didn't trust him accordingly. but you can take it from me--" a bell rang and its note struck mr. baggs dumb. he ceased both to speak and work, dropped his hank, turned down his shirt sleeves and put on his coat. sarah at the stroke of the bell also manifested no further interest in levi's forebodings but left him abruptly. for it was noon and the dinner-hour had come. chapter iv chains for raymond raymond ironsyde had spent his life thus far in a healthy and selfish manner. he owned no objection to hard work of a physical nature, for as a sportsman and athlete he had achieved fame and was jealous to increase it. he preserved the perspective of a boy into manhood; while his father waited, not without exasperation, for him to reach adult estate in mind as well as body. henry ironsyde was still waiting when he died and left raymond to the mercy of daniel. now the brothers had met to thresh out the situation; and a day came when raymond lunched with his friend and fellow sportsman, arthur waldron, of north hill house, and furnished him with particulars. in time past, raymond's grandfather had bought a thousand acres of land on the side of north hill. here he destroyed one old farmhouse and converted another into the country-seat of his family. he lived and died there; but his son, henry, cared not for it, and the place had been let to successive tenants for many years. waldron was the last of these, and raymond's ambition had always been some day to return to north hill house and dwell in his grandfather's home. at luncheon the party of three sat at a round table on a polished floor of oak. estelle played hostess and gazed with frank admiration at the chattering visitor. he brought a proposition that made her feel very excited to learn what her father would think of it. mr. waldron was tall and thin. he lived out of doors and appeared to be made of iron, for nothing wearied him as yet. he had high cheek-bones, and a clean-shaved, agreeable face. he took sport most seriously, was jealous for its rights and observant of its rituals even in the smallest matters. upon the etiquette of all field sports he regarded himself, and was regarded, as an arbiter. "tell me how it went," he said. "i hope your brother was sporting?" mr. waldron used this adjective in the widest possible sense. it embraced all reputable action and covered virtue. if conduct were 'sporting,' he demanded no more from any man; while, conversely, 'unsporting' deeds condemned the doer in all relations of life and rendered him untrustworthy from every standpoint. "depends what you call 'sporting,'" answered raymond, whose estimate of the word was not so comprehensive. "you'd think it would have been rather a case for generosity, but dan didn't seem to see that. it's unlucky for me in a way he's not larger-minded. he's content with justice--what he calls justice. but justice depends on the mind that's got to do it. there's no finality about it, and what daniel calls justice, i call beastly peddling, if not actual bullying." "and what did he call justice?" "well, his first idea was to be just to my father, who was wickedly unjust to me. that wasn't too good for a start, for if you are going to punish the living, because the dead wanted them to be punished, what price your justice anyway? but daniel had a sort of beastly fairness too, for he recognised that my father's very sudden death must be taken into account. my aunt jenny supported me there; and she was sure he would have altered his will if he had had time. daniel granted that, and i began to hope i was going to come well out of it; but i counted my chickens before they were hatched. some people have a sort of diseased idea of the value of work and seem to think if you don't put ten hours a day into an office, you're not justifying your existence. unfortunately for me daniel is one of those people. if you don't work, you oughtn't to eat--he actually thinks that." "the fallacy is that what seems to be play to a mind like daniel's, is really seen to be work by a larger mind," explained arthur waldron. "sport, for instance, which is the backbone of british character, is a thousand times more important to the nation than spinning yarn; and we, who keep up the great tradition of british sport on the highest possible plane, are doing a great deal more valuable work--unpaid, mark you--than mere merchants and people of that kind who toil after money." "of course; but i never yet met a merchant who would see it--certainly not daniel. in fact i've got to work--in his way." "d'you mean he's stopping the allowance?" "yes. at least he's not renewing it. he's offering me a salary if i'll work. a jolly good salary, i grant. i can be just to him, though he can't to me. but, if i'm going to draw the salary, i've got to learn the business and, in fact, go into it and become a spinner. then, at the end of five years, if i shine and really get keen about it and help the show, he'll take me into partnership. that's his offer; and first i told him to go to the devil, and then i changed my mind and, after my aunt had sounded daniel and found that was his ultimatum, i climbed down." "what are you to do? surely he won't chain an open-air man like you to a wretched desk all your time?" "so i thought; but he didn't worry about that. i wanted to go abroad, and combine business with pleasure, and buy the raw material in russia and india and italy and so on. that might have been good enough; but in his rather cold-blooded way, he pointed out that to buy raw material, you wanted to know something about raw material. he asked me if i knew hemp from flax, and of course i had to say i did not. so that put the lid on that. i've got to begin where daniel began ten years ago--at the beginning--with this difference, that i get three hundred quid a year. in fact there's such a mixture of fairness and unfairness in daniel's idea that you don't know where to have him." "what shall you do about it?" "i tell you i've agreed. i must live, obviously, and i'd always meant to do something some day. but naturally my ideas were open air, and i thought when i got things going and took a scheme to my father--for horse-breeding or some useful enterprise--he would have seen i meant business and come round and planked down. but daniel has got no use for horse-breeding, so i must be a spinner--for the time anyway." estelle ventured to speak. "but only girls spin," she said. "you'd never be able to spin, ray." raymond laughed. "everybody's got to spin, it seems," he answered. "except the lilies," declared estelle gravely. "'they toil not, neither do they spin,' you know." mr. waldron regarded his daughter with respect. "just imagine," he said, "at her age. they've made her a member of the field botanists' club. only eleven years old and invited to join a grown-up club!" raymond was somewhat impressed. "fancy a kid like you knowing anything about botany," he said. "i don't," answered the child. "i'm only just beginning. why, i haven't mastered the grasses yet. the flowers are easy, of course, but the grasses are ever so difficult." they returned to ironsyde's plans. "and when d'you weigh in?" queried his friend. "that's the point. that's why i invited myself to lunch. daniel doesn't want me in the office at bridport; he wants me here--at bridetown--so that i can mess about in the works and see a lot of john best, the foreman, and learn all the practical side of the business. it seems rather footling work for a man, but he did it; and he says the first thing is to get a personal understanding of the processes and all that. of course i've always been keen on machinery." "good, then we shall see something of each other." "that's what i want--more than you do, very likely. the idea was that i went to uncle ernest, who is willing to let me have a room at 'the magnolias' and live with him for a year, which is the time daniel wants me to be here; but i couldn't stick churchouse for a year." "naturally." "so what do you say? are you game for a paying guest? you've got tons of room and i shouldn't be in the way." "how lovely!" cried estelle. "do come!" arthur waldron was quietly gratified. "i'm sure i should be delighted to have a pal in the house--a kindred spirit, who understands sport. by all means come," he said. "you're sure? i should be out most of my time at the blessed works, you know. could i bring my horse?" "certainly bring your horse." "that reminds me of one reasonable thing dan's going to do," ran on the other. "he's going to clear me. i told aunt jenny it was no good beginning a new life with a millstone of debts round my neck--in fact we came down to that. i said it was a vital condition. aunt jenny had rather a lively time between us. she sympathises with me tremendously, however, and finally got daniel to promise he would pay off every penny i owed--a paltry two hundred or so." "a very sporting arrangement. make the coffee, estelle, then we'll take a walk on the downs." "i'm going to uncle ernest to tea," explained raymond. "i shall tell him then that i'm not coming to him, thanks to your great kindness." "he will be disappointed," declared estelle. "it seems rather hard of us to take you away from him, i'm afraid." "don't you worry, kiddy. he'll get over it. in fact he'll be jolly thankful, poor old bird. he only did it because he thought he ought to. it's the old, traditional attitude of the churchouses to the ironsydes." "he's very wise about church bells, but he's rather vague about flowers," replied estelle. "he's only interested in dead things, i think; and things that happened long, long ago." "in a weird sort of way, a hobby is a man's substitute for sport, i believe," said estelle's father. "many have no feeling for sport; it's left out of them and they seem to be able to live comfortably without it. instead they develop an instinct for something else. generally it's deadly from the sportsman's point of view; but it seems to take the place of sport to the sportless. how old ruins, or church bells, can supersede a vital, living thing, like the sport of a nation, of course you and i can't explain; but so it is with some minds." "it depends how they were brought up," suggested raymond. "no--take you; you weren't brought up to sport. but your own natural, good instinct took you to it. same with me. the moment i saw a ball, i'm told that i shrieked till they gave it to me--at the age of one that was. and from that time forward they had no trouble with me. a ball always calmed me. why? because a ball, you may say, is the emblem of england's greatness. i was thinking over it not long ago. there is not a single game of the first importance that does not depend on a ball. if one had brains, one could write a book on the inner meaning of that fact. i believe that the ball has a lot to do with the greatness of the empire." "a jolly good idea. i'll try it on uncle ernest," promised raymond. he was cheerful and depressed in turn. his company made him happy and the thought that he would come to live at north hill house also pleased him well; but from time to time the drastic change in his life swept his thoughts like a cloud. the picture of regular work--unloved work that would enable him to live--struck distastefully upon his mind. they strolled over north hill after luncheon and estelle ran hither and thither, busy with two quests. her sharp eyes were in the herbage for the flowers and grasses; but she also sought the feathers of the rooks and crows who assembled here in companies. "the wing feathers are the best for father's pipes," she explained; "but the tail feathers are also very good. sometimes i get splendid luck and find a dozen or two in a morning, and sometimes the birds don't seem to have parted with a single feather. the place to find them is round the furze clumps, because they catch there when the wind blows them." the great hogged ridge of north hill keeps bridetown snug in winter time, and bursts the snow clouds on its bosom. to-day the breezes blew and shadows raced above the rolling green expanses. the downs were broken by dry-built walls and spattered with thickets of furze and white-thorn, black-thorn and elder. blue milkwort, buttercups and daisies adorned them, with eye-bright and the lesser, quaking grass that danced over the green. rabbits twinkled into the furzes where waldron's three fox terriers ran before the party; and now and then a brave buck coney would stand upon the nibbled knoll above his burrow and drum danger before he darted in. it was a haunt of the cuckoo and peewit, the bunting and carrion crow. "here we killed on the seventeenth of january last," said raymond's host. "a fine finish to a grand run. we rolled him over on this very spot after forty-five minutes of the best. it is always good to remember great moments in the past." on the southern slope of north hill there stood a ruined lime-kiln whose walls were full of fern and coated with mother o' thyme. a bank of brier and nettles lay before the mouth. they hid the foot of the kiln and made a snug and secluded spot. bridetown clustered in its elms far below; then the land rose again to protect the hamlet from the south; and beyond stretched the blue line of the channel. the men sat here and smoked, while estelle hunted for flowers and feathers. she came back to them presently with a bee orchis. "for you," she said, and gave it to raymond. "what the dickens is it?" he asked, and she told him. "they're rather rare, but they live happily on the down in some places. i know where." he thanked her very much. "never seen one before," he said. "a funny little pink and black devil, isn't it?" "it isn't a devil," she assured him; "if anything, it's an angel. but really it's more like a small bumble-bee than anything. perhaps you've never seen a bumble-bee either?" "oh, yes, i have--they don't sting." estelle laughed. "i thought that once. a boy in the village told me that bumble-bees have 'got no spears.' and i believed him and tried to help one out of the window once. and i very soon found that he had got a spear." "that reminds me i must take a wasps' nest to-night," said her father. "i've not decided which way to take it yet. there are seven different ways to take a wasps' nest--all good." they strolled homeward presently and parted at the lodge of north hill house. "you must come down and choose your room soon," said estelle. "it must be one that gets the sun in it, and the moon. people always want the sun, but they never seem to want the moon." "don't they, estelle! i know lots of people who want the moon," declared raymond. "perhaps i do." "you can have your choice of four stalls for the horse," said arthur waldron. "i always ride before breakfast myself, wet or fine. only frost stops me. i hope you will too--before you go to the works." raymond was soon at 'the magnolias,' and found mr. churchouse expecting him in the garden. they had not met since henry ironsyde's death, but the elder, familiar with the situation, did not speak of raymond's father. he was anxious to learn the young man's decision, and proved too ingenuous to conceal his relief when the visitor explained his plans. "i felt it my duty to offer you a temporary home," he said, "and we should have done our best to make you comfortable, but one gets into one's routine and i won't disguise from you that i am glad you go to north hill house, raymond." "you couldn't disguise it if you tried, uncle ernest. you're thankful--naturally. you don't want youth in this dignified abode of wisdom. besides, you've got no place for a horse--you know you haven't." "i've no objection to youth, my dear boy, but i can't pretend that the manners and customs of youth are agreeable to me. tobacco, for example, causes me the most acute uneasiness. then the robustness and general exaggeration of the youthful mind and body! it rises beyond fatigue, above the middle-aged desire for calm and comfort. it kicks up its heels for sheer joy of living; it is ever in extremes; it lacks imagination, with the result that it is ruthless. all these characteristics may go with a delightful personality--as in your case, raymond--but let youth cleave to youth. youth understands youth. you will in fact be much happier with waldron." "and you will be happier without me." "it may be selfish to say so, but i certainly shall." "well, you've had the virtue of making the self-denial and i think it was awfully good of you to do so." "i am always here and always very happy and willing to befriend the grandson of my father's partner," declared mr. churchouse. "it is excellent news that you are going into the business." "remains to be seen." the dining room at 'the magnolias' was also the master's study. there were innocent little affectations in it and the room was arranged to create an atmosphere of philosophy and art. books thronged in lofty book-shelves with glass doors. these were surmounted by plaster busts of homer and minerva, toned to mellowness by time. in the window was the writing desk of mr. churchouse, upon which stood a photograph of goethe. tea was laid and a girl brought in the hot water when mr. churchouse rang for it. after she had gone raymond praised her enthusiastically. "by jove, what a pretty housemaid!" he exclaimed. "pretty, yes; a housemaid, no," explained mr. churchouse. "she is the daughter of my housekeeper, mrs. dinnett. mrs. dinnett has been called to chilcombe, to see her old mother who is, i fear, going to die, and so sabina, with her usual kindness, has spent her half-holiday at home to look after me. sabina lives here. she is mrs. dinnett's daughter and one of the spinners at the mill. in fact, mr. best tells me she is his most accomplished spinner and has genius for the work. in her leisure she does braiding at home, as many of the girls do." "she's jolly handsome," declared raymond. "she's chucked away in a place like this." "d'you mean 'the magnolias'?" asked the elder mildly. "no, not 'the magnolias' particularly, but bridetown in general." "and why should bridetown be denied the privilege of numbering a beautiful girl amongst its population?" "oh--why--she's lost, don't you see. working in a stuffy mill, she's lost. if she was on the stage, then thousands would see her. a beautiful thing oughtn't to be hidden away." "god almighty hides away a great many beautiful things," answered mr. churchouse. "there are many beautiful things in our literature and our flora and fauna that are never admired." "so much the worse. when our fauna blossoms out in the shape of a lovely girl, it ought to be seen and give pleasure to thousands." ernest smiled. "i don't think sabina has any ambition to give pleasure to thousands. she is a young woman of very fine temper, with a dignified sense of her own situation and an honest pride in her own dexterity." "engaged to be married, of course?" "i think not. she and her mother are my very good friends. had any betrothal taken place, i feel sure i should have heard of it." "do ring for her, mr. churchouse, and let me look at her again. does she know how good-looking she is?" "youth! youth! yes, not being a fool, she knows she is well-favoured--much as you do, no doubt. i mean that you cannot shave yourself every morning without being conscious that you are in the greek mould. i could show you the engraving of a statue by praxiteles which is absurdly like you. but this accident of nature has not made you vain." "me! good lord!" raymond laughed long. "do not be puffed up," continued mr. churchouse, "for, with charm, you combine to a certain extent the greek vacuity. there are no lines upon your brow. you don't think enough." "don't i, by jove! i've been thinking a great deal too much lately. i've had a headache once." "lack of practice, my dear boy. sabina, being a woman of observation and intelligence, is no doubt aware of the fact that she is unusually personable. but she has brains and knows exactly what importance to attach to such an accident. if you want to learn what spinning means, she will be able to teach you." "every cloud has a silver lining, apparently," said raymond, and when sabina returned, ernest introduced him. the girl was clad in black with a white apron. she wore no cap. "this is mr. raymond ironsyde, sabina, and he's coming to learn all about the mill before long." raymond began to rattle away and sabina, without self-consciousness, listened to him, laughed at his jests and answered his questions. mr. churchouse gazed at them benevolently through his glasses. he came unconsciously under the influence of their joy of life. their conversation also pleased him, for it struck a right note--the note which he considered was seemly between employer and employed. he did not know that youth always modifies its tone in the presence of age, and that those of ripe years never hear the real truth concerning the opinions of the younger generation. when raymond left for home and mr. churchouse walked out to the gate with him, sabina peeped out of the kitchen window which commanded the entrance, and her face was lighted with very genuine animation and interest. mrs. dinnett returned at midnight tearful, for the ancient woman at chilcombe had died in her arms--"at five after five," as she said. mary dinnett was an excitable and pessimistic person. she always leapt to meet trouble half way and invariably lost her nerve upon the least opportunity to do so. the peace of 'the magnolias' had long offered her a fitting sanctum, for here life moved with the utmost simplicity and regularity; but, though as old as he was, mary looked ahead to the time when mr. churchouse might fall, and could always win an ample misery from the reflection that she must then be at the mercy of an unfriendly world. sabina heard the full story of her grandmother's decease with every detail of the passing, but it was the face of a young man, not the countenance of an old woman, that flitted through her thoughts as she went to sleep that night. chapter v in the mill john best was taking raymond ironsyde round the spinning mill, but the foreman had his own theory and proposed to initiate the young man by easy stages. "you've seen the storehouses and the hacklers," he said. "now if you just look into the works and get a general idea of the scheme of things, that's enough for one day." in the great building two sounds deafened an unfamiliar ear: a steady roar, deep and persistent, and through it, like a staccato pulse, a louder, more painful, more penetrating din. the bass to this harsh treble arose from humming belts and running wheels; the crash that punctuated their deep-mouthed riot broke from the drawing heads of the machines. a lofty, open roof, full of large sky-lights, covered the operating room, and in its uplifted dome supports and struts leapt this way and that, while, at the height of the walls, ran rods supporting rows of silver-bright wheels from which the power descended, through endless bands, to the machinery beneath. the floor was of stone, and upon it were disposed the various machine systems--the card and spreader, the drawing frames, roving frames, gill spinners and spinning frames. the general blurred effect in raymond's mind was one of disagreeable sound, which made speech almost impossible. the din drove at him from above and below; and it was accompanied by a thousand unfamiliar movements of flying bands and wheels and squat masses of machinery that convulsed and heaved and palpitated round him. from nearly all the machines there streamed away continuous bright ribbons of hemp or flax, that caught the light and shone. this was the 'sliver,' the wrought, textile material passing through its many changes before it came to the spinners. the amber and lint-white coils of the winding sliver made a brightness among the duns and drabs around them and their colour was caught again aloft where whisps of material hung irregularly--lumps of waste from the ends of the bobbins--and there were also colour notes of warmth in the wooden wheels on many of the machines. these struck a genial tone into the chill greys and flash of polished steel on every side. after the mechanical activity, movement came from the irregular actions of the workers. forty women and girls laboured here, and while some old people only sat on stools by the spouting sliver and wound it away into the tall cans that received it, other younger folk were more intensively engaged. the massive figure of sally groves lumbered at her ministry, where she fed the carding machine. she was subdued to the colour of the hemp tow with which she plied it. elsewhere sarah northover flashed the tresses of long lines over her head and seemed to perform a rhythmic dance with her hands, as she tore each strick into three and laid the shining locks on her spread board. others tended the drawers and rovers, while sabina dinnett, nancy buckler and alice chick, whose high task it was to spin, seemed to twinkle here, there and everywhere in a corybantic measure as they served the shouting and insatiable monsters that turned hemp and flax to yarn. they, indeed, specially attracted raymond, by the activity of their work and the charm of their swift, supple figures, where, never still, they danced about, with a thousand, strenuous activities of hand and foot and eye. their work dazed him and he wanted to stop here and ask sabina many questions. she looked much more beautiful while spinning than in her black dress and white apron--so the young man thought. her work displayed her neat, slim shape as she twirled round, stooped, leapt up again, twisted and stood on tip-toe in a thousand fascinating attitudes. never a dancer in the limelight had revealed so much beauty. she was rayed in a brown gown with a short skirt, and on her head she wore a grey woollen cap. but mr. best forbade interest in the spinners. "you'll not get to them for a week yet," he said. "i'll ask you to just take in the general hang of it, mister raymond, please. power comes from the water-wheel and the steam engine and it's brought down to each machine. just throw your eyes round. you ain't here to look at the girls, if you'll excuse my saying so. you're here to learn." "you can learn more from the girls than all these noisy things put together," laughed raymond; while mr. best shook his head and proceeded with his instructions. "those exhausts above each system suck away the dust and small rubbish," he explained. "we shouldn't be able to breathe without them." the other looked up and saw great leaden-coloured tubes, like organ pipes, above him. mr. best droned on and strove to lay a foundation for future knowledge. he was skilled in every branch of the work, and a past master of all spinning mysteries. his lucid and simple exposition had very well served to introduce an attentive stranger to the complex operations going on around him, but raymond was not attentive. he failed to concentrate and missed fundamental essentials from the desire to examine more advanced and obviously interesting operations. he apologised to john best before the dinner-hour. "this is only a preliminary canter," he said. "it's all greek to me and it will take time to get the thing clear. it looks quite different to me from what it must to you. i'll get the general scheme into my head first and then work out the details. a man's mind can't make order out of this chaos in a minute." he stood and tried to appreciate the trend of events. he enjoyed the adventure, but at present made no effort to do more than enjoy it. he would start to work later. he began to like the din and the dusty light and the glitter and shine of polished metal and bright sliver eternally winding into the cans. round it hovered or sat the women like dull moths. they wound the stream of hemp or flax away and snapped it when a can was full. there was no pause or slackening, nothing but the whirl of living hands and arms and bodies, dead wheels and teeth and pulleys and pins operating on the inert tow. the mediators, animate and inanimate, laboured together for its manufacture; while the masses of mingled wood and steel, leather and brass and iron, moved in controlled obedience to the giant forces liberated from steam and water that drove all. the selfsame power, gleaned from sunshine and moisture and sublimated to human flesh and blood through bread, plied in the fingers and muscles and countless, complex mental directions of the men and women who controlled. from sun-light and air, earth and water had also sprung the fields of hemp and flax in far-off lands and yielded up their loveliness to foreign scutchers. the dried death of countless beautiful herbs now represented the textile fabric on which all this immense energy was applied. thus far, along an obvious line of thought, raymond's reflections took him, but there his slight mental effort ended, and even this much tired him. the time for dinner came; mr. best now turned certain hand-wheels and moved certain levers. they shut off the power and gradually the din lessened, the pulsing and throbbing slowed until the whole great complexity came to a stand-still. the drone of the overhead wheels ceased, the crash of the draw-heads stopped. a startling silence seemed to grow out of the noise and quell it, while a new activity manifested itself among the workers. as a bell rang they were changed in a twinkling and, amid chatter and laughter, like breaking chrysalids, they flung off their basset aprons and dun overalls, to emerge in brighter colours. blouses of pink and blue and red flashed out, straw hats and sun-bonnets appeared, and all streamed away like magic to their neighbouring houses. it was as though its soul had passed and left a dead mill behind it. raymond, released for a moment from the attentions of the foreman, strolled among the machines of the minders and spinners. then his eyes were held by an intimate and personal circumstance that linked these women to this place. he found that on the whitewashed walls beside their working corners, the girls had impressed themselves--their names, their interests, their hopes. with little picture galleries were the walls brightened, and with sentiments and ideas. the names of the workers were printed up in old stamps--green and pink--and beside them one might read, in verses, or photographs, or pictures taken from the journals, something of the history, taste and personal life of those who set them there. serious girls had written favourite hymns beside their working places; the flippant scribbled jokes and riddles; the sentimental copied love songs that ran to many verses. often the photograph of a maiden's lover accompanied them, and there were also portraits of mothers and sisters, babies and brothers. some of the girls had hung up fashion-plates and decorated their workshop with ugly and mean designs for clothing that they would never wear. raymond found that picture postcards were a great feature of these galleries, and they contained also, of course, many private jests and allusions lost upon the visitor. character was revealed in the collections; for the most part they showed desire for joy, and aspiration to deck the working-place with objects and words that should breed happy thoughts and draw the mind where its treasure harboured. each heart it seemed was holding, or seeking, a romance; each heart was settled about some stalwart figure presented in the picture gallery, or still finding temporary substance for dreams in love poetry, in representations of happy lovers at stiles, in partings of soldier and sailor lads from their sweethearts. beside some of the old workers the walls were blank. they had nothing left to set down, or hang up. raymond was arrested by a little rhyme round which a black border had been pasted. it was original: "i am coiling, coiling, coiling into the can, and thinking, thinking, thinking, of my dear man. "he is toiling, toiling, toiling out on the sea, and thinking, thinking, thinking only of me. "f.h." mr. best joined ironsyde. "these walls!" he said. "it's about time we had a coat of whitewash. mister daniel thinks so too." "why--good lord--this is the most interesting part of the whole show. this is alive! who's f.h.?" "the girls will keep that. they like it, though i tell them it would be better rubbed out. poor flossy hackett wrote that. she was going to marry a sailor-man, but he changed his mind, and she broke her heart and drowned herself--that's all there is to it." "the damned rascal. i hope he got what he deserved." mr. best allowed his mind to peep from the shell that usually concealed it. "if he did, he was one man in a thousand. he married a weymouth woman and flossy went into the river--in the deep pool beyond the works. a clever sort of girl, but a dreamer you might say." "i'd like to have had the handling of that devil!" "you never know. she may have had what's better than a wedding ring--in happy dreams. reality's not the best of life. people do change their minds. he was honest and all that. only he found somebody else he liked better." at this moment daniel ironsyde came into the works, and while john best hastened to him, raymond pursued his amusement and studied the wall by the spinning frame where sabina dinnett worked. he found a photograph of her mother and a quotation from shakespeare torn off a calendar for the date of august the third. he guessed that might be sabina's birthday. the quotation ran:-- "to thine own self be true; and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." there was no male in sabina's picture gallery--indeed, no other picture but that of a girl--her fellow spinner, nancy buckler. his brother approached raymond. "you've made a start, ray?" "rather. it's jolly interesting. best is wonderful, but he can't fathom my ignorance yet." "it's all very simple and straightforward. do you like your office?" "yes," declared the younger. "couldn't beat it. when i want something to do, i can fling a line out of the window and fish in the river." "you have plenty to do besides fish out of the window i should hope. let us lunch. i'm stopping here this afternoon. aunt jenny wanted to know whether you'd come to bridport to dinner on sunday." daniel was entirely friendly now and he designed--if the future should justify the step--to take raymond into partnership. but only in the event of very material changes in his brother's life would he do so. their aunt felt sanguine that raymond must soon recognise his responsibilities, settle to the business of justifying his existence and put away childish things; daniel was less hopeful, but trusted that she might be right. her imagination worked for raymond and warned her nephew not to be too exacting at first. she pointed out that it was very improbable daniel's brother would become a model in a moment, or settle down to the business of fixed hours and clerical work without a few lapses from the narrow and arduous path. so the elder was prepared to see his brother kick against the pricks and even warned john best that it might be so. brief acquaintance with raymond had already convinced the foreman of this probability, and he found himself liking daniel's brother from the first. the dangers, however, were not hid from him; but while he perceived the youthful instability of the newcomer and his impatience of detail, he presently discovered an interest in mechanical contrivances, a spark of originality, and a feeling for new things that might lead to results, if only the necessary application were forthcoming and the vital interest aroused. mr. best had a simple formula. "the successful spinner," he often remarked, "is the man who can turn out the best yarn from a given sample of the raw. hand identical stuff to ten manufacturers and you'll soon see where the best yarn comes from." he knew of better yarns than came from the ironsyde mill, and regretted the fact. that a time might arrive when raymond would see with him seemed exceedingly improbable; yet he felt the dim possibility by occasional flashes in the young man, and it was a quality of mr. best's mind to be hopeful and credit other men with his own aspirations, if any excuse existed for so doing. chapter vi 'the seven stars' on a saturday in august, sarah northover, one of those who minded the 'spreader' at bridetown mill, came to see her aunt--the mistress of 'the seven stars,' in barrack street, bridport. she had walked three miles through the hot and dusty lanes and found the shady streets of bridport cool by comparison, but there was work for her at 'the seven stars,' and mrs. northover proved very busy. a holiday party of five-and-twenty guests was arriving at five o'clock for tea, and sarah, perceiving that her own tea would be a matter for the future, lent her aunt a hand. her tea gardens and pleasure grounds were the pride of nelly northover's heart. three quarters of an acre extended here behind the inn, and she had erected swings for the children and laid a croquet lawn for those who enjoyed that pastime. lawn tennis she would not permit, out of respect for her herbaceous border which surrounded the place of entertainment. at one corner was a large summer-house in which her famous teas were generally taken. the charge was one shilling, and being of generous disposition, mrs. northover provided for that figure a handsome meal. she was a large, high-bosomed woman, powerfully built, and inclined to stoutness. her complexion was sanguine, and her prominent eyes were very blue. of a fair-minded and honest spirit, she suffered from an excitable temper and rather sharp tongue. but her moods were understood by her staff, and if her emotional quality did injustice, an innate sense of what was reasonable ultimately righted the wrong. sarah helped job legg and others to prepare for the coming party, while mrs. northover roamed the herbaceous border and cut flowers to decorate the table. while she pursued this work there bustled in richard gurd from 'the tiger.' he was in his shirt-sleeves and evidently pushed for time. "wonders never cease," said nelly, smiling upon him. "it's a month of sundays since you was in my gardens. i'll lay you've come for some flowers for your dining table." reciprocity was practised between these best of friends, and while mr. gurd often sent customers to mrs. northover, since tea parties were not a branch of business he cared about, she returned his good service with gifts from the herbaceous border and free permission to use her spacious inn yard and stables. "i'm always coming to have a look round at your wonderful flower-bed," said richard, "and some sunday morning, during church hours, i will do so; but you know how busy we all are in august. and i don't want no flowers; but i want the run of your four-stall stable. there's a 'beano' coming over from lyme and i'm full up already." "never no need to ask," she answered. "i'll tell job to set a man on to it." he thanked her very heartily and she gave him a rose. then he admired the grass, knowing that she prided herself upon it. "never seen such grass anywhere else in bridport," he assured her. "there's lots try to grow grass like yours; but none can come near this." "'tis job's work," she told him. "he's a northerner and had the charge of a bowling-green at his uncle's public; and what he don't know about grass ain't worth knowing." "he's a sheet-anchor, that man," confessed richard; "a sheet-anchor and a tower of strength, as you might say." "i don't deny it," admitted nelly. "sometimes, in a calm moment, i run my mind over job legg, and i'm almost ashamed to think how much i owe him." "it ain't all one way, however. he's got a snug place, and no potman in dorset draws more money, though there's some who draws more beer." "there's no potman in dorset with his head," she answered. "he's got a brain and it's very seldom indeed you find such an honest chap with such a lot of intellects. the clever ones are mostly the downy ones; but job's single thought is the welfare of the house, and he pushes honesty to extremes." "if you can say that, he must be a wonder, certainly, for none knows what honesty means better than you," said mr. gurd. he had put nelly's rose into his coat. "he's more than a potman, chiefly along of being such a good friend to my late husband. almost the last sensible thing my poor dear said to me before he died was never to get rid of job. and no doubt i never shall. i'm going to put up his money at michaelmas." "well, don't make the man a god, and don't you spoil him. job's a very fine chap and can carry corn as well as most of 'em--in fact far better; but a man is terrible quick to trade on the good opinion of his fellow man, and if you let him imagine you can't do without him, you may put false and fantastic ideas into his head." "i'm not at all sure if i could do without him," she answered, "though, even if he knew it, he's far too fine a character to take advantage. a most modest creature and undervalued accordingly." then a boy ran in for richard and he hastened away, while nelly took a sheaf of flowers to the summer-house and made the table bright with them. she praised her niece's activities. "'tis a shame to ring you in on your half-holiday," she said. "but you're one of the sensible sort, and you won't regret being a good girl to me in the time to come." then she turned to job. "gurd's got a char-a-bank and a party on the way from lyme, and he's full up and wants the four-horse stable," she told him. it was part of job's genius never to be put about, or driven from placidity by anything. "then there's no time to lose," he said. "we're ready here, and now if sarah will lend a hand at the table over there in the shade for the party of six--" "lord! i'd forgotten them." "i hadn't," he answered. "they're cutting in the kitchen now and the party's due at four. so you'll have them very near off your hands before the big lot comes. i'll see to the stable and get in a bit of fresh straw and shake down some hay. then i'll take the bar and let miss denman come to help with the tea." he went his way and sarah sat down a moment while her aunt arranged the flowers. "there's no tea-tables like yours," she said. "i pride myself on 'em. a lot goes to a tea beside the good food, in my opinion. some human pigs don't notice my touches and only want to stuff; but the bettermost have an eye for everything sweet and clean about 'em. such nicer characters don't like poultry messing round and common things in sight while they eat and drink. i know what i feel myself about a clean cloth and a bunch of fine flowers on the table, and many people are quite as particular as me. i train the girls up to take a pride in such things, and now and again a visitor will thank me for it." "i could have brought a bunch of flowers from our little garden," said sarah. "it would be coals to newcastle, my dear. we make a feature of 'em. job legg understands the ways of 'em, and you see the result. you can pick all day from my herbaceous border and not miss what you take." "nobody grows sweet peas like yours." "job again. he's mastered the sweet pea in a manner given to few. he'll bring out four on a stalk, and think nothing of it." "mister best, our foreman, is wonderful in a garden, too," answered sarah. "and a great fruit grower also." "that reminds me. i've got a fine dish of greengages for this party. in the season i fling in a bit of fruit sometimes. it always comes as a pleasant surprise to tea people that they ain't called to pay extra for fruit." she went her way and sarah turned to a lesser entertainment under preparation in a shady corner of the garden. a girl of the house was already busy there, and the guests had arrived. they were hot and thirsty. some sat on the grass and fanned themselves. a young man did juggling feats with the croquet balls for the amusement of two young women. not until half-past six came any pause, but after that hour the tea drinkers thinned off; the big party had come and gone; the smaller groups were all attended to and tea was served in mrs. northover's private sitting-room behind the bar for herself, sarah and the barmaid. being refreshed and rested, mrs. northover turned to the affairs of her niece. at the same moment mr. legg came in. "sit down and have some tea," said mrs. northover. "i've took a hasty cup," he answered, "but could very well do with another." "and how's mister roberts, sarah?" asked her aunt. "fine. he's playing in a cricket match to-day--bridetown against chilcombe. they've asked him to play for bridport since mister raymond saw him bowl. he's very pleased about it." "teetotal, isn't he?" asked mr. job. "yes, mister legg. nick have never once touched a drop in all his life and never means to." "a pity there ain't more of the same way of thinking," said mrs. northover. "and i say that, though a publican and the wife of a publican; and so do you, don't you, job?" "most steadfast," he replied. "when i took on barman as a profession, i never lifted pot or glass again to my own lips, and have stood between many a young man and the last half pint. i tell you this to your face, missis northover. not an hour ago i was at 'the tiger,' to let richard gurd know the stable was ready, and in the private bar there were six young men, all drinking for the pleasure of drinking. if the younger generation only lapped when 'twas thirsty, half the drinking-places would shut, and there wouldn't be no more brewers in the peerage." he shook his head and drank his tea. mrs. northover changed the subject. "how's the works?" she asked. "do the people like the new master?" "just the same--same hours, same money--everything. and mister daniel's brother, mister raymond's, come to it to learn the business. he is a cure!" "he's over there now," said job, waving his hand in the direction of 'the tiger.' "drinking port wine he is with that young sport, motyer, and others like him. i don't like motyer's face. he's a shifty chap, and a thorn in his family's side by all accounts. but mister raymond have a very open countenance and ought to have a good heart." "what do you mean when you say he's a 'cure,' sarah?" asked her aunt. "he's that friendly with us girls," she answered. "he's supposed to be learning all there is to spinning, but he plays about half his time and you can't help laughing. he's so friendly as if he was one of us; but sabina dinnett is his pet. wants to make her smoke cigarettes! but there's no harm to him if you understand." "there's always harm to a chap that plays about and don't look after his own business," declared job. "i understand his brother's been very proper about him, and now it's up to him; and he ain't at the mill to offer the girls cigarettes." "he's got his own room and mister best wishes he'd bide in it," explained sarah, "but he says he must learn, and so he's always wandering around. but everybody likes him, except levi baggs. he don't like anybody. he'd like to draw us all over his hackling frames if he could." they chattered awhile, then worked again; but sarah stayed to supper, and it was not until half-past ten o'clock that she started for home. another bridetown girl--alice chick, the spinner--had been spending her half holiday in bridport. now she met sarah, by appointment, at the top of south street and the two returned together. chapter vii a walk the carding machine was a squat and noisy monster. mr. best confessed that it had put him in mind of a passage from holy writ, for it seemed to be all eyes, behind and before. the eyes were wheels, and beneath, the mass of the carder opened its mouth--a thin and hungry slit into which wound an endless band. spread upon this leathern roller was the hemp tow--that mass of short material which levi baggs, the hackler, pruned away from his long strides. as for the minder, sally groves, she seemed built and born to tend a carding machine. she moved with dignity despite her great size, and although covered in tow dust from head to foot and powdered with a layer of pale amber fluff, she stood as well as another for the solemnity of toil, laboured steadfastly, was neither elated, nor cast down, and presented to younger women a spectacle of skill, resolution and good sense. the great woman ennobled her work; through the dust and din, with placid and amiable features, she peered, and ceased not hour after hour, to spread the tow truly and evenly upon the rolling board. one of less experience might have needed to weigh her material, but sally never weighed; by long practice and good judgment, she produced sliver of even texture. the carder panted, crashed and shook with its energies. it glimmered all over with the bright, hairy gossamer of the tow, which wound thinly through systems of fast and slow wheels. between them the material was lashed and pricked, divided and sub-divided, torn and lacerated by thousands of pins, that separated strand from strand and shook the stuff to its integral fibres before building it up again. despite the thunder and the suggestion of immense forces exerted upon the frail material, utmost delicacy marked the operations of the card. any real strain must have torn to atoms the fine amber coils in which it ejected the strips of shining sliver. enormous waste marked the operation. beneath the machine rose mounds of dust and dirt, and fluff, light as thistledown; while as much was sucked away into the air by the exhaust above. in a lion-coloured overall and under a hat tied beneath her chin with a yellow handkerchief, sally groves pursued her task. then came to her sabina dinnett and, ceasing not to spread her tow the while, sally spoke serious words. "i asked nancy buckler to send you along when your machine stopped a minute. you won't be vexed with me if i say something, will you?" "vexed with you, sally? who ever was vexed with you?" "i'm old enough to be your mother, and 'tis her work if anybody's to speak to you," explained sally; "but she's not here, and she don't see what i can't help seeing." "what have you seen then?" "i've seen a very good-looking young man by the name of raymond ironsyde wasting a deuce of a lot of his time by your spinning frame; and wasting your time, too." sabina changed colour. "fancy you saying that!" she exclaimed. "he's got to learn the business--the practical side, sally. and he wants to master it carefully and grasp the whole thing." miss groves smiled. "ah. he didn't take long mastering the carder," she said. "just two minutes was all he gave me, and i don't think he was very long at the drawing heads neither; and i ain't heard sarah northover say he spent much of his time at the spreader. it all depends on the minder whether mister raymond wants to know much about the work!" "but the spinning is the hardest to understand, sally." "granted, but he don't ask many questions of alice chick or nancy buckler, do he? i'm not blaming him, lord knows, nor yet you, but for friendship i'm whispering to you to be sensible. he's a very kind-hearted young gentleman, and if he had a memory as big as his promises, he'd soon ruin himself. but, like a lot of other nice chaps full of generous ideas, he forgets 'em when the accident that woke 'em is out of his mind. and all i say, sabina, is to be careful. he may be as good as gold, and i dare say he is, but he's gone on you--head over heels--he can't hide it. he don't even try to. and he's a gentleman and you're a spinner. so don't you be silly, and don't think the worse of me for speaking." sabina entertained the opinions concerning middle-age common to youth, but she was fond of sally and set her heart at rest. "you needn't be frightened," she answered. "he's a gentleman, as you say; and you know i'm not the sort to be a fool. i can't help him coming; and i can't be rude to the young man. for that matter i wouldn't. i won't forget what you've said all the same." she hurried away and started her machine; but while her mind concentrated on spinning, some subconscious instincts worked at another matter and she found that sally had cast a cloud upon a coming event which promised nothing but sunshine. she had agreed to go for a walk with raymond ironsyde on the following sunday, and he had named their meeting-place: a bridge that crossed the bride in the vale two miles from the village. she meant to go, for the understanding between her and raymond had advanced far beyond any point dreamed of by sally groves. sabina's mind was in fact exceedingly full of raymond, and his mind was full of her. temperament had conspired to this state of things, for while the youth found himself in love for the first time in his life, and pursued the quest with that ardour and enthusiasm until now reserved for sport, sabina, who had otherwise been much more cautious, was not only in love, but actually felt that shadowy ambitions from the past began to promise realisation. she was not vain, but she knew herself a finer thing in mind and body than most of the girls with whom she worked. she had read a great deal and learned much from mr. churchouse, who delighted to teach her, and from mr. best, with whom she was a prime favourite. she had refused several offers of marriage and preserved a steady determination not to wed until there came a man who could lift her above work and give her a home that would embrace comfort and leisure. she waited, confident that this would happen, for she knew that she could charm men. as yet none had come who awakened any emotion of love in sabina; and she told herself that real love might alter her values and send her to a poor man's home after all. if that happened, she was willing; but she thought it improbable; because, in her experience, poor men were ignorant, and she felt very sure no ignorant man would ever make her love him. then came into her life one very much beyond her dreams, and from an attitude of utmost caution before a physical beauty that fascinated her, she woke into tremendous excitation of mind at the discovery that he, too, was interested. to her it seemed that he had plenty of brains. his ideas were human and beautiful. he declared the conditions of the workers to be not sufficiently considered. he was full of nebulous theories for the amelioration of such conditions. the spectacle of women working for a living caused raymond both uneasiness and indignation. to sabina, it seemed that he was a chivalric knight of romance--a being from a fairy story. she had heard of such men, but never met with one outside a novel. she glorified raymond into something altogether sublime--as soon as she found that he liked her. he filled her head, and while her common-sense vainly tried to talk as sally groves had talked, each meeting with the young man threw her back upon the tremendous fact that he was deeply interested in her and did not care who knew it. common-sense could not modify that; nor would she listen to common-sense, when it suggested that raymond's record was uninspiring, and pointed to no great difference between him and other young men. she told herself that he was misunderstood; she whispered to herself that she understood him. it must be so, for he had declared it. he had said that he was an idealist. as a matter of fact he did not himself know the meaning of the word half as well as sabina. he filled her thoughts, and believing him to be honourable, in the everyday acceptation of the word, she knew she was safe and need not fear him. this fact added to the joy and excitement of a situation that was merely thrilling, not difficult. for she had to be receptive only, and that was easy: the vital matter rested with him. she did not do anything to encourage him, or take any step that her friends could call "forward." she just left it to him and knew not how far he meant to go, yet felt, in sanguine moments, that he would go all the way, sooner or later, and offer to marry her. her friends declared it would be so. they were mightily interested, but not jealous, for the girls recognised sabina's advantages. when, therefore, he asked her to take a walk on a certain sunday afternoon, she agreed to do so. there was no plotting or planning about it. he named a familiar place of meeting and proposed to go thence to the cliffs--a ramble that might bring them face to face with a dozen people who knew them. she felt the happier for that. nor could sally groves and her warning cast her down for long. the hint that raymond was a gentleman and sabina a spinner touched a point in their friendship long past. the girl knew that well enough; but she also knew what sally did not, and told herself that raymond was a great deal more than a gentleman, just as she--sabina--was something more than a spinner. that, however, was the precious knowledge peculiar to the young people themselves. she could not expect sally, or anybody else, to know it yet. as for the young man, life had cut away from him most of his former interests and amusements. he was keeping regular hours and working steadily. he regarded himself as a martyr, yet could get none to take that view. to him, then, came his love affair as a very present help in time of trouble. the emotions awakened by sabina were real, and he fully believed that she was going to be essential to his life's happiness and completion. he knew nothing about women, for his athletic pursuits and ambitions to excel physically produced an indifference to them. but with the change in his existence, and the void thereby created, came love, and he had leisure to welcome it. he magnified sabina, and since her intellect was as good as his own and her education better, he assured himself that she was in every respect superior to her position and worthy of any man's admiration. he did not analyse his feelings or look ahead very far. he did not bother to ask himself what he wanted. he was only concerned to make sabina 'a chum,' as he said, to himself. he knew this to be nonsense, even while he said it, but in the excitement of the quest, chose to ignore rational lines of thought. they met by the little bridge over bride, then walked southerly up a hill to a hamlet, and so on to the heights. beneath the sponge-coloured cliffs eastward swept the grand scythe of chesil bank; but an east wind had brought its garment of grey-blue haze and the extremity of the bank, with portland bill beyond, was hidden. the cliffs gave presently and green slopes sank to the beaches. they reached a place where, separated from the sea by great pebble-ridges, there lay a little mere. two swans swam together upon it, and round about the grey stone banks were washed with silver pink, where the thrift prospered. sabina had not talked much, though she proved a good listener; but raymond spoke fitfully, too, at first. he was new to this sort of thing and told her so. "i don't believe i've ever been for a walk with a girl in my life before," he said. "i can't walk fast enough for you, i'm afraid." "oh yes, you can; you're a very good walker." at last he began to tell her about himself, in the usual fashion of the male, who knows by instinct that subject is most interesting to both. he dwelt on his sporting triumphs of the past, and explained his trials and tribulations in the present. he represented that he was mewed up like an eagle. he described how the tragic call to work for a living had sounded in his ear when he anticipated no such painful experience. before this narrative sabina affected a deeper sympathy than she felt, yet honestly perceived that to such a man, his present life of regular hours must be dreary and desolate. "it's terrible dull for you, i'm sure," she said. "it was," he confessed, "but i'm getting broken in, or perhaps it's because you're so jolly friendly. you're the only person i know in the whole world who has got the mind and imagination to see what a frightful jar it was for an open-air man like me to be dropped into this. people think it is the most unnatural thing on earth that i should suddenly begin to work. but it's just as unnatural really as if my brother suddenly began to play. even my great friend, arthur waldron, talks rubbish about everybody having to work sooner or later--not that he ever did. but you were quick enough to see in a moment. you're tremendously clever, really." "i wish i was; but i saw, of course, that you were rather contemptuous of it all." "so i was at first," he confessed. "at first i felt that it was a woman's show, and that what women can do well is no work for men. but i soon saw i was wrong. it increased my respect for women in a way. to find, for instance, that you could do what you do single-handed and make light of it; that was rather an eye-opener. whenever any pal of mine talks twaddle about what women can't do, i shall bring him to see you at work." "i could do something better than spin if i got the chance," she said, and he applauded the sentiment highly. "of course you could, and i'm glad you've got the pluck to say so. i knew that from the first. you're a lot too clever for spinning, really. you'd shine anywhere. let's sit here under this thorn bush. i must get some rabbiting over this scrub. the place swarms with them. you don't mind if i smoke?" they rested, and he ventured to make a personal remark after sabina had taken off her gloves to cool her hands. "you've hurt yourself," he said, noting what seemed to be an injury. but she made light of it. "it's only a corn from stopping the spindles. every spinner's hands are like that. alice chick has chilblains in winter, then she gets a cruel, bad hand." the slight deformity made raymond uncomfortable. he could not bear to think of a woman suffering such a stigma in her tender flesh. "they ought to invent something to prevent you being hurt," he said, and sabina laughed. "why, there are very few manual trades don't leave their mark," she answered, "and a woman's lucky to get nothing worse than a scarred hand." "would it come right," he ventured to ask, "if you gave up spinning?" "yes, in no time. there are worse things happen to you in the mills than that--and more painful. sometimes the wind from the reels numbs your fingers till you can't feel 'em and they go red, and then blue. and there's always grumbling about the temperature, because what suits hemp and flax don't suit humans. if some clever man could solve these difficulties, it would be more comfortable for us. not that i'm grumbling. our mill is about as perfect as any mill can be, and we've got the blessing of living in the country, too--that's worth a lot." "you're fond of the country." "couldn't live out of it," she said. "thanks to mr. churchouse, i know more about things than some girls." "i should think you did." "he's very wise and kind and lends me books." "a very nice old bird. i nearly went to live with him when i came to bridetown. sorry i didn't, now." she smiled and did not pretend to miss the compliment. "as to the mill," he went on; "don't think i'm the sort of chap that just drifts and is contented to let things be as they were in the time of his father and grandfather." "wouldn't you?" "certainly not. no doubt it's safer and easier and the line of least resistance and all that sort of thing. but when i've once mastered the business, you'll see. i didn't want to come in, but now i'm in, i'm going to the roots of it, and i shall have a pretty big say in things, too, later on." "fancy!" said sabina. "oh yes. you mustn't suppose my brother and i see alike all round. we don't. he wants to be a copy of my father, and i've no ambition to be anything of the kind. my father wasn't at all sporting to me, sabina, and it doesn't alter the fact because he's dead. the first thing is the workers, and whatever i am, i'm clever enough to know that if we don't do a good many things for the workers pretty soon, they'll do those things for themselves. but it will be a great deal more proper and breed a lot more goodwill between labour and capital, if capital takes the first step and improves the conditions and raises the wages all round. d'you know what i would do if i had my way? i'd go one better than the trade unions! i'd cut the ground from under their feet! i'd say to capital 'instead of whining about the trades unions, get to work and make them needless.'" but these gigantic ideas, uttered on the spur of the moment by one who knew less than nothing of his subject, did not interest sabina as much as he expected. the reason, however, he did not know. it was that he had called her by her name for the first time. it slipped out without intention, though he was conscious of it as he spoke it; but he had no idea that it had greatly startled her and awoke mingled feelings of delight and doubt. she was delighted, because it meant her name must have been often in his thoughts, she was doubtful, because its argued perhaps a measure less of that respect he had always paid her. but, on the whole, she felt glad. he waited for her to speak and did not know that she had heard little, but was wondering at that moment if he would go back to the formal 'miss dinnett' again, or always call her 'sabina' in future. after a pause raymond spoke. "now tell me about yourself," he said. "i'm sure you've heard enough about me." "there's nothing to tell." "how did you happen to be a spinner?" "mother was, so i went into it as a matter of course." "i should have thought old churchouse would have seen you're a genius, and educated you and adopted you." "nothing of a genius about me. i'm like most other girls." "i never saw another girl like you," he said. "you'd spoil anybody with your compliments." "never paid a compliment in my life," he declared. their conversation became desultory, and presently sabina said she must be going home. "mother will be wondering." on the way back they met another familiar pair and sabina speculated as to what raymond thought; but he showed no emotion and took off his hat to sarah northover and nicholas roberts, the lathe worker, as they passed by. sarah smiled, and nicholas, a thin, good-looking man, took off his hat also. "i must go and study the lathes," said raymond after they had passed. "that's a branch of the work i haven't looked at yet. roberts seems a good chap, and he's a very useful bowler, i find." "he's engaged to sarah; they're going to be married when he can get a house." "that's another thing that must be looked to. there are scores of cottages that want pulling down here. i shall point that out to the lord of the manor when i get a chance." "you're all for changes and improvements, mister ironsyde." "call me raymond, sabina." "i couldn't do that." "why not? i want you to. by the way, may i call you sabina?" "yes, if you care to." they parted at the entrance gate of 'the magnolias,' and raymond thanked her very heartily for her company. "i've looked forward to this," he said. "and now i shall look forward to the next time. it's very sporting of you to come and i'm tremendously grateful and--good-bye, sabina--till to-morrow." he went on up the road to north hill house and felt the evening had grown tasteless without her. he counted the hours to when he would see her again. she went to work at seven o'clock, but he never appeared at the mill until ten, or later. he began to see that this was the most serious thing within his experience. he supposed that it must be enduring and tend to alter the whole tenor of his life. marriage was one of the stock jokes in his circle, yet, having regard for sabina, this meant marriage or nothing. he felt ill at ease, for love had not yet taken the bit and run away with him. other interests cried out to him--interests that he would have to give up. he tried to treat the matter as a joke with himself, but he could not. he felt melancholy, and that night at supper waldron asked what was wrong, while estelle told him he must be ill, because he was so dull. "i don't believe the spinning works are good for you," she said. "ask for a holiday and distract your mind with other things," suggested waldron. "if you'd come out in the mornings and ride for a couple of hours before breakfast, as i do, you'd be all right." "i will," promised raymond. "i want bucking up." he pictured sabina on horseback. "i wish to god i was rich instead of being a pauper!" he exclaimed. "my advice is that you stick it out for a year or more, till you've convinced your brother you'll never be any good at spinning," said arthur waldron. "then, after he knows you're not frightened of work, but, of course, can't excel at work that isn't congenial, he'll put money into your hands for a higher purpose, and you will go into breeding stock, or some such thing, to help keep up the sporting instincts of the country." with that bright picture still before him raymond retired. but he was not hopeful and even vague suggestions on waldron's part that his friend should become his bailiff and study agriculture did not serve to win from the sufferer more than thanks. the truth he did not mention, knowing that neither waldron, nor anybody else, would offer palatable counsel in connection with that. chapter viii the lecture daniel ironsyde sat with his aunt jenny after dinner and voiced discontent. but it was not with himself and his personal progress that he felt out of tune. all went well at the mill save in one particular, and he found no fault either with the heads of the offices at bridport, or with john best, who entirely controlled the manufacture at bridetown. his brother caused the tribulation of his mind. miss ironsyde sympathised, but argued for raymond. "he has an immense respect for you and would not willingly do anything to annoy you, i'm sure of that. you must remember that raymond was not schooled to this. it takes a boy of his temperament a long time to find the yoke easy. you were naturally studious, and wise enough to get into harness after you left school; raymond, with his extraordinary physical powers, found the fascination of sport over-mastering. he has had to give up what to your better understanding is trivial and unimportant, but it really meant something to him." "he hasn't given up as much as you might think," answered daniel. "he's always taking holidays now for cricket matches, and he rides often with waldron. it was a mistake his going there. waldron is a person with one idea, and a foolish idea at that. he only thinks a man is a man when he's tearing about after foxes, or killing something, or playing with a ball of some sort. he's a bad influence for raymond. but it's not that. it's not so much what raymond doesn't do as what he does do. he's foolish with the spinners and minders at the mill." "he might be," said jenny ironsyde, "but he's a gentleman." "he's an idiot. i believe he'd wreck the whole business if he had the power. best tells me he talks to the girls about what he's going to do presently, and tells them he will raise all their wages. he suggests to perfectly satisfied people that they are not getting enough money! well, it's only human nature for them to agree with him, and you can easily see what the result of that would be. instead of having the hands willing and contented, they'll grow unsettled and grumble, and then work will suffer and a bad spirit appear in the mill. it is simply insane." "i quite agree," answered his aunt. "there's no excuse whatever for nonsense of that sort, and if raymond minded his own business, as he should, it couldn't happen. surely his own work doesn't throw him into the company of the girls?" "of course it doesn't. it's simply a silly excuse to waste his time and hear his own voice. he ought to have learned all about the mechanical part weeks ago." "well, i can only advise patience," said miss ironsyde. "i don't suppose a woman would carry much weight with him, an old one i mean--myself in fact. but failing others i will do what i can. you say mr. waldron's no good. then try uncle ernest. i think he might touch raymond. he's gentle, but he's wise. and failing that, you must tackle him yourself, daniel. it's your duty. i know you hate preaching and all that sort of thing, but there's nobody else." "i suppose there isn't. it can't go on anyway, because he'll do harm. i believe asses like raymond make more trouble than right down wicked people, aunt jenny." "don't tell him he's an ass. be patient--you're wonderfully patient always for such a young man, so be patient with your brother. but try uncle ernest first. he might ask raymond to lunch, or tea, and give him a serious talking to. he'll know what to say." "he's too mild and easy. it will go in at one ear and come out of the other," prophesied daniel. but none the less he called on mr. churchouse when next at bridetown. the old man had just received a parcel by post and was elated. "a most interesting work sent to me from 'a well wisher,'" he said. "it is an old perambulation of dorsetshire, which i have long desired to possess." "people like your writings in the _bridport gazette_," declared daniel. "can you give me a few minutes, uncle ernest? i won't keep you." "my time is always at the service of henry ironsyde's boys," answered the other, "and nothing that i can do for you, or raymond, is a trouble." "thank you. i'm grateful. it is about raymond, as a matter of fact." "ah, i'm not altogether surprised. come into the study." mr. churchouse, carrying his new book, led the way and soon he heard of the younger man's anxieties. but the bookworm increased rather than allayed them. "do you see anything of raymond?" began daniel. "a great deal of him. he often comes to supper. but i will be frank. he does not patronise my simple board for what he can get there, nor does he find my company very exciting. he wouldn't. the attraction, i'm afraid, is my housekeeper's daughter, sabina. sabina, i may tell you, is a very attractive girl, daniel. it has been my pleasure during her youth to assist at her education, and she is well informed and naturally clever. she is inclined to be excitable, as many clever people are, but she is of a charming disposition and has great natural ability. i had thought she would very likely become a schoolmistress; but in this place the call of the mills is paramount and, as you know, the young women generally follow their mothers. so sabina found the thought of the spinning attractive and is now, mr. best tells me, an amazingly clever spinner--his very first in fact. and it cannot be denied that raymond sees a good deal of her. this is probably not wise, because friendship, at their tender ages, will often run into emotion, and, naturally flattered by his ingenuous attentions, sabina might permit herself to spin dreams and so lessen her activities as a spinner of yarn. i say she might. these things mean more to a girl than a boy." "what can i do about it? i was going to ask you to talk sense to raymond." "with all the will, i am not the man, i fear. sense varies so much from the standpoint of the observer, my dear daniel. you, for example, having an old head on young shoulders, would find yourself in agreement with my sentiments; raymond, having a young and rather empty head on his magnificent shoulders, would not. i take the situation to be this. raymond's life has been suddenly changed and his prodigious physical activities reduced. he bursts with life. he is more alive than any youth i have ever known. now all this exuberance of nature must have an outlet, and what more natural than that, in the presence of such an attractive young woman, the sex instinct should begin to assert itself?" "you don't mean he is in love, or anything like that?" "that is just exactly what i do mean," answered mr. churchouse. "i thought he probably liked to chatter to them all, and hear his own voice, and talk rubbish about what he'll do for them in the future." "he has nebulous ideas about wages and so on; but women are quicker than men, and probably they understand perfectly well that he doesn't know what he's talking about so far as that goes. how would it be if you took him into the office at bridport, where he would be more under your eye?" "he must learn the business first and nobody can teach him like best." "then i advise that you talk to him yourself. don't let the fact that you are only a year and three months older than raymond make you too tolerant. you are really ten, or twenty, years older than he is in certain directions, and you must lecture him accordingly. be firm; be decisive. explain to him that life is real and that he must approach it with the same degree of earnestness and self-discipline as he devotes to running and playing games and the like. i feel sure you will carry great weight. he is far from being a fool. in fact he is a very intelligent young man with excellent brains, and if he would devote them to the business, you would soon find him your right hand. the machinery does honestly interest him. but you must make it a personal thing. he must study political economy and the value of labour and its relations to capital and the market value of dry spun yarns. these vague ideas to better the lot of the working classes are wholly admirable and speak of a good heart. but you must get him to listen to reason and the laws of supply and demand and so forth." "what shall i say about the girls?" "it is not so much the girls as the girl. if he had manifested a general interest in them, you need have said nothing; but, with the purest good will to raymond and a great personal affection for sabina, i do feel that this friendship is not desirable. don't think i am cynical and worldly and take too low a view of human nature--far from it, my dear boy. nothing would ever make me take a low view of human nature. but one has not lived for sixty years with one's eyes shut. unhappy things occur and nature is especially dangerous when you find her busy with such natural creatures as your brother and sabina. a word to the wise. i would speak, but you will do so with far greater weight." "i hate preaching and making raymond think i'm a prig and all that sort of thing. it only hardens him against me." "he knows better. at any rate try persuasion. he has a remarkably good temper and a child could lead him. in fact a child sometimes does. he'd do anything for waldron's little girl. just say you admire and share his ambitions for the welfare of the workers. hint at supply and demand; then explain that all must go according to fixed laws, and amelioration is a question of time and combination, and so on. then tackle him fearlessly about sabina and appeal to his highest instincts. i, too, in my diplomatic way will approach him with modern instances. unfortunately it is only too easy to find modern instances of what romance may end in. and to say that modern instances are exceedingly like ancient ones, is merely to say, that human nature doesn't change." fired by this advice, daniel went straight to the works, and it was about eleven o'clock in the day when he entered his brother's office above the mill--to find it empty. descending to the main shop, he discovered raymond showing a visitor round the machines. little estelle waldron was paying her first visit to the spinners and, delighted at the distraction, raymond, on whose invitation she had come, displayed all the operation of turning flax and hemp into yarn. he aired his knowledge, but it was incomplete and he referred constantly to the operators from stage to stage. round-eyed and attentive, estelle poured her whole heart and soul into the business. she showed a quick perception and asked questions that interested the girls. some, indeed, they could not answer. estelle's mind approached their work from a new angle and saw in it mysteries and points calling for solution that had never challenged them. neither had her problems much struck raymond, but he saw their force when she raised them and pronounced them most important. "why, that's fundamental, really," he said, "and yet, be shot, if i ever thought of it! only best will know and i shouldn't be surprised if he doesn't." they stood at the first drawing frame when daniel appeared. they had followed the flat ribbon of sliver from the carding machine. at the drawing frame six ribbons from the carder were all brought together into one ribbon and so gained in quality, while losing more impurities during a second severe process of combing out. "and even now it's not ready for spinning," explained raymond. "now it goes on to the second drawing frame, and four of these ribbons from the first drawer are brought together into one ribbon again. so you see that no less than twenty-four ribbons from the carder are brought together to make stuff good enough to spin." "what do the drawing frames do to it?" asked estelle; "it looks just the same." "blessed if i know," confessed raymond. "what do they do to it, mrs. chick?" a venerable old woman, whose simple task was to wind away the flowing sliver into cans, made answer. she was clad in a dun overall and had a dim scarlet cap of worsted drawn over her white hair. the remains of beauty homed in her brown and wrinkled face; her grey eyes were gentle, and her expression wistful and kindly. "the drawing heads level the 'sliver,' and true it, and make it good," she said. "all the rubbish is dragged out on the teeth and now, though it seems thinner and weaker, it isn't really. now it goes to the roving frame and that makes it still better and ready for the spinners." then came daniel, and raymond, leaving estelle with mrs. chick, departed at his brother's wish. the younger anticipated trouble and began to excuse himself. "waldron's so jolly friendly that i thought you wouldn't mind if i showed his little girl round the works. she's tremendously clever and intelligent." "of course i don't mind. that's nothing, but i want to speak to you on the general question. i do wish, raymond, you'd be more dignified." "dignified! me? good lord!" "well, if you don't like that word, say 'self-respecting.' you might take longer views and look ahead." "you may bet your boots i do that, dan. this life isn't so delightful that i am content to live in the present hour, i assure you. i look ahead all right." "i mean look ahead for the sake of the business, not for your own sake. i don't want to preach, or any nonsense of that kind; but there's nobody else to speak, so i must. the point is that you don't see in the least what you are doing here. in the future my idea was--and yours, too, i suppose--that you came into the business as joint partner with me in everything." "jolly sporting of you, dan." "but that being so, can't you see you ought to support me in everything?" "i do." "no, you don't. you're not taking the right line in the least, and what's more, i believe you know it yourself. don't think i'm selfish and careless about our people, or indifferent to their needs and rights. i'm quite as keen about their welfare as you are; but one can't do everything in a moment. and you're not helping them and only hindering me by talking a lot of rubbish to them." "it isn't rubbish, dan. i had all the facts from levi baggs, the hackler. he understands the claims of capital and what labour is entitled to, and all the rest of it." "baggs is a sour, one-sided man and will only give you a biased and wrong view. if you want to know the truth, you can come into bridport and study it. then you'll see exactly what things are worth, and what we get paid in open market for our goods. all you do by listening to levi is to waste your time and waste his. and then you wander about among the women talking nonsense. and remember this: they know it's nonsense. they understand the question very much better than you do, and instead of respecting you, as they ought to respect a future master, they only laugh at you behind your back. and what will the result be? why, when you come to have a voice in the thing, they'll remind you of all your big talk. and then you've got to climb down and they'll not respect you, or take you seriously." "all right, old chap--enough said. only you needn't think the people wouldn't respect me. i get on jolly well with them as a matter of fact. and i do look ahead--perhaps further than you do. i certainly wouldn't promise anything i wouldn't try to perform. in fact, i'm very keen about them. and i believe if we scrapped all the machinery and got new--" "when you've mastered the present machinery, it will be time to talk about scrapping it," answered daniel. "people are always shouting out for new things, and when they get them--and sacrifice a year's profits very likely in doing so--often the first thing they hear from the operatives is, that the old machinery was much better. our father always liked to see other firms make the experiments." "that's the way to get left, if you ask me." "i don't ask you," answered the master. "i'm telling you, raymond; and you ought to remember that i very well know what i'm talking about and you don't. you must give me some credit. to question me is to question our father, for i learned everything from him." "but times change. you don't want to be left high and dry in the march of progress, my dear chap." "no--you needn't fear that. if you're young, you're a part of progress; you belong to it. but you must get a general knowledge of the present situation in our trade before you can do anything rational in the shape of progress. i've been left a very fine business with a very honoured name to keep up, and if i begin trying to run before i can walk, i should very soon fall down. you must see that." raymond nodded. "yes, that's all right. i'm a learner and i know you can teach me a lot." "if you'd come to me instead of to the mill people." "you don't know their side." "much better than you do. i've talked with our father often and often about it. he was no tyrant and nobody could ever accuse him of injustice." raymond flashed; but he kept his mouth shut on that theme. the only bitter quarrels between the brothers had been on the subject of their father, and the younger knew that the ground was dangerous. at this moment the last thing he desired was any difference with daniel. "i'll keep it all in mind, dan. i don't want to do anything to annoy you, god knows. is there any more? i must go and look after young estelle." "only one thing; and this is purely personal, and so i hope you'll excuse me. i've just been seeing uncle ernest, and nobody wished us better fortune than he does." "he's a good old boy. i've learned a lot about spinning from him." "i know. but--look here, raymond, i do beg of you--i implore of you not to be too friendly with sabina dinnett. you can't think how i should hate anything like that. it isn't fair--it isn't fair to the woman, or to me, or to the family. you must see yourself that sort of thing isn't right. she's a very good girl--our champion spinner best says; and if you go distracting her and taking her out of her station, you are doing her a very cruel turn and upsetting her peace of mind. and the others will be jealous, of course, and so it will go on. it isn't playing the game--it really isn't. that's all. i know you're a sportsman and all that; so i do beg you'll be a sportsman in business too, and take a proper line and remember your obligations. and if i've said a harsh, or unfair word, i'm sorry for it; but you know i haven't." seeing that sabina dinnett was now in paramount and triumphant possession of raymond's mind, he felt thankful that his brother, by running on over this subject and concluding upon the whole question, had saved him the necessity for any direct reply. whether he would have lied or no concerning sabina, raymond did not stop to consider. there is little doubt that he would. but the need was escaped; and so thankful did he feel, that he responded to the admonishment in a tone more complete and with promises more comprehensive than daniel expected. "you're dead right. of course i know it! i've been a silly fool all round. but i won't open my mouth so wide in future, dan. and don't think i'm wasting my time. i'm working like the devil, really, and learning everything from the beginning. best will tell you that's true. he's a splendid teacher and i'll see more of him in future. and i'll read all about yarn and get the hang of the markets, and so on." "thank you--you can't say more. and you might come into bridport oftener, i think. aunt jenny was saying she never sees you now." "i will," promised raymond. "i'm going to dine with you both on my birthday. i believe she'll be good for fifty quid this year. father left her a legacy of a thousand." they parted, and raymond returned to estelle, who was now watching the warping, while daniel went into his foreman's office. estelle was radiant. she had fallen in love with the works. "the girls are all so kind and clever," she said. "rather so. i expect you know all about everything now." "hardly anything yet. but you must let me come again. i do want to know all about it. it is splendidly interesting." "of course, come and go when you like, kiddy." "and i'm going to ask some of them to tea with me," declared estelle. "they all love flowers, and i'm going to show them our garden and my pets. i've asked seven of them and two men." "ask me, too." she brought out a piece of paper and showed him that she had written down nine names. "and if they like it, they'll tell the others and i shall ask them too," she said. "father is always wanting me to spend money, so now i'll spend some on a beautiful tea." raymond saw the name of sabina dinnett. "i'll be there to help you," he promised. "nicholas roberts is the lover of miss northover," explained estelle, "and benny cogle is the lover of miss gale. that's why i asked them. i very nearly went back and asked mister baggs to come, because he seems a silent, sad man; but i was rather frightened of him." "don't ask him; he's an old bear," declared raymond. thus, forgetting his brother as though daniel had ceased to exist, he threw himself into estelle's enterprise and planned an entertainment that must at least have rendered the master uneasy. chapter ix the party arthur waldron did more than love his daughter. he bore to her almost a superstitious reverence, as for one made of superior flesh and blood. he held her in some sort a reincarnation of his wife and took no credit for her cleverness himself. yet he did not spoil her, for her nature was proof against that. estelle, though old for her age, could not be called a prig. she developed an abstract interest in life as her intellect unfolded to accept its wonders and mysteries, yet she remained young in mind as well as body, and was always very glad to meet others of her own age. the mill girls were indeed older than she, but mr. waldron's daughter found their minds as young as her own in such subjects as interested her, though there were many things hidden from her that life had taught them. her father never doubted estelle's judgment or crossed her wishes. therefore he approved of the proposed party and did his best to make it a success. others also were glad to aid estelle and, to her delight, ernest churchouse, with whom she was in favour, yielded to entreaty and joined the company on the lawn of north hill house. tea was served out of doors, and to it there came nine workers from the mill, and two of mr. best's own girls, who were friends of estelle. nicholas roberts arrived with his future wife, sarah northover; sabina dinnett came with nancy buckler and sally groves from the carding machine, while alice chick brought old mrs. chick; mercy gale came too--a fair, florid girl, who warped the yarn when it was spun. mr. waldron was not a ladies' man, and after helping with the tea, served under a big mulberry tree in the garden, he turned his attention to mr. roberts, already known favourably to him as a cricketer, and benny cogle, the engine man. they departed to look at a litter of puppies and the others perambulated the gardens. estelle had a plot of her own, where grew roses, and here, presently, each with a rose at her breast, the girls sat about on an old stone seat and listened to mr. churchouse discourse on the lore of their trade. some, indeed, were bored by the subject and stole away to play beside a fountain and lily pond, where the gold fish were tame and crowded to their hands for food; but others listened and learned surprising facts that set the thoughtful girls wondering. "you mustn't think, you spinners, that you are the last word in spinning," he said; "no, alice and nancy and sabina, you're not; no more are those at other mills, who spin in choicer materials than flax and hemp--i mean the workers in cotton and silk. for the law of things in general, called evolution, seems to stand still when machinery comes to increase output and confuse our ideas of quality and quantity. missis chick here will tell you, when she was a spinner and the old rope walks were not things of the past, that she spun quite as good yarn from the bundle of tow at her waist as you do from the regulation spinners." "and better," said mrs. chick. "i believe you," declared ernest, "and before your time the yarn was better still. for, though some of the best brains in men's heads have been devoted to the subject, we go backwards instead of forwards, and things have been done in spinning that i believe will never be done again. in fact, the further you go back, the better the yarn seems to have been, and i'm sure i don't know how the laws of evolution can explain that. the secret is this: machinery, for all its marvellous improvements, lags far behind the human hand, and the record yarns were spun in the east, while our forefathers still went about in wolf-skins and painted their faces blue. you may laugh, but it is so." "tell us about them, mister churchouse," begged estelle. "for the moment we needn't go back so far," he said. "i'll remind you what a girl thirteen years old did in ireland a hundred years ago. only thirteen was catherine woods--mark that, sabina and alice--but she was a genius who lived in dunmore, county down, and she spun a hank of linen yarn of such tenuity that it would have taken seven hundred such hanks to make a pound of yarn." he turned to estelle. "sabina and the other spinners will appreciate this," he said, "but to explain the marvel of such spider-like spinning, estelle, i may tell you that seventeen and a half pounds of catherine's yarn would have sufficed to stretch round the equator of the earth. no machine-spun yarn has ever come within measurable distance of this astounding feat, and i have never heard of any spinner in europe or america equalling it; yet even this has been beaten when we were painting our noses blue." "where?" asked estelle breathlessly. "in the land of all wonders: egypt. herodotus tells us of a linen corselet, presented to the lacedemonians by king amasis, each thread of which commanded admiration, for though very fine, each was twisted of three hundred and sixty others! and if you decline to believe this--" "oh, mister churchouse, we quite believe it i'm sure, sir, if you say so," interrupted mrs. chick. "well, a later authority, sir gardiner wilkinson, tells us of equal wonders. the linen which he unwound from egyptian mummies has proved as delicate as silk, and equal, if not superior, to our best cambrics. five hundred and forty threads went to the warp and a hundred and ten to the weft; and i'm sure a modern weaver would wonder how they could produce quills fine enough for weaving such yarn through." "there's nothing new under the sun, seemingly," said old mrs. chick. "indeed there isn't, my dear, and so, perhaps, in the time to come, we shall spin again as well as the egyptians five or six thousand years ago," declared ernest. "and even then the spiders will always beat us i expect," said estelle. "true--true, child; nor has man learned the secret, of the caterpillar's silken spinning. talking of caterpillars, you may, or may not, have observed--" it was at this point that raymond, behind the speaker's back, beckoned sabina, and presently, as mr. churchouse began to expatiate on nature's spinning, she slipped away. the garden was large and held many winding paths and secluded nooks. thus the lovers were able to hide themselves from other eyes and amuse themselves with their own conversation. sabina praised estelle. "she's a dear little lady and ever so clever, i'm sure." "so she is, and yet she loses a lot. though her father's such a great sportsman, she doesn't care a button about it. wouldn't ride on a pony even." "i can very well understand that. nor would i if i had the chance." "you're different, sabina. you've not been brought up in a sporting family. all the same you'd ride jolly well, because you've got nerve enough for anything and a perfect figure for riding. you'd look fairly lovely on horseback." "whatever will you say next?" "i often wonder myself," he answered. "this much i'll say any way: it's meat and drink to me to be walking here with you. i only wish i was clever and could really amuse you and make you want to see me, sometimes. but the things i understand, of course, bore you to tears." "you know very well that isn't so," she said. "you've told me heaps of things well worth knowing--things i should never have heard of but for you. and--and i'm sure i'm very proud of your friendship." "good lord! it's the other way about. thanks to mister churchouse and your own wits, you are fearfully well read, and your cleverness fairly staggers me. just to hear you talk is all i want--at least that isn't all. of course, it is a great score for an everyday sort of chap like me to have interested you." sabina did not answer and after a silence which drew out into awkwardness, she made some remark on the flowers. but raymond was not interested about the flowers. he had looked forward to this occasion as an opportunity of exceptional value and now strove to improve the shining hour. "you know i'm a most unlucky beggar really, sabina. you mightn't think it, but i am. you see me cheerful, and joking and trying to make things pleasant for us all at the works; but sometimes, if you could see me tramping alone over north hill, or walking on the beach and looking at the seagulls, you'd be sorry for me." "of course, i'd be sorry for you--if there was anything to be sorry for." "look at it. an open-air man brought up to think my father would leave me all right, and then cut off with nothing and forced to come here and stew and toil and wear myself out struggling with a most difficult business--difficult to me, any way." "i'm sure you're mastering it as quickly as possible." "but the effort. and my muscles are shrinking and i'm losing weight. but, of course, that's nothing to anybody but myself. and then, another side: i want to think of you people first and raise your salaries and so on--especially yours, for you ought to have pounds where you have shillings. and my wishes to do proper things, in the line of modern progress and all that, are turned down by my brother. here am i thinking about you and worrying and knowing it's all wrong--and there's nobody on my side--not a damned person. and it makes me fairly mad." "i'm sure it's splendid of you to look at the mill in such a high-minded way," declared sabina. "and now you've told me, i shall understand what's in your mind. i'm sure i thank you for the thought at any rate." "if you'd only be my friend," he said. "it would be a great honour for a girl--just a spinner--to be that." "the honour is for me. you've got such tons of mind, sabina. you understand all the economical side, and so on." "a thing is only worth what it will fetch, i'm afraid." "that's the point. if you would help me, we would go into it and presently, when i'm a partner, we could bring out a scheme; and then you'd know you'd been instrumental in raising the tone of the whole works. and probably, if we set a good example, other works would raise their tone, too, and gradually the workers would find the whole scheme of things changing, to their advantage." sabina regarded this majestic vision with due reverence. she praised his ideals and honestly believed him a hero. they discussed the subject while the dusk came down and he prophesied great things. "we shall live to see it," he assured her, "and it may be largely thanks to you. and when you have a home of your own and--and--" it was then that she became conscious of his very near presence and the dying light. "they'll all have gone, and so must i," she said, "and i hope you'll thank miss waldron dearly for her nice party." "this is only the first; she'll give dozens more now that this has been such a success. she loves the mill. if you come this way i can let you out by the bottom gate--by the bamboo garden. you've bucked me up like anything--you always do. you're the best thing in my life, sabina. oh, if i was anything to you--if--but of course it's all one way." his voice shook a little. he burned to put his arms round her, and nature shouted so loud in his humming ears that he hardly heard her answer. for she echoed his emotion. "what can i say to that? you're so kind--you don't know how kind. you can't guess what such friendship means to a girl like me. it's something that doesn't come into our lives very often. i'm only wondering what the world will be like when you've gone again." "i shan't go--i'm never going. never, sabina. i--i couldn't live without you. kiss me, for god's sake. i must kiss you--i must--or i shall go mad." his arms were round her and he felt her hot cheek against his. they were young in love and dared not look into each other's eyes. but she kissed him back, and then, as he released her, she ran away, slipped through the wicket, where they stood and hastened off by the lane to bridetown. he glowed at her touch and panted at his triumph. she had not rebuked him, but let him see that she loved him and kissed him for his kiss. he did not attempt to follow her then but turned full of glory. here was a thing that dwarfed every interest of life and made life itself a triviality by comparison. she loved him; he had won her; nothing else that would be, or had been, in the whole world mattered beside such a triumph. his head had touched the stars. and he felt amazingly grateful to her. his thoughts for the moment were full of chivalry. her life must be translated to higher terms and new values. she should have the best that the world could offer, and he would win it for her. her trust was so pathetic and beautiful. to be trusted by her made him feel a finer thing and more important to the cosmic scheme. in itself this was a notable sensation and an addition of power, for nobody had ever trusted him until now. and here was a radiant creature, the most beautiful in the world, who trusted him with herself. his love brought a sense of splendour; her love brought a sense of strength. he swung back to the house feeling in him such mastery as might bend the whole earth to his purposes, take leviathan with a hook, and hang the constellations in new signs upon the void of heaven. chapter x work sarah northover and another young woman were tending the spread board. to this came the 'long line' from the hackler--those strides of amber hemp and lint-white flax that mr. baggs prepared in the hackler's shop. the spread board worked upon the long line as the carder on the tow. over its endless leathern platform, or spreading carriage, the long fibre was drawn into the toothed gills of the machine and converted into sliver for the drawing frames. with swift and rhythmic flinging apart of her arms over her head, sarah separated the stricks into three and laid them overlapping on the carriage. the ribbon thus created was never-ending and wound away into the torture chambers of wheels and teeth within, while from the rear of the spreader trickled out the new-created sliver. great scales hung beside sarah and from time to time she weighed fresh loads of long line and recorded the amount. her arms flashed upwards, the divided stricks came down to be laid in rotation on the running carriage, and ceaselessly she and her fellow worker chattered despite the din around them. "my aunt nelly's coming to see me this morning," said sarah. "she's driving over to talk to mister waldron about his apple orchard and have a look round. last year she bought the whole orchard for cider; and if she thinks well of it, she'll do the same this year." "i wonder you stop here," answered the other girl, "when you might go to your aunt and work in her public-house. i'd a long sight sooner be there than here." "you wouldn't if you was engaged to mister roberts," answered sarah. "of course seeing him every day makes all the difference. and as to work, there's nothing in it, for everybody's got to work at 'the seven stars,' i can tell you, and the work's never done there." "it's the company i should like," declared the other. "i'd give a lot to see new people every day. in a public they come and go, before you've got time to be sick of the sight of 'em. but here, you see the same people and hear the same voices every day of your blessed life; and sometimes it makes me feel right down wicked." "it's narrowing to the mind i dare say, unless you've got a man like mister roberts with a lot of general ideas," admitted sarah. "but you know very well for that matter you could have a man to-morrow. benny cogle's mate is daft for you." the other sniffed. "it's very certain he ain't got no general ideas, beyond the steam engine. he can only talk about the water wheel to-day and the boilers to-morrow. when i find a chap, he'll have to know a powerful lot more about life than that chap--and shave himself oftener also." "he'd shave every day if you took him, same as mister roberts does," said sarah. elsewhere mr. best was starting a run of the gill spinner, a machine which took sliver straight from the drawing frames and spun it into a large coarse yarn. a novice watched him get the great machine to work, make all ready and then, at a touch, connect it with the power and set it crashing and roaring. its voice was distinctive and might be heard by a practised ear above the prevailing thunder. then came mrs. nelly northover to this unfamiliar scene, peeped in at a door or two and failed to see sarah, who laboured at the other end of the mill. but the hostess of 'the seven stars' knew sabina dinnett and now shook hands with her and then stood and watched in bewildered admiration before a big frame of a hundred spindles. sabina was spinning with a heart very full of happiness. on the previous evening she had promised to wed raymond ironsyde, and her thoughts to-day were winged with over-mastering joy. for life had turned into a glorious triumph; the man who had asked her to marry him was not only a gentleman, but far above the power of any wrong-doing. she knew in the very secret places of her soul, that he could never act away from his honest and noble character; that he was a knight above reproach, incapable of wronging any living thing. there was an element of risk for most girls who fell in love with those better born than themselves; but none for her. other men might deceive and abuse, and suffer outer influences to chill their love, when the secret of it became known; but not this man. his rare nature had been revealed to her; he desired the welfare of all people; he was moved with nothing but the purest principles and loftiest feeling. he would not willingly have brought sorrow to a child. and she had won this unique spirit! he loved her with the love that only such a man was great enough to show; and she echoed it and knew that such a passion must be unchanging, everlasting, built not only to make their united lives unspeakably happy and gloriously content, but to run over also into the lives of others, less blessed, and leave the sad world happier for their happiness. there was not a cloud in the sky of her romance and she shared with him for the moment the joy of secrecy. but that would not be long. they had determined to hug their delicious knowledge for a little while and then proclaim the great tidings to the world. so she followed the old road, along which her sisters had tramped from immemorial time, and would still tramp through the generations to come, when her journey was ended and the wonderful country of man's love explored--its oases visited, its antres endured. now sabina played priestess to the spinning machine--a monster reared above her, stupendous and insatiable. along the summit of the spinning frame, just within reach of tall sabina's uplifted hand, there perched a row of reels from which the finished material descended through series of rollers. the retaining roller aloft gave it to the steel delivery roller which drew the thin, sad-looking stuff with increased speed downward. and here at its moment of most shivering tenuity, when the perfected and purified material seemed reduced to an extremity of weakness, came the magic change. unseen in the whirring complexity of the spinner, it received the momentous gift that translates fibre to yarn. in a moment it changed from stuff a baby's finger could break to thread capable of supporting fifteen pounds of pressure. for now came the twist--that word of mighty significance--and the tiny thread of new-born yarn descended to the spindle, vanished in the whirl of the flier and reappeared, an accomplished miracle, winding on the bobbin beneath. upon the spindle revolved the flier--a fork of steel with guide eye at one leg of the fork--and through the guide eye came the twisted yarn to wind on the bobbin below. there, as the bobbin frame rose and fell, the thread was perfectly delivered to the reel and coiled off layer by layer upon it. mrs. northover stared to see the nature of a spinner's duties and the ease with which she controlled the great, pulsing, roaring frame of a hundred spindles. sabina's eyes were everywhere; her hands were never still; her feet seemed to dance a measure to the thunder of the frame. now she marked a roving reel aloft that was running out, and in a moment she had broken the sliver, swept away the empty reel and hung up a full one. then she drew the new sliver down to the point of the break and, in a moment, the two merged and the thread ran on. now her fingers touched the spindles, as a musician touches the keys, and at a moment's pressure the machine obeyed and the yarn flew on its way obedient. now she cleared a snarl, or catch, where a spindle appeared to have run amuck or created hopeless confusion; now she readjusted the weights that kept a drag on the humming bobbins. her twinkling hands touched and calmed and fed the monster. she knew its whims, corrected its errors, brought to her insensate machine the complement of brain that made it trustworthy. and when the bobbins were all full, she hastened along the frame, turned off the driving power and silenced the huge activity in a moment. then, like lightning, she cut her hundred threads and lifted the bobbins from their spindles until she had a pile upon her shoulder. in a marvellously short time she had doffed the bobbins and set up a hundred empty ones. then the cut threads were readjusted, the power turned on and all was motion again. sabina had never calculated her labours, until raymond took the trouble to do so; then she learned a fact that astonished her. he found that it took a hundred and fifty minutes to spin one thousand and fifty yards; and as each spindle spun two and a half miles in ten hours, her daily accomplishment was two hundred and fifty miles of yarn. "you spin from seventy to eighty thousand miles of single yarn a year," he told her, and the fact expressed in these terms amazed her and her sister spinners. now nelly northover praised the performance. "to think that you slips of girls can do anything so wonderful!" she said. "we talk of the spinners of bridport as if they were nobodies; but upon my conscience, sabina, i never will again. i've always thought i was a pretty busy woman; but i'd drop to the earth i'm sure after an hour of your job, let alone ten hours." sabina laughed. "it's use, mrs. northover. some take to it like a duck to water. i did for one. but some never do. if you come to the frame frightened, you never make a spinner. they're like humans, the spinning frames; if they think you're afraid of them, they'll always bully you, but if you show them you're mistress, it's all right. they have their moods and whims, just as we have. they vary, and you never know how the day will go. sometimes everything runs smoothly; sometimes nothing does. some days you're as fresh at the end as the beginning; some days you're dog-tired and worn out after a proper fight." "there's something hungry and cruel and wicked about 'em to my eye," declared mrs. northover. "we're oftener in fault than the frames, however. sometimes the spinner's to blame herself--she may be out of sorts and heavy-handed and slow on her feet and can't put up her ends right, or do anything right; and often it's the fault of the other girls and the 'rove' comes to the spinner rough; and often, again, it's just luck--good or bad. if the machine always ran perfect, there'd be nothing to do. but you've got to use your wits from the time it starts to the time it stops." "the creature would best me every time," said the visitor, regarding sabina's machine with suspicion and something akin to dislike. the spinner stopped a fouled spindle and rubbed her hand. "sometimes the yarn's always snarling and your drag weights are always burning off and the stuff is full of kinks and the sliver's badly pieced up--that's the drawing minder's fault--and a bad drawing minder means work for me. your niece, sarah, is a very good drawing minder, mrs. northover. then you'll get ballooning, when the thread flies round above the flier, and that means too little strain on the jamb and the bobbin has got to be tempered. and often it's too hot, or else too cold, for hemp and flax must have their proper temperature. but to-day my machine is as good and kind as a nice child, that only asks to be fed and won't quarrel with anybody." mrs. northover, however, saw nothing to praise, for sabina's speech had been broken a dozen times. "if that's what you call working kindly, i'd like to see the wretch in a nasty mood," she said. "i lay you want to slap it sometimes." sabina was mending a drag that had burned off. the drags were heavy weights hanging from strings that pressed upon the side of the bobbins and controlled their speed. the friction often burned these cords through and the weights had to be lifted and retied again and again. "we want a clever invention to put this right," she said. "a lot of good time's wasted with the weights. nobody's thought upon the right thing yet." "i'm properly dazed," confessed nelly northover. "you live and learn without a doubt--nothing's so true as that." her niece had seen her and approached, as the machinery began to still for the dinner-hour. "morning, sarah. can you do such wonders as miss dinnett?" she asked. "no, aunt nelly. i'm a spreader minder. but i'll be a spinner some day, if mr. roberts likes for me to stop, here after i'm married." "sarah would soon learn to spin," declared sabina. then she turned to bid raymond ironsyde good morning. his brother was away from bridport on a tour with one of his travellers, that he might become acquainted with many of his more important customers. raymond, therefore, felt safe and was wasting a good deal of his time. he had brought a basket of fruit from north hill house--a present from estelle--and he began to dispense plums and pears as the women streamed away to dinner. they knew him very well now and treated him with varying degrees of familiarity. early doubts had vanished, and they took him as a good natured, rather 'soft' young man, who meant well and was friendly and harmless. the ill-educated are always suspicious, and levi baggs declared from the first that raymond was nothing better than his brother's spy, placed here for a time to inquire into the ambitions and ideas of the workers and so help the firm to combat the lawful demands of those whom they employed; but this theory was long exploded save in the mind of mr. baggs himself. the people of bridetown mill held raymond on their side, and all were secretly interested to know what would spring of his frank friendship with sabina. in serious moments raymond felt uneasy at the relations he had established with the workers, and mr. best did not hesitate to warn him again and again that discipline was ill served by such easy terms between employer and employed; but his moments of perspicuity were rare, for now his mind and soul were poured into one thought and one only. he was riotously happy in his love affair and could not pretend to his fellow creatures anything he did not feel. always amiable and accessible, his romance made him still more so, and he was constitutionally unable at this moment to take a serious view of anything or anybody. one ray of hope, however, mr. best recognised: raymond did show an honest and genuine interest in the machines. he had told the foreman that he believed the great problem lay there, and where machinery was concerned he could be exceedingly intelligent and rational. this trait in him had a bearing on the future and, in time to come, john best remembered its inception and perceived how it had developed. now, his fruit dispensed, raymond talked with sabina about the spinning frame and instructed mrs. northover, who was an acquaintance of his, in its mysteries. "these are old-fashioned frames," he declared, "and i shan't rest till i've turned them out of the works and got the latest and best. i'm all for the new things, because they help the workers and give good results. in fact, i tell my brother that he's behind the times. that's the advantage of coming to a subject fresh, with your mind unprejudiced. daniel's all bound up in the past and, of course, everything my father did must be right; but i know better. you have to move with the times, and if you don't you'll get left." "that's true enough, mr. ironsyde, whatever your business may be," answered mrs. northover. "of course--look at 'the seven stars.' you're always up to date, and why should my spinners--i call them mine--why should they have to spin on machines that come out of the ark, when, by spending a few thousand, they could have the latest?" "you've got to balance cost against value," answered the innkeeper. "it don't do to dash at things. one likes for the new to be tried on its merits first, and then, if it proves all that's claimed for it, you go in and keep abreast of the times according; but the old will often be found as good as the new; and so mr. daniel no doubt looks before he leaps." "that's cowardly in my opinion," replied raymond. "you must take the chances. of course if you're frightened to back your judgment, then that shows you're a second class man with a second class sort of mind; but if you believe in yourself, as everybody does who is any good, then you go ahead, and if you come a purler now and again, that's nothing, because you get it back in other ways. i'm not frightened to chance my luck, am i, sabina?" "never was such a brave one, i'm sure," she said, conscious of their secret. "if you haven't got nerve, you're no good," summed up the young man; "and if you have got nerve, then use it and break out of the beaten track and welcome your luck and court a few adventures for your soul's sake." "all very well for you men," said mrs. northover. "you can have adventures and no great harm done; but us women, if we try for adventures, we come to a bad end." "nobody's more adventurous than you," answered raymond. "look at your gardens and your teas for a bob ahead. wasn't that an adventure--to give a better tea than anybody in bridport?" "i believe women have quite as many adventures as men," declared sarah northover, who was waiting for her aunt, "only we're quieter about 'em." "we've got to be," answered mrs. northover. "now come on to your mother's, sarah. there's mr. roberts waiting for us outside." in the silent and empty mill raymond dawdled for a few minutes with sabina, talked love and won a caress. then she put on her sunbonnet and he walked with her to the door of her home, left her at 'the magnolias' and went his way with estelle's fruit basket. a great expedition had been planned by the lovers for a forthcoming public holiday. they were going to rise in the dawn, before the rest of the world was awake, and tramp out through west haven to golden cap--the supreme eminence of the south coast, that towers with bright, sponge-coloured precipices above the sea, nigh lyme. chapter xi the old store-house through a misty morning, made silver bright by the risen sun, sabina and raymond started for their august holiday. they left bridetown, passed through a white fog on the water-meadows and presently climbed to the cliffs and pursued their way westward. now the sun was over the sea and the channel gleamed and flashed under a wakening, westerly breeze. to west haven they came, where the cliffs break and the rivers from bridport flow through sluices into the little harbour. among the ancient, weather-worn buildings standing here with their feet in the sand drifts, was one specially picturesque. a long and lofty mass it presented, and a hundred years of storm and salt-laden winds had toned it to rich colour and fretted its roof and walls with countless stains. it was a store, three stories high, used of old time for merchandise, but now sunk to rougher uses. in its great open court, facing north, were piled thousands of tons of winnowed sand; its vaults were barred and empty; its glass windows were shattered; rust had eaten away its metal work and rot reduced its doors and sashes to powder. rich red and auburn was its face, with worn courses of brickwork like wounds gashed upon it. a staircase of stone rose against one outer wall, and aloft, in the chambers approached thereby, was laid up a load of sweet smelling, deal planks brought by a norway schooner. here too, were all manner of strange little chambers, some full of old nettings, others littered with the marine stores of the fishermen, who used the ruin for their gear. the place was rat-haunted and full of strange holes and corners. even by day, with the frank sunshine breaking through boarded windows and broken roof, it spoke of incident and adventure; by night it was eloquent of the past--of smugglers, of lawless deeds, of napoleonic spies. raymond and sabina stood and admired the old store. to her it was something new, for her activities never brought her to west haven; but he had been familiar with it from childhood, when, with his brother, he had spent school holidays at west haven, caught prawns from the pier, gone sailing with the fisher folk, and spent many a wet day in the old store-house. he smiled upon it now, told her of his childish adventures and took her in to see an ancient chamber where he and daniel had often played their games. "our nurse used to call it a 'cubby hole,'" he said. "and she was always; jolly thankful when she could pilot us in here from the dangers of the cliffs and the old pier, or the boats in the harbour. the place is just the same--only shrunk. the plaster from the walls is all mouldering away, or you might see the pictures we used to draw upon them with paint from the fishermen's paint pots. down below they bring the sand and grade it for the builders. they've carted away millions of tons of sand from the foreshore in the last fifty years and will cart away millions more, no doubt, for the sea always renews it." she wandered with him and listened half-dreaming. the air for them was electric with their love and they yearned for each other. "i wish we could spend the whole blessed day in this little den together," he said suddenly putting his arms round her; and that brought her to some sense of reality, but none of danger. not a tremor of peril in his company had she ever felt, for did not perfect love cast out fear, and why should a woman hesitate to trust herself with one, to her, the most precious in the world? he suggested dawdling awhile; but she would not. "we are to eat our breakfast at eype beach," she reminded him, "and that's a mile or two yet." so they went on their way again, breasted the grassy cliffs westward of the haven, admired the fog bank touched with gold that hung over the river flats, praised bridport wakening under its leafy woods, marked the herons on the river mud in the valley and the sparrow-hawk poised aloft above the downs. she took his arm up the hill and, like birds themselves, they went lightly together, strong, lissome, radiant in health and youth and the joy of a shared worship that made all things sweet. they talked of the great day when the world was to know their secret. the secret itself proved so attractive to both that they agreed to keep it a little longer. their shared knowledge proved amusing and each told the other of the warnings and advice and fears imparted by careful friends of both sexes, who knew not the splendid truth. how small the wisdom of the wise appeared--how peddling and foolish and mean--contrasted with their superb trust. how sordid were the ways of the world, its fears and suspicions, from the vantage point to which they had climbed. material things even suggested this thought to raymond, and when before noon, they stood on the green crown of golden cap, with the earth and sea spread out around them in mighty harmonies of blue and green, he told sabina so. "we ought to be perched on a place like this," he said, "because we are to the rest of the world, in mind and in happiness, as we are here in body too." "only the sea gulls can go higher, and i always feel they're more like spirits than birds," she answered. "i've got no use for spirits," he told her. "the splendid thing about us is that we're flesh and blood and spirit too. that's the really magnificent combination for happy creatures. a spirit at best can only be an unfinished thing. people make such a fuss about escaping from the flesh. what the deuce do you want to escape from your flesh for, if it's healthy and tough and fine?" "when they get old, they feel like that." "let the old comfort the old then," he said. "i'm proud of my flesh and bones, and so are you, and so we ought to be; and if i had to give them up and die, i should hate it. and if i found myself in another world, a poor shivering idea and nothing else, without flesh and bones to cover me, or clothes to cover them, i should feel ashamed of myself. and they might call it paradise as much as they liked, but it would be hades to me. of course many of the ghosts would pretend that they liked it; but i bet none would really--so jolly undignified to be nothing but an idea." she laughed. "that's just what i feel too; and of course it's utterly wrong of us," she said. "it shows we have got a lot to learn. we only feel like this because we're young. perhaps young ghosts begin like that; but i expect they soon get past it." "i should never want to get past it," he said. he rolled over on the grass and played with her hand. "how could you love and cuddle a ghost?" "no doubt you could love it. i don't suppose you could cuddle it. you wouldn't want to." "no--that's true, sabina. if this cliff carried away this moment, and we were both smashed to pulp and arrived together in another world without any clothes and both horribly down on our luck--but it's too ghastly a picture. i should howl all through eternity--to think what i'd missed." they talked nonsense, played with their thoughts and came nearer and nearer together. one tremendous and masterful impulse drew them on--a raging hunger and thirst on his part and something not widely different on hers. again and again they caught themselves in each other's arms, then broke off, grew serious and strove to steady the trend of their desires. golden cap was a lonely spot and few visited it that day. once a middle-aged man and woman surprised them where they sat behind a rock near the edge of the great precipices. the man had grown warm and mopped his face and let the wind cool it. he was ugly, clumsily built, and displayed large calves in knickerbockers and a hot, bald head. "how hideous human beings can be," said raymond after they had gone. "he wasn't hideous in his wife's eyes, i expect." "middle-age is mercifully blind no doubt to its own horrors," he said. "you can respect and even admire old age, like other ruins, if it's picturesque, but middle-age is deadly always." he smoked and they dawdled the hours away until sabina declared it was tea time. then they sought a little inn at chidcock and spent an hour there. the weather changed as the sun went westerly; the wind sank to a sigh and brought with it rain clouds. but they were unconscious of such accidents. sabina longed for the cliffs again, so they turned homeward by seaton and thorncombe beacon and eype mouth. their talk ran upon marriage and raymond swore that he could not wait long, while she urged the importance to him of so doing. "'twould shake your brother badly if you wed yet awhile, be sure of that," she said. "he would say that you weren't thinking of the work, and it might tempt him to change his mind about making you a partner." "oh damn him. don't talk about him--or work either. i shall never want to work again, or think of work, or anything else on earth till--till--what does he matter anyway--or his ideas? it's a free country and a man has the right to plan his life his own way. if he wants to get the best out of me, he'd better give me five hundred a year to-morrow and tell me to marry you." "we don't want five hundred. that's a fortune. i'm a good manager and know very well how far money can go. with your money and mine." "yours? you won't have any--except mine. you'll stop work then and live--not at bridetown anyway." "i was forgetting. it will be funny not to spin." "you'll spin my happiness and my life and my fate and my children. you'll have plenty of spinning. i'll spin for you and you'll spin for me." "you darling boy! i know you'll spin for me." "work! what's the good of working for yourself?" he asked. "who the devil cares about himself? it's because i don't care a button for myself that i haven't bothered about the mill. but when it comes to you--! you're worth working for! i haven't begun to work yet. i'll surprise daniel presently and everybody else, when i fairly get into my stride. i didn't ask for it and i didn't want it; but as i've got to work, i will work--for you. and you'll live to see that my brother and his ways and plans and small outlook are all nothing to the way i shall grasp the business. and he'll see, too, when i get the lead by sheer better understanding. and that won't be my work, sabina. it will be yours. nothing's worth too much toil for you. and if you couldn't inspire a man to wonderful things, then no woman could." this fit of exaltation passed and the craving for her dominated him again and took psychological shape. he grew moody and abstracted. his voice had a new note in it to her ear. he was fighting with himself and did not guess what was in her mind, or how unconsciously it echoed to his. at dusk the rain came and they ran before a sudden storm down the green hills back to west haven. the place already sank into night and a lamp or two twinkled through the grey. it was past eight o'clock and raymond decided for dinner. "we'll go to the 'brit arms,'" he said, "and feed and get dry. the rain won't last." "i told mother i should be home by nine." "well, you told her wrong. d'you think i'm going to chuck away an hour of this day for a thousand mothers?" when they sauntered out into the night again at ten o'clock, the haven had nearly gone to sleep and the rain was past. in the silence they heard the river rushing through the sluices to the sea; and then they set their faces homeward. but they had to pass the old store-house. it loomed a black, amorphous pile heaved up against the stars, and the man's footsteps dragged as he came to the gaping gates and silent court. he stopped and she stopped. his voice was gruff and queer and half-choked. "come," he said, "i'm in hell, and you've got to turn it to heaven." she murmured something, but he put his arm round her and they vanished into the mass of silent darkness. it was past midnight when they parted at the door of sabina's home and he gave her the cool kiss of afterwards. "now we are one, body and soul, for ever," she whispered to him. "by god, yes," he said. chapter xii credit the mind of raymond ironsyde was now driven and tossed by winds of passion which, blowing against the tides of his own nature, created unrest and storm. a strain of chivalry belonged to him and at first this conquered. he felt the magnitude of sabina's sacrifice and his obligation to a love so absolute. in this spirit he remained for a time, during which their relations were of the closest. they spoke of marriage; they even appointed the day on which the announcement of their betrothal should be made. and though he had gone thus far at her entreaty, always recognising when with her the reasonableness of her wish, after she was gone, the cross seas of his own character, created a different impression and swept the pattern of sabina's will away. for a time the intrigue of meeting her, the planning and the plotting amused him. he imagined the world was blind and that none knew, or guessed, the truth. but bridetown, having eyes as many and sharp as any other hamlet, had long been familiar with the facts. the transparent veil of their imagined secrecy was already rent, though the lovers did not guess it. then raymond's chivalry wore thinner. ruling passions, obscured for a season by the tremendous experience of his first love and its success, began by slow degrees to rise again, solid and challenging, through the rosy clouds. his love, while he shouted to himself that it increased rather than diminished, none the less assumed a change of colour and contour. the bright vapours still shone and sabina could always kindle ineffable glow to the fabric; but she away, they shrank a little and grew less radiant. the truth of himself and his ambitions showed through. at such times he dinned on the ears of his heart that sabina was his life. at other times when the fading fire astonished him by waking a shiver, he blamed fate, told himself that but for the lack of means, he would make a perfect home for sabina; worship and cherish her; fill her life with happiness; pander to her every whim; devote a large portion of his own time to her; do all that wit and love could devise for her pleasure--all but one thing. he did not want to marry her. with that deed demanding to be done, the necessity for it began to be questioned sharply. he was not a marrying man and, in any case, too young to commit himself and his prospects to such a course. he assured himself that he had never contemplated immediate marriage; he had never suggested it to sabina. she herself had not suggested it; for what advantage could be gained by such a step? while a thousand disasters might spring therefrom, not the least being a quarrel with his brother, there was nothing to be said for it. he began to suspect that he could do little less likely to assure sabina's future. he clung to his strand of chivalry at this time, like a drowning man to a straw; but other ingredients of his nature dragged him away. selfishness is the parent of sophistry, and raymond found himself dismissing old rules of morality and inherited instincts of religion and justice for more practical and worldly values. he told himself it was as much for sabina's sake as for his own that he must now respect the dictates of common-sense. there came a day in october, when the young man sat in his office at the mills, smoking and absorbed with his own affairs. the river bride was broken above the works, and while her way ran south of them, the mill-race came north. its labour on the wheel accomplished, the current turned quickly back to the river bed again. from raymond's window he could see the main stream, under a clay bank, where the martins built their nests in spring, and where rush and sedge and an over-hanging sallow marked her windings. the sunshine found the stickles, and where bride skirted the works lay a pool in which trout moved. water buttercups shone silver white in this back-water at spring-time and the water-voles had their haunts in the bank side. beyond stretched meadow-lands and over the hill that rose behind them climbed the road to the cliffs. hounds had ascended this road two hours before and their music came faintly from afar to raymond's ear, then ceased. already his relations with sabina had lessened his will to pleasure in other directions. his money had gone in gifts to her, leaving no spare cash for the old amusements; but the distractions, that for a time had seemed so tame contrasted with the girl, cried louder and reminded how necessary and healthy they were. life seemed reduced to the naked question of cash. he was sorry for himself. it looked hard, outrageous, wrong, that tastes so sane and simple as his own, could not be gratified. a horseman descended the hill and raymond recognised him. it was neddy motyer. his horse was lame and he walked beside it. raymond smiled to himself, for neddy, though a zealous follower of hounds, lacked judgment and often met with disaster. ten minutes later neddy himself appeared. "come to grief," he said. "horse put his foot into a rabbit hole and cut his knee on a flint. i've just taken him to the vet, here to be bandaged, so i thought i'd look you up. why weren't you out?" "i've got more important things to think about for the minute." neddy helped himself to a cigarette. "growing quite the man of business," he said. "what will power you've got! a few of us bet five to one you wouldn't stick it a month; but here you are. only i can tell you this, ray: you're wilting under it. you're not half the man you were. you're getting beastly thin--looking a worm in fact." raymond laughed. "i'm all right. plenty of time to make up for lost time." "it's metal more attractive, i believe," hazarded motyer. "a little bird's been telling us things in bridport. keep clear of the petticoats, old chap--the game's never worth the candle. i speak from experience." "do you? i shouldn't think any girl would have much use for you." "oh yes, they have--plenty of them. but once bit, twice shy. i had an adventure last year." "i don't want to hear it." neddy showed concern. "you're all over the shop, ray. these blessed works are knocking the stuffing out of you and spoiling your temper. are you coming to the 'smoker' at 'the tiger' next month?" "no." "well, do. you want bucking. it'll be a bit out of the common. jack buckler's training at 'the tiger' for his match with solly blades. you know--eliminating round for middle-weight championship. and he's going to spar three rounds with our boy from the tannery--tim chick." "i heard about it from one of our girls here--a cousin of tim's. but i'm off that sort of thing." "since when?" "you can't understand, ned; but life's too short for everything. perhaps you'll have to turn to work someday. then you'll know." "you don't work from eight o'clock at night till eleven anyway. take my tip and come to the show and make a night of it. waldron's going to be there. he's hunting this morning." "i know." the dinner bell had rung and now there came a knock at raymond's door. then sabina entered and was departing again, but her lover bade her stay. "don't go, sabina. this is my friend, mr. motyer--miss dinnett." motyer, remembering raymond's recent snub, was exceedingly charming to sabina. he stopped and chatted another five minutes, then mentioned the smoking concert again and so took his departure. raymond spoke slightingly of him when he had gone. "he's no good, really," he said. "an utter waster and only a hanger-on of sport--can't do anything himself but talk. now he'll tell everybody in bridport about you coming up here in the dinner-hour. come and cheer me up. i'm bothered to death." he kissed her and put his arms round her, but she would not stop. "i can't stay here," she said. "i want to walk up the hill with you. if you're bothered, so am i, my darling." he put on his hat and they went out together. "i've had a nasty jar," she told him. "people are beginning to say things, raymond--things that you wouldn't like to think are being said." "i thought we rose superior to the rest of the world, and what it said and what it thought." "we do and we always have. we're not moral cowards either of us. but there are some things. you don't want me to be insulted. you don't want either of us to lose the respect of people." "we can't have our cake and eat it too, i suppose," he said rather carelessly. "personally i don't care a straw whether people respect me, or despise me, as long as i respect myself. the people that matter to me respect me all right." "well, the people that matter to me, don't," she answered with a flash of colour. "we'll leave you out, raymond, since you're satisfied; but i'm not satisfied. it isn't right, or fair, that i should begin to get sour looks from the women here, where i used to have smiles; and looks from the men--hateful looks--looks that no decent woman ought to suffer. and my mother has heard a lot of lies and is very miserable. so i think it's high time we let everybody know we're engaged. and you must think so, too, after what i've told you, ray dear." "certainly," he answered, "not a shadow of doubt about it. and if i saw any man insult you, i should delight to thrash him on the spot--or a dozen of them. how the devil do people find out about one? i thought we'd been more than clever enough to hoodwink a dead alive place like this." "will you let me tell mother, to-day? and sally groves, and one or two of my best friends at the mill? do, raymond--it's only fair to me now." had she left unspoken her last sentence, he might have agreed; but it struck a wrong note on his ear. it sounded selfish; it suggested that sabina was concerned with herself and indifferent to the complications she had brought into his life. for a moment he was minded to answer hastily; but he controlled himself. "it's natural you should feel like that; so do i, of course. we must settle a date for letting it out. i'll think about it. i'd say this minute, and you know i'm looking forward quite as much as you are to letting the world know my luck; but unfortunately you've just raised the question at an impossible moment, sabina." "why? surely nothing can make it impossible to clear my good name, raymond?" "i've got a good name, too. at least, i imagine so." "our names are one, or should be." "not yet, exactly. i wanted to spare you bothers. i do spare you all the bothers i can; but, of course, i've got my own, too, like everybody else. you see it's rather vital to your future, which you're naturally so keen about, sabina, that i keep in with my brother. you'll admit that much. well, for the moment i'm having the deuce of a row with him. you know what an exacting beggar he is. he will have his pound of flesh, and he has no sympathy for anything on two legs but himself. i asked him for a fortnight's holiday." "a fortnight's holiday, raymond!" "yes--that's not very wonderful, is it? but, of course, you can't understand what this work is to me, because you look at it from a different angle. anyway i want a holiday--to get right away and consider things; and he won't let me have it. and finding that, i lost my temper. and if, at the present moment, daniel hears that we're engaged to be married, sabina, it's about fifty to one that he'd chuck me altogether and stop my dirty little allowance also." they had reached the gate of 'the magnolias,' and sabina did a startling thing. she turned from him and went down the path to the back entrance without another word. but this he could not stand. his heart smote him and he called her with such emotion that she also was sorrowful and came back to the gate. "good god! you frightened me," he said. "this is a quarrel, sabina--our first and last, i hope. never, never let anything come between us. that's unthinkable and i won't have it. you must give and take, my precious girl. and so must i. but look at it. what on earth happens to us if daniel fires me out of the mill?" "he's a just man," she answered. "dislike him as we may, he's a just man and you need not fear him, or anybody else, if you do the right thing." "you oppose your will to mine, then, sabina?" "i don't know your will. i thought i did; i thought i understood you so well by now and was learning better and better how to please you. but now i tell you i am being wronged, and you say nothing can be done." "i never said so. i'm not a blackguard, sabina, and you ought to know that as well as the rest of the world. i'm poor, unfortunately, and the poor have got to be politic. daniel may be just, but it's a narrow-minded, hypocritical justice, and if i tell him i'm engaged to you, he'll sack me. that's the plain english of it." "i don't believe he would." "well, i know he would; and you must at least allow me to know more about him than you do. and so i ask you whether it is common-sense to tell him what's going to happen, for the sake of a few clod-hoppers, who matter to nobody, or--" "but, but, how long is it to go on? why do you shrink from doing now what you wanted to do at first?" "i don't shrink from it at all. i only intend to choose the proper time and not give the show away at a moment when to do so will be to ruin me." "'give the show away,'" she quoted bitterly. "you can look me in the face and say a thing like that! it's only 'a show' to you; but it's my life to me." "i'm sorry i used the expression. words aren't anything. it's my life to me, too. and i've got to think for both of us. in a week, or ten days, i'll eat humble pie and climb down and grovel to daniel. then, when i'm pardoned, we'll tell everybody. it won't kill you to wait another fortnight anyway. and in the meantime we'd better see less of each other, since you're getting so worried about what your friends say about us." now he had said too much. sabina would have agreed to the suggestion of a fortnight's waiting, but the proposal that they should see less of each other both hurt and angered her. the quarrel culminated. "caution seems to me rather a cowardly thing, raymond, from you to me. i tell you that your wife's good name is at stake. for, since you've called me your wife so often, i suppose i may do the same. and if you're so careless for my credit, then i must be jealous for it myself." "and my credit can go to the devil, i suppose?" then she flamed, struck to the root of the matter and left him. "if the fact that you're engaged to me, by every sacred tie of honour, ruins your credit--then tell yourself what you are," she said, and her voice rose to a note he had never heard before. this time he did not call her back, but went his own way up the hill. chapter xiii in the foreman's garden mr. best was a good gardener and cultivated fruit and flowers to perfection. his rambling patch of ground ran beside the river and some of his apple trees bent over it. pear trees also he grew, and a medlar and a quince. but flowers he specially loved. his house was bowered in roses to the thatched roof, and in the garden grew lilies and lupins, a hundred roses and many bright tracts of shining, scented blossoms. now, however, they had vanished and on a saturday afternoon john best was tidying up, tending a bonfire and digging potatoes. he was generous of his treasures and the girls never hesitated to ask him for a rose in june. ancient mrs. chick, too, won an annual gift from the foreman. down one side of his garden ranged great elder bushes, and mrs. chick made of the blooth in summer time, a decoction very precious for throat troubles. now best stood for a moment and regarded a waste corner where grew nettles. somebody approached him in this act of contemplation and he spoke. "i often wonder if it would be worth while making an experiment with stinging nettles," he said to ernest churchouse, who was the visitor. "they have a spinnable fibre, john, without a doubt." "they have, mister churchouse, and they scutch well and can be wrought into textiles. but there's no temptation to make trial. i'm only thinking in a scientific spirit." he swept up the fallen nettles for his bonfire. "i've come for a few balls of the rough twine," said mr. churchouse. "and welcome." an unusual air of gloom sat on mr. best and the other was quick to observe it. "all well, i hope?" he said. "not exactly. i'm rather under the weather; but i dare say it's my own fault." "it often is," admitted ernest; "but in my experience that doesn't make it any better. in fact, the most disagreeable sort of depression is that which we know we are responsible for ourselves. when other people annoy us, we have the tonic effect of righteous indignation; but not when we annoy ourselves and know ourselves to blame." "i wouldn't go so far as to say it's all my own fault, however," answered mr. best. "it is and it isn't my fault. to be a father of children is your own fault in a manner of speaking; and yet to be a father is not any wrong, other things being as they should." "on the contrary, it's part of the whole duty of man--other things being equal, as you say." "we look to see ourselves reflected in our offspring, yet how often do we?" asked the foreman. "perhaps we might oftener, if we didn't suffer from constitutional inability to recognise ourselves, john. i've thought of this problem, let me tell you, for you are one of many who feel the same. so far as i can see, parents worry about what their children look like to them; but never about what they look like to their children." "you speak as a childless widower," answered the other. "believe me, mister churchouse, children nowadays never hesitate to tell us what we look like to them--or what they think of us either. even my sailor boy will do it." "it's the result of education," said ernest. "there is no doubt that education has altered the outlook of the child on the parent. the old relation has disappeared and the fifth commandment does not make its old appeal. children are better educated than their parents." "and what's the result? they'd kill the home goose that lays the golden eggs to-morrow, if they could. in fact, they're doing it. those that remain reasonable and obedient to their fathers and mothers feel themselves martyrs. that's the best sort; but it ain't much fun having a house full of martyrs whether or no; and it ain't much fun to know that your offspring are merely enduring you, as a necessary affliction. as for the other sort, who can't stick home life and old-fashioned ideas, they just break loose and escape as quick as ever they know how--and no loss either." "a gloomy picture," admitted mr. churchouse; "but, like every other picture, it has two sides. i think time may be trusted to put it right. after the young have left the nest, and hopped out into the world, and been sharply pecked now and again, they begin to see home in its true perspective and find that there is nothing like the affection of a mother and father." "they don't want anything of that," declared john. "if you stand for sense and experience and try to learn them, they think you're a fossil and out of sight of reality; and if you attempt to be young and interest yourself in their wretched little affairs and pay the boy with the boys and the girl with the girls, they think you're a fool." "no doubt they see through any effort on the part of the middle-aged to be one with them," admitted ernest. "and for my part i deprecate such attempts. let us grow old like gentlemen, john, and if they cannot perceive the rightness and stateliness of age, so much the worse for them. some of us, however, err very gravely in this matter. there are men who have not the imagination to see themselves growing old; they only feel it. and they try to hide their feelings and think they are also hiding the fact. such men, of course, become the laughing-stocks of the rising generation and the shame of their own." "all the young are alike, so i needn't grumble at my own family for that matter," confessed mr. best. "their generation is all equally headstrong and opinionated--high and low, the same. if i've hinted to raymond ironsyde once, i've hinted a thousand times, that he's not going about his business in a proper spirit." "he is at present obviously in love, john, and must not therefore be judged. but i share your uneasiness." "it's wrong, and he knows it, and she ought to know it, too. sabina, i mean. i should have given her credit for more sense myself. i thought she had plenty of self-respect and brains too." "things are coming to a crisis in that quarter," prophesied ernest. "it is a quality of love that it doesn't stand still, john; and something is going to happen very shortly. either it will be given out that they are betrothed, or else the thing will fade away. sabina has very fine instincts; and on his side, he would, i am sure, do nothing unbecoming his family." "he has--plenty," declared mr. best. "nothing about which there would not be two opinions, believe me. the fact that he has let it go so far makes me think they are engaged. the young will go their own way about things." "if it was all right, sabina dinnett wouldn't be so miserable," argued john best. "she was used to be as cheerful as a bird on a bough; and now she is not." "merely showing that the climax is at hand. i have seen myself lately that sabina was unhappy and even taxed her with it; but she denied it. her mother, however, knows that she is a good deal perturbed. we must hope for the best." "and what is the best?" asked john. "there is not the slightest difficulty about that; the best is what will happen," replied mr. churchouse. "as a good christian you know it perfectly well." but the other shook his head. "that won't do," he answered, "that's only evasion, mister ernest. there's lots and lots of things happen, and the better the christian you are, the better you know they ought not to happen. and whether they are engaged to be married, or whether they quarrel, trouble must come of it. if people do wrong, it's no good for christians to say the issue must be right. that's simply weak-minded. you might as well argue nothing wrong ever does happen, since nothing can happen without the will of god." "in a sense that's true," admitted ernest. "so true, in fact, that we'd better change the subject, john. we thinking and religious men know there's a good deal of thin ice in christianity, where we've got to walk with caution and not venture without a guide. one needs professional theologians to skate over these dangerous places safely. but, for my part, i have my reason well under control, as every religious person should. i can perfectly accept the fact that evil happens, and yet that nothing happens without the sanction of an all powerful and all good god." "you'd better come and get your string then," said mr. best. "and long may your fine faith flourish. you're a great lesson to us people cursed with too much common-sense, i'm sure." "where our religion is concerned, we should be too proud to submit it to common-sense," declared ernest. "common-sense is all very well in everyday affairs; in fact, this world would not prosper without it; but i strongly deprecate common-sense as applied to the next world, john. the next world, from what one glimpses of it in prophecy and revelation, is outside the category of common-sense altogether." "i stand corrected," said mr. best. "but it's a startler--to leave common-sense out of what matters most to thinking men." "we shall be altered in the twinkling of an eye," explained ernest, "and so, doubtless, will be our humble, earthly intelligence, our reliance on reason and other mundane virtues. from the heavenly standpoint, earth will seem a very sordid business altogether, i suspect, and even our good qualities appear very peddling. in fact, we may find, john, that we were in the habit of putting up statues to the wrong persons, and discover the most unexpected people at the right hand of the throne." "i dare say we shall," admitted mr. best; "for if common-sense is going by the board and the virtues all to be scrapped also, then we that think we stand had better take heed lest we fall--you and me included, mister churchouse. however, i'm glad to say i'm not with you there. the book tells us very clear what's good and what's evil; and whatever else heaven will do, it won't go back on the book. i suppose you'll grant that much?" "most certainly," said the elder. "most certainly and surely, john. that, at least, we can rely upon. our stronghold lies in the fact that we know good from evil, and though we don't know what 'infinite' goodness is, we do know that it is still goodness. therefore, though god is infinitely good, he is still good; the difference between his goodness and ours is one of degree, not kind. so metaphysics and quibbling leave us quite safe, which is all that really matters." "i hope you're right," answered best. "life puts sharp questions to religion, and i can't pretend my religion's always clever enough to answer them." ernest took his twine and departed; but the subject of raymond and sabina was not destined to slumber, for now he met raymond on his way to north hill house. he asked him to come into tea and, to his surprise, the young man refused. "that means sabina isn't at home then," said mr. churchouse blandly. "i don't know where she is." at this challenge ernest spoke and struck into the matter very directly. he blamed raymond and feared that his course of action was not that of a gentleman. "you would be the very first to protest and criticise unfavourably, my dear boy, if you saw anybody else treating a girl in this fashion," he concluded. "i'm going to clear it up," answered the culprit. "don't you worry. these things can't be done in a minute. this infernal place is always so quick to think evil, apparently, and judges decent people by its own dirty opinions. i've asked daniel to give me a holiday, so that i may go away and think over life in general. and he won't give me a holiday. it's very clear to me, uncle ernest, that no self-respecting man would be able to work under daniel for long. things are coming to a climax. i doubt if i shall be able to keep on here." "you evade the subject, which is your friendship with sabina, raymond. as to daniel, there ought to be no difficulty whatever, and you know it very well in your heart and head. your protest deceives nobody. but sabina?" here the conversation ceased abruptly, for raymond committed an unique offence. he told mr. churchouse to go to the devil, and left him, standing transfixed with amazement, at the outer gate of 'the magnolias.' with the insult to himself ernest was not much concerned. his regretful astonishment centred in the spectacle of raymond's downfall. "to what confusion and disorder must his mind have been reduced, before he could permit himself such a lapse," reflected mr. churchouse. chapter xiv the concert the effect of raymond's attitude on sabina's mind proved very serious. it awoke in her first anger and then dismay. she was a woman of fine feeling and quick perception. love and ambition had pointed the same road, and the hero, being, as it seemed, without guile, had convinced her that she might believe every word that he spoke and trust everything that he did. she had never contemplated any sacrifice before marriage, and, indeed, when it came, the consummation of their worship proved no sacrifice to her, but an added joy. less than many a married woman had she mourned the surrender, for in her eyes it made all things complete between them and bound them inseparably with the golden links of love and honour. when, therefore, upon this perfect union, sinister light from without had broken, she felt it no great thing to ask raymond that their betrothal should be known. reason and justice demanded it. she did not for an instant suppose that he would hesitate, but rather expected him to blame his own blindness in delay. but finding he desired further postponement, she was struck with consternation that rose to wrath; and when he persisted, she became alarmed and now only considered what best she might do for her own sake. her work suffered and her friends perceived that all was not well with her. with the shortening days and bad weather, the meetings with raymond became more difficult to pursue and she saw less of him. they had patched their quarrel and were friendly enough, but the perfect understanding had departed. they preserved a common ground and she did not mention subjects likely to annoy him. he appeared to be working steadily, seldom came into the shops and was more reserved to everybody in the mill. sabina had not yet spoken to her mother, though many times tempted to do so. her loyalty proved strong in the time of trial; but the greater the strain on herself, the greater the strain on her love for the man. she told herself that no such cruel imposition should have been placed upon her; and she could not fail closely to question the need for it. why did raymond demand continued silence even in the face of offences put upon her by her neighbours? how could he endure to hear that people had been rude to her, and uttered coarse jests in her hearing aimed only at her ear? would a man who loved her, as she deserved to be loved, suffer this? then fear grew. with her he was always kind--kind and considerate in every matter but the vital matter. yet there were differences. the future, in which he had delighted to revel, bored him now, and when she spoke of it, he let the matter drop. he was on good terms with his brother for the moment, and appeared to be winning an increasing interest in his business to the exclusion of other affairs. he would become animated on the subject of sabina's work, rather than the subject of sabina. he stabbed her unconsciously with many little shafts of speech, yet knew not that he was doing so. he grew more grave and self-controlled in their relations. her personal touch began to lose power and waken his answering fire less often. it was then that she found herself with child, and knowing that despite much to cause concern, raymond was still himself, she rejoiced, since this fact must terminate his wavering and establish her future. here at least was an event beyond his power to evade. he loved her and had promised to wed her. he was a man who might be weak, but had never explicitly behaved in a manner to make her tremble for such a situation as the present. procrastination ceased to be possible. what now had happened must demand instant recognition of her rights, and that given, she assured herself the future held no terrors. now he must marry her, or contradict his own record as a gentleman and a man of honour. yet she told him with a tremor and, until the last moment, could not banish from her heart the shadow of fear. he had never spoken of this possibility, or taken it into account, and she felt, seeing his silence, that it would be a shock. the news came to him as they walked from the mill on a saturday when the works closed at noon. he was on his way to bridport and she went beside him for a mile through the lanes. for a moment he said nothing, then, seeing the road empty, he put his arms round her and kissed her. "you clever girl!" he said. "don't tell me you're sorry, for god's sake, or i shall go and drown myself," she answered. her face was anxious and she looked haggard in the cold light of a sunless, winter day. but a genuine, generous emotion had touched him, and with it woke pangs of remorse and contrition. he knew very well what she had been suffering mentally on his account, and he knew that the frightened voice in which she told him the news and the trembling mouth and the tear in her eyes ought not to have been there. every fine feeling in the man and every honest instinct was aroused. for the moment he felt glad that no further delay was possible. his self-respect had already suffered; but now life offered him swift means to regain it. he did not, however, think of himself while his arms were round her; he thought of her and her only, while they remained together. "'sorry'?" he said. "can you think i'm sorry? i'm only sorry that i didn't do something sooner and marry you before this happened, sabina. good lord--it throws a lot of light. i swear it does. i'm glad--i'm honestly glad--and you must be glad and proud and happy and all the rest of it. we'll be married in a month. and you must tell your mother we're engaged to-day; and i'll tell my people. don't you worry. damn me, i've been worrying you a lot lately; but it was only because i couldn't see straight. now i do and i'll soon atone." she wept with thankful heart and begged him to turn with her and tell mrs. dinnett himself. but that he would not do. "it will save time if i go on to bridport and let aunt jenny hear about it. of course the youngster is our affair and nobody need know about that. but we must be married in a jiffey and--you must give notice at the mill to-day. go back now and tell best." "how wonderful you are!" she said. "and yet i feared you might be savage about it." "more shame to me that you should have feared it," he answered; "for that means that i haven't been sporting. but you shall never be frightened of me again, sabina. to see you frightened hurts me like hell. if ever you are again, it will be your fault, not mine." she left him very happy and a great cloud seemed to fall off her life as she returned to the village. she blamed herself for ever doubting him. her love rose from its smothered fires. she soared to great heights and dreamed of doing mighty things for raymond. straight home to her mother she went and told mrs. dinnett of her engagement and swiftly approaching marriage. the light had broken on her darkness at last and she welcomed the child as a blessed forerunner of good. the coming life had already made her love it. meantime raymond preserved his cheerful spirit for a season. but existence never looked the same out of sabina's presence and before he had reached bridport, his mood changed. he recognised very acutely his duty and not a thought stirred in him to escape it; but what for a little while had appeared more than duty and promised to end mean doubts and fears for ever, began now to present itself under other aspects. the joy of a child and a wife and a home faded. for what sort of a home could he establish? he leaned to the hope that daniel might prove generous under the circumstances and believed that his aunt might throw her weight on his side and urge his brother to make adequate provision; but these reflections galled him unspeakably, for they were sordid. they argued weakness in him. he must come as a beggar and eat humble pie; he must for ever sacrifice his independence and, with it, everything that had made life worth living. the more he thought upon it, the more he began to hate the necessity of taking this story to his relations. better men than he had lived in poverty and risen from humble beginnings. it struck him that if he went his own way, redoubled his official energies and asked for nothing more on the strength of his marriage, his own self-respect would be preserved as well as the respect of his aunt and brother. he pictured himself as a hero, yet knew that what he contemplated was merely the conduct of an honest man. the thought of approaching anybody with his intentions grew more distasteful, and by the time he reached bridport, he had determined not to mention the matter, at any rate until the following day. so great a thing demanded more consideration than he could give it for the moment, because his whole future depended on the manner in which he broke it to his people. it was true that the circumstances admitted of no serious delay; sabina must, of course, be considered before everything; but twenty-four hours would make no difference to her, while it might make all the difference to him. he reduced the courses of action to two. either he would announce that he was going to be married immediately as a fact accomplished; or he would invite his aunt's sympathies, use diplomacy and win her to his side with a view to approaching daniel. daniel appeared the danger, because it was quite certain that he would strongly disapprove of raymond's marriage. this certainty induced another element of doubt. for suppose, far from seeking to help raymond with his new responsibilities, daniel took the opposite course and threatened to punish him for any such stupidity? suppose that his brother, from a personal standpoint, objected and backed his objection with a definite assurance that raymond must leave the mill if he took this step? the only way out of that would be to tell daniel that he was compromised and must wed sabina for honour. but raymond felt that he would rather die than make any such confession. his whole soul rose with loathing at the thought of telling the truth to one so frozen and unsympathetic. moreover there was not only himself to be considered, but sabina. what chance would she have of ever winning daniel to acknowledge and respect her if the facts came to his ears? raymond thought himself into a tangle and found a spirit of great depression settling upon him. but, at last, he decided to sleep on the situation. he did not go home, but turned his steps to 'the tiger,' ate his luncheon and drank heartily with it. then he went to see a boxer, who was training with mr. gurd, and presently when neddy motyer appeared, he turned into the billiard room and there killed some hours before the time of the smoking concert. he imbibed the intensely male atmosphere of 'the tiger' with a good deal of satisfaction; but surging up into the forefront of his mind came every moment the truth concerning himself and his future. it made him bitter. for some reason he could not guess, he found himself playing billiards very much above his form. neddy was full of admiration. "by jove, you've come on thirty in a hundred," he said. "if you only gave a fair amount of time to it, you'd soon beat anybody here but waldron." "my sporting days are practically over," answered raymond. "i've got to face real life now, and as soon as you begin to do that, you find sport sinks under the horizon a bit. i thought i should miss it a lot, but i shan't." "if anybody else said that, i should think it was the fox who had lost his brush talking," replied neddy; "but i suppose you mean it. only you'll find, if you chuck sport, you'll soon be no good. even as it is, going into the works has put you back a lot. i doubt if you could do a hundred in eleven seconds now." "there are more important things than doing a hundred in eleven seconds--or even time, either, for that matter." "you won't chuck football, anyway? you'll be fast enough for outside right for year's yet if you watch yourself." "damned easy to say 'watch yourself.' yes, i shall play footer a bit longer if they want me, i suppose." arthur waldron dropped in a few minutes later. he was glad to see raymond. "good," he said. "i thought you were putting in a blameless evening with your people." "no, i'm putting in a blameless evening here." "he's playing enormous billiards, waldron," declared motyer. "i suppose you've been keeping him at it. he's come on miles." "he didn't learn with me, anyway. it's not once in a blue moon that he plays at north hill. but if he's come on, so much the better." they played, but raymond's form had deserted him. waldron was much better than the average amateur and now he gave raymond fifty in two hundred and beat him by as much. they dined together presently, and job legg, who often lent a hand at 'the tiger' on moments of extra pressure, waited upon them. "how's your uncle, job?" asked arthur waldron, who was familiar with mr. legg, and not seldom visited 'the seven stars,' when estelle came with him to bridport. "he's a goner, sir. i'm off to the funeral on monday." "hope the will was all right?" "quite all right, sir, thank you, sir." "then you'll leave, no doubt, and what will missis northover do then?" legg smiled. "it's hid in the future, sir," he answered. a comedian, who was going to perform at the smoking concert, came in with mr. gurd, and the innkeeper introduced him to neddy and raymond. he joined them and added an element of great hilarity to the meal. he abounded in good stories, and understood horse-racing as well as neddy motyer himself. neddy now called himself a 'gentleman backer,' but admitted that, so far, it had not proved a lucrative profession. their talk ranged over sport and athletics. they buzzed one against the other, and not even the humour of the comic man was proof against the seriousness of arthur waldron, who demonstrated, as always, that england's greatness had sprung from the pursuit of masculine pastimes. the breed of horses and the breed of men alike depended upon sport. the empire, in mr. waldron's judgment, had arisen from this sublime foundation. "it reaches from the highest to the lowest," he declared. "the puppy that plays most is the one that always turns into the best dog." the smoking concert, held in mr. gurd's large dining-room, went the way of such things with complete success. the boxing was of the best, and the local lad, tim chick, performed with credit against his experienced antagonist. all the comic man's songs aimed at the folly of marriage and the horrors of domesticity. he seemed to be singing at raymond, who roared with the rest and hated the humourist all the time. the young man grew uneasy and morose before the finish, drank too much whiskey, and felt glad to get into the cold night air when all was over. and then there happened to him a challenge very unexpected, for waldron, as they walked back together through the night-hidden lanes, chose the opportunity to speak of raymond's private affairs. "you can't accuse me of wanting to stick my nose into other people's business, can you, ray? and you can't fairly say that you've ever found me taking too much upon myself or anything of that sort." "no; you're unique in that respect." "well, then, you mustn't be savage if i'm personal. you know me jolly well and you know that you're about the closest friend i've got. and if you weren't a friend and a great deal to me, i shouldn't speak." "go ahead--i can guess. there's only one topic in bridetown, apparently. no doubt you've seen me in the company of sabina dinnett?" "i haven't, i can honestly say. but estelle is very keen about the mill girls. she wants to do all sorts of fine things for them; and she's specially friendly with missis dinnett's daughter. and she's heard things that puzzled her young ears naturally, and she told me that some people say you're being too kind to sabina and other people say you're treating her hardly. of course, that puzzled estelle, clever though she is; but, as a man of the world, i saw what it meant and that kindness may really be cruelty in the long run. you'll forgive me, won't you?" "of course, my dear chap. if one lives in a hole like bridetown, one must expect one's affairs to be common property." "and if they are, what does it matter as long as they are all straightforward? i never care a button what anybody says about me, because i know they can't say anything true that is up against me; and as to lies, they don't matter." "and d'you think i care what they say about me?" "rather not. only if a girl is involved, then the case is altered. i'm not a saint; but--" "when anybody says they're not a saint, you know they're going to begin to preach, arthur." waldron did not answer for a minute. he stopped and lighted his pipe. to raymond, sabina appeared unmeasurably distant at this midnight hour. his volatile mind was quick to take colour from the last experience, and in the aura of the smoking concert, woman looked a slight and inferior thing; marriage, a folly; domestic life, a jest. waldron spoke again. "you won't catch me preaching. i only venture to say that in a little place like this, it's a mistake to be identified with a girl beneath you in every way. it won't hurt you, and if she was a common girl and given to playing about, it wouldn't hurt her; but the dinnetts are different. however, you know a great deal more about her than i do, and if you tell me she's not all she seems and you're not the first and won't be the last, then, of course i'm wrong and enough said. but if she's all right and all she's thought to be, and all estelle thinks her--for estelle's a jolly good student of character--then, frankly, i don't think it's sporting of you to do what you're doing." the word 'sporting' summed the situation from waldron's point of view and he said no more. raymond grew milder. "she's all estelle thinks her. i have a great admiration for her. she's amazingly clever and refined. in fact, i never saw any girl a patch on her in my life." "well then, what follows? surely she ought to be respected in every way." "i do respect her." "then it's up to you to treat her as you'd treat anybody of your own class, and take care that nothing you do throws any shadow on her. and, of course, you know it. i'm not suggesting for a second you don't. i'm only suggesting that what would be quite all right with a girl in your own set, isn't exactly fair to sabina--her position in the world being what it is." it was on raymond's tongue to declare his engagement; but he did not. he had banished sabina for that night and the subject irked him. the justice of waldron's criticism also irked him; but he acknowledged it. "thank you," he answered. "it's jolly good of you to say these things, arthur, because they're not in your line, and i know you hate them. but you're dead right. i dare say i'll tell you something that will astonish you before long. but i'm not doing anything to be ashamed of. i haven't made any mistake; and if i had, i shouldn't shirk the payment." "you can't, my dear chap. a mistake has always got to be paid for in full--often with interest added. as a sportsman you know that, and it holds all through life in my experience." "i shan't make one. but if i do, i'm quite prepared to pay the cost." "we all say that till the bill comes along. better avoid the mistake, and i'm glad you're going to." far away from the scrub on north hill came a sharp, weird sound. "hark!" said waldron. "that's a dog fox! i hope the beggar's caught a rabbit." chapter xv a visit to miss ironsyde on the following day raymond did not appear at breakfast, and estelle wondered at so strange an event. "he's going for a long walk with me this afternoon," she told her father. "it's a promise; we're going all the way to chilcombe, for me to show him that dear little chapel and the wonderful curiosity in it." "not much in his line, but if he said he'll go, he'll go, no doubt," answered her father. they went to church together presently, for waldron observed sunday. he held no definite religious opinions; but inclined to a vague idea that it was seemly to go, because it set a good example and increased your authority. he believed that church-going was a source of good to the proletariat, and though he did not himself accept the doctrine of eternal punishment, since it violated all sporting tenets, he was inclined to think that acceptation of the threat kept ignorant people straight and made them better members of society. he held that the parson and squire must combine in this matter and continue to claim and enforce, as far as possible, a beneficent autocracy in thorpe and hamlet; and he perceived that religion was the only remaining force which upheld their sway. that supernatural control was crumbling under the influences of education he also recognised; but did his best to stem the tide, and trusted that the old dispensation would at least last out his time. on returning from worship they found raymond in the garden, and when estelle reminded him of his promise, he agreed and declared that he looked forward to the tramp. he was cheerful and apparently welcomed estelle's programme, but there happened that which threatened to interfere with it. waldron had retired to his study and a new book on 'the fox terrier,' which he reserved for sabbath reading, and estelle and raymond were just setting out for chilcombe when there came sabina. she had called to see her lover and entered the garden in time to stop him. she had never openly asked to see him in this manner before, and raymond was quick to mark the significance of the change. it annoyed him, while inwardly he recognised its reasonableness. he turned and shook hands with her, and estelle did the same. "we're just starting for chilcombe," she said. sabina looked her surprise. she had been expecting raymond all the morning, to bring the great news to ernest churchouse, and was puzzled to know why he had not come. she could not wait longer, and while her mother advised delay, found herself unable to delay. now she perceived that raymond had made plans independently of her. "i was coming in this evening," he said, in answer to her eyes. "may i speak to you a moment before you start with miss waldron?" she asked, and together they strolled into estelle's rose garden where still a poor blossom or two crowned naked sprays. "i don't understand," began the girl. "surely--surely after yesterday?" "i'd promised to go for this walk with her." "what then? wasn't there all the morning? my mother and i didn't go to church--expecting you every minute." "you must keep your nerve, sabina--both of us must. you mustn't be hysterical about it." she perceived how mightily his mood had changed since their leave-taking of the day before. "what's the matter?" she asked. "i suppose your people have not taken this well." "they don't know yet--nobody does." "you didn't tell them?" "things prevented it. we must choose the right moment to spring this. it's bound to knock them over for a minute. i'm thinking it all out. probably you don't quite realise, sabina, what this means from their point of view. the first thing is to get my aunt on my side; daniel's hopeless, of course." she stared at him. "what in god's name has come over you? you talk as though you hadn't a drop of blood in your veins. were you deaf yesterday? didn't you hear me tell you i was with child by you? 'their point of view'! what about my point of view?" "don't get excited, my dear girl. do give me credit for some sense. this is a very ticklish business, and the whole of our future--yours, of course, quite as much as mine--will depend on what i do during the next few days. do try to realise that. if i make a mistake now, we may repent it for fifty years." "what d'you call making a mistake? what choice of action have you got if you're a gentleman? it kills me--kills me to hear you talking about making a mistake; and your hard voice means that you think you've made one. what have i done but love you with all my heart and soul? what have i ever done to make you put other people's points of view before mine?" "i'm not--i'm not, sabina." "you are. you used to understand me so well and know what was in my mind before i spoke, and now--now before this--the greatest thing in the world for me--you--" "talk quietly, for goodness' sake. you don't want all bridetown to hear us." "you can say that? and you go out walking with a child and--" "look here, sabina, you must pull yourself together, or else you stand a very good chance of bitching up our show altogether," he answered calmly. "this thing has got to be carried out by me, not you; and if you are not going to let me do it my own way, then so much the worse for both of us. i won't be dictated to by you, or anybody, and if you're not contented to believe in me, then i can only say you're making a big mistake and you'll very soon find it out." "what are you going to do, then?" she asked, "and when are you going to do it? i've a right to know that, i suppose?" "to think you can talk in that tone of voice to me--to me of all people!" "to think you can force me to! and now you'll say you've seen things in me you never thought were there, and turn it over in your mind--and--and oh, it's cowardly--it's cruel. and you call yourself an honourable man and could tell me and swear to me only yesterday that i was more to you than anything else in the world!" "d'you know what you're doing?" he asked. "d'you want to make me--there--i won't speak it--i won't come down to your level and forget myself and say things that i'd break my heart to think of afterwards. i must go now, or that girl will be wondering what the deuce has happened. she's told her father already that you weren't happy or something; so i suppose you must have been talking. i'll come in this evening. you'd better go home now as quick as you can." he left her abruptly and she sat down shaking on a stone seat, to prevent herself from falling. grief and terror shared her spirit. she watched him hurry away and, after he was gone, arose to find her legs trembling under her. she went home slowly; then thoughts came to her which restored her physical strength. her anger gave place to fear and her fear beckoned her to confide in somebody with greater power over raymond than her own. she returned to her mother, described her repulse and then declared her intention of going immediately to see miss ironsyde. she concentrated her thoughts on the lady, of whom raymond had often spoken with admiration and respect. she argued with herself that his aunt would only have to hear her story to take her side; she told herself and her mother that since raymond had feared to approach his aunt, sabina might most reasonably do so. she grew calm and convinced herself that not only might she do this, but that when raymond heard of it, he would very possibly be glad that the necessity of confession was escaped. his aunt jenny was very fond of him, and would forgive him and help him to do right. sabina found herself stronger than raymond, and that did not astonish her, for she had suspected it before. her mother, now in tears, agreed with her and she started on foot for bridport, walked quickly, and within an hour, reached the dwelling of the ironsydes--a large house standing hidden in the trees above the town. miss ironsyde was reading and looking forward to her tea when sabina arrived. she had heard of the girl through ernest churchouse, but she had never met her and did not connect her in any way with raymond. jenny received her and was impressed with her beauty, for sabina, albeit anxious and nervous, looked handsome after her quick walk. "i've heard of you from your mother and mr. churchouse," said miss ironsyde, shaking hands. "you come from him, i expect. i hope he is well? sit down by the fire." her kindly manner and gentle face set the younger at ease. "he's quite well, thank you, miss. but i'm here for myself, not him. i'm in a great deal of terrible anxiety, and you'll excuse me for coming, i do hope, when i explain why i've come. it was understood between me and mr. raymond ironsyde very clearly yesterday that he was going to tell you about it. he left me yesterday to do so. but i've seen him to-day and i find he never came, so i thought i might venture to come even though it was sunday." "the better the day, the better the deed. something is troubling you. why did not my nephew come, if he started to come?" "i don't know. indeed, he should have come." "i'm afraid he starts to do a great many things he doesn't carry through," said jenny, and the words, lightly spoken, fell sinister on sabina's ear. "there are some things a man must carry through if he starts to do them," she said quietly, and her tone threw light for raymond's aunt. she grew serious. "tell me," she said. "i know my nephew very well and have his interests greatly at heart. he is somewhat undisciplined still and has had to face certain difficulties and problems, not much in themselves, but much to one with his temperament." then sabina, who felt that she might be fighting for her life, set out to tell her story. she proved at her best and spoke well. she kept her temper and chose her words. the things that she had thought to speak, indeed, escaped her, but her artless and direct narrative did not fail to convince the listener. "you're more to him than anybody in the world, but me," she said; "but i'm first, miss ironsyde. i must be first now. even if to-day he had been different--but what seemed so near yesterday is far off to-day. he was harsh to-day. he terrified me, and i felt you'd think no worse of me than you must, if i ventured to come. i don't ask you to believe anything i say until you have seen him; but i'm not going to tell you anything but the sacred truth. thanks to mr. churchouse i was well educated, and he took kind pains to teach me when i was young and helped me to get fond of books. so when mr. raymond came to the mill, he found i was intelligent and well mannered. and he fell in love with me and asked me to marry him. and i loved him very dearly, because i had never seen or known a man with such a beautiful face and mind. and i promised to marry him. he wished it kept secret and we loved in secret and had great joy of each other for a long time. then people began to talk and i begged him to let it be known we were engaged; but he would not. and then i told him--yesterday--that it must be known and that he must marry me as quickly as he could, for right and honour. and he seemed very glad--almost thankful i thought. he rejoiced about it and said it was splendid news. then he left me to come straight to you and i was happy and thankful. but to-day i went to see him and he had changed and was rough to me and said he must choose his own time! this to me, who am going to be mother of his child next year! i nearly fainted when he said that. he told me to go; and i went. but i could not sit down under the shock; i had to do something and thought of you. so i came to implore you to be on my side--not only for my sake, but his. it's a very fearful thing--only i know how fearful, because i know all he's said and promised; and well i know he meant every word while he was saying it. and i do humbly beg you, miss, for love of him, to reason with him and hear what he's got to say. and if he says a word that contradicts what i've said, then i'll be content for you to believe him and i'll trouble you no more. but he won't. he'll tell you everything i've told you. he couldn't say different, for he's truthful and straight. and if it was anything less than the whole of my future life i wouldn't have come. but i feel there are things hidden in his mind i can't fathom--else after what i told him yesterday, he never, never could have been cruel to me, or changed his mind about coming to see you. and please forgive me for taking up your time. only knowing that you cared for him so much made me come to you." miss ironsyde did not answer immediately. her intuition inclined her to believe every word at its face value; but her very readiness to do so made her cautious. the story was one of every day and bore no marks of improbability; yet among raymond's faults she could not remember any unreasonable relations with the other sex. it had always been one bright spot in his dead father's opinion that the young man did not care about drink or women, and was not intemperate, save in his passion for athletic exercises and his abomination of work. it required no great perception to see that sabina was not the type that entangles men. she had a beautiful face and a comely figure, but she belonged not to the illusive, distracting type. she was obvious and lacked the quality which attracts men far more than open features, regular modelling and steady eyes. it was, in fact, such a face as raymond might have admired, and sabina was such a girl as he might have loved--when he did fall in love. she was apparently his prototype and complement in directness and simplicity of outlook; that miss ironsyde perceived, and the more she reflected the less she felt inclined to doubt. sabina readily guessed the complex thoughts which kept the listener silent after she had finished, and sat quietly without more speech until jenny chose to answer her. that no direct antagonism appeared was a source of comfort. unconsciously sabina felt happier for the presence of the other, though as yet she had heard no consoling word. miss ironsyde regarded her thoughtfully; then she rose and rang the bell. sabina's heart sank for she supposed that she was to be immediately dismissed, and that meant defeat in a quarter very dangerous. but her mind was set at rest, for jenny saw the fear in her eyes. "i'm ringing for tea," she said. "i will ask you to stop and drink a cup with me. you've had a long walk." then came tears; but sabina felt such weakness did not become her and smothered them. "thank you, gratefully, miss ironsyde," she said. tea was a silent matter, for jenny had very little to say. her speech was just and kind, however. it satisfied sabina, whose only concern was justice now. she had spoken first. "i think--i'm sure it's only some hitch in mr. raymond's mind. he's been so wonderful to me--so tender and thoughtful--and he's such a gentleman in all he does and says, that i'm sure he never could dream of going back on his sacred word. he wants to marry me. he'll never tell you different from that. but he cannot realise, perhaps, the need--and yet i won't say that neither, for, of course, he must realise." "say nothing more at all," answered jenny. "you have said everything there was to say and i'm glad you have come to me and told me about it. but i'm not going to say anything myself until i've seen my nephew. you are satisfied that he will tell me the truth?" "yes, i am. don't think i don't trust him. only if there's something hidden from me, he might explain to you what it is, and what i've done to anger him." miss ironsyde did not lack experience of men and could have thrown light on sabina's problem; but she had not the heart. she began to suspect it was the girl's own compliance and his easy victory that had made raymond weary before the reckoning. there is nothing more tasteless than paying after possession, unless the factors combine to make the payment a pleasure and possession an undying delight. miss ironsyde indeed guessed at the truth more accurately than she knew; but her sympathies were entirely with sabina and it was certain that if raymond, when the time came, could offer no respectable and sufficient excuse for a change of mind, he would find little support from her. of her intentions, however, she said nothing, nor indeed while sabina drank a cup of tea had miss ironsyde anything to say. she was not unsympathetic, but she was guarded. "i will see raymond to-morrow without fail," she said when sabina departed. "i share your belief, miss dinnett, that he is a truthful and straightforward man. at least i have always found him so. and i feel very sure that you are truthful and straightforward too. this will come right. i will give you one word of advice, if i may, and ask one question. does anybody know of your engagement except my nephew and myself?" "only my mother. yesterday he told me to go straight home and tell her. and i did. whether he's told anybody, i don't know." "be sure he has not. he would tell nobody before me, i think. my advice, then, is to say nothing more until you hear from him, or me." "i shouldn't, of course, miss ironsyde." "good-bye," said the other kindly. "be of good heart and be patient for a few hours longer. it's hard to ask you to be, but you'll understand the wisdom." when sabina had gone, miss ironsyde nibbled a hot cake and reflected deeply on an interview full of pain. the story--so fresh and terrific to the teller--was older than the hills and presented no novel feature whatever to her who listened. but in theory, jenny ironsyde entertained very positive views concerning the trite situation. whether she would be able to sustain them before her nephew remained to be seen. she already began to fear. she saw the dangers and traversed the arguments. though free from class prejudice, she recognised its weight in such a situation. a break must mean sabina's social ruin; but would union mean ruin to raymond? and if the problem was reduced to that, what became of her theories? she decided that since her theories were based in righteousness and justice, she must prefer his downfall to the woman's. for if, indeed, he fell as the result of a mistaken marriage, he would owe the fall to himself and his attitude after the event. he need not fall. a tendency to judge him hardly, however, drew jenny up. he had yet to be heard. she went to her writing-desk and wrote him a letter directing him to see her on the following day without fail. "it is exceedingly important, my dear boy," she said, "and i shall expect you not later than ten o'clock to-morrow morning." chapter xvi at chilcombe meantime raymond had kept his promise and devoted some hours to estelle's pleasure. the girl was proud of such an event, anticipated it for many days and won great delight from it when it came. she perceived, as they started, that her friend was perturbed and wondered dimly a moment as to what sabina could have said to annoy him; but he appeared to recover quickly and was calm, cheerful and attentive to her chatter after they had gone a mile. "to think you've never been to chilcombe, ray," she said. "you and father go galloping after foxes, or shooting the poor pheasants and partridges and don't care a bit for the wonderful tiny church at chilcombe--the tiniest in england almost, i do believe. and then there's a beautiful thing in it--a splendid treasure; and many people think it was a piece of one of the ships of the spanish armada, that was wrecked on the chesil bank; and i dare say it is." "you must tell me about it." "i'm going to." "not walking too fast for you?" "not yet, but still you might go a little slower, or else i shall get out of breath and shan't be able to tell you about things." he obeyed. "there are no flowers for you to show me now," he said. "no, but there are interesting things. for instance, away there to the right is a wonderful field. and the old story is that everything that is ever planted in it comes up red--red." "what nonsense." "yes, it is, but it's creepy, nice nonsense. because of the story. once there were two murderers at swire village, and one turned upon the other and told the secret of the murder and got his friend caught and hanged. and the bad murderer was paid a great deal of money for telling the government about the other murderer; and that was blood-money, you see. then the bad murderer bought a field, and because he bought it with blood-money, everything he planted came up red. i wish it was true; but, of course, i know it can't be, though a good many things would come up red, like sanfoin and scarlet clover and beetroots." "a jolly good yarn," declared raymond. they tramped along through a network of winding lanes, and presently estelle pointed to a lofty hillock that rose above the high lands on which they walked. "that's shipton hill," she said, pointing to the domelike mound. "and i believe it's called so, because from one point it looks exactly like a ship upside down." "i'll bet it is, and a very good name for it." the diminutive chapel of chilcombe stood in a farmyard beside a lofty knoll of trees. it was a stout little place of early english architecture, lifted high above the surrounding country and having a free horizon of sea and land. it consisted of a chancel, nave and south porch. its bell cote held one bell; and within was a norman font, a trefoil headed piscina, and sitting room for thirty-four people. "isn't it a darling little church?" asked estelle, her voice sunk to a whisper; and raymond nodded and said that it was 'ripping.' then they examined the medieval treasure of the reredos--a panel of cedar wood, some ten feet in length, that surmounted the altar. it was set in a deep oaken frame, and displayed two circular drawings with an oblong picture in the midst. in the left circle was the scourging of christ; in the right, the redeemer rose from the tomb; while between them the crucifixion had been depicted, with armies of mail-clad soldiers about the cross. the winged symbols of the evangelists appeared in other portions of the panel with various separate figures, and there were indications that the work was unfinished. estelle, who had often studied every line of it, gave her explanations and ideas to raymond, while he listened with great attention. then they went to the ancient manor house now converted into a farm; and there the girl had friends who provided them with tea. she made no attempt to hide her pride at her companion, for she was a lonely little person and the expedition with raymond had been a great event in her life. exceedingly happy and contented, she walked beside him homeward in the fading light and ceased not to utter her budding thoughts and reflections. he proved a good listener and encouraged her, for she amused him and really interested him. in common with her father, raymond was often struck by the fact that a child would consider subjects which had never entered his head; but so it was, since estelle's mind had been wrought in a larger plan and compassed heights and depths, even in its present immaturity, to which neither waldron's nor raymond's had aspired. yet the things she said were challenging, though often absurd. facts which he knew, though estelle as yet did not, served to block her ideals and explain her mysteries, yet he recognised the girl's simple dreams, unvexed by practical considerations, or the 'nay' that real life must make to them, were beautiful. she spoke a good deal about the mill, where now her chief interest centred; and raymond spoke about it too. and presently, after brisk interchange of ideas, she pointed out a fact that had not struck him. "it's a funny thing, ray," she said, "but what you love best about the works is the machinery; and what i love best about them is the people. yet i don't see how a machine can be as interesting as a girl." "perhaps you're wrong, estelle. perhaps i wish you were right. if i hadn't found a girl more interesting--" he broke off and turned from the road she had innocently opened into his own thoughts. "of course the people are more interesting, really. but because i'm keen about the machines, you mustn't think i'm not keener still about the people. you see the better the machines, the better time the people will have, and the less hard and difficult and tiring for them will be their work." she considered this and suddenly beamed. "how splendid! of course i see. you _are_ clever, ray. and it's really the people you think of all the time." she gave him a look of admiration. "i expect presently they'll all see that; and gradually you'll get them more and more beautiful machines, till their work is just pleasure and nothing else. and do invent something to prevent sabina and nancy and alice hurting their hands. they have to stop the spindles so often, and it wounds them, and nancy gets chilblains in the winter, so it's simply horrid for her." "that's right. it's one of the problems. i'm not forgetting these things." "and if i think of anything may i tell you?" "i hope you will, estelle." she talked him into a pleasant humour, and it took a practical form unknown to estelle, for before they had reached home again, there passed through raymond's mind a wave of contrition. the contrast between estelle's steadfast and unconscious altruism and his own irresolution and selfishness struck into him. she made him think more kindly of sabina, and when he considered the events of that day from sabina's standpoint, he felt ashamed of himself. for it was not she who had done anything unreasonable. the blame was his. he had practically lied to her the day before, and to-day he had been harsh and cruel. she had a right--the best possible right--to come and see him; she had good reason to be angry on learning that he had not kept his word. he determined to see sabina as quickly as possible, and about seven o'clock in the evening after the return from the walk, he went down to 'the magnolias' and rang the bell. mrs. dinnett came to the door, and said something that hardened the young man's heart again very rapidly. sabina's mother was unfriendly. since her daughter returned, she had learned all there was to know, and for the moment felt very antagonistic. she had already announced the betrothal to certain of her friends, and the facts that day had discovered made her both anxious and angry. she was a woman of intermittent courage, but her paroxysms of pluck soon passed and between them she was craven and easily cast down. for the moment, however, she felt no fear and echoed the mood in which sabina had returned from bridport an hour earlier. "sabina can't be seen to-night," she said. "you wouldn't have anything to do with her this afternoon, mr. ironsyde, and treated her like a stranger; and now she won't see you." "why not, missis dinnett?" "she's got her pride, and you've wounded it--and worse. and i may tell you we're not the people to be treated like this. it's a very ill-convenient business altogether, and if you're a gentleman and a man of honour--" he cut her short. "is she going to see me, or isn't she?" "she is not. she's very much distressed, and every reason to be, god knows; and she's not going to see you to-night." raymond took it quietly and his restraint instantly alarmed mrs. dinnett. "it's not my fault, mr. ironsyde. but seeing how things are between you, she was cruel put about this afternoon, and she's got to think of herself if you can do things like that at such a moment." "she must try and keep her nerve better. there was no reason why i should break promises. she ought to have waited for me to come to her." mary dinnett flamed again. "you can say that! and didn't she wait all the morning to see if you'd come to her--and me? and as to promises--it don't trouble you to break promises, else you'd have seen your family yesterday, as you told sabina you were going to do." "is she going to the mill to-morrow?" he asked, ignoring the attack. "no, she ain't going to the mill. it isn't a right and fitting thing that the woman you're going to marry and the mother of your future child should be working in a spinning mill; and if you don't know it, others do." "she told you then--against my wishes?" "and what are your wishes alongside of your acts? you're behaving very wickedly, mr. ironsyde, and driving my daughter frantic; and if she can't tell her mother her sorrows, who should know?" "she has disobeyed me and done a wrong thing," he said quietly. "this may alter the whole situation, and you can tell her so." "for god's sake don't talk like that. would you ruin the pair of us?" "what am i to do if i can't trust her?" he asked, and then went abruptly away before mary could answer. she was terribly frightened and soon drowned in tears, for when she returned to sabina and related the conversation, her daughter became passionate and blamed her with a shower of bitter words. "i only told you, because i thought you had sense enough to keep your mouth shut about it," she cried. "now he'll think it's common news and hate me--hate me for telling. you've ruined me--that's what you've done, and i may as well go and make a hole in the water as not, for he'll never marry me now." "you told miss ironsyde," sobbed the mother. "that was different. she'll keep it to herself, and i had to tell her to show how serious it was for me. for anything less than that, she'd have taken his side against me. and now he'll find i've been to her, and that may--oh, my god, why didn't i keep quiet a little longer, and trust him?" "you had every right to speak, when you found he was telling lies," said mrs. dinnett. and while they quarrelled, raymond returned to north hill in a mood that could not keep silence. he and arthur waldron smoked after supper, and when estelle had gone to bed, the younger spoke and took up the conversation of the preceding night where he had dropped it. the speech that now passed, however, proceeded on a false foundation, for raymond only told arthur what he pleased and garbled the facts by withholding what was paramount. "you were talking of sabina dinnett last night," he said. "what would you think if i told you i was going to marry her, waldron?" "a big 'if.' but you're not going to tell me so. you would surely have told me yesterday if you had meant that." "why shouldn't i if i want to?" "i always keep out of personal things--even with pals. i strained a point with you last night for friendship, ray. is the deed done, or isn't it? if it is, there is nothing left but to congratulate you and wish you both luck." "if it isn't?" mr. waldron was cautious. "you're not going to draw me till i know as much as you know, old chap. either you're engaged, or you're not." "say it's an open question--then what?" "how can i say it's an open question after this? i'm not going to say a word about it." "well, i thought we were engaged; but it seems there's a bit of doubt in the air still." "then you'd better clear that doubt, before you mention the subject again. until you and she agree about it, naturally it's nobody else's business." "and yet everybody makes it their business, including you. why did you advise me to look out what i was doing last night?" "because you're young, boy, and i thought you might make a mistake and do an unsporting thing. that was nothing to do with your marrying her. how was i to know such an idea was in your mind? naturally nobody supposed any question of that sort had arisen." "why not?" waldron felt a little impatient. "you know as well as i do. men in your position don't as a rule contemplate marriage with women, however charming and clever, who--. but this is nonsense. i'm not going to answer your stupid questions." "then you'd say--?" "no, i wouldn't. i'll say nothing about it. you're wanting to get something for nothing now, and presently i daresay you'd remind me of something i had said. we can go back to the beginning if you like, but you're not going to play lawyer with me, ray. it's in a nutshell, i suppose. you're going to marry miss dinnett, or else you're not. of course, you know which. and if you won't tell me which, then don't ask me to talk about it." "i've not decided." "then drop it till you have." "you're savage now." "i'm never savage--you know that very well. or, if i am, it's only with men who are unsporting." "let's generalise, then. i suppose you'd say a man was a fool to marry out of his own class." "as a rule, yes. because marriage is difficult enough at best without complicating it like that. but there are exceptions. you can't find any rule without exceptions." "i'll tell you the truth then, arthur. i meant to marry sabina. i believed that she was the only being in the world worth living for. but things have happened and now i'm doubtful whether it would be the best possible." "and what about her? is she doubtful too?" "i don't know. anyway i've just been down to see her and she wouldn't see me." "see her to-morrow then and clear it up. if there's a doubt, give yourselves the benefit of the doubt. she's tremendously clever, estelle says, and she may be clever enough to believe it wouldn't do. and if she feels like that, you'll be a fool to press it." they talked on and waldron, despite his caution, was too ingenuous to hide his real opinions. he made it very clear to raymond that any such match, in his judgment, would be attended by failure. but he spoke in ignorance of the truth. the younger went to bed sick of himself. his instincts of right and honour fought with his desires to be free. his heart sank now at the prospect of matrimony. he assured himself that he loved sabina as steadfastly as ever he had loved her; but that there might yet be a shared life of happiness for them without the matrimonial chains. he considered whether it would be possible to influence sabina in that direction; he even went so far as to speculate on what would be his future feelings for her if she insisted upon the sanctity of his promises. chapter xvii confusion mr. churchouse was standing in his porch, when a postman brought him a parcel. it was a book, and ernest displayed mild interest. "what should that be, i wonder?" he said. then he asked a question. "have you seen bert, the newspaper boy? for the second morning he disappoints me." but bert himself appeared at the same moment and the postman went his way. "no newspaper on saturday--how was that?" asked mr. churchouse. "i was dreadful ill and my mother wouldn't let me go outdoors," explained the boy. "i asked neddy prichard to go down to the baker's and get it for you; but he wouldn't." "then i say no more, except to hope you're better." "it's my froat," explained bert, a sturdy, flaxen youngster of ten. "one more point i should like to raise while you are here. have you noticed that garden chair in the porch?" "yes, i have, and wondered why 'twas left there." "wonder no more, bert. it is there that you may put the paper upon it, rather than fling the news on a dirty door-mat." "fancy!" said bert. "i never!" "bear it in mind henceforth, and, if you will delay a moment, i will give you some black currant lozenges for your throat." a big black cat stood by his master listening to this conversation and bert now referred to him. "would thicky cat sclow me?" he asked. "no, bert--have no fear of peter grim," answered mr. churchouse. "his looks belie him. he has a forbidding face but a friendly heart." "he looks cruel fierce." "he does, but though a great sportsman, he has a most amiable nature." having ministered to bert, mr. churchouse retired with his book and paper. then came mary dinnett, red-eyed and in some agitation. but for a moment he did not observe her trouble. he had opened his parcel and revealed a volume bound in withered calf and bearing signs of age and harsh treatment. "a work i have long coveted--it is again 'a well-wisher,' missis dinnett, who has sent it to me. there is much kindness in the world still." but mrs. dinnett was too preoccupied with her own affairs to feel interest in ernest's pleasant little experience. by nature pessimistic, original doubts, when she heard of sabina's engagement, were now confirmed and she felt certain that her daughter would never become young ironsyde's wife. regardless of the girl's injunction to silence, and feeling that both for herself and sabina this disaster might alter the course of their lives and bring her own hairs with sorrow to the grave, mary now took the first opportunity to relate the facts to mr. churchouse. they created in him emotions of such deep concern that neither his book nor his newspaper were opened on the day of the announcement. mrs. dinnett rambled through her disastrous recital, declared that for her own part, she had already accepted the horror of it and was prepared to face the worst that could happen, and went so far as to predict what ernest himself would probably do, now that the scandal had reached his ears. she was distraught and for the moment appeared almost to revel in the accumulated horrors of the situation. she told the story of promise and betrayal and summed up with one agonised prophecy. "and now you'll cast her out--you'll turn upon us and throw us out--i know you will." "'cast her out'? good god of mercy! who am i to cast anybody out, missis dinnett? shall an elderly and faulty fellow creature rise in judgment at the weakness of youth? what have i done in the past to lead you to any such conclusion? i feel very certain, indeed, that you are permitting yourself a debauch of misery--wallowing in it, mary dinnett--as misguided wretches often wallow in drink out of an unmanly despair at their own human weakness. fortify yourself! approach the question on a higher plane. remember no sparrow falls to the ground without the cognisance of its creator! as for sabina, i love her and have devoted many hours to her education. i also love raymond ironsyde--for his own sake as well as his family's. i am perfectly certain that you exaggerate the facts. such a thing is quite incredible. shall i quarrel with a gracious flower because a wandering bee has set a seed? he may be an inconsiderate and greedy bee--but--" mr. churchouse broke off, conscious that his simile would land him in difficulties. "no," he said, "we must not pursue this subject on a pagan or poetical basis. we are dealing with two young christians, missis dinnett--a man and a woman of good nurture and high principle. i will never believe--not if he said it himself--that raymond ironsyde would commit any such unheard-of outrage. you say that he has promised to marry her. that is enough for me. the son of henry ironsyde will keep his promise. be sure of that. for the moment leave the rest in my hands. exercise discretion, and pray, pray keep silence about it. i do trust that nobody has heard anything. publicity might complicate the situation seriously." as a matter of fact mrs. dinnett had told everything to her bosom friend--a woman who dwelt in a cottage one hundred yards from 'the magnolias.' she did not mention this, however. "if you say there's hope, i'll try to believe it," she answered. "the man came here last night and sabina wouldn't see him, and god knows what'll be the next thing." "leave the next thing to me." "she's given notice at the works. he told her to." "of course--quite properly. now calm down and fetch me my walking boots." in half an hour ernest was on his way to bridport. as sabina, before him, his instinct led to miss ironsyde and he felt that the facts might best be imparted to her. if anybody had influence with raymond, it was she. his tone of confidence before mrs. dinnett had been partly assumed, however. his sympathies were chiefly with sabina, for she was no ordinary mill hand; she had enjoyed his tuition and possessed native gifts worthy of admiration. but she was as excitable as her mother, and if this vital matter went awry, there could be no doubt that her life must be spoiled. mr. churchouse managed to get a lift on his way from a friendly farmer, and he arrived at bridport town hall soon after ten o'clock. while driving he put the matter from his mind for a time, and his acquaintance started other trains of thought. one of them, more agreeable to a man of his temperament than the matter in hand, still occupied his mind when he stood before jenny ironsyde. "you!" she said. "i had an idea you never came into the world till afternoon." "seldom--seldom. i drove a good part of the way with farmer gate, and he made a curious remark. he said that a certain person might as well be dead for all the good he was. now what constitutes life? i've been asking myself that." "it's certainly difficult to decide about some people, whether they're alive or dead. some make you doubt if they ever were alive." "a good many certainly don't know they're born; and plenty don't know they're dead," he declared. "to be in your grave is not necessarily to be dead, and to be in your shop, or office, needn't mean that you're alive," admitted the lady. "quite so. who doesn't know dead people personally, and go to tea with them, and hear their bones rattle? and whose spirit doesn't meet in their thoughts, or works, the dead who are still living?" "most true, i'm sure; but you didn't come to tell me that?" "no; yet it has set me wondering whether, perhaps, i am dead--at any rate deader than i need be." "we are probably all deader than we need be." "but to-day there has burst into my life a very wakening thing. it may have been sent. for mystery is everywhere, and what's looking exceedingly bad for those involved, may be good for me. and yet, one can hardly claim to win goodness out of the threatened misfortunes to those who are dear to one." "what's the matter? something's happened, or you wouldn't come to see me so early." "something has happened," he answered, "and one turns to you in times of stress, just as one used to turn to your dear brother, henry. you have character, shrewdness and decision." miss ironsyde saw light. "you've come for raymond," she said. "now how did you divine that? but, as a matter of fact, i've come for somebody else. a very serious thing has happened and if we older heads--" "who told you about it?" "this morning, an hour ago, it was broken to me by sabina's mother." "tell me just what she told you, ernest." he obeyed and described the interview exactly. "i cannot understand that, for sabina saw me last night and explained the situation. i impressed upon her the importance of keeping the matter as secret as possible for the present." "nevertheless mary dinnett told me. she is a very impulsive person--so is sabina; but in sabina's case there is brain power to control impulse; in her mother's case there is none." "i'm much annoyed," declared miss ironsyde--"not of course, that you should know, but that there should be talking. please go home and tell them both to be quiet. this chattering is most dangerous and may defeat everything. last night i wrote to raymond directing him to come and see me immediately. i did not tell him why; but i told him it was urgent. i made the strongest appeal possible. when you arrived, i thought it was he. he should have been here an hour ago." "if he is coming, i will go," answered ernest. "i don't wish to meet him at present. he has done very wrongly--wickedly, in fact. the question is whether marriage with sabina--" "there is no question about that in my opinion," declared the lady. "i am a student of character, and had she been a different sort of girl--. but even as it is i suspend judgment until i have seen raymond. it is quite impossible, however, after hearing her, to see what excuse he can offer." "she is a very superior girl indeed, and very clever and refined. i always hoped she would marry a schoolmaster, or somebody with cultured tastes. but her great and unusual beauty doubtless attracted raymond." "i think you'd better go home, ernest. i'll write to you after i've seen the boy. do command silence from both of them. i'm very angry and very distressed, but really nothing can be done till we hear him. my sympathy is entirely with sabina. let her go on with her life for a day or two and--" "she's changed her life and left the mill. i understand raymond told her to do so." "that is a good sign, i suppose. if she's done that, the whole affair must soon be known. but we talk in the dark." mr. churchouse departed, forgot his anxieties in a second-hand book shop and presently returned home. but he saw nothing of raymond on the way; and miss ironsyde waited in vain for her nephew's arrival. he did not come, and her letter, instead of bringing him immediately as she expected, led to a very different course of action on his part. for, taken with sabina's refusal to see him, he guessed correctly at what had inspired it. sabina had threatened more than once in the past to visit miss ironsyde and he had forbidden her to do so. now he knew from her mother why she had gone, and while not surprised, he clutched at the incident and very quickly worked it into a tremendous grievance against the unlucky girl. his intelligence told him that he could not fairly resent her attempt to win a powerful friend at this crisis in her fortunes; but his own inclinations and growing passion for liberty fastened on it and made him see a possible vantage point. he worked himself up into a false indignation. he knew it was false, yet he persevered in it, as though it were real, and acted as though it were real. he tore up his aunt's letter and ignored it. instead of going to bridport, he went to his office and worked as usual. at dinner time he expected sabina, but she did not come and he heard from mr. best that she was not at the works. "she came in here and gave notice on saturday afternoon," said the foreman, shortly, and turned away from raymond even as he spoke. then the young man remembered that he had bade sabina do this. his anger increased, for now everybody must soon hear of what had happened. in a sort of subconscious way he felt glad, despite his irritation, at the turn of events, for they might reconcile him with his conscience and help to save the situation in the long run. chapter xviii the lovers' grove a little matter now kindled a great fire, and a woman's reasonable irritation, which he had himself created, produced for raymond ironsyde a very complete catastrophe. his aunt, indeed, was not prone to irritation. few women preserved a more level mind, or exhibited that self-control which is a prime product of common-sense; but, for once, it must be confessed that jenny broke down and did that which she had been the first to censure in another. the spark fell on sufficient fuel and the face of the earth was changed for raymond before he slept that night. for his failure to answer her urgent appeal, his contemptuous disregard of the strongest letter she had ever written, annoyed her exceedingly. it argued a callous indifference to her own wishes and a spirit of extraordinary unkindness. she had been a generous aunt to him all his life; he had very much for which to thank her; and yet before this pressing petition he could remain dumb. that his mind was disordered she doubted not; but nothing excused silence at such a moment. after lunch on this day daniel spent some little while with his aunt, and then when a post which might have brought some word from raymond failed to do so, jenny's gust of temper spoke. it was the familiar case of a stab at one who has annoyed us; but to point such stabs, the ear of a third person is necessary, and before she had quite realised what she was doing, miss ironsyde sharply blamed her nephew to his brother. "the most inconsiderate, selfish person on earth is raymond," she said as a servant brought her two letters, neither from the sinner. "i asked him--and prayed him--to see me to-day about a subject of the gravest importance to him and to us all; and he neither comes nor takes the least notice of my letter. he is hopeless." "what's he done now?" "i don't know exactly--at least--never mind. leave it for the minute. sorry, i was cross. you'll know what there is to know soon enough. if there's trouble in store, we must put a bold face on it and think of him." "i rather hoped things were going smoother. he seems to be getting more steady and industrious." "perhaps he reserved his industry for the works and leaves none for anything else, then," she answered; "but don't worry before you need." "you'll tell me if there's anything i ought to know, aunt jenny." "he'll tell you himself, i should hope. and if he doesn't, no doubt there will be plenty of other people to do so. but don't meet trouble half way. shall you be back to tea?" "probably not. i'm going to bridetown this afternoon. i have an appointment with best. he was to see some machinery that sounded all right; but he's very conservative and i can always trust him to be on the safe side. one doesn't mean to be left behind, of course." "always ask yourself what your father would have thought, daniel. and then you'll not make any mistakes." he nodded. "i ask myself that often enough, you may be sure." * * * * * an hour later the young man had driven his trap to the mill and listened to john best on the subject of immediate interest. the foreman decided against any innovation for the present and daniel was glad. then he asked for his brother. "is mister raymond here?" "he was this morning; but he's not down this afternoon. at least he wasn't when i went to his office just before you came." "everything's all right, i suppose?" mr. best looked uncomfortable. "i'm afraid not, sir; but i hate talking. you'd better hear it from him." daniel's heart sank. "tell me," he said. "you're one of us, john--my father's right hand for twenty years--and our good is your good. if you know of trouble, tell me the truth. it may be better for him in the long run. miss ironsyde was bothered about him, to-day." "if it's better for him, then i'll speak," answered best. "he's a very clever young man and learning fast now. he's buckling to and getting on with it. but--sabina dinnett, our first spinner, gave notice on saturday. she's not here to-day." "what does that mean?" "you'd better ask them that know. i've heard a lot of rumours, and they may be true or not, and i hope they're not. but if they are, i suppose it means the old story where men get mixed up with girls." daniel was silent, but his face flushed. "don't jump to the conclusion it's true," urged the foreman. "hear both sides before you do anything about it." "i know it's true." mr. best did not answer. "and you know it's true," continued the younger. "what everybody says nobody should believe," ventured best. "what happened was this--sabina came in on saturday afternoon, when i was working in my garden, and gave notice. not a month, but to go right away. of course i asked her why, but she wouldn't tell me. she was as happy as a lark about it, and what she said was that i'd know the reason very soon and be the first to congratulate her. of course, i thought she was going to be married. and still i hope she is. that's all you can take for truth. the rest is rumour. you can guess how a place like this will roll it over their tongues." "i'll go and see mister churchouse." "do, sir. you can trust him to be charitable." daniel departed; but he did not see ernest churchouse. the antiquary was not at home and, instead, he heard mrs. dinnett, who poured the approximate truth into his ears with many tears. his brother had promised to marry sabina, but on hearing the girl was with child, had apparently refused to keep his engagement. then it was daniel ironsyde's turn to lose his temper. he drove straight to north hill house, found his brother in the garden with estelle waldron, took him aside and discharged him from the mill. raymond had been considering the position and growing a little calmer. with a return of more even temper, he had written to miss ironsyde and promised to be with her on the following evening without fail. he had begged her to keep an open mind so far as he was concerned and he hoped that when the time came, he might be able to trust to her lifelong friendship. what he was going to say, he did not yet know; but he welcomed the brief respite and was in a good temper when his brother challenged him. the attack was direct, blunt and even brutal. it burst like a thunder-bolt on raymond's head, staggered him, and then, of course, enraged him. "i won't keep you," said daniel. "i only want to know one thing. sabina dinnett's going to have a baby. are you the father of it, or aren't you?" "what the devil business is that of yours?" "as one of my mill hands, i consider it is my business. one thinks of them as human beings as well as machines--machines for work, or amusement--according to the point of view. so answer me." "you cold-blooded cur! what are you but a machine?" "answer my question, please." "go to hell." "you blackguard! you do a dirty, cowardly thing like this, despite my warnings and entreaties; you foul our name and drag it in the gutter and then aren't man enough to acknowledge it." the younger trembled with passion. "shut your mouth, or i'll smash your face in!" he cried. his sudden fury calmed his brother. "you refuse to answer, and that can only mean one thing, raymond. then i've done with you. you've dragged us all through the mud--made us a shame and a scandal--proud people. you can go--the further off, the better. i dismiss you and i never want to see your face again." "don't worry--you never shall. god's my judge, i'd sooner sweep a crossing than come to you for anything. i know you well enough. you always meant to do this. you saved your face when my father robbed me from the grave and left me a pauper--you saved your face by putting me into the works; but you never meant me to stop there. you only waited your chance to sack me and keep the lot for yourself. and you've jumped at this and were glad to hear of this--damned glad, i'll bet!" daniel did not answer, but turned his back on his brother, and a minute or two later was driving away. when he had gone, the panting raymond went to his room and flung himself on his bed. under his cooling anger again obtruded the old satisfaction--amorphous, vile, not to be named--that he had felt before. this brought ultimate freedom a step nearer. if ostracism and punishment were to be his portion, then let him earn them. if the world--his world--was to turn against him, let the reversal be for something. poverty would be a fair price for liberty, and those who now seemed so ready to hound him out of his present life and crush his future prospects, should live to see their error. for a time he felt savagely glad that this had happened. he regretted his letter to his aunt; he thought of packing his portmanteau on the instant and vanishing for ever; yet time and reflection abated his dreams. he began to grow a little alarmed. he even regretted his harsh words to his brother before the twilight fell. then his mind was occupied with sabina; but sabina had wounded him to the quick, for it was clear she and her mother had shamelessly published the truth. sabina, then, had courted ruin. she deserved it. he soon argued that the disaster of the day was sabina's work, and he dismissed her with an oath from his thoughts. then he turned to miss ironsyde and found keen curiosity waken to know what she was thinking and feeling about him. did she know that daniel had dismissed him? could she have listened to so grave a determination on daniel's part and taken no step to prevent it? he found himself deeply concerned at being flung out of his brother's business. the more he weighed all that this must mean and its effect upon his future, the more overwhelmed he began to be. he had worked very hard of late and put all his energy and wits into spinning. he was beginning to understand its infinite possibilities and to see how, daniel's trust once won, he might have advanced their common welfare. from this point he ceased to regret his letter to miss ironsyde, but was glad that he had written it. he now only felt concerned that the communication was not penned with some trace of apology for his past indifference to her wishes. he began to see that his sole hope now lay with his aunt, and the supreme point of interest centred in her attitude to the situation. he despatched a second letter, confirming the first, and expressing some contrition at his behaviour to her. but this rudeness he declared to have been the result of peculiarly distressing circumstances; and he assured her, that when the facts came to her ears, she would find no difficulty in forgiving him. their meeting was fixed for the following evening, and until it had taken place, raymond told nobody of what had happened to him. he went to work next morning, to learn indirectly whether best had heard of his dismissal; but it seemed the foreman had not. the circumstance cheered raymond; he began to hope that his brother had changed his mind, and the possibility put him into a sanguine mood at once. he found himself full of good resolutions; he believed that this might prove the turning point; he expected that daniel would arrive at any moment and he was prepared frankly to express deep regret for his conduct if he did so. but daniel did not come. sabina constantly crossed raymond's mind, to be as constantly dismissed from it. he was aware that something definite must be done; but he determined not even to consider the situation until he had seen his aunt. a hopeful mood, for which no cause existed, somehow possessed him upon this day. for no reason and spun of nothing in the least tangible, there grew around him an ambient intuition that he was going to get out of this fix with the help of jenny ironsyde. the impression created a wave of generosity to sabina. he felt a large magnanimity. he was prepared to do everything right and reasonable. he felt that his aunt would approve the line he purposed to take. she was practical, and he assured himself that she would not consent to pronounce the doom of marriage upon him. in this sanguine spirit raymond went to bridport and dined at 'the tiger' before going to see his aunt at the appointed time. and here there happened events to upset the level optimism that had ruled him all day. raymond had the little back-parlour to himself and richard gurd waited upon him. they spoke of general subjects and then the older man became personal. "if you'll excuse me, mister raymond," he said, "if you'll excuse me, as one who's known you ever since you went out of knickers, sir, i'd venture to warn you as a good friend, against a lot that's being said in bridetown and bridport, too. you know how rumours fly about. but a good deal more's being said behind your back than ought to be said; and you'll do well to clear it up. and by the same token, mister motyer's opening his mouth the widest. as for me, i got it from job legg over the way at 'the seven stars'; and he got it from a young woman at bridetown mills, niece of missis northover. so these things fly about." raymond was aware that richard gurd held no puritan opinions. he possessed tolerance and charity for all sorts and conditions, and left morals alone. "and what did you do, dick? i should think you'd learned by this time to let the gossip of a public-house go in at one ear and out of the other." "yes--for certain. i learned to do that before you were born; but when things are said up against those i value and respect, it's different. i've told three men they were liars, to-day, and i may have to tell thirty so, to-morrow." raymond felt his heart go slower. "what the deuce is the matter?" "just this: they say you promised to marry a mill girl at bridetown and--the usual sort of thing--and, knowing you, i told them it was a lie." the young man uttered a scornful ejaculation. "tell them to mind their own business," he said. "good heavens--what a storm in a teacup it is! they couldn't bleat louder if i'd committed a murder." "there's more to it than to most of these stories," explained richard. "you see it sounds a very disgraceful sort of thing, you being your brother's right hand at the works." "i'm not that, anyway." "well, you're an ironsyde, mister raymond, and to have a story of this sort told about an ironsyde is meat and drink for the baser sort. so i hope you'll authorise me to contradict it." "good god--is there no peace, even here?" burst out raymond. "can even a man i thought large-minded and broad-minded and all the rest of it, go on twaddling about this as if he was an old washer-woman? here--get me my bill--i've finished. and if you're going to begin preaching to people who come here for their food and drink, you'd better chuck a pub and start a chapel." mr. gurd was stricken dumb. a thousand ghosts from the grave had not startled him so much as this rebuke. indeed, in a measure, he felt the rebuke deserved, and it was only because he held the rumour of raymond's achievements an evil lie, that he had cautioned the young man, and with the best motives, desired to put him on his guard. but that the story should be true--or based on truth--as now appeared from raymond's anger, had never occurred to richard. had he suspected such a thing, he must have deplored it, but he certainly would not have mentioned it. he went out now without a word and held it the wisest policy not to see his angry customer again that night. he sent raymond's account in by a maid, and the young man paid it and went out to keep his appointment with miss ironsyde. but again his mood was changed. gurd had hit him very hard. indeed, no such severe blow had been struck as this unconscious thrust of richard's. for it meant that an incident that raymond was striving to reconcile with the ways of youth--a sowing of wild oats not destined to damage future crops--had appeared to the easy-going publican as a thing to be stoutly contradicted--an act quite incompatible with raymond's record and credit. coming from gurd this attitude signified a great deal; for if the keeper of a sporting inn took such a line about the situation, what sort of line were others likely to take? above all, what sort of line would his aunt jenny take? his nebulous hopes dwindled. he began to fear that she would find the honour of the family depended not on his freeing himself from sabina, but the contrary. and he was right. miss ironsyde welcomed him kindly, but left no shadow of doubt as to her opinion; and the fact that the situation had been complicated by publicity, which in the last resort he argued, by no means turned her from her ultimatum. "sit down and smoke and listen to me, raymond," she began, after kissing him. "i forgive you, once for all, that you could be so rude to me and fail to see me despite my very pressing letter. no doubt some whim or suspicion inspired you to be unkind. but that doesn't matter now. that's a trifle. we've got to thresh out something that isn't a trifle, however, for your honour and good name are both involved--and with yours, ours." "i argue that a great deal too much is being made of this, aunt jenny." "i hope so--i hope everything has been exaggerated through a misunderstanding. delay in these cases is often simply fatal, raymond, because it gives a lie a start. and if you give a lie a start, it's terribly hard to catch. sabina dinnett came to see me on sunday afternoon and i trust with all my heart she told me what wasn't true." he felt a sudden gleam of hope and she saw it. "don't let any cheerful feeling betray you; this is far from a cheerful subject for any of us. but again, i say, i hope that sabina dinnett has come to wrong conclusions. what she said was this. trust me to be accurate, and when i have done, correct her statement if it is false. frankly, i thought her a highly intelligent young woman, with grace of mind and fine feeling. she was fighting for her future and she did it like a gentlewoman." miss ironsyde then related her conversation with sabina and raymond knew it to be faithful in every particular. "is that true, or isn't it?" she concluded. "yes, it's perfectly true, save in her assumption that i had changed my mind," he said. "what i may have done since, doesn't matter; but when i left her, i had not changed my mind in the least; if she had waited for me to act in my own time, and come to see you, and so on, as i meant to do, and broken it to daniel myself, instead of hearing him break it to me and dismiss me as though i were a drunken groom, then i should have kept my word to her. but these things, and her action, and the fact that she and her fool of a mother have bleated the story all over the county--these things have decided me it would be a terrible mistake to marry sabina now. she's not what i thought. her true character is not trustworthy--in fact--well, you must see for yourself that they don't trust me and are holding a pistol to my head. and no man is going to stand that. we could never be married now, because she hates me. there's another reason too--a practical one." "what?" "why, the best. i'm a pauper. daniel has chucked me out of the works." miss ironsyde showed very great distress. "do you honestly mean that you could look the world in the face if you ruin this woman?" "why use words like that? she's not ruined, any more than thousands of other women." "i'm ashamed of you, raymond. i hope to god you've never said a thing so base as that to anybody but me. and if i thought you meant it, i think it would break my heart. but you don't mean it. you loved the girl and you are an honourable man without a shadow on your good name so far. you loved sabina, and you do love her, and if you said you didn't a thousand times, i should not believe it. you're chivalrous and generous, and that's the precious point about you. granted that she made a mistake, is her mistake to wreck her whole life? just think how she felt--what a shock you gave her. you part with her on saturday the real raymond, fully conscious that you must marry her at once--for her own honour and yours. then on sunday, you are harsh and cruel--for no visible reason. you frighten her; you raise up horrible fears and dangers in her young, nervous spirit. she is in a condition prone to terrors and doubts, and upon this condition you came in a surly mood and imply that you yourself are changed. what wonder she lost her head? yet i do not think that it was to lose her head to come to me. she had often heard you speak of me. she knew that i loved you well and faithfully. she felt that if anybody could put this dreadful fear to rest, i should be the one. don't say she wasn't right." he listened attentively and began to feel something of his aunt's view. "forgive her first for coming to me. if mistaken, admit at least it was largely your own fault that she came. she has nothing but love and devotion for you. she told nothing but the truth." he asked a question, which seemed far from the point, but none the less indicated a coming change of attitude. at any rate jenny so regarded it. "what d'you think of her?" "i think she's a woman of naturally fine character. she has brains and plenty of sense and if she had not loved you unspeakably and been very emotional, i do not think this could have happened to her." she talked on quietly, but with the unconscious force of one who feels her subject to the heart. the man began to yield--not for love of sabina, but for love of himself. for miss ironsyde continued to make him see his own position must be unbearable if he persisted, while first she implied and finally declared, that only through marriage with sabina could his own position be longer retained. but he put forward his dismissal as an argument against marriage. "whatever i feel, it's too late now," he explained. "daniel heard some distorted version of the truth in bridetown, and, of course, believed it, and came to me white with rage and sacked me. well, you must see that alters the case if nothing else does. granted, for the sake of argument, that i can overlook the foolish, clumsy way she and her mother have behaved and go on as we were going, how am i to live and keep a wife on nothing?" "that is a small matter," she answered. "you need not worry about it in the least. and you know in your heart, my dear, you need not. i have had plenty of time to think over this, and i have thought over it. and i am very ready and willing to come between you and any temporal trouble of that sort. as to daniel, when he hears that you are going to marry and always meant to do so, it must entirely change his view of the situation. he is just and reasonable. none can deny that." "you needn't build on daniel, however. i'd rather break stones than go back to the mill after what he said to me." "leave him, then. leave him out of your calculation and come to me. as i tell you, i've thought about it a great deal, and first i think sabina is well suited to be a good wife to you. with time and application she will become a woman that any man might be proud to marry. i say that without prejudice, because i honestly think it. she is adaptable, and, i believe, would very quickly develop into a woman in every way worthy of your real self. and i am prepared to give you five hundred a year, raymond. after all, why not? all that i have is yours and your brother's, some day. and since you need it now, you shall have it now." at another time he had been moved by this generosity; to-night, knowing what it embraced, he was not so grateful as he might have been. his instinct was to protest that he would not marry sabina; but shame prevented him from speaking, since he could advance no decent reason for such a change of mind. he felt vaguely, dimly at the bottom of his soul that, despite events, he ought not to marry her. he believed, apart from his own intense aversion from so doing now, that marriage with him would not in the long run conduce to sabina's happiness. but where were the words capable of lending any conviction to such a sentiment? certainly he could think of none that would change his aunt's opinion. sullenly he accepted her view with outward acknowledgment and inward resentment. then she said a thing that nearly made him rebel, since it struck at his pride, indicated that miss ironsyde was sure of her ground, showed that she had assumed the outcome of their meeting before the event. first, however, he thanked her. "of course, it is amazingly good and kind. i don't like to accept it. but i suppose it would hurt you more if i didn't than if i do. it's a condition naturally that i marry sabina--i quite understand that. well, i must then. i might have been a better friend to her if i hadn't married; and might love her better and love her longer for that matter. but, of course, i can't expect you to understand that. i only want to be sporting, and a man's idea of being sporting isn't the same--" "now, now--you're forgetting and talking nonsense, raymond. you really are forgetting. a man's idea of being 'sporting' does not mean telling stories to a trusting and loving girl, does it? i don't want anybody to judge you but yourself. i am perfectly content to leave it to your own conscience. and very sure i am that if you ask yourself the question, you'll answer it as it should be answered. so sure, indeed, that i have done a definite thing about it, which i will tell you in a moment. for the rest you must find a house where you please and be married as soon as you can. and when daniel understands what a right and proper thing you're doing, i think you'll very soon find all will be satisfactory again in that quarter." "thank you, i'm sure. but don't speak to him yet. i won't ask for favours nor let you, aunt jenny. if he comes to me, well and good--i certainly won't go to him. as to sabina, we'll clear out and get married in a day or two." "not before a registrar," pleaded miss ironsyde. "before the devil i should think," he said, preparing to leave her. she chid him and then mentioned certain preparations made for this particular evening. "don't be cross any more, and let me see you value my good will and love, ray, by doing what i'm going to ask you to do, now. so sure was i that, when the little details were cleared up, you would feel with me, and welcome your liberty from constraint, and return to sabina with the good news, that i asked her to meet you to-night--this very night, my dear, so that you might go home with her and make her happy. she had tea with me--i made her come, and then she went to friends, and she will be in the lovers' grove waiting for you at ten o'clock--half an hour from now." his impulse was to protest, but he recognised the futility for so doing. he felt baffled and cowed and weary. he hated himself because, weakened by poverty, an old woman had been too much for him. he clutched at a hope. perhaps by doing as his aunt desired and going through with this thing, he would find his peace of mind return and a consciousness that, after all, to keep his promise was the only thing which would renew his self-respect. it might prove the line of least resistance to take this course. he felt not sorry at the immediate prospect of meeting sabina. in his present mood that might be a good thing to happen. annoyance passed, and when he did take leave it was with more expressions of gratitude. "i don't know why you are so extraordinarily good to me," he said. "i certainly don't deserve it. but the least i can do is throw up the sponge and do as you will, and trust your judgment. i don't say i agree with you, but i'm going to do it; and if it's a failure, i shan't blame you, aunt jenny." "it won't be a failure. i'm as sure as i'm sure of anything that it will be a splendid success, raymond. come again, very soon, and tell me what you decide about a house. and remember one thing--don't fly away and take a house goodness knows where. always reckon with the possibility--i think certainty--that daniel will soon be friendly, when he hears you're going to be married." he left her very exhausted, and if her spirits sank a little after his departure, raymond's tended to rise. the night air and moonlight brisked him up; he felt a reaction towards sabina and perceived that she must have suffered a good deal. he threw the blame on her mother. once out of bridetown things would settle down; and if his brother came to his senses and asked him to return, he would make it a condition that he worked henceforth at bridport. a feeling of hatred for bridetown mastered him. he descended west street until the town lay behind him, then turned to the left through a wicket, crossed some meadows and reached a popular local tryst and sanctity: the lovers' grove. a certain crudity in the ideas of miss ironsyde struck raymond. how simple and primitive she was after all. could such an unworldly and inexperienced woman be right? he doubted it. but he went on through the avenue of lime and sycamore trees which made the traditional grove. beneath them ran pavement of rough stones, that lifted the pathway above possible inundation, and, to-night, the pattern of the naked boughs above was thrown down upon the stones in a black lace work by the moon. the place was very still, but half a mile distant there dreamed great woods, whence came the hooting of an owl. raymond stood to listen, and when the bird was silent, he heard a footfall ring on the paving-stones and saw sabina coming to him. at heart she had been fearful that he would not appear; but this she did not whisper now. instead she pretended confidence and said, "i knew you'd come!" he responded with fair ardour and tried to banish his grievances against her. he assured her that all her alarm and tribulation were not his fault, but her own; and her responsive agreement and servile tact, by its self-evidence defeated its own object and fretted the man's nerves, despite his kindly feelings. for sabina, in her unspeakable thankfulness at the turn of events, sank from herself and was obsequious. when they met he kissed her and presently, holding his hand, she kissed it. she heaped blame upon herself and praised his magnanimity; she presented the ordinary phenomena of a happy release from affliction and fear; but her intense humility was far from agreeable to raymond, since its very accentuation served to show his own recent actions in painful colours. he told her what his aunt was going to do; and where a subtler mind had held its peace, sabina erred again and praised miss ironsyde. in truth, she was not at her best to-night and her excitement acted unfavourably on raymond. he fought against his own emotions, and listened to her high-strung chatter and plans for the future. a torrent of blame had better suited the contrite mood in which she met him; but she took the blame on her own shoulders, and in her relief said things sycophantic and untrue. he told her almost roughly to stop. "for god's sake don't blackguard yourself any more," he said. "give me a chance. it's for me to apologise to you, surely. i knew perfectly well you meant nothing, and i ought to have had more imagination and not given you any cause to be nervous. i frightened you, and if a woman's frightened, of course, she's not to be blamed for what she does, any more than a man's to be blamed for what he does when he's drunk." this, however, she would not allow. "if i had trusted you, and known you could not do wrong, and remembered what you said when i told you about the child--then all this would have been escaped. and god knows i did trust you at the bottom of my heart all the time." she talked on and the man tired of it and, looking far ahead, perceived that his life must be shared for ever with a nature only now about to be revealed to him. he had seen the best of her; but he had never seen the whole truth of her. he knew she was excitable and passionate; but the excitation and passion had all been displayed for him till now. how different when she approached other affairs of life than love, and brought her emotional characteristics to bear upon them! a sensation of unutterable flatness overtook raymond. she began talking of finding a house, and was not aware that his brother had dismissed him. he snatched an evil pleasure from telling her so. it silenced her and made her the more oppressively submissive. but through this announcement he won temporary release. there came a longing to leave her, to go back to bridport and see other faces, hear other voices and speak of other things. they had walked homeward through the valley of the river and, at west haven, raymond announced that she must go the remainder of the way alone. he salved the unexpected shock of this with a cheerful promise. "i sleep at bridport, to-night," he said, "and i'll leave you here, sabina; but be quite happy. i dare say daniel will be all right. he's a pious blade and all that sort of thing and doesn't understand real life. and as some fool broke our bit of real life rather roughly on his ear, it was too much for his weak nerves. i shan't take you very far off anyway. we'll have a look round soon. i'll go to a house agent or somebody in a day or two." "you must choose," she said. "no, no--that's up to you, and you mustn't have small ideas about it either. you're going to live in a jolly good house, i promise you." this sweetened the parting. he kissed her and turned his face to bridport, while she followed the road homeward. it took her past the old store--black as the night under a roof silvered by the moon. a strange shiver ran through her as she passed it. she could have prayed for time to turn back. "oh, my god, if i was a maiden again!" she said in a low voice to herself. then, growing calmer and musing of the past rather than the future, she asked herself whether in that case she would still be caring for raymond; but she turned from such a thought and smothered the secret indignation still lying red-hot and hidden under the smoke of the things she had said to him that night. on his way to bridport, the man also reflected, but of the future, not the past. "i must be cruel to be kind," he told himself. what he exactly meant by the assurance, he hardly knew. but, in some way, it assisted self-respect and promised a course of action likely to justify his coming life. chapter xix job legg's ambition a disquieting and wholly unexpected event now broke into the strenuous days of the mistress of 'the seven stars.' it followed another, which was now a thing of the past; but mrs. northover had scarcely finished being thankful that the old order was restored again, when that occurred to prove the old order could never be restored. job legg had been called away to the deathbed of an aged uncle. for a fortnight he was absent, and during that time nelly northover found herself the victim of a revelation. she perceived, indeed, startling truths until then hidden from her, and found the absence of job created undreamed-of complications. at every turn she missed the man and discovered, very much to her own surprise, that this most unassuming person appeared vital to the success of her famous house. on every hand she heard the same words; all progress was suspended; nothing could advance until the return of mr. legg. 'the seven stars' were arrested in their courses while he continued absent. thus his temporary disappearance affected the system and proved that around the sun of job legg, quite as much as his mistress, the galaxy revolved; but something more than this remained to be discovered by mrs. northover herself. she found that not only had she undervalued his significance and importance in her scheme of things; but that she entertained a personal regard for the man, unsuspected until he was absent. she missed him at every turn; and when he came back to her, after burying his uncle, mrs. northover could have kissed him. this she did not do; but she was honest; she related the suspension of many great affairs for need of job; she described to him the dislocation that his departure had occasioned and declared her hearty thankfulness that her right hand had returned to her. "you was uppermost in my mind a thousand times a day, job; and when it came to doing the fifty thousand things you do, i began to see what there is to you," said nelly northover. "and this i'll say: you haven't been getting enough money along with me." he was pleased and smiled and thanked her. "i've missed 'the stars,'" he said, "and am very glad to be back." then when things were settled down and mrs. northover happy and content once more, mr. legg cast her into much doubt and uncertainty. indeed his attitude so unexpected, awoke a measure of dismay. life, that nelly hoped was becoming static and comfortable again, suddenly grew highly dynamic. changes stared her in the face and that was done which nothing could undo. on the night that raymond ironsyde left sabina at west haven and returned to bridport, mr. legg, the day's work done, drank a glass of sloe gin in mrs. northover's little parlour and uttered a startling proposition--the last to have been expected. the landlady herself unconsciously opened the way to it, for she touched the matter of his wages and announced her purpose to increase them by five shillings a week. then he spoke. "before we talk about that, hear me," he said. "you were too nice-minded to ask me if i got anything by the death of my old man; but i may tell you, that i got everything. and there was a great deal more than anybody knew. in short he's left me a shade over two hundred pounds per annum, and that with my own savings--for i've saved since i was thirteen years old--brings my income somewhere near the two hundred and fifty mark--not counting wages." "good powers, job! but i am glad. never none on earth deserved a bit better than you do." "and yet," he said, "i only ask myself if all this lifts me high enough to say what i want to say. you know me for a modest man, mrs. northover." "none more so, job." "and therefore i've thought a good deal about it and come to it by the way of reason as well as inclination. in fact i began to think about what i'm going to say now, many years ago after your husband died. and i just let the idea go on till the appointed time, if ever it should come; and when my uncle died and left a bit over four thousand pounds to me, i felt the hour had struck!" nelly's heart sank. "you're going?" she said. "all this means that you are going into business on your own, legg." "let me finish. but be sure of one thing; i'm not going if i can stay with peace and honour. if i can't, then, of course, i must go. to go would be a terrible sad thing for me, for i've grown into this place and feel as much a part of it as the beer engine, or the herbaceous border. but i had to weigh the chances, and i may say my cautious bent of mind showed very clearly what they were. and, so, first, i'll tell what a flight i've took and what a thought i've dared, and then i'll ask you, being a woman with a quick mind and tongue, to answer nothing for the moment, and say no word that you may wish to recall after." "all very wise and proper, i'm sure." "if it ain't, god forgive me, seeing i've been working it out in my mind for very near twenty years. and i say this, that being now a man of capital, and a healthy and respectable man, and well thought of, i believe, and nothing against me to my knowledge, i offer to marry you, nelly northover. the idea, of course, comes upon you like a bolt from the blue, as i can see by your face; but before you answer 'no,' i must say i've loved you in a respectful manner for many years, and though i knew my place too well to say so, i let it appear by faithful service and very sharp eyes always on your interests--day and night you may say." "that is true," she said. "i didn't know my luck." "i don't say that. any honourable man would have done so much, very likely; but perhaps--however, i'm not here to praise myself but to praise you; and i may add i never in a large experience saw the woman--maid, wife or widow--to hold a candle to you for brains and energy and far-reaching fine qualities in general. and therefore i never could be worthy of you, and i don't pretend to it, and the man who did would be a very vain and windy fool; but such is my high opinion and great desire to be your husband that i risk, you may say, everything by offering myself." "this is a very great surprise, job." "so great that you must do me one good turn and not answer without letting it sink in, if you please. i have a right to beg that. of course i know on the spur of the moment the really nice-minded woman always turns down the adventurous male. 'tis their delicate instinct so to do. but you won't do that--for fairness to me. and there's more to it yet, because we've got to think of fairness to you also. i wouldn't have you buy a pig in a poke and take a man of means without knowing where you stood. so i may say that if you presently felt the same as i do about it, i should spend a bit of my capital on 'the seven stars,' which, in my judgment, is now crying for capital expenditure." "it is," admitted mrs. northover, "i grant you that." "very well, then. it would be my pride--" he was interrupted, for the bell of the inn rang and a moment later raymond ironsyde appeared in the hall. he had come for supper and bed. "good evening, mrs. northover," he said. "i'm belated and starving into the bargain. have you got a room?" "for that matter, yes," she answered not very enthusiastically. "but surely 'the tiger's' your house, sir?" "i'm not bound to 'the tiger,' and very likely shall never go there again. gurd is getting too big for his shoes and seems to think he's called upon to preach sermons to his customers, besides doing his duty as a publican. if i want sermons i can go to church for them, not to an inn. give me some supper and a bottle of your best claret. i'm tired and bothered." a customer was a customer and mrs. northover had far too much experience to take up the cudgels for her friend over the way. she guessed pretty accurately at the subject of richard gurd's discourse, yet wondered that he should have spoken. for her own part, while quite as indignant as others and more sorry than many that this cloud should have darkened a famous local name, she held it no personal business of hers. "i'll see what cold meat we've got. would you like a chicken, sir?" "no--beef, and plenty of it. and let me have a room." job legg, concealing the mighty matters in his own bosom, soon waited upon raymond and found him in a sulky humour. the claret was not to his liking and he ordered spirits. he began to smoke and drink, and from an unamiable mood soon thawed and became talkative. he bade job stay and listen to him. "i've got a hell of a lot on my mind," he said, "and it's a relief to talk to a sensible man. there aren't many knocking about so far as i can see." he rambled on touching indirectly, as he imagined, at his own affairs, but making it clear to the listener that a very considerable tumult raged in raymond's own mind. then came mrs. northover, told the guest that it was nearer two o'clock than one, and hoped he was soon going to bed. he promised to do so and she departed; but the faithful job, himself not sleepy, kept raymond company. unavailingly he urged the desirability of sleep, but young ironsyde sat on until he was very drunk. then mr. legg helped him upstairs and assisted him to his bed. it was after three o'clock before he retired himself and found his mind at liberty to speculate upon the issue of his own great adventure. chapter xx a conference jenny ironsyde came to see ernest churchouse upon the matter of the marriage. she found him pensive and a little weary. according to his custom he indulged in ideas before approaching the subject just then uppermost in all minds in bridetown. "i have been suffering from rather a severe dose of the actual," he said; "at present, in the minds of those about me, there is no room for any abstraction. we are confronted with facts--painful facts--a most depressing condition for such a mind as mine. there are three orders of intelligence, jenny. the lowest never reaches higher than the discussion of persons; the second talks about places, which is certainly better; the third soars into the region of ideas; and when one finds a person indulge in ideas, then court their friendship, for ideas are the only sound basis of intellectual interchanges. it is so strange to see an educated person, who might be discussing the deepest mysteries and noblest problems of life, preferring to relate the errors of a domestic servant, or deplore the price of sprats." "all very well for you," declared miss ironsyde; "from your isolated situation, above material cares and anxieties, you can affect this superiority; but what about mrs. dinnett? you would very soon be grumbling if mrs. dinnett put the deepest mysteries and noblest problems of life before the price of sprats. it is true that man cannot live by bread alone; and it is equally true that he cannot live without it. the highest flights are impossible without cooking, and cooking would be impossible if all aspired to the highest flights." "as a matter of fact, mrs. dinnett is my present source of depression," he said. "all is going as it should go, i suppose. the young people are reconciled, and i have arranged that sabina should be married from here a fortnight hence. thus, as it were, i shield and protect her and support her against back-biting and evil tongues." "it is splendid of you." "far from it. i am only doing the obvious. i care much for the girl. but mary dinnett, despite the need to be sanguine and expeditious, permits herself an amount of obstinate melancholy which is most ill-judged and quite unjustified by the situation. nothing will satisfy her. she scorns hope. she declines to take a cheerful view. she even confesses to a premonition they are not going to be married after all. she says that her grandmother had second sight and believes that the doubtful gift has been handed down to her." "this is very bad for sabina." "of course it is. i impress that upon her mother. the girl has been through a great deal. she is highly strung at all times, and these affairs have wrought havoc with her intelligence for the moment. her one thought and feverish longing is to be married, and her mother's fatuous prophecies that she never will be are causing serious nervous trouble to sabina. i feel sure of it. they may even be doing permanent harm." "you should suppress mary." "i endeavour to do so. i put much serving upon her; but her frame of mind is such that her energy is equal to anything. you had better see her and caution her. from another woman, words of wisdom would carry more weight than mine. as to sabina, i have warned her against her mother--a strong thing to do, but i felt it to be my duty." they saw mary dinnett then, and miss ironsyde quickly realised that there were subtle tribulations and shades of doubt in the mother's mind beyond mr. churchouse's power to appreciate. indeed, mrs. dinnett, encouraged so to do by the sympathetic presence of jenny ironsyde, strove to give reasons for her continued gloom. "you must be more hopeful and put a brighter face on it, mary, if only for the sake of the young people," declared the visitor. "you're not approaching the marriage from the right point of view. we must forget the past and keep our minds on the future and proceed with this affair just as though it were an ordinary marriage without any disquieting features. we have to remember that they love each other and really are well suited. the future is chequered by certain differences between my nephews, which have not yet been smoothed out; but i am sure that they will be; and meantime you need feel no fear of any inconvenience for sabina. i am responsible." "i know all that," said mrs. dinnett, "and your name is in my prayers when i rise up and when i go to bed. but while there's a lot other people can do for 'em, there's also a deal they can only do for themselves; and, in my opinion, they are not doing it. it's no good us playacting and forgetting the past and pretending everything is just as it should be, if they won't." "but they have." "sabina has. i doubt if he has. i don't know how you find him, but when i see him he's not in a nice temper and not taking the situation in the spirit of a happy bridegroom--very far from it. and my second-sight, which i get from my grandmother, points to one thing: that there won't be no wedding." "this is preposterous," declared miss ironsyde. "the day is fixed and every preparation far advanced." "that's nought to a wayward mind like his. he's got in a state now when i wouldn't trust him a yard. and i hope to god you'll hold the reins tight, miss, and not slacken till they're man and wife. once let him see his way clear to bolt, and bolt he will." mr. churchouse protested, while jenny only sighed. sabina's mother was echoing her own secret uneasiness, but she lamented that others had marked it as well as herself. "he is in a very moody state, but never speaks of any change of mind to me." "because he well knows you hold the purse," said mrs. dinnett. "i don't want to say anything uncharitable against the man, though i might; but i will say that there's danger and that i do well to be a miserable woman till the danger's past. you tell me to cheer up, and i promise to cheer up quick enough when there's reason to do so. mr. churchouse here is the best gentleman on god's earth; but he don't understand a mother's heart--how should he? and he don't know what a lot women have got to hide from men--for their own self-respect, and because men as a body are such clumsy-minded fools--speaking generally, of course." to see even mrs. dinnett dealing thus in ideas excited ernest and filled him with interest. he forgot everything but the principle she asserted and would have discussed it for an hour; but mary, having thus hit back effectively, departed, and miss ironsyde brought the master of 'the magnolias' back to their subject. "there's a lot of truth in what she says and it shows how trouble quickens the wits," she declared; "and i can say to you, what i wouldn't to her, that raymond is not taking this in a good spirit, or as i hoped and expected. i feel for him, too, while being absolutely firm with him. stupid things were done and the secret of his folly made public. he has a grudge against them and, of course, that is rather a threatening fact, because a grudge against anybody is a deadly thing to get into one's mind. it poisons character and ruins your steady outlook, if it is deep seated enough." "would you say that he bore sabina a grudge?" "i'm afraid so; but i do my best to dispel it by pointing out what she thought herself faced with. and i tell him what is true, that sabina in her moments of greatest fear and exasperation, always behaved like a lady. but in your ear only, ernest, i confess to a new sensation--a sickly sensation of doubt. it comes over my religious certainty sometimes, like a fog. it's cold and shivery. of course from every standpoint of religion and honour and justice, they ought to be married. but--" he stopped her. "having named religion and honour and justice, there is no room for 'but.' indeed, jenny, there is not." "let me speak, all the same. other people can have intuitions besides mrs. dinnett. it's an intuition--not second sight--but it is alive. supposing this marriage doesn't really make for the happiness of either of them?" "if they put religion and honour and justice first, it must," he repeated. "you cannot, i venture to say, have happiness without religion and honour and justice; and if raymond were to go back on his word now, he would be the most miserable man in the country." "i wonder." "don't wonder. be sure of it. granted he finds himself miserable--that is because he has committed a fault. will it make him less miserable to go on and commit a greater? sorrow is a fair price to pay for wisdom, jenny. he is a great deal wiser now than he was six months ago, and to shirk his responsibilities and break his word will not mend matters. besides, there is another consideration, which you forget. these young people are no longer free. even if they both desired to remain single, honour, justice and religion actually demand marriage. there was a doubt in my own mind once, too, whether their happiness would be assured by union. now there is no doubt. a child is coming into the world. need i say more?" "i stand corrected," she answered. "there is really nothing more to be said. for the child's sake, if for no other reason, marry they must. we know too well the fate of the child born out of wedlock in this country." "it is a shameful and cruel fate; and while the church of england cowardly suffers the state to impose it, and selfish men care not, we, with some enthusiasm for the unborn and some indignation to see their disabilities, must do what lies in our power for them." he rambled off into generalities inspired by this grave theme. "'suffer the little children to come unto me,' said christ; and we make it almost impossible for fifty thousand little children to come unto him every year; and those who stand for him, the ministers of his church, lift not a finger. the little children of nobody they are. they grow up conscious of their handicap; they come into the world to trust and hope and find themselves pariahs. is that conducive to a religious trust in god, or a rational trust in man for these outlawed thousands?" she brought him back again to raymond and sabina. "apart from the necessity and justice," she said, "and taking it for granted that the thing must happen, what is your opinion of the future? you know sabina well and ought to be in a position to say if you think she will have the wit and sense to make it a happy marriage." "i should wish to think so. they are a gracious pair--at least they were. i liked both boy and girl exceedingly and i happened to be the one who introduced them to each other. it was after henry's death. sabina came in with our tea and one could almost see an understanding spring up and come to life under one's eyes. they've been wicked, jenny; but such is my hopelessly open mind in the matter of goodness and wickedness, that i often find it harder to forgive some people for doing their duty than others for being wicked. in fact, some do their duty in a way that is perfectly unforgivable, while others fail in such an affecting and attractive manner that they make you all the fonder of them." "i feel so, too, sometimes," she admitted, "but i never dared to confess it. once married, i think raymond would steady down and realise his responsibilities. we must both do what we can to bring the brothers together again. it will take a long time to make daniel forgive this business." "it is just the daniel type who would take it most seriously, even if we are able soon to say 'all's well that ends well.' for that reason, one regrets he heard particulars. however, we must trust and believe the future will set all right and reinstate raymond at the works. for my own part i feel very sure that will happen." "well, i always like to see hope triumphing over experience," she said, "and one need never look further than you for that." "thank yourself," he answered. "your steadfast optimism always awakes an echo in me. if we make up our minds that this is going to be all right, that will at least help on the good cause. we can't do much to make it all right, but we can do something. they are in bridport house-hunting this morning, i hear." "they are; and that reminds me they come to lunch and, i hope, to report progress. of course anything raymond likes, sabina approves; but he isn't easily satisfied. however, they may have found something. daniel, rather fortunately, is from home just now, in the north." "if we could get him to the wedding, it would be a great thing." "i'm afraid we mustn't hope for that; but we can both urge him to come. he may." "i will compose a very special letter to him," said mr. churchouse. "how's your rheumatism?" "better, if anything." chapter xxi the warping mill in the warping shed mercy gale plied her work. it was a separate building adjoining the stores at bridetown mill and, like them, impregnated with the distinctive, fat smell of flax and hemp. under dusty rafters and on a floor of stone the huge warping reels stood. they were light, open frameworks that rose from floor to ceiling and turned upon steel rods. hither came the full bobbins from the spinning machines to be wound off. two dozen of the bobbins hung together on a flat frame or 'creel' and through eyes and slots the yarn ran through a 'hake,' which deftly crossed the strands so that they ran smoothly and freely. the bake box rose and fell and lapped the yarn in perfect spirals round the warping reels as they revolved. the length of a reel of twine varies in different places and countries; but at bridetown, a dorset reel was always measured, and it represented twenty-one thousand, six hundred yards. mercy gale was chaining the warp off the reels in great massive coils which would presently depart to be polished and finished at bridport. all its multiple forms sprang from the simple yarn. it would turn into shop and parcel twines; fishing twines for deep sea lines and nets; and by processes of reduplication, swell to cords and shroud laid ropes, hawsers and mighty cables. a little figure filled the door of the shed and estelle waldron appeared. she shook hands and greeted the worker with friendship, for estelle was now free of the mill and greatly prided herself on personally knowing everybody within them. "good morning, mercy," she said. "i've come to see nancy buckler." "good morning, miss. i know. she's going to run in at dinner time to sing you her song." "it's a wonderful song, i believe," declared estelle, "and very, very old. her grandfather taught it to her before he died, and i want to write it down. do you like poetry, mercy?" "can't say as i do," confessed the warper. she was a fair, tall girl. "i like novels," she added. "i love stories, but i haven't got much use for rhymes." "stories about what?" asked estelle. "i have a sort of an idea to start a library, if i can persuade my father to let me. i believe i could get some books from friends to make a beginning." "stories about adventure," declared mercy. "most of the girls like love stories; but i don't care so much about them. i like stories where big things happen in history." "so do i; and then you know you're reading about what really did happen and about great people who really lived. i think i can lend you some stories like that." mercy thanked her and estelle fell silent considering which book from her limited collection would best meet the other's demand. herself she did not read many novels, but loved her books about plants and her poets. poetry was precious food to her, and mr. churchouse, who also appreciated it, had led her to his special favourites. for the present, therefore, estelle was content with longfellow and cowper and wordsworth. the more dazzling light of keats and shelley and swinburne had yet to dawn for her. nancy buckler arrived presently to sing her song. her looks did not belie nancy. she was sharp of countenance, with thin cheeks and a prominent nose. her voice, too, had a pinch of asperity about it. by nature she was critical of her fellow creatures. no man had desired her, and the fact soured her a little and led to a general contempt of the sex. she smiled for estelle, however, because the ingenuous child had won her friendship. "good morning, miss," she said. "if you've got a pencil and paper, you can take down the words." "but sing them first," begged the listener. "i want to hear you sing them to the old tune, because i expect the tune is as old as the words, nancy." "it's a funny old tune for certain. i can't sing it like grandfather did, for all his age. he croaked it like a machine running, and that seemed the proper way. but i've not got much of a voice." "'tis loud enough, anyway," said mercy, "and that's a virtue." "yes, you can hear what i'm saying," admitted miss buckler, then she sang her song. "when a twister, a twisting, will twist him a twist, with the twisting his twist, he the twine doth entwist; but if one of the twines of the twist doth untwist, the twine that untwisteth, untwisteth the twist, untwisting the twine that entwineth between, he twists with his twister the two in a twine. then, twice having twisted the twines of his twine, he twisteth the twine he had twined in twine. the twain, that in twining before in the twine, as twines were entwisted, he now doth untwine, 'twixt the twain intertwisting a twine more between." nancy gave her remarkable performance in a clear, thin treble. it was a monotonous melody, but suited the words very well. she sang slowly and her face and voice exhibited neither light nor shade. yet her method suited the words in their exceedingly unemotional appeal. "it's the most curious song i ever heard," cried estelle, "and you sing it perfectly, because i heard every word." then she brought out pencil and paper, sat in the deep alcove of the window and transcribed nancy's verse. "you must sing that to my father next time you come up," she said. "it's like no other song in the world, i'm sure." sally groves came in. she had brought estelle the seed of a flower from her garden. "i put it by for you, miss waldron," said the big woman, "because you said you liked it in the fall." they talked together while mercy gale doffed her overall and woollen bonnet. "tell me," said estelle, "of a very good sort of wedding present for mr. ironsyde, when he marries sabina next week." "a new temper, i should think," suggested nancy. "he can't help being rather in a temper," explained estelle, "because they can't find a house." "sabina can find plenty," answered the spinner. "it's him that's so hard to please." sally groves strove to curb nancy's tongue. "you mind your own business," she said. "mr. ironsyde wants everything just so, and why not?" "because it ain't a time to be messing about, i should think," retorted nancy. "and it's for the woman to be considered, not him." then estelle, in all innocence, asked a shattering question. "is it true sabina is going to have a baby? one or two girls in the mill told me she was, but i asked my father, and he seemed to be annoyed and said, of course not. but i hope it's true--it would be lovely for sabina to have a baby to play with." "so it would then," declared sally groves, "but i shouldn't tell nothing about it for the present, miss." "least said, soonest mended," said mercy gale. "it's like this," explained sally groves with clumsy goodness: "they'll want to keep it for a surprise, miss, and i dare say they'd be terrible disappointed if they thought anybody knew anything about it yet." nancy buckler laughed. "i reckon they would," she said. "so don't you name it, miss," continued sally. "don't you name the word yet awhile." estelle nodded. "i won't then," she promised. "i know how sad it is, if you've got a great secret, to find other people know it before you want them to." "beastly sad," said nancy, as she went her way, and the child looked after her puzzled. "i believe nancy's jealous of sabina," she said. then it was sally groves who laughed and her merriment shook the billows of her mighty person. estelle found herself somewhat depressed as she went home. not so much the words as the general spirit of these comments chilled her. after luncheon she visited her father's study and talked to him while he smoked. "what perfectly beautiful thing can i get for ray and sabina for a wedding present?" he cleaned his pipe with one of the crow's feathers estelle was used to collect for him. they stood in vases on the mantel-shelf. "it's a puzzler," confessed arthur waldron. "d'you think ray has grown bad-tempered, father?" "do you?" "no, i'm sure i don't. he is a little different, but that's because he's going to be married. no doubt people do get a little different, then. but nancy buckler at the mill said she thought the best wedding present for him would be a new temper." "that's the sort of insolent things people say, i suppose, behind his back. it's all very unfortunate in my opinion, estelle." "it's frightfully unfortunate ray leaving us, because, after he's married, he must have a house of his own; but it isn't unfortunate his marrying sabina, i'm sure." "i'm not sure at all," confessed her father. his opinion always carried the greatest weight, and she was so much concerned at this announcement that arthur felt sorry he had spoken. "you see, estelle--how can i explain? i think ray in rather too young to marry." "he's well over twenty." "yes, but he's young for his age, and the things that he is keen about are not the things that a girl is keen about. i doubt if he will make sabina happy." "he will if he likes, and i'm sure he will like. he can always make me happy, so, of course, he can make sabina. he's really tremendously clever and knows all sorts of things. oh, don't think it's going to be sad, father. i'm sure they're both much too wise to do anything that's going to be sad. because if ray--" she stopped, for raymond himself came in. he had left early that morning to seek a house with sabina. "what luck?" said waldron. "we've found something that'll do, i think. two miles out towards chidcock. a garden and a decent paddock and a stable. but he'll have to spend some money on the stable. there's a doubt if he will--the landlord, i mean. sabina likes the house, so i hope it will be all right." waldron nodded. "if it's thornton, the horse-dealer, he'll do what you want. he's got houses up there." "it isn't. i haven't seen the man yet." "well," said his friend, "i don't know what the deuce estelle and i are going to do without you. we shall miss you abominably." "what shall i do without you? that's more to the point. you've got each other for pals--i--" he broke off and arthur filled the pregnant pause. "look here--estelle wants to give you a wedding present, old man; and so do i. and as we haven't the remotest idea what would be the likeliest thing, don't stand on ceremony, but tell us." "i don't want anything--except to know i shall always be welcome when i drop in." "we needn't tell you that." "but you must want thousands of things," declared estelle, "everybody does when they're married. and if you don't, i'm sure sabina does--knives and forks and silver tea kettles and pictures for the walls." "married people don't want pictures, estelle; they never look at anything but one another." she laughed. "but the poor walls want pictures if you don't. i believe the walls wouldn't feel comfortable without pictures. besides you and sabina can't sit and look at each other all day." "what about a nice little handy 'jingle' for her to trundle about in?" asked waldron. "as i can't pull it, old chap, it wouldn't be much good. i'm keeping the hunter; but i shan't be able to keep anything else--if that." "how would it be if you sold the hunter and got a nice everyday sort of horse that you could ride, or that sabina could drive?" asked estelle. "no," said waldron firmly. "he doesn't sell his hunter or his guns. these things stand for a link with the outer world and represent sport, which is quite as important as marriage in the general scheme." "i thought to chuck all that and take up golf," said raymond. "there's a lot in golf they tell me." but waldron shook his head. "golf's all right," he admitted, "and a great game. i'm going to take it up myself, and i'm glad it's coming in, because it will add to the usefulness of a lot of us men who have to fall out of cricket. there's a great future for golf, i believe. but no golf for you yet. you won't run any more and you'll drop out of football, as only 'pros.' play much after marriage. but you must shoot as much as possible, and hunt a bit, and play cricket still." this comforting programme soothed raymond. "that's all right, but i've got to find work. i was just beginning to feel keen on work; but now--flit, estelle, my duck. i want to have a yarn with father." the girl departed. "do let it be a 'jingle,' ray," she begged, and then was gone. "it's my damned brother," went on raymond. "he'll come round and ask you to go back, as soon as you're fixed up and everything's all right." "everything won't be all right. everything's confoundedly wrong. think what it is for a proud man to be at the mercy of an aunt, and to look to her for his keep. if anything could make me sick of the whole show, it's that." "i shouldn't feel it so. she's keen on you, and keen on sabina; and she knows you can't live upon air. you may be sure also she knows that it won't last. daniel will come round." "and if he does? it's all the same--taking his money." "you won't be taking it; you'll be earning it." "i hate him, like hell, and i hate the thought of working under him all my life." "you won't be under him. you've often said the time was coming when you'd wipe daniel's eye and show you were the moving spirit of the mill. well now, when you go back, you must work double tides to do it." "he may not take me back, and for many things i'd sooner he didn't. we should never be the same to one another after that row. for two pins, even now, i'd make a bolt, arthur, and disappear altogether and go abroad and carve out my own way." "don't talk rot. you can't do that." but waldron, in spite of his advice and sanguine prophecies, hid a grave doubt at heart whether, so far as raymond's own future was concerned, such a course might not be the wisest. he felt confident, however, that the younger man would keep his engagements. raymond had plenty of pluck and did not lack for a heart, so far as waldron knew. had sabina been no more than engaged, he must strongly have urged raymond to drop her and endure the harsh criticism that would have followed: for an engagement broken appeared a lesser evil than an unhappy mating; but since the position was complicated, he could not feel so and stoutly upheld the marriage on principle, while extremely doubtful of its practical outcome. they talked for two hours to no purpose and then estelle called them to tea. chapter xxii the telegram raymond and sabina spent a long afternoon at the house they had taken; and while he was interested with the stables and garden, she occupied herself indoors. she was very tired before they had finished, and presently, returning to bridport, they called at 'the seven stars' and ordered tea. the famous garden was dismantled now and job legg spent some daily hours in digging there. to-morrow job was to hear what mrs. northover had to say concerning his proposal, and, meantime, the pending decision neither unsettled him nor interfered with his usual placidity and enterprise. nelly northover herself waited upon the engaged couple. she was somewhat abstracted with her own thoughts, but so far banished them that she could show and feel interest in the visitors. raymond described the house, and sabina, glad to see raymond in a cheerful mood, expatiated on the charms of her future home. they delayed somewhat longer than mrs. northover expected and she left them presently, for she had an appointment bearing on the supreme subject of her offer of marriage. mrs. northover was, in fact, going to take another opinion. such indecision seemed foreign to her character, which seldom found her in two minds; but it happened that upon one judgment she had often relied since her husband's death and, before the great problem at present challenging nelly, she believed another view might largely assist her. that she could not decide herself, she felt to be very significant. the fact made her cautious and anxious. she put on her bonnet now, left a maid to settle with the customers and presently stepped across the road to 'the tiger,' for it was richard gurd in whom mrs. northover put her trust. she designed to place job's offer before her friend and invite a candid and unprejudiced criticism. for so doing more reasons than one may have existed; we seldom seek the judgment of a friend without mixed motives; but, at any rate, nelly believed very thoroughly in her neighbour, and if, in reality, it was as much a wish that he should know what had happened, as a desire to learn his opinion upon it, she none the less felt that opinion would be precious and probably decide her. richard was waiting in his office--a small apartment off the bar, to which none had access save himself. "come in here and we shan't be disturbed," he said. "of course, when you tell me you want my advice on a matter of the greatest importance, all else has to stand by. my old friend's wife has a right to come to me, i should hope, and i'm glad you've done so. sit here by the fire." it did not take mrs. northover long to relate the situation, nor was mr. gurd much puzzled to declare his view. in brief words she told him of job legg's greatly increased prosperity and his proposal to wed. having made her statement, she advanced a few words for job. "in fairness and beyond all this, i must tell you, richard, that he's a very uncommon sort of man. that you know, of course, as well as i do. but what you don't know is that when he was away, i badly missed him and found out, for the first time, what an all-round, valuable creature he has become at 'the seven stars.' when he was along with his dying relation, i missed the man a thousand times in every twelve hours and i felt properly astonished to find how he was the prop and stay of my business. that may seem too much to say, seeing i'm a fairly clever woman and know how to run 'the seven stars' in a pretty prosperous way; but there is no doubt legg is very much more than what he seems. he's a very human man and i'll go so far as to say this: i like him. there's great self-respect to him and you feel, under his level temper and unfailing readiness to work at anything and everything, that he's a power for good--in fact a man with high principles--so high as my own, if not higher." "stop there, or you'll over-do it," said richard. "higher than yours his principles won't take him and i refuse to hear you say so. you ask me in plain words if you shall marry job legg, or if you shan't. and before i speak, i may tell you that, as a man of the world, i shan't quarrel with you if you don't take my advice. as a rule i have found that good advice is more often given than taken and, whether or no, the giving of advice nearly always means one thing. and that is that the giver loses a friend. if the advice is bad, it is generally taken, and him that takes it finds out in due course it was bad, and so the giver makes an enemy. and if 'tis good, the same thing happens, for then 'tis not taken and, looking back, the sufferer sees his mistake, and human nature works, and instead of kicking himself, he feels like kicking the wise man that gave him the good advice. but between me and you that won't happen, for there's the ghost of william northover to come between. you and me are high spirited, and i dare say there are some people who would say we are short tempered; but we know better." "that's all true as gospel; and now you tell me if i ought to marry job. or, if 'tis too great a question to decide in a minute, as i find it myself, then leave it till to-morrow and i'll pop in again." "no need to leave it. my mind is used to make itself up swift. first, as to legg. legg's a very good man, indeed, and i'd be the first to praise him. he's all you say--or nearly all--and i've often been very much impressed by him. and if he was anybody's servant but yours, i dare say i'd have tempted him to 'the tiger' before now. but there are some that shine in the lead, like you and me, and some that only show their full worth when they've got to obey. job can obey to perfection; but i'm not so sure if he's fitted to command." "remember," she said, "that if i say 'no' to the man, i lose him. he can't be my right hand no more then, because he'd leave. and my heart sinks at the thought of another potman at my age." "when you say 'potman' you come to the root of the matter, and your age has nothing to do with it," answered richard. "the natural instinct at such times is to advise against, and when man or woman asks a fellow creature as to the wisdom of marrying, they'll always pull a long face and find fifty good reasons why not. but i'm taking this in a larger spirit. there's no reason why you shouldn't marry again, and you'd make another as happy as you did your first, no doubt. but job legg is a potman; he's been a potman for a generation; he thinks like a potman, and his outlook in life is naturally the potman outlook. mind, i'm not saying anything against him as a man when i tell you so; i'm only looking at him now as a husband for you. he's got religion and a good temper, and dollops of sense, and i'll even go so far as to say, seeing that he is now a man of money, that he was within his right to offer, if he did it in a modest manner. but i won't say more than that. he's simple and faithful and a servant worthy of all respect, but that man haven't the parts to rise to mastership. a good stick, but if he was your crutch, he'd fail you. for my part, i'm very sure that people of much greater importance than him would offer for you if they knew you were for a husband." "i wouldn't say i was for a husband, richard. the idea never came into my mind till job legg put it there." "just your modesty. there's no more reason why you shouldn't wed than why i shouldn't. you're a comely and highly marriageable person still, and nobody knows it better than what i do." "you advise against, then?" "in that quarter, yes. i'm thinking of you, and only you, and i don't believe job is quite man enough for the part. leave it, however, for twenty-four hours." "he was to have his answer, to-morrow." "he's used to waiting. tell him you're coming to it and won't keep him much longer. it's too big a thing to be quite sure about, and you were right when you said so. i'll come across and see you in the morning." "i'm obliged to you, richard. and if you'll turn it over, i'll thank you. i wouldn't have come to any other than you, bachelor though you are." "i'll weigh it," he promised, "but i warn you i'm very unlikely to see it different. what you've told me have put other side issues into my head. you'll hunt a rabbit and flush a game bird, sometimes. in fact, great things often come out of little ones." "i know you'll be fair and not let anything influence your judgment," she said. he promised, but with secret uneasiness, for already it seemed that his judgment was being influenced. for that reason he had postponed a final decision until the following day. mrs. northover departed with grateful thanks and left behind her, though she guessed it not, problems far more tremendous than any she had brought. meantime raymond and sabina, on their way to miss ironsyde, were met by mr. neddy motyer. neddy had not seen his friend for some time and now saluted and stopped. it was nearly dark and they stood under a lamp-post. "cheero!" said mr. motyer. "haven't cast an eye on you for a month of sundays, ironsyde." raymond introduced sabina and neddy was gallant and reminded her they had met before at the mill. then, desiring a little masculine society, sabina's betrothed proposed that she should go on and report that he was coming. "aunt jenny will expect us to stop for dinner, so there's no hurry. i'll be up in half an hour." she left them and neddy suggested drinking. "you might as well be dead and buried for all the boys see of you nowadays," he said, as they entered 'the bull' hotel. "i'm busy." "i know, but i hope you'll have a big night off before the deed is done and you take leave of freedom--what?" "i'm not taking leave of freedom. you godless bachelors don't know you're born." "bluff--bluff!" declared neddy. "you can't deceive me, old sport." "you wait till you find the right one." "i shall," promised neddy. "and very well content to wait. nothing is easier than not to be married." "nothing is harder, my dear chap, if you're in love with the right girl." neddy felt the ground delicate. he knew that raymond had knocked down a man for insulting him a week before, so he changed the subject. "i thought you'd be at the fight," he said. "it was a pretty spar--interesting all through. jack buckler won. blades practically let him. not because he wanted to, but because solly blades has got a streak of softness in his make-up. that's fatal in a fighter. if you've got a gentle heart, it don't matter how clever you are: you can't take full advantage of your skill and use the opening when you've won it. blades didn't punish buckler's stupidity, or weakness just when he could have done it. so he lost, because he gave jack time to get strong again; and when blades in his turn went weak, buckler got it over and outed him." "your heart often robs you of what your head won," said another man in the bar. "life's like prize-fighting in that respect. if you don't hit other people when you can, the time will probably come when they'll hit you." it was an ugly philosophy and raymond, looking within, applied to it himself. then he put his own thoughts away. "and how are the gee-gees?" he asked. "as a 'gentleman backer,' i can't say i'm going very strong," confessed neddy. "on the whole, i think it's a mug's game. anyway, i shall chuck it when flat racing comes again. my father's getting restive. i shall have to do something pretty soon." raymond stayed for an hour and was again urged to give a bachelor-supper before he married; but he declined. "shan't chuck away a tenner on a lot of wasters," he said. "got something better to do with it." several men promised to come to church and see the event, now near at hand, but he told them that they might be disappointed. "i'm not too sure about that," he said. "i may put my foot down on that racket and be married at a registrar's. anyway church is no certainty. i've got no use for making a show of my private affairs." on the way to miss ironsyde's he grew moody and gloom settled upon him. a glimpse of the old free and easy life threw into darker colours the new existence ahead. he remembered the sentiments of the strange man in the bar--how weakness is always punished and the heart often robs the head of victory. his heart was robbing his head of freedom; and that meant victory also; for what sort of success can life offer to those who begin it by flinging liberty to the winds? yes, he had been "bluffing," as neddy declared; and to bluff was foreign to his nature. nobody was deceived, for everybody knew the truth, and though none dared laugh at him in public, secretly all his acquaintance were doubtless doing so. sabina saw that he was perturbed when presently he joined miss ironsyde. he had drunk more than enough and proved irritable. he was, however, silent at first, while his aunt discussed the wedding. she took it for granted that it would be in church and reminded raymond of necessary steps. "and certain people should be asked," she said. "have you any friends you particularly wish to be there? mr. churchouse is planning a wedding breakfast--" "no--none of my friends will be there if i can help it. they're not that sort." "have you written to daniel?" "'written to daniel'! good god, no! what should i write to daniel, but to tell him he's the biggest cur and hound on earth?" "you've passed all that. you're not going back again, raymond. you know what you said last time when we talked about it." "if he's ever to be more than a name to me, he must apologise for being a low down brute, first. i've got plenty on my mind without thinking about him. he's going to rue the day he treated me as he has done. i'll bring him and bridetown mill to the gutter, yet." "don't, don't, please. i thought you felt last time we were talking about him--" "drop him--don't mention his name to me--i won't hear it. if you want me to go on with my life with self-respect, then keep his name out of my life. i've cursed him to hell once and for all, so talk of something else!" jenny ironsyde saw that her nephew was in a dark temper, and while at heart she felt indignant and ashamed, more for sabina's sake than his own, she humoured him, spoke of the future and strove to win him back into a cheerful mind. then as they were going to dinner, at half-past seven o'clock, the maid who announced the meal, brought with her a telegram. it was directed to 'ironsyde' only, and, putting on her glasses, jenny read it. daniel had been very seriously injured in a railway accident at york. remorse strikes the young with cruel bitterness. raymond turned pale and staggered. while he had been cursing his brother, the man lay smitten, perhaps at the door of death. his aunt it was who steadied him and turned to the time-table. then she went to her store of ready money. in an hour raymond was on his way. it might be possible for him to catch a midnight train for the north from london and reach york before morning. when he had gone, jenny turned to sabina, who had spoken no word during this scene. "much may come of this," she said. "god works in mysterious ways. i have no fear that raymond will fail in his duty to dear daniel at such a time. come back early to-morrow, sabina. i shall get a telegram, as soon as raymond can despatch it, and shall hold myself in readiness to go at once and stop with daniel. tell mister churchouse what has happened." the lady spent the night in packing. her sufferings and anxieties were allayed by occupation; but the long hours seemed unending. she was ready to start at dawn, but not until ten o'clock came the news from york. mr. churchouse was already with her when the telegram arrived. he had driven from bridetown with sabina. daniel ironsyde was dead and had passed many hours before raymond reached him. sabina went home on hearing this news, and ernest churchouse remained with miss ironsyde. she was prostrated and, for a time, he could not comfort her. but the practical nature of her mind asserted itself between gusts of grief. she despatched a telegram to raymond at york, and begged him to bring back his brother's body as soon as it might be done. concerning the future she also spoke to ernest. "he has made no will," she said, "that i know, because when last we were speaking of raymond, he told me he felt it impossible at present to do so." "then the whole estate belongs to raymond, now?" he asked. "yes, everything is his." chapter xxiii a letter for sabina a human machine, under stress of personal tribulation and lowered vitality, had erred in a signal box five miles from york, with the result that several of his fellow creatures were killed and many injured. daniel ironsyde had only lived long enough to direct the telegram to his home. three days later raymond returned with the body, and once more bridetown crowded to its windows and open spaces, to see the funeral of another master of the mill. to an onlooker the scene might have appeared a repetition in almost every particular of henry ironsyde's obsequies. the spinners crowded on the grassy triangle under the sycamore tree and debated their future. they wondered whether raymond would come to the funeral; and a new note entered into all voices when they spoke his name, for he was master now. mr. churchouse attended the burial, and arthur waldron walked down from north hill house with his daughter. in the churchyard, where daniel's grave waited for him beside his father, old mr. baggs stood and looked down, as he had done when henry ironsyde came to his grave. "life, how short--eternity, how long," he said to john best. ernest churchouse opened the door of the mourning coach as he had done on the previous occasion, and miss ironsyde alighted, followed by raymond. he had come. but he had changed even to the visible eye. the least observing were able to mark differences of voice and manner. raymond's nature had responded to the stroke of circumstance with lightning swiftness. the pressure of his position, thus suddenly relieved, caused a rebound, a liberation of the grinding tension. it remained to be seen what course he might now pursue; yet those who knew him best anticipated no particular reaction. but when he returned it was quickly apparent that tremendous changes had already taken place in the young man's outlook on life and that, whatever his future line of conduct might be, he realised very keenly his altered position. he was now free of all temporal cares; but against that fact he found himself faced with great new responsibilities. remorse hit him hard, but he was through the worst of that, and life had become so tremendous, that he could not for very long keep his thoughts on death. at his brother's funeral he allowed his eye to rest on no familiar face and cast no recognising glance at man or woman. he was haggard and pale, but more than that: a new expression had come into his countenance. already consciousness of possession marked him. he had grasped the fact of the change far quicker than daniel had grasped it after their father's death. he was returning immediately with his aunt to bridport; but mr. churchouse broke through the barrier and spoke to him as he entered the carriage. "won't you see sabina before you go, raymond? you must realise that, even under these terrible conditions, we cannot delay. i understand she wrote to you when you came back; but that you have not answered her letter. as things are it seems to me you might like to be quietly and privately married away from bridetown?" raymond hardly seemed to hear. "i can't talk about that now. a great deal falls upon me at present. i am enormously busy and have to take up the threads of all poor daniel was doing in the north. there is nobody but myself, in my opinion, who can go through with it. i return to london to-night." "but sabina?" raymond answered calmly. "sabina dinnett will hear from me during the next twenty-four hours," he said. ernest gazed aghast. "but, my dear boy, you cannot realise the situation if you talk like that. surely you--" "i realise the situation perfectly well. good-bye, uncle ernest." the coach drove away. miss ironsyde said nothing. she had broken down beside the grave and was still weeping. then came mr. best, where mr. churchouse stood at the lich-gate. he was anxious for information. "did he say anything about his plans?" he asked. "only that he is proceeding with his late brother's business in the north. i perceive a most definite change in the young man, john." "for the better, we'll hope. what's hid in people! you never would have thought mister raymond would have carried himself like that. it wasn't grief at his loss, but a sort of an understanding of the change. he even looked at us differently--even me." "he's overwrought and not himself, probably. i don't think he quite grasps the immediate situation. he seems to be looking far ahead already, whereas the most pressing matter should be a thing of to-morrow." "is the wedding day fixed?" "it is not. he writes to sabina." "writes! isn't he going to see her to-day!" "he returns to london to-night." arthur waldron also asked for news, for raymond had apparently been unconscious of his existence at the funeral. he, too, noted the change in ironsyde's demeanour. "what was it?" he asked, as mr. churchouse walked beside him homeward. "something is altered. it's more his manner than his appearance. of course, he looks played out after his shock, but it's not that. estelle thinks it's his black clothes." "stress of mind and anxiety, no doubt. i spoke to him; but he was rather distant. not unfriendly--he called me 'uncle ernest' as usual--but distant. his mind is entirely preoccupied with business." "what about sabina?" "i asked him. he's writing to her. she wasn't at the funeral. she and her mother kept away at my advice. but i certainly thought he would come and see them afterwards. however, the idea hadn't apparently occurred to him. his mind is full of other things. there was a suggestion of strength--of power--something new." "he must be very strong now," said estelle. "he will have to be strong, because the mill is all his and everything depends upon him. doesn't sabina feel she must be strong, too, mr. churchouse?" "sabina is naturally excited. but she is also puzzled, because it seems strange that anything should come between her and raymond at a time like this--even the terrible death of dear daniel. she has been counting on hearing from him, and to-day she felt quite sure he would see her." "is the wedding put off then?" "i trust not. she is to hear from him to-morrow." * * * * * raymond kept his word and before the end of the following day sabina received a letter. she had alternated, since daniel's sudden death, between fits of depression and elation. she was cast down, because no communication of any kind had reached her since raymond hurried off on the day of the accident; and she was elated, because the future must certainly be much more splendid for raymond now. she explained his silence easily enough, for much work devolved upon him; but when he did not come to see her on the day of the funeral, she was seriously perturbed and grew excited, unstrung and full of forebodings. her mother heard from those who had seen him that raymond appeared to be abstracted and 'kept himself to himself' entirely; which led to anxiety on her part also. the letter defined the position. "my dearest sabina,--a thing like the death of my brother, with all that it means to me, cannot happen without having very far-reaching results. you may have noticed for some time before this occurred that i felt uneasy about the future--not only for your sake, but my own--and i had long felt that we were doing a very doubtful thing to marry. however, as circumstances were such then, that i should have been in the gutter if i did not marry, i was going to do so. there seemed to be no choice, though i felt all the time that i was not doing the fair thing to you, or myself. "now the case is altered and i can do the fair thing to you and myself, because circumstances make it possible. i have got tons of money now, and it is not too much to say that i want you to share it. but not on the old understanding. i hate and loathe matrimony and everything to do with it, and now that it is possible to avoid the institution, i intend to do so. "what you have got to do is to put a lot of stupid, conventional ideas out of your mind, and not worry about other people, and the drivel they talk, or the idiotic things they say. we weren't conventional last year, so why the dickens should we be this? i'm awfully keen about you, sabina, and awfully keen about the child too; but let us be sane and be lovers and not a wretched married couple. "if you will come and be my housekeeper, i shall welcome you with rejoicings, and we can go house-hunting again and find something worthier of us and take bigger views. "don't let this bowl you over and make you savage. it is simply a question of what will keep us the best friends, and wear best. i am perfectly certain that in the long run we shall be happier so, than chained together by a lot of cursed laws, that will put our future relations on a footing that denies freedom of action to us both. let's be pioneers and set a good example to people and help to knock on the head the imbecile marriage laws. "i am, of course, going to put you all right from a worldly point of view and settle a good income upon you, which you will enjoy independently of me; and i also recognise the responsibility of our child. he or she will be my heir, and nothing will be spared for the youngster. "i do hope, my dearest girl, you will see what a sensible idea this is. it means liberty, and you can't have real love without liberty. if we married, i am certain that in a year or two we should hate each other like the devil, and i believe you know that as well as i do. marriage is out-grown--it's a barbaric survival and has a most damnable effect on character. if we are to be close chums and preserve our self-respect, we must steer clear of it. "i am very sure i am right. i've thought a lot about it and heard some very shrewd men in london speak about it. we are up against a sort of battle nowadays. the idea of marriage is the welfare of the community, and the idea of freedom is the welfare of the individual; and i, for one, don't see in the least why the individual should go down for the community. what has the community done for us, that we should become slaves for it? "wealth--at any rate, ample means--does several things for a man. it opens his eyes to the meaning of power. power is a fine thing if it's coupled with sense. already i see what a poor creature i was--owing to the accident of poverty. now you'll find what a huge difference power makes. it changes everything and turns a child into a man. at any rate, i've been a child till now. you've got to be childlike if you're poor. "so i hope you'll take this in the spirit i write, sabina, and trust me, for i'm straight as a line, and my first thought is to make you a happy woman. that i certainly can do, if you'll let me. "i shall be coming home presently; but, for the moment, i must stop here. there is a gigantic deal of work waiting for me; but working for myself and somebody else are two very different things. i don't grudge the work now, since the result of the work means more power. "i hope this is all clear. if it isn't, we must thresh it out when we meet. all i want you to grasp for the moment is that i love you as well as ever--better than anything in the world--and, because i want us to be the dearest friends always, i'm not going to marry you. "your mother and uncle ernest will of course take the conventional line, and my aunt jennie will do the same; but i hope you won't bother about them. your welfare lies with me. don't let them talk you into making a martyr of yourself, or any nonsense of that sort. "always, my dearest sabina, "your faithful pal, "ray." half an hour later mrs. dinnett took the letter in to mr. churchouse. "death," she said. "death is in the air. sabina has gone to bed and i'm going for the doctor. he's broke off the engagement and wants her to be his housekeeper. and this is a christian country, or supposed to be. says it's going to be quite all right and offers her money and a lifetime of sin!" "be calm, mary, be calm. you must have misread the letter. go and get the doctor by all means if sabina has succumbed. and leave the letter with me. i will read it carefully. that is if it is not private." "no, it ain't private. he slaps at us all. we're all conventional people, which means, i suppose, that we fear god and keep the laws. but if my gentleman thinks--" "go and get the doctor, mary. two heads are better than one in a case of this sort. i feel sure you and sabina are making a mistake." "the world shall ring," said mrs. dinnett, "and we'll see if he can show his face among honest men again. we that have abided by the law all our days--now we'll see what the law can do for us against this godless wretch." she went off to the village and ernest cried after her to say nothing at present. he knew, however, as he spoke that it was vain. then he put away his own work and read the letter very carefully twice through. profound sorrow came upon him and his innate optimism was over-clouded. this seemed no longer the raymond ironsyde he had known from childhood. it was not even the raymond of a month ago. he perceived how potential qualities of mind had awakened in the new conditions. he was philosophically interested. so deeply indeed did the psychological features of the change occupy his reflections, that for a time he overlooked their immediate and crushing significance in the affairs of another person. traces of the old raymond remained in the promises of unbounded generosity and assurances of devotion; but mr. churchouse set no store upon them. the word that rang truest was raymond's acute consciousness of power and appreciation thereof. it had, as he said, opened his eyes. under any other conditions than those embracing sabina and right and wrong, as ernest accepted the meaning of right and wrong, he had won great hope from the letter. it was clear that raymond had become a man at a bound and might be expected to develop into a useful man; but that his first step from adolescence was to involve the destruction of a woman and child, soon submerged all lesser considerations in the thinker's mind. righteousness was implicated, and to start his new career with a cold-blooded crime made mr. churchouse tremble for the entire future of the criminal. yet he saw very little hope of changing ironsyde's decision. raymond had evidently considered the matter, and though his argument was abominable in ernest's view, and nothing more than a cowardly evasion of his promises, he suspected that the writer found it satisfy his conscience, since its further education in the consciousness of power. he did not suppose that any whose opinion he respected would alter raymond. it might even be that he was honest in his theories, and believed himself when he said that marriage would end by destroying his love for sabina. but mr. churchouse did not pursue that line of argument. had not mary dinnett just reminded him that this was a christian country? it was, of course, an immoral and selfish letter. ernest knew exactly how it would strike miss ironsyde; but he also knew that many people without principle would view it as reasonable. he had to determine what he was going to do, and soon came back to the attitude he had always taken. an unborn, immortal soul must be considered, and it was idle for raymond to talk about making the coming child his heir. such undertakings were vain. the young man was volatile and his life lay before him. that he could make this offer argued an indifference to sabina's honour which no promises of temporal comfort condoned. for that matter he must surely have known while he wrote that it would be rejected. the outlook appeared exceedingly hopeless. mr. churchouse rose from his desk and looked out of the window. it was a grey and silent morning. only a big magnolia leaf tapped at the casement and dripped rain from its point. and overhead, in her chamber, sabina was lying stricken and speechless. with infinite commiseration mr. churchouse considered what this must mean to her. it was as though mrs. dinnett's hysterical words had come true. indeed, the tender-hearted man felt that death was in his house--death of fair hopes, death of a young and trusting spirit. "the rising generation puts a strain on christianity that i'm sure it was never called to bear in my youth," reflected mr. churchouse. chapter xxiv mrs. northover decides when richard gurd began to consider the case of nelly northover, his mind was very curiously affected. to develop the stages by which he arrived at his startling conclusions might be attractive, but the destination is more important than the journey. after twenty-four hours devoted to this subject alone, richard had not only decided that nelly northover must not marry job legg; he had pushed the problem of his friend far beyond that point and found it already complicated by a greater than job. indeed, the sudden reminder that nelly was a comely and personable woman had affected richard gurd, and the thought that she should contemplate marriage caused him some preliminary uneasiness. he could no more see her married again than he could see himself taking a wife; yet from this attitude, progress was swift, and the longer he thought upon mrs. northover, the more steadily did his mind drive him into an opinion that she might reasonably wed again if she desired to do so. and then he proceeded to the personal concession that there was no radical necessity to remain single himself. because he had reached his present ripe age without a wife, it did not follow he must remain for ever unmarried. he had no objection to marriage, and continued a bachelor merely because he had never found any woman desirable in his eyes. moreover he disliked children. he had reached this stage of the argument before he slept, and when he woke again, he found his mind considerably advanced along the road to nelly. he now came to the deliberate conclusion that he wanted her. the discovery amazed him, but he could not escape it; and in the light of such a surprise he became a little dazzled. sudden soul movements of such force and complexity made richard gurd selfish. it is a fact, that before he went at the appointed time to see the mistress of 'the seven stars,' he had forgotten all about job legg and was entirely concerned with his own tremendous project. full grown and complete at all vital points it sprang from his energetic brain. he had reached the high personal ambition of wanting to marry mrs. northover himself, and their friendship of many years had been so complete, that he felt sanguine from the moment that his great determination dawned. but she spoke and quickly reminded him of what she was expecting. "and how d'you think about it? shall it be, or shan't it, richard?" they were in the private parlour. "leave that," he said. "i can assure you that little affair is already a thing of the past. in fact, my mind has moved such a long way since you came to see me yesterday, that i'd forgot what you came about. but, after all, that was the starting point. now a very curious thing has fallen out, and looking back, i can only say that the wonder is it didn't fall out long years ago." "it did, so far as he was concerned," explained mrs. northover. "mr. legg has been hoping for this for years." "the lord often chooses a fool to light the road of the wise, my dear. not that job's a fool, and a more self-respecting man you won't find. in fact i shall always feel kindly to your potman, for, in a manner of speaking, you may say he's helped to show me my own duty." "i dare say he has; he's a lesson to us all." "he is, but, all the same, it's confounding class with class to think of him as a husband for you. not that i've got any class prejudice myself. you can't keep a hotel year in, year out, and allow yourself the luxury of class prejudice; but be that as it may, legg, though he adorns his class, wouldn't adorn ours in my opinion. and yet i'll say this: i believe it was put to him by providence to offer for you, so that you might be lifted to higher things." "speak english, my dear man. i don't exactly know what you're talking about. but i suppose you mean i'd better not?" mrs. northover was a little disappointed and richard perceived it. "be calm, and don't let me sweep you off your feet as i've been swept off mine," he answered. "since i discovered marriage was a possibility in your mind, i am obliged to confess that it's grown up to be a possibility in mine. and why not?" "no reason at all. 'twas the wonder of bridport, you might say for years, why you remained single." "well, this i'll tell you, nelly; i'm not going to have you marrying any dick, tom or harry that's daring enough to lift his eyes to you and cheeky enough to offer. and when the thought came in my mind, i very soon found that this event rose up ideas that might have slumbered till eternity, but for job legg. and that's why i say providence is in it. i've felt a great admiration for your judgment, and good sense, and fine appearance, ever since the blow fell and your husband was taken. and we know each other pretty close and have got no secrets from each other. and now you may say i've suddenly seen the light; and if you've got half the opinion of me that i have of you, no doubt you'll thank your god to hear what i'm saying and answer according." "good powers! you want to marry me yourself?" gasped mrs. northover. "by all your 'seven stars' i do," he said. "in fact, i want for 'the tiger' to swallow the 'seven stars,' in a poetical way of speaking. i'm a downright man and never take ten minutes where five's enough, so there it is. it came over me last night as a thing that must be--like the conversion of paul. and i'll go further; i won't have you beat about the bush, nelly. you're the sort of woman that can make up your mind in a big thing as quick as you can in a small thing. i consider there's been a good deal of a delicate and tender nature going on between us, though we were too busy to notice it; but now the bud have burst into flower, and i see amazing clear we were made for each other. in fact, i ain't going to take 'no' for an answer, my dear. i've never asked a female to marry me until this hour; and i have not waited into greyness and ripeness to hear a negative. i'm sure of myself, naturally, and i well know that you'd only be a thought less fortunate than i shall be." "stop!" she said, "and let me think. i'm terrible flattered at this, and i'll go so far as to say there's rhyme and reason in it, richard. but you run on so. i feel my will power fairly oozing out of me." "not at all," he answered. "your will power's what i rely upon. you're a forceful person yourself and you naturally approve of forcefulness in others. there's no reason why you shouldn't love me as well as i love you; and, for that matter, you do." "well, i must have time. i must drop legg civilly and break it to him gradual." "i'll meet you there. you needn't tell him you're going to be married all in a minute. he'll find that out for himself very quick. so will everybody. if a thing's worth doing, try to do it--that's my motto. but, for the moment, you can say that your affections are given in another quarter." "of course, it's a great thing for me, richard. i'm very proud of it." "and so am i. and job legg was the dumb instrument, so i am the last to quarrel with him. just tell him, that failing another, you might have thought on him; but that the die is cast; and when he hears his fate, he'll naturally want to know who 'tis. and then the great secret must come out. i should reckon after easter would be a very good time for us to wed." "i can't believe my senses," she said. "you will in a week," he assured her; "and, meanwhile, i shall do my best to help you. in a week the joyful tidings go out to the people." he kissed her, shook her hand and squeezed it. then he departed leaving mrs. northover in the extremity of bewilderment. but pleasure and great pride formed no small part of her mingled emotions. one paramount necessity darkened all, however. nelly felt a very sharp pang when she thought upon mr. legg, and her sufferings increased as the day advanced until they quite mastered the situation and clouded the brightness of conquest. other difficulties and doubts also obtruded as she began to estimate the immensity of the thing that mr. gurd's ardour had prompted her to do; but job was the primal problem and she knew that she could not sleep until she had made her peace with him. she determined to leave him in no doubt concerning his successful rival. the confession would indeed make it easier for them both. at least she hoped it might do so. he came for keys after closing time and she bade him sit down in the chair which richard gurd had that morning filled. one notes trifles at the supremest moments of life, and the trifles often stick, while the great events which accompany them fade into the past. mrs. northover observed that while richard gurd had filled the chair--and overflowed, mr. legg by no means did so. he occupied but the centre of the spacious seat. there seemed a significance in that. "sit down, job, and listen. i've got to say something that will hurt you, my dear man. i've made my choice, after a good bit of deep thought i assure you, and i've--i've chosen the other, job." he stared and his thin jaws worked. his nostrils also twitched. "i didn't know there was another." "more didn't i," answered she. "i'm nothing if not honest, and i tell you frankly that i didn't know it either till he offered. he was a lifelong friend, and i asked him about what i ought to be doing, and then it came out he had already thought of me as a wife and was biding his time. he had nought but praise for you, as all men have; but there it is--richard gurd is very wishful to marry me; and you must understand this clearly, job. if it had been any lesser man than him, or any other man in the world, for that matter, i wouldn't have taken him. i'm very fond of you, and a finer character i've never known; but when richard offered--well, you're among the clever ones and i'm sure you'd be the last to put yourself up against a man of his standing and fame. and my first husband's lifelong friend, you must remember. and though, after all these years, it may seem strange to a great many people, it won't seem strange to you, i hope." "it's a very ill-convenient time to hear this," said mr. legg mildly. then he stopped and regarded her with his little, shrewd eyes. he seemed less occupied with the tremendous present than the future. presently he went on again, while mrs. northover stared at him with an expression of genuine sadness. "all i can say is that i wish gurd had offered sooner, and not led me into this tremendous misfortune. of course, him and me aren't in the same street and i won't pretend it, for none would be deceived if i did. but i say again it's very unfortunate he hung fire till he heard that i had made my offer. for if he'd spoke first, i should have held my peace and gone on my appointed way and stopped at 'the seven stars.' but now, if this happens, all is over and the course of my life is changed. in fact, it is not too much to say i shall leave bridport, though how any person can live comfortably away from bridport, i don't know." mrs. northover felt relief that he should thus fasten on such a minor issue, and never liked him better than at that moment. "thank god, he's took it, lying down!" she thought, then spoke. "don't you leave, my dear man. bridport won't be bridport without you, and you've always been a true and valued friend to me, and such a helpful and sensible creature that i shall only know in the next world all i owe you. and between us, i don't see no reason at all why you shouldn't go on as my potman and--more than that--why shouldn't you marry a nice woman yourself and bring her here, if you've got a mind to it!" he expressed no indignation. again, it seemed that the future was his sole concern and that he designed to waste no warmth on his disappointment. "there never was but one woman for me and never will be; and as to stopping here, i might, or i might not, for i've always had my feelings under very nice control and shouldn't break the rule of a lifetime. but you won't be at 'the seven stars' yourself much longer, and i certainly don't serve under any other but you. in fact this house and garden would only be a deserted wilderness to my view, if you wasn't reigning over 'em." he spoke in his usual emotionless voice, but he woke very active phenomena in mrs. northover. her face grew troubled and she looked into his eyes with a frown. "me gone! what do you mean, legg? me leave 'the seven stars' after thirty-four years?" "no doubt your first would turn in his grave if you did," he admitted; "but what about it? when you're mistress of 'the tiger'--well, then you're mistress of 'the tiger,' and you can't be in two places at once--clever as you are." he had given her something to think about. the possibility of guile in mr. legg had never struck the least, or greatest, of his admirers. he was held a simple soul of transparent probity, yet, for a moment, it almost seemed as though his last remark carried an inner meaning. nelly dismissed the suspicion as unworthy of job; but none the less, though he had doubtless spoken without any sinister purpose, his opinions gave her pause. indeed, they shook her. she had been too much excited to look ahead. now she was called to do so. mr. legg removed the bunch of keys from its nail and prepared to go on his way. she felt weak. "to play second fiddle for the rest of your life after playing first for a quarter of a century is a far-reaching thought," she said. "without a doubt it would be," he admitted. "of course, with some men you wouldn't be called to do it. with richard gurd, you would." "to leave 'the seven stars'! somehow i'd always regarded our place as a higher class establishment than 'the tiger'--along of the tea-gardens and pleasure ground and the class of company." "and quite right to do so. but that's only your opinion, and mine. it won't be his. good night." he left her deep in thought, then five minutes afterwards thrust his long nose round the door again. "the english of it is you can't have anything for nothing--not in this weary world," he said. then he disappeared. a week later sarah northover came to see her aunt and congratulate her on the great news. "now people know it," said sarah, "they all wonder how ever 'twas you and mister gurd didn't marry long ago." "we've been wondering the same, for that matter, and richard takes the blame--naturally, since i couldn't say the word before he asked the question. but for your ear and only yours, sarah, i can whisper that this thing didn't go by rule. and in sober honesty i do believe if he hadn't heard another man wanted me, mister gurd would never have found out he did. but such are the strange things that happen in human nature, no doubt." "another!" said sarah. "they're making up for lost time, seemingly." "another, and a good man," declared her aunt; "but his name is sacred, and you mustn't ask to know it." sarah related events at bridetown. "you've heard, of course, about the goings on? mister ironsyde don't marry sabina, and her mother wants to have the law against him; but though sabina's in a sad state and got to be watched, she won't have the law. we only hear scraps about it, because nancy buckler, her great friend, is under oath of secrecy. but if he shows his face at bridetown, it's very likely he'll be man-handled. then, against that, there's rumours in the air he'll make great changes at the mill, and may put up all our money. in that case, i don't think he'd be treated very rough, because, as my mister roberts says, 'self-preservation is the first law of nature,' and always have been; and if he's going to better us it will mean a lot." "don't you be too hopeful, however," warned mrs. northover. "there's a deal of difference between holding the reins yourself and saying sharp things against them who are. he's hard, and last time he was in this house but one, he got as drunk as a lord and legg helped him to bed. and he quarrelled very sharp with mister gurd for giving him good advice; and richard says the young man is iron painted to look like wood. and he's rarely mistook." "but he always did tell us we never got enough money for our work," argued sarah. "and if anything comes of it and nicholas and me earn five bob more a week between us, it means marriage. so i'm in a twitter." "what does john best say?" "nought. we can't get a word out of him. all we know is we're cruel busy and orders flow in like a river. but that was poor mister daniel's work, no doubt." "marriage is in the air, seemingly," reflected nelly. "it mightn't be altogether a bad thing if you and me went to the altar together, sarah. 'twas always understood you'd be married from 'the seven stars,' and the sight of a young bride and bridegroom would soften the ceremony a bit and distract the eye from me and richard." "good lord!" answered the girl. "there won't be no eyes for small folks like us on the day you take mister gurd. 'twould be one expense without a doubt; but i'm certain positive he wouldn't like for us little people to be mixed up with it. 'twould lessen the blaze from his point of view, and a man such as him wouldn't approve of that." "perhaps you're right," admitted her aunt, with a massive sigh. "he's a masterful piece, and the affair will be carried out as he wills." "i can't see you away from 'the seven stars,' somehow, aunt nelly." "that's what everybody says. more can't i see myself away for that matter. but richard said 'the tiger' would swallow 'the seven stars,' and i know what he meant now." chapter xxv the woman's darkness the blood of sabina dinnett was poisoned through an ordeal of her life when it should have run at its purest and sweetest. that the man who had promised to marry her, had exhausted the vocabulary of love for her, should thus cast her off, struck her into a frantic calenture which, for a season, threatened her existence. the surprise of his decision was not absolute and utter, otherwise such a shock might indeed have killed her; but there lacked not many previous signs to show that raymond ironsyde had strayed from his old enthusiasm and found the approach of marriage finally quench love. the wronged girl could look back and see a thousand such warnings, while she remembered also a dark dread in her heart as to what might possibly overtake her on the death of daniel. true the shadow had lasted but a moment; she banished it, as unworthy, and preferred to dwell on the increased happiness and prosperity that must accrue to raymond; but the passing fear had touched her first, and she could look back now and mark how deeply doubt tinctured all her waking hours since the necessity arose for raymond to wed. for a few days she raged and was only comforted with difficulty. mr. churchouse and jenny ironsyde both visited sabina and bade her control herself and keep calm, lest worst things should happen to her. ernest was still sanguine that the young man would regret his suggestions; but jenny quenched this hope. "it is all of a piece," she said, "and, looking back, i see it. his instinct and will are against any such binding thing as marriage. he wants to make her happy; but if to do so is to make himself miserable, then she must go unhappy. some bad girls might accept his offer; but sabina, of course, cannot. she is not made of the stuff to sink to this, and it was only because he always insisted on the vital need for her to complete his life, that she forgot her wisdom in the past and believed they were really the complement of each other. as if a woman ever was, or ever will be, the real complement of a man, or a man, the complement of a woman! they are only complementary as meat and drink to the hungry." after some days sabina read raymond's letter again and it now awoke a new passion. at first she had hated herself and talked of doing herself an injury; but this was hysteria bred of suffering, since she had not the temperament to commit self-destruction. now her rage burned against the child that she was doomed to bring into the world, and she brooded secretly on how its end might be accomplished. she knew the peril to herself of any such attempt; but while she could not have committed suicide, she faced the thought of the necessary risks. if the child lived, the hateful link must exist forever, if it perished, she would be free. so she argued. full of this idea, she rose from her bed, went about and found some little consolation in the sympathy of her friends. they cursed the man until they heard what he had written to her. then a change came over their criticism, for they were not tuned to sabina's pitch, and it seemed to them, from their more modest standards of education, combined with the diminished self-respect where ignorance obtains, that raymond's offer was fair--even handsome. some, indeed, still mourned with her and shared her fierce indignation; some simulated anger to please her; but most confessed to themselves that she had not much to grumble at. a wise woman warned her against any attempt to tamper with the child. it was too late and the danger far too serious. so she passed through the second phase of her sufferings and went from hatred of herself and loathing of her load, to acute detestation of the man who had destroyed her. his offer seemed to her more villainous than his desertion. his ignorance of her true self, the insolence and contempt that prompted such a proposal, the view of her--these thoughts lashed her into fury. she longed for some one to help her against him and treat him as he deserved to be treated. she felt equal to making any sacrifice, if only he might be debased and scorned and pointed at as he deserved to be. she felt that her emotions must be shared by every honourable woman and decent man. her spirit hungered for a great revenge. at first she dreamed of a personal action. she longed to tear him with her nails, outrage him in people's eyes and make him suffer in his flesh; but that passed: she knew she could not do it. a man was needed to extort punishment from raymond. but no man existed who would undertake the task. she must then find such a man. she even sought him. but she did not find him. the search led to bitter discoveries. if women could forgive her betrayer; if women could say, as presently they said, that she did not know her luck, men were still more indifferent. the attitude of the world to her sufferings horrified sabina. she had none to love her--none, at least, to show his love by assaulting and injuring her enemy. only a certain number even took up the cudgels for her in speech. of these levi baggs, the hackler, was the strongest. but his misanthropy embraced her also. he had said harsh things of his new master; but neither had he spared the victim. upon these three great periods, of rage, futile passion, and hate, there followed a lethargy from which ernest churchouse tried in vain to rouse sabina. he apprehended worse results from this coma of mind and body than from the flux of her natural indignation. he spent much time with her and bade her hope that raymond might still reconsider his future. none had yet seen him since his brother's funeral, and his aunt received no answer to a very strenuous plea. he wrote to her, indeed, about affairs, and even asked her for advice upon certain matters; but they affected the past and daniel rather than the future and himself. she could not fail to notice the supreme change that power had brought with it; his very handwriting seemed to have acquired a firmer line; while his diction certainly showed more strength of purpose. could power modify character? it seemed impossible. she supposed, rather, that character, latent till this sudden change of fortune, had been revealed by power. her first fears for the future of the business abated; but with increasing respect for raymond, the former affection perished. she was firm in her moral standards, and to find his first use of power an evasion of solemn and sacred promises, made miss ironsyde raymond's enemy. that he ignored her appeals to his manhood and honesty did not modify her changed attitude. she found herself much wounded by his callous conduct, and while his past weakness had been forgiven, his new strength proved unforgivable. her appeal was, however, indirectly acknowledged, for sabina received another letter from raymond in which he mentioned miss ironsyde's communication. "my aunt," he wrote, "does not realise the situation, or appreciate the fact that love may remain a much more enduring and lively emotion outside marriage than inside it. there are, of course, people who find chains bearable enough, and even grow to like them, as convicts were said to do; but you are not such a craven, no more am i. we must think of the future, not the past, and i feel very sure that if we married, the result would be death to our friendship. we had a splendid time, and we might still have a splendid time, if you could be unconventional and realise how many other women are also. but probably you have decided against my suggestions, or i should have heard from you. so i suppose you hate me, and i'm awfully sorry to think it. you won't come to me, then. but that doesn't lessen my obligations, and i'm going to take every possible care of you and your child, sabina, whether you come or not. he is my child, too, and i shan't forget it. if you would like to see me you shall when i return to bridport, pretty soon now; but if you would rather not do so, then let me know who represents you, and i will hear what you and your mother would wish." she wrote several answers to this and destroyed them. they were bitter and contemptuous, and as each was finished she realised its futility. she could but sting; she could not seriously hurt. even her sting would not trouble him much, for a man who had done what he had done, was proof against the scorn and hate of a woman. only greater power than his own could make him feel. her powerlessness maddened her--her powerlessness contrasted with his remorseless strength. but he used his strength like a coward. some of her friends urged her to take legal action against raymond ironsyde and demand mighty damages. "you can hurt him there, if you can't anywhere else," said nancy buckler. "you say you're too weak to hurt him, but you're not. knock his money out of him; you ought to get thousands." her mother, for a time, was of the same opinion. it seemed a right and reasonable thing that sabina should not be called upon to face her ruined life without some compensation, but she found herself averse from this. the thought of touching his money, or availing herself of it in any way, was horrible to her. she knew, moreover, that such an arrangement would go far to soothe raymond's conscience; and the more he paid, probably the happier he would feel. for other causes also she declined to take any legal steps against him, and in this decision ernest churchouse supported her. he had been her prime consolation indeed, and though, at first, his line of argument only left sabina impatient, by degrees--by very slow degrees--she inclined to him and suffered herself to hope he might not be mistaken. he urged patience and silence. he held that raymond ironsyde would presently return to that better and worthier self, which could not be denied him. his own abounding charity, where humanity was concerned, honestly induced ernest to hope and almost believe that the son of henry ironsyde had made these proposals under excitation of mind; that he was thrown off his balance by the pressure of events; and that, presently, when he had time to remember the facts concerning sabina, he would be heartily ashamed of himself and make the only adequate amends. it was not unnatural that the girl should find in this theory her highest consolation. she clung to it desperately, though few but mr. churchouse himself accounted it of any consequence. him, however, she had been accustomed to consider the fountain of wisdom, and though, with womanhood, she had lived to see his opinions mistaken and his trust often abused, yet disappointments did not change a sanguine belief in his fellow creatures. so, thankful to repose her mind on another, sabina for a while came to standing-ground in her storm-stricken journey. each day was an eternity, but she strove to be patient. and, meantime, she wrote and posted a letter to her old lover. it was not angry, or even petulant. indeed, she made her appeal with dignity and good choice of words. before all she insisted on the welfare of the child, and reminded him of the cruelty inflicted from birth on any baby unlawfully born in england. mr. churchouse had instructed her in this matter, and she asked raymond if he could find it in his heart to allow the child of their common love and worship to come into the world unrecognised by the world, deprived of recognition and human rights. he answered the letter vaguely and mr. churchouse read a gleam of hope into his words, but neither sabina nor her mother were able to do so. for he spoke only of recognising his responsibilities and paternal duty. he bade her fear nothing for the child, or herself, and assured her that her future would be his care and first obligation as long as he lived. in these assertions mr. churchouse saw a wakening dawn, but mary dinnett declared otherwise. the man was widening the gap; his original idea, that sabina should live with him, had dearly been abandoned. then the contradictions of human nature appeared, and mary, who had been the first to declare her deep indignation at raymond's cynical proposal, began to weaken and even wonder if sabina had done wisely not to discuss that matter. "not that ever you should have done it," she hastened to add; "but if you'd been a bit crafty and not ruled it out altogether, you might have built on it and got friendly again and gradually worked him back to his duty." then mr. churchouse protested, in the name of righteousness, while she argued that god helps those that help themselves, and that wickedness should be opposed with craft. sabina listened to them helplessly and her last hope died out. chapter xxvi of human nature nicholas roberts drove his lathes in a lofty chamber separated by wooden walls from the great central activities of the spinning mill. despite the flying sparks from his emery wheels, he always kept a portrait of sarah northover before him; and certain pictures of notable sportsmen also hung with sarah above the benches whereon nicholas pursued his task. his work was to put a fresh face on the wooden reels and rollers that formed a part of the machines; for running hemp or flax will groove the toughest wood in time, and so ruin the control of the rollers and spoil the thread. the wood curled away like paper before the teeth of the lathes, and the chisels of these, in their turn, had often to be set upon spinning stones. it was noisy work, and nicholas now stopped his grindstone that he might hear his own voice and that of mr. best, who came suddenly into the shop. the foreman spoke of some new wood for roller turning. "it should be here this week," he said. "i told them we were running short. you may expect a good batch of plane and beech by thursday." they discussed the work of roberts and presently turned to the paramount question in every mind at the mill. all naturally desired to know when raymond ironsyde would make his appearance and what would happen when he did so; but while some, having regard for his conduct, felt he would not dare to appear again himself, others believed that one so insensible to honesty and decency would be indifferent to all opinions entertained of him. such suspected that the criticisms of bridetown would be too unimportant to trouble the new master. and it seemed that they were right, for now came ernest churchouse seeking mr. best. he looked into the turning-shop, saw john and entered. "he's coming next week, but perhaps you know it," he began. "and if you haven't heard, be sure you will at any moment." "then our fate is in store," declared nicholas. "some hope nothing, but, seeing that with all his faults he's a sportsman, i do hope a bit. there's plenty beside me who remember his words very well, and they pointed to an all-around rise for men and women alike." "there was a rumour of violence against him. you don't apprehend anything of that sort, i hope?" asked ernest of best. "a few--more women than men--had a plot, i believe, but i haven't heard any more about it. baggs is the ringleader; but if there was any talk of raising the money, he'd find himself deserted. he's very bitter just now, however, and as he's got the pleasant experience of being right for once, you may be sure he's making the most of it." "i'll see him," said mr. churchouse. "i always find him the most difficult character possible; but he must know that to answer violence with violence is vain. patience may yet find the solution. i have by no means given up hope that right will be done." "come and tell levi, then. him and me are out for the moment, because i won't join him in calling down evil on mister ironsyde's head. but what's the sense of losing your temper in other people's quarrels? better keep it for your own, i say." they found levi baggs grumbling to himself over a mass of badly scutched flax; but when he heard that raymond ironsyde was coming, he grew philosophic. "if we could only learn from what we work in," he said, "we'd have the lawless young dog at our mercy. but, of course, we shall not. why don't the yarn teach us a lesson? why don't it show us that, though the thread is nought, and you can break it, same as raymond ironsyde can break me or you, yet when you get to the twist, and the doubling and the trebling, then it's strong enough to defy anything. and if we combined as we ought, we shouldn't be waiting here to listen to what he's got to say; we should be waiting here to tell him what we've got to say. if we had the wit and understanding to twist our threads into one rope against the wickedness of the world, then we should have it all our own way." "yes--all your own way to do your own wickedness," declared best. "we know very well what your idea of fairness is. you look upon capital as a natural enemy, and if raymond ironsyde was an angel with wings, you'd still feel to him that he was a foe and not a friend." "the tradition is in the blood," declared levi. "capital is our natural enemy, as you say. our fathers knew it, and we know it, and our children will know it." "your fathers had a great deal more sense than you have, baggs," declared mr. churchouse. "and if you only remember the past a little, you wouldn't grumble quite so loudly at the present. but labour has a short memory and no gratitude, unfortunately. you're always shouting out what must be done for you; you never spare a thought on what has been done. you never look back at the working-class drudgery of bygone days--to the 'forties' of last century, when your fathers went to work at the curfew bell and earned eighteen-pence a week as apprentices, and two shillings a week and a penny for themselves after they had learned their business. a good spinner in those days might earn five shillings a week, levi--and that out of doors in fair weather. in foul, he, or she, wouldn't do so well. if you had told your fathers seventy years ago that all the spinning walks would be done away with and the population better off notwithstanding, they would never have believed it." "that's the way to look at the subject, levi," declared john best. "think what the men of the past would have said to our luck--and our education." "machinery brought the spinning indoors," continued ernest. "i can remember forty spinning walks in st. michael's lane alone. and with small wages and long hours, remember the price of things, levi; remember the fearful price of bare necessities. clothes were so dear that many a labourer went to church in his smock frock all his life. many never donned broadcloth from their cradle to their grave. and tea five shillings a pound, levi baggs! they used to buy it by the ounce and brew it over and over again. think of the little children, too, and how they were made to work. think of them and feel your heart ache." "my heart aches for myself," answered the hackler, "because i very well remember what my own childhood was. and i'm not saying the times don't better. i'm saying we must keep at 'em, or they'll soon slip back again into the old, bad ways. capital's always pulling against labour and would get back its evil mastery to-morrow if it could. so we need to keep awake, to see we don't lose what we've won, but add to it. now here's a man that's a servant by instinct, and it's in his blood to knuckle under." he pointed to best. "i'm for no man more than another," answered john. "i stand not for man or woman in particular. i'm for the mill first and last and always. i think of what is best for the mill and put it above the welfare of the individual, whatever he represents--capital or labour." "that's where you're wrong. the people are the mill and only the people," declared baggs. "the rest is iron and steel and flax and hemp and steam--dead things all. we are the mill, not the stuff in it, or the man that happens to be the new master." "mr. raymond has expressed admirable sentiments in my hearing," declared ernest churchouse. "for so young a man, he has a considerable grasp of the situation and progressive ideas. you might be in worse hands." "might we? how worse? what can be worse than a man that lies to women and seduces an innocent girl under promise of marriage? what can be worse than a coward and traitor, who does a thing like that, and when he finds he's strong enough to escape the consequences, escapes them?" "heaven knows i'm not condoning his conduct, levi. he has behaved as badly as a young man could, and not a word of extenuation will you hear from me. i'm not speaking of him as a part of the social order; i'm speaking of him as master of the mill. as master here he may be a successful man and you'll do well to bear in mind that he must be judged by results. morally, he's a failure, and you are right to condemn him; but don't let that make you an enemy to him as owner of the works. be just, and don't be prejudiced against him in one capacity because he's failed in another." "a bad man is a bad man," answered baggs stoutly, "and a blackguard's a blackguard. and if you are equal to doing one dirty trick, your fellow man has a right to distrust you all through. you've got to look at a question through your own spectacles, and i won't hear no nonsense about the welfare of the mill, because the welfare of the mill means to me--levi baggs--my welfare--and, no doubt, it means to that godless rip, his welfare. you mark me--a man that can ruin one girl won't be very tender about fifty girls and women. and if you think raymond ironsyde will take any steps to better the workers at the expense of the master, you're wrong, and don't know nothing about human nature." john best looked at mr. churchouse doubtfully. "there's sense in that, i'm fearing," he said. "when you say 'human nature,' levi, you sum the whole situation," answered ernest mildly. "because human nature is like the sea--you never know when you put a net into it what you'll drag up to the light of day. human nature is never exhausted, and it abounds in contradictions. you cannot make hard and fast laws for it, and you cannot, if you are philosophically inclined, presume to argue about it as though it were a consistent and unchanging factor. history is full of examples of men defeating their own characters, of falling away from their own ideals, yet struggling back to them. careers have dawned in beauty and promise and set in blood and failure; and, again, you find people who make a bad start, yet manage to retrieve the situation. in a word, you cannot argue from the past to the future, where human nature is concerned. it is a series of surprises, some gratifying and some very much the reverse. there's always room for hope with the worst and fear with the best of us." "it's easy for you to talk," growled mr. baggs. "but talk don't take the place of facts. i say a blackguard's always a blackguard and defy any man to disprove it." "if you want facts, you can have them," replied ernest. "my researches into history have made me sanguine in this respect. many have been vicious in youth and proved stout enemies to vice at a later time. themistocles did much evil. his father disowned him--and he drove his mother to take her own life for grief at his sins. yet, presently, the ugly bud put forth a noble flower. nicholas west was utterly wicked in his youth and committed such crimes that he was driven from college after burning his master's dwelling-house. yet light dawned for this young man and he ended his days as bishop of ely. titus vespasianus emulated nero in his early rascalities; but having donned the imperial purple, he cast away his evil companions and was accounted good as well as great. henry v. of england was another such man, who reformed himself to admiration. augustine began badly, and declared as a jest that he would rather have his lust satisfied than extinguished. yet this man ended as a saint of christ. i could give you many other examples, levi." "then we'll hope for the best," said john. but mr. baggs only sneered. "we hear of the converted sinners," he said; "but we don't hear of the victims that suffered their wickedness before they turned into saints. let raymond ironsyde be twenty saints rolled into one, that won't make sabina dinnett an honest woman, or her child a lawful child." "never jump to conclusions," advised ernest. "even that may come right. nothing is impossible." "that's a great thought--that nothing's impossible," declared mr. best. they argued, each according to his character and bent of mind, and, while the meliorists cheered each other, mr. baggs laughed at them and held their aspirations vain. chapter xxvii the master of the mill raymond ironsyde came to bridetown. he rode in from bridport, and met john best by appointment early on a march morning. with the words of ernest churchouse still in his ears, the foreman felt profound interest to learn what might be learned considering the changes in his master's character. he found a new raymond, yet as the older writing of a parchment palimpsest will sometimes make itself apparent behind the new, glimpses of his earlier self did not lack. the things many remembered and hoped that ironsyde would remember were not forgotten by him. but instead of the old, vague generalities and misty assurance of goodwill, he now declared definite plans based on knowledge. he came armed with figures and facts, and his method of expression had changed from ideas to intentions. his very manner chimed with his new power. he was decisive, and quite devoid of sentimentality. he feared none, but his attitude to all had changed. they spoke in mr. best's office and he marked how the works came first in raymond's regard. "i've been putting in a lot of time on the machine question," he said. "as you know, that always interested me most before i thought i should have much say in the matter. well, there's no manner of doubt we're badly behind the times. you can't deny it, john. you know better than anybody what we want, and it must be your work to go on with what you began to do for my brother. i don't want to rush at changes and then find i've wasted capital without fair results; but it's clear to me that a good many of our earlier operations are not done as well and swiftly as they might be." "that's true. the carder is out of date and the spreader certainly is." "the thing is to get the best substitutes in the market. you'll have to go round again in a larger spirit. i'm not frightened of risks. is there anybody here who can take your place for a month or six weeks?" mr. best shook his head. "there certainly is not," he said. "then we must look round bridport for a man. i'm prepared to put money into the changes, provided i have you behind me. i can trust you absolutely to know; but i advocate a more sporting policy than my poor brother did. after that we come to the people. i've got my business at my fingers' ends now and i found i was better at figures than i thought. there must be some changes. there are two problems: time and money. either one or other; or probably both must be bettered--that's what i am faced with." "it wants careful thinking out, sir." "well, you are a great deal more to me than my foreman, and you know it. i look to you and only you to help me run the show at bridetown, henceforth. and, before everything, i want my people to be keen and feel my good is their good and their good is mine. anyway, i have based changes on a fair calculation of future profits, plus necessary losses and need to make up wear and tear." "and remember, raw products tend to rise in price all the time." "as to that, i'm none too sure we've been buying in the best market. when i know more about it, i may travel a bit myself. meantime, i'm changing two of our travellers." mr. best nodded. "that's to the good," he said. "i know which. poor mr. daniel would keep them, because his father had told him they were all they ought to be. but least said, soonest mended." "as to the staff, it's summed up in a word. i mean for them a little less time and a little more money. some would like longer hours and much higher wages; some would be content with a little more money; some only talked about shorter time. i heard them all air their opinions in the past. but i've concluded for somewhat shorter hours and somewhat better money. you must rub it into them that new machinery will indirectly help them, too, and make the work lighter and the results better." "that's undoubtedly true, but it's no good saying so. you'll never make them feel that new machinery helps them. but they'll be very glad of a little more money." "we must enlarge their minds and make them understand that the better the machinery, the better their prospects. as i go up--and i mean to--so they shall go up. but our hope of success lies in the mechanical means we employ. they must grasp that intelligently, and be patient, and not expect me to put them before the mill. if the works succeed, then they succeed and i succeed. if the works hang fire and get behindhand, then they will suffer. we're all the servants of the machinery. i want them to grasp that." "it's difficult for them; but no doubt they'll get to see it," answered john. "they must. that's the way to success in my opinion. it's a very interesting subject--the most interesting to me--always was. the machinery, i mean. i may go to america, presently. of course, they can give us a start and a beating at machinery there." "we must remember the driving power," said best. "the driving power can be raised, like everything else. if we haven't got enough power, we must increase it. i've thought of that, too, as a matter of fact." "you can't increase what the river will do; but, of course, you can get a stronger steam engine." "not so sure about the river. there's a new thing--american, of course--called a turbine. but no hurry for that. we've got all the power we want for the minute. that's one virtue of some of the new machinery: it doesn't demand so much power in some cases." but best was very sceptical on this point. they discussed other matters and raymond detailed his ideas as to the alteration of hours and wages. for the most part his foreman had no objections to offer, and when he did question the figures, he was overruled. but he felt constrained to praise. "it's wonderful how you've gone into it," he said. "i never should have thought you'd have had such a head for detail, mister raymond." "no more should i, john. i surprised myself. but when you are working for another person--that's one thing; when you are working for yourself--that's another thing. not much virtue in what i've done, as it is for myself in the long run. when you tell them, explain that i'm not a philanthropist--only a man of business in future. but before all things fair and straight. i mean to be fair to them and to the machinery, too. and to the machinery i look to make all our fortunes. i should have done a little more to start with--for the people i mean; but the death duties are the devil. in fact, i start crippled by them. tell them that and make them understand what they mean on an enterprise of this sort." they went through the works together presently and it was clear that the new owner fixed a gulf between the past and the future. his old easy manner had vanished--and, while friendly enough, he made it quite clear that a vast alteration had come into his mind and manners. it seemed incredible that six months before raymond was chaffing the girls and bringing them fruit. he called them by their names as of yore; but they knew in a moment he had moved with his fortunes and their own manner instinctively altered. he was kind and pleasant, but far more interested in their work than them; and they drew conclusions from the fact. they judged his attitude with gloom and were the more agreeably surprised when they learned what advantages had been planned for them. levi baggs and benny cogle, the engineman, grumbled that more was not done; but the women, who judged raymond from his treatment of sabina and hoped nothing from his old promises, were gratified and astonished at what they heard. an improved sentiment towards the new master was manifest. the instinct to judge people at your own tribunal awoke, and while sally groves and old mrs. chick held out for morals, the other women did not. already they had realised that the idle youth they could answer was gone. and with him had gone the young man who amused himself with a spinner. of course, he could not be expected to marry sabina. such things did not happen out of story books; and if you tried to be too clever for your situation, this was the sort of thing that befell you. so argued nancy buckler and mercy gale; nor did sarah northover much differ from them. none had been fiercer for sabina than nancy, yet her opinion, before the spectacle of raymond himself and after she heard his intentions, was modified. to see him so alert, so aloof from the girls, translated to a higher interest, had altered nancy. despite her asperity and apparent independence of thought, her mind was servile, as the ignorant mind is bound to be. she paid the unconscious deference of weakness to power. raymond lunched at north hill house--now his property. he had not seen waldron since the great change in his fortunes and arthur, with the rest, was quick to perceive the difference. they met in friendship and estelle kissed raymond as she was accustomed to do; but the alteration in him, while missed by her, was soon apparent to her father. it took the shape of a more direct and definite method of thinking. raymond no longer uttered his opinions inconsiderately, as though confessing they were worthless even while he spoke them. he weighed his words, jested far less often, and did not turn serious subjects into laughter. waldron suggested certain things to his new landlord that he desired should be done; but he was amused in secret that some work raymond had blamed daniel for not doing, he now refused to do himself. "i've no objection, old chap--none at all. the other points you raise i shall carry out at my own expense; but the french window in the drawing-room, while an excellent addition to the room, is not a necessity. so you must do that yourself." thus he spoke and arthur agreed. estelle only found him unchanged. before her he was always jovial and happy. he liked to hear her talk and listen to her budding theories of life and pretty dreams of what the world ought to be, if people would only take a little more trouble for other people. but estelle was painfully direct. she thought for herself and had not yet learned to hide her ideas, modify their shapes, or muffle their outlines when presenting them to another person. mr. churchouse and her father were responsible for this. they encouraged her directness and, while knowing that she outraged opinion sometimes, could not bring themselves to warn her, or stain the frankness of her views, with the caution that good manners require thought should not go nude. now the peril of estelle's principles appeared when lunch was finished and the servants had withdrawn. "i didn't speak before lucy and agnes," she said, "because they might talk about it afterwards." "bless me! how cunning she's getting!" laughed raymond. but he did not laugh long. estelle handed him his coffee and lit a match for his cigar; while arthur, guessing what was coming, resigned himself helplessly to the storm. "sabina is fearfully unhappy, ray. she loves you so much, and i hope you will change your mind and marry her after all, because if you do, she'll love her baby, too, and look forward to it very much. but if you don't, she'll hate her baby. and it would be a dreadful thing for the poor little baby to come into the world hated." to waldron's intense relief raymond showed no annoyance whatever. he was gentle and smiled at estelle. "so it would, chicky--it would be a dreadful thing for a baby to come into the world hated. but don't you worry. nobody's going to hate it." "i'll tell sabina that. sabina's sure to have a nice baby, because she's so nice herself." "sure to. and i shall be a very good friend to the baby without marrying sabina." "if she knows that, it ought to comfort her," declared estelle. "and i shall be a great friend to it, too." her father bade the child be off on an errand presently and expressed his regrets to the guest when she was gone. "awfully sorry, old chap, but she's so unearthly and simple; and though i've often told myself to preach to her, i never can quite do it." "never do. she'll learn to hide her thoughts soon enough. nothing she can say would annoy me. for that matter she's only saying what a great many other people are thinking and haven't the pluck to say. the truth is this, arthur; when i was a poor man i was a weak man, and i should have married sabina and we should both have had a hell of a life, no doubt. now the death of daniel has made me a strong man, and i'm not doing wrong as the result; i'm doing right. i can afford to do right and not mind the consequences. and the truth about life is that half the people who do wrong, only do it because they can't afford to do right." "that's a comforting doctrine--for the poor." "it's like this. sabina is a very dear girl, and i loved her tremendously, and if she'd gone on being the same afterwards, i should have married her. but she changed, and i saw that we could never be really happy together as man and wife. there are things in her that would have ruined my temper, and there are things in me she would have got to hate more and more. as a matter of brutal fact, arthur, she got to dislike me long before things came to a climax. she had to hide it, because, from her standpoint and her silly mother's, marriage is the only sort of salvation. whereas for us it would have been damnation. it's very simple; she's got to think as i think and then she'll be all right." "you can't make people think your way, if they prefer to think their own." "it's merely the line of least resistance and what will pay her best. i want you to grasp the fact that she had ceased to like me before there was any reason why she should cease to like me. i'll swear she had. my first thought and intention, when i heard what had happened, was to marry her right away. and what changed my feeling about it, and showed me devilish clear it would be a mistake, was sabina herself. we needn't go over that. but i'm not going to marry her now under any circumstances whatever, while recognising very clearly my duty to her and the child. and though you may say it's humbug, i'm thinking quite as much for her as myself when i say this." "i don't presume to judge. you're not a humbug--no good sportsman is in my experience. if you do everything right for the child, i suppose the world has no reason to criticise." "as long as i'm right with myself, i don't care one button what the world says, arthur. there's nothing quicker opens your eyes, or helps you to take larger views, than independence." "i see that." "all the same, it's a steadying thing if you're honest and have got brains in your head. people thought i was a shallow, easy, good-natured and good-for-nothing fool six months ago. well, they thought wrong. but don't think i'm pleased with myself, or any nonsense of that sort. only a fool is pleased with himself. i've wasted my life till now, because i had no ambition. now i'm beginning it and trying to get things into their proper perspective. when i had no responsibilities, i was irresponsible. now they've come, i'm stringing myself up to meet them." "life's given you your chance." "exactly; and i hope to show i can take it. but i'm not going to start by making an ass of myself to please a few old women." "where shall you live?" "nowhere in particular for the minute. i shall roam and see all that's being done in my business and take john best with me for a while. then it depends. perhaps, if things go as i expect about machinery, i shall ask you for a corner again in the autumn." mr. waldron nodded; but he was not finding himself in complete agreement with raymond. "always welcome," he said. "perhaps you'd rather not? well--see how things go. estelle may bar me. i'm at bridport to-night and return to london to-morrow. but i shall be back again in a week." "shall you play any cricket this summer?" "i should like to if i have time; but it's very improbable. i'm not going to chuck sport though. next year i may have more leisure." "you're at 'the seven stars,' i hear--haven't forgiven dick gurd he tells me." "did we quarrel? i forget. seems funny to think i had enough time on my hands to wrangle with an innkeeper. but i like missis northover's. it's quiet." "shall i come in and dine this evening?" "wait till i'm back again. i've got to talk to my aunt jenny to-night. she's one of the old brigade, but i'm hoping to make her see sense." "when sense clashes with religion, old man, nobody sees sense. i'm afraid your opinions won't entirely commend themselves to miss ironsyde." "probably not. i quite realise that i shall have to exercise the virtue of patience at bridport and bridetown for a year or two. but while i've got you for a friend, arthur, i'm not going to bother." waldron marked the imperious changes and felt somewhat bewildered. raymond left him not a little to think about, and when the younger had ridden off, arthur strolled afield with his thoughts and strove to bring order into them. he felt in a vague sort of way that he had been talking to a stranger, and his hope, if he experienced a hope, was that the new master of the mill might not take himself too seriously. "people who do that are invariably one-sided," thought waldron. upon ironsyde's attitude and intentions with regard to sabina, he also reflected uneasily. what raymond had declared sounded all right, yet arthur could not break with old rooted opinions and the general view of conduct embodied in his favourite word. was it "sporting"? and more important still, was it true? had ironsyde arrived at his determination from honest conviction, or thanks to the force of changed circumstances? mr. waldron gave his friend the benefit of the doubt. "one must remember that he is a good sportsman," he reflected, "and he can't have enough brains to make him a bad sportsman." for the thinker had found within his experience, that those who despised sport, too often despised also the simple ethics that he associated with sportsmanship. in fact, arthur, after one or two painful experiences, had explicitly declared that big brains often went hand in hand with a doubtful sense of honour. he had also, of course, known numerous examples of another sort of dangerous people who assumed the name and distinction of "sportsman" as a garment to hide their true activities and unworthy selves. chapter xxviii clash of opinions mr. job legg, with a persistence inspired by private purpose, continued to impress upon nelly northover the radical truth that in this world you cannot have anything for nothing. he varied the precept sometimes, and reminded her that we must not hope to have our cake and eat it too; and closer relations with richard gurd served to impress upon mrs. northover the value of these verities. nor did she resent them from mr. legg. he had preserved an attitude of manly resignation under his supreme disappointment. he was patient, uncomplaining and self-controlled. he did not immediately give notice of departure, but, for the present, continued to do his duty with customary thoroughness. he showed himself a most tactful man. new virtues were manifested in the light of the misfortune that had overtaken him. affliction and reverse seemed to make him shine the brighter. nelly could hardly understand it. had she not regarded his character as one of obvious simplicity and incapable of guile, she might have felt suspicious of any male who behaved with such exemplary distinction under the circumstances. it was, of course, clear that the mistress of 'the seven stars' could not become mr. gurd's partner and continue to reign over her own constellation as of old. yet nelly did not readily accept a fact so obvious, even under mr. legg's reiterated admonitions. she felt wayward--almost wilful about it: and there came an evening when richard dropped in for his usual half hour of courting to find her in such a frame of mind. humour on his part had saved the situation; but he lacked humour, and while nelly, even as she spoke, knew she was talking nonsense and only waited his reminder of the inevitable in a friendly spirit, yet, when the reminder came, it was couched in words so forcible and so direct, that for a parlous moment her own sense of humour broke down. the initial error was mr. gurd's. the elasticity of youth, both mental and physical, had departed from him, and he took her remarks, uttered more in mischief than in earnest, with too much gravity, not perceiving that nelly herself was in a woman's mood and merely uttering absurdities that he might contradict her. she was ready enough to climb down from her impossible attitude; but richard abruptly threw her down; which unchivalrous action wounded mrs. northover to the quick and begat in her an obstinate and rebellious determination to climb up again. "i'm looking on ahead," she began, while they sat in her parlour together. "this is a great upheaval, richard, and i'm just beginning to feel how great. i'm wondering all manner of things. will you be so happy and comfortable along with me, at 'the seven stars,' as you are at 'the tiger'? you must put that to yourself, you know." it was so absurd an assumption, that she expected his laughter; and if he had laughed and answered with inspiration, no harm could have come of it. but richard felt annoyed rather than amused. the suggestion seemed to show that mrs. northover was a fool--the last thing he bargained for. he exhibited contempt. indeed, he snorted in a manner almost insulting. "woman comes to man, i believe, not man to woman," he said. "that is so," she admitted with a touch of colour in her cheeks at his attitude, "but you must think all round it--which you haven't done yet, seemingly." then richard laughed--too late; for a laugh may lose all its value if the right moment be missed. "where's the fun?" she asked. "i thought, of course, that you'd be business-like as well as lover-like and would see 'the seven stars' had got more to it than 'the tiger.'" even now the situation might have been saved. the very immensity of her claim rendered it ridiculous; but richard was too astonished to guess an utterance so hyperbolic had been made to offer him an easy victory. "you thought that, nelly? 'the seven stars' more to it than 'the tiger'?" "surely!" "because you get a few tea-parties and old women at nine-pence a head on your little bit of grass?" a counter so terrific destroyed the last glimmering hope of a peaceful situation, and mrs. northover perceived this first. "it's war then?" she said. "so perhaps you'll tell me what you mean by my little bit of grass. not the finest pleasure gardens in bridport, i suppose?" "be damned if this ain't the funniest thing i've ever heard," he answered. "you never was one to see a joke, we all know; and if that's the funniest thing you ever heard, you ain't heard many. and you'll forgive me, please, if i tell you there's nothing funny in my speaking about my pleasure gardens, though it does sound a bit funny to hear 'em called 'a bit of grass' by a man that's got nothing but a few apple trees, past bearing, and a strip of potatoes and weeds, and a fowl-run. but, as you've got no use for a garden, perhaps you'll remember the inn yard, and how many hosses you can put up, and how many i can." "it's the number of hosses that comes--not the number you put up," he answered; "and if you want to tell me you've often obliged with a spare space in your yard, perhaps i may remind you that you generally got quite as good as you gave. but be that as it will, the point lies in one simple question, and i ask you if you really thought, as a woman nearer sixty than fifty and with credit for sense, that i was going to chuck 'the tiger' and coming over to your shop. did you really think that?" not for an instant had she thought it; but the time was inappropriate for saying so. she might have confessed the truth in the past; she might confess the truth in the future; she was not going to do so at present. he should have a stab for his stab. "you've often told me i was the sensiblest woman in dorset, richard, and being that, i naturally thought you'd drop your bar-loafers' place and come over to me--and glad to come." "good god!" he said, and stared at her with open nostrils, from which indignant air exploded in gusts. she began to make peace from that moment, feeling that the limit had been reached. indeed she was rather anxious. the thrust appeared to be mortal. mr. gurd rolled in his chair, and after his oath, could find no further words. she declared sorrow. "there--forgive me--i didn't mean to say that. 'tis a crying shame to see two old people dressing one another down this way. i'm sorry if i hurt your feelings, but don't forget you've properly trampled on mine. my pleasure grounds are my lifeblood you might say; and you knew it." "you needn't apologise now. 'the tiger' a bar-loafers' place! the centre of all high-class sport in the district a bar-loafers' place! well, well! no wonder you thought i'd be glad to come and live at 'the seven stars'!" "i didn't really," she confessed. "i knew very well you wouldn't; but i had to say it. the words just flashed out. and if i'd remembered a joke was nothing to you, i might have thought twice." "i laughed, however." "yes, you laughed, i grant--what you can do in that direction, which ain't much." mr. gurd rose to his full height. "well, that lets me out," he said. "we'd better turn this over in a forgiving spirit; and since you say you're sorry, i won't be behind you, though my words was whips to your scorpions and you can't deny it." "we'll meet again in a week," said mrs. northover. "make it a fortnight," he suggested. "no--say a month," she answered--"or six weeks." then it was richard's turn to feel the future in danger. but he had no intention to eat humble pie that evening. "a month then. but one point i wish to make bitter clear, nelly. if you marry me, you come to 'the tiger.'" "so it seems." "yes--bar-loafers, or no bar-loafers." "i'll bear it in mind, richard." the leave-taking lacked affection and they parted with full hearts. each was smarting under consciousness of the other's failure in nice feeling; each was amazed as at a revelation. richard kept his mouth shut concerning this interview, for he was proud and did not like to confess even to himself that he stood on the verge of disaster; but mrs. northover held a familiar within her gates, and she did not hesitate to lay the course of the adventure before job legg. "the world is full of surprises," said nelly, "and you never know, when you begin talking, where the gift of speech will land you. and if you're dealing with a man who can't take a bit of fun and can't keep his eyes on his tongue and his temper at the same time, trouble will often happen." she told the story with honesty and did not exaggerate; but mr. legg supported her and held that such a self-respecting woman could have done and said no less. he declared that richard gurd had brought the misfortune on himself, and feared that the innkeeper's display revealed a poor understanding of female nature. "it isn't as if you was a difficult and notorious sort of woman," explained job; "for then the man might have reason on his side; but to misunderstand you and overlook your playful touch--that shows he's got a low order of brain; because you always speak clearly. your word is as good as your bond and none can question your judgment." he proceeded to examine the argument earnestly and had just proved that mrs. northover was well within her right to set 'the seven stars' above 'the tiger,' when raymond ironsyde entered. he returned from dining with his aunt, and an interview now concluded was of very painful and far-reaching significance. for they had not agreed, and miss ironsyde proved no more able to convince her nephew than was he, to make her see his purpose combined truest wisdom and humanity. they talked after dinner and she invited him to justify his conduct if he could, before hearing her opinions and intentions. he replied at once and she found his arguments and reasons all arrayed and ready to his tongue. he spoke clearly and stated his case in very lucid language; but he irritated her by showing that his mind was entirely closed to argument and that he was not prepared to be influenced in any sort of way. her power had vanished now and she saw how only her power, not her persuasion, had won raymond before his brother's death. he spoke with utmost plainness and did not spare himself in the least. "i've been wrong," he said, "but i'm going to try and be right in the future. i did a foolish thing and fell in love with a good and clever girl. once in love, of course, everything was bent and deflected to be seen through that medium and i believed that nothing else mattered or ever would. then came the sequel, and being powerless to resist, i was going to marry. for some cowardly reason i funked poverty, and the thought of escaping it made me agree to marry sabina, knowing all the time it must prove a failure. that was my second big mistake, and the third was asking her to come and live with me without marrying her. i suggested that, because i wanted her and felt very keen about the child. i ought not to have thought of such a thing. it wasn't fair to her--i quite see that." "can anything be fair to her short of marriage?" "not from her point of view, aunt jenny." "and what other point of view, in keeping with honour and religion, exists?" "as to religion, i'm without it and so much the freer. i don't want to pretend anything i don't feel. i shall always be very sorry, indeed, for what i did; but i'm not going to wreck my life by marrying sabina." "what about her life?" "if she will trust her life to me, i shall do all in my power to make it a happy and easy life. i want the child to be a success. i know it will grow up a reproach to me and all that sort of thing in the opinion of many people; but that won't trouble me half as much as my own regrets. i've not done anything that puts me beyond the, pale of humanity--nor has sabina; and if she can keep her nerve and go on with her life, it ought to be all right for her, presently." "a very cynical attitude and i wish i could change it, raymond. you've lost your self-respect and you know you've done a wrong thing. can't you see that you'll always suffer it if you take no steps to right it? you are a man of feeling, and power can't lessen your feeling. every time you see that child, you will know that you have brought a living soul into the world cruelly handicapped by your deliberate will." "that's not a fair argument," he answered. "if our rotten laws handicap the baby, it will be my object to nullify the handicap to the best of my ability. the laws won't come between me and my child, any more than they came between me and my passion. i'm not the sort to hide behind the mean english law of the natural child. but i'm not going to let that law bully me into marriage with sabina. i've got to think of myself as well as other people. i won't say, what's true--that if sabina married me she wouldn't be happy in the long run; but i will say that i know i shouldn't be, and i'm not prepared to pay any penalty whatever for what i did, beyond the penalty of my own regrets." "if you rule religion out and think you can escape and keep your honour, i don't know what to say," she answered. "for my part i believe sabina would make you a very good and loving wife. and don't fancy, if you refuse her what faithfully you promised her, she will be content with less." "that's her look out. you won't be wise, aunt jenny, to influence her against a fair and generous offer. i want her to live a good life, and i don't want our past love-making to ruin that life, or our child to ruin that life. if she's going to pose as a martyr, i can't help it. that's the side of her that wrecked the show, as a matter of fact, and made it very clear to me that we shouldn't be a happy married couple." "self-preservation is a law of nature. she only did what any girl would have done in trying to find friends to save her from threatened disaster." "well, i dare say it was natural to her to take that line, and it was equally natural to me to resent it. at any rate we know where we stand now. tell me if there's anything else." "i only warn you that she will accept no benefits of any kind from you, raymond. and who shall blame her?" "that's entirely her affair, of course. i can't do more than admit my responsibilities and declare my interest in her future." "she will throw your interest back in your face and teach her child to despise you, as she does." "how d'you know that, aunt jenny?" "because she's a proud woman. and because she would lose the friendship of all proud women and clean thinking men if she condoned what you intend to do. it's horrible to see you turned from a simple, stupid, but honourable boy, into a hard, selfish, irreligious man--and all the result of being rich. i should never have thought it could have made such a dreadful difference so quickly. but i have not changed, raymond. and i tell you this: if you don't marry sabina; if you don't see that only so can you hold up your head as an honest man and a respectable member of society, worthy of your class and your family, then, i, for one, can have no more to do with you. i mean it." "i'm sorry you say that. you've been my guardian angel in a way and i've a million things to thank you for from my childhood. it would be a great grief to me, aunt jenny, if you allowed a difference of opinion to make you take such a line. i hope you'll think differently." "i shall not," she said. "i have not told you this on the spur of the moment, or before i had thought it out very fully and very painfully. but if you do this outrageous thing, i will never be your aunt any more, raymond, and never wish to see you again as long as i live. you know me; i'm not hysterical, or silly, or even sentimental; but i'm jealous for your father's name--and your brother's. you know where duty and honour and solemn obligation point. there is no reason whatever why you should shirk your duty, or sully your honour; but if you do, i decline to have any further dealings with you." he rose to go. "that's definite and clear. good-bye, aunt jenny." "good-bye," she said. "and may god guide you to recall that 'good-bye,' nephew." then he went back to 'the seven stars,' and wondered as he walked, how the new outlook had shrunk up this old woman too, and made one, who bulked so largely in his life of old, now appear as of no account whatever. he was heartily sorry she should have taken so unreasonable a course; but he grieved more for her sake than his own. she was growing old. she would lack his company in the time to come, and her heart was too warm to endure this alienation without much pain. he suspected that if sabina's future course of action satisfied miss ironsyde, she would be friendly to her and the child and, in time, possibly win some pleasure from them. chapter xxix the bunch of grapes raymond proceeded with his business at bridetown oblivious of persons and personalities. he puzzled those who were prepared to be his enemies, for it seemed he was becoming as impersonal as the spinning machines, and one cannot quarrel with a machine. it appeared that he was to be numbered with those who begin badly and retrieve the situation afterwards. so, at least, hoped ernest churchouse, yet, since the old man was called to witness and endure a part of the sorrows of sabina and her mother, it demanded large faith on his part to anticipate brighter times. he clung to it that raymond would yet marry sabina, and he regretted that when the young man actually offered to see sabina, she refused to see him. for this happened. he came to stop at north hill house for two months, while certain experts were inspecting the works, and during this time he wished to visit 'the magnolias' and talk with sabina, but she declined. the very active hate that he had awakened sank gradually to smouldering fires of bitter resentment and contempt. she spoke openly of destroying their babe when it should be born. then the event happened and sabina became the mother of a man child. raymond was still with arthur waldron when estelle brought the news, and the men discussed it. "i hope she'll be reasonable now," said ironsyde. "it bothered me when she refused to see me, because you can't oppose reason to stupidity of that sort. if she's going to take my aunt's line, of course, i'm done, and shall be powerless to help her. i spoke to uncle ernest about it two days ago. he says that it will have to be marriage, or nothing, and seemed to think that would move me to marriage! some people can't understand plain english. but why should she cut off her nose to spite her face and refuse my friendship and help because i won't marry her?" "she's that sort, i suppose. of course, plenty of women would do the same." "i'm not convinced it's sabina really who is doing this. that's why i wanted to see her. very likely aunt jenny is inspiring such a silly attitude, or her mother. they may think if she's firm i may yield. they don't seem to realise that love's as dead as a doornail now. but my duty is clear enough and they can't prevent me from doing it, i imagine." "you want to be sporting to the child, of course." "and to the mother of the child. damn it all, i'm made of flesh and blood. i'm not a fiend. but with women, if you have a grain of common-sense and reasoning power, you become a fiend the moment there's a row. i want sabina and my child to have a good show in the world, arthur." "well, you must let her know it." "i'll see her, presently. i'll take no denial about that. it may be a pious plot really, for religious people don't care how they intrigue, if they can bring off what they want to happen. it was very strange she refused to see me. perhaps they never told her that i offered to come." "yes, they did, because estelle heard churchouse tell her. estelle was with her at the time, and she said she was so sorry when sabina refused. it may have been because she was ill, of course." "i must see her before i go away, anyway. if they've been poisoning her mind against me, i must put it right." "you're a rum 'un! can't you see what this means to her? you talk as if she'd no grievance, and as though it was all a matter of course and an everyday thing." "so it is, for that matter. however, there's no reason for you to bother about it. i quite recognise what it is to be a father, and the obligations. but because i happen to be a father, is no reason why i should be asked to do impossibilities. because you've made a fool of yourself once is no reason why you should again. by good chance i've had unexpected luck in life and things have fallen out amazingly well--and i'm very willing indeed that other people should share my good luck and good fortune. i mean that they shall. but i'm not going to negative my good fortune by doing an imbecile thing." "as long as you're sporting i've got no quarrel with you," declared waldron. "i'm not very clever myself, but i can see that if they won't let you do what you want to do, it's not your fault. if they refuse to let you play the game--but, of course, you must grant the game looks different from their point of view. no doubt they think you're not playing the game. a woman's naturally not such a sporting animal as a man, and what we think is straight, she often doesn't appreciate, and what she thinks is straight we often know is crooked. women, in fact, are more like the other nations which, with all their excellent qualities, don't know what 'sporting' means." "i mean to do right," answered raymond, "and probably i'm strong enough to make them see it and wear them down, presently. i'm really only concerned about sabina and her child. the rest, and what they think and what they don't think, matter nothing. she may listen to reason when she's well again." two days later raymond received a box from london and showed estelle an amazing bunch of muscat grapes, destined for sabina. "she always liked grapes," he said, "and these are as good as any in the world at this moment." on his way to the mill he left the grapes at 'the magnolias,' and spoke a moment with mr. churchouse. "she is making an excellent recovery," said ernest, "and i am hoping that, presently, the maternal instinct will assert itself. i do everything to encourage it. but, of course, when conditions are abnormal, results must be abnormal. she's a very fine and brave woman and worthy of supreme admiration. and worthy of far better and more manly treatment than she has received from you. but you know that very well, raymond. owing to the complexities created by civilisation clashing with nature, we get much needless pain in the world. but a reasonable being should have recognised the situation, as you did not, and realise that we have no right to obey nature if we know at the same time we are flouting civilisation. you think you're doing right by considering sabina's future. you are a gross materialist, raymond, and the end of that is always dust and ashes and defeated hopes. i won't bring religion into it, because that wouldn't carry weight with you; but i bring justice into it and your debt to the social order, that has made you what you are and to which you owe everything. you have done a grave and wicked wrong to the new-born atom of life in this house, and though it is now too late wholly to right that wrong, much might yet be done. i blame you, but i hope for you--i still hope for you." he took the grapes, and raymond, somewhat staggered by this challenge, found himself not ready to answer it. "we'll have a talk some evening, uncle ernest," he answered. "i don't expect your generation to see this thing from my point of view. it's reasonable you shouldn't, because you can't change; and it's also reasonable that i shouldn't see it from your point of view. if i'm material, i'm built so; and that won't prevent me from doing my duty." "i would talk the hands round the clock if i thought i could help you to see your duty with other eyes than your own," replied the old man. "i am quite ready to speak when you are to listen. and i shall begin by reminding you that you are a father. you expect sabina to be a mother in the full meaning of that beautiful word; but a child must have a father also." "i am willing to be a father." "yes, on your own values, which ignore the welfare of the community, justice to the next generation, and the respect you should entertain for yourself." "well, we'll thresh it out another time. you know i respect you very much, uncle ernest; and i'm sure you'll weigh my point of view and not let aunt jenny influence you." "i have a series of duties before me," answered mr. churchouse; "and not least among them is to reconcile you and your aunt. that you should have broken with your sole remaining relative is heart-breaking." "i'd be friends to-morrow; but you know her." he went away to the works and ernest took the grapes to mrs. dinnett. "you'd better not let her have them, however, unless the doctor permits it," said mr. churchouse, whereupon, mary, not trusting herself to speak, took the grapes and departed. the affront embodied in the fruit affected a mind much overwrought of late. she took the present to sabina's room. "there," she said. "he's sunk to sending that. i'd like to fling them in his face." "take them away. i can't touch them." "touch them! and poisoned as likely as not. a man that's committed his crimes would stick at nothing." "he uses poison enough," said the young mother; "but only the poison he can use safely. it matters nothing to him if i live or die. no doubt he'd will me dead, and this child too, if he could; but seeing he can't, he cares nothing. he'll heap insult on injury, no doubt. he's made of clay coarse enough to do it. but when i'm well, i'll see him and make it clear, once for all." "you say that now. but i hope you'll never see him, or breathe the same air with him." "once--when i'm strong. i don't want him to go on living his life without knowing what i'm thinking of him. i don't want him to think he can pose as a decent man again. i want him to know that the road-menders and road-sweepers are high above him." "don't you get in a passion. he knows all that well enough. he isn't deceiving himself any more than anybody else. all honest people know what he is--foul wretch. yes, he's poisoned three lives, if no more, and they are yours and mine and that sleeping child's." "he's ruined his aunt's life, too. she's thrown him over." "that won't trouble him. war against women is what you'd expect. but please god, he'll be up against a man some day--then we shall see a different result. may the almighty let me live long enough to see him in the gutter, where he belongs. i ask no more." they poured their bitterness upon raymond ironsyde; then a thought came into mary dinnett's mind and she left sabina. judging the time, she put on her bonnet presently and walked out to the road whence raymond would return from his work at the luncheon hour. she stood beside the road at a stile that led into the fields, and as raymond, deep in thought, passed her without looking up, he saw something cast at his feet and for a moment stood still. with a soft thud his bunch of grapes fell ruined in the dust before him and, starting back, he looked at the stile and saw sabina's mother gazing at him red-faced and furious. neither spoke. the woman's countenance told her hatred and loathing; the man shrugged his shoulders and, after one swift glance at her, proceeded on his way without quickening or slackening his stride. he heard her spit behind him and found time to regret that a woman of mary's calibre should be at sabina's side. such concentrated hate astonished him a little. there was no reason in it; nothing could be gained by it. this senseless act of a fool merely made him impatient. but he smiled before he reached north hill house to think that but for the interposition of chance and fortune, this brainless old woman might have become his mother-in-law. chapter xxx a triumph of reason mrs. northover took care that her interrupted conversation with job legg should be completed; and he, too, was anxious, that she should know his position. but he realised the danger very fully and was circumspect in his criticism of richard gurd's attitude toward 'the seven stars.' "for my part," said job on the evening that preceded a very important event, "i still repeat that you have a right to consider we're higher class than 'the tiger'; and to speak of the renowned garden as a 'bit of grass' was going much too far. it shows a wrong disposition, and it wasn't a gentlemanly thing, and if it weren't such a wicked falsehood, you might laugh at it for jealousy." "who ever would have thought the man jealous?" she asked. "these failings will out," declared mr. legg. "and seeing you mean to take him, it is as well you know it." she nodded rather gloomily. "your choice of words is above praise, i'm sure, job," she said. "for such a simple and straightforward man, you've a wonderful knowledge of the human heart." "through tribulation i've come to it," he answered. "however, i'm here to help you, not talk about my own bitter disappointments. and very willing i am to help you when it can be done." "d'you think you could speak to richard for me, and put out the truth concerning 'the seven stars'?" she asked. but mr. legg, simple though he might be, was not as simple as that. "no," he replied. "there's few things i wouldn't do for you, on the earth or in the waters under the earth, and i say that, even though you've turned me down after lifting the light of hope. but for me to see gurd on this subject is impossible. it's far too delicate. another man might, but not me, because he knows that i stand in the unfortunate position of the cast out. so if there's one man that can't go to gurd and demand reparation on your account, i'm that man. in a calmer moment, you'll be the first to see it." "i suppose that is so. he'd think, if you talked sense to him, you had an axe to grind and treat you according. you've suffered enough." "i have without a doubt, and shall continue to do so," he answered her. "i think just as much of you as ever i did notwithstanding," said mrs. northover. "and i'll go so far as to say that your simple goodness and calm sense under all circumstances might wear better in the long run than richard's overbearing way and cruel conceit. be honest, job. do you yourself think 'the tiger' is a finer house and more famous than my place?" mr. legg perceived very accurately where nelly suffered most. "this house," he declared, "have got the natural advantages and gurd have got the pull in the matter of capital. my candid opinion, what i've come to after many years of careful thought on the subject, is that if we--i say 'we' from force of habit, though i'm in the outer darkness now--if we had a few hundred pounds spending on us and an advertisement to holiday people in the papers sometimes, then in six months we shouldn't hear any more about 'the tiger.' cash, spent by the hand of a master on 'the seven stars,' would lift us into a different house and we should soon be known to cater for a class that wouldn't recognise 'the tiger.' what we want is a bit of gold and white paint before next summer and all those delicate marks about the place that women understand and value. i've often thought that a new sign for example, with seven golden stars on a sky blue background, and perhaps even a flagstaff in the pleasure grounds, with our own flag flying upon it, would, as it were, widen the gulf between him and you. but, of course, that was before these things happened, and when i was thinking, day and night you may say, how to catch the custom." mrs. northover sighed. "in another man, it would be craft to say such clever things," she answered; "but, in you, i know it's just simple goodness of heart and christian fellowship. 'tis amazing how we think alike." "not now," he corrected her. "too late now. i wish to god we had thought alike; for then, instead of looking at my money as i'd look at a pile of road scrapings, i should see it with very different eyes. my windfall would have been poured out here in such a fashion that the people would have wondered. this place is my life, in a manner of speaking. my earthly life, i mean; which you may say is ended now. i was, in my own opinion, as much a part of 'the seven stars,' as the beer engine. and when uncle died this was my first thought. or i should say my second, because in the natural course of events, you were the first." she sighed again and mr. legg left this delicate ground. "if the man can only be brought to see he's wrong about his fanciful opinion of 'the tiger,' all may go right for you," he continued. "i don't care for his feelings over-much, but your peace of mind i do consider. at present he dares to think you're a silly woman whose goose is a swan. that's very disorderly coming from the man who's going to marry you. therefore you must get some clear-sighted person to open his eyes, and make it bitter clear to him that 'the tiger' never was and never will be a place to draw nice minds and the female element like us." "there's nobody could put it to him better than you," she said. "at another time, perhaps--not now. i'm not clever, nelly; but i'm too clever to edge in between a man like gurd and his future wife. if we stood different, then nobody would open his mouth quicker than me." "we may stand different yet," she answered. "there was a good deal of passion when we met, and not the sort of passion you expect between lovers, either." "if that is so," he answered, "then we can only leave it for the future. but this i'll certainly say: if you tell me presently that you're free to the nation once more and have changed your mind about richard, then i'd very soon let him know there's a gulf fixed between 'the tiger' and 'the seven stars'; and if you said the word, he'd see that gulf getting broader and broader under his living eyes." "i'd have overlooked most anything but what he actually said," she declared. "but to strike at the garden--however, i'll see him, and if i find he's feeling like what i am, it's quite in human reason that we may undo the past before it's too late." "and always remember it's his own will you shall live at 'the tiger,'" warned job. "excuse my bluntness in reminding you of his words; which, no doubt, you committed to memory long before you told me about 'em; but the point lies there. you can't be in two places at once, and so sure as you sign yourself 'gurd,' you'll sell, or sublet 'the seven stars.' in fact, even a simple brain like mine can see you'll sell, for richard will never be content to let you serve two masters; and where the treasure is, there will the heart be also. and to one of your delicate feelings, to know strange hands are in this house, and strange things being done, and liberties taken with the edifice and the garden, very likely. but i don't want to paint any such dreadful picture as that, and, of course, if you honestly love richard, though you're the first woman that ever could--then enough said." "the question is whether he loves me. however, i'll turn it over; and no doubt he will," she answered. "i see him to-morrow." "and don't leave anything uncertain, if i may advise," concluded mr. legg. "i speak as a child in these matters; but, if he's looking at this thing same as you are, and if you both feel you'd be finer ornaments of society apart, than married, all i say is don't let any false manhood on his part, or modesty on yours, keep you to it. better be good neighbours than bad partners. and if i've said too much, god forgive me." fired by these opinions nelly went to her meeting with richard and the first words uttered by mr. gurd sent a ray of warmth to her heart, for it seemed he also had reviewed the situation in a manner worthy of his high intelligence. but he approached the subject uneasily and mrs. northover was too much a woman to rescue him at once. she had been through a good deal and felt it fair that the master of 'the tiger' should also suffer. "it's borne in upon me," he said, after some generalities and vague hopes that nelly was well, "that, perhaps, there's no smoke without fire, as the saying is." "meaning what?" asked she. "meaning, that though we flared up a bit and forgot what we owe to ourselves, there must have been a reason for so much feeling." "there certainly was." "we needn't go back over the details; but you may be sure there must have lurked more behind our row than just a difference of opinion. people don't get properly hot with each other unless there's a reason, nelly, and i'm beginning to fear that the reason lies deeper than we thought." he waited for her to speak; but she did not. "you mustn't think me shifty, or anything of that kind; but i do feel, where there was such a lot of smoke and us separated all these weeks, and none the worse for separation apparently, that, if we was to take the step--in a word, it's come over me stronger and stronger that we might do well to weigh what we're going to do in the balance before we do it." her delight knew no bounds. but still she did not reply, and mr. gurd began to grow red. "if, by your silence, you mean that i'm cutting a poor figure before you, and you think i want to be off our bargain, you're wrong," he said. "your mind ought to move quicker and i don't mind telling you so. i'm not off my bargain, because i'm a man of honour, and my word, given to man, woman or child, is kept. and if you don't know that, you're the only party in bridport that don't. but i say again, there's two sides to it, and look before you leap, though not a maxim women are very addicted to following, is a good rule for all that. so i'll ask you how the land lies, if you please. you've turned this over same as me; and i'll be obliged if you'll tell me how you're viewing it." "in other words you've changed your mind?" "my mind can wait. i may have done so, or i may not; but to change my mind ain't to change my word, so you need have no anxiety on that account." "far from being anxious," answered mrs. northover, "i never felt so light-hearted since i was a girl, richard. for why? my name for honest dealing is as high as yours, i believe, and if you'd come back to me and asked for bygones to be bygones, i should have struggled with it, same as you meant to do. but, seeing you're shaken, i'm pleased to tell, that i'm shaken also. in fact, 'shaken' isn't a strong enough word. i'm thankful to heaven you don't want to go on with it, because, more don't i." "if anything could make me still wish to take you, it's to hear such wisdom," declared mr. gurd, after a noisy expiration of thanksgiving. "i might have known you wasn't behind me in brain power, and i might have felt you'd be bound to see this quite as quick as me, if not quicker. and i'm sure nothing could make me think higher of you than to hear these comforting words." mrs. northover used an aphorism from mr. legg. "our only fault was not to see each other's cleverness," she said, "or to think for a moment, after what passed between us, we could marry without loss of self-respect. it's a lot better, richard, to be good neighbours than bad partners. and good neighbours we always have been and shall be; and whether we'd be good partners or not is no matter; we won't run the risk." "god bless you!" he answered. "then we part true friends, and if anything could make me feel more friendly than i always have felt, it is your high-mindedness, nelly. for high-mindedness there never was your equal. and if many and many a young couple, that flies together and then feels the call to fly apart again, could only approach the tender subject with your fair sight and high reasoning powers, it would be a happier world." "there's only one thing left," concluded mrs. northover, "and that's to let the public know we've changed our minds. with small people, that wouldn't matter; but with us, we can't forget we've been on the centre of the stage lately; and it would never do to let the people suppose that we had quarrelled, or sunk to anything vulgar." "leave it to me," he answered. "it only calls for a light hand. i shall pass it off with one of my jokes, and then people will treat it in a laughing spirit and not brood over it. folk are quick to take a man's own view on everything concerning himself if he's got the art to convince." "we'll say that more marriages are made on the tongues of outsiders than ever come to be celebrated in church," suggested mrs. northover, "and then people will begin to doubt if it wasn't all nonsense from the first." "and they won't be far wrong if they do. it was nonsense; and if we say so in the public ear, none will dare to doubt it." chapter xxxi the offer declined estelle talked to raymond and endeavoured to interest him in sabina's child. "everybody who understands babies says that he's a lovely and perfect one," declared estelle. "i hope you're going to look at him before you go away, because he's yours. and i believe he will be like you, some day. do the colours of babies' eyes change, like kittens' eyes, ray?" "haven't the slightest idea," he answered. "you may be quite sure i shall take care of it, estelle, and see that it has everything it wants." "somehow they're not pleased with you all the same," she answered. "i don't understand about it, but they evidently feel that you ought to have married sabina. i suppose you're not properly his father if you don't marry her?" "that's nonsense, estelle. i'm quite properly his father, and i'm going to be a jolly good father too. but i don't want to be married. i don't believe in it." "if sabina knew you were going to love him and be good to him, she would be happier, i hope." "i'm going to see her presently," he said. "and see the baby?" "plenty of time for that." "there's time, of course, ray. but he's changing. he's five weeks old to-morrow, and i can see great changes. he can just begin to laugh now. things amuse him we don't know. i expect babies are like dogs and can see what we can't." "i'll look at him if sabina likes." "of course she'll like. it's rather horrid of you, in a way, being able to go on with your work for so many weeks without looking at him. it's really rather a slight on sabina, ray. if i'd had a baby, and his father wouldn't look at him for week after week, i should be vexed. and so is sabina." "next time you see her, ask her to name a day and i'll go whenever she likes." estelle was delighted. "that's lovely of you and it will cheer her up very much, for certain," she answered. then she ran away, for to arrange such a meeting seemed the most desirable thing in the world to her at that moment. to sabina she went as fast as her legs could take her, and appreciating that he had sent this guileless messenger to ensure a meeting without preliminaries and without prejudice, sabina hid her feelings and specified a time on the following day. "if he'll come to see me to-morrow in the dinner-hour, that will be best. i'll be alone after twelve o'clock." "you'll show him the baby, won't you, sabina?" "he won't want to see it." "why not?" "does he want to?" "honestly he doesn't seem to understand how wonderful the baby is," explained the child. "ray's going to be a splendid father to him, sabina. he's quite interested; only men are different from us. perhaps they never feel much interest till babies can talk to them. my father says he wasn't much interested in me till i could talk, so it may be a general thing. but when ray sees him, he'll be tremendously proud of him." sabina said no more, and when raymond arrived to see her at the time she appointed, he found her waiting near the entrance of 'the magnolias.' she wore a black dress and was looking very well and very handsome. but the expression in her eyes had changed. he put out his hand, but she did not take it. "mister churchouse has kindly said we can talk in the study, mister ironsyde." he followed her, and when they had come to the room, hoped that she was quite well again. then he sat in a chair by the table and she took a seat opposite him. she did not reply to his wish for her good health, but waited for him to speak. she was not sulky, but apparently indifferent. her fret and fume were smothered of late. now that the supreme injury was inflicted and she had borne a child out of wedlock, sabina's frenzies were over. the battle was lost. life held no further promises, and the denial of the great promise that it had offered and taken back again, numbed her. she was weary of the subject of herself and the child. she could even ask mr. churchouse for books to occupy her mind during convalescence. yet the slumbering storm in her soul awoke in full fury before the man had spoken a dozen words. she looked at raymond with tired eyes, and he felt that, like himself, she was older, wiser, different. he measured the extent of her experiences and felt sorry for her. "sabina," he said. "i must apologise for one mistake. when i asked you to come back to me and live with me, i did a caddish thing. it wasn't worthy of me, or you. i'm awfully sorry. i forgot myself there." she flushed. "can that worry you?" she asked. "i should have thought, after what you'd already done, such an added trifle wouldn't have made you think twice. to ruin a woman body and soul--to lie to her and steal all she's got to give under pretence of marriage--that wasn't caddish, i suppose--that wasn't anything to make you less pleased with yourself. that was what we may expect from men of honour and right bringing up?" "don't take this line, or we shan't get on. if, after certain things happened, i had still felt we--" "stop," she said, "and hear me. you're making my blood burn and my fingers itch to do something. my hands are strong and quick--they're trained to be quick. i thought i could come to this meeting calm and patient enough. i didn't know i'd got any hate left in me--for you, or the world. but i have--you've mighty soon woke it again; and i'm not going to hear you maul the past into your pattern and explain everything away and tell me how you came gradually to see we shouldn't be happy together and all the usual dirty, little lies. tell yourself falsehoods if you like--you needn't waste time telling them to me. i'll tell you the truth; and that is that you're a low, mean coward and bully--a creature to sicken the air for any honest man or woman. and you know it behind your big talk. what did you do? you seduced me under promise of marriage, and when your brother heard what you'd done and flung you out of the mill, you ran to your aunt. and she said, 'choose between ruin and no money, and sabina and money from me.' and so you agreed to marry me--to keep yourself in cash. and then, when all was changed and you found yourself a rich man, you lied again and deserted me, and wronged your child--ruined us both. that's what you did, and what you are." "if you really believe that's the one and only version, i'm afraid we shan't come to an understanding," he said quietly. "you mustn't think so badly of me as that, sabina." "your aunt does. that's how she sees it, being an honest woman." "i must try to show you you're wrong--in time. for the moment i'm only concerned to do everything in my power to make your future secure and calm your mind." "are you? then marry me. that's the only way you can make my future secure, and you well know it." "i can't marry you. i shall never marry. i am very firmly convinced that to marry a woman is to do her a great injury nine times out of ten." "worse than seducing her and leaving her alone in the world with a bastard child, i suppose?" "you're not alone in the world, and your child is my child, and i recognise the fullest obligations to you both." "liar! if you'd recognised your obligations, you wouldn't have let it come into the world nameless and fatherless." she rose. "you want everything your own way, and you think you can bend everything to your own way. but you'll not bend me no more. you've broke me, and you've broke your child. we're rubbish--rubbish on the world's rubbish heap--flung there by you. i, that was so proud of myself! we'll go to the grave shamed and outcast--failures for people to laugh at or preach over. your child's doomed now. the state and the church both turn their backs on such as him. you can't make him your lawful son now." "i can do for him all any father can do for a son." "you shall do nought for him! he's part of me--not you. if you hold back from me, you hold back from him. god's my judge he shan't receive a crust from your hands. you've given him enough. he's got you to thank for a ruined life. he shan't have anything more from you while i can stand between. don't you trouble for him. you go on from strength to strength and the people will praise your hard work and your goodness to the workers--such a pattern master as you'll be." "may time make you feel differently, sabina," he answered. "i've deserved this--all of it. i'm quite ready to grant i've done wrong. but i'm not going to do more if i can help it. i want to be your friend in the highest and worthiest sense possible. i want to atone to you for the past, and i want to stand up for your child through thick and thin, and bear the reproach that he must be to me as long as i live. i've weighed all that. but power can challenge the indifference of the state and the cowardice of the church. the dirty laws will be blotted out by public opinion some day. the child can grow up to be my son and heir, as he will be my first care and thought. everything that is mine can be his and yours--" "that's all one now," she said. "he touches nothing of yours while i touch nothing of yours. there's only one way to bring me and the child into your life, raymond ironsyde, and that's by marrying me. without that we'll not acknowledge you. i'd rather go on the streets than do it. i'd rather tie a brick round your child's neck and drown him like an unwanted dog than let him have comfort from you. and god judge me if i'll depart from that if i live to be a hundred." "you're being badly advised, sabina. i never thought to hear you talk like this. perhaps it's the fact that i'm here myself annoys you. will you let my lawyer see you?" "marry me--marry me--you that loved me. all less than that is insult." "we must leave it, then. would you like me to see my child?" "see him! why? you'll never see him if i can help it. you'd blast his little, trusting eyes. but i won't drown him--you needn't fear that. i'll fight for him, and find friends for him. there's a few clean people left who won't make him suffer for your sins. he'll live to spit on your grave yet." then she left the room, and he got up and went from the house. book ii estelle chapter i the flying years but little can even the most complete biography furnish of a man's days. it is argued that essentials are all that matter, and that since one year is often like another, and life merely a matter of occasional mountain peaks in flat country, the outstanding events alone need be chronicled with any excuse. but who knows the essential, since biographists must perforce omit the spade work of life on character, the gradual attrition or upbuilding of principles under experience, and the strain and stress, that, sooner or later, bear fruit in action? even autobiography, as all other history, needs must be incomplete, since no man himself exactly appreciated the vital experiences that made him what he is, or turns him from what he was; while even if the secret belongs to the protagonist, and intellect and understanding have enabled him to grasp the reality of his progress, or retrogression, he will be jealous to guard such truths and, for pride, or modesty, conceal the real fountains of inspiration that were responsible for progress, or the temptations to error that found his weakest spots, blocked his advance, and rendered futile his highest hopes. the man who knows his inner defeats will not declare them honestly, even if egotism induces an autobiography; while the biographist, being ignorant of his hero's real, psychological existence, secret life, and those thousand hidden influences that have touched him and caused him to react, cannot, with all the will in the world to be true, relate more than superficial truths concerning him. ten years may only be recorded as lengthening the lives of raymond ironsyde, sabina dinnett and their son, together with those interested in them. time, the supreme solvent, flows over existence, submerging here, lifting there, altering the relative attitudes of husband and wife, parent and child, friend and enemy. for no human relation is static. the ebb and flow forget not the closest or remotest connection between members of the human family; not a friendship or interest stands still, and not a love or a hate. time operates upon every human emotion as it operates upon physical life; and ten years left no single situation at bridetown or bridport unchallenged. death cut few knots; since accident willed that one alone fell among those with whom we are concerned. for the rest, years brought their palliatives and corrosives, soothed here, fretted there; here buried old griefs and healed old sores; here calloused troubles, so that they only throbbed intermittently; here built up new enthusiasms, awakened new loves, barbed new enmities. things that looked impossible on the day that ironsyde heard sabina scorn him, happened. threats evaporated, danger signals disappeared; but, in other cases, while the jagged edges and peaks of bitterness and contempt were worn away by a decade of years, the solid rocks from which they sprang persisted and the massive reasons for emotion were not moved, albeit their sharpest expressions vanished. some loves faded into likings, and their raptures to a placid contentment, built as much on the convenience of habit as the memories of a passionate past; other affections, less fortunate, perished and left nothing but remains unlovely. hates also, with their sharpest bristles rubbed down, were modified to bluntness, and left a mere lumpish aversion of mind. some dislikes altogether perished and gave place to indifference; some persisted as the shadow of their former selves; some were kept alive by absurd pride in those who pretended, for their credit's sake, a steadfastness they were not really built to feel. sabina, for example, was constitutionally unequal to any supreme and all-controlling passion unless it had been love; yet still she preserved that inimical attitude to raymond ironsyde she had promised to entertain; though in reality the fire was gone and the ashes cold. she knew it, but was willing to rekindle the flame if material offered, as now it threatened to do. ernest churchouse had published his book upon 'the bells of dorset' and, feeling that it represented his life work, declared himself content. he had grown still less active, but found abundant interests in literature and friendship. he undertook the instruction of sabina's son and, from time to time, reported upon the child. his first friend was now estelle waldron, who, at this stage of her development, found the old and childlike man chime with her hopes and aspirations. estelle was passing through the phase not uncommon to one of her nature. for a time her early womanhood found food in poetry, and her mind, apparently fashioned to advance the world's welfare and add to human happiness, reposed as it seemed on an interlude of reading and the pursuit of beauty. she developed fast to a point--the point whereat she had established a library and common room for the mill hands; the point at which the girls called her 'our lady,' and very honestly loved her for herself as well as for the good she brought them. now, however, her activities were turned inward and she sought to atone for an education incomplete. she had never gone to school, and her governesses, while able and sufficient, could not do for her what only school life can do. this experience, though held needless and doubtful in many opinions, estelle felt to miss and her conscience prompted her to go to london and mix with other people, while her inclination tempted her to stop with her father. she went to london for two years and worked upon a woman's newspaper. then she fell ill and came home and spent her time with arthur waldron, with raymond ironsyde, and with ernest churchouse. a girl friend or two from london also came to visit her. she recovered perfect health, and having contracted a great new worship for poetry in her convalescence, retained it afterwards. ernest was her ally, for he loved poetry--an understanding denied to her other friends. so estelle passed through a period of dreaming, while her intellect grew larger and her human sympathy no less. she had developed into a handsome woman with regular features, a large and almost stately presence and a direct, undraped manner not shadowed as yet by any ray of sex instinct. nature, with her many endowments, chose to withhold the feminine challenge. she was as stark and pure as the moon. young men, drawn by her smile, fled from her self. her father's friends regarded her much as he did: with a sort of uneasy admiration. the people were fond of her, and older women declared that she would never marry. of such was miss jenny ironsyde. "estelle's children will be good works," she told raymond. for she and her nephew were friends again. the steady tides of time had washed away her prophecy of eternal enmity, and increasing infirmity made her seek companionship where she could find it. moreover, she remembered a word that she had spoken to raymond in the past, when she told him how a grudge entertained by one human being against another poisons character and ruins the steadfast outlook upon life. she escaped that danger. it is a quality of small minds rather than of great to remain unchanged. they fossilise more quickly, are more concentrated, have a power to freeze into a mould and preserve it against the teeth of time, or the wit and wisdom of the world. the result is ugly or beautiful, according to the emotion thus for ever embalmed. the loves of such people are intuitive--shared with instinct and above, or below, reason; their hate is similarly impenetrable--preserved in a vacuum. for only a vacuum can hold the sweet for ever untainted, or the bitter for ever unalloyed. mary dinnett belonged to this order. she was now dead, and concerning the legacy of her unchanging attitude more will presently appear. as for nelly northover, she had long been the wife of mr. job legg. that pertinacious man achieved his end at last, and what his few enemies declared was guile, and his many friends held to be tact, won nelly to him a year after her adventure with mr. gurd. none congratulated them more heartily than the master of 'the tiger.' indeed, when 'the seven stars' blazed out anew on an azure firmament--the least of many changes that refreshed and invigorated that famous house--'the tiger' also shone forth in savage splendour and his black and orange stripes blazed again from a mass of tropical vegetation. and beneath the inn signs prosperity continued to obtain. mr. gurd grew less energetic than of yore, while mrs. legg put on much flesh and daily perceived her wisdom in linking job for ever to the enterprise for which she lived. he became thinner, if anything, and time toiled after him in vain. immense success rewarded his innovations, and the tea-gardens of 'the seven stars' had long become a feature of bridport's social life. people hinted that mr. legg was not the meek and mild spirit of ancient opinion and that nelly knew it; but this suggestion may be held no more than the penalty of fame--an activity of the baser sort, who ever drop vinegar of detraction into the oil of content. john best still reigned at the mill, though he had himself already chosen the young man destined to wear his mantle in process of time. to leave the works meant to leave his garden; and that he was unprepared to do until failing energies made it necessary. a decade saw changes among the workers, but not many. sally groves had retired to braid for the firm at home, and old mrs. chick was also gone; but the other hands remained and the staff had slightly increased. nancy buckler was chief spinner now; sarah roberts still minded the spreader, and nicholas continued at the lathes. benny cogle had a new otto gas engine to look after, and mercy gale, now married to him, still worked in the warping chamber. levi baggs would not retire, and since he hackled with his old master, the untameable man, now more than sixty years old, still kept his place, still flouted the accepted order, still read sinister motives into every human activity. new machinery had increased the prosperity of the enterprise, but to no considerable extent. competition continued keen as ever, and each year saw the workers winning slightly increased power through the advance of labour interests. raymond ironsyde was satisfied and remained largely unchanged. he had hardened in opinion and increased in knowledge. he lacked imagination and, as of old, trusted to the machine; but he was rational and proved a capable, second class man of sound judgment and trustworthy in all his undertakings. sport continued to be a living interest of his life, and since he had no ties that involved an establishment, he gladly accepted arthur waldron's offer of a permanent home. it came to him after he had travelled largely and been for three years master of the works. arthur was delighted when raymond accepted his suggestion and made his abode at north hill. they hunted and shot together; and waldron, who now judged that the time for golf had come in his case, devoted the moiety of his life to that pastime. ironsyde worked hard and was held in respect. the circumstance of his child had long been accepted and understood. he exhausted his energy and patience in endeavours to maintain and advance the boy; and those justified in so doing lost no opportunity to urge on sabina dinnett the justice of his demand; but here nothing could change her. she refused to recognise raymond, or receive from him any assistance in the education and nurture of his son. she had called him abel, and as abel dinnett the lad was known. he resembled her in that he was dark and of an excitable and uneven temperament. he might be easily elated and as easily cast down. raymond, who kept a secret eye upon the child, trusted that in a few years his turn would come, though at present denied. at first he resented the resolution that shut him out of his son's life; but the matter had long since sunk to unimportance and he believed that when abel came to years of understanding, he would recognise his own interests and blame those responsible for ignoring them in his childhood. upon this opinion hinged the future of not a few persons. it developed into a conviction permanently established at the back of his mind; but since sabina and others came between, he was content to let them do so and relied upon his son's intelligence in time to come. for years he did not again seek the child's acquaintance after a rebuff, and made no attempt to interfere with the operations of abel's grandmother and mother--to keep them wholly apart. thus, after all, the gratification of their purpose was devoid of savour and ironsyde's indifferent acquiescence robbed their will of its triumph. he had told mary dinnett, through ernest churchouse, that she and her daughter must proceed as they thought fit and that, in any case, the last word would be with him. here, however, he misvalued the strength of the forces arrayed against him, and only the future proved whether the seed sowed in abel dinnett's youthful heart was fertile or barren--whether, by the blood in his own veins, he would offer soil of character to develop enmity to the man who got him, or reveal a nature slow to anger and impatient of wrath. for ernest churchouse these problems offered occupation and he stood as an intermediary between the interests that clashed in the child. he made himself responsible for a measure of the boy's education and, sometimes, reported to estelle such development of character as he perceived. in secret, inspired by the rival claims of heredity and environment, ernest strove to cast a scientific horoscope of little abel's probable future. but to-day contradicted yesterday, and to-morrow proved both untrustworthy. the child was always changing, developing new ideas, indicating new possibilities. it appeared too soon yet to say what he would be, or predict his character and force of purpose. thus he grew, and when he was eight years old, his first friend and ally--his grandmother--died. mr. churchouse, who had long deplored her influence for abel's sake, was hopeful that this departure might prove a blessing. now sabina had taken her mother's place and she looked after ernest well enough. he always hoped that she would marry, and she had been asked to do so more than once, but felt tempted to no such step. thus, then, things stood, and any change of focus and altered outlook in these people, that may serve to suggest discontinuity with their past, must be explained by the passage of ten years. such a period had renewed all physically--a fact full of subtle connotations. it had sharpened the youthful and matured the adult mind; it had dimmed the senses sinking upon nature's night time and strengthened the dawning will and opening intellect. for as a ship furls her spread of sail on entering harbour, so age reduces the scope of the mind and its energies to catch every fresh ripple of the breeze that blows out of progress and change. the centre of the stage, too, gradually reveals new performers; the gaze of manhood is turned on new figures; the limelight of human interest throws up the coming forces of activity and intellect; while those who yesterday shone supreme, slowly pass into the penumbra that heralds eclipse. and who bulk big enough to arrest the eternal march, delay their own progress from light to darkness, or stay the eager young feet tramping outward of the dayspring to take their places in the day? life moves so fast that many a man lives to see the dust thick on his own name in the scroll of merit and taste a regret that only reason can allay. fate had denied sabina dinnett her brief apotheosis. from dark to dark she had gone; yet time had purged her mind of any large bitterness. she looked on and watched raymond's sojourn in the light from a standpoint negative and indifferent. the future for her held interest, for she could not cease to be interested in him, though she knew that he had long since ceased to be interested in her. from the cool cloisters of her obscurity she watched and was only strong in opinion at one point. she dreamed of her son making his way and succeeding in the world; she welcomed mr. churchouse's assurance as to the lad's mental progress and promise; but she was determined as ever that not, if she could help it, should abel enter terms of friendship with his father. thus the relations subsisted, while, strange to record, in practice they had long been accepted as part of the order of things at bridetown. they ceased even to form matter for gossip. for raymond ironsyde was greater here than the lord of the manor, or any other force. the mill continued to be the heart of the village. through the mill the lifeblood circulated; by the mill the prosperity of the people was regulated; and since the master saw that on his own prosperity reposed the prosperity of those whom he employed, there was none to decry him, or echo a disordered past in the ear of the well-ordered present. chapter ii the sea garden bride river still flowed her old way to her work and came, by goldilocks and grasses, by reedmace and angelica, to the mill-race and water-wheel. but now, where the old wheel thundered, there yawned a gap, for the river's power was about to be conserved to better purpose than of old, and as the new machines now demanded greater forces to drive them, so human skill found a way to increase the applied strength of a streamlet. against the outer wall of the mill now hung a turbine and raymond, estelle and others had assembled to see it in operation for the first time. bride was bottled here, and instead of flashing and foaming over the water wheel as of yore, now vanished into the turbine and presently appeared again below it. raymond explained the machine with gusto, and estelle mourned the wheel, yet as one who knew its departure was inevitable. it was summer time, and after john best had displayed the significance of the turbine and the increased powers generated thereby, raymond strolled down the valley beside the river at estelle's invitation. she had something to show him at the mouth of the stream--a sea garden, now in all its beauty and precious to her. for though her mind had winged far beyond the joys of childhood and was occupied with greater matters than field botany, still she loved the wild flowers and welcomed them again in their seasons. their speech drifted to the people, and he told how some welcomed the new appliance and some doubted. then raymond spoke of sabina dinnett in sympathetic ears. for now estelle understood the past; but she had never wavered in her friendship with sabina, any more than had diminished her sister-like attachment to raymond. now, as often, he regretted the attitude his child preserved towards him and expressed sorrow that he could not break down abel's distrust. "more than distrust, in fact, for the kid dislikes me," he said. "you know he does, chicky. but i never can understand why, because he's always with his mother and uncle ernest, and sabina doesn't bear me any malice now, to my knowledge. surely the child must come round sooner or later?" "when he's old enough to understand, i expect he will," she said. "but you'll have to be patient, ray." "oh, yes--that's my strong suit nowadays." "he's a clever little chap, so sabina says; but he's difficult and wayward. he won't be friends with me." raymond changed the subject and praised the valley as it opened to the sea. "what a jolly place! i believe there are scores of delightful spots at bridetown within a walk, and i'm always too busy to see them." "that's certain. i could show you scores." "i ought to know the place i live in, better. i don't even know the soil i walk on--awful ignorance." "the soil is oolite and clay, and the subsoil, which you see in the cliffs, is yellow sandstone--the loveliest, goldenest soil in the world," declared estelle. "the colour of a bath sponge," he said, and she pretended despair. "oh dear! and i really thought i had seen the dawning of poetry in you, ray." "merely reflected from yourself, chicky. still i'm improving. the turbine has a poetic side, don't you think?" "i suppose it has. science is poetic--at any rate, the history of science is full of poetry--if you know what poetry means." "i wish i had more time for such things," he said. "perhaps i shall have some day. to be in trade is rather deadening though. there seems so little to show for all my activities--only hundreds of thousands of miles of string. in weak moments i sometimes ask myself if, after all, it is good enough." "they must be very weak moments, indeed," said estelle. "perhaps you'll tell me how the world could get on without string?" "i don't know. but you, with all your love of beautiful things, ought to understand me instead of jumping on me. what is beauty? no two people feel the same about it, surely? you'd say a poem was beautiful; i'd say a square cut for four, just out of reach of cover point, was beautiful. your father would say, a book on shooting high pheasants was beautiful, if he agreed with it; john best would say a good sample of shop twine was beautiful." "we should all be right, beauty is in all those things. i can see that. i can even see that shooting birds with great skill, as father does, is beautiful--not the slaughter of the bird, which can't be beautiful, but the way it's done. but those are small things. with the workers you want to begin at the beginning and show them--what mister best knows--that the beauty of the thing they make depends on it being well and truly made." "they're restless." "yes; they're reaching out for more happiness, like everybody else." "i wouldn't back the next generation of capitalists to hold the fort against labour." "perhaps the next generation won't want to," she said. "perhaps by that time we shall be educated up to the idea that rich people are quite as anti-social as poor people. then we shall do away with both poverty and riches. to us, educated on the old values, it would come as a shock, but the generation that is born into such a world would accept it as a matter of course and not grumble." he laughed. "don't believe it, chicky. every generation has its own hawks and eagles as well as its sheep. the strong will always want the fulness of the earth and always try to inspire the weak to help them get it. with great leadership you must have equivalent rewards." "why? cannot you imagine men big enough to work for humanity without reward? have there not been plenty of such men--before christ, as well as since?" "power is reward," he answered. "no man is so great that he is indifferent to power, for his greatness depends upon it; and if power was dissipated to-morrow and diluted until none could call himself a leader, we should have a reaction at once and the sheep would grow frightened and bleat for a shepherd. and the shepherd would very soon appear." they stood where the cliffs broke and bride ended her journey at the sea. she came gently without any splendid nuptials to the lover of rivers. her brief course run, her last silver loop wound through the meadows, she ended in a placid pool amid the sand ridges above high-water mark. the yellow cliffs climbed up again on either side, and near the chalice in the grey beach whence, invisible, the river sank away to win the sea by stealth, spread estelle's sea garden--an expanse of stone and sand enriched by many flowers that seemed to crown the river pool with a garland, or weave a wreath for bride's grave in the sand. here were pale gold of poppies, red gold of lotus and rich lichens that made the sea-worn pebbles shine. sea thistle spread glaucous foliage and lifted its blue blossoms; stone-crops and thrifts, tiny trefoils and couch grasses were woven into the sand, and pink storks-bill and silvery convolvulus brought cool colour to this harmony spread beside the purple sea. the day was one of shadow and sunshine mingled, and from time to time, through passages of grey that lowered the glory of estelle's sea garden, a sunburst came to set all glittering once more, to flash upon the river, lighten the masses of distant elm, and throw up the red roofs and grey church tower of bridetown and her encircling hills. "what a jolly place it is," he said taking out his cigar case. then they sat in the shadow of a fishing boat, drawn up here, and raymond lamented the unlovely end of the river. while he did so, the girl regarded him with affection and a secret interest and entertainment. for it amused her often to hear him echo thoughts that had come to her in the past. in a lesser degree her father did the like; but he belonged to a still older generation, and it was with raymond that she found herself chiefly concerned, when he announced, as original, ideas and discoveries that reflected her own dreams in the past. sometimes she thought he was catching up; sometimes, again, she distanced him and felt herself grown up and raymond still a boy. then, sometimes, he would flush a covey of ideas outside her reflections, and so remind her of the things that interested men, in which, as yet, women took no interest. when he spoke of such things, she strove to learn all that he could teach concerning them. but soon she found that was not much. he did not think deeply and she quickly caught him up, if she desired to do so. now he uttered just the same, trivial lament that she had uttered when she was a child. she was pleased, for she rather loved to feel herself older in mind than raymond. it added a lustre to friendship and made her happy--why, she knew not. "what a wretched end--to be choked up in the shingle like that," he said, "instead of dashing out gloriously and losing yourself in the sea!" she smiled gently to herself. "i thought that once, then i was ever so sorry for poor little bride." "a bride without a wedding," he said. "no. she steals to him; she wins his salt kisses and finds them sweet enough. they mate down deep out of sight of all eyes. so you needn't be sorry for her really." "it's like watching people try ever so hard to do something and never bring it off." "yes--even more like than you think, ray; because we feel sad at such apparent failures, and yet what we are looking at may be a victory really, only our dull eyes miss it." "i daresay many people are succeeding who don't appear to be," he admitted. "goodness can't be wasted. it may be poured into the sand all unseen and unsung; but it conquers somehow and does something worth doing, even though no eye can see what. plenty of good things happen in the world--good and helpful things--that are never recorded, or even recognised." "like a stonewaller in a cricket match. the people cuss him, but he may determine who is going to win." she laughed at the simile. they went homeward presently, estelle quietly content to have shown raymond the flower-sprinkled strand, and he well pleased to have pleasured her. chapter iii a twist frame raymond ironsyde grumbled sometimes at the factory act and protested against grandmotherly legislation. yet in some directions he anticipated it. he went, for example, beyond the flax mill ventilation regulations. he loved fresh air himself, and took vast pains to make his works sweet and wholesome for those who breathed therein. even levi baggs could not grumble, for the exhaust draught in his hackling shop was stronger than the law demanded, and the new cyclone separators in the main buildings served to keep the air far purer than of old. ironsyde had established also the kestner system of atomising water, to regulate temperature and counteract the electrical effects of east wind, or frost, on the light slivers. he was always on the lookout for new automatic means to regulate the drags on the bobbins. he had installed an automatic doffing apparatus, and made a departure from the usual dry spinning in a demi-sec, or half-dry, spinning frame, which was new at that time, and had offered excellent results and spun a beautifully smooth yarn. these things all served to assist and relieve the workers in varying degree, but, as raymond often pointed out, they were taken for granted and, sometimes, in his gloomier moments, he accused his people of lacking gratitude. they, for their part, were being gradually caught up in the growing movements of labour. the unintelligent forgot to credit the master with his consideration; while those who could think, were often soured by suspicion. these ignorant spirits doubted not that he was seeking to win their friendship against the rainy days in store for capital. ironsyde came to the works one morning to watch a new twist frame and a new operator. the single strand yarn for material from the spinners was coming to the twist frame to be turned into twines and fishing lines. four full bobbins from the spinning machine went to each spindle of the twist frame, and from it emerged a strong 'four-ply.' it was a machine more complicated than the spinner; and, as only a good billiard player can appreciate the cleverness of a great player, so only a spinner might have admired the rare technical skill of the woman who controlled the twist frame. the soul of the works persisted, though the people and the machines were changed. the old photographs and old verses had gone, but new pictures and poems took their places in the workers' corners; and new fashion-plates hung where the old ones used to hang. the drawers, and the rovers, the spreaders and the spinners still, like bower-birds, adorned the scenes of their toil. a valentine or two and the portrait of a gamekeeper and his dog hung beside the carding machine; for sally groves had retired and a younger woman was in her place. she, too, fed the card by hand, but not so perfectly as sally was wont to do. estelle had come to see the twist frame. she cared much for the mill women and spent a good portion of her hours with them. a very genuine friendship, little tainted with time-serving, or self-interest, obtained for her in the works. on her side, she valued the goodwill of the workers as her best possession, and found among them a field for study in human nature and, in their work, matter for poetry and art. for were not all three fates to be seen at their eternal business here? clotho attended the spread board; the can-minders coiling away the sliver, stood for lachesis; while in the spinners, who cut the thread when the bobbin was full, estelle found atropos, the goddess of the shears. mr. best, grown grizzled, but active still and with no immediate thoughts of retirement, observed the operations of the new spinner at the twist frame. she was a woman from bridport, lured to bridetown by increase of wages. john, who was a man of enthusiasms, turned to estelle. "the best spinner that ever came to bridetown," he whispered. "better than sabina dinnett?" she asked; and best declared that she was. so passage of time soon deadens the outline of all achievement, and living events that happen under our eyes, offer a statement of the quick and real with which beautiful dead things, embalmed in the amber of memory, cannot cope. "sabina, at her best, never touched her, miss waldron." "sabina braids still in her spare time. nobody makes better nets." "this is a cousin of sarah roberts," explained the foreman. "spinning runs in the northover family, and though sarah is a spreader and never will be anything else, there have been wondrous good spinners in the clan. this girl is called milly morton, and her mother and grandmother spun before her. her father was jack morton, one of the last of the old hand spinners. to see him walking backwards from his wheel, and paying out fibre from his waist with one hand and holding up the yarn with the other, was a very good sight. he'd spin very nearly a hundred pounds of hemp in a ten hours' day, and turn out seven or eight miles of yarn, and walk every yard of it, of course. the rope makers swore by him." "i'm sure spinning runs in the blood!" agreed estelle. "both sarah's little girls are longing for the time when they can come into the mill and mind cans; and, of course, the boy wants to do his father's work and be a lathe hand." best nodded. "you've hit it," he declared. "it runs in the blood in a very strange fashion. take sabina's child. by all accounts, his old grandmother did everything in her power to poison his mind against the mill as well as the master. she was a lot bitterer than sabina herself, as the years went on; and if you could look back and uncover the past, you'd find it was her secret work to make that child what he is. but the mill draws him like cheese draws a mouse. i'll find him here a dozen times in a month--just popping in when my back's turned. why he comes i couldn't say; but i think it is because his mother was a spinner and the feeling for the craft is in him." "his father is a spinner, too, for that matter," suggested estelle. "in the larger sense of ownership, yes; but it isn't that that draws him. his father's got no great part in him by all accounts. it's the mother in him that brings him here. not that she knows he comes so often, and i dare say she'd be a good deal put about if she did." "why shouldn't he come, john?" he shrugged his shoulders. "i see no reason against. one gets so used to the situation that its strangeness passes off, but it's very awkward, so to say, that nothing can be done for abel by his father. sabina's wrong to hold out there, and so i've told her." "she doesn't influence abel one way or the other. the child seems to hate mister ironsyde." "well, he loves the mill, though you'd think he might hate that for his father's sake." "he's hard for a little creature of ten years old," said estelle. "he won't make friends with me, but holds off and regards me--just as rabbits and things regard one, before they finally run away. i pretend i don't notice it. he'll listen and even talk if i meet him with his mother; but if i meet him alone, he flies. he generally bolts through a hole in the hedge, or somewhere." "he links you up with mister raymond," explained mr. best. "he knows you live at north hill house, and so he's suspicious. you can disarm him, however, for he's got reasoning parts quite up to the average if not above. he's the sort of boy that if you don't want him to steal your apples, you've only got to give him a few now and then; and then he rises to the situation and feels in honour bound to be straight, because you've lifted him to be your equal." "i call that a very good character." "it might be a lot worse, no doubt." "i wanted him to come to our outing, but he won't do that, though his mother asked him to go." the outing, an annual whole holiday, was won for the mill by estelle, and for the past four years she had taken all who cared to come for a long day by the sea. they always went to weymouth, where amusement offered to suit every taste. "more than ever are coming this year," john told her. "in fact, i believe pretty well everybody's going but levi baggs." "i'm glad. we'll have the two wagonettes from 'the seven stars' as usual. if you are going into bridport you might tell missis legg." "the two big ones we shall want, and they must be here sharp at six o'clock," declared mr. best. "there's nothing like getting off early. i'll speak to job legg about it and tell him to start 'em off earlier. you can trust it to job as to the wagonettes being opened or covered. he's a very weather-wise person and always smells rain twelve hours in advance." chapter iv the red hand the mill had a fascination for all bridetown children and they would trespass boldly and brave all perils to get a glimpse of the machinery. the thunder of the engines drew them, and there were all manner of interesting fragments to be picked up round and about. that they were not permitted within the radius of the works was also a sound reason for being there, and many boys could tell of great adventures and hairbreadth escapes from mr. best, mr. benny cogle and, above all, mr. baggs. for mr. baggs, to the mind of youth, exhibited ogre-like qualities. they knew him as a deadly enemy, for which reason there was no part of the works that possessed a greater or more horrid fascination than the hackling shop. to have entered the den of mr. baggs marked a bridetown lad as worthy of highest respect in his circle. but proofs were always demanded of such a high achievement. when levi caught the adventurer, as sometimes happened, proofs were invariably apparent and a posterior evidence never lacked of a reverse for the offensive; but youth will be served, even though age sometimes serves it rather harshly, and the boys were untiring. unless levi locked the shop, when he went home at noon to dinner, there was always the chance of a raid with a strick or two possibly missing as proof of success. sabina had told abel that he must keep away from the works, but he ignored her direction and often revolved about them at moments of liberty. he was a past master in the art of scouting and evading danger, yet loved danger, and the mill offered him daily possibilities of both courting and escaping peril. together with other little boys nourished on a penny journal, abel had joined the 'band of the red hand.' they did no harm, but hoped some day, when they grew older, to make a more' painful impression on bridetown. at present their modest ambition was to leave the mark of their secret society in every unexpected spot possible. on private walls, in church and chapel, or the house-places of the farms, it was their joy to write with chalk, 'the red hand has been here.' then followed a circle and a cross--the dark symbol of the brotherhood. once a former chief of the gang had left his mark in the hackling shop and more than one member had similarly adorned the interior of the mill; but the old chief had gone to sea at the age of thirteen, and, though younger than some of the present members, abel was now appointed leader and always felt the demand to attempt things that should be worthy of so high a state. they were not the everyday boys who thus combined, but a sort of child less common, yet not uncommon. such lads scent one another out by parity of taste and care less for gregarious games than isolated or lonely adventures. they would rather go trespassing than play cricket; they would organise a secret raid before a public pastime. intuitively they desire romance, and feeling that law and order is opposed to romance, find the need to flout law and order in measure of their strength, and, of course, applaud the successful companion who does so with most complete results. now 'the old adam'--a comprehensive term for independence of view and unpreparedness to accept the tried values of pastors and masters--was strong in abel dinnett. he loved life, but hated discipline, and for him the mill possessed far more significance than it could offer to any lesser member of the band, since his father owned it. for that much abel apprehended, though the meaning of paternity was as yet hidden from him. that raymond ironsyde was his father he understood, and that he must hate him heartily he also understood: his dead grandmother had poured this precept into his young mind at its most receptive period. for the present he was still too youthful to rise beyond this general principle, and he was far too busy with his own adventures to find leisure to hate any one more than fitfully. he told the red handers that some day he designed a terrific attack on raymond ironsyde; and they promised to assist and support him; but they all recognised their greater manifestations must be left until they attained more weight in the cosmic and social schemes, and, for the moment, their endeavour rose little higher than to set their fatal sign where least it might be expected. to this end came dark-eyed abel to the mill at an hour when he should have been at his dinner. ere long his activities might be curtailed, for he was threatened with a preparatory school in the autumn; but before that happened, the red hand must be set in certain high places, and the hackling shop of levi baggs was first among them. abel wore knickerbockers and his feet and legs were bare, for he had just waded across the river beyond the mill, and meant to retreat by the same road. he had hidden in a may bush till the people were all gone to their meal, and then crossed the stream into the works. that the door of the hackler's would be open he did not expect, for levi locked it when he went home; but there was a little window, and abel, who had a theory that where his head could go, his body could follow, believed that by the window it would be possible to make his entrance. the contrary of what he expected happened, however, for the window was shut and the door on the latch. fate willed that on the very day of abel's attack, mr. baggs should be spending the dinner-hour in his shop. his sister, who looked after him, was from home until the evening, and levi had brought his dinner to the works. he was eating it when the boy very cautiously opened the door, and since mr. baggs sat exactly behind the door, this action served to conceal him. the intruder therefore thought the place empty, and proceeded with his operations while levi made no sound, but watched him. taking a piece of chalk from his pocket abel wrote the words of terror, 'the red hand has been here,' and set down the circle and cross. then he picked up one of the bright stricks, that lay beside the hackling board, and was just about to depart in triumph, when mr. baggs banged the door and revealed himself. thus discomfited, abel grew pale and then flushed. mr. baggs was a very big and strong man and the culprit knew that he must now prepare for the pangs that attended failure. but he bore pain well. he had been operated upon for faulty tendons when he was five and proved a spartan patient. he stood now waiting for mr. baggs. other victims had reported that it was levi's custom to use a strap from his own waist when he beat a boy, and abel, even at this tense moment, wondered whether he would now do so. "it's you, is it?" said mr. baggs. "and the red hand has been here, has it? and perhaps the red something else will go away from here. you're a darned young thief--that's what you are." "i ain't yet," argued abel. his voice fluttered, for his heart was beating very fast. "you're as good, however, for you was going to take my strick. the will was there, though i prevented the deed." "i had to show the band as i'd been here." "why did you come? what sense is there to it?" abel regarded mr. baggs doubtfully and did not reply. "just to show you're a bit out of the common, perhaps?" abel clutched at the suggestion. his eyes looked sideways slyly at mr. baggs. the ogre seemed inclined to talk, and through speech might come salvation, for he had acted rather than talked on previous occasions. "we want to be different from common boys," said the marauder. "well, you are, for one, and there's no need to trouble in your case. you was born different, and different you've got to be. i suppose you've been told often enough who your father is?" "yes, i have." "small wonder then that you've got your knife into the world at large, i reckon. what thinking man, or boy, has not for that matter? so you're up against the laws and out for the liberties? well, i don't quarrel with that. only you're too young yet to understand what a lot you've got to grumble at. some day you will." abel said nothing. he hardly listened, and thought far less of what mr. baggs was saying than of what he himself would say to his companions after this great adventure. to make friends with the ogre was no mean feat, even for a member of the red hand. what motiveless malignity actuated levi baggs meanwhile, who can say? he was now a man in sight of seventy, yet his crabbed soul would exude gall under pressure as of yore. none was ever cheered or heartened by anything he might say; but to cast a neighbour down, or make a confident and contented man doubtful and discontented, affected mr. baggs favourably and rendered him as cheerful as his chronic pessimism ever permitted him to be. he bade the child sit and gave him his portion of currant dumpling. "put that down your neck," he said, "and don't you think so bad of me in future. i treat other people same as they treat me, and that's a rule that works out pretty fair in practice, if you've got the power to follow it. but some folks are too weak to treat other people as they are treated--you, for example. you're one of the unlucky ones, you are, abel dinnett." abel enjoyed the pudding; and still his mind dwelt more on future narration of this great incident than on the incident itself. with unconscious art, he felt that the moment when this tale was told, would be far greater for him than the moment when it happened. "i ain't unlucky, mister baggs. i would have been unlucky if you'd beat me; but you've give me your pudding, and i'm on your side till death now." "well, that's something. i ain't got many my side, i believe. the fearless thinker never has. you can come and see me when you mind to, because i'm sorry for you, owing to your bad fortune. you've been handicapped out of winning the race, abel. you know what a handicap is in a race? well, you won't have no chance of winning now, because your father won't own you." "i won't own him," said the boy. "granny always told me he was my bitterest enemy, and she knew, and i won't trust him--never." "i should think not--nor any other wise chap wouldn't trust him. he's a bad lot. he only believes in machines, not humans." the boy began to be receptive. "he wants to be friends, but i won't be his friend, because i hate him. only i don't tell mother, because she don't hate him so much as me." "more fool her, then. she ought to hate him. she's got first cause. do you know who ought to own these works when your father dies?" "no, mister baggs." "you. yes, they did ought to belong to you in justice, because you are his eldest son. everything ought to be yours, if the world were run by right and fairness and honour. but it's all took from you and you can't lift a finger to better yourself, because you're only his natural son, and nature may go to hell every time for all the law and the church care. church and law both hate nature. so that's why i say you're an unlucky boy; and that's why i say that, despite your father's money and fame and being popular and well thought on and all that, he's a cruel rogue." abel was puzzled but interested. "if i'm his boy, why ain't my mother his wife, like all the other chaps' fathers have got wives?" "why ain't your mother his wife? yes, why? after ten years he'll find that question as hard to answer as it was before you were born, i reckon. and the answer to the question is the same as the answer to many questions about raymond ironsyde. and that is, that he is a crooked man who pretends to be a straight one; in a word, a hypocrite. and you'll grow up to understand these things and see what should be yours taken from you and given to other people." "when i grow up, i'll have it out with him," said abel. "no, you won't. because he's strong and you're weak. you're weak and poor and nobody, with no father to fight for you and give you a show in the world. and you'll always be the same, so you'll never stand any chance against him." the boy flushed and showed anger. "i won't be weak and poor always." "against him you will. suppose you went so far as to let him befriend you, could he ever make up for not marrying your mother? can he ever make you anything but a bastard and an outcast? no, he can't; and he only wants to educate you and give you a bit of money and decent clothes for the sake of his own conscience. he'll come to you hat in hand some day--not because he cares a damn for you, but that he may stand well in the eyes of the world." abel now panted with anger, and mr. baggs was mildly amused to see how easily the child could be played upon. "i'll grow up and then--" "don't you worry. you must take life as you find it, and as you haven't found it a very kind thing, you must put up with it. most people draw blanks, and that's why it's better to stop out of the world than in it. and if we could see into the bottom of every heart, we should very likely find that all draw blanks, and even what looks like prizes are not." levi laughed after this sweeping announcement. it appeared to put him in a good temper. he even relaxed in the gravity of his prophecies. "however, life is on the side of youth," he said, "and you may come to the front some day, if you've got enough brains. brains is the only thing that'll save you. your mother's clever and your father's crafty, so perhaps you'll go one better than either. perhaps, some day, if you wait long enough, you'll get back on your father, after all." "i will wait long enough," declared abel. "i don't care how long i wait, but i'll best him, mister baggs." "you keep in that righteous spirit and you'll breed a bit of trouble for him some day, i daresay. and now be off, and if you want to come and see me at work and learn about hackling and the business that ought to be yours but won't be, then you can drop in again when you mind to." "thank you, sir," said abel. "i will come, and if i say you let me, nobody can stop me." "that's right. i like brave boys that ain't frightened of their betters--so called." then abel went off, crossed bride among the sedges and put on his shoes and stockings again. he had a great deal to think about, and this brief conversation played its part in his growing brain to alter old opinions and waken new ideas. that he had successfully stormed the hackling shop and found the ogre friendly was, of course, good; but already, and long before he could retail the incident, it began to lose its rare savour. he perceived this himself dimly, and it made him uncomfortable and troubled. something had happened to him; he knew not what, but it dwarfed the operations of the red hand, and it even made his personal triumph look smaller than it appeared a little while before. abel stared at the mill while he pulled on his stockings and listened to the bell calling the people back to work. by right, then, all these wonders should be his some day; but his father would never give them to him now. he vaguely remembered that his grandmother had said something like this; but it remained for mr. baggs to rekindle the impression until abel became oppressed with its greatness. he considered the problem gloomily for a long time and decided to talk to his mother about it. but he did not. it was characteristic of him that he seldom went to sabina for any light on his difficulties. indeed he attached more importance to mr. churchouse's opinions than his mother's. he determined to see levi baggs again and, meantime, he let a sense of wrong sink into him. here the band of the red hand offered comfort. it seemed proper to his dawning intelligence that one who had been so badly treated as he, should become the head of the red hand. yet, as the possible development of the movement occurred to abel, the child began to share the uneasiness of all conspiracy and feel a weakness inherent in the band. seen from that modest standard of evil-doing which belonged to tommy and billy keep, amos whittle and jacky gale, the red handers appeared a futile organisation even in abel's eyes. he felt, as greater than he have felt, that an ideal society should embrace one member only: himself. there were far too many brothers of the red hand, and before he reached home he even contemplated resignation. he liked better the thought of playing his own hand, and keeping both its colour and its purpose secret from everybody else in the world. his head was, for the moment, full of unsocial thoughts; but whether the impressions created by mr. baggs were likely to persist in a mind so young, looked doubtful. he told his mother nothing, as usual. indeed, had she guessed half that went on in abel's brains, she might have sooner undertaken what presently was indicated, and removed herself and her son to a district far beyond their native village. but the necessity did not exist in her thoughts, and when she recognised it, since the inspiration came from without, she was moved to resent rather than accept it. chapter v an accident there was a cricket luncheon at 'the tiger' when bridport played its last match for the season against axminster. the western township had won the first encounter, and bridport much desired to cry quits over the second. raymond played on this occasion, and though he failed, the credit of bridetown was worthily upheld by nicholas roberts, the lathe-worker. he did not bowl as fast as of yore, but he bowled better, and since axminster was out for one hundred and thirty in their first innings, while bridport had made seventy for two wickets before luncheon, the issue promised well. job legg still helped richard gurd at great moments as he was wont to do, for prosperity had not modified job's activity, or diminished his native goodwill. gurd carved, while job looked after the bottles. arthur waldron, who umpired for bridport, sat beside raymond at lunch and condoled with him, because the younger, who had gone in second wicket down, had played himself in very carefully before the interval. "now you'll have to begin all over again," said waldron. "i always say luncheon may be worth anything to the bowlers. it rests them, but it puts the batsman's eye out." "seeing how short of practice you are this year, you were jolly steady, ray," declared neddy motyer, who sat on the other side of ironsyde. "you stopped some very hot ones." neddy preserved his old interest in sport, but was now a responsible member of society. he had married and joined his father, a harness-maker, in a prosperous business. "i can't time 'em, like i could. that fast chap will get me, i expect." and raymond proved a true prophet. indeed far worse happened than he anticipated. estelle came to watch the cricket after luncheon. she had driven into bridport with her father and raymond in the morning and gone on to jenny ironsyde for the midday meal. now she arrived in time to witness a catastrophe. a very fast bowler went on immediately after lunch. he was a tall and powerful youth with a sinister reputation for bowling at the man rather than the wicket. at any rate he pitched them short and with his lofty delivery bumped them very steeply on a lively pitch. now, in his second over, he sent down a short one at tremendous speed, and the batsman, failing to get out of the way, was hit on the point of the jaw. he fell as though shot and proved to be quite unconscious when picked up. they carried him to the pavilion, and it was not until twenty minutes had passed that raymond came round and the game went on. but ironsyde could take no further part. there was concussion of doubtful severity and he found himself half blind and suffering great pain in the neck and head. estelle came to him and advised that he should go to his aunt's house, which was close at hand. he could not speak, but signified agreement, and they took him there in an ambulance, while the girl ran on to advise his aunt of the accident. a doctor came with him and helped to get him to bed. his mind seemed affected and he wandered in his speech. but he recognised estelle and begged her not to leave him. she sat near him, therefore, in a darkened room and miss ironsyde also came. waldron dropped in before dusk with the news that bridport had won, by a smaller margin than promised, on the first innings. but he found raymond sleeping and did not waken him. estelle believed the injured man would want her when he woke again. the doctor could say nothing till some hours had passed, so she went home, but returned a few hours later to stop the night and help, if need be, to nurse the patient. a professional nurse shared the vigil; but their duties amounted to nothing, for raymond slept through the greater part of the night and declared himself better in the morning. he had to stop with his aunt, however, for two or three days, and while estelle, her ministration ended, was going away after the doctor pronounced raymond on the road to recovery, the patient begged her to remain. he appeared in a sentimental vein, and the experience of being nursed was so novel that ironsyde endured it without a murmur. to estelle, who did not guess he was rather enjoying it, the spectacle of his patience under pain awoke admiration. indeed, she thought him most heroic and he made no effort to undeceive her. incidentally, during his brief convalescence the man saw more of his aunt than he had seen for many days. she also must needs nurse him and exhaust her ingenuity to pass the time. the room was kept dark for eight-and-forty hours, so her method of entertaining her nephew consisted chiefly in conversation. of late years raymond seldom let a week elapse without seeing miss ironsyde if only for half an hour. her waning health occupied him on these occasions and, at his suggestion, she had gone to bath to fight the arthritis that slowly gained upon her. but during his present sojourn at bridport as her guest, raymond let her lead their talk as she would, indeed, he himself sometimes led it into channels of the past, where she would not have ventured to go. life had made an immense difference to the man and he was old for his age now, even as until his brother's death he had been young for his age. she could not fail to note the steadfastness of his mind, despite its limitations. as estelle had often done, she perceived how he set his faith on material things--the steel and steam--to bring about a new order and advance the happiness of mankind; but he was interested in social questions far more than of old time, and she felt no little surprise to hear him talk about the future. "the air is full of change," she said, on one occasion. "it always is," he answered. "there is always movement, although the breath of advance and progress seems to sink to nothing, sometimes. now it's blowing a stiff breeze and may rise to a hurricane in a few years." "it is for the stable, solid backbone of the nation--we of the middle-class--to withstand such storms," she declared, and he agreed. "if you've got a stake in the world, you must certainly see its foundations are driven deep and look to the stake itself, that it's not rotting. some stakes are certainly not made of stuff stout enough to stand against the storms ahead. education is the great, vital thing. i often feel mad to think how i wasted my own time at school, and came to man's work a raw, ignorant fool. we talk of the education of the masses and what i see is this: they will soon be better educated than we ourselves; for we bring any amount of sense and modern ideas to work on their teaching, while our own prehistorical methods are left severely alone. i believe the boys who come to working age now are better taught than i was at my grammar school. i wish i knew more." "yet we see education may run us into great dangers," said jenny ironsyde. "it can be pushed to a perilous point. one even hears a murmur against the bible in the schools. it makes my blood run cold. and we need not look farther than dear estelle to see the peril." "what do you think of estelle?" he asked. "i almost welcome this stupid collapse, nuisance though it is, because it's made a sort of resting-place and brought me nearer to you and estelle. you've both been so kind. a man such as i am, is so busy and absorbed that he forgets all about women; then suddenly lying on his back--done for and useless--he finds they don't forget all about him." "you ask what i think about estelle?" she said. "i never think about estelle--no more than i do about the sunshine, or my comfortable bed, or my tea. she's just one of the precious things i take for granted. i love her. she is a great deal to me, and the hours she spends with a rather old-fashioned and cross-grained woman are the happiest hours i know." "i'm like her father," he said. "i give estelle best. nothing can spoil her, because she's so utterly uninterested in herself. another thing: she's so fair--almost morbidly fair. the only thing that makes her savage is injustice. if she sees an injustice, she won't leave it alone if it's in her power to alter it. that's her father in her. what he calls 'sporting,' she calls 'justice.' and, of course, the essence of sport is justice, if you think it out." "i don't know anything about sport, but i suppose i have to thank cricket for your company at present. as for estelle. i think she has a great idea of your judgment and opinion." he laughed. "if she does, it's probably because i generally agree with her. besides--" he broke off and lighted a cigarette. "'besides' what?" asked the lady. "well--oh i hardly know. i'm tremendously fond of her. perhaps i've taken her too much as you say we take the sun and our meat and drink--as a matter of course. yes, like the sun, and as unapproachable." miss ironsyde considered. "i suppose you're right. i can well imagine that to the average man a 'una,' such as estelle, may seem rather unapproachable." "we're very good friends, though how good i never quite guessed till this catastrophe. she seemed to come and help look after me as a matter of course. didn't think it a bit strange." "she's simple, but in a very noble way. i've only one quarrel with her--the faith of her fathers--" "leave it. you'll only put your foot into it, aunt jenny." "never," she said. "i shall never put my foot into it where right and wrong are concerned--with estelle or you, or anybody else. i'm nearly seventy, remember, raymond, and one knows what is imperishable and to be trusted at that age." thus she negatived mr. churchouse's dictum--that mere age demanded no particular reverence, since many years are as liable to error as few. her nephew was doubtful. "right and wrong are a never-ending puzzle," he said. "they vary so from the point of view. and if you once grant there are more view points than one, where are you?" "right and wrong are not doubtful," she assured him, "and all the science in the world can't turn one into the other--any more than light can turn into darkness." "light can turn into darkness easily enough. i've learned that during the last three days," he answered. "if you fill this room with light, i can't see. if you keep it dark, i can." estelle came to tea and read some notes that mr. best had prepared for raymond. they satisfied him, and the meal was merry, for he found himself free of pain and in the best spirits. estelle, too, had some gossip that amused him. her father was already practising at clay pigeons to get his eye in for the first of september; and he wished to inform raymond that he was shooting well and hoped for a better season than the last. he had also seen a vixen and three cubs on north hill at five o'clock in the morning of the preceding day. "in fact, it's the best of all possible worlds so far as father is concerned," said estelle, "and now he hears you're coming home early next week, he will go to church on sunday with a thankful heart. he said yesterday that raymond's accident had a bright side. d'you know what it is? ray meant to give up cricket altogether after this year; but father points out that he cannot do so now. because it is morally impossible for ray to stop playing until he stands up again to that bowler who hurt him so badly. 'morally impossible,' is what father said." "he's quite right too," declared the patient. "till i've knocked that beggar out of his own ground for six, i certainly shan't chuck cricket. we must meet again next season, if we're both alive. everybody can see that." chapter vi the gathering problem sabina dinnett found that her mind was not so indifferent to her fortunes as she supposed. upon examining it, with respect to the problem of leaving bridetown for abel's sake, which ernest had now raised, she discovered a very keen disinclination to depart. here was the only home that she, or her child, had ever known, and though that mattered nothing, she shrank from beginning a new life away from 'the magnolias' under the increased responsibility of sole control where abel was concerned. moreover, mr. churchouse had more power with abel than anybody. the boy liked him and must surely win sense and knowledge from him, as sabina herself had won them in the past. she knew that these considerations were superficial and the vital point in reason was to separate the son from the father; so that abel's existing animus might perish. both estelle and ernest churchouse had impressed the view upon her; but here crept in the personal factor, and sabina found that she had no real desire to mend the relationship. considerations of her child's future pointed to more self-denial, but only that abel might in time come to be reconciled to raymond and accept good at his hands. and when sabina thought upon this, she soon saw that her own indifference, where ironsyde was concerned, did not extend to the future of the boy. she could still feel, and still suffer, and still resent certain possibilities. she trusted that in time to come, when mr. churchouse and miss ironsyde were gone, the measure of her son's welfare would be hers. she was content to see herself depending upon him; but not if his own prosperity came from his father. she preferred to picture abel as making his way without obligations to that source. she might have married and made her own home, but that alternative never tempted her, since it would have thrust her off the pedestal which she occupied, as one faithful to the faithless, one bitterly wronged, a reproach to the good name--perhaps, even a threat to the sustained prosperity of raymond ironsyde. she could feel all this at some moments. she determined now to let the matter rest, and when ernest churchouse ventured to remind her of the subject and to repeat the opinion that it might be wise for sabina to take the boy away from bridetown, she postponed decision. "i've thought upon it," she said, "and i feel it can very well be left to the spring, if you see nothing against. i've promised to do some braiding in my spare time this winter for a firm at bridport that wants netting in large quantities. they are giving it out to those who can do it; and as for abel, he'll go to his day-school through the winter. and it means a great deal to me, mister churchouse, that you are as good and helpful to him as you were to me when i was young. i don't want to lose that." "i wish i'd been more helpful, my dear." "you taught me a great many things valuable to know. i should have been in my grave years ago, but for you, i reckon. and the child's only a child still. if you work upon him, you'll make him meek and mild in time." "he'll never be meek and mild, sabina--any more than you were. he has plenty of character; he's good material--excellent stuff to be moulded into a fine pattern, i hope. but a little leaven leavens the whole lump of a child, and what i can do is not enough to outweigh other influences." "i don't fear for him. he's got to face facts, and as he grows he must use his own wits and get his own living." "the fear is that he may be spoiled and come to settled, rooted prejudices, too hard to break down afterwards. he is a very interesting boy, just as you were a very interesting girl, sabina. he often reminds me of you. there are the possibilities of beauty in his character. he is sentimental about some things and strangely indifferent about others. he is a mixture of exaggerated kindness in some directions and utter callousness in others. sentimental people often are. he will pick a caterpillar out of the road to save it from death, and he will stone a dog if he has a grudge against it. his attitude to peter grim is one of devotion. he actually told me that it was very sad that peter had now grown too old to catch mice. again, he always brings me the first primrose and spares no pains to find it. such little acts argue a kindly nature. but against them, you have to set his unreasoning dislike of human beings and a certain--shall i say buccaneering spirit." "he feels, and so he'll suffer--as i did. the more you feel, the more you suffer." "and it is therefore our duty to prevent him from feeling mistakenly and wanting to make others suffer. he may sometimes catch allusions in his quick ears that cause him doubt and even pain. and it is certain that the sight of his father does wake wrong thoughts. removed from here, the best part of him would develop, and when the larger questions of his future begin to be considered in a few years time, he might then approach them with an open mind." "there can be no harm in leaving it till the spring. he'd hate going away from here." "i don't think so. the young welcome a change of environment. there is nothing more healthy for their minds as a rule than to travel about. however, we will get him used to the idea of going and think about it again in the spring." so the subject was left, and when the suggestion of departing from bridetown came to abel, he belied the prophecy of mr. churchouse and declared a strong objection to the thought of going. his mother influenced him in this. during the autumn he had a misfortune, for, with two other members of the 'red hand,' he was caught stealing apples at the time of cider-making. three strokes of a birch rod fell on each revolutionary, and not ernest churchouse nor his mother could console abel for this reverse. he gleaned his sole comfort at a dangerous source, and while the kindly ignored the event and the unkindly dwelt upon it, only levi baggs applauded abel and preached privi-conspiracy and rebellion. raymond ironsyde was much perturbed at the adventure, but his friend waldron held the event desirable. as a justice of the peace, it was arthur who prescribed the punishment and trusted in it. thus he, too, incurred abel's enmity. the company of the 'red hand' was disbanded to meet no more, and if his fellow sufferers gained by their chastisement, it was certain that sabina's son did not. insensate law fits the punishment to the crime rather than to the criminal, as though a doctor should only treat disease, without thought of the patient enduring it. neither did abel's mother take the reverse with philosophy. she resented it as cruel cowardice; but it reminded her of the advantages to be gained by leaving her old home. then fell an unexpected disaster and mr. churchouse was called to suffer a dangerous attack of bronchitis. the illness seemed to banish all other considerations from sabina's mind and, while the issue remained in doubt, she planned various courses of action. incidentally, she saw more of estelle and miss ironsyde than of late, for mr. churchouse, whose first pleasure on earth was now estelle, craved her presence during convalescence, as raymond in like case had done; and miss ironsyde also drove to see him on several occasions. the event filled all with concern, for ernest had a trick to make friends and, what is more rare, an art to keep them. many beyond his own circle were relieved and thankful when he weathered danger and began to build up again with the lengthening days of the new year. abel had been very solicitous on his behalf, and he praised the child to jenny and estelle, when they came to drink tea with him on a day in early spring. "i believe there are great possibilities in him and, when i am stronger, i shall resume my attack on sabina to go away," he said. "the boy's mind is being poisoned and we might prevent it." "it's a most unfortunate state of affairs," declared miss ironsyde. "yet it was bound to happen in a little place like this. raymond is not sensitive, or he would feel it far more than he does." "he can't do more and he does feel it a great deal," declared estelle. "i think sabina sees it clearly enough, but it's very hard on her too, to have to go from mister churchouse and her home." "nothing is more mysterious than the sowing and germination of spiritual seed," said the old man. "the enemy sowed tares by night, and what can be more devilish than sowing the tares of evil on virgin soil? it was done long ago. one hesitates to censure the dead, though i daresay, if we could hear them talking in another world, we should find they didn't feel nearly so nice about us and speak their minds quite plainly. we know plenty of people who must be criticising. but truth will out, and the truth is that mary dinnett planted evil thoughts and prejudices in abel. he was not too young, unfortunately, to give them room. a very curious woman--obstinate and almost malignant if vexed and quite incapable of keeping silence even when it was most demanded. if you are going to give people confidences, you must have a good memory. mary would confide all sorts of secrets to me and then, perhaps six months afterwards, be quite furious to find i knew them! she came to me for advice on one occasion and i reminded her of certain circumstances she had confided to me in the past, and she lost her temper entirely. yet a woman of most excellent qualities and most charitable in other people's affairs." "the question is abel, and i have told sabina she must decide about him," said jenny. "we are all of one mind, and raymond himself thinks it would be most desirable. as soon as you are well again, sabina must go." "i shall miss her very much. to find anybody who will fall into my ways may be difficult. when i was younger, i used to like training a domestic. i found it was better to rule by love than fear. you may lose here and there, but you gain more than you lose. human character is really not so profoundly difficult, if you resolutely try to see life from the other person's standpoint. that done, you can help them--and yourself through them." "people who show you their edges, instead of their rounds, are not at all agreeable," said miss ironsyde. "to conquer the salients of character is often a very formidable task." "it is," he admitted, "yet i have found the comfortable, convex and concave characters often really more difficult in the long run. you must have some hard and durable rock on which to found understanding and security. the soft, crumbling people may be lovable; but they are useless as sand at a crisis. they are always slipping away and threatening to smother their best friends with the debris." he chattered on until a fit of coughing stopped him. "you mustn't talk so much," warned estelle. "it's lovely to hear you talking again; but it isn't good for you, yet." then she turned to miss ironsyde. "the first time i came in and found him reading a book catalogue, i knew he was going to be all right." "by the same token another gift has reached me," he answered; "a book on the bells of devon, which i have long wanted to possess." "i'm sure it is not such a perfect book as yours." "indeed it is--very excellently done. the bell mottoes in devonshire are worthy of all admiration. but a great many of the bells in ancient bell-chambers are crazed--a grave number. people don't think as much of a ring of bells in a parish as they used to do." miss ironsyde brought the conversation back to abel; but ernest was tired of this. he viewed sabina's departure with great personal regret. "things will be as they will, my dears," he told them, "and i have such respect for sabina's good sense that i shall be quite content to leave decision with her. it would not become me to dictate or command in such a delicate matter. to return to the bells, i have received a rather encouraging statement from the publishers. four copies of my book have been sold during the last six months." chapter vii the walk home upon a bank holiday sabina took abel to west haven for a long day on the beach and pier. he enjoyed himself very thoroughly, ate, drank and played to his heart's content. but his amusements brought more pleasure to the child than his mother, for he found the wonderful old stores and discovered therein far more entertaining occupation than either sea or shore could offer. the place was deserted to-day, and while sabina sat outside in a corner of the courtyard and occupied herself with the future, abel explored the mysteries of the ancient building and found all manner of strange nooks and mysterious passages. he wove dreams and magnified the least incident into an adventure. he inhabited the dark corners and sombre, subterranean places with enemies that wanted to catch him; he most potently believed that hidden treasures awaited him under the hollow-echoing floors. once he had a rare fright, for a bat hanging asleep in its folded wings, was wakened by him and suddenly flew into his face. he climbed and crawled and crept about, stole a lump of putty and rejoiced at the discovery of some paint pots and a brush. the 'red hand' no longer existed; but the opportunity once more to set up its sinister symbol was too good to resist. he painted it on the walls in several places and then called his mother to look at the achievement. she climbed up a long flight of stone steps that led to the lofts, and suffered a strange experience presently, for the child was playing in the chamber sacred to her surrender. she stood where twelve years before she had come with raymond ironsyde after their day at golden cap. light fell through a window let into the roof. it was broken and fringed with cobwebs. the pile of fishermen's nets had vanished and a carpenter's bench had taken its place. on the walls and timbers were scrawled names and initials of holiday folk, who had explored the old stores through many years. sabina, perceiving where she stood, closed her eyes and took an involuntary step backward. abel called attention to his sign upon the walls. "the carpenter will shiver when he sees that," he said. then he rambled off, whistling, and she sat down and stared round her. she told herself that deep thoughts must surely wake under this sudden experience and the fountains of long sealed emotion bubble upwards, to drown her before them. instead she merely found herself incapable of thinking. a dull, stale, almost stagnant mood crept over her. her mind could neither walk nor fly. after the first thrill of recognition, the light went out and she found herself absolutely indifferent. not anger touched her, nor pain. that the child of that perished passion should play here, and laugh and be merry was poignant, but it did not move her and she felt a sort of surprise that it should not. there was a time when such an experience must have shaken her to the depths, plunged her into some deep pang of soul and left indelible wounds; now, no such thing happened. she gazed mildly about her and almost smiled. then she rose from her seat on the carpenter's bench, went out and descended the staircase again. when she called him to a promised tea at an inn, abel came at once. he was weary and well content. "i shall often come here," he said. "it's the best place i know--better than the old kiln on north hill. i could hide there and nobody find me, and you could bring me food at night." "what do you want to hide for, pretty?" she asked. "i might," he answered and looked at her cautiously for a moment he seemed inclined to say more, but did not. after tea they set out for home, and the fate, which, through the incident of the old store, had subtly prepared and paved a way to something of greater import, sent raymond ironsyde. they had passed the point at which the road from west haven converges into that from bridport, and a man on horseback overtook them. they were all going in the same direction and abel, as soon as he saw who approached, left his mother, went over a convenient gate upon their right and hastened up a hedge. thus he always avoided his father, and when blamed for so doing, would silently endure the blame without explanation or any offer of excuse. raymond had seen him thus escape on more than one occasion, and the incident, clashing at this moment upon his own thoughts, prompted him to a definite and unusual thing. the opportunity was good; sabina walked alone, and if she rebuffed him, he could endure the rebuff. he determined to speak to her and break a silence of many years. the result he could not guess, but since he was actuated by friendly motives alone, he hoped the sudden inspiration might prove fertile of good. at worse she could only decline his advance and refuse to speak with him. their thoughts that day, unknown to each, had been upon the other and there was some emotion in the man's voice when he spoke, though none in hers when she answered. for to him that chance meeting came as a surprise and prompted him to a sudden approach he might not have ventured on maturer consideration; to her it seemed to carry on the experience of the day and, unguessed by raymond, brought less amazement than he imagined. she was a fatalist--perhaps, had always been so, as her mother before her; yet she knew it not. they had passed and repassed many times during the vanished years; but since the moment that she had dismissed him with scorn and hoped her child would live to insult his grave, they had never spoken. he inquired now if he might address her. "may i say a few words to you?" he asked. not knowing what was in her mind, he felt surprised at her conventional reply. "i suppose so, if you wish to do so." her voice seemed to roll back time. yet he guessed her to be less indifferent than her words implied. he dismounted and walked beside her. "i dare say you can understand a little what i feel, when i see that child run away whenever he sets eyes on me," he began; but she did not help him. his voice to her ear was changed. it had grown deeper and hardened. it was more monotonous and did not rise and fall as swiftly as of old. "i don't know at all what you feel about him. i didn't know that you felt anything about him." this was a false note and he felt pained. "indeed, sabina, you know very well i want his friendship--i need it even. before anything i wish to befriend him." "you can't help him. he's a very affectionate child and loves me dearly. you wouldn't understand him. he's all heart." he marked now the great change in sabina. her voice was cold and indifferent. but a cynic fate willed this mood. had she not spent the day at west haven and stood in the old store, it is possible she might have listened to him in another spirit. "i know he's a clever boy, with plenty of charm about him. and i do think, whatever you may feel, sabina, it is doubtfully wise of you to stand between him and me." "if you fancy that, it is a good thing you spoke," she answered. "because nothing further from the truth could be. i don't stand between him and you. i've never influenced him against you. he's heard nothing but the fact that you're his father from me. i've been careful to leave it at that, and i've never answered more than the truth to his many questions." "it is a very great sorrow to me, and it will largely ruin my life if i cannot win his friendship and plan his future." "a child's friendship is easily won. if he denies it, you may be sure it is for a natural instinct." "such an instinct is most unnatural. he has had nothing but friendly words and friendly challenges from me." she felt herself growing impatient. it was clear that he had spoken out of interest for the child alone, and any shadowy suspicion that he designed to declare interest in herself departed from sabina's mind. "well, what's that to me? i can't alter him. i can't make him regard you as a hero and a father to be proud of. he's not hard-hearted or anything of that. he's pretty much like other boys of his age--more sensitive, that's all. he can suffer very sharply and bitterly and he did when that cruel, blundering fool at north hill house had him whipped. he gets the cursed power to suffer from his mother. and, such is his position in the world, that his power to suffer no doubt will be proved to the utmost." "i don't want him to suffer. at least it is in my reach to save him a great deal of needless suffering." "that's just what it isn't--not with his nature. he'd rather suffer than be beholden to you for anything. young as he is, he's told me so in so many words. he knows he's different from other boys--already he knows it--and that breeds bitterness. he's like a dog that's been ill-treated and finds it hard to trust anybody in consequence. unfortunately for you, he's got brains enough to judge; and the older he grows, the harder he'll judge." "that's what i want to break down, sabina. it's awfully sad to feel, that for a prejudice against things that can't be altered, he should stand in his own light and be a needless martyr and make me a greater villain than i am." "are you a villain? if you are, it isn't my child that made you one--nor me, either. no doubt it's awkward to see him running about and breathing the same air with you." he felt an impulse of anger, but easily checked it. "you're rather hard on me, i think. it's a great deal more than awkward to have my child take this line. it's desperately sad. and you must know--thinking purely and only of him--that nothing can be gained and much lost by it. you say he'll hate me more as he grows older. but isn't that a thing to avoid? what good comes into the world with hate? can't you see that it's your place, sabina, to use your influence on my side?" "my god!" she said, "was there ever such a selfish man as you! out of your own mouth you condemn yourself, for it's your inconvenience and discomfort that's troubling you--not his fate. he's a living witness against you--a running sore in your side--and that's why you want his friendship, to ease yourself and heal your conscience. anybody could see that." he did not answer; but this indictment astonished him. could she still be so stern after the years that had swept over their quarrel? "you wrong me there, sabina. indeed, it's not for my own comfort only, but much more largely for his that i am so much concerned. surely we can meet on the common ground of his welfare and leave the rest?" "what common ground is there? why must i think your friendship and your money are the best possible things for him? why should i advise him to take what i refused for myself twelve years and more ago? you offered me your friendship and your money--as a substitute for being your wife. you were so stark ignorant of the girl you'd promised to marry, that you offered her cash and the privilege of your company after your child was born. and now you offer your child cash and the privilege of your company--that's all. you deny him your name, as you denied his mother your name; and why should he pick up the crumbs from your table that his mother would have starved rather than eaten? i've never spoken against you to him and never shall, but i'm not a fool now--whatever i was--and i'm not going to urge my son to seek you and put his little heart into your keeping; because well i know what you do with hearts. i'm outside your life and so is he; and if he likes to come into your life, i shan't prevent it. i couldn't prevent it. he'll do about it as he chooses, when he's old enough to measure it up. but i'm not for you, or against you. i'm only the suffering sort, not the fighting sort. you know whether you deserve the love and worship of that little, nameless boy." he was struck into silence, not at her bitter words, but at his own thoughts. for he had often speculated on future speech with her and wondered when it would happen and what it would concern. he had hoped that she would let the past go and be his friend again on another plane. he had pictured some sort of amity based on the old romance. he had desired nothing so much in life as a friendly understanding and the permission to contribute to the ease and comfort of sabina and the prosperity of his son. he hoped that in course of time and faced with the rights of the child, she would come round. he had pictured her coming round. but now it seemed that he was not to plan their future on his own terms. what he offered had not grown sweeter to her senses. no gifts that he could devise would be anything but poor in the light of the unkind past. and that light burned steadfastly still. she was not changed. as he listened to her, it seemed that she was merely picking up the threads where they were dropped. he feared that if he stopped much longer beside her, she would come back to the old anger and wake into the old wrath. "i'd dearly hoped that you didn't feel like that, any more. you've got right on your side up to a point, though human differences are so involved that it very seldom happens you can get a clean cut between right and wrong. however, the time is past for arguing about that, sabina. granted you are right in your personal attitude, don't carry it on into the next generation and assume i cannot even yet, after all these years, be trusted to befriend my own child." "he's only your child in nature. he's only your child because your blood's in his veins. he's my child, not yours." "but if i want to make him mine? if i want to lift him up and assure his future? if i want to assume paternity--claim it, adopt him as my son--to succeed me some day?" "he must decide for himself whether that's the high-water mark for his future life--to be your adopted son. we can't have it all our own way in this world--not even you, i suppose. a child has to have a mother as well as a father, and a mother's got her rights in her child. even the law allows that." "who'd deny them, sabina? you're possessed, as you always were, with the significance of legal marriage. you don't know that marriage is merely a human contrivance and, nine times out of ten, an infernally clumsy makeshift and a long-drawn pretence. like every other human shift, it is a thing that gets out-grown by the advance of humanity towards higher ideals and cleaner liberties. we are approaching a time when the edifice will be shaken to its mouldering foundations, and presently, while the church and the state are wrangling and quibbling, as they soon must be, over the loathsome divorce laws, these mandarins will wake up to find the marriage laws themselves are being threatened by a new generation sick of the archaic tomfoolery that controls them. if you could only take a larger view and not let yourself be bound down by your own experience--" "you'd better go," she said. "if you'd spoken, so twelve years ago on golden cap, and not hid your heart and lied to me and promised what you never meant to perform, i'd not be walking the world a lonely, despised woman to-day. and law, or no law, the law of the natural child is the law of the land--cruel and vile though it may be." "i'll go, sabina; but i must say what i want to say, first. i must stand up for abel--even against you. childish impressions and dislikes can be rooted out if taken in time; if left to grow, they get beyond reach. so i ask you to think of him. and don't pretend to yourself that my friendship is dangerous, or can do him anything but good. i'm very different from what i was. life hasn't gone over me for nothing. i know what's right well enough, and i know what i owe your son and my son, and i want to make up to him and more than make up to him for his disadvantages. don't prevent me from doing that. give me a chance, sabina. give me a chance to be a good father to him. your word is law with him, and if you left bridetown and took him away from all the rumours and unkind things he may hear here, it would let his mind grow empty of me for a few years; and then, when he's older and more sensible, i think i could win him." "you want us away from this place." "i do. i never should have spoken to you until i knew you wished it, but for this complication; but since the boy is growing up prejudiced against me, i do feel that some strong effort should be taken to nip his young hatred in the bud--for his sake, sabina." "are you sure it's all for his sake? because i'm not. they say you think of nothing on god's earth but machinery nowadays, and look to machines to do the work of hands, and speak of 'hands' when you ought to speak of 'souls.' they say if you could, you'd turn out all the people and let everything be done by steam and steel. there's not much humanity in you, i reckon. and why should you care for one little, unwanted boy? perhaps, if you looked deeper into yourself, you'd find it was your own peace, rather than his, that's making you wish us away from bridetown. at any rate, that's how one or two have seen and said it, when they heard how everybody was at me to go. i've had to live down the past for long, slow, heart-breaking years and seen the fingers pointed at me; and now, with the child growing up, it's your turn i daresay, and you--so strong and masterful--have had enough of pointing fingers and mean to pack us out of our home--for your comfort." he stared at her in the gathering dusk and stood and uttered a great sigh from deep in his lungs. "i'm sorry for you, sabina--sorrier than i am for myself. this is cruel. i didn't know, or dream, that time had stood still for you like this." "time ended for me--then." "for me it had to go on. i must think about this. i didn't guess it was like this with you. don't think i want you away; don't think you're the only thorn in my pillow and that i'm not used to pain and anxiety, or impatient of all the implicit meaning of your lonely life. stop, if you want to stop. i'll see you again, sabina, please. now i'll be gone." when he had mounted his horse and ridden away without more words from her, abel, who had been lurking along on the other side of the hedge, crept through it and rejoined his mother. they walked on in silence for some time. then the child spoke. "fancy your talking to mister ironsyde, mother!" "he talked to me." "i lay you dressed him down then?" "i told him the truth, abel. he wants everything for nothing, mister ironsyde does. he wants you--for nothing." "he's a beast, and i hate him, and he'll know i hate him some day." "don't hate him. he's not worth hating." "i will hate him, i tell you. but for him i'd be the great man in bridetown when he dies. mister baggs told me that." "you mustn't give heed to what people say. you've got mother to look after you." the boy was tired and spoke no more. he padded silently along beside her and presently she heard him laugh to himself. his thoughts had wandered back to the joy of the old store. and she was thinking of what had happened. she, too, even as raymond, had imagined what speech would fall out between them after the long years and wondered concerning the form it would take. she had imagined no such conversation as this. half of her regretted it; but the other half was glad. he had gone on, but it was well that he should know she had stood still. could there be any more terrible news for him than to hear that she had stood still--to feel that he had turned a living woman into a pillar of stone? chapter viii epitaph it cannot be determined by what train of reasoning abel proceeded from one unfortunate experience to create another, or why the grief incidental on a loss should now have nerved him to an evil project long hidden in his thoughts. but so it was; he suffered a sorrow and, under the influence of it, found himself strong enough to attempt a crime. there was no sort of connection between the two, for nothing could bear less upon his evil project than the death of mr. churchouse's old cat; yet thus it fell out and the spirit of abel reacted to his own tears. he came home one day from school to learn how the sick cat prospered and was told to go into the study. his mother knew the child to be much wrapped up in peter grim, and dreading to break the news, begged mr. churchouse to do so. "your old playfellow has left us, daddy," said ernest. "i am glad to say he died peacefully while you were at school. i think he only had a very little bit of his ninth and last life left, for he was fifteen years old and had suffered some harsh shocks." "dead?" asked abel with a quivering mouth. "and i think that we ought to give him a nice grave and put up a little stone to his memory." thus he tried to distract the boy from his loss. "we will go at once," he said, "and choose a beautiful spot in the garden for his grave. you can take one of those pears and eat it while we search." but abel shook his head. "couldn't eat and him lying dead," he answered. he was crying. they went through the french window from the study. "do you know any particular place that he liked?" slowly the child's sorrow lessened in the passing interest of finding the grave. "you must dig it, please, when you come back from afternoon school." abel suggested spots not practical in the other's opinion. "a more secluded site would be better," he declared. "he was very fond of shade. in fact, rather a shady customer himself in his young days. but not a word against the dead. his old age was dignified and blameless. you don't remember the time when he used to steal chickens, do you?" "he never did anything wrong that i know of," said abel. "and he always came and padded on my bed of a morning, like as if he was riding a bicycle--and--and--" he wept again. "if i thought anybody had poisoned him, i'd poison them," he said. "think no such thing. he simply died because he couldn't go on living. you shall have another cat, and it shall be your own." "i don't want another cat. i hate all other cats but him." they found a spot in a side walk, where lily of the valley grew, and later in the day abel dug a grave. estelle happened to visit mr. churchouse and he explained the tragedy. "if you attend the funeral, the boy might tolerate you," he said. "once break down his suspicion and get to his wayward heart, good would come of it he is feeling this very much and in a melting mood." "i'll stop, if he won't be vexed." mr. churchouse went into the garden and praised abel's energies. "a beautiful grave; and it is right and proper that peter grim should lie here, because he often hunted here." "he caught the mice that live in holes at the bottom of the wall," said abel. "if you are ready, we will now bury him. mother must come to the funeral, and estelle must come, because she was very, very fond of poor peter and she would think it most unkind of us if we buried him while she was not there. she will bring some flowers for the grave, and you must get some flowers, too, abel. we must, in fact, each put a flower on him." the boy frowned at mention of estelle, but forgot her in considering the further problem. "he liked the mint bed. i'll put mint on him," he said. "an excellent thought. and i shall pluck one of the big magnolias myself." returning, ernest informed estelle that she must be at the funeral and she went home for a bunch of blossoms to grace the tomb. she picked hot-house flowers, hoping to propitiate abel. there woke a great hope in her to win him. but she failed. he glowered at her when she appeared walking beside his mother, while before them marched mr. churchouse carrying the departed. when the funeral was ended and abel left alone, he sat down by the grave, cried, worked himself into a very mournful mood and finally exhibited anger. why he was angry he did not know, or against whom his temper grew; but his great loss woke resentment. when he felt miserable, somebody was always blamed by him for making him feel so. no immediate cause for quarrel with anything smaller than fate challenged his unsettled mind; then his eyes fixed upon estelle's flowers, and since estelle was always linked in his thoughts with his father, and his father represented an enemy, he began to hate the flowers and wish them away. he heard his mother calling him, but hid from her and when she was silent, came back to the grave again. meantime estelle and ernest drank tea and spoke of abel. "when grief has relaxed the emotions, we may often get in a kindly word and give an enemy something to think about afterwards," he said. "but the boy was obdurate. he is the victim of confused thinking--precocious to a degree in some directions, but very childish in others. at times he alarms me. poor boy. you must try again to win him. the general sentiment is that the young should be patient with the old; but for my part i think it is quite as difficult sometimes for the old to be patient with the young." he turned to his desk. "when i found my dear cat was not, i composed an epitaph for him, estelle. i design to have it scratched on a stone and set above his sleeping place." "do let me hear it," she said, and ernest, fired with the joy of composition, read his memorial verse. "criticise freely," he said. "i value your criticism and you understand poetry. not that this is a poem--merely an epitaph; but it may easily be improved, i doubt not." he put on his glasses and read: "'ended his mingled joy and strife, here lies the dust of peter grim. though life was very kind to him, he proved not very kind to life.'" estelle applauded. "perfect," she said. "you must have it carved on his tombstone." "i think it meets the case. i may have been prejudiced in my affection for him, owing to his affection for me. he came to me at the age of five weeks, and his attitude to me from the first was devoted." "cats have such cajoling ways." "he was not himself honest, yet, i think, saw the value of honesty in others. plain dealers are a temptation to rogues and none, as a rule, is a better judge of an honest man than a dishonest cat." "he wasn't quite a rogue, was he?" "he knew that i am respected, and he traded on my reputation. his life has been spared on more than one occasion for my sake." "on the whole he was not a very model cat, i'm afraid," said estelle. "yes, that is just what he was: a model--cat." they went out to look at the grave again, and something hurried away through the bushes as they did so. "friends, or possibly enemies," suggested mr. churchouse, but estelle, sharper-eyed, saw abel disappear. she also noted that her bouquet of flowers had gone from peter's mound. "oh dear, he's taken away my offering," she said. "what a hard-hearted boy! are there no means of winning him?" they spoke of abel and his mother. "we all regretted her decision to stop. it would have been better if she had gone away." "raymond saw her some time ago." "so she told me; and so did he. misfortune seems to dog the situation, for i believe sabina was half in a mind to take our advice until that meeting. then she changed. apparently she misunderstood him." "ray was very troubled. somehow he made sabina angry--the last thing he meant to do. he's sorry now that he spoke. she thought he was considering himself, and he really was thinking for abel." "we must go on being patient. next year i shall urge her to let abel be sent to a boarding-school. that will be a great advantage every way." so they talked and meantime abel's sorrow ran into the channels of evil. it may be that the presence of estelle had determined this misfortune; but he was ripe for it and his feeling prompted him to let his misery run over, that others might drink of the cup. he had long contemplated a definite deed and planned a stroke against raymond ironsyde; but he had postponed the act, partly from fear, partly because the thought of it was a pleasure. inverted instincts and a mind fouled by promptings from without, led him to understand that ironsyde was his mother's enemy and therefore his own. baggs had told him so in a malignant moment and abel believed it. to injure his enemy was to honour his mother. and the time had come to do so. he was ripe for it to-night. he told himself that peter grim would have approved the blow, and with his mind a chaos of mistaken opinions, at once ludicrous and mournful, he set himself to his task. he ate his supper as usual and went to bed; but when the house was silent in sleep, he rose, put on his clothes and hastened out of doors. he departed by a window on the ground floor and slipped into a night of light and shade, for the moon was full and rode through flying clouds. the boy felt a youthful malefactor's desire to get his task done as swiftly as possible. he was impatient to feel the deed behind him. he ran through the deserted village, crossed a little bridge over the river, and then approached the mill by a meadow below them. thus he always came to see mr. baggs, or anybody who was friendly. the roof of the works shone in answer to fitful moonlight, and they presented to his imagination a strange and unfamiliar appearance. under the sleight of the hour they were changed and towered majestically above him. the mill slept and in the creepy stillness, the river's voice, which he had hardly heard till now, was magnified to a considerable murmur. from far away down the valley came the song of the sea, where a brisk, westerly wind threw the waves on the shingle. a feeling of awe numbed him, but it was not powerful enough to arrest his purpose. his plans had been matured for many days. he meant to burn down the mill. nothing was easier and a match in the inflammable material, of which the hackler's shop was usually full, must quickly involve the mass of the buildings. it was fitting that where he had been impregnated by mr. baggs with much lawless opinion, abel should give expression to his evil purpose. from the tar-pitched work-room of the hackler, fire would very quickly leap to the main building against which it stood, and might, indeed, under the strong wind, involve the stores also and john best's dwelling between them. but it was fated otherwise. a very small incident served to prevent a considerable catastrophe, and when abel broke the window of the hackling room, turned the hasp, raised it, and got in, a man lay awake in pain not thirty yards distant. the lad lighted a candle, which he had brought with him, and it was then, while he collected a heap of long hemp and prepared to set it on fire, that john best, in torture from toothache, went downstairs for a mouthful of brandy. upon the staircase he passed a window and, glancing through it, he saw a light in the hackling shop. it was not the moon and meant a presence there that needed instant explanation. mr. best forgot his toothache, called his sailor son, who happened to be holiday-making at home, and hastened as swiftly and silently as possible over the bridge to the mill. john best the younger, an agile man of thirty, may be said to have saved the situation, for he was far quicker than his father could be and managed to anticipate the disaster by moments. half a minute more might have made all the difference, for the heap of loose hemp and stricks once ignited, no power on earth could have saved a considerable conflagration; but the culprit had his back turned to the window and was still busily piling the tow when best and his son looked in upon him, and the sailor was already half through the window before abel perceived him. the youngster dashed for his candle, but he was too late, a pair of strong hands gripped his neck roughly enough, and he fainted from the shock. they took him out as he had gone in, for the door was locked and levi baggs had the key. then the sailor went back to his home, dressed himself and started for a policeman, while mr. best kept guard over abel. when he came to his senses, the boy found himself in the moonlight with a dozen turns of stout fisherman's twine round his hands and ankles the foreman stood over him, and now that the house was roused, his wife had brought john a pair of trousers and a great coat, for he was in his night shirt. "you'll catch your death," she said. "it's only by god's mercy we didn't all catch our death," he answered. "here's sabina dinnett's boy plotted to destroy the works, and we've yet to find whether he's the tool of others, or has done the deed on his own." "on my own i did it," declared abel; "and i'll do it yet." "you shut your mouth, you imp of satan!" cried the exasperated man. "not a word, you scamp. you've done for yourself now, and everybody knew you'd come to it, sooner or later." in half an hour abel was locked up, and when mr. baggs heard next morning concerning the events of the night, he expressed the utmost surprise and indignation. "young dog! and after the friend i've been to him. blood will tell. that's his lawless father coming out in the wretch," he said. chapter ix the future of abel issues beyond human sight or calculation lay involved in the thing that abel dinnett had done. he had cast down a challenge to society, and everything depended on how society answered that challenge. not only did the child's own future turn on what must follow, but vital matters for those who were called to act hung on their line of action. that, however, they could not know. the tremendous significance of the sinner's future training and the result of what must now happen to him lay far beyond their prescience. it became an immediate question whether abel might, or might not, be saved from the punishment he had deserved. beyond that rose another problem, not less important, and his father doubted whether, for the child's own sake, it would be well to intervene. waldron strongly agreed with him; but estelle did not, and she used her great influence on the side of intervention. miss ironsyde and ernest churchouse were also of her opinion. indeed, all concerned, save his mother and arthur waldron, begged raymond to interfere, if possible. he did not decide immediately. "the boy will be sent to a reformatory for five years if i do nothing," he told estelle, "and that's probably the very best thing on earth that can happen to him. it will put the fear of god into him and possibly obliterate his hate of me. he's bad all through, i'm afraid." "no he isn't--far from it. that's the point," she argued. "these things are a legacy--a hateful legacy from his grandmother. mister churchouse knows him far better than anybody else, and he says there is great sensibility and power of feeling in him. he's tender to animals." "that's not much good if he's going to be tough to me. tell me why his mother doesn't come to me about him." "mister churchouse says she's in a strange state and doesn't seem to care. she told him the sins of the fathers were being visited on the children." "the sins of the fathers are being visited on the fathers, i should think." "that's fair at any rate," she said. "i know just how you must feel. you've been so patient, ray, and taken such a lot of trouble. but i believe it's all part of the fate that links you to the child. his future is made your business now, whether you will or no. it is thrust upon you. nobody but you would be listened to by the law; but you can give an undertaking and do something to save him from the horror of a reformatory." estelle and raymond were having tea together at 'the seven stars' during this conversation. her father was returning home to bridport by an evening train and she had driven to meet him. nelly legg waited upon them, and knowing the matter occupied many tongues, raymond spoke to her. "you can guess this is a puzzler, nelly," he said. "what would you do? miss waldron says it's up to me to try and get the boy off; but the question is shall i be serving him best that way?" "my husband and me have gone over it," she confessed; "of course, everybody has done so. you can't pretend the people aren't interested, and if one has asked job his opinion, a hundred have. people bring him their puzzles and troubles as a sort of habit. from a finger ache to the loss of a fortune they pour their difficulties into his wise head, and for patience he's a very good second to the first of the name. and i may tell you a curious thing, mister raymond, for i've seen it happen. as the folks talk and talk to legg, they get more and more cheerful and he gets more and more depressed. then, after they've let off all their woes on the man, sometimes they'll have the grace to apologise and say it's too bad to give him such a dose. and they always wind up by assuring him he's done them a world of good; but they never stop to think what they have done to him." "vampires of sympathy--blood-suckers," declared raymond. "such kindly men as your husband must pay for their virtues, nelly." "sympathetic people have to work hard," added estelle. "not that he wants the lesser people's gratitude, so long as he has my admiration," explained mrs. legg. "and that he always will have, for he's more than human in some particulars. and only i know the full extent of his wonders. a master of stratagems too--the iron hand in the velvet glove--though if you was to tell half the people in bridport he's got an iron hand, they never would believe it. and as to this sad affair, he's given his opinion and won't change it. you may think him right or wrong, but so it is." "and what does he say, nelly?" "he says the child may be saved as a brand from the burning if the law takes its course. he thinks that if you, or anybody, was to go bail for the child and save him from the consequences of his wicked deed, that a great mistake would be made. in justice to you i should say that they don't all agree. some hope you'll interfere--mostly women." "what do you think?" asked raymond. "as missis legg, i think the same as him; and i'll tell you another thing you may not know. the young boy's mother is by no means sure if she don't feel the same. my married niece is her friend, and last time she saw her, sabina spoke about it. from what sarah says i think she feels it might be better for the boy to put him away. i can't say as to her motives. naturally she's only concerned as to the welfare of the child and knows he'll never be trained to any good where he is." that sabina had expressed so strong an opinion interested raymond. but estelle refused to believe it. "i'm sure sarah misunderstood," she said. "sabina couldn't mean that." they went to the station presently, met arthur waldron and drove him home. estelle urged raymond to see sabina before he decided what to do; and since little time was left before he must act, he went to 'the magnolias' that evening and begged for an interview. sabina had a small sitting-room of her own in which evidence of abel did not lack. drawings that he had made at school were hung on the walls, and a steam-engine--a present from mr. churchouse on his twelfth birthday--stood upon the mantel-shelf. "it's just this, sabina," he said; "i won't keep you; but i feel the future of the boy is in the balance and i can't do anything without hearing your opinion. and first i want you to understand i have quite forgiven him. he's not all to blame. certain fixed, false ideas he has got. they were driven into him at his most impressionable age; and until his reason asserts itself no doubt he'll go on hating me. but that'll all come right. i don't blame you for it." "you should blame me all the same," she said. "it's as much me in his blood as his grandmother at his ear, that turned him to hate you. i don't hate you now--or anybody, or anything. i've not got strength and fight in me now to hate, or love either. but i did hate you and i was full of hate before he was born, and the milk was curdled with hate that fed him. now i don't care what happens. i can't prevent the future of my child from shaping itself. the time for preventing things and doing things and fixing character and getting self-respect is over and past. what he's done is the natural result of what was done to him. and who'll blame him? who'll blame me for being bad and indifferent--wicked if you like? life's made me so--hard--cold to others. but i should have been different if i'd had love and common justice. so would he. it's natural in him to hate you; and now the poor little wretch will get what he deserves--same as his mother did before him, and so all's said. what we deserved, that's all." "i don't think so. i'm very willing to fight for him if i can do him good by fighting. the situation is unusual. you probably do not realise what this means to me. is there to be no finality in your resentment? honestly i get rather tired of it." "i got rather tired of it twelve years ago." "you're not prepared to help me, then, or make any suggestion--for the child's sake?" "i'll not help, or hinder. i've been looking on so long now that i'm only fit to look on. my child has everything against him, and he knows it; and you can't save him from his fate any more than i can. so what's the good of wasting time talking as though you could? fate's fate--beyond us." "we make our own fate. i may tell you that i should have been largely influenced by you, sabina. the question admits of different answers and i recognise my responsibility. some say that i must intervene now and some say that i should not." "and the only one not asked to give an opinion is abel himself. a child is never asked about his own hopes and fears." "we know what his hopes were--to burn down the mill. so we may take it for the present he's not the best judge of what's good for him." "i've done my duty to him," she said, "and that's all i could do. i'm very sorry for him, and what love i've got for him is the sort that's akin to pity. it's contrary to reason that i should take any deep joy in him, or worship the ground he walks on, like other mothers do towards their children. for he stands there before me for ever as the sign and mark of my own failure in life. but i don't think any less of him for trying to destroy the works. i'd decided about him long ago." raymond found nothing to the purpose in this illusive talk. it argued curious impassivity in sabina he thought, and he felt jarred to find the conventional attitude of mother to son was not acknowledged by her. estelle had showed far more feeling, had taken a much more active part in the troubles of abel. estelle had spared no pains in arguing for the child and imploring ironsyde to exhaust his credit on abel's behalf. he told sabina this and she explained it. "i dare say she has. a woman can see why, though doubtless you cannot. it isn't because he's himself that she's active for him; and it isn't because he's my child, either. it's because he's your child. your blood's sacred in her eyes you may be sure. she was a child herself when you ruined me; she forgets all that. why? because ever since she's grown to womanhood and intelligence to note what happens, you have been a saint of virtue and the friend of the weak and the champion of the poor. so, of course, she feels that such a great and good man's son only wants his father's care to make him great and good too." "to think you can talk so after all these years, sabina," he said. "how should i talk? what are the years to me? you never knew, or understood, or respected the stuff i was made of; and you'll never understand your child, either, or the stuff he's made of; and you can tell the young woman that loves you so much, that she's wrong--as wrong as can be. nothing's gained by your having any hand in abel's future. you won't win him with sugarplums now, any more than you will with money later on. he's made of different stuff from you--and better stuff and rarer stuff. there's very little of you in him and very little of me, either. he's himself, and the fineness that might have made him a useful man under fair conditions, is turned to foulness now. your child was ruined in the making--not by me, but by you yourself. and such is his mind that he knows it already. so be warned and let him alone." "if anything could make me agree with miss waldron, sabina, it would be what you tell me," he answered. "and if i can live to show you that you are terribly wrong i shall be glad." "that you never will." "at least you'll do nothing to come between us?" "i never have. i was very careful not to do that. if he can look at you as a friend presently, i shan't prevent it. i shan't warn him against you--though i've warned you against him. the weak use poisonous weapons, because they haven't got the strength to use weapons of might. that's why he tried to burn down the mill. he'll be stronger some day." "he's clever, i'm told, and if we can only interest him in some intelligent business and find what his bent is, we may fill his mind to good purpose. at any rate, i thank you for leaving me free to act. now i can decide what course to take. it was impossible until i heard what you felt." she said no more and he left her to make up his mind. doubt persisted there, for he still suspected, that five years in a reformatory might be better for abel than anything else. such an experience he felt would develop his character, crush his malignant instincts and leave him only too ready to accept his father as his friend; but against such a fate for abel, was his own relationship to the culprit, and the question whether raymond would not suffer very far-reaching censure if he made no effort to come to the boy's rescue. truest wisdom might hold a severe course of correction very desirable; but sentiment and public opinion would be likely to condemn him if he did nothing. people would say that he had taken a harsh revenge on his own, erring child. he fumed at a situation intolerable and was finally moved to accept estelle's advice. from no considerations for bridport, or bridetown, did she urge his active intervention. for abel's sake she begged it and was more insistent than before, when she heard of sabina's indifference. "he's yours," she said. "you've been so splendidly patient. so do go on being patient, and the result will be a fine character and a reward for you. it isn't what people would say; but if he goes to a reformatory, far from wanting you and your help when he comes out again, he'll know in the future that you might have saved him from it and given him a first-rate education among good, upright boys. but if he went to a reformatory, he must meet all sorts of difficult boys, like himself, and they wouldn't help him, and he'd come out harder than he went in." his heart yielded to her at last, even though his head still doubted, for raymond's attitude to estelle had begun insensibly to change since his accident in the cricket field. from that time he won a glimpse of things that apparently others already knew. sabina, in their recorded conversation, had bluntly told him that estelle loved him; and while the man dismissed the idea as an absurdity, it was certain that from this period he began to grow somewhat more sentimentally interested in her. the interest developed very slowly, but this business of abel brought them closer together, for she haunted him during the days before the child came to his trial, and when, perhaps for her sake as much as any other reason, raymond decided to undertake his son's defence, her gratitude was great. he made it clear to her that she was responsible for his determination. "i've let you over-rule me, estelle," he told her. "don't forget it, chicky. and now that the boy will, i hope, be in my hands, you must strengthen my hands all you can and help me to make him my friend." she promised thankfully. "be sure i shall never, never forget," she said, "and i shall never be happy till he knows what you really are, and what you wish him. you must win him now. it's surely contrary to all natural instinct if you can't. the mere fact that you can forgive him for what he tried to do, ought to soften his heart." "i trust more to you than myself," he answered. chapter x the advertisement raymond ironsyde had his way, and local justices, familiar with the situation, were content not to commit abel, but leave the boy in his father's hands. he took all responsibility and, when the time came, sent his son to a good boarding-school at yeovil. sabina so far met him that the operation was conducted in her name, and since the case of abel had been kept out of local papers, his fellow scholars knew nothing of his errors. but his difficulties of character were explained to those now set over him, and they were warned that his moral education, while attempted, had not so far been successful. perhaps only one of those concerned much sympathised with ironsyde in his painful ordeal. those who did not openly assert that he was reaping what he had sown, were indifferent. some, like mr. motyer, held the incident a joke; one only possessed imagination sufficient to guess what these public events must mean to the father of abel. indeed, estelle certainly suffered more for raymond than he suffered for himself. she pictured poignantly his secret thoughts and sorrows at this challenge, and she could guess what it must be to have a child who hated you. in her maiden mind, however, the man's emotions were exaggerated, and she made the mistake of supposing that this grievous thing must be dominating raymond's existence, instead of merely vexing it. in truth he suffered, but he was juster than estelle, and, looking back, measured his liabilities pretty accurately. he had none but himself to thank for these inconveniences, and when he weighed them against the alternative of marriage with sabina, he counted them as bearable. abel tried him sorely, but he did not try him as permanent union with abel's mother must have tried him. since he had renewed speech with her, his conviction was increased that supreme disaster must have followed marriage. moreover, there began to rise a first glimmer of the new situation already indicated. it had grown gradually and developed more intensely during his days of enforced idleness in his aunt's house. from that time, at any rate, he marked the change and saw his old regard and respect for estelle wakening into something greater. her sympathy quickened the new sentiments. he thought she was saner over abel than anybody, for she never became sentimental, or pretended that nothing had happened which might not have been predicted. her support was both human and practical. it satisfied him and showed him her good sense. miss ironsyde had often reminded her nephew that he was the last of his line, and urged him to take a wife and found a family. that raymond should marry seemed desirable to her; but she had not considered estelle as a wife for him. had she done so, jenny must have feared the girl too young and too doubtful in opinions to promise complete success and safety for the master of the mill. he would marry a mature woman and a steadfast christian--so hoped miss ironsyde then. there came a day when raymond called on mr. churchouse. business brought him and first he discussed the matter of an advertisement. "in these days," he said, "the competition grows keener than ever. and i rather revel in it--as i do in the east wind. it's not pleasant at the time, but, if you're healthy, it's a tonic." "and if you're not, it finds the weak places," added mr. churchouse. "no man over sixty has much good to say of the east wind." "well, the works are healthy enough and competition is merely a tonic to us. we hold our own from year to year, and i've reached a conviction that my policy of ruthlessly scrapping machinery the moment it's even on the down grade, is the only sound principle and pays in the long run. and now i want something new in the advertisement line--something not mechanical at all, but human and interesting--calculated to attract, not middlemen and retailers, but the person who buys our string and rope to use it. in fact i want a little book about the romance of spinning, so that people may look at a ball of string, or shoe-thread, or fishing-line, intelligently, and realise about one hundredth part of all that goes to its creation. now you could do a thing like that to perfection, uncle ernest, because you know the business inside out." mr. churchouse was much pleased. "an excellent idea--a brilliant idea, raymond! we must insist on the romance of spinning--the poetry." "i don't want it to be too flowery, but just interesting and direct. a glimpse of the raw material growing, then the history of its manufacture." ernest's eyes sparkled. "from the beginning--from the very beginning," he said. "pliny tells us how the romans used hemp for their sails at the end of the first century. is not the english word 'canvas' only 'cannabis' over again? herodotus speaks of the hempen robes of the thracians as equal to linen in fineness. and as for cordage, the ships of syracuse in b.c.--" he was interrupted. "that's all right, but what i rather fancy is the development of the modern industry--here in dorset." "good--that would follow with all manner of modern instances." mr. churchouse drew a book from one of his shelves. "in tudor times it was ordered by act of parliament that ropes should be twisted and made nowhere else than here. leland, that industrious chronicler, came to grief in this matter, for he calls bridport 'a fair, large town,' where 'be made good daggers.' he shows the danger of taking words too literally, since a 'bridport dagger' is only another name for the hangman's rope." "that's the sort of thing," said raymond. "an article we can illustrate, showing the hemp and flax growing in russia and italy, then all the business of pulling, steeping and retting, drying and scutching. that would be one chapter." "it shall be done. i see it--i see the whole thing--an elegant brochure and well within my power. i am fired with the thought. there is only one objection, however." "none in the world. i see you know just what i'm after--a little pamphlet well illustrated." "the objection is that estelle waldron would do it a thousand times better than i can. she has a more modern outlook and a more modern touch. i feel confident that with me to supply the matter, she would produce a much more attractive and readable work." raymond considered. "i suppose she would. i hadn't thought of her." "believe me, she would succeed to admiration. for your sake as well as mine, she would produce a little masterpiece." "she'd do anything to please you, we all know; but i've no right to bother her with details of business. of course, if you do it, it is a commission and you would name your honorarium, uncle ernest." the old man laughed. "we'll see--we'll see. perhaps i should ask too high a price. but estelle will not be so grasping. and as to your right to bother her with the details of business, anything she can do for you is a very great privilege to her." "i believe i owe her more than a man can ever pay a woman, already." "most men are insolvent to the other sex. woman's noble tradition is to give more than she gets, and let us off the reckoning, quite well knowing it beyond our feeble powers to cry quits with her." raymond was moved at this challenge, for in the light that estelle threw upon them, women interested him more to-day than they had for ten years. "one takes old arthur's daughter for granted rather too much," he said; "we always take good women for granted too much, i suppose. it's the other sort who look out we shan't take them for granted, but at their own valuation. estelle--she's so many-sided--difficult, too, in some things." "she is," admitted ernest. "and just for this reason. she always argues on her own basis of perfect ingenuous honesty. she assumes certain rational foundations for all human relations; and if such bases really existed, then it would be the best possible world, no doubt, and we should all do to our neighbour as we would have him do to us. but the golden rule doesn't actuate the bulk of mankind, unfortunately. men and women are not as good as estelle thinks them." raymond agreed eagerly. "you've hit it," he said. "it is just that. she's right in theory every time; and if people were all as straight and altruistic and high-principled as she is, there'd really be no more bother about morals in the world. native good sense would decide. even as it is, the native good sense of mankind is deciding certain questions and will presently push the lawyers into codifying their mouldy laws, and then give reason a chance to cleanse the whole archaic lump of them; but as it is, estelle--take marriage, for example. i agree with her all the way--in theory. but when you come to view the situation in practice--you're up against things as they are, and you never want people you love to be martyrs, however noble the cause. estelle says the law of sex relationships is barbaric, and that marriage is being submitted to increasing rational criticism, which the law and the church both conspire to ignore. she thinks that these barriers to progress ought to be swept away, because they have a vicious effect on the institution and degrade men and women. she's always got her eye on the future, and the result is sometimes that she doesn't focus the present too exactly. it's noble, but not practical." "the institution of marriage will last estelle's time, i think," declared mr. churchouse. "one hopes so heartily--for her own sake. one knows very well it's an obsolescent sort of state, and can't bear the light of reason, and must be reformed, so that intelligent people can enter it in a self-respecting spirit; but if there is one institution that defies the pioneers, it is marriage. the law's far too strong for us there. and i don't want to see her misunderstood." they parted soon after this speech, and the older man, who had long suspected the fact, now perceived that raymond was beginning to think of estelle in new terms and elevating her to another place in his thoughts. it was the personal standpoint that challenged ironsyde's mind. his old sentiments and opinions respecting the marriage bond took a very different colour before the vision of an estelle united to himself. thus circumstances alter opinions, and the theories he had preached to sabina went down the wind when he thought of estelle. the touchstone of love vitiates as well as purifies thinking. chapter xi the hemp breaker ironsyde attached increasing importance to the fullest possible treatment of the raw material before actual spinning, and was not only always on the lookout for the best hemps and flaxes grown, but spared no pains to bring them to the card and spread board as perfect as possible. to this end he established a hemp break, a hemp breaker and a hemp softener. the first was a wooden press used to crush the stalks of retted hemp straw, so that the harl came away and left the fibre clean. the second shortened long hemp, that it might be more conveniently hackled and drawn. the third served greatly to improve the spinning quality of soft hemps by passing them through a system of callender rollers. there were no hands available for the breakers and softeners, so raymond increased his staff. he also took over ten acres of the north hill house estate, ploughed up permanent grass, cleaned the ground with a root crop, and then started to renew the vanishing industry of flax growing. he visited belgium for the purpose of mastering the modern methods, found the soil of north hill well suited to the crop, and was soon deeply interested in the enterprise. he first hoped to ret his flax in the bride river, as he had seen it retted on the lys, but was dissuaded from making this trial and, instead, built a hot water rettery. his experiments did not go unchallenged, and while the women always applauded any change that took strain off their muscles and improved the possibility of rest, the men were indifferent to this advantage. mr. baggs even condemned it. he came to see the working of the hemp breaker, and perceived without difficulty that its operations must directly tend to diminish his own labour. "you'll pull tons less of solid weight in a day, levi," said best, "when this gets going." "and why should i be asked to pull tons less of solid weight? what's the matter with this?" he thrust out his right arm with hypertrophied muscles hard as steel. "it seems to me that a time's coming when the people won't want muscles any more," he said. "steam has lowered our strength standards as it is, and presently labour will be called to do no more than press buttons in the midst of a roaring hell of machines. the people won't want no more strength than a daddy-long-legs; they that do the work will shrink away till they're gristle and bones, like grasshoppers. and the next thing will be that they'll not be wanted either, but all will be done by just a handful of skilled creatures, that can work the machines from their desks, as easy as the organist plays the organ in church. god help the human frame then!" "we shall never arrive at that, be sure," answered best; "for that's to exalt the dumb material above the worker, and if things were reduced to such a pitch of perfection all round, there would be no need of large populations. but we're told to increase and multiply at the command of god, so you needn't fear machines will ever lower our power to do so. if that happened, it would be as much as to say god allowed us to produce something to our own undoing." "he allows us to produce a fat lot of things to our own undoing," answered the hackler. "ain't nature under god's direction?" "without doubt, levi." "and don't nature tickle us to our own undoing morning, noon, and night? ain't she always at it--always tempting us to go too far along the road of our particular weakness? and ain't laziness the particular weakness of all women and most men? 'tis pandering to laziness, these machines, and for my part i wish ironsyde would get a machine to hackle once and for all. then i'd leave him and go where they still put muscles above machinery." "funny you should say that," answered the foreman. "he's had the thought of your retirement in his mind for a good bit now. only consideration for your feelings has prevented him dropping a hint. he always likes it to come from us, rather than him, when anybody falls out." mr. baggs took this with tolerable calm. "i'll think of it next year," he said. "if i could get at him by a side wind as to the size of the pension--" "that's hid with him. he'll follow his father's rule, you may be sure, and reward you according to your deserts." "i don't expect that," said mr. baggs. "he don't know my deserts." "well, i shouldn't be in any great hurry for your own sake," advised best. "you're well and hard, and can do your work as it should be done; but you must remember you've got no resources outside your hackling shop. take you away from it and you're a blank. you never read a book, or go out for a walk, or even till your allotment ground. all you do is to sit at home and criticise other people. in fact, you're a very ignorant old man, baggs, and if you retired, you'd find life hang that heavy on your hands you'd hardly know how to kill time between meals. then you'd get fat and eat too much and shorten your days. i've known it to happen, where a man who uses his muscles gives up work before his flesh fails him." raymond ironsyde joined them at this juncture and presently, when levi went back to his shop and the hemp breaker had been duly applauded, the master took john best aside and discussed a private matter. "the boy has come back for his holidays," he said; and best, who knew that when raymond spoke of 'the boy' he meant sabina's son, nodded. "i hope all goes well with him and that you hear good accounts," he answered. "the reports are all much the same, term after term. he's said to have plenty of ability, but no perseverance." "think nothing of that," advised the foreman. "schoolmasters expect boys to persevere all round, which is more than you can ask of human nature. the thing is to find out what gets hold of a boy and what he does persevere at--then a sensible schoolmaster wouldn't make him waste half his working hours at other things, for which the boy's mind has got no place. mechanics will be that boy's strong point, if i know anything about boys. and i believe all the fearful wickedness that prompted him to burn the place down is pretty well gone out of him by now." "i've left him severely alone," said raymond. "i've said to myself that not for three whole years will i approach him again. meantime i don't feel any too satisfied with the school. i fancy they are a bit soft there. private schools are like that. they daren't be too strict for fear the children will complain and be taken away. but there are others. i can move him if need be. and i'll ask you, best, to keep your eye on him these holidays, as far as you reasonably can, when he comes here. it is understood he may. try and get him to talk and see if he's got any ideas." "he puts me a good bit in mind of what poor mister daniel was at that age. he's keen about spinning, and if i was to let him mind a can now and again he'd be very proud of himself." "rum that he should like the works and hate me. yes, he hates me all right still, for mister churchouse has sounded him and finds that it is so. it's in the young beggar's blood and there seems to be no operation that will get it out." best considered. "he'll come round. no doubt his schooling is making his mind larger, and, presently, he'll feel the force of christianity also; and that should conquer the old adam in him. by the same token the less he sees of levi, the better. baggs is no teacher for youth, but puts his own wrong and rebellious ideas into their heads, and they think it's fine to be up against law and order. i'll always say 'twas half the fault of baggs the boy thought to burn us down; yet, of course, nobody was more shocked and scandalised than levi when he heard about it. and until the boy's come over to your side, he'll do well not to listen to the seditious old dog." "keep him out of the hackling shop, then. tell him he's not to go there." best shook his head. "the very thing to send him. he's like that. he'd smell a rat very quick if he was ordered not to see baggs. and then he'd haunt baggs. i shan't trust the boy a yard, you understand. you mustn't ask me to do that after the past. but i'm hopeful that his feeling for the craft will lift him up and make him straight. to a craftsman, his work is often more powerful for salvation than his faith. in fact, his work is his faith; and from the way things run in the blood, i reckon that sabina's son might rise into a spinner." "i don't want anything of that sort to happen, and i'm sure she doesn't." "there's a hang-dog look in his eyes i'd like to see away," confessed john. "he's been mismanaged, i reckon, and hasn't any sense of righteousness yet. all for justice he is, so i hear he tells mister churchouse. many are who don't know the meaning of the word. i'll do what i can when he comes here." "he's old for his age in some ways and young in others," explained raymond. "i feel nothing much can be done till he gets friendly with me." "you're doing all any man could do." "at some cost too, john. you, at any rate, can understand what a ghastly situation this is. there seems no end to it." "consequences often bulk much bigger than causes," said best. "in fact, to our eyes, consequences do generally look a most unfair result of causes; as a very small seed will often grow up into a very big tree. you'll never find any man, or woman, satisfied with the price they're called to pay for the privilege of being alive. and in this lad's case, him being built contrary and not turned true--warped no doubt by the accident of his career--you've got to pay a far heavier price than you would have been called to pay if you'd been his lawful begetter. but seeing the difficulty lies in the boy's nature alone, we'll hope that time will cure it, when he's old enough to look ahead and see which side his bread's buttered, if for no higher reason." ironsyde left the mill depressed; indeed, abel's recurring holidays always did depress him. as yet no hoped-for sign of reconciliation could be chronicled. to-day, however, a gleam appeared to dawn, for on calling at 'the magnolias' to see ernest churchouse, raymond was cheered by a promised event which might contain possibilities. estelle had scored a point and got abel to promise to come for a picnic. "he made a hard bargain though," she said. "he's to light a fire and boil the kettle. and we are to stop at the old store in west haven for one good hour on the road home. i've agreed to the terms and shall give him the happiest time i know how." "is his mother going?" "yes--he insists on that. and sabina will come." "but don't hope too much of it," said ernest. "i regard this as the thin end of the wedge--no more than that. if estelle can win his confidence, then she may do great things; but she won't win it at one picnic. i know him too well. he's a mass of contradictions. some days most communicative, other days not a syllable. some days he seems to trust you with his secrets, other days he is suspicious if you ask him the simplest question. he's still a wild animal, who occasionally, for his own convenience, pretends to be tame." "i shan't try to tame him," said estelle. "i respect wild things a great deal too much to show them the charms of being tame. but it's something that he's coming, and if once he will let me be his chum in holidays, i might bring him round to ray." she planned the details of the picnic and invited raymond to imagine himself a boy again. this he did and suggested various additions to the entertainment. "did sabina agree easily?" he asked, still returning to the event as something very great and gratifying. "not willingly, but gradually and cautiously." "she's softer and gentler than she was, however. i can assure you of that," said mr. churchouse. "she thought it might be a trap at first," confessed estelle. "a trap, chicky! you to set a trap?" "no, you, ray. she fancied you might mean to surprise the boy and bully him." "how could she think so?" "i assured her that you'd never dream of any such thing. of course i promised, as she wished me to do so, that you wouldn't turn up at the picnic. i reminded her how very particular you were, and how entirely you leave it to abel to come round and take the first step." "be jolly careful what you say to him. he's a mass of prejudice, where i'm concerned, and doesn't even know i'm educating him." "i'll keep off you," she promised. "in fact, i only intend to give him as good a day as i can. i'm not going to bother about you, ray; i'm going to think of myself and do everything i can to get his friendship on my own account. if i can do that for a start, i shall be satisfied." "and so shall i," declared ernest. "because it wouldn't stop at that. if you succeed, then much may come of it. in my case, i can't lift his guarded friendship for me into enthusiasm. he associates me with learning to read and other painful preliminaries to life. moreover, i have tried to awaken his moral qualities and am regarded with the gravest suspicion in consequence. but you come to him freshly and won't try to teach him anything. join him in his pleasure and add to it all you can. there is nothing that wins young creatures quicker than sharing their pleasures, if you can do so reasonably and are not removed so far from them by age that any attempt would be ridiculous. fifteen and twenty-seven may quite well have a good deal in common still, if twenty-seven is not too proud to confess it." chapter xii the picnic for a long day estelle devoted herself whole-heartedly to winning the friendship of abel dinnett. her chances of success were increased by an accident, though it appeared at first that the misadventure would ruin all. for when estelle arrived at 'the magnolias' in her pony carriage, sabina proved to be sick and quite unequal to the proposed day in the air. abel declined to go without his mother, but, after considerable persuasion, allowed the prospect of pleasure to outweigh his distrust. estelle promised to let him drive, and that privilege in itself proved a temptation too great to resist. his mother's word finally convinced him, and he drove an elderly pony so considerately that his hostess praised him. "i see you are kind to dumb things," she said. "i am glad of that, for they are very understanding and soon know who are their friends and who are not." "if beasts treat me well," he answered, "then i treat them well. and if they treated me badly, then i'd treat them badly." she did not argue about this; indeed, all that day her care was to amuse him and hear his opinions without boring him if she could avoid doing so. he remained shy at first and quiet. from time to time she was in a fair way to break down his reserve; but he seemed to catch himself becoming more friendly and, once or twice, after laughing at something, he relapsed into long silence and looked at her from under his eyelids suspiciously when he thought she was not looking at him. thus she won, only to lose what she had won, and when they reached the breezy cliffs of eype, estelle reckoned that she stood towards him pretty much as she stood at starting. but slowly, surely, inevitably, before such good temper and tact he thawed a little. they tethered the pony, gave it a nosebag and then spread their meal. abel was quick and neat. she noticed that his hands were like his mother's--finely tapered, suggestive of art. but on that subject he seemed to have no ideas, and she found, after trying various themes, that he cared not in the least for music, or pictures, but certainly shared his father's interest in mechanics. abel talked of the mill--self-consciously at first; yet when he found that estelle ignored the past, and understood spinning, he forgot himself entirely for a time under the spell of the subject. they compared notes, and she saw he was more familiar than she with detail. then, while still forgetting his listener, abel remembered himself and his talk of the mill turned into a personal channel. there is no more confidential thing, by fits and starts, than a shy child; and just as estelle felt the boy would never come any closer, or give her a chance to help him, suddenly he startled her with the most unexpected utterance. "you mightn't know it," he said, "but by justice and right i should have the whole works for my very own when mister ironsyde died. because he's my father, though i daresay he pretends to everybody he isn't." "i'm very sure mister ironsyde doesn't feel anything but jolly kind and friendly to you, abel. he doesn't pretend he isn't your father. why should he? you know he's often offered to be friends, and he even forgave you for trying to burn down the mill. surely that was a pretty good sign he means to be friendly?" "i don't want his friendship, because he's not good to mother. he served her very badly. i understand things a lot better than you might think." "well, don't spoil your lunch," she said. "we'll talk afterwards. are you ready for another bottle of gingerbeer? i don't like this gingerbeer out of glass bottles. i like it out of stone bottles." "so do i," he answered, instantly dropping his own wrongs. "but the glass bottles have glass marbles in them, which you can use; and so it's better to have them, because it doesn't matter so much about the taste after it's drunk." she asked him concerning his work and he told her that he best liked history. she asked why, and he gave a curious reason. "because it tells you the truth, and you don't find good men always scoring and bad men always coming to grief. in history, good men come to grief sometimes and bad men score." "but you can't always be sure what is good and what is bad," she argued. "the people who write the histories don't worry you about that," he answered, "but just tell you what happened. and sometimes you are jolly glad when a beast gets murdered, or his throne is taken away from him; and sometimes you are sorry when a brave chap comes to grief, even though he may be bad." "some historians are not fair, though," she said. "some happen to feel like you. they hate some people and some ideas, and always show them in an unfriendly light. if you write history, you must be tremendously fair and keep your own little whims out of it." after their meal estelle smoked a cigarette, much to abel's interest. "i never knew a girl could smoke," he said. "why not? would you like one? i don't suppose a cigarette once in a way can hurt you." "i've smoked thousands," he told her. "and a pipe, too, for that matter. i smoked a cigar once. i found it and smoked it right through." "didn't it make you ill?" "yes--fearfully; but i hid till i was all right again." he smoked a cigarette, and estelle told him that his father was a great smoker and very fond of a pipe. "but he wouldn't let you smoke, except now and again in holiday times--not yet. nobody ought to smoke till he's done growing." "what about you, then?" asked abel. "i've done growing ages ago. i'm nearly twenty-eight." he looked at her and his eyes clouded. he entered a phase of reserve. then she, guessing how to enchant him, suggested the next step. "if you help me pack up now, we'll harness the pony and go down to west haven for a bit. i want to see the old stores i've heard such a lot about. you must show them to me." "yes--part. i know every inch of them, but i can't show you my own secret den, though." "do. i should love to see it." he shook his head. "no good asking," he said. "that's my greatest secret. you can't expect me to tell you. even mother doesn't know." "i won't ask, then. i've got a den, too, for that matter--in fact, two. one on north hill and one in our garden." "d'you know the lime-kiln on north hill?" "rather. the bee orchis grows thereabout." he thought for a moment. "if i showed you my den in the store, would you swear to god never to tell?" "yes, i'd swear faithfully not to." "perhaps i will, then." but when presently they reached his haunt, he had changed his mood. she did not remind him, left him to his devices and sat patiently outside while he was hidden within. occasionally his head popped out of unexpected places aloft, then disappeared again. once she heard a great noise, followed by silence. she called to him and, after a pause, he shouted down that he was all right. when an hour had passed she called out again to tell him to come back to her. "we're going to bridport to tea," she said. he came immediately and revealed a badly torn trouser leg. "i fell," he explained. "i fell through a rotten ceiling, and i've cut my leg. when i was young the sight of blood made me go fainty, but i laugh at it now." he pulled up his trousers and showed a badly barked shin. "we'll go to a chemist and get him to wash it, and i'll get a needle and thread and sew it up," said estelle. she condoled with him as they drove to bridport, but he was impatient of sympathy. "i don't mind pain," he said. "i've tried the red indian tests on myself before to-day. once i had to see a doctor after; but i didn't flinch when i was doing it." a chemist dressed the wounded leg and presently they arrived at 'the seven stars,' where the pony was stabled and tea taken in the garden. mrs. legg provided a needle and thread and produced a very excellent tea. abel enjoyed the swing for some time, but would not let estelle help him. "i can swing myself," he said, "but i'll swing you afterwards." he did so until they were tired. then he walked round the flower borders and presently picked estelle a rose. she thanked him very heartily and told him the names of the blossoms which he did not know. job came and talked to them for a time, and estelle praised the garden, while abel listened. then mr. legg turned to the boy. "holidays round again, young man? i dare say we shall see you sometimes, and, if you like flowers, you can always come in and have a look." "i don't like flowers," said the boy. "i like fruit." he went back to the swing and job asked after mr. waldron. estelle reminded him that he had promised to come and see her garden some day. "be sure i shall, miss," he answered, "but, for the minute, work fastens on me from my rising up to my going down." "however do you get through it all?" "thanks to method. it's summed up in that. without method, i should be a lost man." "you ought to slack off," she said. "i'm sure that nelly doesn't like to see you work so hard." "she'd work hard too, but nature and not her will shortens her great powers. she grows into a mountain of flesh and her substance prevents activity; but the mind is there unclouded. in my case the flesh doesn't gain on me and work agrees with my system." "you're a very wonderful man," declared estelle; "but no doubt plenty of people tell you that." "only by comparison," he explained. "the wonder is all summed up in the one word 'method,' coupled with a good digestion and no strong drink. i'd like to talk more on the subject, but i must be going." "and tell them to put in the pony. we must be going, too." on the way home estelle tried to interest abel in sport. she had been very careful all day to keep raymond off her lips, but now intentionally she spoke of him. it was done with care and she only named him casually in the course of general remarks. thus she hoped that, in time, he would allow her to mention his father without opposition. "i think you ought to play some games with your old friends at bridetown these holidays," she said. "i haven't any old friends there. i don't want friends. i never made that fire you promised." "you shall make it next time we come out; and everybody wants friends. you can't get on without friends. and the good of games is that you make friends. i'm very keen on golf now, though i never thought i should like sport. did you play any cricket at school?" "yes, but i don't care about it." "how did you play? you ought to be rather a dab at it." "i played very well and was in the second eleven. but i don't care about it. it's all right at school, but there are better things to do in the holidays." "if you're a good cricketer, you might get some matches. your father is a very good cricketer, and would have played for the county if he'd been able to practise enough. and mister roberts at the mill is a splendid player." his nervous face twitched and his instant passion ran into his whip hand. he gave the astonished pony a lash and made it start across the road, so that estelle was nearly thrown from her seat. "don't! don't!" she said. "what's the matter?" but she knew. he showed his teeth. "i won't hear his name--i won't hear it. i hate him, i hate him. take the reins--i'll walk. you've spoilt everything now. i always wish he was dead when i hear his name, and i wish he was dead this minute." "my dear abel, i'm sorry. i didn't think you felt so bad as that about him. he doesn't feel at all like that about you." "i hate him, i tell you, and i'm not the only one that hates him. and i don't care what he feels about me. he's my greatest enemy on earth, and people who understand have told me so, and i won't be beholden to him for anything--and--and you can stick up for him till you're black in the face for all i care. i know he's bad and i'll be his enemy always." "you're a little fool," she said calmly. "let me drive and you can listen to me now. if you listen to stupid, wicked people talking of your father, then listen to me for a change. you don't know anything whatever about him, because you won't give him a chance to talk to you himself. if you once let him, you'd very soon stop all this nonsense." "you're bluffing," he said. "you think you'll get round me like that, but you won't. you're only a girl. you don't know anything. it's men tell me about my father. you think he's good, because you love him; but he's bad, really--as bad as hell--as bad as hell." "what's he done then? i'm not bluffing, abel. there's nothing to bluff about. what's your father done to you? you must have some reason for hating him?" "yes, i have." "what is it, then?" "it's because the mill ought to be mine when he dies--there!" she did not answer immediately. she had often thought the same thing. instinct told her that frankness must be the only course. through frankness he might still be won. he did not speak again after his last assertion, and presently she answered in a manner to surprise him. directness was natural to estelle and both her father and her friend, mr. churchouse, had fostered it. people either deprecated or admired this quality of her talk, for directness of speech is so rare that it never fails to appear surprising. "i think you're right there, abel. perhaps the mill ought to be yours some day. perhaps it will be. the things that ought to happen really do sometimes." then he surprised her in his turn. "i wouldn't take the mill--not now. i'll never take anything from him. it's too late now." she realised the futility of argument. "you're tired," she said, "and so am i. we'll talk about important things again some day. only don't--don't imagine people aren't your friends. if you'd only think, you'd see how jolly kind people have been to you over and over again. didn't you ever wonder how you got off so well after trying to burn down the works? you must have. anyway, it showed you'd got plenty of good friends, surely?" "it didn't matter to me. i'd have gone to prison. i don't care what they do to me. they can't make me feel different." "well, leave it. we've had a good day and you needn't quarrel with me, at any rate." "i don't know that. you're his friend." "you surely don't want to quarrel with all his friends as well as him? we are going to be friends, anyway, and have some more good times together. i like you." "i thought i liked you," he said, "but you called me a little fool." "that's nothing. you were a little fool just now. we're all fools sometimes. i've been a fool to-day, myself. you're a little fool to hate anybody. what good does it do you to hate?" "it does do me good; and if i didn't hate him, i should hate myself," the boy declared. "well, it's better to hate yourself than somebody else. it's a good sign i should think if we hate ourselves. we ought to hate ourselves more than we do, because we know better than anybody else how hateful we can be. instead of that, we waste tons of energy hating other people, and think there's nobody so fine and nice and interesting as we are ourselves." "mister churchouse says the less we think about ourselves the better. but you've got to if you've been ill-used." in the dusk twinkled out a glow-worm beside the hedge, and they stopped while abel picked it up. gradually he grew calmer, and when they parted he thanked her for her goodness to him. "it's been a proper day, all but the end," he said, "and i will like you and be your friend. but i won't like my father and be his friend, because he's bad and served mother and me badly. you may think i don't understand such things, but i do. and i never will be beholden to him as long as i live--never." he left her at the outer gate of his home and she drove on and considered him rather hopelessly. he had some feeling for beauty on which she had trusted to work, but it was slight. he was vain, very sensitive, and disposed to be malignant. as yet reason had not come to his rescue and his emotions, ill-directed, ran awry. he was evidently unaware that his father had so far saved the situation for him. what would he do when he knew it? estelle felt the picnic not altogether a failure, yet saw little signs of a situation more hopeful at present. "i can win him," she decided; "but it looks as though his father never would." chapter xiii the runaway estelle was as good as her word and devoted not a few of his holidays to the pleasure of sabina's son. unconsciously she hastened the progress of other matters, for her resolute attempt to win abel, at any cost of patience and trouble, brought her still deeper into the hidden life and ambitions of the boy's father. she was frank with raymond, and when abel had gone back to school and made no sign, estelle related her experiences. "he's sworn eternal friendship with me," she said, "but it's not a friendship that extends to you, or anybody else. he's very narrow. he concentrates in a terrifying way and wants everything. he told me that he hated me to have any other friends but him. it took him a long time to decide about me; but now he has decided. he extracts terrific oaths of secrecy and then imparts his secrets. before giving the oaths, i always tell him i shan't keep them if he's going to confide anything wicked; but his secrets are harmless enough. the last was a wonderful hiding-place. he spends many hours in it. i nearly broke my neck getting there. that's how far we've reached these holidays; and after next term i shall try again." "he's got a heart, if one could only reach it, i suppose." "a very hot heart. i shall try to extend his sympathies when he comes back." her intention added further fuel to the fire burning in raymond's own thoughts. he saw both danger and hope in the situation, as it might develop from this point. the time was drawing nearer when he meant to ask estelle to marry him, and since he looked now at life and all its relations from this standpoint, he began to consider his son therefrom. on the whole he was cheered by estelle's achievements and argued well of them. the danger he set aside, and chose rather to reflect on the hope. with abel back at school again and his mother in a more placid temper, there came a moment of peace. ironsyde was able to forget them and did so thankfully, while he concentrated on the task before him. he felt very doubtful, both of estelle's response and her father's view. the girl herself, however, was all that mattered, for waldron would most surely approve her choice whatever it might be. arthur had of late, however, been giving it as his opinion that his daughter would not marry. he had decided that she was not the marrying sort, and told raymond as much. "the married state's too limited for her: her energies are too tremendous to leave any time for being a wife. to bottle estelle down to a husband and children is impossible. they wouldn't be enough for her intellect." this had been said some time before, when unconscious of ironsyde's growing emotions; but of late he had suspected them and was, therefore, more guarded in his prophecies. then came a shock, which delayed progress, for abel thrust himself to the front of his mind again. estelle corresponded with her new friend, and the boy had heard from her that in future he must thank his father for his education. she felt that it was time he knew this, and hoped that he would now be sane enough to let the fact influence him. it did, but not as she had expected. instead there came the news that abel had been expelled. he deliberately refused to proceed with his work, and, when challenged, explained that he would learn no more at his father's expense. nothing moved him, and estelle's well-meant but ill-judged action merely served to terminate abel's education for good and all. the boy was rapidly becoming a curse to his father. puritans, who knew the story, welcomed its development and greeted each phase with religious enthusiasm; but others felt the situation to be growing absurd. raymond himself so regarded it, and when abel returned home again he insisted on seeing him. "you can be present if you wish to be," he told sabina, but she expressed no such desire. her attitude was modified of late, and, largely under the influence of estelle, she began to see the futility of this life-enmity declared against raymond by her son. of old she had thought it natural, and while not supporting it had made no effort to crush it out of him. now she perceived that it could come to nothing and only breed bitterness. she had, therefore, begun to tone her indifference and withhold the little bitter speeches that only fortified abel's hate. she had even argued with him--lamely enough--and advised him not to persist in a dislike of his father that could not serve him in after life. but he had continued to rejoice in his hatred. while estelle hoped with sabina to break down his obstinacy, he actually looked forward to the time when estelle would hate his enemy also. he had been sorry to see his mother weakening and even blaming him for his opinions. but now he was faced with his father under conditions from which there was no escape. the meeting took place in mr. churchouse's study and abel was called to listen, whether he would or no. raymond knew that the child understood the situation and he did not mince words. he kept his temper and exhausted his arguments. "abel," he said, "you've got to heed me now, and whatever you may feel, you must use your self-control and your brains. i'm speaking entirely for your sake and i'm only concerned for your future. if you would use your reason, it would show you that the things you have done and are doing can't hurt me; they can only hurt yourself; and what is the good of hurting yourself, because you don't like me? if you had burned down the works, the insurance offices would have paid me back all the money they were worth, and the only people to suffer would have been the men and women you threw out of work. so, when you tried to hurt me, you were only hurting other people and yourself. boys who do that sort of thing are called embryo criminals, and that's what they are. but for me and the great kindness and humanity of other men--my friends on the magistrates' bench--you would have been sent to a reformatory after that affair; but your fellow creatures forgave you and were very good to me also, and let you go free on consideration that i would be responsible for you. then i sent you to a good school, where nothing was known against you. now you have been expelled from that school, because you won't work, or go on with your education. and your reason is that i am paying for your education and you won't accept anything at my hands. "but think what precisely this means. it doesn't hurt me in the least. as far as i am concerned, it makes not a shadow of difference. i have no secrets about things. everybody knows the situation, and everybody knows i recognise my obligations where you are concerned and wish to be a good father to you. therefore, if you refuse to let me be, nobody is hurt but yourself, because none can take my place. you don't injure my credit; you only lose your own. the past was past, and people had begun to forget what you did two years ago. now you've reminded them by this folly, and i tell you that you are too old to be so foolish. there is no reason why you should not lead a dignified, honourable and useful life. you have far better opportunities than thousands and thousands of boys, and far better and more powerful friends than ninety-nine boys out of a hundred. "then why fling away your chances and be impossible and useless and an enemy to society, when society only wants to be your friend? what is the good? what do you gain? and what do i lose? you're not hurting me; but you're hurting and distressing your mother. you're old enough to understand all this, and if your mother can feel as i know she feels and ask you to consider your own future and look forward in a sensible spirit, instead of looking back in a senseless one, then surely, for her sake alone, you ought to be prepared to meet me and turn over a new leaf. "for you won't tire out my patience, or break my heart. i never know when i'm beat, and since my wish is only your good, neither you, nor anybody, will choke me off it. i ask you now to promise that, if i send you to another school, you'll work hard and complete your education and qualify yourself for a useful place in the world afterwards. that's what you've got to do, and i hope you see it. then your future will be my affair, for, as my son, i shall be glad and willing to help you on in whatever course of life you may choose. "so that's the position. you see i've given you the credit of being a sane and reasonable being, and i want you to decide as a sane and reasonable being. you can go on hating me as much as you please; but don't go on queering your own pitch and distressing your mother and making your future dark and difficult, when it should be bright and easy. promise me that you'll go back to a new school and work your hardest to atone for this nonsense and i'll take your word for it. and i don't ask for my own sake--always remember that. i ask you for your own sake and your mother's." with bent head the boy scowled up under his eyebrows during this harangue. he answered immediately raymond had finished and revealed passion. "and what, if i say 'no'?" "i hope you won't be so foolish." "i do say 'no' then--a thousand times i say it. because if you bring me up, you get all the credit. you shan't get credit from me. and i'll bring myself up without any help from you. i know i'm different from other boys, because you didn't marry my mother. and that's a fearful wrong to her, and you're not going to get out of that by anything i can do. you're wicked and cowardly to my mother, and she's mister churchouse's servant, instead of being your wife and having servants of her own, and i'm a poor woman's son instead of being a rich man's son, as i ought to be. all that's been told me by them who know it. and you're a bad man, and i hate you, and i shall always hate you as long as you live. and i'll never be beholden to you for anything, because my life is no good now, and my mother's life is no good neither. and if i thought she was taking a penny of your money, i'd--" his temper upset him and he burst into tears. the emotion only served to increase his anger. "i'm crying for hate," he said. "hate, hate, hate!" raymond looked at the boy curiously. "poor little chap, i wish to god i could make you see sense. you've got the substance and are shouting for the shadow, which you can never have. you talk like a man, so i'll answer you like a man and advise you not to listen to the evil tongue of those who bear no kindly thought to me, or you either. what is the sense of all this hate? granted wrong things happened, how are you helping to right the wrong? where is the sense of this blind enmity against me? i can't call back the past, any more than you can call back the tears you have just shed. then why waste nervous energy and strength on all this silly hate?" "because it makes me better and stronger to hate you. it makes me a man quicker to hate you. you say i talk like a man--that's because i hate like a man." "you talk like a very silly man, and if you grow up into a man hating me, you'll grow up a bitter, twisted sort of man--no good to anybody. a man with a grievance is only a nuisance to his neighbours; and seeing what your grievance is, and that i am ready and willing to do everything in a father's power to lessen that grievance and retrieve the mistakes of the past--remembering, too, that everybody knows my good intentions--you'll really get none to care for your troubles. instead, all sensible people will tell you that they are largely of your own making." "the more you talk, the more i hate you," said the boy. "if i never heard your voice again and never saw your face again, still i'd always hate you. i don't hate anything else in the world but you. i wouldn't spare a bit of hate for anything but you. i won't be your son now--never." "well, run away then. you'll live to be sorry for feeling and speaking so, abel. i won't trouble you again. next time we meet, i hope you will come to me." the boy departed and the man considered. it seemed that harm irreparable was wrought, and a reconciliation, that might have been easy in abel's childhood, when he was too young to appreciate their connection, had now become impossible, since he had grown old enough to understand it. he would not be raymond's son. he declined the filial relationship--doubtless prompted thereto from his earliest days, first on one admonition, then at another. the leaven had been mixed with his blood by his mother, in his infant mind by his grandmother, in his soul by fellow men as he grew towards adolescence. yet from sabina herself the poison had almost passed away. in the light of these new difficulties she grew anxious, and began to realise how fatally abel's possession was standing in his own light. she loved him, but not passionately. he would soon be sixteen and her point of view changed. she had listened long to estelle and began to understand that, whatever dark memories and errors belonged to raymond ironsyde's past, he designed nothing but generous goodness for their son in the future. after the meeting with abel, raymond saw sabina and described what had occurred; but she could only express her regrets. she declared herself more hopeful than he and promised to reason with the boy to the best of her power. "i've never stood against you with him, and i've never stood for you with him. i've kept out of it and not influenced for or against," she said. "but now i'll do more than that; i'll try and influence him for you." raymond was obliged. "i shall be very grateful to you if you can. if there's any human being who carries weight with him, you do. such blistering frankness--such crooked, lightning looks of hate--fairly frighten me. i had no idea any young creature could feel so much." "he's going through what i went through, i suppose," she said. "i don't want to hurt you, or vex you any more. i'm changed now and tired of quarrelling with things that can't be altered. when we find the world's sympathy for us is dead, then it's wiser to accept the situation and cease to run about trying to wake it up again. so i'll try to show him what the world will be for the likes of him if he hasn't got you behind him." "do--and don't do it bitterly. you can't talk for two minutes about the past without getting bitter--unconsciously, quite unconsciously, sabina. and your unconscious bitterness hurts me far more than it hurts you. but don't be bitter with him, or show there's another side of your feelings about it. keep that for me, if you must. my shoulders are broad enough to bear it. he is brimming with acid as it is. sweeten his mind if it is in your power. that's the only way of salvation, and the only chance of bringing him and me together." she promised to attempt it. "and if i'm bitter still," she said, "it is largely unconscious, as you say. you can't get the taste of trouble out of your mouth very easily after you've been deluged with it and nigh drowned in it, as i have. it's only an echo and won't reach his ear, though it may reach yours." "thank you, sabina. do what you can," he said, and left her, glad to get away from the subject and back to his own greater interests. he heard nothing more for a few days, then came the news that abel had disappeared. by night he had vanished and search failed to find him. sabina could only state what had gone before his departure. she had spoken with him on raymond's behalf and urged him to reconsider his attitude and behave sensibly and worthily. and he, answering nothing, had gone to bed as usual; but when she called him next morning, no reply came and she found that he had ridden away on his bicycle in the night. the country was hunted, but without result, and not for three days did his mother learn what had become of abel. then, in reply to police notices of his disappearance, there came a letter from a devonshire dairy farm, twenty miles to the west of bridport. the boy had appeared there early in the morning and begged for some breakfast. then he asked for something to do. he was now working on trial for a week, but whether giving satisfaction or no they did not learn. his mother went to see him and found him well pleased with himself and proud of what he had accomplished. he explained to her that he had now taken his life into his own hands and was not going to look to anybody in future but himself. the farmer reported him civil spoken, willing to learn, and quick to please. indeed, abel had never before won such a good character. she left him there happy and content, and took no immediate steps to bring the boy home. it was decided that a conference should presently be held of those interested in abel. "since he is safe and cheerful and doing honest work, you need not be in distress about him at present, sabina," said ernest churchouse; "but raymond ironsyde has no intention that the boy should miss an adequate education, and wishes him to be at school for a couple of years yet, if possible. it is decided that we knock our heads together on the subject presently. we'll meet and try to hit upon a sensible course. meantime this glimpse of reality and hard work at knapp farm will do him good. he may show talent in an agricultural direction. in any case, you can feel sure that whatever tastes he develops, short of buccaneering, or highway robbery, will be gratified." chapter xiv the motor car raymond ironsyde felt somewhat impatient of the conference to consider the situation of his son. but since he had no authority and sabina was anxious to do something, he agreed to consult mr. churchouse. they met at 'the magnolias,' where miss ironsyde joined them; but her old energy and forcible opinions had faded. she did little more than listen. ironsyde came first and spoke to ernest in a mood somewhat despondent. they were alone at the time, for sabina did not join them until estelle came. "is there nothing in paternity?" asked raymond. "isn't nature all powerful and blood thicker than water? what is it that over-rides the natural relationship and poisons him against me? isn't a good father a good father?" "so much is implied in this case," answered the elder. "he's old enough now to understand what it means to be a natural child. doubtless the disabilities they labour under have been explained to him. that fact is what poisons his mind, as you say, and makes him hate the blood in his veins. we've got to get over that and find antidotes for the poison, if we can." "i'm beginning to doubt if we ever shall, uncle ernest." sabina and estelle entered at this moment and heard mr. churchouse make answer. "be sure it can be done. every year makes it more certain, because with increase of reasoning power he'll see the absurdity of this attitude. it is no good to him to continue your enemy." "increase of reason cuts both ways. it shows him his grievances, as well as what will pay him best in the future. he's faced with a clash of reason." "reason i grant springs from different inspirations," admitted ernest. "there's the reason of the heart and the reason of the head--yes, the heart has its reasons, too. and though the head may not appreciate them, they exercise their weight and often conquer." soon there came a carriage from bridport and miss ironsyde joined them. "oh! i'm glad to see a fire," she said, and sat close beside it in an easy chair. then raymond spoke. "it is good of you all to come and lend a hand over this difficult matter. i appreciate it, and specially i thank sabina for letting us consider her son's welfare. she knows that we all want to befriend him and that we all are his friends. it's rather difficult for me to say much; but if you can show me how to do anything practical and establish abel's position and win his goodwill, at any cost to myself, i shall thank you. i've done what i could, but i confess this finds me beaten for the moment. you'd better say what you all think, and see if you agree." the talk that followed was inconsequent and rambling. for a considerable time it led nowhere. miss ironsyde was taciturn. it occupied all her energies to conceal the fact that she was suffering a good deal of physical pain. she made no original suggestions. churchouse, according to his wont, generalised; but it was through a generalisation that they approached something definite. "he has yet to learn that we cannot live to ourselves, or design life's pattern single-handed," declared ernest. "life, in fact, is rather like a blind man weaving a basket: we never see our work, and we have to trust others for the material. and if we better realised how blind we were, we should welcome and invite criticism more freely than we do." "no man makes his own life--i've come to see that," admitted raymond. "the design seems to depend much on your fellow creatures; your triumph or failure is largely the work of others. but it depends on your own judgment to the extent that you can choose what fellow creatures shall help you." estelle approved this. "and if we could only show abel that, and make him feel this determination to be independent of everybody is a mistake. but he told me once, most reasonably, that he didn't mind depending on those who were good to him. he said he would trust them." "trust's everything. it centres on that. can i get his trust, or can't i?" "not for the present, ray. i expect his mind is in a turmoil over this running away. it's all my fault and i take the blame. until he can think calmly you'll never get any power over him. the thing is to fill his mind full with something else." "find out if you can what's in his thoughts," advised sabina. "we say this and that and the other, and plan what must be done, but i judge the first person to ask for an opinion is abel himself. when people are talking about the young, the last thought in their minds is what the young are thinking themselves. they never get asked what's in their minds, yet, if we knew, it might make all the difference." "very sound, sabina," admitted mr. churchouse; "and you should know what's in his mind if anybody does." "i should no doubt, but i don't. i've never been in the boy's secrets, or i might have been more to him. but that's not to say nobody could win them. any clever boy getting on for sixteen years should have plenty of ideas, and if you could find them, it might save a lot of trouble." she turned to estelle as she spoke. "he's often told me things," said estelle, "and he's often been going to tell me others and stopped--not because he thought i'd laugh at him; but because he was doubtful of me. but he knows i can keep secrets now." "he must be treated as an adult," decided ernest. "sabina is perfectly right. we must give him credit for more sense than he has yet discovered, and appeal directly to his pride. i think there are great possibilities about him if he can only be brought to face them. his ruling passion must be discovered. one has marked a love of mystery in him and a wonderful power of make-believe. these are precious promises, rightly guided. they point to imagination and originality. he may have the makings of an artist. without exaggeration, i should say he had an artist's temperament without being an artist; but art is an elastic term. it must mean creative instinct, however, and he has shown that. it has so far taken the shape of a will to create disaster; but why should we not lead his will into another channel and help it to create something worthy?" "he's fond of machinery," said sabina, "and very clever with his hands." "could your child be anything but clever with his hands, sabina?" said estelle. "or mine be anything but fond of machinery?" asked raymond. he meant no harm, but this blunt and rather brutal claim to fatherhood made sabina flinch. it was natural that she never could school herself to accept the situation in open conversation without reserve, and all but ironsyde himself appreciated the silence which fell upon her. his speech, indeed, showed lack of sensibility, yet it could hardly be blamed, since only through acceptation of realities might any hopeful action be taken. but the harm was done and the delicate poise of the situation between abel's parents upset. sabina said no more, and in the momentary silence that followed she rose and left them. "what clumsy fools even nice men can be," sighed miss ironsyde, and churchouse spoke. "leave sabina to me," he said. "i'll comfort her when you've gone. there is a certain ingrained stupidity from which no man escapes in the presence of women. they may, or may not, conceal their feelings; but we all unconsciously bruise and wound them. sabina did not conceal hers. she is quick in mind as well as body. what matters is that she knows exceedingly well we are all on her side and all valuable friends for the lad. now let us return to the point. i think with estelle that abel may have something of the artist in him. he drew exceedingly well as a child. you can see his pictures in sabina's room. such a gift if developed might waken a sense of power." "if he knew great things were within his reach, he would not disdain the means to reach them," said miss ironsyde. "i do think if the boy felt his own possibilities more--if we could waken ambition--he would grow larger-minded. hate always runs counter to our interests in the long run, because it wastes our energy and, if people only knew it, revenge is really not sweet, but exceedingly bitter." "i suggest this," said ironsyde: "that uncle ernest and estelle visit the boy--not in any spirit of weakness, or with any concessions, or attempts to change his mind; but simply to learn his mind. sabina was right there. we'll approach him as we should any other intelligent being, and invite his opinion, and see if it be reasonable, or unreasonable. and if it is reasonable, then i ought to be able to serve him, if he'll let me do so." "i shall certainly do what you wish," agreed ernest. "estelle and i will form a deputation to this difficult customer and endeavour to find out what his lordship really proposes and desires. then, if we can prove to him that he must look to his fellow creatures to advance his welfare; if we can succeed in showing him that not even the youngest of us can stand alone, perhaps we shall achieve something." "and if he won't let me help, perhaps he'll let you, or estelle, or aunt jenny. agree if he makes any possible stipulation. it doesn't matter a button where he supposes help is coming from: the thing is that he should not know it is really coming from me." "i hope we may succeed without craft of that sort, raymond," declared mr. churchouse; "but i shall not hesitate to employ the wisdom of the serpent--if the olive branch of the dove fails to meet the situation. i trust, however, more to estelle than myself. she is nearer abel in point of time, and it is very difficult to bridge a great gulf of years. we old men talk in another language than the young use, and the scenery that fills their eyes--why, it has already vanished beneath our horizons. narrowing vision too often begets narrowing sympathies and we depress youth as much as youth puzzles us." "true, ernest," said miss ironsyde. "have you noticed how a natural instinct makes the young long to escape from the presence of age? the young breathe more freely out of sight of grey heads." "and the grey heads survive their absence without difficulty," confessed mr. churchouse. "but we are a tonic to each other. they help us to see, jenny, and we must help them to feel." "abel shall help us to see his point of view, and we'll help him to feel who his best friends are," promised estelle. raymond had astonished bridport and staggered bridetown with a wondrous invention. the automobile was born, and since it appealed very directly to him, he had acquired one of the first of the new vehicles at some cost, and not only did he engage a skilled mechanic to drive it, but himself devoted time and pains to mastering the machine. he believed in it very stoutly, and held that in time to come it must bulk as a most important industrial factor. already he predicted motor traction on a large scale, while yet the invention was little more than a new toy for the wealthy. and now this car served a useful purpose and mr. churchouse, in some fear and trembling, ventured a first ride. estelle accompanied him and together they drove through the pleasant lands where dorset meets devon, to knapp farm under knapp copse, midway between colyton and ottery st. mary, on a streamlet tributary of the sid. mr. churchouse was amazed and bewildered at this new experience; estelle, who had already enjoyed some long rides, supported him, lulled his anxieties and saw that he kept warm. soon they sighted the ridge which gave knapp its name, and presently met abel, who knew that they were coming. he stood on the tumuli at the top of the knoll and awaited them with interest. his master, from first enthusiasms, now spoke indifferently of him, declared him an average boy, and cared not whether they took him, or left him. as for abel himself, he slighted both estelle and mr. churchouse at first, and appeared for a time quite oblivious to their approaches. he was only interested in the car, which stood drawn up in an open shed at the side of the farmyard. he concentrated here, desired the company of the driver alone, and could with difficulty be drawn away to listen to the travellers and declare his own ambitions. he was, however, not sorry to see estelle, and when, presently, they lured him away from the motor, he talked to them. he bragged about his achievement in running away and finding work; but he was not satisfied with the work itself. "it was only to see if i could live in the world on my own," he said, "and now i know i can. nobody's got any hold on me now, because if you can earn your food and clothes, you're free of everybody. i don't tell them here, but i could work twice as hard and do twice as much if it was worth while; only it isn't." "if you get wages, you ought to earn them," said estelle. "i do," he explained. "i get a shilling a day and my grub, and i earn all that. but, of course, i'm not going to be a farmer. i'm just learning about the land--then i'm going. nobody's clever here. but i like taking it easy and being my own master." "you oughtn't to take it easy at your time of life, abel," declared estelle. "you oughtn't to leave school yet, and i very much hope you'll go back." "never," he said. "i couldn't stop there after i knew he was paying for it. or anywhere else. i'm not going to thank him for anything." "but you stand in the light of your own usefulness," she explained. "the thing is for a boy to do all in his power to make himself a useful man, and by coming here and doing ploughboy's work, when you might be learning and increasing your own value in the world, you are being an idiot, abel. if you let your father educate you, then, in the future, you can pay him back splendidly and with interest for all he has done for you. there's no obligation then--simply a fair bargain." his face hardened and he frowned. "i may pay him for all he's done for me, whether or no," he answered. "anyway, i don't want any more book learning. i'm a man very nearly, and a lot cleverer, as it is, than the other men here. i shall stop here for a bit. i want to be let alone and i will be let alone." "not at all," declared mr. churchouse. "you're going back on yourself, abel, and if you stop here, hoeing turnips and what not, you'll soon find a great disaster happening to you. you will indeed--just the very thing you don't want to happen. you pride yourself on being clever. well, cleverness can't stand still, you know. you go back, or forward. here, you'll go back and get as slow-witted as other ploughboys. you think you won't, but you will. the mud on your boots will work up into your mind, and instead of being full of great ideas for the future, you'll gradually forget all about them. and that would be a disgrace to you." abel showed himself rather impressed with this peril. "i shall read books," he said. "where will you get them?" asked estelle. "besides, after long days working out of doors, you'll be much too tired to read books, or go on with your studies. i know, because i've tried it." "quies was the god of rest in ancient rome," proceeded mr. churchouse, "but he was no god for youth. the elderly turned their weary bodies to his shrine and decorated his altars--not the young. but for you, abel, there are radiant goddesses, and their names are stimula and strenua. to them you must pay suit and service, and your motto should be 'able and willing.'" "of course," cried estelle; "but instead of that, you ask to be let alone, to turn slowly and surely into a ploughboy! why, the harm is already beginning! and you may be quite sure that nobody who cares for you is going to see you turn into a ploughboy." they produced some lunch presently and abel enjoyed the good fare. for a time they pressed him no more, but when the meal was taken, let him show them places of interest. while estelle visited the farm with him and heard all about his work, mr. churchouse discussed the boy with his master. nothing could then be settled, and it was understood that abel should stop at knapp until the farmer heard more concerning him. estelle advanced the good cause very substantially, however, and felt sanguine of the future; for alone with her, abel confessed that farming gave him no pleasure and that his ambition was set on higher things. "i shall be an engineer some day," he said. "presently i shall go where there is machinery, and begin at the bottom and work up to the top. i know a lot more about it than you might think, as it is." "i know you do," she said. "and there's nothing your mother would like better than engineering for you. besides, a boy begins that when he's young, and i believe you ought to be in the shops soon." "i shall be soon. very likely the next thing you hear about me will be that i have disappeared again. then i shall turn up in a works somewhere. because you needn't think i'm going to be a ploughboy. i shouldn't get level with my father by being a ploughboy." "your father would be delighted for you to get level with him and know as much as he does," she answered, pretending to mistake his meaning. "if you said you wanted to know as much about machinery and machines in general as he does, then he would very soon set to work to help you on." abel considered. "i won't take any help from him; but i'll do this--to suit myself, not him. i'd do it so as i could be near mother and could look after her. because, when mister churchouse dies, i'll have to look after her." "you needn't be anxious about your mother, abel. she's got plenty of friends." "her friends don't count if they're his friends, because you can't be my mother's friend and his friend, too. but i'll go into the spinning mill, and be like anybody else, and work for wages--just the same wages as any other boy going in. that won't be thanking him for anything." estelle could hardly hide her satisfaction at this unexpected concession. she dared not show her pleasure for fear that abel would see it and draw back. "then you could live with mother and mister churchouse," she said. "it would be tremendously interesting for you. i wonder if you would begin with roberts at the lathes, or cogle at the engines?" "i don't know. before i ran away, nicholas roberts wanted somebody to help him turning. i've turned sometimes. i'd begin like that and rise to better things." she was careful not to mention his father again. "i believe mister roberts would like to have you in his shop very much. sarah, his wife, hopes that her son will be a lathe-worker some day, but he's too young to go yet." "he'll never be any good at machinery," declared abel. "i know him. he's all for the sea." they took their leave presently, after ernest had heard the boy's offer. he, too, was careful, but applauded the suggestion and assured abel he would be very welcome at his old home. "i like you, you know; in fact, as a rule, we have got on very well together. i believe you'll make an engineer some day if you remember the roman goddesses. to be ambitious is the most hopeful thing we can wish for youth. always be ambitious--that's the first essential for success." but the old man surprised estelle by failing to share her delight at abel's decision. she for her part felt that the grand difficulty was passed, and that once in his father's mill, the boy must sooner or later come to reason, if only by the round of self-interest; but mr. churchouse reminded her that another had to be reckoned with. "a most delicate situation would be created in that case," he said. "of course i can't pretend to say how raymond will regard it. he may see it with your eyes. he sees so many things with your eyes--more and more, in fact--that i hope he will; but you mustn't be very disappointed if he does not. this cannot look to him as it does to you, or even to me. his point of view may reject abel's suggestion altogether for various reasons; and sabina, too, will very likely feel it couldn't happen without awakening a great many painful memories." "she advised us to consult abel and hear what he thought." "we have. we return with the great man's ultimatum. but i'm afraid it doesn't follow that his ultimatum will be accepted. even if sabina felt she could endure such an arrangement, it is doubtful in the extreme whether raymond will. indeed i'll go so far as to prophesy that he won't." estelle saw that she had been over-sanguine. "there's one bright side, however," he continued. "we have got something definite out of the boy and should now be able to help him largely in spite of himself. every day he lives, he'll become more impressed with the necessity for knowledge, and if, for the moment, he declines any alternative, he'll soon come round to one. he knows already that he can't stop at knapp, so this great and perilous adventure of the automobile has been successful--though how successful we cannot tell yet." he knew, however, before the day was done, for sabina felt very definitely on the subject. yet her attitude was curious: she held it not necessary to express an opinion. mr. churchouse came home very cold, and while she attended to his needs, brought him hot drink and lighted a fire, sabina listened. "the boy is exceedingly well," he said. "i never saw his eye so bright, or his skin so clear and brown. but a farmer he won't be for anybody. of course, one never thought he would." when she had heard abel's idea, she answered without delay. "it's a thousand pities he's set his heart on that, because it won't happen. what i think doesn't matter, of course, but for once you'll find his father is of a mind with me. he'll not suffer such an arrangement for a moment. it's bringing the trouble too near. he doesn't want his skeleton walking out of the cupboard into the mill, and whatever happens, that won't." she was right enough, for when raymond heard all that estelle could tell him, he decided instantly against any such arrangement. "impossible," he said. "one needn't trouble even to argue about it. but that he would like to be an engineer is quite healthy. he shall be; and he shall begin at the beginning and have every advantage possible--not his way, but mine. i argue ultimate success from this. it eases my mind." "all the same, if you don't do anything, he'll only run away again," said estelle, who was disappointed. "he won't run far. let him stop where he is for a few months, till he's heartily sick of it and ready to listen to sense. then perhaps i'll go over and see him myself. you've done great things, estelle. i feel more sanguine than i have ever felt about him. i wish i could do what he wants; but that's impossible his way. however, i'll do it in my own. sense is beginning in him, and that is the great and hopeful discovery you've made." "i'm ever so glad you're pleased about it," she said. "he loved the motor car much better than the sight of us. yet he was glad to see us too. he's really a very human boy, you know, ray." chapter xv criticism upon a sunday afternoon, sarah roberts and her husband were drinking tea at 'the seven stars.' they sat in nelly legg's private room, and by some accident all took rather a gloomy view of life. as for nelly, she had been recently weighed, and despite drastic new treatment, was found to have put on two pounds in a month. "lord knows where it'll end," she said. "you can't go on getting heavier and heavier for ever more. even a vegetable marrow, and such like things, reach their limit; and if they can it's hard that a creature with an immortal soul have got to go growing larger and larger, to her own misery and her husband's grief. to be smothered with your own fat is a proper cruel end i call it; and i haven't deserved it; and it shakes my faith in an all-wise god, to feel myself turning into a useless mountain of flesh. worse than useless in fact, because them that can't work themselves are certain sure to make work for others. which i do." "i never knew anything so aggravating, i'm sure," assented nicholas; "but so far as i can see, if life don't fret you from within, it frets you from without. it can't leave you alone to go on your way in a dignified manner. it's always intruding, so to speak. in fact, life comes between us and our living, if you understand me, and sometimes for my part i can look on to the end of it with a lot of resignation." sentiments so unusual from her husband startled mrs. roberts as well as her aunt. "lor, nicholas! what's the matter with you?" asked sarah. "it ain't often i grumble," he answered, "and if anybody's better at taking the rough with the smooth than me, i'd like to see him; but there are times when nature craves for a bit of pudding, and gets sick to death of its daily meal of bread and cheese. i speak in a parable, however, because i don't mean the body but the mind. your body bothers you, missis legg, as well it may; but your mind, thanks to your husband, is pretty peaceful year in year out. in my case, my body calls for no attention. thin as a rake i am and so shall continue. but the tissue is good, and no man is made of better quality stuff. it's my mind that turns in upon itself and gives me a pang now and again. and the higher the nature of the mind, the worse its troubles. in fact the more you can feel, the more you are made to feel; and what the mind is built to endure, that, seemingly, it will be called to endure." but nelly had no patience with the philosophy of mr. roberts. "you're so windy when you've got anything on your chest," she said. "you keep talking and don't get any forwarder. what's the fuss about now?" "you've been listening to baggs, i expect," suggested the wife of nicholas. "baggs has got the boot at last and leaves at christmas, and his pension don't please him, so he's fairly bubbling over with verjuice. i should hope you'd got too much sense to listen to him, nick." "so should i. he's no more than the winter wind in a hedge at any time," answered mr. roberts. "baggs gets attended to same as a wasp gets attended to--because of his sting. all bad-tempered people win a lot more attention and have their way far quicker than us easy and amiable ones. why, we know, of course. human nature's awful cowardly at bottom and will always choose the easiest way to escape the threatened wrath of a bad temper. in fact, fear makes the world go round, not love, as silly people pretend. in my case i feel much like sabina dinnett, who was talking about life not a week ago in the triangle under the sycamore tree. and she said, 'those who do understand don't care, and those who don't understand, don't matter'--so there you are--one's left all alone." "i'm sure you ain't--more's sabina. she's got lots of friends, and you've got your dear wife and children," said nelly. "i have; but the mind sometimes takes a flight above one's family. it's summed up in a word: there's nothing so damned unpleasant as being took for granted, and that's what's the matter with me." "not in your home, you ain't," declared sarah. "no good, sensible wife takes her husband for granted. he's always made a bit of a fuss over under his own roof." "that's true; but in my business i am. to see people--i'll name no names--to see other people purred over, and then to find your own craft treated as just a commonplace of nature, no more wonderful than the leaves on a bush--beastly, i call it." mr. legg had joined them and he admitted the force of the argument. "we're very inclined to put our own job higher in the order of the universe than will other people," he said; "and better men than you have hungered for a bit of notice and a pat on the back and never won it. but time covers that trouble. i grant, all the same, that it's a bit galling when we find the world turns a cold shoulder to our best." "it's a human weakness, nicholas, to want to be patted," said nelly, and her husband agreed. "it is. we share it with dogs," he declared. "but the world in general is too busy to pat us. i remember in my green youth being very proud of myself once and pointing to a lot of pewter in a tub, that i'd worked up till it looked like silver; and i took some credit, and an old man in the bar said that scouring pots was nothing more than scouring pots, and that any other honest fool could have done them just as well as me." "that's all right and i don't pretend my work on the lathe is a national asset, and i don't pretend i ought to have a statue for doing it," answered nicholas; "but what i do say is that i am greater than my lathe and ought to get more attention according. i am a man and not a cog-wheel, and when ironsyde puts cog-wheels above men and gives a dumb machine greater praise than the mechanic who works it--then it's wrong and i don't like it." "he can't make any such mistake as that," argued job. "it's rumoured he's going to stand for parliament at the next general election, so his business is with men, not machines, and he'll very soon find all about the human side of politics." "he'll be human enough till he gets in. they always are. they'll stoop to anything till they're elected," said mrs. legg, "but once there, the case is often altered with 'em." "i want to be recognised as a man," continued roberts, "and ironsyde don't do it. he isn't the only human being with a soul and a future. and now, if he's for parliament, i dare say he'll become more indifferent than ever. he may be a machine himself, with no feelings beyond work; but other people are built different." "a man like him ought to try and do the things himself," suggested sarah. "if employers had to put in a day laying the stricks on the spreadboard, or turning the rollers on the lathe, or hackling, or spinning, they'd very soon get a respect for what the workers do. in fact, if labour had its way, it ought to make capital taste what labour means, and get out of bed when labour gets out, and do what labour does, and eat what labour eats. then capital would begin to know it's born." "it never will happen," persisted nicholas. "nothing opens the eyes of the blind, or makes the man who can buy oysters, eat winkles. the gulf is fixed between us and it won't be crossed. if he goes into parliament, or stops out, he'll be himself still, and look on us doubtfully and wish in his soul that we were made of copper and filled with steam." "a master must follow his people out of the works into their homes if he's worth a rap," declared job. "your aunt always did so with her maidens, and i do so with the men. and it's our place to remember that men and women are far different from metal and steam. you can't turn the power off the workers and think they're going to be all right till you turn it on again. they go on all the time--same as the masters and mistresses do. they sleep and eat and rest; they want their bit of human interest, and bit of fun, and pinch of hope to salt the working day. and as for raymond ironsyde, i've seen his career unfolding since he was a boy and marked him in bad moments and seen his weakness; which secrets were safe enough with me, for i'd always a great feeling for the young. and i say that he's good as gold at heart and his faults only come from a lack of power to put himself in another man's place. he could never look very much farther than his own place in the world and the road that led to it. he did wrong, like all of us, and his faults found him out; which they don't always do. but he's the sort that takes years and years to ripen. he's not yet at his best you'll find; but he's a learner, and he may learn a great many useful things if he goes into parliament--if it's only what to avoid." "there's one thing that will do him a darned sight more good than going into parliament, and that's getting married," said sarah. "in fact, a few of us, that can see further through a milestone than some people, believe it's in sight." "miss waldron, of course?" asked nelly. "yes--her. and when that happens, she'll make of mister ironsyde a much more understanding man than going into parliament will. he's fair and just--not one of us, bar levi baggs, ever said he wasn't that--but she's more--she's just our lady, and our good is her good, and what she's done for us would fill a book; and if she could work on him to look at us through her eyes, then none of us, that deserved it, as we all do, would lose our good word." "what do you say to that, job?" asked mrs. legg. "i say nothing better could happen," he answered. "but don't feel too hopeful. the things that promise best to the human eye ain't the things that providence very often performs. to speak in a religious spirit and without feeling, there's no doubt that providence does take a delight in turning down the obvious things and bringing us up against the doubtful and difficult and unexpected ones. that's why there's such a gulf between story books and real life. the story books that i used to read in my youth, always turned out just as a man of good will and good heart and kindly spirit would wish them to do; but you'd be straining civility to providence and telling a lie if you pretended real life does. therefore i say, hope it may happen; but don't bet on it." job finished his tea and bustled away. "the wisdom of the man!" said nicholas. "he's the most comforting person i know, because he don't pretend. there's some think that everything that happens to us is our own fault, and they drive you silly with their bleating. job knows it ain't so." "a far-seeing man," admitted nelly, "and a great reader of the signs of the times. people used to think he was a simple sort--god forgive me, i did myself; but i know better now. all through that business with poor richard gurd, job understood our characters and bided his time and knew that the crash must come between us. he's told me since that he never really feared gurd, because he looked ahead and felt that two such natures as mine and richard's were never meant to join in matrimony. looking back, i see job's every move and the brain behind it. talk about parliament! if bridport was to send legg there, they'd be sending one that's ten times wiser than raymond ironsyde--and ten times deeper. in fact, the nation's very ill served by most that go there. they are the showy, rich, noisy sort, who want to bulk in the public eye without working for it--ciphers who do what they're told, and don't understand the inner nature of what they're doing more than a hoss in a plough. but men like job, though not so noisy, would get to the root, and use their own judgment, and rise superior to party politics and the pitiful need to shout with your side, right or wrong." "miss waldron is very wishful for him to get in, and she says he's got good ideas," replied nicholas. "if so, he has to thank her for them," added sarah. "and i hope," continued nicholas, "that if he does get in, he'll be suffered to make a speech, and his words will fall stone dead on the ears of the members, and his schemes will fail. then he'll know what it is to be flouted and to see his best feats win not a friendly sign." "electors are a lot too easy going in my opinion," said nelly. "i'm old enough to have seen their foolish ways in my time, and find, over and over again, that they are mostly gulls to be took with words. they never ask what a man's record is and turn over the pages of his past. they never trouble about what he's done, or how he's made his money, or where he stands in public report. it isn't what he has done, but what he's going to do. yet you can better judge of a man from his past than his promises, and measure, in the light of his record, whether he's going to the house of commons for patriotic, decent reasons, or for mean ones. and never you vote for a lawyer, nicholas roberts. 'tis a golden rule with job that never, under any manner of circumstances, will he help to get a lawyer into parliament. they stand in the way of all progress but their own; they suck our blood in every affair of life; they baffle all honest thinking with their cunning, and look at right and wrong only from the point of expediency. job says there ought to be a law against lawyers going in at all. but catch them making it! in fact, we're in their clutches more than the fly in the web, because they make the laws; and they'll never make any laws to limit their own powers over us, though always quick enough to increase them. job says that the only bright side to a revolution would be that the law and the lawyers would be swept into the street orderly bin together. then we'd start clean and free, and try to keep clean and free." upon this subject mrs. legg always found plenty to say. indeed she continued to open her mind till they grew weary. "we must be moving if we're going to church," said sarah. "i think we'd better go and pick up a bit of charity to our neighbour--sunday and all." chapter xvi the offer of marriage raymond met estelle on his way from the works and together they walked home. here and there in the cottage doorways sat women braiding. among them was sally groves--now grown too old and slow to tend the 'card'--and accident willed that she should make an opening for thoughts that now filled ironsyde's mind. they stopped, for sally was an old acquaintance of both, and estelle valued the big woman for her resolute character and shrewd sense. now sally, on strength of long-standing friendship, grew personal. it was an ancient joke to chaff miss groves about marriage, but to-day, when raymond asked if the net she made was to catch a husband, sally retorted with spirit. "all very fine for you two to be poking fun at me," she said. "but what about you? it's time you made up your minds i'm sure, for everybody knows you're in love with each other--though you don't yourselves seemingly." "give us a lead, sally," suggested raymond; but she shook her head. "you're old enough to know your own business," she answered; "but don't you go lecturing other people about matrimony while you're a bachelor yourself--else you'll get the worst of it--as you have now." they left her and laughed together. "yet i've heard you say she was the most sensible woman that ever worked in the mills," argued raymond. estelle made no direct reply, but spoke of sally in the past at one of her parties, when the staff took holiday and spent a day at weymouth. their conversation faded before they reached north hill house, and then, as they entered the drive, raymond reminded estelle of a time long vanished and an expedition taken when she was a child. "talking of good things, d'you remember our walk to chilcombe in the year one? or, to be more exact, when you were in short frocks." "i remember well enough. how my chatter must have bored you." "you never bored me in your life, chicky. in fact, you always seem to have been a part of my life since i began to live. that event happened soon after our walk, if i remember rightly. you really seem as much a part of my life as my right hand, estelle." "well, your right hand can't bore you, certainly." "some of the things that it has done have bored me. but let's go to chilcombe again--not in the car--but just tramp it as we did before. how often have you been there since we went?" she considered. "twice, i think. my friends there left ten years ago and my girl friend died. i haven't been there since i grew up." "well, come this afternoon." "it's going to rain, ray." "since when did rain frighten you?" "i'd love to come." "a walk will do me good," he said. "i'm getting jolly lazy." "so father thinks. he hates motors--says they are going to make the next generation flabby and good-for-nothing." they started presently under low grey clouds, but the sky was not grey for them and the weather of their minds made them forget the poor light and sad south-west wind laden with rain. it held off until they had reached chilcombe chapel, entered the little place of prayer and stood together before the ancient reredos. the golden-brown wood made a patch of brightness in the little building. they were looking at it and recalling estelle's description of it in the past, when the storm broke and the rain beat on the white glass in the windows above them. "how tiny it's all grown," said estelle. "surely everything has shrunk?" they had the chapel to themselves and, sitting beside her in a pew, raymond asked her to marry him. thunder had wakened in the sky, and the glare of lightning touched their faces now and then. but they only remembered that afterwards. "sally groves was no more than half right," he said, "so her fame for wisdom is shaken. she told us we didn't know we loved one another, estelle. but i know i love you well enough, and i've been shaking in my shoes to tell you so for months and months. i knew i was getting too old every minute and yet couldn't say the word. but i must say it now at any cost. chicky, i love you--dearly, dearly i love you--because i'm calm and steady, that doesn't mean i'm not in a blaze inside. i never thought of it even while you were growing up. but a time came when i did begin to think of it like the deuce; and when once i did, the thought towered up like the effreet let out of the bottle--that story you loved when you were small. but my only fear and dread is that you've always been accustomed to think of me as so much older than you are. if you once get an idea into your head about a person's age, you can't get it out again. at least, i can't; so i'm afraid you'll regard me as quite out of the question for a husband. if that's so, i'll begin over again." her eyes were round and her mouth a little open. she did not blink when the lightning flashed. "but--but--" she said. "if i'm not too old, there are no 'buts' left," he declared firmly. "ten years is no great matter after all, and from the point of view of brains, i'm an infant beside you. then say 'yes,' my darling--say 'yes' to me." "i wonder--i wonder, ray?" "haven't you ever guessed what i felt?" "yes, in a vague way. at least i knew there was something growing up between us." "it was love, my beautiful dear." she smiled at him doubtfully. the colour had come back to her face, but she did not respond when he lifted his arms to her. "are you sure--can you be sure, ray? it's so different,--so shattering. it seems to smash up all the past into little bits and begin the world all over again--for you and me. it's such a near thing. i've seen the married people and wondered about it. you might get so weary of always having me so close." "i want you close--closer and closer. i want you as the best part of myself--to make me happier first and, because happier, more useful in the world. i want you at the helm of my life--to steer me, chicky. what couldn't we do together! it's selfish--? it's one-sided, i know that. i get everything--you only get me. but i'll try and rise to the occasion. i worship you, and no woman ever had a more devout worshipper. i feel that your father wouldn't be very mad with me. but it's for you to decide, nothing else matters either way." "i love to think you care for me so much," she said. "and i care for you, ray, and have cared for you--more than either of us know. yes, i have. sally groves knew somehow. i should like to say 'yes' this moment; but i can't. i know i shall say it presently; but i'm not going to say it till i've thought a great many thoughts and looked into the future and considered all this means--for you as well as for me. it's life or death really, for both of us, and the more certain sure we are before, the happier we should be afterwards, i expect." "i'm sure enough, estelle. i've been sure enough for many a long day. i know the very hour i began to be sure." "i think i am too; but i can't say 'yes' and mean 'yes' for the present. i've got to thresh out a lot of things. i dare say they'd be absurd to you; but they're not to me." "can i help you?" "i don't know. you can, i expect. i shall come to you again to throw light on the difficult points." "how long are you going to take?" "how can i tell? but i _can_ all the same, i'm not going to take long." "say you love me--do say that." "i should have told you if i didn't." "that's all right, but not so blessed as hearing you say with your own lips you do. say it--say it, chicky. i won't take advantage of it. i only want to hear it. then i'll leave you in peace to think your thoughts." "i do love you," she said gently and steadily. "it can be nothing smaller than that. you are a very great part of my life--the greatest. i know that, because when you go away life is at evening, and when you come back again life is at morning. let me have a little time, ray--only a very little. then i'll decide." "i hope your wisdom will let you follow your will, then, and not forbid the banns." "you mustn't think it cold and horrid of me." "you couldn't be cold and horrid, my sweet estelle. we're neither of us capable of being cold, or horrid. we are not babies. i don't blame you a bit for wanting to think about it. i only blame myself. if i was all i might have been, you wouldn't want to think about it." this challenge shook her, but did not change her. "nobody's all they might be, ray; but many people are a great deal more than they might be. that's what makes you love people best, i think--to see how brave and patient and splendid men and women can be. life's so difficult even for the luckiest of us; but it isn't the luckiest who are the pluckiest generally--is it? i've had such a lot more than my share of luck already. so have you--at least people think so. but nobody knows one's luck really except oneself." "it's the things that are going to happen will make our good luck," he said. "you'll find men are seldom satisfied with the past, whatever women may be. god knows i'm not." "you were always one of my two heroes when i was a child; and father was the other. he is still my hero--and so are you, ray." "a pretty poor hero. i wouldn't pretend that to my dog. i only claim to have something worth while in me that you might bring out--raw material for you to turn into the finished article." she laughed to hear this. "come--come--you're not as modest as all that. you're much too clever even to pretend any such thing. women don't turn strong men into finished articles. at best, perhaps, they can only decorate a little of the outside." "you laugh," he answered, "but you know better. if you love me, be ambitious for me. that's the most helpful love a woman can give a man--to see his capabilities better than he can, and fire him on the best and biggest he can do, and help him to grasp his opportunities." "so it is." "you've got to decide whether it's worth while marrying me, chicky. you do love me, as i love you--because you can't help it. but you can help marrying me. you've got to think of your own show as well as mine. i quite understand that. you must be yourself and make your own mark, and take advantage of all the big new chances offered to the rising generation of women. i love you a great deal too much to want to lessen you, or drift you into a back-water. it's just a question whether my work, and the mill, and so on, give you the chance you want--if, working together, we can each help on the other. you could certainly help me hugely and you know it; but whether i could help you--that's what you've got to think about i suppose." "yes, i suppose it is, ray." "your eyes say 'yes' already, and they're terrible true eyes." but she only lowered them and neither spoke any more for a little while. the worst of the storm had passed, and its riot and splash gave place to a fine drizzle as the night began to close in. they started for home and, both content to think their own thoughts, trudged side by side. for raymond's part, he knew the woman too well to suffer any doubt of the issue and he was happy. for he felt that she was quietly happy too, and if instincts had brought grave doubts, or prompted her to deny him, she would not have been happy. estelle did not miss the romance from his offer of marriage. she had dreamed of man's love in her poetry-reading days, but under the new phase and the practical bent, developed by a general enthusiasm for her kind, personal emotions were not paramount. there could be but little sex in her affection for raymond: she had lived too near him for that. indeed, she had grown up beside him, and the days before he came to dwell at north hill seemed vague and misty. thus his challenge came as an experience both less and greater than love. it was less, in that no such challenge can be so urgent and so mighty as the call of hungry hearts to each other; it was greater, because the interests involved were built on abiding principles. they arrested her intellectual ambitions and pointed to a sphere of usefulness beyond her unaided power. what must have made his prosaic offer flat in the ear of an amorous woman, edged it for her. he had dwelt on the aspect of their union that was likely most to attract her. there was a pure personal side where love came in and made her heart beat warmly enough; but, higher than that, she saw herself of living value to raymond and helping him just where he stood most in need of help. she believed that they might well prove the complement of each other in those duties, disciplines, and obligations to which life had called them. that night she went closely, searchingly over old ground again from the new point of vision. what had always been interesting to her, became now vital, since these characteristics belonged to the man who wanted to wed her. she tried to be remorseless and cruel that she might be kind. but the palette of thought was only set with pleasant colours. she had been intellectually in love with him for a long time, and he had offered problems which made her love him for the immense interest they gave her. now came additional stimulus in the knowledge that he loved her well enough to share his life, his hopes, and his ambitions with her. she believed they might be wedded in very earnest. he was masterful and possessed self-assurance; but what man can lead and control without these qualities? his self-assurance was less than his self-control, and his instinct for self-assertion had nearly always been counted by a kind heart. it seemed to her that she had never known a man who balanced reason and feeling more judicially, or better preserved a mean between them. she had found that men could differentiate in a way beyond woman's power and be unsociable if their duty demanded it. but to be unsociable is not to be unsocial. raymond took long views, and if his old, genial and jolly attitude to life was a thing of the past, there had been substituted for it a wiser understanding and saner recognition of the useful and useless. men did take longer views than women--so estelle decided: and there raymond would help her; but the all-important matter that night was to satisfy herself how much she could help him. in this reverie she found such warmth and light as set her glowing before dawn, for she built up the spiritual picture of raymond, came very close to its ultimate realities, quickened by the new inspiration, and found that it should be well within her power to serve him generously. she took no credit to herself, but recognized a happy accident of character. there were weak spots in all masculine armour, that only a woman could make strong, and by a good chance she felt that her particular womanhood might serve this essential turn for raymond's manhood. to strengthen her own man's weak spots--surely that was the crown and completion of any wedded life for a woman. to check, to supplement, to enrich: that he would surely do for her; and she hoped to deal as faithfully with him. she was not clear-sighted here, for love, if it be love at all, must bring the rosy veil with it and dim the seeing of the brightest eyes. while the fact that she had grown up with raymond made her view clear enough in some directions, in others it served, of course, to dim judgment. she credited him with greater intellect than he possessed, and dreamed that higher achievements were in his power than was the truth. but there existed a mean, below her dream yet above his present ambition, that it was certainly possible with her incentive he might attain. she might make him more sympathetic and so more synthetic also, and show him how his own industry embraced industrial problems at large--how it could not be taken by itself, but must hold its place only by favour of its progress, and command respect only as it represented the worthiest relation between capital and labour. thus, from the personal interest of his work, she would lift him to measure the world-wide needs of all workers. and then, in time to come, he would forget the personal before the more splendid demands of the universal. the trend of machinery was towards tyranny; he must never lose sight of that, or let the material threaten the spiritual. private life, as well as public life, was open to the tyranny of the machine; and there, too, it would be her joyful privilege to fight beside him for added beauty, added liberty, not only in their own home, but all homes wherein they had power to increase comfort and therefore happiness. the sensitiveness of women should be linked to the driving force of men, as the safety valve to the engine. thus, in a simile surely destined to delight him, she summed her intentions and desires. she had often wondered what must be essential to the fullest employment of her energies and the best and purest use of her thinking; and now she saw that marriage answered the question--not marriage in the abstract, but just marriage with this man. he, of all she had known, was the one with whom she felt best endowed to mingle and merge, so that their united forces should be poured to help the world and water with increase the modest territory through which they must flow. she turned to go to sleep at last, yet dearly longed to tell raymond and amaze her father with the great tidings. an impulse prompted her to leave her lover not a moment more in doubt. she rose, therefore, and descended to his room, which opened beside his private study on the ground floor. the hour was nearly four on an autumn morning. she listened, heard him move restlessly and knew that he did not sleep. he struck a match and lighted a cigarette, for he often smoked at night. then she knocked at the door. "who the devil's that?" he shouted. "i," she said, opening the door an inch and talking softly. "stop where you are and stop worrying and go to sleep. i'm going to marry you, ray, and i'm happier than ever i was before in all my life." then she shut the door and fled away. chapter xvii sabina and abel now was raymond ironsyde too busy to think any thought but one, and though distractions crowded down on the hour, he set them aside so far as it was possible. his betrothal very completely dominated his life and the new relation banished the old attitude between him and estelle. the commonplace existence, as of sister and brother, seemed to perish suddenly, and in its place, as a butterfly from a chrysalis, there reigned the emotional days of prelude to marriage. the mere force of the situation inspired them and they grew as loverly as any boy and girl. it was no make-believe that led them to follow the immemorial way and glory only in the companionship of each other; they felt the desire, and love that had awakened so tardily and moved in a manner so desultory, seemed concerned to make up for lost time. arthur waldron was not so greatly astonished as they expected, and whatever may have been his private hopes and desires for his daughter, he never uttered them, but seeing her happiness, echoed it. "no better thing could have happened from my point of view," he declared, "for if she'd married anybody else in the world, i should have been called to say 'good-bye' to her. since she's chosen you, there's no necessity for me to do so. i hope you're going on living at north hill, and i trust you're going to let me do the same. of course, it would be an impossible arrangement if you were dealing with anybody but me; but since we are what we are in spirit and temper and understanding, i claim that i may stop. the only difference i can see is this: that whereas at present, when we dine, you sit between estelle and me, in future i shall sit between estelle and you." "not even that," vowed the lover. "why shouldn't i go on sitting between you?" "no--you'll be the head of the house in future." "the charm of this house is that there's no head to it," said estelle, "and raymond isn't going to usurp any such position just because he means to marry me." but distractions broke in upon their happiness. ernest churchouse fell grievously ill and lacked strength to fight disease; while there came news from knapp that the farmer was tired of abel and wished him away. for their old friend none could prolong his life; in the case of the boy, raymond decided that sabina had better see him and go primed with a definite offer. abel's father did not anticipate much more trouble in that quarter. he guessed that the lad, now in his seventeenth year, was sufficiently weary of the land and would be glad to take up engineering. he felt confident that sabina must find him changed for the better, prepared for his career and willing to enter upon it without greater waste of time. he invited the boy's mother to learn if he felt more friendly to him, and hoped that abel had now revealed a frame of mind and a power of reasoning, that would serve to solve the problem of his career, and finally abolish his animosity to his father. sabina went to see her son and heard the farmer first. he was not unfriendly, but declared abel a responsibility he no longer desired to incur. "he's just at a tricky age--and he's shifty and secret--unlike other lads. you never know what's going on in his mind, and he never laughs, or takes pleasure in things. he's too difficult for me, and my wife says she's frightened of him. as to work, he does it, but you always feel he's got no love for it. and i know he means to bolt any day. i've marked signs; so it will be better for you people to take the first step." the farmer's wife spoke to similar purpose and added information that made sabina more than uneasy. "it's about this friend of his, miss waldron, that came to see him backalong," she explained. "he'd talk pretty free about her sometimes and was very proud of it when he got a letter now and again. but since she's wrote and told him she's going to be married, he's turned a gloomier character than ever. he don't like the thought of it and it makes him dark. 'tis almost as if he'd been in love with the lady. you do hear of young boys falling in love before their time like that." sabina was on the point of explaining, but did not do so. her first care was to see abel and learn the truth of this report. perhaps she felt not wholly sorry that he resented this conclusion. not a few had spoken of ironsyde's marriage before her: it was the gossip of bridetown; but none appeared to consider how it must affect her, or sympathise with her emotions on the subject. what these emotions were, or whither they tended, she hardly knew herself. unowned even to her innermost heart, a sort of dim hope had not quite died, that he might, after all, come back to her. she blushed at the absurdity of the idea now, but it had struck in her subconsciously and never wholly vanished. before the engagement was announced she had altered her attitude to raymond and used him civilly and shared his desire that abel should be won over by his father. the old hatred at receiving anything from ironsyde's hands no longer existed. she felt indifferent and, before her own approaching problems, was not prepared to decline the offers of help that she knew would quickly come when ernest churchouse died. she intended to preach patience and reason in the ears of abel, and she hoped he would not make her task difficult; but now it was clear that estelle's betrothal had troubled the boy. she saw him and they spoke together for a long time; but already his force of character began to increase beyond his mother's. despite her purpose and sense of the gravity of the situation, he had more effect upon her than she had upon him. yet her arguments were rational and his were not. but the old, fatal, personal element of temper crept in and, during her speech with him, sabina found fires that she believed long quenched, were still smouldering in the depths of memory. the boy could not indeed fan them to flame again; but the result of his attitude served to weaken hers. she did not argue with conviction after finding his temper. by some evil chance, that seemed more like art than accident, he struck old wounds, and she was interested and agitated to find that now he knew all there was to be known of the past and its exact significance. the dream hidden so closely in her heart: that there might yet be a reconciliation--the dream finally killed when she perceived that ironsyde had fallen in love with estelle waldron--was no dream in her son's mind. what she knew was impossible, till now represented no impossibility to him. he actually declared it as a thing which, in his moral outlook, ought to be. only so could the past be retrieved, or the future made endurable. but to that matter they did not immediately come. she dined at the farmer's table with abel and three men. then he was told that he might make holiday and spend the afternoon with his mother where he pleased. he took her therefore to the old barrows nigh knapp, and there on a stone they sat, watched the sun sink over distant woodlands and talked together till the dusk was down. "i ought never to have trusted her," he said. "but i did. and, if i'd thought she would ever have married him, i wouldn't have trusted her. i thought she was the right sort; but if she was, she would never have married a man who had sworn to marry you." "good gracious, abel! whatever are you talking about?" she asked, concerned to find the matter in his mind. "i'm talking about things that happened," he answered. "i'm not a child now. i'm nearly seventeen and older than that, for i overheard two of the men say so. you needn't tell me these things; i found them out for myself, and i hated raymond ironsyde from the time i could hate anybody, because the honest feeling to hate him was in me. and nobody has the right to marry him but you, and he's got no right to marry anybody but you. but he doesn't know the meaning of justice, and she is not fine, or brave, or clever, or any of the things i thought she was, because she wants to marry him." his mother considered this speech. "it's no good vexing yourself about the past," she said. "you and me have got to look to the future, abel, and not to dwell on all that don't make the future any easier. it's difficult enough, but, for us, the luxury of pride and hate isn't possible. i know very well what you feel. it all went through me like fire before you were born--and after; but we've got to go on living, and things are going to change, and we must cut our coats according to our cloth--you and me." "what does that mean?" he asked. "it means we're not independent. there's not enough for your education and my keep. so it's got to be him, or one other, and the other is an old woman--his aunt. but it's all the same really, and he'll see that it comes out of his pocket in the end. he's all powerful and we must do according. christianity's a very convenient thing for the likes of us. it teaches that the meek are blessed and the weak the worthy ones. you must look to your father if you want to succeed in the world." "never," he said. "he's got everything else in the world, but he shan't have me. i don't care much about being alive at best, seeing i must be different from other people all my life; but i'd rather die twenty times than owe anything to him. he knew before i was born that he was going to wreck my life, and he did it, and he wrecked yours, and his marriage with any other woman but you is a lie and a sham, and estelle knows it very well. now i hate her as much as him, and i hate those who let her marry him, and i hate the clergyman that will do it; and if i could ruin them by killing myself on their doorstep, i would. but he wouldn't care for that. if i was to do that, it would just suit the devil, because he'd know i'd gone and could never rise up against him any more." she made a half-hearted attempt to distract his thoughts. she began to argue and, as usual, ended in bitterness. "you mustn't talk nonsense, like that. he means well by you, and you mustn't cut off your nose to spite your face. you'll find plenty of people to take his side and you mustn't only listen to his enemies. there's always wise people to stand up for young men and excuse them, though not many to stand up for young women." "let them stand up for me and excuse me, then," he answered. "let them explain me and tell me why i should think different, and why i should take his filthy money just to set his mind at rest. what has he done for me that i should ease him and do as he pleases? is it out of any care for me he'd lift me up? not likely. it's all to deceive the people and make them say he's a good man. and until he puts you right, he's not a good man, and soon or late i'll have it out with him. god blast me if i don't. but i'll revenge myself clean on him. he shan't make out to the world that he's done what a father should do for a son. he's my natural father and no more, and he never wanted or meant to be more. and no right will take away that wrong. and i'll treat him as other natural creatures treat their fathers." "you can't do that," she said. "you're a human, and you've got a conscience and must answer to it." "i will--some day. i know what my conscience says to me. my conscience tells me the truth, not a lot of lies like yours tells you. i know what's right and i know what's justice. i gave the man one chance. i offered to go in his works--my works that ought to be some day. but that didn't suit him. i must always knuckle under and bend to his will. but never--never. i'd starve first, or throw myself into the sea. he don't want me near him for people to point to, so i must be drove out of bridetown to the ends of the earth if he chooses. and if the damned world was straight and honest and looked after the women and innocent children, 'tis him, not me, would have been drove out of bridetown." he spoke with amazing bitterness for youth, and echoed much that he had heard, as well as what he had thought. his mother felt some astonishment to find how his mind had enlarged, and some fear, also, to see the hopelessness of the position. already she considered in secret what craft might be necessary to bring him to a more reasonable mind. "you'll have to think of me as well as yourself," she said. "life's hard enough without you making it so much harder. two things will happen in a few weeks from now and nothing can stop them. first you've got to leave here, because farmer don't want you any more, and then poor mister churchouse is going to pass away. he's just fading out like a night-light--flickering up and down and bound to be called. and the best man and the truest friend to sorrow that ever trod the earth." "i was going from here," he answered. "and you can look to me for making a pound a week, and you can have it all if you'll take nothing from any of my enemies. if you take money from my enemies, then i won't help you." "you're a man in your opinions seemingly, though i wish to god you hadn't grown out of childhood so quick, if you were going to grow to this. it'll drive you mad if you're not careful. then where shall i be?" "i'll drive other people mad--not you. i'll come back home, and then i'll find work at bridport." "where's home going to be--that's the question?" sabina answered. "there's only one choice for you--between letting him finish your education and going out to work." "we'll live in bridport, then," he told her, "and i'll go into something with machinery. i'll soon rise, and i might rise high enough to ruin him yet, some day. and never you forget he had my offer and turned it down. he didn't know what he was doing when he did that." "he couldn't trust you. how was he to know you wouldn't try to burn the works again--and succeed next time?" abel laughed. "that was a fool's trick. if they'd gone, he'd only have built 'em again, better. but there are some things he can't insure." "i know a good few spinners at bridport. shall i have a look round for you?" she asked, as they rose to return. he considered and agreed. "yes, if it's only through you. i trust you not to go to him about it. if you did and i found you had--" "no, no. i'll not go to him." he came and looked again at the motor car that had brought her. it interested him as keenly as before. "that's for him to go about the country in, because he's standing for parliament," explained sabina. but his anger was spent. he heeded her no more, and even the fact that his father owned the car did not modify his deep interest. he rode a mile or two with her when she started to return and remained silent and rapt for the few minutes of the experience. his mother tried to use the incident. "if you was to be good and patient and let the right thing be done, i daresay in a few years you'd rise to having a motor of your own," she said, when they stopped and he started to trudge back. "if ever i do, i'll get it for myself," he answered. "and when you're old, i'll drive you about, very likely." he left her placidly, and it was understood that in a month he would return to her as soon as she had determined on their immediate future. for herself she knew that it would be necessary to deceive him, yet feared to attempt it after the recent conversation. she felt uneasily proud of him. chapter xviii swan song the doctor said mr. churchouse was dying because he didn't wish to go on living, and when estelle taxed the old man with his indifference, he would not deny it. "i have lived long enough," he said. "the machine is worn out. my thinking is become a painful effort. i forget the simplest matters, and before you are a nuisance to yourself, you may feel very certain you have long been a nuisance to other people." he had for some months grown physically weaker, and both raymond and others had noticed an inconsequence of utterance and an inability to concentrate the mind. he liked friends to come and see him and would listen with obvious effort to follow any argument, or grasp any fresh item of news. but he spoke less and less. nor could sabina tempt him to eat adequate food. he ignored the doctor's drugs and seemed to shrink physically as well as mentally. "i'm turning into my chrysalis," he said once to estelle. "one has to go through that phase before one can be a butterfly. remember, my pretty girl, you are only burying an empty chrysalis when this broken thing is put into the ground." "you're very unkind to talk so," she declared. "you might go on living if you liked, and you ought to try--for the sake of those who love you." but he shook his head. "one doesn't control these things. you know i've always told you that the length of the thread is no part of our business, but only the spinning. i should have liked to see you married; yet, after all, why not? i may be there. i shall hope to beg a holiday on that occasion and be in church." he always spoke thus quite seriously. death he regarded as no discontinuity, or destruction, of life, but merely an alteration of environment. at some personal cost miss ironsyde came to take leave of him, when it seemed that his end was near. he kept his bed now, and by conserving his strength gained a little activity of mind. he was troubled for jenny's physical sufferings; while she, for her part, endeavoured to discuss sabina's problems, but she could not interest the old man in them. "abel is safe with his father," said mr. churchouse. "as for sabina, i have left her a competency, and so have you. one has been very heartily sorry for her. she will have no anxiety when my will is read. i am leaving you three books, jenny. i will leave you more if you like. my library as a whole is bequeathed to estelle waldron, since i know nobody who values and respects books so well." "but abel," she said. "i have tried to establish his character and we may find, after all, i did more than we think. providence is ever ready to water and tend the good seed that we sow. but he must be made to abandon this fatal attitude to his father. it is uncomfortable and inconvenient and helps nobody. i shall talk to him, i hope, before i die. he is coming home in a day or two." but abel delayed a week, at his master's request, that he might help pull a field of mangels, and mr. churchouse never saw him again. during his last days estelle spent much time with him. he seldom mentioned any other person but himself. he wandered in a disjointed fashion over the past and mixed his recollections with his dreams. he remembered jests and sometimes uttered them, then laughed; but often he laughed to himself without giving any reason for his amusement. he was thoughtful and apologetic. indeed, when he looked up into any face, he always said, "i mourn to give you so much trouble." latterly he confused his visitors, but kept estelle and sabina clear in his mind. he fancied that they had quarrelled and was always seeking to reconcile them. every morning he appeared anxious and distressed until they stood by him together and declared that they were the best of friends. then he became tranquil. "that being so," he said, "i shall depart in peace." estelle relieved the professional nurse and would read, talk, or listen, as he wished. he spoke disjointedly one day and wove reality and imagination together. "much good marble is wasted on graves," he declared. "but it doesn't bring the dead to life. do you believe in the resurrection of the body, estelle? i hope you find it easy. that is one of the things i never was honestly able to say i had grasped. reason will fight against the nobler tyranny of faith. the old soul in a glorified body--yet the same body, you understand. we shan't all be in one pattern in heaven. we shall preserve our individuality; and yet i deprecate passing eternity in this tabernacle. improvements may be counted upon, i think. the art of the divine potter can doubtless make beautiful the humblest and the most homely vessel." "nobody who loves you would have you changed," she assured him. then his mind wandered away and he smiled. "i listened to a street preacher once--long, long ago when i was young--and he said that the road to everlasting destruction was lined with women and gin shops. upon which a sailor-man, who listened to him, shouted out, 'oh death, where is thy sting?' the meeting dissolved in a very tornado of laughter. sailors have a great sense of humour. it can take the place of a fire on a cold day. one touch of humour makes the whole world kin. if you have a baby, teach it to laugh as well as to walk. but i think your baby will do that readily enough." on another occasion he laughed suddenly to himself and explained his amusement to sabina, who sat by him. "eunominus, the heretic, boasted that he knew the nature of god; whereupon st. basil instantly puzzled him with twenty-one questions about the body of the ant!" estelle also tried to make mr. churchouse discuss abel dinnett. she told him of an interesting fact. "i have got ray to promise a big thing," she said. "he hesitated, but he loved me too well to deny me. besides, feeling as i do, i couldn't take any denial. you see nature is so much greater than all else to me, and contrasted with her, our little man-made laws, often so mean and hateful in their cowardly caution and cruel injustice, look pitiful and beneath contempt. and i don't want to come between raymond and his eldest son. i won't--i won't do it. abel is his first-born, and it may be cold-blooded of me--ray said it was at first--but i insist on that. i've made him see, and i've made father see. i feel so much about it, that i wouldn't marry him if he didn't recognize abel first and treat him as the first-born ought to be treated." "abel--abel dinnett," said the other, who had not followed her speech. "a good-looking boy, but lawless. he wants the world to bend to him; and yet, if you'll believe me, there is a vein of fine sentiment in his nature. with tears in his eyes he once told me that he had seen a fellow pupil at school cruelly killing insects with a burning glass; and he had beaten the cruel lad and broken his glass. that is all to the good. the difficulty for him is that he was born out of wedlock. this great disability could have been surmounted in america, scotland, ireland, germany, or, in fact, anywhere but in england. the law of the natural child in this country would bring a blush to the cheek of a gorilla. but neither church nor state will lift a finger to right the infamy." "we are always wanting to pluck the mote out of our neighbour's eyes, and never see the beam in our own," she answered. "women will alter that some day--and the disgusting divorce laws, too. perhaps these are the first things they will alter, when they have the power." "who is going into parliament?" he asked. "somebody told me, but i forget. he was a friend of mine. i remember that much." "ray hopes to get in. i am going to help him, if i can." "it is a great responsibility. tell him, if he is elected, to fight for the natural child. it would well become him to do so. let him rise to it. our saviour said, 'suffer the little children to come unto me.' the state, on the contrary, says, 'suffer the little children to be done to death and put out of the way.'" "yes," she answered, "suffer fifty thousand little children to be lost every year, because it is kinder to let them perish, than help them to live under the wicked laws we have planned to govern them." but his mind collapsed and when she strove to bring it back again, she could not. two days before he died, estelle found him in deep distress. he begged to see her alone, and explained that he had to confess a great sin. "i ought to tell a priest," he said, "but i dare think that you will do as well. if you absolve me, i shall know i may hope to be forgiven. i have lived a double life, estelle. i have pretended what was not true--not merely once or twice, but systematically, deliberately, callously." "i don't believe it, dear mister churchouse. you couldn't." "i should never have believed it myself. but even the old can surprise themselves, painfully sometimes. i have lived with this perfidy for many years; but i can't die with it. there's always an inclination to confess our sins to a fellow creature. to confess them to our maker is quite needless, because he knows them; but it's a quality of human nature to feel better after imparting its errors to another ear." he broke off. "what was i saying? i forget." "that you'd done something ever so wicked and nobody knew it." "yes, yes. the books--the books i used to receive from unknown admirers by post. my child, there were no unknown admirers! nobody ever admired me, either secretly or openly. why should they? i used to send the books to myself--god forgive me." "if i'd only known, i'd have sent you hundreds of books," she said. "i did send you one or two." "i know it--they are my most precious possessions. they served in some mysterious way to soothe my bad conscience. it would be interesting to examine and find out how they did. but my brain can't look into anything subtle now. i knew you sent the books. my good angel has recorded my thanks. you always increased my vitality, estelle. you are keeping me alive at present. you have risen in the autumn of my life as a gracious dawn; you have been the sun of my indian summer. you will be a good wife to raymond. it seems only yesterday that he was a little thing in short frocks, and henry so proud of him. now henry is dead, and raymond wife-old and in parliament. a sound liberal, like his father before him." "the election isn't till next year. but i hope he'll get in. they say at bridport he has a very good chance." the day before he died, mr. churchouse seemed better and talked to estelle of another visit from her father. "i always esteem his great good humour and fine british instinct to live and let live. that is where our secret lies. we ride empire with such a loose rein, estelle--the only way. you cannot dare to put a curb on proud people. a paradox that--that those who fast bind don't fast find. the instinct of england's greatness is in your father; he is an epitome of our virtues. he has no imagination, however. nor has england. if she had, doubtless she would not do the great deeds that beggar imagination. that reminds me. there is one little gift that you must have from my own hand. a work of imagination--a work of art. nobody in the world would care about it but you. a poem, in fact. i have written one or two others, but i tore them up. i sent them to newspapers, hoping to astonish you with them; but when they were rejected i destroyed them. this poem i did not send. nobody has seen it but myself. now i give it to you, and i want you to read it aloud to me, that i may hear how it sounds." "how clever of you! there's nothing you can't do. i know i shall love it." he pointed to a sheaf of papers on a table. "the top one. it is a mournful subject, yet i hope treated cheerfully. i wrote it before death was in sight; but i feel no more alarmed or concerned about death now than i did then. you may think it is too simple. but simplicity, though boring to the complex mind, is really quite worth while. the childlike spirit--there is much to be said for it. no doubt i have missed a great deal by limiting my interests; but i have gained too--in directness." "there is a greatness about simplicity," she said. "to be simple in my life and subtle in my thought was my ambition at one time; but i never could rise to subtlety. the native bent was against it. the poem--i do not err in calling it a poem--is called 'afterwards'--unless you can think of a better title. if any obvious and glaring faults strike you, tell me. no doubt there are many." she read the two pages written in his little, careful and almost feminine hand. "when i am dead, the storm and stress of many-coloured consciousness like blossom petals fall away and drops the calyx back to clay; a man, not woman, makes the bed when our night comes and we are dead. "when i am dead, the ebb and flow of folk where i was wont to go, will never stay a moment's pace, or miss along the street my face. yet thoughts may wake and things be said by one or two when i am dead. "when i am dead, the sunset light will fill the gap upon the height in summer time, but on the plain sink down as winter comes again and none who sees the evening red will know i loved it, who am dead. "when i am dead, upon my mound exotic flow'rs may first be found, and not until they've blown away will other blossoms come to stay. a daisy growing overhead brings gentle pleasure to the dead. "when i am dead, i'd love to see an amber thrush hop over me and bend his ear, as he would know what i am whispering down below. may many a song-bird find his bread upon my grave when i am dead. "when i am dead, and years shall pass, the scythe will cut the darnel grass now and again for decency, where we forgotten people lie. o'er ancient graves the living tread with great impertinence on the dead. "when i am dead, all i have done must vanish, like the evening sun. my book about the bells may stay behind me for a fleeting day; but will not very oft be read by anybody when i'm dead." she stopped and smiled with her eyes full of tears. "i had meant to write another verse," he explained, "but i put it off and it's too late now. such as it is, it is yours. does it seem to you to be interesting?" "it's very interesting indeed, and very beautiful. i shall always value it as my greatest treasure." "read it to your children," he said, "and if the opportunity occurs, take them sometimes to see my grave. the spot is long chosen. let there be no gardening upon it out of good heart but bad taste. i should wish it left largely to nature. there will be daisies for your babies to pick. i forget the text i selected. it's in my will." he bade her good-bye more tenderly than usual, as though he knew that he would never see her again, and the next morning bridetown heard that the old man had died in his sleep. the people felt sorry, for he left no enemies, and his many kindly thoughts and deeds were remembered for a little while. chapter xix new work for abel with a swift weaver's knot john best mended the flying yarn. then he turned from a novice at the gill spinner and listened, not very patiently, to one who interrupted his lesson. "it's rather a doubtful thing that you should always be about the place now you've left it, levi," he said to mr. baggs. "it would be better judgment and more decent on your part if you kept away." "you may think so," answered the hackler, "but i do not. and until the figure of my pension is settled, i shall come and go and take no denial." "it is settled. he don't change. he's said you shall have ten shillings a week and no more, so that it will be." "and what if i decline to take ten shillings a week, after fifty years of work in his beastly mill?" "then you can do the other thing and go without. you want it both ways, you do." "i want justice--no more. common justice, i suppose, can be got in dorset as elsewhere. i ought to have had a high testimonial when i left this blasted place--a proper presentation for all to see, and a public feed and a purse of sovereigns at the least." "that's what i mean when i say you can't have it both ways," answered mr. best. "to be nice and pick words and consider your feelings is waste of time, so i tell you that you can't grizzle and grumble and find fault with everything and everybody for fifty years, and then expect people to bow down and worship you and collect a purse of gold when you retire. if we flew any flags about you, it would be because we'd got rid of you. mister ironsyde don't like you, and why should he? you've always been up against the employer and you've never lost a chance to poison the minds of the employed. there's no good will in you and never was, and where you could hang us up in the mill and make difficulties without getting yourself into trouble, you've always took great pleasure in so doing. did you ever pull with me, or anybody, if you could help it? never. you pulled against. you'd often have liked to treat us like the hemp and tear us to pieces on your rougher's hackle. and how does such a man expect anybody to care about him? there was no reason why you should have had a pension at all, in my opinion. you've been blessed with good health and no family, and you've never spent a shilling on another fellow creature in your life. therefore, it's more than justice that you get ten shillings, and not less as you seem to think." mr. baggs glowered at john during this harangue. his was the steadfast attitude of the egoist, who sees all life in terms of his own interest alone. "we've got to fight for ourselves in this world since there's none other to fight for us," he said, "and, of course, you take his side. you've licked ironsyde boots all your life, and nothing an ironsyde can do is wrong. but i might have known the man that's done the wickedness he's done, and deserts his child and let his only son work on the land, wouldn't meet me fair. there's no honour or honesty in the creature, but if he thinks i'm going to take this slight without lifting my voice against it, he's wrong. to leave the works and sneak out of 'em unmourned and without a bit of talk and a testimonial was shameful enough; but ten shilling a week--no! the country shall ring about that and he'll find his credit shaken. 'tis enough to lose him his election to parliament, and i hope it will do so." best stared. "you're a cracked old fool, and not a spark of proper pride or gratitude in you. feeling like that, i wonder you dare touch his money; but you're the sort who would take gifts with one hand and stab the giver with the other. i hope he'll change his mind yet and give you no pension at all." levi, rather impressed with this unusual display of feeling from the foreman, growled a little longer, then went his way; while in john there arose a determination to prevent mr. baggs from visiting the scene of his old activities. at present force of habit drew the old man to spend half his time here; and now, when best had returned to the gill spinner, levi prowled off to his old theatre of work, entered the hackling shop and criticised the new hackler. his successor was young and stood in awe of him at first; but awe was not a quality the veteran inspired for long. already joe ash began to grow restive under levi's criticisms, and dimly to feel that the old hackler was better away. to-day mr. baggs allowed the resentment awakened by best's criticisms to take shape in offensive comments at the expense of his young successor. he was of that order of beings who, when kicked, rests not until he has kicked somebody again. but to-day the evil star of mr. baggs was in ascendant, and when he told the youth that he wasted half his strength and had evidently been taught his business by a fool, levi was called to suffer a spirited retort. joe ash came from the midlands; his vocabulary was wider than that of mr. baggs, and he soon had the old man gasping. finally he ordered him out of the shop, and told him that if he did not go he would be put out. "strength or no strength," he said, "i've got enough for you, so hop out of this and don't come back. if you're to be free of my shop, i leave; and that's all there is to it." mr. baggs departed, having hoped that he might live to see the young man hung with his own long line. he then pursued his way by the river, labouring under acute emotions, and half a mile down stream met a lad engaged in angling. abel dinnett had returned home and was making holiday until his mother should discover work for him, or he himself be able to get occupation. for the moment sabina found herself sufficiently busy packing up her possessions and preparing for the forthcoming sale at 'the magnolias.' she was waiting to find a new home until abel's future labour appeared; but, in secret, raymond ironsyde had undertaken to obtain it, and she knew that henceforth she would live at bridport. mr. baggs poured out his wrongs, but he did not begin immediately. failing adult ears, abel's served him, and he proceeded to declare that the new hackler was a worthless rogue, who did not know his business and would never earn his money. abel, however, had reached a standard of intelligence that no longer respected mr. baggs. "i don't go to the works now," he said, "and never shall again. i don't care nothing about them. my mother and me are going to leave bridetown when i get a job." "no doubt--no doubt. though i dare say your talk is sour grapes--seeing as you'll never come by your rights." abel lifted his eyes to the iron-roofed buildings up the valley. "oh yes, i could," he said. "that man wants to win me now. he's going to be married, and she--her he's going to marry--told my mother that he's wishful for me to be his proper son and be treated according. but i won't have his damned friendship now. it's too late now. you can't drive hate out of a man with gifts." "they ain't gifts--they're your right and due. 'tis done to save his face before the people, so they'll forgive his past and help send him into parliament. look at me--fifty years of service and ten shillings a week pension! it shall be known and 'twill lose him countless votes, please god. a dog like that in parliament! 'twould be a disgrace to the nation. and you go on hating him if you're a brave boy. every honest man hates him, same as i do. twenty shillings i ought to have had, if a penny." "fling his money back in his face," said abel. "nobody did ought to touch his money, or work for it. and if every man and woman refused to go in his works, then he'd be ruined." "the wicked flourish like the green bay tree in this country, because there's such a cruel lot of 'em, and they back each other up against the righteous," declared levi. "but a time's coming, and you'll live to see it, when the world will rise against their iniquity." "don't take his money, then." "it ain't his money. it's my money. he's keeping back my money. when that john best drops out, as he ought to do, for he's long past his work, will he get ten shillings a week? two pound, more like; and all because he cringes and lies and lets the powers of darkness trample on him! and may the money turn to poison in his mouth when he does get it." "everything about ironsyde is poison," added abel. "and that girl that was a friend to me--he's poisoned her now, and i won't know her no more. i won't neighbour with anybody that has a good word for him, and i won't breathe the same air with him much longer; and i told my mother if she took a penny from him, i'd throw her over, too." "quite right. i wish you was strong enough to punish him; but if you was, he'd come whining to you and pray you not to. men like him only make war on women and the weak." abel listened. "i'll punish him if he lives long enough," he said. "that's what i'm after. i'll bide my time." "and for him to dare to get up and ask the people to send him to parliament. but they won't. he's too well known in these parts for that. who's he that he should be lifted up to represent honest, god-fearing men?" "if there was anything to stop him getting in, i'd do it," declared abel. "'tis for us, with weight of years and experience, to keep him out. all sensible people will vote against him, and the more that know the truth of him the fewer will support him. and republican though i am, i'd rather vote for the tory than him. and as for you, if you stood up at his meetings when the time comes, while they were all cheering the wretch, and cried out that you was his son--that would be sure to lose him a good few god-fearing votes. you think of it; you might hinder him and even work him a mint of harm that way." the old man left abel to consider his advice and the angler sat watching his float for another hour. but his thoughts were on what he had heard; and he felt no more interest in his sport. presently he wound up his line and went home. he was attracted by levi's suggestion and guessed that he might create great feeling against his father in that way. himself, he did not shrink from the ordeal in imagination; indeed his inherent vanity rather courted it. but when he told his mother what he might do, she urged him to attempt no such thing. indeed she criticised him sharply for such a foolish thought. "you'll lose all sympathy from the people," she said, "and be flung out; and none will care twopence for you. when you tried to burn the place down and he forgave you, that made a feeling for him, and since then 'tis well known by those that matter, that he's done all he could for you under the circumstances." "that's what he hasn't." "that's what he would if you'd let him. so it's silly to think you've got any more grievances, and if you get up and make a row at one of his meetings, you'll only be chucked into the street. you're nobody now, through your own fault, and you've made people sorry for your father instead of sorry for you, because you're such a pig-headed fool about him and won't see sense." the boy flushed and glared at his mother, who seldom spoke in this vein. "if you wasn't my mother, i'd hit you down for that," he said, clenching his fists. "what do you know about things to talk to me like that? who are you to take his side and cringe to him? if you can't judge him, there's plenty that can, and it's you who are pig-headed, not me, because you don't see i'm fighting your battle for you. it may seem too late to fight for you; but it's never too late to hate a wicked beast, and if i can help to keep him from getting what he wants i will, and i don't care how i do it, either." she looked at him with little love in her eyes. "you're only being a scourge to me--not to him," she answered. "you can't hurt him, however much you want to, and you can't hurt his name or reputation, because time heals all and he's done much to others that will make them forget what he did to me. i forget myself sometimes, so 'tis certain enough the people do. and if i can, surely to god you can, if only for my sake. you're punishing me for being your mother, not him for being your father--just contrary to what you want." "that's all i get, then, for standing up for you against him, and keeping it before him and the people what he's done against you. didn't you tell me years and years ago i'd fight your battles some day? and now, when i'm got clever enough to set about it, you curse me." "i don't curse you, abel. but time is past for fighting battles. there's nothing to fight about now." "we're punishing him cruel by not taking his money; but there's more to do yet," he said. "and i'll do it if i can. and you mind that i'm fighting against him for your sake, and if you're grown too old and too tired to hate the man any more, i haven't. i can hate him for you as well as myself." "and the hate comes back on you," she said. "it's long past the time for all that. you've got plenty of brains and you know that this passion against him is only harming yourself. for god's sake drop it. you say you're a man now. then be a man and take man's views and look on ahead and think of your future life. far from helping me, you're only hindering me. we've come to a time when life's altered and the old life here is done. we're going to begin life together--you and me--and you're going to make our fortunes; but it's a mad lookout if you mean to put all your strength into hating them that have no hate for you. it will make you bitter and useless, and you'll grow up a sour, friendless creature, like levi baggs. what's he got out of all his hate and unkindness to the world?" abel considered. "he hates everybody," he said. "it's no use to hate everybody, because then everybody will hate you. i don't hate everybody. i only hate him." she argued, but knew that she had not changed her son. and then, when he was gone again, fearing that he might do what he threatened, she went to see estelle waldron. they met on the way to see each other, for estelle had heard from raymond that work was found for abel and, as next step in the plot, it was necessary for sabina to go to a small spinning mill in bridport herself. ironsyde's name was not to transpire. gladly enough the mother undertook her task. "he's out of hand," she said, "and away from home half his time. he roams about and listens to bad counsellors. he's worse than ever since he's idle. he's got another evil thought now, for his thoughts foul his reason, as well i know thoughts can." she told estelle what abel had declared he would do. "you'd best let mister ironsyde know," she said, "and he'll take steps according. if the boy can be kept out from any meeting it would be wisest. but i'm powerless. i've wearied my tongue begging and blaming and praying to him to use his sense; but it's beyond my power to make him understand. there's a devil in him and nobody can cast it out." "he won't speak to me now. poor abel--yes, it's something like a devil. i'll tell his father. we were very hopeful about the future until--but if he gets to work, it may sweeten him. he'll have good wages and meet nice people." "i wish it had been farther off." "so did i," answered estelle; "but his father wants him under his own eye and will put him into something better the moment he can. you won't mention this to abel, and he won't hear it there, because the workers don't know it; but raymond has a large interest in the mill really." "i'll not mention it. i'll go to-morrow, and the boy will know nothing save that i've got him a good job." "he can begin next month; and that will help him every way, i hope." so things fell out, and within a month abel was at work. he believed his mother solely responsible for this occupation. she had yet to find a home at bridport, so he came and went from bridetown. he was soon deeply interested and only talked about his labours with a steam engine. of his troubles he ceased to speak, and for many days never mentioned his father's name. chapter xx ideals an event which seemed more or less remote, came suddenly to the forefront of raymond ironsyde's life, for ill-health hastened the retirement of the sitting member and a parliamentary bye-election was called for. having undertaken the constituency he could not turn back, though the sudden demand had not been expected. but he found plenty of enthusiastic helpers and his own personality had made him many friends. it was indeed upon the significance of personality that much turned, and incidentally the experiences into which he now entered served to show him all that personality may mean. estelle rejoiced that he should now so swiftly learn what had so long been apparent to her. she always declared an enthusiasm for personality; to her it seemed the force behind everything and the mainspring of all movement. lack of personality meant stagnation; but granted personality, then advance was possible--almost inevitable. he caught her meaning and appreciated what followed from it. but he saw that personality demands freedom before its fullest expression and highest altitude are attainable. that altitude had never been reached as yet even by the most liberty-loving people. "there's no record in all the world of what man might do under conditions of real liberty," said estelle. "it has never been possible so far; but i do believe history shows that the nearer we approach to it, the more beautiful life becomes for everybody." raymond admitted so much and agreed that the world had yet to learn what it might achieve under a nobler dispensation of freedom. "think of the art, the thought, the leisure for good things, if the ceaseless fight against bad things were only ended; think of the inspirations that personality will be free to express some day," she said. but he shattered her dreams sometimes. she would never suffer him to declare any advance impossible; yet she had to listen, when he explained that countless things she cried for were impracticable under existing circumstances. "you want to get to the goal without running the race, sweetheart," he told her once. "before this and this can possibly happen, that and that must happen. house-building begins at the cellars, not the roof." she wrestled with political economy and its bearings on all that was meant by democracy. she was patient and strove to master detail and keep within the domain of reality. but, after all, she taught him more than he could teach her; because her thoughts sprung from an imagination touched with genius, while he was contented to take things as he found them and distrust emotion and intuition. she exploded ideas in the ordered chambers of his mind. the proposition that labour was not a commodity quite took him off his balance. yet he proved too logical to deny it when estelle convinced his reason. "that fact belongs to the root of all the future, i believe," she said. "from it all the flowers and seed we hope for ought to come, and the interpretation of everything vital. labour and the labourer aren't two different things; they're one and the same thing. his labour is part of every man, and it can no more be measured and calculated away from him than his body and soul can. but it is the body and soul that must regulate labour, not labour the body and soul. so you've got to regard labour and the rights of labour as part of the rights of man, and not a thing to be bought and sold like a pound of tea. you see that? labour, in fact, is as sacred as humanity and its rights are sacred too." "so are the rights of property," he answered, but doubtfully, for he knew at heart that the one proposition did not by any means embrace the other. indeed estelle contradicted him very forcibly. "not the least bit in the world," she declared. "they are as far apart as the poles. there's nothing the least sacred about property. the rights of property are casual. they generally depend on all sorts of things that don't matter. they happen through the changes and chances of life, and human whims and fads and the pure accident of heredity and descent. they are all on a lower level; they are all suspect, whereas the rights of labour are a part of humanity." but he followed her parry with a sharp _riposte_. "remember what happened when somebody promised to marry me," he said. "remember that, as a principle of rectitude, i have recognised my son and accepted your very 'accident of descent' as chief reason for according him all a first-born's rights. that was your instinct towards right--his rights of property." "it was righteousness, not rights of property that made you decide," she assured him. "abel has no rights of property. the law ignores his rights to be alive at all, i believe. the law calls him 'the son of none,' and if you have no parents, you can't really exist. but the rights of labour are above human law and founded in humanity. they are abel's, yours, everybody's. the man who works, by that fact commands the rights of labour. besides, circumstances alter cases." "yes, and may again," he replied. "we can't deny the difficulties in this personal experience of mine. but i'm beginning to think the boy's not normal. i very much fear there's a screw loose." "don't think that. he's a very clever boy." "and yet sabina tells me frankly that his bitterness against me keeps pace with his growing intelligence. instead of his wits defeating his bad temper, as they do sooner or later with most sane people, the older he gets, the more his dislike increases and the less trouble he takes to control it." "if that were so, of course circumstances might alter the case again," she admitted. "but i don't believe there's a weak spot like that. there's something retarded--some confusion of thought, some kind of knot in his mind that isn't smoothed out yet. you've been infinitely patient and we'll go on being infinitely patient--together." this difficult matter she dropped for the present; but finding him some days later in a recipient mood, followed up her cherished argument, that labour must be counted a commodity no more. "listen to me, ray," she said. "very soon you'll be too busy to listen to me at all--these are the last chances for me before your meetings begin. but really what i'm saying will be splendidly useful in speeches." "all very well if getting in was all that mattered," he told her. "i can't echo all your ideas, chicky, and speeches have a way of rising up against one at awkward moments afterwards." "at any rate, you grant the main point," she said, "and so you must grant what follows from it; and if you grant that, and put it in your manifesto, you'll lose a few votes, but you'll gain hundreds. if labour's not a commodity, but to be regulated by body and soul, then wages must be regulated by body and soul too. or, if you want to put it in a way for a crowd to understand, you can say that we give even a steam-engine the oil it must have before it begins to work, so how can we deny a man the oil he wants before he begins to work?" "that means a minimum of wages." "yes, a minimum consistent with human needs, below which wages cannot and must not fail. that minimum should be just as much taken for granted as the air a man breathes, or the water he drinks, or the free education he gets as a boy. it isn't wages really; it's recognition of a man's right to live and share the privileges of life, and be self-respecting, just because he is a man. everybody who is born, ray, ought to have the unquestioned right to live, and the amplest opportunity to become a good and useful citizen. after that is granted, then wages should begin, and each man, or woman, should have full freedom and opportunity to earn what he, or she, was worth. that does away with the absurd idea of equality, which can only be created artificially and would breed disaster if we did create it." "there's no such thing as equality in human nature, any more than in any other nature, estelle. seeds from the same pod are different--some weak, some strong. but i grant the main petition. the idea's first rate--a firm basis of right to reasonable life, and security for every human being as our low-water mark; while, on that foundation, each may lift an edifice according to their power. so that none who has the power to rise above the minimum would be prevented from doing so, and no trades union tyranny should interfere to prevent the strong man working eight hours a day if he desires to do so, because the weaker one can only work seven." "i think the trades unions only want to prevent men being handicapped out of the race at the start," she answered. "they know as well as we do, that men are not born equal in mind or body; but rightly and reasonably, they want them all to start equal as far as conditions go. the race is to the strong and the prize is to the strong; but all, at least, should have power to train for the race and start with equal opportunities to win. there's such a lot to be done." "there is," he admitted. "the handicap you talk of is created for thousands and thousands before they are born at all." "think of being handicapped out of the race before you are born!" she cried. "what could be more unjust and cruel and wicked than that?" "very few will put the unborn before the living, or think of a potential child rather than the desires of the parents--selfish though they may be. it's a free country, and we don't know enough to start stopping people from having a hand in the next generation if they decide to do so." but her enthusiasm was not quenched by difficulties. "we want science and politics and good will to work together," she said. he returned to the smaller argument. "it's a far cry to what you want, yet i for one don't shrink from it. the better a man is, the larger share he should have of the profits of any enterprise he helps to advance. then wages would take the shape of his share in the profits, and you might easily find a head workman of genius drawing more out of a business than--say, a junior partner, who is a fool and not nearly so vital to the enterprise as he. but, you see, if we say that, we argue in a circle, for the junior partner, ass though he is, represents oil and fuel, which are just as important as the clever workman's brains--in fact, his brains can't work without them. capital and labour are two halves of a whole and depend upon each other, as much as men depend on women and women on men. capital does a great deal more than pay labour wages, remember. it educates his children, builds his houses and doctors his ailments. soon--so they tell me--capital will be appropriated to look after labour's old age also, and cheer his manhood with the knowledge that his age is safe." "you don't grudge any of these things, ray?" "not one. every man should have security. but, after all, capital cannot be denied its rights. it has got rights of some sort, surely? socialists would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs; but though they lack power yet to kill the goose, they possess plenty of power to frighten it away to foreign shores, where it can build its nest a bit more hopefully than here. many, who scent repudiation and appropriation, are flying already. capital is diminishing, and there seems a fair chance of labour being over-coddled, at the expense of capital, when the liberals come in again. if that happens, labour is weakened as well as capital. but both are essential to the power and well-being of the state. if we ever had another war, which god forbid, labour and capital would have to sink all differences and go to battle together unless we meant to be defeated. both are vital to our salvation." "then give labour an interest in the blessing of capital," she said. "open labour's eyes to the vital values of capital--its strength as well as weakness. let the units of labour share the interests of their employers and each become a capitalist in their own right. what does it matter where the capital is as long as the nation has got it safe? you might make england a thousand times richer if all those in the country, who want to save money, had the power to save." "how can we? there's not enough to go round," he told her. but she declared that no argument. "then create conditions under which there might be much more. let the workers be owners, too. if the owners only took their ownership in a different spirit and felt no man is more than a trustee for all--if they were like you, ray, who are a worker and an owner both, what great things might happen! make all industry co-operation, in reality as well as theory, and a real democracy must come out of it. it's bound to come." "well, i suppose nothing can help it coming. we are great on free institutions in this country and they get freer every year." so they argued, much at one in heart, and an impartial listener had felt that it was within the power of the woman's intelligence and the man's energy and common sense, to help the world as far as individuals can, did chance and the outcome of their union afford them opportunity. but estelle knew that good ideas were of little value in themselves. seed is of no account if the earth on which it falls be poisoned, and a good idea above all, needs good will to welcome it. good will to the inspirations of man is as sunshine, rain, sweet soil to the seed; without good will all thinking must perish, or at best lie dormant. she wondered how much of good seed had perished under the bad weather of human weakness, prejudice and jealousy. but she was young, and hope her rightful heritage. the blessed word 'reconstruction' seemed to her as musical as a ring of bells. "there are some things you never will be able to express in political terms, and life is one of them," ernest churchouse had assured her; but she was not convinced of it. she still reverenced politics and looked to it to play husbandman, triumph over party and presently shine out, like a universal sun, whose sole warmth was good will to man. and as she felt personally to raymond's work, so did she want the world of women to feel to all men's work. she would not have them claim their rights in the argument of parity of intellect, for that she felt to be vain. it was by the virtue of disparity that their equality should appear. their virtue and essential aid depended on the difference. the world wanted women, not to do what men had done, but to bring to the task the special qualities and distinctive genius of womanhood to complement and crown the labour of manhood. the mighty structure was growing; but it would never be finished without the saving grace of woman's thought and the touch of woman's hand. the world's work needed them--not for the qualities they shared with men, but for the qualities men lacked and they possessed. if raymond represented the masculine worker, she hoped that she might presently stand in the ranks of the women, and doubted not that great women would arise to lead her. she remembered that the roman element of humanity was described as representing the male spirit, while the greek stood for the female; and she could easily dream a blend of the two destined to produce a spirit greater than either. love quickened her visions and added the glow of life to her hopes. so together she and her future husband prepared for their wedded days, and if ever a man and woman faced the future with steadfast determination to do justly and serve their kind with the best of their united powers, this man and woman did. they were to be married after the election, and that would take place early in the coming year. chapter xxi atropos ironsyde for once found himself part of a machine, and by no means the most important part. he fought the election resolutely and spared no energy. the attraction of the contest grew upon him, and since he contended against a personal acquaintance, one who rated sportsmanship as highly as arthur waldron himself, the encounter proceeded on rational lines. it became exceedingly strenuous in the later stages and raymond's agent, from an attitude of certainty, grew more doubtful. but the personal factor told for the liberal. he was popular in the constituency and waldron, himself a strong conservative, whose vote must necessarily be cast against his future son-in-law, preached the moral. "if you beat us, ray, it will be entirely owing to the fact that you played cricket and football in the public eye for twenty years," he asserted and believed. the liberal committee room was at 'the seven stars,' for mr. legg supported the cause of democracy and pinned his highest hopes thereto. he worked hard for ironsyde and, on the sole occasion when painful incidents threatened to spoil a public meeting, job exercised tact and saved the situation. at one of the last of his gatherings, in the great, new public room of 'the seven stars,' ironsyde had been suddenly confronted with his son. abel attended this meeting of his father's supporters and attempted to interrupt it. he had arrived primed with words and meant to declare himself before the people; but when the time came, he was nervous and lost his head. sitting and listening grew to an agony. he could not wait till question time and felt a force within him crying to him, to get upon his feet and finish the thing he had planned to do. but job, who was among the stewards, kept watchful eyes upon the benches, and abel had hardly stood up, when he recognised him. before the boy had shouted half a dozen incoherent words, mr. legg and a policeman were at his side. he sat far down the hall and the little disturbance he had been able to create was hardly appreciated. for raymond now neared the end of his speech and it had contained matter which aroused attention from all who listened to it, awakened disquiet in some, but enthusiasm among the greater number. he was telling of such hopes and desires as he and estelle shared, and though an indifferent speaker, the purity of his ambitions and their far-reaching significance challenged intelligent listeners. in less than half a minute abel was removed. he did not struggle, but his first instinct was great relief to be outside. not until later did his reverse breed wrath. his father had not seen him and when ironsyde inquired afterwards, what the trouble was, mr. legg evaded the facts. but he looked to it that abel should be powerless to renew disturbances. he warned those who controlled the remaining meetings not to admit him, and henceforth kept at the doors a man who knew abel. mr. legg also saw sabina, who was now much in bridport concerned with a little house that she had taken, and the boy's mother implored him to do no more evil. to her surprise he admitted that he had been wrong. but he was dark and stormy. she saw but little of him and did not know how he occupied his leisure, or spent his wages. there is no doubt that, at this time, abel sank out of mind with those most interested in him. estelle was entirely preoccupied with the election, and when once the lad's new work had been determined and he went to do it, raymond dismissed him for the present from his thoughts. he felt grateful to sabina for falling in with his wishes and hoped that, since she was now definitely on his side, a time might soon come when she would be able to influence her son. indeed sabina herself was more hopeful, and when estelle came to see her in bridport, declared that abel kept regular hours and appeared to be interested in his work. neither she nor anybody belonging to him heard of the boy's escapade at the meeting, for upon that subject job legg felt it wisest to be silent. and when the penultimate meeting passed, the spirit of it was such that those best able to judge again felt very sanguine for ironsyde. he had created a good impression and won a wide measure of support. he had worked hard, traversed all the ground and left the people under no shadow of doubt as to his opinions. bridetown was for him; west haven and bridport were said to be largely in his favour, but the outlying agricultural district inclined towards his rival. raymond had, however, been at great pains to win the suffrage of the farmers, and his last meeting was on their account. before him now lay the promise of two days' rest, and he accepted them very thankfully, for he began to grow weary in mind and body. he had poured his vitality into the struggle which, started more or less as a sporting event, gradually waxed into a serious and all-important matter. and as his knowledge increased and his physical energy waned, a cloud dulled his enthusiasm at times and more than once he asked himself if it was all worth while--if this infinite trouble and high tension were expended to the wisest purpose on these ambitions. he had heard things from politicians, who came to speak for him, that discouraged him. he had found that single-mindedness was not the dominant quality of those who followed politics as a profession. the loaves and fishes bulked largely in their calculations, and he heard a distinguished man say things at one of his meetings which raymond knew that it was impossible he could believe. for example, it was clearly a popular catchword that party politics had become archaic, and that a time was near when party would be forgotten in a larger and nobler spirit. speakers openly declared that great changes were in sight, and the constitution must be modified; but, privately, they professed no such opinions. all looked to their party and their party alone for personal advance. it seemed to ironsyde that their spirits were mean spirits; that they concealed behind their profession a practice of shrewd calculation and a policy of cynical self-advance. the talk behind the scenes was not of national welfare, but individual success, or failure. the men who talked the loudest on the platform of altruism and the greatest good to the greatest number, were most alive in private conversation to the wire-pulling and intrigue which proceeded unseen; and it was in the machinery they found their prime interest and excitement, rather than in the great operations the machine was ostensibly created to achieve. the whole business on their lips in private appeared to have no more real significance than a county cricket match, or any other game. thanks largely to the woman he was to wed, ironsyde took now a statesman-like rather than a political view as far as his inexperience could do so. he had no axe to grind, and from the standpoint of his ignorance, progress looked easy and demanded no more than that good will of which estelle so often spoke. but in practice he began to perceive the gulf between ideal legislation and practical politics and, in moments of physical depression, as the election approached, his heart failed him. he grew despondent at night. then, after refreshing sleep, the spirit of hope reawakened. he felt very certain now that he was going to get in; and still with morning light he hailed the victory; while, after a heavy day, he doubted of its fruits and mistrusted himself. his powers seemed puny contrasted with the gigantic difficulties that the machine set up between a private member and any effective or independent activity in the house. he was cast down as he rode home after his last meeting but one, and his reflections were again most deeply tinged with doubt as to the value of these heroic exertions. looked at here, in winter moonlight under a sky of stars, this fevered strife seemed vain, and the particular ambition to which he had devoted such tremendous application appeared thin and doubtful--almost unworthy. he traversed the enterprise, dwelt on outstanding features of it and comforted himself, as often he had done of late, by reflecting that estelle would be at his right hand. if, after practical experience and fair trial, he found himself powerless to serve their common interests, or advance their ideals, then he could leave the field of parliament and seek elsewhere for a hearing. his ingenuous hope was to interest his leaders; for he believed that many who possessed power, thought and felt as he did. he had grown placid by the time he left south street and turned into the road for home. the night was keen and frosty. it braced him and he began to feel cheerful and hungry for the supper that waited him at north hill. then, where the road forked from bridetown and an arm left it for west haven, at a point two hundred yards from outlying farm-houses, a young, slight figure leapt from the hedge, stood firmly in the road and stopped raymond's horse. the moonlight was clear and showed ironsyde his son. abel leapt at the bridle rein, and when the rider bade him loose it, he lifted a revolver and fired twice pointblank. ten minutes later, on their way back from the meeting and full of politics, there drove that way john best, nicholas roberts and a bridetown farmer. they found a man on his back in the middle of the road and a horse standing quietly beside him. none doubted but that raymond ironsyde was dead, yet it was not possible for them to be sure. they lifted him into the farmer's cart therefore, and while best and roberts returned with him to bridport hospital, the farmer mounted ironsyde's horse and galloped to north hill with his news. arthur waldron was from home, but estelle left the house as quickly as a motor car could be made ready, and in a quarter of an hour stood at raymond's side. he was dead and had, indeed, died instantly when fired upon. he had been shot through the lung and heart, and must have perished before he fell from his horse to the ground. they knew estelle at the hospital and left her with raymond for a little while. he looked ten years younger than when she had seen him last. all care was gone and an expression of content rested upon his beautiful face. the doctor feared to leave her, judging of the shock; but when he returned she was calm and controlled. she sat by the dead man and held his hand. "a little longer," she said, and he went out again. chapter xxii the hiding-place no doubt existed as to the murderer of raymond ironsyde, for on the night of his death, abel dinnett did not return home. he had left work at the usual time, but had not taken his bicycle; and from that day he was seen no more. it appeared impossible that he could evade the hue and cry, but twenty-four hours passed and there came no report of his capture. little mystery marked the matter, save that of abel's disappearance. his animosity towards his father was known and it had culminated thus. none imagined that capture would be long delayed; but forty-eight hours passed and still there came no news of him. estelle waldron fled from all thought of him at first; then she reflected upon him--driven to do so by a conviction concerning him that commanded action from her. on the day after the coroner's inquest, for the first time she sought sabina. the meeting was of an affecting character, for each very fully realised the situation from the standpoint of the other. sabina was the more distressed, yet she entertained definite convictions and declared herself positive concerning certain facts. estelle questioned her conclusions and, indeed, refused to believe them. "i hope you'll understand my coming, sabina," she said. she was clad, as usual, in a grey harris tweed, and the elder wondered why she did not wear black. estelle's face was haggard and worn, with much suffering. but it seemed that the last dregs of her own cup were not yet drunk, for an excruciating problem faced her. there was none to help her solve it, yet she took it to sabina. "i thought you'd come, sooner or later. this is a thing beyond any human power to make better. god knows i mourn for you far more than i mourn for myself. i don't mourn for myself. long ago i saw that the living can't be happy, though the dead may be. the dead may be--we'll hope it for them." "it's death to me as well as to him," said estelle simply. "as far as i'm concerned, i feel that i'm dead from now and shall live on as somebody different--somebody i don't know yet. all that we were and had and hoped--everything is gone with him. the future was to be spent in trying to do good things. we shared the same ideas about it. but that's all over. i'm left--single-handed, sabina." "yes, i know how you feel." "i can't bear to think of it yet. i didn't come to talk about him, or myself. i came to talk about abel." "i can't tell you anything about him." "i know you know nothing. i think i know more than you do." "know more of him than i do?" asked the mother. there was almost a flash of jealousy in her voice. but it faded and she sighed. "no, no. you needn't fret for him. they may find him, or they may not; but they'll not find him alive." estelle started. she believed most steadfastly that abel was alive, and felt very certain that she knew his hiding-place. "why do you think that?" she asked. "you might hope it; but why do you think it? have you any good reason for thinking it?" "there are some things you know," answered the mother. "you know them without being told and without any reason. you neither hope nor fear--you know. i might ask you how you know where he is. but i don't want to ask you. i've taken my good-bye of him, poor, wasted life. how had god got the heart to let him live for this? people will say it was fitting, and happened by the plan of his maker. no man's child--not even god's. it's all hidden, all dark to me. it's worked itself out to the bitter end. men would have been too kind to work it out like this. only god could. i can't say much to you. i'm very sorry for you. you were caught up into the thing and didn't know, or guess, what you were thrusting yourself into. but now it's your turn, and you'll have to wait long years, as i did, before you can look at life again without passion or sorrow." "it doesn't matter about me. but, if you feel abel is dead, i feel just as strongly that he is alive, and that this isn't the end of him." sabina considered. "i know him better than you, and i know providence better than you do," she answered. "it's like the wonder you are--to think on him without hate. but you're wasting your time and showing pity for nothing. he's beyond pity. why, i don't pity him--his mother." "i'm only doing what raymond tried to do so often and failed--what he would have me do now if he'd lived. and if i know something that nobody else does, i must use that knowledge. i'm sorry i do know, sabina, but i do." "you waste your time, i expect. if the hunt that's going on doesn't find him, how shall you do it? he's at the bottom of the sea, i hope." they parted and the same night estelle set out to satisfy her will. she told nobody of her purpose, for she knew that her father would not have allowed her to pursue it. waldron was utterly crushed by the death of his friend and could not as yet realise the loss. nor did estelle realise it, save in fitful and fleeting agonies. as yet the full significance of the event was by no means weighed by her. it meant far more than she could measure and receive and accept in so brief a space of time. seen from the standpoint of this death, every plan of her life, every undertaking for the future, was dislocated. she left that complete ruin for the present. there was no hurry to restore, or set about rebuilding the fabric of her future. she would have all her life to do it in. the thought of abel came as a demand to her justice. her knowledge, amounting to a conviction, required action. the nature of the action she did not know, but something urged her to reach him if she could. for she believed him mad. great torture of spirit had overtaken her under her loss; but upon this extreme grief, ugly and incessant, obtruded the thought of abel, the secret of his present refuge and the impulse to approach him. her personal suffering established rather than shook her own high standards. she had promised the boy never to tell anybody of the haunt he had shown her under the roof in the old store at west haven; and if most women might now have forgotten such a promise, estelle did not. but she very strenuously argued against the spiritual impulse to seek him, for every physical instinct rose against doing so. to do this was surely not required of her, for whereunto would it lead? what must be the result of any such meeting? it might be dreadful; it could not fail to be futile. yet all mental effort to escape the task proved vain. her very grief edged her old, austere, chivalrous acceptance of duty. she felt that justice called her to this ordeal, and she went--with no fixed purpose save to see him and urge him to surrender himself for his own peace if he could understand. no personal fear touched her reflections. she might have welcomed fear in these unspeakable moments of her life, for she was little enamoured of living after raymond ironsyde died. the thought of death for herself had not been distasteful at that time. she went fearlessly, when all slept and her going and coming would not be observed. she left her home at a moonless midnight, took candle and matches, dressed in her stoutest clothes and walked over north hill towards bridport. but at the eastern shoulder of the downs she descended through a field and struck the road again just at the fork where raymond had perished. then she struck into the west haven way and soon slipped under the black mass of the old store. the night was cloudy and still. no wind blew and the sigh of the sea beneath the shelving beaches close at hand, had sunk to a murmur. west haven lay lost in darkness. the old store had been searched, as many other empty buildings, for the fugitive; but he was not specially associated with this place, save in the mind of estelle. the police had hunted it carefully, no more, and she guessed that his eerie under the roof, only reached by a somewhat perilous climb through a broken window, would not be discovered. she remembered also that there were some students of raymond's murder who did not associate abel with it. such held that only accident and coincidence had made him run away on the night of ironsyde's end. they argued that in these cases the obvious always proved erroneous, and the theory most transparently rational seldom led the way to the truth. but she had never doubted about that. it seemed already a commonplace of knowledge, a lifetime old, that abel had destroyed his father, and that he must be insane to have ruined his own life in this manner. she ascended cautiously through the darkness, reached a gap--once a window--from which her ascent must be made, and listened for a few moments to hear if anything stirred above her. it seemed as though the old store was full of noises, for the fingers of decay never cease from picking and, in the silence of night, one can best hear their stealthy activities. little falls of fragments sounded loudly, even echoed, in this great silence. there was almost a perpetual rustle and whisper; and once a thud and skurry, when a rat displaced a piece of mortar which fell from the rotting plaster. dark though the heaven was and black the outer night, it had the quality that air never loses and she saw the sky as possessed of illumination in contrast with its setting of the broken window. within all was blankly black; from above there came no sound. she climbed to the window ledge, felt for the nails that abel had hammered in to hold his feet and soon ascended through a large gap under the eaves of the store. some shock had thrown out a piece of brickwork here. seen from the ground the aperture looked trifling and had indeed challenged no attention; but it was large enough to admit a man. for a moment estelle stood in this aperture before entering the den within. she raised her voice, which fluttered after her climb, and called to him. "abel! abel! it's estelle." there came the thought, even as she spoke, that he might answer with a bullet; but he answered not at all. she felt thankful for the silence and hoped that he might have deserted his retreat. perhaps, indeed, he had never come to it; and yet it seemed impossible that he had for two days escaped capture unless here concealed. it occurred to her that he might wander out by night and return before day. he might even now be behind her, to intercept her return. still no shadow of fear shook her mind or body. she felt not a tremor. all that concerned her conscience was now completed and she hoped that it would be possible to dismiss from her thoughts the fellow creature who had destroyed her joy of life and worked evil so far reaching. she could leave him now to his destiny and feel under no compulsion to relate the incidents of her nocturnal search. had he been there, she would have risked the meeting, urged him to surrender and then left him if he allowed her to do so. she would never have given him up, or broken her promise to keep his secret. but the chamber under the roof was large and she did not leave it without making sure that he was neither hiding nor sleeping within it. she entered, lighted her candle and examined a triangular recess formed by the converging beams of the roof above her and the joists under her feet. the boy had been busy here. there were evidences of him--evidences of a child rather than a man. boyish forethought stared her in the face and staggered her by its ghastly incongruities with the things this premeditating youth had done. here were provisions, not such as a man would have selected to stand a siege, but the taste of a schoolboy. she looked at the supplies spread here--tins of preserved food, packets of chocolate, bottles of ginger beer, bananas, biscuits. but it seemed that the hoard had not been touched. one tin of potted salmon had been opened, but no part of the contents was consumed. either accident had changed his purpose and frightened him elsewhere at the last moment, or the energies and activities that had gone to pile this accumulation were all spent in the process and now he did not need them. then she looked further, to the extremity of the den he had made, and there, lying comfortably on a pile of shavings, estelle found him. she guessed that the storm and stress of his crime had exhausted him and thrown him into heaviest possible physical slumber after great mental tribulation. she shuddered as she looked down on him and a revulsion, a loathing tempted her to creep away again before he awakened. she did not think of him as a patricide, nor did her own loss entirely inspire the emotion; she never associated him with that, but kept him outside it, as she would have kept some insensible or inanimate object had such been responsible for ironsyde's end. it was the sudden thought of all raymond's death might mean--not to her but the world--that turned her heart to stone for a fearful second as she looked down upon the unconscious figure. her own sorrow was sealed at its fountains for the time. but her sorrow for the world could not be sealed. and then came the thought that the insensible boy at her feet, escaping for a little while through sleep's primeval sanctity, was part of the robbed world also. who had lost more than he by his unreason? if her heart did not melt then, it grew softer. but there was more to learn before she left him and the truth can be recorded. abel had killed his father and hastened to his lair exultant. he had provided for what should follow and vaguely hoped that presently, before his stores were spent, the way would be clearer for escape. he assured himself safe from discovery and guessed that when a fortnight was passed, he might safely creep out, reach a port, find work in a ship and turn his back upon england for ever. that was his general plan before the deed. afterwards all changed for him. he then found himself a being racked and over-mastered by new sensations. the desirable thing that he had done changed its features, even as death changes the features of life; the ideal, so noble and seemly before, when attained assumed such a shape as, in one of abel's heredity, it was bound to assume. not at once did the change appear, but as a cloud no bigger than a man's hand in the clear, triumphant sky of his achievement. even so an apple, that once he had stolen and hidden, was bruised unknown to him and thus contained the seed of death, that made it rot before it was ripe. the decay spread and the fruit turned to filth before he could win any enjoyment from it. he shook off the beginnings of doubt impatiently. he retraced his grievances and dwelt on the glory of his revenge as he reached his secret place after the crime. but the stain darkened in the heart of his mind; and before dawn crept through cracks in the roof above his lair, dissolution had begun. through the hours of that first day he lay there with his thoughts for company and a process, deepening, as dusk deepened, into remorse began to horrify him. he fought with all his might against it. he resented it with indignation. his gorge rose against it; he would have strangled it, had it been a ponderable thing within his power to destroy; but as time passed he began to know it was stronger than he. it gripped his spirit with unconquerable fingers and slowly stifled him. time crept on interminable. when the second night came, he was faint and turned to his food. he struggled with himself and opened a tin of salmon. but he could not eat. he believed that he would never eat again. he slept for an hour, then woke from terrifying dreams. his mind wandered and he longed to be gone and tear off his clothes and dip into the sea. at dawn of the second day men were hunting the old stores, from its cellars to the attics below him. he heard them speaking under his feet and listened to two men who cursed him. they speculated whether he was too young to hang and hoped he might not be. yet he could take pride in their failure to find him. there was, as he remembered, only one person in the world who knew of his eerie; but terror did not accompany this recollection. his exultation at the defeat of the searchers soon vanished, and he found himself indifferent to the thought that estelle might remember. he knew that his plans could not be fulfilled now: it was impossible for him to live a fortnight here. and then he began stealthily, fearfully, to doubt of life itself. it had changed in its aspect and invitation. its promises were dead. it could hold nothing for him as he had been told by levi baggs. the emotions now threatening his mind were such that he believed no length of days would ever dim them; from what he suffered now, it seemed that time's self could promise no escape. life would be hell and not worth living. at this point in his struggles his mind failed him and became disordered. it worked fitfully, and its processes were broken with blanks and breaks. chaos marked his mental steps from this point; his feet were caught and he fell down and down, yet tried hard for a while to stay his fall. his consciousness began to decide, while his natural instincts struggled against the decision. not one, but rival spirits tore him. reason formed no part in the encounter; no arbiter arose between the conflicting forces, between a gathering will to die and escape further torment, and the brute will to live, that must belong to every young creature, happy or wretched. the trial was long drawn out; but it had ended some hours before estelle stood beside him. she considered whether she should waken abel and determined that she must do so, since to speak with him, if possible, she held her duty now. he was safe if he wished to be, for she would never tell his secret. so she bent down with her light--to find him dead. he had shot himself through the right temple after sunset time of the second day. estelle stood and looked at him for a little while, then climbed back to earth and went away through the darkness to tell his mother that she was right. the end the human boy and the war by eden phillpotts in this book of stories mr. phillpotts uses his genial gift of characterization to picture the effect of the european war on the impressionable minds of boys--english school-boys far away from anything but the mysterious echo of the strange terrors and blood-stirring heroisms of battle, who live close only to the martial invitation of a recruiting station. there are stories of a boy who runs away to go to the front, teachers who go--perhaps without running; the school's contest for a prize poem about the war, and snow battles, fiercely belligerent, mimicking the strategies of flanders and the champagne. they are deeply moving sketches revealing the heart and mind of english youth in war-time. "the book is extraordinary in the skill with which it gets into that world of the boy so shut away from the adult world. it is entirely unlike anything else by phillpotts, equal as it is to his other volumes in charm, character study, humor and interest. it is one of those books that every reader will want to recommend to his friends, and which he will only lend with the express proviso that it must be returned."--_new york times_. "in this book mr. phillpotts pictures a boy, a real human boy. the boy's way of thinking, his outlook upon life, his ambitions, his ideals, his moods, his peculiarities, these are all here touched with a kindly sympathy and humor."--_new york sun_. "mr. phillpotts writes from a real knowledge of the schoolboy's habit of thought. he writes with much humor and the result is as delightful and entertaining a volume as has come from his pen for some time."--_buffalo evening news_. chronicles of st. tid by eden phillpotts "the gifts of the short-story writer are wholly mr. phillpotts'. here, as elsewhere in his works, we have the place painted with the pen of an artist, and the person depicted with the skill of the writer who is inspired by all types of humanity."--_boston evening transcript_. "no one rivals phillpotts in this peculiar domain of presenting an ancient landscape, with its homes and their inmates as survivals of a past century. there is nothing vague about his characters. they are undeniable personalities, and are possessed of a psychology all their own."--_the chicago tribune_. the banks of colne by eden phillpotts "absorbing, written with sure power and a constant flow of humor.... has the warm human glow of sympathy and understanding, and it is written with real mastery."--_new york times_. "a tale of absorbing interest from its start to the altogether unusual and dramatic climax with which it closes."--_philadelphia public ledger_. "stands in the foremost rank of current fiction."--_new york tribune_. "his acute faculties of sympathetic observation, his felicitous skill in characterization, and his power to present the life of a community in all its multiple aspects are here combined in the most mature and absorbing novel of his entire career."--_philadelphia press_. the green alleys by eden phillpotts "as long as we have such novels as _the green alleys_ and such novelists as mr. phillpotts, we need have no fears for the future of english fiction. mr. phillpotts' latest novel is a representative example of him at his best, of his skill as a literary creator and of his ability as an interpreter of life."--_boston transcript_. "a drama of fascinating interest, lightened by touches of delicious comedy ... one of the best of the many remarkable books from the pen of this clever author."--_boston globe_. brunel's tower by eden phillpotts the regeneration of a faulty character through association with dignified honest work and simple, sincere people is the theme which mr. phillpotts has chosen for this novel. the scene is largely laid in a pottery, where a lad, having escaped from a reform school, has sought shelter and work. under the influence of the gentle, kindly folk of the community he comes in a measure to realize himself. old delabole by eden phillpotts "besides being a good story, richly peopled, and brimful of human nature in its finer aspects, the book is seasoned with quiet humor and a deal of mellow wisdom."--_new york times_. the tides of barnegat by f. hopkinson smith contents i the doctor's gig ii spring blossoms iii little tod fogarty iv ann gossaway's red cloak v captain nat's decision vi a game of cards vii the eyes of an old portrait viii an arrival ix the spread of fire x a late visitor xi morton cobden's daughter xii a letter from paris xiii scootsy's epithet xiv high water at yardley xv a package of letters xvi the beginning of the ebb xvii breakers ahead xviii the swede's story xix the breaking of the dawn xx the undertow xxi the man in the slouch hat xxii the claw of the sea-puss the tides of barnegat chapter i the doctor's gig one lovely spring morning--and this story begins on a spring morning some fifty years or more ago--a joy of a morning that made one glad to be alive, when the radiant sunshine had turned the ribbon of a road that ran from warehold village to barnegat light and the sea to satin, the wide marshes to velvet, and the belts of stunted pines to bands of purple--on this spring morning, then, martha sands, the cobdens' nurse, was out with her dog meg. she had taken the little beast to the inner beach for a bath--a custom of hers when the weather was fine and the water not too cold--and was returning to warehold by way of the road, when, calling the dog to her side, she stopped to feast her eyes on the picture unrolled at her feet. to the left of where she stood curved the coast, glistening like a scimitar, and the strip of yellow beach which divided the narrow bay from the open sea; to the right, thrust out into the sheen of silver, lay the spit of sand narrowing the inlet, its edges scalloped with lace foam, its extreme point dominated by the grim tower of barnegat light; aloft, high into the blue, soared the gulls, flashing like jewels as they lifted their breasts to the sun, while away and beyond the sails of the fishing-boats, gray or silver in their shifting tacks, crawled over the wrinkled sea. the glory of the landscape fixed in her mind, martha gathered her shawl about her shoulders, tightened the strings of her white cap, smoothed out her apron, and with the remark to meg that he'd "never see nothin' so beautiful nor so restful," resumed her walk. they were inseparable, these two, and had been ever since the day she had picked him up outside the tavern, half starved and with a sore patch on his back where some kitchen-maid had scalded him. somehow the poor outcast brought home to her a sad page in her own history, when she herself was homeless and miserable, and no hand was stretched out to her. so she had coddled and fondled him, gaining his confidence day by day and talking to him by the hour of whatever was uppermost in her mind. few friendships presented stronger contrasts: she stout and motherly-looking--too stout for any waistline--with kindly blue eyes, smooth gray hair--gray, not white--her round, rosy face, framed in a cotton cap, aglow with the freshness of the morning--a comforting, coddling-up kind of woman of fifty, with a low, crooning voice, gentle fingers, and soft, restful hollows about her shoulders and bosom for the heads of tired babies; meg thin, rickety, and sneak-eyed, with a broken tail that hung at an angle, and but one ear (a black-and-tan had ruined the other)--a sandy-colored, rough-haired, good-for-nothing cur of multifarious lineage, who was either crouching at her feet or in full cry for some hole in a fence or rift in a wood-pile where he could flatten out and sulk in safety. martha continued her talk to meg. while she had been studying the landscape he had taken the opportunity to wallow in whatever came first, and his wet hair was bristling with sand and matted with burrs. "come here, meg--you measly rascal!" she cried, stamping her foot. "come here, i tell ye!" the dog crouched close to the ground, waited until martha was near enough to lay her hand upon him, and then, with a backward spring, darted under a bush in full blossom. "look at ye now!" she shouted in a commanding tone. "'tain't no use o' my washin' ye. ye're full o' thistles and jest as dirty as when i throwed ye in the water. come out o' that, i tell ye! now, meg, darlin'"--this came in a coaxing tone--"come out like a good dog--sure i'm not goin' in them brambles to hunt ye!" a clatter of hoofs rang out on the morning air. a two-wheeled gig drawn by a well-groomed sorrel horse and followed by a brown-haired irish setter was approaching. in it sat a man of thirty, dressed in a long, mouse-colored surtout with a wide cape falling to the shoulders. on his head was a soft gray hat and about his neck a white scarf showing above the lapels of his coat. he had thin, shapely legs, a flat waist, and square shoulders, above which rose a clean-shaven face of singular sweetness and refinement. at the sound of the wheels the tattered cur poked his head from between the blossoms, twisted his one ear to catch the sound, and with a side-spring bounded up the road toward the setter. "well, i declare, if it ain't dr. john cavendish and rex!" martha exclaimed, raising both hands in welcome as the horse stopped beside her. "good-mornin' to ye, doctor john. i thought it was you, but the sun blinded me, and i couldn't see. and ye never saw a better nor a brighter mornin'. these spring days is all blossoms, and they ought to be. where ye goin', anyway, that ye're in such a hurry? ain't nobody sick up to cap'n holt's, be there?" she added, a shade of anxiety crossing her face. "no, martha; it's the dressmaker," answered the doctor, tightening the reins on the restless sorrel as he spoke. the voice was low and kindly and had a ring of sincerity through it. "what dressmaker?" "why, miss gossaway!" his hand was extended now--that fine, delicately wrought, sympathetic hand that had soothed so many aching heads. "you've said it," laughed martha, leaning over the wheel so as to press his fingers in her warm palm. "there ain't no doubt 'bout that skinny fright being 'miss,' and there ain't no doubt 'bout her stayin' so. ann gossaway she is, and ann gossaway she'll die. is she took bad?" she continued, a merry, questioning look lighting up her kindly face, her lips pursed knowingly. "no, only a sore throat" the doctor replied, loosening his coat. "throat!" she rejoined, with a wry look on her face. "too bad 'twarn't her tongue. if ye could snip off a bit o' that some day it would help folks considerable 'round here." the doctor laughed in answer, dropped the lines over the dashboard and leaned forward in his seat, the sun lighting up his clean-cut face. busy as he was--and there were few busier men in town, as every hitching-post along the main street of warehold village from billy tatham's, the driver of the country stage, to captain holt's, could prove--he always had time for a word with the old nurse. "and where have you been, mistress martha?" he asked, with a smile, dropping his whip into the socket, a sure sign that he had a few more minutes to give her. "oh, down to the beach to git some o' the dirt off meg. look at him--did ye ever see such a rapscallion! every time i throw him in he's into the sand ag'in wallowin' before i kin git to him." the doctor bent his head, and for an instant watched the two dogs: meg circling about rex, all four legs taut, his head jerking from side to side in his eagerness to be agreeable to his roadside acquaintance; the agate-eyed setter returning meg's attentions with the stony gaze of a club swell ignoring a shabby relative. the doctor smiled thoughtfully. there was nothing he loved to study so much as dogs--they had a peculiar humor of their own, he often said, more enjoyable sometimes than that of men--then he turned to martha again. "and why are you away from home this morning of all others?" he asked. "i thought miss lucy was expected from school to-day?" "and so she is, god bless her! and that's why i'm here. i was that restless i couldn't keep still, and so i says to miss jane, 'i'm goin' to the beach with meg and watch the ships go by; that's the only thing that'll quiet my nerves. they're never in a hurry with everybody punchin' and haulin' them.' not that there's anybody doin' that to me, 'cept like it is to-day when i'm waitin' for my blessed baby to come back to me. two years, doctor--two whole years since i had my arms round her. wouldn't ye think i'd be nigh crazy?" "she's too big for your arms now, martha," laughed the doctor, gathering up his reins. "she's a woman--seventeen, isn't she?" "seventeen and three months, come the fourteenth of next july. but she's not a woman to me, and she never will be. she's my wee bairn that i took from her mother's dyin' arms and nursed at my own breast, and she'll be that wee bairn to me as long as i live. ye'll be up to see her, won't ye, doctor?" "yes, to-night. how's miss jane?" as he made the inquiry his eyes kindled and a slight color suffused his cheeks. "she'll be better for seein' ye," the nurse answered with a knowing look. then in a louder and more positive tone, "oh, ye needn't stare so with them big brown eyes o' yourn. ye can't fool old martha, none o' you young people kin. ye think i go round with my eyelids sewed up. miss jane knows what she wants--she's proud, and so are you; i never knew a cobden nor a cavendish that warn't. i haven't a word to say--it'll be a good match when it comes off. where's that meg? good-by, doctor. i won't keep ye a minute longer from miss gossaway. i'm sorry it ain't her tongue, but if it's only her throat she may get over it. go 'long, meg!" dr. cavendish laughed one of his quiet laughs--a laugh that wrinkled the lines about his eyes, with only a low gurgle in his throat for accompaniment, picked up his whip, lifted his hat in mock courtesy to the old nurse, and calling to rex, who, bored by meg's attentions, had at last retreated under the gig, chirruped to his horse, and drove on. martha watched the doctor and rex until they were out of sight, walked on to the top of the low hill, and finding a seat by the roadside--her breath came short these warm spring days--sat down to rest, the dog stretched out in her lap. the little outcast had come to her the day lucy left warehold for school, and the old nurse had always regarded him with a certain superstitious feeling, persuading herself that nothing would happen to her bairn as long as this miserable dog was well cared for. "ye heard what doctor john said about her bein' a woman, meg?" she crooned, when she had caught her breath. "and she with her petticoats up to her knees! that's all he knows about her. ye'd know better than that, meg, wouldn't ye--if ye'd seen her grow up like he's done? but grown up or not, meg"--here she lifted the dog's nose to get a clearer view of his sleepy eyes--"she's my blessed baby and she's comin' home this very day, meg, darlin'; d'ye hear that, ye little ruffian? and she's not goin' away ag'in, never, never. there'll be nobody drivin' round in a gig lookin' after her--nor nobody else as long as i kin help it. now git up and come along; i'm that restless i can't sit still," and sliding the dog from her lap, she again resumed her walk toward warehold. soon the village loomed in sight, and later on the open gateway of "yardley," the old cobden manor, with its two high brick posts topped with white balls and shaded by two tall hemlocks, through which could be seen a level path leading to an old colonial house with portico, white pillars supporting a balcony, and a sloping roof with huge chimneys and dormer windows. martha quickened her steps, and halting at the gate-posts, paused for a moment with her eyes up the road. it was yet an hour of the time of her bairn's arrival by the country stage, but her impatience was such that she could not enter the path without this backward glance. meg, who had followed behind his mistress at a snail's pace, also came to a halt and, as was his custom, picked out a soft spot in the road and sat down on his haunches. suddenly the dog sprang up with a quick yelp and darted inside the gate. the next instant a young girl in white, with a wide hat shading her joyous face, jumped from behind one of the big hemlocks and with a cry pinioned martha's arms to her side. "oh, you dear old thing, you! where have you been? didn't you know i was coming by the early stage?" she exclaimed in a half-querulous tone. the old nurse disengaged one of her arms from the tight clasp of the girl, reached up her hand until she found the soft cheek, patted it gently for an instant as a blind person might have done, and then reassured, hid her face on lucy's shoulder and burst into tears. the joy of the surprise had almost stopped her breath. "no, baby, no," she murmured. "no, darlin', i didn't. i was on the beach with meg. no, no--oh, let me cry, darlin'. to think i've got you at last. i wouldn't have gone away, darlin', but they told me you wouldn't be here till dinner-time. oh, darlin', is it you? and it's all true, isn't it? and ye've come back to me for good? hug me close. oh, my baby bairn, my little one! oh, you precious!" and she nestled the girl's head on her bosom, smoothing her cheek as she crooned on, the tears running down her cheeks. before the girl could reply there came a voice calling from the house: "isn't she fine, martha?" a woman above the middle height, young and of slender figure, dressed in a simple gray gown and without her hat, was stepping from the front porch to meet them. "too fine, miss jane, for her old martha," the nurse called back. "i've got to love her all over again. oh, but i'm that happy i could burst meself with joy! give me hold of your hand, darlin'--i'm afraid i'll lose ye ag'in if ye get out of reach of me." the two strolled slowly up the path to meet jane, martha patting the girl's arm and laying her cheek against it as she walked. meg had ceased barking and was now sniffing at lucy's skirts, his bent tail wagging slowly, his sneaky eyes looking up into lucy's face. "will he bite, martha?" she asked, shrinking to one side. she had an aversion to anything physically imperfect, no matter how lovable it might be to others. this tattered example struck her as particularly objectionable. "no, darlin'--nothin' 'cept his food," and martha laughed. "what a horrid little beast!" lucy said half aloud to herself, clinging all the closer to the nurse. "this isn't the dog sister jane wrote me about, is it? she said you loved him dearly--you don't, do you?" "yes, that's the same dog. you don't like him, do you, darlin'?" "no, i think he's awful," retorted lucy in a positive tone. "it's all i had to pet since you went away," martha answered apologetically. "well, now i'm home, give him away, please. go away, you dreadful dog!" she cried, stamping her foot as meg, now reassured, tried to jump upon her. the dog fell back, and crouching close to martha's side raised his eyes appealingly, his ear and tail dragging. jane now joined them. she had stopped to pick some blossoms for the house. "why, lucy, what's poor meg done?" she asked, as she stooped over and stroked the crestfallen beast's head. "poor old doggie--we all love you, don't we?" "well, just please love him all to yourselves, then," retorted lucy with a toss of her head. "i wouldn't touch him with a pair of tongs. i never saw anything so ugly. get away, you little brute!" "oh, lucy, dear, don't talk so," replied the older sister in a pitying tone. "he was half starved when martha found him and brought him home--and look at his poor back--" "no, thank you; i don't want to look at his poor back, nor his poor tail, nor anything else poor about him. and you will send him away, won't you, like a dear good old martha?" she added, patting martha's shoulder in a coaxing way. then encircling jane's waist with her arm, the two sisters sauntered slowly back to the house. martha followed behind with meg. somehow, and for the first time where lucy was concerned, she felt a tightening of her heart-strings, all the more painful because it had followed so closely upon the joy of their meeting. what had come over her bairn, she said to herself with a sigh, that she should talk so to meg--to anything that her old nurse loved, for that matter? jane interrupted her reveries. "did you give meg a bath, martha?" she asked over her shoulder. she had seen the look of disappointment in the old nurse's face and, knowing the cause, tried to lighten the effect. "yes--half water and half sand. doctor john came along with rex shinin' like a new muff, and i was ashamed to let him see meg. he's comin' up to see you to-night, lucy, darlin'," and she bent forward and tapped the girl's shoulder to accentuate the importance of the information. lucy cut her eye in a roguish way and twisted her pretty head around until she could look into jane's eyes. "who do you think he's coming to see, sister?" "why, you, you little goose. they're all coming--uncle ephraim has sent over every day to find out when you would be home, and bart holt was here early this morning, and will be back to-night." "what does bart holt look like?"--she had stopped in her walk to pluck a spray of lilac blossoms. "i haven't seen him for years; i hear he's another one of your beaux," she added, tucking the flowers into jane's belt. "there, sister, that's just your color; that's what that gray dress needs. tell me, what's bart like?" "a little like captain nat, his father," answered jane, ignoring lucy's last inference, "not so stout and--" "what's he doing?" "nothin', darlin', that's any good," broke in martha from behind the two. "he's sailin' a boat when he ain't playin' cards or scarin' everybody down to the beach with his gun, or shyin' things at meg." "don't you mind anything martha says, lucy," interrupted jane in a defensive tone. "he's got a great many very good qualities; he has no mother and the captain has never looked after him. it's a great wonder that he is not worse than he is." she knew martha had spoken the truth, but she still hoped that her influence might help him, and then again, she never liked to hear even her acquaintances criticised. "playing cards! that all?" exclaimed lucy, arching her eyebrows; her sister's excuses for the delinquent evidently made no impression on her. "i don't think playing cards is very bad; and i don't blame him for throwing anything he could lay his hands on at this little wretch of martha's. we all played cards up in our rooms at school. miss sarah never knew anything about it--she thought we were in bed, and it was just lovely to fool her. and what does the immaculate dr. john cavendish look like? has he changed any?" she added with a laugh. "no," answered jane simply. "does he come often?" she had turned her head now and was looking from under her lids at martha. "just as he used to and sit around, or has he--" here she lifted her eyebrows in inquiry, and a laugh bubbled out from between her lips. "yes, that's just what he does do," cried martha in a triumphant tone; "every minute he kin git. and he can't come too often to suit me. i jest love him, and i'm not the only one, neither, darlin'," she added with a nod of her head toward jane. "and barton holt as well?" persisted lucy. "why, sister, i didn't suppose there would be a man for me to look at when i came home, and you've got two already! which one are you going to take?" here her rosy face was drawn into solemn lines. jane colored. "you've got to be a great tease, lucy," she answered as she leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. "i'm not in the back of the doctor's head, nor he in mine--he's too busy nursing the sick--and bart's a boy!" "why, he's twenty-five years old, isn't he?" exclaimed lucy in some surprise. "twenty-five years young, dearie--there's a difference, you know. that's why i do what i can to help him. if he'd had the right influences in his life and could be thrown a little more with nice women it would help make him a better man. be very good to him, please, even if you do find him a little rough." they had mounted the steps of the porch and were now entering the wide colonial hall--a bare white hall, with a staircase protected by spindling mahogany banisters and a handrail. jane passed into the library and seated herself at her desk. lucy ran on upstairs, followed by martha to help unpack her boxes and trunks. when they reached the room in which martha had nursed her for so many years--the little crib still occupied one corner--the old woman took the wide hat from the girl's head and looked long and searchingly into her eyes. "let me look at ye, my baby," she said, as she pushed lucy's hair back from her forehead; "same blue eyes, darlin', same pretty mouth i kissed so often, same little dimples ye had when ye lay in my arms, but ye've changed--how i can't tell. somehow, the face is different." her hands now swept over the full rounded shoulders and plump arms of the beautiful girl, and over the full hips. "the doctor's right, child," she said with a sigh, stepping back a pace and looking her over critically; "my baby's gone--you've filled out to be a woman." chapter ii spring blossoms for days the neighbors in and about the village of warehold had been looking forward to lucy's home-coming as one of the important epochs in the history of the manor house, quite as they would have done had lucy been a boy and the expected function one given in honor of the youthful heir's majority. most of them had known the father and mother of these girls, and all of them loved jane, the gentle mistress of the home--a type of woman eminently qualified to maintain its prestige. it had been a great house in its day. built in early revolutionary times by archibald cobden, who had thrown up his office under the crown and openly espoused the cause of the colonists, it had often been the scene of many of the festivities and social events following the conclusion of peace and for many years thereafter: the rooms were still pointed out in which washington and lafayette had slept, as well as the small alcove where the dashing bart de klyn passed the night whenever he drove over in his coach with outriders from bow hill to barnegat and the sea. with the death of colonel creighton cobden, who held a commission in the war of , all this magnificence of living had changed, and when morton cobden, the father of jane and lucy, inherited the estate, but little was left except the manor house, greatly out of repair, and some invested property which brought in but a modest income. on his death-bed morton cobden's last words were a prayer to jane, then eighteen, that she would watch over and protect her younger sister, a fair-haired child of eight, taking his own and her dead mother's place, a trust which had so dominated jane's life that it had become the greater part of her religion. since then she had been the one strong hand in the home, looking after its affairs, managing their income, and watching over every step of her sister's girlhood and womanhood. two years before she had placed lucy in one of the fashionable boarding-schools of philadelphia, there to study "music and french," and to perfect herself in that "grace of manner and charm of conversation," which the two maiden ladies who presided over its fortunes claimed in their modest advertisements they were so competent to teach. part of the curriculum was an enforced absence from home of two years, during which time none of her own people were to visit her except in case of emergency. to-night, the once famous house shone with something of its old-time color. the candles were lighted in the big bronze candelabra--the ones which came from paris; the best glass and china and all the old plate were brought out and placed on the sideboard and serving-tables; a wood fire was started (the nights were yet cold), its cheery blaze lighting up the brass fender and andirons before which many of colonel cobden's cronies had toasted their shins as they sipped their toddies in the old days; easy-chairs and hair-cloth sofas were drawn from the walls; the big lamps lighted, and many minor details perfected for the comfort of the expected guests. jane entered the drawing-room in advance of lucy and was busying herself putting the final touches to the apartment,--arranging the sprays of blossoms over the clock and under the portrait of morton cobden, which looked calmly down on the room from its place on the walls, when the door opened softly and martha--the old nurse had for years been treated as a member of the family--stepped in, bowing and curtsying as would an old woman in a play, the skirt of her new black silk gown that ann gossaway had made for her held out between her plump fingers, her mob-cap with its long lace strings bobbing with every gesture. with her rosy cheeks, silver-rimmed spectacles, self-satisfied smile, and big puffy sleeves, she looked as if she might have stepped out of one of the old frames lining the walls. "what do ye think of me, miss jane? i'm proud as a peacock--that i am!" she cried, twisting herself about. "do ye know, i never thought that skinny dressmaker could do half as well. is it long enough?" and she craned her head in the attempt to see the edge of the skirt. "fits you beautifully, martha. you look fine," answered jane in all sincerity, as she made a survey of the costume. "how does lucy like it?" "the darlin' don't like it at all; she says i look like a pall-bearer, and ye ought to hear her laughin' at the cap. is there anything the matter with it? the pastor's wife's got one, anyhow, and she's a year younger'n me." "don't mind her, martha--she laughs at everything; and how good it is to hear her! she never saw you look so well," replied jane, as she moved a jar from a table and placed it on the mantel to hold the blossoms she had picked in the garden. "what's she doing upstairs so long?" "prinkin'--and lookin' that beautiful ye wouldn't know her. but the width and the thickness of her"--here the wrinkled fingers measured the increase with a half circle in the air--"and the way she's plumped out--not in one place, but all over--well, i tell ye, ye'd be astonished! she knows it, too, bless her heart! i don't blame her. let her git all the comfort she kin when she's young--that's the time for laughin'--the cryin' always comes later." no part of martha's rhapsody over lucy described jane. not in her best moments could she have been called beautiful--not even to-night when lucy's home-coming had given a glow to her cheeks and a lustre to her eyes that nothing else had done for months. her slender figure, almost angular in its contour with its closely drawn lines about the hips and back; her spare throat and neck, straight arms, thin wrists and hands--transparent hands, though exquisitely wrought, as were those of all her race--all so expressive of high breeding and refinement, carried with them none of the illusions of beauty. the mould of the head, moreover, even when softened by her smooth chestnut hair, worn close to her ears and caught up in a coil behind, was too severe for accepted standards, while her features wonderfully sympathetic as they were, lacked the finer modeling demanded in perfect types of female loveliness, the eyebrows being almost straight, the cheeks sunken, with little shadows under the cheek-bones, and the lips narrow and often drawn. and yet with all these discrepancies and, to some minds, blemishes there was a light in her deep gray eyes, a melody in her voice, a charm in her manner, a sureness of her being exactly the sort of woman one hoped she would be, a quick responsiveness to any confidence, all so captivating and so satisfying that 'those who knew her forgot her slight physical shortcomings and carried away only the remembrance of one so much out of the common and of so distinguished a personality that she became ever after the standard by which they judged all good women. there were times, too--especially whenever lucy entered the room or her name was mentioned--that there shone through jane's eyes a certain instantaneous kindling of the spirit which would irradiate her whole being as a candle does a lantern--a light betokening not only uncontrollable tenderness but unspeakable pride, dimmed now and then when some word or act of her charge brought her face to face with the weight of the responsibility resting upon her--a responsibility far outweighing that which most mothers would have felt. this so dominated jane's every motion that it often robbed her of the full enjoyment of the companionship of a sister so young and so beautiful. if jane, to quote doctor john, looked like a lily swaying on a slender stem, lucy, when she bounded into the room to-night, was a full-blown rose tossed by a summer breeze. she came in with throat and neck bare; a woman all curves and dimples, her skin as pink as a shell; plump as a baby, and as fair, and yet with the form of a wood-nymph; dressed in a clinging, soft gown, the sleeves caught up at the shoulders revealing her beautiful arms, a spray of blossoms on her bosom, her blue eyes dancing with health, looking twenty rather than seventeen; glad of her freedom, glad of her home and jane and martha, and of the lights and blossoms and the glint on silver and glass, and of all that made life breathable and livable. "oh, but isn't it just too lovely to be at home!" she cried as she skipped about. "no lights out at nine, no prayers, no getting up at six o'clock and turning your mattress and washing in a sloppy little washroom. oh, i'm so happy! i can't realize it's all true." as she spoke she raised herself on her toes so that she could see her face in the mirror over the mantel. "why, do you know, sister," she rattled on, her eyes studying her own face, "that miss sarah used to make us learn a page of dictionary if we talked after the silence bell!" "you must know the whole book by heart, then, dearie," replied jane with a smile, as she bent over a table and pushed back some books to make room for a bowl of arbutus she held in her hand. "ah, but she didn't catch us very often. we used to stuff up the cracks in the doors so she couldn't hear us talk and smother our heads in the pillows. jonesy, the english teacher, was the worst." she was still looking in the glass, her fingers busy with the spray of blossoms on her bosom. "she always wore felt slippers and crept around like a cat. she'd tell on anybody. we had a play one night in my room after lights were out, and maria collins was claude melnotte and i was pauline. maria had a mustache blackened on her lips with a piece of burnt cork and i was all fixed up in a dressing-gown and sash. we never heard jonesy till she put her hand on the knob; then we blew out the candle and popped into bed. she smelled the candle-wick and leaned over and kissed maria good-night, and the black all came off on her lips, and next day we got three pages apiece--the mean old thing! how do i look, martha? is my hair all right?" here she turned her head for the old woman's inspection. "beautiful, darlin'. there won't one o' them know ye; they'll think ye're a real livin' princess stepped out of a picture-book." martha had not taken her eyes from lucy since she entered the room. "see my little beau-catchers," she laughed, twisting her head so that martha could see the tiny spanish curls she had flattened against her temples. "they are for bart holt, and i'm going to cut sister out. do you think he'll remember me?" she prattled on, arching her neck. "it won't make any difference if he don't," martha retorted in a positive tone. "but cap'n nat will, and so will the doctor and uncle ephraim and--who's that comin' this early?" and the old nurse paused and listened to a heavy step on the porch. "it must be the cap'n himself; there ain't nobody but him's got a tread like that; ye'd think he was trampin' the deck o' one of his ships." the door of the drawing-room opened and a bluff, hearty, round-faced man of fifty, his iron-gray hair standing straight up on his head like a shoe-brush, dressed in a short pea-jacket surmounted by a low sailor collar and loose necktie, stepped cheerily into the room. "ah, miss jane!" somehow all the neighbors, even the most intimate, remembered to prefix "miss" when speaking to jane. "so you've got this fly-away back again? where are ye? by jingo! let me look at you. why! why! why! did you ever! what have you been doing to yourself, lassie, that you should shed your shell like a bug and come out with wings like a butterfly? why you're the prettiest thing i've seen since i got home from my last voyage." he had lucy by both bands now, and was turning her about as if she had been one of ann gossaway's models. "have i changed, captain holt?" "no--not a mite. you've got a new suit of flesh and blood on your bones, that's all. and it's the best in the locker. well! well! well!" he was still twisting her around. "she does ye proud, martha," he called to the old nurse, who was just leaving the room to take charge of the pantry, now that the guests had begun to arrive. "and so ye're home for good and all, lassie?" "yes--isn't it lovely?" "lovely? that's no name for it. you'll be settin' the young fellers crazy 'bout here before they're a week older. here come two of 'em now." lucy turned her head quickly, just as the doctor and barton holt reached the door of the drawing-room. the elder of the two, doctor john, greeted jane as if she had been a duchess, bowing low as he approached her, his eyes drinking in her every movement; then, after a few words, remembering the occasion as being one in honor of lucy, he walked slowly toward the young girl. "why, lucy, it's so delightful to get you back!" he cried, shaking her hand warmly. "and you are looking so well. poor martha has been on pins and needles waiting for you. i told her just how it would be--that she'd lose her little girl--and she has," and he glanced at her admiringly. "what did she say when she saw you?" "oh, the silly old thing began to cry, just as they all do. have you seen her dog?" the answer jarred on the doctor, although he excused her in his heart on the ground of her youth and her desire to appear at ease in talking to him. "do you mean meg?" he asked, scanning her face the closer. "i don't know what she calls him--but he's the ugliest little beast i ever saw." "yes--but so amusing. i never get tired of watching him. what is left of him is the funniest thing alive. he's better than he looks, though. he and rex have great times together." "i wish you would take him, then. i told martha this morning that he mustn't poke his nose into my room, and he won't. he's a perfect fright." "but the dear old woman loves him," he protested with a tender tone in his voice, his eyes fixed on lucy. he had looked into the faces of too many young girls in his professional career not to know something of what lay at the bottom of their natures. what he saw now came as a distinct surprise. "i don't care if she does," she retorted; "no, i don't," and she knit her brow and shook her pretty head as she laughed. while they stood talking bart holt, who had lingered at the threshold, his eyes searching for the fair arrival, was advancing toward the centre of the room. suddenly he stood still, his gaze fixed on the vision of the girl in the clinging dress, with the blossoms resting on her breast. the curve of her back, the round of the hip; the way her moulded shoulders rose above the lace of her bodice; the bare, full arms tapering to the wrists;--the color, the movement, the grace of it all had taken away his breath. with only a side nod of recognition toward jane, he walked straight to lucy and with an "excuse me," elbowed the doctor out of the way in his eagerness to reach the girl's side. the doctor smiled at the young man's impetuosity, bent his head to lucy, and turned to where jane was standing awaiting the arrival of her other guests. the young man extended his hand. "i'm bart holt," he exclaimed; "you haven't forgotten me, miss lucy, have you? we used to play together. mighty glad to see you--been expecting you for a week." lucy colored slightly and arched her head in a coquettish way. his frankness pleased her; so did the look of unfeigned admiration in his eyes. "why, of course i haven't forgotten you, mr. holt. it was so nice of you to come," and she gave him the tips of her fingers--her own eyes meanwhile, in one comprehensive glance, taking in his round head with its closely cropped curls, searching brown eyes, wavering mouth, broad shoulders, and shapely body, down to his small, well-turned feet. the young fellow lacked the polish and well-bred grace of the doctor, just as he lacked his well-cut clothes and distinguished manners, but there was a sort of easy effrontery and familiar air about him that some of his women admirers encouraged and others shrank from. strange to say, this had appealed to lucy before he had spoken a word. "and you've come home for good now, haven't you?" his eyes were still drinking in the beauty of the girl, his mind neither on his questions nor her answers. "yes, forever and ever," she replied, with a laugh that showed her white teeth. "did you like it at school?" it was her lips now that held his attention and the little curves under her dimpled chin. he thought he had never seen so pretty a mouth and chin. "not always; but we used to have lots of fun," answered the girl, studying him in return--the way his cravat was tied and the part of his hair. she thought he had well-shaped ears and that his nose and eyebrows looked like a picture she had in her room upstairs. "come and tell me about it. let's sit down here," he continued as he drew her to a sofa and stood waiting until she took her seat. "well, i will for a moment, until they begin to come in," she answered, her face all smiles. she liked the way he behaved towards her--not asking her permission, but taking the responsibility and by his manner compelling a sort of obedience. "but i can't stay," she added. "sister won't like it if i'm not with her to shake hands with everybody." "oh, she won't mind me; i'm a great friend of miss jane's. please go on; what kind of fun did you have? i like to hear about girls' scrapes. we had plenty of them at college, but i couldn't tell you half of them." he had settled himself beside her now, his appropriating eyes still taking in her beauty. "oh, all kinds," she replied as she bent her head and glanced at the blossoms on her breast to be assured of their protective covering. "but i shouldn't think you could have much fun with the teachers watching you every minute," said bart, moving nearer to her and turning his body so he could look squarely into her eyes. "yes, but they didn't find out half that was going on." then she added coyly, "i don't know whether you can keep a secret--do you tell everything you hear?" "never tell anything." "how do i know?" "i'll swear it." in proof he held up one hand and closed both eyes in mock reverence as if he were taking an oath. he was getting more interested now in her talk; up to this time her beauty had dazzled him. "never! so help me--" he mumbled impressively. "well, one day we were walking out to the park--now you're sure you won't tell sister, she's so easily shocked?" the tone was the same, but the inflection was shaded to closer intimacy. again bart cast up his eyes. "and all the girls were in a string with miss griggs, the latin teacher, in front, and we all went in a cake shop and got a big piece of gingerbread apiece. we were all eating away hard as we could when we saw miss sarah coming. every girl let her cake go, and when miss sarah got to us the whole ten pieces were scattered along the sidewalk." bart looked disappointed over the mild character of the scrape. from what he had seen of her he had supposed her adventures would be seasoned with a certain spice of deviltry. "i wouldn't have done that, i'd have hidden it in my pocket," he replied, sliding down on the sofa until his head rested on the cushion next her own. "we tried, but she was too close. poor old griggsey got a dreadful scolding. she wasn't like miss jones--she wouldn't tell on the girls." "and did they let any of the fellows come to see you?" bart asked. "no; only brothers and cousins once in a long while. maria collins tried to pass one of her beaux, max feilding, off as a cousin, but miss sarah went down to see him and poor maria had to stay upstairs." "i'd have got in," said bart with some emphasis, rousing himself from his position and twisting his body so he could again look squarely in her face. this escapade was more to his liking. "how?" asked lucy in a tone that showed she not only quite believed it, but rather liked him the better for saying so. "oh i don't know. i'd have cooked up some story." he was leaning over now, toying with the lace that clung to lucy's arms. "did you ever have any one of your own friends treated in that way?" jane's voice cut short her answer. she had seen the two completely absorbed in each other, to the exclusion of the other guests who were now coming in, and wanted lucy beside her. the young girl waved her fan gayly in answer, rose to her feet, turned her head close to bart's, pointed to the incoming guests, whispered something in his ear that made him laugh, listened while he whispered to her in return, and in obedience to the summons crossed the room to meet a group of the neighbors, among them old judge woolworthy, in a snuff-colored coat, high black stock, and bald head, and his bustling little wife. bart's last whisper to lucy was in explanation of the little wife's manner--who now, all bows and smiles, was shaking hands with everybody about her. then came uncle ephraim tipple, and close beside him walked his spouse, ann, in a camel's-hair shawl and poke-bonnet, the two preceded by uncle ephraim's stentorian laugh, which had been heard before their feet had touched the porch outside. mrs. cromartin now bustled in, accompanied by her two daughters--slim, awkward girls, both dressed alike in high waists and short frocks; and after them the bunsbys, father, mother, and son--all smiles, the last a painfully thin young lawyer, in a low collar and a shock of whitey-brown hair, "looking like a patent window-mop resting against a wall," so lucy described him afterward to martha when she was putting her to bed; and finally the colfords and bronsons, young and old, together with pastor dellenbaugh, the white-haired clergyman who preached in the only church in warehold. when lucy had performed her duty and the several greetings were over, and uncle ephraim had shaken the hand of the young hostess in true pump-handle fashion, the old man roaring with laughter all the time, as if it were the funniest thing in the world to find her alive; and the good clergyman in his mildest and most impressive manner had said she grew more and more like her mother every day--which was a flight of imagination on the part of the dear man, for she didn't resemble her in the least; and the two thin girls had remarked that it must be so "perfectly blissful" to get home; and the young lawyer had complimented her on her wonderful, almost life-like resemblance to her grand-father, whose portrait hung in the court-house--and which was nearer the truth--to all of which the young girl replied in her most gracious tones, thanking them for their kindness in coming to see her and for welcoming her so cordially--the whole of lucy's mind once more reverted to bart. indeed, the several lobes of her brain had been working in opposition for the past hour. while one-half of her mind was concocting polite speeches for her guests the other was absorbed in the fear that bart would either get tired of waiting for her return and leave the sofa, or that some other girl friend of his would claim him and her delightful talk be at an end. to the young girl fresh from school bart represented the only thing in the room that was entirely alive. the others talked platitudes and themselves. he had encouraged her to talk of herself and of the things she liked. he had, too, about him an assurance and dominating personality which, although it made her a little afraid of him, only added to his attractiveness. while she stood wondering how many times the white-haired young lawyer would tell her it was so nice to have her back, she felt a slight pressure on her arm and turned to face bart. "you are wanted, please, miss lucy; may i offer you my arm? excuse me, bunsby--i'll give her to you again in a minute." lucy slipped her arm into bart's, and asked simply, "what for?" "to finish our talk, of course. do you suppose i'm going to let that tow-head monopolize you?" he answered, pressing her arm closer to his side with his own. lucy laughed and tapped bart with her fan in rebuke, and then there followed a bit of coquetry in which the young girl declared that he was "too mean for anything, and that she'd never seen anybody so conceited, and if he only knew, she might really prefer the 'tow head' to his own;" to which bart answered that his only excuse was that he was so lonely he was nearly dead, and that he had only come to save his life--the whole affair culminating in his conducting her back to the sofa with a great flourish and again seating himself beside her. "i've been watching you," he began when he had made her comfortable with a small cushion behind her shoulders and another for her pretty feet. "you don't act a bit like miss jane." as he spoke he leaned forward and flicked an imaginary something from her bare wrist with that air which always characterized his early approaches to most women. "why?" lucy asked, pleased at his attentions and thanking him with a more direct look. "oh, i don't know. you're more jolly, i think. i don't like girls who turn out to be solemn after you know them a while; i was afraid you might. you know it's a long time since i saw you." "why, then, sister can't be solemn, for everybody says you and she are great friends," she replied with a light laugh, readjusting the lace of her bodice. "so we are; nobody about here i think as much of as i do of your sister. she's been mighty good to me. but you know what i mean: i mean those don't-touch-me kind of girls who are always thinking you mean a lot of things when you're only trying to be nice and friendly to them. i like to be a brother to a girl and to go sailing with her, and fishing, and not have her bother me about her feet getting a little bit wet, and not scream bloody murder when the boat gives a lurch. that's the kind of girl that's worth having." "and you don't find them?" laughed lucy, looking at him out of the corners of her eyes. "well, not many. do you mind little things like that?" as he spoke his eyes wandered over her bare shoulders until they rested on the blossoms, the sort of roaming, critical eyes that often cause a woman to wonder whether some part of her toilet has not been carelessly put together. then he added, with a sudden lowering of his voice: "that's a nice posy you've got. who sent it?" and he bent his head as if to smell the cluster on her bosom. lucy drew back and a slight flush suffused her cheek; his audacity frightened her. she was fond of admiration, but this way of expressing it was new to her. the young man caught the movement and recovered himself. he had ventured on a thin spot, as was his custom, and the sound of the cracking ice had warned him in time. "oh, i see, they're apple blossoms," he added carelessly as he straightened up. "we've got a lot in our orchard. you like flowers, i see." the even tone and perfect self-possession of the young man reassured her. "oh, i adore them; don't you?" lucy answered in a relieved, almost apologetic voice. she was sorry she had misjudged him. she liked him rather the better now for her mistake. "well, that depends. apple blossoms never looked pretty to me before; but then it makes a good deal of difference where they are," answered bart with a low chuckle. jane had been watching the two and had noticed. bart's position and manner. his easy familiarity of pose offended her. instinctively she glanced about the room, wondering if any of her guests had seen it. that lucy did not resent it surprised her. she supposed her sister's recent training would have made her a little more fastidious. "come, lucy," she called gently, moving toward her, "bring bart over here and join the other girls." "all right, miss jane, we'll be there in a minute," bart answered in lucy's stead. then he bent his head and said in a low voice: "won't you give me half those blossoms?" "no; it would spoil the bunch." "please--" "no, not a single one. you wouldn't care for them, anyway." "yes, i would." here he stretched out his hand and touched the blossoms on her neck. lucy ducked her head in merry glee, sprang up, and with a triumphant curtsy and a "no, you don't, sir--not this time," joined her sister, followed by art. the guests were now separated into big and little groups. uncle ephraim and the judge were hob-nobbing around the fireplace, listening to uncle ephraim's stories and joining in the laughter which every now and then filled the room. captain nat was deep in a discussion with doctor john over some seafaring matter, and jane and mrs. benson were discussing a local charity with pastor dellenbaugh. the younger people being left to themselves soon began to pair off, the white-haired young lawyer disappearing with the older miss cromartin and bart soon following with lucy:--the outer porch and the long walk down the garden path among the trees, despite the chilliness of the night, seemed to be the only place in which they could be comfortable. during a lull in the discussion of captain nat's maritime news and while mrs. benson was talking to the pastor, doctor john seized the opportunity to seat himself again by jane. "don't you think lucy improved?" she asked, motioning the doctor to a place beside her. "she's much more beautiful than i thought she would be," he answered in a hesitating way, looking toward lucy, and seating himself in his favorite attitude, hands in his lap, one leg crossed over the other and hanging straight beside its fellow; only a man like the doctor, of more than usual repose and of a certain elegance of form, jane always said, could sit this way any length of time and be comfortable and unconscious of his posture. then he added slowly, and as if he had given the subject some consideration, "you won't keep her long, i'm afraid." "oh, don't say that," jane cried with a nervous start. "i don't know what i would do if she should marry." "that don't sound like you, miss jane. you would be the first to deny yourself. you are too good to do otherwise." he spoke with a slight quiver in his voice, and yet with an emphasis that showed he believed it. "no; it is you who are good to think so," she replied in a softer tone, bending her head as she spoke, her eyes intent on her fan. "and now tell me," she added quickly, raising her eyes to his as if to bar any further tribute he might be on the point of paying to her--"i hear your mother takes greatly to heart your having refused the hospital appointment." "yes, i'm afraid she does. mother has a good many new-fashioned notions nowadays." he laughed--a mellow, genial laugh; more in the spirit of apology than of criticism. "and you don't want to go?" she asked, her eyes fixed on his. "want to go? no, why should i? there would be nobody to look after the people here if i went away. you don't want me to leave, do you?" he added suddenly in an anxious tone. "nobody does, doctor," she replied, parrying the question, her face flushing with pleasure. here martha entered the room hurriedly and bending over jane's shoulder, whispered something in her ear. the doctor straightened himself and leaned back out of hearing. "well, but i don't think she will take cold," jane whispered in return, looking up into martha's face. "has she anything around her?" "yes, your big red cloak; but the child's head is bare and there's mighty little on her neck, and she ought to come in. the wind's begun to blow and it's gettin' cold." "where is she?" jane continued, her face showing her surprise at martha's statement. "out by the gate with that dare-devil. he don't care who he gives cold. i told her she'd get her death, but she won't mind me." "why, martha, how can you talk so!" jane retorted, with a disapproving frown. then raising her voice so that the doctor could be brought into the conversation, she added in her natural tone, "whom did you say she was with?" "bart holt," cried martha aloud, nodding to the doctor as if to get his assistance in saving her bairn from possible danger. jane colored slightly and turned to doctor john. "you go please, doctor, and bring them all in, or you may have some new patients on your hands." the doctor looked from one to the other in doubt as to the cause of his selection, but jane's face showed none of the anxiety in martha's. "yes, certainly," he answered simply; "but i'll get myself into a hornet's nest. these young people don't like to be told what's good for them," he added with a laugh, rising from his seat. "and after that you'll permit me to slip away without telling anybody, won't you? my last minute has come," and he glanced at his watch. "going so soon? why, i wanted you to stay for supper. it will be ready in a few minutes." her voice had lost its buoyancy now. she never wanted him to go. she never let him know it, but it pained her all the same. "i would like to, but i cannot." all his heart was in his eyes as he spoke. "someone ill?" she asked. "yes, fogarty's child. the little fellow may develop croup before morning. i saw him to-day, and his pulse was not right, he's a sturdy little chap with a thick neck, and that kind always suffers most. if he's worse fogarty is to send word to my office," he added, holding out his hand in parting. "can i help?" jane asked, retaining the doctor's hand in hers as if to get the answer. "no, i'll watch him closely. good-night," and with a smile he bent his head and withdrew. martha followed the doctor to the outer door, and then grumbling her satisfaction went back to the pantry to direct the servants in arranging upon the small table in the supper-room the simple refreshments which always characterized the cobdens' entertainments. soon the girls and their beaux came trooping in to join their elders on the way to the supper-room. lucy hung back until the last (she had not liked the doctor's interference), jane's long red cloak draped from her shoulders, the hood hanging down her back, her cheeks radiant, her beautiful blond hair ruffled with the night wind, an aureole of gold framing her face. bart followed close behind, a pleased, almost triumphant smile playing about his lips. he had carried his point. the cluster of blossoms which had rested upon lucy's bosom was pinned to the lapel of his coat. chapter iii little tod fogarty with the warmth of jane's parting grasp lingering in his own doctor john untied the mare, sprang into his gig, and was soon clear of the village and speeding along the causeway that stretched across the salt marshes leading past his own home to the inner beach beyond. as he drove slowly through his own gate, so as to make as little noise as possible, the cottage, blanketed under its clinging vines, seemed in the soft light of the low-lying moon to be fast asleep. only one eye was open; this was the window of his office, through which streamed the glow of a lamp, its light falling on the gravel path and lilac bushes beyond. rex gave a bark of welcome and raced beside the wheels. "keep still, old dog! down, rex! been lonely, old fellow?" the dog in answer leaped in the air as his master drew rein, and with eager springs tried to reach his hands, barking all the while in short and joyful yelps. doctor john threw the lines across the dash-board, jumped from the gig, and pushing open the hall door--it was never locked--stepped quickly into his office, and turning up the lamp, threw himself into a chair at his desk. the sorrel made no attempt to go to the stable--both horse and man were accustomed to delays--sometimes of long hours and sometimes of whole nights. the appointments and fittings of the office--old-fashioned and practical as they were--reflected in a marked degree the aims and tastes of the occupant. while low bookcases stood against the walls surmounted by rows of test-tubes, mortars and pestles, cases of instruments, and a line of bottles labelled with names of various mixtures (in those days doctors were chemists as well as physicians), there could also be found a bust of the young augustus; one or two lithographs of heidelberg, where he had studied; and some line engravings in black frames--one a view of oxford with the thames wandering by, another a portrait of the duke of wellington, and still another of nell gwynn. scattered about the room were easy-chairs and small tables piled high with books, a copy of tacitus and an early edition of milton being among them, while under the wide, low window stood a narrow bench crowded with flowering plants in earthen pots, the remnants of the winter's bloom. there were also souvenirs of his earlier student life--a life which few of his friends in warehold, except jane cobden, knew or cared anything about--including a pair of crossed foils and two boxing-gloves; these last hung over a portrait of macaulay. what the place lacked was the touch of a woman's hand in vase, flower, or ornament--a touch that his mother, for reasons of her own, never gave and which no other woman had yet dared suggest. for an instant the doctor sat with his elbows on the desk in deep thought, the light illuminating his calm, finely chiselled features and hands--those thin, sure hands which could guide a knife within a hair's breadth of instant death--and leaning forward, with an indrawn sigh examined some letters lying under his eye. then, as if suddenly remembering, he glanced at the office slate, his face lighting up as he found it bare of any entry except the date. rex had been watching his master with ears cocked, and was now on his haunches, cuddling close, his nose resting on the doctor's knee. doctor john laid his hand on the dog's head and smoothing the long, silky ears, said with a sigh of relief, as he settled himself in his chair: "little tod must be better, rex, and we are going to have a quiet night." the anxiety over his patients relieved, his thoughts reverted to jane and their talk. he remembered the tone of her voice and the quick way in which she had warded off his tribute to her goodness; he recalled her anxiety over lucy; he looked again into the deep, trusting eyes that gazed into his as she appealed to him for assistance; he caught once more the poise of the head as she listened to his account of little tod fogarty's illness and heard her quick offer to help, and felt for the second time her instant tenderness and sympathy, never withheld from the sick and suffering, and always so generous and spontaneous. a certain feeling of thankfulness welled up in his heart. perhaps she had at last begun to depend upon him--a dependence which, with a woman such as jane, must, he felt sure, eventually end in love. with these thoughts filling his mind, he settled deeper in his chair. these were the times in which he loved to think of her--when, with pipe in mouth, he could sit alone by his fire and build castles in the coals, every rosy mountain-top aglow with the love he bore her; with no watchful mother's face trying to fathom his thoughts; only his faithful dog stretched at his feet. picking up his brierwood, lying on a pile of books on his desk, and within reach of his hand, he started to fill the bowl, when a scrap of paper covered with a scrawl written in pencil came into view. he turned it to the light and sprang to his feet. "tod worse," he said to himself. "i wonder how long this has been here." the dog was now beside him looking up into the doctor's eyes. it was not the first time that he had seen his master's face grow suddenly serious as he had read the tell-tale slate or had opened some note awaiting his arrival. doctor john lowered the lamp, stepped noiselessly to the foot of the winding stairs that led to the sleeping rooms above--the dog close at his heels, watching his every movement--and called gently: "mother! mother, dear!" he never left his office when she was at home and awake without telling her where he was going. no one answered. "she is asleep. i will slip out without waking her. stay where you are, rex--i will be back some time before daylight," and throwing his night-cloak about his shoulders, he started for his gig. the dog stopped with his paws resting on the outer edge of the top step of the porch, the line he was not to pass, and looked wistfully after the doctor. his loneliness was to continue, and his poor master to go out into the night alone. his tail ceased to wag, only his eyes moved. once outside doctor john patted the mare's neck as if in apology and loosened the reins. "come, old girl," he said; "i'm sorry, but it can't be helped," and springing into the gig, he walked the mare clear of the gravel beyond the gate, so as not to rouse his mother, touched her lightly with the whip, and sent her spinning along the road on the way to fogarty's. the route led toward the sea, branching off within the sight of the cottage porch, past the low, conical ice-houses used by the fishermen in which to cool their fish during the hot weather, along the sand-dunes, and down a steep grade to the shore. the tide was making flood, and the crawling surf spent itself in long shelving reaches of foam. these so packed the sand that the wheels of the gig hardly made an impression upon it. along this smooth surface the mare trotted briskly, her nimble feet wet with the farthest reaches of the incoming wash. as he approached the old house of refuge, black in the moonlight and looking twice its size in the stretch of the endless beach, he noticed for the hundredth time how like a crouching woman it appeared, with its hipped roof hunched up like a shoulder close propped against the dune and its overhanging eaves but a draped hood shading its thoughtful brow; an illusion which vanished when its square form, with its wide door and long platform pointing to the sea, came into view. more than once in its brief history the doctor had seen the volunteer crew, aroused from their cabins along the shore by the boom of a gun from some stranded vessel, throw wide its door and with a wild cheer whirl the life-boat housed beneath its roof into the boiling surf, and many a time had he helped to bring back to life the benumbed bodies drawn from the merciless sea by their strong arms. there were other houses like it up and down the coast. some had remained unused for years, desolate and forlorn, no unhappy ship having foundered or struck the breakers within their reach; others had been in constant use. the crews were gathered from the immediate neighborhood by the custodian, who was the only man to receive pay from the government. if he lived near by he kept the key; if not, the nearest fisherman held it. fogarty, the father of the sick child, and whose cabin was within gunshot of this house, kept the key this year. no other protection was given these isolated houses and none was needed. these black-hooded sisters of the coast, keeping their lonely vigils, were as safe from beach-combers and sea-prowlers as their white-capped namesakes would have been threading the lonely suburbs of some city. the sound of the mare's feet on the oyster-shell path outside his cabin brought fogarty, a tall, thin, weather-beaten fisherman, to the door. he was still wearing his hip-boots and sou'wester--he was just in from the surf--and stood outside the low doorway with a lantern. its light streamed over the sand and made wavering patterns about the mare's feet. "thought ye'd never come, doc," he whispered, as he threw the blanket over the mare. "wife's nigh crazy. tod's fightin' for all he's worth, but there ain't much breath left in him. i was off the inlet when it come on." the wife, a thick-set woman in a close-fitting cap, her arms bared to the elbow, her petticoats above the tops of her shoes, met him inside the door. she had been crying and her eyelids were still wet and her cheeks swollen. the light of the ship's lantern fastened to the wall fell upon a crib in the corner, on which lay the child, his short curls, tangled with much tossing, smoothed back from his face. the doctor's ears had caught the sound of the child's breathing before he entered the room. "when did this come on?" doctor john asked, settling down beside the crib upon a stool that the wife had brushed off with her apron. "'bout sundown, sir," she answered, her tear-soaked eyes fixed on little tod's face. her teeth chattered as she spoke and her arms were tight pressed against her sides, her fingers opening and shutting in her agony. now and then in her nervousness she would wipe her forehead with the back of her wrist as if it were wet, or press her two fingers deep into her swollen cheek. fogarty had followed close behind the doctor and now stood looking down at the crib with fixed eyes, his thin lips close shut, his square jaw sunk in the collar of his shirt. there were no dangers that the sea could unfold which this silent surfman had not met and conquered, and would again. every fisherman on the coast knew fogarty's pluck and skill, and many of them owed their lives to him. to-night, before this invisible power slowly closing about his child he was as powerless as a skiff without oars caught in the swirl of a barnegat tide. "why didn't you let me know sooner, fogarty? you understood my directions?" doctor john asked in a surprised tone. "you shouldn't have left him without letting me know." it was only when his orders were disobeyed and life endangered that he spoke thus. the fisherman turned his head and was about to reply when the wife stepped in front of him. "my husband got ketched in the inlet, sir," she said in an apologetic tone, as if to excuse his absence. "the tide set ag'in him and he had hard pullin' makin' the p'int. it cuts in turrible there, you know, doctor. tod seemed to be all right when he left him this mornin'. i had husband's mate take the note i wrote ye. mate said nobody was at home and he laid it under your pipe. he thought ye'd sure find it there when ye come in." doctor john was not listening to her explanations; he was leaning over the rude crib, his ear to the child's breast. regaining his position, he smoothed the curls tenderly from the forehead of the little fellow, who still lay with eyes closed, one stout brown hand and arm clear of the coverlet, and stood watching his breathing. every now and then a spasm of pain would cross the child's face; the chubby hand would open convulsively and a muffled cry escape him. doctor john watched his breathing for some minutes, laid his hand again on the child's forehead, and rose from the stool. "start up that fire, fogarty," he said in a crisp tone, turning up his shirt-cuffs, slipping off his evening coat, and handing the garment to the wife, who hung it mechanically over a chair, her eyes all the time searching doctor john's face for some gleam of hope. "now get a pan," he continued, "fill it with water and some corn-meal, and get me some cotton cloth--half an apron, piece of an old petticoat, anything, but be quick about it." the woman, glad of something to do, hastened to obey. somehow, the tones of his voice had put new courage into her heart. fogarty threw a heap of driftwood on the smouldering fire and filled the kettle; the dry splinters crackled into a blaze. the noise aroused the child. the doctor held up his finger for silence and again caressed the boy's forehead. fogarty, with a fresh look of alarm in his face, tiptoed back of the crib and stood behind the restless sufferer. under the doctor's touch the child once more became quiet. "is he bad off?" the wife murmured when the doctor moved to the fire and began stirring the mush she was preparing. "the other one went this way; we can't lose him. you won't lose him, will ye, doctor, dear? i don't want to live if this one goes. please, doctor--" the doctor looked into the wife's eyes, blurred with tears, and laid his hand tenderly on her shoulder. "keep a good heart, wife," he said; "we'll pull him through. tod is a tough little chap with plenty of fight in him yet. i've seen them much worse. it will soon be over; don't worry." mrs. fogarty's eyes brightened and even the fisherman's grim face relaxed. silent men in grave crises suffer most; the habit of their lives precludes the giving out of words that soothe and heal; when others speak them, they sink into their thirsty souls like drops of rain after a long drought. it was just such timely expressions as these that helped doctor john's patients most--often their only hope hung on some word uttered with a buoyancy of spirit that for a moment stifled all their anxieties. the effect of the treatment began to tell upon the little sufferer--his breathing became less difficult, the spasms less frequent. the doctor whispered the change to the wife, sitting close at his elbow, his impassive face brightening as he spoke; there was an oven chance now for the boy's life. the vigil continued. no one moved except fogarty, who would now and then tiptoe quickly to the hearth, add a fresh log to the embers, and as quickly move back to his position behind the child's crib. the rising and falling of the blaze, keeping rhythm, as it were, to the hopes and fears of the group, lighted up in turn each figure in the room. first the doctor sitting with hands resting on his knees, his aquiline nose and brow clearly outlined against the shadowy background in the gold chalk of the dancing flames, his black evening clothes in strong contrast to the high white of the coverlet, framing the child's face like a nimbus. next the bent body of the wife, her face in half-tones, her stout shoulders in high relief, and behind, swallowed up in the gloom, out of reach of the fire-. gleam, the straight, motionless form of the fisherman, standing with folded arms, grim and silent, his unseen eyes fixed on his child. far into the night, and until the gray dawn streaked the sky, this vigil continued; the doctor, assisted by fogarty and the wife, changing the poultices, filling the child's lungs with hot steam by means of a paper funnel, and encouraging the mother by his talk. at one time he would tell her in half-whispered tones of a child who had recovered and who had been much weaker than this one. again he would turn to fogarty and talk of the sea, of the fishing outside the inlet, of the big three-masted schooner which had been built by the men at tom's river, of the new light they thought of building at barnegat to take the place of the old one--anything to divert their minds and lessen their anxieties, stopping only to note the sound of every cough the boy gave or to change the treatment as the little sufferer struggled on fighting for his life. when the child dozed no one moved, no word was spoken. then in the silence there would come to their ears above the labored breathing of the boy the long swinging tick of the clock, dull and ominous, as if tolling the minutes of a passing life; the ceaseless crunch of the sea, chewing its cud on the beach outside or the low moan of the outer bar turning restlessly on its bed of sand. suddenly, and without warning, and out of an apparent sleep, the child started up from his pillow with staring eyes and began beating the air for breath. the doctor leaned quickly forward, listened for a moment, his ear to the boy's chest, and said in a quiet, restrained voice: "go into the other room, mrs. fogarty, and stay there till i call you." the woman raised her eyes to his and obeyed mechanically. she was worn out, mind and body, and had lost her power of resistance. as the door shut upon her doctor john sprang from the stool, caught the lamp from the wall, handed it to fogarty, and picking the child up from the crib, laid it flat upon his knees. he now slipped his hand into his pocket and took from it a leather case filled with instruments. "hold the light, fogarty," he said in a firm, decided tone, "and keep your nerve. i thought he'd pull through without it, but he'll strangle if i don't." "what ye goin' to do--not cut him?" whispered the fisherman in a trembling voice. "yes. it's his only chance. i've seen it coming on for the last hour--no nonsense now. steady, old fellow. it'll be over in a minute. ... there, my boy, that'll help you. now, fogarty, hand me that cloth. ... all right, little man; don't cry; it's all over. now open the door and let your wife in," and he laid the child back on the pillow. when the doctor took the blanket from the sorrel tethered outside fogarty's cabin and turned his horse's head homeward the sails of the fishing-boats lying in a string on the far horizon flashed silver in the morning sun, his groom met him at the stable door, and without a word led the mare into the barn. the lamp in his study was still burning in yellow mockery of the rosy dawn. he laid his case of instruments on the desk, hung his cloak and hat to a peg in the closet, and ascended the staircase on the way to his bedroom. as he passed his mother's open door she heard his step. "why, it's broad daylight, son," she called in a voice ending in a yawn. "yes, mother." "where have you been?" "to see little tod fogarty," he answered simply. "what's the matter with him?" "croup." "is he going to die?" "no, not this time." "well, what did you stay out all night for?" the voice had now grown stronger, with a petulant tone through it. "well, i could hardly help it. they are very simple people, and were so badly frightened that they were helpless. it's the only child they have left to them--the last one died of croup." "well, are you going to turn nurse for half the paupers in the county? all children have croup, and they don't all die!" the petulant voice had now developed into one of indignation. "no, mother, but i couldn't take any risks. this little chap is worth saving." there came a pause, during which the tired man waited patiently. "you were at the cobdens'?" "yes; or i should have reached fogarty's sooner." "and miss jane detained you, of course." "no, mother." "good-night, john." "say rather 'good-day,' mother," he answered with a smile and continued on to his room. chapter iv ann gossaway's red cloak the merrymakings at yardley continued for weeks, a new impetus and flavor being lent them by the arrival of two of lucy's friends--her schoolmate and bosom companion, maria collins, of trenton, and maria's devoted admirer, max feilding, of walnut hill, philadelphia. jane, in her joy over lucy's home-coming, and in her desire to meet her sister's every wish, gladly welcomed the new arrivals, although miss collins, strange to say, had not made a very good impression upon her. max she thought better of. he was a quiet, well-bred young fellow; older than either lucy or maria, and having lived abroad a year, knew something of the outside world. moreover, their families had always been intimate in the old days, his ancestral home being always open to jane's mother when a girl. the arrival of these two strangers only added to the general gayety. picnics were planned to the woods back of warehold to which the young people of the town were invited, and in which billy tatham with his team took a prominent part. sailing and fishing parties outside of barnegat were gotten up; dances were held in the old parlor, and even tableaux were arranged under max's artistic guidance. in one of these maria wore a spanish costume fashioned out of a white lace shawl belonging to jane's grand-mother draped over her head and shoulders, and made the more bewitching by a red japonica fixed in her hair, and lucy appeared as a dairy-maid decked out in one of martha's caps, altered to fit her shapely head. the village itself was greatly stirred. "have you seen them two fly-up-the-creeks?" billy tatham, the stage-driver, asked of uncle ephraim tipple as he was driving him down to the boat-landing. "no, what do they look like?" "the he-one had on a two-inch hat with a green ribbon and wore a white bob-tail coat that 'bout reached to the top o' his pants. looks like he lived on water-crackers and milk, his skin's that white. the she-one had a set o' hoops on her big as a circus tent. much as i could do to git her in the 'bus--as it was, she come in sideways. and her trunk! well, it oughter been on wheels--one o' them travellin' houses. i thought one spell i'd take the old plug out the shafts and hook on to it and git it up that-a-way." "some of lucy's chums, i guess," chuckled uncle ephraim. "miss jane told me they were coming. how long are they going to stay?" "dunno. till they git fed up and fattened, maybe. if they was mine i'd have killin' time to-day." ann gossaway and some of her cronies also gave free rein to their tongues. "learned them tricks at a finishin' school, did they?" broke out the dressmaker. (lucy had been the only young woman in warehold who had ever enjoyed that privilege.) "wearin' each other's hats, rollin' round in the sand, and hollerin' so you could hear 'em clear to the lighthouse. if i had my way i'd finish 'em, and that's where they'll git if they don't mind, and quick, too!" the dellenbaughs, cromartins, and bunsbys, being of another class, viewed the young couple's visit in a different light. "mr. feilding has such nice hands and wears such lovely cravats," the younger miss cromartin said, and "miss collins is too sweet for anything." prim mr. bunsby, having superior notions of life and deportment, only shook his head. he looked for more dignity, he said; but then this byronic young man had not been invited to any of the outings. in all these merrymakings and outings lucy was the central figure. her beauty, her joyous nature, her freedom from affectation and conventionality, her love of the out-of-doors, her pretty clothes and the way she wore them, all added to her popularity. in the swing and toss of her freedom, her true temperament developed. she was like a summer rose, making everything and everybody glad about her, loving the air she breathed as much for the color it put into her cheeks as for the new bound it gave to her blood. just as she loved the sunlight for its warmth and the dip and swell of the sea for its thrill. so, too, when the roses were a glory of bloom, not only would she revel in the beauty of the blossoms, but intoxicated by their color and fragrance, would bury her face in the wealth of their abundance, taking in great draughts of their perfume, caressing them with her cheeks, drinking in the honey of their petals. this was also true of her voice--a rich, full, vibrating voice, that dominated the room and thrilled the hearts of all who heard her. when she sang she sang as a bird sings, as much to relieve its own overcharged little body, full to bursting with the music in its soul, as to gladden the surrounding woods with its melody--because, too, she could not help it and because the notes lay nearest her bubbling heart and could find their only outlet through the lips. bart was her constant companion. under his instructions she had learned to hold the tiller in sailing in and out of the inlet; to swim over hand; to dive from a plank, no matter how high the jump; and to join in all his outdoor sports. lucy had been his constant inspiration in all of this. she had surveyed the field that first night of their meeting and had discovered that the young man's personality offered the only material in warehold available for her purpose. with him, or someone like him--one who had leisure and freedom, one who was quick and strong and skilful (and bart was all of these)--the success of her summer would be assured. without him many of her plans could not be carried out. and her victory over him had been an easy one. held first by the spell of her beauty and controlled later by her tact and stronger will, the young man's effrontery--almost impudence at times--had changed to a certain respectful subservience, which showed itself in his constant effort to please and amuse her. when they were not sailing they were back in the orchard out of sight of the house, or were walking together nobody knew where. often bart would call for her immediately after breakfast, and the two would pack a lunch-basket and be gone all day, lucy arranging the details of the outing, and bart entering into them with a dash and an eagerness which, to a man of his temperament, cemented the bond between them all the closer. had they been two fabled denizens of the wood--she a nymph and he a dryad--they could not have been more closely linked with sky and earth. as for jane, she watched the increasing intimacy with alarm. she had suddenly become aroused to the fact that lucy's love affair with bart was going far beyond the limits of prudence. the son of captain nathaniel holt, late of the black ball line of packets, would always be welcome as a visitor at the home, the captain being an old and tried friend of her father's; but neither bart's education nor prospects, nor, for that matter, his social position--a point which usually had very little weight with jane--could possibly entitle him to ask the hand of the granddaughter of archibald cobden in marriage. she began to regret that she had thrown them together. her own ideas of reforming him had never contemplated any such intimacy as now existed between the young man and her sister. the side of his nature which he had always shown her had been one of respectful attention to her wishes; so much so that she had been greatly encouraged in her efforts to make something more of him than even his best friends predicted could be done; but she had never for one instant intended that her friendly interest should go any further, nor could she have conceived of such an issue. and yet jane did nothing to prevent the meetings and outings of the young couple, even after maria's and max's departure. when martha, in her own ever-increasing anxiety, spoke of the growing intimacy she looked grave, but she gave no indication of her own thoughts. her pride prevented her discussing the situation with the old nurse and her love for lucy from intervening in her pleasures. "she has been cooped up at school so long, martha, dear," she answered in extenuation, "that i hate to interfere in anything she wants to do. she is very happy; let her alone. i wish, though, she would return some of the calls of these good people who have been so kind to her. perhaps she will if you speak to her. but don't worry about bart; that will wear itself out. all young girls must have their love-affairs." jane's voice had lacked the ring of true sincerity when she spoke about "wearing itself out," and martha had gone to her room more dissatisfied than before. this feeling became all the more intense when, the next day, from her window she watched bart tying on lucy's hat, puffing out the big bow under her chin, smoothing her hair from the flying strings. lucy's eyes were dancing, her face turned toward bart's, her pretty lips near his own. there was a knot or a twist, or a collection of knots and twists, or perhaps bart's fingers bungled, for minutes passed before the hat could be fastened to suit either of them. martha's head had all this time been thrust out of the easement, her gaze apparently fixed on a birdcage hung from a hook near the shutter. bart caught her eye and whispered to lucy that that "old spy-cat" was watching them; whereupon lucy faced about, waved her hand to the old nurse, and turning quickly, raced up the orchard and out of sight, followed by bart carrying a shawl for them to sit upon. after that martha, unconsciously, perhaps, to herself, kept watch, so far as she could, upon their movements, without, as she thought, betraying herself: making excuses to go to the village when they two went off together in that direction; traversing the orchard, ostensibly looking for meg when she knew all the time that the dog was sound asleep in the woodshed; or yielding to a sudden desire to give the rascal a bath whenever lucy announced that she and bart were going to spend the morning down by the water. as the weeks flew by and lucy had shown no willingness to assume her share of any of the responsibilities of the house,--any that interfered with her personal enjoyment,--jane became more and more restless and unhappy. the older village people had shown her sister every attention, she said to herself,--more than was her due, considering her youth,--and yet lucy had never crossed any one of their thresholds. she again pleaded with the girl to remember her social duties and to pay some regard to the neighbors who had called upon her and who had shown her so much kindness; to which the happy-hearted sister had laughed back in reply: "what for, you dear sister? these old fossils don't want to see me, and i'm sure i don't want to see them. some of them give me the shivers, they are so prim." it was with glad surprise, therefore, that jane heard lucy say in martha's hearing one bright afternoon: "now, i'm going to begin, sister, and you won't have to scold me any more. everyone of these old tabbies i will take in a row: mrs. cavendish first, and then the cromartins, and the balance of the bunch when i can reach them. i am going to rose cottage to see mrs. cavendish this very afternoon." the selection of mrs. cavendish as first on her list only increased jane's wonder. rose cottage lay some two miles from warehold, near the upper end of the beach, and few of their other friends lived near it. then again, jane knew that lucy had not liked the doctor's calling her into the house the night of her arrival, and had heretofore made one excuse after another when urged to call on his mother. her delight, therefore, over lucy's sudden sense of duty was all the more keen. "i'll go with you, darling," she answered, slipping her arm about lucy's waist, "and we'll take meg for a walk." so they started, lucy in her prettiest frock and hat and jane with her big red cloak over her arm to protect the young girl from the breeze from the sea, which in the early autumn was often cool, especially if they should sit out on mrs. cavendish's piazza. the doctor's mother met them on the porch. she had seen them enter the garden gate, and had left her seat by the window, and was standing on the top step to welcome them. rex, as usual, in the doctor's absence, did the honors of the office. he loved jane, and always sprang straight at her, his big paws resting on her shoulders. these courtesies, however, he did not extend to meg. the high-bred setter had no other salutation for the clay-colored remnant than a lifting of his nose, a tightening of his legs, and a smothered growl when meg ventured too near his lordship. "come up, my dear, and let me look at you," were mrs. cavendish's first words of salutation to lucy. "i hear you have quite turned the heads of all the gallants in warehold. john says you are very beautiful, and you know the doctor is a good judge, is he not, miss jane?" she added, holding out her hands to them both. "and he's quite right; you are just like your dear mother, who was known as the rose of barnegat long before you were born. shall we sit here, or will you come into my little salon for a cup of tea?" it was always a salon to mrs. cavendish, never a "sitting-room." "oh, please let me sit here," lucy answered, checking a rising smile at the word, "the view is so lovely," and without further comment or any reference to the compliments showered upon her, she took her seat upon the top step and began to play with rex, who had already offered to make friends with her, his invariable habit with well-dressed people. jane meanwhile improved the occasion to ask the doctor's mother about the hospital they were building near barnegat, and whether she and one or two of the other ladies at warehold would not be useful as visitors, and, perhaps, in case of emergency, as nurses. while the talk was in progress lucy sat smoothing rex's silky ears, listening to every word her hostess spoke, watching her gestures and the expressions that crossed her face, and settling in her mind for all time, after the manner of young girls, what sort of woman the doctor's mother might be; any opinions she might have had two years before being now outlawed by this advanced young woman in her present mature judgment. in that comprehensive glance, with the profound wisdom of her seventeen summers to help her, she had come to the conclusion that mrs. cavendish was a high-strung, nervous, fussy little woman of fifty, with an outward show of good-will and an inward intention to rip everybody up the back who opposed her; proud of her home, of her blood, and of her son, and determined, if she could manage it, to break off his attachment for jane, no matter at what cost. this last lucy caught from a peculiar look in the little old woman's eyes and a slightly scornful curve of the lower lip as she listened to jane's talk about the hospital, all of which was lost on "plain jane cobden," as the doctor's mother invariably called her sister behind her back. then the young mind-reader turned her attention to the house and grounds and the buildings lying above and before her, especially to the way the matted vines hung to the porches and clambered over the roof and dormers. later on she listened to mrs. cavendish's description of its age and ancestry: how it had come down to her from her grandfather, whose large estate was near trenton, where as a girl she had spent her life; how in those days it was but a small villa to which old nicholas erskine, her great-uncle, would bring his guests when the august days made trenton unbearable; and how in later years under the big trees back of the house and over the lawn--"you can see them from where you sit, my dear"--tea had been served to twenty or more of "the first gentlemen and ladies of the land." jane had heard it all a dozen times before, and so had every other visitor at rose cottage, but to lucy it was only confirmation of her latter-day opinion of her hostess. nothing, however, could be more gracious than the close attention which the young girl gave mrs. cavendish's every word when the talk was again directed to her, bending her pretty head and laughing at the right time--a courtesy which so charmed the dear lady that she insisted on giving first lucy, and then jane, a bunch of roses from her "own favorite bush" before the two girls took their leave. with these evidences of her delight made clear, lucy pushed rex from her side--he had become presuming and had left the imprint of his dusty paw upon her spotless frock--and with the remark that she had other visits to pay, her only regret being that this one was so short, she got up from her seat on the step, called meg, and stood waiting for jane with some slight impatience in her manner. jane immediately rose from her chair. she had been greatly pleaded at the impression lucy had made. her manner, her courtesy, her respect for the older woman, her humoring her whims, show her to be the daughter of a cobden. as to her own place during the visit, she had never given it a thought. she would always be willing to act as foil to her accomplished, brilliant sister if by so doing she could make other people love lucy the more. as they walked through the doctor's study, mrs. cavendish preceding them, jane lingered for a moment and gave a hurried glance about her. there stood his chair and his lounge where he had thrown himself so often when tired out. there, too, was the closet where he hung his coat and hat, and the desk covered with books and papers. a certain feeling of reverence not unmixed with curiosity took possession of her, as when one enters a sanctuary in the absence of the priest. for an instant she passed her hand gently over the leather back of the chair where his head rested, smoothing it with her fingers. then her eyes wandered over the room, noting each appointment in detail. suddenly a sense of injustice rose in her mind as she thought that nothing of beauty had ever been added to these plain surroundings; even the plants in the boxes by the windows looked half faded. with a quick glance at the open door she slipped a rose from the bunch in her hand, leaned over, and with the feeling of a devotee laying an offering on the altar, placed the flower hurried on the doctor's slate. then she joined mrs. cavendish. lucy walked slowly from the gate, her eyes every now and then turned to the sea. when she and jane had reached the cross-road that branched off toward the beach--it ran within sight of mrs. cavendish's windows--lucy said: "the afternoon is so lovely i'm not going to pay any more visits, sister. suppose i go to the beach and give meg a bath. you won't mind, will you? come, meg!" "oh, how happy you will make him!" cried jane. "but you are not dressed warm enough, dearie. you know how cool it gets toward evening. here, take my cloak. perhaps i'd better go with you--" "no, do you keep on home. i want to see if the little wretch will be contented with me alone. good-by," and without giving her sister time to protest, she called to meg, and with a wave of her hand, the red cloak flying from her shoulders, ran toward the beach, meg bounding after her. jane waved back in answer, and kept her eyes on the graceful figure skipping along the road, her head and shoulders in silhouette against the blue sea, her white skirts brushing the yellow grass of the sand-dune. all the mother-love in her heart welled up in her breast. she was so proud of her, so much in love with her, so thankful for her! all these foolish love affairs and girl fancies would soon be over and bart and the others like him out of lucy's mind and heart. why worry about it? some great strong soul would come by and by and take this child in his arms and make a woman of her. some strong soul-- she stopped short in her walk and her thoughts went back to the red rose lying on the doctor's desk. "will he know?" she said to herself; "he loves flowers so, and i don't believe anybody ever puts one on his desk. poor fellow! how hard he works and how good he is to everybody! little tod would have died but for his tenderness." then, with a prayer in her heart and a new light in her eyes, she kept on her way. lucy, as she bounded along the edge of the bluff, meg scurrying after her, had never once lost sight of her sister's slender figure. when a turn in the road shut her from view, she crouched down behind a sand-dune, waited until she was sure jane would not change her mind and join her, and then folding the cloak over her arm, gathered up her skirts and ran with all her speed along the wet sand to the house of refuge. as she reached its side, bart holt stepped out into the afternoon light. "i thought you'd never come, darling," he said, catching her in his arms and kissing her. "i couldn't help it, sweetheart. i told sister i was going to see mrs. cavendish, and she was so delighted she said she would go, too." "where is she?" he interrupted, turning his head and looking anxiously up the beach. "gone home. oh, i fixed that. i was scared to death for a minute, but you trust me when i want to get off." "why didn't you let her take that beast of a dog with her? we don't want him," he rejoined, pointing to meg, who had come to a sudden standstill at the sight of bart. "why, you silly! that's how i got away. she thought i was going to give him a bath. how long have you been waiting, my precious?" her hand was on his shoulder now, her eyes raised to his. "oh, 'bout a year. it really seems like a year, luce" (his pet name for her), "when i'm waiting for you. i was sure something was up. wait till i open the door." the two turned toward the house. "why! can we get in? i thought fogarty, the fisherman, had the key," she asked, with a tone of pleasant surprise in her voice. "so he has," he laughed. "got it now hanging up behind his clock. i borrowed it yesterday and had one made just like it. i'm of age." this came with a sly wink, followed by a low laugh of triumph. lucy smiled. she liked his daring; she liked, too, his resources. when a thing was to be done, bart always found the way to do it. she waited until he had fitted the new bright key into the rusty lock, her hand in his. "now, come inside," he cried, swinging wide the big doors. "isn't it a jolly place?" he slipped his arm about her and drew her to him. "see, there's the stove with the kindling-wood all ready to light when anything comes ashore, and up on that shelf are life-preservers; and here's a table and some stools and a lantern--two of 'em; and there's the big life-boat, all ready to push out. good place to come sundays with some of the fellows, isn't it? play all night here, and not a soul would find you out," he chuckled as he pointed to the different things. "you didn't think, now, i was going to have a cubby-hole like this to hide you in where that old spot-cat martha can't be watching us, did you?" he added, drawing her toward him and again kissing her with a sudden intensity. lucy slipped from his arms and began examining everything with the greatest interest. she had never seen anything but the outside of the house before and she always wondered what it contained, and as a child had stood up on her toes and tried to peep in through the crack of the big door. when she had looked the boat all over and felt the oars, and wondered whether the fire could be lighted quick enough, and pictured in her mind the half-drowned people huddled around it in their sea-drenched clothes, she moved to the door. bart wanted her to sit down inside, but she refused. "no, come outside and lie on the sand. nobody comes along here," she insisted. "oh, see how beautiful the sea is! i love that green," and drawing jane's red cloak around her, she settled herself on the sand, bart throwing himself at her feet. the sun was now nearing the horizon, and its golden rays fell across their faces. away off on the sky-line trailed the smoke of an incoming steamer; nearer in idled a schooner bound in to barnegat inlet with every sail set. at their feet the surf rose sleepily under the gentle pressure of the incoming tide, its wavelets spreading themselves in widening circles as if bent on kissing the feet of the radiant girl. as they sat and talked, filled with the happiness of being alone, their eyes now on the sea and now looking into each other's, meg, who had amused himself by barking at the swooping gulls, chasing the sand-snipe and digging holes in the sand for imaginary muskrats, lifted his head and gave a short yelp. bart, annoyed by the sound, picked up a bit of driftwood and hurled it at him, missing him by a few inches. the narrowness of the escape silenced the dog and sent him to the rear with drooping tail and ears. bart should have minded meg's warning. a broad beach in the full glare of the setting sun, even when protected by a house of refuge, is a poor place to be alone in. a woman was passing along the edge of the bluffs, carrying a basket in one hand and a green umbrella in the other; a tall, thin, angular woman, with the eye of a ferret. it was ann gossaway's day for visiting the sick, and she had just left fogarty's cabin, where little tod, with his throat tied up in red flannel, had tried on her mitts and played with her spectacles. miss gossaway had heard meg's bark and had been accorded a full view of lucy's back covered by jane's red cloak, with bart sitting beside her, their shoulders touching. lovers with their heads together interested the gossip no longer, except as a topic to talk about. such trifles had these many years passed out of the dress-maker's life. so miss gossaway, busy with her own thoughts, kept on her way unnoticed by either lucy or bart. when she reached the cross-road she met doctor john driving in. he tightened the reins on the sorrel and stopped. "lovely afternoon, miss gossaway. where are you from--looking at the sunset?" "no, i ain't got no time for spoonin'. i might be if i was miss jane and bart holt. just see 'em a spell ago squattin' down behind the house o' refuge. she wouldn't look at me. i been to fogarty's; she's on my list this week, and it's my day for visitin', fust in two weeks. that two-year-old of hers is all right ag'in after your sewing him up; they'll never get over tellin' how you set up all night with him. you ought to hear mrs. fogarty go on--'oh, the goodness of him!'" and she mimicked the good woman's dialect. "'if tod'd been his own child he couldn't a-done more for him.' that's the way she talks. i heard, doctor, ye never left him till daylight. you're a wonder." the doctor touched his hat and drove on. miss gossaway's sharp, rasping voice and incisive manner of speaking grated upon him. he liked neither her tone nor the way in which she spoke of the mistress of yardley. no one else dared as much. if jane was really on the beach and with bart, she had some good purpose in her mind. it may have been her day for visiting, and bart, perhaps, had accompanied her. but why had miss gossaway not met miss cobden at fogarty's, his being the only cabin that far down the beach? then his face brightened. perhaps, after all, it was lucy whom she had seen. he had placed that same red cloak around her shoulders the night of the reception at yardley--and when she was with bart, too. mrs. cavendish was sitting by her window when the doctor entered his own house. she rose, and putting down her book, advanced to meet him. "you should have come earlier, john," she said with a laugh; "such a charming girl and so pretty and gracious. why, i was quite overcome. she is very different from her sister. what do you think miss jane wants to do now? nurse in the new hospital when it is built! pretty position for a lady, isn't it?" "any position she would fill would gain by her presence," said the doctor gravely. "have they been gone long?" he asked, changing the subject. he never discussed jane cobden with his mother if he could help it. "oh, yes, some time. lucy must have kept on home, for i saw miss jane going toward the beach alone." "are you sure, mother?" there was a note of anxiety in his voice. "yes, certainly. she had that red cloak of hers with her and that miserable little dog; that's how i know. she must be going to stay late. you look tired, my son; have you had a hard day?" added she, kissing him on the cheek. "yes, perhaps i am a little tired, but i'll be all right. have you looked at the slate lately? i'll go myself," and he turned and entered his office. on the slate lay the rose. he picked it up and held it to his nose in a preoccupied way. "one of mother's," he said listlessly, laying it back among his papers. "she so seldom does that sort of thing. funny that she should have given it to me to-day; and after miss jane's visit, too." then he shut the office door, threw himself into his chair, and buried his face in his hands. he was still there when his mother called him to supper. when lucy reached home it was nearly dark. she came alone, leaving bart at the entrance to the village. at her suggestion they had avoided the main road and had crossed the marsh by the foot-path, the dog bounding on ahead and springing at the nurse, who stood in the gate awaiting lucy's return. "why, he's as dry as a bone!" martha cried, stroking meg's rough hair with her plump hand. "he didn't get much of a bath, did he?" "no, i couldn't get him into the water. every time i got my hand on him he'd dart away again." "anybody on the beach, darlin'?" "not a soul except meg and the sandsnipe." chapter v captain nat's decision when martha, with meg at her heels, passed ann gossaway's cottage the next morning on her way to the post-office--her daily custom--the dressmaker, who was sitting in the window, one eye on her needle and the other on the street, craned her head clear of the calico curtain framing the sash and beckoned to her. this perch of ann gossaway's was the eyrie from which she swept the village street, bordered with a double row of wide-spreading elms and fringed with sloping grassy banks spaced at short intervals by hitching-posts and horse-blocks. her own cottage stood somewhat nearer the flagged street path than the others, and as the garden fences were low and her lookout flanked by two windows, one on each end of her corner, she could not only note what went on about the fronts of her neighbors' houses, but much of what took place in their back yards. from this angle, too, she could see quite easily, and without more than twisting her attenuated neck, the whole village street from the cromartins' gate to the spire of the village church, as well as everything that passed up and down the shadow-flecked road: which child, for instance, was late for school, and how often, and what it wore and whether its clothes were new or inherited from an elder sister; who came to the bronsons' next door, and how long they stayed, and whether they brought anything with them or carried anything away; the peddler with his pack; the gunner on his way to the marshes, his two dogs following at his heels in a leash; dr. john cavendish's gig, and whether it was about to stop at uncle ephraim tipple's or keep on, as usual, and whirl into the open gate of cobden manor; billy tatham's passenger list, as the ricketty stage passed with the side curtains up, and the number of trunks and bags, and the size of them, all indicative of where they were bound and for how long; details of village life--no one of which concerned her in the least--being matters of profound interest to miss gossaway. these several discoveries she shared daily with a faded old mother who sat huddled up in a rocking-chair by the stove, winter and summer, whether it had any fire in it or not. uncle ephraim tipple, in his outspoken way, always referred to these two gossips as the "spiders." "when the thin one has sucked the life out of you," he would say with a laugh, "she passes you on to her old mother, who sits doubled up inside the web, and when she gets done munching there isn't anything left but your hide and bones." it was but one of uncle ephraim's jokes. the mother was only a forlorn, half-alive old woman who dozed in her chair by the hour--the relict of a fisherman who had gone to sea in his yawl some twenty years before and who had never come back. the daughter, with the courage of youth, had then stepped into the gap and had alone made the fight for bread. gradually, as the years went by the roses in her cheeks--never too fresh at any time--had begun to fade, her face and figure to shrink, and her brow to tighten. at last, embittered by her responsibilities and disappointments, she had lost faith in human kind and had become a shrew. since then her tongue had swept on as relentlessly as a scythe, sparing neither flower nor noxious weed, a movement which it was wise, sometimes, to check. when, therefore, martha, with meg now bounding before her, caught sight of ann gossaway's beckoning hand thrust out of the low window of her cottage--the spider-web referred to by uncle ephraim--she halted in her walk, lingered a moment as if undecided, expressed her opinion of the dressmaker to meg in an undertone, and swinging open the gate with its ball and chain, made her way over the grass-plot and stood outside the window, level with the sill. "well, it ain't none of my business, of course, martha sands," miss gossaway began, "and that's just what i said to mother when i come home, but if i was some folks i'd see my company in my parlor, long as i had one, 'stead of hidin' down behind the house o' refuge. i said to mother soon's i got in, 'i'm goin' to tell martha sands fust minute i see her. she ain't got no idee how them girls of hers is carryin' on or she'd stop it.' that's what i said, didn't i, mother?" martha caught an inarticulate sound escaping from a figure muffled in a blanket shawl, but nothing else followed. "i thought fust it was you when i heard that draggle-tail dog of yours barkin', but it was only miss jane and bart holt." "down on the beach! when?" asked martha. she had not understood a word of miss gossaway's outburst. "why, yesterday afternoon, of course--didn't i tell ye so? i'd been down to fogarty's; it's my week. miss jane and bart didn't see me--didn't want to. might a' been a pair of scissors, they was that close together." "miss jane warn't on the beach yesterday afternoon," said martha in a positive tone, still in the dark. "she warn't, warn't she? well, i guess i know miss jane cobden. she and bart was hunched up that close you couldn't get a bodkin 'tween 'em. she had that red cloak around her and the hood up ever her head. not know her, and she within ten feet o' me? well, i guess i got my eyes left, ain't i?" martha stood stunned. she knew now who it was. she had taken the red cloak from lucy's shoulders the evening before. then a cold chill crept over her as she remembered the lie lucy had told--"not a soul on the beach but meg and the sandsnipe." for an instant she stood without answering. but for the window-sill on which her hand rested she would have betrayed her emotion in the swaying of her body. she tried to collect her thoughts. to deny jane's identity too positively would only make the situation worse. if either one of the sisters were to be criticised jane could stand it best. "you got sharp eyes and ears, ann gossaway, nobody will deny you them, but still i don't think miss jane was on the beach yesterday." "don't think, don't you? maybe you think i can't tell a cloak from a bed blanket, never havin' made one, and maybe ye think i don't know my own clo'es when i see 'em on folks. i made that red cloak for miss jane two years ago, and i know every stitch in it. don't you try and teach ann gossaway how to cut and baste or you'll git worsted," and the gossip looked over her spectacles at martha and shook her side-curls in a threatening way. miss gossaway had no love for the old nurse. there had been a time when martha "weren't no better'n she oughter be, so everybody said," when she came to the village, and the dressmaker never let a chance slip to humiliate the old woman. martha's open denunciation of the dressmaker's vinegar tongue had only increased the outspoken dislike each had for the other. she saw now, to her delight, that the incident which had seemed to be only a bit of flotsam that had drifted to her shore and which but from martha's manner would have been forgotten by her the next day, might be a fragment detached from some floating family wreck. before she could press the matter to an explanation martha turned abruptly on her heel, called meg, and with the single remark, "well, i guess miss jane's of age," walked quickly across the grass-plot and out of the gate, the ball and chain closing it behind her with a clang. once on the street martha paused with her brain on fire. the lie which lucy had told frightened her. she knew why she had told it, and she knew, too, what harm would come to her bairn if that kind of gossip got abroad in the village. she was no longer the gentle, loving nurse with the soft caressing hand, but a woman of purpose. the sudden terror aroused in her heart had the effect of tightening her grip and bracing her shoulders as if the better to withstand some expected shock. she forgot meg; forgot her errand to the post-office; forgot everything, in fact, except the safety of the child she loved. that lucy had neglected and even avoided her of late, keeping out of her way even when she was in the house, and that she had received only cool indifference in place of loyal love, had greatly grieved her, but it had not lessened the idolatry with which she worshipped her bairn. hours at a time she had spent puzzling her brain trying to account for the change which had come over the girl during two short years of school. she had until now laid this change to her youth, her love of admiration, and had forgiven it. now she understood it; it was that boy bart. he had a way with him. he had even ingratiated himself into miss jane's confidence. and now this young girl had fallen a victim to his wiles. that lucy should lie to her, of all persons, and in so calm and self-possessed a manner; and about bart, of all men--sent a shudder through her heart, that paled her cheek and tightened her lips. once before she had consulted jane and had been rebuffed. now she would depend upon herself. retracing her steps and turning sharply to the right, she ordered meg home in a firm voice, watched the dog slink off and then walked straight down a side road to captain nat holt's house. that the captain occupied a different station in life from herself did not deter her. she felt at the moment that the honor of the cobden name lay in her keeping. the family had stood by her in her trouble; now she would stand by them. the captain sat on his front porch reading a newspaper. he was in his shirt-sleeves and bareheaded, his straight hair standing straight out like the bristles of a shoe-brush. since the death of his wife a few years before he had left the service, and now spent most of his days at home, tending his garden and enjoying his savings. he was a man of positive character and generally had his own way in everything. it was therefore with some astonishment that he heard martha say when she had mounted the porch steps and pushed open the front door, her breath almost gone in her hurried walk, "come inside." captain holt threw down his paper and rising hurriedly from his chair, followed her into the sitting-room. the manner of the nurse surprised him. he had known her for years, ever since his old friend, lucy's father, had died, and the tones of her voice, so different from her usual deferential air, filled him with apprehension. "ain't nobody sick, is there, martha?" "no, but there will be. are ye alone?" "yes." "then shut that door behind ye and sit down. i've got something to say." the grizzled, weather-beaten man who had made twenty voyages around cape horn, and who was known as a man of few words, and those always of command, closed the door upon them, drew down the shade on the sunny side of the room and faced her. he saw now that something of more than usual importance absorbed her. "now, what is it?" he asked. his manner had by this time regained something of the dictatorial tone he always showed those beneath him in authority. "it's about bart. you've got to send him away." she had not moved from her position in the middle of the room. the captain changed color and his voice lost its sharpness. "bart! what's he done now?" "he sneaks off with our lucy every chance he gets. they were on the beach yesterday hidin' behind the house o' refuge with their heads together. she had on miss jane's red cloak, and ann gossaway thought it was miss jane, and i let it go at that." the captain looked at martha incredulously for a moment, and then broke into a loud laugh as the absurdity of the whole thing burst upon him. then dropping back a step, he stood leaning against the old-fashioned sideboard, his elbows behind him, his large frame thrust toward her. "well, what if they were--ain't she pretty enough?" he burst out. "i told her she'd have 'em all crazy, and i hear bart ain't done nothin' but follow in her wake since he seen her launched." martha stepped closer to the captain and held her fist in his face. "he's got to stop it. do ye hear me?" she shouted. "if he don't there'll be trouble, for you and him and everybody. it's me that's crazy, not him." "stop it!" roared the captain, straightening up, the glasses on the sideboard ringing with his sudden lurch. "my boy keep away from the daughter of morton cobden, who was the best friend i ever had and to whom i owe more than any man who ever lived! and this is what you traipsed up here to tell me, is it, you mollycoddle?" again martha edged nearer; her body bent forward, her eyes searching his--so close that she could have touched his face with her knuckles. "hold your tongue and stop talkin' foolishness," she blazed out, the courage of a tigress fighting for her young in her eyes, the same bold ring in her voice. "i tell ye, captain holt, it's got to stop short off, and now! i know men; have known 'em to my misery. i know when they're honest and i know when they ain't, and so do you, if you would open your eyes. bart don't mean no good to my bairn. i see it in his face. i see it in the way he touches her hand and ties on her bonnet. i've watched him ever since the first night he laid eyes on her. he ain't a man with a heart in him; he's a sneak with a lie in his mouth. why don't he come round like any of the others and say where he's goin' and what he wants to do instead of peepin' round the gate-posts watchin' for her and sendin' her notes on the sly, and makin' her lie to me, her old nurse, who's done nothin' but love her? doctor john don't treat miss jane so--he loves her like a man ought to love a woman and he ain't got nothin' to hide--and you didn't treat your wife so. there's something here that tells me"--and she laid her hand on her bosom--"tells me more'n i dare tell ye. i warn ye now ag'in. send him to sea--anywhere, before it is too late. she ain't got no mother; she won't mind a word i say; miss jane is blind as a bat; out with him and now!" the captain straightened himself up, and with his clenched fist raised above his head like a hammer about to strike, cried: "if he harmed the daughter of morton cobden i'd kill him!" the words jumped hot from his throat with a slight hissing sound, his eyes still aflame. "well, then, stop it before it gets too late. i walk the floor nights and i'm scared to death every hour i live." then her voice broke. "please, captain, please," she added in a piteous tone. "don't mind me if i talk wild, my heart is breakin', and i can't hold in no longer," and she burst into a paroxysm of tears. the captain leaned against the sideboard again and looked down upon the floor as if in deep thought. martha's tears did not move him. the tears of few women did. he was only concerned in getting hold of some positive facts upon which he could base his judgment. "come, now," he said in an authoritative voice, "let me get that chair and set down and then i'll see what all this amounts to. sounds like a yarn of a horse-marine." as he spoke he crossed the room and, dragging a rocking-chair from its place beside the wall, settled himself in it. martha found a seat upon the sofa and turned her tear-stained face toward him. "now, what's these young people been doin' that makes ye so almighty narvous?" he continued, lying back in his chair and looking at her from under his bushy eyebrows, his fingers supporting his forehead. "everything. goes out sailin' with her and goes driftin' past with his head in her lap. fogarty's man who brings fish to the house told me." she had regained something of her old composure now. "anything else?" the captain's voice had a relieved, almost condescending tone in it. he had taken his thumb and forefinger from his eyebrow now and sat drumming with his stiffened knuckles on the arm of the rocker. "yes, a heap more--ain't that enough along with the other things i've told ye?" martha's eyes were beginning to blaze again. "no, that's just as it ought to be. boys and girls will be boys and girls the world over." the tone of the captain's voice indicated the condition of his mind. he had at last arrived at a conclusion. martha's head was muddled because of her inordinate and unnatural love for the child she had nursed. she had found a spookship in a fog bank, that was all. jealousy might be at the bottom of it or a certain nervous fussiness. whatever it was it was too trivial for him to waste his time over. the captain rose from his chair, crossed the sitting-room, and opened the door leading to the porch, letting in the sunshine. martha followed close at his heels. "you're runnin' on a wrong tack, old woman, and first thing ye know ye'll be in the breakers," he said, with his hand on the knob. "ease off a little and don't be too hard on 'em. they'll make harbor all right. you're makin' more fuss than a hen over one chicken. miss jane knows what she's about. she's got a level head, and when she tells me that my bart ain't good enough to ship alongside the daughter of morton cobden, i'll sign papers for him somewhere else, and not before. i'll have to get you to excuse me now; i'm busy. good-day," and picking up his paper, he re-entered the house and closed the door upon her. chapter vi a game of cards should miss gossaway have been sitting at her lookout some weeks after martha's interview with captain nat holt, and should she have watched the movements of doctor john's gig as it rounded into the open gate of cobden manor, she must have decided that something out of the common was either happening or about to happen inside yardley's hospitable doors. not only was the sorrel trotting at her best, the doctor flapping the lines along her brown back, his body swaying from side to side with the motion of the light vehicle, but as he passed her house he was also consulting the contents of a small envelope which he had taken from his pocket. "please come early," it read. "i have something important to talk over with you." a note of this character signed with so adorable a name as "jane cobden" was so rare in the doctor's experience that he had at once given up his round of morning visits and, springing into his waiting gig, had started to answer it in person. he was alive with expectancy. what could she want with him except to talk over some subject that they had left unfinished? as he hurried on there came into his mind half a dozen matters, any one of which it would have been a delight to revive. he knew from the way she worded the note that nothing had occurred since he had seen her--within the week, in fact--to cause her either annoyance or suffering. no; it was only to continue one of their confidential talks, which were the joy of his life. jane was waiting for him in the morning-room. her face lighted up as he entered and took her hand, and immediately relaxed again into an expression of anxiety. all his eagerness vanished. he saw with a sinking of the heart, even before she had time to speak, that something outside of his own affairs, or hers, had caused her to write the note. "i came at once," he said, keeping her hand in his. "you look troubled; what has happened?" "nothing yet," she answered, leading him to the sofa, "it is about lucy. she wants to go away for the winter." "where to?" he asked. he had placed a cushion at her back and had settled himself beside her. "to trenton, to visit her friend miss collins and study music. she says warehold bores her." "and you don't want her to go?" "no; i don't fancy miss collins, and i am afraid she has too strong an influence over lucy. her personality grates on me; she is so boisterous, and she laughs so loud; and the views she holds are unaccountable to me in so young a girl. she seems to have had no home training whatever. why lucy likes her, and why she should have selected her as an intimate friend, has always puzzled me." she spoke with her usual frankness and with that directness which always characterized her in matters of this kind. "i had no one else to talk to and am very miserable about it all. you don't mind my sending for you, do you?" "mind! why do you ask such a question? i am never so happy as when i am serving you." that she should send for him at all was happiness. not sickness this time, nor some question of investment, nor the repair of the barn or gate or out-buildings--but lucy, who lay nearest her heart! that was even better than he had expected. "tell me all about it, so i can get it right," he continued in a straightforward tone--the tone of the physician, not the lover. she had relied on him, and he intended to give her the best counsel of which he was capable. the lover could wait. "well, she received a letter a week ago from miss collins, saying she had come to trenton for the winter and had taken some rooms in a house belonging to her aunt, who would live with her. she wants to be within reach of the same music-teacher who taught the girls at miss parkham's school. she says if lucy will come it will reduce the expenses and they can both have the benefit of the tuition. at first lucy did not want to go at all, now she insists, and, strange to say, martha encourages her." "martha wants her to leave?" he asked in surprise. "she says so." the doctor's face assumed a puzzled expression. he could account for lucy's wanting the freedom and novelty of the change, but that martha should be willing to part with her bairn for the winter mystified him. he knew nothing of the flirtation, of course, and its effect on the old nurse, and could not, therefore, understand martha's delight in lucy's and bart's separation. "you will be very lonely," he said, and a certain tender tone developed in his voice. "yes, dreadfully so, but i would not mind if i thought it was for her good. but i don't think so. i may be wrong, and in the uncertainty i wanted to talk it over with you. i get so desolate sometimes. i never seemed to miss my father so much as now. perhaps it is because lucy's babyhood and childhood are over and she is entering upon womanhood with all the dangers it brings. and she frightens me so sometimes," she continued after a slight pause. "she is different; more self-willed, more self-centred. besides, her touch has altered. she doesn't seem to love me as she did--not in the same way." "but she could never do anything else but love you," he interrupted quickly, speaking for himself as well as lucy, his voice vibrating under his emotions. it was all he could do to keep his hands from her own; her sending for him alone restrained him. "i know that, but it is not in the old way. it used to be 'sister, darling, don't tire yourself,' or 'sister, dear, let me go upstairs for you,' or 'cuddle close here, and let us talk it all out together.' there is no more of that. she goes her own way, and when i chide her laughs and leaves me alone until i make some new advance. help me, please, and with all the wisdom you can give me; i have no one else in whom i can trust, no one who is big enough to know what should be done. i might have talked to mr. dellenbaugh about it, but he is away." "no; talk it all out to me," he said simply. "i so want to help you"--his whole heart was going out to her in her distress. "i know you feel sorry for me." she withdrew her hand gently so as not to hurt him; she too did not want to be misunderstood--having sent for him. "i know how sincere your friendship is for me, but put all that aside. don't let your sympathy for me cloud your judgment. what shall i do with lucy? answer me as if you were her father and mine," and she looked straight into his eyes. the doctor tightened the muscles of his throat, closed his teeth, and summoned all his resolution. if he could only tell her what was in his heart how much easier it would all be! for some moments he sat perfectly still, then he answered slowly--as her man of business would have done: "i should let her go." "why do you say so?" "because she will find out in that way sooner than in any other how to appreciate you and her home. living in two rooms and studying music will not suit lucy. when the novelty wears off she will long for her home, and when she comes back it will be with a better appreciation of its comforts. let her go, and make her going as happy as you can." and so jane gave her consent--it is doubtful whether lucy would have waited for it once her mind was made up--and in a week she was off, doctor john taking her himself as far as the junction, and seeing her safe on the road to trenton. martha was evidently delighted at the change, for the old nurse's face was wreathed in smiles that last morning as they all stood out by the gate while billy tatham loaded lucy's trunks and boxes. only once did a frown cross her face, and that was when lucy leaned over and whispering something in bart's ear, slipped a small scrap of paper between his fingers. bart crunched it tight and slid his hand carelessly into his pocket, but the gesture did not deceive the nurse: it haunted her for days thereafter. as the weeks flew by and the letters from trenton told of the happenings in maria's home, it became more and more evident to jane that the doctor's advice had been the wisest and best. lucy would often devote a page or more of her letters to recalling the comforts of her own room at yardley, so different from what she was enduring at trenton, and longing for them to come again. parts of these letters jane read to the doctor, and all of them to martha, who received them with varying comment. it became evident, too, that neither the excitement of bart's letters, nor the visits of the occasional school friends who called upon them both, nor the pursuit of her new accomplishment, had satisfied the girl. jane was not surprised, therefore, remembering the doctor's almost prophetic words, to learn of the arrival of a letter from lucy begging martha to come to her at once for a day or two. the letter was enclosed in one to bart and was handed to the nurse by that young man in person. as he did so he remarked meaningly that miss lucy wanted martha's visit to be kept a secret from everybody but miss jane, "just as a surprise," but martha answered in a positive tone that she had no secrets from those who had a right to know them, and that he could write lucy she was coming next day, and that jane and everybody else who might inquire would know of it before she started. she rather liked bart's receiving the letter. as long as that young man kept away from trenton and confined himself to warehold, where she could keep her eyes on him, she was content. to jane martha said: "oh, bless the darlin'! she can't do a day longer without her martha. i'll go in the mornin'. it's a little pettin' she wants--that's all." so the old nurse bade meg good-by, pinned her big gray shawl about her, tied on her bonnet, took a little basket with some delicacies and a pot of jelly, and like a true mother hubbard, started off, while jane, having persuaded herself that perhaps "the surprise" was meant for her, and that she might be welcoming two exiles instead of one the following night, began to put lucy's room in order and to lay out the many pretty things she loved, especially the new dressing-gown she had made for her, lined with blue silk--her favorite color. all that day and evening, and far into the next afternoon, jane went about the house with the refrain of an old song welling up into her heart--one that had been stifled for months. the thought of the round-about way in which lucy had sent for martha did not dull its melody. that ruse, she knew, came from the foolish pride of youth, the pride that could not meet defeat. underneath it she detected, with a thrill, the love of home; this, after all, was what her sister could not do without. it was not bart this time. that affair, as she had predicted and had repeatedly told martha, had worn itself out and had been replaced by her love of music. she had simply come to herself once more and would again be her old-time sister and her child. then, too--and this sent another wave of delight tingling through her--it had all been the doctor's doing! but for his advice she would never have let lucy go. half a dozen times, although the november afternoon was raw and chilly, with the wind fresh from the sea and the sky dull, she was out on the front porch without shawl or hat, looking down the path, covered now with dead leaves, and scanning closely every team that passed the gate, only to return again to her place by the fire, more impatient than ever. meg's quick ear first caught the grating of the wheels. jane followed him with a cry of joyous expectation, and flew to the door to meet the stage, which for some reason--why, she could not tell--had stopped for a moment outside the gate, dropping only one passenger, and that one the nurse. "and lucy did not come, martha!" jane exclaimed, with almost a sob in her voice. she had reached her side now, followed by meg, who was springing straight at the nurse in the joy of his welcome. the old woman glanced back at the stage, as if afraid of being overheard, and muttered under her breath: "no, she couldn't come." "oh, i am so disappointed! why not?" martha did not answer. she seemed to have lost her breath. jane put her arm about her and led her up the path. once she stumbled, her step was so unsteady, and she would have fallen but for jane's assistance. the two had now reached the hand-railing of the porch. here martha's trembling foot began to feel about for the step. jane caught her in her arms. "you're ill, martha!" she cried in alarm. "give me the bag. what's the matter?" again martha did not answer. "tell me what it is." "upstairs! upstairs!" martha gasped in reply. "quick!" "what has happened?" "not here; upstairs." they climbed the staircase together, jane half carrying the fainting woman, her mind in a whirl. "where were you taken ill? why did you try to come home? why didn't lucy come with you?" they had reached the door of jane's bedroom now, martha clinging to her arm. once inside, the nurse leaned panting against the door, put her bands to her face as if she would shut out some dreadful spectre, and sank slowly to the floor. "it is not me," she moaned, wringing her hands, "not me--not--" "who?" "oh, i can't say it!" "lucy?" "yes" "not ill?" "no; worse!" "oh, martha! not dead?" "o god, i wish she were!" an hour passed--an hour of agony, of humiliation and despair. again the door opened and jane stepped out--slowly, as if in pain, her lips tight drawn, her face ghastly white, the thin cheeks sunken into deeper hollows, the eyes burning. only the mouth preserved its lines, but firmer, more rigid, more severe, as if tightened by the strength of some great resolve. in her hand she held a letter. martha lay on the bed, her face to the wall, her head still in her palms. she had ceased sobbing and was quite still, as if exhausted. jane leaned over the banisters, called to one of the servants, and dropping the letter to the floor below, said: "take that to captain holt's. when he comes bring him upstairs here into my sitting-room." before the servant could reply there came a knock at the front door. jane knew its sound--it was doctor john's. leaning far over, grasping the top rail of the banisters to steady herself, she said to the servant in a low, restrained voice: "if that is dr. cavendish, please say to him that martha is just home from trenton, greatly fatigued, and i beg him to excuse me. when the doctor has driven away, you can take the letter." she kept her grasp on the hand-rail until she heard the tones of his voice through the open hall door and caught the note of sorrow that tinged them. "oh, i'm so sorry! poor martha!" she heard him say. "she is getting too old to go about alone. please tell miss jane she must not hesitate to send for me if i can be of the slightest service." then she re-entered the room where martha lay and closed the door. another and louder knock now broke the stillness of the chamber and checked the sobs of the nurse; captain holt had met jane's servant as he was passing the gate. he stopped for an instant in the hall, slipped off his coat, and walked straight upstairs, humming a tune as he came. jane heard his firm tread, opened the door of their room, and she and martha crossed the hall to a smaller apartment where jane always attended to the business affairs of the house. the captain's face was wreathed in a broad smile as he extended his hand to jane in welcome. "it's lucky ye caught me, miss jane. i was just goin' out, and in a minute i'd been gone for the night. hello, mother martha! i thought you'd gone to trenton." the two women made no reply to his cheery salutation, except to motion him to a seat. then jane closed the door and turned the key in the lock. when the captain emerged from the chamber he stepped out alone. his color was gone, his eyes flashing, his jaw tight set. about his mouth there hovered a savage, almost brutal look, the look of a bulldog who bares his teeth before he tears and strangles--a look his men knew when someone of them purposely disobeyed his orders. for a moment he stood as if dazed. all he remembered clearly was the white, drawn face of a woman gazing at him with staring, tear-drenched eyes, the slow dropping of words that blistered as they fell, and the figure of the nurse wringing her hands and moaning: "oh, i told ye so! i told ye so! why didn't ye listen?" with it came the pain of some sudden blow that deadened his brain and stilled his heart. with a strong effort, like one throwing off a stupor, he raised his head, braced his shoulders, and strode firmly along the corridor and down the stairs on his way to the front door. catching up his coat, he threw it about him, pulled his hat on, with a jerk, slamming the front door, plunged along through the dry leaves that covered the path, and so on out to the main road. once beyond the gate he hesitated, looked up and down, turned to the right and then to the left, as if in doubt, and lunged forward in the direction of the tavern. it was sunday night, and the lounging room was full. one of the inmates rose and offered him a chair--he was much respected in the village, especially among the rougher class, some of whom had sailed with him--but he only waved his hand in thanks. "i don't want to sit down; i'm looking for bart. has he been here?" the sound came as if from between closed teeth. "not as i know of, cap'n," answered the landlord; "not since sundown, nohow." "do any of you know where he is?" the look in the captain's eyes and the sharp, cutting tones of his voice began to be noticed. "do ye want him bad?" asked a man tilted back in a chair against the wall. "yes." "well, i kin tell ye where to find him," "where?" "down on the beach in the refuge shanty. he and the boys have a deck there sunday nights. been at it all fall--thought ye knowed it." out into the night again, and without a word of thanks, down the road and across the causeway to the hard beach, drenched with the ceaseless thrash of the rising sea. he followed no path, picked out no road. stumbling along in the half-gloom of the twilight, he could make out the heads of the sand-dunes, bearded with yellow grass blown flat against their cheeks. soon he reached the prow of the old wreck with its shattered timbers and the water-holes left by the tide. these he avoided, but the smaller objects he trampled upon and over as he strode on, without caring where he stepped or how often he stumbled. outlined against the sand-hills, bleached white under the dull light, he looked like some evil presence bent on mischief, so direct and forceful was his unceasing, persistent stride. when the house of refuge loomed up against the gray froth of the surf he stopped and drew breath. bending forward, he scanned the beach ahead, shading his eyes with his hand as he would have done on his own ship in a fog. he could make out now some streaks of yellow light showing through the cracks one above the other along the side of the house and a dull patch of red. he knew what it meant. bart and his fellows were inside, and were using one of the ship lanterns to see by. this settled in his mind, the captain strode on, but at a slower pace. he had found his bearings, and would steer with caution. hugging the dunes closer, he approached the house from the rear. the big door was shut and a bit of matting had been tacked over the one window to deaden the light. this was why the patch of red was dull. he stood now so near the outside planking that he could hear the laughter and talk of those within. by this time the wind had risen to half a gale and the moan on the outer bar could be heard in the intervals of the pounding surf. the captain crept under the eaves of the roof and listened. he wanted to be sure of bart's voice before he acted. at this instant a sudden gust of wind burst in the big door, extinguishing the light of the lantern, and bart's voice rang out: "stay where you are, boys! don't touch the cards. i know the door, and can fix it; it's only the bolt that's slipped." as bart passed out into the gloom the captain darted forward, seized him with a grip of steel, dragged him clear of the door, and up the sand-dunes out of hearing. then he flung him loose and stood facing the cowering boy. "now stand back and keep away from me, for i'm afraid i'll kill you!" "what have i done?" cringed bart, shielding his face with his elbow as if to ward off a blow. the suddenness of the attack had stunned him. "don't ask me, you whelp, or i'll strangle you. look at me! that's what you been up to, is it?" bart straightened himself, and made some show of resistance. his breath was coming back to him. "i haven't done anything--and if i did--" "you lie! martha's back from trenton and lucy told her. you never thought of me. you never thought of that sister of hers whose heart you've broke, nor of the old woman who nursed her like a mother. you thought of nobody but your stinkin' self. you're not a man! you're a cur! a dog! don't move! keep away from me, i tell ye, or i may lose hold of myself." bart was stretching out his hands now as if in supplication. he had never seen his father like this--the sight frightened him. "father, will you listen--" he pleaded. "i'll listen to nothin'--" "will you, please? it's not all my fault. she ought to have kept out of my way--" "stop! take that back! you'd blame her, would ye--a child just out of school, and as innocent as a baby? by god, you'll do right by her or you'll never set foot inside my house again!" bart faced his father again. "i want to tell you the whole story before you judge me. i want to--" "you'll tell me nothin'! will you act square with her?" "i must tell you first. you wouldn't understand unless--" "you won't? that's what you mean--you mean you won't! damn ye!" the captain raised his clenched fist, quivered for an instant as if struggling against something beyond his control, dropped it slowly to his side and whirling suddenly, strode back up the beach. bart staggered back against the planking, threw out his hand to keep from falling, and watched his father's uncertain, stumbling figure until he was swallowed up in the gloom. the words rang in his ears like a knell. the realization of his position and what it meant, and might mean, rushed over him. for an instant he leaned heavily against the planking until he had caught his breath. then, with quivering lips and shaking legs, he walked slowly back into the house, shutting the big door behind him. "boys," he said with a forced smile, "who do you think's been outside? my father! somebody told him, and he's just been giving me hell for playing cards on sunday." chapter vii the eyes of an old portrait before another sunday night had arrived warehold village was alive with two important pieces of news. the first was the disappearance of bart holt. captain nat, so the story ran, had caught him carousing in the house of refuge on sunday night with some of his boon companions, and after a stormy interview in which the boy pleaded for forgiveness, had driven him out into the night. bart had left town the next morning at daylight and had shipped as a common sailor on board a british bark bound for brazil. no one had seen him go--not even his companions of the night before. the second announcement was more startling. the cobden girls were going to paris. lucy cobden had developed an extraordinary talent for music during her short stay in trenton with her friend maria collins, and miss jane, with her customary unselfishness and devotion to her younger sister, had decided to go with her. they might be gone two years or five--it depended on lucy's success. martha would remain at yardley and take care of the old home. bart's banishment coming first served as a target for the fire of the gossip some days before jane's decision had reached the ears of the villagers. "i always knew he would come to no good end," miss gossaway called out to a passer-by from her eyrie; "and there's more like him if their fathers would look after 'em. guess sea's the best place for him." billy tatham, the stage-driver, did not altogether agree with the extremist. "you hearn tell, i s'pose, of how captain nat handled his boy t'other night, didn't ye?" he remarked to the passenger next to him on the front seat. "it might be the way they did things 'board the black ball line, but 'tain't human and decent, an' i told cap'n nat so to-day. shut his door in his face an' told him he'd kill him if he tried to come in, and all because he ketched him playin' cards on sunday down on the beach. bart warn't no worse than the others he run with, but ye can't tell what these old sea-dogs will do when they git riled. i guess it was the rum more'n the cards. them fellers used to drink a power o' rum in that shanty. i've seen 'em staggerin' home many a monday mornin' when i got down early to open up for my team. it's the rum that riled the cap'n, i guess. he wouldn't stand it aboard ship and used to put his men in irons, i've hearn tell, when they come aboard drunk. what gits me is that the cap'n didn't know them fellers met there every night they could git away, week-days as well as sundays. everybody 'round here knew it 'cept him and the light-keeper, and he's so durned lazy he never once dropped on to 'em. he'd git bounced if the gov'ment found out he was lettin' a gang run the house o' refuge whenever they felt like it. fogarty, the fisherman's, got the key, or oughter have it, but the light-keeper's responsible, so i hearn tell. git-up, billy," and the talk drifted into other channels. the incident was soon forgotten. one young man more or less did not make much difference in warehold. as to captain nat, he was known to be a scrupulously honest, exact man who knew no law outside of his duty. he probably did it for the boy's good, although everybody agreed that he could have accomplished his purpose in some more merciful way. the other sensation--the departure of the two cobden girls, and their possible prolonged stay abroad--did not subside so easily. not only did the neighbors look upon the manor house as the show-place of the village, but the girls themselves were greatly beloved, jane being especially idolized from warehold to barnegat and the sea. to lose jane's presence among them was a positive calamity entailing a sorrow that most of her neighbors could not bring themselves to face. no one could take her place. pastor dellenbaugh, when he heard the news, sank into his study chair and threw up his hands as if to ward off some blow. "miss jane going abroad!" he cried; "and you say nobody knows when she will come back! i can't realize it! we might as well close the school; no one else in the village can keep it together." the cromartins and the others all expressed similar opinions, the younger ladies' sorrow being aggravated when they realized that with lucy away there would be no one to lead in their merrymakings. martha held her peace; she would stay at home, she told mrs. dellenbaugh, and wait for their return and look after the place. her heart was broken with the loneliness that would come, she moaned, but what was best for her bairn she was willing to bear. it didn't make much difference either way; she wasn't long for this world. the doctor's mother heard the news with ill-concealed satisfaction. "a most extraordinary thing has occurred here, my dear," she said to one of her philadelphia friends who was visiting her--she was too politic to talk openly to the neighbors. "you have, of course, met that miss cobden who lives at yardley--not the pretty one--the plain one. well, she is the most quixotic creature in the world. only a few weeks ago she wanted to become a nurse in the public hospital here, and now she proposes to close her house and go abroad for nobody knows how long, simply because her younger sister wants to study music, as if a school-girl couldn't get all the instruction of that kind here that is necessary. really, i never heard of such a thing." to mrs. benson, a neighbor, she said, behind her hand and in strict confidence: "miss cobden is morbidly conscientious over trifles. a fine woman, one of the very finest we have, but a little too strait-laced, and, if i must say it, somewhat commonplace, especially for a woman of her birth and education." to herself she said: "never while i live shall jane cobden marry my john! she can never help any man's career. she has neither the worldly knowledge, nor the personal presence, nor the money." jane gave but one answer to all inquiries--and there were many. "yes, i know the move is a sudden one," she would say, "but it is for lucy's good, and there is no one to go with her but me." no one saw beneath the mask that hid her breaking heart. to them the drawn face and the weary look in her eyes only showed her grief at leaving home and those who loved her: to mrs. cavendish it seemed part of jane's peculiar temperament. nor could they watch her in the silence of the night tossing on her bed, or closeted with martha in her search for the initial steps that had led to this horror. had the philadelphia school undermined her own sisterly teachings or had her companions been at fault? perhaps it was due to the blood of some long-forgotten ancestor, which in the cycle of years had cropped out in this generation, poisoning the fountain of her youth. bart, she realized, had played the villain and the ingrate, but yet it was also true that bart, and all his class, would have been powerless before a woman of a different temperament. who, then, had undermined this citadel and given it over to plunder and disgrace? then with merciless exactness she searched her own heart. had it been her fault? what safeguard had she herself neglected? wherein had she been false to her trust and her promise to her dying father? what could she have done to avert it? these ever-haunting, ever-recurring doubts maddened her. one thing she was determined upon, cost what it might--to protect her sister's name. no daughter of morton cobden's should be pointed at in scorn. for generations no stain of dishonor had tarnished the family name. this must be preserved, no matter who suffered. in this she was sustained by martha, her only confidante. doctor john heard the news from jane's lips before it was known to the villagers. he had come to inquire after martha. she met him at the porch entrance, and led him into the drawing-room, without a word of welcome. then shutting the door, she motioned him to a seat opposite her own on the sofa. the calm, determined way with which this was done--so unusual in one so cordial--startled him. he felt that something of momentous interest, and, judging from jane's face, of serious import, had happened. he invariably took his cue from her face, and his own spirits always rose or fell as the light in her eyes flashed or dimmed. "is there anything the matter?" he asked nervously. "martha worse?" "no, not that; martha is around again--it is about lucy and me." the voice did not sound like jane's. the doctor looked at her intently, but he did not speak. jane continued, her face now deathly pale, her words coming slowly. "you advised me some time ago about lucy's going to trenton, and i am glad i followed it. you thought it would strengthen her love for us all and teach her to love me the better. it has--so much so that hereafter we will never be separated. i hope now you will also approve of what i have just decided upon. lucy is going abroad to live, and i am going with her." as the words fell from her lips her eyes crept up to his face, watching the effect of her statement. it was a cold, almost brutal way of putting it, she knew, but she dared not trust herself with anything less formal. for a moment he sat perfectly still, the color gone from his cheeks, his eyes fixed on hers, a cold chill benumbing the roots of his hair. the suddenness of the announcement seemed to have stunned him. "for how long?" he asked in a halting voice. "i don't know. not less than two years; perhaps longer." "two years? is lucy ill?" "no; she wants to study music, and she couldn't go alone." "have you made up your mind to this?" he asked, in a more positive tone. his self-control was returning now. "yes." doctor john rose from his chair, paced the room slowly for a moment, and crossing to the fireplace with his back to jane, stood under her father's portrait, his elbows on the mantel, his head in his hand. interwoven with the pain which the announcement had given him was the sharper sorrow of her neglect of him. in forming her plans she had never once thought of her lifelong friend. "why did you not tell me something of this before?" the inquiry was not addressed to jane, but to the smouldering coals. "how have i ever failed you? what has my daily life been but an open book for you to read, and here you leave me for years, and never give me a thought." jane started in her seat. "forgive me, my dear friend!" she answered quickly in a voice full of tenderness. "i did not mean to hurt you. it is not that i love all my friends here the less--and you know how truly i appreciate your own friendship--but only that i love my sister more; and my duty is with her. i only decided last night. don't turn your back on me. come and sit by me, and talk to me," she pleaded, holding out her hand. "i need all your strength." as she spoke the tears started to her eyes and her voice sank almost to a whisper. the doctor lifted his head from his palm and walked quickly toward her. the suffering in her voice had robbed him of all resentment. "forgive me, i did not mean it. tell me," he said, in a sudden burst of tenderness--all feeling about himself had dropped away--"why must you go so soon? why not wait until spring?" he had taken his seat beside her now and sat looking into her eyes. "lucy wants to go at once," she replied, in a tone as if the matter did not admit of any discussion. "yes, i know. that's just like her. what she wants she can never wait a minute for, but she certainly would sacrifice some pleasure of her own to please you. if she was determined to be a musician it would be different, but it is only for her pleasure, and as an accomplishment." he spoke earnestly and impersonally, as he always did when she consulted him on any of her affairs, he was trying, too, to wipe from her mind all remembrance of his impatience. jane kept her eyes on the carpet for a moment, and then said quietly, and he thought in rather a hopeless tone: "it is best we go at once." the doctor looked at her searchingly--with the eye of a scientist, this time, probing for a hidden meaning. "then there is something else you have not told me; someone is annoying her, or there is someone with whom you are afraid she will fall in love. who is it? you know how i could help in a matter of that kind." "no; there is no one." doctor john leaned back thoughtfully and tapped the arm of the sofa with his fingers. he felt as if a door had been shut in his face. "i don't understand it," he said slowly, and in a baffled tone. "i have never known you to do a thing like this before. it is entirely unlike you. there is some mystery you are keeping from me. tell me, and let me help." "i can tell you nothing more. can't you trust me to do my duty in my own way?" she stole a look at him as she spoke and again lowered her eyelids. "and you are determined to go?" he asked in his former cross-examining tone. "yes." again the doctor kept silence. despite her assumed courage and determined air, his experienced eye caught beneath it all the shrinking helplessness of the woman. "then i, too, have reached a sudden resolve," he said in a manner almost professional in its precision. "you cannot and shall not go alone." "oh, but lucy and i can get along together," she exclaimed with nervous haste. "there is no one we could take but martha, and she is too old. besides she must look after the house while we are away." "no; martha will not do. no woman will do. i know paris and its life; it is not the place for two women to live in alone, especially so pretty and light-hearted a woman as lucy." "i am not afraid." "no, but i am," he answered in a softened voice, "very much afraid." it was no longer the physician who spoke, but the friend. "of what?" "of a dozen things you do not understand, and cannot until you encounter them," he replied, smoothing her hand tenderly. "yes, but it cannot be helped. there is no one to go with us." this came with some positiveness, yet with a note of impatience in her voice. "yes, there is," he answered gently. "who?" she asked slowly, withdrawing her hand from his caress, an undefined fear rising in her mind. "me. i will go with you." jane looked at him with widening eyes. she knew now. she had caught his meaning in the tones of his voice before he had expressed it, and had tried to think of some way to ward off what she saw was coming, but she was swept helplessly on. "let us go together, jane," he burst out, drawing closer to her. all reserve was gone. the words which had pressed so long for utterance could no longer be held back. "i cannot live here alone without you. you know it, and have always known it. i love you so--don't let us live apart any more. if you must go, go as my wife." a thrill of joy ran through her. her lips quivered. she wanted to cry out, to put her arms around his neck, to tell him everything in her heart. then came a quick, sharp pain that stifled every other thought. for the first time the real bitterness of the situation confronted her. this phase of it she had not counted upon. she shrank back a little. "don't ask me that!" she moaned in a tone almost of pain. "i can stand anything now but that. not now--not now!" her hand was still under his, her fingers lying limp, all the pathos of her suffering in her face: determination to do her duty, horror over the situation, and above them all her overwhelming love for him. he put his arm about her shoulders and drew her to him. "you love me, jane, don't you?" "yes, more than all else in the world," she answered simply. "too well"--and her voice broke--"to have you give up your career for me or mine." "then why should we live apart? i am willing to do as much for lucy as you would. let me share the care and responsibility. you needn't, perhaps, be gone more than a year, and then we will all come back together, and i take up my work again. i need you, my beloved. nothing that i do seems of any use without you. you are my great, strong light, and have always been since the first day i loved you. let me help bear these burdens. you have carried them so long alone." his face lay against hers now, her hand still clasped tight in his. for an instant she did not answer or move; then she straightened a little and lifted her cheek from his. "john," she said--it was the first time in all her life she had called him thus--"you wouldn't love me if i should consent. you have work to do here and i now have work to do on the other side. we cannot work together; we must work apart. your heart is speaking, and i love you for it, but we must not think of it now. it may come right some time--god only knows! my duty is plain--i must go with lucy. neither you nor my dead father would love me if i did differently." "i only know that i love you and that you love me and nothing else should count," he pleaded impatiently. "nothing else shall count. there is nothing you could do would make me love you less. you are practical and wise about all your plans. why has this whim of lucy's taken hold of you as it has? and it is only a whim; lucy will want something else in six months. oh, i cannot--cannot let you go. i'm so desolate without you--my whole life is yours--everything i do is for you. o jane, my beloved, don't shut me out of your life! i will not let you go without me!" his voice vibrated with a certain indignation, as if he had been unjustly treated. she raised one hand and laid it on his forehead, smoothing his brow as a mother would that of a child. the other still lay in his. "don't, john," she moaned, in a half-piteous tone. "don't! don't talk so! i can only bear comforting words to-day. i am too wretched--too utterly broken and miserable. please! please, john!" he dropped her hand and leaning forward put both of his own to his head. he knew how strong was her will and how futile would be his efforts to change her mind unless her conscience agreed. "i won't," he answered, as a strong man answers who is baffled. "i did not mean to be impatient or exacting." then he raised his head and looked steadily into her eyes. "what would you have me do, then?" "wait." "but you give me no promise." "no, i cannot--not now. i am like one staggering along, following a dim light that leads hither and thither, and which may any moment go out and leave me in utter darkness." "then there is something you have not told me?" "o john! can't you trust me?" "and yet you love me?" "as my life, john." when he had gone and she had closed the door upon him, she went back to the sofa where the two had sat together, and with her hands clasped tight above her head, sank down upon its cushions. the tears came like rain now, bitter, blinding tears that she could not check. "i have hurt him," she moaned. "he is so good, and strong, and helpful. he never thinks of himself; it is always of me--me, who can do nothing. the tears were in his eyes--i saw them. oh, i've hurt him--hurt him! and yet, dear god, thou knowest i could not help it." maddened with the pain of it all she sprang up, determined to go to him and tell him everything. to throw herself into his arms and beg forgiveness for her cruelty and crave the protection of his strength. then her gaze fell upon her father's portrait! the cold, steadfast eyes were looking down upon her as if they could read her very soul. "no! no!" she sobbed, putting her hands over her eyes as if to shut out some spectre she had not the courage to face. "it must not be--it cannot be," and she sank back exhausted. when the paroxysm was over she rose to her feet, dried her eyes, smoothed her hair with both hands, and then, with lips tight pressed and faltering steps, walked upstairs to where martha was getting lucy's things ready for the coming journey. crossing the room, she stood with her elbows on the mantel, her cheeks tight pressed between her palms, her eyes on the embers. martha moved from the open trunk and stood behind her. "it was doctor john, wasn't it?" she asked in a broken voice that told of her suffering. "yes," moaned jane from between her hands. "and ye told him about your goin'?" "yes, martha." her frame was shaking with her sobs. "and about lucy?" "no, i could not." martha leaned forward and laid her hand on jane's shoulder. "poor lassie!" she said, patting it softly. "poor lassie! that was the hardest part. he's big and strong and could 'a' comforted ye. my heart aches for ye both!" chapter viii an arrival with the departure of jane and lucy the old homestead took on that desolate, abandoned look which comes to most homes when all the life and joyousness have gone from them. weeds grew in the roadway between the lilacs, dandelions flaunted themselves over the grass-plots; the shutters of the porch side of the house were closed, and the main gate always thrown wide day and night in ungoverned welcome, was seldom opened except to a few intimate friends of the old nurse. at first pastor dellenbaugh had been considerate enough to mount the long path to inquire for news of the travelers and to see how martha was getting along, but after the receipt of the earlier letters from jane telling of their safe arrival and their sojourn in a little village but a short distance out of paris, convenient to the great city, even his visits ceased. captain holt never darkened the door; nor did he ever willingly stop to talk to martha when he met her on the road. she felt the slight, and avoided him when she could. this resulted in their seldom speaking to each other, and then only in the most casual way. she fancied he might think she wanted news of bart, and so gave him no opportunity to discuss him or his whereabouts; but she was mistaken. the captain never mentioned his name to friend or stranger. to him the boy was dead for all time. nor had anyone of his companions heard from him since that stormy night on the beach. doctor john's struggle had lasted for months, but he had come through it chastened and determined. for the first few days he went about his work as one in a dream, his mind on the woman he loved, his hand mechanically doing its duty. jane had so woven herself into his life that her sudden departure had been like the upwrenching of a plant, tearing out the fibres twisted about his heart, cutting off all his sustenance and strength. the inconsistencies of her conduct especially troubled him. if she loved him--and she had told him that she did, and with their cheeks touching--how could she leave him in order to indulge a mere whim of her sister's? and if she loved him well enough to tell him so, why had she refused to plight him her troth? such a course was unnatural, and out of his own and everyone else's experience. women who loved men with a great, strong, healthy love, the love he could give her, and the love he knew she could give him, never permitted such trifles to come between them and their life's happiness. what, he asked himself a thousand times, had brought this change? as the months went by these doubts and speculations one by one passed out of his mind, and only the image of the woman he adored, with all her qualities--loyalty to her trust, tenderness over lucy and unquestioned love for himself--rose clear. no, he would believe in her to the end! she was still all he had in life. if she would not be his wife she should be his friend. that happiness was worth all else to him in the world. his was not to criticise, but to help. help as she wanted it; preserving her standard of personal honor, her devotion to her ideals, her loyalty, her blind obedience to her trust. mrs. cavendish had seen the change in her son's demeanor and had watched him closely through his varying moods, but though she divined their cause she had not sought to probe his secret. his greatest comfort was in his visits to martha. he always dropped in to see her when he made his rounds in the neighborhood; sometimes every day, sometimes once a week, depending on his patients and their condition--visits which were always prolonged when a letter came from either of the girls, for at first lucy wrote to the old nurse as often as did jane. apart from this the doctor loved the patient caretaker, both for her loyalty and for her gentleness. and she loved him in return; clinging to him as an older woman clings to a strong man, following his advice (he never gave orders) to the minutest detail when something in the management or care of house or grounds exceeded her grasp. consulting him, too, and this at jane's special request--regarding any financial complications which needed prompt attention, and which, but for his services, might have required jane's immediate return to disentangle. she loved, too, to talk of lucy and of miss jane's goodness to her bairn, saying she had been both a sister and a mother to her, to which the doctor would invariably add some tribute of his own which only bound the friendship the closer. his main relief, however, lay in his work, and in this he became each day more engrossed. he seemed never to be out of his gig unless at the bedside of some patient. so long and wearing had the routes become--often beyond barnegat and as far as westfield--that the sorrel gave out, and he was obliged to add another horse to his stable. his patients saw the weary look in his eyes--as of one who had often looked on sorrow--and thought it was the hard work and anxiety over them that had caused it. but the old nurse knew better. "his heart's breakin' for love of her," she would say to meg, looking down into his sleepy eyes--she cuddled him more than ever these days--"and i don't wonder. god knows how it'll all end." jane wrote to him but seldom; only half a dozen letters in all during the first year of her absence among them one to tell him of their safe arrival, another to thank him for his kindness to martha, and a third to acknowledge the receipt of a letter of introduction to a student friend of his who was now a prominent physician in paris, and who might be useful in case either of them fell ill. he had written to his friend at the same time, giving the address of the two girls, but the physician had answered that he had called at the street and number, but no one knew of them. the doctor reported this to jane in his next letter, asking her to write to his friend so that he might know of their whereabouts should they need his services, for which jane, in a subsequent letter, thanked him, but made no mention of sending to his friend should occasion require. these subsequent letters said very little about their plans and carefully avoided all reference to their daily life or to lucy's advancement in her studies, and never once set any time for their coming home. he wondered at her neglect of him, and when no answer came to his continued letters, except at long intervals, he could contain himself no longer, and laid the whole matter before martha. "she means nothing, doctor, dear," she had answered, taking his hand and looking up into his troubled face. "her heart is all right; she's goin' through deep waters, bein' away from everybody she loves--you most of all. don't worry; keep on lovin' her, ye'll never have cause to repent it." that same night martha wrote to jane, giving her every detail of the interview, and in due course of time handed the doctor a letter in which jane wrote: "he must not stop writing to me; his letters are all the comfort i have"--a line not intended for the doctor's eyes, but which the good soul could not keep from him, so eager was she to relieve his pain. jane's letter to him in answer to his own expressing his unhappiness over her neglect was less direct, but none the less comforting to him. "i am constantly moving about," the letter ran, "and have much to do and cannot always answer your letters, so please do not expect them too often. but i am always thinking of you and your kindness to dear martha. you do for me when you do for her." after this it became a settled habit between them, he writing by the weekly steamer, telling her every thought of his life, and she replying at long intervals. in these no word of love was spoken on her side; nor was any reference made to their last interview. but this fact did not cool the warmth of his affection nor weaken his faith. she had told him she loved him, and with her own lips. that was enough--enough from a woman like jane. he would lose faith when she denied it in the same way. in the meantime she was his very breath and being. one morning two years after jane's departure, while the doctor and his mother sat at breakfast, mrs. cavendish filling the tea-cups, the spring sunshine lighting up the snow-white cloth and polished silver, the mail arrived and two letters were laid at their respective plates, one for the doctor and the other for his mother. as doctor john glanced at the handwriting his face flushed, and his eyes danced with pleasure. with eager, trembling fingers he broke the seal and ran his eyes hungrily over the contents. it had been his habit to turn to the bottom of the last page before he read the preceding ones, so that he might see the signature and note the final words of affection or friendship, such as "ever your friend," or "affectionately yours," or simply "your friend," written above jane's name. these were to him the thermometric readings of the warmth of her heart. half way down the first page--before he had time to turn the leaf--he caught his breath in an effort to smother a sudden outburst of joy. then with a supreme effort he regained his self-control and read the letter to the end. (he rarely mentioned jane's name to his mother, and he did not want his delight over the contents of the letter to be made the basis of comment.) mrs. cavendish's outburst over the contents of her own envelope broke the silence and relieved his tension. "oh, how fortunate!" she exclaimed. "listen, john; now i really have good news for you. you remember i told you that i met old dr. pencoyd the last time i was in philadelphia, and had a long talk with him. i told him how you were buried here and how hard you worked and how anxious i was that you should leave barnegat, and he promised to write to me, and he has. here's his letter. he says he is getting too old to continue his practice alone, that his assistant has fallen ill, and that if you will come to him at once he will take you into partnership and give you half his practice. i always knew something good would come out of my last visit to philadelphia. aren't you delighted, my son?" "yes, perfectly overjoyed," answered the doctor, laughing. he was more than delighted--brimming over with happiness, in fact--but not over his mother's news; it was the letter held tight in his grasp that was sending electric thrills through him. "a fine old fellow is dr. pencoyd--known him for years," he continued; "i attended his lectures before i went abroad. lives in a musty old house on chestnut street, stuffed full of family portraits and old mahogany furniture, and not a comfortable chair or sofa in the place; wears yellow nankeen waist-coats, takes snuff, and carries a fob. oh, yes, same old fellow. very kind of him, mother, but wouldn't you rather have the sunlight dance in upon you as it does here and catch a glimpse of the sea through the window than to look across at your neighbors' back walls and white marble steps?" it was across that same sea that jane was coming, and the sunshine would come with her! "yes; but, john, surely you are not going to refuse this without looking into it?" she argued, eyeing him through her gold-rimmed glasses. "go and see him, and then you can judge. it's his practice you want, not his house." "no; that's just what i don't want. i've got too much practice now. somehow i can't keep my people well. no, mother, dear, don't bother your dear head over the old doctor and his wants. write him that i am most grateful, but that the fact is i need an assistant myself, and if he will be good enough to send someone down here, i'll keep him busy every hour of the day and night. then, again," he continued, a more serious tone in his voice, "i couldn't possibly leave here now, even if i wished to, which i do not." mrs. cavendish eyed him intently. she had expected just such a refusal nothing that she ever planned for his advancement did he agree to. "why not?" she asked, with some impatience. "the new hospital is about finished, and i am going to take charge of it." "do they pay you for it?" she continued, in an incisive tone. "no, i don't think they will, nor can. it's not, that kind of a hospital," answered the doctor gravely. "and you will look after these people just as you do after fogarty and the branscombs, and everybody else up and down the shore, and never take a penny in pay!" she retorted with some indignation. "i am afraid i will, mother. a disappointing son, am i not? but there's no one to blame but yourself, old lady," and with a laugh he rose from his seat, jane's letter in his hand, and kissed his mother on the cheek. "but, john, dear," she exclaimed in a pleading petulance as she looked into his face, still holding on to the sleeve of his coat to detain him the longer, "just think of this letter of pencoyd's; nothing has ever been offered you better than this. he has the very best people in philadelphia on his list, and you would get--" the doctor slipped his hand under his mother's chin, as he would have done to a child, and said with a twinkle in his eye--he was very happy this morning: "that's precisely my case--i've got the very best people in three counties on my list. that's much better than the old doctor." "who are they, pray?" she was softening under her son's caress. "well, let me think. there's the distinguished mr. tatham, who attends to the transportation of the cities of warehold and barnegat; and the right honorable mr. tipple, and mrs. and miss gossaway, renowned for their toilets--" mrs. cavendish bit her lip. when her son was in one of these moods it was all she could do to keep her temper. "and the wonderful mrs. malmsley, and--" mrs. cavendish looked up. the name had an aristocratic sound, but it was unknown to her. "who is she?" "why, don't you know the wonderful mrs. malmsley?" inquired the doctor, with a quizzical smile. "no, i never heard of her." "well, she's just moved into warehold. poor woman, she hasn't been out of bed for years! she's the wife of the new butcher, and--" "the butcher's wife?" "the butcher's wife, my dear mother, a most delightful old person, who has brought up three sons, and each one a credit to her." mrs. cavendish let go her hold on the doctor's sleeve and settled back in her chair. "and you won't even write to dr. pencoyd?" she asked in a disheartened way, as if she knew he would refuse. "oh, with pleasure, and thank him most kindly, but i couldn't leave barnegat; not now. not at any time, so far as i can see." "and i suppose when jane cobden comes home in a year or so she will work with you in the hospital. she wanted to turn nurse the last time i talked to her." this special arrow in her maternal quiver, poisoned with her jealousy, was always ready. "i hope so," he replied, with a smile that lighted up his whole face; "only it will not be a year. miss jane will be here on the next steamer." mrs. cavendish put down her tea-cup and looked at her son in astonishment. the doctor still kept his eyes on her face. "be here by the next steamer! how do you know?" the doctor held up the letter. "lucy will remain," he added. "she is going to germany to continue her studies." "and jane is coming home alone?" "no, she brings a little child with her, the son of a friend, she writes. she asks that i arrange to have martha meet them at the dock." "somebody, i suppose, she has picked up out of the streets. she is always doing these wild, unpractical things. whose child is it?" "she doesn't say, but i quite agree with you that it was helpless, or she wouldn't have protected it." "why don't lucy come with her?" the doctor shrugged his shoulders. "and i suppose you will go to the ship to meet her?" the doctor drew himself up, clicked his heels together with the air of an officer saluting his superior--really to hide his joy--and said with mock gravity, his hand on his heart: "i shall, most honorable mother, be the first to take her ladyship's hand as she walks down the gangplank." then he added, with a tone of mild reproof in his voice: "what a funny, queer old mother you are! always worrying yourself over the unimportant and the impossible," and stooping down, he kissed her again on the cheek and passed out of the room on the way to his office. "that woman always comes up at the wrong moment," mrs. cavendish said to herself in a bitter tone. "i knew he had received some word from her, i saw it in his face. he would have gone to philadelphia but for jane cobden." chapter ix the spread of fire the doctor kept his word. his hand was the first that touched jane's when she came down the gangplank, martha beside him, holding out her arms for the child, cuddling it to her bosom, wrapping her shawl about it as if to protect it from the gaze of the inquisitive. "o doctor! it was so good of you!" were jane's first words. it hurt her to call him thus, but she wanted to establish the new relation clearly. she had shouldered her cross and must bear its weight alone and in her own way. "you don't know what it is to see a face from home! i am so glad to get here. but you should not have left your people; i wrote martha and told her so. all i wanted you to do was to have her meet me here. thank you, dear friend, for coming." she had not let go his hand, clinging to him as a timid woman in crossing a narrow bridge spanning an abyss clings to the strong arm of a man. he helped her to the dock as tenderly as if she had been a child; asking her if the voyage had been a rough one, whether she had been ill in her berth, and whether she had taken care of the baby herself, and why she had brought no nurse with her. she saw his meaning, but she did not explain her weakness or offer any explanation of the cause of her appearance or of the absence of a nurse. in a moment she changed the subject, asking after his mother and his own work, and seemed interested in what he told her about the neighbors. when the joy of hearing her voice and of looking into her dear face once more had passed, his skilled eyes probed the deeper. he noted with a sinking at the heart the dark circles under the drooping lids, the drawn, pallid skin and telltale furrows that had cut their way deep into her cheeks. her eyes, too, had lost their lustre, and her step lacked the spring and vigor of her old self. the diagnosis alarmed him. even the mould of her face, so distinguished, and to him so beautiful, had undergone a change; whether through illness, or because of some mental anguish, he could not decide. when he pressed his inquiries about lucy she answered with a half-stifled sigh that lucy had decided to remain abroad for a year longer; adding that it had been a great relief to her, and that at first she had thought of remaining with her, but that their affairs, as he knew, had become so involved at home that she feared their means of living might be jeopardized if she did not return at once. the child, however, would be a comfort to both martha and herself until lucy came. then she added in a constrained voice: "its mother would not, or could not care for it, and so i brought it with me." once at home and the little waif safely tucked away in the crib that had sheltered lucy in the old days, the neighbors began to flock in; uncle ephraim among the first. "my, but i'm glad you're back!" he burst out. "martha's been lonelier than a cat in a garret, and down at our house we ain't much better. and so that bunch of roses is going to stay over there, is she, and set those frenchies crazy?" pastor dellenbaugh took both of jane's hands into his own and looking into her face, said: "ah, but we've missed you! there has been no standard, my dear miss jane, since you've been gone. i have felt it, and so has everyone in the church. it is good to have you once more with us." mrs. cavendish could hardly conceal her satisfaction, although she was careful what she said to her son. her hope was that the care of the child would so absorb jane that john would regain his freedom and be no longer subservient to miss cobden's whims. "and so lucy is to stay in paris?" she said, with one of her sweetest smiles. "she is so charming and innocent, that sweet sister of yours, my dear miss jane, and so sympathetic. i quite lost my heart to her. and to study music, too? a most noble accomplishment, my dear. my grandmother, who was an erskine, you know, played divinely on the harp, and many of my ancestors, especially the dagworthys, were accomplished musicians. your sister will look lovely bending over a harp. my grandmother had her portrait painted that way by peale, and it still hangs in the old house in trenton. and they tell me you have brought a little angel with you to bring up and share your loneliness? how pathetic, and how good of you!" the village women--they came in groups--asked dozens of questions before jane had had even time to shake each one by the hand. was lucy so in love with the life abroad that she would never come back? was she just as pretty as ever? what kind of bonnets were being worn? etc., etc. the child in martha's arms was, of course, the object of special attention. they all agreed that it was a healthy, hearty, and most beautiful baby; just the kind of a child one would want to adopt if one had any such extraordinary desires. this talk continued until they had gained the highway, when they also agreed--and this without a single dissenting voice--that in all the village jane cobden was the only woman conscientious enough to want to bring up somebody else's child, and a foreigner at that, when there were any quantity of babies up and down the shore that could be had for the asking. the little creature was, no doubt, helpless, and appealed to miss jane's sympathies, but why bring it home at all? were there not places enough in france where it could be brought up? etc., etc. this sort of gossip went on for days after jane's return, each dropper-in at tea-table or village gathering having some view of her own to express, the women doing most of the talking. the discussion thus begun by friends was soon taken up by the sewing societies and church gatherings, one member in good standing remarking loud enough to be heard by everybody: "as for me, i ain't never surprised at nothin' jane cobden does. she's queerer than dick's hat-band, and allus was, and i've knowed her ever since she used to toddle up to my house and i baked cookies for her. i've seen her many a time feed the dog with what i give her, just because she said he looked hungry, which there warn't a mite o' truth in, for there ain't nothin' goes hungry round my place, and never was. she's queer, i tell ye." "quite true, dear mrs. pokeberry," remarked pastor dellenbaugh in his gentlest tone--he had heard the discussion as he was passing through the room and had stopped to listen--"especially when mercy and kindness is to be shown. some poor little outcast, no doubt, with no one to take care of it, and so this grand woman brings it home to nurse and educate. i wish there were more jane cobdens in my parish. many of you talk good deeds, and justice, and christian spirit; here is a woman who puts them into practice." this statement having been made during the dispersal of a wednesday night meeting, and in the hearing of half the congregation, furnished the key to the mystery, and so for a time the child and its new-found mother ceased to be an active subject of discussion. ann gossaway, however, was not satisfied. the more she thought of the pastor's explanation the more she resented it as an affront to her intelligence. "if folks wants to pick up stray babies," she shouted to her old mother on her return home one night, "and bring 'em home to nuss, they oughter label 'em with some sort o' pedigree, and not keep the village a-guessin' as to who they is and where they come from. i don't believe a word of this outcast yarn. guess miss lucy is all right, and she knows enough to stay away when all this tomfoolery's goin' on. she doesn't want to come back to a child's nussery." to all of which her mother nodded her head, keeping it going like a toy mandarin long after the subject of discussion had been changed. little by little the scandal spread: by innuendoes; by the wise shakings of empty heads; by nods and winks; by the piecing out of incomplete tattle. for the spread of gossip is like the spread of fire: first a smouldering heat--some friction of ill-feeling, perhaps, over a secret sin that cannot be smothered, try as we may; next a hot, blistering tongue of flame creeping stealthily; then a burst of scorching candor and the roar that ends in ruin. sometimes the victim is saved by a dash of honest water--the outspoken word of some brave friend. more often those who should stamp out the burning brand stand idly by until the final collapse and then warm themselves at the blaze. here in warehold it began with some whispered talk: bart holt had disappeared; there was a woman in the case somewhere; bart's exile had not been entirely caused by his love of cards and drink. reference was also made to the fact that jane had gone abroad but a short time after bart's disappearance, and that knowing how fond she was of him, and how she had tried to reform him, the probability was that she had met him in paris. doubts having been expressed that no woman of jane cobden's position would go to any such lengths to oblige so young a fellow as bart holt, the details of their intimacy were passed from mouth to mouth, and when this was again scouted, reference was made to miss gossaway, who was supposed to know more than she was willing to tell. the dressmaker denied all responsibility for the story, but admitted that she had once seen them on the beach "settin' as close together as they could git, with the red cloak she had made for miss jane wound about 'em. "'twarn't none o' my business, and i told martha so, and 'tain't none o' my business now, but i'd rather die than tell a lie or scandalize anybody, and so if ye ask me if i saw 'em i'll have to tell ye i did. i don't believe, howsomever, that miss jane went away to oblige that good-for-nothin' or that she's ever laid eyes on him since. lucy is what took her. she's one o' them flyaways. i see that when she was home, and there warn't no peace up to the cobdens' house till they'd taken her somewheres where she could git all the runnin' round she wanted. as for the baby, there ain't nobody knows where miss jane picked that up, but there ain't no doubt but what she loves it same's if it was her own child. she's named it archie, after her grandfather, anyhow. that's what martha and she calls it. so they're not ashamed of it." when the fire had spent itself, only one spot remained unscorched: this was the parentage of little archie. that mystery still remained unsolved. those of her own class who knew jane intimately admired her kindness of heart and respected her silence; those who did not soon forgot the boy's existence. the tavern loungers, however, some of whom only knew the cobden girls by reputation, had theories of their own; theories which were communicated to other loungers around other tavern stoves, most of whom would not have known either of the ladies on the street. the fact that both women belonged to a social stratum far above them gave additional license to their tongues; they could never be called in question by anybody who overheard, and were therefore safe to discuss the situation at their will. condensed into illogical shape, the story was that jane had met a foreigner who had deserted her, leaving her to care for the child alone; that lucy had refused to come back to warehold, had taken what money was coming to her, and, like a sensible woman, had stayed away. that there was not the slightest foundation for this slander did not lessen its acceptance by a certain class; many claimed that it offered the only plausible solution to the mystery, and must, therefore, be true. it was not long before the echoes of these scandals reached martha's ears. the gossips dare not affront miss jane with their suspicions, but martha was different. if they could irritate her by speaking lightly of her mistress, she might give out some information which would solve the mystery. one night a servant of one of the neighbors stopped martha on the road and sent her flying home; not angry, but terrified. "they're beginnin' to talk," she broke out savagely, as she entered jane's room, her breath almost gone from her run to the house. "i laughed at it and said they dare not one of 'em say it to your face or mine, but they're beginnin' to talk." "is it about barton holt? have they heard anything from him?" asked jane. the fear of his return had always haunted her. "no, and they won't. he'll never come back here ag'in. the captain would kill him." "it isn't about lucy, then, is it?" cried jane, her color going. martha shook her head in answer to save her breath. "who, then?" cried jane, nervously. "not archie?" "yes, archie and you." "what do they say?" asked jane, her voice fallen to a whisper. "they say it's your child, and that ye're afraid to tell who the father is." jane caught at the chair for support and then sank slowly into her seat. "who says so?" she gasped. "nobody that you or i know; some of the beach-combers and hide-by-nights, i think, started it. pokeberry's girl told me; her brother works in the shipyard." jane sat looking at martha with staring eyes. "how dare they--" "they dare do anything, and we can't answer back. that's what's goin' to make it hard. it's nobody's business, but that don't satisfy 'em. i've been through it meself; i know how mean they can be." "they shall never know--not while i have life left in me," jane exclaimed firmly. "yes, but that won't keep 'em from lyin'." the two sat still for some minutes, martha gazing into vacancy, jane lying back in her chair, her eyes closed. one emotion after another coursed through her with lightning rapidity--indignation at the charge, horror at the thought that any of her friends might believe it, followed by a shivering fear that her father's good name, for all her care and suffering, might be smirched at last. suddenly there arose the tall image of doctor john, with his frank, tender face. what would he think of it, and how, if he questioned her, could she answer him? then there came to her that day of parting in paris. she remembered lucy's willingness to give up the child forever, and so cover up all traces of her sin, and her own immediate determination to risk everything for her sister's sake. as this last thought welled up in her mind and she recalled her father's dying command, her brow relaxed. come what might, she was doing her duty. this was her solace and her strength. "cruel, cruel people!" she said to martha, relaxing her hands. "how can they be so wicked? but i am glad it is i who must take the brunt of it all. if they would treat me so, who am innocent, what would they do to my poor lucy?" chapter x a late visitor these rumors never reached the doctor. no scandalmonger ever dared talk gossip to him. when he first began to practise among the people of warehold, and some garrulous old dame would seek to enrich his visit by tittle-tattle about her neighbors, she had never tried it a second time. doctor john of barnegat either received the news in silence or answered it with some pleasantry; even ann gossaway held her peace whenever the doctor had to be called in to prescribe for her oversensitive throat. he was aware that jane had laid herself open to criticism in bringing home a child about which she had made no explanation, but he never spoke of it nor allowed anyone to say so to him. he would have been much happier, of course, if she had given him her confidence in this as she had in many other matters affecting her life; but he accepted her silence as part of her whole attitude toward him. knowing her as he did, he was convinced that her sole incentive was one of loving kindness, both for the child and for the poor mother whose sin or whose poverty she was concealing. in this connection, he remembered how in one of her letters to martha she had told of the numberless waifs she had seen and how her heart ached for them; especially in the hospitals which she had visited and among the students. he recalled that he himself had had many similar experiences in his paris days, in which a woman like jane cobden would have been a veritable angel of mercy. mrs. cavendish's ears were more easily approached by the gossips of warehold and vicinity; then, again she was always curious over the inmates of the cobden house, and any little scraps of news, reliable or not, about either jane or her absent sister were eagerly listened to. finding it impossible to restrain herself any longer, she had seized the opportunity one evening when she and her son were sitting together in the salon, a rare occurrence for the doctor, and only possible when his patients were on the mend. "i'm sorry jane cobden was so foolish as to bring home that baby," she began. "why?" said the doctor, without lifting his eyes from the book he was reading. "oh, she lays herself open to criticism. it is, of course, but one of her eccentricities, but she owes something to her position and birth and should not invite unnecessary comment." "who criticises her?" asked the doctor, his eyes still on the pages. "oh, you can't tell; everybody is talking about it. some of the gossip is outrageous, some i could not even repeat." "i have no doubt of it," answered the doctor quietly. "all small places like warehold and barnegat need topics of conversation, and miss jane for the moment is furnishing one of them. they utilize you, dear mother, and me, and everybody else in the same way. but that is no reason why we should lend our ears or our tongues to spread and encourage it." "i quite agree with you, my son, and i told the person who told me how foolish and silly it was, but they will talk, no matter what you say to them." "what do they say?" asked the doctor, laying down his book and rising from his chair. "oh, all sorts of things. one rumor is that captain holt's son, barton, the one that quarrelled with his father and who went to sea, could tell something of the child, if he could be found." the doctor laughed. "he can be found," he answered. "i saw his father only last week, and he told me bart was in brazil. that is some thousand of miles from paris, but a little thing like that in geography doesn't seem to make much difference to some of our good people. why do you listen to such nonsense?" he added as he kissed her tenderly and, with a pat on her cheek, left the room for his study. his mother's talk had made but little impression upon him. gossip of this kind was always current when waifs like archie formed the topic; but it hurt nobody, he said to himself--nobody like jane. sitting under his study lamp looking up some complicated case, his books about him, jane's sad face came before him. "has she not had trouble enough," he said to himself, "parted from lucy and with her unsettled money affairs, without having to face these gnats whose sting she cannot ward off?" with this came the thought of his own helplessness to comfort her. he had taken her at her word that night before she left for paris, when she had refused to give him her promise and had told him to wait, and he was still ready to come at her call; loving her, watching ever her, absorbed in every detail of her daily life, and eager to grant her slightest wish, and yet he could not but see that she had, since her return, surrounded herself with a barrier which he could neither understand nor break down whenever he touched on their personal relations. had he loved her less he would, in justice to himself, have faced all her opposition and demanded an answer--yes or no--as to whether she would yield to his wishes. but his generous nature forbade any such stand and his reverence for her precluded any such mental attitude. lifting his eyes from his books and gazing dreamily into the space before him, he recalled, with a certain sinking of the heart, a conversation which had taken place between jane and himself a few days after her arrival--an interview which had made a deep impression upon him. the two, in the absence of martha--she had left the room for a moment--were standing beside the crib watching the child's breathing. seizing the opportunity, one he had watched for, he had told her how much he had missed her during the two years, and how much happier his life was now that he could touch her hand and listen to her voice. she had evaded his meaning, making answer that his pleasure, was nothing compared to her own when she thought how safe the baby would be in his hands; adding quickly that she could never thank him enough for remaining in barnegat and not leaving her helpless and without a "physician." the tone with which she pronounced the word had hurt him. he thought he detected a slight inflection, as if she were making a distinction between his skill as an expert and his love as a man, but he was not sure. still gazing into the shadows before him, his unread book in his hand, he recalled a later occasion when she appeared rather to shrink from him than to wish to be near him, speaking to him with downcast eyes and without the frank look in her face which was always his welcome. on this day she was more unstrung and more desolate than he had ever seen her. at length, emboldened by his intense desire to help, and putting aside every obstacle, he had taken her hand and had said with all his heart in his voice: "jane, you once told me you loved me. is it still true?" he remembered how at first she had not answered, and how after a moment she had slowly withdrawn her hand and had replied in a voice almost inarticulate, so great was her emotion. "yes, john, and always will be, but it can never go beyond that--never, never. don't ask many more questions. don't talk to me about it. not now, john--not now! don't hate me! let us be as we have always been--please, john! you would not refuse me if you knew." he had started forward to take her in his arms; to insist that now every obstacle was removed she should give him at once the lawful right to protect her, but she had shrunk back, the palms of her hands held out as barriers, and before he could reason with her martha had entered with something for little archie, and so the interview had come to an end. then, still absorbed in his thoughts, his eyes suddenly brightened and a certain joy trembled in his heart as he remembered that with all these misgivings and doubts there were other times--and their sum was in the ascendency--when she showed the same confidence in his judgement and the same readiness to take his advice; when the old light would once more flash in her eyes as she grasped his hand and the old sadness again shadow her face when his visits came to an end. with this he must be for a time content. these and a hundred other thoughts raced through doctor john's mind as he sat to-night in his study chair, the lamplight falling on his open books and thin, delicately modelled hands. once he rose from his seat and began pacing his study floor, his hands behind his back, his mind on jane, on her curious and incomprehensible moods, trying to solve them as he walked, trusting and leaning upon him one day and shrinking from him the next. baffled for the hundredth time in this mental search, he dropped again into his chair, and adjusting the lamp, pulled his books toward him to devote his mind to their contents. as the light flared up he caught the sound of a step upon the gravel outside, and then a heavy tread upon the porch. an instant later his knocker sounded. doctor cavendish gave a sigh--he had hoped to have one night at home--and rose to open the door. captain nat holt stood outside. his pea-jacket was buttoned close up under his chin, his hat drawn tight down over his forehead. his weather-beaten face, as the light fell upon it, looked cracked and drawn, with dark hollows under the eyes, which the shadows from the lamplight deepened. "it's late, i know, doctor," he said in a hoarse, strained voice; "ten o'clock, maybe, but i got somethin' to talk to ye about," and he strode into the room. "alone, are ye?" he continued, as he loosened his coat and laid his hat on the desk. "where's the good mother? home, is she?" "yes, she's inside," answered the doctor, pointing to the open door leading to the salon and grasping the captain's brawny hand in welcome. "why? do you want to see her?" "no, i don't want to see her; don't want to see nobody but you. she can't hear, can she? 'scuse me--i'll close this door." the doctor looked at him curiously. the captain seemed to be laboring under a nervous strain, unusual in one so stolid and self-possessed. the door closed, the captain moved back a cushion, dropped into a corner of the sofa, and sat looking at the doctor, with legs apart, his open palms resting on his knees. "i got bad news, doctor--awful bad news for everybody," as he spoke he reached into his pocket and produced a letter with a foreign postmark. "you remember my son bart, of course, don't ye, who left home some two years ago?" he went on. the doctor nodded. "well, he's dead." "your son bart dead!" cried the doctor, repeating his name in the surprise of the announcement. "how do you know?" "this letter came by to-day's mail. it's from the consul at rio. bart come in to see him dead broke and he helped him out. he'd run away from the ship and was goin' up into the mines to work, so the consul wrote me. he was in once after that and got a little money, and then he got down with yellow fever and they took him to the hospital, and he died in three days. there ain't no doubt about it. here's a list of the dead in the paper; you kin read his name plain as print." doctor john reached for the letter and newspaper clipping and turned them toward the lamp. the envelope was stamped "rio janeiro" and the letter bore the official heading of the consulate. "that's dreadful, dreadful news, captain," said the doctor in sympathetic tones. "poor boy! it's too bad. perhaps, however, there may be some mistake, after all. foreign hospital registers are not always reliable," added the doctor in a hopeful tone. "no, it's all true, or benham wouldn't write me what he has. i've known him for years. he knows me, too, and he don't go off half-cocked. i wrote him to look after bart and sent him some money and give him the name of the ship, and he watched for her and sent for him all right. i was pretty nigh crazy that night he left, and handled him, maybe, rougher'n i ou'ter, but i couldn't help it. there's some things i can't stand, and what he done was one of 'em. it all comes back to me now, but i'd do it ag'in." as he spoke the rough, hard sailor leaned forward and rested his chin on his hand. the news had evidently been a great shock to him. the doctor reached over and laid his hand on the captain's knee. "i'm very, very sorry, captain, for you and for bart; and the only son you have, is it not?" "yes, and the only child we ever had. that makes it worse. thank god, his mother's dead! all this would have broken her heart." for a moment the two men were silent, then the captain continued in a tone as if he were talking to himself, his eyes on the lamp: "but i couldn't have lived with him after that, and i told him so--not till he acted fair and square, like a man. i hoped he would some day, but that's over now." "we're none of us bad all the way through, captain," reasoned the doctor, "and don't you think of him in that way. he would have come to himself some day and been a comfort to you. i didn't know him as well as i might, and only as i met him at yardley, but he must have had a great many fine qualities or the cobdens wouldn't have liked him. miss jane used often to talk to me about him. she always believed in him. she will be greatly distressed over this news." "that's what brings me here. i want you to tell her, and not me. i'm afraid it'll git out and she'll hear it, and then she'll be worse off than she is now. maybe it's best to say nothin' 'bout it to nobody and let it go. there ain't no one but me to grieve for him, and they don't send no bodies home, not from rio, nor nowheres along that coast. maybe, too, it ain't the time to say it to her. i was up there last week to see the baby, and she looked thinner and paler than i ever see her. i didn't know what to do, so i says to myself, 'there's doctor john, he's at her house reg'lar and knows the ins and outs of her, and i'll go and tell him 'bout it and ask his advice.' i'd rather cut my hand off than hurt her, for if there's an angel on earth she's one. she shakes so when i mention bart's name and gits so flustered, that's why i dar'n't tell her. now he's dead there won't be nobody to do right by archie. i can't; i'm all muzzled up tight. she made me take an oath, same as she has you, and i ain't goin' to break it any more'n you would. the little feller'll have to git 'long best way he kin now." doctor john bent forward in his chair and looked at the captain curiously. his words convey no meaning to him. for an instant he thought that the shock of his son's death had unsettled the man's mind. "take an oath! what for?" "'bout archie and herself." "but i've taken no oath!" "well, perhaps it isn't your habit; it ain't some men's. i did." "what about?" it was the captain's turn now to look searchingly into his companion's face. the doctor's back was toward the lamp, throwing his face into shadow, but the captain could read its expression plainly. "you mean to tell me, doctor, you don't know what's goin' on up at yardley? you do, of course, but you won't say--that's like you doctors!" "yes, everything. but what has your son bart got to do with it?" "got to do with it! ain't jane cobden motherin' his child?" the doctor lunged forward in his seat, his eyes staring straight at the captain. had the old sailor struck him in the face he could not have been more astounded. "his child!" he cried savagely. "certainly! whose else is it? you knew, didn't ye?" the doctor settled back in his chair with the movement of an ox felled by a sudden blow. with the appalling news there rang in his ears the tones of his mother's voice retailing the gossip of the village. this, then, was what she could not repeat. after a moment he raised his head and asked in a low, firm voice: "did bart go to paris after he left here?" "no, of course not! went 'board the corsair bound for rio, and has been there ever since. i told you that before. there weren't no necessity for her to meet him in paris." the doctor sprang from his chair and with eyes biasing and fists tightly clenched, stood over the captain. "and you dare to sit there and tell me that miss jane cobden is that child's mother?" the captain struggled to his feet, his open hands held up to the doctor as if to ward off a blow. "miss jane! no, by god! no! are you crazy? sit down, sit down, i tell ye!" "who, then? speak!" "lucy! that's what i drove bart out for. mort cobden's daughter--mort, mind ye, that was a brother to me since i was a boy! jane that that child's mother! yes, all the mother poor archie's got! ask miss jane, she'll tell ye. tell ye how she sits and eats her heart out to save her sister that's too scared to come home. i want to cut my tongue out for tellin' ye, but i thought ye knew. martha told me you loved her and that she loved you, and i thought she'd told ye. jane cobden crooked! no more'n the angels are. now, will you tell her bart's dead, or shall i?" "i will tell her," answered the doctor firmly, "and to-night." chapter xi morton cobden's daughter the cold wind from the sea freighted with the raw mist churned by the breakers cut sharply against doctor john's cheeks as he sprang into his gig and dashed out of his gate toward yardley. under the shadow of the sombre pines, along the ribbon of a road, dull gray in the light of the stars, and out on the broader highway leading to warehold, the sharp click of the mare's hoofs striking the hard road echoed through the night. the neighbors recognized the tread and the speed, and uncle ephraim threw up a window to know whether it was a case of life or death, an accident, or both; but the doctor only nodded and sped on. it was life and death--life for the woman he loved, death for all who traduced her. the strange news that had dropped from the captain's lips did not affect him except as would the ending of any young life; neither was there any bitterness in his heart against the dead boy who had wrecked lucy's career and brought jane humiliation and despair. all he thought of was the injustice of jane's sufferings. added to this was an overpowering desire to reach her side before her misery should continue another moment; to fold her in his arms, stand between her and the world; help her to grapple with the horror which was slowly crushing out her life. that it was past her hour for retiring, and that there might be no one to answer his summons, made no difference to him. he must see her at all hazards before he closed his eyes. as he whirled into the open gates of yardley and peered from under the hood of the gig at the outlines of the old house, looming dimly through the avenue of bushes, he saw that the occupants were asleep; no lights shone from the upper windows and none burned in the hall below. this discovery checked to some extent the impetus with which he had flung himself into the night, his whole being absorbed and dominated by one idea. the cool wind, too, had begun to tell upon his nerves. he drew rein on the mare and stopped. for the first time since the captain's story had reached his ears his reason began to work. he was never an impetuous man; always a thoughtful and methodical one, and always overparticular in respecting the courtesies of life. he began suddenly to realize that this midnight visit was at variance with every act of his life. then his better judgment became aroused. was it right for him to wake jane and disturb the house at this hour, causing her, perhaps, a sleepless night, or should he wait until the morning, when he could break the news to her in a more gentle and less sensational way? while he sat thus wondering, undetermined whether to drive lightly out of the gate again or to push forward in the hope that someone would be awake, his mind unconsciously reverted to the figure of jane making her way with weary steps down the gangplank of the steamer, the two years of her suffering deep cut into every line of her face. he recalled the shock her appearance had given him, and his perplexity over the cause. he remembered her refusal to give him her promise, her begging him to wait, her unaccountable moods since her return. then lucy's face came before him, her whole career, in fact (in a flash, as a drowning man's life is pictured), from the first night after her return from school until he had bade her good-by to take the train for trenton. little scraps of talk sounded in his ears, and certain expressions about the corners of her eyes revealed themselves to his memory. he thought of her selfishness, of her love of pleasure, of her disregard of jane's wishes, of her recklessness. everything was clear now. "what a fool i have been!" he said to himself. "what a fool--fool! i ought to have known!" next the magnitude of the atonement, and the cruelty and cowardice of the woman who had put her sister into so false a position swept over him. then there arose, like the dawning of a light, the grand figure of the woman he loved, standing clear of all entanglements, a madonna among the saints, more precious than ever in the radiance of her own sacrifice. with this last vision his mind was made up. no, he would not wait a moment. once this terrible secret out of the way, jane would regain her old self and they two fight the world together. as he loosened the reins over the sorrel a light suddenly flashed from one of the upper windows disappeared for a moment, and reappeared again at one of the smaller openings near the front steps. he drew rein again. someone was moving about--who he did not know; perhaps jane, perhaps one of the servants. tying the lines to the dashboard, he sprang from the gig, tethered the mare to one of the lilac bushes, and walked briskly toward the house. as he neared the steps the door was opened and martha's voice rang clear: "meg, you rascal, come in, or shall i let ye stay out and freeze?" doctor john stepped upon the porch, the light of martha's candle falling on his face and figure. "it's i, martha, don't be frightened; it's late, i know, but i hoped miss jane would be up. has she gone to bed?" the old nurse started back. "lord, how ye skeered me! i don't know whether she's asleep or not. she's upstairs with archie, anyhow. i come out after this rapscallion that makes me look him up every night. i've talked to him till i'm sore, and he's promised me a dozen times, and here he is out ag'in. here! where are ye? in with ye, ye little beast!" the dog shrank past her and darted into the hall. "now, then, doctor, come in out of the cold." doctor john stepped softly inside and stood in the flare of the candle-light. he felt that he must give some reason for his appearance at this late hour, even if he did not see jane. it would be just as well, therefore, to tell martha of bart's death at once, and not let her hear it, as she was sure to do, from someone on the street. then again, he had kept few secrets from her where jane was concerned; she had helped him many times before, and her advice was always good. he knew that she was familiar with every detail of the captain's story, but he did not propose to discuss lucy's share in it with the old nurse. that he would reserve for jane's ears alone. "bring your candle into the sitting-room, martha; i have something to tell you," he said gravely, loosening the cape of his overcoat and laying his hat on the hall table. the nurse followed. the measured tones of the doctor's voice, so unlike his cheery greetings, especially to her, unnerved her. this, in connection with the suppressed excitement under which he seemed to labor and the late hour of his visit, at once convinced her that something serious had happened. "is there anything the matter?" she asked in a trembling voice. "yes." "is it about lucy? there ain't nothin' gone wrong with her, doctor dear, is there?" "no, it is not about lucy. it's about barton holt." "ye don't tell me! is he come back?" "no, nor never will. he's dead! "that villain dead! how do you know?" her face paled and her lips quivered, but she gave no other sign of the shock the news had been to her. "captain nat, his father, has just left my office. i promised i would tell miss jane to-night. he was too much broken up and too fearful of its effect upon her to do it himself. i drove fast, but perhaps i'm too late to see her." "well, ye could see her no doubt,--she could throw somethin' around her--but ye mustn't tell her that news. she's been downhearted all day and is tired out. bart's dead, is he?" she repeated with an effort at indifference. "well, that's too bad. i s'pose the captain's feelin' putty bad over it. where did he die?" "he died in rio janeiro of yellow fever," said the doctor slowly, wondering at the self-control of the woman. wondering, too, whether she was glad or sorry over the event, her face and manner showing no index to her feelings. "and will he be brought home to be buried?" she asked with a quick glance at the doctor's face. "no; they never bring them home with yellow fever." "and is that all ye come to tell her?" she was scrutinizing doctor john's face, her quick, nervous glances revealing both suspicion and fear. "i had some other matters to talk about, but if she has retired, perhaps i had better come to-morrow," answered the doctor in undecided tones, as he gazed abstractedly at the flickering candle. the old woman hesitated. she saw that the doctor knew more than he intended to tell her. her curiosity and her fear that some other complication had arisen--one which he was holding back--got the better of her judgment. if it was anything about her bairn, she could not wait until the morning. she had forgotten meg now. "well, maybe if ye break it to her easy-like she can stand it. i don't suppose she's gone to bed yet. her door was open on a crack when i come down, and she always shuts it 'fore she goes to sleep. i'll light a couple o' lamps so ye can see, and then i'll send her down to ye if she'll come. wait here, doctor, dear." the lamps lighted and martha gone, doctor john looked about the room, his glance resting on the sofa where he had so often sat with her; on the portrait of morton cobden, the captain's friend; on the work-basket filled with needlework that jane had left on a small table beside her chair, and upon the books her hands had touched. he thought he had never loved her so much as now. no one he had ever known or heard of had made so great a sacrifice. not for herself this immolation, but for a sister who had betrayed her confidence and who had repaid a life's devotion with unforgivable humiliation and disgrace. this was the woman whose heart he held. this was the woman he loved with every fibre of his being. but her sufferings were over now. he was ready to face the world and its malignity beside her. whatever sins her sister had committed, and however soiled were lucy's garments, jane's robes were as white as snow, he was glad he had yielded to the impulse and had come at once. the barrier between them once broken down and the terrible secret shared, her troubles would end. the whispering of her skirts on the stairs announced her coming before she entered the room. she had been sitting by archie's crib and had not waited to change her loose white gown, whose clinging folds accentuated her frail, delicate form. her hair had been caught up hastily and hung in a dark mass, concealing her small, pale ears and making her face all the whiter by contrast. "something alarming has brought you at this hour," she said, with a note of anxiety in her voice, walking rapidly toward him. "what can i do? who is ill?" doctor john sprang forward, held out both hands, and holding tight to her own, drew her close to him. "has martha told you?" he said tenderly. "no; only that you wanted me. i came as soon as i could." "it's about barton holt. his father has just left my office. i have very sad news for you. the poor boy--" jane loosened her hands from his and drew back. the doctor paused in his recital. "is he ill?" she inquired, a slight shiver running through her. "worse than ill! i'm afraid you'll never see him again." "you mean that he is dead? where?" "yes, dead, in rio. the letter arrived this morning." "and you came all the way up here to tell me this?" she asked, with an effort to hide her astonishment. her eyes dropped for a moment and her voice trembled. then she went on. "what does his father say?" "i have just left him. he is greatly shaken. he would not tell you himself, he said; he was afraid it might shock you too much, and asked me to come up. but it is not altogether that, jane. i have heard something to-night that has driven me half out of my mind. that you should suffer this way alone is torture to me. you cannot, you shall not live another day as you have! let me help!" instantly there flashed into her mind the story martha had brought in from the street. "he has heard it," she said to herself, "but he does not believe it, and he comes to comfort me. i cannot tell the truth without betraying lucy." she drew a step farther from him. "you refer to what the people about us call a mystery--that poor little child upstairs?" she said slowly, all her self-control in her voice. "you think it is a torture for me to care for this helpless baby? it is not a torture; it is a joy--all the joy i have now." she stood looking at him as she spoke with searching eyes, wondering with the ever-questioning doubt of those denied love's full expression. "but i know--" "you know nothing--nothing but what i have told you; and what i have told you is the truth. what i have not told you is mine to keep. you love me too well to probe it any further, i am sorry for the captain. he has an iron will and a rough exterior, but he has a warm heart underneath. if you see him before i do give him my deepest sympathy. now, my dear friend, i must go back to archie; he is restless and needs me. good-night," and she held out her hand and passed out of the room. she was gone before he could stop her. he started forward as her hand touched the door, but she closed it quickly behind her, as if to leave no doubt of her meaning. he saw that she had misunderstood him. he had intended to talk to her of archie's father, and of lucy, and she had supposed he had only come to comfort her about the village gossip. for some minutes he stood like one dazed. then a feeling of unspeakable reverence stole over him. not only was she determined to suffer alone and in silence, but she would guard her sister's secret at the cost of her own happiness. inside that sacred precinct he knew he could never enter; that wine-press she intended to tread alone. then a sudden indignation, followed by a contempt of his own weakness took possession of him. being the older and stronger nature, he should have compelled her to listen. the physician as well as the friend should have asserted himself. no woman could be well balanced who would push away the hand of a man held out to save her from ruin and misery. he would send martha for her again and insist upon her listening to him. he started for the door and stopped irresolute. a new light broke in upon his heart. it was not against himself and her own happiness that she had taken this stand, but to save her father's and her sister's name. he knew how strong was her devotion to her duty, how blind her love for lucy, how sacred she held the trust given to her by her dead father. no; she was neither obstinate nor quixotic. hers was the work of a martyr, not a fanatic. no one he had ever known or heard of had borne so great a cross or made so noble a sacrifice. it was like the deed of some grand old saint, the light of whose glory had shone down the ages. he was wrong, cruelly wrong. the only thing left for him to do was to wait. for what he could not tell. perhaps god in his mercy would one day find the way. martha's kindly voice as she opened the door awoke him from his revery. "did she take it bad?" she asked. "no," he replied aimlessly, without thinking of what he said. "she sent a message to the captain. i'll go now. no, please don't bring a light to the door. the mare's only a short way down the road." when the old nurse had shut the front door after him she put out the lamps and ascended the stairs. the other servants were in bed. jane's door was partly open. martha pushed it gently with her hand and stepped in. jane had thrown herself at full length on the bed and lay with her face buried in her hands. she was talking to herself and had not noticed martha's footsteps. "o god! what have i done that this should be sent to me?" martha heard her say between her sobs. "you would be big enough, my beloved, to bear it all for my sake; to take the stain and wear it; but i cannot hurt you--not you, not you, my great, strong, sweet soul. your heart aches for me and you would give me all you have, but i could not bear your name without telling you. you would forgive me, but i could never forgive myself. no, no, you shall stand unstained if god will give me strength!" martha walked softly to the bed and bent over jane's prostrate body. "it's me, dear. what did he say to break your heart?" jane slipped her arm about the old nurse's neck, drawing her closer, and without lifting her own head from the pillow talked on. "nothing, nothing. he came to comfort me, not to hurt me." "do ye think it's all true 'bout bart?" martha whispered. jane raised her body from the bed and rested her head on martha's shoulder. "yes, it's all true about bart," she answered in a stronger and more composed tone. "i have been expecting it. poor boy, he had nothing to live for, and his conscience must have given him no rest." "did the captain tell him about--" and martha pointed toward the bed of the sleeping child. she could never bring herself to mention lucy's name when speaking either of bart or archie. jane sat erect, brushed the tears from her eyes, smoothed her hair back from her temples, and said with something of her customary poise: "no, i don't think so. the captain gave me his word, and he will not break it. then, again, he will never discredit his own son. the doctor doesn't know, and there will be nobody to tell him. that's not what he came to tell me. it was about the stories you heard last week and which have only just reached his ears. that's all. he wanted to protect me from their annoyance, but i would not listen to him. there is trouble enough without bringing him into it. now go to bed, martha." as she spoke jane regained her feet, and crossing the room, settled into a chair by the boy's crib. long after martha had closed her own door for the night jane sat watching the sleeping child. one plump pink hand lay outside the cover; the other little crumpled rose-leaf was tucked under the cheek, the face half-hidden in a tangle of glossy curls, now spun-gold in the light of the shaded lamp. "poor little waif," she sighed, "poor little motherless, fatherless waif! why didn't you stay in heaven? this world has no place for you." then she rose wearily, picked up the light, carried it across the room to her desk, propped a book in front of it so that its rays would not fall upon the sleeping child, opened her portfolio, and sat down to write. when she had finished and had sealed her letter it was long past midnight. it was addressed to lucy in dresden, and contained a full account of all the doctor had told her of bart's death. chapter xii a letter from paris for the first year jane watched archie's growth and development with the care of a self-appointed nurse temporarily doing her duty by her charge. later on, as the fact became burned into her mind that lucy would never willingly return to warehold, she clung to him with that absorbing love and devotion which an unmarried woman often lavishes upon a child not her own. in his innocent eyes she saw the fulfilment of her promise to her father. he would grow to be a man of courage and strength, the stain upon his birth forgotten, doing honor to himself, to her, and to the name he bore. in him, too, she sought refuge from that other sorrow which was often greater than she could bear--the loss of the closer companionship of doctor john--a companionship which only a wife's place could gain for her. the true mother-love--the love which she had denied herself, a love which had been poured out upon lucy since her father's death--found its outlet, therefore, in little archie. under martha's watchful care the helpless infant grew to be a big, roly-poly boy, never out of her arms when she could avoid it. at five he had lost his golden curls and short skirts and strutted about in knee-trousers. at seven he had begun to roam the streets, picking up his acquaintances wherever he found them. chief among them was tod fogarty, the son of the fisherman, now a boy of ten, big for his age and bubbling over with health and merriment, and whose life doctor john had saved when he was a baby. tod had brought a basket of fish to yardley, and sneaking meg, who was then alive--he died the year after--had helped himself to part of the contents, and the skirmish over its recovery had resulted in a friendship which was to last the boys all their lives. the doctor believed in tod, and always spoke of his pluck and of his love for his mother, qualities which jane admired--but then technical class distinctions never troubled jane--every honest body was jane's friend, just as every honest body was doctor john's. the doctor loved archie with the love of an older brother; not altogether because he was jane's ward, but for the boy's own qualities--for his courage, for his laugh--particularly for his buoyancy. often, as he looked into the lad's eyes brimming with fun, he would wish that he himself had been born with the same kind of temperament. then again the boy satisfied to a certain extent the longing in his heart for home, wife, and child--a void which he knew now would never be filled. fate had decreed that he and the woman he loved should live apart--with this he must be content. not that his disappointments had soured him; only that this ever-present sorrow had added to the cares of his life, and in later years had taken much of the spring and joyousness out of him. this drew him all the closer to archie, and the lad soon became his constant companion; sitting beside him in his gig, waiting for him at the doors of the fishermen's huts, or in the cabins of the poor on the outskirts of barnegat and warehold. "there goes doctor john of barnegat and his curly-head," the neighbors would say; "when ye see one ye see t'other." newcomers in barnegat and warehold thought archie was his son, and would talk to the doctor about him: "fine lad you got, doctor--don't look a bit like you, but maybe he will when he gets his growth." at which the doctor would laugh and pat the boy's head. during all these years lucy's letters came but seldom. when they did arrive, most of them were filled with elaborate excuses for her prolonged stay. the money, she wrote, which jane had sent her from time to time was ample for her needs; she was making many valuable friends, and she could not see how she could return until the following spring--a spring which never came. in no one of them had she ever answered jane's letter about bart's death, except to acknowledge its receipt. nor, strange to say, had she ever expressed any love for archie. jane's letters were always filled with the child's doings; his illnesses and recoveries; but whenever lucy mentioned his name, which was seldom, she invariably referred to him as "your little ward" or "your baby," evidently intending to wipe that part of her life completely out. neither did she make any comment on the child's christening--a ceremony which took place in the church, pastor dellenbaugh officiating--except to write that perhaps one name was as good as another, and that she hoped he would not disgrace it when he grew up. these things, however, made but little impression on jane. she never lost faith in her sister, and never gave up hope that one day they would all three be reunited; how or where she could not tell or foresee, but in some way by which lucy would know and love her son for himself alone, and the two live together ever after--his parentage always a secret. when lucy once looked into her boy's face she was convinced she would love and cling to him. this was her constant prayer. all these hopes were dashed to the ground by the receipt of a letter from lucy with a geneva postmark. she had not written for months, and jane broke the seal with a murmur of delight, martha leaning forward, eager to hear the first word from her bairn. as she read jane's face grew suddenly pale. "what is it?" martha asked in a trembling voice. for some minutes jane sat staring into space, her hand pressed to her side. she looked like one who had received a death message. then, without a word, she handed the letter to martha. the old woman adjusted her glasses, read the missive to the end without comment, and laid it back on jane's lap. the writing covered but part of the page, and announced lucy's coming marriage with a frenchman: "a man of distinction; some years older than myself, and of ample means. he fell in love with me at aix." there are certain crises in life with conclusions so evident that no spoken word can add to their clearness. there is no need of comment; neither is there room for doubt. the bare facts stand naked. no sophistry can dull their outlines nor soften the insistence of their high lights; nor can any reasoning explain away the results that will follow. both women, without the exchange of a word, knew instantly that the consummation of this marriage meant the loss of lucy forever. now she would never come back, and archie would be motherless for life. they foresaw, too, that all their yearning to clasp lucy once more in their arms would go unsatisfied. in this marriage she had found a way to slip as easily from out the ties that bound her to yardley as she would from an old dress. martha rose from her chair, read the letter again to the end, and without opening her lips left the room. jane kept her seat, her head resting on her hand, the letter once more in her lap. the revulsion of feeling had paralyzed her judgment, and for a time had benumbed her emotions. all she saw was archie's eyes looking into hers as he waited for an answer to that question he would one day ask and which now she knew she could never give. then there rose before her, like some disembodied spirit from a long-covered grave, the spectre of the past. an icy chill crept over her. would lucy begin this new life with the same deceit with which she had begun the old? and if she did, would this frenchman forgive her when he learned the facts? if he never learned them--and this was most to be dreaded--what would lucy's misery be all her life if she still kept the secret close? then with a pathos all the more intense because of her ignorance of the true situation--she fighting on alone, unconscious that the man she loved not only knew every pulsation of her aching heart, but would be as willing as herself to guard its secret, she cried: "yes, at any cost she must be saved from this living death! i know what it is to sit beside the man i love, the man whose arm is ready to sustain me, whose heart is bursting for love of me, and yet be always held apart by a spectre which i dare not face." with this came the resolve to prevent the marriage at all hazards, even to leaving yardley and taking the first steamer to europe, that she might plead with lucy in person. while she sat searching her brain for some way out of the threatened calamity, the rapid rumbling of the doctor's gig was heard on the gravel road outside her open window. she knew from the speed with which he drove that something out of the common had happened. the gig stopped and the doctor's voice rang out: "come as quick as you can, jane, please. i've got a bad case some miles out of warehold, and i need you; it's a compound fracture, and i want you to help with the chloroform." all her indecision vanished and all her doubts were swept away as she caught the tones of his voice. who else in the wide world understood her as he did, and who but he should guide her now? had he ever failed her? when was his hand withheld or his lips silent? how long would her pride shut out his sympathy? if he could help in the smaller things of life why not trust him in this larger sorrow?--one that threatened to overwhelm her, she whose heart ached for tenderness and wise counsel. perhaps she could lean upon him without betraying her trust. after all, the question of archie's birth--the one secret between them--need not come up. it was lucy's future happiness which was at stake. this must be made safe at any cost short of exposure. "better put a few things in a bag," doctor john continued. "it may be a case of hours or days--i can't tell till i see him. the boy fell from the roof of the stable and is pretty badly hurt; both legs are broken, i hear; the right one in two places." she was upstairs in a moment, into her nursing dress, always hanging ready in case the doctor called for her, and down again, standing beside the gig, her bag in her hand, before he had time to turn his horse and arrange the seat and robes for her comfort. "who is it?" she asked hurriedly, resting her hand in his as he helped her into the seat and took the one beside her, martha and archie assisting with her bag and big driving cloak. "burton's boy. his father was coming for me and met me on the road. i have everything with me, so we will not lose any time. good-by, my boy," he called to archie. "one day i'll make a doctor of you, and then i won't have to take your dear mother from you so often. good-by, martha. you want to take care of that cough, old lady, or i shall have to send up some of those plasters you love so." they were off and rattling down the path between the lilacs before either archie or the old woman could answer. to hearts like jane's and the doctor's, a suffering body, no matter how far away, was a sinking ship in the clutch of the breakers. until the lifeboat reached her side everything was forgotten. the doctor adjusted the robe over jane's lap and settled himself in his seat. they had often driven thus together, and jane's happiest hours had been spent close to his side, both intent on the same errand of mercy, and both working together. that was the joy of it! they talked of the wounded boy and of the needed treatment and what part each should take in the operation; of some new cases in the hospital and the remedies suggested for their comfort; of archie's life on the beach and how ruddy and handsome he was growing, and of his tender, loving nature; and of the thousand and one other things that two people who know every pulsation of each other's hearts are apt to discuss--of everything, in fact, but the letter in her pocket. "it is a serious case," she said to herself--"this to which we are hurrying--and nothing must disturb the sureness of his sensitive hand." now and then, as he spoke, the two would turn their heads and look into each other's eyes. when a man's face lacks the lines and modellings that stand for beauty the woman who loves him is apt to omit in her eager glance every feature but his eyes. his eyes are the open doors to his soul; in these she finds her ideals, and in these she revels. but with jane every feature was a joy--the way the smoothly cut hair was trimmed about his white temples; the small, well-turned ears lying flat to his head; the lines of his eyebrows; the wide, sensitive nostrils and the gleam of the even teeth flashing from between well-drawn, mobile lips; the white, smooth, polished skin. not all faces could boast this beauty; but then not all souls shone as clearly as did doctor john's through the thin veil of his face. and she was equally young and beautiful to him. her figure was still that of her youth; her face had not changed--he still caught the smile of the girl he loved. often, when they had been driving along the coast, the salt wind in their faces, and he had looked at her suddenly, a thrill of delight had swept through him as he noted how rosy were her cheeks and how ruddy the wrists above the gloves, hiding the dear hands he loved so well, the tapering fingers tipped with delicate pink nails. he could, if he sought them, find many telltale wrinkles about the corners of the mouth and under the eyelids (he knew and loved them all), showing where the acid of anxiety had bitten deep into the plate on which the record of her life was being daily etched, but her beautiful gray eyes still shone with the same true, kindly light, and always flashed the brighter when they looked into his own. no, she was ever young and ever beautiful to him! to-day, however, there was a strange tremor in her voice and an anxious, troubled expression in her face--one that he had not seen for years. nor had she once looked into his eyes in the old way. "something worries you, jane," he said, his voice echoing his thoughts. "tell me about it." "no--not now--it is nothing," she answered quickly. "yes, tell me. don't keep any troubles from me. i have nothing else to do in life but smooth them out. come, what is it?" "wait until we get through with burton's boy. he may be hurt worse than you think." the doctor slackened the reins until they rested on the dashboard, and with a quick movement turned half around and looked searchingly into jane's eyes. "it is serious, then. what has happened?" "only a letter from lucy." "is she coming home?" "no, she is going to be married." the doctor gave a low whistle. instantly archie's laughing eyes looked into his; then came the thought of the nameless grave of his father. "well, upon my soul! you don't say so! who to, pray?" "to a frenchman." jane's eyes were upon his, reading the effect of her news. his tone of surprise left an uncomfortable feeling behind it. "how long has she known him?" he continued, tightening the reins again and chirruping to the mare.. "she does not say--not long, i should think." "what sort of a frenchman is he? i've known several kinds in my life--so have you, no doubt," and a quiet smile overspread his face. "come, bess! hurry up, old girl." "a gentleman, i should think, from what she writes. he is much older than lucy, and she says very well off." "then you didn't meet him on the other side?" "and never heard of him before?" "not until i received this letter." the doctor reached for his whip and flecked off a fly that had settled on the mare's neck. "lucy is about twenty-seven, is she not?" "yes, some eight years younger than i am. why do you ask, john?" "because it is always a restless age for a woman. she has lost the protecting ignorance of youth and she has not yet gained enough of the experience of age to steady her. marriage often comes as a balance-weight. she is coming home to be married, isn't she?" "no; they are to be married in geneva at his mother's." "i think that part of it is a mistake," he said in a decided tone. "there is no reason why she should not be married here; she owes that to you and to herself." then he added in a gentler tone, "and this worries you?" "more than i can tell you, john." there was a note in her voice that vibrated through him. he knew now how seriously the situation affected her. "but why, jane? if lucy is happier in it we should do what we can to help her." "yes, but not in this way. this will make her all the more miserable. i don't want this marriage; i want her to come home and live with me and archie. she makes me promises every year to come, and now it is over six years since i left her and she has always put me off. this marriage means that she will never come. i want her here, john. it is not right for her to live as she does. please think as i do!" the doctor patted jane's hand--it was the only mark of affection he ever allowed himself--not in a caressing way, but more as a father would pat the hand of a nervous child. "well, let us go over it from the beginning. maybe i don't know all the facts. have you the letter with you?" she handed it to him. he passed the reins to her and read it carefully to the end. "have you answered it yet?" "no, i wanted to talk to you about it. what do you think now?" "i can't see that it will make any difference. she is not a woman to live alone. i have always been surprised that she waited so long. you are wrong, jane, about this. it is best for everybody and everything that lucy should be married." "john, dear," she said in a half-pleading tone--there were some times when this last word slipped out--"i don't want this marriage at all. i am so wretched about it that i feel like taking the first steamer and bringing her home with me. she will forget all about him when she is here; and it is only her loneliness that makes her want to marry. i don't want her married; i want her to love me and martha and--archie--and she will if she sees him." "is that better than loving a man who loves her?" the words dropped from his lips before he could recall them--forced out, as it were, by the pressure of his heart. jane caught her breath and the color rose in her cheeks. she knew he did not mean her, and yet she saw he spoke from his heart. doctor john's face, however, gave no sign of his thoughts. "but, john, i don't know that she does love him. she doesn't say so--she says he loves her. and if she did, we cannot all follow our own hearts." "why not?" he replied calmly, looking straight ahead of him: at the bend in the road, at the crows flying in the air, at the leaden sky between the rows of pines. if she wanted to give him her confidence he was ready now with heart and arms wide open. perhaps his hour had come at last. "because--because," she faltered, "our duty comes in. that is holier than love." then her voice rose and steadied itself--"lucy's duty is to come home." he understood. the gate was still shut; the wall still confronted him. he could not and would not scale it. she had risked her own happiness--even her reputation--to keep this skeleton hidden, the secret inviolate. only in the late years had she begun to recover from the strain. she had stood the brunt and borne the sufferings of another's sin without complaint, without reward, giving up everything in life in consecration to her trust. he, of all men, could not tear the mask away, nor could he stoop by the more subtle paths of friendship, love, or duty to seek to look behind it--not without her own free and willing hand to guide him. there was nothing else in all her life that she had not told him. every thought was his, every resolve, every joy. she would entrust him with this if it was hers to give. until she did his lips would be sealed. as to lucy, it could make no difference. bart lying in a foreign grave would never trouble her again, and archie would only be a stumbling-block in her career. she would never love the boy, come what might. if this frenchman filled her ideal, it was best for her to end her days across the water--best certainly for jane, to whom she had only brought unhappiness. for some moments he busied himself with the reins, loosening them from where they were caught in the harness; then he bent his head and said slowly, and with the tone of the physician in consultation: "your protest will do no good, jane, and your trip abroad will only be a waste of time and money. if lucy has not changed, and this letter shows that she has not, she will laugh at your objections and end by doing as she pleases. she has always been a law unto herself, and this new move of hers is part of her life-plan. take my advice: stay where you are; write her a loving, sweet letter and tell her how happy you hope she will be, and send her your congratulations. she will not listen to your objections, and your opposition might lose you her love." before dark they were both on their way back to yardley. burton's boy had not been hurt as badly as his father thought; but one leg was broken, and this was soon in splints, and without jane's assistance. before they had reached her door her mind was made up. the doctor's words, as they always did, had gone down deep into her mind, and all thoughts of going abroad, or of even protesting against lucy's marriage, were given up. only the spectre remained. that the doctor knew nothing of, and that she must meet alone. martha took jane's answer to the post-office herself. she had talked its contents over with the old nurse, and the two had put their hearts into every line. "tell him everything," jane wrote. "don't begin a new life with an old lie. with me it is different. i saved you, my sister, because i loved you, and because i could not bear that your sweet girlhood should be marred. i shall live my life out in this duty. it came to me, and i could not put it from me, and would not now if i could, but i know the tyranny of a secret you cannot share with the man who loves you. i know, too, the cruelty of it all. for years i have answered kindly meant inquiry with discourteous silence, bearing insinuations, calumny, insults--and all because i cannot speak. don't, i beseech you, begin your new life in this slavery. but whatever the outcome, take him into your confidence. better have him leave you now than after you are married. remember, too, that if by this declaration you should lose his love you will at least gain his respect. perhaps, if his heart is tender and he feels for the suffering and wronged, you may keep both. forgive me, dear, but i have only your happiness at heart, and i love you too dearly not to warn you against any danger which would threaten you. martha agrees with me in the above, and knows you will do right by him." when lucy's answer arrived weeks afterward--after her marriage, in fact--jane read it with a clutching at her throat she had not known since that fatal afternoon when martha returned from trenton. "you dear, foolish sister," lucy's letter began, "what should i tell him for? he loves me devotedly and we are very happy together, and i am not going to cause him any pain by bringing any disagreeable thing into his life. people don't do those wild, old-fashioned things over here. and then, again, there is no possibility of his finding out. maria agrees with me thoroughly, and says in her funny way that men nowadays know too much already." then followed an account of her wedding. this letter jane did not read to the doctor--no part of it, in fact. she did not even mention its receipt, except to say that the wedding had taken place in geneva, where the frenchman's mother lived, it being impossible, lucy said, for her to come home, and that maria collins, who was staying with her, had been the only one of her old friends at the ceremony. neither did she read it all to martha. the old nurse was growing more feeble every year and she did not wish her blind faith in her bairn disturbed. for many days she kept the letter locked in her desk, not having the courage to take it out again and read it. then she sent for captain holt, the only one, beside martha, with whom she could discuss the matter. she knew his strong, honest nature, and his blunt, outspoken way of giving vent to his mind, and she hoped that his knowledge of life might help to comfort her. "married to one o' them furriners, is she?" the captain blurted out; "and goin' to keep right on livin' the lie she's lived ever since she left ye? you'll excuse me, miss jane,--you've been a mother, and a sister and everything to her, and you're nearer the angels than anybody i know. that's what i think when i look at you and archie. i say it behind your back and i say it now to your face, for it's true. as to lucy, i may be mistaken, and i may not. i don't want to condemn nothin' 'less i'm on the survey and kin look the craft over; that's why i'm partic'lar. maybe bart was right in sayin' it warn't all his fault, whelp as he was to say it, and maybe he warn't. it ain't up before me and i ain't passin' on it,--but one thing is certain, when a ship's made as many voyages as lucy has and ain't been home for repairs nigh on to seven years--ain't it?" and he looked at jane for confirmation--"she gits foul and sometimes a little mite worm-eaten--especially her bilge timbers, unless they're copper-fastened or pretty good stuff. i've been thinkin' for some time that you ain't got lucy straight, and this last kick-up of hers makes me sure of it. some timber is growed right and some timber is growed crooked; and when it's growed crooked it gits leaky, and no 'mount o' tar and pitch kin stop it. every twist the ship gives it opens the seams, and the pumps is goin' all the time. when your timber is growed right you kin all go to sleep and not a drop o' water'll git in. your sister lucy ain't growed right. maybe she kin help it and maybe she can't, but she'll leak every time there comes a twist. see if she don't." but jane never lost faith nor wavered in her trust. with the old-time love strong upon her she continued to make excuses for this thoughtless, irresponsible woman, so easily influenced. "it is maria collins who has written the letter, and not lucy," she kept saying to herself. "maria has been her bad angel from her girlhood, and still dominates her. the poor child's sufferings have hardened her heart and destroyed for a time her sense of right and wrong--that is all." with this thought uppermost in her mind she took the letter from her desk, and stirring the smouldering embers, laid it upon the coals. the sheet blazed and fell into ashes. "no one will ever know," she said with a sigh. chapter xiii scootsy's epithet lying on barnegat beach, within sight of the house of refuge and fogarty's cabin, was the hull of a sloop which had been whirled in one night in a southeaster, with not a soul on board, riding the breakers like a duck, and landing high and dry out of the hungry clutch of the surf-dogs. she was light at the time and without ballast, and lay stranded upright on her keel. all attempts by the beach-combers to float her had proved futile; they had stripped her of her standing rigging and everything else of value, and had then abandoned her. only the evenly balanced hull was left, its bottom timbers broken and its bent keelson buried in the sand. this hulk little tod fogarty, aged ten, had taken possession of; particularly the after-part of the hold, over which he had placed a trusty henchman armed with a cutlass made from the hoop of a fish barrel. the henchman--aged seven--wore knee-trousers and a cap and answered to the name of archie. the refuge itself bore the title of "the bandit's home." this new hulk had taken the place of the old schooner which had served captain holt as a landmark on that eventful night when he strode barnegat beach in search of bart, and which by the action of the ever-changing tides, had gradually settled until now only a hillock marked its grave--a fate which sooner or later would overtake this newly landed sloop itself. these barnegat tides are the sponges that wipe clean the slate of the beach. each day a new record is made and each day it is wiped out: records from passing ships, an empty crate, broken spar or useless barrel grounded now and then by the tide in its flow as it moves up and down the sand at the will of the waters. records, too, of many footprints,--the lagging steps of happy lovers; the dimpled feet of joyous children; the tread of tramp, coast-guard or fisherman--all scoured clean when the merciful tide makes ebb. other records are strewn along the beach; these the tide alone cannot efface--the bow of some hapless schooner it may be, wrenched from its hull, and sent whirling shoreward; the shattered mast and crosstrees of a stranded ship beaten to death in the breakers; or some battered capstan carried in the white teeth of the surf-dogs and dropped beyond the froth-line. to these with the help of the south wind, the tides extend their mercy, burying them deep with successive blankets of sand, hiding their bruised bodies, covering their nakedness and the marks of their sufferings. all through the restful summer and late autumn these battered derelicts lie buried, while above their graves the children play and watch the ships go by, or stretch themselves at length, their eyes on the circling gulls. with the coming of the autumn all this is changed. the cruel north wind now wakes, and with a loud roar joins hands with the savage easter; the startled surf falls upon the beach like a scourge. under their double lash the outer bar cowers and sinks; the frightened sand flees hither and thither. soon the frenzied breakers throw themselves headlong, tearing with teeth and claws, burrowing deep into the hidden graves. now the forgotten wrecks, like long-buried sins, rise and stand naked, showing every scar and stain. this is the work of the sea-puss--the revolving maniac born of close-wed wind and tide; a beast so terrible that in a single night, with its auger-like snout, it bites huge inlets out of farm lands--mouthfuls deep enough for ships to sail where but yesterday the corn grew. in the hull of this newly stranded sloop, then--sitting high and dry, out of the reach of the summer surf,--tod and archie spent every hour of the day they could call their own; sallying forth on various piratical excursions, coming back laden with driftwood for a bonfire, or hugging some bottle, which was always opened with trembling, eager fingers in the inmost recesses of the home, in the hope that some tidings of a lost ship might be found inside; or with their pockets crammed with clam-shells and other sea spoils with which to decorate the inside timbers of what was left of the former captain's cabin. jane had protested at first, but the doctor had looked the hull over, and found that there was nothing wide enough, nor deep enough, nor sharp enough to do them harm, and so she was content. then again, the boys were both strong for their age, and looked it, tod easily passing for a lad of twelve or fourteen, and archie for a boy of ten. the one danger discovered by the doctor lay in its height, the only way of boarding the stranded craft being by means of a hand-over-hand climb up the rusty chains of the bowsprit, a difficult and trousers-tearing operation. this was obviated by tod's father, who made a ladder for the boys out of a pair of old oars, which the two pirates pulled up after them whenever an enemy hove in sight. when friends approached it was let down with more than elaborate ceremony, the guests being escorted by archie and welcomed on board by tod. once captain holt's short, sturdy body was descried in the offing tramping the sand-dunes on his way to fogarty's, and a signal flag--part of mother fogarty's flannel petticoat, and blood-red, as befitted the desperate nature of the craft over which it floated, was at once set in his honor. the captain put his helm hard down and came up into the wind and alongside the hulk. "well! well! well!" he cried in his best quarterdeck voice--"what are you stowaways doin' here?" and he climbed the ladder and swung himself over the battered rail. archie took his hand and led him into the most sacred recesses of the den, explaining to him his plans for defence, his armament of barrel hoops, and his ammunition of shells and pebbles, tod standing silently by and a little abashed, as was natural in one of his station; at which the captain laughed more loudly than before, catching archie in his arms, rubbing his curly head with his big, hard hand, and telling him he was a chip of the old block, every inch of him--none of which did either archie or tod understand. before he climbed down the ladder he announced with a solemn smile that he thought the craft was well protected so far as collisions on foggy nights were concerned, but he doubted if their arms were sufficient and that he had better leave them his big sea knife which had been twice around cape horn, and which might be useful in lopping off arms and legs whenever the cutthroats got too impudent and aggressive; whereupon archie threw his arms around his grizzled neck and said he was a "bully commodore," and that if he would come and live with them aboard the hulk they would obey his orders to a man. archie leaned over the rotten rail and saw the old salt stop a little way from the hulk and stand looking at them for some minutes and then wave his hand, at which the boys waved back, but the lad did not see the tears that lingered for an instant on the captain's eyelids, and which the sea-breeze caught away; nor did he hear the words, as the captain resumed his walk: "he's all i've got left, and yet he don't know it and i can't tell him. ain't it hell?" neither did they notice that he never once raised his eyes toward the house of refuge as he passed its side. a new door and a new roof had been added, but in other respects it was to him the same grewsome, lonely hut as on that last night when he had denounced his son outside its swinging door. often the boys made neighborly visits to friendly tribes and settlers. fogarty was one of these, and doctor cavendish was another. the doctor's country was a place of buttered bread and preserves and a romp with rex, who was almost as feeble as meg had been in his last days. but fogarty's cabin was a mine of never-ending delight. in addition to the quaint low house of clapboards and old ship-timber, with its sloping roof and little toy windows, so unlike his own at yardley, and smoked ceilings, there was a scrap heap piled up and scattered over the yard which in itself was a veritable treasure-house. here were rusty chains and wooden figure-heads of broken-nosed, blind maidens and tailless dolphins. here were twisted iron rods, fish-baskets, broken lobster-pots, rotting seines and tangled, useless nets--some used as coverings for coops of restless chickens--old worn-out rope, tangled rigging--everything that a fisherman who had spent his life on barnegat beach could pull from the surf or find stranded on the sand. besides all these priceless treasures, there was an old boat lying afloat in a small lagoon back of the house, one of those seepage pools common to the coast--a boat which fogarty had patched with a bit of sail-cloth, and for which he had made two pairs of oars, one for each of the "crew," as he called the lads, and which archie learned to handle with such dexterity that the old fisherman declared he would make a first-class boatman when he grew up, and would "shame the whole bunch of 'em." but these two valiant buccaneers were not to remain in undisturbed possession of the bandit's home with its bewildering fittings and enchanting possibilities--not for long. the secret of the uses to which the stranded craft bad been put, and the attendant fun which commodore tod and his dauntless henchman, archibald cobden, esquire, were daily getting out of its battered timbers, had already become public property. the youth of barnegat--the very young youth, ranging from nine to twelve, and all boys--received the news at first with hilarious joy. this feeling soon gave way to unsuppressed indignation, followed by an active bitterness, when they realized in solemn conclave--the meeting was held in an open lot on saturday morning--that the capture of the craft had been accomplished, not by dwellers under barnegat light, to whom every piece of sea-drift from a tomato-can to a full-rigged ship rightfully belonged, but by a couple of aliens, one of whom wore knee-pants and a white collar,--a distinction in dress highly obnoxious to these lords of the soil. all these denizens of barnegat had at one time or another climbed up the sloop's chains and peered down the hatchway to the sand covering the keelson, and most of them had used it as a shelter behind which, in swimming-time, they had put on or peeled off such mutilated rags as covered their nakedness, but no one of them had yet conceived the idea of turning it into a bandit's home. that touch of the ideal, that gilding of the commonplace, had been reserved for the brain of the curly-haired boy who, with dancing eyes, his sturdy little legs resting on tod's shoulder, had peered over the battered rail, and who, with a burst of enthusiasm, had shouted: "oh, cracky! isn't it nice, tod! it's got a place we can fix up for a robbers' den; and we'll be bandits and have a flag. oh, come up here! you never saw anything so fine," etc., etc. when, therefore, scootsy mulligan, aged nine, son of a ship-caulker who worked in martin farguson's ship-yard, and sandy plummer, eldest of three, and their mother a widow--plain washing and ironing, two doors from the cake-shop--heard that that french "spad," arch cobden what lived up to yardley, and that red-headed irish cub, tod fogarty--tod's hair had turned very red--had pre-empted the black tub, as the wreck was irreverently called, claiming it as their very own, "and-a-sayin' they wuz pirates and bloody turks and sich," these two quarrelsome town rats organized a posse in lower barnegat for its recapture. archie was sweeping the horizon from his perch on the "poop-deck" when his eagle eye detected a strange group of what appeared to be human beings advancing toward the wreck from the direction of barnegat village. one, evidently a chief, was in the lead, the others following bunched together. all were gesticulating wildly. the trusty henchman immediately gave warning to tod, who was at work in the lower hold arranging a bundle of bean-poles which had drifted inshore the night before--part of the deck-load, doubtless, of some passing vessel. "ay, ay, sir!" cried the henchman with a hoist of his knee-pants, as a prelude to his announcement. "ay, ay, yerself!" rumbled back the reply. "what's up?" the commodore had not read as deeply in pirate lore as had archie, and was not, therefore, so ready with its lingo. "band of savages, sir, approaching down the beach." "where away?" thundered back the commodore, his authority now asserting itself in the tones of his voice. "on the starboard bow, sir--six or seven of 'em." "armed or peaceable?" "armed, sir. scootsy mulligan is leadin' 'em." "scootsy mulligan! crickety! he's come to make trouble," shouted back tod, climbing the ladder in a hurry--it was used as a means of descent into the shallow hold when not needed outside. "where are they? oh, yes! i see 'em--lot of 'em, ain't they? saturday, and they ain't no school. say, arch, what are we goin' to do?" the terminal vowels softening his henchman's name were omitted in grave situations; so was the pirate lingo. "do!" retorted archie, his eyes snapping. "why, we'll fight 'em; that's what we are pirates for. fight 'em to the death. hurray! they're not coming aboard--no sir-ee! you go down, toddy [the same free use of terminals], and get two of the biggest bean-poles and i'll run up the death flag. we've got stones and shells enough. hurry--big ones, mind you!" the attacking party, their leader ahead, had now reached the low sand heap marking the grave of the former wreck, but a dozen yards away--the sand had entombed it the year before. "you fellers think yer durned smart, don't ye?" yelled mr. william mulligan, surnamed "scootsy" from his pronounced fleetness of foot. "we're goin' to run ye out o' that tub. 'tain't yourn, it's ourn--ain't it, fellers?" a shout went up in answer from the group on the hillock. "you can come as friends, but not as enemies," cried archie grandiloquently. "the man who sets foot on this ship without permission dies like a dog. we sail under the blood-red flag!" and archie struck an attitude and pointed to the fragment of mother fogarty's own nailed to a lath and hanging limp over the rail. "hi! hi! hi!" yelled the gang in reply. "oh, ain't he a beauty! look at de cotton waddin' on his head!" (archie's cropped curls.) "say, sissy, does yer mother know ye're out? throw that ladder down; we're comin' up there--don't make no diff'rence whether we got yer permish or not--and we'll knock the stuffin' out o' ye if ye put up any job on us. h'ist out that ladder!" "death and no quarter!" shouted back archie, opening the big blade of captain holt's pocket knife and grasping it firmly in his wee hand. "we'll defend this ship with the last drop of our blood!" "ye will, will ye!" retorted scootsy. "come on, fellers--go for 'em! i'll show 'em," and he dodged under the sloop's bow and sprang for the overhanging chains. tod had now clambered up from the hold. under his arm were two stout hickory saplings. one he gave to archie, the other he kept himself. "give them the shells first," commanded archie, dodging a beach pebble; "and when their hands come up over the rail let them have this," and he waved the sapling over his head. "run, tod,--they're trying to climb up behind. i'll take the bow. avast there, ye lubbers!" with this archie dropped to his knees and crouched close to the heel of the rotting bowsprit, out of the way of the flying missiles--each boy's pockets were loaded--and looking cautiously over the side of the hulk, waited until scootsy's dirty fingers--he was climbing the chain hand over hand, his feet resting on a boy below him--came into view. "off there, or i'll crack your fingers!" "crack and be--" bang! went archie's hickory and down dropped the braggart, his oath lost in his cries. "he smashed me fist! he smashed me fist! oh! oh!" whined scootsy, hopping about with the pain, sucking the injured hand and shaking its mate at archie, who was still brandishing the sapling and yelling himself hoarse in his excitement. the attacking party now drew off to the hillock for a council of war. only their heads could be seen--their bodies lay hidden in the long grass of the dune. archie and tod were now dancing about the deck in a delirium of delight--calling out in true piratical terms, "we die, but we never surrender!" tod now and then falling into his native vernacular to the effect that he'd "knock the liver and lights out o' the hull gang," an expression the meaning of which was wholly lost on archie, he never having cleaned a fish in his life. here a boy in his shirt-sleeves straightened up in the yellow grass and looked seaward. then sandy plummer gave a yell and ran to the beach, rolling up what was left of his trousers legs, stopping now and then to untie first one shoe and then the other. two of the gang followed on a run. when the three reached the water's edge they danced about like crusoe's savages, waving their arms and shouting. sandy by this time had stripped off his clothes and had dashed into the water. a long plank from some lumber schooner was drifting up the beach in the gentle swell of the tide. sandy ran abreast of it for a time, sprang into the surf, threw himself upon it flat like a frog, and then began paddling shoreward. the other two now rushed into the water, grasping the near end of the derelict, the whole party pushing and paddling until it was hauled clean of the brine and landed high on the sand. a triumphant yell here came from the water's edge, and the balance of the gang--there were seven in all--rushed to the help of the dauntless three. archie heaped a pile of pebbles within reach of his hand and waited the attack. what the savages were going to do with the plank neither he nor tod could divine. the derelict was now dragged over the sand to the hulk, tod and archie pelting its rescuers with stones and shells as they came within short range. "up with her, fellers!" shouted sandy, who, since scootsy's unmanly tears, had risen to first place. "run it under the bowsprit--up with her--there she goes! altogether!" archie took his stand, his long sapling in his hand, and waited. he thought first he would unseat the end of the plank, but it was too far below him and then again he would be exposed to their volleys of stones, and if he was hurt he might not get back on his craft. tod, who had resigned command in favor of his henchman after archie's masterly defence in the last fight, stood behind him. thermopylae was a narrow place, and so was the famous bridge of horatius. he and his faithful tod would now make the fight of their lives. both of these close shaves for immortality were closed books to tod, but archie knew every line of their records, doctor john having spent many an hour reading to him, the boy curled up in his lap while jane listened. sandy, emboldened by the discovery of the plank, made the first rush up and was immediately knocked from his perch by tod, whose pole swung around his head like a flail. then scootsy tried it, crawling up, protecting his head by ducking it under his elbows, holding meanwhile by his hand. tod's blows fell about his back, but the boy struggled on until archie reached over the gunwale, and with a twist of his wrist, using all his strength, dropped the invader to the sand below. the success of this mode of attack was made apparent, provided they could stick to the plank. five boys now climbed up. archie belabored the first one with the pole and tod grappled with the second, trying to throw him from the rail to the sand, some ten feet below, but the rat close behind him, in spite of their efforts, reached forward, caught the rail, and scrambled up to his mate's assistance. in another instant both had leaped to the sloop's deck. "back! back! run, toddy!" screamed archie, waving his arms. "get on the poop-deck; we can lick them there. run!" tod darted back, and the two defenders clearing the intervening rotten timbers with a bound, sprang upon the roof of the old cabin--archie's "poop." with a whoop the savages followed, jumping over the holes in the planking and avoiding the nails in the open beams. in the melee archie had lost his pole, and was now standing, hat off, his blue eves flashing, all the blood of his overheated little body blazing in his face. the tears of defeat were trembling under his eyelids, he had been outnumbered, but he would die game. in his hand he carried, unconsciously to himself, the big-bladed pocket knife the captain had given him. he would as soon have used it on his mother as upon one of his enemies, but the barnegat invaders were ignorant of that fact, knives being the last resort in their environment. "look out, sandy!" yelled scootsy to his leader, who was now sneaking up to archie with the movement of an indian in ambush;--"he's drawed a knife." sandy stopped and straightened himself within three feet of archie. his hand still smarted from the blow archie had given it. the "spad" had not stopped a second in that attack, and he might not in this; the next thing he knew the knife might be between his ribs. "drawed a knife, hev ye!" he snarled. "drawed a knife, jes' like a spad that ye are! ye oughter put yer hair in curl-papers!" archie looked at the harmless knife in his hand. "i can fight you with my fists if you are bigger than me," he cried, tossing the knife down the open hatchway into the sand below. "hold my coat, tod," and he began stripping off his little jacket. "i ain't fightin' no spads," sneered sandy. he didn't want to fight this one. "yer can't skeer nobody. you'll draw a pistol next. yer better go home to yer mammy, if ye kin find her." "he ain't got no mammy," snarled scootsy. "he's a pick-up--me father says so." archie sprang forward to avenge the insult, but before he could reach scootsy's side a yell arose from the bow of the hulk. "yi! yi! run, fellers! here comes old man fogarty! he's right on top o' ye! not that side--this way. yi! yi!" the invaders turned and ran the length of the deck, scrambled over the side and dropped one after the other to the sand below just as the fogarty head appeared at the bow. it was but a step and a spring for him, and with a lurch he gained the deck of the wreck. "by jiminy, boys, mother thought ye was all killed! has them rats been botherin' ye? ye oughter broke the heads of 'em. where did they get that plank? come 'shore, did it? here, tod, catch hold of it; i jes' wanted a piece o' floorin' like that. why, ye're all het up, archie! come, son, come to dinner; ye'll git cooled off, and mother's got a mess o' clams for ye. never mind 'bout the ladder; i'll lift it down." on the way over to the cabin, fogarty and tod carrying the plank and archie walking beside them, the fisherman gleaned from the boys the details of the fight. archie had recovered the captain's knife and it was now in his hand. "called ye a 'pick-up' did he, the rat, and said ye didn't have no mother. he's a liar! if ye ain't got a mother, and a good one, i don't know who has. that's the way with them town-crabs, allus cussin' somebody better'n themselves." when fogarty had tilted the big plank against the side of the cabin and the boys had entered the kitchen in search of the mess of clams, the fisherman winked to his wife, jerked his head meaningly over one shoulder, and mrs. fogarty, in answer, followed him out to the woodshed. "them sneaks from barnegat, mulligan's and farguson's boys, and the rest of 'em, been lettin' out on archie: callin' him names, sayin' he ain't got no mother and he's one o' them pass-ins ye find on yer doorstep in a basket. i laughed it off and he 'peared to forgit it, but i thought he might ask ye, an' so i wanted to tip ye the wink." "well, ye needn't worry. i ain't goin' to tell him what i don't know," replied the wife, surprised that he should bring her all the way out to the woodshed to tell her a thing like that. "but ye do know, don't ye?" "all i know is what uncle ephraim told me four or five years ago, and he's so flighty half the time and talks so much ye can't believe one-half he says--something about miss jane comin' across archie's mother in a horsepital in paris, or some'er's and promisin' her a-dyin' that she'd look after the boy, and she has. she'd do that here if there was women and babies up to doctor john's horsepital 'stead o' men. it's jes' like her," and mrs. fogarty, not to lose her steps, stooped over a pile of wood and began gathering up an armful. "well, she ain't his mother, ye know," rejoined fogarty, helping his wife with the sticks. "that's what they slammed in his face to-day, and he'll git it ag'in as he grows up. but he don't want to hear it from us." "and he won't. miss jane ain't no fool. she knows more about him than anybody else, and when she gits ready to tell him she'll tell him. don't make no difference who his mother was--the one he's got now is good enough for anybody. tod would have been dead half a dozen times if it hadn't been for her and doctor john, and there ain't nobody knows it better'n me. it's just like her to let archie come here so much with tod; she knows i ain't goin' to let nothin' happen to him. and as for mothers, sam fogarty," here mrs. fogarty lifted her free hand and shook her finger in a positive way--"when archie gits short of mothers he's got one right here, don't make no difference what you or anybody else says," and she tapped her broad bosom meaningly. contrary, however, to fogarty's hopes and surmises, archie had forgotten neither sandy's insult nor scootsy's epithet. "he's a pick-up" and "he ain't got no mammy" kept ringing in his ears as he walked back up the beach to his home. he remembered having heard the words once before when he was some years younger, but then it had come from a passing neighbor and was not intended for him. this time it was flung square in his face. every now and then as he followed the trend of the beach on his way home he would stop and look out over the sea, watching the long threads of smoke being unwound from the spools of the steamers and the sails of the fishing-boats as they caught the light of the setting sun. the epithet worried him. it was something to be ashamed of, he knew, or they would not have used it. jane, standing outside the gate-post, shading her eyes with her hand, scanning the village road, caught sight of his sturdy little figure the moment he turned the corner and ran to meet him. "i got so worried--aren't you late, my son?" she asked, putting her arm about him and kissing him tenderly. "yes, it's awful late. i ran all the way from the church when i saw the clock. i didn't know it was past six. oh, but we've had a bully day, mother! and we've had a fight. tod and i were pirates, and scootsy mulligan tried to--" jane stopped the boy's joyous account with a cry of surprise. they were now walking back to yardley's gate, hugging the stone wall. "a fight! oh, my son!" "yes, a bully fight; only there were seven of them and only two of us. that warn't fair, but mr. fogarty says they always fight like that. i could have licked 'em if they come on one at a time, but they got a plank and crawled up--" "crawled up where, my son?" asked jane in astonishment. all this was an unknown world to her. she had seen the wreck and had known, of course, that the boys were making a playhouse of it, but this latter development was news to her. "why, on the pirate ship, where we've got our bandit's home. tod is commodore and i'm first mate. tod and i did all we could, but they didn't fight fair, and scootsy called me a 'pick-up' and said i hadn't any mother. i asked mr. fogarty what he meant, but he wouldn't tell me. what's a 'pick-up,' dearie?" and he lifted his face to jane's, his honest blue eyes searching her own. jane caught her hand to her side and leaned for a moment against the stone wall. this was the question which for years she had expected him to ask--one to which she had framed a hundred imaginary answers. when as a baby he first began to talk she had determined to tell him she was not his mother, and so get him gradually accustomed to the conditions of his birth. but every day she loved him the more, and every day she had put it off. to-day it was no easier. he was too young, she knew, to take in its full meaning, even if she could muster up the courage to tell him the half she was willing to tell him--that his mother was her friend and on her sick-bed had entrusted her child to her care. she had wanted to wait until he was old enough to understand, so that she should not lose his love when he came to know the truth. there had been, moreover, always this fear--would he love her for shielding his mother, or would he hate lucy when he came to know? she had once talked it all over with captain holt, but she could never muster up the courage to take his advice. "tell him," he had urged. "it'll save you a lot o' trouble in the end. that'll let me out and i kin do for him as i want to. you've lived under this cloud long enough--there ain't nobody can live a lie a whole lifetime, miss jane. i'll take my share of the disgrace along of my dead boy, and you ain't done nothin', god knows, to be ashamed of. tell him! it's grease to yer throat halyards and everything'll run smoother afterward. take my advice, miss jane." all these things rushed through her mind as she stood leaning against the stone wall, archie's hand in hers, his big blue eyes still fixed on her own. "who said that to you, my son?" she asked in assumed indifference, in order to gain time in which to frame her answer and recover from the shock. "scootsy mulligan." "is he a nice boy?" "no, he's a coward, or he wouldn't fight as he does." "then i wouldn't mind him, my boy," and she smoothed back the hair from his forehead, her eyes avoiding the boy's steady gaze. it was only when someone opened the door of the closet concealing this spectre that jane felt her knees give way and her heart turn sick within her. in all else she was fearless and strong. "was he the boy who said you had no mother?" "yes. i gave him an awful whack when he came up the first time, and he went heels over head." "well, you have got a mother, haven't you, darling?" she continued, with a sigh of relief, now that archie was not insistent. "you bet i have!" cried the boy, throwing his arms around her. "then we won't either of us bother about those bad boys and what they say," she answered, stooping over and kissing him. and so for a time the remembrance of scootsy's epithet faded out of the boy's mind. chapter xiv high water at yardley ten years have passed away. the sturdy little fellow in knee-trousers is a lad of seventeen, big and strong for his age; tod is three years older, and the two are still inseparable. the brave commander of the pirate ship is now a full-fledged fisherman and his father's main dependence. archie is again his chief henchman, and the two spend many a morning in tod's boat when the blue-fish are running. old fogarty does not mind it; he rather likes it, and mother fogarty is always happier when the two are together. "if one of 'em gits overboard," she said one day to her husband, "t'other kin save him." "save him! well, i guess!" he replied. "salt water skims off archie same's if he was a white bellied gull; can't drown him no more'n you kin a can buoy." the boy has never forgotten scootsy's epithet, although he has never spoken of it to his mother--no one knows her now by any other name. she thought the episode had passed out of his mind, but she did not know everything that lay in the boy's heart. he and tod had discussed it time and again, and had wondered over his own name and that of his nameless father, as boys wonder, but they had come to no conclusion. no one in the village could tell them, for no one ever knew. he had asked the doctor, but had only received a curious answer. "what difference does it make, son, when you have such a mother? you have brought her only honor, and the world loves her the better because of you. let it rest until she tells you; it will only hurt her heart if you ask her now." the doctor had already planned out the boy's future; he was to be sent to philadelphia to study medicine when his schooling was over, and was then to come into his office and later on succeed to his practice. captain holt would have none of it. "he don't want to saw off no legs," the bluff old man had blurted out when he heard of it. "he wants to git ready to take a ship 'round cape horn. if i had my way i'd send him some'er's where he could learn navigation, and that's in the fo'c's'le of a merchantman. give him a year or two before the mast. i made that mistake with bart--he loafed round here too long and when he did git a chance he was too old." report had it that the captain was going to leave the lad his money, and had therefore a right to speak; but no one knew. he was closer-mouthed than ever, though not so gruff and ugly as he used to be; archie had softened him, they said, taking the place of that boy of his he "druv out to die a good many years ago." jane's mind wavered. neither profession suited her. she would sacrifice anything she had for the boy provided they left him with her. philadelphia was miles away, and she would see him but seldom. the sea she shrank from and dreaded. she had crossed it twice, and both times with an aching heart. she feared, too, its treachery and cruelty. the waves that curled and died on barnegat beach--messengers from across the sea--brought only tidings fraught with suffering. archie had no preferences--none yet. his future was too far off to trouble him much. nor did anything else worry him. one warm september day archie turned into yardley gate, his so'wester still on his head framing his handsome, rosy face; his loose jacket open at the throat, the tarpaulins over his arm. he had been outside the inlet with tod--since daybreak, in fact--fishing for bass and weakfish. jane had been waiting for him for hours. she held an open letter in her hand, and her face was happier, archie thought as he approached her, than he had seen it for months. there are times in all lives when suddenly and without warning, those who have been growing quietly by our side impress their new development upon us. we look at them in full assurance that the timid glance of the child will be returned, and are astounded to find instead the calm gaze of the man; or we stretch out our hand to help the faltering step and touch a muscle that could lead a host. such changes are like the breaking of the dawn; so gradual has been their coming that the full sun of maturity is up and away flooding the world with beauty and light before we can recall the degrees by which it rose. jane realized this--and for the first time--as she looked at archie swinging through the gate, waving his hat as he strode toward her. she saw that the sailor had begun to assert itself. he walked with an easy swing, his broad shoulders--almost as broad as the captain's and twice as hard--thrown back, his head up, his blue eyes and white teeth laughing out of a face brown and ruddy with the sun and wind, his throat and neck bare except for the silk handkerchief--one of tod's--wound loosely about it; a man really, strong and tough, with hard sinews and capable thighs, back, and wrists--the kind of sailorman that could wear tarpaulins or broadcloth at his pleasure and never lose place in either station. in this rude awakening jane's heart-strings tightened. she became suddenly conscious that the cobden look had faded out of him; lucy's eyes and hair were his, and so was her rounded chin, with its dimple, but there was nothing else about him that recalled either her own father or any other cobden she remembered. as he came near enough for her to look into his eyes she began to wonder how he would impress lucy, what side of his nature would she love best--his courage and strength or his tenderness? the sound of his voice shouting her name recalled her to herself, and a thrill of pride illumined her happy face like a burst of sunlight as he tossed his tarpaulins on the grass and put his strong arms about her. "mother, dear! forty black bass, eleven weakfish, and half a barrel of small fry--what do you think of that?" "splendid, archie. tod must be proud as a peacock. but look at this!" and she held up the letter. "who do you think it's from? guess now," and she locked one arm through his, and the two strolled back to the house. "guess now!" she repeated, holding the letter behind her back. the two were often like lovers together. "let me see," he coaxed. "what kind of a stamp has it got?" "never you mind about the stamp." "uncle john--and it's about my going to philadelphia." jane laughed. "uncle john never saw it." "then it's from--oh, you tell me, mother!" "no--guess. think of everybody you ever heard of. those you have seen and those you--" "oh, i know--aunt lucy." "yes, and she's coming home. home, archie, think of it, after all these years!" "well, that's bully! she won't know me, will she? i never saw her, did i?" "yes, when you were a little fellow." it was difficult to keep the tremor out of her voice. "will she bring any dukes and high daddies with her?" "no," laughed jane, "only her little daughter ellen, the sweetest little girl you ever saw, she writes." "how old is she?" he had slipped his arm around his mother's waist now and the two were "toeing it" up the path, he stopping every few feet to root a pebble from its bed. the coming of the aunt was not a great event in his life. "just seven her last birthday." "all right, she's big enough. we'll take her out and teach her to fish. hello, granny!" and the boy loosened his arm as he darted up the steps toward martha. "got the finest mess of fish coming up here in a little while you ever laid your eyes on," he shouted, catching the old nurse's cap from her head and clapping it upon his own, roaring with laughter, as he fled in the direction of the kitchen. jane joined in the merriment and, moving a chair from the hall, took her seat on the porch to await the boy's return. she was too happy to busy herself about the house or to think of any of her outside duties. doctor john would not be in until the afternoon, and so she would occupy herself in thinking out plans to make her sister's home-coming a joyous one. as she looked down over the garden as far as the two big gate-posts standing like grim sentinels beneath the wide branches of the hemlocks, and saw how few changes had taken place in the old home since her girl sister had left it, her heart thrilled with joy. nothing really was different; the same mass of tangled rose-vines climbed over the porch--now quite to the top of the big roof, but still the same dear old vines that lucy had loved in her childhood; the same honeysuckle hid the posts; the same box bordered the paths. the house was just as she left it; her bedroom had really never been touched. what few changes had taken place she would not miss. meg would not run out to meet her, and rex was under a stone that the doctor had placed over his grave; nor would ann gossaway peer out of her eyrie of a window and follow her with her eyes as she drove by; her tongue was quiet at last, and she and her old mother lay side by side in the graveyard. doctor john had exhausted his skill upon them both, and martha, who had forgiven her enemy, had sat by her bedside until the end, but nothing had availed. mrs. cavendish was dead, of course, but she did not think lucy would care very much. she and doctor john had nursed her for months until the end came, and had then laid her away near the apple-trees she was so fond of. but most of the faithful hearts who had loved her were still beating, and all were ready with a hearty welcome. archie was the one thing new--new to lucy. and yet she had no fear either for him or for lucy. when she saw him she would love him, and when she had known him a week she would never be separated from him again. the long absence could not have wiped out all remembrance of the boy, nor would the new child crowd him from her heart. when doctor john sprang from his gig (the custom of his daily visits had never been broken) she could hardly wait until he tied his horse--poor bess had long since given out--to tell him the joyful news. he listened gravely, his face lighting up at her happiness. he was glad for jane and said so frankly, but the situation did not please him. he at heart really dreaded the effect of lucy's companionship on the woman he loved. although it had been years since he had seen her, he had followed her career, especially since her marriage, with the greatest interest and with the closest attention. he had never forgotten, nor had he forgiven her long silence of two years after her marriage, during which time she had never written jane a line, nor had he ever ceased to remember jane's unhappiness over it. jane had explained it all to him on the ground that lucy was offended because she had opposed the marriage, but the doctor knew differently. nor had he ceased to remember the other letters which followed, and how true a story they told of lucy's daily life and ambitions. he could almost recall the wording of one of them. "my husband is too ill," it had said, "to go south with me, and so i will run down to rome for a month or so, for i really need the change." and a later one, written since his death, in which she wrote of her winter in paris and at monte carlo, and "how good my mother-in-law is to take care of ellen." this last letter to her sister, just received--the one he then held in his hand, and which gave jane such joy, and which he was then reading as carefully as if it had been a prescription--was to his analytical mind like all the rest of its predecessors. one sentence sent a slight curl to his lips. "i cannot stay away any longer from my precious sister," it said, "and am coming back to the home i adore. i have no one to love me, now that my dear husband is dead, but you and my darling ellen." the news of lucy's expected return spread rapidly. old martha in her joy was the mouthpiece. she gave the details out at church the sunday morning following the arrival of lucy's letter. she was almost too ill to venture out, but she made the effort, stopping the worshippers as they came down the board walk; telling each one of the good news, the tears streaming down her face. to the children and the younger generation the announcement made but little difference; some of them had never heard that miss jane had a sister, and others only that she lived abroad. their mothers knew, of course, and so did the older men, and all were pleased over the news. those of them who remembered the happy, joyous girl with her merry eyes and ringing laugh were ready to give her a hearty welcome; they felt complimented that the distinguished lady--fifteen years' residence abroad and a rich husband had gained her this position--should be willing to exchange the great paris for the simple life of warehold. it touched their civic pride. great preparations were accordingly made. billy tatham's successor (his son)--in his best open carriage--was drawn up at the station, and lucy's drive through the village with some of her numerous boxes covered with foreign labels piled on the seat beside the young man--who insisted on driving lucy and the child himself--was more like the arrival of a princess revisiting her estates than anything else. martha and archie and jane filled the carriage, with little ellen on archie's lap, and more than one neighbor ran out of the house and waved to them as they drove through the long village street and turned into the gate. archie threw his arms around lucy when he saw her, and in his open, impetuous way called her his "dear aunty," telling her how glad he was that she had come to keep his good mother from getting so sad at times, and adding that she and granny had not slept for days before she came, so eager were they to see her. and lucy kissed him in return, but with a different throb at her heart. she felt a thrill when she saw how handsome and strong he was, and for an instant there flashed through her a feeling of pride that he was her own flesh and blood. then there had come a sudden revulsion, strangling every emotion but the one of aversion--an aversion so overpowering that she turned suddenly and catching ellen in her arms kissed her with so lavish a display of affection that those at the station who witnessed the episode had only praise for the mother's devotion. jane saw the kiss lucy had given archie, and a cry of joy welled up in her heart, but she lost the shadow that followed. my lady of paris was too tactful for that. her old room was all ready. jane, with martha helping, had spent days in its preparation. white dimity curtains starched stiff as a petticoat had been hung at the windows; a new lace cover spread on the little mahogany, brass-mounted dressing-table--her great grandmother's, in fact--with its tiny swinging mirror and the two drawers (martha remembered when her bairn was just high enough to look into the mirror), and pots of fresh flowers placed on the long table on which her hooks used to rest. two easy-chairs had also been brought up from the sitting-room below, covered with new chintz and tied with blue ribbons, and, more wonderful still, a candle-box had been covered with cretonne and studded with brass tacks by the aid of martha's stiff fingers that her bairn might have a place in which to put her dainty shoes and slippers. when the trunks had been carried upstairs and martha with her own hands had opened my lady's gorgeous blue morocco dressing-case with its bottles capped with gold and its brushes and fittings emblazoned with cupids swinging in garlands of roses, the poor woman's astonishment knew no bounds. the many scents and perfumes, the dainty boxes, big and little, holding various powders--one a red paste which the old nurse thought must be a salve, but about which, it is needless to say, she was greatly mistaken--as well as a rabbit's foot smirched with rouge (this she determined to wash at once), and a tiny box of court-plaster cut in half moons. so many things, in fact, did the dear old nurse pull from this wonderful bag that the modest little bureau could not hold half of them, and the big table had to be brought up and swept of its plants and belongings. the various cosmetics and their uses were especial objects of comment. "did ye break one of the bottles, darlin'?" she asked, sniffing at a peculiar perfume which seemed to permeate everything. "some of 'em must have smashed; it's awful strong everywhere--smell that"--and she held out a bit of lace which she had taken from the case, a dressing-sacque that lucy had used on the steamer. lucy laughed. "and you don't like it? how funny, you dear old thing! that was made specially for me; no one else in paris has a drop." and then the dresses! particularly the one she was to wear the first night--a dress flounced and furbelowed and of a creamy white (she still wore mourning--delicate purples shading to white--the exact tone for a husband six months dead). and the filmy dressing-gowns, and, more wonderful than all, the puff of smoke she was to sleep in, held together by a band of violet ribbon; to say nothing of the dainty slippers bound about with swan's-down, and the marvellous hats, endless silk stockings of mauve, white, and black, and long and short gloves. in all her life martha had never seen or heard of such things. the room was filled with them and the two big closets crammed to overflowing, and yet a dozen trunks were not yet unpacked, including the two small boxes holding little ellen's clothes. the night was one long to be remembered. everyone said the manor house had not been so gay for years. and they were all there--all her old friends and many of jane's new ones, who for years had looked on lucy as one too far above them in station to be spoken of except with bated breath. the intimates of the house came early. doctor john first, with his grave manner and low voice--so perfectly dressed and quiet: lucy thought she had never seen his equal in bearing and demeanor, nor one so distinguished-looking--not in any circle in europe; and uncle ephraim, grown fat and gouty, leaning on a cane, but still hearty and wholesome, and overjoyed to see her; and pastor dellenbaugh--his hair was snow-white now--and his complacent and unruffled wife; and the others, including captain holt, who came in late. it was almost a repetition of that other home-coming years before, when they had gathered to greet her, then a happy, joyous girl just out of school. lucy in their honor wore the dress that had so astonished martha, and a diamond-studded ornament which she took from her jewel-case and fastened in her hair. the dress followed the wonderful curves of her beautiful body in all its dimpled plumpness and the jewel set off to perfection the fresh, oval face, laughing blue eyes--wet forget-me-nots were the nearest their color--piquant, upturned nose and saucy mouth. the color of the gown, too, harmonized both with the delicate pink of her cheeks and with the tones of her rather too full throat showing above the string of pearls that clasped it. jane wore a simple gray silk gown which followed closely the slender and almost attenuated lines of her figure. this gown the doctor always loved because, as he told her, it expressed so perfectly the simplicity of her mind and life. her only jewels were her deep, thoughtful eyes, and these, to-night, were brilliant with joy over her sister's return. as jane moved about welcoming her guests the doctor, whose eyes rarely left her face, became conscious that at no time in their lives had the contrast between the two sisters been greater. one, a butterfly of thirty-eight, living only in the glow of the sunlight, radiant in plumage, alighting first on one flower and then on another, but always on flowers, never on weeds; gathering such honey as suited her taste; never resting where she might by any chance be compelled to use her feet, but always poised in air; a woman, rich, brilliant, and beautiful, and--here was the key-note of her life--always, year in and year out, warmed by somebody's admiration, whose she didn't much mind nor care, so that it gratified her pride and relieved her of ennui. the other--and this one he loved with his whole soul--a woman of forty-six, with a profound belief in her creeds; quixotic sometimes in her standards, but always sincere; devoted to her traditions, to her friends and to her duty; unselfish, tender-hearted, and self-sacrificing; whose feet, though often tired and bleeding, had always trodden the earth. as lucy greeted first one neighbor and then another, sometimes with one hand, sometimes with two, offering her cheek now and then to some old friend who had known her as a child, jane's heart swelled with something of the pride she used to have when lucy was a girl. her beautiful sister, she saw, had lost none of the graciousness of her old manner, nor of her tact in making her guests feel perfectly at home. jane noticed, too--and this was new to her--a certain well-bred condescension, so delicately managed as never to be offensive--more the air of a woman accustomed to many sorts and conditions of men and women, and who chose to be agreeable as much to please herself as to please her guests. and yet with all this poise of manner and condescending graciousness, there would now and then dart from lucy's eyes a quick, searching glance of inquiry, as she tried to read her guests' thoughts, followed by a relieved look on her own face as she satisfied herself that no whisper of her past had ever reached them. these glances jane never caught. doctor john was most cordial in his greeting and talked to her a long time about some portions of europe, particularly a certain cafe in dresden where he used to dine, and another in paris frequented by the beau monde. she answered him quite frankly, telling him of some of her own experiences in both places, quite forgetting that she was giving him glimpses of her own life while away--glimpses which she had kept carefully concealed from jane or martha. she was conscious, however, after he had left her of a certain uncomfortable feeling quivering through her as his clear, steadfast eyes looked into hers, he listened, and yet she thought she detected his brain working behind his steadfast gaze. it was as if he was searching for some hidden disease. "he knows something," she said to herself, when the doctor moved to let someone else take his place. "how much i can't tell. i'll get it all out of sister." blunt and bluff captain holt, white-whiskered and white-haired now, but strong and hearty, gave her another and a different shock. what his first words would be when they met and how she would avoid discussing the subject uppermost in their minds if, in his rough way, he insisted on talking about it, was one of the things that had worried her greatly when she decided to come home, for there was never any doubt in her mind as to his knowledge. but she misjudged the captain, as had a great many others who never looked beneath the rugged bark covering his heart of oak. "i'm glad you've come at last," he said gravely, hardly touching her hand in welcome, "you ought to have been here before. jane's got a fine lad of her own that she's bringin' up; when you know him ye'll like him." she did not look at him when she answered, but a certain feeling of relief crept over her. she saw that the captain had buried the past and intended never to revive it. the stern look on his face only gave way when little ellen came to him of her own accord and climbing up into his lap said in her broken english that she heard he was a great captain and that she wanted him to tell her some stories like her good papa used to tell her. "he was gray like you," she said, "and big," and she measured the size with her plump little arms that showed out of her dainty french dress. with doctor john and captain holt out of the way lucy's mind was at rest. "nobody else round about yardley except these two knows," she kept saying to herself with a bound of relief, "and for these i don't care. the doctor is jane's slave, and the captain is evidently wise enough not to uncover skeletons locked up in his own closet." these things settled in her mind, my lady gave herself up to whatever enjoyment, compatible with her rapidly fading mourning, the simple surroundings afforded, taking her cue from the conditions that confronted her and ordering her conduct accordingly and along these lines: archie was her adopted nephew, the son of an old friend of jane's, and one whom she would love dearly, as, in fact, she would anybody else whom jane had brought up; she herself was a gracious widow of large means recovering from a great sorrow; one who had given up the delights of foreign courts to spend some time among her dear people who had loved her as a child. here for a time would she bring up and educate her daughter. "to be once more at home, and in dear old warehold, too!" she had said with upraised madonna-like eyes and clasped hands to a group of women who were hanging on every word that dropped from her pretty lips. "do you know what that is to me? there is hardly a day i have not longed for it. pray, forgive me if i do not come to see you as often as i would, but i really hate to be an hour outside of the four walls of my precious home." chapter xv a package of letters under the influence of the new arrival it was not at all strange that many changes were wrought in the domestic life at cobden manor. my lady was a sensuous creature, loving color and flowers and the dainty appointments of life as much in the surroundings of her home as in the adornment of her person, and it was not many weeks before the old-fashioned sitting-room had been transformed into a french boudoir. in this metamorphosis she had used but few pieces of new furniture--one or two, perhaps, that she had picked up in the village, as well as some bits of mahogany and brass that she loved--but had depended almost entirely upon the rearrangement of the heirlooms of the family. with the boudoir idea in view, she had pulled the old tables out from the walls, drawn the big sofa up to the fire, spread a rug--one of her own--before the mantel, hung new curtains at the windows and ruffled their edges with lace, banked the sills with geraniums and begonias, tilted a print or two beside the clock, scattered a few books and magazines over the centre-table, on which she had placed a big, generous lamp, under whose umbrella shade she could see to read as she sat in her grandmother's rocking-chair--in fact, had, with that taste inherent in some women--touched with a knowing hand the dead things about her and made them live and mean something;--her talisman being an unerring sense of what contributed to personal comfort. heretofore doctor john had been compelled to drag a chair halfway across the room in order to sit and chat with jane, or had been obliged to share her seat on the sofa, too far from the hearth on cold days to be comfortable. now he could either stand on the hearth-rug and talk to her, seated in one corner of the pulled-up sofa, her work-basket on a small table beside her, or he could drop into a big chair within reach of her hand and still feel the glow of the fire. jane smiled at the changes and gave lucy free rein to do as she pleased. her own nature had never required these nicer luxuries; she had been too busy, and in these last years of her life too anxious, to think of them, and so the room had been left as in the days of her father. the effect of the rearrangement was not lost on the neighbors. they at once noticed the sense of cosiness everywhere apparent, and in consequence called twice as often, and it was not long before the old-fashioned sitting-room became a stopping-place for everybody who had half an hour to spare. these attractions, with the aid of a generous hospitality, lucy did her best to maintain, partly because she loved excitement and partly because she intended to win the good-will of her neighbors--those who might be useful to her. the women succumbed at once. not only were her manners most gracious, but her jewels of various kinds, her gowns of lace and frou-frou, her marvellous hats, her assortment of parasols, her little personal belongings and niceties--gold scissors, thimbles, even the violet ribbons that rippled through her transparent underlaces--so different from those of any other woman they knew--were a constant source of wonder and delight. to them she was a beautiful lady bountiful who had fluttered down among them from heights above, and whose departure, should it ever take place, would leave a gloom behind that nothing could illumine. to the men she was more reserved. few of them ever got beyond a handshake and a smile, and none of them ever reached the borders of intimacy. popularity in a country village could never, she knew, be gained by a pretty woman without great discretion. she explained her foresight to jane by telling her that there was no man of her world in warehold but the doctor, and that she wouldn't think of setting her cap for him as she would be gray-haired before he would have the courage to propose. then she kissed jane in apology, and breaking out into a rippling laugh that martha heard upstairs, danced out of the room. little ellen, too, had her innings; not only was she prettily dressed, presenting the most joyous of pictures, as with golden curls flying about her shoulders she flitted in and out of the rooms like a sprite, but she was withal so polite in her greetings, dropping to everyone a little french courtesy when she spoke, and all in her quaint, broken dialect, that everybody fell in love with her at sight. none of the other mothers had such a child, and few of them knew that such children existed. jane watched the workings of lucy's mind with many misgivings. she loved her lightheartedness and the frank, open way with which she greeted everybody who crossed their threshold. she loved, too, to see her beautifully gowned and equipped and to hear the flattering comments of the neighbors on her appearance and many charms; but every now and then her ear caught an insincere note that sent a shiver through her. she saw that the welcome lucy gave them was not from her heart, but from her lips; due to her training, no doubt, or perhaps to her unhappiness, for jane still mourned over the unhappy years of lucy's life--an unhappiness, had she known it, which had really ended with archie's safe adoption and bart's death. another cause of anxiety was lucy's restlessness. every day she must have some new excitement--a picnic with the young girls and young men, private theatricals in the town hall, or excursions to barnegat beach, where they were building a new summer hotel. now and then she would pack her bag and slip off to new york or philadelphia for days at a time to stay with friends she had met abroad, leaving ellen with jane and martha. to the older sister she seemed like some wild, untamable bird of brilliant plumage used to long, soaring flights, perching first on one dizzy height and then another, from which she could watch the world below. the thing, however, which distressed jane most was lucy's attitude towards archie. she made every allowance for her first meeting at the station, and knew that necessarily it must be more or less constrained, but she had not expected the almost cold indifference with which she had treated the boy ever since. as the days went by and lucy made no effort to attach archie to her or to interest herself either in his happiness or welfare, jane became more and more disturbed. she had prayed for this home-coming and had set her heart on the home-building which was sure to follow, and now it seemed farther off than ever. one thing troubled and puzzled her: while lucy was always kind to archie indoors, kissing him with the others when she came down to breakfast, she never, if she could help it, allowed him to walk with her in the village, and she never on any occasion took him with her when visiting the neighbors. "why not take archie with you, dear?" jane had said one morning to lucy, who had just announced her intention of spending a few days in philadelphia with max feilding's sister sue, whom she had met abroad when max was studying in dresden--max was still a bachelor, and his sister kept house for him. he was abroad at the time, but was expected by every steamer. "archie isn't invited, you old goosie, and he would be as much out of place in max's house as uncle ephraim tipple would be in parliament." "but they would be glad to see him if you took him. he is just the age now when a boy gets impressions which last him through--" "yes, the gawky and stumble-over-things age! piano-stools, rugs, anything that comes in his way. and the impressions wouldn't do him a bit of good. they might, in fact, do him harm," and she laughed merrily and spread her fingers to the blaze. a laugh was often her best shield. she had in her time dealt many a blow and then dodged behind a laugh to prevent her opponent from striking back. "but, lucy, don't you want to do something to help him?" jane asked in a pleading tone. "yes, whatever i can, but he seems to me to be doing very well as he is. doctor john is devoted to him and the captain idolizes him. he's a dear, sweet boy, of course, and does you credit, but he's not of my world, jane, dear, and i'd have to make him all over again before he could fit into my atmosphere. besides, he told me this morning that he was going off for a week with some fisherman on the beach--some person by the name of fogarty, i think." "yes, a fine fellow; they have been friends from their boyhood." she was not thinking of fogarty, but of the tone of lucy's voice when speaking of her son. "yes--most estimable gentleman, no doubt, this mr. fogarty, but then, dear, we don't invite that sort of people to dinner, do we?" and another laugh rippled out. "yes, sometimes," answered jane in all sincerity. "not fogarty, because he would be uncomfortable if he came, but many of the others just as humble. we really have very few of any other kind. i like them all. many of them love me dearly." "not at all strange; nobody can help loving you," and she patted jane's shoulder with her jewelled fingers. "but you like them, too, don't you? you treat them as if you did." lucy lifted her fluted petticoat, rested her slippered foot on the fender, glanced down at the embroidered silk stocking covering her ankle, and said in a graver tone: "i like all kinds of people--in their proper place. this is my home, and it is wise to get along with one's neighbors. besides, they all have tongues in their heads like the rest of the human race, and it is just as well to have them wag for you as against you." jane paused for a moment, her eyes watching the blazing logs, and asked with almost a sigh: "you don't mean, dear, that you never intend to help archie, do you?" "never is a long word, jane. wait till he grows up and i see what he makes of himself. he is now nothing but a great animal, well built as a young bull, and about as awkward." jane's eyes flashed and her shoulders straightened. the knife had a double edge to its blade. "he is your own flesh and blood, lucy," she said with a ring of indignation in her voice. "you don't treat ellen so; why should you archie?" lucy took her foot from the fender, dropped her skirts, and looked at jane curiously. from underneath the half-closed lids of her eyes there flashed a quick glance of hate--a look that always came into lucy's eyes whenever jane connected her name with archie's. "let us understand each other, sister," she said icily. "i don't dislike the boy. when he gets into trouble i'll help him in any way i can, but please remember he's not my boy--he's yours. you took him from me with that understanding and i have never asked him back. he can't love two mothers. you say he has been your comfort all these years. why, then, do you want to unsettle his mind?" jane lifted her head and looked at lucy with searching eyes--looked as a man looks when someone he must not strike has flung a glove in his face. "do you really love anything, lucy?" she asked in a lower voice, her eyes still fastened on her sister's. "yes, ellen and you." "did you love her father?" she continued in the same direct tone. "y-e-s, a little-- he was the dearest old man in the world and did his best to please me; and then he was never very well. but why talk about him, dear?" "and you never gave him anything in return for all his devotion?" jane continued in the same cross-examining voice and with the same incisive tone. "yes, my companionship--whenever i could. about what you give doctor john," and she looked at jane with a sly inquiry as she laughed gently to herself. jane bit her lips and her face flushed scarlet. the cowardly thrust had not wounded her own heart. it had only uncovered the love of the man who lay enshrined in its depths. a sudden sense of the injustice done him arose in her mind and then her own helplessness in it all. "i would give him everything i have, if i could," she answered simply, all her insistency gone, the tears starting to her eyes. lucy threw her arms about her sister and held her cheek to her own. "dear, i was only in fun; please forgive me. everything is so solemn to you. now kiss me and tell me you love me." that night when captain holt came in to play with the little "pond lily," as he called ellen, jane told him of her conversation with lucy, not as a reflection on her sister, but because she thought he ought to know how she felt toward archie. the kiss had wiped out the tears, but the repudiation of archie still rankled in her breast. the captain listened patiently to the end. then he said with a pause between each word: "she's sailin' without her port and starboard lights, miss jane. one o' these nights with the tide settin' she'll run up ag'in somethin' solid in a fog, and then--god help her! if bart had lived he might have come home and done the decent thing, and then we could git her into port some'er's for repairs, but that's over now. she better keep her lights trimmed. tell her so for me." what this "decent thing" was he never said--perhaps he had but a vague idea himself. bart had injured lucy and should have made reparation, but in what way except by marriage--he, perhaps, never formulated in his own mind. jane winced under the captain's outburst, but she held her peace. she knew how outspoken he was and how unsparing of those who differed from him and she laid part of his denunciation to this cause. some weeks after this conversation the captain started for yardley to see jane on a matter of business, and incidentally to have a romp with the pond lily. it was astonishing how devoted the old sea-dog was to the child, and how she loved him in return. "my big bear," she used to call him, tugging away at his gray whiskers. on his way he stopped at the post-office for his mail. it was mid-winter and the roads were partly blocked with snow, making walking difficult except for sturdy souls like captain nat. "here, cap'n holt, yer jest the man i been a-waitin' for," cried miss tucher, the postmistress, from behind the sliding window. "if you ain't goin' up to the cobdens, ye kin, can't ye? here's a lot o' letters jest come that i know they're expectin'. miss lucy's" (many of the village people still called her miss lucy, not being able to pronounce her dead husband's name) "come in yesterday and seems as if she couldn't wait. this storm made everything late and the mail got in after she left. there ain't nobody comin' out to-day and here's a pile of 'em--furrin' most of 'em. i'd take 'em myself if the snow warn't so deep. don't mind, do ye? i'd hate to have her disapp'inted, for she's jes' 's sweet as they make 'em." "don't mind it a mite, susan tucher," cried the captain. "goin' there, anyhow. got some business with miss jane. lord, what a wad o' them!" "that ain't half what she gits sometimes," replied the postmistress, "and most of 'em has seals and crests stamped on 'em. some o' them furrin lords, i guess, she met over there." these letters the captain held in his hand when he pushed open the door of the sitting-room and stood before the inmates in his rough pea-jacket, his ruddy face crimson with the cold, his half-moon whiskers all the whiter by contrast. "good-mornin' to the hull o' ye!" he shouted. "cold as blue blazes outside, i tell ye, but ye look snug enough in here. hello, little pond lily! why ain't you out on your sled? put two more roses in your cheeks if there was room for 'em. there, ma'am," and he nodded to lucy and handed her the letters, "that's 'bout all the mail that come this mornin'. there warn't nothin' else much in the bag. susan tucher asked me to bring 'em up to you count of the weather and 'count o' your being in such an all-fired hurry to read 'em." little ellen was in his arms before this speech was finished and everybody else on their feet shaking hands with the old salt, except poor, deaf old martha, who called out, "good-mornin', captain holt," in a strong, clear voice, and in rather a positive way, but who kept her seat by the fire and continued her knitting; and complacent mrs. dellenbaugh, the pastor's wife, who, by reason of her position, never got up for anybody. the captain advanced to the fire, ellen still in his arms, shook hands with mrs. dellenbaugh and extended three fingers, rough as lobster's claws and as red, to the old nurse. of late years he never met martha without feeling that he owed her an apology for the way he had treated her the day she begged him to send bart away. so he always tried to make it up to her, although he had never told her why. "hope you're better, martha? heard ye was under the weather; was that so? ye look spry 'nough now," he shouted in his best quarter-deck voice. "yes, but it warn't much. doctor john fixed me up," martha replied coldly. she had no positive animosity toward the captain--not since he had shown some interest in archie--but she could never make a friend of him. during this greeting lucy, who had regained her chair, sat with the letters unopened in her lap. none of the eagerness miss tucher had indicated was apparent. she seemed more intent on arranging the folds of her morning-gown accentuating the graceful outlines of her well-rounded figure. she had glanced through the package hastily, and had found the one she wanted and knew that it was there warm under her touch--the others did not interest her. "what a big mail, dear," remarked jane, drawing up a chair. "aren't you going to open it?" the captain had found a seat by the window and the child was telling him everything she had done since she last saw him. "oh, yes, in a minute," replied lucy. "there's plenty of time." with this she picked up the bunch of letters, ran her eye through the collection, and then, with the greatest deliberation, broke one seal after another, tossing the contents on the table. some she merely glanced at, searching for the signatures and ignoring the contents; others she read through to the end. one was from dresden, from a student she had known there the year before. this was sealed with a wafer and bore the address of the cafe where he took his meals. another was stamped with a crest and emitted a slight perfume; a third was enlivened by a monogram in gold and began: "ma chere amie," in a bold round hand. the one under her hand she did not open, but slipped into the pocket of her dress. the others she tore into bits and threw upon the blazing logs. "i guess if them fellers knew how short a time it would take ye to heave their cargo overboard," blurted out the captain, "they'd thought a spell 'fore they mailed their manifests." lucy laughed good-naturedly and jane watched the blaze roar up the wide chimney. the captain settled back in his chair and was about to continue his "sea yarn," as he called it, to little ellen, when he suddenly loosened the child from his arms, and leaning forward in his seat toward where jane sat, broke out with: "god bless me! i believe i'm wool-gathering. i clean forgot what i come for. it is you, miss jane, i come to see, not this little curly head that'll git me ashore yet with her cunnin' ways. they're goin' to build a new life-saving station down barnegat way. that dutch brig that come ashore last fall in that so'easter and all them men drownded could have been saved if we'd had somethin' to help 'em with. we did all we could, but that house of refuge ain't half rigged and most o' the time ye got to break the door open to git at what there is if ye're in a hurry, which you allus is. they ought to have a station with everything 'bout as it ought to be and a crew on hand all the time; then, when somethin' comes ashore you're right there on top of it. that one down to squam is just what's wanted here." "will it be near the new summer hotel?" asked lucy carelessly, just as a matter of information, and without raising her eyes from the rings on her beautiful hands. "'bout half a mile from the front porch, ma'am"--he preferred calling her so--"from what i hear. 'tain't located exactly yet, but some'er's along there. i was down with the gov'ment agent yesterday." "who will take charge of it, captain?" inquired jane, reaching over her basket in search of her scissors. "well, that's what i come up for. they're talkin' about me," and the captain put his hands behind ellen's head and cracked his big knuckles close to her ear, the child laughing with delight as she listened. the announcement was received with some surprise. jane, seeing martha's inquiring face, as if she wanted to hear, repeated the captain's words to her in a loud voice. martha laid down her knitting and looked at the captain over her spectacles. "why, would you take it, captain?" jane asked in some astonishment, turning to him again. "don't know but i would. ain't no better job for a man than savin' lives. i've helped kill a good many; 'bout time now i come 'bout on another tack. i'm doin' nothin'--haven't been for years. if i could get the right kind of a crew 'round me--men i could depend on--i think i could make it go." "if you couldn't nobody could, captain," said jane in a positive way. "have you picked out your crew?" "yes, three or four of 'em. isaac polhemus and tom morgan--tom sailed with me on my last voyage--and maybe tod." "archie's tod?" asked jane, replacing her scissors and searching for a spool of cotton. "archie's tod," repeated the captain, nodding his head, his big hand stroking ellen's flossy curls. "that's what brought me up. i want tod, and he won't go without archie. will ye give him to me?" "my archie!" cried jane, dropping her work and staring straight at the captain. "your archie, miss jane, if that's the way you put it," and he stole a look at lucy. she was conscious of his glance, but she did not return it; she merely continued listening as she twirled one of the rings on her finger. "well, but, captain, isn't it very dangerous work? aren't the men often drowned?" protested jane. "anything's dangerous 'bout salt water that's worth the doin'. i've stuck to the pumps seventy-two hours at a time, but i'm here to tell the tale." "have you talked to archie?" "no, but tod has. they've fixed it up betwixt 'em. the boy's dead set to go." "well, but isn't he too young?" "young or old, he's tough as a marline-spike--a , and copper fastened throughout. there ain't a better boatman on the beach. been that way ever since he was a boy. won't do him a bit of harm to lead that kind of life for a year or two. if he was mine it wouldn't take me a minute to tell what i'd do." jane leaned back in her chair, her eyes on the crackling logs, and began patting the carpet with her foot. lucy became engrossed in a book that lay on the table beside her. she didn't intend to take any part in the discussion. if jane wanted archie to serve as a common sailor that was jane's business. then again, it was, perhaps, just as well for a number of reasons to have him under the captain's care. he might become so fond of the sea as to want to follow it all his life. "what do you think about it, lucy?" asked jane. "oh, i don't know anything about it. i don't really. i've lived so long away from here i don't know what the young men are doing for a living. he's always been fond of the sea, has he not, captain holt?" "allus," said the captain doggedly; "it's in his blood." her answer nettled him. "you ain't got no objections, have you, ma'am?" he asked, looking straight at lucy. lucy's color came and went. his tone offended her, especially before mrs. dellenbaugh, who, although she spoke but seldom in public had a tongue of her own when she chose to use it. she was not accustomed to being spoken to in so brusque a way. she understood perfectly well the captain's covert meaning, but she did not intend either to let him see it or to lose her temper. "oh, not the slightest," she answered with a light laugh. "i have no doubt that it will be the making of him to be with you. poor boy, he certainly needs a father's care." the captain winced in turn under the retort and his eyes flashed, but he made no reply. little ellen had slipped out of the captain's lap during the colloquy. she had noticed the change in her friend's tone, and, with a child's intuition, had seen that the harmony was in danger of being broken. she stood by the captain's knee, not knowing whether to climb back again or to resume her seat by the window. lucy, noticing the child's discomfort, called to her: "come here, ellen, you will tire the captain." the child crossed the room and stood by her mother while lucy tried to rearrange the glossy curls, tangled by too close contact with the captain's broad shoulder. in the attempt ellen lost her balance and fell into her mother's lap. "oh, ellen!" said her mother coldly; "stand up, dear. you are so careless. see how you have mussed my gown. now go over to the window and play with your dolls." the captain noted the incident and heard lucy's reproof, but he made no protest. neither did he contradict the mother's statement that the little girl had tired him. his mind was occupied with other things--the tone of the mother's voice for one, and the shade of sadness that passed over the child's face for another. from that moment he took a positive dislike to her. "well, think it over, miss jane," he said, rising from his seat and reaching for his hat. "plenty of time 'bout archie. life-savin' house won't be finished for the next two or three months; don't expect to git into it till june. wonder, little pond lily, if the weather's goin' to be any warmer?" he slipped his hand under the child's chin and leaning over her head peered out of the window. "don't look like it, does it, little one? looks as if the snow would hold on. hello! here comes the doctor. i'll wait a bit--good for sore eyes to see him, and i don't git a chance every day. ask him 'bout archie, miss jane. he'll tell ye whether the lad's too young." there came a stamping of feet on the porch outside as doctor john shook the snow from his boots, and the next instant he stepped into the room bringing with him all the freshness and sunshine of the outside world. "good-morning, good people," he cried, "every one of you! how very snug and cosey you look here! ah, captain, where have you been keeping yourself? and mrs. dellenbaugh! this is indeed a pleasure. i have just passed the dear doctor, and he is looking as young as he did ten years ago. and my lady lucy! down so early! well, mistress martha, up again i see; i told you you'd be all right in a day or two." this running fire of greetings was made with a pause before each inmate of the room--a hearty hand-shake for the bluff captain, the pressing of mrs. dellenbaugh's limp fingers, a low bow to lucy, and a pat on martha's plump shoulder. jane came last, as she always did. she had risen to greet him and was now unwinding the white silk handkerchief wrapped about his throat and helping him off with his fur tippet and gloves. "thank you, jane. no, let me take it; it's rather wet," he added as he started to lay the heavy overcoat over a chair. "wait a minute. i've some violets for you if they are not crushed in my pocket. they came last night," and he handed her a small parcel wrapped in tissue paper. this done, he took his customary place on the rug with his back to the blazing logs and began unbuttoning his trim frock-coat, bringing to view a double-breasted, cream-white waistcoat--he still dressed as a man of thirty, and always in the fashion--as well as a fluffy scarf which jane had made for him with her own fingers. "and what have i interrupted?" he asked, looking over the room. "one of your sea yarns, captain?"--here he reached over and patted the child's head, who had crept back to the captain's arms--"or some of my lady's news from paris? you tell me, jane," he added, with a smile, opening his thin, white, almost transparent fingers and holding them behind his back to the fire, a favorite attitude. "ask the captain, john." she had regained her seat and was reaching out for her work-basket, the violets now pinned in her bosom--her eyes had long since thanked him. "no, do you tell me," he insisted, moving aside the table with her sewing materials and placing it nearer her chair. "well, but it's the captain who should speak," jane replied, laughing, as she looked up into his face, her eyes filled with his presence. "he has startled us all with the most wonderful proposition. the government is going to build a life-saving station at barnegat beach, and they have offered him the position of keeper, and he says he will take it if i will let archie go with him as one of his crew." doctor john's face instantly assumed a graver look. these forked roads confronting the career of a young life were important and not to be lightly dismissed. "well, what did you tell him?" he asked, looking down at jane in the effort to read her thoughts. "we are waiting for you to decide, john." the tone was the same she would have used had the doctor been her own husband and the boy their child. doctor john communed with himself for an instant. "well, let us take a vote," he replied with an air as if each and every one in the room was interested in the decision. "we'll begin with mistress martha, and then mrs. dellenbaugh, and then you, jane, and last our lady from over the sea. the captain has already sold his vote to his affections, and so must be counted out." "yes, but don't count me in, please," exclaimed lucy with a merry laugh as she arose from her seat. "i don't know a thing about it. i've just told the dear captain so. i'm going upstairs this very moment to write some letters. bonjour, monsieur le docteur; bonjour, monsieur le capitaine and madame dellenbaugh," and with a wave of her hand and a little dip of her head to each of the guests, she courtesied out of the room. when the door was closed behind her she stopped in the hall, threw a glance at her face in the old-fashioned mirror, satisfied herself of her skill in preserving its beautiful rabbit's-foot bloom and freshness, gave her blonde hair one or two pats to keep it in place, rearranged the film of white lace about her shapely throat, and gathering up the mass of ruffled skirts that hid her pretty feet, slowly ascended the staircase. once inside her room and while the vote was being taken downstairs that decided archie's fate she locked her door, dropped into a chair by the fire, took the unopened letter from her pocket, and broke the seal. "don't scold, little woman," it read. "i would have written before, but i've been awfully busy getting my place in order. it's all arranged now, however, for the summer. the hotel will be opened in june, and i have the best rooms in the house, the three on the corner overlooking the sea. sue says she will, perhaps, stay part of the summer with me. try and come up next week for the night. if not i'll bring sue with me and come to you for the day. "your own max." for some minutes she sat gazing into the fire, the letter in her hand. "it's about time, mr. max feilding," she said at last with a sigh of relief as she rose from her seat and tucked the letter into her desk. "you've had string enough, my fine fellow; now it's my turn. if i had known you would have stayed behind in paris all these months and kept me waiting here i'd have seen you safe aboard the steamer. the hotel opens in june, does it? well, i can just about stand it here until then; after that i'd go mad. this place bores me to death." chapter xvi the beginning of the ebb spring has come and gone. the lilacs and crocuses, the tulips and buttercups, have bloomed and faded; the lawn has had its sprinkling of dandelions, and the duff of their blossoms has drifted past the hemlocks and over the tree-tops. the grass has had its first cutting; the roses have burst their buds and hang in clusters over the arbors; warm winds blow in from the sea laden with perfumes from beach and salt-marsh; the skies are steely blue and the cloud puffs drift lazily. it is summer-time--the season of joy and gladness, the season of out-of-doors. all the windows at yardley are open; the porch has donned an awning--its first--colored white and green, shading big rocking-chairs and straw tables resting on turkish rugs. lucy had wondered why in all the years that jane had lived alone at yardley she had never once thought of the possibilities of this porch. jane had agreed with her, and so, under lucy's direction, the awnings had been put up and the other comforts inaugurated. beneath its shade lucy sits and reads or embroiders or answers her constantly increasing correspondence. the porch serves too as a reception-room, the vines being thick and the occupants completely hidden from view. here lucy often spreads a small table, especially when max feilding drives over in his london drag from beach haven on barnegat beach. on these occasions, if the weather is warm, she refreshes him with delicate sandwiches and some of her late father's rare scotch whiskey (shelved in the cellar for thirty years) or with the more common brands of cognac served in the old family decanters. of late max had become a constant visitor. his own ancestors had made honorable records in the preceding century, and were friends of the earlier cobdens during the revolution. this, together with the fact that he had visited yardley when lucy was a girl--on his first return from paris, in fact--and that the acquaintance had been kept up while he was a student abroad, was reason enough for his coming with such frequency. his drag, moreover, as it whirled into yardley's gate, gave a certain air of eclat to the manor house that it had not known since the days of the old colonel. nothing was lacking that money and taste could furnish. the grays were high-steppers and smooth as satin, the polished chains rattled and clanked about the pole; the body was red and the wheels yellow, the lap-robe blue, with a monogram; and the diminutive boy studded with silver buttons bearing the crest of the feilding family was as smart as the tailor could make him. and the owner himself, in his whity-brown driving-coat with big pearl buttons, yellow gloves, and gray hat, looked every inch the person to hold the ribbons. altogether it was a most fashionable equipage, owned and driven by a most fashionable man. as for the older residents of warehold, they had only words of praise for the turnout. uncle ephraim declared that it was a "jim dandy," which not only showed his taste, but which also proved how much broader that good-natured cynic had become in later years. billy tatham gazed at it with staring eyes as it trundled down the highway and turned into the gate, and at once determined to paint two of his hacks bright yellow and give each driver a lap-robe with the letter "t" worked in high relief. the inmates of yardley were not quite so enthusiastic. martha was glad that her bairn was having such a good time, and she would often stand on the porch with little ellen's hand in hers and wave to max and lucy as they dashed down the garden road and out through the gate, the tiger behind; but jane, with that quick instinct which some women possess, recognized something in feilding's manner which she could not put into words, and so held her peace. she had nothing against max, but she did not like him. although he was most considerate of her feelings and always deferred to her, she felt that any opposition on her part to their outings would have made no difference to either one of them. he asked her permission, of course, and she recognized the courtesy, but nothing that he ever did or said overcame her dislike of him. doctor john's personal attitude and bearing toward feilding was an enigma not only to jane, but to others who saw it. he invariably greeted him, whenever they met, with marked, almost impressive cordiality, but it never passed a certain limit of reserve; a certain dignity of manner which max had recognized the first day he shook hands with him. it recalled to feilding some of his earlier days, when he was a student in paris. there had been a supper in max's room that ended at daylight--no worse in its features than dozens of others in the quartier--to which an intimate friend of the doctor's had been invited, and upon which, as max heard afterward, the doctor had commented rather severely. max realized, therefore, but too well that the distinguished physician--known now over half the state--understood him, and his habits, and his kind as thoroughly as he did his own ease of instruments. he realized, too, that there was nothing about his present appearance or surroundings or daily life that could lead so thoughtful a man of the world as dr. john cavendish, of barnegat, to conclude that he had changed in any way for the better. and yet this young gentleman could never have been accused of burning his candle at both ends. he had no flagrant vices really--none whose posters were pasted on the victim's face. neither cards nor any other form of play interested him, nor did the wine tempt him when it was red--or of any other color, for that matter, nor did he haunt the dressing-rooms of chorus girls and favorites of the hour. his innate refinement and good taste prevented any such uses of his spare time. his weakness--for it could hardly be called a vice--was narrowed down to one infirmity, and one only: this was his inability to be happy without the exclusive society of some one woman. who the woman might be depended very largely on whom he might be thrown with. in the first ten years of his majority--his days of poverty when a student--it had been some girl in exile, like himself. during the last ten years--since his father's death and his inheritance--it had been a loose end picked out of the great floating drift--that social flotsam and jetsam which eddies in and out of the casinos of nice and monte carlo, flows into aix and trouville in summer and back again to rome and cairo in winter--a discontented wife perhaps; or an unmarried woman of thirty-five or forty, with means enough to live where she pleased; or it might be some self-exiled russian countess or english-woman of quality who had a month off, and who meant to make the most of it. all most respectable people, of course, without a breath of scandal attaching to their names--max was too careful for that--and yet each and every one on the lookout for precisely the type of man that max represented: one never happy or even contented when outside the radius of a waving fan or away from the flutter of a silken skirt. it was in one of these resorts of the idle, a couple of years before, while lucy's husband and little ellen were home in geneva, that max had met her, and where he had renewed the acquaintance of their childhood--an acquaintance which soon ripened into the closest friendship. hence his london drag and appointments; hence the yacht and a four-in-hand--then a great novelty--all of which he had promised her should she decide to join him at home. hence, too, his luxuriously fitted-up bachelor quarters in philadelphia, and his own comfortable apartments in his late father's house, where his sister sue lived; and hence, too, his cosey rooms in the best corner of the beach haven hotel, with a view overlooking barnegat light and the sea. none of these things indicated in the smallest degree that this noble gentleman contemplated finally settling down in a mansion commensurate with his large means, where he and the pretty widow could enjoy their married life together; nothing was further from his mind--nothing could be--he loved his freedom too much. what he wanted, and what he intended to have, was her undivided companionship--at least for the summer; a companionship without any of the uncomfortable complications which would have arisen had he selected an unmarried woman or the wife of some friend to share his leisure and wealth. the woman he picked out for the coming season suited him exactly. she was blonde, with eyes, mouth, teeth, and figure to his liking (he had become critical in forty odd years--twenty passed as an expert); dressed in perfect taste, and wore her clothes to perfection; had a continental training that made her mistress of every situation, receiving with equal ease and graciousness anybody, from a postman to a prince, sending them away charmed and delighted; possessed money enough of her own not to be too much of a drag upon him; and--best of all (and this was most important to the heir of walnut hill)--had the best blood of the state circling in her veins. whether this intimacy might drift into something closer, compelling him to take a reef in his sails, never troubled him. it was not the first time that he had steered his craft between the scylla of matrimony and the charybdis of scandal, and he had not the slightest doubt of his being able to do it again. as for lucy, she had many plans in view. one was to get all the fun possible out of the situation; another was to provide for her future. how this was to be accomplished she had not yet determined. her plans were laid, but some of them she knew from past experience might go astray. on one point she had made up her mind--not to be in a hurry. in furtherance of these schemes she had for some days--some months, in fact--been making preparations for an important move. she knew that its bare announcement would come as a surprise to jane and martha and, perhaps, as a shock, but that did not shake her purpose. she furthermore expected more or less opposition when they fully grasped her meaning. this she intended to overcome. neither jane nor martha, she said to herself, could be angry with her for long, and a few kisses and an additional flow of good-humor would soon set them to laughing again. to guard against the possibility of a too prolonged interview with jane, ending, perhaps, in a disagreeable scene--one beyond her control--she had selected a sunny summer morning for the stage setting of her little comedy and an hour when feilding was expected to call for her in his drag. she and max were to make a joint inspection that day of his new apartment at beach haven, into which he had just moved, as well as the stable containing the three extra vehicles and equine impedimenta, which were to add to their combined comfort and enjoyment. lucy had been walking in the garden looking at the rose-beds, her arm about her sister's slender waist, her ears open to the sound of every passing vehicle--max was expected at any moment--when she began her lines. "you won't mind, jane, dear, will you, if i get together a few things and move over to beach haven for a while?" she remarked simply, just as she might have done had she asked permission to go upstairs to take a nap. "i think we should all encourage a new enterprise like the hotel, especially old families like ours. and then the sea air always does me so much good. nothing like trouville air, my dear husband used to tell me, when i came back in the autumn. you don't mind, do you?" "for how long, lucy?" asked jane, with a tone of disappointment in her voice, as she placed her foot on the top step of the porch. "oh, i can't tell. depends very much on how i like it." as she spoke she drew up an easy-chair for jane and settled herself in another. then she added carelessly: "oh, perhaps a month--perhaps two." "two months!" exclaimed jane in astonishment, dropping into her seat. "why, what do you want to leave yardley for? o lucy, don't--please don't go!" "but you can come over, and i can come here," rejoined lucy in a coaxing tone. "yes; but i don't want to come over. i want you at home. and it's so lovely here. i have never seen the garden look so beautiful; and you have your own room, and this little porch is so cosey. the hotel is a new building, and the doctor says a very damp one, with everything freshly plastered. he won't let any of his patients go there for some weeks, he tells me. why should you want to go? i really couldn't think of it, dear. i'd miss you dreadfully." "you dear old sister," answered lucy, laying her parasol on the small table beside her, "you are so old-fashioned. habit, if nothing else, would make me go. i have hardly passed a summer in paris or geneva since i left you; and you know how delightful my visits to biarritz used to be years ago. since my marriage i have never stayed in any one place so long as this. i must have the sea air." "but the salt water is right here, lucy, within a short walk of our gate, and the air is the same." jane's face wore a troubled look, and there was an anxious, almost frightened tone in her voice. "no, it is not exactly the same," lucy answered positively, as if she had made a life-long study of climate; "and if it were, the life is very different. i love warehold, of course; but you must admit that it is half-asleep all the time. the hotel will be some change; there will be new people and something to see from the piazzas. and i need it, dear. i get tired of one thing all the time--i always have." "but you will be just as lonely there." jane in her astonishment was like a blind man feeling about for a protecting wall. "no; max and his sister will be at beach haven, and lots of others i know. no, i won't be lonely," and an amused expression twinkled in her eyes. jane sat quite still. some of captain holt's blunt, outspoken criticisms floated through her brain. "have you any reason for wanting to leave here?" she asked, raising her eyes and looking straight at lucy. "no, certainly not. how foolish, dear, to ask me! i'm never so happy as when i am with you." "well, why then should you want to give up your home and all the comforts you need--your flowers, garden, and everything you love, and this porch, which you have just made so charming, to go to a damp, half-completed hotel, without a shrub about it--only a stretch of desolate sand with the tide going in and out?" there was a tone of suspicion in jane's voice that lucy had never heard from her sister's lips--never, in all her life. "oh, because i love the tides, if nothing else," she answered with a sentimental note in her voice. "every six hours they bring me a new message. i could spend whole mornings watching the tides come and go. during my long exile you don't know how i dreamed every night of the dear tides of barnegat. if you had been away from all you love as many years as i have, you would understand how i could revel in the sound of the old breakers." for some moments jane did not answer. she knew from the tones of lucy's voice and from the way she spoke that she did not mean it. she had heard her talk that way to some of the villagers when she wanted to impress them, but she had never spoken in the same way to her. "you have some other reason, lucy. is it max?" she asked in a strained tone. lucy colored. she had not given her sister credit for so keen an insight into the situation. jane's mind was evidently working in a new direction. she determined to face the suspicion squarely; the truth under some conditions is better than a lie. "yes," she replied, with an assumed humility and with a tone as if she had been detected in a fault and wanted to make a clean breast of it. "yes--now that you have guessed it--it is max." "don't you think it would be better to see him here instead of at the hotel?" exclaimed jane, her eyes still boring into lucy's. "perhaps"--the answer came in a helpless way--"but that won't do much good. i want to keep my promise to him if i can." "what was your promise?" jane's eyes lost their searching look for an instant, but the tone of suspicion still vibrated. lucy hesitated and began playing with the trimming on her dress. "well, to tell you the truth, dear, a few days ago in a burst of generosity i got myself into something of a scrape. max wants his sister sue to spend the summer with him, and i very foolishly promised to chaperon her. she is delighted over the prospect, for she must have somebody, and i haven't the heart to disappoint her. max has been so kind to me that i hate now to tell him i can't go. that's all, dear. i don't like to speak of obligations of this sort, and so at first i only told you half the truth." "you should always keep your promise, dear," jane answered thoughtfully and with a certain relieved tone. (sue was nearly thirty, but that did not occur to jane.) "but this time i wish you had not promised. i am sorry, too, for little ellen. she will miss her little garden and everything she loves here; and then again, archie will miss her, and so will captain holt and martha. you know as well as i do that a hotel is no place for a child." "i am glad to hear you say so. that's why i shall not take her with me." as she spoke she shot an inquiring glance from the corner of her eyes at the anxious face of her sister. these last lines just before the curtain fell were the ones she had dreaded most. jane half rose from her seat. her deep eyes were wide open, gazing in astonishment at lucy. for an instant she felt as if her heart had stopped beating. "and you--you--are not going to take ellen with you!" she gasped. "no, of course not." she saw her sister's agitation, but she did not intend to notice it. besides, her expectant ear had caught the sound of max's drag as it whirled through the gate. "i always left her with her grandmother when she was much younger than she is now. she is very happy here and i wouldn't be so cruel as to take her away from all her pleasures. then she loves old people. see how fond she is of the captain and martha! no, you are right. i wouldn't think of taking her away." jane was standing now, her eyes blazing, her lips quivering. "you mean, lucy, that you would leave your child here and spend two months away from her?" the wheels were crunching the gravel within a rod of the porch. max had already lifted his hat. "but, sister, you don't understand--" the drag stopped and max, with uncovered head, sprang out and extended his hand to jane. before he could offer his salutations lucy's joyous tones rang out. "just in the nick of time, max," she cried. "i've just been telling my dear sister that i'm going to move over to beach haven to-morrow, bag and baggage, and she is delighted at the news. isn't it just like her?" chapter xvii breakers ahead the summer-home of max feilding, esq., of walnut hill, and of the beautiful and accomplished widow of the dead frenchman was located on a levelled sand-dune in full view of the sea. indeed, from beneath its low-hooded porticos and piazzas nothing else could be seen except, perhaps, the wide sky--gray, mottled, or intensely blue, as the weather permitted--the stretch of white sand shaded from dry to wet and edged with tufts of yellow grass; the circling gulls and the tall finger of barnegat light pointing skyward. nothing, really, but some scattering buildings in silhouette against the glare of the blinding light--one the old house of refuge, a mile away to the north, and nearer by, the new life saving station (now complete) in charge of captain nat holt and his crew of trusty surfmen. this view lucy always enjoyed. she would sit for hours under her awnings and watch the lazy boats crawling in and out of the inlet, or the motionless steamers--motionless at that distance--slowly unwinding their threads of smoke. the station particularly interested her. somehow she felt a certain satisfaction in knowing that archie was at work and that he had at last found his level among his own people--not that she wished him any harm; she only wanted him out of her way. the hostelry itself was one of those low-roofed, shingle-sided and shingle-covered buildings common in the earlier days along the jersey coast, and now supplanted by more modern and more costly structures. it had grown from a farm-house and out-buildings to its present state with the help of an architect and a jig-saw; the former utilizing what remained of the house and its barns, and the latter transforming plain pine into open work patterns with which to decorate its gable ends and facade. when the flags were raised, the hanging baskets suspended in each loop of the porches, and the merciless, omnipresent and ever-insistent sand was swept from its wide piazzas and sun-warped steps it gave out an air of gayety so plausible and enticing that many otherwise sane and intelligent people at once closed their comfortable homes and entered their names in its register. the amusements of these habitues--if they could be called habitues, this being their first summer--were as varied as their tastes. there was a band which played mornings and afternoons in an unpainted pine pagoda planted on a plot of slowly dying grass and decorated with more hanging baskets and chinese lanterns; there was bathing at eleven and four; and there was croquet on the square of cement fenced about by poles and clothes-lines at all hours. besides all this there were driving parties to the villages nearby; dancing parties at night with the band in the large room playing away for dear life, with all the guests except the very young and very old tucked away in twos in the dark corners of the piazzas out of reach of the lights and the inquisitive--in short, all the diversions known to such retreats, so necessary for warding off ennui and thus inducing the inmates to stay the full length of their commitments. in its selection max was guided by two considerations: it was near yardley--this would materially aid in lucy's being able to join him--and it was not fashionable and, therefore, not likely to be overrun with either his own or lucy's friends. the amusements did not interest him; nor did they interest lucy. both had seen too much and enjoyed too much on the other side of the water, at nice, at monte carlo, and biarritz, to give the amusements a thought. what they wanted was to be let alone; this would furnish all the excitement either of them needed. this exclusiveness was greatly helped by the red and yellow drag, with all its contiguous and connecting impedimenta, a turnout which never ceased to occupy everybody's attention whenever the small tiger stood by the heads of the satin-coated grays awaiting the good pleasure of his master and his lady. its possession not only marked a social eminence too lofty for any ordinary habitue to climb to unless helped up by the proffered hand of the owner, but it prevented anyone of these would-be climbers from inviting either its owner or his companion to join in other outings no matter how enjoyable. such amusements as they could offer were too simple and old-fashioned for two distinguished persons who held the world in their slings and who were whirling it around their heads with all their might. the result was that their time was their own. they filled it at their pleasure. when the tide was out and the sand hard, they drove on the beach, stopping at the new station, chatting with captain holt or archie; or they strolled north, always avoiding the house of refuge--that locality had too many unpleasant associations for lucy, or they sat on the dunes, moving back out of the wet as the tide reached them, tossing pebbles in the hollows, or gathering tiny shells, which lucy laid out in rows of letters as she had done when a child. in the afternoon they drove by way of yardley to see how ellen was getting on, or idled about warehold, making little purchases at the shops and chatting with the village people, all of whom would come out to greet them. after dinner they would generally betake themselves to max's portico, opening out of his rooms, or to lucy's--they were at opposite ends of the long corridor--where the two had their coffee while max smoked. the opinions freely expressed regarding their social and moral status, and individual and combined relations, differed greatly in the several localities in which they were wont to appear. in warehold village they were looked upon as two most charming and delightful people, rich, handsome, and of proper age and lineage, who were exactly adapted to each other and who would prove it before the year was out, with pastor dellenbaugh officiating, assisted by some dignitary from philadelphia. at the hostelry many of the habitues had come to a far different conclusion. marriage was not in either of their heads, they maintained; their intimacy was a purely platonic one, born of a friendship dating back to childhood--they were cousins really--max being the dearest and most unselfish creature in the world, he having given up all his pleasures elsewhere to devote himself to a most sweet and gracious lady whose grief was still severe and who would really be quite alone in the world were it not for her little daughter, now temporarily absent. this summary of facts, none of which could be questioned, was supplemented and enriched by another conclusive instalment from mrs. walton coates, of chestnut plains, who had met lucy at aix the year before, and who therefore possessed certain rights not vouchsafed to the other habitues of beach haven--an acquaintance which lucy, for various reasons, took pains to encourage--mrs. c.'s social position being beyond question, and her house and other appointments more than valuable whenever lucy should visit philadelphia: besides, mrs. coates's own and lucy's apartments joined, and the connecting door of the two sitting-rooms was often left open, a fact which established a still closer intimacy. this instalment, given in a positive and rather lofty way, made plain the fact that in her enforced exile the distinguished lady not only deserved the thanks of every habitue of the hotel, but of the whole country around, for selecting the new establishment in which to pass the summer, instead of one of the more fashionable resorts elsewhere. this outburst of the society leader, uttered in the hearing of a crowded piazza, had occurred after a conversation she had had with lucy concerning little ellen. "tell me about your little daughter," mrs. coates had said. "you did not leave her abroad, did you?" "oh, no, my dear mrs. coates! i am really here on my darling's account," lucy answered with a sigh. "my old home is only a short distance from here. but the air does not agree with me there, and so i came here to get a breath of the real sea. ellen is with her aunt, my dear sister jane. i wanted to bring her, but really i hadn't the heart to take her from them; they are so devoted to her. max loves her dearly. he drives me over there almost every day. i really do not know how i could have borne all the sorrows i have had this year without dear max. he is like a brother to me, and so thoughtful. you know we have known each other since we were children. they tell such dreadful stories, too, about him, but i have never seen that side of him, he's a perfect saint to me." from that time on mrs. coates was her loyal mouthpiece and devoted friend. being separated from one's child was one of the things she could not brook; lucy was an angel to stand it as she did. as for max--no other woman had ever so influenced him for good, nor did she believe any other woman could. at the end of the second week a small fly no larger than a pin's head began to develop in the sunshine of their amber. it became visible to the naked eye when max suddenly resolved to leave his drag, his tiger, his high-stepping grays, and his fair companion, and slip over to philadelphia--for a day or two, he explained. his lawyer needed him, he said, and then again he wanted to see his sister sue, who had run down to walnut hill for the day. (sue, it might as well be stated, had not yet put in an appearance at beach haven, nor had she given any notice of her near arrival; a fact which had not disturbed lucy in the least until she attempted to explain to jane.) "i've got to pull up, little woman, and get out for a few days," max had begun. "morton's all snarled up, he writes me, over a mortgage, and i must straighten it out. i'll leave bones [the tiger] and everything just as it is. don't mind, do you?" "mind! of course i do!" retorted lucy. "when did you get this marvellous idea into that wonderful brain of yours, max? i intended to go to warehold myself to-morrow." she spoke with her usual good-humor, but with a slight trace of surprise and disappointment in her tone. "when i opened my mail this morning; but my going won't make any difference about warehold. bones and the groom will take care of you." lucy leaned back in her chair and looked over the rail of the porch. she had noticed lately a certain restraint in max's manner which was new to her. whether he was beginning to get bored, or whether it was only one of his moods, she could not decide--even with her acute knowledge of similar symptoms. that some change, however, had come over him she had not the slightest doubt. she never had any trouble in lassoing her admirers. that came with a glance of her eye or a lift of her pretty shoulders: nor for that matter in keeping possession of them as long as her mood lasted. "whom do you want to see in philadelphia, max?" she asked, smiling roguishly at him. she held him always by presenting her happiest and most joyous side, whether she felt it or not. "sue and morton--and you, you dear girl, if you'll come along." "no; i'm not coming along. i'm too comfortable where i am. is this woman somebody you haven't told me of, max?" she persisted, looking at him from under half-closed lids. "your somebodies are always thin air, little girl; you know everything i have ever done in my whole life," max answered gravely. she had for the last two weeks. lucy threw up her hands and laughed so loud and cheerily that an habitue taking his morning constitutional on the boardwalk below turned his head in their direction. the two were at breakfast under the awnings of lucy's portico, bones standing out of range. "you don't believe it?" "not one word of it, you fraud; nor do you. you've forgotten one-half of all you've done and the other half you wouldn't dare tell any woman. come, give me her name. anybody sue knows?" "nobody that anybody knows, honest john." then he added as an after-thought, "are you sorry?" as he spoke he rose from his seat and stood behind her chair looking down over her figure. she had her back to him. he thought he had never seen her look so lovely. she was wearing a light-blue morning-gown, her arms bare to the elbows, and a wide leghorn hat--the morning costume of all others he liked her best in. "no--don't think i am," she answered lightly. "fact is i was getting pretty tired of you. how long will you be gone?" "oh, i think till the end of the week--not longer." he reached over the chair and was about to play with the tiny curls that lay under the coil of her hair, when he checked himself and straightened up. one of those sudden restraints which had so puzzled lucy had seized him. she could not see his face, but she knew from the tones of his voice that the enthusiasm of the moment had cooled. lucy shifted her chair, lifted her head, and looked up into his eyes. she was always entrancing from this point of view: the upturned eyelashes, round of the cheeks, and the line of the throat and swelling shoulders were like no other woman's he knew. "i don't want you to go, max," she said in the same coaxing tone of voice that ellen might have used in begging for sugar-plums. "just let the mortgage and old morton and everybody else go. stay here with me." max straightened up and threw out his chest and a determined look came into his eyes. if he had had any doubts as to his departure lucy's pleading voice had now removed them. "no, can't do it," he answered in mock positiveness. "can't 'pon my soul. business is business. got to see morton right away; ought to have seen him before." then he added in a more serious tone, "don't get worried if i stay a day or two longer." "well, then, go, you great bear, you," and she rose to her feet and shook out her skirts. "i wouldn't let you stay, no matter what you said." she was not angry--she was only feeling about trying to put her finger on the particular button that controlled max's movements. "worried? not a bit of it. stay as long as you please." there was a button, could she have found it. it was marked "caution," and when pressed communicated to the heir of walnut hill the intelligence that he was getting too fond of the pretty widow and that his only safety lay in temporary flight. it was a favorite trick of his. in the charting of his course he had often found two other rocks beside scylla and charybdis in his way; one was boredom and the other was love. when a woman began to bore him, or he found himself liking her beyond the limit of his philosophy, he invariably found relief in change of scene. sometimes it was a sick aunt or a persistent lawyer or an engagement nearly forgotten and which must be kept at all hazards. he never, however, left his inamorata in either tears or anger. "now, don't be cross, dear," he cried, patting her shoulder with his fingers. "you know i don't want to leave you. i shall be perfectly wretched while i'm gone, but there's no help for it. morton's such a fussy old fellow--always wanting to do a lot of things that can, perhaps, wait just as well as not. hauled me down from walnut hill half a dozen times once, and after all the fellow wouldn't sell. but this time it's important and i must go. bones," and he lifted his finger to the boy, "tell john i want the light wagon. i'll take the . to philadelphia." the tiger advanced ten steps and stood at attention, his finger at his eyebrow. lucy turned her face toward the boy. "no, bones, you'll do nothing of the kind. you tell john to harness the grays to the drag. i'll go to the station with mr. feilding." max shrugged his shoulders. he liked lucy for a good many things--one was her independence, another was her determination to have her own way. then, again, she was never so pretty as when she was a trifle angry; her color came and went so deliciously and her eyes snapped so charmingly. lucy saw the shrug and caught the satisfied look in his face. she didn't want to offend him and yet she didn't intend that he should go without a parting word from her--tender or otherwise, as circumstances might require. she knew she had not found the button, and in her doubt determined for the present to abandon the search. "no, bones, i've changed my mind," she called to the boy, who was now half way down the piazza. "i don't think i will go. i'll stop here, max, and do just what you want me to do," she added in a softened voice. "come along," and she slipped her hand in his and the two walked toward the door of his apartments. when the light wagon and satin-skinned sorrel, with john on the seat and bones in full view, stopped at the sanded porch, mrs. coates and lucy formed part of the admiring group gathered about the turn-out. all of mr. feilding's equipages brought a crowd of onlookers, no matter how often they appeared--he had five with him at beach haven, including the four-in-hand which he seldom used--but the grays and the light wagon, by common consent, were considered the most "stylish" of them all, not excepting the drag. after max had gathered the reins in his hands, had balanced the whip, had settled himself comfortably and with a wave of his hand to lucy had driven off, mrs. coates slipped her arm through my lady's and the two slowly sauntered to their rooms. "charming man, is he not?" mrs. coates ventured. "such a pity he is not married! you know i often wonder whom such men will marry. some pretty school-girl, perhaps, or prim woman of forty." lucy laughed. "no," she answered, "you are wrong. the bread-and-butter miss would never suit max, and he's past the eye-glass and side-curl age. the next phase, if he ever reaches it, will be somebody who will make him do--not as he pleases, but as she pleases. a man like max never cares for a woman any length of time who humors his whims." "well, he certainly was most attentive to that pretty miss billeton. you remember her father was lost overboard four years ago from his yacht. mr. coates told me he met her only a day or so ago; she had come down to look after the new ball-room they are adding to the old house. you know her, don't you?" "no--never heard of her. how old is she?" rejoined lucy in a careless tone. "i should say twenty, maybe twenty-two--you can't always tell about these girls; very pretty and very rich. i am quite sure i saw mr. feilding driving with her just before he moved his horses down here, and she looked prettier than ever. but then he has a new flame every month, i hear." "where were they driving?" there was a slight tone of curiosity in lucy's voice. none of max's love-affairs ever affected her, of course, except as they made for his happiness; all undue interest, therefore, was out of place, especially before mrs. coates. "i don't remember. along the river road, perhaps--he generally drives there when he has a pretty woman with him." lucy bit her lip. some other friend, then, had been promised the drag with the red body and yellow wheels! this was why he couldn't come to yardley when she wrote for him. she had found the button. it rang up another woman. the door between the connecting sitting-rooms was not opened that day, nor that night, for that matter. lucy pleaded a headache and wished to be alone. she really wanted to look the field over and see where her line of battle was weak. not that she really cared--unless the girl should upset her plans; not as jane would have cared had doctor john been guilty of such infidelity. the eclipse was what hurt her. she had held the centre of the stage with the lime-light full upon her all her life, and she intended to retain it against miss billeton or miss anybody else. she decided to let max know at once, and in plain terms, giving him to understand that she didn't intend to be made a fool of, reminding him at the same time that there were plenty of others who cared for her, or who would care for her if she should but raise her little finger. she would raise it, too, even if she packed her trunks and started for paris--and took him with her. these thoughts rushed through her mind as she sat by the window and looked out over the sea. the tide was making flood, and the fishing-boats anchored in the inlet were pointing seaward. she could see, too, the bathers below and the children digging in the sand. now and then a boat would head for the inlet, drop its sail, and swing round motionless with the others. then a speck would break away from the anchored craft and with the movement of a water-spider land the fishermen ashore. none of these things interested her. she could not have told whether the sun shone or whether the sky was fair or dull. neither was she lonely, nor did she miss max. she was simply angry--disgusted--disappointed at the situation; at herself, at the woman who had come between them, at the threatened failure of her plans. one moment she was building up a house of cards in which she held all the trumps, and the next instant she had tumbled it to the ground. one thing she was determined upon--not to take second place. she would have all of him or none of him. at the end of the third day max returned. he had not seen morton, nor any of his clerks, nor anybody connected with his office. neither had he sent him any message or written him any letter. morton might have been dead and buried a century so far as max or his affairs were concerned. nor had he laid his eyes on the beautiful miss billeton; nor visited her house; nor written her any letters; nor inquired for her. what he did do was to run out to walnut hill, have a word with his manager, and slip back to town again and bury himself in his club. most of the time he read the magazines, some pages two or three times over. once he thought he would look up one or two of his women friends at their homes--those who might still be in town--and then gave it up as not being worth the trouble. at the end of the third day he started for barnegat. the air was bad in the city, he said to himself, and everybody he met was uninteresting. he would go back, hitch up the grays, and he and lucy have a spin down the beach. sea air always did agree with him, and he was a fool to leave it. lucy met him at the station in answer to his telegram sent over from warehold. she was dressed in her very best: a double-breasted jacket and straw turban, a gossamer veil wound about it. her cheeks were like two red peonies and her eyes bright as diamonds. she was perched up in the driver's seat of the drag, and handled the reins and whip with the skill of a turfman. this time bones, the tiger, did not spring into his perch as they whirled from the station in the direction of the beach. his company was not wanted. they talked of max's trip, of the mortgage, and of morton; of how hot it was in town and how cool it was on her portico; of mrs. coates and of pater-familias coates, who held a mortgage on beach haven; of the dance the night before--max leading in the conversation and she answering either in mono-syllables or not at all, until max hazarded the statement that he had been bored to death waiting for morton, who never put in an appearance, and that the only human being, male or female, he had seen in town outside the members of the club, was sue. they had arrived off the life-saving station now, and archie had called the captain to the door, and both stood looking at them, the boy waving his hand and the captain following them with his eyes. had either of them caught the captain's remark they, perhaps, would have drawn rein and asked for an explanation: "gay lookin' hose-carriage, ain't it? looks as if they was runnin' to a fire!" but they didn't hear it; would not, probably have heard it, had the captain shouted it in their ears. lucy was intent on opening up a subject which had lain dormant in her mind since the morning of max's departure, and the gentleman himself was trying to cipher out what new "kink," as he expressed it to himself, had "got it into her head." when they had passed the old house of refuge lucy drew rein and stopped the drag where the widening circle of the incoming tide could bathe the horses' feet. she was still uncertain as to how she would lead up to the subject-matter without betraying her own jealousy or, more important still, without losing her temper. this she rarely displayed, no matter how goading the provocation. nobody had any use for an ill-tempered woman, not in her atmosphere; and no fly that she had ever known had been caught by vinegar when seeking honey. there might be vinegar-pots to be found in her larder, but they were kept behind closed doors and sampled only when she was alone. as she sat looking out to sea, max's brain still at work on the problem of her unusual mood, a schooner shifted her mainsail in the light breeze and set her course for the inlet. "that's the regular weekly packet," max ventured. "she's making for farguson's ship-yard. she runs between amboy and barnegat--captain ambrose farguson sails her." at times like these any topic was good enough to begin on. "how do you know?" lucy asked, looking at the incoming schooner from under her half-closed lids. the voice came like the thin piping of a flute preceding the orchestral crash, merely sounded so as to let everybody know it was present. "one of my carriages was shipped by her. i paid captain farguson the freight just before i went away." "what's her name?"--slight tremolo--only a note or two. "the polly walters," droned max, talking at random, mind neither on the sloop nor her captain. "named after his wife?" the flute-like notes came more crisply. "yes, so he told me." max had now ceased to give any attention to his answers. he had about made up his mind that something serious was the matter and that he would ask her and find out. "ought to be called the max feilding, from the way she tacks about. she's changed her course three times since i've been watching her." max shot a glance athwart his shoulder and caught a glimpse of the pretty lips thinned and straightened and the half-closed eyes and wrinkled forehead. he was evidently the disturbing cause, but in what way he could not for the life of him see. that she was angry to the tips of her fingers was beyond question; the first time he had seen her thus in all their acquaintance. "yes-that would fit her exactly," he answered with a smile and with a certain soothing tone in his voice. "every tack her captain makes brings him the nearer to the woman he loves." "rather poetic, max, but slightly farcical. every tack you make lands you in a different port--with a woman waiting in every one of them." the first notes of the overture had now been struck. "no one was waiting in philadelphia for me except sue, and i only met her by accident," he said good-naturedly, and in a tone that showed he would not quarrel, no matter what the provocation; "she came in to see her doctor. didn't stay an hour." "did you take her driving?" this came in a thin, piccolo tone-barely enough room for it to escape through her lips. all the big drums and heavy brass were now being moved up. "no; had nothing to take her out in. why do you ask? what has happened, little--" "take anybody else?" she interrupted. "no." he spoke quite frankly and simply. at any other time she would have believed him. she had always done so in matters of this kind, partly because she didn't much care and partly because she made it a point never to doubt the word of a man, either by suspicion or inference, who was attentive to her. this time she did care, and she intended to tell him so. all she dreaded was that the big horns and the tom-toms would get away from her leadership and the hoped-for, correctly played symphony end in an uproar. "max," she said, turning her head and lifting her finger at him with the movement of a conductor's baton, "how can you lie to me like that? you never went near your lawyer; you went to see miss billeton, and you've spent every minute with her since you left me. don't tell me you didn't. i know everything you've done, and--" bass drums, bass viols, bassoons--everything--was loose now. she had given up her child to be with him! everything, in fact--all her people at yardley; her dear old nurse. she had lied to jane about chaperoning sue--all to come down and keep him from being lonely. what she wanted was a certain confidence in return. it made not the slightest difference to her how many women he loved, or how many women loved him; she didn't love him, and she never would; but unless she was treated differently from a child and like the woman that she was, she was going straight back to yardley, and then back to paris, etc., etc. she knew, as she rushed on in a flood of abuse such as only a woman can let loose when she is thoroughly jealous and entirely angry, that she was destroying the work of months of plotting, and that he would be lost to her forever, but she was powerless to check the torrent of her invective. only when her breath gave out did she stop. max had sat still through it all, his eyes expressing first astonishment and then a certain snap of admiration, as he saw the color rising and falling in her cheeks. it was not the only time in his experience that he had had to face similar outbursts. it was the first time, however, that he had not felt like striking back. other women's outbreaks had bored him and generally had ended his interest in them--this one was more charming than ever. he liked, too, her american pluck and savage independence. jealous she certainly was, but there was no whine about it; nor was there any flop at the close--floppy women he detested--had always done so. lucy struck straight out from her shoulder and feared nothing. as she raged on, the grays beating the water with their well-polished hoofs, he continued to sit perfectly still, never moving a muscle of his face nor changing his patient, tolerant expression. the best plan, he knew, was to let all the steam out of the boiler and then gradually rake the fires. "my dear little woman,"' he began, "to tell you the truth, i never laid eyes on morton; didn't want to, in fact. all that was an excuse to get away. i thought you wanted a rest, and i went away to let you have it. miss billeton i haven't seen for three months, and couldn't if i would, for she is engaged to her cousin and is now in paris buying her wedding clothes. i don't know who has been humbugging you, but they've done it very badly. there is not one word of truth in what you've said from beginning to end." there is a certain ring in a truthful statement that overcomes all doubts. lucy felt this before max had finished. she felt, too, with a sudden thrill, that she still held him. then there came the instantaneous desire to wipe out all traces of the outburst and keep his good-will. "and you swear it?" she asked, her belief already asserting itself in her tones, her voice falling to its old seductive pitch. "on my honor as a man," he answered simply. for a time she remained silent, her mind working behind her mask of eyes and lips, the setting sun slanting across the beach and lighting up her face and hair, the grays splashing the suds with their impatient feet. max kept his gaze upon her. he saw that the outbreak was over and that she was a little ashamed of her tirade. he saw, too, man of the world as he was, that she was casting about in her mind for some way in which she could regain for herself her old position without too much humiliation. "don't say another word, little woman," he said in his kindest tone. "you didn't mean a word of it; you haven't been well lately, and i oughtn't to have left you. tighten up your reins; we'll drive on if you don't mind." that night after the moon had set and the lights had been turned out along the boardwalk and the upper and lower porticos and all beach haven had turned in for the night, and lucy had gone to her apartments, and mr. and mrs. coates and the rest of them, single and double, were asleep, max, who had been pacing up and down his dressing-room, stopped suddenly before his mirror, and lifting the shade from the lamp, made a critical examination of his face. "forty, and i look it!" he said, pinching his chin with his thumb and forefinger, and turning his cheek so that the light would fall on the few gray hairs about his temples. "that beggar miggs said so yesterday at the club. by gad, how pretty she was, and how her eyes snapped! i didn't think it was in her!" chapter xviii the swede's story captain holt had selected his crew--picked surfmen, every one of them--and the chief of the bureau had endorsed the list without comment or inquiry. the captain's own appointment as keeper of the new life-saving station was due as much to his knowledge of men as to his skill as a seaman, and so when his list was sent in--men he said he could "vouch for"--it took but a moment for the chief to write "approved" across its face. isaac polhemus came first: sixty years of age, silent, gray, thick-set; face scarred and seamed by many weathers, but fresh as a baby's; two china-blue eyes--peep-holes through which you looked into his open heart; shoulders hard and tough as cordwood hands a bunch of knots; legs like snubbing-posts, body quick-moving; brain quick-thinking; alert as a dog when on duty, calm as a sleepy cat beside a stove when his time was his own. sixty only in years, this man; forty in strength and in skill, twenty in suppleness, and a one-year-old toddling infant in all that made for guile. "uncle ike" some of the younger men once called him, wondering behind their hands whether he was not too old and believing all the time that he was. "uncle ike" they still called him, but it was a title of affection and pride; affection for the man underneath the blue woollen shirt, and pride because they were deemed worthy to pull an oar beside him. the change took place the winter before when he was serving at manasquan and when he pulled four men single-handed from out of a surf that would have staggered the bravest. there was no life-boat within reach and no hand to help. it was at night--a snowstorm raging and the sea a corral of hungry beasts fighting the length of the beach. the shipwrecked crew had left their schooner pounding on the outer bar, and finding their cries drowned by the roar of the waters, had taken to their boat. she came bow on, the sea-drenched sailors clinging to her sides. uncle isaac polhemus caught sight of her just as a savage pursuing roller dived under her stern, lifted the frail shell on its broad back, and whirled it bottom side up and stern foremost on to the beach. dashing into the suds, he jerked two of the crew to their feet before they knew what had struck them; then sprang back for the others clinging to the seats and slowly drowning in the smother. twice he plunged headlong after them, bracing himself against the backsuck, then with the help of his steel-like grip all four were dragged clear of the souse. ever after it was "uncle isaac" or "that old hang-on," but always with a lifting of the chin in pride. samuel green came next: forty-five, long, lincoln-bodied, and bony; coal-black hair, coal-black eyes, and charcoal-black mustache; neck like a loop in standing rigging; arms long as cant-hooks, with the steel grips for fingers; sluggish in movement and slow in action until the supreme moment of danger tautened his nerves to breaking point; then came an instantaneous spring, quick as the recoil of a parted hawser. all his life a fisherman except the five years he spent in the arctic and the year he served at squan; later he had helped in the volunteer crew alongshore. loving the service, he had sent word over to captain holt that he'd like "to be put on," to which the captain had sent back word by the same messenger "tell him he is put on." and he was, as soon as the papers were returned from washington. captain nat had no record to look up or inquiries to make as to the character or fitness of sam green. he was the man who the winter before had slipped a rope about his body, plunged into the surf and swam out to the brig gorgus and brought back three out of the five men lashed to the rigging, all too benumbed to make fast the shot-line fired across her deck. charles morgan's name followed in regular order, and then parks--men who had sailed with captain holt, and whose word and pluck he could depend upon; and mulligan from barnegat, who could pull a boat with the best of them; and last, and least in years, those two slim, tightly knit, lithe young tiger-cats, tod and archie. captain nat had overhauled each man and had inspected him as closely as he would have done the timber for a new mast or the manila to make its rigging. here was a service that required cool heads, honest hearts, and the highest technical skill, and the men under him must be sound to the core. he intended to do his duty, and so should every man subject to his orders. the government had trusted him and he held himself responsible. this would probably be his last duty, and it would be well done. he was childless, sixty-five years old, and had been idle for years. now he would show his neighbors something of his skill and his power to command. he did not need the pay; he needed the occupation and the being in touch with the things about him. for the last fifteen or more years he had nursed a sorrow and lived the life almost of a recluse. it was time he threw it off. during the first week of service, with his crew about him, he explained to them in minute detail their several duties. each day in the week would have its special work: monday would be beach drill, practising with the firing gun and line and the safety car. tuesday was boat drill; running the boat on its wagon to the edge of the sea, unloading it, and pushing it into the surf, each man in his place, oars poised, the others springing in and taking their seats beside their mates. on wednesdays flag drills; practising with the international code of signals, so as to communicate with stranded vessels. thursdays, beach apparatus again. friday, resuscitation of drowning men. saturday, scrub-day; every man except himself and the cook (each man was cook in turn for a week) on his knees with bucket and brush, and every floor, chair, table, and window scoured clean. sunday, a day of rest, except for the beach patrol, which at night never ceased, and which by day only ceased when the sky was clear of snow and fog. this night patrol would be divided into watches of four hours each at eight, twelve, and four. two of the crew were to make the tramp of the beach, separating opposite the station, one going south two and a half miles to meet the surfman from the next station, and the other going north to the inlet; exchanging their brass checks each with the other, as a record of their faithfulness. in addition to these brass checks each patrol would carry three coston signal cartridges in a water-proof box, and a holder into which they were fitted, the handle having an igniter working on a spring to explode the cartridge, which burned a red light. these will-o'-the-wisps, flashed suddenly from out a desolate coast, have sent a thrill of hope through the heart of many a man clinging to frozen rigging or lashed to some piece of wreckage that the hungry surf, lying in wait, would pounce upon and chew to shreds. the men listened gravely to the captain's words and took up their duties. most of them knew them before, and no minute explanations were necessary. skilled men understand the value of discipline and prefer it to any milder form of government. archie was the only member who raised his eyes in astonishment when the captain, looking his way, mentioned the scrubbing and washing, each man to take his turn, but he made no reply except to nudge tod and say under his breath: "wouldn't you like to see aunt lucy's face when she comes some saturday morning? she'll be pleased, won't she?" as to the cooking, that did not bother him; he and tod had cooked many a meal on fogarty's stove, and mother fogarty had always said archie could beat her any day making biscuit and doughnuts and frying ham. before the second week was out the station had fallen into its regular routine. the casual visitor during the sunny hours of the soft september days when practice drill was over might see only a lonely house built on the sand; and upon entering, a few men leaning back in their chairs against the wall of the living-room reading the papers or smoking their pipes, and perhaps a few others leisurely overhauling the apparatus, making minor repairs, or polishing up some detail the weather had dulled. at night, too, with the radiance of the moon making a pathway of silver across the gentle swell of the sleepy surf, he would doubtless wonder at their continued idle life as he watched the two surfmen separate and begin their walk up and down the beach radiant in the moonlight. but he would change his mind should he chance upon a north-easterly gale, the sea a froth in which no boat could live, the slant of a sou'wester the only protection against the cruel lash of the wind. if this glimpse was not convincing, let him stand in the door of their house in the stillness of a winter's night, and catch the shout and rush of the crew tumbling from their bunks at the cry of "wreck ashore!" from the lips of some breathless patrol who had stumbled over sand-dunes or plunged through snowdrifts up to his waist to give warning. it will take less than a minute to swing wide the doors, grapple the life-boat and apparatus and whirl them over the dunes to the beach; and but a moment more to send a solid shot flying through the air on its mission of mercy. and there is no time lost. ten men have been landed in forty-five minutes through or over a surf that could be heard for miles; rescuers and rescued half dead. but no man let go his grip nor did any heart quail. their duty was in front of them; that was what the government paid for, and that was what they would earn--every penny of it. the station house in order, the captain was ready for visitors--those he wanted. those he did not want--the riffraff of the ship-yard and the loungers about the taverns--he told politely to stay away; and as the land was government property and his will supreme, he was obeyed. little ellen had been the first guest, and by special invitation. "all ready, miss jane, for you and the doctor and the pond lily; bring her down any time. that's what kind o' makes it lonely lyin' shut up with the men. we ain't got no flowers bloomin' 'round, and the sand gits purty white and blank-lookin' sometimes. bring her down, you and the doctor; she's better'n a pot full o' daisies." the doctor, thus commanded, brought her over in his gig, jane, beside him, holding the child in her lap. and archie helped them out, lifting his good mother in his arms clear of the wheel, skirts and all--the crew standing about looking on. some of them knew jane and came in for a hearty handshake, and all of them knew the doctor. there was hardly a man among them whose cabin he had not visited--not once, but dozens of times. with her fair cheeks, golden curls, and spotless frock, the child, among those big men, some in their long hip boots and rough reefing jackets, looked like some fairy that had come in with the morning mist and who might be off on the next breeze. archie had her hugged close to his breast and had started in to show her the cot where he slept, the kitchen where he was to cook, and the peg in the hall where he hung his sou'wester and tarpaulins--every surfman had his peg, order being imperative with captain nat--when that old sea-dog caught the child out of the young fellow's arms and placed her feet on the sand. "no, cobden,"--that was another peculiarity of the captain's,--every man went by his last name, and he had begun with archie to show the men he meant it. "no, that little posy is mine for to-day. come along, you rosebud; i'm goin' to show you the biggest boat you ever saw, and a gun on wheels; and i've got a lot o' shells the men has been pickin' up for ye. oh, but you're goin' to have a beautiful time, lassie!" the child looked up in the captain's face, and her wee hand tightened around his rough stubs of fingers. archie then turned to jane and with tod's help the three made a tour of the house, the doctor following, inspecting the captain's own room with its desk and papers, the kitchen with all its appointments, the outhouse for wood and coal, the staircase leading to the sleeping-rooms above, and at the very top the small ladder leading to the cupola on the roof, where the lookout kept watch on clear days for incoming steamers. on their return mulligan spread a white oil-cloth on the pine table and put out a china plate filled with some cake that he had baked the night before, and which green supplemented by a pitcher of water from the cistern. each one did something to please her. archie handed her the biggest piece of cake on the dish, and uncle isaac left the room in a hurry and stumbling upstairs went through his locker and hauled out the head of a wooden doll which he had picked up on the beach in one of his day patrols and which he had been keeping for one of his grand-children--all blighted with the sun and scarred with salt water, but still showing a full set of features, much to ellen's delight; and sam green told her of his own little girl, just her age, who lived up in the village and whom he saw every two weeks, and whose hair was just the color of hers. meanwhile the doctor chatted with the men, and jane, with her arm locked in archie's, so proud and so tender over him, inspected each appointment and comfort of the house with ever-increasing wonder. and so, with the visit over, the gig was loaded up, and with ellen waving her hand to the men and kissing her finger-tips in true french style to the captain and archie, and the crew responding in a hearty cheer, the party drove, past the old house of refuge, and so on back to warehold and yardley. one august afternoon, some days after this visit, tod stood in the door of the station looking out to sea. the glass had been falling all day and a dog-day haze had settled down over the horizon. this, as the afternoon advanced, had become so thick that the captain had ordered out the patrols, and archie and green were already tramping the beach--green to the inlet and archie to meet the surfmen of the station below. park, who was cook this week, had gone to the village for supplies, and so the captain and tod were alone in the house, the others, with the exception of morgan, who was at his home in the village with a sprained ankle, being at work some distance away on a crosshead over which the life-line was always fired in gun practice. suddenly tod, who was leaning against the jamb of the door speculating over what kind of weather the night would bring, and wondering whether the worst of it would fall in his watch, jerked his neck out of his woollen shirt and strained his eyes in the direction of the beach until they rested upon the figure of a man slowly making his way over the dunes. as he passed the old house of refuge, some hundreds of yards below, he stopped for a moment as if undecided on his course, looked ahead again at the larger house of the station, and then, as if reassured, came stumbling on, his gait showing his want of experience in avoiding the holes and tufts of grass cresting the dunes. his movements were so awkward and his walk so unusual in that neighborhood that tod stepped out on the low porch of the station to get a better view of him. from the man's dress, and from his manner of looking about him, as if feeling his way, tod concluded that he was a stranger and had tramped the beach for the first time. at the sight of the surfman the man left the dune, struck the boat path, and walked straight toward the porch. "kind o' foggy, ain't it?" "yes," replied tod, scrutinizing the man's face and figure, particularly his clothes, which were queerly cut and with a foreign air about them. he saw, too, that he was strong and well built, and not over thirty years of age. "you work here?" continued the stranger, mounting the steps and coming closer, his eyes taking in tod, the porch, and the view of the sitting-room through the open window. "i do," answered tod in the same tone, his eyes still on the man's face. "good job, is it?" he asked, unbuttoning his coat. "i get enough to eat," answered tod curtly, "and enough to do." he had resumed his position against the jamb of the door and stood perfectly impassive, without offering any courtesy of any kind. strangers who asked questions were never very welcome. then, again, the inquiry about his private life nettled him. the man, without noticing the slight rebuff, looked about for a seat, settled down on the top step of the porch, pulled his cap from his head, and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of one hand. then he said slowly, as if to himself: "i took the wrong road and got consid'able het up." tod watched him while he mopped his head with a red cotton handkerchief, but made no reply. curiosity is not the leading characteristic of men who follow the sea. "is the head man around? his name's holt, ain't it?" continued the stranger, replacing his cap and stuffing his handkerchief into the side-pocket of his coat. as the words fell from his lips tod's quick eye caught a sudden gleam like that of a search-light flashed from beneath the heavy eyebrows of the speaker. "that's his name," answered tod. "want to see him? he's inside." the surfman had not yet changed his position nor moved a muscle of his body. tiger cats are often like this. captain holt's burly form stepped from the door. he had overheard the conversation, and not recognizing the voice had come to find out what the man wanted. "you lookin' for me? i'm captain holt. what kin i do for ye?" asked the captain in his quick, imperious way. "that's what he said, sir," rejoined tod, bringing himself to an erect position in deference to his chief. the stranger rose from his seat and took his cap from his head. "i'm out o' work, sir, and want a job, and i thought you might take me on." tod was now convinced that the stranger was a foreigner. no man of tod's class ever took his hat off to his superior officer. they had other ways of showing their respect for his authority--instant obedience, before and behind his back, for instance. the captain's eyes absorbed the man from his thick shoes to his perspiring hair. "norwegian, ain't ye?" "no, sir; swede." "not much difference. when did ye leave sweden? you talk purty good." "when i was a boy." "what kin ye do?" "i'm a good derrick man and been four years with a coaler." "you want steady work, i suppose." the stranger nodded. "well, i ain't got it. gov'ment app'ints our men. this is a life-saving station." the stranger stood twisting his cap. the first statement seemed to make but little impression on him; the second aroused a keener interest. "yes, i know. just new built, ain't it? and you just put in charge? captain nathaniel holt's your name--am i right?" "yes, you're just right." and the captain, dismissing the man and the incident from his mind, turned on his heel, walked the length of the narrow porch and stood scanning the sky and the blurred horizon line. the twilight was now deepening and a red glow shimmered through the settling fog. "fogarty!" cried the captain, beckoning over his shoulder with his head. tod stepped up and stood at attention; as quick in reply as if two steel springs were fastened to his heels. "looks rather soapy, fogarty. may come on thick. better take a turn to the inlet and see if that yawl is in order. we might have to cross it to-night. we can't count on this weather. when you meet green send him back here. that shot-line wants overhaulin'." here the captain hesitated and looked intently at the stranger. "and here, you swede," he called in a louder tone of command, "you go 'long and lend a hand, and when you come back i'll have some supper for ye." one of tod's springs must have slid under the swede's shoes. either the prospect of a meal or of having a companion to whom he could lend a hand--nothing so desolate as a man out of work--a stranger at that--had put new life into his hitherto lethargic body. "this way," said tod, striding out toward the surf. the swede hurried to his side and the two crossed the boat runway, ploughed through the soft drift of the dune, and striking the hard, wet sand of the beach, headed for the inlet. tod having his high, waterproof boots on, tramped along the edge of the incoming surf, the half-circles of suds swashing past his feet and spreading themselves up the slope. the sand was wet here and harder on that account, and the walking better. the swede took the inside course nearer the shore. soon tod began to realize that the interest the captain had shown in the unknown man and the brief order admitting him for a time to membership in the crew placed the stranger on a different footing. he was, so to speak, a comrade and, therefore, entitled to a little more courtesy. this clear in his mind, he allowed his tongue more freedom; not that he had any additional interest in the man--he only meant to be polite. "what you been workin' at?" he asked, kicking an empty tin can that the tide had rolled within his reach. work is the universal topic; the weather is too serious a subject to chatter about lightly. "last year or two?" asked the swede, quickening his pace to keep up. tod's steel springs always kept their original temper while the captain's orders were being executed and never lost their buoyancy until these orders were entirely carried out. "yes," replied tod. "been a-minin'; runnin' the ore derricks and the shaft h'isters. what you been doin'?" and the man glanced at tod from under his cap. "fishin'. see them poles out there? you kin just git sight o' them in the smoke. them's my father's. he's out there now, i guess, if he ain't come in." "you live 'round here?" the man's legs were shorter than tod's, and he was taking two steps to tod's one. "yes, you passed the house o' refuge, didn't ye, comin' up? i was watchin' ye. well, you saw that cabin with the fence 'round it?" "yes; the woman told me where i'd find the cap'n. you know her, i s'pose?" asked the swede. "yes, she's my mother, and that's my home. i was born there." tod's words were addressed to the perspective of the beach and to the way the haze blurred the horizon; surfmen rarely see anything else when walking on the beach, whether on or off duty. "you know everybody 'round here, don't you?" remarked the swede in a casual tone. the same quick, inquiring glance shot out of the man's eyes. "yes, guess so," answered tod with another kick. here the remains of an old straw hat shared the fate of the can. "you ever heard tell of a woman named lucy cobden, lives 'round here somewheres?" tod came to a halt as suddenly as if he had run into a derelict. "i don't know no woman," he answered slowly, accentuating the last word. "i know a lady named miss jane cobden. why?" and he scrutinized the man's face. "one i mean's got a child--big now--must be fifteen or twenty years old--girl, ain't it?" "no, it's a boy. he's one of the crew here; his name's archie cobden. me and him's been brothers since we was babies. what do you know about him?" tod had resumed his walk, but at a slower pace. "nothin'; that's why i ask." the man had also become interested in the flotsam of the beach, and had stopped to pick up a dam-shell which he shied into the surf. then he added slowly, and as if not to make a point of the inquiry, "is she alive?" "yes. here this week. lives up in warehold in that big house with the brick gate-posts." the man walked on for some time in silence and then asked: "you're sure the child is livin' and that the mother's name is jane?" "sure? don't i tell ye cobden's in the crew and miss jane was here this week! he's up the beach on patrol or you'd 'a' seen him when you fust struck the station." the stranger quickened his steps. the information seemed to have put new life into him again. "did you ever hear of a man named bart holt," he asked, "who used to be 'round here?" neither man was looking at the other as they talked. the conversation was merely to pass the time of day. "yes; he's the captain's son. been dead for years. died some'er's out in brazil, so i've heard my father say. had fever or something." the swede walked on in silence for some minutes. then he stopped, faced tod, took hold of the lapel of his coat, and said slowly, as he peered into his eyes: "he ain't dead, no more'n you and i be. i worked for him for two years. he run the mines on a percentage. i got here last week, and he sent me down to find out how the land lay. if the woman was dead i was to say nothing and come back. if she was alive i was to tell the captain, his father, where a letter could reach him. they had some bad blood 'twixt 'em, but he didn't tell me what it was about. he may come home here to live, or he may go back to the mines; it's just how the old man takes it. that's what i've got to say to him. how do you think he'll take it?" for a moment tod made no reply. he was trying to make up his mind what part of the story was true and what part was skilfully put together to provide, perhaps, additional suppers. the improbability of the whole affair struck him with unusual force. raising hopes of a long-lost son in the breast of a father was an old dodge and often meant the raising of money. "well, i can't say," tod answered carelessly; he had his own opinion now of the stranger. "you'll have to see the captain about that. if the man's alive it's rather funny he ain't showed up all these years." "well, keep mum 'bout it, will ye, till i talk to him? here comes one o' your men." green's figure now loomed up out of the mist. "where away, tod?" the approaching surfman cried when he joined the two. "captain wants me to look after the yawl," answered tod. "it's all right," cried green; "i just left it. went down a-purpose. who's yer friend?" "a man the cap'n sent along to lend a hand. this is sam green," and he turned to the swede and nodded to his brother surfman. the two shook hands. the stranger had not volunteered his name and tod had not asked for it. names go for little among men who obey orders; they serve merely as labels and are useful in a payroll, but they do not add to the value of the owner or help his standing in any way. "shorty" or "fatty" or "big mike" is all sufficient. what the man can do and how he does it, is more important. "no use goin' to the inlet," continued green. "i'll report to the captain. come along back. i tell ye it's gettin' thick," and he looked out across the breakers, only the froth line showing in the dim twilight. the three turned and retraced their steps. tod quickened his pace and stepped into the house ahead of the others. not only did he intend to tell the captain of what he had heard, but he intended to tell him at once. captain holt was in his private room, sitting at his desk, busy over his monthly report. a swinging kerosene lamp hanging from the ceiling threw a light full on his ruddy face framed in a fringe of gray whiskers. tod stepped in and closed the door behind him. "i didn't go to the inlet, sir. green had thought of the yawl and had looked after it; he'll report to you about it. i just heard a strange yarn from that fellow you sent with me and i want to tell ye what it is." the captain laid down his pen, pushed his glasses from his eyes, and looked squarely into tod's face. "he's been askin' 'bout miss jane cobden and archie, and says your son bart is alive and sent him down here to find out how the land lay. it's a cock-and-bull story, but i give it to you just as i got it." once in the south seas the captain awoke to look into the muzzle of a double-barrelled shot-gun held in the hand of the leader of a mutiny. the next instant the man was on the floor, the captain's fingers twisted in his throat. tod's eyes were now the barrels of that gun. no cat-like spring followed; only a cold, stony stare, as if he were awaking from a concussion that had knocked the breath out of him. "he says bart's alive!" he gasped. "who? that feller i sent with ye?" "yes." the captain's face grew livid and then flamed up, every vein standing clear, his eyes blazing. "he's a liar! a dirty liar! bring him in!" each word hissed from his lips like an explosive. tod opened the door of the sitting-room and the swede stepped in. the captain whirled his chair suddenly and faced him. anger, doubt, and the flicker of a faint hope were crossing his face with the movement of heat lightning. "you know my son, you say?" "i do." the answer was direct and the tone positive. "what's his name?" "barton holt. he signs it different, but that's his name." "how old is he?" the pitch of the captain's voice had altered. he intended to riddle the man's statement with a cross-fire of examination. "'bout forty, maybe forty-five. he never told "what kind of eyes?" "brown, like yours." "what kind of hair?" "curly. it's gray now; he had fever, and it turned." "where--when?" hope and fear were now struggling for the mastery. "two years ago--when i first knew him; we were in hospital together." "what's he been doin'?" the tone was softer. hope seemed to be stronger now. "mining out in brazil." the captain took his eyes from the face of the man and asked in something of his natural tone of voice: "where is he now?" the swede put his hand in his inside pocket and took out a small time-book tied around with a piece of faded tape. this he slowly unwound, tod's and the captain's eyes following every turn of his fingers. opening the book, he glanced over the leaves, found the one he was looking for, tore it carefully from the book, and handed it to the captain. "that's his writing. if you want to see him send him a line to that address. it'll reach him all right. if you don't want to see him he'll go back with me to rio. i don't want yer supper and i don't want yer job. i done what i promised and that's all there is to it. good-night," and he opened the door and disappeared in the darkness. captain holt sat with his head on his chest looking at the floor in front of him. the light of the banging lamp made dark shadows under his eyebrows and under his chin whiskers. there was a firm set to his clean-shaven lips, but the eyes burned with a gentle light; a certain hope, positive now, seemed to be looming up in them. tod watched him for an instant, and said: "what do ye think of it, cap'n?" "i ain't made up my mind." "is he lyin'?" "i don't know. seems too good to be true. he's got some things right; some things he ain't. keep your mouth shut till i tell ye to open it--to cobden, mind ye, and everybody else. better help green overhaul that line. that'll do, fogarty." tod dipped his head--his sign of courteous assent--and backed out of the room. the captain continued motionless, his eyes fixed on space. once he turned, picked up the paper, scrutinized the handwriting word for word, and tossed it back on the desk. then he rose from his seat and began pacing the floor, stopping to gaze at a chart on the wall, at the top of the stove, at the pendulum of the clock, surveying them leisurely. once he looked out of the window at the flare of light from his swinging lamp, stencilled on the white sand and the gray line of the dunes beyond. at each of these resting-places his face assumed a different expression; hope, fear, and anger again swept across it as his judgment struggled with his heart. in one of his turns up and down the small room he laid his hand on a brick lying on the window-sill--one that had been sent by the builders of the station as a sample. this he turned over carefully, examining the edges and color as if he had seen it for the first time and had to pass judgment upon its defects or merits. laying it back in its place, he threw himself into his chair again, exclaiming aloud, as if talking to someone: "it ain't true. he'd wrote before if he were alive. he was wild and keerless, but he never was dirt-mean, and he wouldn't a-treated me so all these years. the swede's a liar, i tell ye!" wheeling the chair around to face the desk, he picked up a pen, dipped it into the ink, laid it back on the desk, picked it up again, opened a drawer on his right, took from it a sheet of official paper, and wrote a letter of five lines. this he enclosed in the envelope, directed to the name on the slip of paper. then he opened the door. "fogarty." "yes, cap'n." "take this to the village and drop it in the post yourself. the weather's clearin', and you won't be wanted for a while," and he strode out and joined his men. chapter xix the breaking of the dawn september weather on barnegat beach! fine gowns and fine hats on the wide piazzas of beach haven! too cool for bathing, but not too cool to sit on the sand and throw pebbles and loll under kindly umbrellas; air fresh and bracing, with a touch of june in it; skies full of mares'-tails--slips of a painter's brush dragged flat across the film of blue; sea gone to rest; not a ripple, no long break of the surf, only a gentle lift and fall like the breathing of a sleeping child. uncle isaac shook his head when he swept his eye round at all this loveliness; then he turned on his heel and took a look at the aneroid fastened to the wall of the sitting-room of the life-saving station. the arrow showed a steady shrinkage. the barometer had fallen six points. "what do ye think, captain holt?" asked the old surfman. "i ain't thinkin', polhemus; can't tell nothin' 'bout the weather this month till the moon changes; may go on this way for a week or two, or it may let loose and come out to the sou'-east i've seen these dog-days last till october." again uncle isaac shook his head, and this time kept his peace; now that his superior officer had spoken he had no further opinion to express. sam green dropped his feet to the floor, swung himself over to the barometer, gazed at it for a moment, passed out of the door, swept his eye around, and resumed his seat--tilted back against the wall. what his opinion might be was not for publication--not in the captain's hearing. captain holt now consulted the glass, picked up his cap bearing the insignia of his rank, and went out through the kitchen to the land side of the house. the sky and sea--feathery clouds and still, oily flatness--did not interest him this september morning. it was the rolling dune that caught his eye, and the straggly path that threaded its way along the marshes and around and beyond the clump of scrub pines and bushes until it was lost in the haze that hid the village. this land inspection had been going on for a month, and always when tod was returning from the post-office with the morning mail. the men had noticed it, but no one had given vent to his thoughts. tod, of course, knew the cause of the captain's impatience, but no one of the others did, not even archie; time enough for that when the swede's story was proved true. if the fellow had lied that was an end to it; if he had told the truth bart would answer, and the mystery be cleared up. this same silence had been maintained toward jane and the doctor; better not raise hopes he could not verify--certainly not in jane's breast. not that he had much hope himself; he dared not hope. hope meant a prop to his old age; hope meant joy to jane, who would welcome the prodigal; hope meant relief to the doctor, who could then claim his own; hope meant redemption for lucy, a clean name for archie, and honor to himself and his only son. no wonder, then, that he watched for an answer to his letter with feverish impatience. his own missive had been blunt and to the point, asking the direct question: "are you alive or dead, and if alive, why did you fool me with that lie about your dying of fever in a hospital and keep me waiting all these years?" anything more would have been superfluous in the captain's judgment--certainly until he received some more definite information as to whether the man was his son. half a dozen times this lovely september morning the captain had strolled leisurely out of the back door and had mounted the low hillock for a better view. suddenly a light flashed in his face, followed by a look in his eyes that they had not known for weeks--not since the swede left. the light came when his glance fell upon tod's lithe figure swinging along the road; the look kindled when he saw tod stop and wave his hand triumphantly over his head. the letter had arrived! with a movement as quick as that of a horse touched by a whip, he started across the sand to meet the surfman. "guess we got it all right this time, captain," cried tod. "it's got the nassau postmark, anyhow. there warn't nothin' else in the box but the newspapers," and he handed the package to his chief. the two walked to the house and entered the captain's office. tod hung back, but the captain laid his hand on his shoulder. "come in with me, fogarty. shut the door. i'll send these papers in to the men soon's i open this." tod obeyed mechanically. there was a tone in the captain's voice that was new to him. it sounded as if he were reluctant to be left alone with the letter. "now hand me them spectacles." tod reached over and laid the glasses in his chief's hand. the captain settled himself deliberately in his revolving chair, adjusted his spectacles, and slit the envelope with his thumb-nail. out came a sheet of foolscap closely written on both sides. this he read to the end, turning the page as carefully as if it had been a set of official instructions, his face growing paler and paler, his mouth tight shut. tod stood beside him watching the lights and shadows playing across his face. the letter was as follows: "nassau, no. calle valenzuela, "aug. , --. "father: your letter was not what i expected, although it is, perhaps, all i deserve. i am not going into that part of it, now i know that lucy and my child are alive. what has been done in the past i can't undo, and maybe i wouldn't if i could, for if i am worth anything to-day it comes from what i have suffered; that's over now, and i won't rake it up, but i think you would have written me some word of kindness if you had known what i have gone through since i left you. i don't blame you for what you did--i don't blame anybody; all i want now is to get back home among the people who knew me when i was a boy, and try and make up for the misery i have caused you and the cobdens. i would have done this before, but it has only been for the last two years that i have had any money. i have got an interest in the mine now and am considerably ahead, and i can do what i have always determined to do if i ever had the chance and means--come home to lucy and the child; it must be big now--and take them back with me to bolivia, where i have a good home and where, in a few years, i shall be able to give them everything they need. that's due to her and to the child, and it's due to you; and if she'll come i'll do my best to make her happy while she lives. i heard about five years ago from a man who worked for a short time in farguson's ship-yard how she was suffering, and what names the people called the child, and my one thought ever since has been to do the decent thing by both. i couldn't then, for i was living in a hut back in the mountains a thousand miles from the coast, or tramping from place to place; so i kept still. he told me, too, how you felt toward me, and i didn't want to come and have bad blood between us, and so i stayed on. when olssen strom, my foreman, sailed for perth amboy, where they are making some machinery for the company, i thought i'd try again, so i sent him to find out. one thing in your letter is wrong. i never went to the hospital with yellow fever; some of the men had it aboard ship, and i took one of them to the ward the night i ran away. the doctor at the hospital wanted my name, and i gave it, and this may have been how they thought it was me, but i did not intend to deceive you or anybody else, nor cover up any tracks. yes, father, i'm coming home. if you'll hold out your hand to me i'll take it gladly. i've had a hard time since i left you; you'd forgive me if you knew how hard it has been. i haven't had anybody out here to care whether i lived or died, and i would like to see how it feels. but if you don't i can't help it. my hope is that lucy and the boy will feel differently. there is a steamer sailing from here next wednesday; she goes direct to amboy, and you may expect me on her. your son, "barton." "it's him, tod," cried the captain, shaking the letter over his head; "it's him!" the tears stood in his eyes now, his voice trembled; his iron nerve was giving way. "alive, and comin' home! be here next week! keep the door shut, boy, till i pull myself together. oh, my god, tod, think of it! i haven't had a day's peace since i druv him out nigh on to twenty year ago. he hurt me here"--and he pointed to his breast--"where i couldn't forgive him. but it's all over now. he's come to himself like a man, and he's square and honest, and he's goin' to stay home till everything is straightened out. o god! it can't be true! it can't be true!" he was sobbing now, his face hidden by his wrist and the cuff of his coat, the big tears striking his pea-jacket and bounding off. it had been many years since these springs had yielded a drop--not when anybody could see. they must have scalded his rugged cheeks as molten metal scalds a sand-pit. tod stood amazed. the outburst was a revelation. he had known the captain ever since he could remember, but always as an austere, exacting man. "i'm glad, captain," tod said simply; "the men'll be glad, too. shall i tell 'em?" the captain raised his head. "wait a minute, son." his heart was very tender, all discipline was forgotten now; and then he had known tod from his boyhood. "i'll go myself and tell 'em," and he drew his hand across his eyes as if to dry them. "yes, tell 'em. come, i'll go 'long with ye and tell 'em myself. i ain't 'shamed of the way i feel, and the men won't be 'shamed neither." the sitting-room was full when he entered. dinner had been announced by morgan, who was cook that week, by shouting the glad tidings from his place beside the stove, and the men were sitting about in their chairs. two fishermen who had come for their papers occupied seats against the wall. the captain walked to the corner of the table, stood behind his own chair and rested the knuckles of one hand on the white oilcloth. the look on his face attracted every eye. pausing for a moment, he turned to polhemus and spoke to him for the others: "isaac, i got a letter just now. fogarty brought it over. you knew my boy bart, didn't ye, the one that's been dead nigh on to twenty years?" the old surfman nodded, his eyes still fastened on the captain. this calling him "isaac" was evidence that something personal and unusual was coming. the men, too, leaned forward in attention; the story of bart's disappearance and death had been discussed up and down the coast for years. "well, he's alive," rejoined the captain with a triumphant tone in his voice, "and he'll be here in a week--comin' to amboy on a steamer. there ain't no mistake about it; here's his letter." the announcement was received in dead silence. to be surprised was not characteristic of these men, especially over a matter of this kind. death was a part of their daily experience, and a resurrection neither extraordinary nor uncommon. they were glad for the captain, if the captain was glad--and he, evidently was. but what did bart's turning up at this late day mean? had his money given out, or was he figuring to get something out of his father--something he couldn't get as long as he remained dead? the captain continued, his voice stronger and with a more positive ring in it: "he's part owner in a mine now, and he's comin' home to see me and to straighten out some things he's interested in." it was the first time in nearly twenty years that he had ever been able to speak of his son with pride. a ripple of pleasure went through the room. if the prodigal was bringing some money with him and was not to be a drag on the captain, that put a new aspect on the situation. in that case the father was to be congratulated. "well, that's a comfort to you, captain," cried uncle isaac in a cheery tone. "a good son is a good thing. i never had one, dead or alive, but i'd 'a' loved him if i had had. i'm glad for you, captain nat, and i know the men are." (polhemus's age and long friendship gave him this privilege. then, of course, the occasion was not an official one.) "been at the mines, did ye say, captain?" remarked green. not that it was of any interest to him; merely to show his appreciation of the captain's confidence. this could best be done by prolonging the conversation. "yes, up in the mountains of brazil some'er's, i guess, though he don't say," answered the captain in a tone that showed that the subject was still open for discussion. mulligan now caught the friendly ball and tossed it back 'with: "i knowed a feller once who was in brazil--so he said. purty hot down there, ain't it, captain?" "yes; on the coast. i ain't never been back in the interior." tod kept silent. it was not his time to speak, nor would it be proper for him, nor necessary. his chief knew his opinion and sympathies and no word of his could add to their sincerity. archie was the only man in the room, except uncle isaac, who regarded the announcement as personal to the captain. boys without fathers and fathers without boys had been topics which had occupied his mind ever since he could remember. that this old man had found one of his own whom he loved and whom he wanted to get his arms around, was an inspiring thought to archie. "there's no one happier than i am, captain," he burst out enthusiastically. "i've often heard of your son, and of his going away and of your giving him up for dead. i'm mighty glad for you," and he grasped his chief's hand and shook it heartily. as the lad's fingers closed around the rough hand of the captain a furtive look flashed from out morgan's eyes. it was directed to parks--they were both barnegat men--and was answered by that surfman with a slow-falling wink. tod saw it, and his face flushed. certain stories connected with archie rose in his mind; some out of his childhood, others since he had joined the crew. the captain's eyes filled as he shook the boy's hand, but he made no reply to archie's outburst. pausing for a moment, as if willing to listen to any further comments, and finding that no one else had any word for him, he turned on his heel and reentered his office. once inside, he strode to the window and looked out on the dunes, his big hands hooked behind his back, his eyes fixed on vacancy. "it won't be long, now, archie, not long, my lad," he said in a low voice, speaking aloud to himself. "i kin say you're my grandson out loud when bart comes, and nothin' kin or will stop me! and now i kin tell miss jane." thrusting the letter into his inside pocket, he picked up his cap, and strode across the dune in the direction of the new hospital. jane was in one of the wards when the captain sent word to her to come to the visiting-room. she had been helping the doctor in an important operation. the building was but half way between the station and warehold, which made it easier for the captain to keep his eye on the sea should there be any change in the weather. jane listened to the captain's outburst covering the announcement that bart was alive without a comment. her face paled and her breathing came short, but she showed no signs of either joy or sorrow. she had faced too many surprises in her life to be startled at anything. then again, bart alive or dead could make no difference now in either her own or lucy's future. the captain continued, his face brightening, his voice full of hope: "and your troubles are all over now, miss jane; your name will be cleared up, and so will archie's, and the doctor'll git his own, and lucy kin look everybody in the face. see what bart says," and he handed her the open letter. jane read it word by word to the end and handed it back to the captain. once in the reading she had tightened her grasp on her chair as if to steady herself, but she did not flinch; she even read some sentences twice, so that she might be sure of their meaning. in his eagerness the captain had not caught the expression of agony that crossed her face as her mind, grasping the purport of the letter, began to measure the misery that would follow if bart's plan was carried out. "i knew how ye'd feel," he went on, "and i've been huggin' myself ever since it come when i thought how happy ye'd be when i told ye; but i ain't so sure 'bout lucy. what do you think? will she do what bart wants?" "no," said jane in a quiet, restrained voice; "she will not do it." "why?" said the captain in a surprised tone. he was not accustomed to be thwarted in anything he had fixed his mind upon, and he saw from jane's expression that her own was in opposition. "because i won't permit it." the captain leaned forward and looked at jane in astonishment. "you won't permit it!" "no, i won't permit it." "why?" the word came from the captain as if it had been shot from a gun. "because it would not be right." her eyes were still fixed on the captain's. "well, ain't it right that he should make some amends for what he's done?" he retorted with increasing anger. "when he said he wouldn't marry her i druv him out; now he says he's sorry and wants to do squarely by her and my hand's out to him. she ain't got nothin' in her life that's doin' her any good. and that boy's got to be baptized right and take his father's name, archie holt, out loud, so everybody kin hear." jane made no answer except to shake her head. her eyes were still on the captain's, but her mind was neither on him nor on what fell from his lips. she was again confronting that spectre which for years had lain buried and which the man before her was exorcising back to life. the captain sprang from his seat and stood before her; the words now poured from his lips in a torrent. "and you'll git out from this death blanket you been sleepin' under, bearin' her sin; breakin' the doctor's heart and your own; and archie kin hold his head up then and say he's got a father. you ain't heard how the boys talk 'bout him behind his back. tod fogarty's stuck to him, but who else is there 'round here? we all make mistakes; that's what half the folks that's livin' do. everything's been a lie--nothin' but lies--for near twenty years. you've lived a lie motherin' this boy and breakin' your heart over the whitest man that ever stepped in shoe leather. doctor john's lived a lie, tellin' folks he wanted to devote himself to his hospital when he'd rather live in the sound o' your voice and die a pauper than run a college anywhere else. lucy has lived a lie, and is livin' it yet--and likes it, too, that's the worst of it. and i been muzzled all these years; mad one minute and wantin' to twist his neck, and the next with my eyes runnin' tears that the only boy i got was lyin' out among strangers. the only one that's honest is the little pond lily. she ain't got nothin' to hide and you see it in her face. her father was square and her mother's with her and nothin' can't touch her and don't. let's have this out. i'm tired of it--" the captain was out of breath now, his emotions still controlling him, his astonishment at the unexpected opposition from the woman of all others on whose assistance he most relied unabated. jane rose from her chair and stood facing him, a great light in her eyes: "no! no! no! a thousand times, no! you don't know lucy; i do. what you want done now should have been done when archie was born. it was my fault. i couldn't see her suffer. i loved her too much. i thought to save her, i didn't care how. it would have been better for her if she had faced her sin then and taken the consequences; better for all of us. i didn't think so then, and it has taken me years to find it out. i began to be conscious of it first in her marriage, then when she kept on living her lie with her husband, and last when she deserted ellen and went off to beach haven alone--that broke my heart, and my mistake rose up before me, and i knew!" the captain stared at her in astonishment. he could hardly credit his ears. "yes, better, if she'd faced it. she would have lived here then under my care, and she might have loved her child as i have done. now she has no tie, no care, no responsibility, no thought of anything but the pleasures of the moment. i have tried to save her, and i have only helped to ruin her." "make her settle down, then, and face the music!" blurted out the captain, resuming his seat. "bart warn't all bad; he was only young and foolish. he'll take care of her. it ain't never too late to begin to turn honest. bart wants to begin; make her begin, too. he's got money now to do it; and she kin live in south america same's she kin here. she's got no home anywhere. she don't like it here, and never did; you kin see that from the way she swings 'round from place to place. make her face it, i tell ye. you been too easy with her all your life; pull her down now and keep her nose p'inted close to the compass." "you do not know of what you talk," jane answered, her eyes blazing. "she hates the past; hates everything connected with it; hates the very name of barton holt. never once has she mentioned it since her return. she never loved archie; she cared no more for him than a bird that has dropped its young out of its nest. besides, your plan is impossible. marriage does not condone a sin. the power to rise and rectify the wrong lies in the woman. lucy has not got it in her, and she never will have it. part of it is her fault; a large part of it is mine. she has lived this lie all these years, and i have only myself to blame. i have taught her to live it. i began it when i carried her away from here; i should have kept her at home and had her face the consequences of her sin then. i ought to have laid archie in her arms and kept him there. i was a coward and could not, and in my fear i destroyed the only thing that could have saved her--the mother-love. now she will run her course. she's her own mistress; no one can compel her to do anything." the captain raised his clenched hand: "bart will, when he comes." "how?" "by claimin' the boy and shamin' her before the world, if she don't. she liked him well enough when he was a disgrace to himself and to me, without a dollar to his name. what ails him now, when he comes back and owns up like a man and wants to do the square thing, and has got money enough to see it through? she's nothin' but a thing, if she knew it, till this disgrace's wiped off'n her. by god, miss jane, i tell you this has got to be put through just as bart wants it, and quick!" jane stepped closer and laid her hand on the captain's arm. the look in her eyes, the low, incisive, fearless ring in her voice, overawed him. her courage astounded him. this side of her character was a revelation. under their influence he became silent and humbled--as a boisterous advocate is humbled by the measured tones of a just judge. "it is not my friend, captain nat, who is talking now. it is the father who is speaking. think for a moment. who has borne the weight of this, you or i? you had a wayward son whom the people here think you drove out of your home for gambling on sunday. no other taint attaches to him or to you. dozens of other sons and fathers have done the same. he returns a reformed man and lives out his life in the home he left. "i had a wayward sister who forgot her mother, me, her womanhood, and herself, and yet at whose door no suspicion of fault has been laid. i stepped in and took the brunt and still do. i did this for my father's name and for my promise to him and for my love of her. to her child i have given my life. to him i am his mother and will always be--always, because i will stand by my fault. that is a redemption in itself, and that is the only thing that saves me from remorse. you and i, outside of his father and mother, are the only ones living that know of his parentage. the world has long since forgotten the little they suspected. let it rest; no good could come--only suffering and misery. to stir it now would only open old wounds and, worst of all, it would make a new one." "in you?" "no, worse than that. my heart is already scarred all over; no fresh wound would hurt." "in the doctor?" "yes and no. he has never asked the truth and i have never told him." "who, then?" "in little ellen. let us keep that one flower untouched." the captain rested his head in his hand, and for some minutes made no answer. ellen was the apple of his eye. "but if bart insists?" "he won't insist when he sees lucy. she is no more the woman that he loved and wronged than i am. he would not know her if he met her outside this house." "what shall i do?" "nothing. let matters take their course. if he is the man you think he is he will never break the silence." "and you will suffer on--and the doctor?" jane bowed her head and the tears sprang to her eyes. "yes, always; there is nothing else to do." chapter xx the undertow within the month a second letter was handed to the captain by tod, now regularly installed as postman. it was in answer to one of captain holt's which he had directed to the expected steamer and which had met the exile on his arrival. it was dated "amboy," began "my dear father," and was signed "your affectionate son, barton." this conveyed the welcome intelligence--welcome to the father--that the writer would be detained a few days in amboy inspecting the new machinery, after which he would take passage for barnegat by the polly walters, farguson's weekly packet. then these lines followed: "it will be the happiest day of my life when i can come into the inlet at high tide and see my home in the distance." again the captain sought jane. she was still at the hospital, nursing some shipwrecked men--three with internal injuries--who had been brought in from forked river station, the crew having rescued them the week before. two of the regular attendants were worn out with the constant nursing, and so jane continued her vigils. she had kept at her work--turning neither to the right nor to the left, doing her duty with the bravery and patience of a soldier on the firing-line, knowing that any moment some stray bullet might end her usefulness. she would not dodge, nor would she cower; the danger was no greater than others she had faced, and no precaution, she knew, could save her. her lips were still sealed, and would be to the end; some tongue other than her own must betray her sister and her trust. in the meantime she would wait and bear bravely whatever was sent to her. jane was alone when the captain entered, the doctor having left the room to begin his morning inspection. she was in her gray-cotton nursing-dress, her head bound about with a white kerchief. the pathos of her face and the limp, tired movement of her figure would have been instantly apparent to a man less absorbed in his own affairs than the captain. "he'll be here to-morrow or next day!" he cried, as he advanced to where she sat at her desk in the doctor's office, the same light in his eyes and the same buoyant tone in his voice, his ruddy face aglow with his walk from the station. "you have another letter then?" she said in a resigned tone, as if she had expected it and was prepared to meet its consequences. in her suffering she had even forgotten her customary welcome of him--for whatever his attitude and however gruff he might be, she never forgot the warm heart beneath. "yes, from amboy," panted the captain, out of breath with his quick walk, dragging a chair beside jane's desk as he spoke. "he got mine when the steamer come in. he's goin' to take the packet so he kin bring his things--got a lot o' them, he says. and he loves the old home, too--he says so--you kin read it for yourself." as he spoke he unbuttoned his jacket, and taking bart's letter from its inside pocket, laid his finger on the paragraph and held it before her face. "have you talked about it to anybody?" jane asked calmly; she hardly glanced at the letter. "only to the men; but it's all over barnegat. a thing like that's nothin' but a cask o' oil overboard and the bung out--runs everywhere--no use tryin' to stop it." he was in the chair now, his arms on the edge of the desk. "but you've said nothing to anybody about archie and lucy, and what bart intends to do when he comes, have you?" jane inquired in some alarm. "not a word, and won't till ye see him. she's more your sister than she is his wife, and you got most to say 'bout archie, and should. you been everything to him. when you've got through i'll take a hand, but not before." the captain always spoke the truth, and meant it; his word settled at once any anxieties she might have had on that score. "what have you decided to do?" she was not looking at him as she spoke; she was toying with a penholder that lay before her on the desk, apparently intent on its construction. "i'm goin' to meet him at farguson's ship-yard when the polly comes in," rejoined the captain in a positive tone, as if his mind had long since been made up regarding details, and he was reciting them for her guidance--"and take him straight to my house, and then come for you. you kin have it out together. only one thing, miss jane"--here his voice changed and something of his old quarter-deck manner showed itself in his face and gestures--"if he's laid his course and wants to keep hold of the tiller i ain't goin' to block his way and he shall make his harbor, don't make no difference who or what gits in the channel. ain't neither of us earned any extry pay for the way we've run this thing. you've got lucy ashore flounderin' 'round in the fog, and i had no business to send him off without grub or compass. if he wants to steer now he'll steer. i don't want you to make no mistake 'bout this, and you'll excuse me if i put it plain." jane put her hand to her head and looked out of the window toward the sea. all her life seemed to be narrowing to one small converging path which grew smaller and smaller as she looked down its perspective. "i understand, captain," she sighed. all the fight was out of her; she was like one limping across a battlefield, shield and spear gone, the roads unknown. the door opened and the doctor entered. his quick, sensitive eye instantly caught the look of despair on jane's face and the air of determination on the captain's. what had happened he did not know, but something to hurt jane; of that he was positive. he stepped quickly past the captain without accosting him, rested his hand on jane's shoulder, and said in a tender, pleading tone: "you are tired and worn out; get your cloak and hat and i'll drive you home." then he turned to the captain: "miss jane's been up for three nights. i hope you haven't been worrying her with anything you could have spared her from--at least until she got rested," and he frowned at the captain. "no, i ain't and wouldn't. i been a-tellin' her of bart's comin' home. that ain't nothin' to worry over--that's something to be glad of. you heard about it, of course?" "yes, morgan told me. twenty years will make a great difference in bart. it must have been a great surprise to you, captain." both jane and the captain tried to read the doctor's face, and both failed. doctor john might have been commenting on the weather or some equally unimportant topic, so light and casual was his tone. he turned to jane again. "come, dear--please," he begged. it was only when he was anxious about her physical condition or over some mental trouble that engrossed her that he spoke thus. the words lay always on the tip of his tongue, but he never let them fall unless someone was present to overhear. "you are wrong, john," she answered, bridling her shoulders as if to reassure him. "i am not tired--i have a little headache, that's all." with the words she pressed both hands to her temples and smoothed back her hair--a favorite gesture when her brain fluttered against her skull like a caged pigeon. "i will go home, but not now--this afternoon, perhaps. come for me then, please," she added, looking up into his face with a grateful expression. the captain picked up his cap and rose from his seat. one of his dreams was the marriage of these two. episodes like this only showed him the clearer what lay in their hearts. the doctor's anxiety and jane's struggle to bear her burdens outside of his touch and help only confirmed the old sea-dog in his determination. when bart had his way, he said to himself, all this would cease. "i'll be goin' along," he said, looking from one to the other and putting on his cap. "see you later, miss jane. morgan's back ag'in to work, thanks to you, doctor. that was a pretty bad sprain he had--he's all right now, though; went on practice yesterday. i'm glad of it--equinox is comin' on and we can't spare a man, or half a one, these days. may be blowin' a livin' gale 'fore the week's out. good-by, miss jane; good-by, doctor." and he shut the door behind him. with the closing of the door the sound of wheels was heard--a crisp, crunching sound--and then the stamping of horses' feet. max feilding's drag, drawn by the two grays and attended by the diminutive bones, had driven up and now stood beside the stone steps of the front door of the hospital. the coats of the horses shone like satin and every hub and plate glistened in the sunshine. on the seat, the reins in one pretty gloved hand, a gold-mounted whip in the other, sat lucy. she was dressed in her smartest driving toilette--a short yellow-gray jacket fastened with big pearl buttons and a hat bound about with the breast of a tropical bird. her eyes were dancing, her cheeks like ripe peaches with all the bloom belonging to them in evidence, and something more, and her mouth all curves and dimples. when the doctor reached her side--he had heard the sound of the wheels, and looking through the window had caught sight of the drag--she had risen from her perch and was about to spring clear of the equipage without waiting for the helping hand of either bones or himself. she was still a girl in her suppleness. "no, wait until i can give you my hand," he said, hurrying toward her. "no--i don't want your hand, sir esculapius. get out of the way, please--i'm going to jump! there--wasn't that lovely?" and she landed beside him. "where's sister? i've been all the way to yardley, and martha tells me she has been here almost all the week. oh, what a dreadful, gloomy-looking place! how many people have you got here anyhow, cooped up in this awful-- why, it's like an almshouse," she added, looking about her. "where did you say sister was?" "i'll go and call her," interpolated the doctor when he could get a chance to speak. "no, you won't do anything of the kind; i'll go myself. you've had her all the week, and now it's my turn." jane had by this time closed the lid of her desk, had moved out into the hall, and now stood on the top step of the entrance awaiting lucy's ascent. in her gray gown, simple head-dress, and resigned face, the whole framed in the doorway with its connecting background of dull stone, she looked like one of correggio's madonnas illumining some old cloister wall. "oh, you dear, dear sister!" lucy cried, running up the short steps to meet her. "i'm so glad i've found you; i was afraid you were tying up somebody's broken head or rocking a red-flannelled baby." with this she put her arms around jane's neck and kissed her rapturously. "where can we talk? oh, i've got such a lot of things to tell you! you needn't come, you dear, good doctor. please take yourself off, sir--this way, and out the gate, and don't you dare come back until i'm gone." my lady of paris was very happy this morning; bubbling over with merriment--a condition that set the doctor to thinking. indeed, he had been thinking most intently about my lady ever since he had heard of bart's resurrection. he had also been thinking of jane and archie. these last thoughts tightened his throat; they had also kept him awake the past few nights. the doctor bowed with one of his sir roger bows, lifted his hat first to jane in all dignity and reverence, and then to lucy with a flourish--keeping up outwardly the gayety of the occasion and seconding her play of humor--walked to the shed where his horse was tied and drove off. he knew these moods of lucy's; knew they were generally assumed and that they always concealed some purpose--one which neither a frown nor a cutting word nor an outbreak of temper would accomplish; but that fact rarely disturbed him. then, again, he was never anything but courteous to her--always remembering jane's sacrifice and her pride in her. "and now, you dear, let us go somewhere where we can be quiet," lucy cried, slipping her arm around jane's slender waist and moving toward the hall. with the entering of the bare room lined with bottles and cases of instruments her enthusiasm began to cool. up to this time she had done all the talking. was jane tired out nursing? she asked herself; or did she still feel hurt over her refusal to take ellen with her for the summer? she had remembered for days afterward the expression on her face when she told of her plans for the summer and of her leaving ellen at yardley; but she knew this had all passed out of her sister's mind. this was confirmed by jane's continued devotion to ellen and her many kindnesses to the child. it was true that whenever she referred to her separation from ellen, which she never failed to do as a sort of probe to be assured of the condition of jane's mind, there was no direct reply--merely a changing of the topic, but this had only proved jane's devotion in avoiding a subject which might give her beautiful sister pain. what, then, was disturbing her to-day? she asked herself with a slight chill at her heart. then she raised her head and assumed a certain defiant air. better not notice anything jane said or did; if she was tired she would get rested and if she was provoked with her she would get pleased again. it was through her affections and her conscience that she could hold and mould her sister jane--never through opposition or fault-finding. besides, the sun was too bright and the air too delicious, and she herself too blissfully happy to worry over anything. in time all these adverse moods would pass out of jane's heart as they had done a thousand times before. "oh, you dear, precious thing!" lucy began again, all these matters having been reviewed, settled, and dismissed from her mind in the time it took her to cross the room. "i'm so sorry for you when i think of you shut up here with these dreadful people; but i know you wouldn't be happy anywhere else," she laughed in a meaning way. (the bringing in of the doctor even by implication was always a good move.) "and martha looks so desolate. dear, you really ought to be more with her; but for my darling ellen i don't know what martha would do. i miss the child so, and yet i couldn't bear to take her from the dear old woman." jane made no answer. lucy had found a chair now and had laid her gloves, parasol, and handkerchief on another beside her. jane had resumed her seat; her slender neck and sloping shoulders and sparely modelled head with its simply dressed hair--she had removed the kerchief--in silhouette against the white light of the window. "what is it all about, lucy?" she asked in a grave tone after a slight pause in lucy's talk. "i have a great secret to tell you--one you mustn't breathe until i give you leave." she was leaning back in her chair now, her eyes trying to read jane's thoughts. her bare hands were resting in her lap, the jewels flashing from her fingers; about her dainty mouth there hovered, like a butterfly, a triumphant smile; whether this would alight and spread its wings into radiant laughter, or disappear, frightened by a gathering frown, depended on what would drop from her sister's lips. jane looked up. the strong light from the window threw her head into shadow; only the slight fluff of her hair glistened in the light. this made an aureole which framed the madonna's face. "well, lucy, what is it?" she asked again simply. "max is going to be married." "when?" rejoined jane in the same quiet tone. her mind was not on max or on anything connected with him. it was on the shadow slowly settling upon all she loved. "in december," replied lucy, a note of triumph in her voice, her smile broadening. "who to?" "me." with the single word a light ripple escaped from her lips. jane straightened herself in her chair. a sudden faintness passed over her--as if she had received a blow in the chest, stopping her breath. "you mean--you mean--that you have promised to marry max feilding!" she gasped. "that's exactly what i do mean." the butterfly smile about lucy's mouth had vanished. that straightening of the lips and slow contraction of the brow which jane knew so well was taking its place. then she added nervously, unclasping her hands and picking up her gloves: "aren't you pleased?" "i don't know," answered jane, gazing about the room with a dazed look, as if seeking for a succor she could not find. "i must think. and so you have promised to marry max!" she repeated, as if to herself. "and in december." for a brief moment she paused, her eyes again downcast; then she raised her voice quickly and in a more positive tone asked, "and what do you mean to do with ellen?" "that's what i want to talk to you about, you dear thing." lucy had come prepared to ignore any unfavorable criticisms jane might make and to give her only sisterly affection in return. "i want to give her to you for a few months more," she added blandly, "and then we will take her abroad with us and send her to school either in paris or geneva, where her grandmother can be near her. in a year or two she will come to us in paris." jane made no answer. lucy moved uncomfortably in her chair. she had never, in all her life, seen her sister in any such mood. she was not so much astonished over her lack of enthusiasm regarding the engagement; that she had expected--at least for the first few days, until she could win her over to her own view. it was the deadly poise--the icy reserve that disturbed her. this was new. "lucy!" again jane stopped and looked out of the window. "you remember the letter i wrote you some years ago, in which i begged you to tell ellen's father about archie and barton holt?" lucy's eyes flashed. "yes, and you remember my answer, don't you?" she answered sharply. "what a fool i would have been, dear, to have followed your advice!" jane went straight on without heeding the interruption or noticing lucy's changed tone. "do you intend to tell max?" "i tell max! my dear, good sister, are you crazy! what should i tell max for? all that is dead and buried long ago! why do you want to dig up all these graves? tell max--that aristocrat! he's a dear, sweet fellow, but you don't know him. he'd sooner cut his hand off than marry me if he knew!" "i'm afraid you will have to--and this very day," rejoined jane in a calm, measured tone. lucy moved uneasily in her chair; her anxiety had given way to a certain ill-defined terror. jane's voice frightened her. "why?" she asked in a trembling voice. "because captain holt or someone else will, if you don't." "what right has he or anybody else to meddle with my affairs?" lucy retorted in an indignant tone. "because he cannot help it. i intended to keep the news from you for a time, but from what you have just told me you had best hear it now. barton holt is alive. he has been in brazil all these years, in the mines. he has written to his father that he is coming home." all the color faded from lucy's cheeks. "bart! alive! coming home! when?" "he will be here day after to-morrow; he is at amboy, and will come by the weekly packet. what i can do i will. i have worked all my life to save you, and i may yet, but it seems now as if i had reached the end of my rope." "who said so? where did you hear it? it can't be true!" jane shook her head. "i wish it was not true--but it is--every word of it. i have read his letter." lucy sank back in her chair, her cheeks livid, a cold perspiration moistening her forehead. little lines that jane had never noticed began to gather about the corners of her mouth; her eyes were wide open, with a strained, staring expression. what she saw was max's eyes looking into her own, that same cold, cynical expression on his face she had sometimes seen when speaking of other women he had known. "what's he coming for?" her voice was thick and barely audible. "to claim his son." "he--says--he'll--claim--archie--as--his--son!" she gasped. "i'd like to see any man living dare to--" "but he can try, lucy--no one can prevent that, and in the trying the world will know." lucy sprang from her seat and stood over her sister: "i'll deny it!" she cried in a shrill voice; "and face him down. he can't prove it! no one about here can!" "he may have proofs that you couldn't deny, and that i would not if i could. captain holt knows everything, remember," jane replied in her same calm voice. "but nobody else does but you and martha!" the thought gave her renewed hope--the only ray she saw. "true; but the captain is enough. his heart is set on archie's name being cleared, and nothing that i can do or say will turn him from his purpose. do you know what he means to do?" "no," she replied faintly, more terror than curiosity in her voice. "he means that you shall marry barton, and that archie shall be baptized as archibald holt. barton will then take you both back to south america. a totally impossible plan, but--" "i marry barton holt! why, i wouldn't marry him if he got down on his knees. why, i don't even remember what he looks like! did you ever hear of such impudence! what is he to me?" the outburst carried with it a certain relief. "what he is to you is not the question. it is what you are to archie! your sin has been your refusal to acknowledge him. now you are brought face to face with the consequences. the world will forgive a woman all the rest, but never for deserting her child, and that, my dear sister, is precisely what you did to archie." jane's gaze was riveted on lucy. she had never dared to put this fact clearly before--not even to herself. now that she was confronted with the calamity she had dreaded all these years, truth was the only thing that would win. everything now must be laid bare. lucy lifted her terrified face, burst into tears, and reached out her hands to jane. "oh, sister,--sister!" she moaned. "what shall i do? oh, if i had never come home! can't you think of some way? you have always been so good--oh, please! please!" jane drew lucy toward her. "i will do all i can, dear. if i fail there is only one resource left. that is the truth, and all of it. max can save you, and he will if he loves you. tell, him everything!" chapter xxi the man in the slouch hat the wooden arrow on the top of the cupola of the life-saving station had had a busy night of it. with the going down of the sun the wind had continued to blow east-southeast--its old course for weeks--and the little sentinel, lulled into inaction, had fallen into a doze, its feather end fixed on the glow of the twilight. at midnight a rollicking breeze that piped from out the north caught the sensitive vane napping, and before the dawn broke had quite tired it out, shifting from point to point, now west, now east, now nor'east-by-east, and now back to north again. by the time morgan had boiled his coffee and had cut his bacon into slivers ready for the frying-pan the restless wind, as if ashamed of its caprices, had again veered to the north-east, and then, as if determined ever after to lead a better life, had pulled itself together and had at last settled down to a steady blow from that quarter. the needle of the aneroid fastened to the wall of the sitting-room, and in reach of everybody's eye, had also made a night of it. in fact, it had not had a moment's peace since captain holt reset its register the day before. all its efforts for continued good weather had failed. slowly but surely the baffled and disheartened needle had sagged from "fair" to "change," dropped back to "storm," and before noon the next day had about given up the fight and was in full flight for "cyclones and tempests." uncle isaac polhemus, sitting at the table with one eye on his game of dominoes (green was his partner) and the other on the patch of sky framed by the window, read the look of despair on the honest face of the aneroid, and rising from his chair, a "double three" in his hand, stepped to where the weather prophet hung. "sompin's comin' sam," he said solemnly. "the old gal's got a bad setback. ain't none of us goin' to git a wink o' sleep to-night, or i miss my guess. wonder how the wind is." here he moved to the door and peered out. "nor'-east and puffy, just as i thought. we're goin' to hev some weather, sam--ye hear?--some weather!" with this he regained his chair and joined the double three to the long tail of his successes. good weather or bad weather--peace or war--was all the same to uncle isaac. what he wanted was the earliest news from the front. captain holt took a look at the sky, the aneroid and the wind--not the arrow; old sea-dogs know which way the wind blows without depending on any such contrivance--the way the clouds drift, the trend of the white-caps, the set of a distant sail, and on black, almost breathless nights, by the feel of a wet finger held quickly in the air, the coolest side determining the wind point. on this morning the clouds attracted the captain's attention. they hung low and drifted in long, straggling lines. close to the horizon they were ashy pale; being nearest the edge of the brimming sea, they had, no doubt, seen something the higher and rosier-tinted clouds had missed; something of the ruin that was going on farther down the round of the sphere. these clouds the captain studied closely, especially a prismatic sun-dog that glowed like a bit of rainbow snipped off by wind-scissors, and one or two dirt spots sailing along by themselves. during the captain's inspection archie hove in sight, wiping his hands with a wad of cotton waste. he and parks had been swabbing out the firing gun and putting the polished work of the cart apparatus in order. "it's going to blow, captain, isn't it?" he called out. blows were what archie was waiting for. so far the sea had been like a mill-pond, except on one or two occasions, when, to the boy's great regret, nothing came ashore. "looks like it. glass's been goin' down and the wind has settled to the nor'east. some nasty dough-balls out there i don't like. see 'em goin' over that three-master?" archie looked, nodded his head, and a certain thrill went through him. the harder it blew the better it would suit archie. "will the polly be here to-night?" he added. "your son's coming, isn't he?" "yes; but you won't see him to-night, nor to-morrow, not till this is over. you won't catch old ambrose out in this weather" (captain ambrose farguson sailed the polly). "he'll stick his nose in the basin some'er's and hang on for a spell. i thought he'd try to make the inlet, and i 'spected bart here to-night till i saw the glass when i got up. ye can't fool ambrose--he knows. be two or three days now 'fore bart comes," he added, a look of disappointment shadowing his face. archie kept on to the house, and the captain, after another sweep around, turned on his heel and reentered the sitting-room. "green!" "yes, captain." the surfman was on his feet in an instant, his ears wide open. "i wish you and fogarty would look over those new costons and see if they're all right. and, polhemus, perhaps you'd better overhaul them cork jackets; some o' them straps seemed kind o' awkward on practice yesterday--they ought to slip on easier; guess they're considerable dried out and a little mite stiff." green nodded his head in respectful assent and left the room. polhemus, at the mention of his name, had dropped his chair legs to the floor; he had finished his game of dominoes and had been tilted back against the wall, awaiting the dinner-hour. "it's goin' to blow a livin' gale o' wind, polhemus," the captain continued; "that's what it's goin' to do. ye kin see it yerself. there she comes now!" as he spoke the windows on the sea side of the house rattled as if shaken by the hand of a man and as quickly stopped. "them puffs are jest the tootin' of her horn--" this with a jerk of his head toward the windows. "i tell ye, it looks ugly!" polhemus gained his feet and the two men stepped to the sash and peered out. to them the sky was always an open book--each cloud a letter, each mass a paragraph, the whole a warning. "but i'm kind o' glad, isaac." again the captain forgot the surfman in the friend. "as long as it's got to blow it might as well blow now and be over. i'd kind o' set my heart on bart's comin', but i guess i've waited so long i kin wait a day or two more. i wrote him to come by train, but he wrote back he had a lot o' plunder and he'd better put it 'board the polly; and, besides, he said he kind o' wanted to sail into the inlet like he used to when he was a boy. then again, i couldn't meet him; not with this weather comin' on. no--take it all in all, i'm glad he ain't comin'." "well, i guess yer right, captain," answered uncle isaac in an even tone, as he left the room to overhaul the cork jackets. the occasion was not one of absorbing interest to isaac. by the time the table was cleared and the kitchen once more in order not only were the windows on the sea side of the house roughly shaken by the rising gale, but the sand caught from the dunes was being whirled against their panes. the tide, too, egged on by the storm, had crept up the slope of the dunes, the spray drenching the grass-tufts. at five o'clock the wind blew forty miles an hour at sundown it had increased to fifty; at eight o'clock it bowled along at sixty. morgan, who had been to the village for supplies, reported that the tide was over the dock at barnegat and that the roof of the big bathing-house at beach haven had been ripped off and landed on the piazza. he had had all he could do to keep his feet and his basket while crossing the marsh on his way back to the station. then he added: "there's a lot o' people there yit. that feller from philadelphy who's mashed on cobden's aunt was swellin' around in a potato-bug suit o' clothes as big as life." this last was given from behind his hand after he had glanced around the room and found that archie was absent. at eight o'clock, when parks and archie left the station to begin their patrol, parks was obliged to hold on to the rail of the porch to steady himself, and archie, being less sure of his feet, was blown against the water-barrel before he could get his legs well under him. at the edge of the surf the two separated for their four hours' patrol, archie breasting the gale on his way north, and parks hurrying on, helped by the wind, to the south. at ten o'clock parks returned. he had made his first round, and had exchanged his brass check with the patrol at the next station. as he mounted the sand-dune he quickened his steps, hurried to the station, opened the sitting-room door, found it empty, the men being in bed upstairs awaiting their turns, and then strode on to the captain's room, his sou'wester and tarpaulin drenched with spray and sand, his hip-boots leaving watery tracks along the clean floor. "wreck ashore at no. , sir!" parks called out in a voice hoarse with fighting the wind. the captain sprang from his cot--he was awake, his light still burning. "anybody drownded?" "no, sir; got 'em all. seven of 'em, so the patrol said. come ashore 'bout supper-time." "what is she?" "a two-master from virginia loaded with cord-wood. surf's in bad shape, sir; couldn't nothin' live in it afore; it's wuss now. everything's a bobble; turrible to see them sticks thrashin' 'round and slammin' things." "didn't want no assistance, did they?" "no, sir; they got the fust line 'round the foremast and come off in less'n a hour; warn't none of 'em hurted." "is it any better outside?" "no, sir; wuss. i ain't seen nothin' like it 'long the coast for years. good-night," and parks took another hole in the belt holding his tarpaulins together, opened the back door, walked to the edge of the house, steadied himself against the clapboards, and boldly facing the storm, continued his patrol. the captain stretched himself again on his bed; he had tried to sleep, but his brain was too active. as he lay listening to the roar of the surf and the shrill wail of the wind, his thoughts would revert to bart and what his return meant; particularly to its effect on the fortunes of the doctor, of jane and of lucy. jane's attitude continued to astound him. he had expected that lucy might not realize the advantages of his plan at first--not until she had seen bart and listened to what he had to say; but that jane, after the confession of her own weakness should still oppose him, was what he could not under stand, he would keep his promise, however, to the very letter. she should have free range to dissuade bart from his purpose. after that bart should have his way. no other course was possible, and no other course either honest or just. then he went over in his mind all that had happened to him since the day he had driven bart out into the night, and from that same house of refuge, too, which, strange to say, lay within sight of the station. he recalled his own and bart's sufferings; his loneliness; the bitterness of the terrible secret which had kept his mouth closed all these years, depriving him of even the intimate companionship of his own grandson. with this came an increased love for the boy; he again felt the warm pressure of his hand and caught the look in his eyes the morning archie congratulated him so heartily on bart's expected return, he had always loved him; he would love him now a thousand times more when he could put his hand on the boy's shoulder and tell him everything. with the changing of the patrol, tod and polhemus taking the places of archie and parks, he fell into a doze, waking with a sudden start some hours later, springing from his bed, and as quickly turning up the lamp. still in his stocking feet and trousers--on nights like this the men lie down in half their clothes--he walked to the window and peered out. it was nearing daylight; the sky still black. the storm was at its height; the roar of the surf incessant and the howl of the wind deafening. stepping into the sitting-room he glanced at the aneroid--the needle had not advanced a point; then turning into the hall, he mounted the steps to the lookout in the cupola, walked softly past the door of the men's room so as not to waken the sleepers, particularly parks and archie, whose cots were nearest the door--both had had four hours of the gale and would have hours more if it continued--and reaching the landing, pressed his face against the cool pane and peered out. below him stretched a dull waste of sand hardly distinguishable in the gloom until his eyes became accustomed to it, and beyond this the white line of the surf, whiter than either sky or sand. this writhed and twisted like a cobra in pain. to the north burned barnegat light, only the star of its lamp visible. to the south stretched alternate bands of sand, sky, and surf, their dividing lines lost in the night. along this beach, now stopping to get their breath, now slanting the brim of their sou'westers to escape the slash of the sand and spray, strode tod and polhemus, their eyes on and beyond the tumbling surf, their ears open to every unusual sound, their costons buttoned tight under their coats to keep them from the wet. suddenly, while his eyes were searching the horizon line, now hardly discernible in the gloom, a black mass rose from behind a cresting of foam, see-sawed for an instant, clutched wildly at the sky, and dropped out of sight behind a black wall of water. the next instant there flashed on the beach below him, and to the left of the station, the red flare of a coston signal. with the quickness of a cat captain holt sprang to the stairs shouting: "a wreck, men, a wreck!" the next instant he had thrown aside the door of the men's room. "out every one of ye! who's on the beach?" and he looked over the cots to find the empty ones. the men were on their feet before he had ceased speaking, archie before the captain's hand had left the knob of the door. "who's on the beach, i say?" he shouted again. "fogarty and uncle ike," someone answered. "polhemus! good! all hands on the cart, men; boat can't live in that surf. she lies to the north of us!" and he swung himself out of the door and down the stairs. "god help 'em, if they've got to come through that surf!" parks said, slinging on his coat. "the tide's just beginnin' to make flood, and all that cord-wood'll come a-waltzin' back. never see nothin' like it!" the front door now burst in and another shout went ringing through the house: "schooner in the breakers!" it was tod. he had rejoined polhemus the moment before he flared his light and had made a dash to rouse the men. "i seen her, fogarty, from the lookout," cried the captain, in answer, grabbing his sou'wester; he was already in his hip-boots and tarpaulin. "what is she?" "schooner, i guess, sir." "two or three masts?" asked the captain hurriedly, tightening the strap of his sou'wester and slipping the leather thong under his gray whiskers. "can't make out, sir; she come bow on. uncle ike see her fust." and he sprang out after the men. a double door thrown wide; a tangle of wild cats springing straight at a broad-tired cart; a grappling of track-lines and handle-bars; a whirl down the wooden incline, tod following with the quickly lighted lanterns; a dash along the runway, the sand cutting their cheeks like grit from a whirling stone; over the dune, the men bracing the cart on either side, and down the beach the crew swept in a rush to where polhemus stood waving his last coston. here the cart stopped. "don't unload nothin'," shouted polhemus. "she ain't fast; looks to me as if she was draggin' her anchors." captain holt canted the brim of his sou'wester, held his bent elbow against his face to protect it from the cut of the wind, and looked in the direction of the surfman's fingers. the vessel lay about a quarter of a mile from the shore and nearer the house of refuge than when the captain had first seen her from the lookout. she was afloat and drifting broadside on to the coast. her masts were still standing and she seemed able to take care of herself. polhemus was right. nothing could be done till she grounded. in the meantime the crew must keep abreast of her. her fate, however, was but a question of time, for not only had the wind veered to the southward--a-dead-on-shore wind--but the set of the flood must eventually strand her. at the track-lines again, every man in his place, uncle isaac with his shoulder under the spokes of the wheels, the struggling crew keeping the cart close to the edge of the dune, springing out of the way of the boiling surf or sinking up to their waists into crevices of sluiceways gullied out by the hungry sea. once archie lost his footing and would have been sucked under by a comber had not captain holt grapped him by the collar and landed him on his feet again. now and then a roller more vicious than the others would hurl a log of wood straight at the cart with the velocity of a torpedo, and swoop back again, the log missing its mark by a length. when the dawn broke the schooner could be made out more clearly. both masts were still standing, their larger sails blown away. the bowsprit was broken short off close to her chains. about this dragged the remnants of a jib sail over which the sea soused and whitened. she was drifting slowly and was now but a few hundred yards from the beach, holding, doubtless, by her anchors. over her deck the sea made a clean breach. suddenly, and while the men still tugged at the track-ropes, keeping abreast of her so as to be ready with the mortar and shot-line, the ill-fated vessel swung bow on toward the beach, rose on a huge mountain of water, and threw herself headlong. when the smother cleared her foremast was overboard and her deck-house smashed. around her hull the waves gnashed and fought like white wolves, leaping high, flinging themselves upon her. in the recoil captain holt's quick eye got a glimpse of the crew; two were lashed to the rigging and one held the tiller--a short, thickset man, wearing what appeared to be a slouch hat tied over his ears by a white handkerchief. with the grounding of the vessel a cheer went up from around the cart. "now for the mortar!" "up with it on the dune, men!" shouted the captain, his voice ringing above the roar of the tempest. the cart was forced up the slope--two men at the wheels, the others straining ahead--the gun lifted out and set, polhemus ramming the charge home, captain holt sighting the piece; there came a belching sound, a flash of dull light, and a solid shot carrying a line rose in the air, made a curve like a flying rocket, and fell athwart the wreck between her forestay and jib. a cheer went up from the men about the gun. when this line was hauled in and the hawser attached to it made fast high up on the mainmast and above the raging sea, and the car run off to the wreck, the crew could be landed clear of the surf and the slam of the cord-wood. at the fall of the line the man in the slouch hat was seen to edge himself forward in an attempt to catch it. the two men in the rigging kept their hold. the men around the cart sprang for the hawser and tally-blocks to rig the buoy, when a dull cry rose from the wreck. to their horror they saw the mainmast waver, flutter for a moment, and sag over the schooner's side. the last hope of using the life-car was gone! without the elevation of the mast and with nothing but the smashed hull to make fast to, the shipwrecked men would be pounded into pulp in the attempt to drag them through the boil of wreckage. "haul in, men!" cried the captain. "no use of another shot; we can't drag 'em through that surf!" "i'll take my chances," said green, stepping forward. "let me, cap'n. i can handle 'em if they haul in the slack and make fast." "no, you can't," said the captain calmly. "you couldn't get twenty feet from shore. we got to wait till the tide cleans this wood out. it's workin' right now. they kin stand it for a while. certain death to bring 'em through that smother--that stuff'd knock the brains out of 'em fast as they dropped into it. signal to 'em to hang on, parks." an hour went by--an hour of agony to the men clinging to the grounded schooner, and of impatience to the shore crew, who were powerless. the only danger was of exhaustion to the shipwrecked men and the breaking up of the schooner. if this occurred there was nothing left but a plunge of rescuing men through the surf, the life of every man in his hand. the beach began filling up. the news of a shipwreck had spread with the rapidity of a thunder-shower. one crowd, denser in spots where the stronger men were breasting the wind, which was now happily on the wane, were moving from the village along the beach, others were stumbling on through the marshes. from the back country, along the road leading from the hospital, rattled a gig, the horse doing his utmost. in this were doctor john and jane. she had, contrary to his advice, remained at the hospital. the doctor had been awakened by the shouts of a fisherman, and had driven with all speed to the hospital to get his remedies and instruments. jane had insisted upon accompanying him, although she had been up half the night with one of the sailors rescued the week before by the crew of no. . the early morning air--it was now seven o'clock--would do her good, she pleaded, and she might be of use if any one of the poor fellows needed a woman's care. farther down toward beach haven the sand was dotted with wagons and buggies; some filled with summer boarders anxious to see the crew at work. one used as the depot omnibus contained max feilding, lucy, and half a dozen others. she had passed a sleepless night, and hearing the cries of those hurrying by had thrown a heavy cloak around her and opening wide the piazza door had caught sight of the doomed vessel fighting for its life. welcoming the incident as a relief from her own maddening thoughts, she had joined max, hoping that the excitement might divert her mind from the horror that overshadowed her. then, too, she did not want to be separated a single moment from him. since the fatal hour when jane had told her of bart's expected return max's face had haunted her. as long as he continued to look into her eyes, believing and trusting in her there was hope. he had noticed her haggard look, but she had pleaded one of her headaches, and had kept up her smiles, returning his caresses. some way would be opened; some way must be opened! while waiting for the change of wind and tide predicted by captain holt to clear away the deadly drift of the cord-wood so dangerous to the imperilled men, the wreckage from the grounded schooner began to come ashore--crates of vegetables, barrels of groceries, and boxes filled with canned goods. some of these were smashed into splinters by end-on collisions with cord-wood; others had dodged the floatage and were landed high on the beach. during the enforced idleness tod occupied himself in rolling away from the back-suck of the surf the drift that came ashore. being nearest a stranded crate he dragged it clear and stood bending over it, reading the inscription. with a start he beckoned to parks, the nearest man to him, tore the card from the wooden slat, and held it before the surfman's face. "what's this? read! that's the polly walters out there, i tell ye, and the captain's son's aboard! i've been suspicionin' it all the mornin'. that's him with the slouch hat. i knowed he warn't no sailor from the way he acted. don't say nothin' till we're sure." parks lunged forward, dodged a stick of cord-wood that drove straight at him like a battering-ram and, watching his chance, dragged a floating keg from the smother, rolled it clear of the surf, canted it on end, and took a similar card from its head. then he shouted with all his might: "it's the polly, men! it's the polly--the polly walters! o god, ain't that too bad! captain ambrose's drowned, or we'd a-seen him! that feller in the slouch hat is bart holt! gimme that line!" he was stripping off his waterproofs now ready for a plunge into the sea. with the awful words ringing in his ears captain holt made a spring from the dune and came running toward parks, who was now knotting the shot-line about his waist. "what do you say she is?" he shouted, as he flung himself to the edge of the roaring surf and strained his eyes toward the wreck. "the polly--the polly walters!" "my god! how do ye know? she ain't left amboy, i tell ye!" "she has! that's her--see them kerds! they come off that stuff behind ye. tod got one and i got t'other!" he held the bits of cardboard under the rim of the captain's sou'wester. captain holt snatched the cards from parks's hand, read them at a glance, and a dazed, horror-stricken expression crossed his face. then his eye fell upon parks knotting the shot-line about his waist. "take that off! parks, stay where ye are; don't ye move, i tell ye." as the words dropped from the captain's lips a horrified shout went up from the bystanders. the wreck, with a crunching sound, was being lifted from the sand. she rose steadily, staggered for an instant and dropped out of sight. she had broken amidships. with the recoil two ragged bunches showed above the white wash of the water. on one fragment--a splintered mast--crouched the man with the slouch hat; to the other clung the two sailors. the next instant a great roller, gathering strength as it came, threw itself full length on both fragments and swept on. only wreckage was left and one head. with a cry to the men to stand by and catch the slack, the captain ripped a line from the drum of the cart, dragged off his high boots, knotted the bight around his waist, and started on a run for the surf. before his stockinged feet could reach the edge of the foam, archie seized him around the waist and held him with a grip of steel. "you sha'n't do it, captain!" he cried, his eyes blazing. "hold him, men--i'll get him!" with the bound of a cat he landed in the middle of the floatage, dived under the logs, rose on the boiling surf, worked himself clear of the inshore wreckage, and struck out in the direction of the man clinging to the shattered mast, and who was now nearing the beach, whirled on by the inrushing seas. strong men held their breath, tears brimming their eyes. captain holt stood irresolute, dazed for the moment by archie's danger. the beach women--mrs. fogarty among them--were wringing their hands. they knew the risk better than the others. jane, at archie's plunge, had run down to the edge of the surf and stood with tight-clenched fingers, her gaze fixed on the lad's head as he breasted the breakers--her face white as death, the tears streaming down her cheeks. fear for the boy she loved, pride in his pluck and courage, agony over the result of the rescue, all swept through her as she strained her eyes seaward. lucy, max, and mrs. coates were huddled together under the lee of the dune. lucy's eyes were staring straight ahead of her; her teeth chattering with fear and cold. she had heard the shouts of parks and the captain, and knew now whose life was at stake. there was no hope left; archie would win and pull him out alive, and her end would come. the crowd watched the lad until his hand touched the mast, saw him pull himself hand over hand along its slippery surface and reach out his arms. then a cheer went up from a hundred throats, and as instantly died away in a moan of terror. behind, towering over them like a huge wall, came a wave of black water, solemn, merciless, uncrested, as if bent on deadly revenge. under its impact the shattered end of the mast rose clear of the water, tossed about as if in agony, veered suddenly with the movement of a derrick-boom, and with its living freight dashed headlong into the swirl of cord-wood. as it ploughed through the outer drift and reached the inner line of wreckage, tod, whose eyes had never left archie since his leap into the surf, made a running jump from the sand, landed on a tangle of drift, and sprang straight at the section of the mast to which archie clung. the next instant the surf rolled clear, submerging the three men. another ringing order now rose above the roar of the waters, and a chain of rescuing surfmen--the last resort--with captain nat at the head dashed into the turmoil. it was a hand-to-hand fight now with death. at the first onslaught of the battery of wreckage polhemus was knocked breathless by a blow in the stomach and rescued by the bystanders just as a log was curling over him. green was hit by a surging crate, and mulligan only saved from the crush of the cord-wood by the quickness of a fisherman. morgan, watching his chance, sprang clear of a tangle of barrels and cord-wood, dashed into the narrow gap of open water, and grappling tod as he whirled past, twisted his fingers in archie's waistband. the three were then pounced upon by a relay of fishermen led by tod's father and dragged from under the crunch and surge of the smother. both tod and morgan were unhurt and scrambled to their feet as soon as they gained the hard sand, but archie lay insensible where the men had dropped him, his body limp, his feet crumpled under him. all this time the man in the slouch hat was being swirled in the hell of wreckage, the captain meanwhile holding to the human chain with one hand and fighting with the other until he reached the half-drowned man whose grip had now slipped from the crate to which he clung. as the two were shot in toward the beach, green, who had recovered his breath, dodged the recoil, sprang straight for them, threw the captain a line, which he caught, dashed back and dragged the two high up on the beach, the captain's arm still tightly locked about the rescued man. a dozen hands were held out to relieve the captain of his burden, but he only waved them away. "i'll take care of him!" he gasped in a voice almost gone from buffeting the waves, as the body slipped from his arms to the wet sand. "git out of the way, all of you!" once on his feet, he stood for an instant to catch his breath, wrung the grime from his ears with his stiff fingers, and then shaking the water from his shoulders as a dog would after a plunge, he passed his great arms once more under the bedraggled body of the unconscious man and started up the dune toward the house of refuge, the water dripping from both their wet bodies. only once did he pause, and then to shout: "green,--mulligan! go back, some o' ye, and git archie. he's hurt bad. quick, now! and one o' ye bust in them doors. and-- polhemus, pull some coats off that crowd and a shawl or two from them women if they can spare 'em, and find doctor john, some o' ye! d'ye hear! doctor john!" a dozen coats were stripped from as many backs, a shawl of mrs. fogarty's handed to polhemus, the doors burst in and uncle isaac lunging in tumbled the garments on the floor. on these the captain laid the body of the rescued man, the slouch hat still clinging to his head. while this was being done another procession was approaching the house. tod and parks were carrying archie's unconscious form, the water dripping from his clothing. tod had his hands under the boy's armpits and parks carried his feet. behind the three walked jane, half supported by the doctor. "dead!" she moaned. "oh, no--no--no, john; it cannot be! not my archie! my brave archie!" the captain heard the tramp of the men's feet on the board floor of the runway outside and rose to his feet. he had been kneeling beside the form of the rescued man. his face was knotted with the agony he had passed through, his voice still thick and hoarse from battling with the sea. "what's that she says?" he cried, straining his ears to catch jane's words. "what's that! archie dead! no! 'tain't so, is it, doctor?" doctor john, his arm still supporting jane, shook his head gravely and pointed to his own forehead. "it's all over, captain," he said in a broken voice. "skull fractured." "hit with them logs! archie! oh, my god! and this man ain't much better off--he ain't hardly breathin'. see for yerself, doctor. here, tod, lay archie on these coats. move back that boat, men, to give 'em room, and push them stools out of the way. oh, miss jane, maybe it ain't true, maybe he'll come round! i've seen 'em this way more'n a dozen times. here, doctor let's get these wet clo'es off 'em." he dropped between the two limp, soggy bodies and began tearing open the shirt from the man's chest. jane, who had thrown herself in a passion of grief on the water-soaked floor beside archie, commenced wiping the dead boy's face with her handkerchief, smoothing the short wet curls from his forehead as she wept. the man's shirt and collar loosened, captain holt pulled the slouch hat from his head, wrenched the wet shoes loose, wrapped the cold feet in the dry shawl, and began tucking the pile of coats closer about the man's shoulders that he might rest the easier. for a moment he looked intently at the pallid face smeared with ooze and grime, and limp body that the doctor was working over, and then stepped to where tod now crouched beside his friend, the one he had loved all his life. the young surfman's strong body was shaking with the sobs he could no longer restrain. "it's rough, tod," said the captain, in a choking voice, which grew clearer as he talked on. "almighty rough on ye and on all of us. you did what you could--ye risked yer life for him, and there ain't nobody kin do more. i wouldn't send ye out again, but there's work to do. them two men of cap'n ambrose's is drowned, and they'll come ashore some'er's near the inlet, and you and parks better hunt 'em up. they live up to barnegat, ye know, and their folks'll be wantin' 'em." it was strange how calm he was. his sense of duty was now controlling him. tod had raised himself to his feet when the captain had begun to speak and stood with his wet sou'wester in his hand. "been like a brother to me," was all he said, as he brushed the tears from his eyes and went to join parks. the captain watched tod's retreating figure for a moment, and bending again over archie's corpse, stood gazing at the dead face, his hands folded across his girth--as one does when watching a body being slowly lowered into a grave. "i loved ye, boy," jane heard him say between her sobs. "i loved ye! you knowed it, boy. i hoped to tell ye so out loud so everybody could hear. now they'll never know." straightening himself up, he walked firmly to the open door about which the people pressed, held back by the line of surfmen headed by polhemus, and calmly surveyed the crowd. close to the opening, trying to press her way in to jane, his eyes fell on lucy. behind her stood max feilding. "friends," said the captain, in a low, restrained voice, every trace of his grief and excitement gone, "i've got to ask ye to git considerable way back and keep still. we got doctor john here and miss jane, and there ain't nothin' ye kin do. when there is i'll call ye. polhemus, you and green see this order is obeyed." again he hesitated, then raising his eyes over the group nearest the door, he beckoned to lucy, pushed her in ahead of him, caught the swinging doors in his hands, and shut them tight. this done, he again dropped on his knees beside the doctor and the now breathing man. chapter xxii the claw of the sea-puss with the closing of the doors the murmur of the crowd, the dull glare of the gray sky, and the thrash of the wind were shut out. the only light in the house of refuge now came from the two small windows, one above the form of the suffering man and the other behind the dead body of archie. jane's head was close to the boy's chest, her sobs coming from between her hands, held before her face. the shock of archie's death had robbed her of all her strength. lucy knelt beside her, her shoulder resting against a pile of cordage. every now and then she would steal a furtive glance around the room--at the boat, at the rafters overhead, at the stove with its pile of kindling--and a slight shudder would pass through her. she had forgotten nothing of the past, nor of the room in which she crouched. every scar and stain stood out as clear and naked as those on some long-buried wreck dug from shifting sands by a change of tide. a few feet away the doctor was stripping the wet clothes from the rescued man and piling the dry coats over him to warm him back to life. his emergency bag, handed in by polhemus through the crack of the closed doors, had been opened, a bottle selected, and some spoonfuls of brandy forced down the sufferer's throat. he saw that the sea-water had not harmed him; it was the cordwood and wreckage that had crushed the breath out of him. in confirmation he pointed to a thin streak of blood oozing from one ear. the captain nodded, and continued chafing the man's hands--working with the skill of a surfman over the water-soaked body. once he remarked in a half-whisper--so low that jane could not hear him: "i ain't sure yet, doctor. i thought it was bart when i grabbed him fust; but he looks kind o' different from what i expected to see him. if it's him he'll know me when he comes to. i ain't changed so much maybe. i'll rub his feet now," and he kept on with his work of resuscitation. lucy's straining ears had caught the captain's words of doubt, but they gave her no hope. she had recognized at the first glance the man of all others in the world she feared most. his small ears, the way the hair grew on the temples, the bend of the neck and slope from the chin to the throat. no--she had no misgivings. these features had been part of her life--had been constantly before her since the hour jane had told her of bart's expected return. her time had come; nothing could save her. he would regain consciousness, just as the captain had said, and would open those awful hollow eyes and would look at her, and then that dreadful mouth, with its thin, ashen lips, would speak to her, and she could deny nothing. trusting to her luck--something which had never failed her--she had continued in her determination to keep everything from max. now it would all come as a shock to him, and when he asked her if it was true she could only bow her head. she dared not look at archie--she could not. all her injustice to him and to jane; her abandonment of him when a baby; her neglect of him since, her selfish life of pleasure; her triumph over max--all came into review, one picture after another, like the unrolling of a chart. even while her hand was on jane's shoulder, and while comforting words fell from her lips, her mind and eyes were fixed on the face of the man whom the doctor was slowly bringing back to life. not that her sympathy was withheld from archie and jane. it was her terror that dominated her--a terror that froze her blood and clogged her veins and dulled every sensibility and emotion. she was like one lowered into a grave beside a corpse upon which every moment the earth would fall, entombing the living with the dead. the man groaned and turned his head, as if in pain. a convulsive movement of the lips and face followed, and then the eyes partly opened. lucy clutched at the coil of rope, staggered to her feet, and braced herself for the shock. he would rise now, and begin staring about, and then he would recognize her. the captain knew what was coming; he was even now planning in his mind the details of the horrible plot of which jane had told her! captain holt stooped closer and peered under the half-closed lids. "brown eyes," she heard him mutter to himself, "just 's the swede told me." she knew their color; they had looked into her own too often. doctor john felt about with his hand and drew a small package of letters from inside the man's shirt. they were tied with a string and soaked with salt water. this he handed to the captain. the captain pulled them apart and examined them carefully. "it's him," he said with a start, "it's bart! it's all plain now. here's my letter," and he held it up. "see the printing at the top--'life-saving service'? and here's some more--they're all stuck together. wait! here's one--fine writing." then his voice dropped so that only the doctor could hear: "ain't that signed 'lucy'? yes--'lucy'--and it's an old one." the doctor waved the letters away and again laid his hand on the sufferer's chest, keeping it close to his heart. the captain bent nearer. jane, who, crazed with grief, had been caressing archie's cold cheeks, lifted her head as if aware of the approach of some crisis, and turned to where the doctor knelt beside the rescued man. lucy leaned forward with straining eyes and ears. the stillness of death fell upon the small room. outside could be heard the pound and thrash of the surf and the moan of the gale; no human voice--men and women were talking in whispers. one soul had gone to god and another life hung by a thread. the doctor raised his finger. the man's face twitched convulsively, the lids opened wider, there came a short, inward gasp, and the jaw dropped. "he's dead," said the doctor, and rose to his feet. then he took his handkerchief from his pocket and laid it over the dead man's face. as the words fell from his lips lucy caught at the wall, and with an almost hysterical cry of joy threw herself into jane's arms. the captain leaned back against the life-boat and for some moments his eyes were fixed on the body of his dead son. "i ain't never loved nothin' all my life, doctor," he said, his voice choking, "that it didn't go that way." doctor john made no reply except with his eyes. silence is ofttimes more sympathetic than the spoken word. he was putting his remedies back into his bag so that he might rejoin jane. the captain continued: "all i've got is gone now--the wife, archie, and now bart. i counted on these two. bad day's work, doctor--bad day's work." then in a firm tone, "i'll open the doors now and call in the men; we got to git these two bodies up to the station, and then we'll get 'em home somehow." instantly all lucy's terror returned. an unaccountable, unreasoning panic took possession of her. all her past again rose before her. she feared the captain now more than she had bart. crazed over the loss of his son he would blurt out everything. max would hear and know--know about archie and bart and all her life! springing to her feet, maddened with an undefinable terror, she caught the captain's hand as he reached out for the fastenings of the door. "don't--don't tell them who he is! promise me you won't tell them anything! say it's a stranger! you are not sure it's he--i heard you say so!" "not say it's my own son! why?" he was entirely unconscious of what was in her mind. jane had risen to her feet at the note of agony in lucy's voice and had stepped to her side as if to protect her. the doctor stood listening in amazement to lucy's outbreak. he knew her reasons, and was appalled at her rashness. "no! don't--don't!" lucy was looking up into the captain's face now, all her terror in her eyes. "why, i can't see what good that'll do!" for the moment he thought that the excitement had turned her head. "isaac polhemus'll know him," he continued, "soon's he sets his eyes on him. and even if i was mean enough to do it, which i ain't, these letters would tell. they've got to go to the superintendent 'long with everything else found on bodies. your name's on some o' 'em and mine's on some others. we'll git 'em ag'in, but not till gov'ment see 'em." these were the letters which had haunted her! "give them to me! they're mine!" she cried, seizing the captain's fingers and trying to twist the letters from his grasp. a frown gathered on the captain's brow and his voice had an ugly ring in it: "but i tell ye the superintendent's got to have 'em for a while. that's regulations, and that's what we carry out. they ain't goin' to be lost--you'll git 'em ag'in." "he sha'n't have them, i tell you!" her voice rang now with something of her old imperious tone. "nobody shall have them. they're mine--not yours--nor his. give them--" "and break my oath!" interrupted the captain. for the first time he realized what her outburst meant and what inspired it. "what difference does that make in a matter like this? give them to me. you dare not keep them," she cried, tightening her fingers in the effort to wrench the letters from his hand. "sister--doctor--speak to him! make him give them to me--i will have them!" the captain brushed aside her hand as easily as a child would brush aside a flower. his lips were tight shut, his eyes flashing. "you want me to lie to the department?" "yes!" she was beside herself now with fear and rage. "i don't care who you lie to! you brute--you coward-- i want them! i will have them!" again she made a spring for the letters. "see here, you she-devil. look at me!"--the words came in cold, cutting tones. "you're the only thing livin', or dead, that ever dared ask nathaniel holt to do a thing like that. and you think i'd do it to oblige ye? you're rotten as punk--that's what ye are! rotten from yer keel to yer top-gallant! and allus have been since i knowed ye!" jane started forward and faced the now enraged man. "you must not, captain--you shall not speak to my sister that way!" she commanded. the doctor stopped between them: "you forget that she is a woman. i forbid you to--" "i will, i tell ye, doctor! it's true, and you know it." the captain's voice now dominated the room. "that's no reason why you should abuse her. you're too much of a man to act as you do." "it's because i'm a man that i do act this way. she's done nothin' but bring trouble to this town ever since she landed in it from school nigh twenty year ago. druv out that dead boy of mine lyin' there, and made a tramp of him; throwed archie off on miss jane; lied to the man who married her, and been livin' a lie ever since. and now she wants me to break my oath! damn her--" the doctor laid his hand over the captain's mouth. "stop! and i mean it!" his own calm eyes were flashing now. "this is not the place for talk of this kind. we are in the presence of death, and--" the captain caught the doctor's wrist and held it like a vice. "i won't stop. i'll have it out--i've lived all the lies i'm goin' to live! i told you all this fifteen year ago when i thought bart was dead, and you wanted me to keep shut, and i did, and you did, too, and you ain't never opened your mouth since. that's because you're a man--all four square sides of ye. you didn't want to hurt miss jane, and no more did i. that's why i passed archie there in the street; that's why i turned round and looked after him when i couldn't see sometimes for the tears in my eyes; and all to save that thing there that ain't worth savin'! by god, when i think of it i want to tear my tongue out for keepin' still as long as i have!" lucy, who had shrunk back against the wall, now raised her head: "coward! coward!" she muttered. the captain turned and faced her, his eyes blazing, his rage uncontrollable: "yes, you're a thing, i tell ye!--and i'll say it ag'in. i used to think it was bart's fault. now i know it warn't. it was yours. you tricked him, damn ye! do ye hear? ye tricked him with yer lies and yer ways. now they're over--there'll be no more lies--not while i live! i'm goin' to strip ye to bare poles so's folks 'round here kin see. git out of my way--all of ye! out, i tell ye!" the doctor had stepped in front of the infuriated man, his back to the closed door, his open palm upraised. "i will not, and you shall not!" he cried. "what you are about do to is ruin--for lucy, for jane, and for little ellen. you cannot--you shall not put such a stain upon that child. you love her, you--" "yes--too well to let that woman touch her ag'in if i kin help it!" the fury of the merciless sea was in him now--the roar and pound of the surf in his voice. "she'll be a curse to the child all her days; she'll go back on her when she's a mind to just as she did on archie. there ain't a dog that runs the streets that would 'a' done that. she didn't keer then, and she don't keer now, with him a-lyin' dead there. she ain't looked at him once nor shed a tear. it's too late. all hell can't stop me! out of my way, i tell ye, doctor, or i'll hurt ye!" with a wrench he swung back the doors and flung himself into the light. "come in, men! isaac, green--all of ye--and you over there! i got something to say, and i don't want ye to miss a word of it! you, too, mr. feilding, and that lady next ye--and everybody else that kin hear! "that's my son, barton holt, lyin' there dead! the one i druv out o' here nigh twenty year ago. it warn't for playin' cards, but on account of a woman; and there she stands--lucy cobden! that dead boy beside him is their child--my own grandson, archie! out of respect to the best woman that ever lived, miss jane cobden, i've kep' still. if anybody ain't satisfied all they got to do is to look over these letters. that's all!" lucy, with a wild, despairing look at max, had sunk to the floor and lay cowering beneath the lifeboat, her face hidden in the folds of her cloak. jane had shrunk back behind one of the big folding doors and stood concealed from the gaze of the astonished crowd, many of whom were pressing into the entrance. her head was on the doctor's shoulder, her fingers had tight hold of his sleeve. doctor john's arms were about her frail figure, his lips close to her cheek. "don't, dear--don't," he said softly. "you have nothing to reproach yourself with. your life has been one long sacrifice." "oh, but archie, john! think of my boy being gone! oh, i loved him so, john!" "you made a man of him, jane. all he was he owed to you." he was holding her to him--comforting her as a father would a child. "and my poor lucy," jane moaned on, "and the awful, awful disgrace!" her face was still hidden in his shoulder, her frame shaking with the agony of her grief, the words coming slowly, as if wrung one by one out of her breaking heart. "you did your duty, dear--all of it." his lips were close to her ear. no one else heard. "and you knew it all these years, john--and you did not tell me." "it was your secret, dear; not mine." "yes, i know--but i have been so blind--so foolish. i have hurt you so often, and you have been so true through it all. o john, please--please forgive me! my heart has been so sore at times--i have suffered so!" then, with a quick lifting of her head, as if the thought alarmed her, she asked in sudden haste: "and you love me, john, just the same? say you love me, john!" he gathered her closer, and his lips touched her cheek: "i never remember, my darling, when i did not love you. have you ever doubted me?" "no, john, no! never, never! kiss me again, my beloved. you are all i have in the world!" the end and revised by thomas berger and joseph e. loewenstein, m.d. bleak house by charles dickens contents preface i. in chancery ii. in fashion iii. a progress iv. telescopic philanthropy v. a morning adventure vi. quite at home vii. the ghost's walk viii. covering a multitude of sins ix. signs and tokens x. the law-writer xi. our dear brother xii. on the watch xiii. esther's narrative xiv. deportment xv. bell yard xvi. tom-all-alone's xvii. esther's narrative xviii. lady dedlock xix. moving on xx. a new lodger xxi. the smallweed family xxii. mr. bucket xxiii. esther's narrative xxiv. an appeal case xxv. mrs. snagsby sees it all xxvi. sharpshooters xxvii. more old soldiers than one xxviii. the ironmaster xxix. the young man xxx. esther's narrative xxxi. nurse and patient xxxii. the appointed time xxxiii. interlopers xxxiv. a turn of the screw xxxv. esther's narrative xxxvi. chesney wold xxxvii. jarndyce and jarndyce xxxviii. a struggle xxxix. attorney and client xl. national and domestic xli. in mr. tulkinghorn's room xlii. in mr. tulkinghorn's chambers xliii. esther's narrative xliv. the letter and the answer xlv. in trust xlvi. stop him! xlvii. jo's will xlviii. closing in xlix. dutiful friendship l. esther's narrative li. enlightened lii. obstinacy liii. the track liv. springing a mine lv. flight lvi. pursuit lvii. esther's narrative lviii. a wintry day and night lix. esther's narrative lx. perspective lxi. a discovery lxii. another discovery lxiii. steel and iron lxiv. esther's narrative lxv. beginning the world lxvi. down in lincolnshire lxvii. the close of esther's narrative preface a chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under any suspicions of lunacy, that the court of chancery, though the shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point i thought the judge's eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate. there had been, he admitted, a trivial blemish or so in its rate of progress, but this was exaggerated and had been entirely owing to the "parsimony of the public," which guilty public, it appeared, had been until lately bent in the most determined manner on by no means enlarging the number of chancery judges appointed--i believe by richard the second, but any other king will do as well. this seemed to me too profound a joke to be inserted in the body of this book or i should have restored it to conversation kenge or to mr. vholes, with one or other of whom i think it must have originated. in such mouths i might have coupled it with an apt quotation from one of shakespeare's sonnets: "my nature is subdued to what it works in, like the dyer's hand: pity me, then, and wish i were renewed!" but as it is wholesome that the parsimonious public should know what has been doing, and still is doing, in this connexion, i mention here that everything set forth in these pages concerning the court of chancery is substantially true, and within the truth. the case of gridley is in no essential altered from one of actual occurrence, made public by a disinterested person who was professionally acquainted with the whole of the monstrous wrong from beginning to end. at the present moment (august, ) there is a suit before the court which was commenced nearly twenty years ago, in which from thirty to forty counsel have been known to appear at one time, in which costs have been incurred to the amount of seventy thousand pounds, which is a friendly suit, and which is (i am assured) no nearer to its termination now than when it was begun. there is another well-known suit in chancery, not yet decided, which was commenced before the close of the last century and in which more than double the amount of seventy thousand pounds has been swallowed up in costs. if i wanted other authorities for jarndyce and jarndyce, i could rain them on these pages, to the shame of--a parsimonious public. there is only one other point on which i offer a word of remark. the possibility of what is called spontaneous combustion has been denied since the death of mr. krook; and my good friend mr. lewes (quite mistaken, as he soon found, in supposing the thing to have been abandoned by all authorities) published some ingenious letters to me at the time when that event was chronicled, arguing that spontaneous combustion could not possibly be. i have no need to observe that i do not wilfully or negligently mislead my readers and that before i wrote that description i took pains to investigate the subject. there are about thirty cases on record, of which the most famous, that of the countess cornelia de baudi cesenate, was minutely investigated and described by giuseppe bianchini, a prebendary of verona, otherwise distinguished in letters, who published an account of it at verona in , which he afterwards republished at rome. the appearances, beyond all rational doubt, observed in that case are the appearances observed in mr. krook's case. the next most famous instance happened at rheims six years earlier, and the historian in that case is le cat, one of the most renowned surgeons produced by france. the subject was a woman, whose husband was ignorantly convicted of having murdered her; but on solemn appeal to a higher court, he was acquitted because it was shown upon the evidence that she had died the death of which this name of spontaneous combustion is given. i do not think it necessary to add to these notable facts, and that general reference to the authorities which will be found at page , vol. ii.,* the recorded opinions and experiences of distinguished medical professors, french, english, and scotch, in more modern days, contenting myself with observing that i shall not abandon the facts until there shall have been a considerable spontaneous combustion of the testimony on which human occurrences are usually received.** in bleak house i have purposely dwelt upon the romantic side of familiar things. *transcriber's note. this referred to a specific page in the printed book. in this project gutenberg edition the pertinent information is in chapter xxx, paragraph . ** another case, very clearly described by a dentist, occurred at the town of columbus, in the united states of america, quite recently. the subject was a german who kept a liquor-shop and was an inveterate drunkard. chapter i in chancery london. michaelmas term lately over, and the lord chancellor sitting in lincoln's inn hall. implacable november weather. as much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up holborn hill. smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes--gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. dogs, undistinguishable in mire. horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest. fog everywhere. fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. fog on the essex marshes, fog on the kentish heights. fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. fog in the eyes and throats of ancient greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little 'prentice boy on deck. chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds. gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. most of the shops lighted two hours before their time--as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look. the raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, temple bar. and hard by temple bar, in lincoln's inn hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the lord high chancellor in his high court of chancery. never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this high court of chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds this day in the sight of heaven and earth. on such an afternoon, if ever, the lord high chancellor ought to be sitting here--as here he is--with a foggy glory round his head, softly fenced in with crimson cloth and curtains, addressed by a large advocate with great whiskers, a little voice, and an interminable brief, and outwardly directing his contemplation to the lantern in the roof, where he can see nothing but fog. on such an afternoon some score of members of the high court of chancery bar ought to be--as here they are--mistily engaged in one of the ten thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up on slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running their goat-hair and horsehair warded heads against walls of words and making a pretence of equity with serious faces, as players might. on such an afternoon the various solicitors in the cause, some two or three of whom have inherited it from their fathers, who made a fortune by it, ought to be--as are they not?--ranged in a line, in a long matted well (but you might look in vain for truth at the bottom of it) between the registrar's red table and the silk gowns, with bills, cross-bills, answers, rejoinders, injunctions, affidavits, issues, references to masters, masters' reports, mountains of costly nonsense, piled before them. well may the court be dim, with wasting candles here and there; well may the fog hang heavy in it, as if it would never get out; well may the stained-glass windows lose their colour and admit no light of day into the place; well may the uninitiated from the streets, who peep in through the glass panes in the door, be deterred from entrance by its owlish aspect and by the drawl, languidly echoing to the roof from the padded dais where the lord high chancellor looks into the lantern that has no light in it and where the attendant wigs are all stuck in a fog-bank! this is the court of chancery, which has its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire, which has its worn-out lunatic in every madhouse and its dead in every churchyard, which has its ruined suitor with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress borrowing and begging through the round of every man's acquaintance, which gives to monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right, which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope, so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart, that there is not an honourable man among its practitioners who would not give--who does not often give--the warning, "suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come here!" who happen to be in the lord chancellor's court this murky afternoon besides the lord chancellor, the counsel in the cause, two or three counsel who are never in any cause, and the well of solicitors before mentioned? there is the registrar below the judge, in wig and gown; and there are two or three maces, or petty-bags, or privy purses, or whatever they may be, in legal court suits. these are all yawning, for no crumb of amusement ever falls from jarndyce and jarndyce (the cause in hand), which was squeezed dry years upon years ago. the short-hand writers, the reporters of the court, and the reporters of the newspapers invariably decamp with the rest of the regulars when jarndyce and jarndyce comes on. their places are a blank. standing on a seat at the side of the hall, the better to peer into the curtained sanctuary, is a little mad old woman in a squeezed bonnet who is always in court, from its sitting to its rising, and always expecting some incomprehensible judgment to be given in her favour. some say she really is, or was, a party to a suit, but no one knows for certain because no one cares. she carries some small litter in a reticule which she calls her documents, principally consisting of paper matches and dry lavender. a sallow prisoner has come up, in custody, for the half-dozenth time to make a personal application "to purge himself of his contempt," which, being a solitary surviving executor who has fallen into a state of conglomeration about accounts of which it is not pretended that he had ever any knowledge, he is not at all likely ever to do. in the meantime his prospects in life are ended. another ruined suitor, who periodically appears from shropshire and breaks out into efforts to address the chancellor at the close of the day's business and who can by no means be made to understand that the chancellor is legally ignorant of his existence after making it desolate for a quarter of a century, plants himself in a good place and keeps an eye on the judge, ready to call out "my lord!" in a voice of sonorous complaint on the instant of his rising. a few lawyers' clerks and others who know this suitor by sight linger on the chance of his furnishing some fun and enlivening the dismal weather a little. jarndyce and jarndyce drones on. this scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. the parties to it understand it least, but it has been observed that no two chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in jarndyce and jarndyce without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit. the little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new rocking-horse when jarndyce and jarndyce should be settled has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of chancellors has come in and gone out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality; there are not three jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps since old tom jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-house in chancery lane; but jarndyce and jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless. jarndyce and jarndyce has passed into a joke. that is the only good that has ever come of it. it has been death to many, but it is a joke in the profession. every master in chancery has had a reference out of it. every chancellor was "in it," for somebody or other, when he was counsel at the bar. good things have been said about it by blue-nosed, bulbous-shoed old benchers in select port-wine committee after dinner in hall. articled clerks have been in the habit of fleshing their legal wit upon it. the last lord chancellor handled it neatly, when, correcting mr. blowers, the eminent silk gown who said that such a thing might happen when the sky rained potatoes, he observed, "or when we get through jarndyce and jarndyce, mr. blowers"--a pleasantry that particularly tickled the maces, bags, and purses. how many people out of the suit jarndyce and jarndyce has stretched forth its unwholesome hand to spoil and corrupt would be a very wide question. from the master upon whose impaling files reams of dusty warrants in jarndyce and jarndyce have grimly writhed into many shapes, down to the copying-clerk in the six clerks' office who has copied his tens of thousands of chancery folio-pages under that eternal heading, no man's nature has been made better by it. in trickery, evasion, procrastination, spoliation, botheration, under false pretences of all sorts, there are influences that can never come to good. the very solicitors' boys who have kept the wretched suitors at bay, by protesting time out of mind that mr. chizzle, mizzle, or otherwise was particularly engaged and had appointments until dinner, may have got an extra moral twist and shuffle into themselves out of jarndyce and jarndyce. the receiver in the cause has acquired a goodly sum of money by it but has acquired too a distrust of his own mother and a contempt for his own kind. chizzle, mizzle, and otherwise have lapsed into a habit of vaguely promising themselves that they will look into that outstanding little matter and see what can be done for drizzle--who was not well used--when jarndyce and jarndyce shall be got out of the office. shirking and sharking in all their many varieties have been sown broadcast by the ill-fated cause; and even those who have contemplated its history from the outermost circle of such evil have been insensibly tempted into a loose way of letting bad things alone to take their own bad course, and a loose belief that if the world go wrong it was in some off-hand manner never meant to go right. thus, in the midst of the mud and at the heart of the fog, sits the lord high chancellor in his high court of chancery. "mr. tangle," says the lord high chancellor, latterly something restless under the eloquence of that learned gentleman. "mlud," says mr. tangle. mr. tangle knows more of jarndyce and jarndyce than anybody. he is famous for it--supposed never to have read anything else since he left school. "have you nearly concluded your argument?" "mlud, no--variety of points--feel it my duty tsubmit--ludship," is the reply that slides out of mr. tangle. "several members of the bar are still to be heard, i believe?" says the chancellor with a slight smile. eighteen of mr. tangle's learned friends, each armed with a little summary of eighteen hundred sheets, bob up like eighteen hammers in a pianoforte, make eighteen bows, and drop into their eighteen places of obscurity. "we will proceed with the hearing on wednesday fortnight," says the chancellor. for the question at issue is only a question of costs, a mere bud on the forest tree of the parent suit, and really will come to a settlement one of these days. the chancellor rises; the bar rises; the prisoner is brought forward in a hurry; the man from shropshire cries, "my lord!" maces, bags, and purses indignantly proclaim silence and frown at the man from shropshire. "in reference," proceeds the chancellor, still on jarndyce and jarndyce, "to the young girl--" "begludship's pardon--boy," says mr. tangle prematurely. "in reference," proceeds the chancellor with extra distinctness, "to the young girl and boy, the two young people"--mr. tangle crushed--"whom i directed to be in attendance to-day and who are now in my private room, i will see them and satisfy myself as to the expediency of making the order for their residing with their uncle." mr. tangle on his legs again. "begludship's pardon--dead." "with their"--chancellor looking through his double eye-glass at the papers on his desk--"grandfather." "begludship's pardon--victim of rash action--brains." suddenly a very little counsel with a terrific bass voice arises, fully inflated, in the back settlements of the fog, and says, "will your lordship allow me? i appear for him. he is a cousin, several times removed. i am not at the moment prepared to inform the court in what exact remove he is a cousin, but he is a cousin." leaving this address (delivered like a sepulchral message) ringing in the rafters of the roof, the very little counsel drops, and the fog knows him no more. everybody looks for him. nobody can see him. "i will speak with both the young people," says the chancellor anew, "and satisfy myself on the subject of their residing with their cousin. i will mention the matter to-morrow morning when i take my seat." the chancellor is about to bow to the bar when the prisoner is presented. nothing can possibly come of the prisoner's conglomeration but his being sent back to prison, which is soon done. the man from shropshire ventures another remonstrative "my lord!" but the chancellor, being aware of him, has dexterously vanished. everybody else quickly vanishes too. a battery of blue bags is loaded with heavy charges of papers and carried off by clerks; the little mad old woman marches off with her documents; the empty court is locked up. if all the injustice it has committed and all the misery it has caused could only be locked up with it, and the whole burnt away in a great funeral pyre--why so much the better for other parties than the parties in jarndyce and jarndyce! chapter ii in fashion it is but a glimpse of the world of fashion that we want on this same miry afternoon. it is not so unlike the court of chancery but that we may pass from the one scene to the other, as the crow flies. both the world of fashion and the court of chancery are things of precedent and usage: oversleeping rip van winkles who have played at strange games through a deal of thundery weather; sleeping beauties whom the knight will wake one day, when all the stopped spits in the kitchen shall begin to turn prodigiously! it is not a large world. relatively even to this world of ours, which has its limits too (as your highness shall find when you have made the tour of it and are come to the brink of the void beyond), it is a very little speck. there is much good in it; there are many good and true people in it; it has its appointed place. but the evil of it is that it is a world wrapped up in too much jeweller's cotton and fine wool, and cannot hear the rushing of the larger worlds, and cannot see them as they circle round the sun. it is a deadened world, and its growth is sometimes unhealthy for want of air. my lady dedlock has returned to her house in town for a few days previous to her departure for paris, where her ladyship intends to stay some weeks, after which her movements are uncertain. the fashionable intelligence says so for the comfort of the parisians, and it knows all fashionable things. to know things otherwise were to be unfashionable. my lady dedlock has been down at what she calls, in familiar conversation, her "place" in lincolnshire. the waters are out in lincolnshire. an arch of the bridge in the park has been sapped and sopped away. the adjacent low-lying ground for half a mile in breadth is a stagnant river with melancholy trees for islands in it and a surface punctured all over, all day long, with falling rain. my lady dedlock's place has been extremely dreary. the weather for many a day and night has been so wet that the trees seem wet through, and the soft loppings and prunings of the woodman's axe can make no crash or crackle as they fall. the deer, looking soaked, leave quagmires where they pass. the shot of a rifle loses its sharpness in the moist air, and its smoke moves in a tardy little cloud towards the green rise, coppice-topped, that makes a background for the falling rain. the view from my lady dedlock's own windows is alternately a lead-coloured view and a view in indian ink. the vases on the stone terrace in the foreground catch the rain all day; and the heavy drops fall--drip, drip, drip--upon the broad flagged pavement, called from old time the ghost's walk, all night. on sundays the little church in the park is mouldy; the oaken pulpit breaks out into a cold sweat; and there is a general smell and taste as of the ancient dedlocks in their graves. my lady dedlock (who is childless), looking out in the early twilight from her boudoir at a keeper's lodge and seeing the light of a fire upon the latticed panes, and smoke rising from the chimney, and a child, chased by a woman, running out into the rain to meet the shining figure of a wrapped-up man coming through the gate, has been put quite out of temper. my lady dedlock says she has been "bored to death." therefore my lady dedlock has come away from the place in lincolnshire and has left it to the rain, and the crows, and the rabbits, and the deer, and the partridges and pheasants. the pictures of the dedlocks past and gone have seemed to vanish into the damp walls in mere lowness of spirits, as the housekeeper has passed along the old rooms shutting up the shutters. and when they will next come forth again, the fashionable intelligence--which, like the fiend, is omniscient of the past and present, but not the future--cannot yet undertake to say. sir leicester dedlock is only a baronet, but there is no mightier baronet than he. his family is as old as the hills, and infinitely more respectable. he has a general opinion that the world might get on without hills but would be done up without dedlocks. he would on the whole admit nature to be a good idea (a little low, perhaps, when not enclosed with a park-fence), but an idea dependent for its execution on your great county families. he is a gentleman of strict conscience, disdainful of all littleness and meanness and ready on the shortest notice to die any death you may please to mention rather than give occasion for the least impeachment of his integrity. he is an honourable, obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely prejudiced, perfectly unreasonable man. sir leicester is twenty years, full measure, older than my lady. he will never see sixty-five again, nor perhaps sixty-six, nor yet sixty-seven. he has a twist of the gout now and then and walks a little stiffly. he is of a worthy presence, with his light-grey hair and whiskers, his fine shirt-frill, his pure-white waistcoat, and his blue coat with bright buttons always buttoned. he is ceremonious, stately, most polite on every occasion to my lady, and holds her personal attractions in the highest estimation. his gallantry to my lady, which has never changed since he courted her, is the one little touch of romantic fancy in him. indeed, he married her for love. a whisper still goes about that she had not even family; howbeit, sir leicester had so much family that perhaps he had enough and could dispense with any more. but she had beauty, pride, ambition, insolent resolve, and sense enough to portion out a legion of fine ladies. wealth and station, added to these, soon floated her upward, and for years now my lady dedlock has been at the centre of the fashionable intelligence and at the top of the fashionable tree. how alexander wept when he had no more worlds to conquer, everybody knows--or has some reason to know by this time, the matter having been rather frequently mentioned. my lady dedlock, having conquered her world, fell not into the melting, but rather into the freezing, mood. an exhausted composure, a worn-out placidity, an equanimity of fatigue not to be ruffled by interest or satisfaction, are the trophies of her victory. she is perfectly well-bred. if she could be translated to heaven to-morrow, she might be expected to ascend without any rapture. she has beauty still, and if it be not in its heyday, it is not yet in its autumn. she has a fine face--originally of a character that would be rather called very pretty than handsome, but improved into classicality by the acquired expression of her fashionable state. her figure is elegant and has the effect of being tall. not that she is so, but that "the most is made," as the honourable bob stables has frequently asserted upon oath, "of all her points." the same authority observes that she is perfectly got up and remarks in commendation of her hair especially that she is the best-groomed woman in the whole stud. with all her perfections on her head, my lady dedlock has come up from her place in lincolnshire (hotly pursued by the fashionable intelligence) to pass a few days at her house in town previous to her departure for paris, where her ladyship intends to stay some weeks, after which her movements are uncertain. and at her house in town, upon this muddy, murky afternoon, presents himself an old-fashioned old gentleman, attorney-at-law and eke solicitor of the high court of chancery, who has the honour of acting as legal adviser of the dedlocks and has as many cast-iron boxes in his office with that name outside as if the present baronet were the coin of the conjuror's trick and were constantly being juggled through the whole set. across the hall, and up the stairs, and along the passages, and through the rooms, which are very brilliant in the season and very dismal out of it--fairy-land to visit, but a desert to live in--the old gentleman is conducted by a mercury in powder to my lady's presence. the old gentleman is rusty to look at, but is reputed to have made good thrift out of aristocratic marriage settlements and aristocratic wills, and to be very rich. he is surrounded by a mysterious halo of family confidences, of which he is known to be the silent depository. there are noble mausoleums rooted for centuries in retired glades of parks among the growing timber and the fern, which perhaps hold fewer noble secrets than walk abroad among men, shut up in the breast of mr. tulkinghorn. he is of what is called the old school--a phrase generally meaning any school that seems never to have been young--and wears knee-breeches tied with ribbons, and gaiters or stockings. one peculiarity of his black clothes and of his black stockings, be they silk or worsted, is that they never shine. mute, close, irresponsive to any glancing light, his dress is like himself. he never converses when not professionally consulted. he is found sometimes, speechless but quite at home, at corners of dinner-tables in great country houses and near doors of drawing-rooms, concerning which the fashionable intelligence is eloquent, where everybody knows him and where half the peerage stops to say "how do you do, mr. tulkinghorn?" he receives these salutations with gravity and buries them along with the rest of his knowledge. sir leicester dedlock is with my lady and is happy to see mr. tulkinghorn. there is an air of prescription about him which is always agreeable to sir leicester; he receives it as a kind of tribute. he likes mr. tulkinghorn's dress; there is a kind of tribute in that too. it is eminently respectable, and likewise, in a general way, retainer-like. it expresses, as it were, the steward of the legal mysteries, the butler of the legal cellar, of the dedlocks. has mr. tulkinghorn any idea of this himself? it may be so, or it may not, but there is this remarkable circumstance to be noted in everything associated with my lady dedlock as one of a class--as one of the leaders and representatives of her little world. she supposes herself to be an inscrutable being, quite out of the reach and ken of ordinary mortals--seeing herself in her glass, where indeed she looks so. yet every dim little star revolving about her, from her maid to the manager of the italian opera, knows her weaknesses, prejudices, follies, haughtinesses, and caprices and lives upon as accurate a calculation and as nice a measure of her moral nature as her dressmaker takes of her physical proportions. is a new dress, a new custom, a new singer, a new dancer, a new form of jewellery, a new dwarf or giant, a new chapel, a new anything, to be set up? there are deferential people in a dozen callings whom my lady dedlock suspects of nothing but prostration before her, who can tell you how to manage her as if she were a baby, who do nothing but nurse her all their lives, who, humbly affecting to follow with profound subservience, lead her and her whole troop after them; who, in hooking one, hook all and bear them off as lemuel gulliver bore away the stately fleet of the majestic lilliput. "if you want to address our people, sir," say blaze and sparkle, the jewellers--meaning by our people lady dedlock and the rest--"you must remember that you are not dealing with the general public; you must hit our people in their weakest place, and their weakest place is such a place." "to make this article go down, gentlemen," say sheen and gloss, the mercers, to their friends the manufacturers, "you must come to us, because we know where to have the fashionable people, and we can make it fashionable." "if you want to get this print upon the tables of my high connexion, sir," says mr. sladdery, the librarian, "or if you want to get this dwarf or giant into the houses of my high connexion, sir, or if you want to secure to this entertainment the patronage of my high connexion, sir, you must leave it, if you please, to me, for i have been accustomed to study the leaders of my high connexion, sir, and i may tell you without vanity that i can turn them round my finger"--in which mr. sladdery, who is an honest man, does not exaggerate at all. therefore, while mr. tulkinghorn may not know what is passing in the dedlock mind at present, it is very possible that he may. "my lady's cause has been again before the chancellor, has it, mr. tulkinghorn?" says sir leicester, giving him his hand. "yes. it has been on again to-day," mr. tulkinghorn replies, making one of his quiet bows to my lady, who is on a sofa near the fire, shading her face with a hand-screen. "it would be useless to ask," says my lady with the dreariness of the place in lincolnshire still upon her, "whether anything has been done." "nothing that you would call anything has been done to-day," replies mr. tulkinghorn. "nor ever will be," says my lady. sir leicester has no objection to an interminable chancery suit. it is a slow, expensive, british, constitutional kind of thing. to be sure, he has not a vital interest in the suit in question, her part in which was the only property my lady brought him; and he has a shadowy impression that for his name--the name of dedlock--to be in a cause, and not in the title of that cause, is a most ridiculous accident. but he regards the court of chancery, even if it should involve an occasional delay of justice and a trifling amount of confusion, as a something devised in conjunction with a variety of other somethings by the perfection of human wisdom for the eternal settlement (humanly speaking) of everything. and he is upon the whole of a fixed opinion that to give the sanction of his countenance to any complaints respecting it would be to encourage some person in the lower classes to rise up somewhere--like wat tyler. "as a few fresh affidavits have been put upon the file," says mr. tulkinghorn, "and as they are short, and as i proceed upon the troublesome principle of begging leave to possess my clients with any new proceedings in a cause"--cautious man mr. tulkinghorn, taking no more responsibility than necessary--"and further, as i see you are going to paris, i have brought them in my pocket." (sir leicester was going to paris too, by the by, but the delight of the fashionable intelligence was in his lady.) mr. tulkinghorn takes out his papers, asks permission to place them on a golden talisman of a table at my lady's elbow, puts on his spectacles, and begins to read by the light of a shaded lamp. "'in chancery. between john jarndyce--'" my lady interrupts, requesting him to miss as many of the formal horrors as he can. mr. tulkinghorn glances over his spectacles and begins again lower down. my lady carelessly and scornfully abstracts her attention. sir leicester in a great chair looks at the file and appears to have a stately liking for the legal repetitions and prolixities as ranging among the national bulwarks. it happens that the fire is hot where my lady sits and that the hand-screen is more beautiful than useful, being priceless but small. my lady, changing her position, sees the papers on the table--looks at them nearer--looks at them nearer still--asks impulsively, "who copied that?" mr. tulkinghorn stops short, surprised by my lady's animation and her unusual tone. "is it what you people call law-hand?" she asks, looking full at him in her careless way again and toying with her screen. "not quite. probably"--mr. tulkinghorn examines it as he speaks--"the legal character which it has was acquired after the original hand was formed. why do you ask?" "anything to vary this detestable monotony. oh, go on, do!" mr. tulkinghorn reads again. the heat is greater; my lady screens her face. sir leicester dozes, starts up suddenly, and cries, "eh? what do you say?" "i say i am afraid," says mr. tulkinghorn, who had risen hastily, "that lady dedlock is ill." "faint," my lady murmurs with white lips, "only that; but it is like the faintness of death. don't speak to me. ring, and take me to my room!" mr. tulkinghorn retires into another chamber; bells ring, feet shuffle and patter, silence ensues. mercury at last begs mr. tulkinghorn to return. "better now," quoth sir leicester, motioning the lawyer to sit down and read to him alone. "i have been quite alarmed. i never knew my lady swoon before. but the weather is extremely trying, and she really has been bored to death down at our place in lincolnshire." chapter iii a progress i have a great deal of difficulty in beginning to write my portion of these pages, for i know i am not clever. i always knew that. i can remember, when i was a very little girl indeed, i used to say to my doll when we were alone together, "now, dolly, i am not clever, you know very well, and you must be patient with me, like a dear!" and so she used to sit propped up in a great arm-chair, with her beautiful complexion and rosy lips, staring at me--or not so much at me, i think, as at nothing--while i busily stitched away and told her every one of my secrets. my dear old doll! i was such a shy little thing that i seldom dared to open my lips, and never dared to open my heart, to anybody else. it almost makes me cry to think what a relief it used to be to me when i came home from school of a day to run upstairs to my room and say, "oh, you dear faithful dolly, i knew you would be expecting me!" and then to sit down on the floor, leaning on the elbow of her great chair, and tell her all i had noticed since we parted. i had always rather a noticing way--not a quick way, oh, no!--a silent way of noticing what passed before me and thinking i should like to understand it better. i have not by any means a quick understanding. when i love a person very tenderly indeed, it seems to brighten. but even that may be my vanity. i was brought up, from my earliest remembrance--like some of the princesses in the fairy stories, only i was not charming--by my godmother. at least, i only knew her as such. she was a good, good woman! she went to church three times every sunday, and to morning prayers on wednesdays and fridays, and to lectures whenever there were lectures; and never missed. she was handsome; and if she had ever smiled, would have been (i used to think) like an angel--but she never smiled. she was always grave and strict. she was so very good herself, i thought, that the badness of other people made her frown all her life. i felt so different from her, even making every allowance for the differences between a child and a woman; i felt so poor, so trifling, and so far off that i never could be unrestrained with her--no, could never even love her as i wished. it made me very sorry to consider how good she was and how unworthy of her i was, and i used ardently to hope that i might have a better heart; and i talked it over very often with the dear old doll, but i never loved my godmother as i ought to have loved her and as i felt i must have loved her if i had been a better girl. this made me, i dare say, more timid and retiring than i naturally was and cast me upon dolly as the only friend with whom i felt at ease. but something happened when i was still quite a little thing that helped it very much. i had never heard my mama spoken of. i had never heard of my papa either, but i felt more interested about my mama. i had never worn a black frock, that i could recollect. i had never been shown my mama's grave. i had never been told where it was. yet i had never been taught to pray for any relation but my godmother. i had more than once approached this subject of my thoughts with mrs. rachael, our only servant, who took my light away when i was in bed (another very good woman, but austere to me), and she had only said, "esther, good night!" and gone away and left me. although there were seven girls at the neighbouring school where i was a day boarder, and although they called me little esther summerson, i knew none of them at home. all of them were older than i, to be sure (i was the youngest there by a good deal), but there seemed to be some other separation between us besides that, and besides their being far more clever than i was and knowing much more than i did. one of them in the first week of my going to the school (i remember it very well) invited me home to a little party, to my great joy. but my godmother wrote a stiff letter declining for me, and i never went. i never went out at all. it was my birthday. there were holidays at school on other birthdays--none on mine. there were rejoicings at home on other birthdays, as i knew from what i heard the girls relate to one another--there were none on mine. my birthday was the most melancholy day at home in the whole year. i have mentioned that unless my vanity should deceive me (as i know it may, for i may be very vain without suspecting it, though indeed i don't), my comprehension is quickened when my affection is. my disposition is very affectionate, and perhaps i might still feel such a wound if such a wound could be received more than once with the quickness of that birthday. dinner was over, and my godmother and i were sitting at the table before the fire. the clock ticked, the fire clicked; not another sound had been heard in the room or in the house for i don't know how long. i happened to look timidly up from my stitching, across the table at my godmother, and i saw in her face, looking gloomily at me, "it would have been far better, little esther, that you had had no birthday, that you had never been born!" i broke out crying and sobbing, and i said, "oh, dear godmother, tell me, pray do tell me, did mama die on my birthday?" "no," she returned. "ask me no more, child!" "oh, do pray tell me something of her. do now, at last, dear godmother, if you please! what did i do to her? how did i lose her? why am i so different from other children, and why is it my fault, dear godmother? no, no, no, don't go away. oh, speak to me!" i was in a kind of fright beyond my grief, and i caught hold of her dress and was kneeling to her. she had been saying all the while, "let me go!" but now she stood still. her darkened face had such power over me that it stopped me in the midst of my vehemence. i put up my trembling little hand to clasp hers or to beg her pardon with what earnestness i might, but withdrew it as she looked at me, and laid it on my fluttering heart. she raised me, sat in her chair, and standing me before her, said slowly in a cold, low voice--i see her knitted brow and pointed finger--"your mother, esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers. the time will come--and soon enough--when you will understand this better and will feel it too, as no one save a woman can. i have forgiven her"--but her face did not relent--"the wrong she did to me, and i say no more of it, though it was greater than you will ever know--than any one will ever know but i, the sufferer. for yourself, unfortunate girl, orphaned and degraded from the first of these evil anniversaries, pray daily that the sins of others be not visited upon your head, according to what is written. forget your mother and leave all other people to forget her who will do her unhappy child that greatest kindness. now, go!" she checked me, however, as i was about to depart from her--so frozen as i was!--and added this, "submission, self-denial, diligent work, are the preparations for a life begun with such a shadow on it. you are different from other children, esther, because you were not born, like them, in common sinfulness and wrath. you are set apart." i went up to my room, and crept to bed, and laid my doll's cheek against mine wet with tears, and holding that solitary friend upon my bosom, cried myself to sleep. imperfect as my understanding of my sorrow was, i knew that i had brought no joy at any time to anybody's heart and that i was to no one upon earth what dolly was to me. dear, dear, to think how much time we passed alone together afterwards, and how often i repeated to the doll the story of my birthday and confided to her that i would try as hard as ever i could to repair the fault i had been born with (of which i confessedly felt guilty and yet innocent) and would strive as i grew up to be industrious, contented, and kind-hearted and to do some good to some one, and win some love to myself if i could. i hope it is not self-indulgent to shed these tears as i think of it. i am very thankful, i am very cheerful, but i cannot quite help their coming to my eyes. there! i have wiped them away now and can go on again properly. i felt the distance between my godmother and myself so much more after the birthday, and felt so sensible of filling a place in her house which ought to have been empty, that i found her more difficult of approach, though i was fervently grateful to her in my heart, than ever. i felt in the same way towards my school companions; i felt in the same way towards mrs. rachael, who was a widow; and oh, towards her daughter, of whom she was proud, who came to see her once a fortnight! i was very retired and quiet, and tried to be very diligent. one sunny afternoon when i had come home from school with my books and portfolio, watching my long shadow at my side, and as i was gliding upstairs to my room as usual, my godmother looked out of the parlour-door and called me back. sitting with her, i found--which was very unusual indeed--a stranger. a portly, important-looking gentleman, dressed all in black, with a white cravat, large gold watch seals, a pair of gold eye-glasses, and a large seal-ring upon his little finger. "this," said my godmother in an undertone, "is the child." then she said in her naturally stern way of speaking, "this is esther, sir." the gentleman put up his eye-glasses to look at me and said, "come here, my dear!" he shook hands with me and asked me to take off my bonnet, looking at me all the while. when i had complied, he said, "ah!" and afterwards "yes!" and then, taking off his eye-glasses and folding them in a red case, and leaning back in his arm-chair, turning the case about in his two hands, he gave my godmother a nod. upon that, my godmother said, "you may go upstairs, esther!" and i made him my curtsy and left him. it must have been two years afterwards, and i was almost fourteen, when one dreadful night my godmother and i sat at the fireside. i was reading aloud, and she was listening. i had come down at nine o'clock as i always did to read the bible to her, and was reading from st. john how our saviour stooped down, writing with his finger in the dust, when they brought the sinful woman to him. "so when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said unto them, 'he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her!'" i was stopped by my godmother's rising, putting her hand to her head, and crying out in an awful voice from quite another part of the book, "'watch ye, therefore, lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. and what i say unto you, i say unto all, watch!'" in an instant, while she stood before me repeating these words, she fell down on the floor. i had no need to cry out; her voice had sounded through the house and been heard in the street. she was laid upon her bed. for more than a week she lay there, little altered outwardly, with her old handsome resolute frown that i so well knew carved upon her face. many and many a time, in the day and in the night, with my head upon the pillow by her that my whispers might be plainer to her, i kissed her, thanked her, prayed for her, asked her for her blessing and forgiveness, entreated her to give me the least sign that she knew or heard me. no, no, no. her face was immovable. to the very last, and even afterwards, her frown remained unsoftened. on the day after my poor good godmother was buried, the gentleman in black with the white neckcloth reappeared. i was sent for by mrs. rachael, and found him in the same place, as if he had never gone away. "my name is kenge," he said; "you may remember it, my child; kenge and carboy, lincoln's inn." i replied that i remembered to have seen him once before. "pray be seated--here near me. don't distress yourself; it's of no use. mrs. rachael, i needn't inform you who were acquainted with the late miss barbary's affairs, that her means die with her and that this young lady, now her aunt is dead--" "my aunt, sir!" "it is really of no use carrying on a deception when no object is to be gained by it," said mr. kenge smoothly, "aunt in fact, though not in law. don't distress yourself! don't weep! don't tremble! mrs. rachael, our young friend has no doubt heard of--the--a--jarndyce and jarndyce." "never," said mrs. rachael. "is it possible," pursued mr. kenge, putting up his eye-glasses, "that our young friend--i beg you won't distress yourself!--never heard of jarndyce and jarndyce!" i shook my head, wondering even what it was. "not of jarndyce and jarndyce?" said mr. kenge, looking over his glasses at me and softly turning the case about and about as if he were petting something. "not of one of the greatest chancery suits known? not of jarndyce and jarndyce--the--a--in itself a monument of chancery practice. in which (i would say) every difficulty, every contingency, every masterly fiction, every form of procedure known in that court, is represented over and over again? it is a cause that could not exist out of this free and great country. i should say that the aggregate of costs in jarndyce and jarndyce, mrs. rachael"--i was afraid he addressed himself to her because i appeared inattentive"--amounts at the present hour to from six-ty to seven-ty thousand pounds!" said mr. kenge, leaning back in his chair. i felt very ignorant, but what could i do? i was so entirely unacquainted with the subject that i understood nothing about it even then. "and she really never heard of the cause!" said mr. kenge. "surprising!" "miss barbary, sir," returned mrs. rachael, "who is now among the seraphim--" "i hope so, i am sure," said mr. kenge politely. "--wished esther only to know what would be serviceable to her. and she knows, from any teaching she has had here, nothing more." "well!" said mr. kenge. "upon the whole, very proper. now to the point," addressing me. "miss barbary, your sole relation (in fact that is, for i am bound to observe that in law you had none) being deceased and it naturally not being to be expected that mrs. rachael--" "oh, dear no!" said mrs. rachael quickly. "quite so," assented mr. kenge; "--that mrs. rachael should charge herself with your maintenance and support (i beg you won't distress yourself), you are in a position to receive the renewal of an offer which i was instructed to make to miss barbary some two years ago and which, though rejected then, was understood to be renewable under the lamentable circumstances that have since occurred. now, if i avow that i represent, in jarndyce and jarndyce and otherwise, a highly humane, but at the same time singular, man, shall i compromise myself by any stretch of my professional caution?" said mr. kenge, leaning back in his chair again and looking calmly at us both. he appeared to enjoy beyond everything the sound of his own voice. i couldn't wonder at that, for it was mellow and full and gave great importance to every word he uttered. he listened to himself with obvious satisfaction and sometimes gently beat time to his own music with his head or rounded a sentence with his hand. i was very much impressed by him--even then, before i knew that he formed himself on the model of a great lord who was his client and that he was generally called conversation kenge. "mr. jarndyce," he pursued, "being aware of the--i would say, desolate--position of our young friend, offers to place her at a first-rate establishment where her education shall be completed, where her comfort shall be secured, where her reasonable wants shall be anticipated, where she shall be eminently qualified to discharge her duty in that station of life unto which it has pleased--shall i say providence?--to call her." my heart was filled so full, both by what he said and by his affecting manner of saying it, that i was not able to speak, though i tried. "mr. jarndyce," he went on, "makes no condition beyond expressing his expectation that our young friend will not at any time remove herself from the establishment in question without his knowledge and concurrence. that she will faithfully apply herself to the acquisition of those accomplishments, upon the exercise of which she will be ultimately dependent. that she will tread in the paths of virtue and honour, and--the--a--so forth." i was still less able to speak than before. "now, what does our young friend say?" proceeded mr. kenge. "take time, take time! i pause for her reply. but take time!" what the destitute subject of such an offer tried to say, i need not repeat. what she did say, i could more easily tell, if it were worth the telling. what she felt, and will feel to her dying hour, i could never relate. this interview took place at windsor, where i had passed (as far as i knew) my whole life. on that day week, amply provided with all necessaries, i left it, inside the stagecoach, for reading. mrs. rachael was too good to feel any emotion at parting, but i was not so good, and wept bitterly. i thought that i ought to have known her better after so many years and ought to have made myself enough of a favourite with her to make her sorry then. when she gave me one cold parting kiss upon my forehead, like a thaw-drop from the stone porch--it was a very frosty day--i felt so miserable and self-reproachful that i clung to her and told her it was my fault, i knew, that she could say good-bye so easily! "no, esther!" she returned. "it is your misfortune!" the coach was at the little lawn-gate--we had not come out until we heard the wheels--and thus i left her, with a sorrowful heart. she went in before my boxes were lifted to the coach-roof and shut the door. as long as i could see the house, i looked back at it from the window through my tears. my godmother had left mrs. rachael all the little property she possessed; and there was to be a sale; and an old hearth-rug with roses on it, which always seemed to me the first thing in the world i had ever seen, was hanging outside in the frost and snow. a day or two before, i had wrapped the dear old doll in her own shawl and quietly laid her--i am half ashamed to tell it--in the garden-earth under the tree that shaded my old window. i had no companion left but my bird, and him i carried with me in his cage. when the house was out of sight, i sat, with my bird-cage in the straw at my feet, forward on the low seat to look out of the high window, watching the frosty trees, that were like beautiful pieces of spar, and the fields all smooth and white with last night's snow, and the sun, so red but yielding so little heat, and the ice, dark like metal where the skaters and sliders had brushed the snow away. there was a gentleman in the coach who sat on the opposite seat and looked very large in a quantity of wrappings, but he sat gazing out of the other window and took no notice of me. i thought of my dead godmother, of the night when i read to her, of her frowning so fixedly and sternly in her bed, of the strange place i was going to, of the people i should find there, and what they would be like, and what they would say to me, when a voice in the coach gave me a terrible start. it said, "what the de-vil are you crying for?" i was so frightened that i lost my voice and could only answer in a whisper, "me, sir?" for of course i knew it must have been the gentleman in the quantity of wrappings, though he was still looking out of his window. "yes, you," he said, turning round. "i didn't know i was crying, sir," i faltered. "but you are!" said the gentleman. "look here!" he came quite opposite to me from the other corner of the coach, brushed one of his large furry cuffs across my eyes (but without hurting me), and showed me that it was wet. "there! now you know you are," he said. "don't you?" "yes, sir," i said. "and what are you crying for?" said the gentleman, "don't you want to go there?" "where, sir?" "where? why, wherever you are going," said the gentleman. "i am very glad to go there, sir," i answered. "well, then! look glad!" said the gentleman. i thought he was very strange, or at least that what i could see of him was very strange, for he was wrapped up to the chin, and his face was almost hidden in a fur cap with broad fur straps at the side of his head fastened under his chin; but i was composed again, and not afraid of him. so i told him that i thought i must have been crying because of my godmother's death and because of mrs. rachael's not being sorry to part with me. "confound mrs. rachael!" said the gentleman. "let her fly away in a high wind on a broomstick!" i began to be really afraid of him now and looked at him with the greatest astonishment. but i thought that he had pleasant eyes, although he kept on muttering to himself in an angry manner and calling mrs. rachael names. after a little while he opened his outer wrapper, which appeared to me large enough to wrap up the whole coach, and put his arm down into a deep pocket in the side. "now, look here!" he said. "in this paper," which was nicely folded, "is a piece of the best plum-cake that can be got for money--sugar on the outside an inch thick, like fat on mutton chops. here's a little pie (a gem this is, both for size and quality), made in france. and what do you suppose it's made of? livers of fat geese. there's a pie! now let's see you eat 'em." "thank you, sir," i replied; "thank you very much indeed, but i hope you won't be offended--they are too rich for me." "floored again!" said the gentleman, which i didn't at all understand, and threw them both out of window. he did not speak to me any more until he got out of the coach a little way short of reading, when he advised me to be a good girl and to be studious, and shook hands with me. i must say i was relieved by his departure. we left him at a milestone. i often walked past it afterwards, and never for a long time without thinking of him and half expecting to meet him. but i never did; and so, as time went on, he passed out of my mind. when the coach stopped, a very neat lady looked up at the window and said, "miss donny." "no, ma'am, esther summerson." "that is quite right," said the lady, "miss donny." i now understood that she introduced herself by that name, and begged miss donny's pardon for my mistake, and pointed out my boxes at her request. under the direction of a very neat maid, they were put outside a very small green carriage; and then miss donny, the maid, and i got inside and were driven away. "everything is ready for you, esther," said miss donny, "and the scheme of your pursuits has been arranged in exact accordance with the wishes of your guardian, mr. jarndyce." "of--did you say, ma'am?" "of your guardian, mr. jarndyce," said miss donny. i was so bewildered that miss donny thought the cold had been too severe for me and lent me her smelling-bottle. "do you know my--guardian, mr. jarndyce, ma'am?" i asked after a good deal of hesitation. "not personally, esther," said miss donny; "merely through his solicitors, messrs. kenge and carboy, of london. a very superior gentleman, mr. kenge. truly eloquent indeed. some of his periods quite majestic!" i felt this to be very true but was too confused to attend to it. our speedy arrival at our destination, before i had time to recover myself, increased my confusion, and i never shall forget the uncertain and the unreal air of everything at greenleaf (miss donny's house) that afternoon! but i soon became used to it. i was so adapted to the routine of greenleaf before long that i seemed to have been there a great while and almost to have dreamed rather than really lived my old life at my godmother's. nothing could be more precise, exact, and orderly than greenleaf. there was a time for everything all round the dial of the clock, and everything was done at its appointed moment. we were twelve boarders, and there were two miss donnys, twins. it was understood that i would have to depend, by and by, on my qualifications as a governess, and i was not only instructed in everything that was taught at greenleaf, but was very soon engaged in helping to instruct others. although i was treated in every other respect like the rest of the school, this single difference was made in my case from the first. as i began to know more, i taught more, and so in course of time i had plenty to do, which i was very fond of doing because it made the dear girls fond of me. at last, whenever a new pupil came who was a little downcast and unhappy, she was so sure--indeed i don't know why--to make a friend of me that all new-comers were confided to my care. they said i was so gentle, but i am sure they were! i often thought of the resolution i had made on my birthday to try to be industrious, contented, and true-hearted and to do some good to some one and win some love if i could; and indeed, indeed, i felt almost ashamed to have done so little and have won so much. i passed at greenleaf six happy, quiet years. i never saw in any face there, thank heaven, on my birthday, that it would have been better if i had never been born. when the day came round, it brought me so many tokens of affectionate remembrance that my room was beautiful with them from new year's day to christmas. in those six years i had never been away except on visits at holiday time in the neighbourhood. after the first six months or so i had taken miss donny's advice in reference to the propriety of writing to mr. kenge to say that i was happy and grateful, and with her approval i had written such a letter. i had received a formal answer acknowledging its receipt and saying, "we note the contents thereof, which shall be duly communicated to our client." after that i sometimes heard miss donny and her sister mention how regular my accounts were paid, and about twice a year i ventured to write a similar letter. i always received by return of post exactly the same answer in the same round hand, with the signature of kenge and carboy in another writing, which i supposed to be mr. kenge's. it seems so curious to me to be obliged to write all this about myself! as if this narrative were the narrative of my life! but my little body will soon fall into the background now. six quiet years (i find i am saying it for the second time) i had passed at greenleaf, seeing in those around me, as it might be in a looking-glass, every stage of my own growth and change there, when, one november morning, i received this letter. i omit the date. old square, lincoln's inn madam, jarndyce and jarndyce our clt mr. jarndyce being abt to rece into his house, under an order of the ct of chy, a ward of the ct in this cause, for whom he wishes to secure an elgble compn, directs us to inform you that he will be glad of your serces in the afsd capacity. we have arrngd for your being forded, carriage free, pr eight o'clock coach from reading, on monday morning next, to white horse cellar, piccadilly, london, where one of our clks will be in waiting to convey you to our offe as above. we are, madam, your obedt servts, kenge and carboy miss esther summerson oh, never, never, never shall i forget the emotion this letter caused in the house! it was so tender in them to care so much for me, it was so gracious in that father who had not forgotten me to have made my orphan way so smooth and easy and to have inclined so many youthful natures towards me, that i could hardly bear it. not that i would have had them less sorry--i am afraid not; but the pleasure of it, and the pain of it, and the pride and joy of it, and the humble regret of it were so blended that my heart seemed almost breaking while it was full of rapture. the letter gave me only five days' notice of my removal. when every minute added to the proofs of love and kindness that were given me in those five days, and when at last the morning came and when they took me through all the rooms that i might see them for the last time, and when some cried, "esther, dear, say good-bye to me here at my bedside, where you first spoke so kindly to me!" and when others asked me only to write their names, "with esther's love," and when they all surrounded me with their parting presents and clung to me weeping and cried, "what shall we do when dear, dear esther's gone!" and when i tried to tell them how forbearing and how good they had all been to me and how i blessed and thanked them every one, what a heart i had! and when the two miss donnys grieved as much to part with me as the least among them, and when the maids said, "bless you, miss, wherever you go!" and when the ugly lame old gardener, who i thought had hardly noticed me in all those years, came panting after the coach to give me a little nosegay of geraniums and told me i had been the light of his eyes--indeed the old man said so!--what a heart i had then! and could i help it if with all this, and the coming to the little school, and the unexpected sight of the poor children outside waving their hats and bonnets to me, and of a grey-haired gentleman and lady whose daughter i had helped to teach and at whose house i had visited (who were said to be the proudest people in all that country), caring for nothing but calling out, "good-bye, esther. may you be very happy!"--could i help it if i was quite bowed down in the coach by myself and said "oh, i am so thankful, i am so thankful!" many times over! but of course i soon considered that i must not take tears where i was going after all that had been done for me. therefore, of course, i made myself sob less and persuaded myself to be quiet by saying very often, "esther, now you really must! this will not do!" i cheered myself up pretty well at last, though i am afraid i was longer about it than i ought to have been; and when i had cooled my eyes with lavender water, it was time to watch for london. i was quite persuaded that we were there when we were ten miles off, and when we really were there, that we should never get there. however, when we began to jolt upon a stone pavement, and particularly when every other conveyance seemed to be running into us, and we seemed to be running into every other conveyance, i began to believe that we really were approaching the end of our journey. very soon afterwards we stopped. a young gentleman who had inked himself by accident addressed me from the pavement and said, "i am from kenge and carboy's, miss, of lincoln's inn." "if you please, sir," said i. he was very obliging, and as he handed me into a fly after superintending the removal of my boxes, i asked him whether there was a great fire anywhere? for the streets were so full of dense brown smoke that scarcely anything was to be seen. "oh, dear no, miss," he said. "this is a london particular." i had never heard of such a thing. "a fog, miss," said the young gentleman. "oh, indeed!" said i. we drove slowly through the dirtiest and darkest streets that ever were seen in the world (i thought) and in such a distracting state of confusion that i wondered how the people kept their senses, until we passed into sudden quietude under an old gateway and drove on through a silent square until we came to an odd nook in a corner, where there was an entrance up a steep, broad flight of stairs, like an entrance to a church. and there really was a churchyard outside under some cloisters, for i saw the gravestones from the staircase window. this was kenge and carboy's. the young gentleman showed me through an outer office into mr. kenge's room--there was no one in it--and politely put an arm-chair for me by the fire. he then called my attention to a little looking-glass hanging from a nail on one side of the chimney-piece. "in case you should wish to look at yourself, miss, after the journey, as you're going before the chancellor. not that it's requisite, i am sure," said the young gentleman civilly. "going before the chancellor?" i said, startled for a moment. "only a matter of form, miss," returned the young gentleman. "mr. kenge is in court now. he left his compliments, and would you partake of some refreshment"--there were biscuits and a decanter of wine on a small table--"and look over the paper," which the young gentleman gave me as he spoke. he then stirred the fire and left me. everything was so strange--the stranger from its being night in the day-time, the candles burning with a white flame, and looking raw and cold--that i read the words in the newspaper without knowing what they meant and found myself reading the same words repeatedly. as it was of no use going on in that way, i put the paper down, took a peep at my bonnet in the glass to see if it was neat, and looked at the room, which was not half lighted, and at the shabby, dusty tables, and at the piles of writings, and at a bookcase full of the most inexpressive-looking books that ever had anything to say for themselves. then i went on, thinking, thinking, thinking; and the fire went on, burning, burning, burning; and the candles went on flickering and guttering, and there were no snuffers--until the young gentleman by and by brought a very dirty pair--for two hours. at last mr. kenge came. he was not altered, but he was surprised to see how altered i was and appeared quite pleased. "as you are going to be the companion of the young lady who is now in the chancellor's private room, miss summerson," he said, "we thought it well that you should be in attendance also. you will not be discomposed by the lord chancellor, i dare say?" "no, sir," i said, "i don't think i shall," really not seeing on consideration why i should be. so mr. kenge gave me his arm and we went round the corner, under a colonnade, and in at a side door. and so we came, along a passage, into a comfortable sort of room where a young lady and a young gentleman were standing near a great, loud-roaring fire. a screen was interposed between them and it, and they were leaning on the screen, talking. they both looked up when i came in, and i saw in the young lady, with the fire shining upon her, such a beautiful girl! with such rich golden hair, such soft blue eyes, and such a bright, innocent, trusting face! "miss ada," said mr. kenge, "this is miss summerson." she came to meet me with a smile of welcome and her hand extended, but seemed to change her mind in a moment and kissed me. in short, she had such a natural, captivating, winning manner that in a few minutes we were sitting in the window-seat, with the light of the fire upon us, talking together as free and happy as could be. what a load off my mind! it was so delightful to know that she could confide in me and like me! it was so good of her, and so encouraging to me! the young gentleman was her distant cousin, she told me, and his name richard carstone. he was a handsome youth with an ingenuous face and a most engaging laugh; and after she had called him up to where we sat, he stood by us, in the light of the fire, talking gaily, like a light-hearted boy. he was very young, not more than nineteen then, if quite so much, but nearly two years older than she was. they were both orphans and (what was very unexpected and curious to me) had never met before that day. our all three coming together for the first time in such an unusual place was a thing to talk about, and we talked about it; and the fire, which had left off roaring, winked its red eyes at us--as richard said--like a drowsy old chancery lion. we conversed in a low tone because a full-dressed gentleman in a bag wig frequently came in and out, and when he did so, we could hear a drawling sound in the distance, which he said was one of the counsel in our case addressing the lord chancellor. he told mr. kenge that the chancellor would be up in five minutes; and presently we heard a bustle and a tread of feet, and mr. kenge said that the court had risen and his lordship was in the next room. the gentleman in the bag wig opened the door almost directly and requested mr. kenge to come in. upon that, we all went into the next room, mr. kenge first, with my darling--it is so natural to me now that i can't help writing it; and there, plainly dressed in black and sitting in an arm-chair at a table near the fire, was his lordship, whose robe, trimmed with beautiful gold lace, was thrown upon another chair. he gave us a searching look as we entered, but his manner was both courtly and kind. the gentleman in the bag wig laid bundles of papers on his lordship's table, and his lordship silently selected one and turned over the leaves. "miss clare," said the lord chancellor. "miss ada clare?" mr. kenge presented her, and his lordship begged her to sit down near him. that he admired her and was interested by her even i could see in a moment. it touched me that the home of such a beautiful young creature should be represented by that dry, official place. the lord high chancellor, at his best, appeared so poor a substitute for the love and pride of parents. "the jarndyce in question," said the lord chancellor, still turning over leaves, "is jarndyce of bleak house." "jarndyce of bleak house, my lord," said mr. kenge. "a dreary name," said the lord chancellor. "but not a dreary place at present, my lord," said mr. kenge. "and bleak house," said his lordship, "is in--" "hertfordshire, my lord." "mr. jarndyce of bleak house is not married?" said his lordship. "he is not, my lord," said mr. kenge. a pause. "young mr. richard carstone is present?" said the lord chancellor, glancing towards him. richard bowed and stepped forward. "hum!" said the lord chancellor, turning over more leaves. "mr. jarndyce of bleak house, my lord," mr. kenge observed in a low voice, "if i may venture to remind your lordship, provides a suitable companion for--" "for mr. richard carstone?" i thought (but i am not quite sure) i heard his lordship say in an equally low voice and with a smile. "for miss ada clare. this is the young lady. miss summerson." his lordship gave me an indulgent look and acknowledged my curtsy very graciously. "miss summerson is not related to any party in the cause, i think?" "no, my lord." mr. kenge leant over before it was quite said and whispered. his lordship, with his eyes upon his papers, listened, nodded twice or thrice, turned over more leaves, and did not look towards me again until we were going away. mr. kenge now retired, and richard with him, to where i was, near the door, leaving my pet (it is so natural to me that again i can't help it!) sitting near the lord chancellor, with whom his lordship spoke a little part, asking her, as she told me afterwards, whether she had well reflected on the proposed arrangement, and if she thought she would be happy under the roof of mr. jarndyce of bleak house, and why she thought so? presently he rose courteously and released her, and then he spoke for a minute or two with richard carstone, not seated, but standing, and altogether with more ease and less ceremony, as if he still knew, though he was lord chancellor, how to go straight to the candour of a boy. "very well!" said his lordship aloud. "i shall make the order. mr. jarndyce of bleak house has chosen, so far as i may judge," and this was when he looked at me, "a very good companion for the young lady, and the arrangement altogether seems the best of which the circumstances admit." he dismissed us pleasantly, and we all went out, very much obliged to him for being so affable and polite, by which he had certainly lost no dignity but seemed to us to have gained some. when we got under the colonnade, mr. kenge remembered that he must go back for a moment to ask a question and left us in the fog, with the lord chancellor's carriage and servants waiting for him to come out. "well!" said richard carstone. "that's over! and where do we go next, miss summerson?" "don't you know?" i said. "not in the least," said he. "and don't you know, my love?" i asked ada. "no!" said she. "don't you?" "not at all!" said i. we looked at one another, half laughing at our being like the children in the wood, when a curious little old woman in a squeezed bonnet and carrying a reticule came curtsying and smiling up to us with an air of great ceremony. "oh!" said she. "the wards in jarndyce! ve-ry happy, i am sure, to have the honour! it is a good omen for youth, and hope, and beauty when they find themselves in this place, and don't know what's to come of it." "mad!" whispered richard, not thinking she could hear him. "right! mad, young gentleman," she returned so quickly that he was quite abashed. "i was a ward myself. i was not mad at that time," curtsying low and smiling between every little sentence. "i had youth and hope. i believe, beauty. it matters very little now. neither of the three served or saved me. i have the honour to attend court regularly. with my documents. i expect a judgment. shortly. on the day of judgment. i have discovered that the sixth seal mentioned in the revelations is the great seal. it has been open a long time! pray accept my blessing." as ada was a little frightened, i said, to humour the poor old lady, that we were much obliged to her. "ye-es!" she said mincingly. "i imagine so. and here is conversation kenge. with his documents! how does your honourable worship do?" "quite well, quite well! now don't be troublesome, that's a good soul!" said mr. kenge, leading the way back. "by no means," said the poor old lady, keeping up with ada and me. "anything but troublesome. i shall confer estates on both--which is not being troublesome, i trust? i expect a judgment. shortly. on the day of judgment. this is a good omen for you. accept my blessing!" she stopped at the bottom of the steep, broad flight of stairs; but we looked back as we went up, and she was still there, saying, still with a curtsy and a smile between every little sentence, "youth. and hope. and beauty. and chancery. and conversation kenge! ha! pray accept my blessing!" chapter iv telescopic philanthropy we were to pass the night, mr. kenge told us when we arrived in his room, at mrs. jellyby's; and then he turned to me and said he took it for granted i knew who mrs. jellyby was. "i really don't, sir," i returned. "perhaps mr. carstone--or miss clare--" but no, they knew nothing whatever about mrs. jellyby. "in-deed! mrs. jellyby," said mr. kenge, standing with his back to the fire and casting his eyes over the dusty hearth-rug as if it were mrs. jellyby's biography, "is a lady of very remarkable strength of character who devotes herself entirely to the public. she has devoted herself to an extensive variety of public subjects at various times and is at present (until something else attracts her) devoted to the subject of africa, with a view to the general cultivation of the coffee berry--and the natives--and the happy settlement, on the banks of the african rivers, of our superabundant home population. mr. jarndyce, who is desirous to aid any work that is considered likely to be a good work and who is much sought after by philanthropists, has, i believe, a very high opinion of mrs. jellyby." mr. kenge, adjusting his cravat, then looked at us. "and mr. jellyby, sir?" suggested richard. "ah! mr. jellyby," said mr. kenge, "is--a--i don't know that i can describe him to you better than by saying that he is the husband of mrs. jellyby." "a nonentity, sir?" said richard with a droll look. "i don't say that," returned mr. kenge gravely. "i can't say that, indeed, for i know nothing whatever of mr. jellyby. i never, to my knowledge, had the pleasure of seeing mr. jellyby. he may be a very superior man, but he is, so to speak, merged--merged--in the more shining qualities of his wife." mr. kenge proceeded to tell us that as the road to bleak house would have been very long, dark, and tedious on such an evening, and as we had been travelling already, mr. jarndyce had himself proposed this arrangement. a carriage would be at mrs. jellyby's to convey us out of town early in the forenoon of to-morrow. he then rang a little bell, and the young gentleman came in. addressing him by the name of guppy, mr. kenge inquired whether miss summerson's boxes and the rest of the baggage had been "sent round." mr. guppy said yes, they had been sent round, and a coach was waiting to take us round too as soon as we pleased. "then it only remains," said mr. kenge, shaking hands with us, "for me to express my lively satisfaction in (good day, miss clare!) the arrangement this day concluded and my (good-bye to you, miss summerson!) lively hope that it will conduce to the happiness, the (glad to have had the honour of making your acquaintance, mr. carstone!) welfare, the advantage in all points of view, of all concerned! guppy, see the party safely there." "where is 'there,' mr. guppy?" said richard as we went downstairs. "no distance," said mr. guppy; "round in thavies inn, you know." "i can't say i know where it is, for i come from winchester and am strange in london." "only round the corner," said mr. guppy. "we just twist up chancery lane, and cut along holborn, and there we are in four minutes' time, as near as a toucher. this is about a london particular now, ain't it, miss?" he seemed quite delighted with it on my account. "the fog is very dense indeed!" said i. "not that it affects you, though, i'm sure," said mr. guppy, putting up the steps. "on the contrary, it seems to do you good, miss, judging from your appearance." i knew he meant well in paying me this compliment, so i laughed at myself for blushing at it when he had shut the door and got upon the box; and we all three laughed and chatted about our inexperience and the strangeness of london until we turned up under an archway to our destination--a narrow street of high houses like an oblong cistern to hold the fog. there was a confused little crowd of people, principally children, gathered about the house at which we stopped, which had a tarnished brass plate on the door with the inscription jellyby. "don't be frightened!" said mr. guppy, looking in at the coach-window. "one of the young jellybys been and got his head through the area railings!" "oh, poor child," said i; "let me out, if you please!" "pray be careful of yourself, miss. the young jellybys are always up to something," said mr. guppy. i made my way to the poor child, who was one of the dirtiest little unfortunates i ever saw, and found him very hot and frightened and crying loudly, fixed by the neck between two iron railings, while a milkman and a beadle, with the kindest intentions possible, were endeavouring to drag him back by the legs, under a general impression that his skull was compressible by those means. as i found (after pacifying him) that he was a little boy with a naturally large head, i thought that perhaps where his head could go, his body could follow, and mentioned that the best mode of extrication might be to push him forward. this was so favourably received by the milkman and beadle that he would immediately have been pushed into the area if i had not held his pinafore while richard and mr. guppy ran down through the kitchen to catch him when he should be released. at last he was happily got down without any accident, and then he began to beat mr. guppy with a hoop-stick in quite a frantic manner. nobody had appeared belonging to the house except a person in pattens, who had been poking at the child from below with a broom; i don't know with what object, and i don't think she did. i therefore supposed that mrs. jellyby was not at home, and was quite surprised when the person appeared in the passage without the pattens, and going up to the back room on the first floor before ada and me, announced us as, "them two young ladies, missis jellyby!" we passed several more children on the way up, whom it was difficult to avoid treading on in the dark; and as we came into mrs. jellyby's presence, one of the poor little things fell downstairs--down a whole flight (as it sounded to me), with a great noise. mrs. jellyby, whose face reflected none of the uneasiness which we could not help showing in our own faces as the dear child's head recorded its passage with a bump on every stair--richard afterwards said he counted seven, besides one for the landing--received us with perfect equanimity. she was a pretty, very diminutive, plump woman of from forty to fifty, with handsome eyes, though they had a curious habit of seeming to look a long way off. as if--i am quoting richard again--they could see nothing nearer than africa! "i am very glad indeed," said mrs. jellyby in an agreeable voice, "to have the pleasure of receiving you. i have a great respect for mr. jarndyce, and no one in whom he is interested can be an object of indifference to me." we expressed our acknowledgments and sat down behind the door, where there was a lame invalid of a sofa. mrs. jellyby had very good hair but was too much occupied with her african duties to brush it. the shawl in which she had been loosely muffled dropped onto her chair when she advanced to us; and as she turned to resume her seat, we could not help noticing that her dress didn't nearly meet up the back and that the open space was railed across with a lattice-work of stay-lace--like a summer-house. the room, which was strewn with papers and nearly filled by a great writing-table covered with similar litter, was, i must say, not only very untidy but very dirty. we were obliged to take notice of that with our sense of sight, even while, with our sense of hearing, we followed the poor child who had tumbled downstairs: i think into the back kitchen, where somebody seemed to stifle him. but what principally struck us was a jaded and unhealthy-looking though by no means plain girl at the writing-table, who sat biting the feather of her pen and staring at us. i suppose nobody ever was in such a state of ink. and from her tumbled hair to her pretty feet, which were disfigured with frayed and broken satin slippers trodden down at heel, she really seemed to have no article of dress upon her, from a pin upwards, that was in its proper condition or its right place. "you find me, my dears," said mrs. jellyby, snuffing the two great office candles in tin candlesticks, which made the room taste strongly of hot tallow (the fire had gone out, and there was nothing in the grate but ashes, a bundle of wood, and a poker), "you find me, my dears, as usual, very busy; but that you will excuse. the african project at present employs my whole time. it involves me in correspondence with public bodies and with private individuals anxious for the welfare of their species all over the country. i am happy to say it is advancing. we hope by this time next year to have from a hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy families cultivating coffee and educating the natives of borrioboola-gha, on the left bank of the niger." as ada said nothing, but looked at me, i said it must be very gratifying. "it is gratifying," said mrs. jellyby. "it involves the devotion of all my energies, such as they are; but that is nothing, so that it succeeds; and i am more confident of success every day. do you know, miss summerson, i almost wonder that you never turned your thoughts to africa." this application of the subject was really so unexpected to me that i was quite at a loss how to receive it. i hinted that the climate-- "the finest climate in the world!" said mrs. jellyby. "indeed, ma'am?" "certainly. with precaution," said mrs. jellyby. "you may go into holborn, without precaution, and be run over. you may go into holborn, with precaution, and never be run over. just so with africa." i said, "no doubt." i meant as to holborn. "if you would like," said mrs. jellyby, putting a number of papers towards us, "to look over some remarks on that head, and on the general subject, which have been extensively circulated, while i finish a letter i am now dictating to my eldest daughter, who is my amanuensis--" the girl at the table left off biting her pen and made a return to our recognition, which was half bashful and half sulky. "--i shall then have finished for the present," proceeded mrs. jellyby with a sweet smile, "though my work is never done. where are you, caddy?" "'presents her compliments to mr. swallow, and begs--'" said caddy. "'and begs,'" said mrs. jellyby, dictating, "'to inform him, in reference to his letter of inquiry on the african project--' no, peepy! not on my account!" peepy (so self-named) was the unfortunate child who had fallen downstairs, who now interrupted the correspondence by presenting himself, with a strip of plaster on his forehead, to exhibit his wounded knees, in which ada and i did not know which to pity most--the bruises or the dirt. mrs. jellyby merely added, with the serene composure with which she said everything, "go along, you naughty peepy!" and fixed her fine eyes on africa again. however, as she at once proceeded with her dictation, and as i interrupted nothing by doing it, i ventured quietly to stop poor peepy as he was going out and to take him up to nurse. he looked very much astonished at it and at ada's kissing him, but soon fell fast asleep in my arms, sobbing at longer and longer intervals, until he was quiet. i was so occupied with peepy that i lost the letter in detail, though i derived such a general impression from it of the momentous importance of africa, and the utter insignificance of all other places and things, that i felt quite ashamed to have thought so little about it. "six o'clock!" said mrs. jellyby. "and our dinner hour is nominally (for we dine at all hours) five! caddy, show miss clare and miss summerson their rooms. you will like to make some change, perhaps? you will excuse me, i know, being so much occupied. oh, that very bad child! pray put him down, miss summerson!" i begged permission to retain him, truly saying that he was not at all troublesome, and carried him upstairs and laid him on my bed. ada and i had two upper rooms with a door of communication between. they were excessively bare and disorderly, and the curtain to my window was fastened up with a fork. "you would like some hot water, wouldn't you?" said miss jellyby, looking round for a jug with a handle to it, but looking in vain. "if it is not being troublesome," said we. "oh, it's not the trouble," returned miss jellyby; "the question is, if there is any." the evening was so very cold and the rooms had such a marshy smell that i must confess it was a little miserable, and ada was half crying. we soon laughed, however, and were busily unpacking when miss jellyby came back to say that she was sorry there was no hot water, but they couldn't find the kettle, and the boiler was out of order. we begged her not to mention it and made all the haste we could to get down to the fire again. but all the little children had come up to the landing outside to look at the phenomenon of peepy lying on my bed, and our attention was distracted by the constant apparition of noses and fingers in situations of danger between the hinges of the doors. it was impossible to shut the door of either room, for my lock, with no knob to it, looked as if it wanted to be wound up; and though the handle of ada's went round and round with the greatest smoothness, it was attended with no effect whatever on the door. therefore i proposed to the children that they should come in and be very good at my table, and i would tell them the story of little red riding hood while i dressed; which they did, and were as quiet as mice, including peepy, who awoke opportunely before the appearance of the wolf. when we went downstairs we found a mug with "a present from tunbridge wells" on it lighted up in the staircase window with a floating wick, and a young woman, with a swelled face bound up in a flannel bandage blowing the fire of the drawing-room (now connected by an open door with mrs. jellyby's room) and choking dreadfully. it smoked to that degree, in short, that we all sat coughing and crying with the windows open for half an hour, during which mrs. jellyby, with the same sweetness of temper, directed letters about africa. her being so employed was, i must say, a great relief to me, for richard told us that he had washed his hands in a pie-dish and that they had found the kettle on his dressing-table, and he made ada laugh so that they made me laugh in the most ridiculous manner. soon after seven o'clock we went down to dinner, carefully, by mrs. jellyby's advice, for the stair-carpets, besides being very deficient in stair-wires, were so torn as to be absolute traps. we had a fine cod-fish, a piece of roast beef, a dish of cutlets, and a pudding; an excellent dinner, if it had had any cooking to speak of, but it was almost raw. the young woman with the flannel bandage waited, and dropped everything on the table wherever it happened to go, and never moved it again until she put it on the stairs. the person i had seen in pattens, who i suppose to have been the cook, frequently came and skirmished with her at the door, and there appeared to be ill will between them. all through dinner--which was long, in consequence of such accidents as the dish of potatoes being mislaid in the coal skuttle and the handle of the corkscrew coming off and striking the young woman in the chin--mrs. jellyby preserved the evenness of her disposition. she told us a great deal that was interesting about borrioboola-gha and the natives, and received so many letters that richard, who sat by her, saw four envelopes in the gravy at once. some of the letters were proceedings of ladies' committees or resolutions of ladies' meetings, which she read to us; others were applications from people excited in various ways about the cultivation of coffee, and natives; others required answers, and these she sent her eldest daughter from the table three or four times to write. she was full of business and undoubtedly was, as she had told us, devoted to the cause. i was a little curious to know who a mild bald gentleman in spectacles was, who dropped into a vacant chair (there was no top or bottom in particular) after the fish was taken away and seemed passively to submit himself to borrioboola-gha but not to be actively interested in that settlement. as he never spoke a word, he might have been a native but for his complexion. it was not until we left the table and he remained alone with richard that the possibility of his being mr. jellyby ever entered my head. but he was mr. jellyby; and a loquacious young man called mr. quale, with large shining knobs for temples and his hair all brushed to the back of his head, who came in the evening, and told ada he was a philanthropist, also informed her that he called the matrimonial alliance of mrs. jellyby with mr. jellyby the union of mind and matter. this young man, besides having a great deal to say for himself about africa and a project of his for teaching the coffee colonists to teach the natives to turn piano-forte legs and establish an export trade, delighted in drawing mrs. jellyby out by saying, "i believe now, mrs. jellyby, you have received as many as from one hundred and fifty to two hundred letters respecting africa in a single day, have you not?" or, "if my memory does not deceive me, mrs. jellyby, you once mentioned that you had sent off five thousand circulars from one post-office at one time?"--always repeating mrs. jellyby's answer to us like an interpreter. during the whole evening, mr. jellyby sat in a corner with his head against the wall as if he were subject to low spirits. it seemed that he had several times opened his mouth when alone with richard after dinner, as if he had something on his mind, but had always shut it again, to richard's extreme confusion, without saying anything. mrs. jellyby, sitting in quite a nest of waste paper, drank coffee all the evening and dictated at intervals to her eldest daughter. she also held a discussion with mr. quale, of which the subject seemed to be--if i understood it--the brotherhood of humanity, and gave utterance to some beautiful sentiments. i was not so attentive an auditor as i might have wished to be, however, for peepy and the other children came flocking about ada and me in a corner of the drawing-room to ask for another story; so we sat down among them and told them in whispers "puss in boots" and i don't know what else until mrs. jellyby, accidentally remembering them, sent them to bed. as peepy cried for me to take him to bed, i carried him upstairs, where the young woman with the flannel bandage charged into the midst of the little family like a dragon and overturned them into cribs. after that i occupied myself in making our room a little tidy and in coaxing a very cross fire that had been lighted to burn, which at last it did, quite brightly. on my return downstairs, i felt that mrs. jellyby looked down upon me rather for being so frivolous, and i was sorry for it, though at the same time i knew that i had no higher pretensions. it was nearly midnight before we found an opportunity of going to bed, and even then we left mrs. jellyby among her papers drinking coffee and miss jellyby biting the feather of her pen. "what a strange house!" said ada when we got upstairs. "how curious of my cousin jarndyce to send us here!" "my love," said i, "it quite confuses me. i want to understand it, and i can't understand it at all." "what?" asked ada with her pretty smile. "all this, my dear," said i. "it must be very good of mrs. jellyby to take such pains about a scheme for the benefit of natives--and yet--peepy and the housekeeping!" ada laughed and put her arm about my neck as i stood looking at the fire, and told me i was a quiet, dear, good creature and had won her heart. "you are so thoughtful, esther," she said, "and yet so cheerful! and you do so much, so unpretendingly! you would make a home out of even this house." my simple darling! she was quite unconscious that she only praised herself and that it was in the goodness of her own heart that she made so much of me! "may i ask you a question?" said i when we had sat before the fire a little while. "five hundred," said ada. "your cousin, mr. jarndyce. i owe so much to him. would you mind describing him to me?" shaking her golden hair, ada turned her eyes upon me with such laughing wonder that i was full of wonder too, partly at her beauty, partly at her surprise. "esther!" she cried. "my dear!" "you want a description of my cousin jarndyce?" "my dear, i never saw him." "and i never saw him!" returned ada. well, to be sure! no, she had never seen him. young as she was when her mama died, she remembered how the tears would come into her eyes when she spoke of him and of the noble generosity of his character, which she had said was to be trusted above all earthly things; and ada trusted it. her cousin jarndyce had written to her a few months ago--"a plain, honest letter," ada said--proposing the arrangement we were now to enter on and telling her that "in time it might heal some of the wounds made by the miserable chancery suit." she had replied, gratefully accepting his proposal. richard had received a similar letter and had made a similar response. he had seen mr. jarndyce once, but only once, five years ago, at winchester school. he had told ada, when they were leaning on the screen before the fire where i found them, that he recollected him as "a bluff, rosy fellow." this was the utmost description ada could give me. it set me thinking so that when ada was asleep, i still remained before the fire, wondering and wondering about bleak house, and wondering and wondering that yesterday morning should seem so long ago. i don't know where my thoughts had wandered when they were recalled by a tap at the door. i opened it softly and found miss jellyby shivering there with a broken candle in a broken candlestick in one hand and an egg-cup in the other. "good night!" she said very sulkily. "good night!" said i. "may i come in?" she shortly and unexpectedly asked me in the same sulky way. "certainly," said i. "don't wake miss clare." she would not sit down, but stood by the fire dipping her inky middle finger in the egg-cup, which contained vinegar, and smearing it over the ink stains on her face, frowning the whole time and looking very gloomy. "i wish africa was dead!" she said on a sudden. i was going to remonstrate. "i do!" she said "don't talk to me, miss summerson. i hate it and detest it. it's a beast!" i told her she was tired, and i was sorry. i put my hand upon her head, and touched her forehead, and said it was hot now but would be cool to-morrow. she still stood pouting and frowning at me, but presently put down her egg-cup and turned softly towards the bed where ada lay. "she is very pretty!" she said with the same knitted brow and in the same uncivil manner. i assented with a smile. "an orphan. ain't she?" "yes." "but knows a quantity, i suppose? can dance, and play music, and sing? she can talk french, i suppose, and do geography, and globes, and needlework, and everything?" "no doubt," said i. "i can't," she returned. "i can't do anything hardly, except write. i'm always writing for ma. i wonder you two were not ashamed of yourselves to come in this afternoon and see me able to do nothing else. it was like your ill nature. yet you think yourselves very fine, i dare say!" i could see that the poor girl was near crying, and i resumed my chair without speaking and looked at her (i hope) as mildly as i felt towards her. "it's disgraceful," she said. "you know it is. the whole house is disgraceful. the children are disgraceful. i'm disgraceful. pa's miserable, and no wonder! priscilla drinks--she's always drinking. it's a great shame and a great story of you if you say you didn't smell her to-day. it was as bad as a public-house, waiting at dinner; you know it was!" "my dear, i don't know it," said i. "you do," she said very shortly. "you shan't say you don't. you do!" "oh, my dear!" said i. "if you won't let me speak--" "you're speaking now. you know you are. don't tell stories, miss summerson." "my dear," said i, "as long as you won't hear me out--" "i don't want to hear you out." "oh, yes, i think you do," said i, "because that would be so very unreasonable. i did not know what you tell me because the servant did not come near me at dinner; but i don't doubt what you tell me, and i am sorry to hear it." "you needn't make a merit of that," said she. "no, my dear," said i. "that would be very foolish." she was still standing by the bed, and now stooped down (but still with the same discontented face) and kissed ada. that done, she came softly back and stood by the side of my chair. her bosom was heaving in a distressful manner that i greatly pitied, but i thought it better not to speak. "i wish i was dead!" she broke out. "i wish we were all dead. it would be a great deal better for us." in a moment afterwards, she knelt on the ground at my side, hid her face in my dress, passionately begged my pardon, and wept. i comforted her and would have raised her, but she cried no, no; she wanted to stay there! "you used to teach girls," she said, "if you could only have taught me, i could have learnt from you! i am so very miserable, and i like you so much!" i could not persuade her to sit by me or to do anything but move a ragged stool to where she was kneeling, and take that, and still hold my dress in the same manner. by degrees the poor tired girl fell asleep, and then i contrived to raise her head so that it should rest on my lap, and to cover us both with shawls. the fire went out, and all night long she slumbered thus before the ashy grate. at first i was painfully awake and vainly tried to lose myself, with my eyes closed, among the scenes of the day. at length, by slow degrees, they became indistinct and mingled. i began to lose the identity of the sleeper resting on me. now it was ada, now one of my old reading friends from whom i could not believe i had so recently parted. now it was the little mad woman worn out with curtsying and smiling, now some one in authority at bleak house. lastly, it was no one, and i was no one. the purblind day was feebly struggling with the fog when i opened my eyes to encounter those of a dirty-faced little spectre fixed upon me. peepy had scaled his crib, and crept down in his bed-gown and cap, and was so cold that his teeth were chattering as if he had cut them all. chapter v a morning adventure although the morning was raw, and although the fog still seemed heavy--i say seemed, for the windows were so encrusted with dirt that they would have made midsummer sunshine dim--i was sufficiently forewarned of the discomfort within doors at that early hour and sufficiently curious about london to think it a good idea on the part of miss jellyby when she proposed that we should go out for a walk. "ma won't be down for ever so long," she said, "and then it's a chance if breakfast's ready for an hour afterwards, they dawdle so. as to pa, he gets what he can and goes to the office. he never has what you would call a regular breakfast. priscilla leaves him out the loaf and some milk, when there is any, overnight. sometimes there isn't any milk, and sometimes the cat drinks it. but i'm afraid you must be tired, miss summerson, and perhaps you would rather go to bed." "i am not at all tired, my dear," said i, "and would much prefer to go out." "if you're sure you would," returned miss jellyby, "i'll get my things on." ada said she would go too, and was soon astir. i made a proposal to peepy, in default of being able to do anything better for him, that he should let me wash him and afterwards lay him down on my bed again. to this he submitted with the best grace possible, staring at me during the whole operation as if he never had been, and never could again be, so astonished in his life--looking very miserable also, certainly, but making no complaint, and going snugly to sleep as soon as it was over. at first i was in two minds about taking such a liberty, but i soon reflected that nobody in the house was likely to notice it. what with the bustle of dispatching peepy and the bustle of getting myself ready and helping ada, i was soon quite in a glow. we found miss jellyby trying to warm herself at the fire in the writing-room, which priscilla was then lighting with a smutty parlour candlestick, throwing the candle in to make it burn better. everything was just as we had left it last night and was evidently intended to remain so. below-stairs the dinner-cloth had not been taken away, but had been left ready for breakfast. crumbs, dust, and waste-paper were all over the house. some pewter pots and a milk-can hung on the area railings; the door stood open; and we met the cook round the corner coming out of a public-house, wiping her mouth. she mentioned, as she passed us, that she had been to see what o'clock it was. but before we met the cook, we met richard, who was dancing up and down thavies inn to warm his feet. he was agreeably surprised to see us stirring so soon and said he would gladly share our walk. so he took care of ada, and miss jellyby and i went first. i may mention that miss jellyby had relapsed into her sulky manner and that i really should not have thought she liked me much unless she had told me so. "where would you wish to go?" she asked. "anywhere, my dear," i replied. "anywhere's nowhere," said miss jellyby, stopping perversely. "let us go somewhere at any rate," said i. she then walked me on very fast. "i don't care!" she said. "now, you are my witness, miss summerson, i say i don't care--but if he was to come to our house with his great, shining, lumpy forehead night after night till he was as old as methuselah, i wouldn't have anything to say to him. such asses as he and ma make of themselves!" "my dear!" i remonstrated, in allusion to the epithet and the vigorous emphasis miss jellyby set upon it. "your duty as a child--" "oh! don't talk of duty as a child, miss summerson; where's ma's duty as a parent? all made over to the public and africa, i suppose! then let the public and africa show duty as a child; it's much more their affair than mine. you are shocked, i dare say! very well, so am i shocked too; so we are both shocked, and there's an end of it!" she walked me on faster yet. "but for all that, i say again, he may come, and come, and come, and i won't have anything to say to him. i can't bear him. if there's any stuff in the world that i hate and detest, it's the stuff he and ma talk. i wonder the very paving-stones opposite our house can have the patience to stay there and be a witness of such inconsistencies and contradictions as all that sounding nonsense, and ma's management!" i could not but understand her to refer to mr. quale, the young gentleman who had appeared after dinner yesterday. i was saved the disagreeable necessity of pursuing the subject by richard and ada coming up at a round pace, laughing and asking us if we meant to run a race. thus interrupted, miss jellyby became silent and walked moodily on at my side while i admired the long successions and varieties of streets, the quantity of people already going to and fro, the number of vehicles passing and repassing, the busy preparations in the setting forth of shop windows and the sweeping out of shops, and the extraordinary creatures in rags secretly groping among the swept-out rubbish for pins and other refuse. "so, cousin," said the cheerful voice of richard to ada behind me. "we are never to get out of chancery! we have come by another way to our place of meeting yesterday, and--by the great seal, here's the old lady again!" truly, there she was, immediately in front of us, curtsying, and smiling, and saying with her yesterday's air of patronage, "the wards in jarndyce! ve-ry happy, i am sure!" "you are out early, ma'am," said i as she curtsied to me. "ye-es! i usually walk here early. before the court sits. it's retired. i collect my thoughts here for the business of the day," said the old lady mincingly. "the business of the day requires a great deal of thought. chancery justice is so ve-ry difficult to follow." "who's this, miss summerson?" whispered miss jellyby, drawing my arm tighter through her own. the little old lady's hearing was remarkably quick. she answered for herself directly. "a suitor, my child. at your service. i have the honour to attend court regularly. with my documents. have i the pleasure of addressing another of the youthful parties in jarndyce?" said the old lady, recovering herself, with her head on one side, from a very low curtsy. richard, anxious to atone for his thoughtlessness of yesterday, good-naturedly explained that miss jellyby was not connected with the suit. "ha!" said the old lady. "she does not expect a judgment? she will still grow old. but not so old. oh, dear, no! this is the garden of lincoln's inn. i call it my garden. it is quite a bower in the summer-time. where the birds sing melodiously. i pass the greater part of the long vacation here. in contemplation. you find the long vacation exceedingly long, don't you?" we said yes, as she seemed to expect us to say so. "when the leaves are falling from the trees and there are no more flowers in bloom to make up into nosegays for the lord chancellor's court," said the old lady, "the vacation is fulfilled and the sixth seal, mentioned in the revelations, again prevails. pray come and see my lodging. it will be a good omen for me. youth, and hope, and beauty are very seldom there. it is a long, long time since i had a visit from either." she had taken my hand, and leading me and miss jellyby away, beckoned richard and ada to come too. i did not know how to excuse myself and looked to richard for aid. as he was half amused and half curious and all in doubt how to get rid of the old lady without offence, she continued to lead us away, and he and ada continued to follow, our strange conductress informing us all the time, with much smiling condescension, that she lived close by. it was quite true, as it soon appeared. she lived so close by that we had not time to have done humouring her for a few moments before she was at home. slipping us out at a little side gate, the old lady stopped most unexpectedly in a narrow back street, part of some courts and lanes immediately outside the wall of the inn, and said, "this is my lodging. pray walk up!" she had stopped at a shop over which was written krook, rag and bottle warehouse. also, in long thin letters, krook, dealer in marine stores. in one part of the window was a picture of a red paper mill at which a cart was unloading a quantity of sacks of old rags. in another was the inscription bones bought. in another, kitchen-stuff bought. in another, old iron bought. in another, waste-paper bought. in another, ladies' and gentlemen's wardrobes bought. everything seemed to be bought and nothing to be sold there. in all parts of the window were quantities of dirty bottles--blacking bottles, medicine bottles, ginger-beer and soda-water bottles, pickle bottles, wine bottles, ink bottles; i am reminded by mentioning the latter that the shop had in several little particulars the air of being in a legal neighbourhood and of being, as it were, a dirty hanger-on and disowned relation of the law. there were a great many ink bottles. there was a little tottering bench of shabby old volumes outside the door, labelled "law books, all at d." some of the inscriptions i have enumerated were written in law-hand, like the papers i had seen in kenge and carboy's office and the letters i had so long received from the firm. among them was one, in the same writing, having nothing to do with the business of the shop, but announcing that a respectable man aged forty-five wanted engrossing or copying to execute with neatness and dispatch: address to nemo, care of mr. krook, within. there were several second-hand bags, blue and red, hanging up. a little way within the shop-door lay heaps of old crackled parchment scrolls and discoloured and dog's-eared law-papers. i could have fancied that all the rusty keys, of which there must have been hundreds huddled together as old iron, had once belonged to doors of rooms or strong chests in lawyers' offices. the litter of rags tumbled partly into and partly out of a one-legged wooden scale, hanging without any counterpoise from a beam, might have been counsellors' bands and gowns torn up. one had only to fancy, as richard whispered to ada and me while we all stood looking in, that yonder bones in a corner, piled together and picked very clean, were the bones of clients, to make the picture complete. as it was still foggy and dark, and as the shop was blinded besides by the wall of lincoln's inn, intercepting the light within a couple of yards, we should not have seen so much but for a lighted lantern that an old man in spectacles and a hairy cap was carrying about in the shop. turning towards the door, he now caught sight of us. he was short, cadaverous, and withered, with his head sunk sideways between his shoulders and the breath issuing in visible smoke from his mouth as if he were on fire within. his throat, chin, and eyebrows were so frosted with white hairs and so gnarled with veins and puckered skin that he looked from his breast upward like some old root in a fall of snow. "hi, hi!" said the old man, coming to the door. "have you anything to sell?" we naturally drew back and glanced at our conductress, who had been trying to open the house-door with a key she had taken from her pocket, and to whom richard now said that as we had had the pleasure of seeing where she lived, we would leave her, being pressed for time. but she was not to be so easily left. she became so fantastically and pressingly earnest in her entreaties that we would walk up and see her apartment for an instant, and was so bent, in her harmless way, on leading me in, as part of the good omen she desired, that i (whatever the others might do) saw nothing for it but to comply. i suppose we were all more or less curious; at any rate, when the old man added his persuasions to hers and said, "aye, aye! please her! it won't take a minute! come in, come in! come in through the shop if t'other door's out of order!" we all went in, stimulated by richard's laughing encouragement and relying on his protection. "my landlord, krook," said the little old lady, condescending to him from her lofty station as she presented him to us. "he is called among the neighbours the lord chancellor. his shop is called the court of chancery. he is a very eccentric person. he is very odd. oh, i assure you he is very odd!" she shook her head a great many times and tapped her forehead with her finger to express to us that we must have the goodness to excuse him, "for he is a little--you know--m!" said the old lady with great stateliness. the old man overheard, and laughed. "it's true enough," he said, going before us with the lantern, "that they call me the lord chancellor and call my shop chancery. and why do you think they call me the lord chancellor and my shop chancery?" "i don't know, i am sure!" said richard rather carelessly. "you see," said the old man, stopping and turning round, "they--hi! here's lovely hair! i have got three sacks of ladies' hair below, but none so beautiful and fine as this. what colour, and what texture!" "that'll do, my good friend!" said richard, strongly disapproving of his having drawn one of ada's tresses through his yellow hand. "you can admire as the rest of us do without taking that liberty." the old man darted at him a sudden look which even called my attention from ada, who, startled and blushing, was so remarkably beautiful that she seemed to fix the wandering attention of the little old lady herself. but as ada interposed and laughingly said she could only feel proud of such genuine admiration, mr. krook shrunk into his former self as suddenly as he had leaped out of it. "you see, i have so many things here," he resumed, holding up the lantern, "of so many kinds, and all as the neighbours think (but they know nothing), wasting away and going to rack and ruin, that that's why they have given me and my place a christening. and i have so many old parchmentses and papers in my stock. and i have a liking for rust and must and cobwebs. and all's fish that comes to my net. and i can't abear to part with anything i once lay hold of (or so my neighbours think, but what do they know?) or to alter anything, or to have any sweeping, nor scouring, nor cleaning, nor repairing going on about me. that's the way i've got the ill name of chancery. i don't mind. i go to see my noble and learned brother pretty well every day, when he sits in the inn. he don't notice me, but i notice him. there's no great odds betwixt us. we both grub on in a muddle. hi, lady jane!" a large grey cat leaped from some neighbouring shelf on his shoulder and startled us all. "hi! show 'em how you scratch. hi! tear, my lady!" said her master. the cat leaped down and ripped at a bundle of rags with her tigerish claws, with a sound that it set my teeth on edge to hear. "she'd do as much for any one i was to set her on," said the old man. "i deal in cat-skins among other general matters, and hers was offered to me. it's a very fine skin, as you may see, but i didn't have it stripped off! that warn't like chancery practice though, says you!" he had by this time led us across the shop, and now opened a door in the back part of it, leading to the house-entry. as he stood with his hand upon the lock, the little old lady graciously observed to him before passing out, "that will do, krook. you mean well, but are tiresome. my young friends are pressed for time. i have none to spare myself, having to attend court very soon. my young friends are the wards in jarndyce." "jarndyce!" said the old man with a start. "jarndyce and jarndyce. the great suit, krook," returned his lodger. "hi!" exclaimed the old man in a tone of thoughtful amazement and with a wider stare than before. "think of it!" he seemed so rapt all in a moment and looked so curiously at us that richard said, "why, you appear to trouble yourself a good deal about the causes before your noble and learned brother, the other chancellor!" "yes," said the old man abstractedly. "sure! your name now will be--" "richard carstone." "carstone," he repeated, slowly checking off that name upon his forefinger; and each of the others he went on to mention upon a separate finger. "yes. there was the name of barbary, and the name of clare, and the name of dedlock, too, i think." "he knows as much of the cause as the real salaried chancellor!" said richard, quite astonished, to ada and me. "aye!" said the old man, coming slowly out of his abstraction. "yes! tom jarndyce--you'll excuse me, being related; but he was never known about court by any other name, and was as well known there as--she is now," nodding slightly at his lodger. "tom jarndyce was often in here. he got into a restless habit of strolling about when the cause was on, or expected, talking to the little shopkeepers and telling 'em to keep out of chancery, whatever they did. 'for,' says he, 'it's being ground to bits in a slow mill; it's being roasted at a slow fire; it's being stung to death by single bees; it's being drowned by drops; it's going mad by grains.' he was as near making away with himself, just where the young lady stands, as near could be." we listened with horror. "he come in at the door," said the old man, slowly pointing an imaginary track along the shop, "on the day he did it--the whole neighbourhood had said for months before that he would do it, of a certainty sooner or later--he come in at the door that day, and walked along there, and sat himself on a bench that stood there, and asked me (you'll judge i was a mortal sight younger then) to fetch him a pint of wine. 'for,' says he, 'krook, i am much depressed; my cause is on again, and i think i'm nearer judgment than i ever was.' i hadn't a mind to leave him alone; and i persuaded him to go to the tavern over the way there, t'other side my lane (i mean chancery lane); and i followed and looked in at the window, and saw him, comfortable as i thought, in the arm-chair by the fire, and company with him. i hadn't hardly got back here when i heard a shot go echoing and rattling right away into the inn. i ran out--neighbours ran out--twenty of us cried at once, 'tom jarndyce!'" the old man stopped, looked hard at us, looked down into the lantern, blew the light out, and shut the lantern up. "we were right, i needn't tell the present hearers. hi! to be sure, how the neighbourhood poured into court that afternoon while the cause was on! how my noble and learned brother, and all the rest of 'em, grubbed and muddled away as usual and tried to look as if they hadn't heard a word of the last fact in the case or as if they had--oh, dear me!--nothing at all to do with it if they had heard of it by any chance!" ada's colour had entirely left her, and richard was scarcely less pale. nor could i wonder, judging even from my emotions, and i was no party in the suit, that to hearts so untried and fresh it was a shock to come into the inheritance of a protracted misery, attended in the minds of many people with such dreadful recollections. i had another uneasiness, in the application of the painful story to the poor half-witted creature who had brought us there; but, to my surprise, she seemed perfectly unconscious of that and only led the way upstairs again, informing us with the toleration of a superior creature for the infirmities of a common mortal that her landlord was "a little m, you know!" she lived at the top of the house, in a pretty large room, from which she had a glimpse of lincoln's inn hall. this seemed to have been her principal inducement, originally, for taking up her residence there. she could look at it, she said, in the night, especially in the moonshine. her room was clean, but very, very bare. i noticed the scantiest necessaries in the way of furniture; a few old prints from books, of chancellors and barristers, wafered against the wall; and some half-dozen reticles and work-bags, "containing documents," as she informed us. there were neither coals nor ashes in the grate, and i saw no articles of clothing anywhere, nor any kind of food. upon a shelf in an open cupboard were a plate or two, a cup or two, and so forth, but all dry and empty. there was a more affecting meaning in her pinched appearance, i thought as i looked round, than i had understood before. "extremely honoured, i am sure," said our poor hostess with the greatest suavity, "by this visit from the wards in jarndyce. and very much indebted for the omen. it is a retired situation. considering. i am limited as to situation. in consequence of the necessity of attending on the chancellor. i have lived here many years. i pass my days in court, my evenings and my nights here. i find the nights long, for i sleep but little and think much. that is, of course, unavoidable, being in chancery. i am sorry i cannot offer chocolate. i expect a judgment shortly and shall then place my establishment on a superior footing. at present, i don't mind confessing to the wards in jarndyce (in strict confidence) that i sometimes find it difficult to keep up a genteel appearance. i have felt the cold here. i have felt something sharper than cold. it matters very little. pray excuse the introduction of such mean topics." she partly drew aside the curtain of the long, low garret window and called our attention to a number of bird-cages hanging there, some containing several birds. there were larks, linnets, and goldfinches--i should think at least twenty. "i began to keep the little creatures," she said, "with an object that the wards will readily comprehend. with the intention of restoring them to liberty. when my judgment should be given. ye-es! they die in prison, though. their lives, poor silly things, are so short in comparison with chancery proceedings that, one by one, the whole collection has died over and over again. i doubt, do you know, whether one of these, though they are all young, will live to be free! ve-ry mortifying, is it not?" although she sometimes asked a question, she never seemed to expect a reply, but rambled on as if she were in the habit of doing so when no one but herself was present. "indeed," she pursued, "i positively doubt sometimes, i do assure you, whether while matters are still unsettled, and the sixth or great seal still prevails, i may not one day be found lying stark and senseless here, as i have found so many birds!" richard, answering what he saw in ada's compassionate eyes, took the opportunity of laying some money, softly and unobserved, on the chimney-piece. we all drew nearer to the cages, feigning to examine the birds. "i can't allow them to sing much," said the little old lady, "for (you'll think this curious) i find my mind confused by the idea that they are singing while i am following the arguments in court. and my mind requires to be so very clear, you know! another time, i'll tell you their names. not at present. on a day of such good omen, they shall sing as much as they like. in honour of youth," a smile and curtsy, "hope," a smile and curtsy, "and beauty," a smile and curtsy. "there! we'll let in the full light." the birds began to stir and chirp. "i cannot admit the air freely," said the little old lady--the room was close, and would have been the better for it--"because the cat you saw downstairs, called lady jane, is greedy for their lives. she crouches on the parapet outside for hours and hours. i have discovered," whispering mysteriously, "that her natural cruelty is sharpened by a jealous fear of their regaining their liberty. in consequence of the judgment i expect being shortly given. she is sly and full of malice. i half believe, sometimes, that she is no cat, but the wolf of the old saying. it is so very difficult to keep her from the door." some neighbouring bells, reminding the poor soul that it was half-past nine, did more for us in the way of bringing our visit to an end than we could easily have done for ourselves. she hurriedly took up her little bag of documents, which she had laid upon the table on coming in, and asked if we were also going into court. on our answering no, and that we would on no account detain her, she opened the door to attend us downstairs. "with such an omen, it is even more necessary than usual that i should be there before the chancellor comes in," said she, "for he might mention my case the first thing. i have a presentiment that he will mention it the first thing this morning." she stopped to tell us in a whisper as we were going down that the whole house was filled with strange lumber which her landlord had bought piecemeal and had no wish to sell, in consequence of being a little m. this was on the first floor. but she had made a previous stoppage on the second floor and had silently pointed at a dark door there. "the only other lodger," she now whispered in explanation, "a law-writer. the children in the lanes here say he has sold himself to the devil. i don't know what he can have done with the money. hush!" she appeared to mistrust that the lodger might hear her even there, and repeating "hush!" went before us on tiptoe as though even the sound of her footsteps might reveal to him what she had said. passing through the shop on our way out, as we had passed through it on our way in, we found the old man storing a quantity of packets of waste-paper in a kind of well in the floor. he seemed to be working hard, with the perspiration standing on his forehead, and had a piece of chalk by him, with which, as he put each separate package or bundle down, he made a crooked mark on the panelling of the wall. richard and ada, and miss jellyby, and the little old lady had gone by him, and i was going when he touched me on the arm to stay me, and chalked the letter j upon the wall--in a very curious manner, beginning with the end of the letter and shaping it backward. it was a capital letter, not a printed one, but just such a letter as any clerk in messrs. kenge and carboy's office would have made. "can you read it?" he asked me with a keen glance. "surely," said i. "it's very plain." "what is it?" "j." with another glance at me, and a glance at the door, he rubbed it out and turned an "a" in its place (not a capital letter this time), and said, "what's that?" i told him. he then rubbed that out and turned the letter "r," and asked me the same question. he went on quickly until he had formed in the same curious manner, beginning at the ends and bottoms of the letters, the word jarndyce, without once leaving two letters on the wall together. "what does that spell?" he asked me. when i told him, he laughed. in the same odd way, yet with the same rapidity, he then produced singly, and rubbed out singly, the letters forming the words bleak house. these, in some astonishment, i also read; and he laughed again. "hi!" said the old man, laying aside the chalk. "i have a turn for copying from memory, you see, miss, though i can neither read nor write." he looked so disagreeable and his cat looked so wickedly at me, as if i were a blood-relation of the birds upstairs, that i was quite relieved by richard's appearing at the door and saying, "miss summerson, i hope you are not bargaining for the sale of your hair. don't be tempted. three sacks below are quite enough for mr. krook!" i lost no time in wishing mr. krook good morning and joining my friends outside, where we parted with the little old lady, who gave us her blessing with great ceremony and renewed her assurance of yesterday in reference to her intention of settling estates on ada and me. before we finally turned out of those lanes, we looked back and saw mr. krook standing at his shop-door, in his spectacles, looking after us, with his cat upon his shoulder, and her tail sticking up on one side of his hairy cap like a tall feather. "quite an adventure for a morning in london!" said richard with a sigh. "ah, cousin, cousin, it's a weary word this chancery!" "it is to me, and has been ever since i can remember," returned ada. "i am grieved that i should be the enemy--as i suppose i am--of a great number of relations and others, and that they should be my enemies--as i suppose they are--and that we should all be ruining one another without knowing how or why and be in constant doubt and discord all our lives. it seems very strange, as there must be right somewhere, that an honest judge in real earnest has not been able to find out through all these years where it is." "ah, cousin!" said richard. "strange, indeed! all this wasteful, wanton chess-playing is very strange. to see that composed court yesterday jogging on so serenely and to think of the wretchedness of the pieces on the board gave me the headache and the heartache both together. my head ached with wondering how it happened, if men were neither fools nor rascals; and my heart ached to think they could possibly be either. but at all events, ada--i may call you ada?" "of course you may, cousin richard." "at all events, chancery will work none of its bad influences on us. we have happily been brought together, thanks to our good kinsman, and it can't divide us now!" "never, i hope, cousin richard!" said ada gently. miss jellyby gave my arm a squeeze and me a very significant look. i smiled in return, and we made the rest of the way back very pleasantly. in half an hour after our arrival, mrs. jellyby appeared; and in the course of an hour the various things necessary for breakfast straggled one by one into the dining-room. i do not doubt that mrs. jellyby had gone to bed and got up in the usual manner, but she presented no appearance of having changed her dress. she was greatly occupied during breakfast, for the morning's post brought a heavy correspondence relative to borrioboola-gha, which would occasion her (she said) to pass a busy day. the children tumbled about, and notched memoranda of their accidents in their legs, which were perfect little calendars of distress; and peepy was lost for an hour and a half, and brought home from newgate market by a policeman. the equable manner in which mrs. jellyby sustained both his absence and his restoration to the family circle surprised us all. she was by that time perseveringly dictating to caddy, and caddy was fast relapsing into the inky condition in which we had found her. at one o'clock an open carriage arrived for us, and a cart for our luggage. mrs. jellyby charged us with many remembrances to her good friend mr. jarndyce; caddy left her desk to see us depart, kissed me in the passage, and stood biting her pen and sobbing on the steps; peepy, i am happy to say, was asleep and spared the pain of separation (i was not without misgivings that he had gone to newgate market in search of me); and all the other children got up behind the barouche and fell off, and we saw them, with great concern, scattered over the surface of thavies inn as we rolled out of its precincts. chapter vi quite at home the day had brightened very much, and still brightened as we went westward. we went our way through the sunshine and the fresh air, wondering more and more at the extent of the streets, the brilliancy of the shops, the great traffic, and the crowds of people whom the pleasanter weather seemed to have brought out like many-coloured flowers. by and by we began to leave the wonderful city and to proceed through suburbs which, of themselves, would have made a pretty large town in my eyes; and at last we got into a real country road again, with windmills, rick-yards, milestones, farmers' waggons, scents of old hay, swinging signs, and horse troughs: trees, fields, and hedge-rows. it was delightful to see the green landscape before us and the immense metropolis behind; and when a waggon with a train of beautiful horses, furnished with red trappings and clear-sounding bells, came by us with its music, i believe we could all three have sung to the bells, so cheerful were the influences around. "the whole road has been reminding me of my namesake whittington," said richard, "and that waggon is the finishing touch. halloa! what's the matter?" we had stopped, and the waggon had stopped too. its music changed as the horses came to a stand, and subsided to a gentle tinkling, except when a horse tossed his head or shook himself and sprinkled off a little shower of bell-ringing. "our postilion is looking after the waggoner," said richard, "and the waggoner is coming back after us. good day, friend!" the waggoner was at our coach-door. "why, here's an extraordinary thing!" added richard, looking closely at the man. "he has got your name, ada, in his hat!" he had all our names in his hat. tucked within the band were three small notes--one addressed to ada, one to richard, one to me. these the waggoner delivered to each of us respectively, reading the name aloud first. in answer to richard's inquiry from whom they came, he briefly answered, "master, sir, if you please"; and putting on his hat again (which was like a soft bowl), cracked his whip, re-awakened his music, and went melodiously away. "is that mr. jarndyce's waggon?" said richard, calling to our post-boy. "yes, sir," he replied. "going to london." we opened the notes. each was a counterpart of the other and contained these words in a solid, plain hand. i look forward, my dear, to our meeting easily and without constraint on either side. i therefore have to propose that we meet as old friends and take the past for granted. it will be a relief to you possibly, and to me certainly, and so my love to you. john jarndyce i had perhaps less reason to be surprised than either of my companions, having never yet enjoyed an opportunity of thanking one who had been my benefactor and sole earthly dependence through so many years. i had not considered how i could thank him, my gratitude lying too deep in my heart for that; but i now began to consider how i could meet him without thanking him, and felt it would be very difficult indeed. the notes revived in richard and ada a general impression that they both had, without quite knowing how they came by it, that their cousin jarndyce could never bear acknowledgments for any kindness he performed and that sooner than receive any he would resort to the most singular expedients and evasions or would even run away. ada dimly remembered to have heard her mother tell, when she was a very little child, that he had once done her an act of uncommon generosity and that on her going to his house to thank him, he happened to see her through a window coming to the door, and immediately escaped by the back gate, and was not heard of for three months. this discourse led to a great deal more on the same theme, and indeed it lasted us all day, and we talked of scarcely anything else. if we did by any chance diverge into another subject, we soon returned to this, and wondered what the house would be like, and when we should get there, and whether we should see mr. jarndyce as soon as we arrived or after a delay, and what he would say to us, and what we should say to him. all of which we wondered about, over and over again. the roads were very heavy for the horses, but the pathway was generally good, so we alighted and walked up all the hills, and liked it so well that we prolonged our walk on the level ground when we got to the top. at barnet there were other horses waiting for us, but as they had only just been fed, we had to wait for them too, and got a long fresh walk over a common and an old battle-field before the carriage came up. these delays so protracted the journey that the short day was spent and the long night had closed in before we came to st. albans, near to which town bleak house was, we knew. by that time we were so anxious and nervous that even richard confessed, as we rattled over the stones of the old street, to feeling an irrational desire to drive back again. as to ada and me, whom he had wrapped up with great care, the night being sharp and frosty, we trembled from head to foot. when we turned out of the town, round a corner, and richard told us that the post-boy, who had for a long time sympathized with our heightened expectation, was looking back and nodding, we both stood up in the carriage (richard holding ada lest she should be jolted down) and gazed round upon the open country and the starlight night for our destination. there was a light sparkling on the top of a hill before us, and the driver, pointing to it with his whip and crying, "that's bleak house!" put his horses into a canter and took us forward at such a rate, uphill though it was, that the wheels sent the road drift flying about our heads like spray from a water-mill. presently we lost the light, presently saw it, presently lost it, presently saw it, and turned into an avenue of trees and cantered up towards where it was beaming brightly. it was in a window of what seemed to be an old-fashioned house with three peaks in the roof in front and a circular sweep leading to the porch. a bell was rung as we drew up, and amidst the sound of its deep voice in the still air, and the distant barking of some dogs, and a gush of light from the opened door, and the smoking and steaming of the heated horses, and the quickened beating of our own hearts, we alighted in no inconsiderable confusion. "ada, my love, esther, my dear, you are welcome. i rejoice to see you! rick, if i had a hand to spare at present, i would give it you!" the gentleman who said these words in a clear, bright, hospitable voice had one of his arms round ada's waist and the other round mine, and kissed us both in a fatherly way, and bore us across the hall into a ruddy little room, all in a glow with a blazing fire. here he kissed us again, and opening his arms, made us sit down side by side on a sofa ready drawn out near the hearth. i felt that if we had been at all demonstrative, he would have run away in a moment. "now, rick!" said he. "i have a hand at liberty. a word in earnest is as good as a speech. i am heartily glad to see you. you are at home. warm yourself!" richard shook him by both hands with an intuitive mixture of respect and frankness, and only saying (though with an earnestness that rather alarmed me, i was so afraid of mr. jarndyce's suddenly disappearing), "you are very kind, sir! we are very much obliged to you!" laid aside his hat and coat and came up to the fire. "and how did you like the ride? and how did you like mrs. jellyby, my dear?" said mr. jarndyce to ada. while ada was speaking to him in reply, i glanced (i need not say with how much interest) at his face. it was a handsome, lively, quick face, full of change and motion; and his hair was a silvered iron-grey. i took him to be nearer sixty than fifty, but he was upright, hearty, and robust. from the moment of his first speaking to us his voice had connected itself with an association in my mind that i could not define; but now, all at once, a something sudden in his manner and a pleasant expression in his eyes recalled the gentleman in the stagecoach six years ago on the memorable day of my journey to reading. i was certain it was he. i never was so frightened in my life as when i made the discovery, for he caught my glance, and appearing to read my thoughts, gave such a look at the door that i thought we had lost him. however, i am happy to say he remained where he was, and asked me what i thought of mrs. jellyby. "she exerts herself very much for africa, sir," i said. "nobly!" returned mr. jarndyce. "but you answer like ada." whom i had not heard. "you all think something else, i see." "we rather thought," said i, glancing at richard and ada, who entreated me with their eyes to speak, "that perhaps she was a little unmindful of her home." "floored!" cried mr. jarndyce. i was rather alarmed again. "well! i want to know your real thoughts, my dear. i may have sent you there on purpose." "we thought that, perhaps," said i, hesitating, "it is right to begin with the obligations of home, sir; and that, perhaps, while those are overlooked and neglected, no other duties can possibly be substituted for them." "the little jellybys," said richard, coming to my relief, "are really--i can't help expressing myself strongly, sir--in a devil of a state." "she means well," said mr. jarndyce hastily. "the wind's in the east." "it was in the north, sir, as we came down," observed richard. "my dear rick," said mr. jarndyce, poking the fire, "i'll take an oath it's either in the east or going to be. i am always conscious of an uncomfortable sensation now and then when the wind is blowing in the east." "rheumatism, sir?" said richard. "i dare say it is, rick. i believe it is. and so the little jell--i had my doubts about 'em--are in a--oh, lord, yes, it's easterly!" said mr. jarndyce. he had taken two or three undecided turns up and down while uttering these broken sentences, retaining the poker in one hand and rubbing his hair with the other, with a good-natured vexation at once so whimsical and so lovable that i am sure we were more delighted with him than we could possibly have expressed in any words. he gave an arm to ada and an arm to me, and bidding richard bring a candle, was leading the way out when he suddenly turned us all back again. "those little jellybys. couldn't you--didn't you--now, if it had rained sugar-plums, or three-cornered raspberry tarts, or anything of that sort!" said mr. jarndyce. "oh, cousin--" ada hastily began. "good, my pretty pet. i like cousin. cousin john, perhaps, is better." "then, cousin john--" ada laughingly began again. "ha, ha! very good indeed!" said mr. jarndyce with great enjoyment. "sounds uncommonly natural. yes, my dear?" "it did better than that. it rained esther." "aye?" said mr. jarndyce. "what did esther do?" "why, cousin john," said ada, clasping her hands upon his arm and shaking her head at me across him--for i wanted her to be quiet--"esther was their friend directly. esther nursed them, coaxed them to sleep, washed and dressed them, told them stories, kept them quiet, bought them keepsakes"--my dear girl! i had only gone out with peepy after he was found and given him a little, tiny horse!--"and, cousin john, she softened poor caroline, the eldest one, so much and was so thoughtful for me and so amiable! no, no, i won't be contradicted, esther dear! you know, you know, it's true!" the warm-hearted darling leaned across her cousin john and kissed me, and then looking up in his face, boldly said, "at all events, cousin john, i will thank you for the companion you have given me." i felt as if she challenged him to run away. but he didn't. "where did you say the wind was, rick?" asked mr. jarndyce. "in the north as we came down, sir." "you are right. there's no east in it. a mistake of mine. come, girls, come and see your home!" it was one of those delightfully irregular houses where you go up and down steps out of one room into another, and where you come upon more rooms when you think you have seen all there are, and where there is a bountiful provision of little halls and passages, and where you find still older cottage-rooms in unexpected places with lattice windows and green growth pressing through them. mine, which we entered first, was of this kind, with an up-and-down roof that had more corners in it than i ever counted afterwards and a chimney (there was a wood fire on the hearth) paved all around with pure white tiles, in every one of which a bright miniature of the fire was blazing. out of this room, you went down two steps into a charming little sitting-room looking down upon a flower-garden, which room was henceforth to belong to ada and me. out of this you went up three steps into ada's bedroom, which had a fine broad window commanding a beautiful view (we saw a great expanse of darkness lying underneath the stars), to which there was a hollow window-seat, in which, with a spring-lock, three dear adas might have been lost at once. out of this room you passed into a little gallery, with which the other best rooms (only two) communicated, and so, by a little staircase of shallow steps with a number of corner stairs in it, considering its length, down into the hall. but if instead of going out at ada's door you came back into my room, and went out at the door by which you had entered it, and turned up a few crooked steps that branched off in an unexpected manner from the stairs, you lost yourself in passages, with mangles in them, and three-cornered tables, and a native hindu chair, which was also a sofa, a box, and a bedstead, and looked in every form something between a bamboo skeleton and a great bird-cage, and had been brought from india nobody knew by whom or when. from these you came on richard's room, which was part library, part sitting-room, part bedroom, and seemed indeed a comfortable compound of many rooms. out of that you went straight, with a little interval of passage, to the plain room where mr. jarndyce slept, all the year round, with his window open, his bedstead without any furniture standing in the middle of the floor for more air, and his cold bath gaping for him in a smaller room adjoining. out of that you came into another passage, where there were back-stairs and where you could hear the horses being rubbed down outside the stable and being told to "hold up" and "get over," as they slipped about very much on the uneven stones. or you might, if you came out at another door (every room had at least two doors), go straight down to the hall again by half-a-dozen steps and a low archway, wondering how you got back there or had ever got out of it. the furniture, old-fashioned rather than old, like the house, was as pleasantly irregular. ada's sleeping-room was all flowers--in chintz and paper, in velvet, in needlework, in the brocade of two stiff courtly chairs which stood, each attended by a little page of a stool for greater state, on either side of the fire-place. our sitting-room was green and had framed and glazed upon the walls numbers of surprising and surprised birds, staring out of pictures at a real trout in a case, as brown and shining as if it had been served with gravy; at the death of captain cook; and at the whole process of preparing tea in china, as depicted by chinese artists. in my room there were oval engravings of the months--ladies haymaking in short waists and large hats tied under the chin, for june; smooth-legged noblemen pointing with cocked-hats to village steeples, for october. half-length portraits in crayons abounded all through the house, but were so dispersed that i found the brother of a youthful officer of mine in the china-closet and the grey old age of my pretty young bride, with a flower in her bodice, in the breakfast-room. as substitutes, i had four angels, of queen anne's reign, taking a complacent gentleman to heaven, in festoons, with some difficulty; and a composition in needlework representing fruit, a kettle, and an alphabet. all the movables, from the wardrobes to the chairs and tables, hangings, glasses, even to the pincushions and scent-bottles on the dressing-tables, displayed the same quaint variety. they agreed in nothing but their perfect neatness, their display of the whitest linen, and their storing-up, wheresoever the existence of a drawer, small or large, rendered it possible, of quantities of rose-leaves and sweet lavender. such, with its illuminated windows, softened here and there by shadows of curtains, shining out upon the starlight night; with its light, and warmth, and comfort; with its hospitable jingle, at a distance, of preparations for dinner; with the face of its generous master brightening everything we saw; and just wind enough without to sound a low accompaniment to everything we heard, were our first impressions of bleak house. "i am glad you like it," said mr. jarndyce when he had brought us round again to ada's sitting-room. "it makes no pretensions, but it is a comfortable little place, i hope, and will be more so with such bright young looks in it. you have barely half an hour before dinner. there's no one here but the finest creature upon earth--a child." "more children, esther!" said ada. "i don't mean literally a child," pursued mr. jarndyce; "not a child in years. he is grown up--he is at least as old as i am--but in simplicity, and freshness, and enthusiasm, and a fine guileless inaptitude for all worldly affairs, he is a perfect child." we felt that he must be very interesting. "he knows mrs. jellyby," said mr. jarndyce. "he is a musical man, an amateur, but might have been a professional. he is an artist too, an amateur, but might have been a professional. he is a man of attainments and of captivating manners. he has been unfortunate in his affairs, and unfortunate in his pursuits, and unfortunate in his family; but he don't care--he's a child!" "did you imply that he has children of his own, sir?" inquired richard. "yes, rick! half-a-dozen. more! nearer a dozen, i should think. but he has never looked after them. how could he? he wanted somebody to look after him. he is a child, you know!" said mr. jarndyce. "and have the children looked after themselves at all, sir?" inquired richard. "why, just as you may suppose," said mr. jarndyce, his countenance suddenly falling. "it is said that the children of the very poor are not brought up, but dragged up. harold skimpole's children have tumbled up somehow or other. the wind's getting round again, i am afraid. i feel it rather!" richard observed that the situation was exposed on a sharp night. "it is exposed," said mr. jarndyce. "no doubt that's the cause. bleak house has an exposed sound. but you are coming my way. come along!" our luggage having arrived and being all at hand, i was dressed in a few minutes and engaged in putting my worldly goods away when a maid (not the one in attendance upon ada, but another, whom i had not seen) brought a basket into my room with two bunches of keys in it, all labelled. "for you, miss, if you please," said she. "for me?" said i. "the housekeeping keys, miss." i showed my surprise, for she added with some little surprise on her own part, "i was told to bring them as soon as you was alone, miss. miss summerson, if i don't deceive myself?" "yes," said i. "that is my name." "the large bunch is the housekeeping, and the little bunch is the cellars, miss. any time you was pleased to appoint to-morrow morning, i was to show you the presses and things they belong to." i said i would be ready at half-past six, and after she was gone, stood looking at the basket, quite lost in the magnitude of my trust. ada found me thus and had such a delightful confidence in me when i showed her the keys and told her about them that it would have been insensibility and ingratitude not to feel encouraged. i knew, to be sure, that it was the dear girl's kindness, but i liked to be so pleasantly cheated. when we went downstairs, we were presented to mr. skimpole, who was standing before the fire telling richard how fond he used to be, in his school-time, of football. he was a little bright creature with a rather large head, but a delicate face and a sweet voice, and there was a perfect charm in him. all he said was so free from effort and spontaneous and was said with such a captivating gaiety that it was fascinating to hear him talk. being of a more slender figure than mr. jarndyce and having a richer complexion, with browner hair, he looked younger. indeed, he had more the appearance in all respects of a damaged young man than a well-preserved elderly one. there was an easy negligence in his manner and even in his dress (his hair carelessly disposed, and his neck-kerchief loose and flowing, as i have seen artists paint their own portraits) which i could not separate from the idea of a romantic youth who had undergone some unique process of depreciation. it struck me as being not at all like the manner or appearance of a man who had advanced in life by the usual road of years, cares, and experiences. i gathered from the conversation that mr. skimpole had been educated for the medical profession and had once lived, in his professional capacity, in the household of a german prince. he told us, however, that as he had always been a mere child in point of weights and measures and had never known anything about them (except that they disgusted him), he had never been able to prescribe with the requisite accuracy of detail. in fact, he said, he had no head for detail. and he told us, with great humour, that when he was wanted to bleed the prince or physic any of his people, he was generally found lying on his back in bed, reading the newspapers or making fancy-sketches in pencil, and couldn't come. the prince, at last, objecting to this, "in which," said mr. skimpole, in the frankest manner, "he was perfectly right," the engagement terminated, and mr. skimpole having (as he added with delightful gaiety) "nothing to live upon but love, fell in love, and married, and surrounded himself with rosy cheeks." his good friend jarndyce and some other of his good friends then helped him, in quicker or slower succession, to several openings in life, but to no purpose, for he must confess to two of the oldest infirmities in the world: one was that he had no idea of time, the other that he had no idea of money. in consequence of which he never kept an appointment, never could transact any business, and never knew the value of anything! well! so he had got on in life, and here he was! he was very fond of reading the papers, very fond of making fancy-sketches with a pencil, very fond of nature, very fond of art. all he asked of society was to let him live. that wasn't much. his wants were few. give him the papers, conversation, music, mutton, coffee, landscape, fruit in the season, a few sheets of bristol-board, and a little claret, and he asked no more. he was a mere child in the world, but he didn't cry for the moon. he said to the world, "go your several ways in peace! wear red coats, blue coats, lawn sleeves; put pens behind your ears, wear aprons; go after glory, holiness, commerce, trade, any object you prefer; only--let harold skimpole live!" all this and a great deal more he told us, not only with the utmost brilliancy and enjoyment, but with a certain vivacious candour--speaking of himself as if he were not at all his own affair, as if skimpole were a third person, as if he knew that skimpole had his singularities but still had his claims too, which were the general business of the community and must not be slighted. he was quite enchanting. if i felt at all confused at that early time in endeavouring to reconcile anything he said with anything i had thought about the duties and accountabilities of life (which i am far from sure of), i was confused by not exactly understanding why he was free of them. that he was free of them, i scarcely doubted; he was so very clear about it himself. "i covet nothing," said mr. skimpole in the same light way. "possession is nothing to me. here is my friend jarndyce's excellent house. i feel obliged to him for possessing it. i can sketch it and alter it. i can set it to music. when i am here, i have sufficient possession of it and have neither trouble, cost, nor responsibility. my steward's name, in short, is jarndyce, and he can't cheat me. we have been mentioning mrs. jellyby. there is a bright-eyed woman, of a strong will and immense power of business detail, who throws herself into objects with surprising ardour! i don't regret that i have not a strong will and an immense power of business detail to throw myself into objects with surprising ardour. i can admire her without envy. i can sympathize with the objects. i can dream of them. i can lie down on the grass--in fine weather--and float along an african river, embracing all the natives i meet, as sensible of the deep silence and sketching the dense overhanging tropical growth as accurately as if i were there. i don't know that it's of any direct use my doing so, but it's all i can do, and i do it thoroughly. then, for heaven's sake, having harold skimpole, a confiding child, petitioning you, the world, an agglomeration of practical people of business habits, to let him live and admire the human family, do it somehow or other, like good souls, and suffer him to ride his rocking-horse!" it was plain enough that mr. jarndyce had not been neglectful of the adjuration. mr. skimpole's general position there would have rendered it so without the addition of what he presently said. "it's only you, the generous creatures, whom i envy," said mr. skimpole, addressing us, his new friends, in an impersonal manner. "i envy you your power of doing what you do. it is what i should revel in myself. i don't feel any vulgar gratitude to you. i almost feel as if you ought to be grateful to me for giving you the opportunity of enjoying the luxury of generosity. i know you like it. for anything i can tell, i may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of increasing your stock of happiness. i may have been born to be a benefactor to you by sometimes giving you an opportunity of assisting me in my little perplexities. why should i regret my incapacity for details and worldly affairs when it leads to such pleasant consequences? i don't regret it therefore." of all his playful speeches (playful, yet always fully meaning what they expressed) none seemed to be more to the taste of mr. jarndyce than this. i had often new temptations, afterwards, to wonder whether it was really singular, or only singular to me, that he, who was probably the most grateful of mankind upon the least occasion, should so desire to escape the gratitude of others. we were all enchanted. i felt it a merited tribute to the engaging qualities of ada and richard that mr. skimpole, seeing them for the first time, should be so unreserved and should lay himself out to be so exquisitely agreeable. they (and especially richard) were naturally pleased, for similar reasons, and considered it no common privilege to be so freely confided in by such an attractive man. the more we listened, the more gaily mr. skimpole talked. and what with his fine hilarious manner and his engaging candour and his genial way of lightly tossing his own weaknesses about, as if he had said, "i am a child, you know! you are designing people compared with me" (he really made me consider myself in that light) "but i am gay and innocent; forget your worldly arts and play with me!" the effect was absolutely dazzling. he was so full of feeling too and had such a delicate sentiment for what was beautiful or tender that he could have won a heart by that alone. in the evening, when i was preparing to make tea and ada was touching the piano in the adjoining room and softly humming a tune to her cousin richard, which they had happened to mention, he came and sat down on the sofa near me and so spoke of ada that i almost loved him. "she is like the morning," he said. "with that golden hair, those blue eyes, and that fresh bloom on her cheek, she is like the summer morning. the birds here will mistake her for it. we will not call such a lovely young creature as that, who is a joy to all mankind, an orphan. she is the child of the universe." mr. jarndyce, i found, was standing near us with his hands behind him and an attentive smile upon his face. "the universe," he observed, "makes rather an indifferent parent, i am afraid." "oh! i don't know!" cried mr. skimpole buoyantly. "i think i do know," said mr. jarndyce. "well!" cried mr. skimpole. "you know the world (which in your sense is the universe), and i know nothing of it, so you shall have your way. but if i had mine," glancing at the cousins, "there should be no brambles of sordid realities in such a path as that. it should be strewn with roses; it should lie through bowers, where there was no spring, autumn, nor winter, but perpetual summer. age or change should never wither it. the base word money should never be breathed near it!" mr. jarndyce patted him on the head with a smile, as if he had been really a child, and passing a step or two on, and stopping a moment, glanced at the young cousins. his look was thoughtful, but had a benignant expression in it which i often (how often!) saw again, which has long been engraven on my heart. the room in which they were, communicating with that in which he stood, was only lighted by the fire. ada sat at the piano; richard stood beside her, bending down. upon the wall, their shadows blended together, surrounded by strange forms, not without a ghostly motion caught from the unsteady fire, though reflecting from motionless objects. ada touched the notes so softly and sang so low that the wind, sighing away to the distant hills, was as audible as the music. the mystery of the future and the little clue afforded to it by the voice of the present seemed expressed in the whole picture. but it is not to recall this fancy, well as i remember it, that i recall the scene. first, i was not quite unconscious of the contrast in respect of meaning and intention between the silent look directed that way and the flow of words that had preceded it. secondly, though mr. jarndyce's glance as he withdrew it rested for but a moment on me, i felt as if in that moment he confided to me--and knew that he confided to me and that i received the confidence--his hope that ada and richard might one day enter on a dearer relationship. mr. skimpole could play on the piano and the violoncello, and he was a composer--had composed half an opera once, but got tired of it--and played what he composed with taste. after tea we had quite a little concert, in which richard--who was enthralled by ada's singing and told me that she seemed to know all the songs that ever were written--and mr. jarndyce, and i were the audience. after a little while i missed first mr. skimpole and afterwards richard, and while i was thinking how could richard stay away so long and lose so much, the maid who had given me the keys looked in at the door, saying, "if you please, miss, could you spare a minute?" when i was shut out with her in the hall, she said, holding up her hands, "oh, if you please, miss, mr. carstone says would you come upstairs to mr. skimpole's room. he has been took, miss!" "took?" said i. "took, miss. sudden," said the maid. i was apprehensive that his illness might be of a dangerous kind, but of course i begged her to be quiet and not disturb any one and collected myself, as i followed her quickly upstairs, sufficiently to consider what were the best remedies to be applied if it should prove to be a fit. she threw open a door and i went into a chamber, where, to my unspeakable surprise, instead of finding mr. skimpole stretched upon the bed or prostrate on the floor, i found him standing before the fire smiling at richard, while richard, with a face of great embarrassment, looked at a person on the sofa, in a white great-coat, with smooth hair upon his head and not much of it, which he was wiping smoother and making less of with a pocket-handkerchief. "miss summerson," said richard hurriedly, "i am glad you are come. you will be able to advise us. our friend mr. skimpole--don't be alarmed!--is arrested for debt." "and really, my dear miss summerson," said mr. skimpole with his agreeable candour, "i never was in a situation in which that excellent sense and quiet habit of method and usefulness, which anybody must observe in you who has the happiness of being a quarter of an hour in your society, was more needed." the person on the sofa, who appeared to have a cold in his head, gave such a very loud snort that he startled me. "are you arrested for much, sir?" i inquired of mr. skimpole. "my dear miss summerson," said he, shaking his head pleasantly, "i don't know. some pounds, odd shillings, and halfpence, i think, were mentioned." "it's twenty-four pound, sixteen, and sevenpence ha'penny," observed the stranger. "that's wot it is." "and it sounds--somehow it sounds," said mr. skimpole, "like a small sum?" the strange man said nothing but made another snort. it was such a powerful one that it seemed quite to lift him out of his seat. "mr. skimpole," said richard to me, "has a delicacy in applying to my cousin jarndyce because he has lately--i think, sir, i understood you that you had lately--" "oh, yes!" returned mr. skimpole, smiling. "though i forgot how much it was and when it was. jarndyce would readily do it again, but i have the epicure-like feeling that i would prefer a novelty in help, that i would rather," and he looked at richard and me, "develop generosity in a new soil and in a new form of flower." "what do you think will be best, miss summerson?" said richard, aside. i ventured to inquire, generally, before replying, what would happen if the money were not produced. "jail," said the strange man, coolly putting his handkerchief into his hat, which was on the floor at his feet. "or coavinses." "may i ask, sir, what is--" "coavinses?" said the strange man. "a 'ouse." richard and i looked at one another again. it was a most singular thing that the arrest was our embarrassment and not mr. skimpole's. he observed us with a genial interest, but there seemed, if i may venture on such a contradiction, nothing selfish in it. he had entirely washed his hands of the difficulty, and it had become ours. "i thought," he suggested, as if good-naturedly to help us out, "that being parties in a chancery suit concerning (as people say) a large amount of property, mr. richard or his beautiful cousin, or both, could sign something, or make over something, or give some sort of undertaking, or pledge, or bond? i don't know what the business name of it may be, but i suppose there is some instrument within their power that would settle this?" "not a bit on it," said the strange man. "really?" returned mr. skimpole. "that seems odd, now, to one who is no judge of these things!" "odd or even," said the stranger gruffly, "i tell you, not a bit on it!" "keep your temper, my good fellow, keep your temper!" mr. skimpole gently reasoned with him as he made a little drawing of his head on the fly-leaf of a book. "don't be ruffled by your occupation. we can separate you from your office; we can separate the individual from the pursuit. we are not so prejudiced as to suppose that in private life you are otherwise than a very estimable man, with a great deal of poetry in your nature, of which you may not be conscious." the stranger only answered with another violent snort, whether in acceptance of the poetry-tribute or in disdainful rejection of it, he did not express to me. "now, my dear miss summerson, and my dear mr. richard," said mr. skimpole gaily, innocently, and confidingly as he looked at his drawing with his head on one side, "here you see me utterly incapable of helping myself, and entirely in your hands! i only ask to be free. the butterflies are free. mankind will surely not deny to harold skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies!" "my dear miss summerson," said richard in a whisper, "i have ten pounds that i received from mr. kenge. i must try what that will do." i possessed fifteen pounds, odd shillings, which i had saved from my quarterly allowance during several years. i had always thought that some accident might happen which would throw me suddenly, without any relation or any property, on the world and had always tried to keep some little money by me that i might not be quite penniless. i told richard of my having this little store and having no present need of it, and i asked him delicately to inform mr. skimpole, while i should be gone to fetch it, that we would have the pleasure of paying his debt. when i came back, mr. skimpole kissed my hand and seemed quite touched. not on his own account (i was again aware of that perplexing and extraordinary contradiction), but on ours, as if personal considerations were impossible with him and the contemplation of our happiness alone affected him. richard, begging me, for the greater grace of the transaction, as he said, to settle with coavinses (as mr. skimpole now jocularly called him), i counted out the money and received the necessary acknowledgment. this, too, delighted mr. skimpole. his compliments were so delicately administered that i blushed less than i might have done and settled with the stranger in the white coat without making any mistakes. he put the money in his pocket and shortly said, "well, then, i'll wish you a good evening, miss. "my friend," said mr. skimpole, standing with his back to the fire after giving up the sketch when it was half finished, "i should like to ask you something, without offence." i think the reply was, "cut away, then!" "did you know this morning, now, that you were coming out on this errand?" said mr. skimpole. "know'd it yes'day aft'noon at tea-time," said coavinses. "it didn't affect your appetite? didn't make you at all uneasy?" "not a bit," said coavinses. "i know'd if you wos missed to-day, you wouldn't be missed to-morrow. a day makes no such odds." "but when you came down here," proceeded mr. skimpole, "it was a fine day. the sun was shining, the wind was blowing, the lights and shadows were passing across the fields, the birds were singing." "nobody said they warn't, in my hearing," returned coavinses. "no," observed mr. skimpole. "but what did you think upon the road?" "wot do you mean?" growled coavinses with an appearance of strong resentment. "think! i've got enough to do, and little enough to get for it without thinking. thinking!" (with profound contempt). "then you didn't think, at all events," proceeded mr. skimpole, "to this effect: 'harold skimpole loves to see the sun shine, loves to hear the wind blow, loves to watch the changing lights and shadows, loves to hear the birds, those choristers in nature's great cathedral. and does it seem to me that i am about to deprive harold skimpole of his share in such possessions, which are his only birthright!' you thought nothing to that effect?" "i--certainly--did--not," said coavinses, whose doggedness in utterly renouncing the idea was of that intense kind that he could only give adequate expression to it by putting a long interval between each word, and accompanying the last with a jerk that might have dislocated his neck. "very odd and very curious, the mental process is, in you men of business!" said mr. skimpole thoughtfully. "thank you, my friend. good night." as our absence had been long enough already to seem strange downstairs, i returned at once and found ada sitting at work by the fireside talking to her cousin john. mr. skimpole presently appeared, and richard shortly after him. i was sufficiently engaged during the remainder of the evening in taking my first lesson in backgammon from mr. jarndyce, who was very fond of the game and from whom i wished of course to learn it as quickly as i could in order that i might be of the very small use of being able to play when he had no better adversary. but i thought, occasionally, when mr. skimpole played some fragments of his own compositions or when, both at the piano and the violoncello, and at our table, he preserved with an absence of all effort his delightful spirits and his easy flow of conversation, that richard and i seemed to retain the transferred impression of having been arrested since dinner and that it was very curious altogether. it was late before we separated, for when ada was going at eleven o'clock, mr. skimpole went to the piano and rattled hilariously that the best of all ways to lengthen our days was to steal a few hours from night, my dear! it was past twelve before he took his candle and his radiant face out of the room, and i think he might have kept us there, if he had seen fit, until daybreak. ada and richard were lingering for a few moments by the fire, wondering whether mrs. jellyby had yet finished her dictation for the day, when mr. jarndyce, who had been out of the room, returned. "oh, dear me, what's this, what's this!" he said, rubbing his head and walking about with his good-humoured vexation. "what's this they tell me? rick, my boy, esther, my dear, what have you been doing? why did you do it? how could you do it? how much apiece was it? the wind's round again. i feel it all over me!" we neither of us quite knew what to answer. "come, rick, come! i must settle this before i sleep. how much are you out of pocket? you two made the money up, you know! why did you? how could you? oh, lord, yes, it's due east--must be!" "really, sir," said richard, "i don't think it would be honourable in me to tell you. mr. skimpole relied upon us--" "lord bless you, my dear boy! he relies upon everybody!" said mr. jarndyce, giving his head a great rub and stopping short. "indeed, sir?" "everybody! and he'll be in the same scrape again next week!" said mr. jarndyce, walking again at a great pace, with a candle in his hand that had gone out. "he's always in the same scrape. he was born in the same scrape. i verily believe that the announcement in the newspapers when his mother was confined was 'on tuesday last, at her residence in botheration buildings, mrs. skimpole of a son in difficulties.'" richard laughed heartily but added, "still, sir, i don't want to shake his confidence or to break his confidence, and if i submit to your better knowledge again, that i ought to keep his secret, i hope you will consider before you press me any more. of course, if you do press me, sir, i shall know i am wrong and will tell you." "well!" cried mr. jarndyce, stopping again, and making several absent endeavours to put his candlestick in his pocket. "i--here! take it away, my dear. i don't know what i am about with it; it's all the wind--invariably has that effect--i won't press you, rick; you may be right. but really--to get hold of you and esther--and to squeeze you like a couple of tender young saint michael's oranges! it'll blow a gale in the course of the night!" he was now alternately putting his hands into his pockets as if he were going to keep them there a long time, and taking them out again and vehemently rubbing them all over his head. i ventured to take this opportunity of hinting that mr. skimpole, being in all such matters quite a child-- "eh, my dear?" said mr. jarndyce, catching at the word. "being quite a child, sir," said i, "and so different from other people--" "you are right!" said mr. jarndyce, brightening. "your woman's wit hits the mark. he is a child--an absolute child. i told you he was a child, you know, when i first mentioned him." certainly! certainly! we said. "and he is a child. now, isn't he?" asked mr. jarndyce, brightening more and more. he was indeed, we said. "when you come to think of it, it's the height of childishness in you--i mean me--" said mr. jarndyce, "to regard him for a moment as a man. you can't make him responsible. the idea of harold skimpole with designs or plans, or knowledge of consequences! ha, ha, ha!" it was so delicious to see the clouds about his bright face clearing, and to see him so heartily pleased, and to know, as it was impossible not to know, that the source of his pleasure was the goodness which was tortured by condemning, or mistrusting, or secretly accusing any one, that i saw the tears in ada's eyes, while she echoed his laugh, and felt them in my own. "why, what a cod's head and shoulders i am," said mr. jarndyce, "to require reminding of it! the whole business shows the child from beginning to end. nobody but a child would have thought of singling you two out for parties in the affair! nobody but a child would have thought of your having the money! if it had been a thousand pounds, it would have been just the same!" said mr. jarndyce with his whole face in a glow. we all confirmed it from our night's experience. "to be sure, to be sure!" said mr. jarndyce. "however, rick, esther, and you too, ada, for i don't know that even your little purse is safe from his inexperience--i must have a promise all round that nothing of this sort shall ever be done any more. no advances! not even sixpences." we all promised faithfully, richard with a merry glance at me touching his pocket as if to remind me that there was no danger of our transgressing. "as to skimpole," said mr. jarndyce, "a habitable doll's house with good board and a few tin people to get into debt with and borrow money of would set the boy up in life. he is in a child's sleep by this time, i suppose; it's time i should take my craftier head to my more worldly pillow. good night, my dears. god bless you!" he peeped in again, with a smiling face, before we had lighted our candles, and said, "oh! i have been looking at the weather-cock. i find it was a false alarm about the wind. it's in the south!" and went away singing to himself. ada and i agreed, as we talked together for a little while upstairs, that this caprice about the wind was a fiction and that he used the pretence to account for any disappointment he could not conceal, rather than he would blame the real cause of it or disparage or depreciate any one. we thought this very characteristic of his eccentric gentleness and of the difference between him and those petulant people who make the weather and the winds (particularly that unlucky wind which he had chosen for such a different purpose) the stalking-horses of their splenetic and gloomy humours. indeed, so much affection for him had been added in this one evening to my gratitude that i hoped i already began to understand him through that mingled feeling. any seeming inconsistencies in mr. skimpole or in mrs. jellyby i could not expect to be able to reconcile, having so little experience or practical knowledge. neither did i try, for my thoughts were busy when i was alone, with ada and richard and with the confidence i had seemed to receive concerning them. my fancy, made a little wild by the wind perhaps, would not consent to be all unselfish, either, though i would have persuaded it to be so if i could. it wandered back to my godmother's house and came along the intervening track, raising up shadowy speculations which had sometimes trembled there in the dark as to what knowledge mr. jarndyce had of my earliest history--even as to the possibility of his being my father, though that idle dream was quite gone now. it was all gone now, i remembered, getting up from the fire. it was not for me to muse over bygones, but to act with a cheerful spirit and a grateful heart. so i said to myself, "esther, esther, esther! duty, my dear!" and gave my little basket of housekeeping keys such a shake that they sounded like little bells and rang me hopefully to bed. chapter vii the ghost's walk while esther sleeps, and while esther wakes, it is still wet weather down at the place in lincolnshire. the rain is ever falling--drip, drip, drip--by day and night upon the broad flagged terrace-pavement, the ghost's walk. the weather is so very bad down in lincolnshire that the liveliest imagination can scarcely apprehend its ever being fine again. not that there is any superabundant life of imagination on the spot, for sir leicester is not here (and, truly, even if he were, would not do much for it in that particular), but is in paris with my lady; and solitude, with dusky wings, sits brooding upon chesney wold. there may be some motions of fancy among the lower animals at chesney wold. the horses in the stables--the long stables in a barren, red-brick court-yard, where there is a great bell in a turret, and a clock with a large face, which the pigeons who live near it and who love to perch upon its shoulders seem to be always consulting--they may contemplate some mental pictures of fine weather on occasions, and may be better artists at them than the grooms. the old roan, so famous for cross-country work, turning his large eyeball to the grated window near his rack, may remember the fresh leaves that glisten there at other times and the scents that stream in, and may have a fine run with the hounds, while the human helper, clearing out the next stall, never stirs beyond his pitchfork and birch-broom. the grey, whose place is opposite the door and who with an impatient rattle of his halter pricks his ears and turns his head so wistfully when it is opened, and to whom the opener says, "woa grey, then, steady! noabody wants you to-day!" may know it quite as well as the man. the whole seemingly monotonous and uncompanionable half-dozen, stabled together, may pass the long wet hours when the door is shut in livelier communication than is held in the servants' hall or at the dedlock arms, or may even beguile the time by improving (perhaps corrupting) the pony in the loose-box in the corner. so the mastiff, dozing in his kennel in the court-yard with his large head on his paws, may think of the hot sunshine when the shadows of the stable-buildings tire his patience out by changing and leave him at one time of the day no broader refuge than the shadow of his own house, where he sits on end, panting and growling short, and very much wanting something to worry besides himself and his chain. so now, half-waking and all-winking, he may recall the house full of company, the coach-houses full of vehicles, the stables full of horses, and the out-buildings full of attendants upon horses, until he is undecided about the present and comes forth to see how it is. then, with that impatient shake of himself, he may growl in the spirit, "rain, rain, rain! nothing but rain--and no family here!" as he goes in again and lies down with a gloomy yawn. so with the dogs in the kennel-buildings across the park, who have their restless fits and whose doleful voices when the wind has been very obstinate have even made it known in the house itself--upstairs, downstairs, and in my lady's chamber. they may hunt the whole country-side, while the raindrops are pattering round their inactivity. so the rabbits with their self-betraying tails, frisking in and out of holes at roots of trees, may be lively with ideas of the breezy days when their ears are blown about or of those seasons of interest when there are sweet young plants to gnaw. the turkey in the poultry-yard, always troubled with a class-grievance (probably christmas), may be reminiscent of that summer morning wrongfully taken from him when he got into the lane among the felled trees, where there was a barn and barley. the discontented goose, who stoops to pass under the old gateway, twenty feet high, may gabble out, if we only knew it, a waddling preference for weather when the gateway casts its shadow on the ground. be this as it may, there is not much fancy otherwise stirring at chesney wold. if there be a little at any odd moment, it goes, like a little noise in that old echoing place, a long way and usually leads off to ghosts and mystery. it has rained so hard and rained so long down in lincolnshire that mrs. rouncewell, the old housekeeper at chesney wold, has several times taken off her spectacles and cleaned them to make certain that the drops were not upon the glasses. mrs. rouncewell might have been sufficiently assured by hearing the rain, but that she is rather deaf, which nothing will induce her to believe. she is a fine old lady, handsome, stately, wonderfully neat, and has such a back and such a stomacher that if her stays should turn out when she dies to have been a broad old-fashioned family fire-grate, nobody who knows her would have cause to be surprised. weather affects mrs. rouncewell little. the house is there in all weathers, and the house, as she expresses it, "is what she looks at." she sits in her room (in a side passage on the ground floor, with an arched window commanding a smooth quadrangle, adorned at regular intervals with smooth round trees and smooth round blocks of stone, as if the trees were going to play at bowls with the stones), and the whole house reposes on her mind. she can open it on occasion and be busy and fluttered, but it is shut up now and lies on the breadth of mrs. rouncewell's iron-bound bosom in a majestic sleep. it is the next difficult thing to an impossibility to imagine chesney wold without mrs. rouncewell, but she has only been here fifty years. ask her how long, this rainy day, and she shall answer "fifty year, three months, and a fortnight, by the blessing of heaven, if i live till tuesday." mr. rouncewell died some time before the decease of the pretty fashion of pig-tails, and modestly hid his own (if he took it with him) in a corner of the churchyard in the park near the mouldy porch. he was born in the market-town, and so was his young widow. her progress in the family began in the time of the last sir leicester and originated in the still-room. the present representative of the dedlocks is an excellent master. he supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individual characters, intentions, or opinions, and is persuaded that he was born to supersede the necessity of their having any. if he were to make a discovery to the contrary, he would be simply stunned--would never recover himself, most likely, except to gasp and die. but he is an excellent master still, holding it a part of his state to be so. he has a great liking for mrs. rouncewell; he says she is a most respectable, creditable woman. he always shakes hands with her when he comes down to chesney wold and when he goes away; and if he were very ill, or if he were knocked down by accident, or run over, or placed in any situation expressive of a dedlock at a disadvantage, he would say if he could speak, "leave me, and send mrs. rouncewell here!" feeling his dignity, at such a pass, safer with her than with anybody else. mrs. rouncewell has known trouble. she has had two sons, of whom the younger ran wild, and went for a soldier, and never came back. even to this hour, mrs. rouncewell's calm hands lose their composure when she speaks of him, and unfolding themselves from her stomacher, hover about her in an agitated manner as she says what a likely lad, what a fine lad, what a gay, good-humoured, clever lad he was! her second son would have been provided for at chesney wold and would have been made steward in due season, but he took, when he was a schoolboy, to constructing steam-engines out of saucepans and setting birds to draw their own water with the least possible amount of labour, so assisting them with artful contrivance of hydraulic pressure that a thirsty canary had only, in a literal sense, to put his shoulder to the wheel and the job was done. this propensity gave mrs. rouncewell great uneasiness. she felt it with a mother's anguish to be a move in the wat tyler direction, well knowing that sir leicester had that general impression of an aptitude for any art to which smoke and a tall chimney might be considered essential. but the doomed young rebel (otherwise a mild youth, and very persevering), showing no sign of grace as he got older but, on the contrary, constructing a model of a power-loom, she was fain, with many tears, to mention his backslidings to the baronet. "mrs. rouncewell," said sir leicester, "i can never consent to argue, as you know, with any one on any subject. you had better get rid of your boy; you had better get him into some works. the iron country farther north is, i suppose, the congenial direction for a boy with these tendencies." farther north he went, and farther north he grew up; and if sir leicester dedlock ever saw him when he came to chesney wold to visit his mother, or ever thought of him afterwards, it is certain that he only regarded him as one of a body of some odd thousand conspirators, swarthy and grim, who were in the habit of turning out by torchlight two or three nights in the week for unlawful purposes. nevertheless, mrs. rouncewell's son has, in the course of nature and art, grown up, and established himself, and married, and called unto him mrs. rouncewell's grandson, who, being out of his apprenticeship, and home from a journey in far countries, whither he was sent to enlarge his knowledge and complete his preparations for the venture of this life, stands leaning against the chimney-piece this very day in mrs. rouncewell's room at chesney wold. "and, again and again, i am glad to see you, watt! and, once again, i am glad to see you, watt!" says mrs. rouncewell. "you are a fine young fellow. you are like your poor uncle george. ah!" mrs. rouncewell's hands unquiet, as usual, on this reference. "they say i am like my father, grandmother." "like him, also, my dear--but most like your poor uncle george! and your dear father." mrs. rouncewell folds her hands again. "he is well?" "thriving, grandmother, in every way." "i am thankful!" mrs. rouncewell is fond of her son but has a plaintive feeling towards him, much as if he were a very honourable soldier who had gone over to the enemy. "he is quite happy?" says she. "quite." "i am thankful! so he has brought you up to follow in his ways and has sent you into foreign countries and the like? well, he knows best. there may be a world beyond chesney wold that i don't understand. though i am not young, either. and i have seen a quantity of good company too!" "grandmother," says the young man, changing the subject, "what a very pretty girl that was i found with you just now. you called her rosa?" "yes, child. she is daughter of a widow in the village. maids are so hard to teach, now-a-days, that i have put her about me young. she's an apt scholar and will do well. she shows the house already, very pretty. she lives with me at my table here." "i hope i have not driven her away?" "she supposes we have family affairs to speak about, i dare say. she is very modest. it is a fine quality in a young woman. and scarcer," says mrs. rouncewell, expanding her stomacher to its utmost limits, "than it formerly was!" the young man inclines his head in acknowledgment of the precepts of experience. mrs. rouncewell listens. "wheels!" says she. they have long been audible to the younger ears of her companion. "what wheels on such a day as this, for gracious sake?" after a short interval, a tap at the door. "come in!" a dark-eyed, dark-haired, shy, village beauty comes in--so fresh in her rosy and yet delicate bloom that the drops of rain which have beaten on her hair look like the dew upon a flower fresh gathered. "what company is this, rosa?" says mrs. rouncewell. "it's two young men in a gig, ma'am, who want to see the house--yes, and if you please, i told them so!" in quick reply to a gesture of dissent from the housekeeper. "i went to the hall-door and told them it was the wrong day and the wrong hour, but the young man who was driving took off his hat in the wet and begged me to bring this card to you." "read it, my dear watt," says the housekeeper. rosa is so shy as she gives it to him that they drop it between them and almost knock their foreheads together as they pick it up. rosa is shyer than before. "mr. guppy" is all the information the card yields. "guppy!" repeats mrs. rouncewell, "mr. guppy! nonsense, i never heard of him!" "if you please, he told me that!" says rosa. "but he said that he and the other young gentleman came from london only last night by the mail, on business at the magistrates' meeting, ten miles off, this morning, and that as their business was soon over, and they had heard a great deal said of chesney wold, and really didn't know what to do with themselves, they had come through the wet to see it. they are lawyers. he says he is not in mr. tulkinghorn's office, but he is sure he may make use of mr. tulkinghorn's name if necessary." finding, now she leaves off, that she has been making quite a long speech, rosa is shyer than ever. now, mr. tulkinghorn is, in a manner, part and parcel of the place, and besides, is supposed to have made mrs. rouncewell's will. the old lady relaxes, consents to the admission of the visitors as a favour, and dismisses rosa. the grandson, however, being smitten by a sudden wish to see the house himself, proposes to join the party. the grandmother, who is pleased that he should have that interest, accompanies him--though to do him justice, he is exceedingly unwilling to trouble her. "much obliged to you, ma'am!" says mr. guppy, divesting himself of his wet dreadnought in the hall. "us london lawyers don't often get an out, and when we do, we like to make the most of it, you know." the old housekeeper, with a gracious severity of deportment, waves her hand towards the great staircase. mr. guppy and his friend follow rosa; mrs. rouncewell and her grandson follow them; a young gardener goes before to open the shutters. as is usually the case with people who go over houses, mr. guppy and his friend are dead beat before they have well begun. they straggle about in wrong places, look at wrong things, don't care for the right things, gape when more rooms are opened, exhibit profound depression of spirits, and are clearly knocked up. in each successive chamber that they enter, mrs. rouncewell, who is as upright as the house itself, rests apart in a window-seat or other such nook and listens with stately approval to rosa's exposition. her grandson is so attentive to it that rosa is shyer than ever--and prettier. thus they pass on from room to room, raising the pictured dedlocks for a few brief minutes as the young gardener admits the light, and reconsigning them to their graves as he shuts it out again. it appears to the afflicted mr. guppy and his inconsolable friend that there is no end to the dedlocks, whose family greatness seems to consist in their never having done anything to distinguish themselves for seven hundred years. even the long drawing-room of chesney wold cannot revive mr. guppy's spirits. he is so low that he droops on the threshold and has hardly strength of mind to enter. but a portrait over the chimney-piece, painted by the fashionable artist of the day, acts upon him like a charm. he recovers in a moment. he stares at it with uncommon interest; he seems to be fixed and fascinated by it. "dear me!" says mr. guppy. "who's that?" "the picture over the fire-place," says rosa, "is the portrait of the present lady dedlock. it is considered a perfect likeness, and the best work of the master." "blest," says mr. guppy, staring in a kind of dismay at his friend, "if i can ever have seen her. yet i know her! has the picture been engraved, miss?" "the picture has never been engraved. sir leicester has always refused permission." "well!" says mr. guppy in a low voice. "i'll be shot if it ain't very curious how well i know that picture! so that's lady dedlock, is it!" "the picture on the right is the present sir leicester dedlock. the picture on the left is his father, the late sir leicester." mr. guppy has no eyes for either of these magnates. "it's unaccountable to me," he says, still staring at the portrait, "how well i know that picture! i'm dashed," adds mr. guppy, looking round, "if i don't think i must have had a dream of that picture, you know!" as no one present takes any especial interest in mr. guppy's dreams, the probability is not pursued. but he still remains so absorbed by the portrait that he stands immovable before it until the young gardener has closed the shutters, when he comes out of the room in a dazed state that is an odd though a sufficient substitute for interest and follows into the succeeding rooms with a confused stare, as if he were looking everywhere for lady dedlock again. he sees no more of her. he sees her rooms, which are the last shown, as being very elegant, and he looks out of the windows from which she looked out, not long ago, upon the weather that bored her to death. all things have an end, even houses that people take infinite pains to see and are tired of before they begin to see them. he has come to the end of the sight, and the fresh village beauty to the end of her description; which is always this: "the terrace below is much admired. it is called, from an old story in the family, the ghost's walk." "no?" says mr. guppy, greedily curious. "what's the story, miss? is it anything about a picture?" "pray tell us the story," says watt in a half whisper. "i don't know it, sir." rosa is shyer than ever. "it is not related to visitors; it is almost forgotten," says the housekeeper, advancing. "it has never been more than a family anecdote." "you'll excuse my asking again if it has anything to do with a picture, ma'am," observes mr. guppy, "because i do assure you that the more i think of that picture the better i know it, without knowing how i know it!" the story has nothing to do with a picture; the housekeeper can guarantee that. mr. guppy is obliged to her for the information and is, moreover, generally obliged. he retires with his friend, guided down another staircase by the young gardener, and presently is heard to drive away. it is now dusk. mrs. rouncewell can trust to the discretion of her two young hearers and may tell them how the terrace came to have that ghostly name. she seats herself in a large chair by the fast-darkening window and tells them: "in the wicked days, my dears, of king charles the first--i mean, of course, in the wicked days of the rebels who leagued themselves against that excellent king--sir morbury dedlock was the owner of chesney wold. whether there was any account of a ghost in the family before those days, i can't say. i should think it very likely indeed." mrs. rouncewell holds this opinion because she considers that a family of such antiquity and importance has a right to a ghost. she regards a ghost as one of the privileges of the upper classes, a genteel distinction to which the common people have no claim. "sir morbury dedlock," says mrs. rouncewell, "was, i have no occasion to say, on the side of the blessed martyr. but it is supposed that his lady, who had none of the family blood in her veins, favoured the bad cause. it is said that she had relations among king charles's enemies, that she was in correspondence with them, and that she gave them information. when any of the country gentlemen who followed his majesty's cause met here, it is said that my lady was always nearer to the door of their council-room than they supposed. do you hear a sound like a footstep passing along the terrace, watt?" rosa draws nearer to the housekeeper. "i hear the rain-drip on the stones," replies the young man, "and i hear a curious echo--i suppose an echo--which is very like a halting step." the housekeeper gravely nods and continues: "partly on account of this division between them, and partly on other accounts, sir morbury and his lady led a troubled life. she was a lady of a haughty temper. they were not well suited to each other in age or character, and they had no children to moderate between them. after her favourite brother, a young gentleman, was killed in the civil wars (by sir morbury's near kinsman), her feeling was so violent that she hated the race into which she had married. when the dedlocks were about to ride out from chesney wold in the king's cause, she is supposed to have more than once stolen down into the stables in the dead of night and lamed their horses; and the story is that once at such an hour, her husband saw her gliding down the stairs and followed her into the stall where his own favourite horse stood. there he seized her by the wrist, and in a struggle or in a fall or through the horse being frightened and lashing out, she was lamed in the hip and from that hour began to pine away." the housekeeper has dropped her voice to a little more than a whisper. "she had been a lady of a handsome figure and a noble carriage. she never complained of the change; she never spoke to any one of being crippled or of being in pain, but day by day she tried to walk upon the terrace, and with the help of the stone balustrade, went up and down, up and down, up and down, in sun and shadow, with greater difficulty every day. at last, one afternoon her husband (to whom she had never, on any persuasion, opened her lips since that night), standing at the great south window, saw her drop upon the pavement. he hastened down to raise her, but she repulsed him as he bent over her, and looking at him fixedly and coldly, said, 'i will die here where i have walked. and i will walk here, though i am in my grave. i will walk here until the pride of this house is humbled. and when calamity or when disgrace is coming to it, let the dedlocks listen for my step!'" watt looks at rosa. rosa in the deepening gloom looks down upon the ground, half frightened and half shy. "there and then she died. and from those days," says mrs. rouncewell, "the name has come down--the ghost's walk. if the tread is an echo, it is an echo that is only heard after dark, and is often unheard for a long while together. but it comes back from time to time; and so sure as there is sickness or death in the family, it will be heard then." "and disgrace, grandmother--" says watt. "disgrace never comes to chesney wold," returns the housekeeper. her grandson apologizes with "true. true." "that is the story. whatever the sound is, it is a worrying sound," says mrs. rouncewell, getting up from her chair; "and what is to be noticed in it is that it must be heard. my lady, who is afraid of nothing, admits that when it is there, it must be heard. you cannot shut it out. watt, there is a tall french clock behind you (placed there, 'a purpose) that has a loud beat when it is in motion and can play music. you understand how those things are managed?" "pretty well, grandmother, i think." "set it a-going." watt sets it a-going--music and all. "now, come hither," says the housekeeper. "hither, child, towards my lady's pillow. i am not sure that it is dark enough yet, but listen! can you hear the sound upon the terrace, through the music, and the beat, and everything?" "i certainly can!" "so my lady says." chapter viii covering a multitude of sins it was interesting when i dressed before daylight to peep out of window, where my candles were reflected in the black panes like two beacons, and finding all beyond still enshrouded in the indistinctness of last night, to watch how it turned out when the day came on. as the prospect gradually revealed itself and disclosed the scene over which the wind had wandered in the dark, like my memory over my life, i had a pleasure in discovering the unknown objects that had been around me in my sleep. at first they were faintly discernible in the mist, and above them the later stars still glimmered. that pale interval over, the picture began to enlarge and fill up so fast that at every new peep i could have found enough to look at for an hour. imperceptibly my candles became the only incongruous part of the morning, the dark places in my room all melted away, and the day shone bright upon a cheerful landscape, prominent in which the old abbey church, with its massive tower, threw a softer train of shadow on the view than seemed compatible with its rugged character. but so from rough outsides (i hope i have learnt), serene and gentle influences often proceed. every part of the house was in such order, and every one was so attentive to me, that i had no trouble with my two bunches of keys, though what with trying to remember the contents of each little store-room drawer and cupboard; and what with making notes on a slate about jams, and pickles, and preserves, and bottles, and glass, and china, and a great many other things; and what with being generally a methodical, old-maidish sort of foolish little person, i was so busy that i could not believe it was breakfast-time when i heard the bell ring. away i ran, however, and made tea, as i had already been installed into the responsibility of the tea-pot; and then, as they were all rather late and nobody was down yet, i thought i would take a peep at the garden and get some knowledge of that too. i found it quite a delightful place--in front, the pretty avenue and drive by which we had approached (and where, by the by, we had cut up the gravel so terribly with our wheels that i asked the gardener to roll it); at the back, the flower-garden, with my darling at her window up there, throwing it open to smile out at me, as if she would have kissed me from that distance. beyond the flower-garden was a kitchen-garden, and then a paddock, and then a snug little rick-yard, and then a dear little farm-yard. as to the house itself, with its three peaks in the roof; its various-shaped windows, some so large, some so small, and all so pretty; its trellis-work, against the south-front for roses and honey-suckle, and its homely, comfortable, welcoming look--it was, as ada said when she came out to meet me with her arm through that of its master, worthy of her cousin john, a bold thing to say, though he only pinched her dear cheek for it. mr. skimpole was as agreeable at breakfast as he had been overnight. there was honey on the table, and it led him into a discourse about bees. he had no objection to honey, he said (and i should think he had not, for he seemed to like it), but he protested against the overweening assumptions of bees. he didn't at all see why the busy bee should be proposed as a model to him; he supposed the bee liked to make honey, or he wouldn't do it--nobody asked him. it was not necessary for the bee to make such a merit of his tastes. if every confectioner went buzzing about the world banging against everything that came in his way and egotistically calling upon everybody to take notice that he was going to his work and must not be interrupted, the world would be quite an unsupportable place. then, after all, it was a ridiculous position to be smoked out of your fortune with brimstone as soon as you had made it. you would have a very mean opinion of a manchester man if he spun cotton for no other purpose. he must say he thought a drone the embodiment of a pleasanter and wiser idea. the drone said unaffectedly, "you will excuse me; i really cannot attend to the shop! i find myself in a world in which there is so much to see and so short a time to see it in that i must take the liberty of looking about me and begging to be provided for by somebody who doesn't want to look about him." this appeared to mr. skimpole to be the drone philosophy, and he thought it a very good philosophy, always supposing the drone to be willing to be on good terms with the bee, which, so far as he knew, the easy fellow always was, if the consequential creature would only let him, and not be so conceited about his honey! he pursued this fancy with the lightest foot over a variety of ground and made us all merry, though again he seemed to have as serious a meaning in what he said as he was capable of having. i left them still listening to him when i withdrew to attend to my new duties. they had occupied me for some time, and i was passing through the passages on my return with my basket of keys on my arm when mr. jarndyce called me into a small room next his bed-chamber, which i found to be in part a little library of books and papers and in part quite a little museum of his boots and shoes and hat-boxes. "sit down, my dear," said mr. jarndyce. "this, you must know, is the growlery. when i am out of humour, i come and growl here." "you must be here very seldom, sir," said i. "oh, you don't know me!" he returned. "when i am deceived or disappointed in--the wind, and it's easterly, i take refuge here. the growlery is the best-used room in the house. you are not aware of half my humours yet. my dear, how you are trembling!" i could not help it; i tried very hard, but being alone with that benevolent presence, and meeting his kind eyes, and feeling so happy and so honoured there, and my heart so full--i kissed his hand. i don't know what i said, or even that i spoke. he was disconcerted and walked to the window; i almost believed with an intention of jumping out, until he turned and i was reassured by seeing in his eyes what he had gone there to hide. he gently patted me on the head, and i sat down. "there! there!" he said. "that's over. pooh! don't be foolish." "it shall not happen again, sir," i returned, "but at first it is difficult--" "nonsense!" he said. "it's easy, easy. why not? i hear of a good little orphan girl without a protector, and i take it into my head to be that protector. she grows up, and more than justifies my good opinion, and i remain her guardian and her friend. what is there in all this? so, so! now, we have cleared off old scores, and i have before me thy pleasant, trusting, trusty face again." i said to myself, "esther, my dear, you surprise me! this really is not what i expected of you!" and it had such a good effect that i folded my hands upon my basket and quite recovered myself. mr. jarndyce, expressing his approval in his face, began to talk to me as confidentially as if i had been in the habit of conversing with him every morning for i don't know how long. i almost felt as if i had. "of course, esther," he said, "you don't understand this chancery business?" and of course i shook my head. "i don't know who does," he returned. "the lawyers have twisted it into such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the case have long disappeared from the face of the earth. it's about a will and the trusts under a will--or it was once. it's about nothing but costs now. we are always appearing, and disappearing, and swearing, and interrogating, and filing, and cross-filing, and arguing, and sealing, and motioning, and referring, and reporting, and revolving about the lord chancellor and all his satellites, and equitably waltzing ourselves off to dusty death, about costs. that's the great question. all the rest, by some extraordinary means, has melted away." "but it was, sir," said i, to bring him back, for he began to rub his head, "about a will?" "why, yes, it was about a will when it was about anything," he returned. "a certain jarndyce, in an evil hour, made a great fortune, and made a great will. in the question how the trusts under that will are to be administered, the fortune left by the will is squandered away; the legatees under the will are reduced to such a miserable condition that they would be sufficiently punished if they had committed an enormous crime in having money left them, and the will itself is made a dead letter. all through the deplorable cause, everything that everybody in it, except one man, knows already is referred to that only one man who don't know, it to find out--all through the deplorable cause, everybody must have copies, over and over again, of everything that has accumulated about it in the way of cartloads of papers (or must pay for them without having them, which is the usual course, for nobody wants them) and must go down the middle and up again through such an infernal country-dance of costs and fees and nonsense and corruption as was never dreamed of in the wildest visions of a witch's sabbath. equity sends questions to law, law sends questions back to equity; law finds it can't do this, equity finds it can't do that; neither can so much as say it can't do anything, without this solicitor instructing and this counsel appearing for a, and that solicitor instructing and that counsel appearing for b; and so on through the whole alphabet, like the history of the apple pie. and thus, through years and years, and lives and lives, everything goes on, constantly beginning over and over again, and nothing ever ends. and we can't get out of the suit on any terms, for we are made parties to it, and must be parties to it, whether we like it or not. but it won't do to think of it! when my great uncle, poor tom jarndyce, began to think of it, it was the beginning of the end!" "the mr. jarndyce, sir, whose story i have heard?" he nodded gravely. "i was his heir, and this was his house, esther. when i came here, it was bleak indeed. he had left the signs of his misery upon it." "how changed it must be now!" i said. "it had been called, before his time, the peaks. he gave it its present name and lived here shut up, day and night poring over the wicked heaps of papers in the suit and hoping against hope to disentangle it from its mystification and bring it to a close. in the meantime, the place became dilapidated, the wind whistled through the cracked walls, the rain fell through the broken roof, the weeds choked the passage to the rotting door. when i brought what remained of him home here, the brains seemed to me to have been blown out of the house too, it was so shattered and ruined." he walked a little to and fro after saying this to himself with a shudder, and then looked at me, and brightened, and came and sat down again with his hands in his pockets. "i told you this was the growlery, my dear. where was i?" i reminded him, at the hopeful change he had made in bleak house. "bleak house; true. there is, in that city of london there, some property of ours which is much at this day what bleak house was then; i say property of ours, meaning of the suit's, but i ought to call it the property of costs, for costs is the only power on earth that will ever get anything out of it now or will ever know it for anything but an eyesore and a heartsore. it is a street of perishing blind houses, with their eyes stoned out, without a pane of glass, without so much as a window-frame, with the bare blank shutters tumbling from their hinges and falling asunder, the iron rails peeling away in flakes of rust, the chimneys sinking in, the stone steps to every door (and every door might be death's door) turning stagnant green, the very crutches on which the ruins are propped decaying. although bleak house was not in chancery, its master was, and it was stamped with the same seal. these are the great seal's impressions, my dear, all over england--the children know them!" "how changed it is!" i said again. "why, so it is," he answered much more cheerfully; "and it is wisdom in you to keep me to the bright side of the picture." (the idea of my wisdom!) "these are things i never talk about or even think about, excepting in the growlery here. if you consider it right to mention them to rick and ada," looking seriously at me, "you can. i leave it to your discretion, esther." "i hope, sir--" said i. "i think you had better call me guardian, my dear." i felt that i was choking again--i taxed myself with it, "esther, now, you know you are!"--when he feigned to say this slightly, as if it were a whim instead of a thoughtful tenderness. but i gave the housekeeping keys the least shake in the world as a reminder to myself, and folding my hands in a still more determined manner on the basket, looked at him quietly. "i hope, guardian," said i, "that you may not trust too much to my discretion. i hope you may not mistake me. i am afraid it will be a disappointment to you to know that i am not clever, but it really is the truth, and you would soon find it out if i had not the honesty to confess it." he did not seem at all disappointed; quite the contrary. he told me, with a smile all over his face, that he knew me very well indeed and that i was quite clever enough for him. "i hope i may turn out so," said i, "but i am much afraid of it, guardian." "you are clever enough to be the good little woman of our lives here, my dear," he returned playfully; "the little old woman of the child's (i don't mean skimpole's) rhyme: "'little old woman, and whither so high?' 'to sweep the cobwebs out of the sky.' "you will sweep them so neatly out of our sky in the course of your housekeeping, esther, that one of these days we shall have to abandon the growlery and nail up the door." this was the beginning of my being called old woman, and little old woman, and cobweb, and mrs. shipton, and mother hubbard, and dame durden, and so many names of that sort that my own name soon became quite lost among them. "however," said mr. jarndyce, "to return to our gossip. here's rick, a fine young fellow full of promise. what's to be done with him?" oh, my goodness, the idea of asking my advice on such a point! "here he is, esther," said mr. jarndyce, comfortably putting his hands into his pockets and stretching out his legs. "he must have a profession; he must make some choice for himself. there will be a world more wiglomeration about it, i suppose, but it must be done." "more what, guardian?" said i. "more wiglomeration," said he. "it's the only name i know for the thing. he is a ward in chancery, my dear. kenge and carboy will have something to say about it; master somebody--a sort of ridiculous sexton, digging graves for the merits of causes in a back room at the end of quality court, chancery lane--will have something to say about it; counsel will have something to say about it; the chancellor will have something to say about it; the satellites will have something to say about it; they will all have to be handsomely feed, all round, about it; the whole thing will be vastly ceremonious, wordy, unsatisfactory, and expensive, and i call it, in general, wiglomeration. how mankind ever came to be afflicted with wiglomeration, or for whose sins these young people ever fell into a pit of it, i don't know; so it is." he began to rub his head again and to hint that he felt the wind. but it was a delightful instance of his kindness towards me that whether he rubbed his head, or walked about, or did both, his face was sure to recover its benignant expression as it looked at mine; and he was sure to turn comfortable again and put his hands in his pockets and stretch out his legs. "perhaps it would be best, first of all," said i, "to ask mr. richard what he inclines to himself." "exactly so," he returned. "that's what i mean! you know, just accustom yourself to talk it over, with your tact and in your quiet way, with him and ada, and see what you all make of it. we are sure to come at the heart of the matter by your means, little woman." i really was frightened at the thought of the importance i was attaining and the number of things that were being confided to me. i had not meant this at all; i had meant that he should speak to richard. but of course i said nothing in reply except that i would do my best, though i feared (i really felt it necessary to repeat this) that he thought me much more sagacious than i was. at which my guardian only laughed the pleasantest laugh i ever heard. "come!" he said, rising and pushing back his chair. "i think we may have done with the growlery for one day! only a concluding word. esther, my dear, do you wish to ask me anything?" he looked so attentively at me that i looked attentively at him and felt sure i understood him. "about myself, sir?" said i. "yes." "guardian," said i, venturing to put my hand, which was suddenly colder than i could have wished, in his, "nothing! i am quite sure that if there were anything i ought to know or had any need to know, i should not have to ask you to tell it to me. if my whole reliance and confidence were not placed in you, i must have a hard heart indeed. i have nothing to ask you, nothing in the world." he drew my hand through his arm and we went away to look for ada. from that hour i felt quite easy with him, quite unreserved, quite content to know no more, quite happy. we lived, at first, rather a busy life at bleak house, for we had to become acquainted with many residents in and out of the neighbourhood who knew mr. jarndyce. it seemed to ada and me that everybody knew him who wanted to do anything with anybody else's money. it amazed us when we began to sort his letters and to answer some of them for him in the growlery of a morning to find how the great object of the lives of nearly all his correspondents appeared to be to form themselves into committees for getting in and laying out money. the ladies were as desperate as the gentlemen; indeed, i think they were even more so. they threw themselves into committees in the most impassioned manner and collected subscriptions with a vehemence quite extraordinary. it appeared to us that some of them must pass their whole lives in dealing out subscription-cards to the whole post-office directory--shilling cards, half-crown cards, half-sovereign cards, penny cards. they wanted everything. they wanted wearing apparel, they wanted linen rags, they wanted money, they wanted coals, they wanted soup, they wanted interest, they wanted autographs, they wanted flannel, they wanted whatever mr. jarndyce had--or had not. their objects were as various as their demands. they were going to raise new buildings, they were going to pay off debts on old buildings, they were going to establish in a picturesque building (engraving of proposed west elevation attached) the sisterhood of mediaeval marys, they were going to give a testimonial to mrs. jellyby, they were going to have their secretary's portrait painted and presented to his mother-in-law, whose deep devotion to him was well known, they were going to get up everything, i really believe, from five hundred thousand tracts to an annuity and from a marble monument to a silver tea-pot. they took a multitude of titles. they were the women of england, the daughters of britain, the sisters of all the cardinal virtues separately, the females of america, the ladies of a hundred denominations. they appeared to be always excited about canvassing and electing. they seemed to our poor wits, and according to their own accounts, to be constantly polling people by tens of thousands, yet never bringing their candidates in for anything. it made our heads ache to think, on the whole, what feverish lives they must lead. among the ladies who were most distinguished for this rapacious benevolence (if i may use the expression) was a mrs. pardiggle, who seemed, as i judged from the number of her letters to mr. jarndyce, to be almost as powerful a correspondent as mrs. jellyby herself. we observed that the wind always changed when mrs. pardiggle became the subject of conversation and that it invariably interrupted mr. jarndyce and prevented his going any farther, when he had remarked that there were two classes of charitable people; one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all. we were therefore curious to see mrs. pardiggle, suspecting her to be a type of the former class, and were glad when she called one day with her five young sons. she was a formidable style of lady with spectacles, a prominent nose, and a loud voice, who had the effect of wanting a great deal of room. and she really did, for she knocked down little chairs with her skirts that were quite a great way off. as only ada and i were at home, we received her timidly, for she seemed to come in like cold weather and to make the little pardiggles blue as they followed. "these, young ladies," said mrs. pardiggle with great volubility after the first salutations, "are my five boys. you may have seen their names in a printed subscription list (perhaps more than one) in the possession of our esteemed friend mr. jarndyce. egbert, my eldest (twelve), is the boy who sent out his pocket-money, to the amount of five and threepence, to the tockahoopo indians. oswald, my second (ten and a half), is the child who contributed two and nine-pence to the great national smithers testimonial. francis, my third (nine), one and sixpence halfpenny; felix, my fourth (seven), eightpence to the superannuated widows; alfred, my youngest (five), has voluntarily enrolled himself in the infant bonds of joy, and is pledged never, through life, to use tobacco in any form." we had never seen such dissatisfied children. it was not merely that they were weazened and shrivelled--though they were certainly that too--but they looked absolutely ferocious with discontent. at the mention of the tockahoopo indians, i could really have supposed egbert to be one of the most baleful members of that tribe, he gave me such a savage frown. the face of each child, as the amount of his contribution was mentioned, darkened in a peculiarly vindictive manner, but his was by far the worst. i must except, however, the little recruit into the infant bonds of joy, who was stolidly and evenly miserable. "you have been visiting, i understand," said mrs. pardiggle, "at mrs. jellyby's?" we said yes, we had passed one night there. "mrs. jellyby," pursued the lady, always speaking in the same demonstrative, loud, hard tone, so that her voice impressed my fancy as if it had a sort of spectacles on too--and i may take the opportunity of remarking that her spectacles were made the less engaging by her eyes being what ada called "choking eyes," meaning very prominent--"mrs. jellyby is a benefactor to society and deserves a helping hand. my boys have contributed to the african project--egbert, one and six, being the entire allowance of nine weeks; oswald, one and a penny halfpenny, being the same; the rest, according to their little means. nevertheless, i do not go with mrs. jellyby in all things. i do not go with mrs. jellyby in her treatment of her young family. it has been noticed. it has been observed that her young family are excluded from participation in the objects to which she is devoted. she may be right, she may be wrong; but, right or wrong, this is not my course with my young family. i take them everywhere." i was afterwards convinced (and so was ada) that from the ill-conditioned eldest child, these words extorted a sharp yell. he turned it off into a yawn, but it began as a yell. "they attend matins with me (very prettily done) at half-past six o'clock in the morning all the year round, including of course the depth of winter," said mrs. pardiggle rapidly, "and they are with me during the revolving duties of the day. i am a school lady, i am a visiting lady, i am a reading lady, i am a distributing lady; i am on the local linen box committee and many general committees; and my canvassing alone is very extensive--perhaps no one's more so. but they are my companions everywhere; and by these means they acquire that knowledge of the poor, and that capacity of doing charitable business in general--in short, that taste for the sort of thing--which will render them in after life a service to their neighbours and a satisfaction to themselves. my young family are not frivolous; they expend the entire amount of their allowance in subscriptions, under my direction; and they have attended as many public meetings and listened to as many lectures, orations, and discussions as generally fall to the lot of few grown people. alfred (five), who, as i mentioned, has of his own election joined the infant bonds of joy, was one of the very few children who manifested consciousness on that occasion after a fervid address of two hours from the chairman of the evening." alfred glowered at us as if he never could, or would, forgive the injury of that night. "you may have observed, miss summerson," said mrs. pardiggle, "in some of the lists to which i have referred, in the possession of our esteemed friend mr. jarndyce, that the names of my young family are concluded with the name of o. a. pardiggle, f.r.s., one pound. that is their father. we usually observe the same routine. i put down my mite first; then my young family enrol their contributions, according to their ages and their little means; and then mr. pardiggle brings up the rear. mr. pardiggle is happy to throw in his limited donation, under my direction; and thus things are made not only pleasant to ourselves, but, we trust, improving to others." suppose mr. pardiggle were to dine with mr. jellyby, and suppose mr. jellyby were to relieve his mind after dinner to mr. pardiggle, would mr. pardiggle, in return, make any confidential communication to mr. jellyby? i was quite confused to find myself thinking this, but it came into my head. "you are very pleasantly situated here!" said mrs. pardiggle. we were glad to change the subject, and going to the window, pointed out the beauties of the prospect, on which the spectacles appeared to me to rest with curious indifference. "you know mr. gusher?" said our visitor. we were obliged to say that we had not the pleasure of mr. gusher's acquaintance. "the loss is yours, i assure you," said mrs. pardiggle with her commanding deportment. "he is a very fervid, impassioned speaker--full of fire! stationed in a waggon on this lawn, now, which, from the shape of the land, is naturally adapted to a public meeting, he would improve almost any occasion you could mention for hours and hours! by this time, young ladies," said mrs. pardiggle, moving back to her chair and overturning, as if by invisible agency, a little round table at a considerable distance with my work-basket on it, "by this time you have found me out, i dare say?" this was really such a confusing question that ada looked at me in perfect dismay. as to the guilty nature of my own consciousness after what i had been thinking, it must have been expressed in the colour of my cheeks. "found out, i mean," said mrs. pardiggle, "the prominent point in my character. i am aware that it is so prominent as to be discoverable immediately. i lay myself open to detection, i know. well! i freely admit, i am a woman of business. i love hard work; i enjoy hard work. the excitement does me good. i am so accustomed and inured to hard work that i don't know what fatigue is." we murmured that it was very astonishing and very gratifying, or something to that effect. i don't think we knew what it was either, but this is what our politeness expressed. "i do not understand what it is to be tired; you cannot tire me if you try!" said mrs. pardiggle. "the quantity of exertion (which is no exertion to me), the amount of business (which i regard as nothing), that i go through sometimes astonishes myself. i have seen my young family, and mr. pardiggle, quite worn out with witnessing it, when i may truly say i have been as fresh as a lark!" if that dark-visaged eldest boy could look more malicious than he had already looked, this was the time when he did it. i observed that he doubled his right fist and delivered a secret blow into the crown of his cap, which was under his left arm. "this gives me a great advantage when i am making my rounds," said mrs. pardiggle. "if i find a person unwilling to hear what i have to say, i tell that person directly, 'i am incapable of fatigue, my good friend, i am never tired, and i mean to go on until i have done.' it answers admirably! miss summerson, i hope i shall have your assistance in my visiting rounds immediately, and miss clare's very soon." at first i tried to excuse myself for the present on the general ground of having occupations to attend to which i must not neglect. but as this was an ineffectual protest, i then said, more particularly, that i was not sure of my qualifications. that i was inexperienced in the art of adapting my mind to minds very differently situated, and addressing them from suitable points of view. that i had not that delicate knowledge of the heart which must be essential to such a work. that i had much to learn, myself, before i could teach others, and that i could not confide in my good intentions alone. for these reasons i thought it best to be as useful as i could, and to render what kind services i could to those immediately about me, and to try to let that circle of duty gradually and naturally expand itself. all this i said with anything but confidence, because mrs. pardiggle was much older than i, and had great experience, and was so very military in her manners. "you are wrong, miss summerson," said she, "but perhaps you are not equal to hard work or the excitement of it, and that makes a vast difference. if you would like to see how i go through my work, i am now about--with my young family--to visit a brickmaker in the neighbourhood (a very bad character) and shall be glad to take you with me. miss clare also, if she will do me the favour." ada and i interchanged looks, and as we were going out in any case, accepted the offer. when we hastily returned from putting on our bonnets, we found the young family languishing in a corner and mrs. pardiggle sweeping about the room, knocking down nearly all the light objects it contained. mrs. pardiggle took possession of ada, and i followed with the family. ada told me afterwards that mrs. pardiggle talked in the same loud tone (that, indeed, i overheard) all the way to the brickmaker's about an exciting contest which she had for two or three years waged against another lady relative to the bringing in of their rival candidates for a pension somewhere. there had been a quantity of printing, and promising, and proxying, and polling, and it appeared to have imparted great liveliness to all concerned, except the pensioners--who were not elected yet. i am very fond of being confided in by children and am happy in being usually favoured in that respect, but on this occasion it gave me great uneasiness. as soon as we were out of doors, egbert, with the manner of a little footpad, demanded a shilling of me on the ground that his pocket-money was "boned" from him. on my pointing out the great impropriety of the word, especially in connexion with his parent (for he added sulkily "by her!"), he pinched me and said, "oh, then! now! who are you! you wouldn't like it, i think? what does she make a sham for, and pretend to give me money, and take it away again? why do you call it my allowance, and never let me spend it?" these exasperating questions so inflamed his mind and the minds of oswald and francis that they all pinched me at once, and in a dreadfully expert way--screwing up such little pieces of my arms that i could hardly forbear crying out. felix, at the same time, stamped upon my toes. and the bond of joy, who on account of always having the whole of his little income anticipated stood in fact pledged to abstain from cakes as well as tobacco, so swelled with grief and rage when we passed a pastry-cook's shop that he terrified me by becoming purple. i never underwent so much, both in body and mind, in the course of a walk with young people as from these unnaturally constrained children when they paid me the compliment of being natural. i was glad when we came to the brickmaker's house, though it was one of a cluster of wretched hovels in a brick-field, with pigsties close to the broken windows and miserable little gardens before the doors growing nothing but stagnant pools. here and there an old tub was put to catch the droppings of rain-water from a roof, or they were banked up with mud into a little pond like a large dirt-pie. at the doors and windows some men and women lounged or prowled about, and took little notice of us except to laugh to one another or to say something as we passed about gentlefolks minding their own business and not troubling their heads and muddying their shoes with coming to look after other people's. mrs. pardiggle, leading the way with a great show of moral determination and talking with much volubility about the untidy habits of the people (though i doubted if the best of us could have been tidy in such a place), conducted us into a cottage at the farthest corner, the ground-floor room of which we nearly filled. besides ourselves, there were in this damp, offensive room a woman with a black eye, nursing a poor little gasping baby by the fire; a man, all stained with clay and mud and looking very dissipated, lying at full length on the ground, smoking a pipe; a powerful young man fastening a collar on a dog; and a bold girl doing some kind of washing in very dirty water. they all looked up at us as we came in, and the woman seemed to turn her face towards the fire as if to hide her bruised eye; nobody gave us any welcome. "well, my friends," said mrs. pardiggle, but her voice had not a friendly sound, i thought; it was much too business-like and systematic. "how do you do, all of you? i am here again. i told you, you couldn't tire me, you know. i am fond of hard work, and am true to my word." "there an't," growled the man on the floor, whose head rested on his hand as he stared at us, "any more on you to come in, is there?" "no, my friend," said mrs. pardiggle, seating herself on one stool and knocking down another. "we are all here." "because i thought there warn't enough of you, perhaps?" said the man, with his pipe between his lips as he looked round upon us. the young man and the girl both laughed. two friends of the young man, whom we had attracted to the doorway and who stood there with their hands in their pockets, echoed the laugh noisily. "you can't tire me, good people," said mrs. pardiggle to these latter. "i enjoy hard work, and the harder you make mine, the better i like it." "then make it easy for her!" growled the man upon the floor. "i wants it done, and over. i wants a end of these liberties took with my place. i wants an end of being drawed like a badger. now you're a-going to poll-pry and question according to custom--i know what you're a-going to be up to. well! you haven't got no occasion to be up to it. i'll save you the trouble. is my daughter a-washin? yes, she is a-washin. look at the water. smell it! that's wot we drinks. how do you like it, and what do you think of gin instead! an't my place dirty? yes, it is dirty--it's nat'rally dirty, and it's nat'rally onwholesome; and we've had five dirty and onwholesome children, as is all dead infants, and so much the better for them, and for us besides. have i read the little book wot you left? no, i an't read the little book wot you left. there an't nobody here as knows how to read it; and if there wos, it wouldn't be suitable to me. it's a book fit for a babby, and i'm not a babby. if you was to leave me a doll, i shouldn't nuss it. how have i been conducting of myself? why, i've been drunk for three days; and i'da been drunk four if i'da had the money. don't i never mean for to go to church? no, i don't never mean for to go to church. i shouldn't be expected there, if i did; the beadle's too gen-teel for me. and how did my wife get that black eye? why, i give it her; and if she says i didn't, she's a lie!" he had pulled his pipe out of his mouth to say all this, and he now turned over on his other side and smoked again. mrs. pardiggle, who had been regarding him through her spectacles with a forcible composure, calculated, i could not help thinking, to increase his antagonism, pulled out a good book as if it were a constable's staff and took the whole family into custody. i mean into religious custody, of course; but she really did it as if she were an inexorable moral policeman carrying them all off to a station-house. ada and i were very uncomfortable. we both felt intrusive and out of place, and we both thought that mrs. pardiggle would have got on infinitely better if she had not had such a mechanical way of taking possession of people. the children sulked and stared; the family took no notice of us whatever, except when the young man made the dog bark, which he usually did when mrs. pardiggle was most emphatic. we both felt painfully sensible that between us and these people there was an iron barrier which could not be removed by our new friend. by whom or how it could be removed, we did not know, but we knew that. even what she read and said seemed to us to be ill-chosen for such auditors, if it had been imparted ever so modestly and with ever so much tact. as to the little book to which the man on the floor had referred, we acquired a knowledge of it afterwards, and mr. jarndyce said he doubted if robinson crusoe could have read it, though he had had no other on his desolate island. we were much relieved, under these circumstances, when mrs. pardiggle left off. the man on the floor, then turning his head round again, said morosely, "well! you've done, have you?" "for to-day, i have, my friend. but i am never fatigued. i shall come to you again in your regular order," returned mrs. pardiggle with demonstrative cheerfulness. "so long as you goes now," said he, folding his arms and shutting his eyes with an oath, "you may do wot you like!" mrs. pardiggle accordingly rose and made a little vortex in the confined room from which the pipe itself very narrowly escaped. taking one of her young family in each hand, and telling the others to follow closely, and expressing her hope that the brickmaker and all his house would be improved when she saw them next, she then proceeded to another cottage. i hope it is not unkind in me to say that she certainly did make, in this as in everything else, a show that was not conciliatory of doing charity by wholesale and of dealing in it to a large extent. she supposed that we were following her, but as soon as the space was left clear, we approached the woman sitting by the fire to ask if the baby were ill. she only looked at it as it lay on her lap. we had observed before that when she looked at it she covered her discoloured eye with her hand, as though she wished to separate any association with noise and violence and ill treatment from the poor little child. ada, whose gentle heart was moved by its appearance, bent down to touch its little face. as she did so, i saw what happened and drew her back. the child died. "oh, esther!" cried ada, sinking on her knees beside it. "look here! oh, esther, my love, the little thing! the suffering, quiet, pretty little thing! i am so sorry for it. i am so sorry for the mother. i never saw a sight so pitiful as this before! oh, baby, baby!" such compassion, such gentleness, as that with which she bent down weeping and put her hand upon the mother's might have softened any mother's heart that ever beat. the woman at first gazed at her in astonishment and then burst into tears. presently i took the light burden from her lap, did what i could to make the baby's rest the prettier and gentler, laid it on a shelf, and covered it with my own handkerchief. we tried to comfort the mother, and we whispered to her what our saviour said of children. she answered nothing, but sat weeping--weeping very much. when i turned, i found that the young man had taken out the dog and was standing at the door looking in upon us with dry eyes, but quiet. the girl was quiet too and sat in a corner looking on the ground. the man had risen. he still smoked his pipe with an air of defiance, but he was silent. an ugly woman, very poorly clothed, hurried in while i was glancing at them, and coming straight up to the mother, said, "jenny! jenny!" the mother rose on being so addressed and fell upon the woman's neck. she also had upon her face and arms the marks of ill usage. she had no kind of grace about her, but the grace of sympathy; but when she condoled with the woman, and her own tears fell, she wanted no beauty. i say condoled, but her only words were "jenny! jenny!" all the rest was in the tone in which she said them. i thought it very touching to see these two women, coarse and shabby and beaten, so united; to see what they could be to one another; to see how they felt for one another, how the heart of each to each was softened by the hard trials of their lives. i think the best side of such people is almost hidden from us. what the poor are to the poor is little known, excepting to themselves and god. we felt it better to withdraw and leave them uninterrupted. we stole out quietly and without notice from any one except the man. he was leaning against the wall near the door, and finding that there was scarcely room for us to pass, went out before us. he seemed to want to hide that he did this on our account, but we perceived that he did, and thanked him. he made no answer. ada was so full of grief all the way home, and richard, whom we found at home, was so distressed to see her in tears (though he said to me, when she was not present, how beautiful it was too!), that we arranged to return at night with some little comforts and repeat our visit at the brick-maker's house. we said as little as we could to mr. jarndyce, but the wind changed directly. richard accompanied us at night to the scene of our morning expedition. on our way there, we had to pass a noisy drinking-house, where a number of men were flocking about the door. among them, and prominent in some dispute, was the father of the little child. at a short distance, we passed the young man and the dog, in congenial company. the sister was standing laughing and talking with some other young women at the corner of the row of cottages, but she seemed ashamed and turned away as we went by. we left our escort within sight of the brickmaker's dwelling and proceeded by ourselves. when we came to the door, we found the woman who had brought such consolation with her standing there looking anxiously out. "it's you, young ladies, is it?" she said in a whisper. "i'm a-watching for my master. my heart's in my mouth. if he was to catch me away from home, he'd pretty near murder me." "do you mean your husband?" said i. "yes, miss, my master. jenny's asleep, quite worn out. she's scarcely had the child off her lap, poor thing, these seven days and nights, except when i've been able to take it for a minute or two." as she gave way for us, she went softly in and put what we had brought near the miserable bed on which the mother slept. no effort had been made to clean the room--it seemed in its nature almost hopeless of being clean; but the small waxen form from which so much solemnity diffused itself had been composed afresh, and washed, and neatly dressed in some fragments of white linen; and on my handkerchief, which still covered the poor baby, a little bunch of sweet herbs had been laid by the same rough, scarred hands, so lightly, so tenderly! "may heaven reward you!" we said to her. "you are a good woman." "me, young ladies?" she returned with surprise. "hush! jenny, jenny!" the mother had moaned in her sleep and moved. the sound of the familiar voice seemed to calm her again. she was quiet once more. how little i thought, when i raised my handkerchief to look upon the tiny sleeper underneath and seemed to see a halo shine around the child through ada's drooping hair as her pity bent her head--how little i thought in whose unquiet bosom that handkerchief would come to lie after covering the motionless and peaceful breast! i only thought that perhaps the angel of the child might not be all unconscious of the woman who replaced it with so compassionate a hand; not all unconscious of her presently, when we had taken leave, and left her at the door, by turns looking, and listening in terror for herself, and saying in her old soothing manner, "jenny, jenny!" chapter ix signs and tokens i don't know how it is i seem to be always writing about myself. i mean all the time to write about other people, and i try to think about myself as little as possible, and i am sure, when i find myself coming into the story again, i am really vexed and say, "dear, dear, you tiresome little creature, i wish you wouldn't!" but it is all of no use. i hope any one who may read what i write will understand that if these pages contain a great deal about me, i can only suppose it must be because i have really something to do with them and can't be kept out. my darling and i read together, and worked, and practised, and found so much employment for our time that the winter days flew by us like bright-winged birds. generally in the afternoons, and always in the evenings, richard gave us his company. although he was one of the most restless creatures in the world, he certainly was very fond of our society. he was very, very, very fond of ada. i mean it, and i had better say it at once. i had never seen any young people falling in love before, but i found them out quite soon. i could not say so, of course, or show that i knew anything about it. on the contrary, i was so demure and used to seem so unconscious that sometimes i considered within myself while i was sitting at work whether i was not growing quite deceitful. but there was no help for it. all i had to do was to be quiet, and i was as quiet as a mouse. they were as quiet as mice too, so far as any words were concerned, but the innocent manner in which they relied more and more upon me as they took more and more to one another was so charming that i had great difficulty in not showing how it interested me. "our dear little old woman is such a capital old woman," richard would say, coming up to meet me in the garden early, with his pleasant laugh and perhaps the least tinge of a blush, "that i can't get on without her. before i begin my harum-scarum day--grinding away at those books and instruments and then galloping up hill and down dale, all the country round, like a highwayman--it does me so much good to come and have a steady walk with our comfortable friend, that here i am again!" "you know, dame durden, dear," ada would say at night, with her head upon my shoulder and the firelight shining in her thoughtful eyes, "i don't want to talk when we come upstairs here. only to sit a little while thinking, with your dear face for company, and to hear the wind and remember the poor sailors at sea--" ah! perhaps richard was going to be a sailor. we had talked it over very often now, and there was some talk of gratifying the inclination of his childhood for the sea. mr. jarndyce had written to a relation of the family, a great sir leicester dedlock, for his interest in richard's favour, generally; and sir leicester had replied in a gracious manner that he would be happy to advance the prospects of the young gentleman if it should ever prove to be within his power, which was not at all probable, and that my lady sent her compliments to the young gentleman (to whom she perfectly remembered that she was allied by remote consanguinity) and trusted that he would ever do his duty in any honourable profession to which he might devote himself. "so i apprehend it's pretty clear," said richard to me, "that i shall have to work my own way. never mind! plenty of people have had to do that before now, and have done it. i only wish i had the command of a clipping privateer to begin with and could carry off the chancellor and keep him on short allowance until he gave judgment in our cause. he'd find himself growing thin, if he didn't look sharp!" with a buoyancy and hopefulness and a gaiety that hardly ever flagged, richard had a carelessness in his character that quite perplexed me, principally because he mistook it, in such a very odd way, for prudence. it entered into all his calculations about money in a singular manner which i don't think i can better explain than by reverting for a moment to our loan to mr. skimpole. mr. jarndyce had ascertained the amount, either from mr. skimpole himself or from coavinses, and had placed the money in my hands with instructions to me to retain my own part of it and hand the rest to richard. the number of little acts of thoughtless expenditure which richard justified by the recovery of his ten pounds, and the number of times he talked to me as if he had saved or realized that amount, would form a sum in simple addition. "my prudent mother hubbard, why not?" he said to me when he wanted, without the least consideration, to bestow five pounds on the brickmaker. "i made ten pounds, clear, out of coavinses' business." "how was that?" said i. "why, i got rid of ten pounds which i was quite content to get rid of and never expected to see any more. you don't deny that?" "no," said i. "very well! then i came into possession of ten pounds--" "the same ten pounds," i hinted. "that has nothing to do with it!" returned richard. "i have got ten pounds more than i expected to have, and consequently i can afford to spend it without being particular." in exactly the same way, when he was persuaded out of the sacrifice of these five pounds by being convinced that it would do no good, he carried that sum to his credit and drew upon it. "let me see!" he would say. "i saved five pounds out of the brickmaker's affair, so if i have a good rattle to london and back in a post-chaise and put that down at four pounds, i shall have saved one. and it's a very good thing to save one, let me tell you: a penny saved is a penny got!" i believe richard's was as frank and generous a nature as there possibly can be. he was ardent and brave, and in the midst of all his wild restlessness, was so gentle that i knew him like a brother in a few weeks. his gentleness was natural to him and would have shown itself abundantly even without ada's influence; but with it, he became one of the most winning of companions, always so ready to be interested and always so happy, sanguine, and light-hearted. i am sure that i, sitting with them, and walking with them, and talking with them, and noticing from day to day how they went on, falling deeper and deeper in love, and saying nothing about it, and each shyly thinking that this love was the greatest of secrets, perhaps not yet suspected even by the other--i am sure that i was scarcely less enchanted than they were and scarcely less pleased with the pretty dream. we were going on in this way, when one morning at breakfast mr. jarndyce received a letter, and looking at the superscription, said, "from boythorn? aye, aye!" and opened and read it with evident pleasure, announcing to us in a parenthesis when he was about half-way through, that boythorn was "coming down" on a visit. now who was boythorn, we all thought. and i dare say we all thought too--i am sure i did, for one--would boythorn at all interfere with what was going forward? "i went to school with this fellow, lawrence boythorn," said mr. jarndyce, tapping the letter as he laid it on the table, "more than five and forty years ago. he was then the most impetuous boy in the world, and he is now the most impetuous man. he was then the loudest boy in the world, and he is now the loudest man. he was then the heartiest and sturdiest boy in the world, and he is now the heartiest and sturdiest man. he is a tremendous fellow." "in stature, sir?" asked richard. "pretty well, rick, in that respect," said mr. jarndyce; "being some ten years older than i and a couple of inches taller, with his head thrown back like an old soldier, his stalwart chest squared, his hands like a clean blacksmith's, and his lungs! there's no simile for his lungs. talking, laughing, or snoring, they make the beams of the house shake." as mr. jarndyce sat enjoying the image of his friend boythorn, we observed the favourable omen that there was not the least indication of any change in the wind. "but it's the inside of the man, the warm heart of the man, the passion of the man, the fresh blood of the man, rick--and ada, and little cobweb too, for you are all interested in a visitor--that i speak of," he pursued. "his language is as sounding as his voice. he is always in extremes, perpetually in the superlative degree. in his condemnation he is all ferocity. you might suppose him to be an ogre from what he says, and i believe he has the reputation of one with some people. there! i tell you no more of him beforehand. you must not be surprised to see him take me under his protection, for he has never forgotten that i was a low boy at school and that our friendship began in his knocking two of my head tyrant's teeth out (he says six) before breakfast. boythorn and his man," to me, "will be here this afternoon, my dear." i took care that the necessary preparations were made for mr. boythorn's reception, and we looked forward to his arrival with some curiosity. the afternoon wore away, however, and he did not appear. the dinner-hour arrived, and still he did not appear. the dinner was put back an hour, and we were sitting round the fire with no light but the blaze when the hall-door suddenly burst open and the hall resounded with these words, uttered with the greatest vehemence and in a stentorian tone: "we have been misdirected, jarndyce, by a most abandoned ruffian, who told us to take the turning to the right instead of to the left. he is the most intolerable scoundrel on the face of the earth. his father must have been a most consummate villain, ever to have such a son. i would have had that fellow shot without the least remorse!" "did he do it on purpose?" mr. jarndyce inquired. "i have not the slightest doubt that the scoundrel has passed his whole existence in misdirecting travellers!" returned the other. "by my soul, i thought him the worst-looking dog i had ever beheld when he was telling me to take the turning to the right. and yet i stood before that fellow face to face and didn't knock his brains out!" "teeth, you mean?" said mr. jarndyce. "ha, ha, ha!" laughed mr. lawrence boythorn, really making the whole house vibrate. "what, you have not forgotten it yet! ha, ha, ha! and that was another most consummate vagabond! by my soul, the countenance of that fellow when he was a boy was the blackest image of perfidy, cowardice, and cruelty ever set up as a scarecrow in a field of scoundrels. if i were to meet that most unparalleled despot in the streets to-morrow, i would fell him like a rotten tree!" "i have no doubt of it," said mr. jarndyce. "now, will you come upstairs?" "by my soul, jarndyce," returned his guest, who seemed to refer to his watch, "if you had been married, i would have turned back at the garden-gate and gone away to the remotest summits of the himalaya mountains sooner than i would have presented myself at this unseasonable hour." "not quite so far, i hope?" said mr. jarndyce. "by my life and honour, yes!" cried the visitor. "i wouldn't be guilty of the audacious insolence of keeping a lady of the house waiting all this time for any earthly consideration. i would infinitely rather destroy myself--infinitely rather!" talking thus, they went upstairs, and presently we heard him in his bedroom thundering "ha, ha, ha!" and again "ha, ha, ha!" until the flattest echo in the neighbourhood seemed to catch the contagion and to laugh as enjoyingly as he did or as we did when we heard him laugh. we all conceived a prepossession in his favour, for there was a sterling quality in this laugh, and in his vigorous, healthy voice, and in the roundness and fullness with which he uttered every word he spoke, and in the very fury of his superlatives, which seemed to go off like blank cannons and hurt nothing. but we were hardly prepared to have it so confirmed by his appearance when mr. jarndyce presented him. he was not only a very handsome old gentleman--upright and stalwart as he had been described to us--with a massive grey head, a fine composure of face when silent, a figure that might have become corpulent but for his being so continually in earnest that he gave it no rest, and a chin that might have subsided into a double chin but for the vehement emphasis in which it was constantly required to assist; but he was such a true gentleman in his manner, so chivalrously polite, his face was lighted by a smile of so much sweetness and tenderness, and it seemed so plain that he had nothing to hide, but showed himself exactly as he was--incapable, as richard said, of anything on a limited scale, and firing away with those blank great guns because he carried no small arms whatever--that really i could not help looking at him with equal pleasure as he sat at dinner, whether he smilingly conversed with ada and me, or was led by mr. jarndyce into some great volley of superlatives, or threw up his head like a bloodhound and gave out that tremendous "ha, ha, ha!" "you have brought your bird with you, i suppose?" said mr. jarndyce. "by heaven, he is the most astonishing bird in europe!" replied the other. "he is the most wonderful creature! i wouldn't take ten thousand guineas for that bird. i have left an annuity for his sole support in case he should outlive me. he is, in sense and attachment, a phenomenon. and his father before him was one of the most astonishing birds that ever lived!" the subject of this laudation was a very little canary, who was so tame that he was brought down by mr. boythorn's man, on his forefinger, and after taking a gentle flight round the room, alighted on his master's head. to hear mr. boythorn presently expressing the most implacable and passionate sentiments, with this fragile mite of a creature quietly perched on his forehead, was to have a good illustration of his character, i thought. "by my soul, jarndyce," he said, very gently holding up a bit of bread to the canary to peck at, "if i were in your place i would seize every master in chancery by the throat to-morrow morning and shake him until his money rolled out of his pockets and his bones rattled in his skin. i would have a settlement out of somebody, by fair means or by foul. if you would empower me to do it, i would do it for you with the greatest satisfaction!" (all this time the very small canary was eating out of his hand.) "i thank you, lawrence, but the suit is hardly at such a point at present," returned mr. jarndyce, laughing, "that it would be greatly advanced even by the legal process of shaking the bench and the whole bar." "there never was such an infernal cauldron as that chancery on the face of the earth!" said mr. boythorn. "nothing but a mine below it on a busy day in term time, with all its records, rules, and precedents collected in it and every functionary belonging to it also, high and low, upward and downward, from its son the accountant-general to its father the devil, and the whole blown to atoms with ten thousand hundredweight of gunpowder, would reform it in the least!" it was impossible not to laugh at the energetic gravity with which he recommended this strong measure of reform. when we laughed, he threw up his head and shook his broad chest, and again the whole country seemed to echo to his "ha, ha, ha!" it had not the least effect in disturbing the bird, whose sense of security was complete and who hopped about the table with its quick head now on this side and now on that, turning its bright sudden eye on its master as if he were no more than another bird. "but how do you and your neighbour get on about the disputed right of way?" said mr. jarndyce. "you are not free from the toils of the law yourself!" "the fellow has brought actions against me for trespass, and i have brought actions against him for trespass," returned mr. boythorn. "by heaven, he is the proudest fellow breathing. it is morally impossible that his name can be sir leicester. it must be sir lucifer." "complimentary to our distant relation!" said my guardian laughingly to ada and richard. "i would beg miss clare's pardon and mr. carstone's pardon," resumed our visitor, "if i were not reassured by seeing in the fair face of the lady and the smile of the gentleman that it is quite unnecessary and that they keep their distant relation at a comfortable distance." "or he keeps us," suggested richard. "by my soul," exclaimed mr. boythorn, suddenly firing another volley, "that fellow is, and his father was, and his grandfather was, the most stiff-necked, arrogant imbecile, pig-headed numskull, ever, by some inexplicable mistake of nature, born in any station of life but a walking-stick's! the whole of that family are the most solemnly conceited and consummate blockheads! but it's no matter; he should not shut up my path if he were fifty baronets melted into one and living in a hundred chesney wolds, one within another, like the ivory balls in a chinese carving. the fellow, by his agent, or secretary, or somebody, writes to me 'sir leicester dedlock, baronet, presents his compliments to mr. lawrence boythorn, and has to call his attention to the fact that the green pathway by the old parsonage-house, now the property of mr. lawrence boythorn, is sir leicester's right of way, being in fact a portion of the park of chesney wold, and that sir leicester finds it convenient to close up the same.' i write to the fellow, 'mr. lawrence boythorn presents his compliments to sir leicester dedlock, baronet, and has to call his attention to the fact that he totally denies the whole of sir leicester dedlock's positions on every possible subject and has to add, in reference to closing up the pathway, that he will be glad to see the man who may undertake to do it.' the fellow sends a most abandoned villain with one eye to construct a gateway. i play upon that execrable scoundrel with a fire-engine until the breath is nearly driven out of his body. the fellow erects a gate in the night. i chop it down and burn it in the morning. he sends his myrmidons to come over the fence and pass and repass. i catch them in humane man traps, fire split peas at their legs, play upon them with the engine--resolve to free mankind from the insupportable burden of the existence of those lurking ruffians. he brings actions for trespass; i bring actions for trespass. he brings actions for assault and battery; i defend them and continue to assault and batter. ha, ha, ha!" to hear him say all this with unimaginable energy, one might have thought him the angriest of mankind. to see him at the very same time, looking at the bird now perched upon his thumb and softly smoothing its feathers with his forefinger, one might have thought him the gentlest. to hear him laugh and see the broad good nature of his face then, one might have supposed that he had not a care in the world, or a dispute, or a dislike, but that his whole existence was a summer joke. "no, no," he said, "no closing up of my paths by any dedlock! though i willingly confess," here he softened in a moment, "that lady dedlock is the most accomplished lady in the world, to whom i would do any homage that a plain gentleman, and no baronet with a head seven hundred years thick, may. a man who joined his regiment at twenty and within a week challenged the most imperious and presumptuous coxcomb of a commanding officer that ever drew the breath of life through a tight waist--and got broke for it--is not the man to be walked over by all the sir lucifers, dead or alive, locked or unlocked. ha, ha, ha!" "nor the man to allow his junior to be walked over either?" said my guardian. "most assuredly not!" said mr. boythorn, clapping him on the shoulder with an air of protection that had something serious in it, though he laughed. "he will stand by the low boy, always. jarndyce, you may rely upon him! but speaking of this trespass--with apologies to miss clare and miss summerson for the length at which i have pursued so dry a subject--is there nothing for me from your men kenge and carboy?" "i think not, esther?" said mr. jarndyce. "nothing, guardian." "much obliged!" said mr. boythorn. "had no need to ask, after even my slight experience of miss summerson's forethought for every one about her." (they all encouraged me; they were determined to do it.) "i inquired because, coming from lincolnshire, i of course have not yet been in town, and i thought some letters might have been sent down here. i dare say they will report progress to-morrow morning." i saw him so often in the course of the evening, which passed very pleasantly, contemplate richard and ada with an interest and a satisfaction that made his fine face remarkably agreeable as he sat at a little distance from the piano listening to the music--and he had small occasion to tell us that he was passionately fond of music, for his face showed it--that i asked my guardian as we sat at the backgammon board whether mr. boythorn had ever been married. "no," said he. "no." "but he meant to be!" said i. "how did you find out that?" he returned with a smile. "why, guardian," i explained, not without reddening a little at hazarding what was in my thoughts, "there is something so tender in his manner, after all, and he is so very courtly and gentle to us, and--" mr. jarndyce directed his eyes to where he was sitting as i have just described him. i said no more. "you are right, little woman," he answered. "he was all but married once. long ago. and once." "did the lady die?" "no--but she died to him. that time has had its influence on all his later life. would you suppose him to have a head and a heart full of romance yet?" "i think, guardian, i might have supposed so. but it is easy to say that when you have told me so." "he has never since been what he might have been," said mr. jarndyce, "and now you see him in his age with no one near him but his servant and his little yellow friend. it's your throw, my dear!" i felt, from my guardian's manner, that beyond this point i could not pursue the subject without changing the wind. i therefore forbore to ask any further questions. i was interested, but not curious. i thought a little while about this old love story in the night, when i was awakened by mr. boythorn's lusty snoring; and i tried to do that very difficult thing, imagine old people young again and invested with the graces of youth. but i fell asleep before i had succeeded, and dreamed of the days when i lived in my godmother's house. i am not sufficiently acquainted with such subjects to know whether it is at all remarkable that i almost always dreamed of that period of my life. with the morning there came a letter from messrs. kenge and carboy to mr. boythorn informing him that one of their clerks would wait upon him at noon. as it was the day of the week on which i paid the bills, and added up my books, and made all the household affairs as compact as possible, i remained at home while mr. jarndyce, ada, and richard took advantage of a very fine day to make a little excursion, mr. boythorn was to wait for kenge and carboy's clerk and then was to go on foot to meet them on their return. well! i was full of business, examining tradesmen's books, adding up columns, paying money, filing receipts, and i dare say making a great bustle about it when mr. guppy was announced and shown in. i had had some idea that the clerk who was to be sent down might be the young gentleman who had met me at the coach-office, and i was glad to see him, because he was associated with my present happiness. i scarcely knew him again, he was so uncommonly smart. he had an entirely new suit of glossy clothes on, a shining hat, lilac-kid gloves, a neckerchief of a variety of colours, a large hot-house flower in his button-hole, and a thick gold ring on his little finger. besides which, he quite scented the dining-room with bear's-grease and other perfumery. he looked at me with an attention that quite confused me when i begged him to take a seat until the servant should return; and as he sat there crossing and uncrossing his legs in a corner, and i asked him if he had had a pleasant ride, and hoped that mr. kenge was well, i never looked at him, but i found him looking at me in the same scrutinizing and curious way. when the request was brought to him that he would go upstairs to mr. boythorn's room, i mentioned that he would find lunch prepared for him when he came down, of which mr. jarndyce hoped he would partake. he said with some embarrassment, holding the handle of the door, "shall i have the honour of finding you here, miss?" i replied yes, i should be there; and he went out with a bow and another look. i thought him only awkward and shy, for he was evidently much embarrassed; and i fancied that the best thing i could do would be to wait until i saw that he had everything he wanted and then to leave him to himself. the lunch was soon brought, but it remained for some time on the table. the interview with mr. boythorn was a long one, and a stormy one too, i should think, for although his room was at some distance i heard his loud voice rising every now and then like a high wind, and evidently blowing perfect broadsides of denunciation. at last mr. guppy came back, looking something the worse for the conference. "my eye, miss," he said in a low voice, "he's a tartar!" "pray take some refreshment, sir," said i. mr. guppy sat down at the table and began nervously sharpening the carving-knife on the carving-fork, still looking at me (as i felt quite sure without looking at him) in the same unusual manner. the sharpening lasted so long that at last i felt a kind of obligation on me to raise my eyes in order that i might break the spell under which he seemed to labour, of not being able to leave off. he immediately looked at the dish and began to carve. "what will you take yourself, miss? you'll take a morsel of something?" "no, thank you," said i. "shan't i give you a piece of anything at all, miss?" said mr. guppy, hurriedly drinking off a glass of wine. "nothing, thank you," said i. "i have only waited to see that you have everything you want. is there anything i can order for you?" "no, i am much obliged to you, miss, i'm sure. i've everything that i can require to make me comfortable--at least i--not comfortable--i'm never that." he drank off two more glasses of wine, one after another. i thought i had better go. "i beg your pardon, miss!" said mr. guppy, rising when he saw me rise. "but would you allow me the favour of a minute's private conversation?" not knowing what to say, i sat down again. "what follows is without prejudice, miss?" said mr. guppy, anxiously bringing a chair towards my table. "i don't understand what you mean," said i, wondering. "it's one of our law terms, miss. you won't make any use of it to my detriment at kenge and carboy's or elsewhere. if our conversation shouldn't lead to anything, i am to be as i was and am not to be prejudiced in my situation or worldly prospects. in short, it's in total confidence." "i am at a loss, sir," said i, "to imagine what you can have to communicate in total confidence to me, whom you have never seen but once; but i should be very sorry to do you any injury." "thank you, miss. i'm sure of it--that's quite sufficient." all this time mr. guppy was either planing his forehead with his handkerchief or tightly rubbing the palm of his left hand with the palm of his right. "if you would excuse my taking another glass of wine, miss, i think it might assist me in getting on without a continual choke that cannot fail to be mutually unpleasant." he did so, and came back again. i took the opportunity of moving well behind my table. "you wouldn't allow me to offer you one, would you miss?" said mr. guppy, apparently refreshed. "not any," said i. "not half a glass?" said mr. guppy. "quarter? no! then, to proceed. my present salary, miss summerson, at kenge and carboy's, is two pound a week. when i first had the happiness of looking upon you, it was one fifteen, and had stood at that figure for a lengthened period. a rise of five has since taken place, and a further rise of five is guaranteed at the expiration of a term not exceeding twelve months from the present date. my mother has a little property, which takes the form of a small life annuity, upon which she lives in an independent though unassuming manner in the old street road. she is eminently calculated for a mother-in-law. she never interferes, is all for peace, and her disposition easy. she has her failings--as who has not?--but i never knew her do it when company was present, at which time you may freely trust her with wines, spirits, or malt liquors. my own abode is lodgings at penton place, pentonville. it is lowly, but airy, open at the back, and considered one of the 'ealthiest outlets. miss summerson! in the mildest language, i adore you. would you be so kind as to allow me (as i may say) to file a declaration--to make an offer!" mr. guppy went down on his knees. i was well behind my table and not much frightened. i said, "get up from that ridiculous position immediately, sir, or you will oblige me to break my implied promise and ring the bell!" "hear me out, miss!" said mr. guppy, folding his hands. "i cannot consent to hear another word, sir," i returned, "unless you get up from the carpet directly and go and sit down at the table as you ought to do if you have any sense at all." he looked piteously, but slowly rose and did so. "yet what a mockery it is, miss," he said with his hand upon his heart and shaking his head at me in a melancholy manner over the tray, "to be stationed behind food at such a moment. the soul recoils from food at such a moment, miss." "i beg you to conclude," said i; "you have asked me to hear you out, and i beg you to conclude." "i will, miss," said mr. guppy. "as i love and honour, so likewise i obey. would that i could make thee the subject of that vow before the shrine!" "that is quite impossible," said i, "and entirely out of the question." "i am aware," said mr. guppy, leaning forward over the tray and regarding me, as i again strangely felt, though my eyes were not directed to him, with his late intent look, "i am aware that in a worldly point of view, according to all appearances, my offer is a poor one. but, miss summerson! angel! no, don't ring--i have been brought up in a sharp school and am accustomed to a variety of general practice. though a young man, i have ferreted out evidence, got up cases, and seen lots of life. blest with your hand, what means might i not find of advancing your interests and pushing your fortunes! what might i not get to know, nearly concerning you? i know nothing now, certainly; but what might i not if i had your confidence, and you set me on?" i told him that he addressed my interest or what he supposed to be my interest quite as unsuccessfully as he addressed my inclination, and he would now understand that i requested him, if he pleased, to go away immediately. "cruel miss," said mr. guppy, "hear but another word! i think you must have seen that i was struck with those charms on the day when i waited at the whytorseller. i think you must have remarked that i could not forbear a tribute to those charms when i put up the steps of the 'ackney-coach. it was a feeble tribute to thee, but it was well meant. thy image has ever since been fixed in my breast. i have walked up and down of an evening opposite jellyby's house only to look upon the bricks that once contained thee. this out of to-day, quite an unnecessary out so far as the attendance, which was its pretended object, went, was planned by me alone for thee alone. if i speak of interest, it is only to recommend myself and my respectful wretchedness. love was before it, and is before it." "i should be pained, mr. guppy," said i, rising and putting my hand upon the bell-rope, "to do you or any one who was sincere the injustice of slighting any honest feeling, however disagreeably expressed. if you have really meant to give me a proof of your good opinion, though ill-timed and misplaced, i feel that i ought to thank you. i have very little reason to be proud, and i am not proud. i hope," i think i added, without very well knowing what i said, "that you will now go away as if you had never been so exceedingly foolish and attend to messrs. kenge and carboy's business." "half a minute, miss!" cried mr. guppy, checking me as i was about to ring. "this has been without prejudice?" "i will never mention it," said i, "unless you should give me future occasion to do so." "a quarter of a minute, miss! in case you should think better at any time, however distant--that's no consequence, for my feelings can never alter--of anything i have said, particularly what might i not do, mr. william guppy, eighty-seven, penton place, or if removed, or dead (of blighted hopes or anything of that sort), care of mrs. guppy, three hundred and two, old street road, will be sufficient." i rang the bell, the servant came, and mr. guppy, laying his written card upon the table and making a dejected bow, departed. raising my eyes as he went out, i once more saw him looking at me after he had passed the door. i sat there for another hour or more, finishing my books and payments and getting through plenty of business. then i arranged my desk, and put everything away, and was so composed and cheerful that i thought i had quite dismissed this unexpected incident. but, when i went upstairs to my own room, i surprised myself by beginning to laugh about it and then surprised myself still more by beginning to cry about it. in short, i was in a flutter for a little while and felt as if an old chord had been more coarsely touched than it ever had been since the days of the dear old doll, long buried in the garden. chapter x the law-writer on the eastern borders of chancery lane, that is to say, more particularly in cook's court, cursitor street, mr. snagsby, law-stationer, pursues his lawful calling. in the shade of cook's court, at most times a shady place, mr. snagsby has dealt in all sorts of blank forms of legal process; in skins and rolls of parchment; in paper--foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white, whitey-brown, and blotting; in stamps; in office-quills, pens, ink, india-rubber, pounce, pins, pencils, sealing-wax, and wafers; in red tape and green ferret; in pocket-books, almanacs, diaries, and law lists; in string boxes, rulers, inkstands--glass and leaden--pen-knives, scissors, bodkins, and other small office-cutlery; in short, in articles too numerous to mention, ever since he was out of his time and went into partnership with peffer. on that occasion, cook's court was in a manner revolutionized by the new inscription in fresh paint, peffer and snagsby, displacing the time-honoured and not easily to be deciphered legend peffer only. for smoke, which is the london ivy, had so wreathed itself round peffer's name and clung to his dwelling-place that the affectionate parasite quite overpowered the parent tree. peffer is never seen in cook's court now. he is not expected there, for he has been recumbent this quarter of a century in the churchyard of st. andrews, holborn, with the waggons and hackney-coaches roaring past him all the day and half the night like one great dragon. if he ever steal forth when the dragon is at rest to air himself again in cook's court until admonished to return by the crowing of the sanguine cock in the cellar at the little dairy in cursitor street, whose ideas of daylight it would be curious to ascertain, since he knows from his personal observation next to nothing about it--if peffer ever do revisit the pale glimpses of cook's court, which no law-stationer in the trade can positively deny, he comes invisibly, and no one is the worse or wiser. in his lifetime, and likewise in the period of snagsby's "time" of seven long years, there dwelt with peffer in the same law-stationering premises a niece--a short, shrewd niece, something too violently compressed about the waist, and with a sharp nose like a sharp autumn evening, inclining to be frosty towards the end. the cook's courtiers had a rumour flying among them that the mother of this niece did, in her daughter's childhood, moved by too jealous a solicitude that her figure should approach perfection, lace her up every morning with her maternal foot against the bed-post for a stronger hold and purchase; and further, that she exhibited internally pints of vinegar and lemon-juice, which acids, they held, had mounted to the nose and temper of the patient. with whichsoever of the many tongues of rumour this frothy report originated, it either never reached or never influenced the ears of young snagsby, who, having wooed and won its fair subject on his arrival at man's estate, entered into two partnerships at once. so now, in cook's court, cursitor street, mr. snagsby and the niece are one; and the niece still cherishes her figure, which, however tastes may differ, is unquestionably so far precious that there is mighty little of it. mr. and mrs. snagsby are not only one bone and one flesh, but, to the neighbours' thinking, one voice too. that voice, appearing to proceed from mrs. snagsby alone, is heard in cook's court very often. mr. snagsby, otherwise than as he finds expression through these dulcet tones, is rarely heard. he is a mild, bald, timid man with a shining head and a scrubby clump of black hair sticking out at the back. he tends to meekness and obesity. as he stands at his door in cook's court in his grey shop-coat and black calico sleeves, looking up at the clouds, or stands behind a desk in his dark shop with a heavy flat ruler, snipping and slicing at sheepskin in company with his two 'prentices, he is emphatically a retiring and unassuming man. from beneath his feet, at such times, as from a shrill ghost unquiet in its grave, there frequently arise complainings and lamentations in the voice already mentioned; and haply, on some occasions when these reach a sharper pitch than usual, mr. snagsby mentions to the 'prentices, "i think my little woman is a-giving it to guster!" this proper name, so used by mr. snagsby, has before now sharpened the wit of the cook's courtiers to remark that it ought to be the name of mrs. snagsby, seeing that she might with great force and expression be termed a guster, in compliment to her stormy character. it is, however, the possession, and the only possession except fifty shillings per annum and a very small box indifferently filled with clothing, of a lean young woman from a workhouse (by some supposed to have been christened augusta) who, although she was farmed or contracted for during her growing time by an amiable benefactor of his species resident at tooting, and cannot fail to have been developed under the most favourable circumstances, "has fits," which the parish can't account for. guster, really aged three or four and twenty, but looking a round ten years older, goes cheap with this unaccountable drawback of fits, and is so apprehensive of being returned on the hands of her patron saint that except when she is found with her head in the pail, or the sink, or the copper, or the dinner, or anything else that happens to be near her at the time of her seizure, she is always at work. she is a satisfaction to the parents and guardians of the 'prentices, who feel that there is little danger of her inspiring tender emotions in the breast of youth; she is a satisfaction to mrs. snagsby, who can always find fault with her; she is a satisfaction to mr. snagsby, who thinks it a charity to keep her. the law-stationer's establishment is, in guster's eyes, a temple of plenty and splendour. she believes the little drawing-room upstairs, always kept, as one may say, with its hair in papers and its pinafore on, to be the most elegant apartment in christendom. the view it commands of cook's court at one end (not to mention a squint into cursitor street) and of coavinses' the sheriff's officer's backyard at the other she regards as a prospect of unequalled beauty. the portraits it displays in oil--and plenty of it too--of mr. snagsby looking at mrs. snagsby and of mrs. snagsby looking at mr. snagsby are in her eyes as achievements of raphael or titian. guster has some recompenses for her many privations. mr. snagsby refers everything not in the practical mysteries of the business to mrs. snagsby. she manages the money, reproaches the tax-gatherers, appoints the times and places of devotion on sundays, licenses mr. snagsby's entertainments, and acknowledges no responsibility as to what she thinks fit to provide for dinner, insomuch that she is the high standard of comparison among the neighbouring wives a long way down chancery lane on both sides, and even out in holborn, who in any domestic passages of arms habitually call upon their husbands to look at the difference between their (the wives') position and mrs. snagsby's, and their (the husbands') behaviour and mr. snagsby's. rumour, always flying bat-like about cook's court and skimming in and out at everybody's windows, does say that mrs. snagsby is jealous and inquisitive and that mr. snagsby is sometimes worried out of house and home, and that if he had the spirit of a mouse he wouldn't stand it. it is even observed that the wives who quote him to their self-willed husbands as a shining example in reality look down upon him and that nobody does so with greater superciliousness than one particular lady whose lord is more than suspected of laying his umbrella on her as an instrument of correction. but these vague whisperings may arise from mr. snagsby's being in his way rather a meditative and poetical man, loving to walk in staple inn in the summer-time and to observe how countrified the sparrows and the leaves are, also to lounge about the rolls yard of a sunday afternoon and to remark (if in good spirits) that there were old times once and that you'd find a stone coffin or two now under that chapel, he'll be bound, if you was to dig for it. he solaces his imagination, too, by thinking of the many chancellors and vices, and masters of the rolls who are deceased; and he gets such a flavour of the country out of telling the two 'prentices how he has heard say that a brook "as clear as crystal" once ran right down the middle of holborn, when turnstile really was a turnstile, leading slap away into the meadows--gets such a flavour of the country out of this that he never wants to go there. the day is closing in and the gas is lighted, but is not yet fully effective, for it is not quite dark. mr. snagsby standing at his shop-door looking up at the clouds sees a crow who is out late skim westward over the slice of sky belonging to cook's court. the crow flies straight across chancery lane and lincoln's inn garden into lincoln's inn fields. here, in a large house, formerly a house of state, lives mr. tulkinghorn. it is let off in sets of chambers now, and in those shrunken fragments of its greatness, lawyers lie like maggots in nuts. but its roomy staircases, passages, and antechambers still remain; and even its painted ceilings, where allegory, in roman helmet and celestial linen, sprawls among balustrades and pillars, flowers, clouds, and big-legged boys, and makes the head ache--as would seem to be allegory's object always, more or less. here, among his many boxes labelled with transcendent names, lives mr. tulkinghorn, when not speechlessly at home in country-houses where the great ones of the earth are bored to death. here he is to-day, quiet at his table. an oyster of the old school whom nobody can open. like as he is to look at, so is his apartment in the dusk of the present afternoon. rusty, out of date, withdrawing from attention, able to afford it. heavy, broad-backed, old-fashioned, mahogany-and-horsehair chairs, not easily lifted; obsolete tables with spindle-legs and dusty baize covers; presentation prints of the holders of great titles in the last generation or the last but one, environ him. a thick and dingy turkey-carpet muffles the floor where he sits, attended by two candles in old-fashioned silver candlesticks that give a very insufficient light to his large room. the titles on the backs of his books have retired into the binding; everything that can have a lock has got one; no key is visible. very few loose papers are about. he has some manuscript near him, but is not referring to it. with the round top of an inkstand and two broken bits of sealing-wax he is silently and slowly working out whatever train of indecision is in his mind. now the inkstand top is in the middle, now the red bit of sealing-wax, now the black bit. that's not it. mr. tulkinghorn must gather them all up and begin again. here, beneath the painted ceiling, with foreshortened allegory staring down at his intrusion as if it meant to swoop upon him, and he cutting it dead, mr. tulkinghorn has at once his house and office. he keeps no staff, only one middle-aged man, usually a little out at elbows, who sits in a high pew in the hall and is rarely overburdened with business. mr. tulkinghorn is not in a common way. he wants no clerks. he is a great reservoir of confidences, not to be so tapped. his clients want him; he is all in all. drafts that he requires to be drawn are drawn by special-pleaders in the temple on mysterious instructions; fair copies that he requires to be made are made at the stationers', expense being no consideration. the middle-aged man in the pew knows scarcely more of the affairs of the peerage than any crossing-sweeper in holborn. the red bit, the black bit, the inkstand top, the other inkstand top, the little sand-box. so! you to the middle, you to the right, you to the left. this train of indecision must surely be worked out now or never. now! mr. tulkinghorn gets up, adjusts his spectacles, puts on his hat, puts the manuscript in his pocket, goes out, tells the middle-aged man out at elbows, "i shall be back presently." very rarely tells him anything more explicit. mr. tulkinghorn goes, as the crow came--not quite so straight, but nearly--to cook's court, cursitor street. to snagsby's, law-stationer's, deeds engrossed and copied, law-writing executed in all its branches, &c., &c., &c. it is somewhere about five or six o'clock in the afternoon, and a balmy fragrance of warm tea hovers in cook's court. it hovers about snagsby's door. the hours are early there: dinner at half-past one and supper at half-past nine. mr. snagsby was about to descend into the subterranean regions to take tea when he looked out of his door just now and saw the crow who was out late. "master at home?" guster is minding the shop, for the 'prentices take tea in the kitchen with mr. and mrs. snagsby; consequently, the robe-maker's two daughters, combing their curls at the two glasses in the two second-floor windows of the opposite house, are not driving the two 'prentices to distraction as they fondly suppose, but are merely awakening the unprofitable admiration of guster, whose hair won't grow, and never would, and it is confidently thought, never will. "master at home?" says mr. tulkinghorn. master is at home, and guster will fetch him. guster disappears, glad to get out of the shop, which she regards with mingled dread and veneration as a storehouse of awful implements of the great torture of the law--a place not to be entered after the gas is turned off. mr. snagsby appears, greasy, warm, herbaceous, and chewing. bolts a bit of bread and butter. says, "bless my soul, sir! mr. tulkinghorn!" "i want half a word with you, snagsby." "certainly, sir! dear me, sir, why didn't you send your young man round for me? pray walk into the back shop, sir." snagsby has brightened in a moment. the confined room, strong of parchment-grease, is warehouse, counting-house, and copying-office. mr. tulkinghorn sits, facing round, on a stool at the desk. "jarndyce and jarndyce, snagsby." "yes, sir." mr. snagsby turns up the gas and coughs behind his hand, modestly anticipating profit. mr. snagsby, as a timid man, is accustomed to cough with a variety of expressions, and so to save words. "you copied some affidavits in that cause for me lately." "yes, sir, we did." "there was one of them," says mr. tulkinghorn, carelessly feeling--tight, unopenable oyster of the old school!--in the wrong coat-pocket, "the handwriting of which is peculiar, and i rather like. as i happened to be passing, and thought i had it about me, i looked in to ask you--but i haven't got it. no matter, any other time will do. ah! here it is! i looked in to ask you who copied this." "who copied this, sir?" says mr. snagsby, taking it, laying it flat on the desk, and separating all the sheets at once with a twirl and a twist of the left hand peculiar to lawstationers. "we gave this out, sir. we were giving out rather a large quantity of work just at that time. i can tell you in a moment who copied it, sir, by referring to my book." mr. snagsby takes his book down from the safe, makes another bolt of the bit of bread and butter which seemed to have stopped short, eyes the affidavit aside, and brings his right forefinger travelling down a page of the book, "jewby--packer--jarndyce." "jarndyce! here we are, sir," says mr. snagsby. "to be sure! i might have remembered it. this was given out, sir, to a writer who lodges just over on the opposite side of the lane." mr. tulkinghorn has seen the entry, found it before the law-stationer, read it while the forefinger was coming down the hill. "what do you call him? nemo?" says mr. tulkinghorn. "nemo, sir. here it is. forty-two folio. given out on the wednesday night at eight o'clock, brought in on the thursday morning at half after nine." "nemo!" repeats mr. tulkinghorn. "nemo is latin for no one." "it must be english for some one, sir, i think," mr. snagsby submits with his deferential cough. "it is a person's name. here it is, you see, sir! forty-two folio. given out wednesday night, eight o'clock; brought in thursday morning, half after nine." the tail of mr. snagsby's eye becomes conscious of the head of mrs. snagsby looking in at the shop-door to know what he means by deserting his tea. mr. snagsby addresses an explanatory cough to mrs. snagsby, as who should say, "my dear, a customer!" "half after nine, sir," repeats mr. snagsby. "our law-writers, who live by job-work, are a queer lot; and this may not be his name, but it's the name he goes by. i remember now, sir, that he gives it in a written advertisement he sticks up down at the rule office, and the king's bench office, and the judges' chambers, and so forth. you know the kind of document, sir--wanting employ?" mr. tulkinghorn glances through the little window at the back of coavinses', the sheriff's officer's, where lights shine in coavinses' windows. coavinses' coffee-room is at the back, and the shadows of several gentlemen under a cloud loom cloudily upon the blinds. mr. snagsby takes the opportunity of slightly turning his head to glance over his shoulder at his little woman and to make apologetic motions with his mouth to this effect: "tul-king-horn--rich--in-flu-en-tial!" "have you given this man work before?" asks mr. tulkinghorn. "oh, dear, yes, sir! work of yours." "thinking of more important matters, i forget where you said he lived?" "across the lane, sir. in fact, he lodges at a--" mr. snagsby makes another bolt, as if the bit of bread and butter were insurmountable "--at a rag and bottle shop." "can you show me the place as i go back?" "with the greatest pleasure, sir!" mr. snagsby pulls off his sleeves and his grey coat, pulls on his black coat, takes his hat from its peg. "oh! here is my little woman!" he says aloud. "my dear, will you be so kind as to tell one of the lads to look after the shop while i step across the lane with mr. tulkinghorn? mrs. snagsby, sir--i shan't be two minutes, my love!" mrs. snagsby bends to the lawyer, retires behind the counter, peeps at them through the window-blind, goes softly into the back office, refers to the entries in the book still lying open. is evidently curious. "you will find that the place is rough, sir," says mr. snagsby, walking deferentially in the road and leaving the narrow pavement to the lawyer; "and the party is very rough. but they're a wild lot in general, sir. the advantage of this particular man is that he never wants sleep. he'll go at it right on end if you want him to, as long as ever you like." it is quite dark now, and the gas-lamps have acquired their full effect. jostling against clerks going to post the day's letters, and against counsel and attorneys going home to dinner, and against plaintiffs and defendants and suitors of all sorts, and against the general crowd, in whose way the forensic wisdom of ages has interposed a million of obstacles to the transaction of the commonest business of life; diving through law and equity, and through that kindred mystery, the street mud, which is made of nobody knows what and collects about us nobody knows whence or how--we only knowing in general that when there is too much of it we find it necessary to shovel it away--the lawyer and the law-stationer come to a rag and bottle shop and general emporium of much disregarded merchandise, lying and being in the shadow of the wall of lincoln's inn, and kept, as is announced in paint, to all whom it may concern, by one krook. "this is where he lives, sir," says the law-stationer. "this is where he lives, is it?" says the lawyer unconcernedly. "thank you." "are you not going in, sir?" "no, thank you, no; i am going on to the fields at present. good evening. thank you!" mr. snagsby lifts his hat and returns to his little woman and his tea. but mr. tulkinghorn does not go on to the fields at present. he goes a short way, turns back, comes again to the shop of mr. krook, and enters it straight. it is dim enough, with a blot-headed candle or so in the windows, and an old man and a cat sitting in the back part by a fire. the old man rises and comes forward, with another blot-headed candle in his hand. "pray is your lodger within?" "male or female, sir?" says mr. krook. "male. the person who does copying." mr. krook has eyed his man narrowly. knows him by sight. has an indistinct impression of his aristocratic repute. "did you wish to see him, sir?" "yes." "it's what i seldom do myself," says mr. krook with a grin. "shall i call him down? but it's a weak chance if he'd come, sir!" "i'll go up to him, then," says mr. tulkinghorn. "second floor, sir. take the candle. up there!" mr. krook, with his cat beside him, stands at the bottom of the staircase, looking after mr. tulkinghorn. "hi-hi!" he says when mr. tulkinghorn has nearly disappeared. the lawyer looks down over the hand-rail. the cat expands her wicked mouth and snarls at him. "order, lady jane! behave yourself to visitors, my lady! you know what they say of my lodger?" whispers krook, going up a step or two. "what do they say of him?" "they say he has sold himself to the enemy, but you and i know better--he don't buy. i'll tell you what, though; my lodger is so black-humoured and gloomy that i believe he'd as soon make that bargain as any other. don't put him out, sir. that's my advice!" mr. tulkinghorn with a nod goes on his way. he comes to the dark door on the second floor. he knocks, receives no answer, opens it, and accidentally extinguishes his candle in doing so. the air of the room is almost bad enough to have extinguished it if he had not. it is a small room, nearly black with soot, and grease, and dirt. in the rusty skeleton of a grate, pinched at the middle as if poverty had gripped it, a red coke fire burns low. in the corner by the chimney stand a deal table and a broken desk, a wilderness marked with a rain of ink. in another corner a ragged old portmanteau on one of the two chairs serves for cabinet or wardrobe; no larger one is needed, for it collapses like the cheeks of a starved man. the floor is bare, except that one old mat, trodden to shreds of rope-yarn, lies perishing upon the hearth. no curtain veils the darkness of the night, but the discoloured shutters are drawn together, and through the two gaunt holes pierced in them, famine might be staring in--the banshee of the man upon the bed. for, on a low bed opposite the fire, a confusion of dirty patchwork, lean-ribbed ticking, and coarse sacking, the lawyer, hesitating just within the doorway, sees a man. he lies there, dressed in shirt and trousers, with bare feet. he has a yellow look in the spectral darkness of a candle that has guttered down until the whole length of its wick (still burning) has doubled over and left a tower of winding-sheet above it. his hair is ragged, mingling with his whiskers and his beard--the latter, ragged too, and grown, like the scum and mist around him, in neglect. foul and filthy as the room is, foul and filthy as the air is, it is not easy to perceive what fumes those are which most oppress the senses in it; but through the general sickliness and faintness, and the odour of stale tobacco, there comes into the lawyer's mouth the bitter, vapid taste of opium. "hallo, my friend!" he cries, and strikes his iron candlestick against the door. he thinks he has awakened his friend. he lies a little turned away, but his eyes are surely open. "hallo, my friend!" he cries again. "hallo! hallo!" as he rattles on the door, the candle which has drooped so long goes out and leaves him in the dark, with the gaunt eyes in the shutters staring down upon the bed. chapter xi our dear brother a touch on the lawyer's wrinkled hand as he stands in the dark room, irresolute, makes him start and say, "what's that?" "it's me," returns the old man of the house, whose breath is in his ear. "can't you wake him?" "no." "what have you done with your candle?" "it's gone out. here it is." krook takes it, goes to the fire, stoops over the red embers, and tries to get a light. the dying ashes have no light to spare, and his endeavours are vain. muttering, after an ineffectual call to his lodger, that he will go downstairs and bring a lighted candle from the shop, the old man departs. mr. tulkinghorn, for some new reason that he has, does not await his return in the room, but on the stairs outside. the welcome light soon shines upon the wall, as krook comes slowly up with his green-eyed cat following at his heels. "does the man generally sleep like this?" inquired the lawyer in a low voice. "hi! i don't know," says krook, shaking his head and lifting his eyebrows. "i know next to nothing of his habits except that he keeps himself very close." thus whispering, they both go in together. as the light goes in, the great eyes in the shutters, darkening, seem to close. not so the eyes upon the bed. "god save us!" exclaims mr. tulkinghorn. "he is dead!" krook drops the heavy hand he has taken up so suddenly that the arm swings over the bedside. they look at one another for a moment. "send for some doctor! call for miss flite up the stairs, sir. here's poison by the bed! call out for flite, will you?" says krook, with his lean hands spread out above the body like a vampire's wings. mr. tulkinghorn hurries to the landing and calls, "miss flite! flite! make haste, here, whoever you are! flite!" krook follows him with his eyes, and while he is calling, finds opportunity to steal to the old portmanteau and steal back again. "run, flite, run! the nearest doctor! run!" so mr. krook addresses a crazy little woman who is his female lodger, who appears and vanishes in a breath, who soon returns accompanied by a testy medical man brought from his dinner, with a broad, snuffy upper lip and a broad scotch tongue. "ey! bless the hearts o' ye," says the medical man, looking up at them after a moment's examination. "he's just as dead as phairy!" mr. tulkinghorn (standing by the old portmanteau) inquires if he has been dead any time. "any time, sir?" says the medical gentleman. "it's probable he wull have been dead aboot three hours." "about that time, i should say," observes a dark young man on the other side of the bed. "air you in the maydickle prayfession yourself, sir?" inquires the first. the dark young man says yes. "then i'll just tak' my depairture," replies the other, "for i'm nae gude here!" with which remark he finishes his brief attendance and returns to finish his dinner. the dark young surgeon passes the candle across and across the face and carefully examines the law-writer, who has established his pretensions to his name by becoming indeed no one. "i knew this person by sight very well," says he. "he has purchased opium of me for the last year and a half. was anybody present related to him?" glancing round upon the three bystanders. "i was his landlord," grimly answers krook, taking the candle from the surgeon's outstretched hand. "he told me once i was the nearest relation he had." "he has died," says the surgeon, "of an over-dose of opium, there is no doubt. the room is strongly flavoured with it. there is enough here now," taking an old tea-pot from mr. krook, "to kill a dozen people." "do you think he did it on purpose?" asks krook. "took the over-dose?" "yes!" krook almost smacks his lips with the unction of a horrible interest. "i can't say. i should think it unlikely, as he has been in the habit of taking so much. but nobody can tell. he was very poor, i suppose?" "i suppose he was. his room--don't look rich," says krook, who might have changed eyes with his cat, as he casts his sharp glance around. "but i have never been in it since he had it, and he was too close to name his circumstances to me." "did he owe you any rent?" "six weeks." "he will never pay it!" says the young man, resuming his examination. "it is beyond a doubt that he is indeed as dead as pharaoh; and to judge from his appearance and condition, i should think it a happy release. yet he must have been a good figure when a youth, and i dare say, good-looking." he says this, not unfeelingly, while sitting on the bedstead's edge with his face towards that other face and his hand upon the region of the heart. "i recollect once thinking there was something in his manner, uncouth as it was, that denoted a fall in life. was that so?" he continues, looking round. krook replies, "you might as well ask me to describe the ladies whose heads of hair i have got in sacks downstairs. than that he was my lodger for a year and a half and lived--or didn't live--by law-writing, i know no more of him." during this dialogue mr. tulkinghorn has stood aloof by the old portmanteau, with his hands behind him, equally removed, to all appearance, from all three kinds of interest exhibited near the bed--from the young surgeon's professional interest in death, noticeable as being quite apart from his remarks on the deceased as an individual; from the old man's unction; and the little crazy woman's awe. his imperturbable face has been as inexpressive as his rusty clothes. one could not even say he has been thinking all this while. he has shown neither patience nor impatience, nor attention nor abstraction. he has shown nothing but his shell. as easily might the tone of a delicate musical instrument be inferred from its case, as the tone of mr. tulkinghorn from his case. he now interposes, addressing the young surgeon in his unmoved, professional way. "i looked in here," he observes, "just before you, with the intention of giving this deceased man, whom i never saw alive, some employment at his trade of copying. i had heard of him from my stationer--snagsby of cook's court. since no one here knows anything about him, it might be as well to send for snagsby. ah!" to the little crazy woman, who has often seen him in court, and whom he has often seen, and who proposes, in frightened dumb-show, to go for the law-stationer. "suppose you do!" while she is gone, the surgeon abandons his hopeless investigation and covers its subject with the patchwork counterpane. mr. krook and he interchange a word or two. mr. tulkinghorn says nothing, but stands, ever, near the old portmanteau. mr. snagsby arrives hastily in his grey coat and his black sleeves. "dear me, dear me," he says; "and it has come to this, has it! bless my soul!" "can you give the person of the house any information about this unfortunate creature, snagsby?" inquires mr. tulkinghorn. "he was in arrears with his rent, it seems. and he must be buried, you know." "well, sir," says mr. snagsby, coughing his apologetic cough behind his hand, "i really don't know what advice i could offer, except sending for the beadle." "i don't speak of advice," returns mr. tulkinghorn. "i could advise--" "no one better, sir, i am sure," says mr. snagsby, with his deferential cough. "i speak of affording some clue to his connexions, or to where he came from, or to anything concerning him." "i assure you, sir," says mr. snagsby after prefacing his reply with his cough of general propitiation, "that i no more know where he came from than i know--" "where he has gone to, perhaps," suggests the surgeon to help him out. a pause. mr. tulkinghorn looking at the law-stationer. mr. krook, with his mouth open, looking for somebody to speak next. "as to his connexions, sir," says mr. snagsby, "if a person was to say to me, 'snagsby, here's twenty thousand pound down, ready for you in the bank of england if you'll only name one of 'em,' i couldn't do it, sir! about a year and a half ago--to the best of my belief, at the time when he first came to lodge at the present rag and bottle shop--" "that was the time!" says krook with a nod. "about a year and a half ago," says mr. snagsby, strengthened, "he came into our place one morning after breakfast, and finding my little woman (which i name mrs. snagsby when i use that appellation) in our shop, produced a specimen of his handwriting and gave her to understand that he was in want of copying work to do and was, not to put too fine a point upon it," a favourite apology for plain speaking with mr. snagsby, which he always offers with a sort of argumentative frankness, "hard up! my little woman is not in general partial to strangers, particular--not to put too fine a point upon it--when they want anything. but she was rather took by something about this person, whether by his being unshaved, or by his hair being in want of attention, or by what other ladies' reasons, i leave you to judge; and she accepted of the specimen, and likewise of the address. my little woman hasn't a good ear for names," proceeds mr. snagsby after consulting his cough of consideration behind his hand, "and she considered nemo equally the same as nimrod. in consequence of which, she got into a habit of saying to me at meals, 'mr. snagsby, you haven't found nimrod any work yet!' or 'mr. snagsby, why didn't you give that eight and thirty chancery folio in jarndyce to nimrod?' or such like. and that is the way he gradually fell into job-work at our place; and that is the most i know of him except that he was a quick hand, and a hand not sparing of night-work, and that if you gave him out, say, five and forty folio on the wednesday night, you would have it brought in on the thursday morning. all of which--" mr. snagsby concludes by politely motioning with his hat towards the bed, as much as to add, "i have no doubt my honourable friend would confirm if he were in a condition to do it." "hadn't you better see," says mr. tulkinghorn to krook, "whether he had any papers that may enlighten you? there will be an inquest, and you will be asked the question. you can read?" "no, i can't," returns the old man with a sudden grin. "snagsby," says mr. tulkinghorn, "look over the room for him. he will get into some trouble or difficulty otherwise. being here, i'll wait if you make haste, and then i can testify on his behalf, if it should ever be necessary, that all was fair and right. if you will hold the candle for mr. snagsby, my friend, he'll soon see whether there is anything to help you." "in the first place, here's an old portmanteau, sir," says snagsby. ah, to be sure, so there is! mr. tulkinghorn does not appear to have seen it before, though he is standing so close to it, and though there is very little else, heaven knows. the marine-store merchant holds the light, and the law-stationer conducts the search. the surgeon leans against the corner of the chimney-piece; miss flite peeps and trembles just within the door. the apt old scholar of the old school, with his dull black breeches tied with ribbons at the knees, his large black waistcoat, his long-sleeved black coat, and his wisp of limp white neckerchief tied in the bow the peerage knows so well, stands in exactly the same place and attitude. there are some worthless articles of clothing in the old portmanteau; there is a bundle of pawnbrokers' duplicates, those turnpike tickets on the road of poverty; there is a crumpled paper, smelling of opium, on which are scrawled rough memoranda--as, took, such a day, so many grains; took, such another day, so many more--begun some time ago, as if with the intention of being regularly continued, but soon left off. there are a few dirty scraps of newspapers, all referring to coroners' inquests; there is nothing else. they search the cupboard and the drawer of the ink-splashed table. there is not a morsel of an old letter or of any other writing in either. the young surgeon examines the dress on the law-writer. a knife and some odd halfpence are all he finds. mr. snagsby's suggestion is the practical suggestion after all, and the beadle must be called in. so the little crazy lodger goes for the beadle, and the rest come out of the room. "don't leave the cat there!" says the surgeon; "that won't do!" mr. krook therefore drives her out before him, and she goes furtively downstairs, winding her lithe tail and licking her lips. "good night!" says mr. tulkinghorn, and goes home to allegory and meditation. by this time the news has got into the court. groups of its inhabitants assemble to discuss the thing, and the outposts of the army of observation (principally boys) are pushed forward to mr. krook's window, which they closely invest. a policeman has already walked up to the room, and walked down again to the door, where he stands like a tower, only condescending to see the boys at his base occasionally; but whenever he does see them, they quail and fall back. mrs. perkins, who has not been for some weeks on speaking terms with mrs. piper in consequence for an unpleasantness originating in young perkins' having "fetched" young piper "a crack," renews her friendly intercourse on this auspicious occasion. the potboy at the corner, who is a privileged amateur, as possessing official knowledge of life and having to deal with drunken men occasionally, exchanges confidential communications with the policeman and has the appearance of an impregnable youth, unassailable by truncheons and unconfinable in station-houses. people talk across the court out of window, and bare-headed scouts come hurrying in from chancery lane to know what's the matter. the general feeling seems to be that it's a blessing mr. krook warn't made away with first, mingled with a little natural disappointment that he was not. in the midst of this sensation, the beadle arrives. the beadle, though generally understood in the neighbourhood to be a ridiculous institution, is not without a certain popularity for the moment, if it were only as a man who is going to see the body. the policeman considers him an imbecile civilian, a remnant of the barbarous watchmen times, but gives him admission as something that must be borne with until government shall abolish him. the sensation is heightened as the tidings spread from mouth to mouth that the beadle is on the ground and has gone in. by and by the beadle comes out, once more intensifying the sensation, which has rather languished in the interval. he is understood to be in want of witnesses for the inquest to-morrow who can tell the coroner and jury anything whatever respecting the deceased. is immediately referred to innumerable people who can tell nothing whatever. is made more imbecile by being constantly informed that mrs. green's son "was a law-writer his-self and knowed him better than anybody," which son of mrs. green's appears, on inquiry, to be at the present time aboard a vessel bound for china, three months out, but considered accessible by telegraph on application to the lords of the admiralty. beadle goes into various shops and parlours, examining the inhabitants, always shutting the door first, and by exclusion, delay, and general idiotcy exasperating the public. policeman seen to smile to potboy. public loses interest and undergoes reaction. taunts the beadle in shrill youthful voices with having boiled a boy, choruses fragments of a popular song to that effect and importing that the boy was made into soup for the workhouse. policeman at last finds it necessary to support the law and seize a vocalist, who is released upon the flight of the rest on condition of his getting out of this then, come, and cutting it--a condition he immediately observes. so the sensation dies off for the time; and the unmoved policeman (to whom a little opium, more or less, is nothing), with his shining hat, stiff stock, inflexible great-coat, stout belt and bracelet, and all things fitting, pursues his lounging way with a heavy tread, beating the palms of his white gloves one against the other and stopping now and then at a street-corner to look casually about for anything between a lost child and a murder. under cover of the night, the feeble-minded beadle comes flitting about chancery lane with his summonses, in which every juror's name is wrongly spelt, and nothing rightly spelt but the beadle's own name, which nobody can read or wants to know. the summonses served and his witnesses forewarned, the beadle goes to mr. krook's to keep a small appointment he has made with certain paupers, who, presently arriving, are conducted upstairs, where they leave the great eyes in the shutter something new to stare at, in that last shape which earthly lodgings take for no one--and for every one. and all that night the coffin stands ready by the old portmanteau; and the lonely figure on the bed, whose path in life has lain through five and forty years, lies there with no more track behind him that any one can trace than a deserted infant. next day the court is all alive--is like a fair, as mrs. perkins, more than reconciled to mrs. piper, says in amicable conversation with that excellent woman. the coroner is to sit in the first-floor room at the sol's arms, where the harmonic meetings take place twice a week and where the chair is filled by a gentleman of professional celebrity, faced by little swills, the comic vocalist, who hopes (according to the bill in the window) that his friends will rally round him and support first-rate talent. the sol's arms does a brisk stroke of business all the morning. even children so require sustaining under the general excitement that a pieman who has established himself for the occasion at the corner of the court says his brandy-balls go off like smoke. what time the beadle, hovering between the door of mr. krook's establishment and the door of the sol's arms, shows the curiosity in his keeping to a few discreet spirits and accepts the compliment of a glass of ale or so in return. at the appointed hour arrives the coroner, for whom the jurymen are waiting and who is received with a salute of skittles from the good dry skittle-ground attached to the sol's arms. the coroner frequents more public-houses than any man alive. the smell of sawdust, beer, tobacco-smoke, and spirits is inseparable in his vocation from death in its most awful shapes. he is conducted by the beadle and the landlord to the harmonic meeting room, where he puts his hat on the piano and takes a windsor-chair at the head of a long table formed of several short tables put together and ornamented with glutinous rings in endless involutions, made by pots and glasses. as many of the jury as can crowd together at the table sit there. the rest get among the spittoons and pipes or lean against the piano. over the coroner's head is a small iron garland, the pendant handle of a bell, which rather gives the majesty of the court the appearance of going to be hanged presently. call over and swear the jury! while the ceremony is in progress, sensation is created by the entrance of a chubby little man in a large shirt-collar, with a moist eye and an inflamed nose, who modestly takes a position near the door as one of the general public, but seems familiar with the room too. a whisper circulates that this is little swills. it is considered not unlikely that he will get up an imitation of the coroner and make it the principal feature of the harmonic meeting in the evening. "well, gentlemen--" the coroner begins. "silence there, will you!" says the beadle. not to the coroner, though it might appear so. "well, gentlemen," resumes the coroner. "you are impanelled here to inquire into the death of a certain man. evidence will be given before you as to the circumstances attending that death, and you will give your verdict according to the--skittles; they must be stopped, you know, beadle!--evidence, and not according to anything else. the first thing to be done is to view the body." "make way there!" cries the beadle. so they go out in a loose procession, something after the manner of a straggling funeral, and make their inspection in mr. krook's back second floor, from which a few of the jurymen retire pale and precipitately. the beadle is very careful that two gentlemen not very neat about the cuffs and buttons (for whose accommodation he has provided a special little table near the coroner in the harmonic meeting room) should see all that is to be seen. for they are the public chroniclers of such inquiries by the line; and he is not superior to the universal human infirmity, but hopes to read in print what "mooney, the active and intelligent beadle of the district," said and did and even aspires to see the name of mooney as familiarly and patronizingly mentioned as the name of the hangman is, according to the latest examples. little swills is waiting for the coroner and jury on their return. mr. tulkinghorn, also. mr. tulkinghorn is received with distinction and seated near the coroner between that high judicial officer, a bagatelle-board, and the coal-box. the inquiry proceeds. the jury learn how the subject of their inquiry died, and learn no more about him. "a very eminent solicitor is in attendance, gentlemen," says the coroner, "who, i am informed, was accidentally present when discovery of the death was made, but he could only repeat the evidence you have already heard from the surgeon, the landlord, the lodger, and the law-stationer, and it is not necessary to trouble him. is anybody in attendance who knows anything more?" mrs. piper pushed forward by mrs. perkins. mrs. piper sworn. anastasia piper, gentlemen. married woman. now, mrs. piper, what have you got to say about this? why, mrs. piper has a good deal to say, chiefly in parentheses and without punctuation, but not much to tell. mrs. piper lives in the court (which her husband is a cabinet-maker), and it has long been well beknown among the neighbours (counting from the day next but one before the half-baptizing of alexander james piper aged eighteen months and four days old on accounts of not being expected to live such was the sufferings gentlemen of that child in his gums) as the plaintive--so mrs. piper insists on calling the deceased--was reported to have sold himself. thinks it was the plaintive's air in which that report originatinin. see the plaintive often and considered as his air was feariocious and not to be allowed to go about some children being timid (and if doubted hoping mrs. perkins may be brought forard for she is here and will do credit to her husband and herself and family). has seen the plaintive wexed and worrited by the children (for children they will ever be and you cannot expect them specially if of playful dispositions to be methoozellers which you was not yourself). on accounts of this and his dark looks has often dreamed as she see him take a pick-axe from his pocket and split johnny's head (which the child knows not fear and has repeatually called after him close at his eels). never however see the plaintive take a pick-axe or any other wepping far from it. has seen him hurry away when run and called after as if not partial to children and never see him speak to neither child nor grown person at any time (excepting the boy that sweeps the crossing down the lane over the way round the corner which if he was here would tell you that he has been seen a-speaking to him frequent). says the coroner, is that boy here? says the beadle, no, sir, he is not here. says the coroner, go and fetch him then. in the absence of the active and intelligent, the coroner converses with mr. tulkinghorn. oh! here's the boy, gentlemen! here he is, very muddy, very hoarse, very ragged. now, boy! but stop a minute. caution. this boy must be put through a few preliminary paces. name, jo. nothing else that he knows on. don't know that everybody has two names. never heerd of sich a think. don't know that jo is short for a longer name. thinks it long enough for him. he don't find no fault with it. spell it? no. he can't spell it. no father, no mother, no friends. never been to school. what's home? knows a broom's a broom, and knows it's wicked to tell a lie. don't recollect who told him about the broom or about the lie, but knows both. can't exactly say what'll be done to him arter he's dead if he tells a lie to the gentlemen here, but believes it'll be something wery bad to punish him, and serve him right--and so he'll tell the truth. "this won't do, gentlemen!" says the coroner with a melancholy shake of the head. "don't you think you can receive his evidence, sir?" asks an attentive juryman. "out of the question," says the coroner. "you have heard the boy. 'can't exactly say' won't do, you know. we can't take that in a court of justice, gentlemen. it's terrible depravity. put the boy aside." boy put aside, to the great edification of the audience, especially of little swills, the comic vocalist. now. is there any other witness? no other witness. very well, gentlemen! here's a man unknown, proved to have been in the habit of taking opium in large quantities for a year and a half, found dead of too much opium. if you think you have any evidence to lead you to the conclusion that he committed suicide, you will come to that conclusion. if you think it is a case of accidental death, you will find a verdict accordingly. verdict accordingly. accidental death. no doubt. gentlemen, you are discharged. good afternoon. while the coroner buttons his great-coat, mr. tulkinghorn and he give private audience to the rejected witness in a corner. that graceless creature only knows that the dead man (whom he recognized just now by his yellow face and black hair) was sometimes hooted and pursued about the streets. that one cold winter night when he, the boy, was shivering in a doorway near his crossing, the man turned to look at him, and came back, and having questioned him and found that he had not a friend in the world, said, "neither have i. not one!" and gave him the price of a supper and a night's lodging. that the man had often spoken to him since and asked him whether he slept sound at night, and how he bore cold and hunger, and whether he ever wished to die, and similar strange questions. that when the man had no money, he would say in passing, "i am as poor as you to-day, jo," but that when he had any, he had always (as the boy most heartily believes) been glad to give him some. "he was wery good to me," says the boy, wiping his eyes with his wretched sleeve. "wen i see him a-layin' so stritched out just now, i wished he could have heerd me tell him so. he wos wery good to me, he wos!" as he shuffles downstairs, mr. snagsby, lying in wait for him, puts a half-crown in his hand. "if you ever see me coming past your crossing with my little woman--i mean a lady--" says mr. snagsby with his finger on his nose, "don't allude to it!" for some little time the jurymen hang about the sol's arms colloquially. in the sequel, half-a-dozen are caught up in a cloud of pipe-smoke that pervades the parlour of the sol's arms; two stroll to hampstead; and four engage to go half-price to the play at night, and top up with oysters. little swills is treated on several hands. being asked what he thinks of the proceedings, characterizes them (his strength lying in a slangular direction) as "a rummy start." the landlord of the sol's arms, finding little swills so popular, commends him highly to the jurymen and public, observing that for a song in character he don't know his equal and that that man's character-wardrobe would fill a cart. thus, gradually the sol's arms melts into the shadowy night and then flares out of it strong in gas. the harmonic meeting hour arriving, the gentleman of professional celebrity takes the chair, is faced (red-faced) by little swills; their friends rally round them and support first-rate talent. in the zenith of the evening, little swills says, "gentlemen, if you'll permit me, i'll attempt a short description of a scene of real life that came off here to-day." is much applauded and encouraged; goes out of the room as swills; comes in as the coroner (not the least in the world like him); describes the inquest, with recreative intervals of piano-forte accompaniment, to the refrain: with his (the coroner's) tippy tol li doll, tippy tol lo doll, tippy tol li doll, dee! the jingling piano at last is silent, and the harmonic friends rally round their pillows. then there is rest around the lonely figure, now laid in its last earthly habitation; and it is watched by the gaunt eyes in the shutters through some quiet hours of night. if this forlorn man could have been prophetically seen lying here by the mother at whose breast he nestled, a little child, with eyes upraised to her loving face, and soft hand scarcely knowing how to close upon the neck to which it crept, what an impossibility the vision would have seemed! oh, if in brighter days the now-extinguished fire within him ever burned for one woman who held him in her heart, where is she, while these ashes are above the ground! it is anything but a night of rest at mr. snagsby's, in cook's court, where guster murders sleep by going, as mr. snagsby himself allows--not to put too fine a point upon it--out of one fit into twenty. the occasion of this seizure is that guster has a tender heart and a susceptible something that possibly might have been imagination, but for tooting and her patron saint. be it what it may, now, it was so direfully impressed at tea-time by mr. snagsby's account of the inquiry at which he had assisted that at supper-time she projected herself into the kitchen, preceded by a flying dutch cheese, and fell into a fit of unusual duration, which she only came out of to go into another, and another, and so on through a chain of fits, with short intervals between, of which she has pathetically availed herself by consuming them in entreaties to mrs. snagsby not to give her warning "when she quite comes to," and also in appeals to the whole establishment to lay her down on the stones and go to bed. hence, mr. snagsby, at last hearing the cock at the little dairy in cursitor street go into that disinterested ecstasy of his on the subject of daylight, says, drawing a long breath, though the most patient of men, "i thought you was dead, i am sure!" what question this enthusiastic fowl supposes he settles when he strains himself to such an extent, or why he should thus crow (so men crow on various triumphant public occasions, however) about what cannot be of any moment to him, is his affair. it is enough that daylight comes, morning comes, noon comes. then the active and intelligent, who has got into the morning papers as such, comes with his pauper company to mr. krook's and bears off the body of our dear brother here departed to a hemmed-in churchyard, pestiferous and obscene, whence malignant diseases are communicated to the bodies of our dear brothers and sisters who have not departed, while our dear brothers and sisters who hang about official back-stairs--would to heaven they had departed!--are very complacent and agreeable. into a beastly scrap of ground which a turk would reject as a savage abomination and a caffre would shudder at, they bring our dear brother here departed to receive christian burial. with houses looking on, on every side, save where a reeking little tunnel of a court gives access to the iron gate--with every villainy of life in action close on death, and every poisonous element of death in action close on life--here they lower our dear brother down a foot or two, here sow him in corruption, to be raised in corruption: an avenging ghost at many a sick-bedside, a shameful testimony to future ages how civilization and barbarism walked this boastful island together. come night, come darkness, for you cannot come too soon or stay too long by such a place as this! come, straggling lights into the windows of the ugly houses; and you who do iniquity therein, do it at least with this dread scene shut out! come, flame of gas, burning so sullenly above the iron gate, on which the poisoned air deposits its witch-ointment slimy to the touch! it is well that you should call to every passerby, "look here!" with the night comes a slouching figure through the tunnel-court to the outside of the iron gate. it holds the gate with its hands and looks in between the bars, stands looking in for a little while. it then, with an old broom it carries, softly sweeps the step and makes the archway clean. it does so very busily and trimly, looks in again a little while, and so departs. jo, is it thou? well, well! though a rejected witness, who "can't exactly say" what will be done to him in greater hands than men's, thou art not quite in outer darkness. there is something like a distant ray of light in thy muttered reason for this: "he wos wery good to me, he wos!" chapter xii on the watch it has left off raining down in lincolnshire at last, and chesney wold has taken heart. mrs. rouncewell is full of hospitable cares, for sir leicester and my lady are coming home from paris. the fashionable intelligence has found it out and communicates the glad tidings to benighted england. it has also found out that they will entertain a brilliant and distinguished circle of the elite of the beau monde (the fashionable intelligence is weak in english, but a giant refreshed in french) at the ancient and hospitable family seat in lincolnshire. for the greater honour of the brilliant and distinguished circle, and of chesney wold into the bargain, the broken arch of the bridge in the park is mended; and the water, now retired within its proper limits and again spanned gracefully, makes a figure in the prospect from the house. the clear, cold sunshine glances into the brittle woods and approvingly beholds the sharp wind scattering the leaves and drying the moss. it glides over the park after the moving shadows of the clouds, and chases them, and never catches them, all day. it looks in at the windows and touches the ancestral portraits with bars and patches of brightness never contemplated by the painters. athwart the picture of my lady, over the great chimney-piece, it throws a broad bend-sinister of light that strikes down crookedly into the hearth and seems to rend it. through the same cold sunshine and the same sharp wind, my lady and sir leicester, in their travelling chariot (my lady's woman and sir leicester's man affectionate in the rumble), start for home. with a considerable amount of jingling and whip-cracking, and many plunging demonstrations on the part of two bare-backed horses and two centaurs with glazed hats, jack-boots, and flowing manes and tails, they rattle out of the yard of the hotel bristol in the place vendome and canter between the sun-and-shadow-chequered colonnade of the rue de rivoli and the garden of the ill-fated palace of a headless king and queen, off by the place of concord, and the elysian fields, and the gate of the star, out of paris. sooth to say, they cannot go away too fast, for even here my lady dedlock has been bored to death. concert, assembly, opera, theatre, drive, nothing is new to my lady under the worn-out heavens. only last sunday, when poor wretches were gay--within the walls playing with children among the clipped trees and the statues in the palace garden; walking, a score abreast, in the elysian fields, made more elysian by performing dogs and wooden horses; between whiles filtering (a few) through the gloomy cathedral of our lady to say a word or two at the base of a pillar within flare of a rusty little gridiron-full of gusty little tapers; without the walls encompassing paris with dancing, love-making, wine-drinking, tobacco-smoking, tomb-visiting, billiard card and domino playing, quack-doctoring, and much murderous refuse, animate and inanimate--only last sunday, my lady, in the desolation of boredom and the clutch of giant despair, almost hated her own maid for being in spirits. she cannot, therefore, go too fast from paris. weariness of soul lies before her, as it lies behind--her ariel has put a girdle of it round the whole earth, and it cannot be unclasped--but the imperfect remedy is always to fly from the last place where it has been experienced. fling paris back into the distance, then, exchanging it for endless avenues and cross-avenues of wintry trees! and, when next beheld, let it be some leagues away, with the gate of the star a white speck glittering in the sun, and the city a mere mound in a plain--two dark square towers rising out of it, and light and shadow descending on it aslant, like the angels in jacob's dream! sir leicester is generally in a complacent state, and rarely bored. when he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own greatness. it is a considerable advantage to a man to have so inexhaustible a subject. after reading his letters, he leans back in his corner of the carriage and generally reviews his importance to society. "you have an unusual amount of correspondence this morning?" says my lady after a long time. she is fatigued with reading. has almost read a page in twenty miles. "nothing in it, though. nothing whatever." "i saw one of mr. tulkinghorn's long effusions, i think?" "you see everything," says sir leicester with admiration. "ha!" sighs my lady. "he is the most tiresome of men!" "he sends--i really beg your pardon--he sends," says sir leicester, selecting the letter and unfolding it, "a message to you. our stopping to change horses as i came to his postscript drove it out of my memory. i beg you'll excuse me. he says--" sir leicester is so long in taking out his eye-glass and adjusting it that my lady looks a little irritated. "he says 'in the matter of the right of way--' i beg your pardon, that's not the place. he says--yes! here i have it! he says, 'i beg my respectful compliments to my lady, who, i hope, has benefited by the change. will you do me the favour to mention (as it may interest her) that i have something to tell her on her return in reference to the person who copied the affidavit in the chancery suit, which so powerfully stimulated her curiosity. i have seen him.'" my lady, leaning forward, looks out of her window. "that's the message," observes sir leicester. "i should like to walk a little," says my lady, still looking out of her window. "walk?" repeats sir leicester in a tone of surprise. "i should like to walk a little," says my lady with unmistakable distinctness. "please to stop the carriage." the carriage is stopped, the affectionate man alights from the rumble, opens the door, and lets down the steps, obedient to an impatient motion of my lady's hand. my lady alights so quickly and walks away so quickly that sir leicester, for all his scrupulous politeness, is unable to assist her, and is left behind. a space of a minute or two has elapsed before he comes up with her. she smiles, looks very handsome, takes his arm, lounges with him for a quarter of a mile, is very much bored, and resumes her seat in the carriage. the rattle and clatter continue through the greater part of three days, with more or less of bell-jingling and whip-cracking, and more or less plunging of centaurs and bare-backed horses. their courtly politeness to each other at the hotels where they tarry is the theme of general admiration. though my lord is a little aged for my lady, says madame, the hostess of the golden ape, and though he might be her amiable father, one can see at a glance that they love each other. one observes my lord with his white hair, standing, hat in hand, to help my lady to and from the carriage. one observes my lady, how recognisant of my lord's politeness, with an inclination of her gracious head and the concession of her so-genteel fingers! it is ravishing! the sea has no appreciation of great men, but knocks them about like the small fry. it is habitually hard upon sir leicester, whose countenance it greenly mottles in the manner of sage-cheese and in whose aristocratic system it effects a dismal revolution. it is the radical of nature to him. nevertheless, his dignity gets over it after stopping to refit, and he goes on with my lady for chesney wold, lying only one night in london on the way to lincolnshire. through the same cold sunlight, colder as the day declines, and through the same sharp wind, sharper as the separate shadows of bare trees gloom together in the woods, and as the ghost's walk, touched at the western corner by a pile of fire in the sky, resigns itself to coming night, they drive into the park. the rooks, swinging in their lofty houses in the elm-tree avenue, seem to discuss the question of the occupancy of the carriage as it passes underneath, some agreeing that sir leicester and my lady are come down, some arguing with malcontents who won't admit it, now all consenting to consider the question disposed of, now all breaking out again in violent debate, incited by one obstinate and drowsy bird who will persist in putting in a last contradictory croak. leaving them to swing and caw, the travelling chariot rolls on to the house, where fires gleam warmly through some of the windows, though not through so many as to give an inhabited expression to the darkening mass of front. but the brilliant and distinguished circle will soon do that. mrs. rouncewell is in attendance and receives sir leicester's customary shake of the hand with a profound curtsy. "how do you do, mrs. rouncewell? i am glad to see you." "i hope i have the honour of welcoming you in good health, sir leicester?" "in excellent health, mrs. rouncewell." "my lady is looking charmingly well," says mrs. rouncewell with another curtsy. my lady signifies, without profuse expenditure of words, that she is as wearily well as she can hope to be. but rosa is in the distance, behind the housekeeper; and my lady, who has not subdued the quickness of her observation, whatever else she may have conquered, asks, "who is that girl?" "a young scholar of mine, my lady. rosa." "come here, rosa!" lady dedlock beckons her, with even an appearance of interest. "why, do you know how pretty you are, child?" she says, touching her shoulder with her two forefingers. rosa, very much abashed, says, "no, if you please, my lady!" and glances up, and glances down, and don't know where to look, but looks all the prettier. "how old are you?" "nineteen, my lady." "nineteen," repeats my lady thoughtfully. "take care they don't spoil you by flattery." "yes, my lady." my lady taps her dimpled cheek with the same delicate gloved fingers and goes on to the foot of the oak staircase, where sir leicester pauses for her as her knightly escort. a staring old dedlock in a panel, as large as life and as dull, looks as if he didn't know what to make of it, which was probably his general state of mind in the days of queen elizabeth. that evening, in the housekeeper's room, rosa can do nothing but murmur lady dedlock's praises. she is so affable, so graceful, so beautiful, so elegant; has such a sweet voice and such a thrilling touch that rosa can feel it yet! mrs. rouncewell confirms all this, not without personal pride, reserving only the one point of affability. mrs. rouncewell is not quite sure as to that. heaven forbid that she should say a syllable in dispraise of any member of that excellent family, above all, of my lady, whom the whole world admires; but if my lady would only be "a little more free," not quite so cold and distant, mrs. rouncewell thinks she would be more affable. "'tis almost a pity," mrs. rouncewell adds--only "almost" because it borders on impiety to suppose that anything could be better than it is, in such an express dispensation as the dedlock affairs--"that my lady has no family. if she had had a daughter now, a grown young lady, to interest her, i think she would have had the only kind of excellence she wants." "might not that have made her still more proud, grandmother?" says watt, who has been home and come back again, he is such a good grandson. "more and most, my dear," returns the housekeeper with dignity, "are words it's not my place to use--nor so much as to hear--applied to any drawback on my lady." "i beg your pardon, grandmother. but she is proud, is she not?" "if she is, she has reason to be. the dedlock family have always reason to be." "well," says watt, "it's to be hoped they line out of their prayer-books a certain passage for the common people about pride and vainglory. forgive me, grandmother! only a joke!" "sir leicester and lady dedlock, my dear, are not fit subjects for joking." "sir leicester is no joke by any means," says watt, "and i humbly ask his pardon. i suppose, grandmother, that even with the family and their guests down here, there is no objection to my prolonging my stay at the dedlock arms for a day or two, as any other traveller might?" "surely, none in the world, child." "i am glad of that," says watt, "because i have an inexpressible desire to extend my knowledge of this beautiful neighbourhood." he happens to glance at rosa, who looks down and is very shy indeed. but according to the old superstition, it should be rosa's ears that burn, and not her fresh bright cheeks, for my lady's maid is holding forth about her at this moment with surpassing energy. my lady's maid is a frenchwoman of two and thirty, from somewhere in the southern country about avignon and marseilles, a large-eyed brown woman with black hair who would be handsome but for a certain feline mouth and general uncomfortable tightness of face, rendering the jaws too eager and the skull too prominent. there is something indefinably keen and wan about her anatomy, and she has a watchful way of looking out of the corners of her eyes without turning her head which could be pleasantly dispensed with, especially when she is in an ill humour and near knives. through all the good taste of her dress and little adornments, these objections so express themselves that she seems to go about like a very neat she-wolf imperfectly tamed. besides being accomplished in all the knowledge appertaining to her post, she is almost an englishwoman in her acquaintance with the language; consequently, she is in no want of words to shower upon rosa for having attracted my lady's attention, and she pours them out with such grim ridicule as she sits at dinner that her companion, the affectionate man, is rather relieved when she arrives at the spoon stage of that performance. ha, ha, ha! she, hortense, been in my lady's service since five years and always kept at the distance, and this doll, this puppet, caressed--absolutely caressed--by my lady on the moment of her arriving at the house! ha, ha, ha! "and do you know how pretty you are, child?" "no, my lady." you are right there! "and how old are you, child! and take care they do not spoil you by flattery, child!" oh, how droll! it is the best thing altogether. in short, it is such an admirable thing that mademoiselle hortense can't forget it; but at meals for days afterwards, even among her countrywomen and others attached in like capacity to the troop of visitors, relapses into silent enjoyment of the joke--an enjoyment expressed, in her own convivial manner, by an additional tightness of face, thin elongation of compressed lips, and sidewise look, which intense appreciation of humour is frequently reflected in my lady's mirrors when my lady is not among them. all the mirrors in the house are brought into action now, many of them after a long blank. they reflect handsome faces, simpering faces, youthful faces, faces of threescore and ten that will not submit to be old; the entire collection of faces that have come to pass a january week or two at chesney wold, and which the fashionable intelligence, a mighty hunter before the lord, hunts with a keen scent, from their breaking cover at the court of st. james's to their being run down to death. the place in lincolnshire is all alive. by day guns and voices are heard ringing in the woods, horsemen and carriages enliven the park roads, servants and hangers-on pervade the village and the dedlock arms. seen by night from distant openings in the trees, the row of windows in the long drawing-room, where my lady's picture hangs over the great chimney-piece, is like a row of jewels set in a black frame. on sunday the chill little church is almost warmed by so much gallant company, and the general flavour of the dedlock dust is quenched in delicate perfumes. the brilliant and distinguished circle comprehends within it no contracted amount of education, sense, courage, honour, beauty, and virtue. yet there is something a little wrong about it in despite of its immense advantages. what can it be? dandyism? there is no king george the fourth now (more the pity) to set the dandy fashion; there are no clear-starched jack-towel neckcloths, no short-waisted coats, no false calves, no stays. there are no caricatures, now, of effeminate exquisites so arrayed, swooning in opera boxes with excess of delight and being revived by other dainty creatures poking long-necked scent-bottles at their noses. there is no beau whom it takes four men at once to shake into his buckskins, or who goes to see all the executions, or who is troubled with the self-reproach of having once consumed a pea. but is there dandyism in the brilliant and distinguished circle notwithstanding, dandyism of a more mischievous sort, that has got below the surface and is doing less harmless things than jack-towelling itself and stopping its own digestion, to which no rational person need particularly object? why, yes. it cannot be disguised. there are at chesney wold this january week some ladies and gentlemen of the newest fashion, who have set up a dandyism--in religion, for instance. who in mere lackadaisical want of an emotion have agreed upon a little dandy talk about the vulgar wanting faith in things in general, meaning in the things that have been tried and found wanting, as though a low fellow should unaccountably lose faith in a bad shilling after finding it out! who would make the vulgar very picturesque and faithful by putting back the hands upon the clock of time and cancelling a few hundred years of history. there are also ladies and gentlemen of another fashion, not so new, but very elegant, who have agreed to put a smooth glaze on the world and to keep down all its realities. for whom everything must be languid and pretty. who have found out the perpetual stoppage. who are to rejoice at nothing and be sorry for nothing. who are not to be disturbed by ideas. on whom even the fine arts, attending in powder and walking backward like the lord chamberlain, must array themselves in the milliners' and tailors' patterns of past generations and be particularly careful not to be in earnest or to receive any impress from the moving age. then there is my lord boodle, of considerable reputation with his party, who has known what office is and who tells sir leicester dedlock with much gravity, after dinner, that he really does not see to what the present age is tending. a debate is not what a debate used to be; the house is not what the house used to be; even a cabinet is not what it formerly was. he perceives with astonishment that supposing the present government to be overthrown, the limited choice of the crown, in the formation of a new ministry, would lie between lord coodle and sir thomas doodle--supposing it to be impossible for the duke of foodle to act with goodle, which may be assumed to be the case in consequence of the breach arising out of that affair with hoodle. then, giving the home department and the leadership of the house of commons to joodle, the exchequer to koodle, the colonies to loodle, and the foreign office to moodle, what are you to do with noodle? you can't offer him the presidency of the council; that is reserved for poodle. you can't put him in the woods and forests; that is hardly good enough for quoodle. what follows? that the country is shipwrecked, lost, and gone to pieces (as is made manifest to the patriotism of sir leicester dedlock) because you can't provide for noodle! on the other hand, the right honourable william buffy, m.p., contends across the table with some one else that the shipwreck of the country--about which there is no doubt; it is only the manner of it that is in question--is attributable to cuffy. if you had done with cuffy what you ought to have done when he first came into parliament, and had prevented him from going over to duffy, you would have got him into alliance with fuffy, you would have had with you the weight attaching as a smart debater to guffy, you would have brought to bear upon the elections the wealth of huffy, you would have got in for three counties juffy, kuffy, and luffy, and you would have strengthened your administration by the official knowledge and the business habits of muffy. all this, instead of being as you now are, dependent on the mere caprice of puffy! as to this point, and as to some minor topics, there are differences of opinion; but it is perfectly clear to the brilliant and distinguished circle, all round, that nobody is in question but boodle and his retinue, and buffy and his retinue. these are the great actors for whom the stage is reserved. a people there are, no doubt--a certain large number of supernumeraries, who are to be occasionally addressed, and relied upon for shouts and choruses, as on the theatrical stage; but boodle and buffy, their followers and families, their heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, are the born first-actors, managers, and leaders, and no others can appear upon the scene for ever and ever. in this, too, there is perhaps more dandyism at chesney wold than the brilliant and distinguished circle will find good for itself in the long run. for it is, even with the stillest and politest circles, as with the circle the necromancer draws around him--very strange appearances may be seen in active motion outside. with this difference, that being realities and not phantoms, there is the greater danger of their breaking in. chesney wold is quite full anyhow, so full that a burning sense of injury arises in the breasts of ill-lodged ladies'-maids, and is not to be extinguished. only one room is empty. it is a turret chamber of the third order of merit, plainly but comfortably furnished and having an old-fashioned business air. it is mr. tulkinghorn's room, and is never bestowed on anybody else, for he may come at any time. he is not come yet. it is his quiet habit to walk across the park from the village in fine weather, to drop into this room as if he had never been out of it since he was last seen there, to request a servant to inform sir leicester that he is arrived in case he should be wanted, and to appear ten minutes before dinner in the shadow of the library-door. he sleeps in his turret with a complaining flag-staff over his head, and has some leads outside on which, any fine morning when he is down here, his black figure may be seen walking before breakfast like a larger species of rook. every day before dinner, my lady looks for him in the dusk of the library, but he is not there. every day at dinner, my lady glances down the table for the vacant place that would be waiting to receive him if he had just arrived, but there is no vacant place. every night my lady casually asks her maid, "is mr. tulkinghorn come?" every night the answer is, "no, my lady, not yet." one night, while having her hair undressed, my lady loses herself in deep thought after this reply until she sees her own brooding face in the opposite glass, and a pair of black eyes curiously observing her. "be so good as to attend," says my lady then, addressing the reflection of hortense, "to your business. you can contemplate your beauty at another time." "pardon! it was your ladyship's beauty." "that," says my lady, "you needn't contemplate at all." at length, one afternoon a little before sunset, when the bright groups of figures which have for the last hour or two enlivened the ghost's walk are all dispersed and only sir leicester and my lady remain upon the terrace, mr. tulkinghorn appears. he comes towards them at his usual methodical pace, which is never quickened, never slackened. he wears his usual expressionless mask--if it be a mask--and carries family secrets in every limb of his body and every crease of his dress. whether his whole soul is devoted to the great or whether he yields them nothing beyond the services he sells is his personal secret. he keeps it, as he keeps the secrets of his clients; he is his own client in that matter, and will never betray himself. "how do you do, mr. tulkinghorn?" says sir leicester, giving him his hand. mr. tulkinghorn is quite well. sir leicester is quite well. my lady is quite well. all highly satisfactory. the lawyer, with his hands behind him, walks at sir leicester's side along the terrace. my lady walks upon the other side. "we expected you before," says sir leicester. a gracious observation. as much as to say, "mr. tulkinghorn, we remember your existence when you are not here to remind us of it by your presence. we bestow a fragment of our minds upon you, sir, you see!" mr. tulkinghorn, comprehending it, inclines his head and says he is much obliged. "i should have come down sooner," he explains, "but that i have been much engaged with those matters in the several suits between yourself and boythorn." "a man of a very ill-regulated mind," observes sir leicester with severity. "an extremely dangerous person in any community. a man of a very low character of mind." "he is obstinate," says mr. tulkinghorn. "it is natural to such a man to be so," says sir leicester, looking most profoundly obstinate himself. "i am not at all surprised to hear it." "the only question is," pursues the lawyer, "whether you will give up anything." "no, sir," replies sir leicester. "nothing. i give up?" "i don't mean anything of importance. that, of course, i know you would not abandon. i mean any minor point." "mr. tulkinghorn," returns sir leicester, "there can be no minor point between myself and mr. boythorn. if i go farther, and observe that i cannot readily conceive how any right of mine can be a minor point, i speak not so much in reference to myself as an individual as in reference to the family position i have it in charge to maintain." mr. tulkinghorn inclines his head again. "i have now my instructions," he says. "mr. boythorn will give us a good deal of trouble--" "it is the character of such a mind, mr. tulkinghorn," sir leicester interrupts him, "to give trouble. an exceedingly ill-conditioned, levelling person. a person who, fifty years ago, would probably have been tried at the old bailey for some demagogue proceeding, and severely punished--if not," adds sir leicester after a moment's pause, "if not hanged, drawn, and quartered." sir leicester appears to discharge his stately breast of a burden in passing this capital sentence, as if it were the next satisfactory thing to having the sentence executed. "but night is coming on," says he, "and my lady will take cold. my dear, let us go in." as they turn towards the hall-door, lady dedlock addresses mr. tulkinghorn for the first time. "you sent me a message respecting the person whose writing i happened to inquire about. it was like you to remember the circumstance; i had quite forgotten it. your message reminded me of it again. i can't imagine what association i had with a hand like that, but i surely had some." "you had some?" mr. tulkinghorn repeats. "oh, yes!" returns my lady carelessly. "i think i must have had some. and did you really take the trouble to find out the writer of that actual thing--what is it!--affidavit?" "yes." "how very odd!" they pass into a sombre breakfast-room on the ground floor, lighted in the day by two deep windows. it is now twilight. the fire glows brightly on the panelled wall and palely on the window-glass, where, through the cold reflection of the blaze, the colder landscape shudders in the wind and a grey mist creeps along, the only traveller besides the waste of clouds. my lady lounges in a great chair in the chimney-corner, and sir leicester takes another great chair opposite. the lawyer stands before the fire with his hand out at arm's length, shading his face. he looks across his arm at my lady. "yes," he says, "i inquired about the man, and found him. and, what is very strange, i found him--" "not to be any out-of-the-way person, i am afraid!" lady dedlock languidly anticipates. "i found him dead." "oh, dear me!" remonstrated sir leicester. not so much shocked by the fact as by the fact of the fact being mentioned. "i was directed to his lodging--a miserable, poverty-stricken place--and i found him dead." "you will excuse me, mr. tulkinghorn," observes sir leicester. "i think the less said--" "pray, sir leicester, let me hear the story out" (it is my lady speaking). "it is quite a story for twilight. how very shocking! dead?" mr. tulkinghorn re-asserts it by another inclination of his head. "whether by his own hand--" "upon my honour!" cries sir leicester. "really!" "do let me hear the story!" says my lady. "whatever you desire, my dear. but, i must say--" "no, you mustn't say! go on, mr. tulkinghorn." sir leicester's gallantry concedes the point, though he still feels that to bring this sort of squalor among the upper classes is really--really-- "i was about to say," resumes the lawyer with undisturbed calmness, "that whether he had died by his own hand or not, it was beyond my power to tell you. i should amend that phrase, however, by saying that he had unquestionably died of his own act, though whether by his own deliberate intention or by mischance can never certainly be known. the coroner's jury found that he took the poison accidentally." "and what kind of man," my lady asks, "was this deplorable creature?" "very difficult to say," returns the lawyer, shaking his head. "he had lived so wretchedly and was so neglected, with his gipsy colour and his wild black hair and beard, that i should have considered him the commonest of the common. the surgeon had a notion that he had once been something better, both in appearance and condition." "what did they call the wretched being?" "they called him what he had called himself, but no one knew his name." "not even any one who had attended on him?" "no one had attended on him. he was found dead. in fact, i found him." "without any clue to anything more?" "without any; there was," says the lawyer meditatively, "an old portmanteau, but--no, there were no papers." during the utterance of every word of this short dialogue, lady dedlock and mr. tulkinghorn, without any other alteration in their customary deportment, have looked very steadily at one another--as was natural, perhaps, in the discussion of so unusual a subject. sir leicester has looked at the fire, with the general expression of the dedlock on the staircase. the story being told, he renews his stately protest, saying that as it is quite clear that no association in my lady's mind can possibly be traceable to this poor wretch (unless he was a begging-letter writer), he trusts to hear no more about a subject so far removed from my lady's station. "certainly, a collection of horrors," says my lady, gathering up her mantles and furs, "but they interest one for the moment! have the kindness, mr. tulkinghorn, to open the door for me." mr. tulkinghorn does so with deference and holds it open while she passes out. she passes close to him, with her usual fatigued manner and insolent grace. they meet again at dinner--again, next day--again, for many days in succession. lady dedlock is always the same exhausted deity, surrounded by worshippers, and terribly liable to be bored to death, even while presiding at her own shrine. mr. tulkinghorn is always the same speechless repository of noble confidences, so oddly out of place and yet so perfectly at home. they appear to take as little note of one another as any two people enclosed within the same walls could. but whether each evermore watches and suspects the other, evermore mistrustful of some great reservation; whether each is evermore prepared at all points for the other, and never to be taken unawares; what each would give to know how much the other knows--all this is hidden, for the time, in their own hearts. chapter xiii esther's narrative we held many consultations about what richard was to be, first without mr. jarndyce, as he had requested, and afterwards with him, but it was a long time before we seemed to make progress. richard said he was ready for anything. when mr. jarndyce doubted whether he might not already be too old to enter the navy, richard said he had thought of that, and perhaps he was. when mr. jarndyce asked him what he thought of the army, richard said he had thought of that, too, and it wasn't a bad idea. when mr. jarndyce advised him to try and decide within himself whether his old preference for the sea was an ordinary boyish inclination or a strong impulse, richard answered, well he really had tried very often, and he couldn't make out. "how much of this indecision of character," mr. jarndyce said to me, "is chargeable on that incomprehensible heap of uncertainty and procrastination on which he has been thrown from his birth, i don't pretend to say; but that chancery, among its other sins, is responsible for some of it, i can plainly see. it has engendered or confirmed in him a habit of putting off--and trusting to this, that, and the other chance, without knowing what chance--and dismissing everything as unsettled, uncertain, and confused. the character of much older and steadier people may be even changed by the circumstances surrounding them. it would be too much to expect that a boy's, in its formation, should be the subject of such influences and escape them." i felt this to be true; though if i may venture to mention what i thought besides, i thought it much to be regretted that richard's education had not counteracted those influences or directed his character. he had been eight years at a public school and had learnt, i understood, to make latin verses of several sorts in the most admirable manner. but i never heard that it had been anybody's business to find out what his natural bent was, or where his failings lay, or to adapt any kind of knowledge to him. he had been adapted to the verses and had learnt the art of making them to such perfection that if he had remained at school until he was of age, i suppose he could only have gone on making them over and over again unless he had enlarged his education by forgetting how to do it. still, although i had no doubt that they were very beautiful, and very improving, and very sufficient for a great many purposes of life, and always remembered all through life, i did doubt whether richard would not have profited by some one studying him a little, instead of his studying them quite so much. to be sure, i knew nothing of the subject and do not even now know whether the young gentlemen of classic rome or greece made verses to the same extent--or whether the young gentlemen of any country ever did. "i haven't the least idea," said richard, musing, "what i had better be. except that i am quite sure i don't want to go into the church, it's a toss-up." "you have no inclination in mr. kenge's way?" suggested mr. jarndyce. "i don't know that, sir!" replied richard. "i am fond of boating. articled clerks go a good deal on the water. it's a capital profession!" "surgeon--" suggested mr. jarndyce. "that's the thing, sir!" cried richard. i doubt if he had ever once thought of it before. "that's the thing, sir," repeated richard with the greatest enthusiasm. "we have got it at last. m.r.c.s.!" he was not to be laughed out of it, though he laughed at it heartily. he said he had chosen his profession, and the more he thought of it, the more he felt that his destiny was clear; the art of healing was the art of all others for him. mistrusting that he only came to this conclusion because, having never had much chance of finding out for himself what he was fitted for and having never been guided to the discovery, he was taken by the newest idea and was glad to get rid of the trouble of consideration, i wondered whether the latin verses often ended in this or whether richard's was a solitary case. mr. jarndyce took great pains to talk with him seriously and to put it to his good sense not to deceive himself in so important a matter. richard was a little grave after these interviews, but invariably told ada and me that it was all right, and then began to talk about something else. "by heaven!" cried mr. boythorn, who interested himself strongly in the subject--though i need not say that, for he could do nothing weakly; "i rejoice to find a young gentleman of spirit and gallantry devoting himself to that noble profession! the more spirit there is in it, the better for mankind and the worse for those mercenary task-masters and low tricksters who delight in putting that illustrious art at a disadvantage in the world. by all that is base and despicable," cried mr. boythorn, "the treatment of surgeons aboard ship is such that i would submit the legs--both legs--of every member of the admiralty board to a compound fracture and render it a transportable offence in any qualified practitioner to set them if the system were not wholly changed in eight and forty hours!" "wouldn't you give them a week?" asked mr. jarndyce. "no!" cried mr. boythorn firmly. "not on any consideration! eight and forty hours! as to corporations, parishes, vestry-boards, and similar gatherings of jolter-headed clods who assemble to exchange such speeches that, by heaven, they ought to be worked in quicksilver mines for the short remainder of their miserable existence, if it were only to prevent their detestable english from contaminating a language spoken in the presence of the sun--as to those fellows, who meanly take advantage of the ardour of gentlemen in the pursuit of knowledge to recompense the inestimable services of the best years of their lives, their long study, and their expensive education with pittances too small for the acceptance of clerks, i would have the necks of every one of them wrung and their skulls arranged in surgeons' hall for the contemplation of the whole profession in order that its younger members might understand from actual measurement, in early life, how thick skulls may become!" he wound up this vehement declaration by looking round upon us with a most agreeable smile and suddenly thundering, "ha, ha, ha!" over and over again, until anybody else might have been expected to be quite subdued by the exertion. as richard still continued to say that he was fixed in his choice after repeated periods for consideration had been recommended by mr. jarndyce and had expired, and he still continued to assure ada and me in the same final manner that it was "all right," it became advisable to take mr. kenge into council. mr. kenge, therefore, came down to dinner one day, and leaned back in his chair, and turned his eye-glasses over and over, and spoke in a sonorous voice, and did exactly what i remembered to have seen him do when i was a little girl. "ah!" said mr. kenge. "yes. well! a very good profession, mr. jarndyce, a very good profession." "the course of study and preparation requires to be diligently pursued," observed my guardian with a glance at richard. "oh, no doubt," said mr. kenge. "diligently." "but that being the case, more or less, with all pursuits that are worth much," said mr. jarndyce, "it is not a special consideration which another choice would be likely to escape." "truly," said mr. kenge. "and mr. richard carstone, who has so meritoriously acquitted himself in the--shall i say the classic shades?--in which his youth had been passed, will, no doubt, apply the habits, if not the principles and practice, of versification in that tongue in which a poet was said (unless i mistake) to be born, not made, to the more eminently practical field of action on which he enters." "you may rely upon it," said richard in his off-hand manner, "that i shall go at it and do my best." "very well, mr. jarndyce!" said mr. kenge, gently nodding his head. "really, when we are assured by mr. richard that he means to go at it and to do his best," nodding feelingly and smoothly over those expressions, "i would submit to you that we have only to inquire into the best mode of carrying out the object of his ambition. now, with reference to placing mr. richard with some sufficiently eminent practitioner. is there any one in view at present?" "no one, rick, i think?" said my guardian. "no one, sir," said richard. "quite so!" observed mr. kenge. "as to situation, now. is there any particular feeling on that head?" "n--no," said richard. "quite so!" observed mr. kenge again. "i should like a little variety," said richard; "i mean a good range of experience." "very requisite, no doubt," returned mr. kenge. "i think this may be easily arranged, mr. jarndyce? we have only, in the first place, to discover a sufficiently eligible practitioner; and as soon as we make our want--and shall i add, our ability to pay a premium?--known, our only difficulty will be in the selection of one from a large number. we have only, in the second place, to observe those little formalities which are rendered necessary by our time of life and our being under the guardianship of the court. we shall soon be--shall i say, in mr. richard's own light-hearted manner, 'going at it'--to our heart's content. it is a coincidence," said mr. kenge with a tinge of melancholy in his smile, "one of those coincidences which may or may not require an explanation beyond our present limited faculties, that i have a cousin in the medical profession. he might be deemed eligible by you and might be disposed to respond to this proposal. i can answer for him as little as for you, but he might!" as this was an opening in the prospect, it was arranged that mr. kenge should see his cousin. and as mr. jarndyce had before proposed to take us to london for a few weeks, it was settled next day that we should make our visit at once and combine richard's business with it. mr. boythorn leaving us within a week, we took up our abode at a cheerful lodging near oxford street over an upholsterer's shop. london was a great wonder to us, and we were out for hours and hours at a time, seeing the sights, which appeared to be less capable of exhaustion than we were. we made the round of the principal theatres, too, with great delight, and saw all the plays that were worth seeing. i mention this because it was at the theatre that i began to be made uncomfortable again by mr. guppy. i was sitting in front of the box one night with ada, and richard was in the place he liked best, behind ada's chair, when, happening to look down into the pit, i saw mr. guppy, with his hair flattened down upon his head and woe depicted in his face, looking up at me. i felt all through the performance that he never looked at the actors but constantly looked at me, and always with a carefully prepared expression of the deepest misery and the profoundest dejection. it quite spoiled my pleasure for that night because it was so very embarrassing and so very ridiculous. but from that time forth, we never went to the play without my seeing mr. guppy in the pit, always with his hair straight and flat, his shirt-collar turned down, and a general feebleness about him. if he were not there when we went in, and i began to hope he would not come and yielded myself for a little while to the interest of the scene, i was certain to encounter his languishing eyes when i least expected it and, from that time, to be quite sure that they were fixed upon me all the evening. i really cannot express how uneasy this made me. if he would only have brushed up his hair or turned up his collar, it would have been bad enough; but to know that that absurd figure was always gazing at me, and always in that demonstrative state of despondency, put such a constraint upon me that i did not like to laugh at the play, or to cry at it, or to move, or to speak. i seemed able to do nothing naturally. as to escaping mr. guppy by going to the back of the box, i could not bear to do that because i knew richard and ada relied on having me next them and that they could never have talked together so happily if anybody else had been in my place. so there i sat, not knowing where to look--for wherever i looked, i knew mr. guppy's eyes were following me--and thinking of the dreadful expense to which this young man was putting himself on my account. sometimes i thought of telling mr. jarndyce. then i feared that the young man would lose his situation and that i might ruin him. sometimes i thought of confiding in richard, but was deterred by the possibility of his fighting mr. guppy and giving him black eyes. sometimes i thought, should i frown at him or shake my head. then i felt i could not do it. sometimes i considered whether i should write to his mother, but that ended in my being convinced that to open a correspondence would be to make the matter worse. i always came to the conclusion, finally, that i could do nothing. mr. guppy's perseverance, all this time, not only produced him regularly at any theatre to which we went, but caused him to appear in the crowd as we were coming out, and even to get up behind our fly--where i am sure i saw him, two or three times, struggling among the most dreadful spikes. after we got home, he haunted a post opposite our house. the upholsterer's where we lodged being at the corner of two streets, and my bedroom window being opposite the post, i was afraid to go near the window when i went upstairs, lest i should see him (as i did one moonlight night) leaning against the post and evidently catching cold. if mr. guppy had not been, fortunately for me, engaged in the daytime, i really should have had no rest from him. while we were making this round of gaieties, in which mr. guppy so extraordinarily participated, the business which had helped to bring us to town was not neglected. mr. kenge's cousin was a mr. bayham badger, who had a good practice at chelsea and attended a large public institution besides. he was quite willing to receive richard into his house and to superintend his studies, and as it seemed that those could be pursued advantageously under mr. badger's roof, and mr. badger liked richard, and as richard said he liked mr. badger "well enough," an agreement was made, the lord chancellor's consent was obtained, and it was all settled. on the day when matters were concluded between richard and mr. badger, we were all under engagement to dine at mr. badger's house. we were to be "merely a family party," mrs. badger's note said; and we found no lady there but mrs. badger herself. she was surrounded in the drawing-room by various objects, indicative of her painting a little, playing the piano a little, playing the guitar a little, playing the harp a little, singing a little, working a little, reading a little, writing poetry a little, and botanizing a little. she was a lady of about fifty, i should think, youthfully dressed, and of a very fine complexion. if i add to the little list of her accomplishments that she rouged a little, i do not mean that there was any harm in it. mr. bayham badger himself was a pink, fresh-faced, crisp-looking gentleman with a weak voice, white teeth, light hair, and surprised eyes, some years younger, i should say, than mrs. bayham badger. he admired her exceedingly, but principally, and to begin with, on the curious ground (as it seemed to us) of her having had three husbands. we had barely taken our seats when he said to mr. jarndyce quite triumphantly, "you would hardly suppose that i am mrs. bayham badger's third!" "indeed?" said mr. jarndyce. "her third!" said mr. badger. "mrs. bayham badger has not the appearance, miss summerson, of a lady who has had two former husbands?" i said "not at all!" "and most remarkable men!" said mr. badger in a tone of confidence. "captain swosser of the royal navy, who was mrs. badger's first husband, was a very distinguished officer indeed. the name of professor dingo, my immediate predecessor, is one of european reputation." mrs. badger overheard him and smiled. "yes, my dear!" mr. badger replied to the smile, "i was observing to mr. jarndyce and miss summerson that you had had two former husbands--both very distinguished men. and they found it, as people generally do, difficult to believe." "i was barely twenty," said mrs. badger, "when i married captain swosser of the royal navy. i was in the mediterranean with him; i am quite a sailor. on the twelfth anniversary of my wedding-day, i became the wife of professor dingo." "of european reputation," added mr. badger in an undertone. "and when mr. badger and myself were married," pursued mrs. badger, "we were married on the same day of the year. i had become attached to the day." "so that mrs. badger has been married to three husbands--two of them highly distinguished men," said mr. badger, summing up the facts, "and each time upon the twenty-first of march at eleven in the forenoon!" we all expressed our admiration. "but for mr. badger's modesty," said mr. jarndyce, "i would take leave to correct him and say three distinguished men." "thank you, mr. jarndyce! what i always tell him!" observed mrs. badger. "and, my dear," said mr. badger, "what do i always tell you? that without any affectation of disparaging such professional distinction as i may have attained (which our friend mr. carstone will have many opportunities of estimating), i am not so weak--no, really," said mr. badger to us generally, "so unreasonable--as to put my reputation on the same footing with such first-rate men as captain swosser and professor dingo. perhaps you may be interested, mr. jarndyce," continued mr. bayham badger, leading the way into the next drawing-room, "in this portrait of captain swosser. it was taken on his return home from the african station, where he had suffered from the fever of the country. mrs. badger considers it too yellow. but it's a very fine head. a very fine head!" we all echoed, "a very fine head!" "i feel when i look at it," said mr. badger, "'that's a man i should like to have seen!' it strikingly bespeaks the first-class man that captain swosser pre-eminently was. on the other side, professor dingo. i knew him well--attended him in his last illness--a speaking likeness! over the piano, mrs. bayham badger when mrs. swosser. over the sofa, mrs. bayham badger when mrs. dingo. of mrs. bayham badger in esse, i possess the original and have no copy." dinner was now announced, and we went downstairs. it was a very genteel entertainment, very handsomely served. but the captain and the professor still ran in mr. badger's head, and as ada and i had the honour of being under his particular care, we had the full benefit of them. "water, miss summerson? allow me! not in that tumbler, pray. bring me the professor's goblet, james!" ada very much admired some artificial flowers under a glass. "astonishing how they keep!" said mr. badger. "they were presented to mrs. bayham badger when she was in the mediterranean." he invited mr. jarndyce to take a glass of claret. "not that claret!" he said. "excuse me! this is an occasion, and on an occasion i produce some very special claret i happen to have. (james, captain swosser's wine!) mr. jarndyce, this is a wine that was imported by the captain, we will not say how many years ago. you will find it very curious. my dear, i shall be happy to take some of this wine with you. (captain swosser's claret to your mistress, james!) my love, your health!" after dinner, when we ladies retired, we took mrs. badger's first and second husband with us. mrs. badger gave us in the drawing-room a biographical sketch of the life and services of captain swosser before his marriage and a more minute account of him dating from the time when he fell in love with her at a ball on board the crippler, given to the officers of that ship when she lay in plymouth harbour. "the dear old crippler!" said mrs. badger, shaking her head. "she was a noble vessel. trim, ship-shape, all a taunto, as captain swosser used to say. you must excuse me if i occasionally introduce a nautical expression; i was quite a sailor once. captain swosser loved that craft for my sake. when she was no longer in commission, he frequently said that if he were rich enough to buy her old hulk, he would have an inscription let into the timbers of the quarter-deck where we stood as partners in the dance to mark the spot where he fell--raked fore and aft (captain swosser used to say) by the fire from my tops. it was his naval way of mentioning my eyes." mrs. badger shook her head, sighed, and looked in the glass. "it was a great change from captain swosser to professor dingo," she resumed with a plaintive smile. "i felt it a good deal at first. such an entire revolution in my mode of life! but custom, combined with science--particularly science--inured me to it. being the professor's sole companion in his botanical excursions, i almost forgot that i had ever been afloat, and became quite learned. it is singular that the professor was the antipodes of captain swosser and that mr. badger is not in the least like either!" we then passed into a narrative of the deaths of captain swosser and professor dingo, both of whom seem to have had very bad complaints. in the course of it, mrs. badger signified to us that she had never madly loved but once and that the object of that wild affection, never to be recalled in its fresh enthusiasm, was captain swosser. the professor was yet dying by inches in the most dismal manner, and mrs. badger was giving us imitations of his way of saying, with great difficulty, "where is laura? let laura give me my toast and water!" when the entrance of the gentlemen consigned him to the tomb. now, i observed that evening, as i had observed for some days past, that ada and richard were more than ever attached to each other's society, which was but natural, seeing that they were going to be separated so soon. i was therefore not very much surprised when we got home, and ada and i retired upstairs, to find ada more silent than usual, though i was not quite prepared for her coming into my arms and beginning to speak to me, with her face hidden. "my darling esther!" murmured ada. "i have a great secret to tell you!" a mighty secret, my pretty one, no doubt! "what is it, ada?" "oh, esther, you would never guess!" "shall i try to guess?" said i. "oh, no! don't! pray don't!" cried ada, very much startled by the idea of my doing so. "now, i wonder who it can be about?" said i, pretending to consider. "it's about--" said ada in a whisper. "it's about--my cousin richard!" "well, my own!" said i, kissing her bright hair, which was all i could see. "and what about him?" "oh, esther, you would never guess!" it was so pretty to have her clinging to me in that way, hiding her face, and to know that she was not crying in sorrow but in a little glow of joy, and pride, and hope, that i would not help her just yet. "he says--i know it's very foolish, we are both so young--but he says," with a burst of tears, "that he loves me dearly, esther." "does he indeed?" said i. "i never heard of such a thing! why, my pet of pets, i could have told you that weeks and weeks ago!" to see ada lift up her flushed face in joyful surprise, and hold me round the neck, and laugh, and cry, and blush, was so pleasant! "why, my darling," said i, "what a goose you must take me for! your cousin richard has been loving you as plainly as he could for i don't know how long!" "and yet you never said a word about it!" cried ada, kissing me. "no, my love," said i. "i waited to be told." "but now i have told you, you don't think it wrong of me, do you?" returned ada. she might have coaxed me to say no if i had been the hardest-hearted duenna in the world. not being that yet, i said no very freely. "and now," said i, "i know the worst of it." "oh, that's not quite the worst of it, esther dear!" cried ada, holding me tighter and laying down her face again upon my breast. "no?" said i. "not even that?" "no, not even that!" said ada, shaking her head. "why, you never mean to say--" i was beginning in joke. but ada, looking up and smiling through her tears, cried, "yes, i do! you know, you know i do!" and then sobbed out, "with all my heart i do! with all my whole heart, esther!" i told her, laughing, why i had known that, too, just as well as i had known the other! and we sat before the fire, and i had all the talking to myself for a little while (though there was not much of it); and ada was soon quiet and happy. "do you think my cousin john knows, dear dame durden?" she asked. "unless my cousin john is blind, my pet," said i, "i should think my cousin john knows pretty well as much as we know." "we want to speak to him before richard goes," said ada timidly, "and we wanted you to advise us, and to tell him so. perhaps you wouldn't mind richard's coming in, dame durden?" "oh! richard is outside, is he, my dear?" said i. "i am not quite certain," returned ada with a bashful simplicity that would have won my heart if she had not won it long before, "but i think he's waiting at the door." there he was, of course. they brought a chair on either side of me, and put me between them, and really seemed to have fallen in love with me instead of one another, they were so confiding, and so trustful, and so fond of me. they went on in their own wild way for a little while--i never stopped them; i enjoyed it too much myself--and then we gradually fell to considering how young they were, and how there must be a lapse of several years before this early love could come to anything, and how it could come to happiness only if it were real and lasting and inspired them with a steady resolution to do their duty to each other, with constancy, fortitude, and perseverance, each always for the other's sake. well! richard said that he would work his fingers to the bone for ada, and ada said that she would work her fingers to the bone for richard, and they called me all sorts of endearing and sensible names, and we sat there, advising and talking, half the night. finally, before we parted, i gave them my promise to speak to their cousin john to-morrow. so, when to-morrow came, i went to my guardian after breakfast, in the room that was our town-substitute for the growlery, and told him that i had it in trust to tell him something. "well, little woman," said he, shutting up his book, "if you have accepted the trust, there can be no harm in it." "i hope not, guardian," said i. "i can guarantee that there is no secrecy in it. for it only happened yesterday." "aye? and what is it, esther?" "guardian," said i, "you remember the happy night when first we came down to bleak house? when ada was singing in the dark room?" i wished to call to his remembrance the look he had given me then. unless i am much mistaken, i saw that i did so. "because--" said i with a little hesitation. "yes, my dear!" said he. "don't hurry." "because," said i, "ada and richard have fallen in love. and have told each other so." "already!" cried my guardian, quite astonished. "yes!" said i. "and to tell you the truth, guardian, i rather expected it." "the deuce you did!" said he. he sat considering for a minute or two, with his smile, at once so handsome and so kind, upon his changing face, and then requested me to let them know that he wished to see them. when they came, he encircled ada with one arm in his fatherly way and addressed himself to richard with a cheerful gravity. "rick," said mr. jarndyce, "i am glad to have won your confidence. i hope to preserve it. when i contemplated these relations between us four which have so brightened my life and so invested it with new interests and pleasures, i certainly did contemplate, afar off, the possibility of you and your pretty cousin here (don't be shy, ada, don't be shy, my dear!) being in a mind to go through life together. i saw, and do see, many reasons to make it desirable. but that was afar off, rick, afar off!" "we look afar off, sir," returned richard. "well!" said mr. jarndyce. "that's rational. now, hear me, my dears! i might tell you that you don't know your own minds yet, that a thousand things may happen to divert you from one another, that it is well this chain of flowers you have taken up is very easily broken, or it might become a chain of lead. but i will not do that. such wisdom will come soon enough, i dare say, if it is to come at all. i will assume that a few years hence you will be in your hearts to one another what you are to-day. all i say before speaking to you according to that assumption is, if you do change--if you do come to find that you are more commonplace cousins to each other as man and woman than you were as boy and girl (your manhood will excuse me, rick!)--don't be ashamed still to confide in me, for there will be nothing monstrous or uncommon in it. i am only your friend and distant kinsman. i have no power over you whatever. but i wish and hope to retain your confidence if i do nothing to forfeit it." "i am very sure, sir," returned richard, "that i speak for ada too when i say that you have the strongest power over us both--rooted in respect, gratitude, and affection--strengthening every day." "dear cousin john," said ada, on his shoulder, "my father's place can never be empty again. all the love and duty i could ever have rendered to him is transferred to you." "come!" said mr. jarndyce. "now for our assumption. now we lift our eyes up and look hopefully at the distance! rick, the world is before you; and it is most probable that as you enter it, so it will receive you. trust in nothing but in providence and your own efforts. never separate the two, like the heathen waggoner. constancy in love is a good thing, but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort. if you had the abilities of all the great men, past and present, you could do nothing well without sincerely meaning it and setting about it. if you entertain the supposition that any real success, in great things or in small, ever was or could be, ever will or can be, wrested from fortune by fits and starts, leave that wrong idea here or leave your cousin ada here." "i will leave it here, sir," replied richard smiling, "if i brought it here just now (but i hope i did not), and will work my way on to my cousin ada in the hopeful distance." "right!" said mr. jarndyce. "if you are not to make her happy, why should you pursue her?" "i wouldn't make her unhappy--no, not even for her love," retorted richard proudly. "well said!" cried mr. jarndyce. "that's well said! she remains here, in her home with me. love her, rick, in your active life, no less than in her home when you revisit it, and all will go well. otherwise, all will go ill. that's the end of my preaching. i think you and ada had better take a walk." ada tenderly embraced him, and richard heartily shook hands with him, and then the cousins went out of the room, looking back again directly, though, to say that they would wait for me. the door stood open, and we both followed them with our eyes as they passed down the adjoining room, on which the sun was shining, and out at its farther end. richard with his head bent, and her hand drawn through his arm, was talking to her very earnestly; and she looked up in his face, listening, and seemed to see nothing else. so young, so beautiful, so full of hope and promise, they went on lightly through the sunlight as their own happy thoughts might then be traversing the years to come and making them all years of brightness. so they passed away into the shadow and were gone. it was only a burst of light that had been so radiant. the room darkened as they went out, and the sun was clouded over. "am i right, esther?" said my guardian when they were gone. he was so good and wise to ask me whether he was right! "rick may gain, out of this, the quality he wants. wants, at the core of so much that is good!" said mr. jarndyce, shaking his head. "i have said nothing to ada, esther. she has her friend and counsellor always near." and he laid his hand lovingly upon my head. i could not help showing that i was a little moved, though i did all i could to conceal it. "tut tut!" said he. "but we must take care, too, that our little woman's life is not all consumed in care for others." "care? my dear guardian, i believe i am the happiest creature in the world!" "i believe so, too," said he. "but some one may find out what esther never will--that the little woman is to be held in remembrance above all other people!" i have omitted to mention in its place that there was some one else at the family dinner party. it was not a lady. it was a gentleman. it was a gentleman of a dark complexion--a young surgeon. he was rather reserved, but i thought him very sensible and agreeable. at least, ada asked me if i did not, and i said yes. chapter xiv deportment richard left us on the very next evening to begin his new career, and committed ada to my charge with great love for her and great trust in me. it touched me then to reflect, and it touches me now, more nearly, to remember (having what i have to tell) how they both thought of me, even at that engrossing time. i was a part of all their plans, for the present and the future. i was to write richard once a week, making my faithful report of ada, who was to write to him every alternate day. i was to be informed, under his own hand, of all his labours and successes; i was to observe how resolute and persevering he would be; i was to be ada's bridesmaid when they were married; i was to live with them afterwards; i was to keep all the keys of their house; i was to be made happy for ever and a day. "and if the suit should make us rich, esther--which it may, you know!" said richard to crown all. a shade crossed ada's face. "my dearest ada," asked richard, "why not?" "it had better declare us poor at once," said ada. "oh! i don't know about that," returned richard, "but at all events, it won't declare anything at once. it hasn't declared anything in heaven knows how many years." "too true," said ada. "yes, but," urged richard, answering what her look suggested rather than her words, "the longer it goes on, dear cousin, the nearer it must be to a settlement one way or other. now, is not that reasonable?" "you know best, richard. but i am afraid if we trust to it, it will make us unhappy." "but, my ada, we are not going to trust to it!" cried richard gaily. "we know it better than to trust to it. we only say that if it should make us rich, we have no constitutional objection to being rich. the court is, by solemn settlement of law, our grim old guardian, and we are to suppose that what it gives us (when it gives us anything) is our right. it is not necessary to quarrel with our right." "no," said ada, "but it may be better to forget all about it." "well, well," cried richard, "then we will forget all about it! we consign the whole thing to oblivion. dame durden puts on her approving face, and it's done!" "dame durden's approving face," said i, looking out of the box in which i was packing his books, "was not very visible when you called it by that name; but it does approve, and she thinks you can't do better." so, richard said there was an end of it, and immediately began, on no other foundation, to build as many castles in the air as would man the great wall of china. he went away in high spirits. ada and i, prepared to miss him very much, commenced our quieter career. on our arrival in london, we had called with mr. jarndyce at mrs. jellyby's but had not been so fortunate as to find her at home. it appeared that she had gone somewhere to a tea-drinking and had taken miss jellyby with her. besides the tea-drinking, there was to be some considerable speech-making and letter-writing on the general merits of the cultivation of coffee, conjointly with natives, at the settlement of borrioboola-gha. all this involved, no doubt, sufficient active exercise of pen and ink to make her daughter's part in the proceedings anything but a holiday. it being now beyond the time appointed for mrs. jellyby's return, we called again. she was in town, but not at home, having gone to mile end directly after breakfast on some borrioboolan business, arising out of a society called the east london branch aid ramification. as i had not seen peepy on the occasion of our last call (when he was not to be found anywhere, and when the cook rather thought he must have strolled away with the dustman's cart), i now inquired for him again. the oyster shells he had been building a house with were still in the passage, but he was nowhere discoverable, and the cook supposed that he had "gone after the sheep." when we repeated, with some surprise, "the sheep?" she said, oh, yes, on market days he sometimes followed them quite out of town and came back in such a state as never was! i was sitting at the window with my guardian on the following morning, and ada was busy writing--of course to richard--when miss jellyby was announced, and entered, leading the identical peepy, whom she had made some endeavours to render presentable by wiping the dirt into corners of his face and hands and making his hair very wet and then violently frizzling it with her fingers. everything the dear child wore was either too large for him or too small. among his other contradictory decorations he had the hat of a bishop and the little gloves of a baby. his boots were, on a small scale, the boots of a ploughman, while his legs, so crossed and recrossed with scratches that they looked like maps, were bare below a very short pair of plaid drawers finished off with two frills of perfectly different patterns. the deficient buttons on his plaid frock had evidently been supplied from one of mr. jellyby's coats, they were so extremely brazen and so much too large. most extraordinary specimens of needlework appeared on several parts of his dress, where it had been hastily mended, and i recognized the same hand on miss jellyby's. she was, however, unaccountably improved in her appearance and looked very pretty. she was conscious of poor little peepy being but a failure after all her trouble, and she showed it as she came in by the way in which she glanced first at him and then at us. "oh, dear me!" said my guardian. "due east!" ada and i gave her a cordial welcome and presented her to mr. jarndyce, to whom she said as she sat down, "ma's compliments, and she hopes you'll excuse her, because she's correcting proofs of the plan. she's going to put out five thousand new circulars, and she knows you'll be interested to hear that. i have brought one of them with me. ma's compliments." with which she presented it sulkily enough. "thank you," said my guardian. "i am much obliged to mrs. jellyby. oh, dear me! this is a very trying wind!" we were busy with peepy, taking off his clerical hat, asking him if he remembered us, and so on. peepy retired behind his elbow at first, but relented at the sight of sponge-cake and allowed me to take him on my lap, where he sat munching quietly. mr. jarndyce then withdrawing into the temporary growlery, miss jellyby opened a conversation with her usual abruptness. "we are going on just as bad as ever in thavies inn," said she. "i have no peace of my life. talk of africa! i couldn't be worse off if i was a what's-his-name--man and a brother!" i tried to say something soothing. "oh, it's of no use, miss summerson," exclaimed miss jellyby, "though i thank you for the kind intention all the same. i know how i am used, and i am not to be talked over. you wouldn't be talked over if you were used so. peepy, go and play at wild beasts under the piano!" "i shan't!" said peepy. "very well, you ungrateful, naughty, hard-hearted boy!" returned miss jellyby with tears in her eyes. "i'll never take pains to dress you any more." "yes, i will go, caddy!" cried peepy, who was really a good child and who was so moved by his sister's vexation that he went at once. "it seems a little thing to cry about," said poor miss jellyby apologetically, "but i am quite worn out. i was directing the new circulars till two this morning. i detest the whole thing so that that alone makes my head ache till i can't see out of my eyes. and look at that poor unfortunate child! was there ever such a fright as he is!" peepy, happily unconscious of the defects in his appearance, sat on the carpet behind one of the legs of the piano, looking calmly out of his den at us while he ate his cake. "i have sent him to the other end of the room," observed miss jellyby, drawing her chair nearer ours, "because i don't want him to hear the conversation. those little things are so sharp! i was going to say, we really are going on worse than ever. pa will be a bankrupt before long, and then i hope ma will be satisfied. there'll he nobody but ma to thank for it." we said we hoped mr. jellyby's affairs were not in so bad a state as that. "it's of no use hoping, though it's very kind of you," returned miss jellyby, shaking her head. "pa told me only yesterday morning (and dreadfully unhappy he is) that he couldn't weather the storm. i should be surprised if he could. when all our tradesmen send into our house any stuff they like, and the servants do what they like with it, and i have no time to improve things if i knew how, and ma don't care about anything, i should like to make out how pa is to weather the storm. i declare if i was pa, i'd run away." "my dear!" said i, smiling. "your papa, no doubt, considers his family." "oh, yes, his family is all very fine, miss summerson," replied miss jellyby; "but what comfort is his family to him? his family is nothing but bills, dirt, waste, noise, tumbles downstairs, confusion, and wretchedness. his scrambling home, from week's end to week's end, is like one great washing-day--only nothing's washed!" miss jellyby tapped her foot upon the floor and wiped her eyes. "i am sure i pity pa to that degree," she said, "and am so angry with ma that i can't find words to express myself! however, i am not going to bear it, i am determined. i won't be a slave all my life, and i won't submit to be proposed to by mr. quale. a pretty thing, indeed, to marry a philanthropist. as if i hadn't had enough of that!" said poor miss jellyby. i must confess that i could not help feeling rather angry with mrs. jellyby myself, seeing and hearing this neglected girl and knowing how much of bitterly satirical truth there was in what she said. "if it wasn't that we had been intimate when you stopped at our house," pursued miss jellyby, "i should have been ashamed to come here to-day, for i know what a figure i must seem to you two. but as it is, i made up my mind to call, especially as i am not likely to see you again the next time you come to town." she said this with such great significance that ada and i glanced at one another, foreseeing something more. "no!" said miss jellyby, shaking her head. "not at all likely! i know i may trust you two. i am sure you won't betray me. i am engaged." "without their knowledge at home?" said i. "why, good gracious me, miss summerson," she returned, justifying herself in a fretful but not angry manner, "how can it be otherwise? you know what ma is--and i needn't make poor pa more miserable by telling him." "but would it not be adding to his unhappiness to marry without his knowledge or consent, my dear?" said i. "no," said miss jellyby, softening. "i hope not. i should try to make him happy and comfortable when he came to see me, and peepy and the others should take it in turns to come and stay with me, and they should have some care taken of them then." there was a good deal of affection in poor caddy. she softened more and more while saying this and cried so much over the unwonted little home-picture she had raised in her mind that peepy, in his cave under the piano, was touched, and turned himself over on his back with loud lamentations. it was not until i had brought him to kiss his sister, and had restored him to his place on my lap, and had shown him that caddy was laughing (she laughed expressly for the purpose), that we could recall his peace of mind; even then it was for some time conditional on his taking us in turns by the chin and smoothing our faces all over with his hand. at last, as his spirits were not equal to the piano, we put him on a chair to look out of window; and miss jellyby, holding him by one leg, resumed her confidence. "it began in your coming to our house," she said. we naturally asked how. "i felt i was so awkward," she replied, "that i made up my mind to be improved in that respect at all events and to learn to dance. i told ma i was ashamed of myself, and i must be taught to dance. ma looked at me in that provoking way of hers as if i wasn't in sight, but i was quite determined to be taught to dance, and so i went to mr. turveydrop's academy in newman street." "and was it there, my dear--" i began. "yes, it was there," said caddy, "and i am engaged to mr. turveydrop. there are two mr. turveydrops, father and son. my mr. turveydrop is the son, of course. i only wish i had been better brought up and was likely to make him a better wife, for i am very fond of him." "i am sorry to hear this," said i, "i must confess." "i don't know why you should be sorry," she retorted a little anxiously, "but i am engaged to mr. turveydrop, whether or no, and he is very fond of me. it's a secret as yet, even on his side, because old mr. turveydrop has a share in the connexion and it might break his heart or give him some other shock if he was told of it abruptly. old mr. turveydrop is a very gentlemanly man indeed--very gentlemanly." "does his wife know of it?" asked ada. "old mr. turveydrop's wife, miss clare?" returned miss jellyby, opening her eyes. "there's no such person. he is a widower." we were here interrupted by peepy, whose leg had undergone so much on account of his sister's unconsciously jerking it like a bell-rope whenever she was emphatic that the afflicted child now bemoaned his sufferings with a very low-spirited noise. as he appealed to me for compassion, and as i was only a listener, i undertook to hold him. miss jellyby proceeded, after begging peepy's pardon with a kiss and assuring him that she hadn't meant to do it. "that's the state of the case," said caddy. "if i ever blame myself, i still think it's ma's fault. we are to be married whenever we can, and then i shall go to pa at the office and write to ma. it won't much agitate ma; i am only pen and ink to her. one great comfort is," said caddy with a sob, "that i shall never hear of africa after i am married. young mr. turveydrop hates it for my sake, and if old mr. turveydrop knows there is such a place, it's as much as he does." "it was he who was very gentlemanly, i think!" said i. "very gentlemanly indeed," said caddy. "he is celebrated almost everywhere for his deportment." "does he teach?" asked ada. "no, he don't teach anything in particular," replied caddy. "but his deportment is beautiful." caddy went on to say with considerable hesitation and reluctance that there was one thing more she wished us to know, and felt we ought to know, and which she hoped would not offend us. it was that she had improved her acquaintance with miss flite, the little crazy old lady, and that she frequently went there early in the morning and met her lover for a few minutes before breakfast--only for a few minutes. "i go there at other times," said caddy, "but prince does not come then. young mr. turveydrop's name is prince; i wish it wasn't, because it sounds like a dog, but of course he didn't christen himself. old mr. turveydrop had him christened prince in remembrance of the prince regent. old mr. turveydrop adored the prince regent on account of his deportment. i hope you won't think the worse of me for having made these little appointments at miss flite's, where i first went with you, because i like the poor thing for her own sake and i believe she likes me. if you could see young mr. turveydrop, i am sure you would think well of him--at least, i am sure you couldn't possibly think any ill of him. i am going there now for my lesson. i couldn't ask you to go with me, miss summerson; but if you would," said caddy, who had said all this earnestly and tremblingly, "i should be very glad--very glad." it happened that we had arranged with my guardian to go to miss flite's that day. we had told him of our former visit, and our account had interested him; but something had always happened to prevent our going there again. as i trusted that i might have sufficient influence with miss jellyby to prevent her taking any very rash step if i fully accepted the confidence she was so willing to place in me, poor girl, i proposed that she and i and peepy should go to the academy and afterwards meet my guardian and ada at miss flite's, whose name i now learnt for the first time. this was on condition that miss jellyby and peepy should come back with us to dinner. the last article of the agreement being joyfully acceded to by both, we smartened peepy up a little with the assistance of a few pins, some soap and water, and a hair-brush, and went out, bending our steps towards newman street, which was very near. i found the academy established in a sufficiently dingy house at the corner of an archway, with busts in all the staircase windows. in the same house there were also established, as i gathered from the plates on the door, a drawing-master, a coal-merchant (there was, certainly, no room for his coals), and a lithographic artist. on the plate which, in size and situation, took precedence of all the rest, i read, mr. turveydrop. the door was open, and the hall was blocked up by a grand piano, a harp, and several other musical instruments in cases, all in progress of removal, and all looking rakish in the daylight. miss jellyby informed me that the academy had been lent, last night, for a concert. we went upstairs--it had been quite a fine house once, when it was anybody's business to keep it clean and fresh, and nobody's business to smoke in it all day--and into mr. turveydrop's great room, which was built out into a mews at the back and was lighted by a skylight. it was a bare, resounding room smelling of stables, with cane forms along the walls, and the walls ornamented at regular intervals with painted lyres and little cut-glass branches for candles, which seemed to be shedding their old-fashioned drops as other branches might shed autumn leaves. several young lady pupils, ranging from thirteen or fourteen years of age to two or three and twenty, were assembled; and i was looking among them for their instructor when caddy, pinching my arm, repeated the ceremony of introduction. "miss summerson, mr. prince turveydrop!" i curtsied to a little blue-eyed fair man of youthful appearance with flaxen hair parted in the middle and curling at the ends all round his head. he had a little fiddle, which we used to call at school a kit, under his left arm, and its little bow in the same hand. his little dancing-shoes were particularly diminutive, and he had a little innocent, feminine manner which not only appealed to me in an amiable way, but made this singular effect upon me, that i received the impression that he was like his mother and that his mother had not been much considered or well used. "i am very happy to see miss jellyby's friend," he said, bowing low to me. "i began to fear," with timid tenderness, "as it was past the usual time, that miss jellyby was not coming." "i beg you will have the goodness to attribute that to me, who have detained her, and to receive my excuses, sir," said i. "oh, dear!" said he. "and pray," i entreated, "do not allow me to be the cause of any more delay." with that apology i withdrew to a seat between peepy (who, being well used to it, had already climbed into a corner place) and an old lady of a censorious countenance whose two nieces were in the class and who was very indignant with peepy's boots. prince turveydrop then tinkled the strings of his kit with his fingers, and the young ladies stood up to dance. just then there appeared from a side-door old mr. turveydrop, in the full lustre of his deportment. he was a fat old gentleman with a false complexion, false teeth, false whiskers, and a wig. he had a fur collar, and he had a padded breast to his coat, which only wanted a star or a broad blue ribbon to be complete. he was pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and strapped down, as much as he could possibly bear. he had such a neckcloth on (puffing his very eyes out of their natural shape), and his chin and even his ears so sunk into it, that it seemed as though he must inevitably double up if it were cast loose. he had under his arm a hat of great size and weight, shelving downward from the crown to the brim, and in his hand a pair of white gloves with which he flapped it as he stood poised on one leg in a high-shouldered, round-elbowed state of elegance not to be surpassed. he had a cane, he had an eye-glass, he had a snuff-box, he had rings, he had wristbands, he had everything but any touch of nature; he was not like youth, he was not like age, he was not like anything in the world but a model of deportment. "father! a visitor. miss jellyby's friend, miss summerson." "distinguished," said mr. turveydrop, "by miss summerson's presence." as he bowed to me in that tight state, i almost believe i saw creases come into the whites of his eyes. "my father," said the son, aside, to me with quite an affecting belief in him, "is a celebrated character. my father is greatly admired." "go on, prince! go on!" said mr. turveydrop, standing with his back to the fire and waving his gloves condescendingly. "go on, my son!" at this command, or by this gracious permission, the lesson went on. prince turveydrop sometimes played the kit, dancing; sometimes played the piano, standing; sometimes hummed the tune with what little breath he could spare, while he set a pupil right; always conscientiously moved with the least proficient through every step and every part of the figure; and never rested for an instant. his distinguished father did nothing whatever but stand before the fire, a model of deportment. "and he never does anything else," said the old lady of the censorious countenance. "yet would you believe that it's his name on the door-plate?" "his son's name is the same, you know," said i. "he wouldn't let his son have any name if he could take it from him," returned the old lady. "look at the son's dress!" it certainly was plain--threadbare--almost shabby. "yet the father must be garnished and tricked out," said the old lady, "because of his deportment. i'd deport him! transport him would be better!" i felt curious to know more concerning this person. i asked, "does he give lessons in deportment now?" "now!" returned the old lady shortly. "never did." after a moment's consideration, i suggested that perhaps fencing had been his accomplishment. "i don't believe he can fence at all, ma'am," said the old lady. i looked surprised and inquisitive. the old lady, becoming more and more incensed against the master of deportment as she dwelt upon the subject, gave me some particulars of his career, with strong assurances that they were mildly stated. he had married a meek little dancing-mistress, with a tolerable connexion (having never in his life before done anything but deport himself), and had worked her to death, or had, at the best, suffered her to work herself to death, to maintain him in those expenses which were indispensable to his position. at once to exhibit his deportment to the best models and to keep the best models constantly before himself, he had found it necessary to frequent all public places of fashionable and lounging resort, to be seen at brighton and elsewhere at fashionable times, and to lead an idle life in the very best clothes. to enable him to do this, the affectionate little dancing-mistress had toiled and laboured and would have toiled and laboured to that hour if her strength had lasted so long. for the mainspring of the story was that in spite of the man's absorbing selfishness, his wife (overpowered by his deportment) had, to the last, believed in him and had, on her death-bed, in the most moving terms, confided him to their son as one who had an inextinguishable claim upon him and whom he could never regard with too much pride and deference. the son, inheriting his mother's belief, and having the deportment always before him, had lived and grown in the same faith, and now, at thirty years of age, worked for his father twelve hours a day and looked up to him with veneration on the old imaginary pinnacle. "the airs the fellow gives himself!" said my informant, shaking her head at old mr. turveydrop with speechless indignation as he drew on his tight gloves, of course unconscious of the homage she was rendering. "he fully believes he is one of the aristocracy! and he is so condescending to the son he so egregiously deludes that you might suppose him the most virtuous of parents. oh!" said the old lady, apostrophizing him with infinite vehemence. "i could bite you!" i could not help being amused, though i heard the old lady out with feelings of real concern. it was difficult to doubt her with the father and son before me. what i might have thought of them without the old lady's account, or what i might have thought of the old lady's account without them, i cannot say. there was a fitness of things in the whole that carried conviction with it. my eyes were yet wandering, from young mr. turveydrop working so hard, to old mr. turveydrop deporting himself so beautifully, when the latter came ambling up to me and entered into conversation. he asked me, first of all, whether i conferred a charm and a distinction on london by residing in it? i did not think it necessary to reply that i was perfectly aware i should not do that, in any case, but merely told him where i did reside. "a lady so graceful and accomplished," he said, kissing his right glove and afterwards extending it towards the pupils, "will look leniently on the deficiencies here. we do our best to polish--polish--polish!" he sat down beside me, taking some pains to sit on the form, i thought, in imitation of the print of his illustrious model on the sofa. and really he did look very like it. "to polish--polish--polish!" he repeated, taking a pinch of snuff and gently fluttering his fingers. "but we are not, if i may say so to one formed to be graceful both by nature and art--" with the high-shouldered bow, which it seemed impossible for him to make without lifting up his eyebrows and shutting his eyes "--we are not what we used to be in point of deportment." "are we not, sir?" said i. "we have degenerated," he returned, shaking his head, which he could do to a very limited extent in his cravat. "a levelling age is not favourable to deportment. it develops vulgarity. perhaps i speak with some little partiality. it may not be for me to say that i have been called, for some years now, gentleman turveydrop, or that his royal highness the prince regent did me the honour to inquire, on my removing my hat as he drove out of the pavilion at brighton (that fine building), 'who is he? who the devil is he? why don't i know him? why hasn't he thirty thousand a year?' but these are little matters of anecdote--the general property, ma'am--still repeated occasionally among the upper classes." "indeed?" said i. he replied with the high-shouldered bow. "where what is left among us of deportment," he added, "still lingers. england--alas, my country!--has degenerated very much, and is degenerating every day. she has not many gentlemen left. we are few. i see nothing to succeed us but a race of weavers." "one might hope that the race of gentlemen would be perpetuated here," said i. "you are very good." he smiled with a high-shouldered bow again. "you flatter me. but, no--no! i have never been able to imbue my poor boy with that part of his art. heaven forbid that i should disparage my dear child, but he has--no deportment." "he appears to be an excellent master," i observed. "understand me, my dear madam, he is an excellent master. all that can be acquired, he has acquired. all that can be imparted, he can impart. but there are things--" he took another pinch of snuff and made the bow again, as if to add, "this kind of thing, for instance." i glanced towards the centre of the room, where miss jellyby's lover, now engaged with single pupils, was undergoing greater drudgery than ever. "my amiable child," murmured mr. turveydrop, adjusting his cravat. "your son is indefatigable," said i. "it is my reward," said mr. turveydrop, "to hear you say so. in some respects, he treads in the footsteps of his sainted mother. she was a devoted creature. but wooman, lovely wooman," said mr. turveydrop with very disagreeable gallantry, "what a sex you are!" i rose and joined miss jellyby, who was by this time putting on her bonnet. the time allotted to a lesson having fully elapsed, there was a general putting on of bonnets. when miss jellyby and the unfortunate prince found an opportunity to become betrothed i don't know, but they certainly found none on this occasion to exchange a dozen words. "my dear," said mr. turveydrop benignly to his son, "do you know the hour?" "no, father." the son had no watch. the father had a handsome gold one, which he pulled out with an air that was an example to mankind. "my son," said he, "it's two o'clock. recollect your school at kensington at three." "that's time enough for me, father," said prince. "i can take a morsel of dinner standing and be off." "my dear boy," returned his father, "you must be very quick. you will find the cold mutton on the table." "thank you, father. are you off now, father?" "yes, my dear. i suppose," said mr. turveydrop, shutting his eyes and lifting up his shoulders with modest consciousness, "that i must show myself, as usual, about town." "you had better dine out comfortably somewhere," said his son. "my dear child, i intend to. i shall take my little meal, i think, at the french house, in the opera colonnade." "that's right. good-bye, father!" said prince, shaking hands. "good-bye, my son. bless you!" mr. turveydrop said this in quite a pious manner, and it seemed to do his son good, who, in parting from him, was so pleased with him, so dutiful to him, and so proud of him that i almost felt as if it were an unkindness to the younger man not to be able to believe implicitly in the elder. the few moments that were occupied by prince in taking leave of us (and particularly of one of us, as i saw, being in the secret), enhanced my favourable impression of his almost childish character. i felt a liking for him and a compassion for him as he put his little kit in his pocket--and with it his desire to stay a little while with caddy--and went away good-humouredly to his cold mutton and his school at kensington, that made me scarcely less irate with his father than the censorious old lady. the father opened the room door for us and bowed us out in a manner, i must acknowledge, worthy of his shining original. in the same style he presently passed us on the other side of the street, on his way to the aristocratic part of the town, where he was going to show himself among the few other gentlemen left. for some moments, i was so lost in reconsidering what i had heard and seen in newman street that i was quite unable to talk to caddy or even to fix my attention on what she said to me, especially when i began to inquire in my mind whether there were, or ever had been, any other gentlemen, not in the dancing profession, who lived and founded a reputation entirely on their deportment. this became so bewildering and suggested the possibility of so many mr. turveydrops that i said, "esther, you must make up your mind to abandon this subject altogether and attend to caddy." i accordingly did so, and we chatted all the rest of the way to lincoln's inn. caddy told me that her lover's education had been so neglected that it was not always easy to read his notes. she said if he were not so anxious about his spelling and took less pains to make it clear, he would do better; but he put so many unnecessary letters into short words that they sometimes quite lost their english appearance. "he does it with the best intention," observed caddy, "but it hasn't the effect he means, poor fellow!" caddy then went on to reason, how could he be expected to be a scholar when he had passed his whole life in the dancing-school and had done nothing but teach and fag, fag and teach, morning, noon, and night! and what did it matter? she could write letters enough for both, as she knew to her cost, and it was far better for him to be amiable than learned. "besides, it's not as if i was an accomplished girl who had any right to give herself airs," said caddy. "i know little enough, i am sure, thanks to ma! "there's another thing i want to tell you, now we are alone," continued caddy, "which i should not have liked to mention unless you had seen prince, miss summerson. you know what a house ours is. it's of no use my trying to learn anything that it would be useful for prince's wife to know in our house. we live in such a state of muddle that it's impossible, and i have only been more disheartened whenever i have tried. so i get a little practice with--who do you think? poor miss flite! early in the morning i help her to tidy her room and clean her birds, and i make her cup of coffee for her (of course she taught me), and i have learnt to make it so well that prince says it's the very best coffee he ever tasted, and would quite delight old mr. turveydrop, who is very particular indeed about his coffee. i can make little puddings too; and i know how to buy neck of mutton, and tea, and sugar, and butter, and a good many housekeeping things. i am not clever at my needle, yet," said caddy, glancing at the repairs on peepy's frock, "but perhaps i shall improve, and since i have been engaged to prince and have been doing all this, i have felt better-tempered, i hope, and more forgiving to ma. it rather put me out at first this morning to see you and miss clare looking so neat and pretty and to feel ashamed of peepy and myself too, but on the whole i hope i am better-tempered than i was and more forgiving to ma." the poor girl, trying so hard, said it from her heart, and touched mine. "caddy, my love," i replied, "i begin to have a great affection for you, and i hope we shall become friends." "oh, do you?" cried caddy. "how happy that would make me!" "my dear caddy," said i, "let us be friends from this time, and let us often have a chat about these matters and try to find the right way through them." caddy was overjoyed. i said everything i could in my old-fashioned way to comfort and encourage her, and i would not have objected to old mr. turveydrop that day for any smaller consideration than a settlement on his daughter-in-law. by this time we were come to mr. krook's, whose private door stood open. there was a bill, pasted on the door-post, announcing a room to let on the second floor. it reminded caddy to tell me as we proceeded upstairs that there had been a sudden death there and an inquest and that our little friend had been ill of the fright. the door and window of the vacant room being open, we looked in. it was the room with the dark door to which miss flite had secretly directed my attention when i was last in the house. a sad and desolate place it was, a gloomy, sorrowful place that gave me a strange sensation of mournfulness and even dread. "you look pale," said caddy when we came out, "and cold!" i felt as if the room had chilled me. we had walked slowly while we were talking, and my guardian and ada were here before us. we found them in miss flite's garret. they were looking at the birds, while a medical gentleman who was so good as to attend miss flite with much solicitude and compassion spoke with her cheerfully by the fire. "i have finished my professional visit," he said, coming forward. "miss flite is much better and may appear in court (as her mind is set upon it) to-morrow. she has been greatly missed there, i understand." miss flite received the compliment with complacency and dropped a general curtsy to us. "honoured, indeed," said she, "by another visit from the wards in jarndyce! ve-ry happy to receive jarndyce of bleak house beneath my humble roof!" with a special curtsy. "fitz-jarndyce, my dear"--she had bestowed that name on caddy, it appeared, and always called her by it--"a double welcome!" "has she been very ill?" asked mr. jarndyce of the gentleman whom we had found in attendance on her. she answered for herself directly, though he had put the question in a whisper. "oh, decidedly unwell! oh, very unwell indeed," she said confidentially. "not pain, you know--trouble. not bodily so much as nervous, nervous! the truth is," in a subdued voice and trembling, "we have had death here. there was poison in the house. i am very susceptible to such horrid things. it frightened me. only mr. woodcourt knows how much. my physician, mr. woodcourt!" with great stateliness. "the wards in jarndyce--jarndyce of bleak house--fitz-jarndyce!" "miss flite," said mr. woodcourt in a grave kind of voice, as if he were appealing to her while speaking to us, and laying his hand gently on her arm, "miss flite describes her illness with her usual accuracy. she was alarmed by an occurrence in the house which might have alarmed a stronger person, and was made ill by the distress and agitation. she brought me here in the first hurry of the discovery, though too late for me to be of any use to the unfortunate man. i have compensated myself for that disappointment by coming here since and being of some small use to her." "the kindest physician in the college," whispered miss flite to me. "i expect a judgment. on the day of judgment. and shall then confer estates." "she will be as well in a day or two," said mr. woodcourt, looking at her with an observant smile, "as she ever will be. in other words, quite well of course. have you heard of her good fortune?" "most extraordinary!" said miss flite, smiling brightly. "you never heard of such a thing, my dear! every saturday, conversation kenge or guppy (clerk to conversation k.) places in my hand a paper of shillings. shillings. i assure you! always the same number in the paper. always one for every day in the week. now you know, really! so well-timed, is it not? ye-es! from whence do these papers come, you say? that is the great question. naturally. shall i tell you what i think? i think," said miss flite, drawing herself back with a very shrewd look and shaking her right forefinger in a most significant manner, "that the lord chancellor, aware of the length of time during which the great seal has been open (for it has been open a long time!), forwards them. until the judgment i expect is given. now that's very creditable, you know. to confess in that way that he is a little slow for human life. so delicate! attending court the other day--i attend it regularly, with my documents--i taxed him with it, and he almost confessed. that is, i smiled at him from my bench, and he smiled at me from his bench. but it's great good fortune, is it not? and fitz-jarndyce lays the money out for me to great advantage. oh, i assure you to the greatest advantage!" i congratulated her (as she addressed herself to me) upon this fortunate addition to her income and wished her a long continuance of it. i did not speculate upon the source from which it came or wonder whose humanity was so considerate. my guardian stood before me, contemplating the birds, and i had no need to look beyond him. "and what do you call these little fellows, ma'am?" said he in his pleasant voice. "have they any names?" "i can answer for miss flite that they have," said i, "for she promised to tell us what they were. ada remembers?" ada remembered very well. "did i?" said miss flite. "who's that at my door? what are you listening at my door for, krook?" the old man of the house, pushing it open before him, appeared there with his fur cap in his hand and his cat at his heels. "i warn't listening, miss flite," he said, "i was going to give a rap with my knuckles, only you're so quick!" "make your cat go down. drive her away!" the old lady angrily exclaimed. "bah, bah! there ain't no danger, gentlefolks," said mr. krook, looking slowly and sharply from one to another until he had looked at all of us; "she'd never offer at the birds when i was here unless i told her to it." "you will excuse my landlord," said the old lady with a dignified air. "m, quite m! what do you want, krook, when i have company?" "hi!" said the old man. "you know i am the chancellor." "well?" returned miss flite. "what of that?" "for the chancellor," said the old man with a chuckle, "not to be acquainted with a jarndyce is queer, ain't it, miss flite? mightn't i take the liberty? your servant, sir. i know jarndyce and jarndyce a'most as well as you do, sir. i knowed old squire tom, sir. i never to my knowledge see you afore though, not even in court. yet, i go there a mortal sight of times in the course of the year, taking one day with another." "i never go there," said mr. jarndyce (which he never did on any consideration). "i would sooner go--somewhere else." "would you though?" returned krook, grinning. "you're bearing hard upon my noble and learned brother in your meaning, sir, though perhaps it is but nat'ral in a jarndyce. the burnt child, sir! what, you're looking at my lodger's birds, mr. jarndyce?" the old man had come by little and little into the room until he now touched my guardian with his elbow and looked close up into his face with his spectacled eyes. "it's one of her strange ways that she'll never tell the names of these birds if she can help it, though she named 'em all." this was in a whisper. "shall i run 'em over, flite?" he asked aloud, winking at us and pointing at her as she turned away, affecting to sweep the grate. "if you like," she answered hurriedly. the old man, looking up at the cages after another look at us, went through the list. "hope, joy, youth, peace, rest, life, dust, ashes, waste, want, ruin, despair, madness, death, cunning, folly, words, wigs, rags, sheepskin, plunder, precedent, jargon, gammon, and spinach. that's the whole collection," said the old man, "all cooped up together, by my noble and learned brother." "this is a bitter wind!" muttered my guardian. "when my noble and learned brother gives his judgment, they're to be let go free," said krook, winking at us again. "and then," he added, whispering and grinning, "if that ever was to happen--which it won't--the birds that have never been caged would kill 'em." "if ever the wind was in the east," said my guardian, pretending to look out of the window for a weathercock, "i think it's there to-day!" we found it very difficult to get away from the house. it was not miss flite who detained us; she was as reasonable a little creature in consulting the convenience of others as there possibly could be. it was mr. krook. he seemed unable to detach himself from mr. jarndyce. if he had been linked to him, he could hardly have attended him more closely. he proposed to show us his court of chancery and all the strange medley it contained; during the whole of our inspection (prolonged by himself) he kept close to mr. jarndyce and sometimes detained him under one pretence or other until we had passed on, as if he were tormented by an inclination to enter upon some secret subject which he could not make up his mind to approach. i cannot imagine a countenance and manner more singularly expressive of caution and indecision, and a perpetual impulse to do something he could not resolve to venture on, than mr. krook's was that day. his watchfulness of my guardian was incessant. he rarely removed his eyes from his face. if he went on beside him, he observed him with the slyness of an old white fox. if he went before, he looked back. when we stood still, he got opposite to him, and drawing his hand across and across his open mouth with a curious expression of a sense of power, and turning up his eyes, and lowering his grey eyebrows until they appeared to be shut, seemed to scan every lineament of his face. at last, having been (always attended by the cat) all over the house and having seen the whole stock of miscellaneous lumber, which was certainly curious, we came into the back part of the shop. here on the head of an empty barrel stood on end were an ink-bottle, some old stumps of pens, and some dirty playbills; and against the wall were pasted several large printed alphabets in several plain hands. "what are you doing here?" asked my guardian. "trying to learn myself to read and write," said krook. "and how do you get on?" "slow. bad," returned the old man impatiently. "it's hard at my time of life." "it would be easier to be taught by some one," said my guardian. "aye, but they might teach me wrong!" returned the old man with a wonderfully suspicious flash of his eye. "i don't know what i may have lost by not being learned afore. i wouldn't like to lose anything by being learned wrong now." "wrong?" said my guardian with his good-humoured smile. "who do you suppose would teach you wrong?" "i don't know, mr. jarndyce of bleak house!" replied the old man, turning up his spectacles on his forehead and rubbing his hands. "i don't suppose as anybody would, but i'd rather trust my own self than another!" these answers and his manner were strange enough to cause my guardian to inquire of mr. woodcourt, as we all walked across lincoln's inn together, whether mr. krook were really, as his lodger represented him, deranged. the young surgeon replied, no, he had seen no reason to think so. he was exceedingly distrustful, as ignorance usually was, and he was always more or less under the influence of raw gin, of which he drank great quantities and of which he and his back-shop, as we might have observed, smelt strongly; but he did not think him mad as yet. on our way home, i so conciliated peepy's affections by buying him a windmill and two flour-sacks that he would suffer nobody else to take off his hat and gloves and would sit nowhere at dinner but at my side. caddy sat upon the other side of me, next to ada, to whom we imparted the whole history of the engagement as soon as we got back. we made much of caddy, and peepy too; and caddy brightened exceedingly; and my guardian was as merry as we were; and we were all very happy indeed until caddy went home at night in a hackney-coach, with peepy fast asleep, but holding tight to the windmill. i have forgotten to mention--at least i have not mentioned--that mr. woodcourt was the same dark young surgeon whom we had met at mr. badger's. or that mr. jarndyce invited him to dinner that day. or that he came. or that when they were all gone and i said to ada, "now, my darling, let us have a little talk about richard!" ada laughed and said-- but i don't think it matters what my darling said. she was always merry. chapter xv bell yard while we were in london mr. jarndyce was constantly beset by the crowd of excitable ladies and gentlemen whose proceedings had so much astonished us. mr. quale, who presented himself soon after our arrival, was in all such excitements. he seemed to project those two shining knobs of temples of his into everything that went on and to brush his hair farther and farther back, until the very roots were almost ready to fly out of his head in inappeasable philanthropy. all objects were alike to him, but he was always particularly ready for anything in the way of a testimonial to any one. his great power seemed to be his power of indiscriminate admiration. he would sit for any length of time, with the utmost enjoyment, bathing his temples in the light of any order of luminary. having first seen him perfectly swallowed up in admiration of mrs. jellyby, i had supposed her to be the absorbing object of his devotion. i soon discovered my mistake and found him to be train-bearer and organ-blower to a whole procession of people. mrs. pardiggle came one day for a subscription to something, and with her, mr. quale. whatever mrs. pardiggle said, mr. quale repeated to us; and just as he had drawn mrs. jellyby out, he drew mrs. pardiggle out. mrs. pardiggle wrote a letter of introduction to my guardian in behalf of her eloquent friend mr. gusher. with mr. gusher appeared mr. quale again. mr. gusher, being a flabby gentleman with a moist surface and eyes so much too small for his moon of a face that they seemed to have been originally made for somebody else, was not at first sight prepossessing; yet he was scarcely seated before mr. quale asked ada and me, not inaudibly, whether he was not a great creature--which he certainly was, flabbily speaking, though mr. quale meant in intellectual beauty--and whether we were not struck by his massive configuration of brow. in short, we heard of a great many missions of various sorts among this set of people, but nothing respecting them was half so clear to us as that it was mr. quale's mission to be in ecstasies with everybody else's mission and that it was the most popular mission of all. mr. jarndyce had fallen into this company in the tenderness of his heart and his earnest desire to do all the good in his power; but that he felt it to be too often an unsatisfactory company, where benevolence took spasmodic forms, where charity was assumed as a regular uniform by loud professors and speculators in cheap notoriety, vehement in profession, restless and vain in action, servile in the last degree of meanness to the great, adulatory of one another, and intolerable to those who were anxious quietly to help the weak from failing rather than with a great deal of bluster and self-laudation to raise them up a little way when they were down, he plainly told us. when a testimonial was originated to mr. quale by mr. gusher (who had already got one, originated by mr. quale), and when mr. gusher spoke for an hour and a half on the subject to a meeting, including two charity schools of small boys and girls, who were specially reminded of the widow's mite, and requested to come forward with halfpence and be acceptable sacrifices, i think the wind was in the east for three whole weeks. i mention this because i am coming to mr. skimpole again. it seemed to me that his off-hand professions of childishness and carelessness were a great relief to my guardian, by contrast with such things, and were the more readily believed in since to find one perfectly undesigning and candid man among many opposites could not fail to give him pleasure. i should be sorry to imply that mr. skimpole divined this and was politic; i really never understood him well enough to know. what he was to my guardian, he certainly was to the rest of the world. he had not been very well; and thus, though he lived in london, we had seen nothing of him until now. he appeared one morning in his usual agreeable way and as full of pleasant spirits as ever. well, he said, here he was! he had been bilious, but rich men were often bilious, and therefore he had been persuading himself that he was a man of property. so he was, in a certain point of view--in his expansive intentions. he had been enriching his medical attendant in the most lavish manner. he had always doubled, and sometimes quadrupled, his fees. he had said to the doctor, "now, my dear doctor, it is quite a delusion on your part to suppose that you attend me for nothing. i am overwhelming you with money--in my expansive intentions--if you only knew it!" and really (he said) he meant it to that degree that he thought it much the same as doing it. if he had had those bits of metal or thin paper to which mankind attached so much importance to put in the doctor's hand, he would have put them in the doctor's hand. not having them, he substituted the will for the deed. very well! if he really meant it--if his will were genuine and real, which it was--it appeared to him that it was the same as coin, and cancelled the obligation. "it may be, partly, because i know nothing of the value of money," said mr. skimpole, "but i often feel this. it seems so reasonable! my butcher says to me he wants that little bill. it's a part of the pleasant unconscious poetry of the man's nature that he always calls it a 'little' bill--to make the payment appear easy to both of us. i reply to the butcher, 'my good friend, if you knew it, you are paid. you haven't had the trouble of coming to ask for the little bill. you are paid. i mean it.'" "but, suppose," said my guardian, laughing, "he had meant the meat in the bill, instead of providing it?" "my dear jarndyce," he returned, "you surprise me. you take the butcher's position. a butcher i once dealt with occupied that very ground. says he, 'sir, why did you eat spring lamb at eighteen pence a pound?' 'why did i eat spring lamb at eighteen pence a pound, my honest friend?' said i, naturally amazed by the question. 'i like spring lamb!' this was so far convincing. 'well, sir,' says he, 'i wish i had meant the lamb as you mean the money!' 'my good fellow,' said i, 'pray let us reason like intellectual beings. how could that be? it was impossible. you had got the lamb, and i have not got the money. you couldn't really mean the lamb without sending it in, whereas i can, and do, really mean the money without paying it!' he had not a word. there was an end of the subject." "did he take no legal proceedings?" inquired my guardian. "yes, he took legal proceedings," said mr. skimpole. "but in that he was influenced by passion, not by reason. passion reminds me of boythorn. he writes me that you and the ladies have promised him a short visit at his bachelor-house in lincolnshire." "he is a great favourite with my girls," said mr. jarndyce, "and i have promised for them." "nature forgot to shade him off, i think," observed mr. skimpole to ada and me. "a little too boisterous--like the sea. a little too vehement--like a bull who has made up his mind to consider every colour scarlet. but i grant a sledge-hammering sort of merit in him!" i should have been surprised if those two could have thought very highly of one another, mr. boythorn attaching so much importance to many things and mr. skimpole caring so little for anything. besides which, i had noticed mr. boythorn more than once on the point of breaking out into some strong opinion when mr. skimpole was referred to. of course i merely joined ada in saying that we had been greatly pleased with him. "he has invited me," said mr. skimpole; "and if a child may trust himself in such hands--which the present child is encouraged to do, with the united tenderness of two angels to guard him--i shall go. he proposes to frank me down and back again. i suppose it will cost money? shillings perhaps? or pounds? or something of that sort? by the by, coavinses. you remember our friend coavinses, miss summerson?" he asked me as the subject arose in his mind, in his graceful, light-hearted manner and without the least embarrassment. "oh, yes!" said i. "coavinses has been arrested by the great bailiff," said mr. skimpole. "he will never do violence to the sunshine any more." it quite shocked me to hear it, for i had already recalled with anything but a serious association the image of the man sitting on the sofa that night wiping his head. "his successor informed me of it yesterday," said mr. skimpole. "his successor is in my house now--in possession, i think he calls it. he came yesterday, on my blue-eyed daughter's birthday. i put it to him, 'this is unreasonable and inconvenient. if you had a blue-eyed daughter you wouldn't like me to come, uninvited, on her birthday?' but he stayed." mr. skimpole laughed at the pleasant absurdity and lightly touched the piano by which he was seated. "and he told me," he said, playing little chords where i shall put full stops, "the coavinses had left. three children. no mother. and that coavinses' profession. being unpopular. the rising coavinses. were at a considerable disadvantage." mr. jarndyce got up, rubbing his head, and began to walk about. mr. skimpole played the melody of one of ada's favourite songs. ada and i both looked at mr. jarndyce, thinking that we knew what was passing in his mind. after walking and stopping, and several times leaving off rubbing his head, and beginning again, my guardian put his hand upon the keys and stopped mr. skimpole's playing. "i don't like this, skimpole," he said thoughtfully. mr. skimpole, who had quite forgotten the subject, looked up surprised. "the man was necessary," pursued my guardian, walking backward and forward in the very short space between the piano and the end of the room and rubbing his hair up from the back of his head as if a high east wind had blown it into that form. "if we make such men necessary by our faults and follies, or by our want of worldly knowledge, or by our misfortunes, we must not revenge ourselves upon them. there was no harm in his trade. he maintained his children. one would like to know more about this." "oh! coavinses?" cried mr. skimpole, at length perceiving what he meant. "nothing easier. a walk to coavinses' headquarters, and you can know what you will." mr. jarndyce nodded to us, who were only waiting for the signal. "come! we will walk that way, my dears. why not that way as soon as another!" we were quickly ready and went out. mr. skimpole went with us and quite enjoyed the expedition. it was so new and so refreshing, he said, for him to want coavinses instead of coavinses wanting him! he took us, first, to cursitor street, chancery lane, where there was a house with barred windows, which he called coavinses' castle. on our going into the entry and ringing a bell, a very hideous boy came out of a sort of office and looked at us over a spiked wicket. "who did you want?" said the boy, fitting two of the spikes into his chin. "there was a follower, or an officer, or something, here," said mr. jarndyce, "who is dead." "yes?" said the boy. "well?" "i want to know his name, if you please?" "name of neckett," said the boy. "and his address?" "bell yard," said the boy. "chandler's shop, left hand side, name of blinder." "was he--i don't know how to shape the question--" murmured my guardian, "industrious?" "was neckett?" said the boy. "yes, wery much so. he was never tired of watching. he'd set upon a post at a street corner eight or ten hours at a stretch if he undertook to do it." "he might have done worse," i heard my guardian soliloquize. "he might have undertaken to do it and not done it. thank you. that's all i want." we left the boy, with his head on one side and his arms on the gate, fondling and sucking the spikes, and went back to lincoln's inn, where mr. skimpole, who had not cared to remain nearer coavinses, awaited us. then we all went to bell yard, a narrow alley at a very short distance. we soon found the chandler's shop. in it was a good-natured-looking old woman with a dropsy, or an asthma, or perhaps both. "neckett's children?" said she in reply to my inquiry. "yes, surely, miss. three pair, if you please. door right opposite the stairs." and she handed me the key across the counter. i glanced at the key and glanced at her, but she took it for granted that i knew what to do with it. as it could only be intended for the children's door, i came out without asking any more questions and led the way up the dark stairs. we went as quietly as we could, but four of us made some noise on the aged boards, and when we came to the second story we found we had disturbed a man who was standing there looking out of his room. "is it gridley that's wanted?" he said, fixing his eyes on me with an angry stare. "no, sir," said i; "i am going higher up." he looked at ada, and at mr. jarndyce, and at mr. skimpole, fixing the same angry stare on each in succession as they passed and followed me. mr. jarndyce gave him good day. "good day!" he said abruptly and fiercely. he was a tall, sallow man with a careworn head on which but little hair remained, a deeply lined face, and prominent eyes. he had a combative look and a chafing, irritable manner which, associated with his figure--still large and powerful, though evidently in its decline--rather alarmed me. he had a pen in his hand, and in the glimpse i caught of his room in passing, i saw that it was covered with a litter of papers. leaving him standing there, we went up to the top room. i tapped at the door, and a little shrill voice inside said, "we are locked in. mrs. blinder's got the key!" i applied the key on hearing this and opened the door. in a poor room with a sloping ceiling and containing very little furniture was a mite of a boy, some five or six years old, nursing and hushing a heavy child of eighteen months. there was no fire, though the weather was cold; both children were wrapped in some poor shawls and tippets as a substitute. their clothing was not so warm, however, but that their noses looked red and pinched and their small figures shrunken as the boy walked up and down nursing and hushing the child with its head on his shoulder. "who has locked you up here alone?" we naturally asked. "charley," said the boy, standing still to gaze at us. "is charley your brother?" "no. she's my sister, charlotte. father called her charley." "are there any more of you besides charley?" "me," said the boy, "and emma," patting the limp bonnet of the child he was nursing. "and charley." "where is charley now?" "out a-washing," said the boy, beginning to walk up and down again and taking the nankeen bonnet much too near the bedstead by trying to gaze at us at the same time. we were looking at one another and at these two children when there came into the room a very little girl, childish in figure but shrewd and older-looking in the face--pretty-faced too--wearing a womanly sort of bonnet much too large for her and drying her bare arms on a womanly sort of apron. her fingers were white and wrinkled with washing, and the soap-suds were yet smoking which she wiped off her arms. but for this, she might have been a child playing at washing and imitating a poor working-woman with a quick observation of the truth. she had come running from some place in the neighbourhood and had made all the haste she could. consequently, though she was very light, she was out of breath and could not speak at first, as she stood panting, and wiping her arms, and looking quietly at us. "oh, here's charley!" said the boy. the child he was nursing stretched forth its arms and cried out to be taken by charley. the little girl took it, in a womanly sort of manner belonging to the apron and the bonnet, and stood looking at us over the burden that clung to her most affectionately. "is it possible," whispered my guardian as we put a chair for the little creature and got her to sit down with her load, the boy keeping close to her, holding to her apron, "that this child works for the rest? look at this! for god's sake, look at this!" it was a thing to look at. the three children close together, and two of them relying solely on the third, and the third so young and yet with an air of age and steadiness that sat so strangely on the childish figure. "charley, charley!" said my guardian. "how old are you?" "over thirteen, sir," replied the child. "oh! what a great age," said my guardian. "what a great age, charley!" i cannot describe the tenderness with which he spoke to her, half playfully yet all the more compassionately and mournfully. "and do you live alone here with these babies, charley?" said my guardian. "yes, sir," returned the child, looking up into his face with perfect confidence, "since father died." "and how do you live, charley? oh! charley," said my guardian, turning his face away for a moment, "how do you live?" "since father died, sir, i've gone out to work. i'm out washing to-day." "god help you, charley!" said my guardian. "you're not tall enough to reach the tub!" "in pattens i am, sir," she said quickly. "i've got a high pair as belonged to mother." "and when did mother die? poor mother!" "mother died just after emma was born," said the child, glancing at the face upon her bosom. "then father said i was to be as good a mother to her as i could. and so i tried. and so i worked at home and did cleaning and nursing and washing for a long time before i began to go out. and that's how i know how; don't you see, sir?" "and do you often go out?" "as often as i can," said charley, opening her eyes and smiling, "because of earning sixpences and shillings!" "and do you always lock the babies up when you go out?" "to keep 'em safe, sir, don't you see?" said charley. "mrs. blinder comes up now and then, and mr. gridley comes up sometimes, and perhaps i can run in sometimes, and they can play you know, and tom an't afraid of being locked up, are you, tom?" "no-o!" said tom stoutly. "when it comes on dark, the lamps are lighted down in the court, and they show up here quite bright--almost quite bright. don't they, tom?" "yes, charley," said tom, "almost quite bright." "then he's as good as gold," said the little creature--oh, in such a motherly, womanly way! "and when emma's tired, he puts her to bed. and when he's tired he goes to bed himself. and when i come home and light the candle and has a bit of supper, he sits up again and has it with me. don't you, tom?" "oh, yes, charley!" said tom. "that i do!" and either in this glimpse of the great pleasure of his life or in gratitude and love for charley, who was all in all to him, he laid his face among the scanty folds of her frock and passed from laughing into crying. it was the first time since our entry that a tear had been shed among these children. the little orphan girl had spoken of their father and their mother as if all that sorrow were subdued by the necessity of taking courage, and by her childish importance in being able to work, and by her bustling busy way. but now, when tom cried, although she sat quite tranquil, looking quietly at us, and did not by any movement disturb a hair of the head of either of her little charges, i saw two silent tears fall down her face. i stood at the window with ada, pretending to look at the housetops, and the blackened stack of chimneys, and the poor plants, and the birds in little cages belonging to the neighbours, when i found that mrs. blinder, from the shop below, had come in (perhaps it had taken her all this time to get upstairs) and was talking to my guardian. "it's not much to forgive 'em the rent, sir," she said; "who could take it from them!" "well, well!" said my guardian to us two. "it is enough that the time will come when this good woman will find that it was much, and that forasmuch as she did it unto the least of these--this child," he added after a few moments, "could she possibly continue this?" "really, sir, i think she might," said mrs. blinder, getting her heavy breath by painful degrees. "she's as handy as it's possible to be. bless you, sir, the way she tended them two children after the mother died was the talk of the yard! and it was a wonder to see her with him after he was took ill, it really was! 'mrs. blinder,' he said to me the very last he spoke--he was lying there--'mrs. blinder, whatever my calling may have been, i see a angel sitting in this room last night along with my child, and i trust her to our father!'" "he had no other calling?" said my guardian. "no, sir," returned mrs. blinder, "he was nothing but a follerers. when he first came to lodge here, i didn't know what he was, and i confess that when i found out i gave him notice. it wasn't liked in the yard. it wasn't approved by the other lodgers. it is not a genteel calling," said mrs. blinder, "and most people do object to it. mr. gridley objected to it very strong, and he is a good lodger, though his temper has been hard tried." "so you gave him notice?" said my guardian. "so i gave him notice," said mrs. blinder. "but really when the time came, and i knew no other ill of him, i was in doubts. he was punctual and diligent; he did what he had to do, sir," said mrs. blinder, unconsciously fixing mr. skimpole with her eye, "and it's something in this world even to do that." "so you kept him after all?" "why, i said that if he could arrange with mr. gridley, i could arrange it with the other lodgers and should not so much mind its being liked or disliked in the yard. mr. gridley gave his consent gruff--but gave it. he was always gruff with him, but he has been kind to the children since. a person is never known till a person is proved." "have many people been kind to the children?" asked mr. jarndyce. "upon the whole, not so bad, sir," said mrs. blinder; "but certainly not so many as would have been if their father's calling had been different. mr. coavins gave a guinea, and the follerers made up a little purse. some neighbours in the yard that had always joked and tapped their shoulders when he went by came forward with a little subscription, and--in general--not so bad. similarly with charlotte. some people won't employ her because she was a follerer's child; some people that do employ her cast it at her; some make a merit of having her to work for them, with that and all her draw-backs upon her, and perhaps pay her less and put upon her more. but she's patienter than others would be, and is clever too, and always willing, up to the full mark of her strength and over. so i should say, in general, not so bad, sir, but might be better." mrs. blinder sat down to give herself a more favourable opportunity of recovering her breath, exhausted anew by so much talking before it was fully restored. mr. jarndyce was turning to speak to us when his attention was attracted by the abrupt entrance into the room of the mr. gridley who had been mentioned and whom we had seen on our way up. "i don't know what you may be doing here, ladies and gentlemen," he said, as if he resented our presence, "but you'll excuse my coming in. i don't come in to stare about me. well, charley! well, tom! well, little one! how is it with us all to-day?" he bent over the group in a caressing way and clearly was regarded as a friend by the children, though his face retained its stern character and his manner to us was as rude as it could be. my guardian noticed it and respected it. "no one, surely, would come here to stare about him," he said mildly. "may be so, sir, may be so," returned the other, taking tom upon his knee and waving him off impatiently. "i don't want to argue with ladies and gentlemen. i have had enough of arguing to last one man his life." "you have sufficient reason, i dare say," said mr. jarndyce, "for being chafed and irritated--" "there again!" exclaimed the man, becoming violently angry. "i am of a quarrelsome temper. i am irascible. i am not polite!" "not very, i think." "sir," said gridley, putting down the child and going up to him as if he meant to strike him, "do you know anything of courts of equity?" "perhaps i do, to my sorrow." "to your sorrow?" said the man, pausing in his wrath, "if so, i beg your pardon. i am not polite, i know. i beg your pardon! sir," with renewed violence, "i have been dragged for five and twenty years over burning iron, and i have lost the habit of treading upon velvet. go into the court of chancery yonder and ask what is one of the standing jokes that brighten up their business sometimes, and they will tell you that the best joke they have is the man from shropshire. i," he said, beating one hand on the other passionately, "am the man from shropshire." "i believe i and my family have also had the honour of furnishing some entertainment in the same grave place," said my guardian composedly. "you may have heard my name--jarndyce." "mr. jarndyce," said gridley with a rough sort of salutation, "you bear your wrongs more quietly than i can bear mine. more than that, i tell you--and i tell this gentleman, and these young ladies, if they are friends of yours--that if i took my wrongs in any other way, i should be driven mad! it is only by resenting them, and by revenging them in my mind, and by angrily demanding the justice i never get, that i am able to keep my wits together. it is only that!" he said, speaking in a homely, rustic way and with great vehemence. "you may tell me that i over-excite myself. i answer that it's in my nature to do it, under wrong, and i must do it. there's nothing between doing it, and sinking into the smiling state of the poor little mad woman that haunts the court. if i was once to sit down under it, i should become imbecile." the passion and heat in which he was, and the manner in which his face worked, and the violent gestures with which he accompanied what he said, were most painful to see. "mr. jarndyce," he said, "consider my case. as true as there is a heaven above us, this is my case. i am one of two brothers. my father (a farmer) made a will and left his farm and stock and so forth to my mother for her life. after my mother's death, all was to come to me except a legacy of three hundred pounds that i was then to pay my brother. my mother died. my brother some time afterwards claimed his legacy. i and some of my relations said that he had had a part of it already in board and lodging and some other things. now mind! that was the question, and nothing else. no one disputed the will; no one disputed anything but whether part of that three hundred pounds had been already paid or not. to settle that question, my brother filing a bill, i was obliged to go into this accursed chancery; i was forced there because the law forced me and would let me go nowhere else. seventeen people were made defendants to that simple suit! it first came on after two years. it was then stopped for another two years while the master (may his head rot off!) inquired whether i was my father's son, about which there was no dispute at all with any mortal creature. he then found out that there were not defendants enough--remember, there were only seventeen as yet!--but that we must have another who had been left out and must begin all over again. the costs at that time--before the thing was begun!--were three times the legacy. my brother would have given up the legacy, and joyful, to escape more costs. my whole estate, left to me in that will of my father's, has gone in costs. the suit, still undecided, has fallen into rack, and ruin, and despair, with everything else--and here i stand, this day! now, mr. jarndyce, in your suit there are thousands and thousands involved, where in mine there are hundreds. is mine less hard to bear or is it harder to bear, when my whole living was in it and has been thus shamefully sucked away?" mr. jarndyce said that he condoled with him with all his heart and that he set up no monopoly himself in being unjustly treated by this monstrous system. "there again!" said mr. gridley with no diminution of his rage. "the system! i am told on all hands, it's the system. i mustn't look to individuals. it's the system. i mustn't go into court and say, 'my lord, i beg to know this from you--is this right or wrong? have you the face to tell me i have received justice and therefore am dismissed?' my lord knows nothing of it. he sits there to administer the system. i mustn't go to mr. tulkinghorn, the solicitor in lincoln's inn fields, and say to him when he makes me furious by being so cool and satisfied--as they all do, for i know they gain by it while i lose, don't i?--i mustn't say to him, 'i will have something out of some one for my ruin, by fair means or foul!' he is not responsible. it's the system. but, if i do no violence to any of them, here--i may! i don't know what may happen if i am carried beyond myself at last! i will accuse the individual workers of that system against me, face to face, before the great eternal bar!" his passion was fearful. i could not have believed in such rage without seeing it. "i have done!" he said, sitting down and wiping his face. "mr. jarndyce, i have done! i am violent, i know. i ought to know it. i have been in prison for contempt of court. i have been in prison for threatening the solicitor. i have been in this trouble, and that trouble, and shall be again. i am the man from shropshire, and i sometimes go beyond amusing them, though they have found it amusing, too, to see me committed into custody and brought up in custody and all that. it would be better for me, they tell me, if i restrained myself. i tell them that if i did restrain myself i should become imbecile. i was a good-enough-tempered man once, i believe. people in my part of the country say they remember me so, but now i must have this vent under my sense of injury or nothing could hold my wits together. it would be far better for you, mr. gridley,' the lord chancellor told me last week, 'not to waste your time here, and to stay, usefully employed, down in shropshire.' 'my lord, my lord, i know it would,' said i to him, 'and it would have been far better for me never to have heard the name of your high office, but unhappily for me, i can't undo the past, and the past drives me here!' besides," he added, breaking fiercely out, "i'll shame them. to the last, i'll show myself in that court to its shame. if i knew when i was going to die, and could be carried there, and had a voice to speak with, i would die there, saying, 'you have brought me here and sent me from here many and many a time. now send me out feet foremost!'" his countenance had, perhaps for years, become so set in its contentious expression that it did not soften, even now when he was quiet. "i came to take these babies down to my room for an hour," he said, going to them again, "and let them play about. i didn't mean to say all this, but it don't much signify. you're not afraid of me, tom, are you?" "no!" said tom. "you ain't angry with me." "you are right, my child. you're going back, charley? aye? come then, little one!" he took the youngest child on his arm, where she was willing enough to be carried. "i shouldn't wonder if we found a ginger-bread soldier downstairs. let's go and look for him!" he made his former rough salutation, which was not deficient in a certain respect, to mr. jarndyce, and bowing slightly to us, went downstairs to his room. upon that, mr. skimpole began to talk, for the first time since our arrival, in his usual gay strain. he said, well, it was really very pleasant to see how things lazily adapted themselves to purposes. here was this mr. gridley, a man of a robust will and surprising energy--intellectually speaking, a sort of inharmonious blacksmith--and he could easily imagine that there gridley was, years ago, wandering about in life for something to expend his superfluous combativeness upon--a sort of young love among the thorns--when the court of chancery came in his way and accommodated him with the exact thing he wanted. there they were, matched, ever afterwards! otherwise he might have been a great general, blowing up all sorts of towns, or he might have been a great politician, dealing in all sorts of parliamentary rhetoric; but as it was, he and the court of chancery had fallen upon each other in the pleasantest way, and nobody was much the worse, and gridley was, so to speak, from that hour provided for. then look at coavinses! how delightfully poor coavinses (father of these charming children) illustrated the same principle! he, mr. skimpole, himself, had sometimes repined at the existence of coavinses. he had found coavinses in his way. he could had dispensed with coavinses. there had been times when, if he had been a sultan, and his grand vizier had said one morning, "what does the commander of the faithful require at the hands of his slave?" he might have even gone so far as to reply, "the head of coavinses!" but what turned out to be the case? that, all that time, he had been giving employment to a most deserving man, that he had been a benefactor to coavinses, that he had actually been enabling coavinses to bring up these charming children in this agreeable way, developing these social virtues! insomuch that his heart had just now swelled and the tears had come into his eyes when he had looked round the room and thought, "i was the great patron of coavinses, and his little comforts were my work!" there was something so captivating in his light way of touching these fantastic strings, and he was such a mirthful child by the side of the graver childhood we had seen, that he made my guardian smile even as he turned towards us from a little private talk with mrs. blinder. we kissed charley, and took her downstairs with us, and stopped outside the house to see her run away to her work. i don't know where she was going, but we saw her run, such a little, little creature in her womanly bonnet and apron, through a covered way at the bottom of the court and melt into the city's strife and sound like a dewdrop in an ocean. chapter xvi tom-all-alone's my lady dedlock is restless, very restless. the astonished fashionable intelligence hardly knows where to have her. to-day she is at chesney wold; yesterday she was at her house in town; to-morrow she may be abroad, for anything the fashionable intelligence can with confidence predict. even sir leicester's gallantry has some trouble to keep pace with her. it would have more but that his other faithful ally, for better and for worse--the gout--darts into the old oak bed-chamber at chesney wold and grips him by both legs. sir leicester receives the gout as a troublesome demon, but still a demon of the patrician order. all the dedlocks, in the direct male line, through a course of time during and beyond which the memory of man goeth not to the contrary, have had the gout. it can be proved, sir. other men's fathers may have died of the rheumatism or may have taken base contagion from the tainted blood of the sick vulgar, but the dedlock family have communicated something exclusive even to the levelling process of dying by dying of their own family gout. it has come down through the illustrious line like the plate, or the pictures, or the place in lincolnshire. it is among their dignities. sir leicester is perhaps not wholly without an impression, though he has never resolved it into words, that the angel of death in the discharge of his necessary duties may observe to the shades of the aristocracy, "my lords and gentlemen, i have the honour to present to you another dedlock certified to have arrived per the family gout." hence sir leicester yields up his family legs to the family disorder as if he held his name and fortune on that feudal tenure. he feels that for a dedlock to be laid upon his back and spasmodically twitched and stabbed in his extremities is a liberty taken somewhere, but he thinks, "we have all yielded to this; it belongs to us; it has for some hundreds of years been understood that we are not to make the vaults in the park interesting on more ignoble terms; and i submit myself to the compromise." and a goodly show he makes, lying in a flush of crimson and gold in the midst of the great drawing-room before his favourite picture of my lady, with broad strips of sunlight shining in, down the long perspective, through the long line of windows, and alternating with soft reliefs of shadow. outside, the stately oaks, rooted for ages in the green ground which has never known ploughshare, but was still a chase when kings rode to battle with sword and shield and rode a-hunting with bow and arrow, bear witness to his greatness. inside, his forefathers, looking on him from the walls, say, "each of us was a passing reality here and left this coloured shadow of himself and melted into remembrance as dreamy as the distant voices of the rooks now lulling you to rest," and hear their testimony to his greatness too. and he is very great this day. and woe to boythorn or other daring wight who shall presumptuously contest an inch with him! my lady is at present represented, near sir leicester, by her portrait. she has flitted away to town, with no intention of remaining there, and will soon flit hither again, to the confusion of the fashionable intelligence. the house in town is not prepared for her reception. it is muffled and dreary. only one mercury in powder gapes disconsolate at the hall-window; and he mentioned last night to another mercury of his acquaintance, also accustomed to good society, that if that sort of thing was to last--which it couldn't, for a man of his spirits couldn't bear it, and a man of his figure couldn't be expected to bear it--there would be no resource for him, upon his honour, but to cut his throat! what connexion can there be between the place in lincolnshire, the house in town, the mercury in powder, and the whereabout of jo the outlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon him when he swept the churchyard-step? what connexion can there have been between many people in the innumerable histories of this world who from opposite sides of great gulfs have, nevertheless, been very curiously brought together! jo sweeps his crossing all day long, unconscious of the link, if any link there be. he sums up his mental condition when asked a question by replying that he "don't know nothink." he knows that it's hard to keep the mud off the crossing in dirty weather, and harder still to live by doing it. nobody taught him even that much; he found it out. jo lives--that is to say, jo has not yet died--in a ruinous place known to the like of him by the name of tom-all-alone's. it is a black, dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people, where the crazy houses were seized upon, when their decay was far advanced, by some bold vagrants who after establishing their own possession took to letting them out in lodgings. now, these tumbling tenements contain, by night, a swarm of misery. as on the ruined human wretch vermin parasites appear, so these ruined shelters have bred a crowd of foul existence that crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards; and coils itself to sleep, in maggot numbers, where the rain drips in; and comes and goes, fetching and carrying fever and sowing more evil in its every footprint than lord coodle, and sir thomas doodle, and the duke of foodle, and all the fine gentlemen in office, down to zoodle, shall set right in five hundred years--though born expressly to do it. twice lately there has been a crash and a cloud of dust, like the springing of a mine, in tom-all-alone's; and each time a house has fallen. these accidents have made a paragraph in the newspapers and have filled a bed or two in the nearest hospital. the gaps remain, and there are not unpopular lodgings among the rubbish. as several more houses are nearly ready to go, the next crash in tom-all-alone's may be expected to be a good one. this desirable property is in chancery, of course. it would be an insult to the discernment of any man with half an eye to tell him so. whether "tom" is the popular representative of the original plaintiff or defendant in jarndyce and jarndyce, or whether tom lived here when the suit had laid the street waste, all alone, until other settlers came to join him, or whether the traditional title is a comprehensive name for a retreat cut off from honest company and put out of the pale of hope, perhaps nobody knows. certainly jo don't know. "for i don't," says jo, "i don't know nothink." it must be a strange state to be like jo! to shuffle through the streets, unfamiliar with the shapes, and in utter darkness as to the meaning, of those mysterious symbols, so abundant over the shops, and at the corners of streets, and on the doors, and in the windows! to see people read, and to see people write, and to see the postmen deliver letters, and not to have the least idea of all that language--to be, to every scrap of it, stone blind and dumb! it must be very puzzling to see the good company going to the churches on sundays, with their books in their hands, and to think (for perhaps jo does think at odd times) what does it all mean, and if it means anything to anybody, how comes it that it means nothing to me? to be hustled, and jostled, and moved on; and really to feel that it would appear to be perfectly true that i have no business here, or there, or anywhere; and yet to be perplexed by the consideration that i am here somehow, too, and everybody overlooked me until i became the creature that i am! it must be a strange state, not merely to be told that i am scarcely human (as in the case of my offering myself for a witness), but to feel it of my own knowledge all my life! to see the horses, dogs, and cattle go by me and to know that in ignorance i belong to them and not to the superior beings in my shape, whose delicacy i offend! jo's ideas of a criminal trial, or a judge, or a bishop, or a government, or that inestimable jewel to him (if he only knew it) the constitution, should be strange! his whole material and immaterial life is wonderfully strange; his death, the strangest thing of all. jo comes out of tom-all-alone's, meeting the tardy morning which is always late in getting down there, and munches his dirty bit of bread as he comes along. his way lying through many streets, and the houses not yet being open, he sits down to breakfast on the door-step of the society for the propagation of the gospel in foreign parts and gives it a brush when he has finished as an acknowledgment of the accommodation. he admires the size of the edifice and wonders what it's all about. he has no idea, poor wretch, of the spiritual destitution of a coral reef in the pacific or what it costs to look up the precious souls among the coco-nuts and bread-fruit. he goes to his crossing and begins to lay it out for the day. the town awakes; the great tee-totum is set up for its daily spin and whirl; all that unaccountable reading and writing, which has been suspended for a few hours, recommences. jo and the other lower animals get on in the unintelligible mess as they can. it is market-day. the blinded oxen, over-goaded, over-driven, never guided, run into wrong places and are beaten out, and plunge red-eyed and foaming at stone walls, and often sorely hurt the innocent, and often sorely hurt themselves. very like jo and his order; very, very like! a band of music comes and plays. jo listens to it. so does a dog--a drover's dog, waiting for his master outside a butcher's shop, and evidently thinking about those sheep he has had upon his mind for some hours and is happily rid of. he seems perplexed respecting three or four, can't remember where he left them, looks up and down the street as half expecting to see them astray, suddenly pricks up his ears and remembers all about it. a thoroughly vagabond dog, accustomed to low company and public-houses; a terrific dog to sheep, ready at a whistle to scamper over their backs and tear out mouthfuls of their wool; but an educated, improved, developed dog who has been taught his duties and knows how to discharge them. he and jo listen to the music, probably with much the same amount of animal satisfaction; likewise as to awakened association, aspiration, or regret, melancholy or joyful reference to things beyond the senses, they are probably upon a par. but, otherwise, how far above the human listener is the brute! turn that dog's descendants wild, like jo, and in a very few years they will so degenerate that they will lose even their bark--but not their bite. the day changes as it wears itself away and becomes dark and drizzly. jo fights it out at his crossing among the mud and wheels, the horses, whips, and umbrellas, and gets but a scanty sum to pay for the unsavoury shelter of tom-all-alone's. twilight comes on; gas begins to start up in the shops; the lamplighter, with his ladder, runs along the margin of the pavement. a wretched evening is beginning to close in. in his chambers mr. tulkinghorn sits meditating an application to the nearest magistrate to-morrow morning for a warrant. gridley, a disappointed suitor, has been here to-day and has been alarming. we are not to be put in bodily fear, and that ill-conditioned fellow shall be held to bail again. from the ceiling, foreshortened allegory, in the person of one impossible roman upside down, points with the arm of samson (out of joint, and an odd one) obtrusively toward the window. why should mr. tulkinghorn, for such no reason, look out of window? is the hand not always pointing there? so he does not look out of window. and if he did, what would it be to see a woman going by? there are women enough in the world, mr. tulkinghorn thinks--too many; they are at the bottom of all that goes wrong in it, though, for the matter of that, they create business for lawyers. what would it be to see a woman going by, even though she were going secretly? they are all secret. mr. tulkinghorn knows that very well. but they are not all like the woman who now leaves him and his house behind, between whose plain dress and her refined manner there is something exceedingly inconsistent. she should be an upper servant by her attire, yet in her air and step, though both are hurried and assumed--as far as she can assume in the muddy streets, which she treads with an unaccustomed foot--she is a lady. her face is veiled, and still she sufficiently betrays herself to make more than one of those who pass her look round sharply. she never turns her head. lady or servant, she has a purpose in her and can follow it. she never turns her head until she comes to the crossing where jo plies with his broom. he crosses with her and begs. still, she does not turn her head until she has landed on the other side. then she slightly beckons to him and says, "come here!" jo follows her a pace or two into a quiet court. "are you the boy i've read of in the papers?" she asked behind her veil. "i don't know," says jo, staring moodily at the veil, "nothink about no papers. i don't know nothink about nothink at all." "were you examined at an inquest?" "i don't know nothink about no--where i was took by the beadle, do you mean?" says jo. "was the boy's name at the inkwhich jo?" "yes." "that's me!" says jo. "come farther up." "you mean about the man?" says jo, following. "him as wos dead?" "hush! speak in a whisper! yes. did he look, when he was living, so very ill and poor?" "oh, jist!" says jo. "did he look like--not like you?" says the woman with abhorrence. "oh, not so bad as me," says jo. "i'm a reg'lar one i am! you didn't know him, did you?" "how dare you ask me if i knew him?" "no offence, my lady," says jo with much humility, for even he has got at the suspicion of her being a lady. "i am not a lady. i am a servant." "you are a jolly servant!" says jo without the least idea of saying anything offensive, merely as a tribute of admiration. "listen and be silent. don't talk to me, and stand farther from me! can you show me all those places that were spoken of in the account i read? the place he wrote for, the place he died at, the place where you were taken to, and the place where he was buried? do you know the place where he was buried?" jo answers with a nod, having also nodded as each other place was mentioned. "go before me and show me all those dreadful places. stop opposite to each, and don't speak to me unless i speak to you. don't look back. do what i want, and i will pay you well." jo attends closely while the words are being spoken; tells them off on his broom-handle, finding them rather hard; pauses to consider their meaning; considers it satisfactory; and nods his ragged head. "i'm fly," says jo. "but fen larks, you know. stow hooking it!" "what does the horrible creature mean?" exclaims the servant, recoiling from him. "stow cutting away, you know!" says jo. "i don't understand you. go on before! i will give you more money than you ever had in your life." jo screws up his mouth into a whistle, gives his ragged head a rub, takes his broom under his arm, and leads the way, passing deftly with his bare feet over the hard stones and through the mud and mire. cook's court. jo stops. a pause. "who lives here?" "him wot give him his writing and give me half a bull," says jo in a whisper without looking over his shoulder. "go on to the next." krook's house. jo stops again. a longer pause. "who lives here?" "he lived here," jo answers as before. after a silence he is asked, "in which room?" "in the back room up there. you can see the winder from this corner. up there! that's where i see him stritched out. this is the public-ouse where i was took to." "go on to the next!" it is a longer walk to the next, but jo, relieved of his first suspicions, sticks to the forms imposed upon him and does not look round. by many devious ways, reeking with offence of many kinds, they come to the little tunnel of a court, and to the gas-lamp (lighted now), and to the iron gate. "he was put there," says jo, holding to the bars and looking in. "where? oh, what a scene of horror!" "there!" says jo, pointing. "over yinder. among them piles of bones, and close to that there kitchin winder! they put him wery nigh the top. they was obliged to stamp upon it to git it in. i could unkiver it for you with my broom if the gate was open. that's why they locks it, i s'pose," giving it a shake. "it's always locked. look at the rat!" cries jo, excited. "hi! look! there he goes! ho! into the ground!" the servant shrinks into a corner, into a corner of that hideous archway, with its deadly stains contaminating her dress; and putting out her two hands and passionately telling him to keep away from her, for he is loathsome to her, so remains for some moments. jo stands staring and is still staring when she recovers herself. "is this place of abomination consecrated ground?" "i don't know nothink of consequential ground," says jo, still staring. "is it blessed?" "which?" says jo, in the last degree amazed. "is it blessed?" "i'm blest if i know," says jo, staring more than ever; "but i shouldn't think it warn't. blest?" repeats jo, something troubled in his mind. "it an't done it much good if it is. blest? i should think it was t'othered myself. but i don't know nothink!" the servant takes as little heed of what he says as she seems to take of what she has said herself. she draws off her glove to get some money from her purse. jo silently notices how white and small her hand is and what a jolly servant she must be to wear such sparkling rings. she drops a piece of money in his hand without touching it, and shuddering as their hands approach. "now," she adds, "show me the spot again!" jo thrusts the handle of his broom between the bars of the gate, and with his utmost power of elaboration, points it out. at length, looking aside to see if he has made himself intelligible, he finds that he is alone. his first proceeding is to hold the piece of money to the gas-light and to be overpowered at finding that it is yellow--gold. his next is to give it a one-sided bite at the edge as a test of its quality. his next, to put it in his mouth for safety and to sweep the step and passage with great care. his job done, he sets off for tom-all-alone's, stopping in the light of innumerable gas-lamps to produce the piece of gold and give it another one-sided bite as a reassurance of its being genuine. the mercury in powder is in no want of society to-night, for my lady goes to a grand dinner and three or four balls. sir leicester is fidgety down at chesney wold, with no better company than the gout; he complains to mrs. rouncewell that the rain makes such a monotonous pattering on the terrace that he can't read the paper even by the fireside in his own snug dressing-room. "sir leicester would have done better to try the other side of the house, my dear," says mrs. rouncewell to rosa. "his dressing-room is on my lady's side. and in all these years i never heard the step upon the ghost's walk more distinct than it is to-night!" chapter xvii esther's narrative richard very often came to see us while we remained in london (though he soon failed in his letter-writing), and with his quick abilities, his good spirits, his good temper, his gaiety and freshness, was always delightful. but though i liked him more and more the better i knew him, i still felt more and more how much it was to be regretted that he had been educated in no habits of application and concentration. the system which had addressed him in exactly the same manner as it had addressed hundreds of other boys, all varying in character and capacity, had enabled him to dash through his tasks, always with fair credit and often with distinction, but in a fitful, dazzling way that had confirmed his reliance on those very qualities in himself which it had been most desirable to direct and train. they were good qualities, without which no high place can be meritoriously won, but like fire and water, though excellent servants, they were very bad masters. if they had been under richard's direction, they would have been his friends; but richard being under their direction, they became his enemies. i write down these opinions not because i believe that this or any other thing was so because i thought so, but only because i did think so and i want to be quite candid about all i thought and did. these were my thoughts about richard. i thought i often observed besides how right my guardian was in what he had said, and that the uncertainties and delays of the chancery suit had imparted to his nature something of the careless spirit of a gamester who felt that he was part of a great gaming system. mr. and mrs. bayham badger coming one afternoon when my guardian was not at home, in the course of conversation i naturally inquired after richard. "why, mr. carstone," said mrs. badger, "is very well and is, i assure you, a great acquisition to our society. captain swosser used to say of me that i was always better than land a-head and a breeze a-starn to the midshipmen's mess when the purser's junk had become as tough as the fore-topsel weather earings. it was his naval way of mentioning generally that i was an acquisition to any society. i may render the same tribute, i am sure, to mr. carstone. but i--you won't think me premature if i mention it?" i said no, as mrs. badger's insinuating tone seemed to require such an answer. "nor miss clare?" said mrs. bayham badger sweetly. ada said no, too, and looked uneasy. "why, you see, my dears," said mrs. badger, "--you'll excuse me calling you my dears?" we entreated mrs. badger not to mention it. "because you really are, if i may take the liberty of saying so," pursued mrs. badger, "so perfectly charming. you see, my dears, that although i am still young--or mr. bayham badger pays me the compliment of saying so--" "no," mr. badger called out like some one contradicting at a public meeting. "not at all!" "very well," smiled mrs. badger, "we will say still young." "undoubtedly," said mr. badger. "my dears, though still young, i have had many opportunities of observing young men. there were many such on board the dear old crippler, i assure you. after that, when i was with captain swosser in the mediterranean, i embraced every opportunity of knowing and befriending the midshipmen under captain swosser's command. you never heard them called the young gentlemen, my dears, and probably would not understand allusions to their pipe-claying their weekly accounts, but it is otherwise with me, for blue water has been a second home to me, and i have been quite a sailor. again, with professor dingo." "a man of european reputation," murmured mr. badger. "when i lost my dear first and became the wife of my dear second," said mrs. badger, speaking of her former husbands as if they were parts of a charade, "i still enjoyed opportunities of observing youth. the class attendant on professor dingo's lectures was a large one, and it became my pride, as the wife of an eminent scientific man seeking herself in science the utmost consolation it could impart, to throw our house open to the students as a kind of scientific exchange. every tuesday evening there was lemonade and a mixed biscuit for all who chose to partake of those refreshments. and there was science to an unlimited extent." "remarkable assemblies those, miss summerson," said mr. badger reverentially. "there must have been great intellectual friction going on there under the auspices of such a man!" "and now," pursued mrs. badger, "now that i am the wife of my dear third, mr. badger, i still pursue those habits of observation which were formed during the lifetime of captain swosser and adapted to new and unexpected purposes during the lifetime of professor dingo. i therefore have not come to the consideration of mr. carstone as a neophyte. and yet i am very much of the opinion, my dears, that he has not chosen his profession advisedly." ada looked so very anxious now that i asked mrs. badger on what she founded her supposition. "my dear miss summerson," she replied, "on mr. carstone's character and conduct. he is of such a very easy disposition that probably he would never think it worth-while to mention how he really feels, but he feels languid about the profession. he has not that positive interest in it which makes it his vocation. if he has any decided impression in reference to it, i should say it was that it is a tiresome pursuit. now, this is not promising. young men like mr. allan woodcourt who take it from a strong interest in all that it can do will find some reward in it through a great deal of work for a very little money and through years of considerable endurance and disappointment. but i am quite convinced that this would never be the case with mr. carstone." "does mr. badger think so too?" asked ada timidly. "why," said mr. badger, "to tell the truth, miss clare, this view of the matter had not occurred to me until mrs. badger mentioned it. but when mrs. badger put it in that light, i naturally gave great consideration to it, knowing that mrs. badger's mind, in addition to its natural advantages, has had the rare advantage of being formed by two such very distinguished (i will even say illustrious) public men as captain swosser of the royal navy and professor dingo. the conclusion at which i have arrived is--in short, is mrs. badger's conclusion." "it was a maxim of captain swosser's," said mrs. badger, "speaking in his figurative naval manner, that when you make pitch hot, you cannot make it too hot; and that if you only have to swab a plank, you should swab it as if davy jones were after you. it appears to me that this maxim is applicable to the medical as well as to the nautical profession. "to all professions," observed mr. badger. "it was admirably said by captain swosser. beautifully said." "people objected to professor dingo when we were staying in the north of devon after our marriage," said mrs. badger, "that he disfigured some of the houses and other buildings by chipping off fragments of those edifices with his little geological hammer. but the professor replied that he knew of no building save the temple of science. the principle is the same, i think?" "precisely the same," said mr. badger. "finely expressed! the professor made the same remark, miss summerson, in his last illness, when (his mind wandering) he insisted on keeping his little hammer under the pillow and chipping at the countenances of the attendants. the ruling passion!" although we could have dispensed with the length at which mr. and mrs. badger pursued the conversation, we both felt that it was disinterested in them to express the opinion they had communicated to us and that there was a great probability of its being sound. we agreed to say nothing to mr. jarndyce until we had spoken to richard; and as he was coming next evening, we resolved to have a very serious talk with him. so after he had been a little while with ada, i went in and found my darling (as i knew she would be) prepared to consider him thoroughly right in whatever he said. "and how do you get on, richard?" said i. i always sat down on the other side of him. he made quite a sister of me. "oh! well enough!" said richard. "he can't say better than that, esther, can he?" cried my pet triumphantly. i tried to look at my pet in the wisest manner, but of course i couldn't. "well enough?" i repeated. "yes," said richard, "well enough. it's rather jog-trotty and humdrum. but it'll do as well as anything else!" "oh! my dear richard!" i remonstrated. "what's the matter?" said richard. "do as well as anything else!" "i don't think there's any harm in that, dame durden," said ada, looking so confidingly at me across him; "because if it will do as well as anything else, it will do very well, i hope." "oh, yes, i hope so," returned richard, carelessly tossing his hair from his forehead. "after all, it may be only a kind of probation till our suit is--i forgot though. i am not to mention the suit. forbidden ground! oh, yes, it's all right enough. let us talk about something else." ada would have done so willingly, and with a full persuasion that we had brought the question to a most satisfactory state. but i thought it would be useless to stop there, so i began again. "no, but richard," said i, "and my dear ada! consider how important it is to you both, and what a point of honour it is towards your cousin, that you, richard, should be quite in earnest without any reservation. i think we had better talk about this, really, ada. it will be too late very soon." "oh, yes! we must talk about it!" said ada. "but i think richard is right." what was the use of my trying to look wise when she was so pretty, and so engaging, and so fond of him! "mr. and mrs. badger were here yesterday, richard," said i, "and they seemed disposed to think that you had no great liking for the profession." "did they though?" said richard. "oh! well, that rather alters the case, because i had no idea that they thought so, and i should not have liked to disappoint or inconvenience them. the fact is, i don't care much about it. but, oh, it don't matter! it'll do as well as anything else!" "you hear him, ada!" said i. "the fact is," richard proceeded, half thoughtfully and half jocosely, "it is not quite in my way. i don't take to it. and i get too much of mrs. bayham badger's first and second." "i am sure that's very natural!" cried ada, quite delighted. "the very thing we both said yesterday, esther!" "then," pursued richard, "it's monotonous, and to-day is too like yesterday, and to-morrow is too like to-day." "but i am afraid," said i, "this is an objection to all kinds of application--to life itself, except under some very uncommon circumstances." "do you think so?" returned richard, still considering. "perhaps! ha! why, then, you know," he added, suddenly becoming gay again, "we travel outside a circle to what i said just now. it'll do as well as anything else. oh, it's all right enough! let us talk about something else." but even ada, with her loving face--and if it had seemed innocent and trusting when i first saw it in that memorable november fog, how much more did it seem now when i knew her innocent and trusting heart--even ada shook her head at this and looked serious. so i thought it a good opportunity to hint to richard that if he were sometimes a little careless of himself, i was very sure he never meant to be careless of ada, and that it was a part of his affectionate consideration for her not to slight the importance of a step that might influence both their lives. this made him almost grave. "my dear mother hubbard," he said, "that's the very thing! i have thought of that several times and have been quite angry with myself for meaning to be so much in earnest and--somehow--not exactly being so. i don't know how it is; i seem to want something or other to stand by. even you have no idea how fond i am of ada (my darling cousin, i love you, so much!), but i don't settle down to constancy in other things. it's such uphill work, and it takes such a time!" said richard with an air of vexation. "that may be," i suggested, "because you don't like what you have chosen." "poor fellow!" said ada. "i am sure i don't wonder at it!" no. it was not of the least use my trying to look wise. i tried again, but how could i do it, or how could it have any effect if i could, while ada rested her clasped hands upon his shoulder and while he looked at her tender blue eyes, and while they looked at him! "you see, my precious girl," said richard, passing her golden curls through and through his hand, "i was a little hasty perhaps; or i misunderstood my own inclinations perhaps. they don't seem to lie in that direction. i couldn't tell till i tried. now the question is whether it's worth-while to undo all that has been done. it seems like making a great disturbance about nothing particular." "my dear richard," said i, "how can you say about nothing particular?" "i don't mean absolutely that," he returned. "i mean that it may be nothing particular because i may never want it." both ada and i urged, in reply, not only that it was decidedly worth-while to undo what had been done, but that it must be undone. i then asked richard whether he had thought of any more congenial pursuit. "there, my dear mrs. shipton," said richard, "you touch me home. yes, i have. i have been thinking that the law is the boy for me." "the law!" repeated ada as if she were afraid of the name. "if i went into kenge's office," said richard, "and if i were placed under articles to kenge, i should have my eye on the--hum!--the forbidden ground--and should be able to study it, and master it, and to satisfy myself that it was not neglected and was being properly conducted. i should be able to look after ada's interests and my own interests (the same thing!); and i should peg away at blackstone and all those fellows with the most tremendous ardour." i was not by any means so sure of that, and i saw how his hankering after the vague things yet to come of those long-deferred hopes cast a shade on ada's face. but i thought it best to encourage him in any project of continuous exertion, and only advised him to be quite sure that his mind was made up now. "my dear minerva," said richard, "i am as steady as you are. i made a mistake; we are all liable to mistakes; i won't do so any more, and i'll become such a lawyer as is not often seen. that is, you know," said richard, relapsing into doubt, "if it really is worth-while, after all, to make such a disturbance about nothing particular!" this led to our saying again, with a great deal of gravity, all that we had said already and to our coming to much the same conclusion afterwards. but we so strongly advised richard to be frank and open with mr. jarndyce, without a moment's delay, and his disposition was naturally so opposed to concealment that he sought him out at once (taking us with him) and made a full avowal. "rick," said my guardian, after hearing him attentively, "we can retreat with honour, and we will. but we must be careful--for our cousin's sake, rick, for our cousin's sake--that we make no more such mistakes. therefore, in the matter of the law, we will have a good trial before we decide. we will look before we leap, and take plenty of time about it." richard's energy was of such an impatient and fitful kind that he would have liked nothing better than to have gone to mr. kenge's office in that hour and to have entered into articles with him on the spot. submitting, however, with a good grace to the caution that we had shown to be so necessary, he contented himself with sitting down among us in his lightest spirits and talking as if his one unvarying purpose in life from childhood had been that one which now held possession of him. my guardian was very kind and cordial with him, but rather grave, enough so to cause ada, when he had departed and we were going upstairs to bed, to say, "cousin john, i hope you don't think the worse of richard?" "no, my love," said he. "because it was very natural that richard should be mistaken in such a difficult case. it is not uncommon." "no, no, my love," said he. "don't look unhappy." "oh, i am not unhappy, cousin john!" said ada, smiling cheerfully, with her hand upon his shoulder, where she had put it in bidding him good night. "but i should be a little so if you thought at all the worse of richard." "my dear," said mr. jarndyce, "i should think the worse of him only if you were ever in the least unhappy through his means. i should be more disposed to quarrel with myself even then, than with poor rick, for i brought you together. but, tut, all this is nothing! he has time before him, and the race to run. i think the worse of him? not i, my loving cousin! and not you, i swear!" "no, indeed, cousin john," said ada, "i am sure i could not--i am sure i would not--think any ill of richard if the whole world did. i could, and i would, think better of him then than at any other time!" so quietly and honestly she said it, with her hands upon his shoulders--both hands now--and looking up into his face, like the picture of truth! "i think," said my guardian, thoughtfully regarding her, "i think it must be somewhere written that the virtues of the mothers shall occasionally be visited on the children, as well as the sins of the father. good night, my rosebud. good night, little woman. pleasant slumbers! happy dreams!" this was the first time i ever saw him follow ada with his eyes with something of a shadow on their benevolent expression. i well remembered the look with which he had contemplated her and richard when she was singing in the firelight; it was but a very little while since he had watched them passing down the room in which the sun was shining, and away into the shade; but his glance was changed, and even the silent look of confidence in me which now followed it once more was not quite so hopeful and untroubled as it had originally been. ada praised richard more to me that night than ever she had praised him yet. she went to sleep with a little bracelet he had given her clasped upon her arm. i fancied she was dreaming of him when i kissed her cheek after she had slept an hour and saw how tranquil and happy she looked. for i was so little inclined to sleep myself that night that i sat up working. it would not be worth mentioning for its own sake, but i was wakeful and rather low-spirited. i don't know why. at least i don't think i know why. at least, perhaps i do, but i don't think it matters. at any rate, i made up my mind to be so dreadfully industrious that i would leave myself not a moment's leisure to be low-spirited. for i naturally said, "esther! you to be low-spirited. you!" and it really was time to say so, for i--yes, i really did see myself in the glass, almost crying. "as if you had anything to make you unhappy, instead of everything to make you happy, you ungrateful heart!" said i. if i could have made myself go to sleep, i would have done it directly, but not being able to do that, i took out of my basket some ornamental work for our house (i mean bleak house) that i was busy with at that time and sat down to it with great determination. it was necessary to count all the stitches in that work, and i resolved to go on with it until i couldn't keep my eyes open, and then to go to bed. i soon found myself very busy. but i had left some silk downstairs in a work-table drawer in the temporary growlery, and coming to a stop for want of it, i took my candle and went softly down to get it. to my great surprise, on going in i found my guardian still there, and sitting looking at the ashes. he was lost in thought, his book lay unheeded by his side, his silvered iron-grey hair was scattered confusedly upon his forehead as though his hand had been wandering among it while his thoughts were elsewhere, and his face looked worn. almost frightened by coming upon him so unexpectedly, i stood still for a moment and should have retired without speaking had he not, in again passing his hand abstractedly through his hair, seen me and started. "esther!" i told him what i had come for. "at work so late, my dear?" "i am working late to-night," said i, "because i couldn't sleep and wished to tire myself. but, dear guardian, you are late too, and look weary. you have no trouble, i hope, to keep you waking?" "none, little woman, that you would readily understand," said he. he spoke in a regretful tone so new to me that i inwardly repeated, as if that would help me to his meaning, "that i could readily understand!" "remain a moment, esther," said he, "you were in my thoughts." "i hope i was not the trouble, guardian?" he slightly waved his hand and fell into his usual manner. the change was so remarkable, and he appeared to make it by dint of so much self-command, that i found myself again inwardly repeating, "none that i could understand!" "little woman," said my guardian, "i was thinking--that is, i have been thinking since i have been sitting here--that you ought to know of your own history all i know. it is very little. next to nothing." "dear guardian," i replied, "when you spoke to me before on that subject--" "but since then," he gravely interposed, anticipating what i meant to say, "i have reflected that your having anything to ask me, and my having anything to tell you, are different considerations, esther. it is perhaps my duty to impart to you the little i know." "if you think so, guardian, it is right." "i think so," he returned very gently, and kindly, and very distinctly. "my dear, i think so now. if any real disadvantage can attach to your position in the mind of any man or woman worth a thought, it is right that you at least of all the world should not magnify it to yourself by having vague impressions of its nature." i sat down and said after a little effort to be as calm as i ought to be, "one of my earliest remembrances, guardian, is of these words: 'your mother, esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers. the time will come, and soon enough, when you will understand this better, and will feel it too, as no one save a woman can.'" i had covered my face with my hands in repeating the words, but i took them away now with a better kind of shame, i hope, and told him that to him i owed the blessing that i had from my childhood to that hour never, never, never felt it. he put up his hand as if to stop me. i well knew that he was never to be thanked, and said no more. "nine years, my dear," he said after thinking for a little while, "have passed since i received a letter from a lady living in seclusion, written with a stern passion and power that rendered it unlike all other letters i have ever read. it was written to me (as it told me in so many words), perhaps because it was the writer's idiosyncrasy to put that trust in me, perhaps because it was mine to justify it. it told me of a child, an orphan girl then twelve years old, in some such cruel words as those which live in your remembrance. it told me that the writer had bred her in secrecy from her birth, had blotted out all trace of her existence, and that if the writer were to die before the child became a woman, she would be left entirely friendless, nameless, and unknown. it asked me to consider if i would, in that case, finish what the writer had begun." i listened in silence and looked attentively at him. "your early recollection, my dear, will supply the gloomy medium through which all this was seen and expressed by the writer, and the distorted religion which clouded her mind with impressions of the need there was for the child to expiate an offence of which she was quite innocent. i felt concerned for the little creature, in her darkened life, and replied to the letter." i took his hand and kissed it. "it laid the injunction on me that i should never propose to see the writer, who had long been estranged from all intercourse with the world, but who would see a confidential agent if i would appoint one. i accredited mr. kenge. the lady said, of her own accord and not of his seeking, that her name was an assumed one. that she was, if there were any ties of blood in such a case, the child's aunt. that more than this she would never (and he was well persuaded of the steadfastness of her resolution) for any human consideration disclose. my dear, i have told you all." i held his hand for a little while in mine. "i saw my ward oftener than she saw me," he added, cheerily making light of it, "and i always knew she was beloved, useful, and happy. she repays me twenty-thousandfold, and twenty more to that, every hour in every day!" "and oftener still," said i, "she blesses the guardian who is a father to her!" at the word father, i saw his former trouble come into his face. he subdued it as before, and it was gone in an instant; but it had been there and it had come so swiftly upon my words that i felt as if they had given him a shock. i again inwardly repeated, wondering, "that i could readily understand. none that i could readily understand!" no, it was true. i did not understand it. not for many and many a day. "take a fatherly good night, my dear," said he, kissing me on the forehead, "and so to rest. these are late hours for working and thinking. you do that for all of us, all day long, little housekeeper!" i neither worked nor thought any more that night. i opened my grateful heart to heaven in thankfulness for its providence to me and its care of me, and fell asleep. we had a visitor next day. mr. allan woodcourt came. he came to take leave of us; he had settled to do so beforehand. he was going to china and to india as a surgeon on board ship. he was to be away a long, long time. i believe--at least i know--that he was not rich. all his widowed mother could spare had been spent in qualifying him for his profession. it was not lucrative to a young practitioner, with very little influence in london; and although he was, night and day, at the service of numbers of poor people and did wonders of gentleness and skill for them, he gained very little by it in money. he was seven years older than i. not that i need mention it, for it hardly seems to belong to anything. i think--i mean, he told us--that he had been in practice three or four years and that if he could have hoped to contend through three or four more, he would not have made the voyage on which he was bound. but he had no fortune or private means, and so he was going away. he had been to see us several times altogether. we thought it a pity he should go away. because he was distinguished in his art among those who knew it best, and some of the greatest men belonging to it had a high opinion of him. when he came to bid us good-bye, he brought his mother with him for the first time. she was a pretty old lady, with bright black eyes, but she seemed proud. she came from wales and had had, a long time ago, an eminent person for an ancestor, of the name of morgan ap-kerrig--of some place that sounded like gimlet--who was the most illustrious person that ever was known and all of whose relations were a sort of royal family. he appeared to have passed his life in always getting up into mountains and fighting somebody; and a bard whose name sounded like crumlinwallinwer had sung his praises in a piece which was called, as nearly as i could catch it, mewlinnwillinwodd. mrs. woodcourt, after expatiating to us on the fame of her great kinsman, said that no doubt wherever her son allan went he would remember his pedigree and would on no account form an alliance below it. she told him that there were many handsome english ladies in india who went out on speculation, and that there were some to be picked up with property, but that neither charms nor wealth would suffice for the descendant from such a line without birth, which must ever be the first consideration. she talked so much about birth that for a moment i half fancied, and with pain--but what an idle fancy to suppose that she could think or care what mine was! mr. woodcourt seemed a little distressed by her prolixity, but he was too considerate to let her see it and contrived delicately to bring the conversation round to making his acknowledgments to my guardian for his hospitality and for the very happy hours--he called them the very happy hours--he had passed with us. the recollection of them, he said, would go with him wherever he went and would be always treasured. and so we gave him our hands, one after another--at least, they did--and i did; and so he put his lips to ada's hand--and to mine; and so he went away upon his long, long voyage! i was very busy indeed all day and wrote directions home to the servants, and wrote notes for my guardian, and dusted his books and papers, and jingled my housekeeping keys a good deal, one way and another. i was still busy between the lights, singing and working by the window, when who should come in but caddy, whom i had no expectation of seeing! "why, caddy, my dear," said i, "what beautiful flowers!" she had such an exquisite little nosegay in her hand. "indeed, i think so, esther," replied caddy. "they are the loveliest i ever saw." "prince, my dear?" said i in a whisper. "no," answered caddy, shaking her head and holding them to me to smell. "not prince." "well, to be sure, caddy!" said i. "you must have two lovers!" "what? do they look like that sort of thing?" said caddy. "do they look like that sort of thing?" i repeated, pinching her cheek. caddy only laughed in return, and telling me that she had come for half an hour, at the expiration of which time prince would be waiting for her at the corner, sat chatting with me and ada in the window, every now and then handing me the flowers again or trying how they looked against my hair. at last, when she was going, she took me into my room and put them in my dress. "for me?" said i, surprised. "for you," said caddy with a kiss. "they were left behind by somebody." "left behind?" "at poor miss flite's," said caddy. "somebody who has been very good to her was hurrying away an hour ago to join a ship and left these flowers behind. no, no! don't take them out. let the pretty little things lie here," said caddy, adjusting them with a careful hand, "because i was present myself, and i shouldn't wonder if somebody left them on purpose!" "do they look like that sort of thing?" said ada, coming laughingly behind me and clasping me merrily round the waist. "oh, yes, indeed they do, dame durden! they look very, very like that sort of thing. oh, very like it indeed, my dear!" chapter xviii lady dedlock it was not so easy as it had appeared at first to arrange for richard's making a trial of mr. kenge's office. richard himself was the chief impediment. as soon as he had it in his power to leave mr. badger at any moment, he began to doubt whether he wanted to leave him at all. he didn't know, he said, really. it wasn't a bad profession; he couldn't assert that he disliked it; perhaps he liked it as well as he liked any other--suppose he gave it one more chance! upon that, he shut himself up for a few weeks with some books and some bones and seemed to acquire a considerable fund of information with great rapidity. his fervour, after lasting about a month, began to cool, and when it was quite cooled, began to grow warm again. his vacillations between law and medicine lasted so long that midsummer arrived before he finally separated from mr. badger and entered on an experimental course of messrs. kenge and carboy. for all his waywardness, he took great credit to himself as being determined to be in earnest "this time." and he was so good-natured throughout, and in such high spirits, and so fond of ada, that it was very difficult indeed to be otherwise than pleased with him. "as to mr. jarndyce," who, i may mention, found the wind much given, during this period, to stick in the east; "as to mr. jarndyce," richard would say to me, "he is the finest fellow in the world, esther! i must be particularly careful, if it were only for his satisfaction, to take myself well to task and have a regular wind-up of this business now." the idea of his taking himself well to task, with that laughing face and heedless manner and with a fancy that everything could catch and nothing could hold, was ludicrously anomalous. however, he told us between-whiles that he was doing it to such an extent that he wondered his hair didn't turn grey. his regular wind-up of the business was (as i have said) that he went to mr. kenge's about midsummer to try how he liked it. all this time he was, in money affairs, what i have described him in a former illustration--generous, profuse, wildly careless, but fully persuaded that he was rather calculating and prudent. i happened to say to ada, in his presence, half jestingly, half seriously, about the time of his going to mr. kenge's, that he needed to have fortunatus' purse, he made so light of money, which he answered in this way, "my jewel of a dear cousin, you hear this old woman! why does she say that? because i gave eight pounds odd (or whatever it was) for a certain neat waistcoat and buttons a few days ago. now, if i had stayed at badger's i should have been obliged to spend twelve pounds at a blow for some heart-breaking lecture-fees. so i make four pounds--in a lump--by the transaction!" it was a question much discussed between him and my guardian what arrangements should be made for his living in london while he experimented on the law, for we had long since gone back to bleak house, and it was too far off to admit of his coming there oftener than once a week. my guardian told me that if richard were to settle down at mr. kenge's he would take some apartments or chambers where we too could occasionally stay for a few days at a time; "but, little woman," he added, rubbing his head very significantly, "he hasn't settled down there yet!" the discussions ended in our hiring for him, by the month, a neat little furnished lodging in a quiet old house near queen square. he immediately began to spend all the money he had in buying the oddest little ornaments and luxuries for this lodging; and so often as ada and i dissuaded him from making any purchase that he had in contemplation which was particularly unnecessary and expensive, he took credit for what it would have cost and made out that to spend anything less on something else was to save the difference. while these affairs were in abeyance, our visit to mr. boythorn's was postponed. at length, richard having taken possession of his lodging, there was nothing to prevent our departure. he could have gone with us at that time of the year very well, but he was in the full novelty of his new position and was making most energetic attempts to unravel the mysteries of the fatal suit. consequently we went without him, and my darling was delighted to praise him for being so busy. we made a pleasant journey down into lincolnshire by the coach and had an entertaining companion in mr. skimpole. his furniture had been all cleared off, it appeared, by the person who took possession of it on his blue-eyed daughter's birthday, but he seemed quite relieved to think that it was gone. chairs and table, he said, were wearisome objects; they were monotonous ideas, they had no variety of expression, they looked you out of countenance, and you looked them out of countenance. how pleasant, then, to be bound to no particular chairs and tables, but to sport like a butterfly among all the furniture on hire, and to flit from rosewood to mahogany, and from mahogany to walnut, and from this shape to that, as the humour took one! "the oddity of the thing is," said mr. skimpole with a quickened sense of the ludicrous, "that my chairs and tables were not paid for, and yet my landlord walks off with them as composedly as possible. now, that seems droll! there is something grotesque in it. the chair and table merchant never engaged to pay my landlord my rent. why should my landlord quarrel with him? if i have a pimple on my nose which is disagreeable to my landlord's peculiar ideas of beauty, my landlord has no business to scratch my chair and table merchant's nose, which has no pimple on it. his reasoning seems defective!" "well," said my guardian good-humouredly, "it's pretty clear that whoever became security for those chairs and tables will have to pay for them." "exactly!" returned mr. skimpole. "that's the crowning point of unreason in the business! i said to my landlord, 'my good man, you are not aware that my excellent friend jarndyce will have to pay for those things that you are sweeping off in that indelicate manner. have you no consideration for his property?' he hadn't the least." "and refused all proposals," said my guardian. "refused all proposals," returned mr. skimpole. "i made him business proposals. i had him into my room. i said, 'you are a man of business, i believe?' he replied, 'i am,' 'very well,' said i, 'now let us be business-like. here is an inkstand, here are pens and paper, here are wafers. what do you want? i have occupied your house for a considerable period, i believe to our mutual satisfaction until this unpleasant misunderstanding arose; let us be at once friendly and business-like. what do you want?' in reply to this, he made use of the figurative expression--which has something eastern about it--that he had never seen the colour of my money. 'my amiable friend,' said i, 'i never have any money. i never know anything about money.' 'well, sir,' said he, 'what do you offer if i give you time?' 'my good fellow,' said i, 'i have no idea of time; but you say you are a man of business, and whatever you can suggest to be done in a business-like way with pen, and ink, and paper--and wafers--i am ready to do. don't pay yourself at another man's expense (which is foolish), but be business-like!' however, he wouldn't be, and there was an end of it." if these were some of the inconveniences of mr. skimpole's childhood, it assuredly possessed its advantages too. on the journey he had a very good appetite for such refreshment as came in our way (including a basket of choice hothouse peaches), but never thought of paying for anything. so when the coachman came round for his fee, he pleasantly asked him what he considered a very good fee indeed, now--a liberal one--and on his replying half a crown for a single passenger, said it was little enough too, all things considered, and left mr. jarndyce to give it him. it was delightful weather. the green corn waved so beautifully, the larks sang so joyfully, the hedges were so full of wild flowers, the trees were so thickly out in leaf, the bean-fields, with a light wind blowing over them, filled the air with such a delicious fragrance! late in the afternoon we came to the market-town where we were to alight from the coach--a dull little town with a church-spire, and a marketplace, and a market-cross, and one intensely sunny street, and a pond with an old horse cooling his legs in it, and a very few men sleepily lying and standing about in narrow little bits of shade. after the rustling of the leaves and the waving of the corn all along the road, it looked as still, as hot, as motionless a little town as england could produce. at the inn we found mr. boythorn on horseback, waiting with an open carriage to take us to his house, which was a few miles off. he was overjoyed to see us and dismounted with great alacrity. "by heaven!" said he after giving us a courteous greeting. "this a most infamous coach. it is the most flagrant example of an abominable public vehicle that ever encumbered the face of the earth. it is twenty-five minutes after its time this afternoon. the coachman ought to be put to death!" "is he after his time?" said mr. skimpole, to whom he happened to address himself. "you know my infirmity." "twenty-five minutes! twenty-six minutes!" replied mr. boythorn, referring to his watch. "with two ladies in the coach, this scoundrel has deliberately delayed his arrival six and twenty minutes. deliberately! it is impossible that it can be accidental! but his father--and his uncle--were the most profligate coachmen that ever sat upon a box." while he said this in tones of the greatest indignation, he handed us into the little phaeton with the utmost gentleness and was all smiles and pleasure. "i am sorry, ladies," he said, standing bare-headed at the carriage-door when all was ready, "that i am obliged to conduct you nearly two miles out of the way. but our direct road lies through sir leicester dedlock's park, and in that fellow's property i have sworn never to set foot of mine, or horse's foot of mine, pending the present relations between us, while i breathe the breath of life!" and here, catching my guardian's eye, he broke into one of his tremendous laughs, which seemed to shake even the motionless little market-town. "are the dedlocks down here, lawrence?" said my guardian as we drove along and mr. boythorn trotted on the green turf by the roadside. "sir arrogant numskull is here," replied mr. boythorn. "ha ha ha! sir arrogant is here, and i am glad to say, has been laid by the heels here. my lady," in naming whom he always made a courtly gesture as if particularly to exclude her from any part in the quarrel, "is expected, i believe, daily. i am not in the least surprised that she postpones her appearance as long as possible. whatever can have induced that transcendent woman to marry that effigy and figure-head of a baronet is one of the most impenetrable mysteries that ever baffled human inquiry. ha ha ha ha!" "i suppose," said my guardian, laughing, "we may set foot in the park while we are here? the prohibition does not extend to us, does it?" "i can lay no prohibition on my guests," he said, bending his head to ada and me with the smiling politeness which sat so gracefully upon him, "except in the matter of their departure. i am only sorry that i cannot have the happiness of being their escort about chesney wold, which is a very fine place! but by the light of this summer day, jarndyce, if you call upon the owner while you stay with me, you are likely to have but a cool reception. he carries himself like an eight-day clock at all times, like one of a race of eight-day clocks in gorgeous cases that never go and never went--ha ha ha!--but he will have some extra stiffness, i can promise you, for the friends of his friend and neighbour boythorn!" "i shall not put him to the proof," said my guardian. "he is as indifferent to the honour of knowing me, i dare say, as i am to the honour of knowing him. the air of the grounds and perhaps such a view of the house as any other sightseer might get are quite enough for me." "well!" said mr. boythorn. "i am glad of it on the whole. it's in better keeping. i am looked upon about here as a second ajax defying the lightning. ha ha ha ha! when i go into our little church on a sunday, a considerable part of the inconsiderable congregation expect to see me drop, scorched and withered, on the pavement under the dedlock displeasure. ha ha ha ha! i have no doubt he is surprised that i don't. for he is, by heaven, the most self-satisfied, and the shallowest, and the most coxcombical and utterly brainless ass!" our coming to the ridge of a hill we had been ascending enabled our friend to point out chesney wold itself to us and diverted his attention from its master. it was a picturesque old house in a fine park richly wooded. among the trees and not far from the residence he pointed out the spire of the little church of which he had spoken. oh, the solemn woods over which the light and shadow travelled swiftly, as if heavenly wings were sweeping on benignant errands through the summer air; the smooth green slopes, the glittering water, the garden where the flowers were so symmetrically arranged in clusters of the richest colours, how beautiful they looked! the house, with gable and chimney, and tower, and turret, and dark doorway, and broad terrace-walk, twining among the balustrades of which, and lying heaped upon the vases, there was one great flush of roses, seemed scarcely real in its light solidity and in the serene and peaceful hush that rested on all around it. to ada and to me, that above all appeared the pervading influence. on everything, house, garden, terrace, green slopes, water, old oaks, fern, moss, woods again, and far away across the openings in the prospect to the distance lying wide before us with a purple bloom upon it, there seemed to be such undisturbed repose. when we came into the little village and passed a small inn with the sign of the dedlock arms swinging over the road in front, mr. boythorn interchanged greetings with a young gentleman sitting on a bench outside the inn-door who had some fishing-tackle lying beside him. "that's the housekeeper's grandson, mr. rouncewell by name," said, he, "and he is in love with a pretty girl up at the house. lady dedlock has taken a fancy to the pretty girl and is going to keep her about her own fair person--an honour which my young friend himself does not at all appreciate. however, he can't marry just yet, even if his rosebud were willing; so he is fain to make the best of it. in the meanwhile, he comes here pretty often for a day or two at a time to--fish. ha ha ha ha!" "are he and the pretty girl engaged, mr. boythorn?" asked ada. "why, my dear miss clare," he returned, "i think they may perhaps understand each other; but you will see them soon, i dare say, and i must learn from you on such a point--not you from me." ada blushed, and mr. boythorn, trotting forward on his comely grey horse, dismounted at his own door and stood ready with extended arm and uncovered head to welcome us when we arrived. he lived in a pretty house, formerly the parsonage house, with a lawn in front, a bright flower-garden at the side, and a well-stocked orchard and kitchen-garden in the rear, enclosed with a venerable wall that had of itself a ripened ruddy look. but, indeed, everything about the place wore an aspect of maturity and abundance. the old lime-tree walk was like green cloisters, the very shadows of the cherry-trees and apple-trees were heavy with fruit, the gooseberry-bushes were so laden that their branches arched and rested on the earth, the strawberries and raspberries grew in like profusion, and the peaches basked by the hundred on the wall. tumbled about among the spread nets and the glass frames sparkling and winking in the sun there were such heaps of drooping pods, and marrows, and cucumbers, that every foot of ground appeared a vegetable treasury, while the smell of sweet herbs and all kinds of wholesome growth (to say nothing of the neighbouring meadows where the hay was carrying) made the whole air a great nosegay. such stillness and composure reigned within the orderly precincts of the old red wall that even the feathers hung in garlands to scare the birds hardly stirred; and the wall had such a ripening influence that where, here and there high up, a disused nail and scrap of list still clung to it, it was easy to fancy that they had mellowed with the changing seasons and that they had rusted and decayed according to the common fate. the house, though a little disorderly in comparison with the garden, was a real old house with settles in the chimney of the brick-floored kitchen and great beams across the ceilings. on one side of it was the terrible piece of ground in dispute, where mr. boythorn maintained a sentry in a smock-frock day and night, whose duty was supposed to be, in cases of aggression, immediately to ring a large bell hung up there for the purpose, to unchain a great bull-dog established in a kennel as his ally, and generally to deal destruction on the enemy. not content with these precautions, mr. boythorn had himself composed and posted there, on painted boards to which his name was attached in large letters, the following solemn warnings: "beware of the bull-dog. he is most ferocious. lawrence boythorn." "the blunderbus is loaded with slugs. lawrence boythorn." "man-traps and spring-guns are set here at all times of the day and night. lawrence boythorn." "take notice. that any person or persons audaciously presuming to trespass on this property will be punished with the utmost severity of private chastisement and prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law. lawrence boythorn." these he showed us from the drawing-room window, while his bird was hopping about his head, and he laughed, "ha ha ha ha! ha ha ha ha!" to that extent as he pointed them out that i really thought he would have hurt himself. "but this is taking a good deal of trouble," said mr. skimpole in his light way, "when you are not in earnest after all." "not in earnest!" returned mr. boythorn with unspeakable warmth. "not in earnest! if i could have hoped to train him, i would have bought a lion instead of that dog and would have turned him loose upon the first intolerable robber who should dare to make an encroachment on my rights. let sir leicester dedlock consent to come out and decide this question by single combat, and i will meet him with any weapon known to mankind in any age or country. i am that much in earnest. not more!" we arrived at his house on a saturday. on the sunday morning we all set forth to walk to the little church in the park. entering the park, almost immediately by the disputed ground, we pursued a pleasant footpath winding among the verdant turf and the beautiful trees until it brought us to the church-porch. the congregation was extremely small and quite a rustic one with the exception of a large muster of servants from the house, some of whom were already in their seats, while others were yet dropping in. there were some stately footmen, and there was a perfect picture of an old coachman, who looked as if he were the official representative of all the pomps and vanities that had ever been put into his coach. there was a very pretty show of young women, and above them, the handsome old face and fine responsible portly figure of the housekeeper towered pre-eminent. the pretty girl of whom mr. boythorn had told us was close by her. she was so very pretty that i might have known her by her beauty even if i had not seen how blushingly conscious she was of the eyes of the young fisherman, whom i discovered not far off. one face, and not an agreeable one, though it was handsome, seemed maliciously watchful of this pretty girl, and indeed of every one and everything there. it was a frenchwoman's. as the bell was yet ringing and the great people were not yet come, i had leisure to glance over the church, which smelt as earthy as a grave, and to think what a shady, ancient, solemn little church it was. the windows, heavily shaded by trees, admitted a subdued light that made the faces around me pale, and darkened the old brasses in the pavement and the time and damp-worn monuments, and rendered the sunshine in the little porch, where a monotonous ringer was working at the bell, inestimably bright. but a stir in that direction, a gathering of reverential awe in the rustic faces, and a blandly ferocious assumption on the part of mr. boythorn of being resolutely unconscious of somebody's existence forewarned me that the great people were come and that the service was going to begin. "'enter not into judgment with thy servant, o lord, for in thy sight--'" shall i ever forget the rapid beating at my heart, occasioned by the look i met as i stood up! shall i ever forget the manner in which those handsome proud eyes seemed to spring out of their languor and to hold mine! it was only a moment before i cast mine down--released again, if i may say so--on my book; but i knew the beautiful face quite well in that short space of time. and, very strangely, there was something quickened within me, associated with the lonely days at my godmother's; yes, away even to the days when i had stood on tiptoe to dress myself at my little glass after dressing my doll. and this, although i had never seen this lady's face before in all my life--i was quite sure of it--absolutely certain. it was easy to know that the ceremonious, gouty, grey-haired gentleman, the only other occupant of the great pew, was sir leicester dedlock, and that the lady was lady dedlock. but why her face should be, in a confused way, like a broken glass to me, in which i saw scraps of old remembrances, and why i should be so fluttered and troubled (for i was still) by having casually met her eyes, i could not think. i felt it to be an unmeaning weakness in me and tried to overcome it by attending to the words i heard. then, very strangely, i seemed to hear them, not in the reader's voice, but in the well-remembered voice of my godmother. this made me think, did lady dedlock's face accidentally resemble my godmother's? it might be that it did, a little; but the expression was so different, and the stern decision which had worn into my godmother's face, like weather into rocks, was so completely wanting in the face before me that it could not be that resemblance which had struck me. neither did i know the loftiness and haughtiness of lady dedlock's face, at all, in any one. and yet i--i, little esther summerson, the child who lived a life apart and on whose birthday there was no rejoicing--seemed to arise before my own eyes, evoked out of the past by some power in this fashionable lady, whom i not only entertained no fancy that i had ever seen, but whom i perfectly well knew i had never seen until that hour. it made me tremble so to be thrown into this unaccountable agitation that i was conscious of being distressed even by the observation of the french maid, though i knew she had been looking watchfully here, and there, and everywhere, from the moment of her coming into the church. by degrees, though very slowly, i at last overcame my strange emotion. after a long time, i looked towards lady dedlock again. it was while they were preparing to sing, before the sermon. she took no heed of me, and the beating at my heart was gone. neither did it revive for more than a few moments when she once or twice afterwards glanced at ada or at me through her glass. the service being concluded, sir leicester gave his arm with much taste and gallantry to lady dedlock--though he was obliged to walk by the help of a thick stick--and escorted her out of church to the pony carriage in which they had come. the servants then dispersed, and so did the congregation, whom sir leicester had contemplated all along (mr. skimpole said to mr. boythorn's infinite delight) as if he were a considerable landed proprietor in heaven. "he believes he is!" said mr. boythorn. "he firmly believes it. so did his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather!" "do you know," pursued mr. skimpole very unexpectedly to mr. boythorn, "it's agreeable to me to see a man of that sort." "is it!" said mr. boythorn. "say that he wants to patronize me," pursued mr. skimpole. "very well! i don't object." "i do," said mr. boythorn with great vigour. "do you really?" returned mr. skimpole in his easy light vein. "but that's taking trouble, surely. and why should you take trouble? here am i, content to receive things childishly as they fall out, and i never take trouble! i come down here, for instance, and i find a mighty potentate exacting homage. very well! i say 'mighty potentate, here is my homage! it's easier to give it than to withhold it. here it is. if you have anything of an agreeable nature to show me, i shall be happy to see it; if you have anything of an agreeable nature to give me, i shall be happy to accept it.' mighty potentate replies in effect, 'this is a sensible fellow. i find him accord with my digestion and my bilious system. he doesn't impose upon me the necessity of rolling myself up like a hedgehog with my points outward. i expand, i open, i turn my silver lining outward like milton's cloud, and it's more agreeable to both of us.' that's my view of such things, speaking as a child!" "but suppose you went down somewhere else to-morrow," said mr. boythorn, "where there was the opposite of that fellow--or of this fellow. how then?" "how then?" said mr. skimpole with an appearance of the utmost simplicity and candour. "just the same then! i should say, 'my esteemed boythorn'--to make you the personification of our imaginary friend--'my esteemed boythorn, you object to the mighty potentate? very good. so do i. i take it that my business in the social system is to be agreeable; i take it that everybody's business in the social system is to be agreeable. it's a system of harmony, in short. therefore if you object, i object. now, excellent boythorn, let us go to dinner!'" "but excellent boythorn might say," returned our host, swelling and growing very red, "i'll be--" "i understand," said mr. skimpole. "very likely he would." "--if i will go to dinner!" cried mr. boythorn in a violent burst and stopping to strike his stick upon the ground. "and he would probably add, 'is there such a thing as principle, mr. harold skimpole?'" "to which harold skimpole would reply, you know," he returned in his gayest manner and with his most ingenuous smile, "'upon my life i have not the least idea! i don't know what it is you call by that name, or where it is, or who possesses it. if you possess it and find it comfortable, i am quite delighted and congratulate you heartily. but i know nothing about it, i assure you; for i am a mere child, and i lay no claim to it, and i don't want it!' so, you see, excellent boythorn and i would go to dinner after all!" this was one of many little dialogues between them which i always expected to end, and which i dare say would have ended under other circumstances, in some violent explosion on the part of our host. but he had so high a sense of his hospitable and responsible position as our entertainer, and my guardian laughed so sincerely at and with mr. skimpole, as a child who blew bubbles and broke them all day long, that matters never went beyond this point. mr. skimpole, who always seemed quite unconscious of having been on delicate ground, then betook himself to beginning some sketch in the park which he never finished, or to playing fragments of airs on the piano, or to singing scraps of songs, or to lying down on his back under a tree and looking at the sky--which he couldn't help thinking, he said, was what he was meant for; it suited him so exactly. "enterprise and effort," he would say to us (on his back), "are delightful to me. i believe i am truly cosmopolitan. i have the deepest sympathy with them. i lie in a shady place like this and think of adventurous spirits going to the north pole or penetrating to the heart of the torrid zone with admiration. mercenary creatures ask, 'what is the use of a man's going to the north pole? what good does it do?' i can't say; but, for anything i can say, he may go for the purpose--though he don't know it--of employing my thoughts as i lie here. take an extreme case. take the case of the slaves on american plantations. i dare say they are worked hard, i dare say they don't altogether like it. i dare say theirs is an unpleasant experience on the whole; but they people the landscape for me, they give it a poetry for me, and perhaps that is one of the pleasanter objects of their existence. i am very sensible of it, if it be, and i shouldn't wonder if it were!" i always wondered on these occasions whether he ever thought of mrs. skimpole and the children, and in what point of view they presented themselves to his cosmopolitan mind. so far as i could understand, they rarely presented themselves at all. the week had gone round to the saturday following that beating of my heart in the church; and every day had been so bright and blue that to ramble in the woods, and to see the light striking down among the transparent leaves and sparkling in the beautiful interlacings of the shadows of the trees, while the birds poured out their songs and the air was drowsy with the hum of insects, had been most delightful. we had one favourite spot, deep in moss and last year's leaves, where there were some felled trees from which the bark was all stripped off. seated among these, we looked through a green vista supported by thousands of natural columns, the whitened stems of trees, upon a distant prospect made so radiant by its contrast with the shade in which we sat and made so precious by the arched perspective through which we saw it that it was like a glimpse of the better land. upon the saturday we sat here, mr. jarndyce, ada, and i, until we heard thunder muttering in the distance and felt the large raindrops rattle through the leaves. the weather had been all the week extremely sultry, but the storm broke so suddenly--upon us, at least, in that sheltered spot--that before we reached the outskirts of the wood the thunder and lightning were frequent and the rain came plunging through the leaves as if every drop were a great leaden bead. as it was not a time for standing among trees, we ran out of the wood, and up and down the moss-grown steps which crossed the plantation-fence like two broad-staved ladders placed back to back, and made for a keeper's lodge which was close at hand. we had often noticed the dark beauty of this lodge standing in a deep twilight of trees, and how the ivy clustered over it, and how there was a steep hollow near, where we had once seen the keeper's dog dive down into the fern as if it were water. the lodge was so dark within, now the sky was overcast, that we only clearly saw the man who came to the door when we took shelter there and put two chairs for ada and me. the lattice-windows were all thrown open, and we sat just within the doorway watching the storm. it was grand to see how the wind awoke, and bent the trees, and drove the rain before it like a cloud of smoke; and to hear the solemn thunder and to see the lightning; and while thinking with awe of the tremendous powers by which our little lives are encompassed, to consider how beneficent they are and how upon the smallest flower and leaf there was already a freshness poured from all this seeming rage which seemed to make creation new again. "is it not dangerous to sit in so exposed a place?" "oh, no, esther dear!" said ada quietly. ada said it to me, but i had not spoken. the beating of my heart came back again. i had never heard the voice, as i had never seen the face, but it affected me in the same strange way. again, in a moment, there arose before my mind innumerable pictures of myself. lady dedlock had taken shelter in the lodge before our arrival there and had come out of the gloom within. she stood behind my chair with her hand upon it. i saw her with her hand close to my shoulder when i turned my head. "i have frightened you?" she said. no. it was not fright. why should i be frightened! "i believe," said lady dedlock to my guardian, "i have the pleasure of speaking to mr. jarndyce." "your remembrance does me more honour than i had supposed it would, lady dedlock," he returned. "i recognized you in church on sunday. i am sorry that any local disputes of sir leicester's--they are not of his seeking, however, i believe--should render it a matter of some absurd difficulty to show you any attention here." "i am aware of the circumstances," returned my guardian with a smile, "and am sufficiently obliged." she had given him her hand in an indifferent way that seemed habitual to her and spoke in a correspondingly indifferent manner, though in a very pleasant voice. she was as graceful as she was beautiful, perfectly self-possessed, and had the air, i thought, of being able to attract and interest any one if she had thought it worth her while. the keeper had brought her a chair on which she sat in the middle of the porch between us. "is the young gentleman disposed of whom you wrote to sir leicester about and whose wishes sir leicester was sorry not to have it in his power to advance in any way?" she said over her shoulder to my guardian. "i hope so," said he. she seemed to respect him and even to wish to conciliate him. there was something very winning in her haughty manner, and it became more familiar--i was going to say more easy, but that could hardly be--as she spoke to him over her shoulder. "i presume this is your other ward, miss clare?" he presented ada, in form. "you will lose the disinterested part of your don quixote character," said lady dedlock to mr. jarndyce over her shoulder again, "if you only redress the wrongs of beauty like this. but present me," and she turned full upon me, "to this young lady too!" "miss summerson really is my ward," said mr. jarndyce. "i am responsible to no lord chancellor in her case." "has miss summerson lost both her parents?" said my lady. "yes." "she is very fortunate in her guardian." lady dedlock looked at me, and i looked at her and said i was indeed. all at once she turned from me with a hasty air, almost expressive of displeasure or dislike, and spoke to him over her shoulder again. "ages have passed since we were in the habit of meeting, mr. jarndyce." "a long time. at least i thought it was a long time, until i saw you last sunday," he returned. "what! even you are a courtier, or think it necessary to become one to me!" she said with some disdain. "i have achieved that reputation, i suppose." "you have achieved so much, lady dedlock," said my guardian, "that you pay some little penalty, i dare say. but none to me." "so much!" she repeated, slightly laughing. "yes!" with her air of superiority, and power, and fascination, and i know not what, she seemed to regard ada and me as little more than children. so, as she slightly laughed and afterwards sat looking at the rain, she was as self-possessed and as free to occupy herself with her own thoughts as if she had been alone. "i think you knew my sister when we were abroad together better than you know me?" she said, looking at him again. "yes, we happened to meet oftener," he returned. "we went our several ways," said lady dedlock, "and had little in common even before we agreed to differ. it is to be regretted, i suppose, but it could not be helped." lady dedlock again sat looking at the rain. the storm soon began to pass upon its way. the shower greatly abated, the lightning ceased, the thunder rolled among the distant hills, and the sun began to glisten on the wet leaves and the falling rain. as we sat there, silently, we saw a little pony phaeton coming towards us at a merry pace. "the messenger is coming back, my lady," said the keeper, "with the carriage." as it drove up, we saw that there were two people inside. there alighted from it, with some cloaks and wrappers, first the frenchwoman whom i had seen in church, and secondly the pretty girl, the frenchwoman with a defiant confidence, the pretty girl confused and hesitating. "what now?" said lady dedlock. "two!" "i am your maid, my lady, at the present," said the frenchwoman. "the message was for the attendant." "i was afraid you might mean me, my lady," said the pretty girl. "i did mean you, child," replied her mistress calmly. "put that shawl on me." she slightly stooped her shoulders to receive it, and the pretty girl lightly dropped it in its place. the frenchwoman stood unnoticed, looking on with her lips very tightly set. "i am sorry," said lady dedlock to mr. jarndyce, "that we are not likely to renew our former acquaintance. you will allow me to send the carriage back for your two wards. it shall be here directly." but as he would on no account accept this offer, she took a graceful leave of ada--none of me--and put her hand upon his proffered arm, and got into the carriage, which was a little, low, park carriage with a hood. "come in, child," she said to the pretty girl; "i shall want you. go on!" the carriage rolled away, and the frenchwoman, with the wrappers she had brought hanging over her arm, remained standing where she had alighted. i suppose there is nothing pride can so little bear with as pride itself, and that she was punished for her imperious manner. her retaliation was the most singular i could have imagined. she remained perfectly still until the carriage had turned into the drive, and then, without the least discomposure of countenance, slipped off her shoes, left them on the ground, and walked deliberately in the same direction through the wettest of the wet grass. "is that young woman mad?" said my guardian. "oh, no, sir!" said the keeper, who, with his wife, was looking after her. "hortense is not one of that sort. she has as good a head-piece as the best. but she's mortal high and passionate--powerful high and passionate; and what with having notice to leave, and having others put above her, she don't take kindly to it." "but why should she walk shoeless through all that water?" said my guardian. "why, indeed, sir, unless it is to cool her down!" said the man. "or unless she fancies it's blood," said the woman. "she'd as soon walk through that as anything else, i think, when her own's up!" we passed not far from the house a few minutes afterwards. peaceful as it had looked when we first saw it, it looked even more so now, with a diamond spray glittering all about it, a light wind blowing, the birds no longer hushed but singing strongly, everything refreshed by the late rain, and the little carriage shining at the doorway like a fairy carriage made of silver. still, very steadfastly and quietly walking towards it, a peaceful figure too in the landscape, went mademoiselle hortense, shoeless, through the wet grass. chapter xix moving on it is the long vacation in the regions of chancery lane. the good ships law and equity, those teak-built, copper-bottomed, iron-fastened, brazen-faced, and not by any means fast-sailing clippers are laid up in ordinary. the flying dutchman, with a crew of ghostly clients imploring all whom they may encounter to peruse their papers, has drifted, for the time being, heaven knows where. the courts are all shut up; the public offices lie in a hot sleep. westminster hall itself is a shady solitude where nightingales might sing, and a tenderer class of suitors than is usually found there, walk. the temple, chancery lane, serjeants' inn, and lincoln's inn even unto the fields are like tidal harbours at low water, where stranded proceedings, offices at anchor, idle clerks lounging on lop-sided stools that will not recover their perpendicular until the current of term sets in, lie high and dry upon the ooze of the long vacation. outer doors of chambers are shut up by the score, messages and parcels are to be left at the porter's lodge by the bushel. a crop of grass would grow in the chinks of the stone pavement outside lincoln's inn hall, but that the ticket-porters, who have nothing to do beyond sitting in the shade there, with their white aprons over their heads to keep the flies off, grub it up and eat it thoughtfully. there is only one judge in town. even he only comes twice a week to sit in chambers. if the country folks of those assize towns on his circuit could see him now! no full-bottomed wig, no red petticoats, no fur, no javelin-men, no white wands. merely a close-shaved gentleman in white trousers and a white hat, with sea-bronze on the judicial countenance, and a strip of bark peeled by the solar rays from the judicial nose, who calls in at the shell-fish shop as he comes along and drinks iced ginger-beer! the bar of england is scattered over the face of the earth. how england can get on through four long summer months without its bar--which is its acknowledged refuge in adversity and its only legitimate triumph in prosperity--is beside the question; assuredly that shield and buckler of britannia are not in present wear. the learned gentleman who is always so tremendously indignant at the unprecedented outrage committed on the feelings of his client by the opposite party that he never seems likely to recover it is doing infinitely better than might be expected in switzerland. the learned gentleman who does the withering business and who blights all opponents with his gloomy sarcasm is as merry as a grig at a french watering-place. the learned gentleman who weeps by the pint on the smallest provocation has not shed a tear these six weeks. the very learned gentleman who has cooled the natural heat of his gingery complexion in pools and fountains of law until he has become great in knotty arguments for term-time, when he poses the drowsy bench with legal "chaff," inexplicable to the uninitiated and to most of the initiated too, is roaming, with a characteristic delight in aridity and dust, about constantinople. other dispersed fragments of the same great palladium are to be found on the canals of venice, at the second cataract of the nile, in the baths of germany, and sprinkled on the sea-sand all over the english coast. scarcely one is to be encountered in the deserted region of chancery lane. if such a lonely member of the bar do flit across the waste and come upon a prowling suitor who is unable to leave off haunting the scenes of his anxiety, they frighten one another and retreat into opposite shades. it is the hottest long vacation known for many years. all the young clerks are madly in love, and according to their various degrees, pine for bliss with the beloved object, at margate, ramsgate, or gravesend. all the middle-aged clerks think their families too large. all the unowned dogs who stray into the inns of court and pant about staircases and other dry places seeking water give short howls of aggravation. all the blind men's dogs in the streets draw their masters against pumps or trip them over buckets. a shop with a sun-blind, and a watered pavement, and a bowl of gold and silver fish in the window, is a sanctuary. temple bar gets so hot that it is, to the adjacent strand and fleet street, what a heater is in an urn, and keeps them simmering all night. there are offices about the inns of court in which a man might be cool, if any coolness were worth purchasing at such a price in dullness; but the little thoroughfares immediately outside those retirements seem to blaze. in mr. krook's court, it is so hot that the people turn their houses inside out and sit in chairs upon the pavement--mr. krook included, who there pursues his studies, with his cat (who never is too hot) by his side. the sol's arms has discontinued the harmonic meetings for the season, and little swills is engaged at the pastoral gardens down the river, where he comes out in quite an innocent manner and sings comic ditties of a juvenile complexion calculated (as the bill says) not to wound the feelings of the most fastidious mind. over all the legal neighbourhood there hangs, like some great veil of rust or gigantic cobweb, the idleness and pensiveness of the long vacation. mr. snagsby, law-stationer of cook's court, cursitor street, is sensible of the influence not only in his mind as a sympathetic and contemplative man, but also in his business as a law-stationer aforesaid. he has more leisure for musing in staple inn and in the rolls yard during the long vacation than at other seasons, and he says to the two 'prentices, what a thing it is in such hot weather to think that you live in an island with the sea a-rolling and a-bowling right round you. guster is busy in the little drawing-room on this present afternoon in the long vacation, when mr. and mrs. snagsby have it in contemplation to receive company. the expected guests are rather select than numerous, being mr. and mrs. chadband and no more. from mr. chadband's being much given to describe himself, both verbally and in writing, as a vessel, he is occasionally mistaken by strangers for a gentleman connected with navigation, but he is, as he expresses it, "in the ministry." mr. chadband is attached to no particular denomination and is considered by his persecutors to have nothing so very remarkable to say on the greatest of subjects as to render his volunteering, on his own account, at all incumbent on his conscience; but he has his followers, and mrs. snagsby is of the number. mrs. snagsby has but recently taken a passage upward by the vessel, chadband; and her attention was attracted to that bark a , when she was something flushed by the hot weather. "my little woman," says mr. snagsby to the sparrows in staple inn, "likes to have her religion rather sharp, you see!" so guster, much impressed by regarding herself for the time as the handmaid of chadband, whom she knows to be endowed with the gift of holding forth for four hours at a stretch, prepares the little drawing-room for tea. all the furniture is shaken and dusted, the portraits of mr. and mrs. snagsby are touched up with a wet cloth, the best tea-service is set forth, and there is excellent provision made of dainty new bread, crusty twists, cool fresh butter, thin slices of ham, tongue, and german sausage, and delicate little rows of anchovies nestling in parsley, not to mention new-laid eggs, to be brought up warm in a napkin, and hot buttered toast. for chadband is rather a consuming vessel--the persecutors say a gorging vessel--and can wield such weapons of the flesh as a knife and fork remarkably well. mr. snagsby in his best coat, looking at all the preparations when they are completed and coughing his cough of deference behind his hand, says to mrs. snagsby, "at what time did you expect mr. and mrs. chadband, my love?" "at six," says mrs. snagsby. mr. snagsby observes in a mild and casual way that "it's gone that." "perhaps you'd like to begin without them," is mrs. snagsby's reproachful remark. mr. snagsby does look as if he would like it very much, but he says, with his cough of mildness, "no, my dear, no. i merely named the time." "what's time," says mrs. snagsby, "to eternity?" "very true, my dear," says mr. snagsby. "only when a person lays in victuals for tea, a person does it with a view--perhaps--more to time. and when a time is named for having tea, it's better to come up to it." "to come up to it!" mrs. snagsby repeats with severity. "up to it! as if mr. chadband was a fighter!" "not at all, my dear," says mr. snagsby. here, guster, who had been looking out of the bedroom window, comes rustling and scratching down the little staircase like a popular ghost, and falling flushed into the drawing-room, announces that mr. and mrs. chadband have appeared in the court. the bell at the inner door in the passage immediately thereafter tinkling, she is admonished by mrs. snagsby, on pain of instant reconsignment to her patron saint, not to omit the ceremony of announcement. much discomposed in her nerves (which were previously in the best order) by this threat, she so fearfully mutilates that point of state as to announce "mr. and mrs. cheeseming, least which, imeantersay, whatsername!" and retires conscience-stricken from the presence. mr. chadband is a large yellow man with a fat smile and a general appearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system. mrs. chadband is a stern, severe-looking, silent woman. mr. chadband moves softly and cumbrously, not unlike a bear who has been taught to walk upright. he is very much embarrassed about the arms, as if they were inconvenient to him and he wanted to grovel, is very much in a perspiration about the head, and never speaks without first putting up his great hand, as delivering a token to his hearers that he is going to edify them. "my friends," says mr. chadband, "peace be on this house! on the master thereof, on the mistress thereof, on the young maidens, and on the young men! my friends, why do i wish for peace? what is peace? is it war? no. is it strife? no. is it lovely, and gentle, and beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? oh, yes! therefore, my friends, i wish for peace, upon you and upon yours." in consequence of mrs. snagsby looking deeply edified, mr. snagsby thinks it expedient on the whole to say amen, which is well received. "now, my friends," proceeds mr. chadband, "since i am upon this theme--" guster presents herself. mrs. snagsby, in a spectral bass voice and without removing her eyes from chadband, says with dreadful distinctness, "go away!" "now, my friends," says chadband, "since i am upon this theme, and in my lowly path improving it--" guster is heard unaccountably to murmur "one thousing seven hundred and eighty-two." the spectral voice repeats more solemnly, "go away!" "now, my friends," says mr. chadband, "we will inquire in a spirit of love--" still guster reiterates "one thousing seven hundred and eighty-two." mr. chadband, pausing with the resignation of a man accustomed to be persecuted and languidly folding up his chin into his fat smile, says, "let us hear the maiden! speak, maiden!" "one thousing seven hundred and eighty-two, if you please, sir. which he wish to know what the shilling ware for," says guster, breathless. "for?" returns mrs. chadband. "for his fare!" guster replied that "he insistes on one and eightpence or on summonsizzing the party." mrs. snagsby and mrs. chadband are proceeding to grow shrill in indignation when mr. chadband quiets the tumult by lifting up his hand. "my friends," says he, "i remember a duty unfulfilled yesterday. it is right that i should be chastened in some penalty. i ought not to murmur. rachael, pay the eightpence!" while mrs. snagsby, drawing her breath, looks hard at mr. snagsby, as who should say, "you hear this apostle!" and while mr. chadband glows with humility and train oil, mrs. chadband pays the money. it is mr. chadband's habit--it is the head and front of his pretensions indeed--to keep this sort of debtor and creditor account in the smallest items and to post it publicly on the most trivial occasions. "my friends," says chadband, "eightpence is not much; it might justly have been one and fourpence; it might justly have been half a crown. o let us be joyful, joyful! o let us be joyful!" with which remark, which appears from its sound to be an extract in verse, mr. chadband stalks to the table, and before taking a chair, lifts up his admonitory hand. "my friends," says he, "what is this which we now behold as being spread before us? refreshment. do we need refreshment then, my friends? we do. and why do we need refreshment, my friends? because we are but mortal, because we are but sinful, because we are but of the earth, because we are not of the air. can we fly, my friends? we cannot. why can we not fly, my friends?" mr. snagsby, presuming on the success of his last point, ventures to observe in a cheerful and rather knowing tone, "no wings." but is immediately frowned down by mrs. snagsby. "i say, my friends," pursues mr. chadband, utterly rejecting and obliterating mr. snagsby's suggestion, "why can we not fly? is it because we are calculated to walk? it is. could we walk, my friends, without strength? we could not. what should we do without strength, my friends? our legs would refuse to bear us, our knees would double up, our ankles would turn over, and we should come to the ground. then from whence, my friends, in a human point of view, do we derive the strength that is necessary to our limbs? is it," says chadband, glancing over the table, "from bread in various forms, from butter which is churned from the milk which is yielded unto us by the cow, from the eggs which are laid by the fowl, from ham, from tongue, from sausage, and from such like? it is. then let us partake of the good things which are set before us!" the persecutors denied that there was any particular gift in mr. chadband's piling verbose flights of stairs, one upon another, after this fashion. but this can only be received as a proof of their determination to persecute, since it must be within everybody's experience that the chadband style of oratory is widely received and much admired. mr. chadband, however, having concluded for the present, sits down at mr. snagsby's table and lays about him prodigiously. the conversion of nutriment of any sort into oil of the quality already mentioned appears to be a process so inseparable from the constitution of this exemplary vessel that in beginning to eat and drink, he may be described as always becoming a kind of considerable oil mills or other large factory for the production of that article on a wholesale scale. on the present evening of the long vacation, in cook's court, cursitor street, he does such a powerful stroke of business that the warehouse appears to be quite full when the works cease. at this period of the entertainment, guster, who has never recovered her first failure, but has neglected no possible or impossible means of bringing the establishment and herself into contempt--among which may be briefly enumerated her unexpectedly performing clashing military music on mr. chadband's head with plates, and afterwards crowning that gentleman with muffins--at which period of the entertainment, guster whispers mr. snagsby that he is wanted. "and being wanted in the--not to put too fine a point upon it--in the shop," says mr. snagsby, rising, "perhaps this good company will excuse me for half a minute." mr. snagsby descends and finds the two 'prentices intently contemplating a police constable, who holds a ragged boy by the arm. "why, bless my heart," says mr. snagsby, "what's the matter!" "this boy," says the constable, "although he's repeatedly told to, won't move on--" "i'm always a-moving on, sar," cries the boy, wiping away his grimy tears with his arm. "i've always been a-moving and a-moving on, ever since i was born. where can i possibly move to, sir, more nor i do move!" "he won't move on," says the constable calmly, with a slight professional hitch of his neck involving its better settlement in his stiff stock, "although he has been repeatedly cautioned, and therefore i am obliged to take him into custody. he's as obstinate a young gonoph as i know. he won't move on." "oh, my eye! where can i move to!" cries the boy, clutching quite desperately at his hair and beating his bare feet upon the floor of mr. snagsby's passage. "don't you come none of that or i shall make blessed short work of you!" says the constable, giving him a passionless shake. "my instructions are that you are to move on. i have told you so five hundred times." "but where?" cries the boy. "well! really, constable, you know," says mr. snagsby wistfully, and coughing behind his hand his cough of great perplexity and doubt, "really, that does seem a question. where, you know?" "my instructions don't go to that," replies the constable. "my instructions are that this boy is to move on." do you hear, jo? it is nothing to you or to any one else that the great lights of the parliamentary sky have failed for some few years in this business to set you the example of moving on. the one grand recipe remains for you--the profound philosophical prescription--the be-all and the end-all of your strange existence upon earth. move on! you are by no means to move off, jo, for the great lights can't at all agree about that. move on! mr. snagsby says nothing to this effect, says nothing at all indeed, but coughs his forlornest cough, expressive of no thoroughfare in any direction. by this time mr. and mrs. chadband and mrs. snagsby, hearing the altercation, have appeared upon the stairs. guster having never left the end of the passage, the whole household are assembled. "the simple question is, sir," says the constable, "whether you know this boy. he says you do." mrs. snagsby, from her elevation, instantly cries out, "no he don't!" "my lit-tle woman!" says mr. snagsby, looking up the staircase. "my love, permit me! pray have a moment's patience, my dear. i do know something of this lad, and in what i know of him, i can't say that there's any harm; perhaps on the contrary, constable." to whom the law-stationer relates his joful and woeful experience, suppressing the half-crown fact. "well!" says the constable, "so far, it seems, he had grounds for what he said. when i took him into custody up in holborn, he said you knew him. upon that, a young man who was in the crowd said he was acquainted with you, and you were a respectable housekeeper, and if i'd call and make the inquiry, he'd appear. the young man don't seem inclined to keep his word, but--oh! here is the young man!" enter mr. guppy, who nods to mr. snagsby and touches his hat with the chivalry of clerkship to the ladies on the stairs. "i was strolling away from the office just now when i found this row going on," says mr. guppy to the law-stationer, "and as your name was mentioned, i thought it was right the thing should be looked into." "it was very good-natured of you, sir," says mr. snagsby, "and i am obliged to you." and mr. snagsby again relates his experience, again suppressing the half-crown fact. "now, i know where you live," says the constable, then, to jo. "you live down in tom-all-alone's. that's a nice innocent place to live in, ain't it?" "i can't go and live in no nicer place, sir," replies jo. "they wouldn't have nothink to say to me if i wos to go to a nice innocent place fur to live. who ud go and let a nice innocent lodging to such a reg'lar one as me!" "you are very poor, ain't you?" says the constable. "yes, i am indeed, sir, wery poor in gin'ral," replies jo. "i leave you to judge now! i shook these two half-crowns out of him," says the constable, producing them to the company, "in only putting my hand upon him!" "they're wot's left, mr. snagsby," says jo, "out of a sov-ring as wos give me by a lady in a wale as sed she wos a servant and as come to my crossin one night and asked to be showd this 'ere ouse and the ouse wot him as you giv the writin to died at, and the berrin-ground wot he's berrid in. she ses to me she ses 'are you the boy at the inkwhich?' she ses. i ses 'yes' i ses. she ses to me she ses 'can you show me all them places?' i ses 'yes i can' i ses. and she ses to me 'do it' and i dun it and she giv me a sov'ring and hooked it. and i an't had much of the sov'ring neither," says jo, with dirty tears, "fur i had to pay five bob, down in tom-all-alone's, afore they'd square it fur to give me change, and then a young man he thieved another five while i was asleep and another boy he thieved ninepence and the landlord he stood drains round with a lot more on it." "you don't expect anybody to believe this, about the lady and the sovereign, do you?" says the constable, eyeing him aside with ineffable disdain. "i don't know as i do, sir," replies jo. "i don't expect nothink at all, sir, much, but that's the true hist'ry on it." "you see what he is!" the constable observes to the audience. "well, mr. snagsby, if i don't lock him up this time, will you engage for his moving on?" "no!" cries mrs. snagsby from the stairs. "my little woman!" pleads her husband. "constable, i have no doubt he'll move on. you know you really must do it," says mr. snagsby. "i'm everyways agreeable, sir," says the hapless jo. "do it, then," observes the constable. "you know what you have got to do. do it! and recollect you won't get off so easy next time. catch hold of your money. now, the sooner you're five mile off, the better for all parties." with this farewell hint and pointing generally to the setting sun as a likely place to move on to, the constable bids his auditors good afternoon and makes the echoes of cook's court perform slow music for him as he walks away on the shady side, carrying his iron-bound hat in his hand for a little ventilation. now, jo's improbable story concerning the lady and the sovereign has awakened more or less the curiosity of all the company. mr. guppy, who has an inquiring mind in matters of evidence and who has been suffering severely from the lassitude of the long vacation, takes that interest in the case that he enters on a regular cross-examination of the witness, which is found so interesting by the ladies that mrs. snagsby politely invites him to step upstairs and drink a cup of tea, if he will excuse the disarranged state of the tea-table, consequent on their previous exertions. mr. guppy yielding his assent to this proposal, jo is requested to follow into the drawing-room doorway, where mr. guppy takes him in hand as a witness, patting him into this shape, that shape, and the other shape like a butterman dealing with so much butter, and worrying him according to the best models. nor is the examination unlike many such model displays, both in respect of its eliciting nothing and of its being lengthy, for mr. guppy is sensible of his talent, and mrs. snagsby feels not only that it gratifies her inquisitive disposition, but that it lifts her husband's establishment higher up in the law. during the progress of this keen encounter, the vessel chadband, being merely engaged in the oil trade, gets aground and waits to be floated off. "well!" says mr. guppy. "either this boy sticks to it like cobbler's-wax or there is something out of the common here that beats anything that ever came into my way at kenge and carboy's." mrs. chadband whispers mrs. snagsby, who exclaims, "you don't say so!" "for years!" replied mrs. chadband. "has known kenge and carboy's office for years," mrs. snagsby triumphantly explains to mr. guppy. "mrs. chadband--this gentleman's wife--reverend mr. chadband." "oh, indeed!" says mr. guppy. "before i married my present husband," says mrs. chadband. "was you a party in anything, ma'am?" says mr. guppy, transferring his cross-examination. "no." "not a party in anything, ma'am?" says mr. guppy. mrs. chadband shakes her head. "perhaps you were acquainted with somebody who was a party in something, ma'am?" says mr. guppy, who likes nothing better than to model his conversation on forensic principles. "not exactly that, either," replies mrs. chadband, humouring the joke with a hard-favoured smile. "not exactly that, either!" repeats mr. guppy. "very good. pray, ma'am, was it a lady of your acquaintance who had some transactions (we will not at present say what transactions) with kenge and carboy's office, or was it a gentleman of your acquaintance? take time, ma'am. we shall come to it presently. man or woman, ma'am?" "neither," says mrs. chadband as before. "oh! a child!" says mr. guppy, throwing on the admiring mrs. snagsby the regular acute professional eye which is thrown on british jurymen. "now, ma'am, perhaps you'll have the kindness to tell us what child." "you have got it at last, sir," says mrs. chadband with another hard-favoured smile. "well, sir, it was before your time, most likely, judging from your appearance. i was left in charge of a child named esther summerson, who was put out in life by messrs. kenge and carboy." "miss summerson, ma'am!" cries mr. guppy, excited. "i call her esther summerson," says mrs. chadband with austerity. "there was no miss-ing of the girl in my time. it was esther. 'esther, do this! esther, do that!' and she was made to do it." "my dear ma'am," returns mr. guppy, moving across the small apartment, "the humble individual who now addresses you received that young lady in london when she first came here from the establishment to which you have alluded. allow me to have the pleasure of taking you by the hand." mr. chadband, at last seeing his opportunity, makes his accustomed signal and rises with a smoking head, which he dabs with his pocket-handkerchief. mrs. snagsby whispers "hush!" "my friends," says chadband, "we have partaken in moderation" (which was certainly not the case so far as he was concerned) "of the comforts which have been provided for us. may this house live upon the fatness of the land; may corn and wine be plentiful therein; may it grow, may it thrive, may it prosper, may it advance, may it proceed, may it press forward! but, my friends, have we partaken of anything else? we have. my friends, of what else have we partaken? of spiritual profit? yes. from whence have we derived that spiritual profit? my young friend, stand forth!" jo, thus apostrophized, gives a slouch backward, and another slouch forward, and another slouch to each side, and confronts the eloquent chadband with evident doubts of his intentions. "my young friend," says chadband, "you are to us a pearl, you are to us a diamond, you are to us a gem, you are to us a jewel. and why, my young friend?" "i don't know," replies jo. "i don't know nothink." "my young friend," says chadband, "it is because you know nothing that you are to us a gem and jewel. for what are you, my young friend? are you a beast of the field? no. a bird of the air? no. a fish of the sea or river? no. you are a human boy, my young friend. a human boy. o glorious to be a human boy! and why glorious, my young friend? because you are capable of receiving the lessons of wisdom, because you are capable of profiting by this discourse which i now deliver for your good, because you are not a stick, or a staff, or a stock, or a stone, or a post, or a pillar. o running stream of sparkling joy to be a soaring human boy! and do you cool yourself in that stream now, my young friend? no. why do you not cool yourself in that stream now? because you are in a state of darkness, because you are in a state of obscurity, because you are in a state of sinfulness, because you are in a state of bondage. my young friend, what is bondage? let us, in a spirit of love, inquire." at this threatening stage of the discourse, jo, who seems to have been gradually going out of his mind, smears his right arm over his face and gives a terrible yawn. mrs. snagsby indignantly expresses her belief that he is a limb of the arch-fiend. "my friends," says mr. chadband with his persecuted chin folding itself into its fat smile again as he looks round, "it is right that i should be humbled, it is right that i should be tried, it is right that i should be mortified, it is right that i should be corrected. i stumbled, on sabbath last, when i thought with pride of my three hours' improving. the account is now favourably balanced: my creditor has accepted a composition. o let us be joyful, joyful! o let us be joyful!" great sensation on the part of mrs. snagsby. "my friends," says chadband, looking round him in conclusion, "i will not proceed with my young friend now. will you come to-morrow, my young friend, and inquire of this good lady where i am to be found to deliver a discourse unto you, and will you come like the thirsty swallow upon the next day, and upon the day after that, and upon the day after that, and upon many pleasant days, to hear discourses?" (this with a cow-like lightness.) jo, whose immediate object seems to be to get away on any terms, gives a shuffling nod. mr. guppy then throws him a penny, and mrs. snagsby calls to guster to see him safely out of the house. but before he goes downstairs, mr. snagsby loads him with some broken meats from the table, which he carries away, hugging in his arms. so, mr. chadband--of whom the persecutors say that it is no wonder he should go on for any length of time uttering such abominable nonsense, but that the wonder rather is that he should ever leave off, having once the audacity to begin--retires into private life until he invests a little capital of supper in the oil-trade. jo moves on, through the long vacation, down to blackfriars bridge, where he finds a baking stony corner wherein to settle to his repast. and there he sits, munching and gnawing, and looking up at the great cross on the summit of st. paul's cathedral, glittering above a red-and-violet-tinted cloud of smoke. from the boy's face one might suppose that sacred emblem to be, in his eyes, the crowning confusion of the great, confused city--so golden, so high up, so far out of his reach. there he sits, the sun going down, the river running fast, the crowd flowing by him in two streams--everything moving on to some purpose and to one end--until he is stirred up and told to "move on" too. chapter xx a new lodger the long vacation saunters on towards term-time like an idle river very leisurely strolling down a flat country to the sea. mr. guppy saunters along with it congenially. he has blunted the blade of his penknife and broken the point off by sticking that instrument into his desk in every direction. not that he bears the desk any ill will, but he must do something, and it must be something of an unexciting nature, which will lay neither his physical nor his intellectual energies under too heavy contribution. he finds that nothing agrees with him so well as to make little gyrations on one leg of his stool, and stab his desk, and gape. kenge and carboy are out of town, and the articled clerk has taken out a shooting license and gone down to his father's, and mr. guppy's two fellow-stipendiaries are away on leave. mr. guppy and mr. richard carstone divide the dignity of the office. but mr. carstone is for the time being established in kenge's room, whereat mr. guppy chafes. so exceedingly that he with biting sarcasm informs his mother, in the confidential moments when he sups with her off a lobster and lettuce in the old street road, that he is afraid the office is hardly good enough for swells, and that if he had known there was a swell coming, he would have got it painted. mr. guppy suspects everybody who enters on the occupation of a stool in kenge and carboy's office of entertaining, as a matter of course, sinister designs upon him. he is clear that every such person wants to depose him. if he be ever asked how, why, when, or wherefore, he shuts up one eye and shakes his head. on the strength of these profound views, he in the most ingenious manner takes infinite pains to counterplot when there is no plot, and plays the deepest games of chess without any adversary. it is a source of much gratification to mr. guppy, therefore, to find the new-comer constantly poring over the papers in jarndyce and jarndyce, for he well knows that nothing but confusion and failure can come of that. his satisfaction communicates itself to a third saunterer through the long vacation in kenge and carboy's office, to wit, young smallweed. whether young smallweed (metaphorically called small and eke chick weed, as it were jocularly to express a fledgling) was ever a boy is much doubted in lincoln's inn. he is now something under fifteen and an old limb of the law. he is facetiously understood to entertain a passion for a lady at a cigar-shop in the neighbourhood of chancery lane and for her sake to have broken off a contract with another lady, to whom he had been engaged some years. he is a town-made article, of small stature and weazen features, but may be perceived from a considerable distance by means of his very tall hat. to become a guppy is the object of his ambition. he dresses at that gentleman (by whom he is patronized), talks at him, walks at him, founds himself entirely on him. he is honoured with mr. guppy's particular confidence and occasionally advises him, from the deep wells of his experience, on difficult points in private life. mr. guppy has been lolling out of window all the morning after trying all the stools in succession and finding none of them easy, and after several times putting his head into the iron safe with a notion of cooling it. mr. smallweed has been twice dispatched for effervescent drinks, and has twice mixed them in the two official tumblers and stirred them up with the ruler. mr. guppy propounds for mr. smallweed's consideration the paradox that the more you drink the thirstier you are and reclines his head upon the window-sill in a state of hopeless languor. while thus looking out into the shade of old square, lincoln's inn, surveying the intolerable bricks and mortar, mr. guppy becomes conscious of a manly whisker emerging from the cloistered walk below and turning itself up in the direction of his face. at the same time, a low whistle is wafted through the inn and a suppressed voice cries, "hip! gup-py!" "why, you don't mean it!" says mr. guppy, aroused. "small! here's jobling!" small's head looks out of window too and nods to jobling. "where have you sprung up from?" inquires mr. guppy. "from the market-gardens down by deptford. i can't stand it any longer. i must enlist. i say! i wish you'd lend me half a crown. upon my soul, i'm hungry." jobling looks hungry and also has the appearance of having run to seed in the market-gardens down by deptford. "i say! just throw out half a crown if you have got one to spare. i want to get some dinner." "will you come and dine with me?" says mr. guppy, throwing out the coin, which mr. jobling catches neatly. "how long should i have to hold out?" says jobling. "not half an hour. i am only waiting here till the enemy goes, returns mr. guppy, butting inward with his head. "what enemy?" "a new one. going to be articled. will you wait?" "can you give a fellow anything to read in the meantime?" says mr. jobling. smallweed suggests the law list. but mr. jobling declares with much earnestness that he "can't stand it." "you shall have the paper," says mr. guppy. "he shall bring it down. but you had better not be seen about here. sit on our staircase and read. it's a quiet place." jobling nods intelligence and acquiescence. the sagacious smallweed supplies him with the newspaper and occasionally drops his eye upon him from the landing as a precaution against his becoming disgusted with waiting and making an untimely departure. at last the enemy retreats, and then smallweed fetches mr. jobling up. "well, and how are you?" says mr. guppy, shaking hands with him. "so, so. how are you?" mr. guppy replying that he is not much to boast of, mr. jobling ventures on the question, "how is she?" this mr. guppy resents as a liberty, retorting, "jobling, there are chords in the human mind--" jobling begs pardon. "any subject but that!" says mr. guppy with a gloomy enjoyment of his injury. "for there are chords, jobling--" mr. jobling begs pardon again. during this short colloquy, the active smallweed, who is of the dinner party, has written in legal characters on a slip of paper, "return immediately." this notification to all whom it may concern, he inserts in the letter-box, and then putting on the tall hat at the angle of inclination at which mr. guppy wears his, informs his patron that they may now make themselves scarce. accordingly they betake themselves to a neighbouring dining-house, of the class known among its frequenters by the denomination slap-bang, where the waitress, a bouncing young female of forty, is supposed to have made some impression on the susceptible smallweed, of whom it may be remarked that he is a weird changeling to whom years are nothing. he stands precociously possessed of centuries of owlish wisdom. if he ever lay in a cradle, it seems as if he must have lain there in a tail-coat. he has an old, old eye, has smallweed; and he drinks and smokes in a monkeyish way; and his neck is stiff in his collar; and he is never to be taken in; and he knows all about it, whatever it is. in short, in his bringing up he has been so nursed by law and equity that he has become a kind of fossil imp, to account for whose terrestrial existence it is reported at the public offices that his father was john doe and his mother the only female member of the roe family, also that his first long-clothes were made from a blue bag. into the dining-house, unaffected by the seductive show in the window of artificially whitened cauliflowers and poultry, verdant baskets of peas, coolly blooming cucumbers, and joints ready for the spit, mr. smallweed leads the way. they know him there and defer to him. he has his favourite box, he bespeaks all the papers, he is down upon bald patriarchs, who keep them more than ten minutes afterwards. it is of no use trying him with anything less than a full-sized "bread" or proposing to him any joint in cut unless it is in the very best cut. in the matter of gravy he is adamant. conscious of his elfin power and submitting to his dread experience, mr. guppy consults him in the choice of that day's banquet, turning an appealing look towards him as the waitress repeats the catalogue of viands and saying "what do you take, chick?" chick, out of the profundity of his artfulness, preferring "veal and ham and french beans--and don't you forget the stuffing, polly" (with an unearthly cock of his venerable eye), mr. guppy and mr. jobling give the like order. three pint pots of half-and-half are superadded. quickly the waitress returns bearing what is apparently a model of the tower of babel but what is really a pile of plates and flat tin dish-covers. mr. smallweed, approving of what is set before him, conveys intelligent benignity into his ancient eye and winks upon her. then, amid a constant coming in, and going out, and running about, and a clatter of crockery, and a rumbling up and down of the machine which brings the nice cuts from the kitchen, and a shrill crying for more nice cuts down the speaking-pipe, and a shrill reckoning of the cost of nice cuts that have been disposed of, and a general flush and steam of hot joints, cut and uncut, and a considerably heated atmosphere in which the soiled knives and tablecloths seem to break out spontaneously into eruptions of grease and blotches of beer, the legal triumvirate appease their appetites. mr. jobling is buttoned up closer than mere adornment might require. his hat presents at the rims a peculiar appearance of a glistening nature, as if it had been a favourite snail-promenade. the same phenomenon is visible on some parts of his coat, and particularly at the seams. he has the faded appearance of a gentleman in embarrassed circumstances; even his light whiskers droop with something of a shabby air. his appetite is so vigorous that it suggests spare living for some little time back. he makes such a speedy end of his plate of veal and ham, bringing it to a close while his companions are yet midway in theirs, that mr. guppy proposes another. "thank you, guppy," says mr. jobling, "i really don't know but what i will take another." another being brought, he falls to with great goodwill. mr. guppy takes silent notice of him at intervals until he is half way through this second plate and stops to take an enjoying pull at his pint pot of half-and-half (also renewed) and stretches out his legs and rubs his hands. beholding him in which glow of contentment, mr. guppy says, "you are a man again, tony!" "well, not quite yet," says mr. jobling. "say, just born." "will you take any other vegetables? grass? peas? summer cabbage?" "thank you, guppy," says mr. jobling. "i really don't know but what i will take summer cabbage." order given; with the sarcastic addition (from mr. smallweed) of "without slugs, polly!" and cabbage produced. "i am growing up, guppy," says mr. jobling, plying his knife and fork with a relishing steadiness. "glad to hear it." "in fact, i have just turned into my teens," says mr. jobling. he says no more until he has performed his task, which he achieves as messrs. guppy and smallweed finish theirs, thus getting over the ground in excellent style and beating those two gentlemen easily by a veal and ham and a cabbage. "now, small," says mr. guppy, "what would you recommend about pastry?" "marrow puddings," says mr. smallweed instantly. "aye, aye!" cries mr. jobling with an arch look. "you're there, are you? thank you, mr. guppy, i don't know but what i will take a marrow pudding." three marrow puddings being produced, mr. jobling adds in a pleasant humour that he is coming of age fast. to these succeed, by command of mr. smallweed, "three cheshires," and to those "three small rums." this apex of the entertainment happily reached, mr. jobling puts up his legs on the carpeted seat (having his own side of the box to himself), leans against the wall, and says, "i am grown up now, guppy. i have arrived at maturity." "what do you think, now," says mr. guppy, "about--you don't mind smallweed?" "not the least in the world. i have the pleasure of drinking his good health." "sir, to you!" says mr. smallweed. "i was saying, what do you think now," pursues mr. guppy, "of enlisting?" "why, what i may think after dinner," returns mr. jobling, "is one thing, my dear guppy, and what i may think before dinner is another thing. still, even after dinner, i ask myself the question, what am i to do? how am i to live? ill fo manger, you know," says mr. jobling, pronouncing that word as if he meant a necessary fixture in an english stable. "ill fo manger. that's the french saying, and mangering is as necessary to me as it is to a frenchman. or more so." mr. smallweed is decidedly of opinion "much more so." "if any man had told me," pursues jobling, "even so lately as when you and i had the frisk down in lincolnshire, guppy, and drove over to see that house at castle wold--" mr. smallweed corrects him--chesney wold. "chesney wold. (i thank my honourable friend for that cheer.) if any man had told me then that i should be as hard up at the present time as i literally find myself, i should have--well, i should have pitched into him," says mr. jobling, taking a little rum-and-water with an air of desperate resignation; "i should have let fly at his head." "still, tony, you were on the wrong side of the post then," remonstrates mr. guppy. "you were talking about nothing else in the gig." "guppy," says mr. jobling, "i will not deny it. i was on the wrong side of the post. but i trusted to things coming round." that very popular trust in flat things coming round! not in their being beaten round, or worked round, but in their "coming" round! as though a lunatic should trust in the world's "coming" triangular! "i had confident expectations that things would come round and be all square," says mr. jobling with some vagueness of expression and perhaps of meaning too. "but i was disappointed. they never did. and when it came to creditors making rows at the office and to people that the office dealt with making complaints about dirty trifles of borrowed money, why there was an end of that connexion. and of any new professional connexion too, for if i was to give a reference to-morrow, it would be mentioned and would sew me up. then what's a fellow to do? i have been keeping out of the way and living cheap down about the market-gardens, but what's the use of living cheap when you have got no money? you might as well live dear." "better," mr. smallweed thinks. "certainly. it's the fashionable way; and fashion and whiskers have been my weaknesses, and i don't care who knows it," says mr. jobling. "they are great weaknesses--damme, sir, they are great. well," proceeds mr. jobling after a defiant visit to his rum-and-water, "what can a fellow do, i ask you, but enlist?" mr. guppy comes more fully into the conversation to state what, in his opinion, a fellow can do. his manner is the gravely impressive manner of a man who has not committed himself in life otherwise than as he has become the victim of a tender sorrow of the heart. "jobling," says mr. guppy, "myself and our mutual friend smallweed--" mr. smallweed modestly observes, "gentlemen both!" and drinks. "--have had a little conversation on this matter more than once since you--" "say, got the sack!" cries mr. jobling bitterly. "say it, guppy. you mean it." "no-o-o! left the inn," mr. smallweed delicately suggests. "since you left the inn, jobling," says mr. guppy; "and i have mentioned to our mutual friend smallweed a plan i have lately thought of proposing. you know snagsby the stationer?" "i know there is such a stationer," returns mr. jobling. "he was not ours, and i am not acquainted with him." "he is ours, jobling, and i am acquainted with him," mr. guppy retorts. "well, sir! i have lately become better acquainted with him through some accidental circumstances that have made me a visitor of his in private life. those circumstances it is not necessary to offer in argument. they may--or they may not--have some reference to a subject which may--or may not--have cast its shadow on my existence." as it is mr. guppy's perplexing way with boastful misery to tempt his particular friends into this subject, and the moment they touch it, to turn on them with that trenchant severity about the chords in the human mind, both mr. jobling and mr. smallweed decline the pitfall by remaining silent. "such things may be," repeats mr. guppy, "or they may not be. they are no part of the case. it is enough to mention that both mr. and mrs. snagsby are very willing to oblige me and that snagsby has, in busy times, a good deal of copying work to give out. he has all tulkinghorn's, and an excellent business besides. i believe if our mutual friend smallweed were put into the box, he could prove this?" mr. smallweed nods and appears greedy to be sworn. "now, gentlemen of the jury," says mr. guppy, "--i mean, now, jobling--you may say this is a poor prospect of a living. granted. but it's better than nothing, and better than enlistment. you want time. there must be time for these late affairs to blow over. you might live through it on much worse terms than by writing for snagsby." mr. jobling is about to interrupt when the sagacious smallweed checks him with a dry cough and the words, "hem! shakspeare!" "there are two branches to this subject, jobling," says mr. guppy. "that is the first. i come to the second. you know krook, the chancellor, across the lane. come, jobling," says mr. guppy in his encouraging cross-examination-tone, "i think you know krook, the chancellor, across the lane?" "i know him by sight," says mr. jobling. "you know him by sight. very well. and you know little flite?" "everybody knows her," says mr. jobling. "everybody knows her. very well. now it has been one of my duties of late to pay flite a certain weekly allowance, deducting from it the amount of her weekly rent, which i have paid (in consequence of instructions i have received) to krook himself, regularly in her presence. this has brought me into communication with krook and into a knowledge of his house and his habits. i know he has a room to let. you may live there at a very low charge under any name you like, as quietly as if you were a hundred miles off. he'll ask no questions and would accept you as a tenant at a word from me--before the clock strikes, if you chose. and i tell you another thing, jobling," says mr. guppy, who has suddenly lowered his voice and become familiar again, "he's an extraordinary old chap--always rummaging among a litter of papers and grubbing away at teaching himself to read and write, without getting on a bit, as it seems to me. he is a most extraordinary old chap, sir. i don't know but what it might be worth a fellow's while to look him up a bit." "you don't mean--" mr. jobling begins. "i mean," returns mr. guppy, shrugging his shoulders with becoming modesty, "that i can't make him out. i appeal to our mutual friend smallweed whether he has or has not heard me remark that i can't make him out." mr. smallweed bears the concise testimony, "a few!" "i have seen something of the profession and something of life, tony," says mr. guppy, "and it's seldom i can't make a man out, more or less. but such an old card as this, so deep, so sly, and secret (though i don't believe he is ever sober), i never came across. now, he must be precious old, you know, and he has not a soul about him, and he is reported to be immensely rich; and whether he is a smuggler, or a receiver, or an unlicensed pawnbroker, or a money-lender--all of which i have thought likely at different times--it might pay you to knock up a sort of knowledge of him. i don't see why you shouldn't go in for it, when everything else suits." mr. jobling, mr. guppy, and mr. smallweed all lean their elbows on the table and their chins upon their hands, and look at the ceiling. after a time, they all drink, slowly lean back, put their hands in their pockets, and look at one another. "if i had the energy i once possessed, tony!" says mr. guppy with a sigh. "but there are chords in the human mind--" expressing the remainder of the desolate sentiment in rum-and-water, mr. guppy concludes by resigning the adventure to tony jobling and informing him that during the vacation and while things are slack, his purse, "as far as three or four or even five pound goes," will be at his disposal. "for never shall it be said," mr. guppy adds with emphasis, "that william guppy turned his back upon his friend!" the latter part of the proposal is so directly to the purpose that mr. jobling says with emotion, "guppy, my trump, your fist!" mr. guppy presents it, saying, "jobling, my boy, there it is!" mr. jobling returns, "guppy, we have been pals now for some years!" mr. guppy replies, "jobling, we have." they then shake hands, and mr. jobling adds in a feeling manner, "thank you, guppy, i don't know but what i will take another glass for old acquaintance sake." "krook's last lodger died there," observes mr. guppy in an incidental way. "did he though!" says mr. jobling. "there was a verdict. accidental death. you don't mind that?" "no," says mr. jobling, "i don't mind it; but he might as well have died somewhere else. it's devilish odd that he need go and die at my place!" mr. jobling quite resents this liberty, several times returning to it with such remarks as, "there are places enough to die in, i should think!" or, "he wouldn't have liked my dying at his place, i dare say!" however, the compact being virtually made, mr. guppy proposes to dispatch the trusty smallweed to ascertain if mr. krook is at home, as in that case they may complete the negotiation without delay. mr. jobling approving, smallweed puts himself under the tall hat and conveys it out of the dining-rooms in the guppy manner. he soon returns with the intelligence that mr. krook is at home and that he has seen him through the shop-door, sitting in the back premises, sleeping "like one o'clock." "then i'll pay," says mr. guppy, "and we'll go and see him. small, what will it be?" mr. smallweed, compelling the attendance of the waitress with one hitch of his eyelash, instantly replies as follows: "four veals and hams is three, and four potatoes is three and four, and one summer cabbage is three and six, and three marrows is four and six, and six breads is five, and three cheshires is five and three, and four half-pints of half-and-half is six and three, and four small rums is eight and three, and three pollys is eight and six. eight and six in half a sovereign, polly, and eighteenpence out!" not at all excited by these stupendous calculations, smallweed dismisses his friends with a cool nod and remains behind to take a little admiring notice of polly, as opportunity may serve, and to read the daily papers, which are so very large in proportion to himself, shorn of his hat, that when he holds up the times to run his eye over the columns, he seems to have retired for the night and to have disappeared under the bedclothes. mr. guppy and mr. jobling repair to the rag and bottle shop, where they find krook still sleeping like one o'clock, that is to say, breathing stertorously with his chin upon his breast and quite insensible to any external sounds or even to gentle shaking. on the table beside him, among the usual lumber, stand an empty gin-bottle and a glass. the unwholesome air is so stained with this liquor that even the green eyes of the cat upon her shelf, as they open and shut and glimmer on the visitors, look drunk. "hold up here!" says mr. guppy, giving the relaxed figure of the old man another shake. "mr. krook! halloa, sir!" but it would seem as easy to wake a bundle of old clothes with a spirituous heat smouldering in it. "did you ever see such a stupor as he falls into, between drink and sleep?" says mr. guppy. "if this is his regular sleep," returns jobling, rather alarmed, "it'll last a long time one of these days, i am thinking." "it's always more like a fit than a nap," says mr. guppy, shaking him again. "halloa, your lordship! why, he might be robbed fifty times over! open your eyes!" after much ado, he opens them, but without appearing to see his visitors or any other objects. though he crosses one leg on another, and folds his hands, and several times closes and opens his parched lips, he seems to all intents and purposes as insensible as before. "he is alive, at any rate," says mr. guppy. "how are you, my lord chancellor. i have brought a friend of mine, sir, on a little matter of business." the old man still sits, often smacking his dry lips without the least consciousness. after some minutes he makes an attempt to rise. they help him up, and he staggers against the wall and stares at them. "how do you do, mr. krook?" says mr. guppy in some discomfiture. "how do you do, sir? you are looking charming, mr. krook. i hope you are pretty well?" the old man, in aiming a purposeless blow at mr. guppy, or at nothing, feebly swings himself round and comes with his face against the wall. so he remains for a minute or two, heaped up against it, and then staggers down the shop to the front door. the air, the movement in the court, the lapse of time, or the combination of these things recovers him. he comes back pretty steadily, adjusting his fur cap on his head and looking keenly at them. "your servant, gentlemen; i've been dozing. hi! i am hard to wake, odd times." "rather so, indeed, sir," responds mr. guppy. "what? you've been a-trying to do it, have you?" says the suspicious krook. "only a little," mr. guppy explains. the old man's eye resting on the empty bottle, he takes it up, examines it, and slowly tilts it upside down. "i say!" he cries like the hobgoblin in the story. "somebody's been making free here!" "i assure you we found it so," says mr. guppy. "would you allow me to get it filled for you?" "yes, certainly i would!" cries krook in high glee. "certainly i would! don't mention it! get it filled next door--sol's arms--the lord chancellor's fourteenpenny. bless you, they know me!" he so presses the empty bottle upon mr. guppy that that gentleman, with a nod to his friend, accepts the trust and hurries out and hurries in again with the bottle filled. the old man receives it in his arms like a beloved grandchild and pats it tenderly. "but, i say," he whispers, with his eyes screwed up, after tasting it, "this ain't the lord chancellor's fourteenpenny. this is eighteenpenny!" "i thought you might like that better," says mr. guppy. "you're a nobleman, sir," returns krook with another taste, and his hot breath seems to come towards them like a flame. "you're a baron of the land." taking advantage of this auspicious moment, mr. guppy presents his friend under the impromptu name of mr. weevle and states the object of their visit. krook, with his bottle under his arm (he never gets beyond a certain point of either drunkenness or sobriety), takes time to survey his proposed lodger and seems to approve of him. "you'd like to see the room, young man?" he says. "ah! it's a good room! been whitewashed. been cleaned down with soft soap and soda. hi! it's worth twice the rent, letting alone my company when you want it and such a cat to keep the mice away." commending the room after this manner, the old man takes them upstairs, where indeed they do find it cleaner than it used to be and also containing some old articles of furniture which he has dug up from his inexhaustible stores. the terms are easily concluded--for the lord chancellor cannot be hard on mr. guppy, associated as he is with kenge and carboy, jarndyce and jarndyce, and other famous claims on his professional consideration--and it is agreed that mr. weevle shall take possession on the morrow. mr. weevle and mr. guppy then repair to cook's court, cursitor street, where the personal introduction of the former to mr. snagsby is effected and (more important) the vote and interest of mrs. snagsby are secured. they then report progress to the eminent smallweed, waiting at the office in his tall hat for that purpose, and separate, mr. guppy explaining that he would terminate his little entertainment by standing treat at the play but that there are chords in the human mind which would render it a hollow mockery. on the morrow, in the dusk of evening, mr. weevle modestly appears at krook's, by no means incommoded with luggage, and establishes himself in his new lodging, where the two eyes in the shutters stare at him in his sleep, as if they were full of wonder. on the following day mr. weevle, who is a handy good-for-nothing kind of young fellow, borrows a needle and thread of miss flite and a hammer of his landlord and goes to work devising apologies for window-curtains, and knocking up apologies for shelves, and hanging up his two teacups, milkpot, and crockery sundries on a pennyworth of little hooks, like a shipwrecked sailor making the best of it. but what mr. weevle prizes most of all his few possessions (next after his light whiskers, for which he has an attachment that only whiskers can awaken in the breast of man) is a choice collection of copper-plate impressions from that truly national work the divinities of albion, or galaxy gallery of british beauty, representing ladies of title and fashion in every variety of smirk that art, combined with capital, is capable of producing. with these magnificent portraits, unworthily confined in a band-box during his seclusion among the market-gardens, he decorates his apartment; and as the galaxy gallery of british beauty wears every variety of fancy dress, plays every variety of musical instrument, fondles every variety of dog, ogles every variety of prospect, and is backed up by every variety of flower-pot and balustrade, the result is very imposing. but fashion is mr. weevle's, as it was tony jobling's, weakness. to borrow yesterday's paper from the sol's arms of an evening and read about the brilliant and distinguished meteors that are shooting across the fashionable sky in every direction is unspeakable consolation to him. to know what member of what brilliant and distinguished circle accomplished the brilliant and distinguished feat of joining it yesterday or contemplates the no less brilliant and distinguished feat of leaving it to-morrow gives him a thrill of joy. to be informed what the galaxy gallery of british beauty is about, and means to be about, and what galaxy marriages are on the tapis, and what galaxy rumours are in circulation, is to become acquainted with the most glorious destinies of mankind. mr. weevle reverts from this intelligence to the galaxy portraits implicated, and seems to know the originals, and to be known of them. for the rest he is a quiet lodger, full of handy shifts and devices as before mentioned, able to cook and clean for himself as well as to carpenter, and developing social inclinations after the shades of evening have fallen on the court. at those times, when he is not visited by mr. guppy or by a small light in his likeness quenched in a dark hat, he comes out of his dull room--where he has inherited the deal wilderness of desk bespattered with a rain of ink--and talks to krook or is "very free," as they call it in the court, commendingly, with any one disposed for conversation. wherefore, mrs. piper, who leads the court, is impelled to offer two remarks to mrs. perkins: firstly, that if her johnny was to have whiskers, she could wish 'em to be identically like that young man's; and secondly, "mark my words, mrs. perkins, ma'am, and don't you be surprised, lord bless you, if that young man comes in at last for old krook's money!" chapter xxi the smallweed family in a rather ill-favoured and ill-savoured neighbourhood, though one of its rising grounds bears the name of mount pleasant, the elfin smallweed, christened bartholomew and known on the domestic hearth as bart, passes that limited portion of his time on which the office and its contingencies have no claim. he dwells in a little narrow street, always solitary, shady, and sad, closely bricked in on all sides like a tomb, but where there yet lingers the stump of an old forest tree whose flavour is about as fresh and natural as the smallweed smack of youth. there has been only one child in the smallweed family for several generations. little old men and women there have been, but no child, until mr. smallweed's grandmother, now living, became weak in her intellect and fell (for the first time) into a childish state. with such infantine graces as a total want of observation, memory, understanding, and interest, and an eternal disposition to fall asleep over the fire and into it, mr. smallweed's grandmother has undoubtedly brightened the family. mr. smallweed's grandfather is likewise of the party. he is in a helpless condition as to his lower, and nearly so as to his upper, limbs, but his mind is unimpaired. it holds, as well as it ever held, the first four rules of arithmetic and a certain small collection of the hardest facts. in respect of ideality, reverence, wonder, and other such phrenological attributes, it is no worse off than it used to be. everything that mr. smallweed's grandfather ever put away in his mind was a grub at first, and is a grub at last. in all his life he has never bred a single butterfly. the father of this pleasant grandfather, of the neighbourhood of mount pleasant, was a horny-skinned, two-legged, money-getting species of spider who spun webs to catch unwary flies and retired into holes until they were entrapped. the name of this old pagan's god was compound interest. he lived for it, married it, died of it. meeting with a heavy loss in an honest little enterprise in which all the loss was intended to have been on the other side, he broke something--something necessary to his existence, therefore it couldn't have been his heart--and made an end of his career. as his character was not good, and he had been bred at a charity school in a complete course, according to question and answer, of those ancient people the amorites and hittites, he was frequently quoted as an example of the failure of education. his spirit shone through his son, to whom he had always preached of "going out" early in life and whom he made a clerk in a sharp scrivener's office at twelve years old. there the young gentleman improved his mind, which was of a lean and anxious character, and developing the family gifts, gradually elevated himself into the discounting profession. going out early in life and marrying late, as his father had done before him, he too begat a lean and anxious-minded son, who in his turn, going out early in life and marrying late, became the father of bartholomew and judith smallweed, twins. during the whole time consumed in the slow growth of this family tree, the house of smallweed, always early to go out and late to marry, has strengthened itself in its practical character, has discarded all amusements, discountenanced all story-books, fairy-tales, fictions, and fables, and banished all levities whatsoever. hence the gratifying fact that it has had no child born to it and that the complete little men and women whom it has produced have been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with something depressing on their minds. at the present time, in the dark little parlour certain feet below the level of the street--a grim, hard, uncouth parlour, only ornamented with the coarsest of baize table-covers, and the hardest of sheet-iron tea-trays, and offering in its decorative character no bad allegorical representation of grandfather smallweed's mind--seated in two black horsehair porter's chairs, one on each side of the fire-place, the superannuated mr. and mrs. smallweed while away the rosy hours. on the stove are a couple of trivets for the pots and kettles which it is grandfather smallweed's usual occupation to watch, and projecting from the chimney-piece between them is a sort of brass gallows for roasting, which he also superintends when it is in action. under the venerable mr. smallweed's seat and guarded by his spindle legs is a drawer in his chair, reported to contain property to a fabulous amount. beside him is a spare cushion with which he is always provided in order that he may have something to throw at the venerable partner of his respected age whenever she makes an allusion to money--a subject on which he is particularly sensitive. "and where's bart?" grandfather smallweed inquires of judy, bart's twin sister. "he an't come in yet," says judy. "it's his tea-time, isn't it?" "no." "how much do you mean to say it wants then?" "ten minutes." "hey?" "ten minutes." (loud on the part of judy.) "ho!" says grandfather smallweed. "ten minutes." grandmother smallweed, who has been mumbling and shaking her head at the trivets, hearing figures mentioned, connects them with money and screeches like a horrible old parrot without any plumage, "ten ten-pound notes!" grandfather smallweed immediately throws the cushion at her. "drat you, be quiet!" says the good old man. the effect of this act of jaculation is twofold. it not only doubles up mrs. smallweed's head against the side of her porter's chair and causes her to present, when extricated by her granddaughter, a highly unbecoming state of cap, but the necessary exertion recoils on mr. smallweed himself, whom it throws back into his porter's chair like a broken puppet. the excellent old gentleman being at these times a mere clothes-bag with a black skull-cap on the top of it, does not present a very animated appearance until he has undergone the two operations at the hands of his granddaughter of being shaken up like a great bottle and poked and punched like a great bolster. some indication of a neck being developed in him by these means, he and the sharer of his life's evening again fronting one another in their two porter's chairs, like a couple of sentinels long forgotten on their post by the black serjeant, death. judy the twin is worthy company for these associates. she is so indubitably sister to mr. smallweed the younger that the two kneaded into one would hardly make a young person of average proportions, while she so happily exemplifies the before-mentioned family likeness to the monkey tribe that attired in a spangled robe and cap she might walk about the table-land on the top of a barrel-organ without exciting much remark as an unusual specimen. under existing circumstances, however, she is dressed in a plain, spare gown of brown stuff. judy never owned a doll, never heard of cinderella, never played at any game. she once or twice fell into children's company when she was about ten years old, but the children couldn't get on with judy, and judy couldn't get on with them. she seemed like an animal of another species, and there was instinctive repugnance on both sides. it is very doubtful whether judy knows how to laugh. she has so rarely seen the thing done that the probabilities are strong the other way. of anything like a youthful laugh, she certainly can have no conception. if she were to try one, she would find her teeth in her way, modelling that action of her face, as she has unconsciously modelled all its other expressions, on her pattern of sordid age. such is judy. and her twin brother couldn't wind up a top for his life. he knows no more of jack the giant killer or of sinbad the sailor than he knows of the people in the stars. he could as soon play at leap-frog or at cricket as change into a cricket or a frog himself. but he is so much the better off than his sister that on his narrow world of fact an opening has dawned into such broader regions as lie within the ken of mr. guppy. hence his admiration and his emulation of that shining enchanter. judy, with a gong-like clash and clatter, sets one of the sheet-iron tea-trays on the table and arranges cups and saucers. the bread she puts on in an iron basket, and the butter (and not much of it) in a small pewter plate. grandfather smallweed looks hard after the tea as it is served out and asks judy where the girl is. "charley, do you mean?" says judy. "hey?" from grandfather smallweed. "charley, do you mean?" this touches a spring in grandmother smallweed, who, chuckling as usual at the trivets, cries, "over the water! charley over the water, charley over the water, over the water to charley, charley over the water, over the water to charley!" and becomes quite energetic about it. grandfather looks at the cushion but has not sufficiently recovered his late exertion. "ha!" he says when there is silence. "if that's her name. she eats a deal. it would be better to allow her for her keep." judy, with her brother's wink, shakes her head and purses up her mouth into no without saying it. "no?" returns the old man. "why not?" "she'd want sixpence a day, and we can do it for less," says judy. "sure?" judy answers with a nod of deepest meaning and calls, as she scrapes the butter on the loaf with every precaution against waste and cuts it into slices, "you, charley, where are you?" timidly obedient to the summons, a little girl in a rough apron and a large bonnet, with her hands covered with soap and water and a scrubbing brush in one of them, appears, and curtsys. "what work are you about now?" says judy, making an ancient snap at her like a very sharp old beldame. "i'm a-cleaning the upstairs back room, miss," replies charley. "mind you do it thoroughly, and don't loiter. shirking won't do for me. make haste! go along!" cries judy with a stamp upon the ground. "you girls are more trouble than you're worth, by half." on this severe matron, as she returns to her task of scraping the butter and cutting the bread, falls the shadow of her brother, looking in at the window. for whom, knife and loaf in hand, she opens the street-door. "aye, aye, bart!" says grandfather smallweed. "here you are, hey?" "here i am," says bart. "been along with your friend again, bart?" small nods. "dining at his expense, bart?" small nods again. "that's right. live at his expense as much as you can, and take warning by his foolish example. that's the use of such a friend. the only use you can put him to," says the venerable sage. his grandson, without receiving this good counsel as dutifully as he might, honours it with all such acceptance as may lie in a slight wink and a nod and takes a chair at the tea-table. the four old faces then hover over teacups like a company of ghastly cherubim, mrs. smallweed perpetually twitching her head and chattering at the trivets and mr. smallweed requiring to be repeatedly shaken up like a large black draught. "yes, yes," says the good old gentleman, reverting to his lesson of wisdom. "that's such advice as your father would have given you, bart. you never saw your father. more's the pity. he was my true son." whether it is intended to be conveyed that he was particularly pleasant to look at, on that account, does not appear. "he was my true son," repeats the old gentleman, folding his bread and butter on his knee, "a good accountant, and died fifteen years ago." mrs. smallweed, following her usual instinct, breaks out with "fifteen hundred pound. fifteen hundred pound in a black box, fifteen hundred pound locked up, fifteen hundred pound put away and hid!" her worthy husband, setting aside his bread and butter, immediately discharges the cushion at her, crushes her against the side of her chair, and falls back in his own, overpowered. his appearance, after visiting mrs. smallweed with one of these admonitions, is particularly impressive and not wholly prepossessing, firstly because the exertion generally twists his black skull-cap over one eye and gives him an air of goblin rakishness, secondly because he mutters violent imprecations against mrs. smallweed, and thirdly because the contrast between those powerful expressions and his powerless figure is suggestive of a baleful old malignant who would be very wicked if he could. all this, however, is so common in the smallweed family circle that it produces no impression. the old gentleman is merely shaken and has his internal feathers beaten up, the cushion is restored to its usual place beside him, and the old lady, perhaps with her cap adjusted and perhaps not, is planted in her chair again, ready to be bowled down like a ninepin. some time elapses in the present instance before the old gentleman is sufficiently cool to resume his discourse, and even then he mixes it up with several edifying expletives addressed to the unconscious partner of his bosom, who holds communication with nothing on earth but the trivets. as thus: "if your father, bart, had lived longer, he might have been worth a deal of money--you brimstone chatterer!--but just as he was beginning to build up the house that he had been making the foundations for, through many a year--you jade of a magpie, jackdaw, and poll-parrot, what do you mean!--he took ill and died of a low fever, always being a sparing and a spare man, full of business care--i should like to throw a cat at you instead of a cushion, and i will too if you make such a confounded fool of yourself!--and your mother, who was a prudent woman as dry as a chip, just dwindled away like touchwood after you and judy were born--you are an old pig. you are a brimstone pig. you're a head of swine!" judy, not interested in what she has often heard, begins to collect in a basin various tributary streams of tea, from the bottoms of cups and saucers and from the bottom of the tea-pot for the little charwoman's evening meal. in like manner she gets together, in the iron bread-basket, as many outside fragments and worn-down heels of loaves as the rigid economy of the house has left in existence. "but your father and me were partners, bart," says the old gentleman, "and when i am gone, you and judy will have all there is. it's rare for you both that you went out early in life--judy to the flower business, and you to the law. you won't want to spend it. you'll get your living without it, and put more to it. when i am gone, judy will go back to the flower business and you'll still stick to the law." one might infer from judy's appearance that her business rather lay with the thorns than the flowers, but she has in her time been apprenticed to the art and mystery of artificial flower-making. a close observer might perhaps detect both in her eye and her brother's, when their venerable grandsire anticipates his being gone, some little impatience to know when he may be going, and some resentful opinion that it is time he went. "now, if everybody has done," says judy, completing her preparations, "i'll have that girl in to her tea. she would never leave off if she took it by herself in the kitchen." charley is accordingly introduced, and under a heavy fire of eyes, sits down to her basin and a druidical ruin of bread and butter. in the active superintendence of this young person, judy smallweed appears to attain a perfectly geological age and to date from the remotest periods. her systematic manner of flying at her and pouncing on her, with or without pretence, whether or no, is wonderful, evincing an accomplishment in the art of girl-driving seldom reached by the oldest practitioners. "now, don't stare about you all the afternoon," cries judy, shaking her head and stamping her foot as she happens to catch the glance which has been previously sounding the basin of tea, "but take your victuals and get back to your work." "yes, miss," says charley. "don't say yes," returns miss smallweed, "for i know what you girls are. do it without saying it, and then i may begin to believe you." charley swallows a great gulp of tea in token of submission and so disperses the druidical ruins that miss smallweed charges her not to gormandize, which "in you girls," she observes, is disgusting. charley might find some more difficulty in meeting her views on the general subject of girls but for a knock at the door. "see who it is, and don't chew when you open it!" cries judy. the object of her attentions withdrawing for the purpose, miss smallweed takes that opportunity of jumbling the remainder of the bread and butter together and launching two or three dirty tea-cups into the ebb-tide of the basin of tea as a hint that she considers the eating and drinking terminated. "now! who is it, and what's wanted?" says the snappish judy. it is one mr. george, it appears. without other announcement or ceremony, mr. george walks in. "whew!" says mr. george. "you are hot here. always a fire, eh? well! perhaps you do right to get used to one." mr. george makes the latter remark to himself as he nods to grandfather smallweed. "ho! it's you!" cries the old gentleman. "how de do? how de do?" "middling," replies mr. george, taking a chair. "your granddaughter i have had the honour of seeing before; my service to you, miss." "this is my grandson," says grandfather smallweed. "you ha'n't seen him before. he is in the law and not much at home." "my service to him, too! he is like his sister. he is very like his sister. he is devilish like his sister," says mr. george, laying a great and not altogether complimentary stress on his last adjective. "and how does the world use you, mr. george?" grandfather smallweed inquires, slowly rubbing his legs. "pretty much as usual. like a football." he is a swarthy brown man of fifty, well made, and good looking, with crisp dark hair, bright eyes, and a broad chest. his sinewy and powerful hands, as sunburnt as his face, have evidently been used to a pretty rough life. what is curious about him is that he sits forward on his chair as if he were, from long habit, allowing space for some dress or accoutrements that he has altogether laid aside. his step too is measured and heavy and would go well with a weighty clash and jingle of spurs. he is close-shaved now, but his mouth is set as if his upper lip had been for years familiar with a great moustache; and his manner of occasionally laying the open palm of his broad brown hand upon it is to the same effect. altogether one might guess mr. george to have been a trooper once upon a time. a special contrast mr. george makes to the smallweed family. trooper was never yet billeted upon a household more unlike him. it is a broadsword to an oyster-knife. his developed figure and their stunted forms, his large manner filling any amount of room and their little narrow pinched ways, his sounding voice and their sharp spare tones, are in the strongest and the strangest opposition. as he sits in the middle of the grim parlour, leaning a little forward, with his hands upon his thighs and his elbows squared, he looks as though, if he remained there long, he would absorb into himself the whole family and the whole four-roomed house, extra little back-kitchen and all. "do you rub your legs to rub life into 'em?" he asks of grandfather smallweed after looking round the room. "why, it's partly a habit, mr. george, and--yes--it partly helps the circulation," he replies. "the cir-cu-la-tion!" repeats mr. george, folding his arms upon his chest and seeming to become two sizes larger. "not much of that, i should think." "truly i'm old, mr. george," says grandfather smallweed. "but i can carry my years. i'm older than her," nodding at his wife, "and see what she is? you're a brimstone chatterer!" with a sudden revival of his late hostility. "unlucky old soul!" says mr. george, turning his head in that direction. "don't scold the old lady. look at her here, with her poor cap half off her head and her poor hair all in a muddle. hold up, ma'am. that's better. there we are! think of your mother, mr. smallweed," says mr. george, coming back to his seat from assisting her, "if your wife an't enough." "i suppose you were an excellent son, mr. george?" the old man hints with a leer. the colour of mr. george's face rather deepens as he replies, "why no. i wasn't." "i am astonished at it." "so am i. i ought to have been a good son, and i think i meant to have been one. but i wasn't. i was a thundering bad son, that's the long and the short of it, and never was a credit to anybody." "surprising!" cries the old man. "however," mr. george resumes, "the less said about it, the better now. come! you know the agreement. always a pipe out of the two months' interest! (bosh! it's all correct. you needn't be afraid to order the pipe. here's the new bill, and here's the two months' interest-money, and a devil-and-all of a scrape it is to get it together in my business.)" mr. george sits, with his arms folded, consuming the family and the parlour while grandfather smallweed is assisted by judy to two black leathern cases out of a locked bureau, in one of which he secures the document he has just received, and from the other takes another similar document which he hands to mr. george, who twists it up for a pipelight. as the old man inspects, through his glasses, every up-stroke and down-stroke of both documents before he releases them from their leathern prison, and as he counts the money three times over and requires judy to say every word she utters at least twice, and is as tremulously slow of speech and action as it is possible to be, this business is a long time in progress. when it is quite concluded, and not before, he disengages his ravenous eyes and fingers from it and answers mr. george's last remark by saying, "afraid to order the pipe? we are not so mercenary as that, sir. judy, see directly to the pipe and the glass of cold brandy-and-water for mr. george." the sportive twins, who have been looking straight before them all this time except when they have been engrossed by the black leathern cases, retire together, generally disdainful of the visitor, but leaving him to the old man as two young cubs might leave a traveller to the parental bear. "and there you sit, i suppose, all the day long, eh?" says mr. george with folded arms. "just so, just so," the old man nods. "and don't you occupy yourself at all?" "i watch the fire--and the boiling and the roasting--" "when there is any," says mr. george with great expression. "just so. when there is any." "don't you read or get read to?" the old man shakes his head with sharp sly triumph. "no, no. we have never been readers in our family. it don't pay. stuff. idleness. folly. no, no!" "there's not much to choose between your two states," says the visitor in a key too low for the old man's dull hearing as he looks from him to the old woman and back again. "i say!" in a louder voice. "i hear you." "you'll sell me up at last, i suppose, when i am a day in arrear." "my dear friend!" cries grandfather smallweed, stretching out both hands to embrace him. "never! never, my dear friend! but my friend in the city that i got to lend you the money--he might!" "oh! you can't answer for him?" says mr. george, finishing the inquiry in his lower key with the words "you lying old rascal!" "my dear friend, he is not to be depended on. i wouldn't trust him. he will have his bond, my dear friend." "devil doubt him," says mr. george. charley appearing with a tray, on which are the pipe, a small paper of tobacco, and the brandy-and-water, he asks her, "how do you come here! you haven't got the family face." "i goes out to work, sir," returns charley. the trooper (if trooper he be or have been) takes her bonnet off, with a light touch for so strong a hand, and pats her on the head. "you give the house almost a wholesome look. it wants a bit of youth as much as it wants fresh air." then he dismisses her, lights his pipe, and drinks to mr. smallweed's friend in the city--the one solitary flight of that esteemed old gentleman's imagination. "so you think he might be hard upon me, eh?" "i think he might--i am afraid he would. i have known him do it," says grandfather smallweed incautiously, "twenty times." incautiously, because his stricken better-half, who has been dozing over the fire for some time, is instantly aroused and jabbers "twenty thousand pounds, twenty twenty-pound notes in a money-box, twenty guineas, twenty million twenty per cent, twenty--" and is then cut short by the flying cushion, which the visitor, to whom this singular experiment appears to be a novelty, snatches from her face as it crushes her in the usual manner. "you're a brimstone idiot. you're a scorpion--a brimstone scorpion! you're a sweltering toad. you're a chattering clattering broomstick witch that ought to be burnt!" gasps the old man, prostrate in his chair. "my dear friend, will you shake me up a little?" mr. george, who has been looking first at one of them and then at the other, as if he were demented, takes his venerable acquaintance by the throat on receiving this request, and dragging him upright in his chair as easily as if he were a doll, appears in two minds whether or no to shake all future power of cushioning out of him and shake him into his grave. resisting the temptation, but agitating him violently enough to make his head roll like a harlequin's, he puts him smartly down in his chair again and adjusts his skull-cap with such a rub that the old man winks with both eyes for a minute afterwards. "o lord!" gasps mr. smallweed. "that'll do. thank you, my dear friend, that'll do. oh, dear me, i'm out of breath. o lord!" and mr. smallweed says it not without evident apprehensions of his dear friend, who still stands over him looming larger than ever. the alarming presence, however, gradually subsides into its chair and falls to smoking in long puffs, consoling itself with the philosophical reflection, "the name of your friend in the city begins with a d, comrade, and you're about right respecting the bond." "did you speak, mr. george?" inquires the old man. the trooper shakes his head, and leaning forward with his right elbow on his right knee and his pipe supported in that hand, while his other hand, resting on his left leg, squares his left elbow in a martial manner, continues to smoke. meanwhile he looks at mr. smallweed with grave attention and now and then fans the cloud of smoke away in order that he may see him the more clearly. "i take it," he says, making just as much and as little change in his position as will enable him to reach the glass to his lips with a round, full action, "that i am the only man alive (or dead either) that gets the value of a pipe out of you?" "well," returns the old man, "it's true that i don't see company, mr. george, and that i don't treat. i can't afford to it. but as you, in your pleasant way, made your pipe a condition--" "why, it's not for the value of it; that's no great thing. it was a fancy to get it out of you. to have something in for my money." "ha! you're prudent, prudent, sir!" cries grandfather smallweed, rubbing his legs. "very. i always was." puff. "it's a sure sign of my prudence that i ever found the way here." puff. "also, that i am what i am." puff. "i am well known to be prudent," says mr. george, composedly smoking. "i rose in life that way." "don't be down-hearted, sir. you may rise yet." mr. george laughs and drinks. "ha'n't you no relations, now," asks grandfather smallweed with a twinkle in his eyes, "who would pay off this little principal or who would lend you a good name or two that i could persuade my friend in the city to make you a further advance upon? two good names would be sufficient for my friend in the city. ha'n't you no such relations, mr. george?" mr. george, still composedly smoking, replies, "if i had, i shouldn't trouble them. i have been trouble enough to my belongings in my day. it may be a very good sort of penitence in a vagabond, who has wasted the best time of his life, to go back then to decent people that he never was a credit to and live upon them, but it's not my sort. the best kind of amends then for having gone away is to keep away, in my opinion." "but natural affection, mr. george," hints grandfather smallweed. "for two good names, hey?" says mr. george, shaking his head and still composedly smoking. "no. that's not my sort either." grandfather smallweed has been gradually sliding down in his chair since his last adjustment and is now a bundle of clothes with a voice in it calling for judy. that houri, appearing, shakes him up in the usual manner and is charged by the old gentleman to remain near him. for he seems chary of putting his visitor to the trouble of repeating his late attentions. "ha!" he observes when he is in trim again. "if you could have traced out the captain, mr. george, it would have been the making of you. if when you first came here, in consequence of our advertisement in the newspapers--when i say 'our,' i'm alluding to the advertisements of my friend in the city, and one or two others who embark their capital in the same way, and are so friendly towards me as sometimes to give me a lift with my little pittance--if at that time you could have helped us, mr. george, it would have been the making of you." "i was willing enough to be 'made,' as you call it," says mr. george, smoking not quite so placidly as before, for since the entrance of judy he has been in some measure disturbed by a fascination, not of the admiring kind, which obliges him to look at her as she stands by her grandfather's chair, "but on the whole, i am glad i wasn't now." "why, mr. george? in the name of--of brimstone, why?" says grandfather smallweed with a plain appearance of exasperation. (brimstone apparently suggested by his eye lighting on mrs. smallweed in her slumber.) "for two reasons, comrade." "and what two reasons, mr. george? in the name of the--" "of our friend in the city?" suggests mr. george, composedly drinking. "aye, if you like. what two reasons?" "in the first place," returns mr. george, but still looking at judy as if she being so old and so like her grandfather it is indifferent which of the two he addresses, "you gentlemen took me in. you advertised that mr. hawdon (captain hawdon, if you hold to the saying 'once a captain, always a captain') was to hear of something to his advantage." "well?" returns the old man shrilly and sharply. "well!" says mr. george, smoking on. "it wouldn't have been much to his advantage to have been clapped into prison by the whole bill and judgment trade of london." "how do you know that? some of his rich relations might have paid his debts or compounded for 'em. besides, he had taken us in. he owed us immense sums all round. i would sooner have strangled him than had no return. if i sit here thinking of him," snarls the old man, holding up his impotent ten fingers, "i want to strangle him now." and in a sudden access of fury, he throws the cushion at the unoffending mrs. smallweed, but it passes harmlessly on one side of her chair. "i don't need to be told," returns the trooper, taking his pipe from his lips for a moment and carrying his eyes back from following the progress of the cushion to the pipe-bowl which is burning low, "that he carried on heavily and went to ruin. i have been at his right hand many a day when he was charging upon ruin full-gallop. i was with him when he was sick and well, rich and poor. i laid this hand upon him after he had run through everything and broken down everything beneath him--when he held a pistol to his head." "i wish he had let it off," says the benevolent old man, "and blown his head into as many pieces as he owed pounds!" "that would have been a smash indeed," returns the trooper coolly; "any way, he had been young, hopeful, and handsome in the days gone by, and i am glad i never found him, when he was neither, to lead to a result so much to his advantage. that's reason number one." "i hope number two's as good?" snarls the old man. "why, no. it's more of a selfish reason. if i had found him, i must have gone to the other world to look. he was there." "how do you know he was there?" "he wasn't here." "how do you know he wasn't here?" "don't lose your temper as well as your money," says mr. george, calmly knocking the ashes out of his pipe. "he was drowned long before. i am convinced of it. he went over a ship's side. whether intentionally or accidentally, i don't know. perhaps your friend in the city does. do you know what that tune is, mr. smallweed?" he adds after breaking off to whistle one, accompanied on the table with the empty pipe. "tune!" replied the old man. "no. we never have tunes here." "that's the dead march in saul. they bury soldiers to it, so it's the natural end of the subject. now, if your pretty granddaughter--excuse me, miss--will condescend to take care of this pipe for two months, we shall save the cost of one next time. good evening, mr. smallweed!" "my dear friend!" the old man gives him both his hands. "so you think your friend in the city will be hard upon me if i fall in a payment?" says the trooper, looking down upon him like a giant. "my dear friend, i am afraid he will," returns the old man, looking up at him like a pygmy. mr. george laughs, and with a glance at mr. smallweed and a parting salutation to the scornful judy, strides out of the parlour, clashing imaginary sabres and other metallic appurtenances as he goes. "you're a damned rogue," says the old gentleman, making a hideous grimace at the door as he shuts it. "but i'll lime you, you dog, i'll lime you!" after this amiable remark, his spirit soars into those enchanting regions of reflection which its education and pursuits have opened to it, and again he and mrs. smallweed while away the rosy hours, two unrelieved sentinels forgotten as aforesaid by the black serjeant. while the twain are faithful to their post, mr. george strides through the streets with a massive kind of swagger and a grave-enough face. it is eight o'clock now, and the day is fast drawing in. he stops hard by waterloo bridge and reads a playbill, decides to go to astley's theatre. being there, is much delighted with the horses and the feats of strength; looks at the weapons with a critical eye; disapproves of the combats as giving evidences of unskilful swordsmanship; but is touched home by the sentiments. in the last scene, when the emperor of tartary gets up into a cart and condescends to bless the united lovers by hovering over them with the union jack, his eyelashes are moistened with emotion. the theatre over, mr. george comes across the water again and makes his way to that curious region lying about the haymarket and leicester square which is a centre of attraction to indifferent foreign hotels and indifferent foreigners, racket-courts, fighting-men, swordsmen, footguards, old china, gaming-houses, exhibitions, and a large medley of shabbiness and shrinking out of sight. penetrating to the heart of this region, he arrives by a court and a long whitewashed passage at a great brick building composed of bare walls, floors, roof-rafters, and skylights, on the front of which, if it can be said to have any front, is painted george's shooting gallery, &c. into george's shooting gallery, &c., he goes; and in it there are gaslights (partly turned off now), and two whitened targets for rifle-shooting, and archery accommodation, and fencing appliances, and all necessaries for the british art of boxing. none of these sports or exercises being pursued in george's shooting gallery to-night, which is so devoid of company that a little grotesque man with a large head has it all to himself and lies asleep upon the floor. the little man is dressed something like a gunsmith, in a green-baize apron and cap; and his face and hands are dirty with gunpowder and begrimed with the loading of guns. as he lies in the light before a glaring white target, the black upon him shines again. not far off is the strong, rough, primitive table with a vice upon it at which he has been working. he is a little man with a face all crushed together, who appears, from a certain blue and speckled appearance that one of his cheeks presents, to have been blown up, in the way of business, at some odd time or times. "phil!" says the trooper in a quiet voice. "all right!" cries phil, scrambling to his feet. "anything been doing?" "flat as ever so much swipes," says phil. "five dozen rifle and a dozen pistol. as to aim!" phil gives a howl at the recollection. "shut up shop, phil!" as phil moves about to execute this order, it appears that he is lame, though able to move very quickly. on the speckled side of his face he has no eyebrow, and on the other side he has a bushy black one, which want of uniformity gives him a very singular and rather sinister appearance. everything seems to have happened to his hands that could possibly take place consistently with the retention of all the fingers, for they are notched, and seamed, and crumpled all over. he appears to be very strong and lifts heavy benches about as if he had no idea what weight was. he has a curious way of limping round the gallery with his shoulder against the wall and tacking off at objects he wants to lay hold of instead of going straight to them, which has left a smear all round the four walls, conventionally called "phil's mark." this custodian of george's gallery in george's absence concludes his proceedings, when he has locked the great doors and turned out all the lights but one, which he leaves to glimmer, by dragging out from a wooden cabin in a corner two mattresses and bedding. these being drawn to opposite ends of the gallery, the trooper makes his own bed and phil makes his. "phil!" says the master, walking towards him without his coat and waistcoat, and looking more soldierly than ever in his braces. "you were found in a doorway, weren't you?" "gutter," says phil. "watchman tumbled over me." "then vagabondizing came natural to you from the beginning." "as nat'ral as possible," says phil. "good night!" "good night, guv'ner." phil cannot even go straight to bed, but finds it necessary to shoulder round two sides of the gallery and then tack off at his mattress. the trooper, after taking a turn or two in the rifle-distance and looking up at the moon now shining through the skylights, strides to his own mattress by a shorter route and goes to bed too. chapter xxii mr. bucket allegory looks pretty cool in lincoln's inn fields, though the evening is hot, for both mr. tulkinghorn's windows are wide open, and the room is lofty, gusty, and gloomy. these may not be desirable characteristics when november comes with fog and sleet or january with ice and snow, but they have their merits in the sultry long vacation weather. they enable allegory, though it has cheeks like peaches, and knees like bunches of blossoms, and rosy swellings for calves to its legs and muscles to its arms, to look tolerably cool to-night. plenty of dust comes in at mr. tulkinghorn's windows, and plenty more has generated among his furniture and papers. it lies thick everywhere. when a breeze from the country that has lost its way takes fright and makes a blind hurry to rush out again, it flings as much dust in the eyes of allegory as the law--or mr. tulkinghorn, one of its trustiest representatives--may scatter, on occasion, in the eyes of the laity. in his lowering magazine of dust, the universal article into which his papers and himself, and all his clients, and all things of earth, animate and inanimate, are resolving, mr. tulkinghorn sits at one of the open windows enjoying a bottle of old port. though a hard-grained man, close, dry, and silent, he can enjoy old wine with the best. he has a priceless bin of port in some artful cellar under the fields, which is one of his many secrets. when he dines alone in chambers, as he has dined to-day, and has his bit of fish and his steak or chicken brought in from the coffee-house, he descends with a candle to the echoing regions below the deserted mansion, and heralded by a remote reverberation of thundering doors, comes gravely back encircled by an earthy atmosphere and carrying a bottle from which he pours a radiant nectar, two score and ten years old, that blushes in the glass to find itself so famous and fills the whole room with the fragrance of southern grapes. mr. tulkinghorn, sitting in the twilight by the open window, enjoys his wine. as if it whispered to him of its fifty years of silence and seclusion, it shuts him up the closer. more impenetrable than ever, he sits, and drinks, and mellows as it were in secrecy, pondering at that twilight hour on all the mysteries he knows, associated with darkening woods in the country, and vast blank shut-up houses in town, and perhaps sparing a thought or two for himself, and his family history, and his money, and his will--all a mystery to every one--and that one bachelor friend of his, a man of the same mould and a lawyer too, who lived the same kind of life until he was seventy-five years old, and then suddenly conceiving (as it is supposed) an impression that it was too monotonous, gave his gold watch to his hair-dresser one summer evening and walked leisurely home to the temple and hanged himself. but mr. tulkinghorn is not alone to-night to ponder at his usual length. seated at the same table, though with his chair modestly and uncomfortably drawn a little way from it, sits a bald, mild, shining man who coughs respectfully behind his hand when the lawyer bids him fill his glass. "now, snagsby," says mr. tulkinghorn, "to go over this odd story again." "if you please, sir." "you told me when you were so good as to step round here last night--" "for which i must ask you to excuse me if it was a liberty, sir; but i remember that you had taken a sort of an interest in that person, and i thought it possible that you might--just--wish--to--" mr. tulkinghorn is not the man to help him to any conclusion or to admit anything as to any possibility concerning himself. so mr. snagsby trails off into saying, with an awkward cough, "i must ask you to excuse the liberty, sir, i am sure." "not at all," says mr. tulkinghorn. "you told me, snagsby, that you put on your hat and came round without mentioning your intention to your wife. that was prudent i think, because it's not a matter of such importance that it requires to be mentioned." "well, sir," returns mr. snagsby, "you see, my little woman is--not to put too fine a point upon it--inquisitive. she's inquisitive. poor little thing, she's liable to spasms, and it's good for her to have her mind employed. in consequence of which she employs it--i should say upon every individual thing she can lay hold of, whether it concerns her or not--especially not. my little woman has a very active mind, sir." mr. snagsby drinks and murmurs with an admiring cough behind his hand, "dear me, very fine wine indeed!" "therefore you kept your visit to yourself last night?" says mr. tulkinghorn. "and to-night too?" "yes, sir, and to-night, too. my little woman is at present in--not to put too fine a point on it--in a pious state, or in what she considers such, and attends the evening exertions (which is the name they go by) of a reverend party of the name of chadband. he has a great deal of eloquence at his command, undoubtedly, but i am not quite favourable to his style myself. that's neither here nor there. my little woman being engaged in that way made it easier for me to step round in a quiet manner." mr. tulkinghorn assents. "fill your glass, snagsby." "thank you, sir, i am sure," returns the stationer with his cough of deference. "this is wonderfully fine wine, sir!" "it is a rare wine now," says mr. tulkinghorn. "it is fifty years old." "is it indeed, sir? but i am not surprised to hear it, i am sure. it might be--any age almost." after rendering this general tribute to the port, mr. snagsby in his modesty coughs an apology behind his hand for drinking anything so precious. "will you run over, once again, what the boy said?" asks mr. tulkinghorn, putting his hands into the pockets of his rusty smallclothes and leaning quietly back in his chair. "with pleasure, sir." then, with fidelity, though with some prolixity, the law-stationer repeats jo's statement made to the assembled guests at his house. on coming to the end of his narrative, he gives a great start and breaks off with, "dear me, sir, i wasn't aware there was any other gentleman present!" mr. snagsby is dismayed to see, standing with an attentive face between himself and the lawyer at a little distance from the table, a person with a hat and stick in his hand who was not there when he himself came in and has not since entered by the door or by either of the windows. there is a press in the room, but its hinges have not creaked, nor has a step been audible upon the floor. yet this third person stands there with his attentive face, and his hat and stick in his hands, and his hands behind him, a composed and quiet listener. he is a stoutly built, steady-looking, sharp-eyed man in black, of about the middle-age. except that he looks at mr. snagsby as if he were going to take his portrait, there is nothing remarkable about him at first sight but his ghostly manner of appearing. "don't mind this gentleman," says mr. tulkinghorn in his quiet way. "this is only mr. bucket." "oh, indeed, sir?" returns the stationer, expressing by a cough that he is quite in the dark as to who mr. bucket may be. "i wanted him to hear this story," says the lawyer, "because i have half a mind (for a reason) to know more of it, and he is very intelligent in such things. what do you say to this, bucket?" "it's very plain, sir. since our people have moved this boy on, and he's not to be found on his old lay, if mr. snagsby don't object to go down with me to tom-all-alone's and point him out, we can have him here in less than a couple of hours' time. i can do it without mr. snagsby, of course, but this is the shortest way." "mr. bucket is a detective officer, snagsby," says the lawyer in explanation. "is he indeed, sir?" says mr. snagsby with a strong tendency in his clump of hair to stand on end. "and if you have no real objection to accompany mr. bucket to the place in question," pursues the lawyer, "i shall feel obliged to you if you will do so." in a moment's hesitation on the part of mr. snagsby, bucket dips down to the bottom of his mind. "don't you be afraid of hurting the boy," he says. "you won't do that. it's all right as far as the boy's concerned. we shall only bring him here to ask him a question or so i want to put to him, and he'll be paid for his trouble and sent away again. it'll be a good job for him. i promise you, as a man, that you shall see the boy sent away all right. don't you be afraid of hurting him; you an't going to do that." "very well, mr. tulkinghorn!" cries mr. snagsby cheerfully. and reassured, "since that's the case--" "yes! and lookee here, mr. snagsby," resumes bucket, taking him aside by the arm, tapping him familiarly on the breast, and speaking in a confidential tone. "you're a man of the world, you know, and a man of business, and a man of sense. that's what you are." "i am sure i am much obliged to you for your good opinion," returns the stationer with his cough of modesty, "but--" "that's what you are, you know," says bucket. "now, it an't necessary to say to a man like you, engaged in your business, which is a business of trust and requires a person to be wide awake and have his senses about him and his head screwed on tight (i had an uncle in your business once)--it an't necessary to say to a man like you that it's the best and wisest way to keep little matters like this quiet. don't you see? quiet!" "certainly, certainly," returns the other. "i don't mind telling you," says bucket with an engaging appearance of frankness, "that as far as i can understand it, there seems to be a doubt whether this dead person wasn't entitled to a little property, and whether this female hasn't been up to some games respecting that property, don't you see?" "oh!" says mr. snagsby, but not appearing to see quite distinctly. "now, what you want," pursues bucket, again tapping mr. snagsby on the breast in a comfortable and soothing manner, "is that every person should have their rights according to justice. that's what you want." "to be sure," returns mr. snagsby with a nod. "on account of which, and at the same time to oblige a--do you call it, in your business, customer or client? i forget how my uncle used to call it." "why, i generally say customer myself," replies mr. snagsby. "you're right!" returns mr. bucket, shaking hands with him quite affectionately. "--on account of which, and at the same time to oblige a real good customer, you mean to go down with me, in confidence, to tom-all-alone's and to keep the whole thing quiet ever afterwards and never mention it to any one. that's about your intentions, if i understand you?" "you are right, sir. you are right," says mr. snagsby. "then here's your hat," returns his new friend, quite as intimate with it as if he had made it; "and if you're ready, i am." they leave mr. tulkinghorn, without a ruffle on the surface of his unfathomable depths, drinking his old wine, and go down into the streets. "you don't happen to know a very good sort of person of the name of gridley, do you?" says bucket in friendly converse as they descend the stairs. "no," says mr. snagsby, considering, "i don't know anybody of that name. why?" "nothing particular," says bucket; "only having allowed his temper to get a little the better of him and having been threatening some respectable people, he is keeping out of the way of a warrant i have got against him--which it's a pity that a man of sense should do." as they walk along, mr. snagsby observes, as a novelty, that however quick their pace may be, his companion still seems in some undefinable manner to lurk and lounge; also, that whenever he is going to turn to the right or left, he pretends to have a fixed purpose in his mind of going straight ahead, and wheels off, sharply, at the very last moment. now and then, when they pass a police-constable on his beat, mr. snagsby notices that both the constable and his guide fall into a deep abstraction as they come towards each other, and appear entirely to overlook each other, and to gaze into space. in a few instances, mr. bucket, coming behind some under-sized young man with a shining hat on, and his sleek hair twisted into one flat curl on each side of his head, almost without glancing at him touches him with his stick, upon which the young man, looking round, instantly evaporates. for the most part mr. bucket notices things in general, with a face as unchanging as the great mourning ring on his little finger or the brooch, composed of not much diamond and a good deal of setting, which he wears in his shirt. when they come at last to tom-all-alone's, mr. bucket stops for a moment at the corner and takes a lighted bull's-eye from the constable on duty there, who then accompanies him with his own particular bull's-eye at his waist. between his two conductors, mr. snagsby passes along the middle of a villainous street, undrained, unventilated, deep in black mud and corrupt water--though the roads are dry elsewhere--and reeking with such smells and sights that he, who has lived in london all his life, can scarce believe his senses. branching from this street and its heaps of ruins are other streets and courts so infamous that mr. snagsby sickens in body and mind and feels as if he were going every moment deeper down into the infernal gulf. "draw off a bit here, mr. snagsby," says bucket as a kind of shabby palanquin is borne towards them, surrounded by a noisy crowd. "here's the fever coming up the street!" as the unseen wretch goes by, the crowd, leaving that object of attraction, hovers round the three visitors like a dream of horrible faces and fades away up alleys and into ruins and behind walls, and with occasional cries and shrill whistles of warning, thenceforth flits about them until they leave the place. "are those the fever-houses, darby?" mr. bucket coolly asks as he turns his bull's-eye on a line of stinking ruins. darby replies that "all them are," and further that in all, for months and months, the people "have been down by dozens" and have been carried out dead and dying "like sheep with the rot." bucket observing to mr. snagsby as they go on again that he looks a little poorly, mr. snagsby answers that he feels as if he couldn't breathe the dreadful air. there is inquiry made at various houses for a boy named jo. as few people are known in tom-all-alone's by any christian sign, there is much reference to mr. snagsby whether he means carrots, or the colonel, or gallows, or young chisel, or terrier tip, or lanky, or the brick. mr. snagsby describes over and over again. there are conflicting opinions respecting the original of his picture. some think it must be carrots, some say the brick. the colonel is produced, but is not at all near the thing. whenever mr. snagsby and his conductors are stationary, the crowd flows round, and from its squalid depths obsequious advice heaves up to mr. bucket. whenever they move, and the angry bull's-eyes glare, it fades away and flits about them up the alleys, and in the ruins, and behind the walls, as before. at last there is a lair found out where toughy, or the tough subject, lays him down at night; and it is thought that the tough subject may be jo. comparison of notes between mr. snagsby and the proprietress of the house--a drunken face tied up in a black bundle, and flaring out of a heap of rags on the floor of a dog-hutch which is her private apartment--leads to the establishment of this conclusion. toughy has gone to the doctor's to get a bottle of stuff for a sick woman but will be here anon. "and who have we got here to-night?" says mr. bucket, opening another door and glaring in with his bull's-eye. "two drunken men, eh? and two women? the men are sound enough," turning back each sleeper's arm from his face to look at him. "are these your good men, my dears?" "yes, sir," returns one of the women. "they are our husbands." "brickmakers, eh?" "yes, sir." "what are you doing here? you don't belong to london." "no, sir. we belong to hertfordshire." "whereabouts in hertfordshire?" "saint albans." "come up on the tramp?" "we walked up yesterday. there's no work down with us at present, but we have done no good by coming here, and shall do none, i expect." "that's not the way to do much good," says mr. bucket, turning his head in the direction of the unconscious figures on the ground. "it an't indeed," replies the woman with a sigh. "jenny and me knows it full well." the room, though two or three feet higher than the door, is so low that the head of the tallest of the visitors would touch the blackened ceiling if he stood upright. it is offensive to every sense; even the gross candle burns pale and sickly in the polluted air. there are a couple of benches and a higher bench by way of table. the men lie asleep where they stumbled down, but the women sit by the candle. lying in the arms of the woman who has spoken is a very young child. "why, what age do you call that little creature?" says bucket. "it looks as if it was born yesterday." he is not at all rough about it; and as he turns his light gently on the infant, mr. snagsby is strangely reminded of another infant, encircled with light, that he has seen in pictures. "he is not three weeks old yet, sir," says the woman. "is he your child?" "mine." the other woman, who was bending over it when they came in, stoops down again and kisses it as it lies asleep. "you seem as fond of it as if you were the mother yourself," says mr. bucket. "i was the mother of one like it, master, and it died." "ah, jenny, jenny!" says the other woman to her. "better so. much better to think of dead than alive, jenny! much better!" "why, you an't such an unnatural woman, i hope," returns bucket sternly, "as to wish your own child dead?" "god knows you are right, master," she returns. "i am not. i'd stand between it and death with my own life if i could, as true as any pretty lady." "then don't talk in that wrong manner," says mr. bucket, mollified again. "why do you do it?" "it's brought into my head, master," returns the woman, her eyes filling with tears, "when i look down at the child lying so. if it was never to wake no more, you'd think me mad, i should take on so. i know that very well. i was with jenny when she lost hers--warn't i, jenny?--and i know how she grieved. but look around you at this place. look at them," glancing at the sleepers on the ground. "look at the boy you're waiting for, who's gone out to do me a good turn. think of the children that your business lays with often and often, and that you see grow up!" "well, well," says mr. bucket, "you train him respectable, and he'll be a comfort to you, and look after you in your old age, you know." "i mean to try hard," she answers, wiping her eyes. "but i have been a-thinking, being over-tired to-night and not well with the ague, of all the many things that'll come in his way. my master will be against it, and he'll be beat, and see me beat, and made to fear his home, and perhaps to stray wild. if i work for him ever so much, and ever so hard, there's no one to help me; and if he should be turned bad 'spite of all i could do, and the time should come when i should sit by him in his sleep, made hard and changed, an't it likely i should think of him as he lies in my lap now and wish he had died as jenny's child died!" "there, there!" says jenny. "liz, you're tired and ill. let me take him." in doing so, she displaces the mother's dress, but quickly readjusts it over the wounded and bruised bosom where the baby has been lying. "it's my dead child," says jenny, walking up and down as she nurses, "that makes me love this child so dear, and it's my dead child that makes her love it so dear too, as even to think of its being taken away from her now. while she thinks that, i think what fortune would i give to have my darling back. but we mean the same thing, if we knew how to say it, us two mothers does in our poor hearts!" as mr. snagsby blows his nose and coughs his cough of sympathy, a step is heard without. mr. bucket throws his light into the doorway and says to mr. snagsby, "now, what do you say to toughy? will he do?" "that's jo," says mr. snagsby. jo stands amazed in the disk of light, like a ragged figure in a magic-lantern, trembling to think that he has offended against the law in not having moved on far enough. mr. snagsby, however, giving him the consolatory assurance, "it's only a job you will be paid for, jo," he recovers; and on being taken outside by mr. bucket for a little private confabulation, tells his tale satisfactorily, though out of breath. "i have squared it with the lad," says mr. bucket, returning, "and it's all right. now, mr. snagsby, we're ready for you." first, jo has to complete his errand of good nature by handing over the physic he has been to get, which he delivers with the laconic verbal direction that "it's to be all took d'rectly." secondly, mr. snagsby has to lay upon the table half a crown, his usual panacea for an immense variety of afflictions. thirdly, mr. bucket has to take jo by the arm a little above the elbow and walk him on before him, without which observance neither the tough subject nor any other subject could be professionally conducted to lincoln's inn fields. these arrangements completed, they give the women good night and come out once more into black and foul tom-all-alone's. by the noisome ways through which they descended into that pit, they gradually emerge from it, the crowd flitting, and whistling, and skulking about them until they come to the verge, where restoration of the bull's-eyes is made to darby. here the crowd, like a concourse of imprisoned demons, turns back, yelling, and is seen no more. through the clearer and fresher streets, never so clear and fresh to mr. snagsby's mind as now, they walk and ride until they come to mr. tulkinghorn's gate. as they ascend the dim stairs (mr. tulkinghorn's chambers being on the first floor), mr. bucket mentions that he has the key of the outer door in his pocket and that there is no need to ring. for a man so expert in most things of that kind, bucket takes time to open the door and makes some noise too. it may be that he sounds a note of preparation. howbeit, they come at last into the hall, where a lamp is burning, and so into mr. tulkinghorn's usual room--the room where he drank his old wine to-night. he is not there, but his two old-fashioned candlesticks are, and the room is tolerably light. mr. bucket, still having his professional hold of jo and appearing to mr. snagsby to possess an unlimited number of eyes, makes a little way into this room, when jo starts and stops. "what's the matter?" says bucket in a whisper. "there she is!" cries jo. "who!" "the lady!" a female figure, closely veiled, stands in the middle of the room, where the light falls upon it. it is quite still and silent. the front of the figure is towards them, but it takes no notice of their entrance and remains like a statue. "now, tell me," says bucket aloud, "how you know that to be the lady." "i know the wale," replies jo, staring, "and the bonnet, and the gownd." "be quite sure of what you say, tough," returns bucket, narrowly observant of him. "look again." "i am a-looking as hard as ever i can look," says jo with starting eyes, "and that there's the wale, the bonnet, and the gownd." "what about those rings you told me of?" asks bucket. "a-sparkling all over here," says jo, rubbing the fingers of his left hand on the knuckles of his right without taking his eyes from the figure. the figure removes the right-hand glove and shows the hand. "now, what do you say to that?" asks bucket. jo shakes his head. "not rings a bit like them. not a hand like that." "what are you talking of?" says bucket, evidently pleased though, and well pleased too. "hand was a deal whiter, a deal delicater, and a deal smaller," returns jo. "why, you'll tell me i'm my own mother next," says mr. bucket. "do you recollect the lady's voice?" "i think i does," says jo. the figure speaks. "was it at all like this? i will speak as long as you like if you are not sure. was it this voice, or at all like this voice?" jo looks aghast at mr. bucket. "not a bit!" "then, what," retorts that worthy, pointing to the figure, "did you say it was the lady for?" "cos," says jo with a perplexed stare but without being at all shaken in his certainty, "cos that there's the wale, the bonnet, and the gownd. it is her and it an't her. it an't her hand, nor yet her rings, nor yet her woice. but that there's the wale, the bonnet, and the gownd, and they're wore the same way wot she wore 'em, and it's her height wot she wos, and she giv me a sov'ring and hooked it." "well!" says mr. bucket slightly, "we haven't got much good out of you. but, however, here's five shillings for you. take care how you spend it, and don't get yourself into trouble." bucket stealthily tells the coins from one hand into the other like counters--which is a way he has, his principal use of them being in these games of skill--and then puts them, in a little pile, into the boy's hand and takes him out to the door, leaving mr. snagsby, not by any means comfortable under these mysterious circumstances, alone with the veiled figure. but on mr. tulkinghorn's coming into the room, the veil is raised and a sufficiently good-looking frenchwoman is revealed, though her expression is something of the intensest. "thank you, mademoiselle hortense," says mr. tulkinghorn with his usual equanimity. "i will give you no further trouble about this little wager." "you will do me the kindness to remember, sir, that i am not at present placed?" says mademoiselle. "certainly, certainly!" "and to confer upon me the favour of your distinguished recommendation?" "by all means, mademoiselle hortense." "a word from mr. tulkinghorn is so powerful." "it shall not be wanting, mademoiselle." "receive the assurance of my devoted gratitude, dear sir." "good night." mademoiselle goes out with an air of native gentility; and mr. bucket, to whom it is, on an emergency, as natural to be groom of the ceremonies as it is to be anything else, shows her downstairs, not without gallantry. "well, bucket?" quoth mr. tulkinghorn on his return. "it's all squared, you see, as i squared it myself, sir. there an't a doubt that it was the other one with this one's dress on. the boy was exact respecting colours and everything. mr. snagsby, i promised you as a man that he should be sent away all right. don't say it wasn't done!" "you have kept your word, sir," returns the stationer; "and if i can be of no further use, mr. tulkinghorn, i think, as my little woman will be getting anxious--" "thank you, snagsby, no further use," says mr. tulkinghorn. "i am quite indebted to you for the trouble you have taken already." "not at all, sir. i wish you good night." "you see, mr. snagsby," says mr. bucket, accompanying him to the door and shaking hands with him over and over again, "what i like in you is that you're a man it's of no use pumping; that's what you are. when you know you have done a right thing, you put it away, and it's done with and gone, and there's an end of it. that's what you do." "that is certainly what i endeavour to do, sir," returns mr. snagsby. "no, you don't do yourself justice. it an't what you endeavour to do," says mr. bucket, shaking hands with him and blessing him in the tenderest manner, "it's what you do. that's what i estimate in a man in your way of business." mr. snagsby makes a suitable response and goes homeward so confused by the events of the evening that he is doubtful of his being awake and out--doubtful of the reality of the streets through which he goes--doubtful of the reality of the moon that shines above him. he is presently reassured on these subjects by the unchallengeable reality of mrs. snagsby, sitting up with her head in a perfect beehive of curl-papers and night-cap, who has dispatched guster to the police-station with official intelligence of her husband's being made away with, and who within the last two hours has passed through every stage of swooning with the greatest decorum. but as the little woman feelingly says, many thanks she gets for it! chapter xxiii esther's narrative we came home from mr. boythorn's after six pleasant weeks. we were often in the park and in the woods and seldom passed the lodge where we had taken shelter without looking in to speak to the keeper's wife; but we saw no more of lady dedlock, except at church on sundays. there was company at chesney wold; and although several beautiful faces surrounded her, her face retained the same influence on me as at first. i do not quite know even now whether it was painful or pleasurable, whether it drew me towards her or made me shrink from her. i think i admired her with a kind of fear, and i know that in her presence my thoughts always wandered back, as they had done at first, to that old time of my life. i had a fancy, on more than one of these sundays, that what this lady so curiously was to me, i was to her--i mean that i disturbed her thoughts as she influenced mine, though in some different way. but when i stole a glance at her and saw her so composed and distant and unapproachable, i felt this to be a foolish weakness. indeed, i felt the whole state of my mind in reference to her to be weak and unreasonable, and i remonstrated with myself about it as much as i could. one incident that occurred before we quitted mr. boythorn's house, i had better mention in this place. i was walking in the garden with ada when i was told that some one wished to see me. going into the breakfast-room where this person was waiting, i found it to be the french maid who had cast off her shoes and walked through the wet grass on the day when it thundered and lightened. "mademoiselle," she began, looking fixedly at me with her too-eager eyes, though otherwise presenting an agreeable appearance and speaking neither with boldness nor servility, "i have taken a great liberty in coming here, but you know how to excuse it, being so amiable, mademoiselle." "no excuse is necessary," i returned, "if you wish to speak to me." "that is my desire, mademoiselle. a thousand thanks for the permission. i have your leave to speak. is it not?" she said in a quick, natural way. "certainly," said i. "mademoiselle, you are so amiable! listen then, if you please. i have left my lady. we could not agree. my lady is so high, so very high. pardon! mademoiselle, you are right!" her quickness anticipated what i might have said presently but as yet had only thought. "it is not for me to come here to complain of my lady. but i say she is so high, so very high. i will not say a word more. all the world knows that." "go on, if you please," said i. "assuredly; mademoiselle, i am thankful for your politeness. mademoiselle, i have an inexpressible desire to find service with a young lady who is good, accomplished, beautiful. you are good, accomplished, and beautiful as an angel. ah, could i have the honour of being your domestic!" "i am sorry--" i began. "do not dismiss me so soon, mademoiselle!" she said with an involuntary contraction of her fine black eyebrows. "let me hope a moment! mademoiselle, i know this service would be more retired than that which i have quitted. well! i wish that. i know this service would be less distinguished than that which i have quitted. well! i wish that, i know that i should win less, as to wages here. good. i am content." "i assure you," said i, quite embarrassed by the mere idea of having such an attendant, "that i keep no maid--" "ah, mademoiselle, but why not? why not, when you can have one so devoted to you! who would be enchanted to serve you; who would be so true, so zealous, and so faithful every day! mademoiselle, i wish with all my heart to serve you. do not speak of money at present. take me as i am. for nothing!" she was so singularly earnest that i drew back, almost afraid of her. without appearing to notice it, in her ardour she still pressed herself upon me, speaking in a rapid subdued voice, though always with a certain grace and propriety. "mademoiselle, i come from the south country where we are quick and where we like and dislike very strong. my lady was too high for me; i was too high for her. it is done--past--finished! receive me as your domestic, and i will serve you well. i will do more for you than you figure to yourself now. chut! mademoiselle, i will--no matter, i will do my utmost possible in all things. if you accept my service, you will not repent it. mademoiselle, you will not repent it, and i will serve you well. you don't know how well!" there was a lowering energy in her face as she stood looking at me while i explained the impossibility of my engaging her (without thinking it necessary to say how very little i desired to do so), which seemed to bring visibly before me some woman from the streets of paris in the reign of terror. she heard me out without interruption and then said with her pretty accent and in her mildest voice, "hey, mademoiselle, i have received my answer! i am sorry of it. but i must go elsewhere and seek what i have not found here. will you graciously let me kiss your hand?" she looked at me more intently as she took it, and seemed to take note, with her momentary touch, of every vein in it. "i fear i surprised you, mademoiselle, on the day of the storm?" she said with a parting curtsy. i confessed that she had surprised us all. "i took an oath, mademoiselle," she said, smiling, "and i wanted to stamp it on my mind so that i might keep it faithfully. and i will! adieu, mademoiselle!" so ended our conference, which i was very glad to bring to a close. i supposed she went away from the village, for i saw her no more; and nothing else occurred to disturb our tranquil summer pleasures until six weeks were out and we returned home as i began just now by saying. at that time, and for a good many weeks after that time, richard was constant in his visits. besides coming every saturday or sunday and remaining with us until monday morning, he sometimes rode out on horseback unexpectedly and passed the evening with us and rode back again early next day. he was as vivacious as ever and told us he was very industrious, but i was not easy in my mind about him. it appeared to me that his industry was all misdirected. i could not find that it led to anything but the formation of delusive hopes in connexion with the suit already the pernicious cause of so much sorrow and ruin. he had got at the core of that mystery now, he told us, and nothing could be plainer than that the will under which he and ada were to take i don't know how many thousands of pounds must be finally established if there were any sense or justice in the court of chancery--but oh, what a great if that sounded in my ears--and that this happy conclusion could not be much longer delayed. he proved this to himself by all the weary arguments on that side he had read, and every one of them sunk him deeper in the infatuation. he had even begun to haunt the court. he told us how he saw miss flite there daily, how they talked together, and how he did her little kindnesses, and how, while he laughed at her, he pitied her from his heart. but he never thought--never, my poor, dear, sanguine richard, capable of so much happiness then, and with such better things before him--what a fatal link was riveting between his fresh youth and her faded age, between his free hopes and her caged birds, and her hungry garret, and her wandering mind. ada loved him too well to mistrust him much in anything he said or did, and my guardian, though he frequently complained of the east wind and read more than usual in the growlery, preserved a strict silence on the subject. so i thought one day when i went to london to meet caddy jellyby, at her solicitation, i would ask richard to be in waiting for me at the coach-office, that we might have a little talk together. i found him there when i arrived, and we walked away arm in arm. "well, richard," said i as soon as i could begin to be grave with him, "are you beginning to feel more settled now?" "oh, yes, my dear!" returned richard. "i'm all right enough." "but settled?" said i. "how do you mean, settled?" returned richard with his gay laugh. "settled in the law," said i. "oh, aye," replied richard, "i'm all right enough." "you said that before, my dear richard." "and you don't think it's an answer, eh? well! perhaps it's not. settled? you mean, do i feel as if i were settling down?" "yes." "why, no, i can't say i am settling down," said richard, strongly emphasizing "down," as if that expressed the difficulty, "because one can't settle down while this business remains in such an unsettled state. when i say this business, of course i mean the--forbidden subject." "do you think it will ever be in a settled state?" said i. "not the least doubt of it," answered richard. we walked a little way without speaking, and presently richard addressed me in his frankest and most feeling manner, thus: "my dear esther, i understand you, and i wish to heaven i were a more constant sort of fellow. i don't mean constant to ada, for i love her dearly--better and better every day--but constant to myself. (somehow, i mean something that i can't very well express, but you'll make it out.) if i were a more constant sort of fellow, i should have held on either to badger or to kenge and carboy like grim death, and should have begun to be steady and systematic by this time, and shouldn't be in debt, and--" "are you in debt, richard?" "yes," said richard, "i am a little so, my dear. also, i have taken rather too much to billiards and that sort of thing. now the murder's out; you despise me, esther, don't you?" "you know i don't," said i. "you are kinder to me than i often am to myself," he returned. "my dear esther, i am a very unfortunate dog not to be more settled, but how can i be more settled? if you lived in an unfinished house, you couldn't settle down in it; if you were condemned to leave everything you undertook unfinished, you would find it hard to apply yourself to anything; and yet that's my unhappy case. i was born into this unfinished contention with all its chances and changes, and it began to unsettle me before i quite knew the difference between a suit at law and a suit of clothes; and it has gone on unsettling me ever since; and here i am now, conscious sometimes that i am but a worthless fellow to love my confiding cousin ada." we were in a solitary place, and he put his hands before his eyes and sobbed as he said the words. "oh, richard!" said i. "do not be so moved. you have a noble nature, and ada's love may make you worthier every day." "i know, my dear," he replied, pressing my arm, "i know all that. you mustn't mind my being a little soft now, for i have had all this upon my mind for a long time, and have often meant to speak to you, and have sometimes wanted opportunity and sometimes courage. i know what the thought of ada ought to do for me, but it doesn't do it. i am too unsettled even for that. i love her most devotedly, and yet i do her wrong, in doing myself wrong, every day and hour. but it can't last for ever. we shall come on for a final hearing and get judgment in our favour, and then you and ada shall see what i can really be!" it had given me a pang to hear him sob and see the tears start out between his fingers, but that was infinitely less affecting to me than the hopeful animation with which he said these words. "i have looked well into the papers, esther. i have been deep in them for months," he continued, recovering his cheerfulness in a moment, "and you may rely upon it that we shall come out triumphant. as to years of delay, there has been no want of them, heaven knows! and there is the greater probability of our bringing the matter to a speedy close; in fact, it's on the paper now. it will be all right at last, and then you shall see!" recalling how he had just now placed messrs. kenge and carboy in the same category with mr. badger, i asked him when he intended to be articled in lincoln's inn. "there again! i think not at all, esther," he returned with an effort. "i fancy i have had enough of it. having worked at jarndyce and jarndyce like a galley slave, i have slaked my thirst for the law and satisfied myself that i shouldn't like it. besides, i find it unsettles me more and more to be so constantly upon the scene of action. so what," continued richard, confident again by this time, "do i naturally turn my thoughts to?" "i can't imagine," said i. "don't look so serious," returned richard, "because it's the best thing i can do, my dear esther, i am certain. it's not as if i wanted a profession for life. these proceedings will come to a termination, and then i am provided for. no. i look upon it as a pursuit which is in its nature more or less unsettled, and therefore suited to my temporary condition--i may say, precisely suited. what is it that i naturally turn my thoughts to?" i looked at him and shook my head. "what," said richard, in a tone of perfect conviction, "but the army!" "the army?" said i. "the army, of course. what i have to do is to get a commission; and--there i am, you know!" said richard. and then he showed me, proved by elaborate calculations in his pocket-book, that supposing he had contracted, say, two hundred pounds of debt in six months out of the army; and that he contracted no debt at all within a corresponding period in the army--as to which he had quite made up his mind; this step must involve a saving of four hundred pounds in a year, or two thousand pounds in five years, which was a considerable sum. and then he spoke so ingenuously and sincerely of the sacrifice he made in withdrawing himself for a time from ada, and of the earnestness with which he aspired--as in thought he always did, i know full well--to repay her love, and to ensure her happiness, and to conquer what was amiss in himself, and to acquire the very soul of decision, that he made my heart ache keenly, sorely. for, i thought, how would this end, how could this end, when so soon and so surely all his manly qualities were touched by the fatal blight that ruined everything it rested on! i spoke to richard with all the earnestness i felt, and all the hope i could not quite feel then, and implored him for ada's sake not to put any trust in chancery. to all i said, richard readily assented, riding over the court and everything else in his easy way and drawing the brightest pictures of the character he was to settle into--alas, when the grievous suit should loose its hold upon him! we had a long talk, but it always came back to that, in substance. at last we came to soho square, where caddy jellyby had appointed to wait for me, as a quiet place in the neighbourhood of newman street. caddy was in the garden in the centre and hurried out as soon as i appeared. after a few cheerful words, richard left us together. "prince has a pupil over the way, esther," said caddy, "and got the key for us. so if you will walk round and round here with me, we can lock ourselves in and i can tell you comfortably what i wanted to see your dear good face about." "very well, my dear," said i. "nothing could be better." so caddy, after affectionately squeezing the dear good face as she called it, locked the gate, and took my arm, and we began to walk round the garden very cosily. "you see, esther," said caddy, who thoroughly enjoyed a little confidence, "after you spoke to me about its being wrong to marry without ma's knowledge, or even to keep ma long in the dark respecting our engagement--though i don't believe ma cares much for me, i must say--i thought it right to mention your opinions to prince. in the first place because i want to profit by everything you tell me, and in the second place because i have no secrets from prince." "i hope he approved, caddy?" "oh, my dear! i assure you he would approve of anything you could say. you have no idea what an opinion he has of you!" "indeed!" "esther, it's enough to make anybody but me jealous," said caddy, laughing and shaking her head; "but it only makes me joyful, for you are the first friend i ever had, and the best friend i ever can have, and nobody can respect and love you too much to please me." "upon my word, caddy," said i, "you are in the general conspiracy to keep me in a good humour. well, my dear?" "well! i am going to tell you," replied caddy, crossing her hands confidentially upon my arm. "so we talked a good deal about it, and so i said to prince, 'prince, as miss summerson--'" "i hope you didn't say 'miss summerson'?" "no. i didn't!" cried caddy, greatly pleased and with the brightest of faces. "i said, 'esther.' i said to prince, 'as esther is decidedly of that opinion, prince, and has expressed it to me, and always hints it when she writes those kind notes, which you are so fond of hearing me read to you, i am prepared to disclose the truth to ma whenever you think proper. and i think, prince,' said i, 'that esther thinks that i should be in a better, and truer, and more honourable position altogether if you did the same to your papa.'" "yes, my dear," said i. "esther certainly does think so." "so i was right, you see!" exclaimed caddy. "well! this troubled prince a good deal, not because he had the least doubt about it, but because he is so considerate of the feelings of old mr. turveydrop; and he had his apprehensions that old mr. turveydrop might break his heart, or faint away, or be very much overcome in some affecting manner or other if he made such an announcement. he feared old mr. turveydrop might consider it undutiful and might receive too great a shock. for old mr. turveydrop's deportment is very beautiful, you know, esther," said caddy, "and his feelings are extremely sensitive." "are they, my dear?" "oh, extremely sensitive. prince says so. now, this has caused my darling child--i didn't mean to use the expression to you, esther," caddy apologized, her face suffused with blushes, "but i generally call prince my darling child." i laughed; and caddy laughed and blushed, and went on. "this has caused him, esther--" "caused whom, my dear?" "oh, you tiresome thing!" said caddy, laughing, with her pretty face on fire. "my darling child, if you insist upon it! this has caused him weeks of uneasiness and has made him delay, from day to day, in a very anxious manner. at last he said to me, 'caddy, if miss summerson, who is a great favourite with my father, could be prevailed upon to be present when i broke the subject, i think i could do it.' so i promised i would ask you. and i made up my mind, besides," said caddy, looking at me hopefully but timidly, "that if you consented, i would ask you afterwards to come with me to ma. this is what i meant when i said in my note that i had a great favour and a great assistance to beg of you. and if you thought you could grant it, esther, we should both be very grateful." "let me see, caddy," said i, pretending to consider. "really, i think i could do a greater thing than that if the need were pressing. i am at your service and the darling child's, my dear, whenever you like." caddy was quite transported by this reply of mine, being, i believe, as susceptible to the least kindness or encouragement as any tender heart that ever beat in this world; and after another turn or two round the garden, during which she put on an entirely new pair of gloves and made herself as resplendent as possible that she might do no avoidable discredit to the master of deportment, we went to newman street direct. prince was teaching, of course. we found him engaged with a not very hopeful pupil--a stubborn little girl with a sulky forehead, a deep voice, and an inanimate, dissatisfied mama--whose case was certainly not rendered more hopeful by the confusion into which we threw her preceptor. the lesson at last came to an end, after proceeding as discordantly as possible; and when the little girl had changed her shoes and had had her white muslin extinguished in shawls, she was taken away. after a few words of preparation, we then went in search of mr. turveydrop, whom we found, grouped with his hat and gloves, as a model of deportment, on the sofa in his private apartment--the only comfortable room in the house. he appeared to have dressed at his leisure in the intervals of a light collation, and his dressing-case, brushes, and so forth, all of quite an elegant kind, lay about. "father, miss summerson; miss jellyby." "charmed! enchanted!" said mr. turveydrop, rising with his high-shouldered bow. "permit me!" handing chairs. "be seated!" kissing the tips of his left fingers. "overjoyed!" shutting his eyes and rolling. "my little retreat is made a paradise." recomposing himself on the sofa like the second gentleman in europe. "again you find us, miss summerson," said he, "using our little arts to polish, polish! again the sex stimulates us and rewards us by the condescension of its lovely presence. it is much in these times (and we have made an awfully degenerating business of it since the days of his royal highness the prince regent--my patron, if i may presume to say so) to experience that deportment is not wholly trodden under foot by mechanics. that it can yet bask in the smile of beauty, my dear madam." i said nothing, which i thought a suitable reply; and he took a pinch of snuff. "my dear son," said mr. turveydrop, "you have four schools this afternoon. i would recommend a hasty sandwich." "thank you, father," returned prince, "i will be sure to be punctual. my dear father, may i beg you to prepare your mind for what i am going to say?" "good heaven!" exclaimed the model, pale and aghast as prince and caddy, hand in hand, bent down before him. "what is this? is this lunacy! or what is this?" "father," returned prince with great submission, "i love this young lady, and we are engaged." "engaged!" cried mr. turveydrop, reclining on the sofa and shutting out the sight with his hand. "an arrow launched at my brain by my own child!" "we have been engaged for some time, father," faltered prince, "and miss summerson, hearing of it, advised that we should declare the fact to you and was so very kind as to attend on the present occasion. miss jellyby is a young lady who deeply respects you, father." mr. turveydrop uttered a groan. "no, pray don't! pray don't, father," urged his son. "miss jellyby is a young lady who deeply respects you, and our first desire is to consider your comfort." mr. turveydrop sobbed. "no, pray don't, father!" cried his son. "boy," said mr. turveydrop, "it is well that your sainted mother is spared this pang. strike deep, and spare not. strike home, sir, strike home!" "pray don't say so, father," implored prince, in tears. "it goes to my heart. i do assure you, father, that our first wish and intention is to consider your comfort. caroline and i do not forget our duty--what is my duty is caroline's, as we have often said together--and with your approval and consent, father, we will devote ourselves to making your life agreeable." "strike home," murmured mr. turveydrop. "strike home!" but he seemed to listen, i thought, too. "my dear father," returned prince, "we well know what little comforts you are accustomed to and have a right to, and it will always be our study and our pride to provide those before anything. if you will bless us with your approval and consent, father, we shall not think of being married until it is quite agreeable to you; and when we are married, we shall always make you--of course--our first consideration. you must ever be the head and master here, father; and we feel how truly unnatural it would be in us if we failed to know it or if we failed to exert ourselves in every possible way to please you." mr. turveydrop underwent a severe internal struggle and came upright on the sofa again with his cheeks puffing over his stiff cravat, a perfect model of parental deportment. "my son!" said mr. turveydrop. "my children! i cannot resist your prayer. be happy!" his benignity as he raised his future daughter-in-law and stretched out his hand to his son (who kissed it with affectionate respect and gratitude) was the most confusing sight i ever saw. "my children," said mr. turveydrop, paternally encircling caddy with his left arm as she sat beside him, and putting his right hand gracefully on his hip. "my son and daughter, your happiness shall be my care. i will watch over you. you shall always live with me"--meaning, of course, i will always live with you--"this house is henceforth as much yours as mine; consider it your home. may you long live to share it with me!" the power of his deportment was such that they really were as much overcome with thankfulness as if, instead of quartering himself upon them for the rest of his life, he were making some munificent sacrifice in their favour. "for myself, my children," said mr. turveydrop, "i am falling into the sear and yellow leaf, and it is impossible to say how long the last feeble traces of gentlemanly deportment may linger in this weaving and spinning age. but, so long, i will do my duty to society and will show myself, as usual, about town. my wants are few and simple. my little apartment here, my few essentials for the toilet, my frugal morning meal, and my little dinner will suffice. i charge your dutiful affection with the supply of these requirements, and i charge myself with all the rest." they were overpowered afresh by his uncommon generosity. "my son," said mr. turveydrop, "for those little points in which you are deficient--points of deportment, which are born with a man, which may be improved by cultivation, but can never be originated--you may still rely on me. i have been faithful to my post since the days of his royal highness the prince regent, and i will not desert it now. no, my son. if you have ever contemplated your father's poor position with a feeling of pride, you may rest assured that he will do nothing to tarnish it. for yourself, prince, whose character is different (we cannot be all alike, nor is it advisable that we should), work, be industrious, earn money, and extend the connexion as much as possible." "that you may depend i will do, dear father, with all my heart," replied prince. "i have no doubt of it," said mr. turveydrop. "your qualities are not shining, my dear child, but they are steady and useful. and to both of you, my children, i would merely observe, in the spirit of a sainted wooman on whose path i had the happiness of casting, i believe, some ray of light, take care of the establishment, take care of my simple wants, and bless you both!" old mr. turveydrop then became so very gallant, in honour of the occasion, that i told caddy we must really go to thavies inn at once if we were to go at all that day. so we took our departure after a very loving farewell between caddy and her betrothed, and during our walk she was so happy and so full of old mr. turveydrop's praises that i would not have said a word in his disparagement for any consideration. the house in thavies inn had bills in the windows announcing that it was to let, and it looked dirtier and gloomier and ghastlier than ever. the name of poor mr. jellyby had appeared in the list of bankrupts but a day or two before, and he was shut up in the dining-room with two gentlemen and a heap of blue bags, account-books, and papers, making the most desperate endeavours to understand his affairs. they appeared to me to be quite beyond his comprehension, for when caddy took me into the dining-room by mistake and we came upon mr. jellyby in his spectacles, forlornly fenced into a corner by the great dining-table and the two gentlemen, he seemed to have given up the whole thing and to be speechless and insensible. going upstairs to mrs. jellyby's room (the children were all screaming in the kitchen, and there was no servant to be seen), we found that lady in the midst of a voluminous correspondence, opening, reading, and sorting letters, with a great accumulation of torn covers on the floor. she was so preoccupied that at first she did not know me, though she sat looking at me with that curious, bright-eyed, far-off look of hers. "ah! miss summerson!" she said at last. "i was thinking of something so different! i hope you are well. i am happy to see you. mr. jarndyce and miss clare quite well?" i hoped in return that mr. jellyby was quite well. "why, not quite, my dear," said mrs. jellyby in the calmest manner. "he has been unfortunate in his affairs and is a little out of spirits. happily for me, i am so much engaged that i have no time to think about it. we have, at the present moment, one hundred and seventy families, miss summerson, averaging five persons in each, either gone or going to the left bank of the niger." i thought of the one family so near us who were neither gone nor going to the left bank of the niger, and wondered how she could be so placid. "you have brought caddy back, i see," observed mrs. jellyby with a glance at her daughter. "it has become quite a novelty to see her here. she has almost deserted her old employment and in fact obliges me to employ a boy." "i am sure, ma--" began caddy. "now you know, caddy," her mother mildly interposed, "that i do employ a boy, who is now at his dinner. what is the use of your contradicting?" "i was not going to contradict, ma," returned caddy. "i was only going to say that surely you wouldn't have me be a mere drudge all my life." "i believe, my dear," said mrs. jellyby, still opening her letters, casting her bright eyes smilingly over them, and sorting them as she spoke, "that you have a business example before you in your mother. besides. a mere drudge? if you had any sympathy with the destinies of the human race, it would raise you high above any such idea. but you have none. i have often told you, caddy, you have no such sympathy." "not if it's africa, ma, i have not." "of course you have not. now, if i were not happily so much engaged, miss summerson," said mrs. jellyby, sweetly casting her eyes for a moment on me and considering where to put the particular letter she had just opened, "this would distress and disappoint me. but i have so much to think of, in connexion with borrioboola-gha and it is so necessary i should concentrate myself that there is my remedy, you see." as caddy gave me a glance of entreaty, and as mrs. jellyby was looking far away into africa straight through my bonnet and head, i thought it a good opportunity to come to the subject of my visit and to attract mrs. jellyby's attention. "perhaps," i began, "you will wonder what has brought me here to interrupt you." "i am always delighted to see miss summerson," said mrs. jellyby, pursuing her employment with a placid smile. "though i wish," and she shook her head, "she was more interested in the borrioboolan project." "i have come with caddy," said i, "because caddy justly thinks she ought not to have a secret from her mother and fancies i shall encourage and aid her (though i am sure i don't know how) in imparting one." "caddy," said mrs. jellyby, pausing for a moment in her occupation and then serenely pursuing it after shaking her head, "you are going to tell me some nonsense." caddy untied the strings of her bonnet, took her bonnet off, and letting it dangle on the floor by the strings, and crying heartily, said, "ma, i am engaged." "oh, you ridiculous child!" observed mrs. jellyby with an abstracted air as she looked over the dispatch last opened; "what a goose you are!" "i am engaged, ma," sobbed caddy, "to young mr. turveydrop, at the academy; and old mr. turveydrop (who is a very gentlemanly man indeed) has given his consent, and i beg and pray you'll give us yours, ma, because i never could be happy without it. i never, never could!" sobbed caddy, quite forgetful of her general complainings and of everything but her natural affection. "you see again, miss summerson," observed mrs. jellyby serenely, "what a happiness it is to be so much occupied as i am and to have this necessity for self-concentration that i have. here is caddy engaged to a dancing-master's son--mixed up with people who have no more sympathy with the destinies of the human race than she has herself! this, too, when mr. quale, one of the first philanthropists of our time, has mentioned to me that he was really disposed to be interested in her!" "ma, i always hated and detested mr. quale!" sobbed caddy. "caddy, caddy!" returned mrs. jellyby, opening another letter with the greatest complacency. "i have no doubt you did. how could you do otherwise, being totally destitute of the sympathies with which he overflows! now, if my public duties were not a favourite child to me, if i were not occupied with large measures on a vast scale, these petty details might grieve me very much, miss summerson. but can i permit the film of a silly proceeding on the part of caddy (from whom i expect nothing else) to interpose between me and the great african continent? no. no," repeated mrs. jellyby in a calm clear voice, and with an agreeable smile, as she opened more letters and sorted them. "no, indeed." i was so unprepared for the perfect coolness of this reception, though i might have expected it, that i did not know what to say. caddy seemed equally at a loss. mrs. jellyby continued to open and sort letters and to repeat occasionally in quite a charming tone of voice and with a smile of perfect composure, "no, indeed." "i hope, ma," sobbed poor caddy at last, "you are not angry?" "oh, caddy, you really are an absurd girl," returned mrs. jellyby, "to ask such questions after what i have said of the preoccupation of my mind." "and i hope, ma, you give us your consent and wish us well?" said caddy. "you are a nonsensical child to have done anything of this kind," said mrs. jellyby; "and a degenerate child, when you might have devoted yourself to the great public measure. but the step is taken, and i have engaged a boy, and there is no more to be said. now, pray, caddy," said mrs. jellyby, for caddy was kissing her, "don't delay me in my work, but let me clear off this heavy batch of papers before the afternoon post comes in!" i thought i could not do better than take my leave; i was detained for a moment by caddy's saying, "you won't object to my bringing him to see you, ma?" "oh, dear me, caddy," cried mrs. jellyby, who had relapsed into that distant contemplation, "have you begun again? bring whom?" "him, ma." "caddy, caddy!" said mrs. jellyby, quite weary of such little matters. "then you must bring him some evening which is not a parent society night, or a branch night, or a ramification night. you must accommodate the visit to the demands upon my time. my dear miss summerson, it was very kind of you to come here to help out this silly chit. good-bye! when i tell you that i have fifty-eight new letters from manufacturing families anxious to understand the details of the native and coffee-cultivation question this morning, i need not apologize for having very little leisure." i was not surprised by caddy's being in low spirits when we went downstairs, or by her sobbing afresh on my neck, or by her saying she would far rather have been scolded than treated with such indifference, or by her confiding to me that she was so poor in clothes that how she was ever to be married creditably she didn't know. i gradually cheered her up by dwelling on the many things she would do for her unfortunate father and for peepy when she had a home of her own; and finally we went downstairs into the damp dark kitchen, where peepy and his little brothers and sisters were grovelling on the stone floor and where we had such a game of play with them that to prevent myself from being quite torn to pieces i was obliged to fall back on my fairy-tales. from time to time i heard loud voices in the parlour overhead, and occasionally a violent tumbling about of the furniture. the last effect i am afraid was caused by poor mr. jellyby's breaking away from the dining-table and making rushes at the window with the intention of throwing himself into the area whenever he made any new attempt to understand his affairs. as i rode quietly home at night after the day's bustle, i thought a good deal of caddy's engagement and felt confirmed in my hopes (in spite of the elder mr. turveydrop) that she would be the happier and better for it. and if there seemed to be but a slender chance of her and her husband ever finding out what the model of deportment really was, why that was all for the best too, and who would wish them to be wiser? i did not wish them to be any wiser and indeed was half ashamed of not entirely believing in him myself. and i looked up at the stars, and thought about travellers in distant countries and the stars they saw, and hoped i might always be so blest and happy as to be useful to some one in my small way. they were so glad to see me when i got home, as they always were, that i could have sat down and cried for joy if that had not been a method of making myself disagreeable. everybody in the house, from the lowest to the highest, showed me such a bright face of welcome, and spoke so cheerily, and was so happy to do anything for me, that i suppose there never was such a fortunate little creature in the world. we got into such a chatty state that night, through ada and my guardian drawing me out to tell them all about caddy, that i went on prose, prose, prosing for a length of time. at last i got up to my own room, quite red to think how i had been holding forth, and then i heard a soft tap at my door. so i said, "come in!" and there came in a pretty little girl, neatly dressed in mourning, who dropped a curtsy. "if you please, miss," said the little girl in a soft voice, "i am charley." "why, so you are," said i, stooping down in astonishment and giving her a kiss. "how glad am i to see you, charley!" "if you please, miss," pursued charley in the same soft voice, "i'm your maid." "charley?" "if you please, miss, i'm a present to you, with mr. jarndyce's love." i sat down with my hand on charley's neck and looked at charley. "and oh, miss," says charley, clapping her hands, with the tears starting down her dimpled cheeks, "tom's at school, if you please, and learning so good! and little emma, she's with mrs. blinder, miss, a-being took such care of! and tom, he would have been at school--and emma, she would have been left with mrs. blinder--and me, i should have been here--all a deal sooner, miss; only mr. jarndyce thought that tom and emma and me had better get a little used to parting first, we was so small. don't cry, if you please, miss!" "i can't help it, charley." "no, miss, nor i can't help it," says charley. "and if you please, miss, mr. jarndyce's love, and he thinks you'll like to teach me now and then. and if you please, tom and emma and me is to see each other once a month. and i'm so happy and so thankful, miss," cried charley with a heaving heart, "and i'll try to be such a good maid!" "oh, charley dear, never forget who did all this!" "no, miss, i never will. nor tom won't. nor yet emma. it was all you, miss." "i have known nothing of it. it was mr. jarndyce, charley." "yes, miss, but it was all done for the love of you and that you might be my mistress. if you please, miss, i am a little present with his love, and it was all done for the love of you. me and tom was to be sure to remember it." charley dried her eyes and entered on her functions, going in her matronly little way about and about the room and folding up everything she could lay her hands upon. presently charley came creeping back to my side and said, "oh, don't cry, if you please, miss." and i said again, "i can't help it, charley." and charley said again, "no, miss, nor i can't help it." and so, after all, i did cry for joy indeed, and so did she. chapter xxiv an appeal case as soon as richard and i had held the conversation of which i have given an account, richard communicated the state of his mind to mr. jarndyce. i doubt if my guardian were altogether taken by surprise when he received the representation, though it caused him much uneasiness and disappointment. he and richard were often closeted together, late at night and early in the morning, and passed whole days in london, and had innumerable appointments with mr. kenge, and laboured through a quantity of disagreeable business. while they were thus employed, my guardian, though he underwent considerable inconvenience from the state of the wind and rubbed his head so constantly that not a single hair upon it ever rested in its right place, was as genial with ada and me as at any other time, but maintained a steady reserve on these matters. and as our utmost endeavours could only elicit from richard himself sweeping assurances that everything was going on capitally and that it really was all right at last, our anxiety was not much relieved by him. we learnt, however, as the time went on, that a new application was made to the lord chancellor on richard's behalf as an infant and a ward, and i don't know what, and that there was a quantity of talking, and that the lord chancellor described him in open court as a vexatious and capricious infant, and that the matter was adjourned and readjourned, and referred, and reported on, and petitioned about until richard began to doubt (as he told us) whether, if he entered the army at all, it would not be as a veteran of seventy or eighty years of age. at last an appointment was made for him to see the lord chancellor again in his private room, and there the lord chancellor very seriously reproved him for trifling with time and not knowing his mind--"a pretty good joke, i think," said richard, "from that quarter!"--and at last it was settled that his application should be granted. his name was entered at the horse guards as an applicant for an ensign's commission; the purchase-money was deposited at an agent's; and richard, in his usual characteristic way, plunged into a violent course of military study and got up at five o'clock every morning to practise the broadsword exercise. thus, vacation succeeded term, and term succeeded vacation. we sometimes heard of jarndyce and jarndyce as being in the paper or out of the paper, or as being to be mentioned, or as being to be spoken to; and it came on, and it went off. richard, who was now in a professor's house in london, was able to be with us less frequently than before; my guardian still maintained the same reserve; and so time passed until the commission was obtained and richard received directions with it to join a regiment in ireland. he arrived post-haste with the intelligence one evening, and had a long conference with my guardian. upwards of an hour elapsed before my guardian put his head into the room where ada and i were sitting and said, "come in, my dears!" we went in and found richard, whom we had last seen in high spirits, leaning on the chimney-piece looking mortified and angry. "rick and i, ada," said mr. jarndyce, "are not quite of one mind. come, come, rick, put a brighter face upon it!" "you are very hard with me, sir," said richard. "the harder because you have been so considerate to me in all other respects and have done me kindnesses that i can never acknowledge. i never could have been set right without you, sir." "well, well!" said mr. jarndyce. "i want to set you more right yet. i want to set you more right with yourself." "i hope you will excuse my saying, sir," returned richard in a fiery way, but yet respectfully, "that i think i am the best judge about myself." "i hope you will excuse my saying, my dear rick," observed mr. jarndyce with the sweetest cheerfulness and good humour, "that it's quite natural in you to think so, but i don't think so. i must do my duty, rick, or you could never care for me in cool blood; and i hope you will always care for me, cool and hot." ada had turned so pale that he made her sit down in his reading-chair and sat beside her. "it's nothing, my dear," he said, "it's nothing. rick and i have only had a friendly difference, which we must state to you, for you are the theme. now you are afraid of what's coming." "i am not indeed, cousin john," replied ada with a smile, "if it is to come from you." "thank you, my dear. do you give me a minute's calm attention, without looking at rick. and, little woman, do you likewise. my dear girl," putting his hand on hers as it lay on the side of the easy-chair, "you recollect the talk we had, we four when the little woman told me of a little love affair?" "it is not likely that either richard or i can ever forget your kindness that day, cousin john." "i can never forget it," said richard. "and i can never forget it," said ada. "so much the easier what i have to say, and so much the easier for us to agree," returned my guardian, his face irradiated by the gentleness and honour of his heart. "ada, my bird, you should know that rick has now chosen his profession for the last time. all that he has of certainty will be expended when he is fully equipped. he has exhausted his resources and is bound henceforward to the tree he has planted." "quite true that i have exhausted my present resources, and i am quite content to know it. but what i have of certainty, sir," said richard, "is not all i have." "rick, rick!" cried my guardian with a sudden terror in his manner, and in an altered voice, and putting up his hands as if he would have stopped his ears. "for the love of god, don't found a hope or expectation on the family curse! whatever you do on this side the grave, never give one lingering glance towards the horrible phantom that has haunted us so many years. better to borrow, better to beg, better to die!" we were all startled by the fervour of this warning. richard bit his lip and held his breath, and glanced at me as if he felt, and knew that i felt too, how much he needed it. "ada, my dear," said mr. jarndyce, recovering his cheerfulness, "these are strong words of advice, but i live in bleak house and have seen a sight here. enough of that. all richard had to start him in the race of life is ventured. i recommend to him and you, for his sake and your own, that he should depart from us with the understanding that there is no sort of contract between you. i must go further. i will be plain with you both. you were to confide freely in me, and i will confide freely in you. i ask you wholly to relinquish, for the present, any tie but your relationship." "better to say at once, sir," returned richard, "that you renounce all confidence in me and that you advise ada to do the same." "better to say nothing of the sort, rick, because i don't mean it." "you think i have begun ill, sir," retorted richard. "i have, i know." "how i hoped you would begin, and how go on, i told you when we spoke of these things last," said mr. jarndyce in a cordial and encouraging manner. "you have not made that beginning yet, but there is a time for all things, and yours is not gone by; rather, it is just now fully come. make a clear beginning altogether. you two (very young, my dears) are cousins. as yet, you are nothing more. what more may come must come of being worked out, rick, and no sooner." "you are very hard with me, sir," said richard. "harder than i could have supposed you would be." "my dear boy," said mr. jarndyce, "i am harder with myself when i do anything that gives you pain. you have your remedy in your own hands. ada, it is better for him that he should be free and that there should be no youthful engagement between you. rick, it is better for her, much better; you owe it to her. come! each of you will do what is best for the other, if not what is best for yourselves." "why is it best, sir?" returned richard hastily. "it was not when we opened our hearts to you. you did not say so then." "i have had experience since. i don't blame you, rick, but i have had experience since." "you mean of me, sir." "well! yes, of both of you," said mr. jarndyce kindly. "the time is not come for your standing pledged to one another. it is not right, and i must not recognize it. come, come, my young cousins, begin afresh! bygones shall be bygones, and a new page turned for you to write your lives in." richard gave an anxious glance at ada but said nothing. "i have avoided saying one word to either of you or to esther," said mr. jarndyce, "until now, in order that we might be open as the day, and all on equal terms. i now affectionately advise, i now most earnestly entreat, you two to part as you came here. leave all else to time, truth, and steadfastness. if you do otherwise, you will do wrong, and you will have made me do wrong in ever bringing you together." a long silence succeeded. "cousin richard," said ada then, raising her blue eyes tenderly to his face, "after what our cousin john has said, i think no choice is left us. your mind may be quite at ease about me, for you will leave me here under his care and will be sure that i can have nothing to wish for--quite sure if i guide myself by his advice. i--i don't doubt, cousin richard," said ada, a little confused, "that you are very fond of me, and i--i don't think you will fall in love with anybody else. but i should like you to consider well about it too, as i should like you to be in all things very happy. you may trust in me, cousin richard. i am not at all changeable; but i am not unreasonable, and should never blame you. even cousins may be sorry to part; and in truth i am very, very sorry, richard, though i know it's for your welfare. i shall always think of you affectionately, and often talk of you with esther, and--and perhaps you will sometimes think a little of me, cousin richard. so now," said ada, going up to him and giving him her trembling hand, "we are only cousins again, richard--for the time perhaps--and i pray for a blessing on my dear cousin, wherever he goes!" it was strange to me that richard should not be able to forgive my guardian for entertaining the very same opinion of him which he himself had expressed of himself in much stronger terms to me. but it was certainly the case. i observed with great regret that from this hour he never was as free and open with mr. jarndyce as he had been before. he had every reason given him to be so, but he was not; and solely on his side, an estrangement began to arise between them. in the business of preparation and equipment he soon lost himself, and even his grief at parting from ada, who remained in hertfordshire while he, mr. jarndyce, and i went up to london for a week. he remembered her by fits and starts, even with bursts of tears, and at such times would confide to me the heaviest self-reproaches. but in a few minutes he would recklessly conjure up some undefinable means by which they were both to be made rich and happy for ever, and would become as gay as possible. it was a busy time, and i trotted about with him all day long, buying a variety of things of which he stood in need. of the things he would have bought if he had been left to his own ways i say nothing. he was perfectly confidential with me, and often talked so sensibly and feelingly about his faults and his vigorous resolutions, and dwelt so much upon the encouragement he derived from these conversations that i could never have been tired if i had tried. there used, in that week, to come backward and forward to our lodging to fence with richard a person who had formerly been a cavalry soldier; he was a fine bluff-looking man, of a frank free bearing, with whom richard had practised for some months. i heard so much about him, not only from richard, but from my guardian too, that i was purposely in the room with my work one morning after breakfast when he came. "good morning, mr. george," said my guardian, who happened to be alone with me. "mr. carstone will be here directly. meanwhile, miss summerson is very happy to see you, i know. sit down." he sat down, a little disconcerted by my presence, i thought, and without looking at me, drew his heavy sunburnt hand across and across his upper lip. "you are as punctual as the sun," said mr. jarndyce. "military time, sir," he replied. "force of habit. a mere habit in me, sir. i am not at all business-like." "yet you have a large establishment, too, i am told?" said mr. jarndyce. "not much of a one, sir. i keep a shooting gallery, but not much of a one." "and what kind of a shot and what kind of a swordsman do you make of mr. carstone?" said my guardian. "pretty good, sir," he replied, folding his arms upon his broad chest and looking very large. "if mr. carstone was to give his full mind to it, he would come out very good." "but he don't, i suppose?" said my guardian. "he did at first, sir, but not afterwards. not his full mind. perhaps he has something else upon it--some young lady, perhaps." his bright dark eyes glanced at me for the first time. "he has not me upon his mind, i assure you, mr. george," said i, laughing, "though you seem to suspect me." he reddened a little through his brown and made me a trooper's bow. "no offence, i hope, miss. i am one of the roughs." "not at all," said i. "i take it as a compliment." if he had not looked at me before, he looked at me now in three or four quick successive glances. "i beg your pardon, sir," he said to my guardian with a manly kind of diffidence, "but you did me the honour to mention the young lady's name--" "miss summerson." "miss summerson," he repeated, and looked at me again. "do you know the name?" i asked. "no, miss. to my knowledge i never heard it. i thought i had seen you somewhere." "i think not," i returned, raising my head from my work to look at him; and there was something so genuine in his speech and manner that i was glad of the opportunity. "i remember faces very well." "so do i, miss!" he returned, meeting my look with the fullness of his dark eyes and broad forehead. "humph! what set me off, now, upon that!" his once more reddening through his brown and being disconcerted by his efforts to remember the association brought my guardian to his relief. "have you many pupils, mr. george?" "they vary in their number, sir. mostly they're but a small lot to live by." "and what classes of chance people come to practise at your gallery?" "all sorts, sir. natives and foreigners. from gentlemen to 'prentices. i have had frenchwomen come, before now, and show themselves dabs at pistol-shooting. mad people out of number, of course, but they go everywhere where the doors stand open." "people don't come with grudges and schemes of finishing their practice with live targets, i hope?" said my guardian, smiling. "not much of that, sir, though that has happened. mostly they come for skill--or idleness. six of one, and half-a-dozen of the other. i beg your pardon," said mr. george, sitting stiffly upright and squaring an elbow on each knee, "but i believe you're a chancery suitor, if i have heard correct?" "i am sorry to say i am." "i have had one of your compatriots in my time, sir." "a chancery suitor?" returned my guardian. "how was that?" "why, the man was so badgered and worried and tortured by being knocked about from post to pillar, and from pillar to post," said mr. george, "that he got out of sorts. i don't believe he had any idea of taking aim at anybody, but he was in that condition of resentment and violence that he would come and pay for fifty shots and fire away till he was red hot. one day i said to him when there was nobody by and he had been talking to me angrily about his wrongs, 'if this practice is a safety-valve, comrade, well and good; but i don't altogether like your being so bent upon it in your present state of mind; i'd rather you took to something else.' i was on my guard for a blow, he was that passionate; but he received it in very good part and left off directly. we shook hands and struck up a sort of friendship." "what was that man?" asked my guardian in a new tone of interest. "why, he began by being a small shropshire farmer before they made a baited bull of him," said mr. george. "was his name gridley?" "it was, sir." mr. george directed another succession of quick bright glances at me as my guardian and i exchanged a word or two of surprise at the coincidence, and i therefore explained to him how we knew the name. he made me another of his soldierly bows in acknowledgment of what he called my condescension. "i don't know," he said as he looked at me, "what it is that sets me off again--but--bosh! what's my head running against!" he passed one of his heavy hands over his crisp dark hair as if to sweep the broken thoughts out of his mind and sat a little forward, with one arm akimbo and the other resting on his leg, looking in a brown study at the ground. "i am sorry to learn that the same state of mind has got this gridley into new troubles and that he is in hiding," said my guardian. "so i am told, sir," returned mr. george, still musing and looking on the ground. "so i am told." "you don't know where?" "no, sir," returned the trooper, lifting up his eyes and coming out of his reverie. "i can't say anything about him. he will be worn out soon, i expect. you may file a strong man's heart away for a good many years, but it will tell all of a sudden at last." richard's entrance stopped the conversation. mr. george rose, made me another of his soldierly bows, wished my guardian a good day, and strode heavily out of the room. this was the morning of the day appointed for richard's departure. we had no more purchases to make now; i had completed all his packing early in the afternoon; and our time was disengaged until night, when he was to go to liverpool for holyhead. jarndyce and jarndyce being again expected to come on that day, richard proposed to me that we should go down to the court and hear what passed. as it was his last day, and he was eager to go, and i had never been there, i gave my consent and we walked down to westminster, where the court was then sitting. we beguiled the way with arrangements concerning the letters that richard was to write to me and the letters that i was to write to him and with a great many hopeful projects. my guardian knew where we were going and therefore was not with us. when we came to the court, there was the lord chancellor--the same whom i had seen in his private room in lincoln's inn--sitting in great state and gravity on the bench, with the mace and seals on a red table below him and an immense flat nosegay, like a little garden, which scented the whole court. below the table, again, was a long row of solicitors, with bundles of papers on the matting at their feet; and then there were the gentlemen of the bar in wigs and gowns--some awake and some asleep, and one talking, and nobody paying much attention to what he said. the lord chancellor leaned back in his very easy chair with his elbow on the cushioned arm and his forehead resting on his hand; some of those who were present dozed; some read the newspapers; some walked about or whispered in groups: all seemed perfectly at their ease, by no means in a hurry, very unconcerned, and extremely comfortable. to see everything going on so smoothly and to think of the roughness of the suitors' lives and deaths; to see all that full dress and ceremony and to think of the waste, and want, and beggared misery it represented; to consider that while the sickness of hope deferred was raging in so many hearts this polite show went calmly on from day to day, and year to year, in such good order and composure; to behold the lord chancellor and the whole array of practitioners under him looking at one another and at the spectators as if nobody had ever heard that all over england the name in which they were assembled was a bitter jest, was held in universal horror, contempt, and indignation, was known for something so flagrant and bad that little short of a miracle could bring any good out of it to any one--this was so curious and self-contradictory to me, who had no experience of it, that it was at first incredible, and i could not comprehend it. i sat where richard put me, and tried to listen, and looked about me; but there seemed to be no reality in the whole scene except poor little miss flite, the madwoman, standing on a bench and nodding at it. miss flite soon espied us and came to where we sat. she gave me a gracious welcome to her domain and indicated, with much gratification and pride, its principal attractions. mr. kenge also came to speak to us and did the honours of the place in much the same way, with the bland modesty of a proprietor. it was not a very good day for a visit, he said; he would have preferred the first day of term; but it was imposing, it was imposing. when we had been there half an hour or so, the case in progress--if i may use a phrase so ridiculous in such a connexion--seemed to die out of its own vapidity, without coming, or being by anybody expected to come, to any result. the lord chancellor then threw down a bundle of papers from his desk to the gentlemen below him, and somebody said, "jarndyce and jarndyce." upon this there was a buzz, and a laugh, and a general withdrawal of the bystanders, and a bringing in of great heaps, and piles, and bags and bags full of papers. i think it came on "for further directions"--about some bill of costs, to the best of my understanding, which was confused enough. but i counted twenty-three gentlemen in wigs who said they were "in it," and none of them appeared to understand it much better than i. they chatted about it with the lord chancellor, and contradicted and explained among themselves, and some of them said it was this way, and some of them said it was that way, and some of them jocosely proposed to read huge volumes of affidavits, and there was more buzzing and laughing, and everybody concerned was in a state of idle entertainment, and nothing could be made of it by anybody. after an hour or so of this, and a good many speeches being begun and cut short, it was "referred back for the present," as mr. kenge said, and the papers were bundled up again before the clerks had finished bringing them in. i glanced at richard on the termination of these hopeless proceedings and was shocked to see the worn look of his handsome young face. "it can't last for ever, dame durden. better luck next time!" was all he said. i had seen mr. guppy bringing in papers and arranging them for mr. kenge; and he had seen me and made me a forlorn bow, which rendered me desirous to get out of the court. richard had given me his arm and was taking me away when mr. guppy came up. "i beg your pardon, mr. carstone," said he in a whisper, "and miss summerson's also, but there's a lady here, a friend of mine, who knows her and wishes to have the pleasure of shaking hands." as he spoke, i saw before me, as if she had started into bodily shape from my remembrance, mrs. rachael of my godmother's house. "how do you do, esther?" said she. "do you recollect me?" i gave her my hand and told her yes and that she was very little altered. "i wonder you remember those times, esther," she returned with her old asperity. "they are changed now. well! i am glad to see you, and glad you are not too proud to know me." but indeed she seemed disappointed that i was not. "proud, mrs. rachael!" i remonstrated. "i am married, esther," she returned, coldly correcting me, "and am mrs. chadband. well! i wish you good day, and i hope you'll do well." mr. guppy, who had been attentive to this short dialogue, heaved a sigh in my ear and elbowed his own and mrs. rachael's way through the confused little crowd of people coming in and going out, which we were in the midst of and which the change in the business had brought together. richard and i were making our way through it, and i was yet in the first chill of the late unexpected recognition when i saw, coming towards us, but not seeing us, no less a person than mr. george. he made nothing of the people about him as he tramped on, staring over their heads into the body of the court. "george!" said richard as i called his attention to him. "you are well met, sir," he returned. "and you, miss. could you point a person out for me, i want? i don't understand these places." turning as he spoke and making an easy way for us, he stopped when we were out of the press in a corner behind a great red curtain. "there's a little cracked old woman," he began, "that--" i put up my finger, for miss flite was close by me, having kept beside me all the time and having called the attention of several of her legal acquaintance to me (as i had overheard to my confusion) by whispering in their ears, "hush! fitz jarndyce on my left!" "hem!" said mr. george. "you remember, miss, that we passed some conversation on a certain man this morning? gridley," in a low whisper behind his hand. "yes," said i. "he is hiding at my place. i couldn't mention it. hadn't his authority. he is on his last march, miss, and has a whim to see her. he says they can feel for one another, and she has been almost as good as a friend to him here. i came down to look for her, for when i sat by gridley this afternoon, i seemed to hear the roll of the muffled drums." "shall i tell her?" said i. "would you be so good?" he returned with a glance of something like apprehension at miss flite. "it's a providence i met you, miss; i doubt if i should have known how to get on with that lady." and he put one hand in his breast and stood upright in a martial attitude as i informed little miss flite, in her ear, of the purport of his kind errand. "my angry friend from shropshire! almost as celebrated as myself!" she exclaimed. "now really! my dear, i will wait upon him with the greatest pleasure." "he is living concealed at mr. george's," said i. "hush! this is mr. george." "in--deed!" returned miss flite. "very proud to have the honour! a military man, my dear. you know, a perfect general!" she whispered to me. poor miss flite deemed it necessary to be so courtly and polite, as a mark of her respect for the army, and to curtsy so very often that it was no easy matter to get her out of the court. when this was at last done, and addressing mr. george as "general," she gave him her arm, to the great entertainment of some idlers who were looking on, he was so discomposed and begged me so respectfully "not to desert him" that i could not make up my mind to do it, especially as miss flite was always tractable with me and as she too said, "fitz jarndyce, my dear, you will accompany us, of course." as richard seemed quite willing, and even anxious, that we should see them safely to their destination, we agreed to do so. and as mr. george informed us that gridley's mind had run on mr. jarndyce all the afternoon after hearing of their interview in the morning, i wrote a hasty note in pencil to my guardian to say where we were gone and why. mr. george sealed it at a coffee-house, that it might lead to no discovery, and we sent it off by a ticket-porter. we then took a hackney-coach and drove away to the neighbourhood of leicester square. we walked through some narrow courts, for which mr. george apologized, and soon came to the shooting gallery, the door of which was closed. as he pulled a bell-handle which hung by a chain to the door-post, a very respectable old gentleman with grey hair, wearing spectacles, and dressed in a black spencer and gaiters and a broad-brimmed hat, and carrying a large gold-beaded cane, addressed him. "i ask your pardon, my good friend," said he, "but is this george's shooting gallery?" "it is, sir," returned mr. george, glancing up at the great letters in which that inscription was painted on the whitewashed wall. "oh! to be sure!" said the old gentleman, following his eyes. "thank you. have you rung the bell?" "my name is george, sir, and i have rung the bell." "oh, indeed?" said the old gentleman. "your name is george? then i am here as soon as you, you see. you came for me, no doubt?" "no, sir. you have the advantage of me." "oh, indeed?" said the old gentleman. "then it was your young man who came for me. i am a physician and was requested--five minutes ago--to come and visit a sick man at george's shooting gallery." "the muffled drums," said mr. george, turning to richard and me and gravely shaking his head. "it's quite correct, sir. will you please to walk in." the door being at that moment opened by a very singular-looking little man in a green-baize cap and apron, whose face and hands and dress were blackened all over, we passed along a dreary passage into a large building with bare brick walls where there were targets, and guns, and swords, and other things of that kind. when we had all arrived here, the physician stopped, and taking off his hat, appeared to vanish by magic and to leave another and quite a different man in his place. "now lookee here, george," said the man, turning quickly round upon him and tapping him on the breast with a large forefinger. "you know me, and i know you. you're a man of the world, and i'm a man of the world. my name's bucket, as you are aware, and i have got a peace-warrant against gridley. you have kept him out of the way a long time, and you have been artful in it, and it does you credit." mr. george, looking hard at him, bit his lip and shook his head. "now, george," said the other, keeping close to him, "you're a sensible man and a well-conducted man; that's what you are, beyond a doubt. and mind you, i don't talk to you as a common character, because you have served your country and you know that when duty calls we must obey. consequently you're very far from wanting to give trouble. if i required assistance, you'd assist me; that's what you'd do. phil squod, don't you go a-sidling round the gallery like that"--the dirty little man was shuffling about with his shoulder against the wall, and his eyes on the intruder, in a manner that looked threatening--"because i know you and won't have it." "phil!" said mr. george. "yes, guv'ner." "be quiet." the little man, with a low growl, stood still. "ladies and gentlemen," said mr. bucket, "you'll excuse anything that may appear to be disagreeable in this, for my name's inspector bucket of the detective, and i have a duty to perform. george, i know where my man is because i was on the roof last night and saw him through the skylight, and you along with him. he is in there, you know," pointing; "that's where he is--on a sofy. now i must see my man, and i must tell my man to consider himself in custody; but you know me, and you know i don't want to take any uncomfortable measures. you give me your word, as from one man to another (and an old soldier, mind you, likewise), that it's honourable between us two, and i'll accommodate you to the utmost of my power." "i give it," was the reply. "but it wasn't handsome in you, mr. bucket." "gammon, george! not handsome?" said mr. bucket, tapping him on his broad breast again and shaking hands with him. "i don't say it wasn't handsome in you to keep my man so close, do i? be equally good-tempered to me, old boy! old william tell, old shaw, the life guardsman! why, he's a model of the whole british army in himself, ladies and gentlemen. i'd give a fifty-pun' note to be such a figure of a man!" the affair being brought to this head, mr. george, after a little consideration, proposed to go in first to his comrade (as he called him), taking miss flite with him. mr. bucket agreeing, they went away to the further end of the gallery, leaving us sitting and standing by a table covered with guns. mr. bucket took this opportunity of entering into a little light conversation, asking me if i were afraid of fire-arms, as most young ladies were; asking richard if he were a good shot; asking phil squod which he considered the best of those rifles and what it might be worth first-hand, telling him in return that it was a pity he ever gave way to his temper, for he was naturally so amiable that he might have been a young woman, and making himself generally agreeable. after a time he followed us to the further end of the gallery, and richard and i were going quietly away when mr. george came after us. he said that if we had no objection to see his comrade, he would take a visit from us very kindly. the words had hardly passed his lips when the bell was rung and my guardian appeared, "on the chance," he slightly observed, "of being able to do any little thing for a poor fellow involved in the same misfortune as himself." we all four went back together and went into the place where gridley was. it was a bare room, partitioned off from the gallery with unpainted wood. as the screening was not more than eight or ten feet high and only enclosed the sides, not the top, the rafters of the high gallery roof were overhead, and the skylight through which mr. bucket had looked down. the sun was low--near setting--and its light came redly in above, without descending to the ground. upon a plain canvas-covered sofa lay the man from shropshire, dressed much as we had seen him last, but so changed that at first i recognized no likeness in his colourless face to what i recollected. he had been still writing in his hiding-place, and still dwelling on his grievances, hour after hour. a table and some shelves were covered with manuscript papers and with worn pens and a medley of such tokens. touchingly and awfully drawn together, he and the little mad woman were side by side and, as it were, alone. she sat on a chair holding his hand, and none of us went close to them. his voice had faded, with the old expression of his face, with his strength, with his anger, with his resistance to the wrongs that had at last subdued him. the faintest shadow of an object full of form and colour is such a picture of it as he was of the man from shropshire whom we had spoken with before. he inclined his head to richard and me and spoke to my guardian. "mr. jarndyce, it is very kind of you to come to see me. i am not long to be seen, i think. i am very glad to take your hand, sir. you are a good man, superior to injustice, and god knows i honour you." they shook hands earnestly, and my guardian said some words of comfort to him. "it may seem strange to you, sir," returned gridley; "i should not have liked to see you if this had been the first time of our meeting. but you know i made a fight for it, you know i stood up with my single hand against them all, you know i told them the truth to the last, and told them what they were, and what they had done to me; so i don't mind your seeing me, this wreck." "you have been courageous with them many and many a time," returned my guardian. "sir, i have been," with a faint smile. "i told you what would come of it when i ceased to be so, and see here! look at us--look at us!" he drew the hand miss flite held through her arm and brought her something nearer to him. "this ends it. of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits and hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul alone comes natural to me, and i am fit for. there is a tie of many suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie i ever had on earth that chancery has not broken." "accept my blessing, gridley," said miss flite in tears. "accept my blessing!" "i thought, boastfully, that they never could break my heart, mr. jarndyce. i was resolved that they should not. i did believe that i could, and would, charge them with being the mockery they were until i died of some bodily disorder. but i am worn out. how long i have been wearing out, i don't know; i seemed to break down in an hour. i hope they may never come to hear of it. i hope everybody here will lead them to believe that i died defying them, consistently and perseveringly, as i did through so many years." here mr. bucket, who was sitting in a corner by the door, good-naturedly offered such consolation as he could administer. "come, come!" he said from his corner. "don't go on in that way, mr. gridley. you are only a little low. we are all of us a little low sometimes. i am. hold up, hold up! you'll lose your temper with the whole round of 'em, again and again; and i shall take you on a score of warrants yet, if i have luck." he only shook his head. "don't shake your head," said mr. bucket. "nod it; that's what i want to see you do. why, lord bless your soul, what times we have had together! haven't i seen you in the fleet over and over again for contempt? haven't i come into court, twenty afternoons for no other purpose than to see you pin the chancellor like a bull-dog? don't you remember when you first began to threaten the lawyers, and the peace was sworn against you two or three times a week? ask the little old lady there; she has been always present. hold up, mr. gridley, hold up, sir!" "what are you going to do about him?" asked george in a low voice. "i don't know yet," said bucket in the same tone. then resuming his encouragement, he pursued aloud: "worn out, mr. gridley? after dodging me for all these weeks and forcing me to climb the roof here like a tom cat and to come to see you as a doctor? that ain't like being worn out. i should think not! now i tell you what you want. you want excitement, you know, to keep you up; that's what you want. you're used to it, and you can't do without it. i couldn't myself. very well, then; here's this warrant got by mr. tulkinghorn of lincoln's inn fields, and backed into half-a-dozen counties since. what do you say to coming along with me, upon this warrant, and having a good angry argument before the magistrates? it'll do you good; it'll freshen you up and get you into training for another turn at the chancellor. give in? why, i am surprised to hear a man of your energy talk of giving in. you mustn't do that. you're half the fun of the fair in the court of chancery. george, you lend mr. gridley a hand, and let's see now whether he won't be better up than down." "he is very weak," said the trooper in a low voice. "is he?" returned bucket anxiously. "i only want to rouse him. i don't like to see an old acquaintance giving in like this. it would cheer him up more than anything if i could make him a little waxy with me. he's welcome to drop into me, right and left, if he likes. i shall never take advantage of it." the roof rang with a scream from miss flite, which still rings in my ears. "oh, no, gridley!" she cried as he fell heavily and calmly back from before her. "not without my blessing. after so many years!" the sun was down, the light had gradually stolen from the roof, and the shadow had crept upward. but to me the shadow of that pair, one living and one dead, fell heavier on richard's departure than the darkness of the darkest night. and through richard's farewell words i heard it echoed: "of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits and hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul alone comes natural to me, and i am fit for. there is a tie of many suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie i ever had on earth that chancery has not broken!" chapter xxv mrs. snagsby sees it all there is disquietude in cook's court, cursitor street. black suspicion hides in that peaceful region. the mass of cook's courtiers are in their usual state of mind, no better and no worse; but mr. snagsby is changed, and his little woman knows it. for tom-all-alone's and lincoln's inn fields persist in harnessing themselves, a pair of ungovernable coursers, to the chariot of mr. snagsby's imagination; and mr. bucket drives; and the passengers are jo and mr. tulkinghorn; and the complete equipage whirls though the law-stationery business at wild speed all round the clock. even in the little front kitchen where the family meals are taken, it rattles away at a smoking pace from the dinner-table, when mr. snagsby pauses in carving the first slice of the leg of mutton baked with potatoes and stares at the kitchen wall. mr. snagsby cannot make out what it is that he has had to do with. something is wrong somewhere, but what something, what may come of it, to whom, when, and from which unthought of and unheard of quarter is the puzzle of his life. his remote impressions of the robes and coronets, the stars and garters, that sparkle through the surface-dust of mr. tulkinghorn's chambers; his veneration for the mysteries presided over by that best and closest of his customers, whom all the inns of court, all chancery lane, and all the legal neighbourhood agree to hold in awe; his remembrance of detective mr. bucket with his forefinger and his confidential manner, impossible to be evaded or declined, persuade him that he is a party to some dangerous secret without knowing what it is. and it is the fearful peculiarity of this condition that, at any hour of his daily life, at any opening of the shop-door, at any pull of the bell, at any entrance of a messenger, or any delivery of a letter, the secret may take air and fire, explode, and blow up--mr. bucket only knows whom. for which reason, whenever a man unknown comes into the shop (as many men unknown do) and says, "is mr. snagsby in?" or words to that innocent effect, mr. snagsby's heart knocks hard at his guilty breast. he undergoes so much from such inquiries that when they are made by boys he revenges himself by flipping at their ears over the counter and asking the young dogs what they mean by it and why they can't speak out at once? more impracticable men and boys persist in walking into mr. snagsby's sleep and terrifying him with unaccountable questions, so that often when the cock at the little dairy in cursitor street breaks out in his usual absurd way about the morning, mr. snagsby finds himself in a crisis of nightmare, with his little woman shaking him and saying "what's the matter with the man!" the little woman herself is not the least item in his difficulty. to know that he is always keeping a secret from her, that he has under all circumstances to conceal and hold fast a tender double tooth, which her sharpness is ever ready to twist out of his head, gives mr. snagsby, in her dentistical presence, much of the air of a dog who has a reservation from his master and will look anywhere rather than meet his eye. these various signs and tokens, marked by the little woman, are not lost upon her. they impel her to say, "snagsby has something on his mind!" and thus suspicion gets into cook's court, cursitor street. from suspicion to jealousy, mrs. snagsby finds the road as natural and short as from cook's court to chancery lane. and thus jealousy gets into cook's court, cursitor street. once there (and it was always lurking thereabout), it is very active and nimble in mrs. snagsby's breast, prompting her to nocturnal examinations of mr. snagsby's pockets; to secret perusals of mr. snagsby's letters; to private researches in the day book and ledger, till, cash-box, and iron safe; to watchings at windows, listenings behind doors, and a general putting of this and that together by the wrong end. mrs. snagsby is so perpetually on the alert that the house becomes ghostly with creaking boards and rustling garments. the 'prentices think somebody may have been murdered there in bygone times. guster holds certain loose atoms of an idea (picked up at tooting, where they were found floating among the orphans) that there is buried money underneath the cellar, guarded by an old man with a white beard, who cannot get out for seven thousand years because he said the lord's prayer backwards. "who was nimrod?" mrs. snagsby repeatedly inquires of herself. "who was that lady--that creature? and who is that boy?" now, nimrod being as dead as the mighty hunter whose name mrs. snagsby has appropriated, and the lady being unproducible, she directs her mental eye, for the present, with redoubled vigilance to the boy. "and who," quoth mrs. snagsby for the thousand and first time, "is that boy? who is that--!" and there mrs. snagsby is seized with an inspiration. he has no respect for mr. chadband. no, to be sure, and he wouldn't have, of course. naturally he wouldn't, under those contagious circumstances. he was invited and appointed by mr. chadband--why, mrs. snagsby heard it herself with her own ears!--to come back, and be told where he was to go, to be addressed by mr. chadband; and he never came! why did he never come? because he was told not to come. who told him not to come? who? ha, ha! mrs. snagsby sees it all. but happily (and mrs. snagsby tightly shakes her head and tightly smiles) that boy was met by mr. chadband yesterday in the streets; and that boy, as affording a subject which mr. chadband desires to improve for the spiritual delight of a select congregation, was seized by mr. chadband and threatened with being delivered over to the police unless he showed the reverend gentleman where he lived and unless he entered into, and fulfilled, an undertaking to appear in cook's court to-morrow night, "to--mor--row--night," mrs. snagsby repeats for mere emphasis with another tight smile and another tight shake of her head; and to-morrow night that boy will be here, and to-morrow night mrs. snagsby will have her eye upon him and upon some one else; and oh, you may walk a long while in your secret ways (says mrs. snagsby with haughtiness and scorn), but you can't blind me! mrs. snagsby sounds no timbrel in anybody's ears, but holds her purpose quietly, and keeps her counsel. to-morrow comes, the savoury preparations for the oil trade come, the evening comes. comes mr. snagsby in his black coat; come the chadbands; come (when the gorging vessel is replete) the 'prentices and guster, to be edified; comes at last, with his slouching head, and his shuffle backward, and his shuffle forward, and his shuffle to the right, and his shuffle to the left, and his bit of fur cap in his muddy hand, which he picks as if it were some mangy bird he had caught and was plucking before eating raw, jo, the very, very tough subject mr. chadband is to improve. mrs. snagsby screws a watchful glance on jo as he is brought into the little drawing-room by guster. he looks at mr. snagsby the moment he comes in. aha! why does he look at mr. snagsby? mr. snagsby looks at him. why should he do that, but that mrs. snagsby sees it all? why else should that look pass between them, why else should mr. snagsby be confused and cough a signal cough behind his hand? it is as clear as crystal that mr. snagsby is that boy's father. "peace, my friends," says chadband, rising and wiping the oily exudations from his reverend visage. "peace be with us! my friends, why with us? because," with his fat smile, "it cannot be against us, because it must be for us; because it is not hardening, because it is softening; because it does not make war like the hawk, but comes home unto us like the dove. therefore, my friends, peace be with us! my human boy, come forward!" stretching forth his flabby paw, mr. chadband lays the same on jo's arm and considers where to station him. jo, very doubtful of his reverend friend's intentions and not at all clear but that something practical and painful is going to be done to him, mutters, "you let me alone. i never said nothink to you. you let me alone." "no, my young friend," says chadband smoothly, "i will not let you alone. and why? because i am a harvest-labourer, because i am a toiler and a moiler, because you are delivered over unto me and are become as a precious instrument in my hands. my friends, may i so employ this instrument as to use it to your advantage, to your profit, to your gain, to your welfare, to your enrichment! my young friend, sit upon this stool." jo, apparently possessed by an impression that the reverend gentleman wants to cut his hair, shields his head with both arms and is got into the required position with great difficulty and every possible manifestation of reluctance. when he is at last adjusted like a lay-figure, mr. chadband, retiring behind the table, holds up his bear's-paw and says, "my friends!" this is the signal for a general settlement of the audience. the 'prentices giggle internally and nudge each other. guster falls into a staring and vacant state, compounded of a stunned admiration of mr. chadband and pity for the friendless outcast whose condition touches her nearly. mrs. snagsby silently lays trains of gunpowder. mrs. chadband composes herself grimly by the fire and warms her knees, finding that sensation favourable to the reception of eloquence. it happens that mr. chadband has a pulpit habit of fixing some member of his congregation with his eye and fatly arguing his points with that particular person, who is understood to be expected to be moved to an occasional grunt, groan, gasp, or other audible expression of inward working, which expression of inward working, being echoed by some elderly lady in the next pew and so communicated like a game of forfeits through a circle of the more fermentable sinners present, serves the purpose of parliamentary cheering and gets mr. chadband's steam up. from mere force of habit, mr. chadband in saying "my friends!" has rested his eye on mr. snagsby and proceeds to make that ill-starred stationer, already sufficiently confused, the immediate recipient of his discourse. "we have here among us, my friends," says chadband, "a gentile and a heathen, a dweller in the tents of tom-all-alone's and a mover-on upon the surface of the earth. we have here among us, my friends," and mr. chadband, untwisting the point with his dirty thumb-nail, bestows an oily smile on mr. snagsby, signifying that he will throw him an argumentative back-fall presently if he be not already down, "a brother and a boy. devoid of parents, devoid of relations, devoid of flocks and herds, devoid of gold and silver and of precious stones. now, my friends, why do i say he is devoid of these possessions? why? why is he?" mr. chadband states the question as if he were propounding an entirely new riddle of much ingenuity and merit to mr. snagsby and entreating him not to give it up. mr. snagsby, greatly perplexed by the mysterious look he received just now from his little woman--at about the period when mr. chadband mentioned the word parents--is tempted into modestly remarking, "i don't know, i'm sure, sir." on which interruption mrs. chadband glares and mrs. snagsby says, "for shame!" "i hear a voice," says chadband; "is it a still small voice, my friends? i fear not, though i fain would hope so--" "ah--h!" from mrs. snagsby. "which says, 'i don't know.' then i will tell you why. i say this brother present here among us is devoid of parents, devoid of relations, devoid of flocks and herds, devoid of gold, of silver, and of precious stones because he is devoid of the light that shines in upon some of us. what is that light? what is it? i ask you, what is that light?" mr. chadband draws back his head and pauses, but mr. snagsby is not to be lured on to his destruction again. mr. chadband, leaning forward over the table, pierces what he has got to follow directly into mr. snagsby with the thumb-nail already mentioned. "it is," says chadband, "the ray of rays, the sun of suns, the moon of moons, the star of stars. it is the light of terewth." mr. chadband draws himself up again and looks triumphantly at mr. snagsby as if he would be glad to know how he feels after that. "of terewth," says mr. chadband, hitting him again. "say not to me that it is not the lamp of lamps. i say to you it is. i say to you, a million of times over, it is. it is! i say to you that i will proclaim it to you, whether you like it or not; nay, that the less you like it, the more i will proclaim it to you. with a speaking-trumpet! i say to you that if you rear yourself against it, you shall fall, you shall be bruised, you shall be battered, you shall be flawed, you shall be smashed." the present effect of this flight of oratory--much admired for its general power by mr. chadband's followers--being not only to make mr. chadband unpleasantly warm, but to represent the innocent mr. snagsby in the light of a determined enemy to virtue, with a forehead of brass and a heart of adamant, that unfortunate tradesman becomes yet more disconcerted and is in a very advanced state of low spirits and false position when mr. chadband accidentally finishes him. "my friends," he resumes after dabbing his fat head for some time--and it smokes to such an extent that he seems to light his pocket-handkerchief at it, which smokes, too, after every dab--"to pursue the subject we are endeavouring with our lowly gifts to improve, let us in a spirit of love inquire what is that terewth to which i have alluded. for, my young friends," suddenly addressing the 'prentices and guster, to their consternation, "if i am told by the doctor that calomel or castor-oil is good for me, i may naturally ask what is calomel, and what is castor-oil. i may wish to be informed of that before i dose myself with either or with both. now, my young friends, what is this terewth then? firstly (in a spirit of love), what is the common sort of terewth--the working clothes--the every-day wear, my young friends? is it deception?" "ah--h!" from mrs. snagsby. "is it suppression?" a shiver in the negative from mrs. snagsby. "is it reservation?" a shake of the head from mrs. snagsby--very long and very tight. "no, my friends, it is neither of these. neither of these names belongs to it. when this young heathen now among us--who is now, my friends, asleep, the seal of indifference and perdition being set upon his eyelids; but do not wake him, for it is right that i should have to wrestle, and to combat and to struggle, and to conquer, for his sake--when this young hardened heathen told us a story of a cock, and of a bull, and of a lady, and of a sovereign, was that the terewth? no. or if it was partly, was it wholly and entirely? no, my friends, no!" if mr. snagsby could withstand his little woman's look as it enters at his eyes, the windows of his soul, and searches the whole tenement, he were other than the man he is. he cowers and droops. "or, my juvenile friends," says chadband, descending to the level of their comprehension with a very obtrusive demonstration in his greasily meek smile of coming a long way downstairs for the purpose, "if the master of this house was to go forth into the city and there see an eel, and was to come back, and was to call unto him the mistress of this house, and was to say, 'sarah, rejoice with me, for i have seen an elephant!' would that be terewth?" mrs. snagsby in tears. "or put it, my juvenile friends, that he saw an elephant, and returning said 'lo, the city is barren, i have seen but an eel,' would that be terewth?" mrs. snagsby sobbing loudly. "or put it, my juvenile friends," said chadband, stimulated by the sound, "that the unnatural parents of this slumbering heathen--for parents he had, my juvenile friends, beyond a doubt--after casting him forth to the wolves and the vultures, and the wild dogs and the young gazelles, and the serpents, went back to their dwellings and had their pipes, and their pots, and their flutings and their dancings, and their malt liquors, and their butcher's meat and poultry, would that be terewth?" mrs. snagsby replies by delivering herself a prey to spasms, not an unresisting prey, but a crying and a tearing one, so that cook's court re-echoes with her shrieks. finally, becoming cataleptic, she has to be carried up the narrow staircase like a grand piano. after unspeakable suffering, productive of the utmost consternation, she is pronounced, by expresses from the bedroom, free from pain, though much exhausted, in which state of affairs mr. snagsby, trampled and crushed in the piano-forte removal, and extremely timid and feeble, ventures to come out from behind the door in the drawing-room. all this time jo has been standing on the spot where he woke up, ever picking his cap and putting bits of fur in his mouth. he spits them out with a remorseful air, for he feels that it is in his nature to be an unimprovable reprobate and that it's no good his trying to keep awake, for he won't never know nothink. though it may be, jo, that there is a history so interesting and affecting even to minds as near the brutes as thine, recording deeds done on this earth for common men, that if the chadbands, removing their own persons from the light, would but show it thee in simple reverence, would but leave it unimproved, would but regard it as being eloquent enough without their modest aid--it might hold thee awake, and thou might learn from it yet! jo never heard of any such book. its compilers and the reverend chadband are all one to him, except that he knows the reverend chadband and would rather run away from him for an hour than hear him talk for five minutes. "it an't no good my waiting here no longer," thinks jo. "mr. snagsby an't a-going to say nothink to me to-night." and downstairs he shuffles. but downstairs is the charitable guster, holding by the handrail of the kitchen stairs and warding off a fit, as yet doubtfully, the same having been induced by mrs. snagsby's screaming. she has her own supper of bread and cheese to hand to jo, with whom she ventures to interchange a word or so for the first time. "here's something to eat, poor boy," says guster. "thank'ee, mum," says jo. "are you hungry?" "jist!" says jo. "what's gone of your father and your mother, eh?" jo stops in the middle of a bite and looks petrified. for this orphan charge of the christian saint whose shrine was at tooting has patted him on the shoulder, and it is the first time in his life that any decent hand has been so laid upon him. "i never know'd nothink about 'em," says jo. "no more didn't i of mine," cries guster. she is repressing symptoms favourable to the fit when she seems to take alarm at something and vanishes down the stairs. "jo," whispers the law-stationer softly as the boy lingers on the step. "here i am, mr. snagsby!" "i didn't know you were gone--there's another half-crown, jo. it was quite right of you to say nothing about the lady the other night when we were out together. it would breed trouble. you can't be too quiet, jo." "i am fly, master!" and so, good night. a ghostly shade, frilled and night-capped, follows the law-stationer to the room he came from and glides higher up. and henceforth he begins, go where he will, to be attended by another shadow than his own, hardly less constant than his own, hardly less quiet than his own. and into whatsoever atmosphere of secrecy his own shadow may pass, let all concerned in the secrecy beware! for the watchful mrs. snagsby is there too--bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, shadow of his shadow. chapter xxvi sharpshooters wintry morning, looking with dull eyes and sallow face upon the neighbourhood of leicester square, finds its inhabitants unwilling to get out of bed. many of them are not early risers at the brightest of times, being birds of night who roost when the sun is high and are wide awake and keen for prey when the stars shine out. behind dingy blind and curtain, in upper story and garret, skulking more or less under false names, false hair, false titles, false jewellery, and false histories, a colony of brigands lie in their first sleep. gentlemen of the green-baize road who could discourse from personal experience of foreign galleys and home treadmills; spies of strong governments that eternally quake with weakness and miserable fear, broken traitors, cowards, bullies, gamesters, shufflers, swindlers, and false witnesses; some not unmarked by the branding-iron beneath their dirty braid; all with more cruelty in them than was in nero, and more crime than is in newgate. for howsoever bad the devil can be in fustian or smock-frock (and he can be very bad in both), he is a more designing, callous, and intolerable devil when he sticks a pin in his shirt-front, calls himself a gentleman, backs a card or colour, plays a game or so of billiards, and knows a little about bills and promissory notes than in any other form he wears. and in such form mr. bucket shall find him, when he will, still pervading the tributary channels of leicester square. but the wintry morning wants him not and wakes him not. it wakes mr. george of the shooting gallery and his familiar. they arise, roll up and stow away their mattresses. mr. george, having shaved himself before a looking-glass of minute proportions, then marches out, bare-headed and bare-chested, to the pump in the little yard and anon comes back shining with yellow soap, friction, drifting rain, and exceedingly cold water. as he rubs himself upon a large jack-towel, blowing like a military sort of diver just come up, his hair curling tighter and tighter on his sunburnt temples the more he rubs it so that it looks as if it never could be loosened by any less coercive instrument than an iron rake or a curry-comb--as he rubs, and puffs, and polishes, and blows, turning his head from side to side the more conveniently to excoriate his throat, and standing with his body well bent forward to keep the wet from his martial legs, phil, on his knees lighting a fire, looks round as if it were enough washing for him to see all that done, and sufficient renovation for one day to take in the superfluous health his master throws off. when mr. george is dry, he goes to work to brush his head with two hard brushes at once, to that unmerciful degree that phil, shouldering his way round the gallery in the act of sweeping it, winks with sympathy. this chafing over, the ornamental part of mr. george's toilet is soon performed. he fills his pipe, lights it, and marches up and down smoking, as his custom is, while phil, raising a powerful odour of hot rolls and coffee, prepares breakfast. he smokes gravely and marches in slow time. perhaps this morning's pipe is devoted to the memory of gridley in his grave. "and so, phil," says george of the shooting gallery after several turns in silence, "you were dreaming of the country last night?" phil, by the by, said as much in a tone of surprise as he scrambled out of bed. "yes, guv'ner." "what was it like?" "i hardly know what it was like, guv'ner," said phil, considering. "how did you know it was the country?" "on account of the grass, i think. and the swans upon it," says phil after further consideration. "what were the swans doing on the grass?" "they was a-eating of it, i expect," says phil. the master resumes his march, and the man resumes his preparation of breakfast. it is not necessarily a lengthened preparation, being limited to the setting forth of very simple breakfast requisites for two and the broiling of a rasher of bacon at the fire in the rusty grate; but as phil has to sidle round a considerable part of the gallery for every object he wants, and never brings two objects at once, it takes time under the circumstances. at length the breakfast is ready. phil announcing it, mr. george knocks the ashes out of his pipe on the hob, stands his pipe itself in the chimney corner, and sits down to the meal. when he has helped himself, phil follows suit, sitting at the extreme end of the little oblong table and taking his plate on his knees. either in humility, or to hide his blackened hands, or because it is his natural manner of eating. "the country," says mr. george, plying his knife and fork; "why, i suppose you never clapped your eyes on the country, phil?" "i see the marshes once," says phil, contentedly eating his breakfast. "what marshes?" "the marshes, commander," returns phil. "where are they?" "i don't know where they are," says phil; "but i see 'em, guv'ner. they was flat. and miste." governor and commander are interchangeable terms with phil, expressive of the same respect and deference and applicable to nobody but mr. george. "i was born in the country, phil." "was you indeed, commander?" "yes. and bred there." phil elevates his one eyebrow, and after respectfully staring at his master to express interest, swallows a great gulp of coffee, still staring at him. "there's not a bird's note that i don't know," says mr. george. "not many an english leaf or berry that i couldn't name. not many a tree that i couldn't climb yet if i was put to it. i was a real country boy, once. my good mother lived in the country." "she must have been a fine old lady, guv'ner," phil observes. "aye! and not so old either, five and thirty years ago," says mr. george. "but i'll wager that at ninety she would be near as upright as me, and near as broad across the shoulders." "did she die at ninety, guv'ner?" inquires phil. "no. bosh! let her rest in peace, god bless her!" says the trooper. "what set me on about country boys, and runaways, and good-for-nothings? you, to be sure! so you never clapped your eyes upon the country--marshes and dreams excepted. eh?" phil shakes his head. "do you want to see it?" "n-no, i don't know as i do, particular," says phil. "the town's enough for you, eh?" "why, you see, commander," says phil, "i ain't acquainted with anythink else, and i doubt if i ain't a-getting too old to take to novelties." "how old are you, phil?" asks the trooper, pausing as he conveys his smoking saucer to his lips. "i'm something with a eight in it," says phil. "it can't be eighty. nor yet eighteen. it's betwixt 'em, somewheres." mr. george, slowly putting down his saucer without tasting its contents, is laughingly beginning, "why, what the deuce, phil--" when he stops, seeing that phil is counting on his dirty fingers. "i was just eight," says phil, "agreeable to the parish calculation, when i went with the tinker. i was sent on a errand, and i see him a-sittin under a old buildin with a fire all to himself wery comfortable, and he says, 'would you like to come along a me, my man?' i says 'yes,' and him and me and the fire goes home to clerkenwell together. that was april fool day. i was able to count up to ten; and when april fool day come round again, i says to myself, 'now, old chap, you're one and a eight in it.' april fool day after that, i says, 'now, old chap, you're two and a eight in it.' in course of time, i come to ten and a eight in it; two tens and a eight in it. when it got so high, it got the upper hand of me, but this is how i always know there's a eight in it." "ah!" says mr. george, resuming his breakfast. "and where's the tinker?" "drink put him in the hospital, guv'ner, and the hospital put him--in a glass-case, i have heerd," phil replies mysteriously. "by that means you got promotion? took the business, phil?" "yes, commander, i took the business. such as it was. it wasn't much of a beat--round saffron hill, hatton garden, clerkenwell, smiffeld, and there--poor neighbourhood, where they uses up the kettles till they're past mending. most of the tramping tinkers used to come and lodge at our place; that was the best part of my master's earnings. but they didn't come to me. i warn't like him. he could sing 'em a good song. i couldn't! he could play 'em a tune on any sort of pot you please, so as it was iron or block tin. i never could do nothing with a pot but mend it or bile it--never had a note of music in me. besides, i was too ill-looking, and their wives complained of me." "they were mighty particular. you would pass muster in a crowd, phil!" says the trooper with a pleasant smile. "no, guv'ner," returns phil, shaking his head. "no, i shouldn't. i was passable enough when i went with the tinker, though nothing to boast of then; but what with blowing the fire with my mouth when i was young, and spileing my complexion, and singeing my hair off, and swallering the smoke, and what with being nat'rally unfort'nate in the way of running against hot metal and marking myself by sich means, and what with having turn-ups with the tinker as i got older, almost whenever he was too far gone in drink--which was almost always--my beauty was queer, wery queer, even at that time. as to since, what with a dozen years in a dark forge where the men was given to larking, and what with being scorched in a accident at a gas-works, and what with being blowed out of winder case-filling at the firework business, i am ugly enough to be made a show on!" resigning himself to which condition with a perfectly satisfied manner, phil begs the favour of another cup of coffee. while drinking it, he says, "it was after the case-filling blow-up when i first see you, commander. you remember?" "i remember, phil. you were walking along in the sun." "crawling, guv'ner, again a wall--" "true, phil--shouldering your way on--" "in a night-cap!" exclaims phil, excited. "in a night-cap--" "and hobbling with a couple of sticks!" cries phil, still more excited. "with a couple of sticks. when--" "when you stops, you know," cries phil, putting down his cup and saucer and hastily removing his plate from his knees, "and says to me, 'what, comrade! you have been in the wars!' i didn't say much to you, commander, then, for i was took by surprise that a person so strong and healthy and bold as you was should stop to speak to such a limping bag of bones as i was. but you says to me, says you, delivering it out of your chest as hearty as possible, so that it was like a glass of something hot, 'what accident have you met with? you have been badly hurt. what's amiss, old boy? cheer up, and tell us about it!' cheer up! i was cheered already! i says as much to you, you says more to me, i says more to you, you says more to me, and here i am, commander! here i am, commander!" cries phil, who has started from his chair and unaccountably begun to sidle away. "if a mark's wanted, or if it will improve the business, let the customers take aim at me. they can't spoil my beauty. i'm all right. come on! if they want a man to box at, let 'em box at me. let 'em knock me well about the head. i don't mind. if they want a light-weight to be throwed for practice, cornwall, devonshire, or lancashire, let 'em throw me. they won't hurt me. i have been throwed, all sorts of styles, all my life!" with this unexpected speech, energetically delivered and accompanied by action illustrative of the various exercises referred to, phil squod shoulders his way round three sides of the gallery, and abruptly tacking off at his commander, makes a butt at him with his head, intended to express devotion to his service. he then begins to clear away the breakfast. mr. george, after laughing cheerfully and clapping him on the shoulder, assists in these arrangements and helps to get the gallery into business order. that done, he takes a turn at the dumb-bells, and afterwards weighing himself and opining that he is getting "too fleshy," engages with great gravity in solitary broadsword practice. meanwhile phil has fallen to work at his usual table, where he screws and unscrews, and cleans, and files, and whistles into small apertures, and blackens himself more and more, and seems to do and undo everything that can be done and undone about a gun. master and man are at length disturbed by footsteps in the passage, where they make an unusual sound, denoting the arrival of unusual company. these steps, advancing nearer and nearer to the gallery, bring into it a group at first sight scarcely reconcilable with any day in the year but the fifth of november. it consists of a limp and ugly figure carried in a chair by two bearers and attended by a lean female with a face like a pinched mask, who might be expected immediately to recite the popular verses commemorative of the time when they did contrive to blow old england up alive but for her keeping her lips tightly and defiantly closed as the chair is put down. at which point the figure in it gasping, "o lord! oh, dear me! i am shaken!" adds, "how de do, my dear friend, how de do?" mr. george then descries, in the procession, the venerable mr. smallweed out for an airing, attended by his granddaughter judy as body-guard. "mr. george, my dear friend," says grandfather smallweed, removing his right arm from the neck of one of his bearers, whom he has nearly throttled coming along, "how de do? you're surprised to see me, my dear friend." "i should hardly have been more surprised to have seen your friend in the city," returns mr. george. "i am very seldom out," pants mr. smallweed. "i haven't been out for many months. it's inconvenient--and it comes expensive. but i longed so much to see you, my dear mr. george. how de do, sir?" "i am well enough," says mr. george. "i hope you are the same." "you can't be too well, my dear friend." mr. smallweed takes him by both hands. "i have brought my granddaughter judy. i couldn't keep her away. she longed so much to see you." "hum! she bears it calmly!" mutters mr. george. "so we got a hackney-cab, and put a chair in it, and just round the corner they lifted me out of the cab and into the chair, and carried me here that i might see my dear friend in his own establishment! this," says grandfather smallweed, alluding to the bearer, who has been in danger of strangulation and who withdraws adjusting his windpipe, "is the driver of the cab. he has nothing extra. it is by agreement included in his fare. this person," the other bearer, "we engaged in the street outside for a pint of beer. which is twopence. judy, give the person twopence. i was not sure you had a workman of your own here, my dear friend, or we needn't have employed this person." grandfather smallweed refers to phil with a glance of considerable terror and a half-subdued "o lord! oh, dear me!" nor in his apprehension, on the surface of things, without some reason, for phil, who has never beheld the apparition in the black-velvet cap before, has stopped short with a gun in his hand with much of the air of a dead shot intent on picking mr. smallweed off as an ugly old bird of the crow species. "judy, my child," says grandfather smallweed, "give the person his twopence. it's a great deal for what he has done." the person, who is one of those extraordinary specimens of human fungus that spring up spontaneously in the western streets of london, ready dressed in an old red jacket, with a "mission" for holding horses and calling coaches, received his twopence with anything but transport, tosses the money into the air, catches it over-handed, and retires. "my dear mr. george," says grandfather smallweed, "would you be so kind as help to carry me to the fire? i am accustomed to a fire, and i am an old man, and i soon chill. oh, dear me!" his closing exclamation is jerked out of the venerable gentleman by the suddenness with which mr. squod, like a genie, catches him up, chair and all, and deposits him on the hearth-stone. "o lord!" says mr. smallweed, panting. "oh, dear me! oh, my stars! my dear friend, your workman is very strong--and very prompt. o lord, he is very prompt! judy, draw me back a little. i'm being scorched in the legs," which indeed is testified to the noses of all present by the smell of his worsted stockings. the gentle judy, having backed her grandfather a little way from the fire, and having shaken him up as usual, and having released his overshadowed eye from its black-velvet extinguisher, mr. smallweed again says, "oh, dear me! o lord!" and looking about and meeting mr. george's glance, again stretches out both hands. "my dear friend! so happy in this meeting! and this is your establishment? it's a delightful place. it's a picture! you never find that anything goes off here accidentally, do you, my dear friend?" adds grandfather smallweed, very ill at ease. "no, no. no fear of that." "and your workman. he--oh, dear me!--he never lets anything off without meaning it, does he, my dear friend?" "he has never hurt anybody but himself," says mr. george, smiling. "but he might, you know. he seems to have hurt himself a good deal, and he might hurt somebody else," the old gentleman returns. "he mightn't mean it--or he even might. mr. george, will you order him to leave his infernal fire-arms alone and go away?" obedient to a nod from the trooper, phil retires, empty-handed, to the other end of the gallery. mr. smallweed, reassured, falls to rubbing his legs. "and you're doing well, mr. george?" he says to the trooper, squarely standing faced about towards him with his broadsword in his hand. "you are prospering, please the powers?" mr. george answers with a cool nod, adding, "go on. you have not come to say that, i know." "you are so sprightly, mr. george," returns the venerable grandfather. "you are such good company." "ha ha! go on!" says mr. george. "my dear friend! but that sword looks awful gleaming and sharp. it might cut somebody, by accident. it makes me shiver, mr. george. curse him!" says the excellent old gentleman apart to judy as the trooper takes a step or two away to lay it aside. "he owes me money, and might think of paying off old scores in this murdering place. i wish your brimstone grandmother was here, and he'd shave her head off." mr. george, returning, folds his arms, and looking down at the old man, sliding every moment lower and lower in his chair, says quietly, "now for it!" "ho!" cries mr. smallweed, rubbing his hands with an artful chuckle. "yes. now for it. now for what, my dear friend?" "for a pipe," says mr. george, who with great composure sets his chair in the chimney-corner, takes his pipe from the grate, fills it and lights it, and falls to smoking peacefully. this tends to the discomfiture of mr. smallweed, who finds it so difficult to resume his object, whatever it may be, that he becomes exasperated and secretly claws the air with an impotent vindictiveness expressive of an intense desire to tear and rend the visage of mr. george. as the excellent old gentleman's nails are long and leaden, and his hands lean and veinous, and his eyes green and watery; and, over and above this, as he continues, while he claws, to slide down in his chair and to collapse into a shapeless bundle, he becomes such a ghastly spectacle, even in the accustomed eyes of judy, that that young virgin pounces at him with something more than the ardour of affection and so shakes him up and pats and pokes him in divers parts of his body, but particularly in that part which the science of self-defence would call his wind, that in his grievous distress he utters enforced sounds like a paviour's rammer. when judy has by these means set him up again in his chair, with a white face and a frosty nose (but still clawing), she stretches out her weazen forefinger and gives mr. george one poke in the back. the trooper raising his head, she makes another poke at her esteemed grandfather, and having thus brought them together, stares rigidly at the fire. "aye, aye! ho, ho! u--u--u--ugh!" chatters grandfather smallweed, swallowing his rage. "my dear friend!" (still clawing). "i tell you what," says mr. george. "if you want to converse with me, you must speak out. i am one of the roughs, and i can't go about and about. i haven't the art to do it. i am not clever enough. it don't suit me. when you go winding round and round me," says the trooper, putting his pipe between his lips again, "damme, if i don't feel as if i was being smothered!" and he inflates his broad chest to its utmost extent as if to assure himself that he is not smothered yet. "if you have come to give me a friendly call," continues mr. george, "i am obliged to you; how are you? if you have come to see whether there's any property on the premises, look about you; you are welcome. if you want to out with something, out with it!" the blooming judy, without removing her gaze from the fire, gives her grandfather one ghostly poke. "you see! it's her opinion too. and why the devil that young woman won't sit down like a christian," says mr. george with his eyes musingly fixed on judy, "i can't comprehend." "she keeps at my side to attend to me, sir," says grandfather smallweed. "i am an old man, my dear mr. george, and i need some attention. i can carry my years; i am not a brimstone poll-parrot" (snarling and looking unconsciously for the cushion), "but i need attention, my dear friend." "well!" returns the trooper, wheeling his chair to face the old man. "now then?" "my friend in the city, mr. george, has done a little business with a pupil of yours." "has he?" says mr. george. "i am sorry to hear it." "yes, sir." grandfather smallweed rubs his legs. "he is a fine young soldier now, mr. george, by the name of carstone. friends came forward and paid it all up, honourable." "did they?" returns mr. george. "do you think your friend in the city would like a piece of advice?" "i think he would, my dear friend. from you." "i advise him, then, to do no more business in that quarter. there's no more to be got by it. the young gentleman, to my knowledge, is brought to a dead halt." "no, no, my dear friend. no, no, mr. george. no, no, no, sir," remonstrates grandfather smallweed, cunningly rubbing his spare legs. "not quite a dead halt, i think. he has good friends, and he is good for his pay, and he is good for the selling price of his commission, and he is good for his chance in a lawsuit, and he is good for his chance in a wife, and--oh, do you know, mr. george, i think my friend would consider the young gentleman good for something yet?" says grandfather smallweed, turning up his velvet cap and scratching his ear like a monkey. mr. george, who has put aside his pipe and sits with an arm on his chair-back, beats a tattoo on the ground with his right foot as if he were not particularly pleased with the turn the conversation has taken. "but to pass from one subject to another," resumes mr. smallweed. "'to promote the conversation,' as a joker might say. to pass, mr. george, from the ensign to the captain." "what are you up to, now?" asks mr. george, pausing with a frown in stroking the recollection of his moustache. "what captain?" "our captain. the captain we know of. captain hawdon." "oh! that's it, is it?" says mr. george with a low whistle as he sees both grandfather and granddaughter looking hard at him. "you are there! well? what about it? come, i won't be smothered any more. speak!" "my dear friend," returns the old man, "i was applied--judy, shake me up a little!--i was applied to yesterday about the captain, and my opinion still is that the captain is not dead." "bosh!" observes mr. george. "what was your remark, my dear friend?" inquires the old man with his hand to his ear. "bosh!" "ho!" says grandfather smallweed. "mr. george, of my opinion you can judge for yourself according to the questions asked of me and the reasons given for asking 'em. now, what do you think the lawyer making the inquiries wants?" "a job," says mr. george. "nothing of the kind!" "can't be a lawyer, then," says mr. george, folding his arms with an air of confirmed resolution. "my dear friend, he is a lawyer, and a famous one. he wants to see some fragment in captain hawdon's writing. he don't want to keep it. he only wants to see it and compare it with a writing in his possession." "well?" "well, mr. george. happening to remember the advertisement concerning captain hawdon and any information that could be given respecting him, he looked it up and came to me--just as you did, my dear friend. will you shake hands? so glad you came that day! i should have missed forming such a friendship if you hadn't come!" "well, mr. smallweed?" says mr. george again after going through the ceremony with some stiffness. "i had no such thing. i have nothing but his signature. plague pestilence and famine, battle murder and sudden death upon him," says the old man, making a curse out of one of his few remembrances of a prayer and squeezing up his velvet cap between his angry hands, "i have half a million of his signatures, i think! but you," breathlessly recovering his mildness of speech as judy re-adjusts the cap on his skittle-ball of a head, "you, my dear mr. george, are likely to have some letter or paper that would suit the purpose. anything would suit the purpose, written in the hand." "some writing in that hand," says the trooper, pondering; "may be, i have." "my dearest friend!" "may be, i have not." "ho!" says grandfather smallweed, crest-fallen. "but if i had bushels of it, i would not show as much as would make a cartridge without knowing why." "sir, i have told you why. my dear mr. george, i have told you why." "not enough," says the trooper, shaking his head. "i must know more, and approve it." "then, will you come to the lawyer? my dear friend, will you come and see the gentleman?" urges grandfather smallweed, pulling out a lean old silver watch with hands like the leg of a skeleton. "i told him it was probable i might call upon him between ten and eleven this forenoon, and it's now half after ten. will you come and see the gentleman, mr. george?" "hum!" says he gravely. "i don't mind that. though why this should concern you so much, i don't know." "everything concerns me that has a chance in it of bringing anything to light about him. didn't he take us all in? didn't he owe us immense sums, all round? concern me? who can anything about him concern more than me? not, my dear friend," says grandfather smallweed, lowering his tone, "that i want you to betray anything. far from it. are you ready to come, my dear friend?" "aye! i'll come in a moment. i promise nothing, you know." "no, my dear mr. george; no." "and you mean to say you're going to give me a lift to this place, wherever it is, without charging for it?" mr. george inquires, getting his hat and thick wash-leather gloves. this pleasantry so tickles mr. smallweed that he laughs, long and low, before the fire. but ever while he laughs, he glances over his paralytic shoulder at mr. george and eagerly watches him as he unlocks the padlock of a homely cupboard at the distant end of the gallery, looks here and there upon the higher shelves, and ultimately takes something out with a rustling of paper, folds it, and puts it in his breast. then judy pokes mr. smallweed once, and mr. smallweed pokes judy once. "i am ready," says the trooper, coming back. "phil, you can carry this old gentleman to his coach, and make nothing of him." "oh, dear me! o lord! stop a moment!" says mr. smallweed. "he's so very prompt! are you sure you can do it carefully, my worthy man?" phil makes no reply, but seizing the chair and its load, sidles away, tightly hugged by the now speechless mr. smallweed, and bolts along the passage as if he had an acceptable commission to carry the old gentleman to the nearest volcano. his shorter trust, however, terminating at the cab, he deposits him there; and the fair judy takes her place beside him, and the chair embellishes the roof, and mr. george takes the vacant place upon the box. mr. george is quite confounded by the spectacle he beholds from time to time as he peeps into the cab through the window behind him, where the grim judy is always motionless, and the old gentleman with his cap over one eye is always sliding off the seat into the straw and looking upward at him out of his other eye with a helpless expression of being jolted in the back. chapter xxvii more old soldiers than one mr. george has not far to ride with folded arms upon the box, for their destination is lincoln's inn fields. when the driver stops his horses, mr. george alights, and looking in at the window, says, "what, mr. tulkinghorn's your man, is he?" "yes, my dear friend. do you know him, mr. george?" "why, i have heard of him--seen him too, i think. but i don't know him, and he don't know me." there ensues the carrying of mr. smallweed upstairs, which is done to perfection with the trooper's help. he is borne into mr. tulkinghorn's great room and deposited on the turkey rug before the fire. mr. tulkinghorn is not within at the present moment but will be back directly. the occupant of the pew in the hall, having said thus much, stirs the fire and leaves the triumvirate to warm themselves. mr. george is mightily curious in respect of the room. he looks up at the painted ceiling, looks round at the old law-books, contemplates the portraits of the great clients, reads aloud the names on the boxes. "'sir leicester dedlock, baronet,'" mr. george reads thoughtfully. "ha! 'manor of chesney wold.' humph!" mr. george stands looking at these boxes a long while--as if they were pictures--and comes back to the fire repeating, "sir leicester dedlock, baronet, and manor of chesney wold, hey?" "worth a mint of money, mr. george!" whispers grandfather smallweed, rubbing his legs. "powerfully rich!" "who do you mean? this old gentleman, or the baronet?" "this gentleman, this gentleman." "so i have heard; and knows a thing or two, i'll hold a wager. not bad quarters, either," says mr. george, looking round again. "see the strong-box yonder!" this reply is cut short by mr. tulkinghorn's arrival. there is no change in him, of course. rustily drest, with his spectacles in his hand, and their very case worn threadbare. in manner, close and dry. in voice, husky and low. in face, watchful behind a blind; habitually not uncensorious and contemptuous perhaps. the peerage may have warmer worshippers and faithfuller believers than mr. tulkinghorn, after all, if everything were known. "good morning, mr. smallweed, good morning!" he says as he comes in. "you have brought the sergeant, i see. sit down, sergeant." as mr. tulkinghorn takes off his gloves and puts them in his hat, he looks with half-closed eyes across the room to where the trooper stands and says within himself perchance, "you'll do, my friend!" "sit down, sergeant," he repeats as he comes to his table, which is set on one side of the fire, and takes his easy-chair. "cold and raw this morning, cold and raw!" mr. tulkinghorn warms before the bars, alternately, the palms and knuckles of his hands and looks (from behind that blind which is always down) at the trio sitting in a little semicircle before him. "now, i can feel what i am about" (as perhaps he can in two senses), "mr. smallweed." the old gentleman is newly shaken up by judy to bear his part in the conversation. "you have brought our good friend the sergeant, i see." "yes, sir," returns mr. smallweed, very servile to the lawyer's wealth and influence. "and what does the sergeant say about this business?" "mr. george," says grandfather smallweed with a tremulous wave of his shrivelled hand, "this is the gentleman, sir." mr. george salutes the gentleman but otherwise sits bolt upright and profoundly silent--very forward in his chair, as if the full complement of regulation appendages for a field-day hung about him. mr. tulkinghorn proceeds, "well, george--i believe your name is george?" "it is so, sir." "what do you say, george?" "i ask your pardon, sir," returns the trooper, "but i should wish to know what you say?" "do you mean in point of reward?" "i mean in point of everything, sir." this is so very trying to mr. smallweed's temper that he suddenly breaks out with "you're a brimstone beast!" and as suddenly asks pardon of mr. tulkinghorn, excusing himself for this slip of the tongue by saying to judy, "i was thinking of your grandmother, my dear." "i supposed, sergeant," mr. tulkinghorn resumes as he leans on one side of his chair and crosses his legs, "that mr. smallweed might have sufficiently explained the matter. it lies in the smallest compass, however. you served under captain hawdon at one time, and were his attendant in illness, and rendered him many little services, and were rather in his confidence, i am told. that is so, is it not?" "yes, sir, that is so," says mr. george with military brevity. "therefore you may happen to have in your possession something--anything, no matter what; accounts, instructions, orders, a letter, anything--in captain hawdon's writing. i wish to compare his writing with some that i have. if you can give me the opportunity, you shall be rewarded for your trouble. three, four, five, guineas, you would consider handsome, i dare say." "noble, my dear friend!" cries grandfather smallweed, screwing up his eyes. "if not, say how much more, in your conscience as a soldier, you can demand. there is no need for you to part with the writing, against your inclination--though i should prefer to have it." mr. george sits squared in exactly the same attitude, looks at the painted ceiling, and says never a word. the irascible mr. smallweed scratches the air. "the question is," says mr. tulkinghorn in his methodical, subdued, uninterested way, "first, whether you have any of captain hawdon's writing?" "first, whether i have any of captain hawdon's writing, sir," repeats mr. george. "secondly, what will satisfy you for the trouble of producing it?" "secondly, what will satisfy me for the trouble of producing it, sir," repeats mr. george. "thirdly, you can judge for yourself whether it is at all like that," says mr. tulkinghorn, suddenly handing him some sheets of written paper tied together. "whether it is at all like that, sir. just so," repeats mr. george. all three repetitions mr. george pronounces in a mechanical manner, looking straight at mr. tulkinghorn; nor does he so much as glance at the affidavit in jarndyce and jarndyce, that has been given to him for his inspection (though he still holds it in his hand), but continues to look at the lawyer with an air of troubled meditation. "well?" says mr. tulkinghorn. "what do you say?" "well, sir," replies mr. george, rising erect and looking immense, "i would rather, if you'll excuse me, have nothing to do with this." mr. tulkinghorn, outwardly quite undisturbed, demands, "why not?" "why, sir," returns the trooper. "except on military compulsion, i am not a man of business. among civilians i am what they call in scotland a ne'er-do-weel. i have no head for papers, sir. i can stand any fire better than a fire of cross questions. i mentioned to mr. smallweed, only an hour or so ago, that when i come into things of this kind i feel as if i was being smothered. and that is my sensation," says mr. george, looking round upon the company, "at the present moment." with that, he takes three strides forward to replace the papers on the lawyer's table and three strides backward to resume his former station, where he stands perfectly upright, now looking at the ground and now at the painted ceiling, with his hands behind him as if to prevent himself from accepting any other document whatever. under this provocation, mr. smallweed's favourite adjective of disparagement is so close to his tongue that he begins the words "my dear friend" with the monosyllable "brim," thus converting the possessive pronoun into brimmy and appearing to have an impediment in his speech. once past this difficulty, however, he exhorts his dear friend in the tenderest manner not to be rash, but to do what so eminent a gentleman requires, and to do it with a good grace, confident that it must be unobjectionable as well as profitable. mr. tulkinghorn merely utters an occasional sentence, as, "you are the best judge of your own interest, sergeant." "take care you do no harm by this." "please yourself, please yourself." "if you know what you mean, that's quite enough." these he utters with an appearance of perfect indifference as he looks over the papers on his table and prepares to write a letter. mr. george looks distrustfully from the painted ceiling to the ground, from the ground to mr. smallweed, from mr. smallweed to mr. tulkinghorn, and from mr. tulkinghorn to the painted ceiling again, often in his perplexity changing the leg on which he rests. "i do assure you, sir," says mr. george, "not to say it offensively, that between you and mr. smallweed here, i really am being smothered fifty times over. i really am, sir. i am not a match for you gentlemen. will you allow me to ask why you want to see the captain's hand, in the case that i could find any specimen of it?" mr. tulkinghorn quietly shakes his head. "no. if you were a man of business, sergeant, you would not need to be informed that there are confidential reasons, very harmless in themselves, for many such wants in the profession to which i belong. but if you are afraid of doing any injury to captain hawdon, you may set your mind at rest about that." "aye! he is dead, sir." "is he?" mr. tulkinghorn quietly sits down to write. "well, sir," says the trooper, looking into his hat after another disconcerted pause, "i am sorry not to have given you more satisfaction. if it would be any satisfaction to any one that i should be confirmed in my judgment that i would rather have nothing to do with this by a friend of mine who has a better head for business than i have, and who is an old soldier, i am willing to consult with him. i--i really am so completely smothered myself at present," says mr. george, passing his hand hopelessly across his brow, "that i don't know but what it might be a satisfaction to me." mr. smallweed, hearing that this authority is an old soldier, so strongly inculcates the expediency of the trooper's taking counsel with him, and particularly informing him of its being a question of five guineas or more, that mr. george engages to go and see him. mr. tulkinghorn says nothing either way. "i'll consult my friend, then, by your leave, sir," says the trooper, "and i'll take the liberty of looking in again with the final answer in the course of the day. mr. smallweed, if you wish to be carried downstairs--" "in a moment, my dear friend, in a moment. will you first let me speak half a word with this gentleman in private?" "certainly, sir. don't hurry yourself on my account." the trooper retires to a distant part of the room and resumes his curious inspection of the boxes, strong and otherwise. "if i wasn't as weak as a brimstone baby, sir," whispers grandfather smallweed, drawing the lawyer down to his level by the lapel of his coat and flashing some half-quenched green fire out of his angry eyes, "i'd tear the writing away from him. he's got it buttoned in his breast. i saw him put it there. judy saw him put it there. speak up, you crabbed image for the sign of a walking-stick shop, and say you saw him put it there!" this vehement conjuration the old gentleman accompanies with such a thrust at his granddaughter that it is too much for his strength, and he slips away out of his chair, drawing mr. tulkinghorn with him, until he is arrested by judy, and well shaken. "violence will not do for me, my friend," mr. tulkinghorn then remarks coolly. "no, no, i know, i know, sir. but it's chafing and galling--it's--it's worse than your smattering chattering magpie of a grandmother," to the imperturbable judy, who only looks at the fire, "to know he has got what's wanted and won't give it up. he, not to give it up! he! a vagabond! but never mind, sir, never mind. at the most, he has only his own way for a little while. i have him periodically in a vice. i'll twist him, sir. i'll screw him, sir. if he won't do it with a good grace, i'll make him do it with a bad one, sir! now, my dear mr. george," says grandfather smallweed, winking at the lawyer hideously as he releases him, "i am ready for your kind assistance, my excellent friend!" mr. tulkinghorn, with some shadowy sign of amusement manifesting itself through his self-possession, stands on the hearth-rug with his back to the fire, watching the disappearance of mr. smallweed and acknowledging the trooper's parting salute with one slight nod. it is more difficult to get rid of the old gentleman, mr. george finds, than to bear a hand in carrying him downstairs, for when he is replaced in his conveyance, he is so loquacious on the subject of the guineas and retains such an affectionate hold of his button--having, in truth, a secret longing to rip his coat open and rob him--that some degree of force is necessary on the trooper's part to effect a separation. it is accomplished at last, and he proceeds alone in quest of his adviser. by the cloisterly temple, and by whitefriars (there, not without a glance at hanging-sword alley, which would seem to be something in his way), and by blackfriars bridge, and blackfriars road, mr. george sedately marches to a street of little shops lying somewhere in that ganglion of roads from kent and surrey, and of streets from the bridges of london, centring in the far-famed elephant who has lost his castle formed of a thousand four-horse coaches to a stronger iron monster than he, ready to chop him into mince-meat any day he dares. to one of the little shops in this street, which is a musician's shop, having a few fiddles in the window, and some pan's pipes and a tambourine, and a triangle, and certain elongated scraps of music, mr. george directs his massive tread. and halting at a few paces from it, as he sees a soldierly looking woman, with her outer skirts tucked up, come forth with a small wooden tub, and in that tub commence a-whisking and a-splashing on the margin of the pavement, mr. george says to himself, "she's as usual, washing greens. i never saw her, except upon a baggage-waggon, when she wasn't washing greens!" the subject of this reflection is at all events so occupied in washing greens at present that she remains unsuspicious of mr. george's approach until, lifting up herself and her tub together when she has poured the water off into the gutter, she finds him standing near her. her reception of him is not flattering. "george, i never see you but i wish you was a hundred mile away!" the trooper, without remarking on this welcome, follows into the musical-instrument shop, where the lady places her tub of greens upon the counter, and having shaken hands with him, rests her arms upon it. "i never," she says, "george, consider matthew bagnet safe a minute when you're near him. you are that restless and that roving--" "yes! i know i am, mrs. bagnet. i know i am." "you know you are!" says mrs. bagnet. "what's the use of that? why are you?" "the nature of the animal, i suppose," returns the trooper good-humouredly. "ah!" cries mrs. bagnet, something shrilly. "but what satisfaction will the nature of the animal be to me when the animal shall have tempted my mat away from the musical business to new zealand or australey?" mrs. bagnet is not at all an ill-looking woman. rather large-boned, a little coarse in the grain, and freckled by the sun and wind which have tanned her hair upon the forehead, but healthy, wholesome, and bright-eyed. a strong, busy, active, honest-faced woman of from forty-five to fifty. clean, hardy, and so economically dressed (though substantially) that the only article of ornament of which she stands possessed appear's to be her wedding-ring, around which her finger has grown to be so large since it was put on that it will never come off again until it shall mingle with mrs. bagnet's dust. "mrs. bagnet," says the trooper, "i am on my parole with you. mat will get no harm from me. you may trust me so far." "well, i think i may. but the very looks of you are unsettling," mrs. bagnet rejoins. "ah, george, george! if you had only settled down and married joe pouch's widow when he died in north america, she'd have combed your hair for you." "it was a chance for me, certainly," returns the trooper half laughingly, half seriously, "but i shall never settle down into a respectable man now. joe pouch's widow might have done me good--there was something in her, and something of her--but i couldn't make up my mind to it. if i had had the luck to meet with such a wife as mat found!" mrs. bagnet, who seems in a virtuous way to be under little reserve with a good sort of fellow, but to be another good sort of fellow herself for that matter, receives this compliment by flicking mr. george in the face with a head of greens and taking her tub into the little room behind the shop. "why, quebec, my poppet," says george, following, on invitation, into that department. "and little malta, too! come and kiss your bluffy!" these young ladies--not supposed to have been actually christened by the names applied to them, though always so called in the family from the places of their birth in barracks--are respectively employed on three-legged stools, the younger (some five or six years old) in learning her letters out of a penny primer, the elder (eight or nine perhaps) in teaching her and sewing with great assiduity. both hail mr. george with acclamations as an old friend and after some kissing and romping plant their stools beside him. "and how's young woolwich?" says mr. george. "ah! there now!" cries mrs. bagnet, turning about from her saucepans (for she is cooking dinner) with a bright flush on her face. "would you believe it? got an engagement at the theayter, with his father, to play the fife in a military piece." "well done, my godson!" cries mr. george, slapping his thigh. "i believe you!" says mrs. bagnet. "he's a briton. that's what woolwich is. a briton!" "and mat blows away at his bassoon, and you're respectable civilians one and all," says mr. george. "family people. children growing up. mat's old mother in scotland, and your old father somewhere else, corresponded with, and helped a little, and--well, well! to be sure, i don't know why i shouldn't be wished a hundred mile away, for i have not much to do with all this!" mr. george is becoming thoughtful, sitting before the fire in the whitewashed room, which has a sanded floor and a barrack smell and contains nothing superfluous and has not a visible speck of dirt or dust in it, from the faces of quebec and malta to the bright tin pots and pannikins upon the dresser shelves--mr. george is becoming thoughtful, sitting here while mrs. bagnet is busy, when mr. bagnet and young woolwich opportunely come home. mr. bagnet is an ex-artilleryman, tall and upright, with shaggy eyebrows and whiskers like the fibres of a coco-nut, not a hair upon his head, and a torrid complexion. his voice, short, deep, and resonant, is not at all unlike the tones of the instrument to which he is devoted. indeed there may be generally observed in him an unbending, unyielding, brass-bound air, as if he were himself the bassoon of the human orchestra. young woolwich is the type and model of a young drummer. both father and son salute the trooper heartily. he saying, in due season, that he has come to advise with mr. bagnet, mr. bagnet hospitably declares that he will hear of no business until after dinner and that his friend shall not partake of his counsel without first partaking of boiled pork and greens. the trooper yielding to this invitation, he and mr. bagnet, not to embarrass the domestic preparations, go forth to take a turn up and down the little street, which they promenade with measured tread and folded arms, as if it were a rampart. "george," says mr. bagnet. "you know me. it's my old girl that advises. she has the head. but i never own to it before her. discipline must be maintained. wait till the greens is off her mind. then we'll consult. whatever the old girl says, do--do it!" "i intend to, mat," replies the other. "i would sooner take her opinion than that of a college." "college," returns mr. bagnet in short sentences, bassoon-like. "what college could you leave--in another quarter of the world--with nothing but a grey cloak and an umbrella--to make its way home to europe? the old girl would do it to-morrow. did it once!" "you are right," says mr. george. "what college," pursues bagnet, "could you set up in life--with two penn'orth of white lime--a penn'orth of fuller's earth--a ha'porth of sand--and the rest of the change out of sixpence in money? that's what the old girl started on. in the present business." "i am rejoiced to hear it's thriving, mat." "the old girl," says mr. bagnet, acquiescing, "saves. has a stocking somewhere. with money in it. i never saw it. but i know she's got it. wait till the greens is off her mind. then she'll set you up." "she is a treasure!" exclaims mr. george. "she's more. but i never own to it before her. discipline must be maintained. it was the old girl that brought out my musical abilities. i should have been in the artillery now but for the old girl. six years i hammered at the fiddle. ten at the flute. the old girl said it wouldn't do; intention good, but want of flexibility; try the bassoon. the old girl borrowed a bassoon from the bandmaster of the rifle regiment. i practised in the trenches. got on, got another, get a living by it!" george remarks that she looks as fresh as a rose and as sound as an apple. "the old girl," says mr. bagnet in reply, "is a thoroughly fine woman. consequently she is like a thoroughly fine day. gets finer as she gets on. i never saw the old girl's equal. but i never own to it before her. discipline must be maintained!" proceeding to converse on indifferent matters, they walk up and down the little street, keeping step and time, until summoned by quebec and malta to do justice to the pork and greens, over which mrs. bagnet, like a military chaplain, says a short grace. in the distribution of these comestibles, as in every other household duty, mrs. bagnet developes an exact system, sitting with every dish before her, allotting to every portion of pork its own portion of pot-liquor, greens, potatoes, and even mustard, and serving it out complete. having likewise served out the beer from a can and thus supplied the mess with all things necessary, mrs. bagnet proceeds to satisfy her own hunger, which is in a healthy state. the kit of the mess, if the table furniture may be so denominated, is chiefly composed of utensils of horn and tin that have done duty in several parts of the world. young woolwich's knife, in particular, which is of the oyster kind, with the additional feature of a strong shutting-up movement which frequently balks the appetite of that young musician, is mentioned as having gone in various hands the complete round of foreign service. the dinner done, mrs. bagnet, assisted by the younger branches (who polish their own cups and platters, knives and forks), makes all the dinner garniture shine as brightly as before and puts it all away, first sweeping the hearth, to the end that mr. bagnet and the visitor may not be retarded in the smoking of their pipes. these household cares involve much pattening and counter-pattening in the backyard and considerable use of a pail, which is finally so happy as to assist in the ablutions of mrs. bagnet herself. that old girl reappearing by and by, quite fresh, and sitting down to her needlework, then and only then--the greens being only then to be considered as entirely off her mind--mr. bagnet requests the trooper to state his case. this mr. george does with great discretion, appearing to address himself to mr. bagnet, but having an eye solely on the old girl all the time, as bagnet has himself. she, equally discreet, busies herself with her needlework. the case fully stated, mr. bagnet resorts to his standard artifice for the maintenance of discipline. "that's the whole of it, is it, george?" says he. "that's the whole of it." "you act according to my opinion?" "i shall be guided," replies george, "entirely by it." "old girl," says mr. bagnet, "give him my opinion. you know it. tell him what it is." it is that he cannot have too little to do with people who are too deep for him and cannot be too careful of interference with matters he does not understand--that the plain rule is to do nothing in the dark, to be a party to nothing underhanded or mysterious, and never to put his foot where he cannot see the ground. this, in effect, is mr. bagnet's opinion, as delivered through the old girl, and it so relieves mr. george's mind by confirming his own opinion and banishing his doubts that he composes himself to smoke another pipe on that exceptional occasion and to have a talk over old times with the whole bagnet family, according to their various ranges of experience. through these means it comes to pass that mr. george does not again rise to his full height in that parlour until the time is drawing on when the bassoon and fife are expected by a british public at the theatre; and as it takes time even then for mr. george, in his domestic character of bluffy, to take leave of quebec and malta and insinuate a sponsorial shilling into the pocket of his godson with felicitations on his success in life, it is dark when mr. george again turns his face towards lincoln's inn fields. "a family home," he ruminates as he marches along, "however small it is, makes a man like me look lonely. but it's well i never made that evolution of matrimony. i shouldn't have been fit for it. i am such a vagabond still, even at my present time of life, that i couldn't hold to the gallery a month together if it was a regular pursuit or if i didn't camp there, gipsy fashion. come! i disgrace nobody and cumber nobody; that's something. i have not done that for many a long year!" so he whistles it off and marches on. arrived in lincoln's inn fields and mounting mr. tulkinghorn's stair, he finds the outer door closed and the chambers shut, but the trooper not knowing much about outer doors, and the staircase being dark besides, he is yet fumbling and groping about, hoping to discover a bell-handle or to open the door for himself, when mr. tulkinghorn comes up the stairs (quietly, of course) and angrily asks, "who is that? what are you doing there?" "i ask your pardon, sir. it's george. the sergeant." "and couldn't george, the sergeant, see that my door was locked?" "why, no, sir, i couldn't. at any rate, i didn't," says the trooper, rather nettled. "have you changed your mind? or are you in the same mind?" mr. tulkinghorn demands. but he knows well enough at a glance. "in the same mind, sir." "i thought so. that's sufficient. you can go. so you are the man," says mr. tulkinghorn, opening his door with the key, "in whose hiding-place mr. gridley was found?" "yes, i am the man," says the trooper, stopping two or three stairs down. "what then, sir?" "what then? i don't like your associates. you should not have seen the inside of my door this morning if i had thought of your being that man. gridley? a threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow." with these words, spoken in an unusually high tone for him, the lawyer goes into his rooms and shuts the door with a thundering noise. mr. george takes his dismissal in great dudgeon, the greater because a clerk coming up the stairs has heard the last words of all and evidently applies them to him. "a pretty character to bear," the trooper growls with a hasty oath as he strides downstairs. "a threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow!" and looking up, he sees the clerk looking down at him and marking him as he passes a lamp. this so intensifies his dudgeon that for five minutes he is in an ill humour. but he whistles that off like the rest of it and marches home to the shooting gallery. chapter xxviii the ironmaster sir leicester dedlock has got the better, for the time being, of the family gout and is once more, in a literal no less than in a figurative point of view, upon his legs. he is at his place in lincolnshire; but the waters are out again on the low-lying grounds, and the cold and damp steal into chesney wold, though well defended, and eke into sir leicester's bones. the blazing fires of faggot and coal--dedlock timber and antediluvian forest--that blaze upon the broad wide hearths and wink in the twilight on the frowning woods, sullen to see how trees are sacrificed, do not exclude the enemy. the hot-water pipes that trail themselves all over the house, the cushioned doors and windows, and the screens and curtains fail to supply the fires' deficiencies and to satisfy sir leicester's need. hence the fashionable intelligence proclaims one morning to the listening earth that lady dedlock is expected shortly to return to town for a few weeks. it is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations. indeed great men have often more than their fair share of poor relations, inasmuch as very red blood of the superior quality, like inferior blood unlawfully shed, will cry aloud and will be heard. sir leicester's cousins, in the remotest degree, are so many murders in the respect that they "will out." among whom there are cousins who are so poor that one might almost dare to think it would have been the happier for them never to have been plated links upon the dedlock chain of gold, but to have been made of common iron at first and done base service. service, however (with a few limited reservations, genteel but not profitable), they may not do, being of the dedlock dignity. so they visit their richer cousins, and get into debt when they can, and live but shabbily when they can't, and find--the women no husbands, and the men no wives--and ride in borrowed carriages, and sit at feasts that are never of their own making, and so go through high life. the rich family sum has been divided by so many figures, and they are the something over that nobody knows what to do with. everybody on sir leicester dedlock's side of the question and of his way of thinking would appear to be his cousin more or less. from my lord boodle, through the duke of foodle, down to noodle, sir leicester, like a glorious spider, stretches his threads of relationship. but while he is stately in the cousinship of the everybodys, he is a kind and generous man, according to his dignified way, in the cousinship of the nobodys; and at the present time, in despite of the damp, he stays out the visit of several such cousins at chesney wold with the constancy of a martyr. of these, foremost in the front rank stands volumnia dedlock, a young lady (of sixty) who is doubly highly related, having the honour to be a poor relation, by the mother's side, to another great family. miss volumnia, displaying in early life a pretty talent for cutting ornaments out of coloured paper, and also for singing to the guitar in the spanish tongue, and propounding french conundrums in country houses, passed the twenty years of her existence between twenty and forty in a sufficiently agreeable manner. lapsing then out of date and being considered to bore mankind by her vocal performances in the spanish language, she retired to bath, where she lives slenderly on an annual present from sir leicester and whence she makes occasional resurrections in the country houses of her cousins. she has an extensive acquaintance at bath among appalling old gentlemen with thin legs and nankeen trousers, and is of high standing in that dreary city. but she is a little dreaded elsewhere in consequence of an indiscreet profusion in the article of rouge and persistency in an obsolete pearl necklace like a rosary of little bird's-eggs. in any country in a wholesome state, volumnia would be a clear case for the pension list. efforts have been made to get her on it, and when william buffy came in, it was fully expected that her name would be put down for a couple of hundred a year. but william buffy somehow discovered, contrary to all expectation, that these were not the times when it could be done, and this was the first clear indication sir leicester dedlock had conveyed to him that the country was going to pieces. there is likewise the honourable bob stables, who can make warm mashes with the skill of a veterinary surgeon and is a better shot than most gamekeepers. he has been for some time particularly desirous to serve his country in a post of good emoluments, unaccompanied by any trouble or responsibility. in a well-regulated body politic this natural desire on the part of a spirited young gentleman so highly connected would be speedily recognized, but somehow william buffy found when he came in that these were not times in which he could manage that little matter either, and this was the second indication sir leicester dedlock had conveyed to him that the country was going to pieces. the rest of the cousins are ladies and gentlemen of various ages and capacities, the major part amiable and sensible and likely to have done well enough in life if they could have overcome their cousinship; as it is, they are almost all a little worsted by it, and lounge in purposeless and listless paths, and seem to be quite as much at a loss how to dispose of themselves as anybody else can be how to dispose of them. in this society, and where not, my lady dedlock reigns supreme. beautiful, elegant, accomplished, and powerful in her little world (for the world of fashion does not stretch all the way from pole to pole), her influence in sir leicester's house, however haughty and indifferent her manner, is greatly to improve it and refine it. the cousins, even those older cousins who were paralysed when sir leicester married her, do her feudal homage; and the honourable bob stables daily repeats to some chosen person between breakfast and lunch his favourite original remark, that she is the best-groomed woman in the whole stud. such the guests in the long drawing-room at chesney wold this dismal night when the step on the ghost's walk (inaudible here, however) might be the step of a deceased cousin shut out in the cold. it is near bed-time. bedroom fires blaze brightly all over the house, raising ghosts of grim furniture on wall and ceiling. bedroom candlesticks bristle on the distant table by the door, and cousins yawn on ottomans. cousins at the piano, cousins at the soda-water tray, cousins rising from the card-table, cousins gathered round the fire. standing on one side of his own peculiar fire (for there are two), sir leicester. on the opposite side of the broad hearth, my lady at her table. volumnia, as one of the more privileged cousins, in a luxurious chair between them. sir leicester glancing, with magnificent displeasure, at the rouge and the pearl necklace. "i occasionally meet on my staircase here," drawls volumnia, whose thoughts perhaps are already hopping up it to bed, after a long evening of very desultory talk, "one of the prettiest girls, i think, that i ever saw in my life." "a protegee of my lady's," observes sir leicester. "i thought so. i felt sure that some uncommon eye must have picked that girl out. she really is a marvel. a dolly sort of beauty perhaps," says miss volumnia, reserving her own sort, "but in its way, perfect; such bloom i never saw!" sir leicester, with his magnificent glance of displeasure at the rouge, appears to say so too. "indeed," remarks my lady languidly, "if there is any uncommon eye in the case, it is mrs. rouncewell's, and not mine. rosa is her discovery." "your maid, i suppose?" "no. my anything; pet--secretary--messenger--i don't know what." "you like to have her about you, as you would like to have a flower, or a bird, or a picture, or a poodle--no, not a poodle, though--or anything else that was equally pretty?" says volumnia, sympathizing. "yes, how charming now! and how well that delightful old soul mrs. rouncewell is looking. she must be an immense age, and yet she is as active and handsome! she is the dearest friend i have, positively!" sir leicester feels it to be right and fitting that the housekeeper of chesney wold should be a remarkable person. apart from that, he has a real regard for mrs. rouncewell and likes to hear her praised. so he says, "you are right, volumnia," which volumnia is extremely glad to hear. "she has no daughter of her own, has she?" "mrs. rouncewell? no, volumnia. she has a son. indeed, she had two." my lady, whose chronic malady of boredom has been sadly aggravated by volumnia this evening, glances wearily towards the candlesticks and heaves a noiseless sigh. "and it is a remarkable example of the confusion into which the present age has fallen; of the obliteration of landmarks, the opening of floodgates, and the uprooting of distinctions," says sir leicester with stately gloom, "that i have been informed by mr. tulkinghorn that mrs. rouncewell's son has been invited to go into parliament." miss volumnia utters a little sharp scream. "yes, indeed," repeats sir leicester. "into parliament." "i never heard of such a thing! good gracious, what is the man?" exclaims volumnia. "he is called, i believe--an--ironmaster." sir leicester says it slowly and with gravity and doubt, as not being sure but that he is called a lead-mistress or that the right word may be some other word expressive of some other relationship to some other metal. volumnia utters another little scream. "he has declined the proposal, if my information from mr. tulkinghorn be correct, as i have no doubt it is. mr. tulkinghorn being always correct and exact; still that does not," says sir leicester, "that does not lessen the anomaly, which is fraught with strange considerations--startling considerations, as it appears to me." miss volumnia rising with a look candlestick-wards, sir leicester politely performs the grand tour of the drawing-room, brings one, and lights it at my lady's shaded lamp. "i must beg you, my lady," he says while doing so, "to remain a few moments, for this individual of whom i speak arrived this evening shortly before dinner and requested in a very becoming note"--sir leicester, with his habitual regard to truth, dwells upon it--"i am bound to say, in a very becoming and well-expressed note, the favour of a short interview with yourself and myself on the subject of this young girl. as it appeared that he wished to depart to-night, i replied that we would see him before retiring." miss volumnia with a third little scream takes flight, wishing her hosts--o lud!--well rid of the--what is it?--ironmaster! the other cousins soon disperse, to the last cousin there. sir leicester rings the bell, "make my compliments to mr. rouncewell, in the housekeeper's apartments, and say i can receive him now." my lady, who has heard all this with slight attention outwardly, looks towards mr. rouncewell as he comes in. he is a little over fifty perhaps, of a good figure, like his mother, and has a clear voice, a broad forehead from which his dark hair has retired, and a shrewd though open face. he is a responsible-looking gentleman dressed in black, portly enough, but strong and active. has a perfectly natural and easy air and is not in the least embarrassed by the great presence into which he comes. "sir leicester and lady dedlock, as i have already apologized for intruding on you, i cannot do better than be very brief. i thank you, sir leicester." the head of the dedlocks has motioned towards a sofa between himself and my lady. mr. rouncewell quietly takes his seat there. "in these busy times, when so many great undertakings are in progress, people like myself have so many workmen in so many places that we are always on the flight." sir leicester is content enough that the ironmaster should feel that there is no hurry there; there, in that ancient house, rooted in that quiet park, where the ivy and the moss have had time to mature, and the gnarled and warted elms and the umbrageous oaks stand deep in the fern and leaves of a hundred years; and where the sun-dial on the terrace has dumbly recorded for centuries that time which was as much the property of every dedlock--while he lasted--as the house and lands. sir leicester sits down in an easy-chair, opposing his repose and that of chesney wold to the restless flights of ironmasters. "lady dedlock has been so kind," proceeds mr. rouncewell with a respectful glance and a bow that way, "as to place near her a young beauty of the name of rosa. now, my son has fallen in love with rosa and has asked my consent to his proposing marriage to her and to their becoming engaged if she will take him--which i suppose she will. i have never seen rosa until to-day, but i have some confidence in my son's good sense--even in love. i find her what he represents her, to the best of my judgment; and my mother speaks of her with great commendation." "she in all respects deserves it," says my lady. "i am happy, lady dedlock, that you say so, and i need not comment on the value to me of your kind opinion of her." "that," observes sir leicester with unspeakable grandeur, for he thinks the ironmaster a little too glib, "must be quite unnecessary." "quite unnecessary, sir leicester. now, my son is a very young man, and rosa is a very young woman. as i made my way, so my son must make his; and his being married at present is out of the question. but supposing i gave my consent to his engaging himself to this pretty girl, if this pretty girl will engage herself to him, i think it a piece of candour to say at once--i am sure, sir leicester and lady dedlock, you will understand and excuse me--i should make it a condition that she did not remain at chesney wold. therefore, before communicating further with my son, i take the liberty of saying that if her removal would be in any way inconvenient or objectionable, i will hold the matter over with him for any reasonable time and leave it precisely where it is." not remain at chesney wold! make it a condition! all sir leicester's old misgivings relative to wat tyler and the people in the iron districts who do nothing but turn out by torchlight come in a shower upon his head, the fine grey hair of which, as well as of his whiskers, actually stirs with indignation. "am i to understand, sir," says sir leicester, "and is my lady to understand"--he brings her in thus specially, first as a point of gallantry, and next as a point of prudence, having great reliance on her sense--"am i to understand, mr. rouncewell, and is my lady to understand, sir, that you consider this young woman too good for chesney wold or likely to be injured by remaining here?" "certainly not, sir leicester," "i am glad to hear it." sir leicester very lofty indeed. "pray, mr. rouncewell," says my lady, warning sir leicester off with the slightest gesture of her pretty hand, as if he were a fly, "explain to me what you mean." "willingly, lady dedlock. there is nothing i could desire more." addressing her composed face, whose intelligence, however, is too quick and active to be concealed by any studied impassiveness, however habitual, to the strong saxon face of the visitor, a picture of resolution and perseverance, my lady listens with attention, occasionally slightly bending her head. "i am the son of your housekeeper, lady dedlock, and passed my childhood about this house. my mother has lived here half a century and will die here i have no doubt. she is one of those examples--perhaps as good a one as there is--of love, and attachment, and fidelity in such a nation, which england may well be proud of, but of which no order can appropriate the whole pride or the whole merit, because such an instance bespeaks high worth on two sides--on the great side assuredly, on the small one no less assuredly." sir leicester snorts a little to hear the law laid down in this way, but in his honour and his love of truth, he freely, though silently, admits the justice of the ironmaster's proposition. "pardon me for saying what is so obvious, but i wouldn't have it hastily supposed," with the least turn of his eyes towards sir leicester, "that i am ashamed of my mother's position here, or wanting in all just respect for chesney wold and the family. i certainly may have desired--i certainly have desired, lady dedlock--that my mother should retire after so many years and end her days with me. but as i have found that to sever this strong bond would be to break her heart, i have long abandoned that idea." sir leicester very magnificent again at the notion of mrs. rouncewell being spirited off from her natural home to end her days with an ironmaster. "i have been," proceeds the visitor in a modest, clear way, "an apprentice and a workman. i have lived on workman's wages, years and years, and beyond a certain point have had to educate myself. my wife was a foreman's daughter, and plainly brought up. we have three daughters besides this son of whom i have spoken, and being fortunately able to give them greater advantages than we have had ourselves, we have educated them well, very well. it has been one of our great cares and pleasures to make them worthy of any station." a little boastfulness in his fatherly tone here, as if he added in his heart, "even of the chesney wold station." not a little more magnificence, therefore, on the part of sir leicester. "all this is so frequent, lady dedlock, where i live, and among the class to which i belong, that what would be generally called unequal marriages are not of such rare occurrence with us as elsewhere. a son will sometimes make it known to his father that he has fallen in love, say, with a young woman in the factory. the father, who once worked in a factory himself, will be a little disappointed at first very possibly. it may be that he had other views for his son. however, the chances are that having ascertained the young woman to be of unblemished character, he will say to his son, 'i must be quite sure you are in earnest here. this is a serious matter for both of you. therefore i shall have this girl educated for two years,' or it may be, 'i shall place this girl at the same school with your sisters for such a time, during which you will give me your word and honour to see her only so often. if at the expiration of that time, when she has so far profited by her advantages as that you may be upon a fair equality, you are both in the same mind, i will do my part to make you happy.' i know of several cases such as i describe, my lady, and i think they indicate to me my own course now." sir leicester's magnificence explodes. calmly, but terribly. "mr. rouncewell," says sir leicester with his right hand in the breast of his blue coat, the attitude of state in which he is painted in the gallery, "do you draw a parallel between chesney wold and a--" here he resists a disposition to choke, "a factory?" "i need not reply, sir leicester, that the two places are very different; but for the purposes of this case, i think a parallel may be justly drawn between them." sir leicester directs his majestic glance down one side of the long drawing-room and up the other before he can believe that he is awake. "are you aware, sir, that this young woman whom my lady--my lady--has placed near her person was brought up at the village school outside the gates?" "sir leicester, i am quite aware of it. a very good school it is, and handsomely supported by this family." "then, mr. rouncewell," returns sir leicester, "the application of what you have said is, to me, incomprehensible." "will it be more comprehensible, sir leicester, if i say," the ironmaster is reddening a little, "that i do not regard the village school as teaching everything desirable to be known by my son's wife?" from the village school of chesney wold, intact as it is this minute, to the whole framework of society; from the whole framework of society, to the aforesaid framework receiving tremendous cracks in consequence of people (iron-masters, lead-mistresses, and what not) not minding their catechism, and getting out of the station unto which they are called--necessarily and for ever, according to sir leicester's rapid logic, the first station in which they happen to find themselves; and from that, to their educating other people out of their stations, and so obliterating the landmarks, and opening the floodgates, and all the rest of it; this is the swift progress of the dedlock mind. "my lady, i beg your pardon. permit me, for one moment!" she has given a faint indication of intending to speak. "mr. rouncewell, our views of duty, and our views of station, and our views of education, and our views of--in short, all our views--are so diametrically opposed, that to prolong this discussion must be repellent to your feelings and repellent to my own. this young woman is honoured with my lady's notice and favour. if she wishes to withdraw herself from that notice and favour or if she chooses to place herself under the influence of any one who may in his peculiar opinions--you will allow me to say, in his peculiar opinions, though i readily admit that he is not accountable for them to me--who may, in his peculiar opinions, withdraw her from that notice and favour, she is at any time at liberty to do so. we are obliged to you for the plainness with which you have spoken. it will have no effect of itself, one way or other, on the young woman's position here. beyond this, we can make no terms; and here we beg--if you will be so good--to leave the subject." the visitor pauses a moment to give my lady an opportunity, but she says nothing. he then rises and replies, "sir leicester and lady dedlock, allow me to thank you for your attention and only to observe that i shall very seriously recommend my son to conquer his present inclinations. good night!" "mr. rouncewell," says sir leicester with all the nature of a gentleman shining in him, "it is late, and the roads are dark. i hope your time is not so precious but that you will allow my lady and myself to offer you the hospitality of chesney wold, for to-night at least." "i hope so," adds my lady. "i am much obliged to you, but i have to travel all night in order to reach a distant part of the country punctually at an appointed time in the morning." therewith the ironmaster takes his departure, sir leicester ringing the bell and my lady rising as he leaves the room. when my lady goes to her boudoir, she sits down thoughtfully by the fire, and inattentive to the ghost's walk, looks at rosa, writing in an inner room. presently my lady calls her. "come to me, child. tell me the truth. are you in love?" "oh! my lady!" my lady, looking at the downcast and blushing face, says smiling, "who is it? is it mrs. rouncewell's grandson?" "yes, if you please, my lady. but i don't know that i am in love with him--yet." "yet, you silly little thing! do you know that he loves you, yet?" "i think he likes me a little, my lady." and rosa bursts into tears. is this lady dedlock standing beside the village beauty, smoothing her dark hair with that motherly touch, and watching her with eyes so full of musing interest? aye, indeed it is! "listen to me, child. you are young and true, and i believe you are attached to me." "indeed i am, my lady. indeed there is nothing in the world i wouldn't do to show how much." "and i don't think you would wish to leave me just yet, rosa, even for a lover?" "no, my lady! oh, no!" rosa looks up for the first time, quite frightened at the thought. "confide in me, my child. don't fear me. i wish you to be happy, and will make you so--if i can make anybody happy on this earth." rosa, with fresh tears, kneels at her feet and kisses her hand. my lady takes the hand with which she has caught it, and standing with her eyes fixed on the fire, puts it about and about between her own two hands, and gradually lets it fall. seeing her so absorbed, rosa softly withdraws; but still my lady's eyes are on the fire. in search of what? of any hand that is no more, of any hand that never was, of any touch that might have magically changed her life? or does she listen to the ghost's walk and think what step does it most resemble? a man's? a woman's? the pattering of a little child's feet, ever coming on--on--on? some melancholy influence is upon her, or why should so proud a lady close the doors and sit alone upon the hearth so desolate? volumnia is away next day, and all the cousins are scattered before dinner. not a cousin of the batch but is amazed to hear from sir leicester at breakfast-time of the obliteration of landmarks, and opening of floodgates, and cracking of the framework of society, manifested through mrs. rouncewell's son. not a cousin of the batch but is really indignant, and connects it with the feebleness of william buffy when in office, and really does feel deprived of a stake in the country--or the pension list--or something--by fraud and wrong. as to volumnia, she is handed down the great staircase by sir leicester, as eloquent upon the theme as if there were a general rising in the north of england to obtain her rouge-pot and pearl necklace. and thus, with a clatter of maids and valets--for it is one appurtenance of their cousinship that however difficult they may find it to keep themselves, they must keep maids and valets--the cousins disperse to the four winds of heaven; and the one wintry wind that blows to-day shakes a shower from the trees near the deserted house, as if all the cousins had been changed into leaves. chapter xxix the young man chesney wold is shut up, carpets are rolled into great scrolls in corners of comfortless rooms, bright damask does penance in brown holland, carving and gilding puts on mortification, and the dedlock ancestors retire from the light of day again. around and around the house the leaves fall thick, but never fast, for they come circling down with a dead lightness that is sombre and slow. let the gardener sweep and sweep the turf as he will, and press the leaves into full barrows, and wheel them off, still they lie ankle-deep. howls the shrill wind round chesney wold; the sharp rain beats, the windows rattle, and the chimneys growl. mists hide in the avenues, veil the points of view, and move in funeral-wise across the rising grounds. on all the house there is a cold, blank smell like the smell of a little church, though something dryer, suggesting that the dead and buried dedlocks walk there in the long nights and leave the flavour of their graves behind them. but the house in town, which is rarely in the same mind as chesney wold at the same time, seldom rejoicing when it rejoices or mourning when it mourns, excepting when a dedlock dies--the house in town shines out awakened. as warm and bright as so much state may be, as delicately redolent of pleasant scents that bear no trace of winter as hothouse flowers can make it, soft and hushed so that the ticking of the clocks and the crisp burning of the fires alone disturb the stillness in the rooms, it seems to wrap those chilled bones of sir leicester's in rainbow-coloured wool. and sir leicester is glad to repose in dignified contentment before the great fire in the library, condescendingly perusing the backs of his books or honouring the fine arts with a glance of approbation. for he has his pictures, ancient and modern. some of the fancy ball school in which art occasionally condescends to become a master, which would be best catalogued like the miscellaneous articles in a sale. as "three high-backed chairs, a table and cover, long-necked bottle (containing wine), one flask, one spanish female's costume, three-quarter face portrait of miss jogg the model, and a suit of armour containing don quixote." or "one stone terrace (cracked), one gondola in distance, one venetian senator's dress complete, richly embroidered white satin costume with profile portrait of miss jogg the model, one scimitar superbly mounted in gold with jewelled handle, elaborate moorish dress (very rare), and othello." mr. tulkinghorn comes and goes pretty often, there being estate business to do, leases to be renewed, and so on. he sees my lady pretty often, too; and he and she are as composed, and as indifferent, and take as little heed of one another, as ever. yet it may be that my lady fears this mr. tulkinghorn and that he knows it. it may be that he pursues her doggedly and steadily, with no touch of compunction, remorse, or pity. it may be that her beauty and all the state and brilliancy surrounding her only gives him the greater zest for what he is set upon and makes him the more inflexible in it. whether he be cold and cruel, whether immovable in what he has made his duty, whether absorbed in love of power, whether determined to have nothing hidden from him in ground where he has burrowed among secrets all his life, whether he in his heart despises the splendour of which he is a distant beam, whether he is always treasuring up slights and offences in the affability of his gorgeous clients--whether he be any of this, or all of this, it may be that my lady had better have five thousand pairs of fashionable eyes upon her, in distrustful vigilance, than the two eyes of this rusty lawyer with his wisp of neckcloth and his dull black breeches tied with ribbons at the knees. sir leicester sits in my lady's room--that room in which mr. tulkinghorn read the affidavit in jarndyce and jarndyce--particularly complacent. my lady, as on that day, sits before the fire with her screen in her hand. sir leicester is particularly complacent because he has found in his newspaper some congenial remarks bearing directly on the floodgates and the framework of society. they apply so happily to the late case that sir leicester has come from the library to my lady's room expressly to read them aloud. "the man who wrote this article," he observes by way of preface, nodding at the fire as if he were nodding down at the man from a mount, "has a well-balanced mind." the man's mind is not so well balanced but that he bores my lady, who, after a languid effort to listen, or rather a languid resignation of herself to a show of listening, becomes distraught and falls into a contemplation of the fire as if it were her fire at chesney wold, and she had never left it. sir leicester, quite unconscious, reads on through his double eye-glass, occasionally stopping to remove his glass and express approval, as "very true indeed," "very properly put," "i have frequently made the same remark myself," invariably losing his place after each observation, and going up and down the column to find it again. sir leicester is reading with infinite gravity and state when the door opens, and the mercury in powder makes this strange announcement, "the young man, my lady, of the name of guppy." sir leicester pauses, stares, repeats in a killing voice, "the young man of the name of guppy?" looking round, he beholds the young man of the name of guppy, much discomfited and not presenting a very impressive letter of introduction in his manner and appearance. "pray," says sir leicester to mercury, "what do you mean by announcing with this abruptness a young man of the name of guppy?" "i beg your pardon, sir leicester, but my lady said she would see the young man whenever he called. i was not aware that you were here, sir leicester." with this apology, mercury directs a scornful and indignant look at the young man of the name of guppy which plainly says, "what do you come calling here for and getting me into a row?" "it's quite right. i gave him those directions," says my lady. "let the young man wait." "by no means, my lady. since he has your orders to come, i will not interrupt you." sir leicester in his gallantry retires, rather declining to accept a bow from the young man as he goes out and majestically supposing him to be some shoemaker of intrusive appearance. lady dedlock looks imperiously at her visitor when the servant has left the room, casting her eyes over him from head to foot. she suffers him to stand by the door and asks him what he wants. "that your ladyship would have the kindness to oblige me with a little conversation," returns mr. guppy, embarrassed. "you are, of course, the person who has written me so many letters?" "several, your ladyship. several before your ladyship condescended to favour me with an answer." "and could you not take the same means of rendering a conversation unnecessary? can you not still?" mr. guppy screws his mouth into a silent "no!" and shakes his head. "you have been strangely importunate. if it should appear, after all, that what you have to say does not concern me--and i don't know how it can, and don't expect that it will--you will allow me to cut you short with but little ceremony. say what you have to say, if you please." my lady, with a careless toss of her screen, turns herself towards the fire again, sitting almost with her back to the young man of the name of guppy. "with your ladyship's permission, then," says the young man, "i will now enter on my business. hem! i am, as i told your ladyship in my first letter, in the law. being in the law, i have learnt the habit of not committing myself in writing, and therefore i did not mention to your ladyship the name of the firm with which i am connected and in which my standing--and i may add income--is tolerably good. i may now state to your ladyship, in confidence, that the name of that firm is kenge and carboy, of lincoln's inn, which may not be altogether unknown to your ladyship in connexion with the case in chancery of jarndyce and jarndyce." my lady's figure begins to be expressive of some attention. she has ceased to toss the screen and holds it as if she were listening. "now, i may say to your ladyship at once," says mr. guppy, a little emboldened, "it is no matter arising out of jarndyce and jarndyce that made me so desirous to speak to your ladyship, which conduct i have no doubt did appear, and does appear, obtrusive--in fact, almost blackguardly." after waiting for a moment to receive some assurance to the contrary, and not receiving any, mr. guppy proceeds, "if it had been jarndyce and jarndyce, i should have gone at once to your ladyship's solicitor, mr. tulkinghorn, of the fields. i have the pleasure of being acquainted with mr. tulkinghorn--at least we move when we meet one another--and if it had been any business of that sort, i should have gone to him." my lady turns a little round and says, "you had better sit down." "thank your ladyship." mr. guppy does so. "now, your ladyship"--mr. guppy refers to a little slip of paper on which he has made small notes of his line of argument and which seems to involve him in the densest obscurity whenever he looks at it--"i--oh, yes!--i place myself entirely in your ladyship's hands. if your ladyship was to make any complaint to kenge and carboy or to mr. tulkinghorn of the present visit, i should be placed in a very disagreeable situation. that, i openly admit. consequently, i rely upon your ladyship's honour." my lady, with a disdainful gesture of the hand that holds the screen, assures him of his being worth no complaint from her. "thank your ladyship," says mr. guppy; "quite satisfactory. now--i--dash it!--the fact is that i put down a head or two here of the order of the points i thought of touching upon, and they're written short, and i can't quite make out what they mean. if your ladyship will excuse me taking it to the window half a moment, i--" mr. guppy, going to the window, tumbles into a pair of love-birds, to whom he says in his confusion, "i beg your pardon, i am sure." this does not tend to the greater legibility of his notes. he murmurs, growing warm and red and holding the slip of paper now close to his eyes, now a long way off, "c.s. what's c.s. for? oh! c.s.! oh, i know! yes, to be sure!" and comes back enlightened. "i am not aware," says mr. guppy, standing midway between my lady and his chair, "whether your ladyship ever happened to hear of, or to see, a young lady of the name of miss esther summerson." my lady's eyes look at him full. "i saw a young lady of that name not long ago. this past autumn." "now, did it strike your ladyship that she was like anybody?" asks mr. guppy, crossing his arms, holding his head on one side, and scratching the corner of his mouth with his memoranda. my lady removes her eyes from him no more. "no." "not like your ladyship's family?" "no." "i think your ladyship," says mr. guppy, "can hardly remember miss summerson's face?" "i remember the young lady very well. what has this to do with me?" "your ladyship, i do assure you that having miss summerson's image imprinted on my 'eart--which i mention in confidence--i found, when i had the honour of going over your ladyship's mansion of chesney wold while on a short out in the county of lincolnshire with a friend, such a resemblance between miss esther summerson and your ladyship's own portrait that it completely knocked me over, so much so that i didn't at the moment even know what it was that knocked me over. and now i have the honour of beholding your ladyship near (i have often, since that, taken the liberty of looking at your ladyship in your carriage in the park, when i dare say you was not aware of me, but i never saw your ladyship so near), it's really more surprising than i thought it." young man of the name of guppy! there have been times, when ladies lived in strongholds and had unscrupulous attendants within call, when that poor life of yours would not have been worth a minute's purchase, with those beautiful eyes looking at you as they look at this moment. my lady, slowly using her little hand-screen as a fan, asks him again what he supposes that his taste for likenesses has to do with her. "your ladyship," replies mr. guppy, again referring to his paper, "i am coming to that. dash these notes! oh! 'mrs. chadband.' yes." mr. guppy draws his chair a little forward and seats himself again. my lady reclines in her chair composedly, though with a trifle less of graceful ease than usual perhaps, and never falters in her steady gaze. "a--stop a minute, though!" mr. guppy refers again. "e.s. twice? oh, yes! yes, i see my way now, right on." rolling up the slip of paper as an instrument to point his speech with, mr. guppy proceeds. "your ladyship, there is a mystery about miss esther summerson's birth and bringing up. i am informed of that fact because--which i mention in confidence--i know it in the way of my profession at kenge and carboy's. now, as i have already mentioned to your ladyship, miss summerson's image is imprinted on my 'eart. if i could clear this mystery for her, or prove her to be well related, or find that having the honour to be a remote branch of your ladyship's family she had a right to be made a party in jarndyce and jarndyce, why, i might make a sort of a claim upon miss summerson to look with an eye of more dedicated favour on my proposals than she has exactly done as yet. in fact, as yet she hasn't favoured them at all." a kind of angry smile just dawns upon my lady's face. "now, it's a very singular circumstance, your ladyship," says mr. guppy, "though one of those circumstances that do fall in the way of us professional men--which i may call myself, for though not admitted, yet i have had a present of my articles made to me by kenge and carboy, on my mother's advancing from the principal of her little income the money for the stamp, which comes heavy--that i have encountered the person who lived as servant with the lady who brought miss summerson up before mr. jarndyce took charge of her. that lady was a miss barbary, your ladyship." is the dead colour on my lady's face reflected from the screen which has a green silk ground and which she holds in her raised hand as if she had forgotten it, or is it a dreadful paleness that has fallen on her? "did your ladyship," says mr. guppy, "ever happen to hear of miss barbary?" "i don't know. i think so. yes." "was miss barbary at all connected with your ladyship's family?" my lady's lips move, but they utter nothing. she shakes her head. "not connected?" says mr. guppy. "oh! not to your ladyship's knowledge, perhaps? ah! but might be? yes." after each of these interrogatories, she has inclined her head. "very good! now, this miss barbary was extremely close--seems to have been extraordinarily close for a female, females being generally (in common life at least) rather given to conversation--and my witness never had an idea whether she possessed a single relative. on one occasion, and only one, she seems to have been confidential to my witness on a single point, and she then told her that the little girl's real name was not esther summerson, but esther hawdon." "my god!" mr. guppy stares. lady dedlock sits before him looking him through, with the same dark shade upon her face, in the same attitude even to the holding of the screen, with her lips a little apart, her brow a little contracted, but for the moment dead. he sees her consciousness return, sees a tremor pass across her frame like a ripple over water, sees her lips shake, sees her compose them by a great effort, sees her force herself back to the knowledge of his presence and of what he has said. all this, so quickly, that her exclamation and her dead condition seem to have passed away like the features of those long-preserved dead bodies sometimes opened up in tombs, which, struck by the air like lightning, vanish in a breath. "your ladyship is acquainted with the name of hawdon?" "i have heard it before." "name of any collateral or remote branch of your ladyship's family?" "no." "now, your ladyship," says mr. guppy, "i come to the last point of the case, so far as i have got it up. it's going on, and i shall gather it up closer and closer as it goes on. your ladyship must know--if your ladyship don't happen, by any chance, to know already--that there was found dead at the house of a person named krook, near chancery lane, some time ago, a law-writer in great distress. upon which law-writer there was an inquest, and which law-writer was an anonymous character, his name being unknown. but, your ladyship, i have discovered very lately that that law-writer's name was hawdon." "and what is that to me?" "aye, your ladyship, that's the question! now, your ladyship, a queer thing happened after that man's death. a lady started up, a disguised lady, your ladyship, who went to look at the scene of action and went to look at his grave. she hired a crossing-sweeping boy to show it her. if your ladyship would wish to have the boy produced in corroboration of this statement, i can lay my hand upon him at any time." the wretched boy is nothing to my lady, and she does not wish to have him produced. "oh, i assure your ladyship it's a very queer start indeed," says mr. guppy. "if you was to hear him tell about the rings that sparkled on her fingers when she took her glove off, you'd think it quite romantic." there are diamonds glittering on the hand that holds the screen. my lady trifles with the screen and makes them glitter more, again with that expression which in other times might have been so dangerous to the young man of the name of guppy. "it was supposed, your ladyship, that he left no rag or scrap behind him by which he could be possibly identified. but he did. he left a bundle of old letters." the screen still goes, as before. all this time her eyes never once release him. "they were taken and secreted. and to-morrow night, your ladyship, they will come into my possession." "still i ask you, what is this to me?" "your ladyship, i conclude with that." mr. guppy rises. "if you think there's enough in this chain of circumstances put together--in the undoubted strong likeness of this young lady to your ladyship, which is a positive fact for a jury; in her having been brought up by miss barbary; in miss barbary stating miss summerson's real name to be hawdon; in your ladyship's knowing both these names very well; and in hawdon's dying as he did--to give your ladyship a family interest in going further into the case, i will bring these papers here. i don't know what they are, except that they are old letters: i have never had them in my possession yet. i will bring those papers here as soon as i get them and go over them for the first time with your ladyship. i have told your ladyship my object. i have told your ladyship that i should be placed in a very disagreeable situation if any complaint was made, and all is in strict confidence." is this the full purpose of the young man of the name of guppy, or has he any other? do his words disclose the length, breadth, depth, of his object and suspicion in coming here; or if not, what do they hide? he is a match for my lady there. she may look at him, but he can look at the table and keep that witness-box face of his from telling anything. "you may bring the letters," says my lady, "if you choose." "your ladyship is not very encouraging, upon my word and honour," says mr. guppy, a little injured. "you may bring the letters," she repeats in the same tone, "if you--please." "it shall be done. i wish your ladyship good day." on a table near her is a rich bauble of a casket, barred and clasped like an old strong-chest. she, looking at him still, takes it to her and unlocks it. "oh! i assure your ladyship i am not actuated by any motives of that sort," says mr. guppy, "and i couldn't accept anything of the kind. i wish your ladyship good day, and am much obliged to you all the same." so the young man makes his bow and goes downstairs, where the supercilious mercury does not consider himself called upon to leave his olympus by the hall-fire to let the young man out. as sir leicester basks in his library and dozes over his newspaper, is there no influence in the house to startle him, not to say to make the very trees at chesney wold fling up their knotted arms, the very portraits frown, the very armour stir? no. words, sobs, and cries are but air, and air is so shut in and shut out throughout the house in town that sounds need be uttered trumpet-tongued indeed by my lady in her chamber to carry any faint vibration to sir leicester's ears; and yet this cry is in the house, going upward from a wild figure on its knees. "o my child, my child! not dead in the first hours of her life, as my cruel sister told me, but sternly nurtured by her, after she had renounced me and my name! o my child, o my child!" chapter xxx esther's narrative richard had been gone away some time when a visitor came to pass a few days with us. it was an elderly lady. it was mrs. woodcourt, who, having come from wales to stay with mrs. bayham badger and having written to my guardian, "by her son allan's desire," to report that she had heard from him and that he was well "and sent his kind remembrances to all of us," had been invited by my guardian to make a visit to bleak house. she stayed with us nearly three weeks. she took very kindly to me and was extremely confidential, so much so that sometimes she almost made me uncomfortable. i had no right, i knew very well, to be uncomfortable because she confided in me, and i felt it was unreasonable; still, with all i could do, i could not quite help it. she was such a sharp little lady and used to sit with her hands folded in each other looking so very watchful while she talked to me that perhaps i found that rather irksome. or perhaps it was her being so upright and trim, though i don't think it was that, because i thought that quaintly pleasant. nor can it have been the general expression of her face, which was very sparkling and pretty for an old lady. i don't know what it was. or at least if i do now, i thought i did not then. or at least--but it don't matter. of a night when i was going upstairs to bed, she would invite me into her room, where she sat before the fire in a great chair; and, dear me, she would tell me about morgan ap-kerrig until i was quite low-spirited! sometimes she recited a few verses from crumlinwallinwer and the mewlinnwillinwodd (if those are the right names, which i dare say they are not), and would become quite fiery with the sentiments they expressed. though i never knew what they were (being in welsh), further than that they were highly eulogistic of the lineage of morgan ap-kerrig. "so, miss summerson," she would say to me with stately triumph, "this, you see, is the fortune inherited by my son. wherever my son goes, he can claim kindred with ap-kerrig. he may not have money, but he always has what is much better--family, my dear." i had my doubts of their caring so very much for morgan ap-kerrig in india and china, but of course i never expressed them. i used to say it was a great thing to be so highly connected. "it is, my dear, a great thing," mrs. woodcourt would reply. "it has its disadvantages; my son's choice of a wife, for instance, is limited by it, but the matrimonial choice of the royal family is limited in much the same manner." then she would pat me on the arm and smooth my dress, as much as to assure me that she had a good opinion of me, the distance between us notwithstanding. "poor mr. woodcourt, my dear," she would say, and always with some emotion, for with her lofty pedigree she had a very affectionate heart, "was descended from a great highland family, the maccoorts of maccoort. he served his king and country as an officer in the royal highlanders, and he died on the field. my son is one of the last representatives of two old families. with the blessing of heaven he will set them up again and unite them with another old family." it was in vain for me to try to change the subject, as i used to try, only for the sake of novelty or perhaps because--but i need not be so particular. mrs. woodcourt never would let me change it. "my dear," she said one night, "you have so much sense and you look at the world in a quiet manner so superior to your time of life that it is a comfort to me to talk to you about these family matters of mine. you don't know much of my son, my dear; but you know enough of him, i dare say, to recollect him?" "yes, ma'am. i recollect him." "yes, my dear. now, my dear, i think you are a judge of character, and i should like to have your opinion of him." "oh, mrs. woodcourt," said i, "that is so difficult!" "why is it so difficult, my dear?" she returned. "i don't see it myself." "to give an opinion--" "on so slight an acquaintance, my dear. that's true." i didn't mean that, because mr. woodcourt had been at our house a good deal altogether and had become quite intimate with my guardian. i said so, and added that he seemed to be very clever in his profession--we thought--and that his kindness and gentleness to miss flite were above all praise. "you do him justice!" said mrs. woodcourt, pressing my hand. "you define him exactly. allan is a dear fellow, and in his profession faultless. i say it, though i am his mother. still, i must confess he is not without faults, love." "none of us are," said i. "ah! but his really are faults that he might correct, and ought to correct," returned the sharp old lady, sharply shaking her head. "i am so much attached to you that i may confide in you, my dear, as a third party wholly disinterested, that he is fickleness itself." i said i should have thought it hardly possible that he could have been otherwise than constant to his profession and zealous in the pursuit of it, judging from the reputation he had earned. "you are right again, my dear," the old lady retorted, "but i don't refer to his profession, look you." "oh!" said i. "no," said she. "i refer, my dear, to his social conduct. he is always paying trivial attentions to young ladies, and always has been, ever since he was eighteen. now, my dear, he has never really cared for any one of them and has never meant in doing this to do any harm or to express anything but politeness and good nature. still, it's not right, you know; is it?" "no," said i, as she seemed to wait for me. "and it might lead to mistaken notions, you see, my dear." i supposed it might. "therefore, i have told him many times that he really should be more careful, both in justice to himself and in justice to others. and he has always said, 'mother, i will be; but you know me better than anybody else does, and you know i mean no harm--in short, mean nothing.' all of which is very true, my dear, but is no justification. however, as he is now gone so far away and for an indefinite time, and as he will have good opportunities and introductions, we may consider this past and gone. and you, my dear," said the old lady, who was now all nods and smiles, "regarding your dear self, my love?" "me, mrs. woodcourt?" "not to be always selfish, talking of my son, who has gone to seek his fortune and to find a wife--when do you mean to seek your fortune and to find a husband, miss summerson? hey, look you! now you blush!" i don't think i did blush--at all events, it was not important if i did--and i said my present fortune perfectly contented me and i had no wish to change it. "shall i tell you what i always think of you and the fortune yet to come for you, my love?" said mrs. woodcourt. "if you believe you are a good prophet," said i. "why, then, it is that you will marry some one very rich and very worthy, much older--five and twenty years, perhaps--than yourself. and you will be an excellent wife, and much beloved, and very happy." "that is a good fortune," said i. "but why is it to be mine?" "my dear," she returned, "there's suitability in it--you are so busy, and so neat, and so peculiarly situated altogether that there's suitability in it, and it will come to pass. and nobody, my love, will congratulate you more sincerely on such a marriage than i shall." it was curious that this should make me uncomfortable, but i think it did. i know it did. it made me for some part of that night uncomfortable. i was so ashamed of my folly that i did not like to confess it even to ada, and that made me more uncomfortable still. i would have given anything not to have been so much in the bright old lady's confidence if i could have possibly declined it. it gave me the most inconsistent opinions of her. at one time i thought she was a story-teller, and at another time that she was the pink of truth. now i suspected that she was very cunning, next moment i believed her honest welsh heart to be perfectly innocent and simple. and after all, what did it matter to me, and why did it matter to me? why could not i, going up to bed with my basket of keys, stop to sit down by her fire and accommodate myself for a little while to her, at least as well as to anybody else, and not trouble myself about the harmless things she said to me? impelled towards her, as i certainly was, for i was very anxious that she should like me and was very glad indeed that she did, why should i harp afterwards, with actual distress and pain, on every word she said and weigh it over and over again in twenty scales? why was it so worrying to me to have her in our house, and confidential to me every night, when i yet felt that it was better and safer somehow that she should be there than anywhere else? these were perplexities and contradictions that i could not account for. at least, if i could--but i shall come to all that by and by, and it is mere idleness to go on about it now. so when mrs. woodcourt went away, i was sorry to lose her but was relieved too. and then caddy jellyby came down, and caddy brought such a packet of domestic news that it gave us abundant occupation. first caddy declared (and would at first declare nothing else) that i was the best adviser that ever was known. this, my pet said, was no news at all; and this, i said, of course, was nonsense. then caddy told us that she was going to be married in a month and that if ada and i would be her bridesmaids, she was the happiest girl in the world. to be sure, this was news indeed; and i thought we never should have done talking about it, we had so much to say to caddy, and caddy had so much to say to us. it seemed that caddy's unfortunate papa had got over his bankruptcy--"gone through the gazette," was the expression caddy used, as if it were a tunnel--with the general clemency and commiseration of his creditors, and had got rid of his affairs in some blessed manner without succeeding in understanding them, and had given up everything he possessed (which was not worth much, i should think, to judge from the state of the furniture), and had satisfied every one concerned that he could do no more, poor man. so, he had been honourably dismissed to "the office" to begin the world again. what he did at the office, i never knew; caddy said he was a "custom-house and general agent," and the only thing i ever understood about that business was that when he wanted money more than usual he went to the docks to look for it, and hardly ever found it. as soon as her papa had tranquillized his mind by becoming this shorn lamb, and they had removed to a furnished lodging in hatton garden (where i found the children, when i afterwards went there, cutting the horse hair out of the seats of the chairs and choking themselves with it), caddy had brought about a meeting between him and old mr. turveydrop; and poor mr. jellyby, being very humble and meek, had deferred to mr. turveydrop's deportment so submissively that they had become excellent friends. by degrees, old mr. turveydrop, thus familiarized with the idea of his son's marriage, had worked up his parental feelings to the height of contemplating that event as being near at hand and had given his gracious consent to the young couple commencing housekeeping at the academy in newman street when they would. "and your papa, caddy. what did he say?" "oh! poor pa," said caddy, "only cried and said he hoped we might get on better than he and ma had got on. he didn't say so before prince, he only said so to me. and he said, 'my poor girl, you have not been very well taught how to make a home for your husband, but unless you mean with all your heart to strive to do it, you had better murder him than marry him--if you really love him.'" "and how did you reassure him, caddy?" "why, it was very distressing, you know, to see poor pa so low and hear him say such terrible things, and i couldn't help crying myself. but i told him that i did mean it with all my heart and that i hoped our house would be a place for him to come and find some comfort in of an evening and that i hoped and thought i could be a better daughter to him there than at home. then i mentioned peepy's coming to stay with me, and then pa began to cry again and said the children were indians." "indians, caddy?" "yes," said caddy, "wild indians. and pa said"--here she began to sob, poor girl, not at all like the happiest girl in the world--"that he was sensible the best thing that could happen to them was their being all tomahawked together." ada suggested that it was comfortable to know that mr. jellyby did not mean these destructive sentiments. "no, of course i know pa wouldn't like his family to be weltering in their blood," said caddy, "but he means that they are very unfortunate in being ma's children and that he is very unfortunate in being ma's husband; and i am sure that's true, though it seems unnatural to say so." i asked caddy if mrs. jellyby knew that her wedding-day was fixed. "oh! you know what ma is, esther," she returned. "it's impossible to say whether she knows it or not. she has been told it often enough; and when she is told it, she only gives me a placid look, as if i was i don't know what--a steeple in the distance," said caddy with a sudden idea; "and then she shakes her head and says 'oh, caddy, caddy, what a tease you are!' and goes on with the borrioboola letters." "and about your wardrobe, caddy?" said i. for she was under no restraint with us. "well, my dear esther," she returned, drying her eyes, "i must do the best i can and trust to my dear prince never to have an unkind remembrance of my coming so shabbily to him. if the question concerned an outfit for borrioboola, ma would know all about it and would be quite excited. being what it is, she neither knows nor cares." caddy was not at all deficient in natural affection for her mother, but mentioned this with tears as an undeniable fact, which i am afraid it was. we were sorry for the poor dear girl and found so much to admire in the good disposition which had survived under such discouragement that we both at once (i mean ada and i) proposed a little scheme that made her perfectly joyful. this was her staying with us for three weeks, my staying with her for one, and our all three contriving and cutting out, and repairing, and sewing, and saving, and doing the very best we could think of to make the most of her stock. my guardian being as pleased with the idea as caddy was, we took her home next day to arrange the matter and brought her out again in triumph with her boxes and all the purchases that could be squeezed out of a ten-pound note, which mr. jellyby had found in the docks i suppose, but which he at all events gave her. what my guardian would not have given her if we had encouraged him, it would be difficult to say, but we thought it right to compound for no more than her wedding-dress and bonnet. he agreed to this compromise, and if caddy had ever been happy in her life, she was happy when we sat down to work. she was clumsy enough with her needle, poor girl, and pricked her fingers as much as she had been used to ink them. she could not help reddening a little now and then, partly with the smart and partly with vexation at being able to do no better, but she soon got over that and began to improve rapidly. so day after day she, and my darling, and my little maid charley, and a milliner out of the town, and i, sat hard at work, as pleasantly as possible. over and above this, caddy was very anxious "to learn housekeeping," as she said. now, mercy upon us! the idea of her learning housekeeping of a person of my vast experience was such a joke that i laughed, and coloured up, and fell into a comical confusion when she proposed it. however, i said, "caddy, i am sure you are very welcome to learn anything that you can learn of me, my dear," and i showed her all my books and methods and all my fidgety ways. you would have supposed that i was showing her some wonderful inventions, by her study of them; and if you had seen her, whenever i jingled my housekeeping keys, get up and attend me, certainly you might have thought that there never was a greater imposter than i with a blinder follower than caddy jellyby. so what with working and housekeeping, and lessons to charley, and backgammon in the evening with my guardian, and duets with ada, the three weeks slipped fast away. then i went home with caddy to see what could be done there, and ada and charley remained behind to take care of my guardian. when i say i went home with caddy, i mean to the furnished lodging in hatton garden. we went to newman street two or three times, where preparations were in progress too--a good many, i observed, for enhancing the comforts of old mr. turveydrop, and a few for putting the newly married couple away cheaply at the top of the house--but our great point was to make the furnished lodging decent for the wedding-breakfast and to imbue mrs. jellyby beforehand with some faint sense of the occasion. the latter was the more difficult thing of the two because mrs. jellyby and an unwholesome boy occupied the front sitting-room (the back one was a mere closet), and it was littered down with waste-paper and borrioboolan documents, as an untidy stable might be littered with straw. mrs. jellyby sat there all day drinking strong coffee, dictating, and holding borrioboolan interviews by appointment. the unwholesome boy, who seemed to me to be going into a decline, took his meals out of the house. when mr. jellyby came home, he usually groaned and went down into the kitchen. there he got something to eat if the servant would give him anything, and then, feeling that he was in the way, went out and walked about hatton garden in the wet. the poor children scrambled up and tumbled down the house as they had always been accustomed to do. the production of these devoted little sacrifices in any presentable condition being quite out of the question at a week's notice, i proposed to caddy that we should make them as happy as we could on her marriage morning in the attic where they all slept, and should confine our greatest efforts to her mama and her mama's room, and a clean breakfast. in truth mrs. jellyby required a good deal of attention, the lattice-work up her back having widened considerably since i first knew her and her hair looking like the mane of a dustman's horse. thinking that the display of caddy's wardrobe would be the best means of approaching the subject, i invited mrs. jellyby to come and look at it spread out on caddy's bed in the evening after the unwholesome boy was gone. "my dear miss summerson," said she, rising from her desk with her usual sweetness of temper, "these are really ridiculous preparations, though your assisting them is a proof of your kindness. there is something so inexpressibly absurd to me in the idea of caddy being married! oh, caddy, you silly, silly, silly puss!" she came upstairs with us notwithstanding and looked at the clothes in her customary far-off manner. they suggested one distinct idea to her, for she said with her placid smile, and shaking her head, "my good miss summerson, at half the cost, this weak child might have been equipped for africa!" on our going downstairs again, mrs. jellyby asked me whether this troublesome business was really to take place next wednesday. and on my replying yes, she said, "will my room be required, my dear miss summerson? for it's quite impossible that i can put my papers away." i took the liberty of saying that the room would certainly be wanted and that i thought we must put the papers away somewhere. "well, my dear miss summerson," said mrs. jellyby, "you know best, i dare say. but by obliging me to employ a boy, caddy has embarrassed me to that extent, overwhelmed as i am with public business, that i don't know which way to turn. we have a ramification meeting, too, on wednesday afternoon, and the inconvenience is very serious." "it is not likely to occur again," said i, smiling. "caddy will be married but once, probably." "that's true," mrs. jellyby replied; "that's true, my dear. i suppose we must make the best of it!" the next question was how mrs. jellyby should be dressed on the occasion. i thought it very curious to see her looking on serenely from her writing-table while caddy and i discussed it, occasionally shaking her head at us with a half-reproachful smile like a superior spirit who could just bear with our trifling. the state in which her dresses were, and the extraordinary confusion in which she kept them, added not a little to our difficulty; but at length we devised something not very unlike what a common-place mother might wear on such an occasion. the abstracted manner in which mrs. jellyby would deliver herself up to having this attire tried on by the dressmaker, and the sweetness with which she would then observe to me how sorry she was that i had not turned my thoughts to africa, were consistent with the rest of her behaviour. the lodging was rather confined as to space, but i fancied that if mrs. jellyby's household had been the only lodgers in saint paul's or saint peter's, the sole advantage they would have found in the size of the building would have been its affording a great deal of room to be dirty in. i believe that nothing belonging to the family which it had been possible to break was unbroken at the time of those preparations for caddy's marriage, that nothing which it had been possible to spoil in any way was unspoilt, and that no domestic object which was capable of collecting dirt, from a dear child's knee to the door-plate, was without as much dirt as could well accumulate upon it. poor mr. jellyby, who very seldom spoke and almost always sat when he was at home with his head against the wall, became interested when he saw that caddy and i were attempting to establish some order among all this waste and ruin and took off his coat to help. but such wonderful things came tumbling out of the closets when they were opened--bits of mouldy pie, sour bottles, mrs. jellyby's caps, letters, tea, forks, odd boots and shoes of children, firewood, wafers, saucepan-lids, damp sugar in odds and ends of paper bags, footstools, blacklead brushes, bread, mrs. jellyby's bonnets, books with butter sticking to the binding, guttered candle ends put out by being turned upside down in broken candlesticks, nutshells, heads and tails of shrimps, dinner-mats, gloves, coffee-grounds, umbrellas--that he looked frightened, and left off again. but he came regularly every evening and sat without his coat, with his head against the wall, as though he would have helped us if he had known how. "poor pa!" said caddy to me on the night before the great day, when we really had got things a little to rights. "it seems unkind to leave him, esther. but what could i do if i stayed! since i first knew you, i have tidied and tidied over and over again, but it's useless. ma and africa, together, upset the whole house directly. we never have a servant who don't drink. ma's ruinous to everything." mr. jellyby could not hear what she said, but he seemed very low indeed and shed tears, i thought. "my heart aches for him; that it does!" sobbed caddy. "i can't help thinking to-night, esther, how dearly i hope to be happy with prince, and how dearly pa hoped, i dare say, to be happy with ma. what a disappointed life!" "my dear caddy!" said mr. jellyby, looking slowly round from the wail. it was the first time, i think, i ever heard him say three words together. "yes, pa!" cried caddy, going to him and embracing him affectionately. "my dear caddy," said mr. jellyby. "never have--" "not prince, pa?" faltered caddy. "not have prince?" "yes, my dear," said mr. jellyby. "have him, certainly. but, never have--" i mentioned in my account of our first visit in thavies inn that richard described mr. jellyby as frequently opening his mouth after dinner without saying anything. it was a habit of his. he opened his mouth now a great many times and shook his head in a melancholy manner. "what do you wish me not to have? don't have what, dear pa?" asked caddy, coaxing him, with her arms round his neck. "never have a mission, my dear child." mr. jellyby groaned and laid his head against the wall again, and this was the only time i ever heard him make any approach to expressing his sentiments on the borrioboolan question. i suppose he had been more talkative and lively once, but he seemed to have been completely exhausted long before i knew him. i thought mrs. jellyby never would have left off serenely looking over her papers and drinking coffee that night. it was twelve o'clock before we could obtain possession of the room, and the clearance it required then was so discouraging that caddy, who was almost tired out, sat down in the middle of the dust and cried. but she soon cheered up, and we did wonders with it before we went to bed. in the morning it looked, by the aid of a few flowers and a quantity of soap and water and a little arrangement, quite gay. the plain breakfast made a cheerful show, and caddy was perfectly charming. but when my darling came, i thought--and i think now--that i never had seen such a dear face as my beautiful pet's. we made a little feast for the children upstairs, and we put peepy at the head of the table, and we showed them caddy in her bridal dress, and they clapped their hands and hurrahed, and caddy cried to think that she was going away from them and hugged them over and over again until we brought prince up to fetch her away--when, i am sorry to say, peepy bit him. then there was old mr. turveydrop downstairs, in a state of deportment not to be expressed, benignly blessing caddy and giving my guardian to understand that his son's happiness was his own parental work and that he sacrificed personal considerations to ensure it. "my dear sir," said mr. turveydrop, "these young people will live with me; my house is large enough for their accommodation, and they shall not want the shelter of my roof. i could have wished--you will understand the allusion, mr. jarndyce, for you remember my illustrious patron the prince regent--i could have wished that my son had married into a family where there was more deportment, but the will of heaven be done!" mr. and mrs. pardiggle were of the party--mr. pardiggle, an obstinate-looking man with a large waistcoat and stubbly hair, who was always talking in a loud bass voice about his mite, or mrs. pardiggle's mite, or their five boys' mites. mr. quale, with his hair brushed back as usual and his knobs of temples shining very much, was also there, not in the character of a disappointed lover, but as the accepted of a young--at least, an unmarried--lady, a miss wisk, who was also there. miss wisk's mission, my guardian said, was to show the world that woman's mission was man's mission and that the only genuine mission of both man and woman was to be always moving declaratory resolutions about things in general at public meetings. the guests were few, but were, as one might expect at mrs. jellyby's, all devoted to public objects only. besides those i have mentioned, there was an extremely dirty lady with her bonnet all awry and the ticketed price of her dress still sticking on it, whose neglected home, caddy told me, was like a filthy wilderness, but whose church was like a fancy fair. a very contentious gentleman, who said it was his mission to be everybody's brother but who appeared to be on terms of coolness with the whole of his large family, completed the party. a party, having less in common with such an occasion, could hardly have been got together by any ingenuity. such a mean mission as the domestic mission was the very last thing to be endured among them; indeed, miss wisk informed us, with great indignation, before we sat down to breakfast, that the idea of woman's mission lying chiefly in the narrow sphere of home was an outrageous slander on the part of her tyrant, man. one other singularity was that nobody with a mission--except mr. quale, whose mission, as i think i have formerly said, was to be in ecstasies with everybody's mission--cared at all for anybody's mission. mrs. pardiggle being as clear that the only one infallible course was her course of pouncing upon the poor and applying benevolence to them like a strait-waistcoat; as miss wisk was that the only practical thing for the world was the emancipation of woman from the thraldom of her tyrant, man. mrs. jellyby, all the while, sat smiling at the limited vision that could see anything but borrioboola-gha. but i am anticipating now the purport of our conversation on the ride home instead of first marrying caddy. we all went to church, and mr. jellyby gave her away. of the air with which old mr. turveydrop, with his hat under his left arm (the inside presented at the clergyman like a cannon) and his eyes creasing themselves up into his wig, stood stiff and high-shouldered behind us bridesmaids during the ceremony, and afterwards saluted us, i could never say enough to do it justice. miss wisk, whom i cannot report as prepossessing in appearance, and whose manner was grim, listened to the proceedings, as part of woman's wrongs, with a disdainful face. mrs. jellyby, with her calm smile and her bright eyes, looked the least concerned of all the company. we duly came back to breakfast, and mrs. jellyby sat at the head of the table and mr. jellyby at the foot. caddy had previously stolen upstairs to hug the children again and tell them that her name was turveydrop. but this piece of information, instead of being an agreeable surprise to peepy, threw him on his back in such transports of kicking grief that i could do nothing on being sent for but accede to the proposal that he should be admitted to the breakfast table. so he came down and sat in my lap; and mrs. jellyby, after saying, in reference to the state of his pinafore, "oh, you naughty peepy, what a shocking little pig you are!" was not at all discomposed. he was very good except that he brought down noah with him (out of an ark i had given him before we went to church) and would dip him head first into the wine-glasses and then put him in his mouth. my guardian, with his sweet temper and his quick perception and his amiable face, made something agreeable even out of the ungenial company. none of them seemed able to talk about anything but his, or her, own one subject, and none of them seemed able to talk about even that as part of a world in which there was anything else; but my guardian turned it all to the merry encouragement of caddy and the honour of the occasion, and brought us through the breakfast nobly. what we should have done without him, i am afraid to think, for all the company despising the bride and bridegroom and old mr. turveydrop--and old mr. thurveydrop, in virtue of his deportment, considering himself vastly superior to all the company--it was a very unpromising case. at last the time came when poor caddy was to go and when all her property was packed on the hired coach and pair that was to take her and her husband to gravesend. it affected us to see caddy clinging, then, to her deplorable home and hanging on her mother's neck with the greatest tenderness. "i am very sorry i couldn't go on writing from dictation, ma," sobbed caddy. "i hope you forgive me now." "oh, caddy, caddy!" said mrs. jellyby. "i have told you over and over again that i have engaged a boy, and there's an end of it." "you are sure you are not the least angry with me, ma? say you are sure before i go away, ma?" "you foolish caddy," returned mrs. jellyby, "do i look angry, or have i inclination to be angry, or time to be angry? how can you?" "take a little care of pa while i am gone, mama!" mrs. jellyby positively laughed at the fancy. "you romantic child," said she, lightly patting caddy's back. "go along. i am excellent friends with you. now, good-bye, caddy, and be very happy!" then caddy hung upon her father and nursed his cheek against hers as if he were some poor dull child in pain. all this took place in the hall. her father released her, took out his pocket handkerchief, and sat down on the stairs with his head against the wall. i hope he found some consolation in walls. i almost think he did. and then prince took her arm in his and turned with great emotion and respect to his father, whose deportment at that moment was overwhelming. "thank you over and over again, father!" said prince, kissing his hand. "i am very grateful for all your kindness and consideration regarding our marriage, and so, i can assure you, is caddy." "very," sobbed caddy. "ve-ry!" "my dear son," said mr. turveydrop, "and dear daughter, i have done my duty. if the spirit of a sainted wooman hovers above us and looks down on the occasion, that, and your constant affection, will be my recompense. you will not fail in your duty, my son and daughter, i believe?" "dear father, never!" cried prince. "never, never, dear mr. turveydrop!" said caddy. "this," returned mr. turveydrop, "is as it should be. my children, my home is yours, my heart is yours, my all is yours. i will never leave you; nothing but death shall part us. my dear son, you contemplate an absence of a week, i think?" "a week, dear father. we shall return home this day week." "my dear child," said mr. turveydrop, "let me, even under the present exceptional circumstances, recommend strict punctuality. it is highly important to keep the connexion together; and schools, if at all neglected, are apt to take offence." "this day week, father, we shall be sure to be home to dinner." "good!" said mr. turveydrop. "you will find fires, my dear caroline, in your own room, and dinner prepared in my apartment. yes, yes, prince!" anticipating some self-denying objection on his son's part with a great air. "you and our caroline will be strange in the upper part of the premises and will, therefore, dine that day in my apartment. now, bless ye!" they drove away, and whether i wondered most at mrs. jellyby or at mr. turveydrop, i did not know. ada and my guardian were in the same condition when we came to talk it over. but before we drove away too, i received a most unexpected and eloquent compliment from mr. jellyby. he came up to me in the hall, took both my hands, pressed them earnestly, and opened his mouth twice. i was so sure of his meaning that i said, quite flurried, "you are very welcome, sir. pray don't mention it!" "i hope this marriage is for the best, guardian," said i when we three were on our road home. "i hope it is, little woman. patience. we shall see." "is the wind in the east to-day?" i ventured to ask him. he laughed heartily and answered, "no." "but it must have been this morning, i think," said i. he answered "no" again, and this time my dear girl confidently answered "no" too and shook the lovely head which, with its blooming flowers against the golden hair, was like the very spring. "much you know of east winds, my ugly darling," said i, kissing her in my admiration--i couldn't help it. well! it was only their love for me, i know very well, and it is a long time ago. i must write it even if i rub it out again, because it gives me so much pleasure. they said there could be no east wind where somebody was; they said that wherever dame durden went, there was sunshine and summer air. chapter xxxi nurse and patient i had not been at home again many days when one evening i went upstairs into my own room to take a peep over charley's shoulder and see how she was getting on with her copy-book. writing was a trying business to charley, who seemed to have no natural power over a pen, but in whose hand every pen appeared to become perversely animated, and to go wrong and crooked, and to stop, and splash, and sidle into corners like a saddle-donkey. it was very odd to see what old letters charley's young hand had made, they so wrinkled, and shrivelled, and tottering, it so plump and round. yet charley was uncommonly expert at other things and had as nimble little fingers as i ever watched. "well, charley," said i, looking over a copy of the letter o in which it was represented as square, triangular, pear-shaped, and collapsed in all kinds of ways, "we are improving. if we only get to make it round, we shall be perfect, charley." then i made one, and charley made one, and the pen wouldn't join charley's neatly, but twisted it up into a knot. "never mind, charley. we shall do it in time." charley laid down her pen, the copy being finished, opened and shut her cramped little hand, looked gravely at the page, half in pride and half in doubt, and got up, and dropped me a curtsy. "thank you, miss. if you please, miss, did you know a poor person of the name of jenny?" "a brickmaker's wife, charley? yes." "she came and spoke to me when i was out a little while ago, and said you knew her, miss. she asked me if i wasn't the young lady's little maid--meaning you for the young lady, miss--and i said yes, miss." "i thought she had left this neighbourhood altogether, charley." "so she had, miss, but she's come back again to where she used to live--she and liz. did you know another poor person of the name of liz, miss?" "i think i do, charley, though not by name." "that's what she said!" returned charley. "they have both come back, miss, and have been tramping high and low." "tramping high and low, have they, charley?" "yes, miss." if charley could only have made the letters in her copy as round as the eyes with which she looked into my face, they would have been excellent. "and this poor person came about the house three or four days, hoping to get a glimpse of you, miss--all she wanted, she said--but you were away. that was when she saw me. she saw me a-going about, miss," said charley with a short laugh of the greatest delight and pride, "and she thought i looked like your maid!" "did she though, really, charley?" "yes, miss!" said charley. "really and truly." and charley, with another short laugh of the purest glee, made her eyes very round again and looked as serious as became my maid. i was never tired of seeing charley in the full enjoyment of that great dignity, standing before me with her youthful face and figure, and her steady manner, and her childish exultation breaking through it now and then in the pleasantest way. "and where did you see her, charley?" said i. my little maid's countenance fell as she replied, "by the doctor's shop, miss." for charley wore her black frock yet. i asked if the brickmaker's wife were ill, but charley said no. it was some one else. some one in her cottage who had tramped down to saint albans and was tramping he didn't know where. a poor boy, charley said. no father, no mother, no any one. "like as tom might have been, miss, if emma and me had died after father," said charley, her round eyes filling with tears. "and she was getting medicine for him, charley?" "she said, miss," returned charley, "how that he had once done as much for her." my little maid's face was so eager and her quiet hands were folded so closely in one another as she stood looking at me that i had no great difficulty in reading her thoughts. "well, charley," said i, "it appears to me that you and i can do no better than go round to jenny's and see what's the matter." the alacrity with which charley brought my bonnet and veil, and having dressed me, quaintly pinned herself into her warm shawl and made herself look like a little old woman, sufficiently expressed her readiness. so charley and i, without saying anything to any one, went out. it was a cold, wild night, and the trees shuddered in the wind. the rain had been thick and heavy all day, and with little intermission for many days. none was falling just then, however. the sky had partly cleared, but was very gloomy--even above us, where a few stars were shining. in the north and north-west, where the sun had set three hours before, there was a pale dead light both beautiful and awful; and into it long sullen lines of cloud waved up like a sea stricken immovable as it was heaving. towards london a lurid glare overhung the whole dark waste, and the contrast between these two lights, and the fancy which the redder light engendered of an unearthly fire, gleaming on all the unseen buildings of the city and on all the faces of its many thousands of wondering inhabitants, was as solemn as might be. i had no thought that night--none, i am quite sure--of what was soon to happen to me. but i have always remembered since that when we had stopped at the garden-gate to look up at the sky, and when we went upon our way, i had for a moment an undefinable impression of myself as being something different from what i then was. i know it was then and there that i had it. i have ever since connected the feeling with that spot and time and with everything associated with that spot and time, to the distant voices in the town, the barking of a dog, and the sound of wheels coming down the miry hill. it was saturday night, and most of the people belonging to the place where we were going were drinking elsewhere. we found it quieter than i had previously seen it, though quite as miserable. the kilns were burning, and a stifling vapour set towards us with a pale-blue glare. we came to the cottage, where there was a feeble candle in the patched window. we tapped at the door and went in. the mother of the little child who had died was sitting in a chair on one side of the poor fire by the bed; and opposite to her, a wretched boy, supported by the chimney-piece, was cowering on the floor. he held under his arm, like a little bundle, a fragment of a fur cap; and as he tried to warm himself, he shook until the crazy door and window shook. the place was closer than before and had an unhealthy and a very peculiar smell. i had not lifted my veil when i first spoke to the woman, which was at the moment of our going in. the boy staggered up instantly and stared at me with a remarkable expression of surprise and terror. his action was so quick and my being the cause of it was so evident that i stood still instead of advancing nearer. "i won't go no more to the berryin ground," muttered the boy; "i ain't a-going there, so i tell you!" i lifted my veil and spoke to the woman. she said to me in a low voice, "don't mind him, ma'am. he'll soon come back to his head," and said to him, "jo, jo, what's the matter?" "i know wot she's come for!" cried the boy. "who?" "the lady there. she's come to get me to go along with her to the berryin ground. i won't go to the berryin ground. i don't like the name on it. she might go a-berryin me." his shivering came on again, and as he leaned against the wall, he shook the hovel. "he has been talking off and on about such like all day, ma'am," said jenny softly. "why, how you stare! this is my lady, jo." "is it?" returned the boy doubtfully, and surveying me with his arm held out above his burning eyes. "she looks to me the t'other one. it ain't the bonnet, nor yet it ain't the gownd, but she looks to me the t'other one." my little charley, with her premature experience of illness and trouble, had pulled off her bonnet and shawl and now went quietly up to him with a chair and sat him down in it like an old sick nurse. except that no such attendant could have shown him charley's youthful face, which seemed to engage his confidence. "i say!" said the boy. "you tell me. ain't the lady the t'other lady?" charley shook her head as she methodically drew his rags about him and made him as warm as she could. "oh!" the boy muttered. "then i s'pose she ain't." "i came to see if i could do you any good," said i. "what is the matter with you?" "i'm a-being froze," returned the boy hoarsely, with his haggard gaze wandering about me, "and then burnt up, and then froze, and then burnt up, ever so many times in a hour. and my head's all sleepy, and all a-going mad-like--and i'm so dry--and my bones isn't half so much bones as pain. "when did he come here?" i asked the woman. "this morning, ma'am, i found him at the corner of the town. i had known him up in london yonder. hadn't i, jo?" "tom-all-alone's," the boy replied. whenever he fixed his attention or his eyes, it was only for a very little while. he soon began to droop his head again, and roll it heavily, and speak as if he were half awake. "when did he come from london?" i asked. "i come from london yes'day," said the boy himself, now flushed and hot. "i'm a-going somewheres." "where is he going?" i asked. "somewheres," repeated the boy in a louder tone. "i have been moved on, and moved on, more nor ever i was afore, since the t'other one give me the sov'ring. mrs. snagsby, she's always a-watching, and a-driving of me--what have i done to her?--and they're all a-watching and a-driving of me. every one of 'em's doing of it, from the time when i don't get up, to the time when i don't go to bed. and i'm a-going somewheres. that's where i'm a-going. she told me, down in tom-all-alone's, as she came from stolbuns, and so i took the stolbuns road. it's as good as another." he always concluded by addressing charley. "what is to be done with him?" said i, taking the woman aside. "he could not travel in this state even if he had a purpose and knew where he was going!" "i know no more, ma'am, than the dead," she replied, glancing compassionately at him. "perhaps the dead know better, if they could only tell us. i've kept him here all day for pity's sake, and i've given him broth and physic, and liz has gone to try if any one will take him in (here's my pretty in the bed--her child, but i call it mine); but i can't keep him long, for if my husband was to come home and find him here, he'd be rough in putting him out and might do him a hurt. hark! here comes liz back!" the other woman came hurriedly in as she spoke, and the boy got up with a half-obscured sense that he was expected to be going. when the little child awoke, and when and how charley got at it, took it out of bed, and began to walk about hushing it, i don't know. there she was, doing all this in a quiet motherly manner as if she were living in mrs. blinder's attic with tom and emma again. the friend had been here and there, and had been played about from hand to hand, and had come back as she went. at first it was too early for the boy to be received into the proper refuge, and at last it was too late. one official sent her to another, and the other sent her back again to the first, and so backward and forward, until it appeared to me as if both must have been appointed for their skill in evading their duties instead of performing them. and now, after all, she said, breathing quickly, for she had been running and was frightened too, "jenny, your master's on the road home, and mine's not far behind, and the lord help the boy, for we can do no more for him!" they put a few halfpence together and hurried them into his hand, and so, in an oblivious, half-thankful, half-insensible way, he shuffled out of the house. "give me the child, my dear," said its mother to charley, "and thank you kindly too! jenny, woman dear, good night! young lady, if my master don't fall out with me, i'll look down by the kiln by and by, where the boy will be most like, and again in the morning!" she hurried off, and presently we passed her hushing and singing to her child at her own door and looking anxiously along the road for her drunken husband. i was afraid of staying then to speak to either woman, lest i should bring her into trouble. but i said to charley that we must not leave the boy to die. charley, who knew what to do much better than i did, and whose quickness equalled her presence of mind, glided on before me, and presently we came up with jo, just short of the brick-kiln. i think he must have begun his journey with some small bundle under his arm and must have had it stolen or lost it. for he still carried his wretched fragment of fur cap like a bundle, though he went bare-headed through the rain, which now fell fast. he stopped when we called to him and again showed a dread of me when i came up, standing with his lustrous eyes fixed upon me, and even arrested in his shivering fit. i asked him to come with us, and we would take care that he had some shelter for the night. "i don't want no shelter," he said; "i can lay amongst the warm bricks." "but don't you know that people die there?" replied charley. "they dies everywheres," said the boy. "they dies in their lodgings--she knows where; i showed her--and they dies down in tom-all-alone's in heaps. they dies more than they lives, according to what i see." then he hoarsely whispered charley, "if she ain't the t'other one, she ain't the forrenner. is there three of 'em then?" charley looked at me a little frightened. i felt half frightened at myself when the boy glared on me so. but he turned and followed when i beckoned to him, and finding that he acknowledged that influence in me, i led the way straight home. it was not far, only at the summit of the hill. we passed but one man. i doubted if we should have got home without assistance, the boy's steps were so uncertain and tremulous. he made no complaint, however, and was strangely unconcerned about himself, if i may say so strange a thing. leaving him in the hall for a moment, shrunk into the corner of the window-seat and staring with an indifference that scarcely could be called wonder at the comfort and brightness about him, i went into the drawing-room to speak to my guardian. there i found mr. skimpole, who had come down by the coach, as he frequently did without notice, and never bringing any clothes with him, but always borrowing everything he wanted. they came out with me directly to look at the boy. the servants had gathered in the hall too, and he shivered in the window-seat with charley standing by him, like some wounded animal that had been found in a ditch. "this is a sorrowful case," said my guardian after asking him a question or two and touching him and examining his eyes. "what do you say, harold?" "you had better turn him out," said mr. skimpole. "what do you mean?" inquired my guardian, almost sternly. "my dear jarndyce," said mr. skimpole, "you know what i am: i am a child. be cross to me if i deserve it. but i have a constitutional objection to this sort of thing. i always had, when i was a medical man. he's not safe, you know. there's a very bad sort of fever about him." mr. skimpole had retreated from the hall to the drawing-room again and said this in his airy way, seated on the music-stool as we stood by. "you'll say it's childish," observed mr. skimpole, looking gaily at us. "well, i dare say it may be; but i am a child, and i never pretend to be anything else. if you put him out in the road, you only put him where he was before. he will be no worse off than he was, you know. even make him better off, if you like. give him sixpence, or five shillings, or five pound ten--you are arithmeticians, and i am not--and get rid of him!" "and what is he to do then?" asked my guardian. "upon my life," said mr. skimpole, shrugging his shoulders with his engaging smile, "i have not the least idea what he is to do then. but i have no doubt he'll do it." "now, is it not a horrible reflection," said my guardian, to whom i had hastily explained the unavailing efforts of the two women, "is it not a horrible reflection," walking up and down and rumpling his hair, "that if this wretched creature were a convicted prisoner, his hospital would be wide open to him, and he would be as well taken care of as any sick boy in the kingdom?" "my dear jarndyce," returned mr. skimpole, "you'll pardon the simplicity of the question, coming as it does from a creature who is perfectly simple in worldly matters, but why isn't he a prisoner then?" my guardian stopped and looked at him with a whimsical mixture of amusement and indignation in his face. "our young friend is not to be suspected of any delicacy, i should imagine," said mr. skimpole, unabashed and candid. "it seems to me that it would be wiser, as well as in a certain kind of way more respectable, if he showed some misdirected energy that got him into prison. there would be more of an adventurous spirit in it, and consequently more of a certain sort of poetry." "i believe," returned my guardian, resuming his uneasy walk, "that there is not such another child on earth as yourself." "do you really?" said mr. skimpole. "i dare say! but i confess i don't see why our young friend, in his degree, should not seek to invest himself with such poetry as is open to him. he is no doubt born with an appetite--probably, when he is in a safer state of health, he has an excellent appetite. very well. at our young friend's natural dinner hour, most likely about noon, our young friend says in effect to society, 'i am hungry; will you have the goodness to produce your spoon and feed me?' society, which has taken upon itself the general arrangement of the whole system of spoons and professes to have a spoon for our young friend, does not produce that spoon; and our young friend, therefore, says 'you really must excuse me if i seize it.' now, this appears to me a case of misdirected energy, which has a certain amount of reason in it and a certain amount of romance; and i don't know but what i should be more interested in our young friend, as an illustration of such a case, than merely as a poor vagabond--which any one can be." "in the meantime," i ventured to observe, "he is getting worse." "in the meantime," said mr. skimpole cheerfully, "as miss summerson, with her practical good sense, observes, he is getting worse. therefore i recommend your turning him out before he gets still worse." the amiable face with which he said it, i think i shall never forget. "of course, little woman," observed my guardian, turning to me, "i can ensure his admission into the proper place by merely going there to enforce it, though it's a bad state of things when, in his condition, that is necessary. but it's growing late, and is a very bad night, and the boy is worn out already. there is a bed in the wholesome loft-room by the stable; we had better keep him there till morning, when he can be wrapped up and removed. we'll do that." "oh!" said mr. skimpole, with his hands upon the keys of the piano as we moved away. "are you going back to our young friend?" "yes," said my guardian. "how i envy you your constitution, jarndyce!" returned mr. skimpole with playful admiration. "you don't mind these things; neither does miss summerson. you are ready at all times to go anywhere, and do anything. such is will! i have no will at all--and no won't--simply can't." "you can't recommend anything for the boy, i suppose?" said my guardian, looking back over his shoulder half angrily; only half angrily, for he never seemed to consider mr. skimpole an accountable being. "my dear jarndyce, i observed a bottle of cooling medicine in his pocket, and it's impossible for him to do better than take it. you can tell them to sprinkle a little vinegar about the place where he sleeps and to keep it moderately cool and him moderately warm. but it is mere impertinence in me to offer any recommendation. miss summerson has such a knowledge of detail and such a capacity for the administration of detail that she knows all about it." we went back into the hall and explained to jo what we proposed to do, which charley explained to him again and which he received with the languid unconcern i had already noticed, wearily looking on at what was done as if it were for somebody else. the servants compassionating his miserable state and being very anxious to help, we soon got the loft-room ready; and some of the men about the house carried him across the wet yard, well wrapped up. it was pleasant to observe how kind they were to him and how there appeared to be a general impression among them that frequently calling him "old chap" was likely to revive his spirits. charley directed the operations and went to and fro between the loft-room and the house with such little stimulants and comforts as we thought it safe to give him. my guardian himself saw him before he was left for the night and reported to me when he returned to the growlery to write a letter on the boy's behalf, which a messenger was charged to deliver at day-light in the morning, that he seemed easier and inclined to sleep. they had fastened his door on the outside, he said, in case of his being delirious, but had so arranged that he could not make any noise without being heard. ada being in our room with a cold, mr. skimpole was left alone all this time and entertained himself by playing snatches of pathetic airs and sometimes singing to them (as we heard at a distance) with great expression and feeling. when we rejoined him in the drawing-room he said he would give us a little ballad which had come into his head "apropos of our young friend," and he sang one about a peasant boy, "thrown on the wide world, doomed to wander and roam, bereft of his parents, bereft of a home." quite exquisitely. it was a song that always made him cry, he told us. he was extremely gay all the rest of the evening, for he absolutely chirped--those were his delighted words--when he thought by what a happy talent for business he was surrounded. he gave us, in his glass of negus, "better health to our young friend!" and supposed and gaily pursued the case of his being reserved like whittington to become lord mayor of london. in that event, no doubt, he would establish the jarndyce institution and the summerson almshouses, and a little annual corporation pilgrimage to st. albans. he had no doubt, he said, that our young friend was an excellent boy in his way, but his way was not the harold skimpole way; what harold skimpole was, harold skimpole had found himself, to his considerable surprise, when he first made his own acquaintance; he had accepted himself with all his failings and had thought it sound philosophy to make the best of the bargain; and he hoped we would do the same. charley's last report was that the boy was quiet. i could see, from my window, the lantern they had left him burning quietly; and i went to bed very happy to think that he was sheltered. there was more movement and more talking than usual a little before daybreak, and it awoke me. as i was dressing, i looked out of my window and asked one of our men who had been among the active sympathizers last night whether there was anything wrong about the house. the lantern was still burning in the loft-window. "it's the boy, miss," said he. "is he worse?" i inquired. "gone, miss. "dead!" "dead, miss? no. gone clean off." at what time of the night he had gone, or how, or why, it seemed hopeless ever to divine. the door remaining as it had been left, and the lantern standing in the window, it could only be supposed that he had got out by a trap in the floor which communicated with an empty cart-house below. but he had shut it down again, if that were so; and it looked as if it had not been raised. nothing of any kind was missing. on this fact being clearly ascertained, we all yielded to the painful belief that delirium had come upon him in the night and that, allured by some imaginary object or pursued by some imaginary horror, he had strayed away in that worse than helpless state; all of us, that is to say, but mr. skimpole, who repeatedly suggested, in his usual easy light style, that it had occurred to our young friend that he was not a safe inmate, having a bad kind of fever upon him, and that he had with great natural politeness taken himself off. every possible inquiry was made, and every place was searched. the brick-kilns were examined, the cottages were visited, the two women were particularly questioned, but they knew nothing of him, and nobody could doubt that their wonder was genuine. the weather had for some time been too wet and the night itself had been too wet to admit of any tracing by footsteps. hedge and ditch, and wall, and rick and stack, were examined by our men for a long distance round, lest the boy should be lying in such a place insensible or dead; but nothing was seen to indicate that he had ever been near. from the time when he was left in the loft-room, he vanished. the search continued for five days. i do not mean that it ceased even then, but that my attention was then diverted into a current very memorable to me. as charley was at her writing again in my room in the evening, and as i sat opposite to her at work, i felt the table tremble. looking up, i saw my little maid shivering from head to foot. "charley," said i, "are you so cold?" "i think i am, miss," she replied. "i don't know what it is. i can't hold myself still. i felt so yesterday at about this same time, miss. don't be uneasy, i think i'm ill." i heard ada's voice outside, and i hurried to the door of communication between my room and our pretty sitting-room, and locked it. just in time, for she tapped at it while my hand was yet upon the key. ada called to me to let her in, but i said, "not now, my dearest. go away. there's nothing the matter; i will come to you presently." ah! it was a long, long time before my darling girl and i were companions again. charley fell ill. in twelve hours she was very ill. i moved her to my room, and laid her in my bed, and sat down quietly to nurse her. i told my guardian all about it, and why i felt it was necessary that i should seclude myself, and my reason for not seeing my darling above all. at first she came very often to the door, and called to me, and even reproached me with sobs and tears; but i wrote her a long letter saying that she made me anxious and unhappy and imploring her, as she loved me and wished my mind to be at peace, to come no nearer than the garden. after that she came beneath the window even oftener than she had come to the door, and if i had learnt to love her dear sweet voice before when we were hardly ever apart, how did i learn to love it then, when i stood behind the window-curtain listening and replying, but not so much as looking out! how did i learn to love it afterwards, when the harder time came! they put a bed for me in our sitting-room; and by keeping the door wide open, i turned the two rooms into one, now that ada had vacated that part of the house, and kept them always fresh and airy. there was not a servant in or about the house but was so good that they would all most gladly have come to me at any hour of the day or night without the least fear or unwillingness, but i thought it best to choose one worthy woman who was never to see ada and whom i could trust to come and go with all precaution. through her means i got out to take the air with my guardian when there was no fear of meeting ada, and wanted for nothing in the way of attendance, any more than in any other respect. and thus poor charley sickened and grew worse, and fell into heavy danger of death, and lay severely ill for many a long round of day and night. so patient she was, so uncomplaining, and inspired by such a gentle fortitude that very often as i sat by charley holding her head in my arms--repose would come to her, so, when it would come to her in no other attitude--i silently prayed to our father in heaven that i might not forget the lesson which this little sister taught me. i was very sorrowful to think that charley's pretty looks would change and be disfigured, even if she recovered--she was such a child with her dimpled face--but that thought was, for the greater part, lost in her greater peril. when she was at the worst, and her mind rambled again to the cares of her father's sick bed and the little children, she still knew me so far as that she would be quiet in my arms when she could lie quiet nowhere else, and murmur out the wanderings of her mind less restlessly. at those times i used to think, how should i ever tell the two remaining babies that the baby who had learned of her faithful heart to be a mother to them in their need was dead! there were other times when charley knew me well and talked to me, telling me that she sent her love to tom and emma and that she was sure tom would grow up to be a good man. at those times charley would speak to me of what she had read to her father as well as she could to comfort him, of that young man carried out to be buried who was the only son of his mother and she was a widow, of the ruler's daughter raised up by the gracious hand upon her bed of death. and charley told me that when her father died she had kneeled down and prayed in her first sorrow that he likewise might be raised up and given back to his poor children, and that if she should never get better and should die too, she thought it likely that it might come into tom's mind to offer the same prayer for her. then would i show tom how these people of old days had been brought back to life on earth, only that we might know our hope to be restored to heaven! but of all the various times there were in charley's illness, there was not one when she lost the gentle qualities i have spoken of. and there were many, many when i thought in the night of the last high belief in the watching angel, and the last higher trust in god, on the part of her poor despised father. and charley did not die. she flutteringly and slowly turned the dangerous point, after long lingering there, and then began to mend. the hope that never had been given, from the first, of charley being in outward appearance charley any more soon began to be encouraged; and even that prospered, and i saw her growing into her old childish likeness again. it was a great morning when i could tell ada all this as she stood out in the garden; and it was a great evening when charley and i at last took tea together in the next room. but on that same evening, i felt that i was stricken cold. happily for both of us, it was not until charley was safe in bed again and placidly asleep that i began to think the contagion of her illness was upon me. i had been able easily to hide what i felt at tea-time, but i was past that already now, and i knew that i was rapidly following in charley's steps. i was well enough, however, to be up early in the morning, and to return my darling's cheerful blessing from the garden, and to talk with her as long as usual. but i was not free from an impression that i had been walking about the two rooms in the night, a little beside myself, though knowing where i was; and i felt confused at times--with a curious sense of fullness, as if i were becoming too large altogether. in the evening i was so much worse that i resolved to prepare charley, with which view i said, "you're getting quite strong, charley, are you not?' "oh, quite!" said charley. "strong enough to be told a secret, i think, charley?" "quite strong enough for that, miss!" cried charley. but charley's face fell in the height of her delight, for she saw the secret in my face; and she came out of the great chair, and fell upon my bosom, and said "oh, miss, it's my doing! it's my doing!" and a great deal more out of the fullness of her grateful heart. "now, charley," said i after letting her go on for a little while, "if i am to be ill, my great trust, humanly speaking, is in you. and unless you are as quiet and composed for me as you always were for yourself, you can never fulfil it, charley." "if you'll let me cry a little longer, miss," said charley. "oh, my dear, my dear! if you'll only let me cry a little longer. oh, my dear!"--how affectionately and devotedly she poured this out as she clung to my neck, i never can remember without tears--"i'll be good." so i let charley cry a little longer, and it did us both good. "trust in me now, if you please, miss," said charley quietly. "i am listening to everything you say." "it's very little at present, charley. i shall tell your doctor to-night that i don't think i am well and that you are going to nurse me." for that the poor child thanked me with her whole heart. "and in the morning, when you hear miss ada in the garden, if i should not be quite able to go to the window-curtain as usual, do you go, charley, and say i am asleep--that i have rather tired myself, and am asleep. at all times keep the room as i have kept it, charley, and let no one come." charley promised, and i lay down, for i was very heavy. i saw the doctor that night and asked the favour of him that i wished to ask relative to his saying nothing of my illness in the house as yet. i have a very indistinct remembrance of that night melting into day, and of day melting into night again; but i was just able on the first morning to get to the window and speak to my darling. on the second morning i heard her dear voice--oh, how dear now!--outside; and i asked charley, with some difficulty (speech being painful to me), to go and say i was asleep. i heard her answer softly, "don't disturb her, charley, for the world!" "how does my own pride look, charley?" i inquired. "disappointed, miss," said charley, peeping through the curtain. "but i know she is very beautiful this morning." "she is indeed, miss," answered charley, peeping. "still looking up at the window." with her blue clear eyes, god bless them, always loveliest when raised like that! i called charley to me and gave her her last charge. "now, charley, when she knows i am ill, she will try to make her way into the room. keep her out, charley, if you love me truly, to the last! charley, if you let her in but once, only to look upon me for one moment as i lie here, i shall die." "i never will! i never will!" she promised me. "i believe it, my dear charley. and now come and sit beside me for a little while, and touch me with your hand. for i cannot see you, charley; i am blind." chapter xxxii the appointed time it is night in lincoln's inn--perplexed and troublous valley of the shadow of the law, where suitors generally find but little day--and fat candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks have rattled down the crazy wooden stairs and dispersed. the bell that rings at nine o'clock has ceased its doleful clangour about nothing; the gates are shut; and the night-porter, a solemn warder with a mighty power of sleep, keeps guard in his lodge. from tiers of staircase windows clogged lamps like the eyes of equity, bleared argus with a fathomless pocket for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly blink at the stars. in dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little patches of candlelight reveal where some wise draughtsman and conveyancer yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes of sheep-skin, in the average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an acre of land. over which bee-like industry these benefactors of their species linger yet, though office-hours be past, that they may give, for every day, some good account at last. in the neighbouring court, where the lord chancellor of the rag and bottle shop dwells, there is a general tendency towards beer and supper. mrs. piper and mrs. perkins, whose respective sons, engaged with a circle of acquaintance in the game of hide and seek, have been lying in ambush about the by-ways of chancery lane for some hours and scouring the plain of the same thoroughfare to the confusion of passengers--mrs. piper and mrs. perkins have but now exchanged congratulations on the children being abed, and they still linger on a door-step over a few parting words. mr. krook and his lodger, and the fact of mr. krook's being "continually in liquor," and the testamentary prospects of the young man are, as usual, the staple of their conversation. but they have something to say, likewise, of the harmonic meeting at the sol's arms, where the sound of the piano through the partly opened windows jingles out into the court, and where little swills, after keeping the lovers of harmony in a roar like a very yorick, may now be heard taking the gruff line in a concerted piece and sentimentally adjuring his friends and patrons to "listen, listen, listen, tew the wa-ter fall!" mrs. perkins and mrs. piper compare opinions on the subject of the young lady of professional celebrity who assists at the harmonic meetings and who has a space to herself in the manuscript announcement in the window, mrs. perkins possessing information that she has been married a year and a half, though announced as miss m. melvilleson, the noted siren, and that her baby is clandestinely conveyed to the sol's arms every night to receive its natural nourishment during the entertainments. "sooner than which, myself," says mrs. perkins, "i would get my living by selling lucifers." mrs. piper, as in duty bound, is of the same opinion, holding that a private station is better than public applause, and thanking heaven for her own (and, by implication, mrs. perkins') respectability. by this time the pot-boy of the sol's arms appearing with her supper-pint well frothed, mrs. piper accepts that tankard and retires indoors, first giving a fair good night to mrs. perkins, who has had her own pint in her hand ever since it was fetched from the same hostelry by young perkins before he was sent to bed. now there is a sound of putting up shop-shutters in the court and a smell as of the smoking of pipes; and shooting stars are seen in upper windows, further indicating retirement to rest. now, too, the policeman begins to push at doors; to try fastenings; to be suspicious of bundles; and to administer his beat, on the hypothesis that every one is either robbing or being robbed. it is a close night, though the damp cold is searching too, and there is a laggard mist a little way up in the air. it is a fine steaming night to turn the slaughter-houses, the unwholesome trades, the sewerage, bad water, and burial-grounds to account, and give the registrar of deaths some extra business. it may be something in the air--there is plenty in it--or it may be something in himself that is in fault; but mr. weevle, otherwise jobling, is very ill at ease. he comes and goes between his own room and the open street door twenty times an hour. he has been doing so ever since it fell dark. since the chancellor shut up his shop, which he did very early to-night, mr. weevle has been down and up, and down and up (with a cheap tight velvet skull-cap on his head, making his whiskers look out of all proportion), oftener than before. it is no phenomenon that mr. snagsby should be ill at ease too, for he always is so, more or less, under the oppressive influence of the secret that is upon him. impelled by the mystery of which he is a partaker and yet in which he is not a sharer, mr. snagsby haunts what seems to be its fountain-head--the rag and bottle shop in the court. it has an irresistible attraction for him. even now, coming round by the sol's arms with the intention of passing down the court, and out at the chancery lane end, and so terminating his unpremeditated after-supper stroll of ten minutes' long from his own door and back again, mr. snagsby approaches. "what, mr. weevle?" says the stationer, stopping to speak. "are you there?" "aye!" says weevle, "here i am, mr. snagsby." "airing yourself, as i am doing, before you go to bed?" the stationer inquires. "why, there's not much air to be got here; and what there is, is not very freshening," weevle answers, glancing up and down the court. "very true, sir. don't you observe," says mr. snagsby, pausing to sniff and taste the air a little, "don't you observe, mr. weevle, that you're--not to put too fine a point upon it--that you're rather greasy here, sir?" "why, i have noticed myself that there is a queer kind of flavour in the place to-night," mr. weevle rejoins. "i suppose it's chops at the sol's arms." "chops, do you think? oh! chops, eh?" mr. snagsby sniffs and tastes again. "well, sir, i suppose it is. but i should say their cook at the sol wanted a little looking after. she has been burning 'em, sir! and i don't think"--mr. snagsby sniffs and tastes again and then spits and wipes his mouth--"i don't think--not to put too fine a point upon it--that they were quite fresh when they were shown the gridiron." "that's very likely. it's a tainting sort of weather." "it is a tainting sort of weather," says mr. snagsby, "and i find it sinking to the spirits." "by george! i find it gives me the horrors," returns mr. weevle. "then, you see, you live in a lonesome way, and in a lonesome room, with a black circumstance hanging over it," says mr. snagsby, looking in past the other's shoulder along the dark passage and then falling back a step to look up at the house. "i couldn't live in that room alone, as you do, sir. i should get so fidgety and worried of an evening, sometimes, that i should be driven to come to the door and stand here sooner than sit there. but then it's very true that you didn't see, in your room, what i saw there. that makes a difference." "i know quite enough about it," returns tony. "it's not agreeable, is it?" pursues mr. snagsby, coughing his cough of mild persuasion behind his hand. "mr. krook ought to consider it in the rent. i hope he does, i am sure." "i hope he does," says tony. "but i doubt it." "you find the rent too high, do you, sir?" returns the stationer. "rents are high about here. i don't know how it is exactly, but the law seems to put things up in price. not," adds mr. snagsby with his apologetic cough, "that i mean to say a word against the profession i get my living by." mr. weevle again glances up and down the court and then looks at the stationer. mr. snagsby, blankly catching his eye, looks upward for a star or so and coughs a cough expressive of not exactly seeing his way out of this conversation. "it's a curious fact, sir," he observes, slowly rubbing his hands, "that he should have been--" "who's he?" interrupts mr. weevle. "the deceased, you know," says mr. snagsby, twitching his head and right eyebrow towards the staircase and tapping his acquaintance on the button. "ah, to be sure!" returns the other as if he were not over-fond of the subject. "i thought we had done with him." "i was only going to say it's a curious fact, sir, that he should have come and lived here, and been one of my writers, and then that you should come and live here, and be one of my writers too. which there is nothing derogatory, but far from it in the appellation," says mr. snagsby, breaking off with a mistrust that he may have unpolitely asserted a kind of proprietorship in mr. weevle, "because i have known writers that have gone into brewers' houses and done really very respectable indeed. eminently respectable, sir," adds mr. snagsby with a misgiving that he has not improved the matter. "it's a curious coincidence, as you say," answers weevle, once more glancing up and down the court. "seems a fate in it, don't there?" suggests the stationer. "there does." "just so," observes the stationer with his confirmatory cough. "quite a fate in it. quite a fate. well, mr. weevle, i am afraid i must bid you good night"--mr. snagsby speaks as if it made him desolate to go, though he has been casting about for any means of escape ever since he stopped to speak--"my little woman will be looking for me else. good night, sir!" if mr. snagsby hastens home to save his little woman the trouble of looking for him, he might set his mind at rest on that score. his little woman has had her eye upon him round the sol's arms all this time and now glides after him with a pocket handkerchief wrapped over her head, honouring mr. weevle and his doorway with a searching glance as she goes past. "you'll know me again, ma'am, at all events," says mr. weevle to himself; "and i can't compliment you on your appearance, whoever you are, with your head tied up in a bundle. is this fellow never coming!" this fellow approaches as he speaks. mr. weevle softly holds up his finger, and draws him into the passage, and closes the street door. then they go upstairs, mr. weevle heavily, and mr. guppy (for it is he) very lightly indeed. when they are shut into the back room, they speak low. "i thought you had gone to jericho at least instead of coming here," says tony. "why, i said about ten." "you said about ten," tony repeats. "yes, so you did say about ten. but according to my count, it's ten times ten--it's a hundred o'clock. i never had such a night in my life!" "what has been the matter?" "that's it!" says tony. "nothing has been the matter. but here have i been stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib till i have had the horrors falling on me as thick as hail. there's a blessed-looking candle!" says tony, pointing to the heavily burning taper on his table with a great cabbage head and a long winding-sheet. "that's easily improved," mr. guppy observes as he takes the snuffers in hand. "is it?" returns his friend. "not so easily as you think. it has been smouldering like that ever since it was lighted." "why, what's the matter with you, tony?" inquires mr. guppy, looking at him, snuffers in hand, as he sits down with his elbow on the table. "william guppy," replies the other, "i am in the downs. it's this unbearably dull, suicidal room--and old boguey downstairs, i suppose." mr. weevle moodily pushes the snuffers-tray from him with his elbow, leans his head on his hand, puts his feet on the fender, and looks at the fire. mr. guppy, observing him, slightly tosses his head and sits down on the other side of the table in an easy attitude. "wasn't that snagsby talking to you, tony?" "yes, and he--yes, it was snagsby," said mr. weevle, altering the construction of his sentence. "on business?" "no. no business. he was only sauntering by and stopped to prose." "i thought it was snagsby," says mr. guppy, "and thought it as well that he shouldn't see me, so i waited till he was gone." "there we go again, william g.!" cried tony, looking up for an instant. "so mysterious and secret! by george, if we were going to commit a murder, we couldn't have more mystery about it!" mr. guppy affects to smile, and with the view of changing the conversation, looks with an admiration, real or pretended, round the room at the galaxy gallery of british beauty, terminating his survey with the portrait of lady dedlock over the mantelshelf, in which she is represented on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the terrace, and a vase upon the pedestal, and her shawl upon the vase, and a prodigious piece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the prodigious piece of fur, and a bracelet on her arm. "that's very like lady dedlock," says mr. guppy. "it's a speaking likeness." "i wish it was," growls tony, without changing his position. "i should have some fashionable conversation, here, then." finding by this time that his friend is not to be wheedled into a more sociable humour, mr. guppy puts about upon the ill-used tack and remonstrates with him. "tony," says he, "i can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for no man knows what it is when it does come upon a man better than i do, and no man perhaps has a better right to know it than a man who has an unrequited image imprinted on his 'eart. but there are bounds to these things when an unoffending party is in question, and i will acknowledge to you, tony, that i don't think your manner on the present occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly." "this is strong language, william guppy," returns mr. weevle. "sir, it may be," retorts mr. william guppy, "but i feel strongly when i use it." mr. weevle admits that he has been wrong and begs mr. william guppy to think no more about it. mr. william guppy, however, having got the advantage, cannot quite release it without a little more injured remonstrance. "no! dash it, tony," says that gentleman, "you really ought to be careful how you wound the feelings of a man who has an unrequited image imprinted on his 'eart and who is not altogether happy in those chords which vibrate to the tenderest emotions. you, tony, possess in yourself all that is calculated to charm the eye and allure the taste. it is not--happily for you, perhaps, and i may wish that i could say the same--it is not your character to hover around one flower. the ole garden is open to you, and your airy pinions carry you through it. still, tony, far be it from me, i am sure, to wound even your feelings without a cause!" tony again entreats that the subject may be no longer pursued, saying emphatically, "william guppy, drop it!" mr. guppy acquiesces, with the reply, "i never should have taken it up, tony, of my own accord." "and now," says tony, stirring the fire, "touching this same bundle of letters. isn't it an extraordinary thing of krook to have appointed twelve o'clock to-night to hand 'em over to me?" "very. what did he do it for?" "what does he do anything for? he don't know. said to-day was his birthday and he'd hand 'em over to-night at twelve o'clock. he'll have drunk himself blind by that time. he has been at it all day." "he hasn't forgotten the appointment, i hope?" "forgotten? trust him for that. he never forgets anything. i saw him to-night, about eight--helped him to shut up his shop--and he had got the letters then in his hairy cap. he pulled it off and showed 'em me. when the shop was closed, he took them out of his cap, hung his cap on the chair-back, and stood turning them over before the fire. i heard him a little while afterwards, through the floor here, humming like the wind, the only song he knows--about bibo, and old charon, and bibo being drunk when he died, or something or other. he has been as quiet since as an old rat asleep in his hole." "and you are to go down at twelve?" "at twelve. and as i tell you, when you came it seemed to me a hundred." "tony," says mr. guppy after considering a little with his legs crossed, "he can't read yet, can he?" "read! he'll never read. he can make all the letters separately, and he knows most of them separately when he sees them; he has got on that much, under me; but he can't put them together. he's too old to acquire the knack of it now--and too drunk." "tony," says mr. guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs, "how do you suppose he spelt out that name of hawdon?" "he never spelt it out. you know what a curious power of eye he has and how he has been used to employ himself in copying things by eye alone. he imitated it, evidently from the direction of a letter, and asked me what it meant." "tony," says mr. guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs again, "should you say that the original was a man's writing or a woman's?" "a woman's. fifty to one a lady's--slopes a good deal, and the end of the letter 'n,' long and hasty." mr. guppy has been biting his thumb-nail during this dialogue, generally changing the thumb when he has changed the cross leg. as he is going to do so again, he happens to look at his coat-sleeve. it takes his attention. he stares at it, aghast. "why, tony, what on earth is going on in this house to-night? is there a chimney on fire?" "chimney on fire!" "ah!" returns mr. guppy. "see how the soot's falling. see here, on my arm! see again, on the table here! confound the stuff, it won't blow off--smears like black fat!" they look at one another, and tony goes listening to the door, and a little way upstairs, and a little way downstairs. comes back and says it's all right and all quiet, and quotes the remark he lately made to mr. snagsby about their cooking chops at the sol's arms. "and it was then," resumes mr. guppy, still glancing with remarkable aversion at the coat-sleeve, as they pursue their conversation before the fire, leaning on opposite sides of the table, with their heads very near together, "that he told you of his having taken the bundle of letters from his lodger's portmanteau?" "that was the time, sir," answers tony, faintly adjusting his whiskers. "whereupon i wrote a line to my dear boy, the honourable william guppy, informing him of the appointment for to-night and advising him not to call before, boguey being a slyboots." the light vivacious tone of fashionable life which is usually assumed by mr. weevle sits so ill upon him to-night that he abandons that and his whiskers together, and after looking over his shoulder, appears to yield himself up a prey to the horrors again. "you are to bring the letters to your room to read and compare, and to get yourself into a position to tell him all about them. that's the arrangement, isn't it, tony?" asks mr. guppy, anxiously biting his thumb-nail. "you can't speak too low. yes. that's what he and i agreed." "i tell you what, tony--" "you can't speak too low," says tony once more. mr. guppy nods his sagacious head, advances it yet closer, and drops into a whisper. "i tell you what. the first thing to be done is to make another packet like the real one so that if he should ask to see the real one while it's in my possession, you can show him the dummy." "and suppose he detects the dummy as soon as he sees it, which with his biting screw of an eye is about five hundred times more likely than not," suggests tony. "then we'll face it out. they don't belong to him, and they never did. you found that, and you placed them in my hands--a legal friend of yours--for security. if he forces us to it, they'll be producible, won't they?" "ye-es," is mr. weevle's reluctant admission. "why, tony," remonstrates his friend, "how you look! you don't doubt william guppy? you don't suspect any harm?" "i don't suspect anything more than i know, william," returns the other gravely. "and what do you know?" urges mr. guppy, raising his voice a little; but on his friend's once more warning him, "i tell you, you can't speak too low," he repeats his question without any sound at all, forming with his lips only the words, "what do you know?" "i know three things. first, i know that here we are whispering in secrecy, a pair of conspirators." "well!" says mr. guppy. "and we had better be that than a pair of noodles, which we should be if we were doing anything else, for it's the only way of doing what we want to do. secondly?" "secondly, it's not made out to me how it's likely to be profitable, after all." mr. guppy casts up his eyes at the portrait of lady dedlock over the mantelshelf and replies, "tony, you are asked to leave that to the honour of your friend. besides its being calculated to serve that friend in those chords of the human mind which--which need not be called into agonizing vibration on the present occasion--your friend is no fool. what's that?" "it's eleven o'clock striking by the bell of saint paul's. listen and you'll hear all the bells in the city jangling." both sit silent, listening to the metal voices, near and distant, resounding from towers of various heights, in tones more various than their situations. when these at length cease, all seems more mysterious and quiet than before. one disagreeable result of whispering is that it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence, haunted by the ghosts of sound--strange cracks and tickings, the rustling of garments that have no substance in them, and the tread of dreadful feet that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the winter snow. so sensitive the two friends happen to be that the air is full of these phantoms, and the two look over their shoulders by one consent to see that the door is shut. "yes, tony?" says mr. guppy, drawing nearer to the fire and biting his unsteady thumb-nail. "you were going to say, thirdly?" "it's far from a pleasant thing to be plotting about a dead man in the room where he died, especially when you happen to live in it." "but we are plotting nothing against him, tony." "may be not, still i don't like it. live here by yourself and see how you like it." "as to dead men, tony," proceeds mr. guppy, evading this proposal, "there have been dead men in most rooms." "i know there have, but in most rooms you let them alone, and--and they let you alone," tony answers. the two look at each other again. mr. guppy makes a hurried remark to the effect that they may be doing the deceased a service, that he hopes so. there is an oppressive blank until mr. weevle, by stirring the fire suddenly, makes mr. guppy start as if his heart had been stirred instead. "fah! here's more of this hateful soot hanging about," says he. "let us open the window a bit and get a mouthful of air. it's too close." he raises the sash, and they both rest on the window-sill, half in and half out of the room. the neighbouring houses are too near to admit of their seeing any sky without craning their necks and looking up, but lights in frowsy windows here and there, and the rolling of distant carriages, and the new expression that there is of the stir of men, they find to be comfortable. mr. guppy, noiselessly tapping on the window-sill, resumes his whispering in quite a light-comedy tone. "by the by, tony, don't forget old smallweed," meaning the younger of that name. "i have not let him into this, you know. that grandfather of his is too keen by half. it runs in the family." "i remember," says tony. "i am up to all that." "and as to krook," resumes mr. guppy. "now, do you suppose he really has got hold of any other papers of importance, as he has boasted to you, since you have been such allies?" tony shakes his head. "i don't know. can't imagine. if we get through this business without rousing his suspicions, i shall be better informed, no doubt. how can i know without seeing them, when he don't know himself? he is always spelling out words from them, and chalking them over the table and the shop-wall, and asking what this is and what that is; but his whole stock from beginning to end may easily be the waste-paper he bought it as, for anything i can say. it's a monomania with him to think he is possessed of documents. he has been going to learn to read them this last quarter of a century, i should judge, from what he tells me." "how did he first come by that idea, though? that's the question," mr. guppy suggests with one eye shut, after a little forensic meditation. "he may have found papers in something he bought, where papers were not supposed to be, and may have got it into his shrewd head from the manner and place of their concealment that they are worth something." "or he may have been taken in, in some pretended bargain. or he may have been muddled altogether by long staring at whatever he has got, and by drink, and by hanging about the lord chancellor's court and hearing of documents for ever," returns mr. weevle. mr. guppy sitting on the window-sill, nodding his head and balancing all these possibilities in his mind, continues thoughtfully to tap it, and clasp it, and measure it with his hand, until he hastily draws his hand away. "what, in the devil's name," he says, "is this! look at my fingers!" a thick, yellow liquor defiles them, which is offensive to the touch and sight and more offensive to the smell. a stagnant, sickening oil with some natural repulsion in it that makes them both shudder. "what have you been doing here? what have you been pouring out of window?" "i pouring out of window! nothing, i swear! never, since i have been here!" cries the lodger. and yet look here--and look here! when he brings the candle here, from the corner of the window-sill, it slowly drips and creeps away down the bricks, here lies in a little thick nauseous pool. "this is a horrible house," says mr. guppy, shutting down the window. "give me some water or i shall cut my hand off." he so washes, and rubs, and scrubs, and smells, and washes, that he has not long restored himself with a glass of brandy and stood silently before the fire when saint paul's bell strikes twelve and all those other bells strike twelve from their towers of various heights in the dark air, and in their many tones. when all is quiet again, the lodger says, "it's the appointed time at last. shall i go?" mr. guppy nods and gives him a "lucky touch" on the back, but not with the washed hand, though it is his right hand. he goes downstairs, and mr. guppy tries to compose himself before the fire for waiting a long time. but in no more than a minute or two the stairs creak and tony comes swiftly back. "have you got them?" "got them! no. the old man's not there." he has been so horribly frightened in the short interval that his terror seizes the other, who makes a rush at him and asks loudly, "what's the matter?" "i couldn't make him hear, and i softly opened the door and looked in. and the burning smell is there--and the soot is there, and the oil is there--and he is not there!" tony ends this with a groan. mr. guppy takes the light. they go down, more dead than alive, and holding one another, push open the door of the back shop. the cat has retreated close to it and stands snarling, not at them, at something on the ground before the fire. there is a very little fire left in the grate, but there is a smouldering, suffocating vapour in the room and a dark, greasy coating on the walls and ceiling. the chairs and table, and the bottle so rarely absent from the table, all stand as usual. on one chair-back hang the old man's hairy cap and coat. "look!" whispers the lodger, pointing his friend's attention to these objects with a trembling finger. "i told you so. when i saw him last, he took his cap off, took out the little bundle of old letters, hung his cap on the back of the chair--his coat was there already, for he had pulled that off before he went to put the shutters up--and i left him turning the letters over in his hand, standing just where that crumbled black thing is upon the floor." is he hanging somewhere? they look up. no. "see!" whispers tony. "at the foot of the same chair there lies a dirty bit of thin red cord that they tie up pens with. that went round the letters. he undid it slowly, leering and laughing at me, before he began to turn them over, and threw it there. i saw it fall." "what's the matter with the cat?" says mr. guppy. "look at her!" "mad, i think. and no wonder in this evil place." they advance slowly, looking at all these things. the cat remains where they found her, still snarling at the something on the ground before the fire and between the two chairs. what is it? hold up the light. here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder from a little bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to be steeped in something; and here is--is it the cinder of a small charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it coal? oh, horror, he is here! and this from which we run away, striking out the light and overturning one another into the street, is all that represents him. help, help, help! come into this house for heaven's sake! plenty will come in, but none can help. the lord chancellor of that court, true to his title in his last act, has died the death of all lord chancellors in all courts and of all authorities in all places under all names soever, where false pretences are made, and where injustice is done. call the death by any name your highness will, attribute it to whom you will, or say it might have been prevented how you will, it is the same death eternally--inborn, inbred, engendered in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that only--spontaneous combustion, and none other of all the deaths that can be died. chapter xxxiii interlopers now do those two gentlemen not very neat about the cuffs and buttons who attended the last coroner's inquest at the sol's arms reappear in the precincts with surprising swiftness (being, in fact, breathlessly fetched by the active and intelligent beadle), and institute perquisitions through the court, and dive into the sol's parlour, and write with ravenous little pens on tissue-paper. now do they note down, in the watches of the night, how the neighbourhood of chancery lane was yesterday, at about midnight, thrown into a state of the most intense agitation and excitement by the following alarming and horrible discovery. now do they set forth how it will doubtless be remembered that some time back a painful sensation was created in the public mind by a case of mysterious death from opium occurring in the first floor of the house occupied as a rag, bottle, and general marine store shop, by an eccentric individual of intemperate habits, far advanced in life, named krook; and how, by a remarkable coincidence, krook was examined at the inquest, which it may be recollected was held on that occasion at the sol's arms, a well-conducted tavern immediately adjoining the premises in question on the west side and licensed to a highly respectable landlord, mr. james george bogsby. now do they show (in as many words as possible) how during some hours of yesterday evening a very peculiar smell was observed by the inhabitants of the court, in which the tragical occurrence which forms the subject of that present account transpired; and which odour was at one time so powerful that mr. swills, a comic vocalist professionally engaged by mr. j. g. bogsby, has himself stated to our reporter that he mentioned to miss m. melvilleson, a lady of some pretensions to musical ability, likewise engaged by mr. j. g. bogsby to sing at a series of concerts called harmonic assemblies, or meetings, which it would appear are held at the sol's arms under mr. bogsby's direction pursuant to the act of george the second, that he (mr. swills) found his voice seriously affected by the impure state of the atmosphere, his jocose expression at the time being that he was like an empty post-office, for he hadn't a single note in him. how this account of mr. swills is entirely corroborated by two intelligent married females residing in the same court and known respectively by the names of mrs. piper and mrs. perkins, both of whom observed the foetid effluvia and regarded them as being emitted from the premises in the occupation of krook, the unfortunate deceased. all this and a great deal more the two gentlemen who have formed an amicable partnership in the melancholy catastrophe write down on the spot; and the boy population of the court (out of bed in a moment) swarm up the shutters of the sol's arms parlour, to behold the tops of their heads while they are about it. the whole court, adult as well as boy, is sleepless for that night, and can do nothing but wrap up its many heads, and talk of the ill-fated house, and look at it. miss flite has been bravely rescued from her chamber, as if it were in flames, and accommodated with a bed at the sol's arms. the sol neither turns off its gas nor shuts its door all night, for any kind of public excitement makes good for the sol and causes the court to stand in need of comfort. the house has not done so much in the stomachic article of cloves or in brandy-and-water warm since the inquest. the moment the pot-boy heard what had happened, he rolled up his shirt-sleeves tight to his shoulders and said, "there'll be a run upon us!" in the first outcry, young piper dashed off for the fire-engines and returned in triumph at a jolting gallop perched up aloft on the phoenix and holding on to that fabulous creature with all his might in the midst of helmets and torches. one helmet remains behind after careful investigation of all chinks and crannies and slowly paces up and down before the house in company with one of the two policemen who have likewise been left in charge thereof. to this trio everybody in the court possessed of sixpence has an insatiate desire to exhibit hospitality in a liquid form. mr. weevle and his friend mr. guppy are within the bar at the sol and are worth anything to the sol that the bar contains if they will only stay there. "this is not a time," says mr. bogsby, "to haggle about money," though he looks something sharply after it, over the counter; "give your orders, you two gentlemen, and you're welcome to whatever you put a name to." thus entreated, the two gentlemen (mr. weevle especially) put names to so many things that in course of time they find it difficult to put a name to anything quite distinctly, though they still relate to all new-comers some version of the night they have had of it, and of what they said, and what they thought, and what they saw. meanwhile, one or other of the policemen often flits about the door, and pushing it open a little way at the full length of his arm, looks in from outer gloom. not that he has any suspicions, but that he may as well know what they are up to in there. thus night pursues its leaden course, finding the court still out of bed through the unwonted hours, still treating and being treated, still conducting itself similarly to a court that has had a little money left it unexpectedly. thus night at length with slow-retreating steps departs, and the lamp-lighter going his rounds, like an executioner to a despotic king, strikes off the little heads of fire that have aspired to lessen the darkness. thus the day cometh, whether or no. and the day may discern, even with its dim london eye, that the court has been up all night. over and above the faces that have fallen drowsily on tables and the heels that lie prone on hard floors instead of beds, the brick and mortar physiognomy of the very court itself looks worn and jaded. and now the neighbourhood, waking up and beginning to hear of what has happened, comes streaming in, half dressed, to ask questions; and the two policemen and the helmet (who are far less impressible externally than the court) have enough to do to keep the door. "good gracious, gentlemen!" says mr. snagsby, coming up. "what's this i hear!" "why, it's true," returns one of the policemen. "that's what it is. now move on here, come!" "why, good gracious, gentlemen," says mr. snagsby, somewhat promptly backed away, "i was at this door last night betwixt ten and eleven o'clock in conversation with the young man who lodges here." "indeed?" returns the policeman. "you will find the young man next door then. now move on here, some of you." "not hurt, i hope?" says mr. snagsby. "hurt? no. what's to hurt him!" mr. snagsby, wholly unable to answer this or any question in his troubled mind, repairs to the sol's arms and finds mr. weevle languishing over tea and toast with a considerable expression on him of exhausted excitement and exhausted tobacco-smoke. "and mr. guppy likewise!" quoth mr. snagsby. "dear, dear, dear! what a fate there seems in all this! and my lit--" mr. snagsby's power of speech deserts him in the formation of the words "my little woman." for to see that injured female walk into the sol's arms at that hour of the morning and stand before the beer-engine, with her eyes fixed upon him like an accusing spirit, strikes him dumb. "my dear," says mr. snagsby when his tongue is loosened, "will you take anything? a little--not to put too fine a point upon it--drop of shrub?" "no," says mrs. snagsby. "my love, you know these two gentlemen?" "yes!" says mrs. snagsby, and in a rigid manner acknowledges their presence, still fixing mr. snagsby with her eye. the devoted mr. snagsby cannot bear this treatment. he takes mrs. snagsby by the hand and leads her aside to an adjacent cask. "my little woman, why do you look at me in that way? pray don't do it." "i can't help my looks," says mrs. snagsby, "and if i could i wouldn't." mr. snagsby, with his cough of meekness, rejoins, "wouldn't you really, my dear?" and meditates. then coughs his cough of trouble and says, "this is a dreadful mystery, my love!" still fearfully disconcerted by mrs. snagsby's eye. "it is," returns mrs. snagsby, shaking her head, "a dreadful mystery." "my little woman," urges mr. snagsby in a piteous manner, "don't for goodness' sake speak to me with that bitter expression and look at me in that searching way! i beg and entreat of you not to do it. good lord, you don't suppose that i would go spontaneously combusting any person, my dear?" "i can't say," returns mrs. snagsby. on a hasty review of his unfortunate position, mr. snagsby "can't say" either. he is not prepared positively to deny that he may have had something to do with it. he has had something--he don't know what--to do with so much in this connexion that is mysterious that it is possible he may even be implicated, without knowing it, in the present transaction. he faintly wipes his forehead with his handkerchief and gasps. "my life," says the unhappy stationer, "would you have any objections to mention why, being in general so delicately circumspect in your conduct, you come into a wine-vaults before breakfast?" "why do you come here?" inquires mrs. snagsby. "my dear, merely to know the rights of the fatal accident which has happened to the venerable party who has been--combusted." mr. snagsby has made a pause to suppress a groan. "i should then have related them to you, my love, over your french roll." "i dare say you would! you relate everything to me, mr. snagsby." "every--my lit--" "i should be glad," says mrs. snagsby after contemplating his increased confusion with a severe and sinister smile, "if you would come home with me; i think you may be safer there, mr. snagsby, than anywhere else." "my love, i don't know but what i may be, i am sure. i am ready to go." mr. snagsby casts his eye forlornly round the bar, gives messrs. weevle and guppy good morning, assures them of the satisfaction with which he sees them uninjured, and accompanies mrs. snagsby from the sol's arms. before night his doubt whether he may not be responsible for some inconceivable part in the catastrophe which is the talk of the whole neighbourhood is almost resolved into certainty by mrs. snagsby's pertinacity in that fixed gaze. his mental sufferings are so great that he entertains wandering ideas of delivering himself up to justice and requiring to be cleared if innocent and punished with the utmost rigour of the law if guilty. mr. weevle and mr. guppy, having taken their breakfast, step into lincoln's inn to take a little walk about the square and clear as many of the dark cobwebs out of their brains as a little walk may. "there can be no more favourable time than the present, tony," says mr. guppy after they have broodingly made out the four sides of the square, "for a word or two between us upon a point on which we must, with very little delay, come to an understanding." "now, i tell you what, william g.!" returns the other, eyeing his companion with a bloodshot eye. "if it's a point of conspiracy, you needn't take the trouble to mention it. i have had enough of that, and i ain't going to have any more. we shall have you taking fire next or blowing up with a bang." this supposititious phenomenon is so very disagreeable to mr. guppy that his voice quakes as he says in a moral way, "tony, i should have thought that what we went through last night would have been a lesson to you never to be personal any more as long as you lived." to which mr. weevle returns, "william, i should have thought it would have been a lesson to you never to conspire any more as long as you lived." to which mr. guppy says, "who's conspiring?" to which mr. jobling replies, "why, you are!" to which mr. guppy retorts, "no, i am not." to which mr. jobling retorts again, "yes, you are!" to which mr. guppy retorts, "who says so?" to which mr. jobling retorts, "i say so!" to which mr. guppy retorts, "oh, indeed?" to which mr. jobling retorts, "yes, indeed!" and both being now in a heated state, they walk on silently for a while to cool down again. "tony," says mr. guppy then, "if you heard your friend out instead of flying at him, you wouldn't fall into mistakes. but your temper is hasty and you are not considerate. possessing in yourself, tony, all that is calculated to charm the eye--" "oh! blow the eye!" cries mr. weevle, cutting him short. "say what you have got to say!" finding his friend in this morose and material condition, mr. guppy only expresses the finer feelings of his soul through the tone of injury in which he recommences, "tony, when i say there is a point on which we must come to an understanding pretty soon, i say so quite apart from any kind of conspiring, however innocent. you know it is professionally arranged beforehand in all cases that are tried what facts the witnesses are to prove. is it or is it not desirable that we should know what facts we are to prove on the inquiry into the death of this unfortunate old mo--gentleman?" (mr. guppy was going to say "mogul," but thinks "gentleman" better suited to the circumstances.) "what facts? the facts." "the facts bearing on that inquiry. those are"--mr. guppy tells them off on his fingers--"what we knew of his habits, when you saw him last, what his condition was then, the discovery that we made, and how we made it." "yes," says mr. weevle. "those are about the facts." "we made the discovery in consequence of his having, in his eccentric way, an appointment with you at twelve o'clock at night, when you were to explain some writing to him as you had often done before on account of his not being able to read. i, spending the evening with you, was called down--and so forth. the inquiry being only into the circumstances touching the death of the deceased, it's not necessary to go beyond these facts, i suppose you'll agree?" "no!" returns mr. weevle. "i suppose not." "and this is not a conspiracy, perhaps?" says the injured guppy. "no," returns his friend; "if it's nothing worse than this, i withdraw the observation." "now, tony," says mr. guppy, taking his arm again and walking him slowly on, "i should like to know, in a friendly way, whether you have yet thought over the many advantages of your continuing to live at that place?" "what do you mean?" says tony, stopping. "whether you have yet thought over the many advantages of your continuing to live at that place?" repeats mr. guppy, walking him on again. "at what place? that place?" pointing in the direction of the rag and bottle shop. mr. guppy nods. "why, i wouldn't pass another night there for any consideration that you could offer me," says mr. weevle, haggardly staring. "do you mean it though, tony?" "mean it! do i look as if i mean it? i feel as if i do; i know that," says mr. weevle with a very genuine shudder. "then the possibility or probability--for such it must be considered--of your never being disturbed in possession of those effects lately belonging to a lone old man who seemed to have no relation in the world, and the certainty of your being able to find out what he really had got stored up there, don't weigh with you at all against last night, tony, if i understand you?" says mr. guppy, biting his thumb with the appetite of vexation. "certainly not. talk in that cool way of a fellow's living there?" cries mr. weevle indignantly. "go and live there yourself." "oh! i, tony!" says mr. guppy, soothing him. "i have never lived there and couldn't get a lodging there now, whereas you have got one." "you are welcome to it," rejoins his friend, "and--ugh!--you may make yourself at home in it." "then you really and truly at this point," says mr. guppy, "give up the whole thing, if i understand you, tony?" "you never," returns tony with a most convincing steadfastness, "said a truer word in all your life. i do!" while they are so conversing, a hackney-coach drives into the square, on the box of which vehicle a very tall hat makes itself manifest to the public. inside the coach, and consequently not so manifest to the multitude, though sufficiently so to the two friends, for the coach stops almost at their feet, are the venerable mr. smallweed and mrs. smallweed, accompanied by their granddaughter judy. an air of haste and excitement pervades the party, and as the tall hat (surmounting mr. smallweed the younger) alights, mr. smallweed the elder pokes his head out of window and bawls to mr. guppy, "how de do, sir! how de do!" "what do chick and his family want here at this time of the morning, i wonder!" says mr. guppy, nodding to his familiar. "my dear sir," cries grandfather smallweed, "would you do me a favour? would you and your friend be so very obleeging as to carry me into the public-house in the court, while bart and his sister bring their grandmother along? would you do an old man that good turn, sir?" mr. guppy looks at his friend, repeating inquiringly, "the public-house in the court?" and they prepare to bear the venerable burden to the sol's arms. "there's your fare!" says the patriarch to the coachman with a fierce grin and shaking his incapable fist at him. "ask me for a penny more, and i'll have my lawful revenge upon you. my dear young men, be easy with me, if you please. allow me to catch you round the neck. i won't squeeze you tighter than i can help. oh, lord! oh, dear me! oh, my bones!" it is well that the sol is not far off, for mr. weevle presents an apoplectic appearance before half the distance is accomplished. with no worse aggravation of his symptoms, however, than the utterance of divers croaking sounds expressive of obstructed respiration, he fulfils his share of the porterage and the benevolent old gentleman is deposited by his own desire in the parlour of the sol's arms. "oh, lord!" gasps mr. smallweed, looking about him, breathless, from an arm-chair. "oh, dear me! oh, my bones and back! oh, my aches and pains! sit down, you dancing, prancing, shambling, scrambling poll-parrot! sit down!" this little apostrophe to mrs. smallweed is occasioned by a propensity on the part of that unlucky old lady whenever she finds herself on her feet to amble about and "set" to inanimate objects, accompanying herself with a chattering noise, as in a witch dance. a nervous affection has probably as much to do with these demonstrations as any imbecile intention in the poor old woman, but on the present occasion they are so particularly lively in connexion with the windsor arm-chair, fellow to that in which mr. smallweed is seated, that she only quite desists when her grandchildren have held her down in it, her lord in the meanwhile bestowing upon her, with great volubility, the endearing epithet of "a pig-headed jackdaw," repeated a surprising number of times. "my dear sir," grandfather smallweed then proceeds, addressing mr. guppy, "there has been a calamity here. have you heard of it, either of you?" "heard of it, sir! why, we discovered it." "you discovered it. you two discovered it! bart, they discovered it!" the two discoverers stare at the smallweeds, who return the compliment. "my dear friends," whines grandfather smallweed, putting out both his hands, "i owe you a thousand thanks for discharging the melancholy office of discovering the ashes of mrs. smallweed's brother." "eh?" says mr. guppy. "mrs. smallweed's brother, my dear friend--her only relation. we were not on terms, which is to be deplored now, but he never would be on terms. he was not fond of us. he was eccentric--he was very eccentric. unless he has left a will (which is not at all likely) i shall take out letters of administration. i have come down to look after the property; it must be sealed up, it must be protected. i have come down," repeats grandfather smallweed, hooking the air towards him with all his ten fingers at once, "to look after the property." "i think, small," says the disconsolate mr. guppy, "you might have mentioned that the old man was your uncle." "you two were so close about him that i thought you would like me to be the same," returns that old bird with a secretly glistening eye. "besides, i wasn't proud of him." "besides which, it was nothing to you, you know, whether he was or not," says judy. also with a secretly glistening eye. "he never saw me in his life to know me," observed small; "i don't know why i should introduce him, i am sure!" "no, he never communicated with us, which is to be deplored," the old gentleman strikes in, "but i have come to look after the property--to look over the papers, and to look after the property. we shall make good our title. it is in the hands of my solicitor. mr. tulkinghorn, of lincoln's inn fields, over the way there, is so good as to act as my solicitor; and grass don't grow under his feet, i can tell ye. krook was mrs. smallweed's only brother; she had no relation but krook, and krook had no relation but mrs. smallweed. i am speaking of your brother, you brimstone black-beetle, that was seventy-six years of age." mrs. smallweed instantly begins to shake her head and pipe up, "seventy-six pound seven and sevenpence! seventy-six thousand bags of money! seventy-six hundred thousand million of parcels of bank-notes!" "will somebody give me a quart pot?" exclaims her exasperated husband, looking helplessly about him and finding no missile within his reach. "will somebody obleege me with a spittoon? will somebody hand me anything hard and bruising to pelt at her? you hag, you cat, you dog, you brimstone barker!" here mr. smallweed, wrought up to the highest pitch by his own eloquence, actually throws judy at her grandmother in default of anything else, by butting that young virgin at the old lady with such force as he can muster and then dropping into his chair in a heap. "shake me up, somebody, if you'll be so good," says the voice from within the faintly struggling bundle into which he has collapsed. "i have come to look after the property. shake me up, and call in the police on duty at the next house to be explained to about the property. my solicitor will be here presently to protect the property. transportation or the gallows for anybody who shall touch the property!" as his dutiful grandchildren set him up, panting, and putting him through the usual restorative process of shaking and punching, he still repeats like an echo, "the--the property! the property! property!" mr. weevle and mr. guppy look at each other, the former as having relinquished the whole affair, the latter with a discomfited countenance as having entertained some lingering expectations yet. but there is nothing to be done in opposition to the smallweed interest. mr. tulkinghorn's clerk comes down from his official pew in the chambers to mention to the police that mr. tulkinghorn is answerable for its being all correct about the next of kin and that the papers and effects will be formally taken possession of in due time and course. mr. smallweed is at once permitted so far to assert his supremacy as to be carried on a visit of sentiment into the next house and upstairs into miss flite's deserted room, where he looks like a hideous bird of prey newly added to her aviary. the arrival of this unexpected heir soon taking wind in the court still makes good for the sol and keeps the court upon its mettle. mrs. piper and mrs. perkins think it hard upon the young man if there really is no will, and consider that a handsome present ought to be made him out of the estate. young piper and young perkins, as members of that restless juvenile circle which is the terror of the foot-passengers in chancery lane, crumble into ashes behind the pump and under the archway all day long, where wild yells and hootings take place over their remains. little swills and miss m. melvilleson enter into affable conversation with their patrons, feeling that these unusual occurrences level the barriers between professionals and non-professionals. mr. bogsby puts up "the popular song of king death, with chorus by the whole strength of the company," as the great harmonic feature of the week and announces in the bill that "j. g. b. is induced to do so at a considerable extra expense in consequence of a wish which has been very generally expressed at the bar by a large body of respectable individuals and in homage to a late melancholy event which has aroused so much sensation." there is one point connected with the deceased upon which the court is particularly anxious, namely, that the fiction of a full-sized coffin should be preserved, though there is so little to put in it. upon the undertaker's stating in the sol's bar in the course of the day that he has received orders to construct "a six-footer," the general solicitude is much relieved, and it is considered that mr. smallweed's conduct does him great honour. out of the court, and a long way out of it, there is considerable excitement too, for men of science and philosophy come to look, and carriages set down doctors at the corner who arrive with the same intent, and there is more learned talk about inflammable gases and phosphuretted hydrogen than the court has ever imagined. some of these authorities (of course the wisest) hold with indignation that the deceased had no business to die in the alleged manner; and being reminded by other authorities of a certain inquiry into the evidence for such deaths reprinted in the sixth volume of the philosophical transactions; and also of a book not quite unknown on english medical jurisprudence; and likewise of the italian case of the countess cornelia baudi as set forth in detail by one bianchini, prebendary of verona, who wrote a scholarly work or so and was occasionally heard of in his time as having gleams of reason in him; and also of the testimony of messrs. fodere and mere, two pestilent frenchmen who would investigate the subject; and further, of the corroborative testimony of monsieur le cat, a rather celebrated french surgeon once upon a time, who had the unpoliteness to live in a house where such a case occurred and even to write an account of it--still they regard the late mr. krook's obstinacy in going out of the world by any such by-way as wholly unjustifiable and personally offensive. the less the court understands of all this, the more the court likes it, and the greater enjoyment it has in the stock in trade of the sol's arms. then there comes the artist of a picture newspaper, with a foreground and figures ready drawn for anything from a wreck on the cornish coast to a review in hyde park or a meeting in manchester, and in mrs. perkins' own room, memorable evermore, he then and there throws in upon the block mr. krook's house, as large as life; in fact, considerably larger, making a very temple of it. similarly, being permitted to look in at the door of the fatal chamber, he depicts that apartment as three-quarters of a mile long by fifty yards high, at which the court is particularly charmed. all this time the two gentlemen before mentioned pop in and out of every house and assist at the philosophical disputations--go everywhere and listen to everybody--and yet are always diving into the sol's parlour and writing with the ravenous little pens on the tissue-paper. at last come the coroner and his inquiry, like as before, except that the coroner cherishes this case as being out of the common way and tells the gentlemen of the jury, in his private capacity, that "that would seem to be an unlucky house next door, gentlemen, a destined house; but so we sometimes find it, and these are mysteries we can't account for!" after which the six-footer comes into action and is much admired. in all these proceedings mr. guppy has so slight a part, except when he gives his evidence, that he is moved on like a private individual and can only haunt the secret house on the outside, where he has the mortification of seeing mr. smallweed padlocking the door, and of bitterly knowing himself to be shut out. but before these proceedings draw to a close, that is to say, on the night next after the catastrophe, mr. guppy has a thing to say that must be said to lady dedlock. for which reason, with a sinking heart and with that hang-dog sense of guilt upon him which dread and watching enfolded in the sol's arms have produced, the young man of the name of guppy presents himself at the town mansion at about seven o'clock in the evening and requests to see her ladyship. mercury replies that she is going out to dinner; don't he see the carriage at the door? yes, he does see the carriage at the door; but he wants to see my lady too. mercury is disposed, as he will presently declare to a fellow-gentleman in waiting, "to pitch into the young man"; but his instructions are positive. therefore he sulkily supposes that the young man must come up into the library. there he leaves the young man in a large room, not over-light, while he makes report of him. mr. guppy looks into the shade in all directions, discovering everywhere a certain charred and whitened little heap of coal or wood. presently he hears a rustling. is it--? no, it's no ghost, but fair flesh and blood, most brilliantly dressed. "i have to beg your ladyship's pardon," mr. guppy stammers, very downcast. "this is an inconvenient time--" "i told you, you could come at any time." she takes a chair, looking straight at him as on the last occasion. "thank your ladyship. your ladyship is very affable." "you can sit down." there is not much affability in her tone. "i don't know, your ladyship, that it's worth while my sitting down and detaining you, for i--i have not got the letters that i mentioned when i had the honour of waiting on your ladyship." "have you come merely to say so?" "merely to say so, your ladyship." mr. guppy besides being depressed, disappointed, and uneasy, is put at a further disadvantage by the splendour and beauty of her appearance. she knows its influence perfectly, has studied it too well to miss a grain of its effect on any one. as she looks at him so steadily and coldly, he not only feels conscious that he has no guide in the least perception of what is really the complexion of her thoughts, but also that he is being every moment, as it were, removed further and further from her. she will not speak, it is plain. so he must. "in short, your ladyship," says mr. guppy like a meanly penitent thief, "the person i was to have had the letters of, has come to a sudden end, and--" he stops. lady dedlock calmly finishes the sentence. "and the letters are destroyed with the person?" mr. guppy would say no if he could--as he is unable to hide. "i believe so, your ladyship." if he could see the least sparkle of relief in her face now? no, he could see no such thing, even if that brave outside did not utterly put him away, and he were not looking beyond it and about it. he falters an awkward excuse or two for his failure. "is this all you have to say?" inquires lady dedlock, having heard him out--or as nearly out as he can stumble. mr. guppy thinks that's all. "you had better be sure that you wish to say nothing more to me, this being the last time you will have the opportunity." mr. guppy is quite sure. and indeed he has no such wish at present, by any means. "that is enough. i will dispense with excuses. good evening to you!" and she rings for mercury to show the young man of the name of guppy out. but in that house, in that same moment, there happens to be an old man of the name of tulkinghorn. and that old man, coming with his quiet footstep to the library, has his hand at that moment on the handle of the door--comes in--and comes face to face with the young man as he is leaving the room. one glance between the old man and the lady, and for an instant the blind that is always down flies up. suspicion, eager and sharp, looks out. another instant, close again. "i beg your pardon, lady dedlock. i beg your pardon a thousand times. it is so very unusual to find you here at this hour. i supposed the room was empty. i beg your pardon!" "stay!" she negligently calls him back. "remain here, i beg. i am going out to dinner. i have nothing more to say to this young man!" the disconcerted young man bows, as he goes out, and cringingly hopes that mr. tulkinghorn of the fields is well. "aye, aye?" says the lawyer, looking at him from under his bent brows, though he has no need to look again--not he. "from kenge and carboy's, surely?" "kenge and carboy's, mr. tulkinghorn. name of guppy, sir." "to be sure. why, thank you, mr. guppy, i am very well!" "happy to hear it, sir. you can't be too well, sir, for the credit of the profession." "thank you, mr. guppy!" mr. guppy sneaks away. mr. tulkinghorn, such a foil in his old-fashioned rusty black to lady dedlock's brightness, hands her down the staircase to her carriage. he returns rubbing his chin, and rubs it a good deal in the course of the evening. chapter xxxiv a turn of the screw "now, what," says mr. george, "may this be? is it blank cartridge or ball? a flash in the pan or a shot?" an open letter is the subject of the trooper's speculations, and it seems to perplex him mightily. he looks at it at arm's length, brings it close to him, holds it in his right hand, holds it in his left hand, reads it with his head on this side, with his head on that side, contracts his eyebrows, elevates them, still cannot satisfy himself. he smooths it out upon the table with his heavy palm, and thoughtfully walking up and down the gallery, makes a halt before it every now and then to come upon it with a fresh eye. even that won't do. "is it," mr. george still muses, "blank cartridge or ball?" phil squod, with the aid of a brush and paint-pot, is employed in the distance whitening the targets, softly whistling in quick-march time and in drum-and-fife manner that he must and will go back again to the girl he left behind him. "phil!" the trooper beckons as he calls him. phil approaches in his usual way, sidling off at first as if he were going anywhere else and then bearing down upon his commander like a bayonet-charge. certain splashes of white show in high relief upon his dirty face, and he scrapes his one eyebrow with the handle of the brush. "attention, phil! listen to this." "steady, commander, steady." "'sir. allow me to remind you (though there is no legal necessity for my doing so, as you are aware) that the bill at two months' date drawn on yourself by mr. matthew bagnet, and by you accepted, for the sum of ninety-seven pounds four shillings and ninepence, will become due to-morrow, when you will please be prepared to take up the same on presentation. yours, joshua smallweed.' what do you make of that, phil?" "mischief, guv'ner." "why?" "i think," replies phil after pensively tracing out a cross-wrinkle in his forehead with the brush-handle, "that mischeevious consequences is always meant when money's asked for." "lookye, phil," says the trooper, sitting on the table. "first and last, i have paid, i may say, half as much again as this principal in interest and one thing and another." phil intimates by sidling back a pace or two, with a very unaccountable wrench of his wry face, that he does not regard the transaction as being made more promising by this incident. "and lookye further, phil," says the trooper, staying his premature conclusions with a wave of his hand. "there has always been an understanding that this bill was to be what they call renewed. and it has been renewed no end of times. what do you say now?" "i say that i think the times is come to a end at last." "you do? humph! i am much of the same mind myself." "joshua smallweed is him that was brought here in a chair?" "the same." "guv'ner," says phil with exceeding gravity, "he's a leech in his dispositions, he's a screw and a wice in his actions, a snake in his twistings, and a lobster in his claws." having thus expressively uttered his sentiments, mr. squod, after waiting a little to ascertain if any further remark be expected of him, gets back by his usual series of movements to the target he has in hand and vigorously signifies through his former musical medium that he must and he will return to that ideal young lady. george, having folded the letter, walks in that direction. "there is a way, commander," says phil, looking cunningly at him, "of settling this." "paying the money, i suppose? i wish i could." phil shakes his head. "no, guv'ner, no; not so bad as that. there is a way," says phil with a highly artistic turn of his brush; "what i'm a-doing at present." "whitewashing." phil nods. "a pretty way that would be! do you know what would become of the bagnets in that case? do you know they would be ruined to pay off my old scores? you're a moral character," says the trooper, eyeing him in his large way with no small indignation; "upon my life you are, phil!" phil, on one knee at the target, is in course of protesting earnestly, though not without many allegorical scoops of his brush and smoothings of the white surface round the rim with his thumb, that he had forgotten the bagnet responsibility and would not so much as injure a hair of the head of any member of that worthy family when steps are audible in the long passage without, and a cheerful voice is heard to wonder whether george is at home. phil, with a look at his master, hobbles up, saying, "here's the guv'ner, mrs. bagnet! here he is!" and the old girl herself, accompanied by mr. bagnet, appears. the old girl never appears in walking trim, in any season of the year, without a grey cloth cloak, coarse and much worn but very clean, which is, undoubtedly, the identical garment rendered so interesting to mr. bagnet by having made its way home to europe from another quarter of the globe in company with mrs. bagnet and an umbrella. the latter faithful appendage is also invariably a part of the old girl's presence out of doors. it is of no colour known in this life and has a corrugated wooden crook for a handle, with a metallic object let into its prow, or beak, resembling a little model of a fanlight over a street door or one of the oval glasses out of a pair of spectacles, which ornamental object has not that tenacious capacity of sticking to its post that might be desired in an article long associated with the british army. the old girl's umbrella is of a flabby habit of waist and seems to be in need of stays--an appearance that is possibly referable to its having served through a series of years at home as a cupboard and on journeys as a carpet bag. she never puts it up, having the greatest reliance on her well-proved cloak with its capacious hood, but generally uses the instrument as a wand with which to point out joints of meat or bunches of greens in marketing or to arrest the attention of tradesmen by a friendly poke. without her market-basket, which is a sort of wicker well with two flapping lids, she never stirs abroad. attended by these her trusty companions, therefore, her honest sunburnt face looking cheerily out of a rough straw bonnet, mrs. bagnet now arrives, fresh-coloured and bright, in george's shooting gallery. "well, george, old fellow," says she, "and how do you do, this sunshiny morning?" giving him a friendly shake of the hand, mrs. bagnet draws a long breath after her walk and sits down to enjoy a rest. having a faculty, matured on the tops of baggage-waggons and in other such positions, of resting easily anywhere, she perches on a rough bench, unties her bonnet-strings, pushes back her bonnet, crosses her arms, and looks perfectly comfortable. mr. bagnet in the meantime has shaken hands with his old comrade and with phil, on whom mrs. bagnet likewise bestows a good-humoured nod and smile. "now, george," said mrs. bagnet briskly, "here we are, lignum and myself"--she often speaks of her husband by this appellation, on account, as it is supposed, of lignum vitae having been his old regimental nickname when they first became acquainted, in compliment to the extreme hardness and toughness of his physiognomy--"just looked in, we have, to make it all correct as usual about that security. give him the new bill to sign, george, and he'll sign it like a man." "i was coming to you this morning," observes the trooper reluctantly. "yes, we thought you'd come to us this morning, but we turned out early and left woolwich, the best of boys, to mind his sisters and came to you instead--as you see! for lignum, he's tied so close now, and gets so little exercise, that a walk does him good. but what's the matter, george?" asks mrs. bagnet, stopping in her cheerful talk. "you don't look yourself." "i am not quite myself," returns the trooper; "i have been a little put out, mrs. bagnet." her bright quick eye catches the truth directly. "george!" holding up her forefinger. "don't tell me there's anything wrong about that security of lignum's! don't do it, george, on account of the children!" the trooper looks at her with a troubled visage. "george," says mrs. bagnet, using both her arms for emphasis and occasionally bringing down her open hands upon her knees. "if you have allowed anything wrong to come to that security of lignum's, and if you have let him in for it, and if you have put us in danger of being sold up--and i see sold up in your face, george, as plain as print--you have done a shameful action and have deceived us cruelly. i tell you, cruelly, george. there!" mr. bagnet, otherwise as immovable as a pump or a lamp-post, puts his large right hand on the top of his bald head as if to defend it from a shower-bath and looks with great uneasiness at mrs. bagnet. "george," says that old girl, "i wonder at you! george, i am ashamed of you! george, i couldn't have believed you would have done it! i always knew you to be a rolling stone that gathered no moss, but i never thought you would have taken away what little moss there was for bagnet and the children to lie upon. you know what a hard-working, steady-going chap he is. you know what quebec and malta and woolwich are, and i never did think you would, or could, have had the heart to serve us so. oh, george!" mrs. bagnet gathers up her cloak to wipe her eyes on in a very genuine manner, "how could you do it?" mrs. bagnet ceasing, mr. bagnet removes his hand from his head as if the shower-bath were over and looks disconsolately at mr. george, who has turned quite white and looks distressfully at the grey cloak and straw bonnet. "mat," says the trooper in a subdued voice, addressing him but still looking at his wife, "i am sorry you take it so much to heart, because i do hope it's not so bad as that comes to. i certainly have, this morning, received this letter"--which he reads aloud--"but i hope it may be set right yet. as to a rolling stone, why, what you say is true. i am a rolling stone, and i never rolled in anybody's way, i fully believe, that i rolled the least good to. but it's impossible for an old vagabond comrade to like your wife and family better than i like 'em, mat, and i trust you'll look upon me as forgivingly as you can. don't think i've kept anything from you. i haven't had the letter more than a quarter of an hour." "old girl," murmurs mr. bagnet after a short silence, "will you tell him my opinion?" "oh! why didn't he marry," mrs. bagnet answers, half laughing and half crying, "joe pouch's widder in north america? then he wouldn't have got himself into these troubles." "the old girl," says mr. bagnet, "puts it correct--why didn't you?" "well, she has a better husband by this time, i hope," returns the trooper. "anyhow, here i stand, this present day, not married to joe pouch's widder. what shall i do? you see all i have got about me. it's not mine; it's yours. give the word, and i'll sell off every morsel. if i could have hoped it would have brought in nearly the sum wanted, i'd have sold all long ago. don't believe that i'll leave you or yours in the lurch, mat. i'd sell myself first. i only wish," says the trooper, giving himself a disparaging blow in the chest, "that i knew of any one who'd buy such a second-hand piece of old stores." "old girl," murmurs mr. bagnet, "give him another bit of my mind." "george," says the old girl, "you are not so much to be blamed, on full consideration, except for ever taking this business without the means." "and that was like me!" observes the penitent trooper, shaking his head. "like me, i know." "silence! the old girl," says mr. bagnet, "is correct--in her way of giving my opinions--hear me out!" "that was when you never ought to have asked for the security, george, and when you never ought to have got it, all things considered. but what's done can't be undone. you are always an honourable and straightforward fellow, as far as lays in your power, though a little flighty. on the other hand, you can't admit but what it's natural in us to be anxious with such a thing hanging over our heads. so forget and forgive all round, george. come! forget and forgive all round!" mrs. bagnet, giving him one of her honest hands and giving her husband the other, mr. george gives each of them one of his and holds them while he speaks. "i do assure you both, there's nothing i wouldn't do to discharge this obligation. but whatever i have been able to scrape together has gone every two months in keeping it up. we have lived plainly enough here, phil and i. but the gallery don't quite do what was expected of it, and it's not--in short, it's not the mint. it was wrong in me to take it? well, so it was. but i was in a manner drawn into that step, and i thought it might steady me, and set me up, and you'll try to overlook my having such expectations, and upon my soul, i am very much obliged to you, and very much ashamed of myself." with these concluding words, mr. george gives a shake to each of the hands he holds, and relinquishing them, backs a pace or two in a broad-chested, upright attitude, as if he had made a final confession and were immediately going to be shot with all military honours. "george, hear me out!" says mr. bagnet, glancing at his wife. "old girl, go on!" mr. bagnet, being in this singular manner heard out, has merely to observe that the letter must be attended to without any delay, that it is advisable that george and he should immediately wait on mr. smallweed in person, and that the primary object is to save and hold harmless mr. bagnet, who had none of the money. mr. george, entirely assenting, puts on his hat and prepares to march with mr. bagnet to the enemy's camp. "don't you mind a woman's hasty word, george," says mrs. bagnet, patting him on the shoulder. "i trust my old lignum to you, and i am sure you'll bring him through it." the trooper returns that this is kindly said and that he will bring lignum through it somehow. upon which mrs. bagnet, with her cloak, basket, and umbrella, goes home, bright-eyed again, to the rest of her family, and the comrades sally forth on the hopeful errand of mollifying mr. smallweed. whether there are two people in england less likely to come satisfactorily out of any negotiation with mr. smallweed than mr. george and mr. matthew bagnet may be very reasonably questioned. also, notwithstanding their martial appearance, broad square shoulders, and heavy tread, whether there are within the same limits two more simple and unaccustomed children in all the smallweedy affairs of life. as they proceed with great gravity through the streets towards the region of mount pleasant, mr. bagnet, observing his companion to be thoughtful, considers it a friendly part to refer to mrs. bagnet's late sally. "george, you know the old girl--she's as sweet and as mild as milk. but touch her on the children--or myself--and she's off like gunpowder." "it does her credit, mat!" "george," says mr. bagnet, looking straight before him, "the old girl--can't do anything--that don't do her credit. more or less. i never say so. discipline must be maintained." "she's worth her weight in gold," says the trooper. "in gold?" says mr. bagnet. "i'll tell you what. the old girl's weight--is twelve stone six. would i take that weight--in any metal--for the old girl? no. why not? because the old girl's metal is far more precious--than the preciousest metal. and she's all metal!" "you are right, mat!" "when she took me--and accepted of the ring--she 'listed under me and the children--heart and head, for life. she's that earnest," says mr. bagnet, "and true to her colours--that, touch us with a finger--and she turns out--and stands to her arms. if the old girl fires wide--once in a way--at the call of duty--look over it, george. for she's loyal!" "why, bless her, mat," returns the trooper, "i think the higher of her for it!" "you are right!" says mr. bagnet with the warmest enthusiasm, though without relaxing the rigidity of a single muscle. "think as high of the old girl--as the rock of gibraltar--and still you'll be thinking low--of such merits. but i never own to it before her. discipline must be maintained." these encomiums bring them to mount pleasant and to grandfather smallweed's house. the door is opened by the perennial judy, who, having surveyed them from top to toe with no particular favour, but indeed with a malignant sneer, leaves them standing there while she consults the oracle as to their admission. the oracle may be inferred to give consent from the circumstance of her returning with the words on her honey lips that they can come in if they want to it. thus privileged, they come in and find mr. smallweed with his feet in the drawer of his chair as if it were a paper foot-bath and mrs. smallweed obscured with the cushion like a bird that is not to sing. "my dear friend," says grandfather smallweed with those two lean affectionate arms of his stretched forth. "how de do? how de do? who is our friend, my dear friend?" "why this," returns george, not able to be very conciliatory at first, "is matthew bagnet, who has obliged me in that matter of ours, you know." "oh! mr. bagnet? surely!" the old man looks at him under his hand. "hope you're well, mr. bagnet? fine man, mr. george! military air, sir!" no chairs being offered, mr. george brings one forward for bagnet and one for himself. they sit down, mr. bagnet as if he had no power of bending himself, except at the hips, for that purpose. "judy," says mr. smallweed, "bring the pipe." "why, i don't know," mr. george interposes, "that the young woman need give herself that trouble, for to tell you the truth, i am not inclined to smoke it to-day." "ain't you?" returns the old man. "judy, bring the pipe." "the fact is, mr. smallweed," proceeds george, "that i find myself in rather an unpleasant state of mind. it appears to me, sir, that your friend in the city has been playing tricks." "oh, dear no!" says grandfather smallweed. "he never does that!" "don't he? well, i am glad to hear it, because i thought it might be his doing. this, you know, i am speaking of. this letter." grandfather smallweed smiles in a very ugly way in recognition of the letter. "what does it mean?" asks mr. george. "judy," says the old man. "have you got the pipe? give it to me. did you say what does it mean, my good friend?" "aye! now, come, come, you know, mr. smallweed," urges the trooper, constraining himself to speak as smoothly and confidentially as he can, holding the open letter in one hand and resting the broad knuckles of the other on his thigh, "a good lot of money has passed between us, and we are face to face at the present moment, and are both well aware of the understanding there has always been. i am prepared to do the usual thing which i have done regularly and to keep this matter going. i never got a letter like this from you before, and i have been a little put about by it this morning, because here's my friend matthew bagnet, who, you know, had none of the money--" "i don't know it, you know," says the old man quietly. "why, con-found you--it, i mean--i tell you so, don't i?" "oh, yes, you tell me so," returns grandfather smallweed. "but i don't know it." "well!" says the trooper, swallowing his fire. "i know it." mr. smallweed replies with excellent temper, "ah! that's quite another thing!" and adds, "but it don't matter. mr. bagnet's situation is all one, whether or no." the unfortunate george makes a great effort to arrange the affair comfortably and to propitiate mr. smallweed by taking him upon his own terms. "that's just what i mean. as you say, mr. smallweed, here's matthew bagnet liable to be fixed whether or no. now, you see, that makes his good lady very uneasy in her mind, and me too, for whereas i'm a harum-scarum sort of a good-for-nought that more kicks than halfpence come natural to, why he's a steady family man, don't you see? now, mr. smallweed," says the trooper, gaining confidence as he proceeds in his soldierly mode of doing business, "although you and i are good friends enough in a certain sort of a way, i am well aware that i can't ask you to let my friend bagnet off entirely." "oh, dear, you are too modest. you can ask me anything, mr. george." (there is an ogreish kind of jocularity in grandfather smallweed to-day.) "and you can refuse, you mean, eh? or not you so much, perhaps, as your friend in the city? ha ha ha!" "ha ha ha!" echoes grandfather smallweed. in such a very hard manner and with eyes so particularly green that mr. bagnet's natural gravity is much deepened by the contemplation of that venerable man. "come!" says the sanguine george. "i am glad to find we can be pleasant, because i want to arrange this pleasantly. here's my friend bagnet, and here am i. we'll settle the matter on the spot, if you please, mr. smallweed, in the usual way. and you'll ease my friend bagnet's mind, and his family's mind, a good deal if you'll just mention to him what our understanding is." here some shrill spectre cries out in a mocking manner, "oh, good gracious! oh!" unless, indeed, it be the sportive judy, who is found to be silent when the startled visitors look round, but whose chin has received a recent toss, expressive of derision and contempt. mr. bagnet's gravity becomes yet more profound. "but i think you asked me, mr. george"--old smallweed, who all this time has had the pipe in his hand, is the speaker now--"i think you asked me, what did the letter mean?" "why, yes, i did," returns the trooper in his off-hand way, "but i don't care to know particularly, if it's all correct and pleasant." mr. smallweed, purposely balking himself in an aim at the trooper's head, throws the pipe on the ground and breaks it to pieces. "that's what it means, my dear friend. i'll smash you. i'll crumble you. i'll powder you. go to the devil!" the two friends rise and look at one another. mr. bagnet's gravity has now attained its profoundest point. "go to the devil!" repeats the old man. "i'll have no more of your pipe-smokings and swaggerings. what? you're an independent dragoon, too! go to my lawyer (you remember where; you have been there before) and show your independence now, will you? come, my dear friend, there's a chance for you. open the street door, judy; put these blusterers out! call in help if they don't go. put 'em out!" he vociferates this so loudly that mr. bagnet, laying his hands on the shoulders of his comrade before the latter can recover from his amazement, gets him on the outside of the street door, which is instantly slammed by the triumphant judy. utterly confounded, mr. george awhile stands looking at the knocker. mr. bagnet, in a perfect abyss of gravity, walks up and down before the little parlour window like a sentry and looks in every time he passes, apparently revolving something in his mind. "come, mat," says mr. george when he has recovered himself, "we must try the lawyer. now, what do you think of this rascal?" mr. bagnet, stopping to take a farewell look into the parlour, replies with one shake of his head directed at the interior, "if my old girl had been here--i'd have told him!" having so discharged himself of the subject of his cogitations, he falls into step and marches off with the trooper, shoulder to shoulder. when they present themselves in lincoln's inn fields, mr. tulkinghorn is engaged and not to be seen. he is not at all willing to see them, for when they have waited a full hour, and the clerk, on his bell being rung, takes the opportunity of mentioning as much, he brings forth no more encouraging message than that mr. tulkinghorn has nothing to say to them and they had better not wait. they do wait, however, with the perseverance of military tactics, and at last the bell rings again and the client in possession comes out of mr. tulkinghorn's room. the client is a handsome old lady, no other than mrs. rouncewell, housekeeper at chesney wold. she comes out of the sanctuary with a fair old-fashioned curtsy and softly shuts the door. she is treated with some distinction there, for the clerk steps out of his pew to show her through the outer office and to let her out. the old lady is thanking him for his attention when she observes the comrades in waiting. "i beg your pardon, sir, but i think those gentlemen are military?" the clerk referring the question to them with his eye, and mr. george not turning round from the almanac over the fire-place. mr. bagnet takes upon himself to reply, "yes, ma'am. formerly." "i thought so. i was sure of it. my heart warms, gentlemen, at the sight of you. it always does at the sight of such. god bless you, gentlemen! you'll excuse an old woman, but i had a son once who went for a soldier. a fine handsome youth he was, and good in his bold way, though some people did disparage him to his poor mother. i ask your pardon for troubling you, sir. god bless you, gentlemen!" "same to you, ma'am!" returns mr. bagnet with right good will. there is something very touching in the earnestness of the old lady's voice and in the tremble that goes through her quaint old figure. but mr. george is so occupied with the almanac over the fire-place (calculating the coming months by it perhaps) that he does not look round until she has gone away and the door is closed upon her. "george," mr. bagnet gruffly whispers when he does turn from the almanac at last. "don't be cast down! 'why, soldiers, why--should we be melancholy, boys?' cheer up, my hearty!" the clerk having now again gone in to say that they are still there and mr. tulkinghorn being heard to return with some irascibility, "let 'em come in then!" they pass into the great room with the painted ceiling and find him standing before the fire. "now, you men, what do you want? sergeant, i told you the last time i saw you that i don't desire your company here." sergeant replies--dashed within the last few minutes as to his usual manner of speech, and even as to his usual carriage--that he has received this letter, has been to mr. smallweed about it, and has been referred there. "i have nothing to say to you," rejoins mr. tulkinghorn. "if you get into debt, you must pay your debts or take the consequences. you have no occasion to come here to learn that, i suppose?" sergeant is sorry to say that he is not prepared with the money. "very well! then the other man--this man, if this is he--must pay it for you." sergeant is sorry to add that the other man is not prepared with the money either. "very well! then you must pay it between you or you must both be sued for it and both suffer. you have had the money and must refund it. you are not to pocket other people's pounds, shillings, and pence and escape scot-free." the lawyer sits down in his easy-chair and stirs the fire. mr. george hopes he will have the goodness to--"i tell you, sergeant, i have nothing to say to you. i don't like your associates and don't want you here. this matter is not at all in my course of practice and is not in my office. mr. smallweed is good enough to offer these affairs to me, but they are not in my way. you must go to melchisedech's in clifford's inn." "i must make an apology to you, sir," says mr. george, "for pressing myself upon you with so little encouragement--which is almost as unpleasant to me as it can be to you--but would you let me say a private word to you?" mr. tulkinghorn rises with his hands in his pockets and walks into one of the window recesses. "now! i have no time to waste." in the midst of his perfect assumption of indifference, he directs a sharp look at the trooper, taking care to stand with his own back to the light and to have the other with his face towards it. "well, sir," says mr. george, "this man with me is the other party implicated in this unfortunate affair--nominally, only nominally--and my sole object is to prevent his getting into trouble on my account. he is a most respectable man with a wife and family, formerly in the royal artillery--" "my friend, i don't care a pinch of snuff for the whole royal artillery establishment--officers, men, tumbrils, waggons, horses, guns, and ammunition." "'tis likely, sir. but i care a good deal for bagnet and his wife and family being injured on my account. and if i could bring them through this matter, i should have no help for it but to give up without any other consideration what you wanted of me the other day." "have you got it here?" "i have got it here, sir." "sergeant," the lawyer proceeds in his dry passionless manner, far more hopeless in the dealing with than any amount of vehemence, "make up your mind while i speak to you, for this is final. after i have finished speaking i have closed the subject, and i won't re-open it. understand that. you can leave here, for a few days, what you say you have brought here if you choose; you can take it away at once if you choose. in case you choose to leave it here, i can do this for you--i can replace this matter on its old footing, and i can go so far besides as to give you a written undertaking that this man bagnet shall never be troubled in any way until you have been proceeded against to the utmost, that your means shall be exhausted before the creditor looks to his. this is in fact all but freeing him. have you decided?" the trooper puts his hand into his breast and answers with a long breath, "i must do it, sir." so mr. tulkinghorn, putting on his spectacles, sits down and writes the undertaking, which he slowly reads and explains to bagnet, who has all this time been staring at the ceiling and who puts his hand on his bald head again, under this new verbal shower-bath, and seems exceedingly in need of the old girl through whom to express his sentiments. the trooper then takes from his breast-pocket a folded paper, which he lays with an unwilling hand at the lawyer's elbow. "'tis only a letter of instructions, sir. the last i ever had from him." look at a millstone, mr. george, for some change in its expression, and you will find it quite as soon as in the face of mr. tulkinghorn when he opens and reads the letter! he refolds it and lays it in his desk with a countenance as unperturbable as death. nor has he anything more to say or do but to nod once in the same frigid and discourteous manner and to say briefly, "you can go. show these men out, there!" being shown out, they repair to mr. bagnet's residence to dine. boiled beef and greens constitute the day's variety on the former repast of boiled pork and greens, and mrs. bagnet serves out the meal in the same way and seasons it with the best of temper, being that rare sort of old girl that she receives good to her arms without a hint that it might be better and catches light from any little spot of darkness near her. the spot on this occasion is the darkened brow of mr. george; he is unusually thoughtful and depressed. at first mrs. bagnet trusts to the combined endearments of quebec and malta to restore him, but finding those young ladies sensible that their existing bluffy is not the bluffy of their usual frolicsome acquaintance, she winks off the light infantry and leaves him to deploy at leisure on the open ground of the domestic hearth. but he does not. he remains in close order, clouded and depressed. during the lengthy cleaning up and pattening process, when he and mr. bagnet are supplied with their pipes, he is no better than he was at dinner. he forgets to smoke, looks at the fire and ponders, lets his pipe out, fills the breast of mr. bagnet with perturbation and dismay by showing that he has no enjoyment of tobacco. therefore when mrs. bagnet at last appears, rosy from the invigorating pail, and sits down to her work, mr. bagnet growls, "old girl!" and winks monitions to her to find out what's the matter. "why, george!" says mrs. bagnet, quietly threading her needle. "how low you are!" "am i? not good company? well, i am afraid i am not." "he ain't at all like bluffy, mother!" cries little malta. "because he ain't well, i think, mother," adds quebec. "sure that's a bad sign not to be like bluffy, too!" returns the trooper, kissing the young damsels. "but it's true," with a sigh, "true, i am afraid. these little ones are always right!" "george," says mrs. bagnet, working busily, "if i thought you cross enough to think of anything that a shrill old soldier's wife--who could have bitten her tongue off afterwards and ought to have done it almost--said this morning, i don't know what i shouldn't say to you now." "my kind soul of a darling," returns the trooper. "not a morsel of it." "because really and truly, george, what i said and meant to say was that i trusted lignum to you and was sure you'd bring him through it. and you have brought him through it, noble!" "thankee, my dear!" says george. "i am glad of your good opinion." in giving mrs. bagnet's hand, with her work in it, a friendly shake--for she took her seat beside him--the trooper's attention is attracted to her face. after looking at it for a little while as she plies her needle, he looks to young woolwich, sitting on his stool in the corner, and beckons that fifer to him. "see there, my boy," says george, very gently smoothing the mother's hair with his hand, "there's a good loving forehead for you! all bright with love of you, my boy. a little touched by the sun and the weather through following your father about and taking care of you, but as fresh and wholesome as a ripe apple on a tree." mr. bagnet's face expresses, so far as in its wooden material lies, the highest approbation and acquiescence. "the time will come, my boy," pursues the trooper, "when this hair of your mother's will be grey, and this forehead all crossed and re-crossed with wrinkles, and a fine old lady she'll be then. take care, while you are young, that you can think in those days, 'i never whitened a hair of her dear head--i never marked a sorrowful line in her face!' for of all the many things that you can think of when you are a man, you had better have that by you, woolwich!" mr. george concludes by rising from his chair, seating the boy beside his mother in it, and saying, with something of a hurry about him, that he'll smoke his pipe in the street a bit. chapter xxxv esther's narrative i lay ill through several weeks, and the usual tenor of my life became like an old remembrance. but this was not the effect of time so much as of the change in all my habits made by the helplessness and inaction of a sick-room. before i had been confined to it many days, everything else seemed to have retired into a remote distance where there was little or no separation between the various stages of my life which had been really divided by years. in falling ill, i seemed to have crossed a dark lake and to have left all my experiences, mingled together by the great distance, on the healthy shore. my housekeeping duties, though at first it caused me great anxiety to think that they were unperformed, were soon as far off as the oldest of the old duties at greenleaf or the summer afternoons when i went home from school with my portfolio under my arm, and my childish shadow at my side, to my godmother's house. i had never known before how short life really was and into how small a space the mind could put it. while i was very ill, the way in which these divisions of time became confused with one another distressed my mind exceedingly. at once a child, an elder girl, and the little woman i had been so happy as, i was not only oppressed by cares and difficulties adapted to each station, but by the great perplexity of endlessly trying to reconcile them. i suppose that few who have not been in such a condition can quite understand what i mean or what painful unrest arose from this source. for the same reason i am almost afraid to hint at that time in my disorder--it seemed one long night, but i believe there were both nights and days in it--when i laboured up colossal staircases, ever striving to reach the top, and ever turned, as i have seen a worm in a garden path, by some obstruction, and labouring again. i knew perfectly at intervals, and i think vaguely at most times, that i was in my bed; and i talked with charley, and felt her touch, and knew her very well; yet i would find myself complaining, "oh, more of these never-ending stairs, charley--more and more--piled up to the sky', i think!" and labouring on again. dare i hint at that worse time when, strung together somewhere in great black space, there was a flaming necklace, or ring, or starry circle of some kind, of which i was one of the beads! and when my only prayer was to be taken off from the rest and when it was such inexplicable agony and misery to be a part of the dreadful thing? perhaps the less i say of these sick experiences, the less tedious and the more intelligible i shall be. i do not recall them to make others unhappy or because i am now the least unhappy in remembering them. it may be that if we knew more of such strange afflictions we might be the better able to alleviate their intensity. the repose that succeeded, the long delicious sleep, the blissful rest, when in my weakness i was too calm to have any care for myself and could have heard (or so i think now) that i was dying, with no other emotion than with a pitying love for those i left behind--this state can be perhaps more widely understood. i was in this state when i first shrunk from the light as it twinkled on me once more, and knew with a boundless joy for which no words are rapturous enough that i should see again. i had heard my ada crying at the door, day and night; i had heard her calling to me that i was cruel and did not love her; i had heard her praying and imploring to be let in to nurse and comfort me and to leave my bedside no more; but i had only said, when i could speak, "never, my sweet girl, never!" and i had over and over again reminded charley that she was to keep my darling from the room whether i lived or died. charley had been true to me in that time of need, and with her little hand and her great heart had kept the door fast. but now, my sight strengthening and the glorious light coming every day more fully and brightly on me, i could read the letters that my dear wrote to me every morning and evening and could put them to my lips and lay my cheek upon them with no fear of hurting her. i could see my little maid, so tender and so careful, going about the two rooms setting everything in order and speaking cheerfully to ada from the open window again. i could understand the stillness in the house and the thoughtfulness it expressed on the part of all those who had always been so good to me. i could weep in the exquisite felicity of my heart and be as happy in my weakness as ever i had been in my strength. by and by my strength began to be restored. instead of lying, with so strange a calmness, watching what was done for me, as if it were done for some one else whom i was quietly sorry for, i helped it a little, and so on to a little more and much more, until i became useful to myself, and interested, and attached to life again. how well i remember the pleasant afternoon when i was raised in bed with pillows for the first time to enjoy a great tea-drinking with charley! the little creature--sent into the world, surely, to minister to the weak and sick--was so happy, and so busy, and stopped so often in her preparations to lay her head upon my bosom, and fondle me, and cry with joyful tears she was so glad, she was so glad, that i was obliged to say, "charley, if you go on in this way, i must lie down again, my darling, for i am weaker than i thought i was!" so charley became as quiet as a mouse and took her bright face here and there across and across the two rooms, out of the shade into the divine sunshine, and out of the sunshine into the shade, while i watched her peacefully. when all her preparations were concluded and the pretty tea-table with its little delicacies to tempt me, and its white cloth, and its flowers, and everything so lovingly and beautifully arranged for me by ada downstairs, was ready at the bedside, i felt sure i was steady enough to say something to charley that was not new to my thoughts. first i complimented charley on the room, and indeed it was so fresh and airy, so spotless and neat, that i could scarce believe i had been lying there so long. this delighted charley, and her face was brighter than before. "yet, charley," said i, looking round, "i miss something, surely, that i am accustomed to?" poor little charley looked round too and pretended to shake her head as if there were nothing absent. "are the pictures all as they used to be?" i asked her. "every one of them, miss," said charley. "and the furniture, charley?" "except where i have moved it about to make more room, miss." "and yet," said i, "i miss some familiar object. ah, i know what it is, charley! it's the looking-glass." charley got up from the table, making as if she had forgotten something, and went into the next room; and i heard her sob there. i had thought of this very often. i was now certain of it. i could thank god that it was not a shock to me now. i called charley back, and when she came--at first pretending to smile, but as she drew nearer to me, looking grieved--i took her in my arms and said, "it matters very little, charley. i hope i can do without my old face very well." i was presently so far advanced as to be able to sit up in a great chair and even giddily to walk into the adjoining room, leaning on charley. the mirror was gone from its usual place in that room too, but what i had to bear was none the harder to bear for that. my guardian had throughout been earnest to visit me, and there was now no good reason why i should deny myself that happiness. he came one morning, and when he first came in, could only hold me in his embrace and say, "my dear, dear girl!" i had long known--who could know better?--what a deep fountain of affection and generosity his heart was; and was it not worth my trivial suffering and change to fill such a place in it? "oh, yes!" i thought. "he has seen me, and he loves me better than he did; he has seen me and is even fonder of me than he was before; and what have i to mourn for!" he sat down by me on the sofa, supporting me with his arm. for a little while he sat with his hand over his face, but when he removed it, fell into his usual manner. there never can have been, there never can be, a pleasanter manner. "my little woman," said he, "what a sad time this has been. such an inflexible little woman, too, through all!" "only for the best, guardian," said i. "for the best?" he repeated tenderly. "of course, for the best. but here have ada and i been perfectly forlorn and miserable; here has your friend caddy been coming and going late and early; here has every one about the house been utterly lost and dejected; here has even poor rick been writing--to me too--in his anxiety for you!" i had read of caddy in ada's letters, but not of richard. i told him so. "why, no, my dear," he replied. "i have thought it better not to mention it to her." "and you speak of his writing to you," said i, repeating his emphasis. "as if it were not natural for him to do so, guardian; as if he could write to a better friend!" "he thinks he could, my love," returned my guardian, "and to many a better. the truth is, he wrote to me under a sort of protest while unable to write to you with any hope of an answer--wrote coldly, haughtily, distantly, resentfully. well, dearest little woman, we must look forbearingly on it. he is not to blame. jarndyce and jarndyce has warped him out of himself and perverted me in his eyes. i have known it do as bad deeds, and worse, many a time. if two angels could be concerned in it, i believe it would change their nature." "it has not changed yours, guardian." "oh, yes, it has, my dear," he said laughingly. "it has made the south wind easterly, i don't know how often. rick mistrusts and suspects me--goes to lawyers, and is taught to mistrust and suspect me. hears i have conflicting interests, claims clashing against his and what not. whereas, heaven knows that if i could get out of the mountains of wiglomeration on which my unfortunate name has been so long bestowed (which i can't) or could level them by the extinction of my own original right (which i can't either, and no human power ever can, anyhow, i believe, to such a pass have we got), i would do it this hour. i would rather restore to poor rick his proper nature than be endowed with all the money that dead suitors, broken, heart and soul, upon the wheel of chancery, have left unclaimed with the accountant-general--and that's money enough, my dear, to be cast into a pyramid, in memory of chancery's transcendent wickedness." "is it possible, guardian," i asked, amazed, "that richard can be suspicious of you?" "ah, my love, my love," he said, "it is in the subtle poison of such abuses to breed such diseases. his blood is infected, and objects lose their natural aspects in his sight. it is not his fault." "but it is a terrible misfortune, guardian." "it is a terrible misfortune, little woman, to be ever drawn within the influences of jarndyce and jarndyce. i know none greater. by little and little he has been induced to trust in that rotten reed, and it communicates some portion of its rottenness to everything around him. but again i say with all my soul, we must be patient with poor rick and not blame him. what a troop of fine fresh hearts like his have i seen in my time turned by the same means!" i could not help expressing something of my wonder and regret that his benevolent, disinterested intentions had prospered so little. "we must not say so, dame durden," he cheerfully replied; "ada is the happier, i hope, and that is much. i did think that i and both these young creatures might be friends instead of distrustful foes and that we might so far counter-act the suit and prove too strong for it. but it was too much to expect. jarndyce and jarndyce was the curtain of rick's cradle." "but, guardian, may we not hope that a little experience will teach him what a false and wretched thing it is?" "we will hope so, my esther," said mr. jarndyce, "and that it may not teach him so too late. in any case we must not be hard on him. there are not many grown and matured men living while we speak, good men too, who if they were thrown into this same court as suitors would not be vitally changed and depreciated within three years--within two--within one. how can we stand amazed at poor rick? a young man so unfortunate," here he fell into a lower tone, as if he were thinking aloud, "cannot at first believe (who could?) that chancery is what it is. he looks to it, flushed and fitfully, to do something with his interests and bring them to some settlement. it procrastinates, disappoints, tries, tortures him; wears out his sanguine hopes and patience, thread by thread; but he still looks to it, and hankers after it, and finds his whole world treacherous and hollow. well, well, well! enough of this, my dear!" he had supported me, as at first, all this time, and his tenderness was so precious to me that i leaned my head upon his shoulder and loved him as if he had been my father. i resolved in my own mind in this little pause, by some means, to see richard when i grew strong and try to set him right. "there are better subjects than these," said my guardian, "for such a joyful time as the time of our dear girl's recovery. and i had a commission to broach one of them as soon as i should begin to talk. when shall ada come to see you, my love?" i had been thinking of that too. a little in connexion with the absent mirrors, but not much, for i knew my loving girl would be changed by no change in my looks. "dear guardian," said i, "as i have shut her out so long--though indeed, indeed, she is like the light to me--" "i know it well, dame durden, well." he was so good, his touch expressed such endearing compassion and affection, and the tone of his voice carried such comfort into my heart that i stopped for a little while, quite unable to go on. "yes, yes, you are tired," said he. "rest a little." "as i have kept ada out so long," i began afresh after a short while, "i think i should like to have my own way a little longer, guardian. it would be best to be away from here before i see her. if charley and i were to go to some country lodging as soon as i can move, and if i had a week there in which to grow stronger and to be revived by the sweet air and to look forward to the happiness of having ada with me again, i think it would be better for us." i hope it was not a poor thing in me to wish to be a little more used to my altered self before i met the eyes of the dear girl i longed so ardently to see, but it is the truth. i did. he understood me, i was sure; but i was not afraid of that. if it were a poor thing, i knew he would pass it over. "our spoilt little woman," said my guardian, "shall have her own way even in her inflexibility, though at the price, i know, of tears downstairs. and see here! here is boythorn, heart of chivalry, breathing such ferocious vows as never were breathed on paper before, that if you don't go and occupy his whole house, he having already turned out of it expressly for that purpose, by heaven and by earth he'll pull it down and not leave one brick standing on another!" and my guardian put a letter in my hand, without any ordinary beginning such as "my dear jarndyce," but rushing at once into the words, "i swear if miss summerson do not come down and take possession of my house, which i vacate for her this day at one o'clock, p.m.," and then with the utmost seriousness, and in the most emphatic terms, going on to make the extraordinary declaration he had quoted. we did not appreciate the writer the less for laughing heartily over it, and we settled that i should send him a letter of thanks on the morrow and accept his offer. it was a most agreeable one to me, for all the places i could have thought of, i should have liked to go to none so well as chesney wold. "now, little housewife," said my guardian, looking at his watch, "i was strictly timed before i came upstairs, for you must not be tired too soon; and my time has waned away to the last minute. i have one other petition. little miss flite, hearing a rumour that you were ill, made nothing of walking down here--twenty miles, poor soul, in a pair of dancing shoes--to inquire. it was heaven's mercy we were at home, or she would have walked back again." the old conspiracy to make me happy! everybody seemed to be in it! "now, pet," said my guardian, "if it would not be irksome to you to admit the harmless little creature one afternoon before you save boythorn's otherwise devoted house from demolition, i believe you would make her prouder and better pleased with herself than i--though my eminent name is jarndyce--could do in a lifetime." i have no doubt he knew there would be something in the simple image of the poor afflicted creature that would fall like a gentle lesson on my mind at that time. i felt it as he spoke to me. i could not tell him heartily enough how ready i was to receive her. i had always pitied her, never so much as now. i had always been glad of my little power to soothe her under her calamity, but never, never, half so glad before. we arranged a time for miss flite to come out by the coach and share my early dinner. when my guardian left me, i turned my face away upon my couch and prayed to be forgiven if i, surrounded by such blessings, had magnified to myself the little trial that i had to undergo. the childish prayer of that old birthday when i had aspired to be industrious, contented, and true-hearted and to do good to some one and win some love to myself if i could came back into my mind with a reproachful sense of all the happiness i had since enjoyed and all the affectionate hearts that had been turned towards me. if i were weak now, what had i profited by those mercies? i repeated the old childish prayer in its old childish words and found that its old peace had not departed from it. my guardian now came every day. in a week or so more i could walk about our rooms and hold long talks with ada from behind the window-curtain. yet i never saw her, for i had not as yet the courage to look at the dear face, though i could have done so easily without her seeing me. on the appointed day miss flite arrived. the poor little creature ran into my room quite forgetful of her usual dignity, and crying from her very heart of hearts, "my dear fitz jarndyce!" fell upon my neck and kissed me twenty times. "dear me!" said she, putting her hand into her reticule, "i have nothing here but documents, my dear fitz jarndyce; i must borrow a pocket handkerchief." charley gave her one, and the good creature certainly made use of it, for she held it to her eyes with both hands and sat so, shedding tears for the next ten minutes. "with pleasure, my dear fitz jarndyce," she was careful to explain. "not the least pain. pleasure to see you well again. pleasure at having the honour of being admitted to see you. i am so much fonder of you, my love, than of the chancellor. though i do attend court regularly. by the by, my dear, mentioning pocket handkerchiefs--" miss flite here looked at charley, who had been to meet her at the place where the coach stopped. charley glanced at me and looked unwilling to pursue the suggestion. "ve-ry right!" said miss flite, "ve-ry correct. truly! highly indiscreet of me to mention it; but my dear miss fitz jarndyce, i am afraid i am at times (between ourselves, you wouldn't think it) a little--rambling you know," said miss flite, touching her forehead. "nothing more." "what were you going to tell me?" said i, smiling, for i saw she wanted to go on. "you have roused my curiosity, and now you must gratify it." miss flite looked at charley for advice in this important crisis, who said, "if you please, ma'am, you had better tell then," and therein gratified miss flite beyond measure. "so sagacious, our young friend," said she to me in her mysterious way. "diminutive. but ve-ry sagacious! well, my dear, it's a pretty anecdote. nothing more. still i think it charming. who should follow us down the road from the coach, my dear, but a poor person in a very ungenteel bonnet--" "jenny, if you please, miss," said charley. "just so!" miss flite acquiesced with the greatest suavity. "jenny. ye-es! and what does she tell our young friend but that there has been a lady with a veil inquiring at her cottage after my dear fitz jarndyce's health and taking a handkerchief away with her as a little keepsake merely because it was my amiable fitz jarndyce's! now, you know, so very prepossessing in the lady with the veil!" "if you please, miss," said charley, to whom i looked in some astonishment, "jenny says that when her baby died, you left a handkerchief there, and that she put it away and kept it with the baby's little things. i think, if you please, partly because it was yours, miss, and partly because it had covered the baby." "diminutive," whispered miss flite, making a variety of motions about her own forehead to express intellect in charley. "but exceedingly sagacious! and so dear! my love, she's clearer than any counsel i ever heard!" "yes, charley," i returned. "i remember it. well?" "well, miss," said charley, "and that's the handkerchief the lady took. and jenny wants you to know that she wouldn't have made away with it herself for a heap of money but that the lady took it and left some money instead. jenny don't know her at all, if you please, miss!" "why, who can she be?" said i. "my love," miss flite suggested, advancing her lips to my ear with her most mysterious look, "in my opinion--don't mention this to our diminutive friend--she's the lord chancellor's wife. he's married, you know. and i understand she leads him a terrible life. throws his lordship's papers into the fire, my dear, if he won't pay the jeweller!" i did not think very much about this lady then, for i had an impression that it might be caddy. besides, my attention was diverted by my visitor, who was cold after her ride and looked hungry and who, our dinner being brought in, required some little assistance in arraying herself with great satisfaction in a pitiable old scarf and a much-worn and often-mended pair of gloves, which she had brought down in a paper parcel. i had to preside, too, over the entertainment, consisting of a dish of fish, a roast fowl, a sweetbread, vegetables, pudding, and madeira; and it was so pleasant to see how she enjoyed it, and with what state and ceremony she did honour to it, that i was soon thinking of nothing else. when we had finished and had our little dessert before us, embellished by the hands of my dear, who would yield the superintendence of everything prepared for me to no one, miss flite was so very chatty and happy that i thought i would lead her to her own history, as she was always pleased to talk about herself. i began by saying "you have attended on the lord chancellor many years, miss flite?" "oh, many, many, many years, my dear. but i expect a judgment. shortly." there was an anxiety even in her hopefulness that made me doubtful if i had done right in approaching the subject. i thought i would say no more about it. "my father expected a judgment," said miss flite. "my brother. my sister. they all expected a judgment. the same that i expect." "they are all--" "ye-es. dead of course, my dear," said she. as i saw she would go on, i thought it best to try to be serviceable to her by meeting the theme rather than avoiding it. "would it not be wiser," said i, "to expect this judgment no more?" "why, my dear," she answered promptly, "of course it would!" "and to attend the court no more?" "equally of course," said she. "very wearing to be always in expectation of what never comes, my dear fitz jarndyce! wearing, i assure you, to the bone!" she slightly showed me her arm, and it was fearfully thin indeed. "but, my dear," she went on in her mysterious way, "there's a dreadful attraction in the place. hush! don't mention it to our diminutive friend when she comes in. or it may frighten her. with good reason. there's a cruel attraction in the place. you can't leave it. and you must expect." i tried to assure her that this was not so. she heard me patiently and smilingly, but was ready with her own answer. "aye, aye, aye! you think so because i am a little rambling. ve-ry absurd, to be a little rambling, is it not? ve-ry confusing, too. to the head. i find it so. but, my dear, i have been there many years, and i have noticed. it's the mace and seal upon the table." what could they do, did she think? i mildly asked her. "draw," returned miss flite. "draw people on, my dear. draw peace out of them. sense out of them. good looks out of them. good qualities out of them. i have felt them even drawing my rest away in the night. cold and glittering devils!" she tapped me several times upon the arm and nodded good-humouredly as if she were anxious i should understand that i had no cause to fear her, though she spoke so gloomily, and confided these awful secrets to me. "let me see," said she. "i'll tell you my own case. before they ever drew me--before i had ever seen them--what was it i used to do? tambourine playing? no. tambour work. i and my sister worked at tambour work. our father and our brother had a builder's business. we all lived together. ve-ry respectably, my dear! first, our father was drawn--slowly. home was drawn with him. in a few years he was a fierce, sour, angry bankrupt without a kind word or a kind look for any one. he had been so different, fitz jarndyce. he was drawn to a debtors' prison. there he died. then our brother was drawn--swiftly--to drunkenness. and rags. and death. then my sister was drawn. hush! never ask to what! then i was ill and in misery, and heard, as i had often heard before, that this was all the work of chancery. when i got better, i went to look at the monster. and then i found out how it was, and i was drawn to stay there." having got over her own short narrative, in the delivery of which she had spoken in a low, strained voice, as if the shock were fresh upon her, she gradually resumed her usual air of amiable importance. "you don't quite credit me, my dear! well, well! you will, some day. i am a little rambling. but i have noticed. i have seen many new faces come, unsuspicious, within the influence of the mace and seal in these many years. as my father's came there. as my brother's. as my sister's. as my own. i hear conversation kenge and the rest of them say to the new faces, 'here's little miss flite. oh, you are new here; and you must come and be presented to little miss flite!' ve-ry good. proud i am sure to have the honour! and we all laugh. but, fitz jarndyce, i know what will happen. i know, far better than they do, when the attraction has begun. i know the signs, my dear. i saw them begin in gridley. and i saw them end. fitz jarndyce, my love," speaking low again, "i saw them beginning in our friend the ward in jarndyce. let some one hold him back. or he'll be drawn to ruin." she looked at me in silence for some moments, with her face gradually softening into a smile. seeming to fear that she had been too gloomy, and seeming also to lose the connexion in her mind, she said politely as she sipped her glass of wine, "yes, my dear, as i was saying, i expect a judgment shortly. then i shall release my birds, you know, and confer estates." i was much impressed by her allusion to richard and by the sad meaning, so sadly illustrated in her poor pinched form, that made its way through all her incoherence. but happily for her, she was quite complacent again now and beamed with nods and smiles. "but, my dear," she said, gaily, reaching another hand to put it upon mine. "you have not congratulated me on my physician. positively not once, yet!" i was obliged to confess that i did not quite know what she meant. "my physician, mr. woodcourt, my dear, who was so exceedingly attentive to me. though his services were rendered quite gratuitously. until the day of judgment. i mean the judgment that will dissolve the spell upon me of the mace and seal." "mr. woodcourt is so far away, now," said i, "that i thought the time for such congratulation was past, miss flite." "but, my child," she returned, "is it possible that you don't know what has happened?" "no," said i. "not what everybody has been talking of, my beloved fitz jarndyce!" "no," said i. "you forget how long i have been here." "true! my dear, for the moment--true. i blame myself. but my memory has been drawn out of me, with everything else, by what i mentioned. ve-ry strong influence, is it not? well, my dear, there has been a terrible shipwreck over in those east indian seas." "mr. woodcourt shipwrecked!" "don't be agitated, my dear. he is safe. an awful scene. death in all shapes. hundreds of dead and dying. fire, storm, and darkness. numbers of the drowning thrown upon a rock. there, and through it all, my dear physician was a hero. calm and brave through everything. saved many lives, never complained in hunger and thirst, wrapped naked people in his spare clothes, took the lead, showed them what to do, governed them, tended the sick, buried the dead, and brought the poor survivors safely off at last! my dear, the poor emaciated creatures all but worshipped him. they fell down at his feet when they got to the land and blessed him. the whole country rings with it. stay! where's my bag of documents? i have got it there, and you shall read it, you shall read it!" and i did read all the noble history, though very slowly and imperfectly then, for my eyes were so dimmed that i could not see the words, and i cried so much that i was many times obliged to lay down the long account she had cut out of the newspaper. i felt so triumphant ever to have known the man who had done such generous and gallant deeds, i felt such glowing exultation in his renown, i so admired and loved what he had done, that i envied the storm-worn people who had fallen at his feet and blessed him as their preserver. i could myself have kneeled down then, so far away, and blessed him in my rapture that he should be so truly good and brave. i felt that no one--mother, sister, wife--could honour him more than i. i did, indeed! my poor little visitor made me a present of the account, and when as the evening began to close in she rose to take her leave, lest she should miss the coach by which she was to return, she was still full of the shipwreck, which i had not yet sufficiently composed myself to understand in all its details. "my dear," said she as she carefully folded up her scarf and gloves, "my brave physician ought to have a title bestowed upon him. and no doubt he will. you are of that opinion?" that he well deserved one, yes. that he would ever have one, no. "why not, fitz jarndyce?" she asked rather sharply. i said it was not the custom in england to confer titles on men distinguished by peaceful services, however good and great, unless occasionally when they consisted of the accumulation of some very large amount of money. "why, good gracious," said miss flite, "how can you say that? surely you know, my dear, that all the greatest ornaments of england in knowledge, imagination, active humanity, and improvement of every sort are added to its nobility! look round you, my dear, and consider. you must be rambling a little now, i think, if you don't know that this is the great reason why titles will always last in the land!" i am afraid she believed what she said, for there were moments when she was very mad indeed. and now i must part with the little secret i have thus far tried to keep. i had thought, sometimes, that mr. woodcourt loved me and that if he had been richer he would perhaps have told me that he loved me before he went away. i had thought, sometimes, that if he had done so, i should have been glad of it. but how much better it was now that this had never happened! what should i have suffered if i had had to write to him and tell him that the poor face he had known as mine was quite gone from me and that i freely released him from his bondage to one whom he had never seen! oh, it was so much better as it was! with a great pang mercifully spared me, i could take back to my heart my childish prayer to be all he had so brightly shown himself; and there was nothing to be undone: no chain for me to break or for him to drag; and i could go, please god, my lowly way along the path of duty, and he could go his nobler way upon its broader road; and though we were apart upon the journey, i might aspire to meet him, unselfishly, innocently, better far than he had thought me when i found some favour in his eyes, at the journey's end. chapter xxxvi chesney wold charley and i did not set off alone upon our expedition into lincolnshire. my guardian had made up his mind not to lose sight of me until i was safe in mr. boythorn's house, so he accompanied us, and we were two days upon the road. i found every breath of air, and every scent, and every flower and leaf and blade of grass, and every passing cloud, and everything in nature, more beautiful and wonderful to me than i had ever found it yet. this was my first gain from my illness. how little i had lost, when the wide world was so full of delight for me. my guardian intending to go back immediately, we appointed, on our way down, a day when my dear girl should come. i wrote her a letter, of which he took charge, and he left us within half an hour of our arrival at our destination, on a delightful evening in the early summer-time. if a good fairy had built the house for me with a wave of her wand, and i had been a princess and her favoured god-child, i could not have been more considered in it. so many preparations were made for me and such an endearing remembrance was shown of all my little tastes and likings that i could have sat down, overcome, a dozen times before i had revisited half the rooms. i did better than that, however, by showing them all to charley instead. charley's delight calmed mine; and after we had had a walk in the garden, and charley had exhausted her whole vocabulary of admiring expressions, i was as tranquilly happy as i ought to have been. it was a great comfort to be able to say to myself after tea, "esther, my dear, i think you are quite sensible enough to sit down now and write a note of thanks to your host." he had left a note of welcome for me, as sunny as his own face, and had confided his bird to my care, which i knew to be his highest mark of confidence. accordingly i wrote a little note to him in london, telling him how all his favourite plants and trees were looking, and how the most astonishing of birds had chirped the honours of the house to me in the most hospitable manner, and how, after singing on my shoulder, to the inconceivable rapture of my little maid, he was then at roost in the usual corner of his cage, but whether dreaming or no i could not report. my note finished and sent off to the post, i made myself very busy in unpacking and arranging; and i sent charley to bed in good time and told her i should want her no more that night. for i had not yet looked in the glass and had never asked to have my own restored to me. i knew this to be a weakness which must be overcome, but i had always said to myself that i would begin afresh when i got to where i now was. therefore i had wanted to be alone, and therefore i said, now alone, in my own room, "esther, if you are to be happy, if you are to have any right to pray to be true-hearted, you must keep your word, my dear." i was quite resolved to keep it, but i sat down for a little while first to reflect upon all my blessings. and then i said my prayers and thought a little more. my hair had not been cut off, though it had been in danger more than once. it was long and thick. i let it down, and shook it out, and went up to the glass upon the dressing-table. there was a little muslin curtain drawn across it. i drew it back and stood for a moment looking through such a veil of my own hair that i could see nothing else. then i put my hair aside and looked at the reflection in the mirror, encouraged by seeing how placidly it looked at me. i was very much changed--oh, very, very much. at first my face was so strange to me that i think i should have put my hands before it and started back but for the encouragement i have mentioned. very soon it became more familiar, and then i knew the extent of the alteration in it better than i had done at first. it was not like what i had expected, but i had expected nothing definite, and i dare say anything definite would have surprised me. i had never been a beauty and had never thought myself one, but i had been very different from this. it was all gone now. heaven was so good to me that i could let it go with a few not bitter tears and could stand there arranging my hair for the night quite thankfully. one thing troubled me, and i considered it for a long time before i went to sleep. i had kept mr. woodcourt's flowers. when they were withered i had dried them and put them in a book that i was fond of. nobody knew this, not even ada. i was doubtful whether i had a right to preserve what he had sent to one so different--whether it was generous towards him to do it. i wished to be generous to him, even in the secret depths of my heart, which he would never know, because i could have loved him--could have been devoted to him. at last i came to the conclusion that i might keep them if i treasured them only as a remembrance of what was irrevocably past and gone, never to be looked back on any more, in any other light. i hope this may not seem trivial. i was very much in earnest. i took care to be up early in the morning and to be before the glass when charley came in on tiptoe. "dear, dear, miss!" cried charley, starting. "is that you?" "yes, charley," said i, quietly putting up my hair. "and i am very well indeed, and very happy." i saw it was a weight off charley's mind, but it was a greater weight off mine. i knew the worst now and was composed to it. i shall not conceal, as i go on, the weaknesses i could not quite conquer, but they always passed from me soon and the happier frame of mind stayed by me faithfully. wishing to be fully re-established in my strength and my good spirits before ada came, i now laid down a little series of plans with charley for being in the fresh air all day long. we were to be out before breakfast, and were to dine early, and were to be out again before and after dinner, and were to talk in the garden after tea, and were to go to rest betimes, and were to climb every hill and explore every road, lane, and field in the neighbourhood. as to restoratives and strengthening delicacies, mr. boythorn's good housekeeper was for ever trotting about with something to eat or drink in her hand; i could not even be heard of as resting in the park but she would come trotting after me with a basket, her cheerful face shining with a lecture on the importance of frequent nourishment. then there was a pony expressly for my riding, a chubby pony with a short neck and a mane all over his eyes who could canter--when he would--so easily and quietly that he was a treasure. in a very few days he would come to me in the paddock when i called him, and eat out of my hand, and follow me about. we arrived at such a capital understanding that when he was jogging with me lazily, and rather obstinately, down some shady lane, if i patted his neck and said, "stubbs, i am surprised you don't canter when you know how much i like it; and i think you might oblige me, for you are only getting stupid and going to sleep," he would give his head a comical shake or two and set off directly, while charley would stand still and laugh with such enjoyment that her laughter was like music. i don't know who had given stubbs his name, but it seemed to belong to him as naturally as his rough coat. once we put him in a little chaise and drove him triumphantly through the green lanes for five miles; but all at once, as we were extolling him to the skies, he seemed to take it ill that he should have been accompanied so far by the circle of tantalizing little gnats that had been hovering round and round his ears the whole way without appearing to advance an inch, and stopped to think about it. i suppose he came to the decision that it was not to be borne, for he steadily refused to move until i gave the reins to charley and got out and walked, when he followed me with a sturdy sort of good humour, putting his head under my arm and rubbing his ear against my sleeve. it was in vain for me to say, "now, stubbs, i feel quite sure from what i know of you that you will go on if i ride a little while," for the moment i left him, he stood stock still again. consequently i was obliged to lead the way, as before; and in this order we returned home, to the great delight of the village. charley and i had reason to call it the most friendly of villages, i am sure, for in a week's time the people were so glad to see us go by, though ever so frequently in the course of a day, that there were faces of greeting in every cottage. i had known many of the grown people before and almost all the children, but now the very steeple began to wear a familiar and affectionate look. among my new friends was an old old woman who lived in such a little thatched and whitewashed dwelling that when the outside shutter was turned up on its hinges, it shut up the whole house-front. this old lady had a grandson who was a sailor, and i wrote a letter to him for her and drew at the top of it the chimney-corner in which she had brought him up and where his old stool yet occupied its old place. this was considered by the whole village the most wonderful achievement in the world, but when an answer came back all the way from plymouth, in which he mentioned that he was going to take the picture all the way to america, and from america would write again, i got all the credit that ought to have been given to the post-office and was invested with the merit of the whole system. thus, what with being so much in the air, playing with so many children, gossiping with so many people, sitting on invitation in so many cottages, going on with charley's education, and writing long letters to ada every day, i had scarcely any time to think about that little loss of mine and was almost always cheerful. if i did think of it at odd moments now and then, i had only to be busy and forget it. i felt it more than i had hoped i should once when a child said, "mother, why is the lady not a pretty lady now like she used to be?" but when i found the child was not less fond of me, and drew its soft hand over my face with a kind of pitying protection in its touch, that soon set me up again. there were many little occurrences which suggested to me, with great consolation, how natural it is to gentle hearts to be considerate and delicate towards any inferiority. one of these particularly touched me. i happened to stroll into the little church when a marriage was just concluded, and the young couple had to sign the register. the bridegroom, to whom the pen was handed first, made a rude cross for his mark; the bride, who came next, did the same. now, i had known the bride when i was last there, not only as the prettiest girl in the place, but as having quite distinguished herself in the school, and i could not help looking at her with some surprise. she came aside and whispered to me, while tears of honest love and admiration stood in her bright eyes, "he's a dear good fellow, miss; but he can't write yet--he's going to learn of me--and i wouldn't shame him for the world!" why, what had i to fear, i thought, when there was this nobility in the soul of a labouring man's daughter! the air blew as freshly and revivingly upon me as it had ever blown, and the healthy colour came into my new face as it had come into my old one. charley was wonderful to see, she was so radiant and so rosy; and we both enjoyed the whole day and slept soundly the whole night. there was a favourite spot of mine in the park-woods of chesney wold where a seat had been erected commanding a lovely view. the wood had been cleared and opened to improve this point of sight, and the bright sunny landscape beyond was so beautiful that i rested there at least once every day. a picturesque part of the hall, called the ghost's walk, was seen to advantage from this higher ground; and the startling name, and the old legend in the dedlock family which i had heard from mr. boythorn accounting for it, mingled with the view and gave it something of a mysterious interest in addition to its real charms. there was a bank here, too, which was a famous one for violets; and as it was a daily delight of charley's to gather wild flowers, she took as much to the spot as i did. it would be idle to inquire now why i never went close to the house or never went inside it. the family were not there, i had heard on my arrival, and were not expected. i was far from being incurious or uninterested about the building; on the contrary, i often sat in this place wondering how the rooms ranged and whether any echo like a footstep really did resound at times, as the story said, upon the lonely ghost's walk. the indefinable feeling with which lady dedlock had impressed me may have had some influence in keeping me from the house even when she was absent. i am not sure. her face and figure were associated with it, naturally; but i cannot say that they repelled me from it, though something did. for whatever reason or no reason, i had never once gone near it, down to the day at which my story now arrives. i was resting at my favourite point after a long ramble, and charley was gathering violets at a little distance from me. i had been looking at the ghost's walk lying in a deep shade of masonry afar off and picturing to myself the female shape that was said to haunt it when i became aware of a figure approaching through the wood. the perspective was so long and so darkened by leaves, and the shadows of the branches on the ground made it so much more intricate to the eye, that at first i could not discern what figure it was. by little and little it revealed itself to be a woman's--a lady's--lady dedlock's. she was alone and coming to where i sat with a much quicker step, i observed to my surprise, than was usual with her. i was fluttered by her being unexpectedly so near (she was almost within speaking distance before i knew her) and would have risen to continue my walk. but i could not. i was rendered motionless. not so much by her hurried gesture of entreaty, not so much by her quick advance and outstretched hands, not so much by the great change in her manner and the absence of her haughty self-restraint, as by a something in her face that i had pined for and dreamed of when i was a little child, something i had never seen in any face, something i had never seen in hers before. a dread and faintness fell upon me, and i called to charley. lady dedlock stopped upon the instant and changed back almost to what i had known her. "miss summerson, i am afraid i have startled you," she said, now advancing slowly. "you can scarcely be strong yet. you have been very ill, i know. i have been much concerned to hear it." i could no more have removed my eyes from her pale face than i could have stirred from the bench on which i sat. she gave me her hand, and its deadly coldness, so at variance with the enforced composure of her features, deepened the fascination that overpowered me. i cannot say what was in my whirling thoughts. "you are recovering again?" she asked kindly. "i was quite well but a moment ago, lady dedlock." "is this your young attendant?" "yes." "will you send her on before and walk towards your house with me?" "charley," said i, "take your flowers home, and i will follow you directly." charley, with her best curtsy, blushingly tied on her bonnet and went her way. when she was gone, lady dedlock sat down on the seat beside me. i cannot tell in any words what the state of my mind was when i saw in her hand my handkerchief with which i had covered the dead baby. i looked at her, but i could not see her, i could not hear her, i could not draw my breath. the beating of my heart was so violent and wild that i felt as if my life were breaking from me. but when she caught me to her breast, kissed me, wept over me, compassionated me, and called me back to myself; when she fell down on her knees and cried to me, "oh, my child, my child, i am your wicked and unhappy mother! oh, try to forgive me!"--when i saw her at my feet on the bare earth in her great agony of mind, i felt, through all my tumult of emotion, a burst of gratitude to the providence of god that i was so changed as that i never could disgrace her by any trace of likeness, as that nobody could ever now look at me and look at her and remotely think of any near tie between us. i raised my mother up, praying and beseeching her not to stoop before me in such affliction and humiliation. i did so in broken, incoherent words, for besides the trouble i was in, it frightened me to see her at my feet. i told her--or i tried to tell her--that if it were for me, her child, under any circumstances to take upon me to forgive her, i did it, and had done it, many, many years. i told her that my heart overflowed with love for her, that it was natural love which nothing in the past had changed or could change. that it was not for me, then resting for the first time on my mother's bosom, to take her to account for having given me life, but that my duty was to bless her and receive her, though the whole world turned from her, and that i only asked her leave to do it. i held my mother in my embrace, and she held me in hers, and among the still woods in the silence of the summer day there seemed to be nothing but our two troubled minds that was not at peace. "to bless and receive me," groaned my mother, "it is far too late. i must travel my dark road alone, and it will lead me where it will. from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour, i do not see the way before my guilty feet. this is the earthly punishment i have brought upon myself. i bear it, and i hide it." even in the thinking of her endurance, she drew her habitual air of proud indifference about her like a veil, though she soon cast it off again. "i must keep this secret, if by any means it can be kept, not wholly for myself. i have a husband, wretched and dishonouring creature that i am!" these words she uttered with a suppressed cry of despair, more terrible in its sound than any shriek. covering her face with her hands, she shrank down in my embrace as if she were unwilling that i should touch her; nor could i, by my utmost persuasions or by any endearments i could use, prevail upon her to rise. she said, no, no, no, she could only speak to me so; she must be proud and disdainful everywhere else; she would be humbled and ashamed there, in the only natural moments of her life. my unhappy mother told me that in my illness she had been nearly frantic. she had but then known that her child was living. she could not have suspected me to be that child before. she had followed me down here to speak to me but once in all her life. we never could associate, never could communicate, never probably from that time forth could interchange another word on earth. she put into my hands a letter she had written for my reading only and said when i had read it and destroyed it--but not so much for her sake, since she asked nothing, as for her husband's and my own--i must evermore consider her as dead. if i could believe that she loved me, in this agony in which i saw her, with a mother's love, she asked me to do that, for then i might think of her with a greater pity, imagining what she suffered. she had put herself beyond all hope and beyond all help. whether she preserved her secret until death or it came to be discovered and she brought dishonour and disgrace upon the name she had taken, it was her solitary struggle always; and no affection could come near her, and no human creature could render her any aid. "but is the secret safe so far?" i asked. "is it safe now, dearest mother?" "no," replied my mother. "it has been very near discovery. it was saved by an accident. it may be lost by another accident--to-morrow, any day." "do you dread a particular person?" "hush! do not tremble and cry so much for me. i am not worthy of these tears," said my mother, kissing my hands. "i dread one person very much." "an enemy?" "not a friend. one who is too passionless to be either. he is sir leicester dedlock's lawyer, mechanically faithful without attachment, and very jealous of the profit, privilege, and reputation of being master of the mysteries of great houses." "has he any suspicions?" "many." "not of you?" i said alarmed. "yes! he is always vigilant and always near me. i may keep him at a standstill, but i can never shake him off." "has he so little pity or compunction?" "he has none, and no anger. he is indifferent to everything but his calling. his calling is the acquisition of secrets and the holding possession of such power as they give him, with no sharer or opponent in it." "could you trust in him?" "i shall never try. the dark road i have trodden for so many years will end where it will. i follow it alone to the end, whatever the end be. it may be near, it may be distant; while the road lasts, nothing turns me." "dear mother, are you so resolved?" "i am resolved. i have long outbidden folly with folly, pride with pride, scorn with scorn, insolence with insolence, and have outlived many vanities with many more. i will outlive this danger, and outdie it, if i can. it has closed around me almost as awfully as if these woods of chesney wold had closed around the house, but my course through it is the same. i have but one; i can have but one." "mr. jarndyce--" i was beginning when my mother hurriedly inquired, "does he suspect?" "no," said i. "no, indeed! be assured that he does not!" and i told her what he had related to me as his knowledge of my story. "but he is so good and sensible," said i, "that perhaps if he knew--" my mother, who until this time had made no change in her position, raised her hand up to my lips and stopped me. "confide fully in him," she said after a little while. "you have my free consent--a small gift from such a mother to her injured child!--but do not tell me of it. some pride is left in me even yet." i explained, as nearly as i could then, or can recall now--for my agitation and distress throughout were so great that i scarcely understood myself, though every word that was uttered in the mother's voice, so unfamiliar and so melancholy to me, which in my childhood i had never learned to love and recognize, had never been sung to sleep with, had never heard a blessing from, had never had a hope inspired by, made an enduring impression on my memory--i say i explained, or tried to do it, how i had only hoped that mr. jarndyce, who had been the best of fathers to me, might be able to afford some counsel and support to her. but my mother answered no, it was impossible; no one could help her. through the desert that lay before her, she must go alone. "my child, my child!" she said. "for the last time! these kisses for the last time! these arms upon my neck for the last time! we shall meet no more. to hope to do what i seek to do, i must be what i have been so long. such is my reward and doom. if you hear of lady dedlock, brilliant, prosperous, and flattered, think of your wretched mother, conscience-stricken, underneath that mask! think that the reality is in her suffering, in her useless remorse, in her murdering within her breast the only love and truth of which it is capable! and then forgive her if you can, and cry to heaven to forgive her, which it never can!" we held one another for a little space yet, but she was so firm that she took my hands away, and put them back against my breast, and with a last kiss as she held them there, released them, and went from me into the wood. i was alone, and calm and quiet below me in the sun and shade lay the old house, with its terraces and turrets, on which there had seemed to me to be such complete repose when i first saw it, but which now looked like the obdurate and unpitying watcher of my mother's misery. stunned as i was, as weak and helpless at first as i had ever been in my sick chamber, the necessity of guarding against the danger of discovery, or even of the remotest suspicion, did me service. i took such precautions as i could to hide from charley that i had been crying, and i constrained myself to think of every sacred obligation that there was upon me to be careful and collected. it was not a little while before i could succeed or could even restrain bursts of grief, but after an hour or so i was better and felt that i might return. i went home very slowly and told charley, whom i found at the gate looking for me, that i had been tempted to extend my walk after lady dedlock had left me and that i was over-tired and would lie down. safe in my own room, i read the letter. i clearly derived from it--and that was much then--that i had not been abandoned by my mother. her elder and only sister, the godmother of my childhood, discovering signs of life in me when i had been laid aside as dead, had in her stern sense of duty, with no desire or willingness that i should live, reared me in rigid secrecy and had never again beheld my mother's face from within a few hours of my birth. so strangely did i hold my place in this world that until within a short time back i had never, to my own mother's knowledge, breathed--had been buried--had never been endowed with life--had never borne a name. when she had first seen me in the church she had been startled and had thought of what would have been like me if it had ever lived, and had lived on, but that was all then. what more the letter told me needs not to be repeated here. it has its own times and places in my story. my first care was to burn what my mother had written and to consume even its ashes. i hope it may not appear very unnatural or bad in me that i then became heavily sorrowful to think i had ever been reared. that i felt as if i knew it would have been better and happier for many people if indeed i had never breathed. that i had a terror of myself as the danger and the possible disgrace of my own mother and of a proud family name. that i was so confused and shaken as to be possessed by a belief that it was right and had been intended that i should die in my birth, and that it was wrong and not intended that i should be then alive. these are the real feelings that i had. i fell asleep worn out, and when i awoke i cried afresh to think that i was back in the world with my load of trouble for others. i was more than ever frightened of myself, thinking anew of her against whom i was a witness, of the owner of chesney wold, of the new and terrible meaning of the old words now moaning in my ear like a surge upon the shore, "your mother, esther, was your disgrace, and you are hers. the time will come--and soon enough--when you will understand this better, and will feel it too, as no one save a woman can." with them, those other words returned, "pray daily that the sins of others be not visited upon your head." i could not disentangle all that was about me, and i felt as if the blame and the shame were all in me, and the visitation had come down. the day waned into a gloomy evening, overcast and sad, and i still contended with the same distress. i went out alone, and after walking a little in the park, watching the dark shades falling on the trees and the fitful flight of the bats, which sometimes almost touched me, was attracted to the house for the first time. perhaps i might not have gone near it if i had been in a stronger frame of mind. as it was, i took the path that led close by it. i did not dare to linger or to look up, but i passed before the terrace garden with its fragrant odours, and its broad walks, and its well-kept beds and smooth turf; and i saw how beautiful and grave it was, and how the old stone balustrades and parapets, and wide flights of shallow steps, were seamed by time and weather; and how the trained moss and ivy grew about them, and around the old stone pedestal of the sun-dial; and i heard the fountain falling. then the way went by long lines of dark windows diversified by turreted towers and porches of eccentric shapes, where old stone lions and grotesque monsters bristled outside dens of shadow and snarled at the evening gloom over the escutcheons they held in their grip. thence the path wound underneath a gateway, and through a court-yard where the principal entrance was (i hurried quickly on), and by the stables where none but deep voices seemed to be, whether in the murmuring of the wind through the strong mass of ivy holding to a high red wall, or in the low complaining of the weathercock, or in the barking of the dogs, or in the slow striking of a clock. so, encountering presently a sweet smell of limes, whose rustling i could hear, i turned with the turning of the path to the south front, and there above me were the balustrades of the ghost's walk and one lighted window that might be my mother's. the way was paved here, like the terrace overhead, and my footsteps from being noiseless made an echoing sound upon the flags. stopping to look at nothing, but seeing all i did see as i went, i was passing quickly on, and in a few moments should have passed the lighted window, when my echoing footsteps brought it suddenly into my mind that there was a dreadful truth in the legend of the ghost's walk, that it was i who was to bring calamity upon the stately house and that my warning feet were haunting it even then. seized with an augmented terror of myself which turned me cold, i ran from myself and everything, retraced the way by which i had come, and never paused until i had gained the lodge-gate, and the park lay sullen and black behind me. not before i was alone in my own room for the night and had again been dejected and unhappy there did i begin to know how wrong and thankless this state was. but from my darling who was coming on the morrow, i found a joyful letter, full of such loving anticipation that i must have been of marble if it had not moved me; from my guardian, too, i found another letter, asking me to tell dame durden, if i should see that little woman anywhere, that they had moped most pitiably without her, that the housekeeping was going to rack and ruin, that nobody else could manage the keys, and that everybody in and about the house declared it was not the same house and was becoming rebellious for her return. two such letters together made me think how far beyond my deserts i was beloved and how happy i ought to be. that made me think of all my past life; and that brought me, as it ought to have done before, into a better condition. for i saw very well that i could not have been intended to die, or i should never have lived; not to say should never have been reserved for such a happy life. i saw very well how many things had worked together for my welfare, and that if the sins of the fathers were sometimes visited upon the children, the phrase did not mean what i had in the morning feared it meant. i knew i was as innocent of my birth as a queen of hers and that before my heavenly father i should not be punished for birth nor a queen rewarded for it. i had had experience, in the shock of that very day, that i could, even thus soon, find comforting reconcilements to the change that had fallen on me. i renewed my resolutions and prayed to be strengthened in them, pouring out my heart for myself and for my unhappy mother and feeling that the darkness of the morning was passing away. it was not upon my sleep; and when the next day's light awoke me, it was gone. my dear girl was to arrive at five o'clock in the afternoon. how to help myself through the intermediate time better than by taking a long walk along the road by which she was to come, i did not know; so charley and i and stubbs--stubbs saddled, for we never drove him after the one great occasion--made a long expedition along that road and back. on our return, we held a great review of the house and garden and saw that everything was in its prettiest condition, and had the bird out ready as an important part of the establishment. there were more than two full hours yet to elapse before she could come, and in that interval, which seemed a long one, i must confess i was nervously anxious about my altered looks. i loved my darling so well that i was more concerned for their effect on her than on any one. i was not in this slight distress because i at all repined--i am quite certain i did not, that day--but, i thought, would she be wholly prepared? when she first saw me, might she not be a little shocked and disappointed? might it not prove a little worse than she expected? might she not look for her old esther and not find her? might she not have to grow used to me and to begin all over again? i knew the various expressions of my sweet girl's face so well, and it was such an honest face in its loveliness, that i was sure beforehand she could not hide that first look from me. and i considered whether, if it should signify any one of these meanings, which was so very likely, could i quite answer for myself? well, i thought i could. after last night, i thought i could. but to wait and wait, and expect and expect, and think and think, was such bad preparation that i resolved to go along the road again and meet her. so i said to charley, "charley, i will go by myself and walk along the road until she comes." charley highly approving of anything that pleased me, i went and left her at home. but before i got to the second milestone, i had been in so many palpitations from seeing dust in the distance (though i knew it was not, and could not, be the coach yet) that i resolved to turn back and go home again. and when i had turned, i was in such fear of the coach coming up behind me (though i still knew that it neither would, nor could, do any such thing) that i ran the greater part of the way to avoid being overtaken. then, i considered, when i had got safe back again, this was a nice thing to have done! now i was hot and had made the worst of it instead of the best. at last, when i believed there was at least a quarter of an hour more yet, charley all at once cried out to me as i was trembling in the garden, "here she comes, miss! here she is!" i did not mean to do it, but i ran upstairs into my room and hid myself behind the door. there i stood trembling, even when i heard my darling calling as she came upstairs, "esther, my dear, my love, where are you? little woman, dear dame durden!" she ran in, and was running out again when she saw me. ah, my angel girl! the old dear look, all love, all fondness, all affection. nothing else in it--no, nothing, nothing! oh, how happy i was, down upon the floor, with my sweet beautiful girl down upon the floor too, holding my scarred face to her lovely cheek, bathing it with tears and kisses, rocking me to and fro like a child, calling me by every tender name that she could think of, and pressing me to her faithful heart. chapter xxxvii jarndyce and jarndyce if the secret i had to keep had been mine, i must have confided it to ada before we had been long together. but it was not mine, and i did not feel that i had a right to tell it, even to my guardian, unless some great emergency arose. it was a weight to bear alone; still my present duty appeared to be plain, and blest in the attachment of my dear, i did not want an impulse and encouragement to do it. though often when she was asleep and all was quiet, the remembrance of my mother kept me waking and made the night sorrowful, i did not yield to it at another time; and ada found me what i used to be--except, of course, in that particular of which i have said enough and which i have no intention of mentioning any more just now, if i can help it. the difficulty that i felt in being quite composed that first evening when ada asked me, over our work, if the family were at the house, and when i was obliged to answer yes, i believed so, for lady dedlock had spoken to me in the woods the day before yesterday, was great. greater still when ada asked me what she had said, and when i replied that she had been kind and interested, and when ada, while admitting her beauty and elegance, remarked upon her proud manner and her imperious chilling air. but charley helped me through, unconsciously, by telling us that lady dedlock had only stayed at the house two nights on her way from london to visit at some other great house in the next county and that she had left early on the morning after we had seen her at our view, as we called it. charley verified the adage about little pitchers, i am sure, for she heard of more sayings and doings in a day than would have come to my ears in a month. we were to stay a month at mr. boythorn's. my pet had scarcely been there a bright week, as i recollect the time, when one evening after we had finished helping the gardener in watering his flowers, and just as the candles were lighted, charley, appearing with a very important air behind ada's chair, beckoned me mysteriously out of the room. "oh! if you please, miss," said charley in a whisper, with her eyes at their roundest and largest. "you're wanted at the dedlock arms." "why, charley," said i, "who can possibly want me at the public-house?" "i don't know, miss," returned charley, putting her head forward and folding her hands tight upon the band of her little apron, which she always did in the enjoyment of anything mysterious or confidential, "but it's a gentleman, miss, and his compliments, and will you please to come without saying anything about it." "whose compliments, charley?" "his'n, miss," returned charley, whose grammatical education was advancing, but not very rapidly. "and how do you come to be the messenger, charley?" "i am not the messenger, if you please, miss," returned my little maid. "it was w. grubble, miss." "and who is w. grubble, charley?" "mister grubble, miss," returned charley. "don't you know, miss? the dedlock arms, by w. grubble," which charley delivered as if she were slowly spelling out the sign. "aye? the landlord, charley?" "yes, miss. if you please, miss, his wife is a beautiful woman, but she broke her ankle, and it never joined. and her brother's the sawyer that was put in the cage, miss, and they expect he'll drink himself to death entirely on beer," said charley. not knowing what might be the matter, and being easily apprehensive now, i thought it best to go to this place by myself. i bade charley be quick with my bonnet and veil and my shawl, and having put them on, went away down the little hilly street, where i was as much at home as in mr. boythorn's garden. mr. grubble was standing in his shirt-sleeves at the door of his very clean little tavern waiting for me. he lifted off his hat with both hands when he saw me coming, and carrying it so, as if it were an iron vessel (it looked as heavy), preceded me along the sanded passage to his best parlour, a neat carpeted room with more plants in it than were quite convenient, a coloured print of queen caroline, several shells, a good many tea-trays, two stuffed and dried fish in glass cases, and either a curious egg or a curious pumpkin (but i don't know which, and i doubt if many people did) hanging from his ceiling. i knew mr. grubble very well by sight, from his often standing at his door. a pleasant-looking, stoutish, middle-aged man who never seemed to consider himself cozily dressed for his own fire-side without his hat and top-boots, but who never wore a coat except at church. he snuffed the candle, and backing away a little to see how it looked, backed out of the room--unexpectedly to me, for i was going to ask him by whom he had been sent. the door of the opposite parlour being then opened, i heard some voices, familiar in my ears i thought, which stopped. a quick light step approached the room in which i was, and who should stand before me but richard! "my dear esther!" he said. "my best friend!" and he really was so warm-hearted and earnest that in the first surprise and pleasure of his brotherly greeting i could scarcely find breath to tell him that ada was well. "answering my very thoughts--always the same dear girl!" said richard, leading me to a chair and seating himself beside me. i put my veil up, but not quite. "always the same dear girl!" said richard just as heartily as before. i put up my veil altogether, and laying my hand on richard's sleeve and looking in his face, told him how much i thanked him for his kind welcome and how greatly i rejoiced to see him, the more so because of the determination i had made in my illness, which i now conveyed to him. "my love," said richard, "there is no one with whom i have a greater wish to talk than you, for i want you to understand me." "and i want you, richard," said i, shaking my head, "to understand some one else." "since you refer so immediately to john jarndyce," said richard, "--i suppose you mean him?" "of course i do." "then i may say at once that i am glad of it, because it is on that subject that i am anxious to be understood. by you, mind--you, my dear! i am not accountable to mr. jarndyce or mr. anybody." i was pained to find him taking this tone, and he observed it. "well, well, my dear," said richard, "we won't go into that now. i want to appear quietly in your country-house here, with you under my arm, and give my charming cousin a surprise. i suppose your loyalty to john jarndyce will allow that?" "my dear richard," i returned, "you know you would be heartily welcome at his house--your home, if you will but consider it so; and you are as heartily welcome here!" "spoken like the best of little women!" cried richard gaily. i asked him how he liked his profession. "oh, i like it well enough!" said richard. "it's all right. it does as well as anything else, for a time. i don't know that i shall care about it when i come to be settled, but i can sell out then and--however, never mind all that botheration at present." so young and handsome, and in all respects so perfectly the opposite of miss flite! and yet, in the clouded, eager, seeking look that passed over him, so dreadfully like her! "i am in town on leave just now," said richard. "indeed?" "yes. i have run over to look after my--my chancery interests before the long vacation," said richard, forcing a careless laugh. "we are beginning to spin along with that old suit at last, i promise you." no wonder that i shook my head! "as you say, it's not a pleasant subject." richard spoke with the same shade crossing his face as before. "let it go to the four winds for to-night. puff! gone! who do you suppose is with me?" "was it mr. skimpole's voice i heard?" "that's the man! he does me more good than anybody. what a fascinating child it is!" i asked richard if any one knew of their coming down together. he answered, no, nobody. he had been to call upon the dear old infant--so he called mr. skimpole--and the dear old infant had told him where we were, and he had told the dear old infant he was bent on coming to see us, and the dear old infant had directly wanted to come too; and so he had brought him. "and he is worth--not to say his sordid expenses--but thrice his weight in gold," said richard. "he is such a cheery fellow. no worldliness about him. fresh and green-hearted!" i certainly did not see the proof of mr. skimpole's worldliness in his having his expenses paid by richard, but i made no remark about that. indeed, he came in and turned our conversation. he was charmed to see me, said he had been shedding delicious tears of joy and sympathy at intervals for six weeks on my account, had never been so happy as in hearing of my progress, began to understand the mixture of good and evil in the world now, felt that he appreciated health the more when somebody else was ill, didn't know but what it might be in the scheme of things that a should squint to make b happier in looking straight or that c should carry a wooden leg to make d better satisfied with his flesh and blood in a silk stocking. "my dear miss summerson, here is our friend richard," said mr. skimpole, "full of the brightest visions of the future, which he evokes out of the darkness of chancery. now that's delightful, that's inspiriting, that's full of poetry! in old times the woods and solitudes were made joyous to the shepherd by the imaginary piping and dancing of pan and the nymphs. this present shepherd, our pastoral richard, brightens the dull inns of court by making fortune and her train sport through them to the melodious notes of a judgment from the bench. that's very pleasant, you know! some ill-conditioned growling fellow may say to me, 'what's the use of these legal and equitable abuses? how do you defend them?' i reply, 'my growling friend, i don't defend them, but they are very agreeable to me. there is a shepherd--youth, a friend of mine, who transmutes them into something highly fascinating to my simplicity. i don't say it is for this that they exist--for i am a child among you worldly grumblers, and not called upon to account to you or myself for anything--but it may be so.'" i began seriously to think that richard could scarcely have found a worse friend than this. it made me uneasy that at such a time when he most required some right principle and purpose he should have this captivating looseness and putting-off of everything, this airy dispensing with all principle and purpose, at his elbow. i thought i could understand how such a nature as my guardian's, experienced in the world and forced to contemplate the miserable evasions and contentions of the family misfortune, found an immense relief in mr. skimpole's avowal of his weaknesses and display of guileless candour; but i could not satisfy myself that it was as artless as it seemed or that it did not serve mr. skimpole's idle turn quite as well as any other part, and with less trouble. they both walked back with me, and mr. skimpole leaving us at the gate, i walked softly in with richard and said, "ada, my love, i have brought a gentleman to visit you." it was not difficult to read the blushing, startled face. she loved him dearly, and he knew it, and i knew it. it was a very transparent business, that meeting as cousins only. i almost mistrusted myself as growing quite wicked in my suspicions, but i was not so sure that richard loved her dearly. he admired her very much--any one must have done that--and i dare say would have renewed their youthful engagement with great pride and ardour but that he knew how she would respect her promise to my guardian. still i had a tormenting idea that the influence upon him extended even here, that he was postponing his best truth and earnestness in this as in all things until jarndyce and jarndyce should be off his mind. ah me! what richard would have been without that blight, i never shall know now! he told ada, in his most ingenuous way, that he had not come to make any secret inroad on the terms she had accepted (rather too implicitly and confidingly, he thought) from mr. jarndyce, that he had come openly to see her and to see me and to justify himself for the present terms on which he stood with mr. jarndyce. as the dear old infant would be with us directly, he begged that i would make an appointment for the morning, when he might set himself right through the means of an unreserved conversation with me. i proposed to walk with him in the park at seven o'clock, and this was arranged. mr. skimpole soon afterwards appeared and made us merry for an hour. he particularly requested to see little coavinses (meaning charley) and told her, with a patriarchal air, that he had given her late father all the business in his power and that if one of her little brothers would make haste to get set up in the same profession, he hoped he should still be able to put a good deal of employment in his way. "for i am constantly being taken in these nets," said mr. skimpole, looking beamingly at us over a glass of wine-and-water, "and am constantly being bailed out--like a boat. or paid off--like a ship's company. somebody always does it for me. i can't do it, you know, for i never have any money. but somebody does it. i get out by somebody's means; i am not like the starling; i get out. if you were to ask me who somebody is, upon my word i couldn't tell you. let us drink to somebody. god bless him!" richard was a little late in the morning, but i had not to wait for him long, and we turned into the park. the air was bright and dewy and the sky without a cloud. the birds sang delightfully; the sparkles in the fern, the grass, and trees, were exquisite to see; the richness of the woods seemed to have increased twenty-fold since yesterday, as if, in the still night when they had looked so massively hushed in sleep, nature, through all the minute details of every wonderful leaf, had been more wakeful than usual for the glory of that day. "this is a lovely place," said richard, looking round. "none of the jar and discord of law-suits here!" but there was other trouble. "i tell you what, my dear girl," said richard, "when i get affairs in general settled, i shall come down here, i think, and rest." "would it not be better to rest now?" i asked. "oh, as to resting now," said richard, "or as to doing anything very definite now, that's not easy. in short, it can't be done; i can't do it at least." "why not?" said i. "you know why not, esther. if you were living in an unfinished house, liable to have the roof put on or taken off--to be from top to bottom pulled down or built up--to-morrow, next day, next week, next month, next year--you would find it hard to rest or settle. so do i. now? there's no now for us suitors." i could almost have believed in the attraction on which my poor little wandering friend had expatiated when i saw again the darkened look of last night. terrible to think it had in it also a shade of that unfortunate man who had died. "my dear richard," said i, "this is a bad beginning of our conversation." "i knew you would tell me so, dame durden." "and not i alone, dear richard. it was not i who cautioned you once never to found a hope or expectation on the family curse." "there you come back to john jarndyce!" said richard impatiently. "well! we must approach him sooner or later, for he is the staple of what i have to say, and it's as well at once. my dear esther, how can you be so blind? don't you see that he is an interested party and that it may be very well for him to wish me to know nothing of the suit, and care nothing about it, but that it may not be quite so well for me?" "oh, richard," i remonstrated, "is it possible that you can ever have seen him and heard him, that you can ever have lived under his roof and known him, and can yet breathe, even to me in this solitary place where there is no one to hear us, such unworthy suspicions?" he reddened deeply, as if his natural generosity felt a pang of reproach. he was silent for a little while before he replied in a subdued voice, "esther, i am sure you know that i am not a mean fellow and that i have some sense of suspicion and distrust being poor qualities in one of my years." "i know it very well," said i. "i am not more sure of anything." "that's a dear girl," retorted richard, "and like you, because it gives me comfort. i had need to get some scrap of comfort out of all this business, for it's a bad one at the best, as i have no occasion to tell you." "i know perfectly," said i. "i know as well, richard--what shall i say? as well as you do--that such misconstructions are foreign to your nature. and i know, as well as you know, what so changes it." "come, sister, come," said richard a little more gaily, "you will be fair with me at all events. if i have the misfortune to be under that influence, so has he. if it has a little twisted me, it may have a little twisted him too. i don't say that he is not an honourable man, out of all this complication and uncertainty; i am sure he is. but it taints everybody. you know it taints everybody. you have heard him say so fifty times. then why should he escape?" "because," said i, "his is an uncommon character, and he has resolutely kept himself outside the circle, richard." "oh, because and because!" replied richard in his vivacious way. "i am not sure, my dear girl, but that it may be wise and specious to preserve that outward indifference. it may cause other parties interested to become lax about their interests; and people may die off, and points may drag themselves out of memory, and many things may smoothly happen that are convenient enough." i was so touched with pity for richard that i could not reproach him any more, even by a look. i remembered my guardian's gentleness towards his errors and with what perfect freedom from resentment he had spoken of them. "esther," richard resumed, "you are not to suppose that i have come here to make underhanded charges against john jarndyce. i have only come to justify myself. what i say is, it was all very well and we got on very well while i was a boy, utterly regardless of this same suit; but as soon as i began to take an interest in it and to look into it, then it was quite another thing. then john jarndyce discovers that ada and i must break off and that if i don't amend that very objectionable course, i am not fit for her. now, esther, i don't mean to amend that very objectionable course: i will not hold john jarndyce's favour on those unfair terms of compromise, which he has no right to dictate. whether it pleases him or displeases him, i must maintain my rights and ada's. i have been thinking about it a good deal, and this is the conclusion i have come to." poor dear richard! he had indeed been thinking about it a good deal. his face, his voice, his manner, all showed that too plainly. "so i tell him honourably (you are to know i have written to him about all this) that we are at issue and that we had better be at issue openly than covertly. i thank him for his goodwill and his protection, and he goes his road, and i go mine. the fact is, our roads are not the same. under one of the wills in dispute, i should take much more than he. i don't mean to say that it is the one to be established, but there it is, and it has its chance." "i have not to learn from you, my dear richard," said i, "of your letter. i had heard of it already without an offended or angry word." "indeed?" replied richard, softening. "i am glad i said he was an honourable man, out of all this wretched affair. but i always say that and have never doubted it. now, my dear esther, i know these views of mine appear extremely harsh to you, and will to ada when you tell her what has passed between us. but if you had gone into the case as i have, if you had only applied yourself to the papers as i did when i was at kenge's, if you only knew what an accumulation of charges and counter-charges, and suspicions and cross-suspicions, they involve, you would think me moderate in comparison." "perhaps so," said i. "but do you think that, among those many papers, there is much truth and justice, richard?" "there is truth and justice somewhere in the case, esther--" "or was once, long ago," said i. "is--is--must be somewhere," pursued richard impetuously, "and must be brought out. to allow ada to be made a bribe and hush-money of is not the way to bring it out. you say the suit is changing me; john jarndyce says it changes, has changed, and will change everybody who has any share in it. then the greater right i have on my side when i resolve to do all i can to bring it to an end." "all you can, richard! do you think that in these many years no others have done all they could? has the difficulty grown easier because of so many failures?" "it can't last for ever," returned richard with a fierceness kindling in him which again presented to me that last sad reminder. "i am young and earnest, and energy and determination have done wonders many a time. others have only half thrown themselves into it. i devote myself to it. i make it the object of my life." "oh, richard, my dear, so much the worse, so much the worse!" "no, no, no, don't you be afraid for me," he returned affectionately. "you're a dear, good, wise, quiet, blessed girl; but you have your prepossessions. so i come round to john jarndyce. i tell you, my good esther, when he and i were on those terms which he found so convenient, we were not on natural terms." "are division and animosity your natural terms, richard?" "no, i don't say that. i mean that all this business puts us on unnatural terms, with which natural relations are incompatible. see another reason for urging it on! i may find out when it's over that i have been mistaken in john jarndyce. my head may be clearer when i am free of it, and i may then agree with what you say to-day. very well. then i shall acknowledge it and make him reparation." everything postponed to that imaginary time! everything held in confusion and indecision until then! "now, my best of confidantes," said richard, "i want my cousin ada to understand that i am not captious, fickle, and wilful about john jarndyce, but that i have this purpose and reason at my back. i wish to represent myself to her through you, because she has a great esteem and respect for her cousin john; and i know you will soften the course i take, even though you disapprove of it; and--and in short," said richard, who had been hesitating through these words, "i--i don't like to represent myself in this litigious, contentious, doubting character to a confiding girl like ada." i told him that he was more like himself in those latter words than in anything he had said yet. "why," acknowledged richard, "that may be true enough, my love. i rather feel it to be so. but i shall be able to give myself fair-play by and by. i shall come all right again, then, don't you be afraid." i asked him if this were all he wished me to tell ada. "not quite," said richard. "i am bound not to withhold from her that john jarndyce answered my letter in his usual manner, addressing me as 'my dear rick,' trying to argue me out of my opinions, and telling me that they should make no difference in him. (all very well of course, but not altering the case.) i also want ada to know that if i see her seldom just now, i am looking after her interests as well as my own--we two being in the same boat exactly--and that i hope she will not suppose from any flying rumours she may hear that i am at all light-headed or imprudent; on the contrary, i am always looking forward to the termination of the suit, and always planning in that direction. being of age now and having taken the step i have taken, i consider myself free from any accountability to john jarndyce; but ada being still a ward of the court, i don't yet ask her to renew our engagement. when she is free to act for herself, i shall be myself once more and we shall both be in very different worldly circumstances, i believe. if you tell her all this with the advantage of your considerate way, you will do me a very great and a very kind service, my dear esther; and i shall knock jarndyce and jarndyce on the head with greater vigour. of course i ask for no secrecy at bleak house." "richard," said i, "you place great confidence in me, but i fear you will not take advice from me?" "it's impossible that i can on this subject, my dear girl. on any other, readily." as if there were any other in his life! as if his whole career and character were not being dyed one colour! "but i may ask you a question, richard?" "i think so," said he, laughing. "i don't know who may not, if you may not." "you say, yourself, you are not leading a very settled life." "how can i, my dear esther, with nothing settled!" "are you in debt again?" "why, of course i am," said richard, astonished at my simplicity. "is it of course?" "my dear child, certainly. i can't throw myself into an object so completely without expense. you forget, or perhaps you don't know, that under either of the wills ada and i take something. it's only a question between the larger sum and the smaller. i shall be within the mark any way. bless your heart, my excellent girl," said richard, quite amused with me, "i shall be all right! i shall pull through, my dear!" i felt so deeply sensible of the danger in which he stood that i tried, in ada's name, in my guardian's, in my own, by every fervent means that i could think of, to warn him of it and to show him some of his mistakes. he received everything i said with patience and gentleness, but it all rebounded from him without taking the least effect. i could not wonder at this after the reception his preoccupied mind had given to my guardian's letter, but i determined to try ada's influence yet. so when our walk brought us round to the village again, and i went home to breakfast, i prepared ada for the account i was going to give her and told her exactly what reason we had to dread that richard was losing himself and scattering his whole life to the winds. it made her very unhappy, of course, though she had a far, far greater reliance on his correcting his errors than i could have--which was so natural and loving in my dear!--and she presently wrote him this little letter: my dearest cousin, esther has told me all you said to her this morning. i write this to repeat most earnestly for myself all that she said to you and to let you know how sure i am that you will sooner or later find our cousin john a pattern of truth, sincerity, and goodness, when you will deeply, deeply grieve to have done him (without intending it) so much wrong. i do not quite know how to write what i wish to say next, but i trust you will understand it as i mean it. i have some fears, my dearest cousin, that it may be partly for my sake you are now laying up so much unhappiness for yourself--and if for yourself, for me. in case this should be so, or in case you should entertain much thought of me in what you are doing, i most earnestly entreat and beg you to desist. you can do nothing for my sake that will make me half so happy as for ever turning your back upon the shadow in which we both were born. do not be angry with me for saying this. pray, pray, dear richard, for my sake, and for your own, and in a natural repugnance for that source of trouble which had its share in making us both orphans when we were very young, pray, pray, let it go for ever. we have reason to know by this time that there is no good in it and no hope, that there is nothing to be got from it but sorrow. my dearest cousin, it is needless for me to say that you are quite free and that it is very likely you may find some one whom you will love much better than your first fancy. i am quite sure, if you will let me say so, that the object of your choice would greatly prefer to follow your fortunes far and wide, however moderate or poor, and see you happy, doing your duty and pursuing your chosen way, than to have the hope of being, or even to be, very rich with you (if such a thing were possible) at the cost of dragging years of procrastination and anxiety and of your indifference to other aims. you may wonder at my saying this so confidently with so little knowledge or experience, but i know it for a certainty from my own heart. ever, my dearest cousin, your most affectionate ada this note brought richard to us very soon, but it made little change in him if any. we would fairly try, he said, who was right and who was wrong--he would show us--we should see! he was animated and glowing, as if ada's tenderness had gratified him; but i could only hope, with a sigh, that the letter might have some stronger effect upon his mind on re-perusal than it assuredly had then. as they were to remain with us that day and had taken their places to return by the coach next morning, i sought an opportunity of speaking to mr. skimpole. our out-of-door life easily threw one in my way, and i delicately said that there was a responsibility in encouraging richard. "responsibility, my dear miss summerson?" he repeated, catching at the word with the pleasantest smile. "i am the last man in the world for such a thing. i never was responsible in my life--i can't be." "i am afraid everybody is obliged to be," said i timidly enough, he being so much older and more clever than i. "no, really?" said mr. skimpole, receiving this new light with a most agreeable jocularity of surprise. "but every man's not obliged to be solvent? i am not. i never was. see, my dear miss summerson," he took a handful of loose silver and halfpence from his pocket, "there's so much money. i have not an idea how much. i have not the power of counting. call it four and ninepence--call it four pound nine. they tell me i owe more than that. i dare say i do. i dare say i owe as much as good-natured people will let me owe. if they don't stop, why should i? there you have harold skimpole in little. if that's responsibility, i am responsible." the perfect ease of manner with which he put the money up again and looked at me with a smile on his refined face, as if he had been mentioning a curious little fact about somebody else, almost made me feel as if he really had nothing to do with it. "now, when you mention responsibility," he resumed, "i am disposed to say that i never had the happiness of knowing any one whom i should consider so refreshingly responsible as yourself. you appear to me to be the very touchstone of responsibility. when i see you, my dear miss summerson, intent upon the perfect working of the whole little orderly system of which you are the centre, i feel inclined to say to myself--in fact i do say to myself very often--that's responsibility!" it was difficult, after this, to explain what i meant; but i persisted so far as to say that we all hoped he would check and not confirm richard in the sanguine views he entertained just then. "most willingly," he retorted, "if i could. but, my dear miss summerson, i have no art, no disguise. if he takes me by the hand and leads me through westminster hall in an airy procession after fortune, i must go. if he says, 'skimpole, join the dance!' i must join it. common sense wouldn't, i know, but i have no common sense." it was very unfortunate for richard, i said. "do you think so!" returned mr. skimpole. "don't say that, don't say that. let us suppose him keeping company with common sense--an excellent man--a good deal wrinkled--dreadfully practical--change for a ten-pound note in every pocket--ruled account-book in his hand--say, upon the whole, resembling a tax-gatherer. our dear richard, sanguine, ardent, overleaping obstacles, bursting with poetry like a young bud, says to this highly respectable companion, 'i see a golden prospect before me; it's very bright, it's very beautiful, it's very joyous; here i go, bounding over the landscape to come at it!' the respectable companion instantly knocks him down with the ruled account-book; tells him in a literal, prosaic way that he sees no such thing; shows him it's nothing but fees, fraud, horsehair wigs, and black gowns. now you know that's a painful change--sensible in the last degree, i have no doubt, but disagreeable. i can't do it. i haven't got the ruled account-book, i have none of the tax-gathering elements in my composition, i am not at all respectable, and i don't want to be. odd perhaps, but so it is!" it was idle to say more, so i proposed that we should join ada and richard, who were a little in advance, and i gave up mr. skimpole in despair. he had been over the hall in the course of the morning and whimsically described the family pictures as we walked. there were such portentous shepherdesses among the ladies dedlock dead and gone, he told us, that peaceful crooks became weapons of assault in their hands. they tended their flocks severely in buckram and powder and put their sticking-plaster patches on to terrify commoners as the chiefs of some other tribes put on their war-paint. there was a sir somebody dedlock, with a battle, a sprung-mine, volumes of smoke, flashes of lightning, a town on fire, and a stormed fort, all in full action between his horse's two hind legs, showing, he supposed, how little a dedlock made of such trifles. the whole race he represented as having evidently been, in life, what he called "stuffed people"--a large collection, glassy eyed, set up in the most approved manner on their various twigs and perches, very correct, perfectly free from animation, and always in glass cases. i was not so easy now during any reference to the name but that i felt it a relief when richard, with an exclamation of surprise, hurried away to meet a stranger whom he first descried coming slowly towards us. "dear me!" said mr. skimpole. "vholes!" we asked if that were a friend of richard's. "friend and legal adviser," said mr. skimpole. "now, my dear miss summerson, if you want common sense, responsibility, and respectability, all united--if you want an exemplary man--vholes is the man." we had not known, we said, that richard was assisted by any gentleman of that name. "when he emerged from legal infancy," returned mr. skimpole, "he parted from our conversational friend kenge and took up, i believe, with vholes. indeed, i know he did, because i introduced him to vholes." "had you known him long?" asked ada. "vholes? my dear miss clare, i had had that kind of acquaintance with him which i have had with several gentlemen of his profession. he had done something or other in a very agreeable, civil manner--taken proceedings, i think, is the expression--which ended in the proceeding of his taking me. somebody was so good as to step in and pay the money--something and fourpence was the amount; i forget the pounds and shillings, but i know it ended with fourpence, because it struck me at the time as being so odd that i could owe anybody fourpence--and after that i brought them together. vholes asked me for the introduction, and i gave it. now i come to think of it," he looked inquiringly at us with his frankest smile as he made the discovery, "vholes bribed me, perhaps? he gave me something and called it commission. was it a five-pound note? do you know, i think it must have been a five-pound note!" his further consideration of the point was prevented by richard's coming back to us in an excited state and hastily representing mr. vholes--a sallow man with pinched lips that looked as if they were cold, a red eruption here and there upon his face, tall and thin, about fifty years of age, high-shouldered, and stooping. dressed in black, black-gloved, and buttoned to the chin, there was nothing so remarkable in him as a lifeless manner and a slow, fixed way he had of looking at richard. "i hope i don't disturb you, ladies," said mr. vholes, and now i observed that he was further remarkable for an inward manner of speaking. "i arranged with mr. carstone that he should always know when his cause was in the chancellor's paper, and being informed by one of my clerks last night after post time that it stood, rather unexpectedly, in the paper for to-morrow, i put myself into the coach early this morning and came down to confer with him." "yes," said richard, flushed, and looking triumphantly at ada and me, "we don't do these things in the old slow way now. we spin along now! mr. vholes, we must hire something to get over to the post town in, and catch the mail to-night, and go up by it!" "anything you please, sir," returned mr. vholes. "i am quite at your service." "let me see," said richard, looking at his watch. "if i run down to the dedlock, and get my portmanteau fastened up, and order a gig, or a chaise, or whatever's to be got, we shall have an hour then before starting. i'll come back to tea. cousin ada, will you and esther take care of mr. vholes when i am gone?" he was away directly, in his heat and hurry, and was soon lost in the dusk of evening. we who were left walked on towards the house. "is mr. carstone's presence necessary to-morrow, sir?" said i. "can it do any good?" "no, miss," mr. vholes replied. "i am not aware that it can." both ada and i expressed our regret that he should go, then, only to be disappointed. "mr. carstone has laid down the principle of watching his own interests," said mr. vholes, "and when a client lays down his own principle, and it is not immoral, it devolves upon me to carry it out. i wish in business to be exact and open. i am a widower with three daughters--emma, jane, and caroline--and my desire is so to discharge the duties of life as to leave them a good name. this appears to be a pleasant spot, miss." the remark being made to me in consequence of my being next him as we walked, i assented and enumerated its chief attractions. "indeed?" said mr. vholes. "i have the privilege of supporting an aged father in the vale of taunton--his native place--and i admire that country very much. i had no idea there was anything so attractive here." to keep up the conversation, i asked mr. vholes if he would like to live altogether in the country. "there, miss," said he, "you touch me on a tender string. my health is not good (my digestion being much impaired), and if i had only myself to consider, i should take refuge in rural habits, especially as the cares of business have prevented me from ever coming much into contact with general society, and particularly with ladies' society, which i have most wished to mix in. but with my three daughters, emma, jane, and caroline--and my aged father--i cannot afford to be selfish. it is true i have no longer to maintain a dear grandmother who died in her hundred and second year, but enough remains to render it indispensable that the mill should be always going." it required some attention to hear him on account of his inward speaking and his lifeless manner. "you will excuse my having mentioned my daughters," he said. "they are my weak point. i wish to leave the poor girls some little independence, as well as a good name." we now arrived at mr. boythorn's house, where the tea-table, all prepared, was awaiting us. richard came in restless and hurried shortly afterwards, and leaning over mr. vholes's chair, whispered something in his ear. mr. vholes replied aloud--or as nearly aloud i suppose as he had ever replied to anything--"you will drive me, will you, sir? it is all the same to me, sir. anything you please. i am quite at your service." we understood from what followed that mr. skimpole was to be left until the morning to occupy the two places which had been already paid for. as ada and i were both in low spirits concerning richard and very sorry so to part with him, we made it as plain as we politely could that we should leave mr. skimpole to the dedlock arms and retire when the night-travellers were gone. richard's high spirits carrying everything before them, we all went out together to the top of the hill above the village, where he had ordered a gig to wait and where we found a man with a lantern standing at the head of the gaunt pale horse that had been harnessed to it. i never shall forget those two seated side by side in the lantern's light, richard all flush and fire and laughter, with the reins in his hand; mr. vholes quite still, black-gloved, and buttoned up, looking at him as if he were looking at his prey and charming it. i have before me the whole picture of the warm dark night, the summer lightning, the dusty track of road closed in by hedgerows and high trees, the gaunt pale horse with his ears pricked up, and the driving away at speed to jarndyce and jarndyce. my dear girl told me that night how richard's being thereafter prosperous or ruined, befriended or deserted, could only make this difference to her, that the more he needed love from one unchanging heart, the more love that unchanging heart would have to give him; how he thought of her through his present errors, and she would think of him at all times--never of herself if she could devote herself to him, never of her own delights if she could minister to his. and she kept her word? i look along the road before me, where the distance already shortens and the journey's end is growing visible; and true and good above the dead sea of the chancery suit and all the ashy fruit it cast ashore, i think i see my darling. chapter xxxviii a struggle when our time came for returning to bleak house again, we were punctual to the day and were received with an overpowering welcome. i was perfectly restored to health and strength, and finding my housekeeping keys laid ready for me in my room, rang myself in as if i had been a new year, with a merry little peal. "once more, duty, duty, esther," said i; "and if you are not overjoyed to do it, more than cheerfully and contentedly, through anything and everything, you ought to be. that's all i have to say to you, my dear!" the first few mornings were mornings of so much bustle and business, devoted to such settlements of accounts, such repeated journeys to and fro between the growlery and all other parts of the house, so many rearrangements of drawers and presses, and such a general new beginning altogether, that i had not a moment's leisure. but when these arrangements were completed and everything was in order, i paid a visit of a few hours to london, which something in the letter i had destroyed at chesney wold had induced me to decide upon in my own mind. i made caddy jellyby--her maiden name was so natural to me that i always called her by it--the pretext for this visit and wrote her a note previously asking the favour of her company on a little business expedition. leaving home very early in the morning, i got to london by stage-coach in such good time that i got to newman street with the day before me. caddy, who had not seen me since her wedding-day, was so glad and so affectionate that i was half inclined to fear i should make her husband jealous. but he was, in his way, just as bad--i mean as good; and in short it was the old story, and nobody would leave me any possibility of doing anything meritorious. the elder mr. turveydrop was in bed, i found, and caddy was milling his chocolate, which a melancholy little boy who was an apprentice--it seemed such a curious thing to be apprenticed to the trade of dancing--was waiting to carry upstairs. her father-in-law was extremely kind and considerate, caddy told me, and they lived most happily together. (when she spoke of their living together, she meant that the old gentleman had all the good things and all the good lodging, while she and her husband had what they could get, and were poked into two corner rooms over the mews.) "and how is your mama, caddy?" said i. "why, i hear of her, esther," replied caddy, "through pa, but i see very little of her. we are good friends, i am glad to say, but ma thinks there is something absurd in my having married a dancing-master, and she is rather afraid of its extending to her." it struck me that if mrs. jellyby had discharged her own natural duties and obligations before she swept the horizon with a telescope in search of others, she would have taken the best precautions against becoming absurd, but i need scarcely observe that i kept this to myself. "and your papa, caddy?" "he comes here every evening," returned caddy, "and is so fond of sitting in the corner there that it's a treat to see him." looking at the corner, i plainly perceived the mark of mr. jellyby's head against the wall. it was consolatory to know that he had found such a resting-place for it. "and you, caddy," said i, "you are always busy, i'll be bound?" "well, my dear," returned caddy, "i am indeed, for to tell you a grand secret, i am qualifying myself to give lessons. prince's health is not strong, and i want to be able to assist him. what with schools, and classes here, and private pupils, and the apprentices, he really has too much to do, poor fellow!" the notion of the apprentices was still so odd to me that i asked caddy if there were many of them. "four," said caddy. "one in-door, and three out. they are very good children; only when they get together they will play--children-like--instead of attending to their work. so the little boy you saw just now waltzes by himself in the empty kitchen, and we distribute the others over the house as well as we can." "that is only for their steps, of course?" said i. "only for their steps," said caddy. "in that way they practise, so many hours at a time, whatever steps they happen to be upon. they dance in the academy, and at this time of year we do figures at five every morning." "why, what a laborious life!" i exclaimed. "i assure you, my dear," returned caddy, smiling, "when the out-door apprentices ring us up in the morning (the bell rings into our room, not to disturb old mr. turveydrop), and when i put up the window and see them standing on the door-step with their little pumps under their arms, i am actually reminded of the sweeps." all this presented the art to me in a singular light, to be sure. caddy enjoyed the effect of her communication and cheerfully recounted the particulars of her own studies. "you see, my dear, to save expense i ought to know something of the piano, and i ought to know something of the kit too, and consequently i have to practise those two instruments as well as the details of our profession. if ma had been like anybody else, i might have had some little musical knowledge to begin upon. however, i hadn't any; and that part of the work is, at first, a little discouraging, i must allow. but i have a very good ear, and i am used to drudgery--i have to thank ma for that, at all events--and where there's a will there's a way, you know, esther, the world over." saying these words, caddy laughingly sat down at a little jingling square piano and really rattled off a quadrille with great spirit. then she good-humouredly and blushingly got up again, and while she still laughed herself, said, "don't laugh at me, please; that's a dear girl!" i would sooner have cried, but i did neither. i encouraged her and praised her with all my heart. for i conscientiously believed, dancing-master's wife though she was, and dancing-mistress though in her limited ambition she aspired to be, she had struck out a natural, wholesome, loving course of industry and perseverance that was quite as good as a mission. "my dear," said caddy, delighted, "you can't think how you cheer me. i shall owe you, you don't know how much. what changes, esther, even in my small world! you recollect that first night, when i was so unpolite and inky? who would have thought, then, of my ever teaching people to dance, of all other possibilities and impossibilities!" her husband, who had left us while we had this chat, now coming back, preparatory to exercising the apprentices in the ball-room, caddy informed me she was quite at my disposal. but it was not my time yet, i was glad to tell her, for i should have been vexed to take her away then. therefore we three adjourned to the apprentices together, and i made one in the dance. the apprentices were the queerest little people. besides the melancholy boy, who, i hoped, had not been made so by waltzing alone in the empty kitchen, there were two other boys and one dirty little limp girl in a gauzy dress. such a precocious little girl, with such a dowdy bonnet on (that, too, of a gauzy texture), who brought her sandalled shoes in an old threadbare velvet reticule. such mean little boys, when they were not dancing, with string, and marbles, and cramp-bones in their pockets, and the most untidy legs and feet--and heels particularly. i asked caddy what had made their parents choose this profession for them. caddy said she didn't know; perhaps they were designed for teachers, perhaps for the stage. they were all people in humble circumstances, and the melancholy boy's mother kept a ginger-beer shop. we danced for an hour with great gravity, the melancholy child doing wonders with his lower extremities, in which there appeared to be some sense of enjoyment though it never rose above his waist. caddy, while she was observant of her husband and was evidently founded upon him, had acquired a grace and self-possession of her own, which, united to her pretty face and figure, was uncommonly agreeable. she already relieved him of much of the instruction of these young people, and he seldom interfered except to walk his part in the figure if he had anything to do in it. he always played the tune. the affectation of the gauzy child, and her condescension to the boys, was a sight. and thus we danced an hour by the clock. when the practice was concluded, caddy's husband made himself ready to go out of town to a school, and caddy ran away to get ready to go out with me. i sat in the ball-room in the interval, contemplating the apprentices. the two out-door boys went upon the staircase to put on their half-boots and pull the in-door boy's hair, as i judged from the nature of his objections. returning with their jackets buttoned and their pumps stuck in them, they then produced packets of cold bread and meat and bivouacked under a painted lyre on the wall. the little gauzy child, having whisked her sandals into the reticule and put on a trodden-down pair of shoes, shook her head into the dowdy bonnet at one shake, and answering my inquiry whether she liked dancing by replying, "not with boys," tied it across her chin, and went home contemptuous. "old mr. turveydrop is so sorry," said caddy, "that he has not finished dressing yet and cannot have the pleasure of seeing you before you go. you are such a favourite of his, esther." i expressed myself much obliged to him, but did not think it necessary to add that i readily dispensed with this attention. "it takes him a long time to dress," said caddy, "because he is very much looked up to in such things, you know, and has a reputation to support. you can't think how kind he is to pa. he talks to pa of an evening about the prince regent, and i never saw pa so interested." there was something in the picture of mr. turveydrop bestowing his deportment on mr. jellyby that quite took my fancy. i asked caddy if he brought her papa out much. "no," said caddy, "i don't know that he does that, but he talks to pa, and pa greatly admires him, and listens, and likes it. of course i am aware that pa has hardly any claims to deportment, but they get on together delightfully. you can't think what good companions they make. i never saw pa take snuff before in my life, but he takes one pinch out of mr. turveydrop's box regularly and keeps putting it to his nose and taking it away again all the evening." that old mr. turveydrop should ever, in the chances and changes of life, have come to the rescue of mr. jellyby from borrioboola-gha appeared to me to be one of the pleasantest of oddities. "as to peepy," said caddy with a little hesitation, "whom i was most afraid of--next to having any family of my own, esther--as an inconvenience to mr. turveydrop, the kindness of the old gentleman to that child is beyond everything. he asks to see him, my dear! he lets him take the newspaper up to him in bed; he gives him the crusts of his toast to eat; he sends him on little errands about the house; he tells him to come to me for sixpences. in short," said caddy cheerily, "and not to prose, i am a very fortunate girl and ought to be very grateful. where are we going, esther?" "to the old street road," said i, "where i have a few words to say to the solicitor's clerk who was sent to meet me at the coach-office on the very day when i came to london and first saw you, my dear. now i think of it, the gentleman who brought us to your house." "then, indeed, i seem to be naturally the person to go with you," returned caddy. to the old street road we went and there inquired at mrs. guppy's residence for mrs. guppy. mrs. guppy, occupying the parlours and having indeed been visibly in danger of cracking herself like a nut in the front-parlour door by peeping out before she was asked for, immediately presented herself and requested us to walk in. she was an old lady in a large cap, with rather a red nose and rather an unsteady eye, but smiling all over. her close little sitting-room was prepared for a visit, and there was a portrait of her son in it which, i had almost written here, was more like than life: it insisted upon him with such obstinacy, and was so determined not to let him off. not only was the portrait there, but we found the original there too. he was dressed in a great many colours and was discovered at a table reading law-papers with his forefinger to his forehead. "miss summerson," said mr. guppy, rising, "this is indeed an oasis. mother, will you be so good as to put a chair for the other lady and get out of the gangway." mrs. guppy, whose incessant smiling gave her quite a waggish appearance, did as her son requested and then sat down in a corner, holding her pocket handkerchief to her chest, like a fomentation, with both hands. i presented caddy, and mr. guppy said that any friend of mine was more than welcome. i then proceeded to the object of my visit. "i took the liberty of sending you a note, sir," said i. mr. guppy acknowledged the receipt by taking it out of his breast-pocket, putting it to his lips, and returning it to his pocket with a bow. mr. guppy's mother was so diverted that she rolled her head as she smiled and made a silent appeal to caddy with her elbow. "could i speak to you alone for a moment?" said i. anything like the jocoseness of mr. guppy's mother just now, i think i never saw. she made no sound of laughter, but she rolled her head, and shook it, and put her handkerchief to her mouth, and appealed to caddy with her elbow, and her hand, and her shoulder, and was so unspeakably entertained altogether that it was with some difficulty she could marshal caddy through the little folding-door into her bedroom adjoining. "miss summerson," said mr. guppy, "you will excuse the waywardness of a parent ever mindful of a son's appiness. my mother, though highly exasperating to the feelings, is actuated by maternal dictates." i could hardly have believed that anybody could in a moment have turned so red or changed so much as mr. guppy did when i now put up my veil. "i asked the favour of seeing you for a few moments here," said i, "in preference to calling at mr. kenge's because, remembering what you said on an occasion when you spoke to me in confidence, i feared i might otherwise cause you some embarrassment, mr. guppy." i caused him embarrassment enough as it was, i am sure. i never saw such faltering, such confusion, such amazement and apprehension. "miss summerson," stammered mr. guppy, "i--i--beg your pardon, but in our profession--we--we--find it necessary to be explicit. you have referred to an occasion, miss, when i--when i did myself the honour of making a declaration which--" something seemed to rise in his throat that he could not possibly swallow. he put his hand there, coughed, made faces, tried again to swallow it, coughed again, made faces again, looked all round the room, and fluttered his papers. "a kind of giddy sensation has come upon me, miss," he explained, "which rather knocks me over. i--er--a little subject to this sort of thing--er--by george!" i gave him a little time to recover. he consumed it in putting his hand to his forehead and taking it away again, and in backing his chair into the corner behind him. "my intention was to remark, miss," said mr. guppy, "dear me--something bronchial, i think--hem!--to remark that you was so good on that occasion as to repel and repudiate that declaration. you--you wouldn't perhaps object to admit that? though no witnesses are present, it might be a satisfaction to--to your mind--if you was to put in that admission." "there can be no doubt," said i, "that i declined your proposal without any reservation or qualification whatever, mr. guppy." "thank you, miss," he returned, measuring the table with his troubled hands. "so far that's satisfactory, and it does you credit. er--this is certainly bronchial!--must be in the tubes--er--you wouldn't perhaps be offended if i was to mention--not that it's necessary, for your own good sense or any person's sense must show 'em that--if i was to mention that such declaration on my part was final, and there terminated?" "i quite understand that," said i. "perhaps--er--it may not be worth the form, but it might be a satisfaction to your mind--perhaps you wouldn't object to admit that, miss?" said mr. guppy. "i admit it most fully and freely," said i. "thank you," returned mr. guppy. "very honourable, i am sure. i regret that my arrangements in life, combined with circumstances over which i have no control, will put it out of my power ever to fall back upon that offer or to renew it in any shape or form whatever, but it will ever be a retrospect entwined--er--with friendship's bowers." mr. guppy's bronchitis came to his relief and stopped his measurement of the table. "i may now perhaps mention what i wished to say to you?" i began. "i shall be honoured, i am sure," said mr. guppy. "i am so persuaded that your own good sense and right feeling, miss, will--will keep you as square as possible--that i can have nothing but pleasure, i am sure, in hearing any observations you may wish to offer." "you were so good as to imply, on that occasion--" "excuse me, miss," said mr. guppy, "but we had better not travel out of the record into implication. i cannot admit that i implied anything." "you said on that occasion," i recommenced, "that you might possibly have the means of advancing my interests and promoting my fortunes by making discoveries of which i should be the subject. i presume that you founded that belief upon your general knowledge of my being an orphan girl, indebted for everything to the benevolence of mr. jarndyce. now, the beginning and the end of what i have come to beg of you is, mr. guppy, that you will have the kindness to relinquish all idea of so serving me. i have thought of this sometimes, and i have thought of it most lately--since i have been ill. at length i have decided, in case you should at any time recall that purpose and act upon it in any way, to come to you and assure you that you are altogether mistaken. you could make no discovery in reference to me that would do me the least service or give me the least pleasure. i am acquainted with my personal history, and i have it in my power to assure you that you never can advance my welfare by such means. you may, perhaps, have abandoned this project a long time. if so, excuse my giving you unnecessary trouble. if not, i entreat you, on the assurance i have given you, henceforth to lay it aside. i beg you to do this, for my peace." "i am bound to confess," said mr. guppy, "that you express yourself, miss, with that good sense and right feeling for which i gave you credit. nothing can be more satisfactory than such right feeling, and if i mistook any intentions on your part just now, i am prepared to tender a full apology. i should wish to be understood, miss, as hereby offering that apology--limiting it, as your own good sense and right feeling will point out the necessity of, to the present proceedings." i must say for mr. guppy that the snuffling manner he had had upon him improved very much. he seemed truly glad to be able to do something i asked, and he looked ashamed. "if you will allow me to finish what i have to say at once so that i may have no occasion to resume," i went on, seeing him about to speak, "you will do me a kindness, sir. i come to you as privately as possible because you announced this impression of yours to me in a confidence which i have really wished to respect--and which i always have respected, as you remember. i have mentioned my illness. there really is no reason why i should hesitate to say that i know very well that any little delicacy i might have had in making a request to you is quite removed. therefore i make the entreaty i have now preferred, and i hope you will have sufficient consideration for me to accede to it." i must do mr. guppy the further justice of saying that he had looked more and more ashamed and that he looked most ashamed and very earnest when he now replied with a burning face, "upon my word and honour, upon my life, upon my soul, miss summerson, as i am a living man, i'll act according to your wish! i'll never go another step in opposition to it. i'll take my oath to it if it will be any satisfaction to you. in what i promise at this present time touching the matters now in question," continued mr. guppy rapidly, as if he were repeating a familiar form of words, "i speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so--" "i am quite satisfied," said i, rising at this point, "and i thank you very much. caddy, my dear, i am ready!" mr. guppy's mother returned with caddy (now making me the recipient of her silent laughter and her nudges), and we took our leave. mr. guppy saw us to the door with the air of one who was either imperfectly awake or walking in his sleep; and we left him there, staring. but in a minute he came after us down the street without any hat, and with his long hair all blown about, and stopped us, saying fervently, "miss summerson, upon my honour and soul, you may depend upon me!" "i do," said i, "quite confidently." "i beg your pardon, miss," said mr. guppy, going with one leg and staying with the other, "but this lady being present--your own witness--it might be a satisfaction to your mind (which i should wish to set at rest) if you was to repeat those admissions." "well, caddy," said i, turning to her, "perhaps you will not be surprised when i tell you, my dear, that there never has been any engagement--" "no proposal or promise of marriage whatsoever," suggested mr. guppy. "no proposal or promise of marriage whatsoever," said i, "between this gentleman--" "william guppy, of penton place, pentonville, in the county of middlesex," he murmured. "between this gentleman, mr. william guppy, of penton place, pentonville, in the county of middlesex, and myself." "thank you, miss," said mr. guppy. "very full--er--excuse me--lady's name, christian and surname both?" i gave them. "married woman, i believe?" said mr. guppy. "married woman. thank you. formerly caroline jellyby, spinster, then of thavies inn, within the city of london, but extra-parochial; now of newman street, oxford street. much obliged." he ran home and came running back again. "touching that matter, you know, i really and truly am very sorry that my arrangements in life, combined with circumstances over which i have no control, should prevent a renewal of what was wholly terminated some time back," said mr. guppy to me forlornly and despondently, "but it couldn't be. now could it, you know! i only put it to you." i replied it certainly could not. the subject did not admit of a doubt. he thanked me and ran to his mother's again--and back again. "it's very honourable of you, miss, i am sure," said mr. guppy. "if an altar could be erected in the bowers of friendship--but, upon my soul, you may rely upon me in every respect save and except the tender passion only!" the struggle in mr. guppy's breast and the numerous oscillations it occasioned him between his mother's door and us were sufficiently conspicuous in the windy street (particularly as his hair wanted cutting) to make us hurry away. i did so with a lightened heart; but when we last looked back, mr. guppy was still oscillating in the same troubled state of mind. chapter xxxix attorney and client the name of mr. vholes, preceded by the legend ground-floor, is inscribed upon a door-post in symond's inn, chancery lane--a little, pale, wall-eyed, woebegone inn like a large dust-binn of two compartments and a sifter. it looks as if symond were a sparing man in his way and constructed his inn of old building materials which took kindly to the dry rot and to dirt and all things decaying and dismal, and perpetuated symond's memory with congenial shabbiness. quartered in this dingy hatchment commemorative of symond are the legal bearings of mr. vholes. mr. vholes's office, in disposition retiring and in situation retired, is squeezed up in a corner and blinks at a dead wall. three feet of knotty-floored dark passage bring the client to mr. vholes's jet-black door, in an angle profoundly dark on the brightest midsummer morning and encumbered by a black bulk-head of cellarage staircase against which belated civilians generally strike their brows. mr. vholes's chambers are on so small a scale that one clerk can open the door without getting off his stool, while the other who elbows him at the same desk has equal facilities for poking the fire. a smell as of unwholesome sheep blending with the smell of must and dust is referable to the nightly (and often daily) consumption of mutton fat in candles and to the fretting of parchment forms and skins in greasy drawers. the atmosphere is otherwise stale and close. the place was last painted or whitewashed beyond the memory of man, and the two chimneys smoke, and there is a loose outer surface of soot everywhere, and the dull cracked windows in their heavy frames have but one piece of character in them, which is a determination to be always dirty and always shut unless coerced. this accounts for the phenomenon of the weaker of the two usually having a bundle of firewood thrust between its jaws in hot weather. mr. vholes is a very respectable man. he has not a large business, but he is a very respectable man. he is allowed by the greater attorneys who have made good fortunes or are making them to be a most respectable man. he never misses a chance in his practice, which is a mark of respectability. he never takes any pleasure, which is another mark of respectability. he is reserved and serious, which is another mark of respectability. his digestion is impaired, which is highly respectable. and he is making hay of the grass which is flesh, for his three daughters. and his father is dependent on him in the vale of taunton. the one great principle of the english law is to make business for itself. there is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. viewed by this light it becomes a coherent scheme and not the monstrous maze the laity are apt to think it. let them but once clearly perceive that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their expense, and surely they will cease to grumble. but not perceiving this quite plainly--only seeing it by halves in a confused way--the laity sometimes suffer in peace and pocket, with a bad grace, and do grumble very much. then this respectability of mr. vholes is brought into powerful play against them. "repeal this statute, my good sir?" says mr. kenge to a smarting client. "repeal it, my dear sir? never, with my consent. alter this law, sir, and what will be the effect of your rash proceeding on a class of practitioners very worthily represented, allow me to say to you, by the opposite attorney in the case, mr. vholes? sir, that class of practitioners would be swept from the face of the earth. now you cannot afford--i will say, the social system cannot afford--to lose an order of men like mr. vholes. diligent, persevering, steady, acute in business. my dear sir, i understand your present feelings against the existing state of things, which i grant to be a little hard in your case; but i can never raise my voice for the demolition of a class of men like mr. vholes." the respectability of mr. vholes has even been cited with crushing effect before parliamentary committees, as in the following blue minutes of a distinguished attorney's evidence. "question (number five hundred and seventeen thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine): if i understand you, these forms of practice indisputably occasion delay? answer: yes, some delay. question: and great expense? answer: most assuredly they cannot be gone through for nothing. question: and unspeakable vexation? answer: i am not prepared to say that. they have never given me any vexation; quite the contrary. question: but you think that their abolition would damage a class of practitioners? answer: i have no doubt of it. question: can you instance any type of that class? answer: yes. i would unhesitatingly mention mr. vholes. he would be ruined. question: mr. vholes is considered, in the profession, a respectable man? answer:"--which proved fatal to the inquiry for ten years--"mr. vholes is considered, in the profession, a most respectable man." so in familiar conversation, private authorities no less disinterested will remark that they don't know what this age is coming to, that we are plunging down precipices, that now here is something else gone, that these changes are death to people like vholes--a man of undoubted respectability, with a father in the vale of taunton, and three daughters at home. take a few steps more in this direction, say they, and what is to become of vholes's father? is he to perish? and of vholes's daughters? are they to be shirt-makers, or governesses? as though, mr. vholes and his relations being minor cannibal chiefs and it being proposed to abolish cannibalism, indignant champions were to put the case thus: make man-eating unlawful, and you starve the vholeses! in a word, mr. vholes, with his three daughters and his father in the vale of taunton, is continually doing duty, like a piece of timber, to shore up some decayed foundation that has become a pitfall and a nuisance. and with a great many people in a great many instances, the question is never one of a change from wrong to right (which is quite an extraneous consideration), but is always one of injury or advantage to that eminently respectable legion, vholes. the chancellor is, within these ten minutes, "up" for the long vacation. mr. vholes, and his young client, and several blue bags hastily stuffed out of all regularity of form, as the larger sort of serpents are in their first gorged state, have returned to the official den. mr. vholes, quiet and unmoved, as a man of so much respectability ought to be, takes off his close black gloves as if he were skinning his hands, lifts off his tight hat as if he were scalping himself, and sits down at his desk. the client throws his hat and gloves upon the ground--tosses them anywhere, without looking after them or caring where they go; flings himself into a chair, half sighing and half groaning; rests his aching head upon his hand and looks the portrait of young despair. "again nothing done!" says richard. "nothing, nothing done!" "don't say nothing done, sir," returns the placid vholes. "that is scarcely fair, sir, scarcely fair!" "why, what is done?" says richard, turning gloomily upon him. "that may not be the whole question," returns vholes, "the question may branch off into what is doing, what is doing?" "and what is doing?" asks the moody client. vholes, sitting with his arms on the desk, quietly bringing the tips of his five right fingers to meet the tips of his five left fingers, and quietly separating them again, and fixedly and slowly looking at his client, replies, "a good deal is doing, sir. we have put our shoulders to the wheel, mr. carstone, and the wheel is going round." "yes, with ixion on it. how am i to get through the next four or five accursed months?" exclaims the young man, rising from his chair and walking about the room. "mr. c.," returns vholes, following him close with his eyes wherever he goes, "your spirits are hasty, and i am sorry for it on your account. excuse me if i recommend you not to chafe so much, not to be so impetuous, not to wear yourself out so. you should have more patience. you should sustain yourself better." "i ought to imitate you, in fact, mr. vholes?" says richard, sitting down again with an impatient laugh and beating the devil's tattoo with his boot on the patternless carpet. "sir," returns vholes, always looking at the client as if he were making a lingering meal of him with his eyes as well as with his professional appetite. "sir," returns vholes with his inward manner of speech and his bloodless quietude, "i should not have had the presumption to propose myself as a model for your imitation or any man's. let me but leave the good name to my three daughters, and that is enough for me; i am not a self-seeker. but since you mention me so pointedly, i will acknowledge that i should like to impart to you a little of my--come, sir, you are disposed to call it insensibility, and i am sure i have no objection--say insensibility--a little of my insensibility." "mr. vholes," explains the client, somewhat abashed, "i had no intention to accuse you of insensibility." "i think you had, sir, without knowing it," returns the equable vholes. "very naturally. it is my duty to attend to your interests with a cool head, and i can quite understand that to your excited feelings i may appear, at such times as the present, insensible. my daughters may know me better; my aged father may know me better. but they have known me much longer than you have, and the confiding eye of affection is not the distrustful eye of business. not that i complain, sir, of the eye of business being distrustful; quite the contrary. in attending to your interests, i wish to have all possible checks upon me; it is right that i should have them; i court inquiry. but your interests demand that i should be cool and methodical, mr. carstone; and i cannot be otherwise--no, sir, not even to please you." mr. vholes, after glancing at the official cat who is patiently watching a mouse's hole, fixes his charmed gaze again on his young client and proceeds in his buttoned-up, half-audible voice as if there were an unclean spirit in him that will neither come out nor speak out, "what are you to do, sir, you inquire, during the vacation. i should hope you gentlemen of the army may find many means of amusing yourselves if you give your minds to it. if you had asked me what i was to do during the vacation, i could have answered you more readily. i am to attend to your interests. i am to be found here, day by day, attending to your interests. that is my duty, mr. c., and term-time or vacation makes no difference to me. if you wish to consult me as to your interests, you will find me here at all times alike. other professional men go out of town. i don't. not that i blame them for going; i merely say i don't go. this desk is your rock, sir!" mr. vholes gives it a rap, and it sounds as hollow as a coffin. not to richard, though. there is encouragement in the sound to him. perhaps mr. vholes knows there is. "i am perfectly aware, mr. vholes," says richard, more familiarly and good-humouredly, "that you are the most reliable fellow in the world and that to have to do with you is to have to do with a man of business who is not to be hoodwinked. but put yourself in my case, dragging on this dislocated life, sinking deeper and deeper into difficulty every day, continually hoping and continually disappointed, conscious of change upon change for the worse in myself, and of no change for the better in anything else, and you will find it a dark-looking case sometimes, as i do." "you know," says mr. vholes, "that i never give hopes, sir. i told you from the first, mr. c., that i never give hopes. particularly in a case like this, where the greater part of the costs comes out of the estate, i should not be considerate of my good name if i gave hopes. it might seem as if costs were my object. still, when you say there is no change for the better, i must, as a bare matter of fact, deny that." "aye?" returns richard, brightening. "but how do you make it out?" "mr. carstone, you are represented by--" "you said just now--a rock." "yes, sir," says mr. vholes, gently shaking his head and rapping the hollow desk, with a sound as if ashes were falling on ashes, and dust on dust, "a rock. that's something. you are separately represented, and no longer hidden and lost in the interests of others. that's something. the suit does not sleep; we wake it up, we air it, we walk it about. that's something. it's not all jarndyce, in fact as well as in name. that's something. nobody has it all his own way now, sir. and that's something, surely." richard, his face flushing suddenly, strikes the desk with his clenched hand. "mr. vholes! if any man had told me when i first went to john jarndyce's house that he was anything but the disinterested friend he seemed--that he was what he has gradually turned out to be--i could have found no words strong enough to repel the slander; i could not have defended him too ardently. so little did i know of the world! whereas now i do declare to you that he becomes to me the embodiment of the suit; that in place of its being an abstraction, it is john jarndyce; that the more i suffer, the more indignant i am with him; that every new delay and every new disappointment is only a new injury from john jarndyce's hand." "no, no," says vholes. "don't say so. we ought to have patience, all of us. besides, i never disparage, sir. i never disparage." "mr. vholes," returns the angry client. "you know as well as i that he would have strangled the suit if he could." "he was not active in it," mr. vholes admits with an appearance of reluctance. "he certainly was not active in it. but however, but however, he might have had amiable intentions. who can read the heart, mr. c.!" "you can," returns richard. "i, mr. c.?" "well enough to know what his intentions were. are or are not our interests conflicting? tell--me--that!" says richard, accompanying his last three words with three raps on his rock of trust. "mr. c.," returns vholes, immovable in attitude and never winking his hungry eyes, "i should be wanting in my duty as your professional adviser, i should be departing from my fidelity to your interests, if i represented those interests as identical with the interests of mr. jarndyce. they are no such thing, sir. i never impute motives; i both have and am a father, and i never impute motives. but i must not shrink from a professional duty, even if it sows dissensions in families. i understand you to be now consulting me professionally as to your interests? you are so? i reply, then, they are not identical with those of mr. jarndyce." "of course they are not!" cries richard. "you found that out long ago." "mr. c.," returns vholes, "i wish to say no more of any third party than is necessary. i wish to leave my good name unsullied, together with any little property of which i may become possessed through industry and perseverance, to my daughters emma, jane, and caroline. i also desire to live in amity with my professional brethren. when mr. skimpole did me the honour, sir--i will not say the very high honour, for i never stoop to flattery--of bringing us together in this room, i mentioned to you that i could offer no opinion or advice as to your interests while those interests were entrusted to another member of the profession. and i spoke in such terms as i was bound to speak of kenge and carboy's office, which stands high. you, sir, thought fit to withdraw your interests from that keeping nevertheless and to offer them to me. you brought them with clean hands, sir, and i accepted them with clean hands. those interests are now paramount in this office. my digestive functions, as you may have heard me mention, are not in a good state, and rest might improve them; but i shall not rest, sir, while i am your representative. whenever you want me, you will find me here. summon me anywhere, and i will come. during the long vacation, sir, i shall devote my leisure to studying your interests more and more closely and to making arrangements for moving heaven and earth (including, of course, the chancellor) after michaelmas term; and when i ultimately congratulate you, sir," says mr. vholes with the severity of a determined man, "when i ultimately congratulate you, sir, with all my heart, on your accession to fortune--which, but that i never give hopes, i might say something further about--you will owe me nothing beyond whatever little balance may be then outstanding of the costs as between solicitor and client not included in the taxed costs allowed out of the estate. i pretend to no claim upon you, mr. c., but for the zealous and active discharge--not the languid and routine discharge, sir: that much credit i stipulate for--of my professional duty. my duty prosperously ended, all between us is ended." vholes finally adds, by way of rider to this declaration of his principles, that as mr. carstone is about to rejoin his regiment, perhaps mr. c. will favour him with an order on his agent for twenty pounds on account. "for there have been many little consultations and attendances of late, sir," observes vholes, turning over the leaves of his diary, "and these things mount up, and i don't profess to be a man of capital. when we first entered on our present relations i stated to you openly--it is a principle of mine that there never can be too much openness between solicitor and client--that i was not a man of capital and that if capital was your object you had better leave your papers in kenge's office. no, mr. c., you will find none of the advantages or disadvantages of capital here, sir. this," vholes gives the desk one hollow blow again, "is your rock; it pretends to be nothing more." the client, with his dejection insensibly relieved and his vague hopes rekindled, takes pen and ink and writes the draft, not without perplexed consideration and calculation of the date it may bear, implying scant effects in the agent's hands. all the while, vholes, buttoned up in body and mind, looks at him attentively. all the while, vholes's official cat watches the mouse's hole. lastly, the client, shaking hands, beseeches mr. vholes, for heaven's sake and earth's sake, to do his utmost to "pull him through" the court of chancery. mr. vholes, who never gives hopes, lays his palm upon the client's shoulder and answers with a smile, "always here, sir. personally, or by letter, you will always find me here, sir, with my shoulder to the wheel." thus they part, and vholes, left alone, employs himself in carrying sundry little matters out of his diary into his draft bill book for the ultimate behoof of his three daughters. so might an industrious fox or bear make up his account of chickens or stray travellers with an eye to his cubs, not to disparage by that word the three raw-visaged, lank, and buttoned-up maidens who dwell with the parent vholes in an earthy cottage situated in a damp garden at kennington. richard, emerging from the heavy shade of symond's inn into the sunshine of chancery lane--for there happens to be sunshine there to-day--walks thoughtfully on, and turns into lincoln's inn, and passes under the shadow of the lincoln's inn trees. on many such loungers have the speckled shadows of those trees often fallen; on the like bent head, the bitten nail, the lowering eye, the lingering step, the purposeless and dreamy air, the good consuming and consumed, the life turned sour. this lounger is not shabby yet, but that may come. chancery, which knows no wisdom but in precedent, is very rich in such precedents; and why should one be different from ten thousand? yet the time is so short since his depreciation began that as he saunters away, reluctant to leave the spot for some long months together, though he hates it, richard himself may feel his own case as if it were a startling one. while his heart is heavy with corroding care, suspense, distrust, and doubt, it may have room for some sorrowful wonder when he recalls how different his first visit there, how different he, how different all the colours of his mind. but injustice breeds injustice; the fighting with shadows and being defeated by them necessitates the setting up of substances to combat; from the impalpable suit which no man alive can understand, the time for that being long gone by, it has become a gloomy relief to turn to the palpable figure of the friend who would have saved him from this ruin and make him his enemy. richard has told vholes the truth. is he in a hardened or a softened mood, he still lays his injuries equally at that door; he was thwarted, in that quarter, of a set purpose, and that purpose could only originate in the one subject that is resolving his existence into itself; besides, it is a justification to him in his own eyes to have an embodied antagonist and oppressor. is richard a monster in all this, or would chancery be found rich in such precedents too if they could be got for citation from the recording angel? two pairs of eyes not unused to such people look after him, as, biting his nails and brooding, he crosses the square and is swallowed up by the shadow of the southern gateway. mr. guppy and mr. weevle are the possessors of those eyes, and they have been leaning in conversation against the low stone parapet under the trees. he passes close by them, seeing nothing but the ground. "william," says mr. weevle, adjusting his whiskers, "there's combustion going on there! it's not a case of spontaneous, but it's smouldering combustion it is." "ah!" says mr. guppy. "he wouldn't keep out of jarndyce, and i suppose he's over head and ears in debt. i never knew much of him. he was as high as the monument when he was on trial at our place. a good riddance to me, whether as clerk or client! well, tony, that as i was mentioning is what they're up to." mr. guppy, refolding his arms, resettles himself against the parapet, as resuming a conversation of interest. "they are still up to it, sir," says mr. guppy, "still taking stock, still examining papers, still going over the heaps and heaps of rubbish. at this rate they'll be at it these seven years." "and small is helping?" "small left us at a week's notice. told kenge his grandfather's business was too much for the old gentleman and he could better himself by undertaking it. there had been a coolness between myself and small on account of his being so close. but he said you and i began it, and as he had me there--for we did--i put our acquaintance on the old footing. that's how i come to know what they're up to." "you haven't looked in at all?" "tony," says mr. guppy, a little disconcerted, "to be unreserved with you, i don't greatly relish the house, except in your company, and therefore i have not; and therefore i proposed this little appointment for our fetching away your things. there goes the hour by the clock! tony"--mr. guppy becomes mysteriously and tenderly eloquent--"it is necessary that i should impress upon your mind once more that circumstances over which i have no control have made a melancholy alteration in my most cherished plans and in that unrequited image which i formerly mentioned to you as a friend. that image is shattered, and that idol is laid low. my only wish now in connexion with the objects which i had an idea of carrying out in the court with your aid as a friend is to let 'em alone and bury 'em in oblivion. do you think it possible, do you think it at all likely (i put it to you, tony, as a friend), from your knowledge of that capricious and deep old character who fell a prey to the--spontaneous element, do you, tony, think it at all likely that on second thoughts he put those letters away anywhere, after you saw him alive, and that they were not destroyed that night?" mr. weevle reflects for some time. shakes his head. decidedly thinks not. "tony," says mr. guppy as they walk towards the court, "once again understand me, as a friend. without entering into further explanations, i may repeat that the idol is down. i have no purpose to serve now but burial in oblivion. to that i have pledged myself. i owe it to myself, and i owe it to the shattered image, as also to the circumstances over which i have no control. if you was to express to me by a gesture, by a wink, that you saw lying anywhere in your late lodgings any papers that so much as looked like the papers in question, i would pitch them into the fire, sir, on my own responsibility." mr. weevle nods. mr. guppy, much elevated in his own opinion by having delivered these observations, with an air in part forensic and in part romantic--this gentleman having a passion for conducting anything in the form of an examination, or delivering anything in the form of a summing up or a speech--accompanies his friend with dignity to the court. never since it has been a court has it had such a fortunatus' purse of gossip as in the proceedings at the rag and bottle shop. regularly, every morning at eight, is the elder mr. smallweed brought down to the corner and carried in, accompanied by mrs. smallweed, judy, and bart; and regularly, all day, do they all remain there until nine at night, solaced by gipsy dinners, not abundant in quantity, from the cook's shop, rummaging and searching, digging, delving, and diving among the treasures of the late lamented. what those treasures are they keep so secret that the court is maddened. in its delirium it imagines guineas pouring out of tea-pots, crown-pieces overflowing punch-bowls, old chairs and mattresses stuffed with bank of england notes. it possesses itself of the sixpenny history (with highly coloured folding frontispiece) of mr. daniel dancer and his sister, and also of mr. elwes, of suffolk, and transfers all the facts from those authentic narratives to mr. krook. twice when the dustman is called in to carry off a cartload of old paper, ashes, and broken bottles, the whole court assembles and pries into the baskets as they come forth. many times the two gentlemen who write with the ravenous little pens on the tissue-paper are seen prowling in the neighbourhood--shy of each other, their late partnership being dissolved. the sol skilfully carries a vein of the prevailing interest through the harmonic nights. little swills, in what are professionally known as "patter" allusions to the subject, is received with loud applause; and the same vocalist "gags" in the regular business like a man inspired. even miss m. melvilleson, in the revived caledonian melody of "we're a-nodding," points the sentiment that "the dogs love broo" (whatever the nature of that refreshment may be) with such archness and such a turn of the head towards next door that she is immediately understood to mean mr. smallweed loves to find money, and is nightly honoured with a double encore. for all this, the court discovers nothing; and as mrs. piper and mrs. perkins now communicate to the late lodger whose appearance is the signal for a general rally, it is in one continual ferment to discover everything, and more. mr. weevle and mr. guppy, with every eye in the court's head upon them, knock at the closed door of the late lamented's house, in a high state of popularity. but being contrary to the court's expectation admitted, they immediately become unpopular and are considered to mean no good. the shutters are more or less closed all over the house, and the ground-floor is sufficiently dark to require candles. introduced into the back shop by mr. smallweed the younger, they, fresh from the sunlight, can at first see nothing save darkness and shadows; but they gradually discern the elder mr. smallweed seated in his chair upon the brink of a well or grave of waste-paper, the virtuous judy groping therein like a female sexton, and mrs. smallweed on the level ground in the vicinity snowed up in a heap of paper fragments, print, and manuscript which would appear to be the accumulated compliments that have been sent flying at her in the course of the day. the whole party, small included, are blackened with dust and dirt and present a fiendish appearance not relieved by the general aspect of the room. there is more litter and lumber in it than of old, and it is dirtier if possible; likewise, it is ghostly with traces of its dead inhabitant and even with his chalked writing on the wall. on the entrance of visitors, mr. smallweed and judy simultaneously fold their arms and stop in their researches. "aha!" croaks the old gentleman. "how de do, gentlemen, how de do! come to fetch your property, mr. weevle? that's well, that's well. ha! ha! we should have been forced to sell you up, sir, to pay your warehouse room if you had left it here much longer. you feel quite at home here again, i dare say? glad to see you, glad to see you!" mr. weevle, thanking him, casts an eye about. mr. guppy's eye follows mr. weevle's eye. mr. weevle's eye comes back without any new intelligence in it. mr. guppy's eye comes back and meets mr. smallweed's eye. that engaging old gentleman is still murmuring, like some wound-up instrument running down, "how de do, sir--how de--how--" and then having run down, he lapses into grinning silence, as mr. guppy starts at seeing mr. tulkinghorn standing in the darkness opposite with his hands behind him. "gentleman so kind as to act as my solicitor," says grandfather smallweed. "i am not the sort of client for a gentleman of such note, but he is so good!" mr. guppy, slightly nudging his friend to take another look, makes a shuffling bow to mr. tulkinghorn, who returns it with an easy nod. mr. tulkinghorn is looking on as if he had nothing else to do and were rather amused by the novelty. "a good deal of property here, sir, i should say," mr. guppy observes to mr. smallweed. "principally rags and rubbish, my dear friend! rags and rubbish! me and bart and my granddaughter judy are endeavouring to make out an inventory of what's worth anything to sell. but we haven't come to much as yet; we--haven't--come--to--hah!" mr. smallweed has run down again, while mr. weevle's eye, attended by mr. guppy's eye, has again gone round the room and come back. "well, sir," says mr. weevle. "we won't intrude any longer if you'll allow us to go upstairs." "anywhere, my dear sir, anywhere! you're at home. make yourself so, pray!" as they go upstairs, mr. guppy lifts his eyebrows inquiringly and looks at tony. tony shakes his head. they find the old room very dull and dismal, with the ashes of the fire that was burning on that memorable night yet in the discoloured grate. they have a great disinclination to touch any object, and carefully blow the dust from it first. nor are they desirous to prolong their visit, packing the few movables with all possible speed and never speaking above a whisper. "look here," says tony, recoiling. "here's that horrible cat coming in!" mr. guppy retreats behind a chair. "small told me of her. she went leaping and bounding and tearing about that night like a dragon, and got out on the house-top, and roamed about up there for a fortnight, and then came tumbling down the chimney very thin. did you ever see such a brute? looks as if she knew all about it, don't she? almost looks as if she was krook. shoohoo! get out, you goblin!" lady jane, in the doorway, with her tiger snarl from ear to ear and her club of a tail, shows no intention of obeying; but mr. tulkinghorn stumbling over her, she spits at his rusty legs, and swearing wrathfully, takes her arched back upstairs. possibly to roam the house-tops again and return by the chimney. "mr. guppy," says mr. tulkinghorn, "could i have a word with you?" mr. guppy is engaged in collecting the galaxy gallery of british beauty from the wall and depositing those works of art in their old ignoble band-box. "sir," he returns, reddening, "i wish to act with courtesy towards every member of the profession, and especially, i am sure, towards a member of it so well known as yourself--i will truly add, sir, so distinguished as yourself. still, mr. tulkinghorn, sir, i must stipulate that if you have any word with me, that word is spoken in the presence of my friend." "oh, indeed?" says mr. tulkinghorn. "yes, sir. my reasons are not of a personal nature at all, but they are amply sufficient for myself." "no doubt, no doubt." mr. tulkinghorn is as imperturbable as the hearthstone to which he has quietly walked. "the matter is not of that consequence that i need put you to the trouble of making any conditions, mr. guppy." he pauses here to smile, and his smile is as dull and rusty as his pantaloons. "you are to be congratulated, mr. guppy; you are a fortunate young man, sir." "pretty well so, mr. tulkinghorn; i don't complain." "complain? high friends, free admission to great houses, and access to elegant ladies! why, mr. guppy, there are people in london who would give their ears to be you." mr. guppy, looking as if he would give his own reddening and still reddening ears to be one of those people at present instead of himself, replies, "sir, if i attend to my profession and do what is right by kenge and carboy, my friends and acquaintances are of no consequence to them nor to any member of the profession, not excepting mr. tulkinghorn of the fields. i am not under any obligation to explain myself further; and with all respect for you, sir, and without offence--i repeat, without offence--" "oh, certainly!" "--i don't intend to do it." "quite so," says mr. tulkinghorn with a calm nod. "very good; i see by these portraits that you take a strong interest in the fashionable great, sir?" he addresses this to the astounded tony, who admits the soft impeachment. "a virtue in which few englishmen are deficient," observes mr. tulkinghorn. he has been standing on the hearthstone with his back to the smoked chimney-piece, and now turns round with his glasses to his eyes. "who is this? 'lady dedlock.' ha! a very good likeness in its way, but it wants force of character. good day to you, gentlemen; good day!" when he has walked out, mr. guppy, in a great perspiration, nerves himself to the hasty completion of the taking down of the galaxy gallery, concluding with lady dedlock. "tony," he says hurriedly to his astonished companion, "let us be quick in putting the things together and in getting out of this place. it were in vain longer to conceal from you, tony, that between myself and one of the members of a swan-like aristocracy whom i now hold in my hand, there has been undivulged communication and association. the time might have been when i might have revealed it to you. it never will be more. it is due alike to the oath i have taken, alike to the shattered idol, and alike to circumstances over which i have no control, that the whole should be buried in oblivion. i charge you as a friend, by the interest you have ever testified in the fashionable intelligence, and by any little advances with which i may have been able to accommodate you, so to bury it without a word of inquiry!" this charge mr. guppy delivers in a state little short of forensic lunacy, while his friend shows a dazed mind in his whole head of hair and even in his cultivated whiskers. chapter xl national and domestic england has been in a dreadful state for some weeks. lord coodle would go out, sir thomas doodle wouldn't come in, and there being nobody in great britain (to speak of) except coodle and doodle, there has been no government. it is a mercy that the hostile meeting between those two great men, which at one time seemed inevitable, did not come off, because if both pistols had taken effect, and coodle and doodle had killed each other, it is to be presumed that england must have waited to be governed until young coodle and young doodle, now in frocks and long stockings, were grown up. this stupendous national calamity, however, was averted by lord coodle's making the timely discovery that if in the heat of debate he had said that he scorned and despised the whole ignoble career of sir thomas doodle, he had merely meant to say that party differences should never induce him to withhold from it the tribute of his warmest admiration; while it as opportunely turned out, on the other hand, that sir thomas doodle had in his own bosom expressly booked lord coodle to go down to posterity as the mirror of virtue and honour. still england has been some weeks in the dismal strait of having no pilot (as was well observed by sir leicester dedlock) to weather the storm; and the marvellous part of the matter is that england has not appeared to care very much about it, but has gone on eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage as the old world did in the days before the flood. but coodle knew the danger, and doodle knew the danger, and all their followers and hangers-on had the clearest possible perception of the danger. at last sir thomas doodle has not only condescended to come in, but has done it handsomely, bringing in with him all his nephews, all his male cousins, and all his brothers-in-law. so there is hope for the old ship yet. doodle has found that he must throw himself upon the country, chiefly in the form of sovereigns and beer. in this metamorphosed state he is available in a good many places simultaneously and can throw himself upon a considerable portion of the country at one time. britannia being much occupied in pocketing doodle in the form of sovereigns, and swallowing doodle in the form of beer, and in swearing herself black in the face that she does neither--plainly to the advancement of her glory and morality--the london season comes to a sudden end, through all the doodleites and coodleites dispersing to assist britannia in those religious exercises. hence mrs. rouncewell, housekeeper at chesney wold, foresees, though no instructions have yet come down, that the family may shortly be expected, together with a pretty large accession of cousins and others who can in any way assist the great constitutional work. and hence the stately old dame, taking time by the forelock, leads him up and down the staircases, and along the galleries and passages, and through the rooms, to witness before he grows any older that everything is ready, that floors are rubbed bright, carpets spread, curtains shaken out, beds puffed and patted, still-room and kitchen cleared for action--all things prepared as beseems the dedlock dignity. this present summer evening, as the sun goes down, the preparations are complete. dreary and solemn the old house looks, with so many appliances of habitation and with no inhabitants except the pictured forms upon the walls. so did these come and go, a dedlock in possession might have ruminated passing along; so did they see this gallery hushed and quiet, as i see it now; so think, as i think, of the gap that they would make in this domain when they were gone; so find it, as i find it, difficult to believe that it could be without them; so pass from my world, as i pass from theirs, now closing the reverberating door; so leave no blank to miss them, and so die. through some of the fiery windows beautiful from without, and set, at this sunset hour, not in dull-grey stone but in a glorious house of gold, the light excluded at other windows pours in rich, lavish, overflowing like the summer plenty in the land. then do the frozen dedlocks thaw. strange movements come upon their features as the shadows of leaves play there. a dense justice in a corner is beguiled into a wink. a staring baronet, with a truncheon, gets a dimple in his chin. down into the bosom of a stony shepherdess there steals a fleck of light and warmth that would have done it good a hundred years ago. one ancestress of volumnia, in high-heeled shoes, very like her--casting the shadow of that virgin event before her full two centuries--shoots out into a halo and becomes a saint. a maid of honour of the court of charles the second, with large round eyes (and other charms to correspond), seems to bathe in glowing water, and it ripples as it glows. but the fire of the sun is dying. even now the floor is dusky, and shadow slowly mounts the walls, bringing the dedlocks down like age and death. and now, upon my lady's picture over the great chimney-piece, a weird shade falls from some old tree, that turns it pale, and flutters it, and looks as if a great arm held a veil or hood, watching an opportunity to draw it over her. higher and darker rises shadow on the wall--now a red gloom on the ceiling--now the fire is out. all that prospect, which from the terrace looked so near, has moved solemnly away and changed--not the first nor the last of beautiful things that look so near and will so change--into a distant phantom. light mists arise, and the dew falls, and all the sweet scents in the garden are heavy in the air. now the woods settle into great masses as if they were each one profound tree. and now the moon rises to separate them, and to glimmer here and there in horizontal lines behind their stems, and to make the avenue a pavement of light among high cathedral arches fantastically broken. now the moon is high; and the great house, needing habitation more than ever, is like a body without life. now it is even awful, stealing through it, to think of the live people who have slept in the solitary bedrooms, to say nothing of the dead. now is the time for shadow, when every corner is a cavern and every downward step a pit, when the stained glass is reflected in pale and faded hues upon the floors, when anything and everything can be made of the heavy staircase beams excepting their own proper shapes, when the armour has dull lights upon it not easily to be distinguished from stealthy movement, and when barred helmets are frightfully suggestive of heads inside. but of all the shadows in chesney wold, the shadow in the long drawing-room upon my lady's picture is the first to come, the last to be disturbed. at this hour and by this light it changes into threatening hands raised up and menacing the handsome face with every breath that stirs. "she is not well, ma'am," says a groom in mrs. rouncewell's audience-chamber. "my lady not well! what's the matter?" "why, my lady has been but poorly, ma'am, since she was last here--i don't mean with the family, ma'am, but when she was here as a bird of passage like. my lady has not been out much, for her, and has kept her room a good deal." "chesney wold, thomas," rejoins the housekeeper with proud complacency, "will set my lady up! there is no finer air and no healthier soil in the world!" thomas may have his own personal opinions on this subject, probably hints them in his manner of smoothing his sleek head from the nape of his neck to his temples, but he forbears to express them further and retires to the servants' hall to regale on cold meat-pie and ale. this groom is the pilot-fish before the nobler shark. next evening, down come sir leicester and my lady with their largest retinue, and down come the cousins and others from all the points of the compass. thenceforth for some weeks backward and forward rush mysterious men with no names, who fly about all those particular parts of the country on which doodle is at present throwing himself in an auriferous and malty shower, but who are merely persons of a restless disposition and never do anything anywhere. on these national occasions sir leicester finds the cousins useful. a better man than the honourable bob stables to meet the hunt at dinner, there could not possibly be. better got up gentlemen than the other cousins to ride over to polling-booths and hustings here and there, and show themselves on the side of england, it would be hard to find. volumnia is a little dim, but she is of the true descent; and there are many who appreciate her sprightly conversation, her french conundrums so old as to have become in the cycles of time almost new again, the honour of taking the fair dedlock in to dinner, or even the privilege of her hand in the dance. on these national occasions dancing may be a patriotic service, and volumnia is constantly seen hopping about for the good of an ungrateful and unpensioning country. my lady takes no great pains to entertain the numerous guests, and being still unwell, rarely appears until late in the day. but at all the dismal dinners, leaden lunches, basilisk balls, and other melancholy pageants, her mere appearance is a relief. as to sir leicester, he conceives it utterly impossible that anything can be wanting, in any direction, by any one who has the good fortune to be received under that roof; and in a state of sublime satisfaction, he moves among the company, a magnificent refrigerator. daily the cousins trot through dust and canter over roadside turf, away to hustings and polling-booths (with leather gloves and hunting-whips for the counties and kid gloves and riding-canes for the boroughs), and daily bring back reports on which sir leicester holds forth after dinner. daily the restless men who have no occupation in life present the appearance of being rather busy. daily volumnia has a little cousinly talk with sir leicester on the state of the nation, from which sir leicester is disposed to conclude that volumnia is a more reflecting woman than he had thought her. "how are we getting on?" says miss volumnia, clasping her hands. "are we safe?" the mighty business is nearly over by this time, and doodle will throw himself off the country in a few days more. sir leicester has just appeared in the long drawing-room after dinner, a bright particular star surrounded by clouds of cousins. "volumnia," replies sir leicester, who has a list in his hand, "we are doing tolerably." "only tolerably!" although it is summer weather, sir leicester always has his own particular fire in the evening. he takes his usual screened seat near it and repeats with much firmness and a little displeasure, as who should say, i am not a common man, and when i say tolerably, it must not be understood as a common expression, "volumnia, we are doing tolerably." "at least there is no opposition to you," volumnia asserts with confidence. "no, volumnia. this distracted country has lost its senses in many respects, i grieve to say, but--" "it is not so mad as that. i am glad to hear it!" volumnia's finishing the sentence restores her to favour. sir leicester, with a gracious inclination of his head, seems to say to himself, "a sensible woman this, on the whole, though occasionally precipitate." in fact, as to this question of opposition, the fair dedlock's observation was superfluous, sir leicester on these occasions always delivering in his own candidateship, as a kind of handsome wholesale order to be promptly executed. two other little seats that belong to him he treats as retail orders of less importance, merely sending down the men and signifying to the tradespeople, "you will have the goodness to make these materials into two members of parliament and to send them home when done." "i regret to say, volumnia, that in many places the people have shown a bad spirit, and that this opposition to the government has been of a most determined and most implacable description." "w-r-retches!" says volumnia. "even," proceeds sir leicester, glancing at the circumjacent cousins on sofas and ottomans, "even in many--in fact, in most--of those places in which the government has carried it against a faction--" (note, by the way, that the coodleites are always a faction with the doodleites, and that the doodleites occupy exactly the same position towards the coodleites.) "--even in them i am shocked, for the credit of englishmen, to be constrained to inform you that the party has not triumphed without being put to an enormous expense. hundreds," says sir leicester, eyeing the cousins with increasing dignity and swelling indignation, "hundreds of thousands of pounds!" if volumnia have a fault, it is the fault of being a trifle too innocent, seeing that the innocence which would go extremely well with a sash and tucker is a little out of keeping with the rouge and pearl necklace. howbeit, impelled by innocence, she asks, "what for?" "volumnia," remonstrates sir leicester with his utmost severity. "volumnia!" "no, no, i don't mean what for," cries volumnia with her favourite little scream. "how stupid i am! i mean what a pity!" "i am glad," returns sir leicester, "that you do mean what a pity." volumnia hastens to express her opinion that the shocking people ought to be tried as traitors and made to support the party. "i am glad, volumnia," repeats sir leicester, unmindful of these mollifying sentiments, "that you do mean what a pity. it is disgraceful to the electors. but as you, though inadvertently and without intending so unreasonable a question, asked me 'what for?' let me reply to you. for necessary expenses. and i trust to your good sense, volumnia, not to pursue the subject, here or elsewhere." sir leicester feels it incumbent on him to observe a crushing aspect towards volumnia because it is whispered abroad that these necessary expenses will, in some two hundred election petitions, be unpleasantly connected with the word bribery, and because some graceless jokers have consequently suggested the omission from the church service of the ordinary supplication in behalf of the high court of parliament and have recommended instead that the prayers of the congregation be requested for six hundred and fifty-eight gentlemen in a very unhealthy state. "i suppose," observes volumnia, having taken a little time to recover her spirits after her late castigation, "i suppose mr. tulkinghorn has been worked to death." "i don't know," says sir leicester, opening his eyes, "why mr. tulkinghorn should be worked to death. i don't know what mr. tulkinghorn's engagements may be. he is not a candidate." volumnia had thought he might have been employed. sir leicester could desire to know by whom, and what for. volumnia, abashed again, suggests, by somebody--to advise and make arrangements. sir leicester is not aware that any client of mr. tulkinghorn has been in need of his assistance. lady dedlock, seated at an open window with her arm upon its cushioned ledge and looking out at the evening shadows falling on the park, has seemed to attend since the lawyer's name was mentioned. a languid cousin with a moustache in a state of extreme debility now observes from his couch that man told him ya'as'dy that tulkinghorn had gone down t' that iron place t' give legal 'pinion 'bout something, and that contest being over t' day, 'twould be highly jawlly thing if tulkinghorn should 'pear with news that coodle man was floored. mercury in attendance with coffee informs sir leicester, hereupon, that mr. tulkinghorn has arrived and is taking dinner. my lady turns her head inward for the moment, then looks out again as before. volumnia is charmed to hear that her delight is come. he is so original, such a stolid creature, such an immense being for knowing all sorts of things and never telling them! volumnia is persuaded that he must be a freemason. is sure he is at the head of a lodge, and wears short aprons, and is made a perfect idol of with candlesticks and trowels. these lively remarks the fair dedlock delivers in her youthful manner, while making a purse. "he has not been here once," she adds, "since i came. i really had some thoughts of breaking my heart for the inconstant creature. i had almost made up my mind that he was dead." it may be the gathering gloom of evening, or it may be the darker gloom within herself, but a shade is on my lady's face, as if she thought, "i would he were!" "mr. tulkinghorn," says sir leicester, "is always welcome here and always discreet wheresoever he is. a very valuable person, and deservedly respected." the debilitated cousin supposes he is "'normously rich fler." "he has a stake in the country," says sir leicester, "i have no doubt. he is, of course, handsomely paid, and he associates almost on a footing of equality with the highest society." everybody starts. for a gun is fired close by. "good gracious, what's that?" cries volumnia with her little withered scream. "a rat," says my lady. "and they have shot him." enter mr. tulkinghorn, followed by mercuries with lamps and candles. "no, no," says sir leicester, "i think not. my lady, do you object to the twilight?" on the contrary, my lady prefers it. "volumnia?" oh! nothing is so delicious to volumnia as to sit and talk in the dark. "then take them away," says sir leicester. "tulkinghorn, i beg your pardon. how do you do?" mr. tulkinghorn with his usual leisurely ease advances, renders his passing homage to my lady, shakes sir leicester's hand, and subsides into the chair proper to him when he has anything to communicate, on the opposite side of the baronet's little newspaper-table. sir leicester is apprehensive that my lady, not being very well, will take cold at that open window. my lady is obliged to him, but would rather sit there for the air. sir leicester rises, adjusts her scarf about her, and returns to his seat. mr. tulkinghorn in the meanwhile takes a pinch of snuff. "now," says sir leicester. "how has that contest gone?" "oh, hollow from the beginning. not a chance. they have brought in both their people. you are beaten out of all reason. three to one." it is a part of mr. tulkinghorn's policy and mastery to have no political opinions; indeed, no opinions. therefore he says "you" are beaten, and not "we." sir leicester is majestically wroth. volumnia never heard of such a thing. 'the debilitated cousin holds that it's sort of thing that's sure tapn slongs votes--giv'n--mob. "it's the place, you know," mr. tulkinghorn goes on to say in the fast-increasing darkness when there is silence again, "where they wanted to put up mrs. rouncewell's son." "a proposal which, as you correctly informed me at the time, he had the becoming taste and perception," observes sir leicester, "to decline. i cannot say that i by any means approve of the sentiments expressed by mr. rouncewell when he was here for some half-hour in this room, but there was a sense of propriety in his decision which i am glad to acknowledge." "ha!" says mr. tulkinghorn. "it did not prevent him from being very active in this election, though." sir leicester is distinctly heard to gasp before speaking. "did i understand you? did you say that mr. rouncewell had been very active in this election?" "uncommonly active." "against--" "oh, dear yes, against you. he is a very good speaker. plain and emphatic. he made a damaging effect, and has great influence. in the business part of the proceedings he carried all before him." it is evident to the whole company, though nobody can see him, that sir leicester is staring majestically. "and he was much assisted," says mr. tulkinghorn as a wind-up, "by his son." "by his son, sir?" repeats sir leicester with awful politeness. "by his son." "the son who wished to marry the young woman in my lady's service?" "that son. he has but one." "then upon my honour," says sir leicester after a terrific pause during which he has been heard to snort and felt to stare, "then upon my honour, upon my life, upon my reputation and principles, the floodgates of society are burst open, and the waters have--a--obliterated the landmarks of the framework of the cohesion by which things are held together!" general burst of cousinly indignation. volumnia thinks it is really high time, you know, for somebody in power to step in and do something strong. debilitated cousin thinks--country's going--dayvle--steeple-chase pace. "i beg," says sir leicester in a breathless condition, "that we may not comment further on this circumstance. comment is superfluous. my lady, let me suggest in reference to that young woman--" "i have no intention," observes my lady from her window in a low but decided tone, "of parting with her." "that was not my meaning," returns sir leicester. "i am glad to hear you say so. i would suggest that as you think her worthy of your patronage, you should exert your influence to keep her from these dangerous hands. you might show her what violence would be done in such association to her duties and principles, and you might preserve her for a better fate. you might point out to her that she probably would, in good time, find a husband at chesney wold by whom she would not be--" sir leicester adds, after a moment's consideration, "dragged from the altars of her forefathers." these remarks he offers with his unvarying politeness and deference when he addresses himself to his wife. she merely moves her head in reply. the moon is rising, and where she sits there is a little stream of cold pale light, in which her head is seen. "it is worthy of remark," says mr. tulkinghorn, "however, that these people are, in their way, very proud." "proud?" sir leicester doubts his hearing. "i should not be surprised if they all voluntarily abandoned the girl--yes, lover and all--instead of her abandoning them, supposing she remained at chesney wold under such circumstances." "well!" says sir leicester tremulously. "well! you should know, mr. tulkinghorn. you have been among them." "really, sir leicester," returns the lawyer, "i state the fact. why, i could tell you a story--with lady dedlock's permission." her head concedes it, and volumnia is enchanted. a story! oh, he is going to tell something at last! a ghost in it, volumnia hopes? "no. real flesh and blood." mr. tulkinghorn stops for an instant and repeats with some little emphasis grafted upon his usual monotony, "real flesh and blood, miss dedlock. sir leicester, these particulars have only lately become known to me. they are very brief. they exemplify what i have said. i suppress names for the present. lady dedlock will not think me ill-bred, i hope?" by the light of the fire, which is low, he can be seen looking towards the moonlight. by the light of the moon lady dedlock can be seen, perfectly still. "a townsman of this mrs. rouncewell, a man in exactly parallel circumstances as i am told, had the good fortune to have a daughter who attracted the notice of a great lady. i speak of really a great lady, not merely great to him, but married to a gentleman of your condition, sir leicester." sir leicester condescendingly says, "yes, mr. tulkinghorn," implying that then she must have appeared of very considerable moral dimensions indeed in the eyes of an iron-master. "the lady was wealthy and beautiful, and had a liking for the girl, and treated her with great kindness, and kept her always near her. now this lady preserved a secret under all her greatness, which she had preserved for many years. in fact, she had in early life been engaged to marry a young rake--he was a captain in the army--nothing connected with whom came to any good. she never did marry him, but she gave birth to a child of which he was the father." by the light of the fire he can be seen looking towards the moonlight. by the moonlight, lady dedlock can be seen in profile, perfectly still. "the captain in the army being dead, she believed herself safe; but a train of circumstances with which i need not trouble you led to discovery. as i received the story, they began in an imprudence on her own part one day when she was taken by surprise, which shows how difficult it is for the firmest of us (she was very firm) to be always guarded. there was great domestic trouble and amazement, you may suppose; i leave you to imagine, sir leicester, the husband's grief. but that is not the present point. when mr. rouncewell's townsman heard of the disclosure, he no more allowed the girl to be patronized and honoured than he would have suffered her to be trodden underfoot before his eyes. such was his pride, that he indignantly took her away, as if from reproach and disgrace. he had no sense of the honour done him and his daughter by the lady's condescension; not the least. he resented the girl's position, as if the lady had been the commonest of commoners. that is the story. i hope lady dedlock will excuse its painful nature." there are various opinions on the merits, more or less conflicting with volumnia's. that fair young creature cannot believe there ever was any such lady and rejects the whole history on the threshold. the majority incline to the debilitated cousin's sentiment, which is in few words--"no business--rouncewell's fernal townsman." sir leicester generally refers back in his mind to wat tyler and arranges a sequence of events on a plan of his own. there is not much conversation in all, for late hours have been kept at chesney wold since the necessary expenses elsewhere began, and this is the first night in many on which the family have been alone. it is past ten when sir leicester begs mr. tulkinghorn to ring for candles. then the stream of moonlight has swelled into a lake, and then lady dedlock for the first time moves, and rises, and comes forward to a table for a glass of water. winking cousins, bat-like in the candle glare, crowd round to give it; volumnia (always ready for something better if procurable) takes another, a very mild sip of which contents her; lady dedlock, graceful, self-possessed, looked after by admiring eyes, passes away slowly down the long perspective by the side of that nymph, not at all improving her as a question of contrast. chapter xli in mr. tulkinghorn's room mr. tulkinghorn arrives in his turret-room a little breathed by the journey up, though leisurely performed. there is an expression on his face as if he had discharged his mind of some grave matter and were, in his close way, satisfied. to say of a man so severely and strictly self-repressed that he is triumphant would be to do him as great an injustice as to suppose him troubled with love or sentiment or any romantic weakness. he is sedately satisfied. perhaps there is a rather increased sense of power upon him as he loosely grasps one of his veinous wrists with his other hand and holding it behind his back walks noiselessly up and down. there is a capacious writing-table in the room on which is a pretty large accumulation of papers. the green lamp is lighted, his reading-glasses lie upon the desk, the easy-chair is wheeled up to it, and it would seem as though he had intended to bestow an hour or so upon these claims on his attention before going to bed. but he happens not to be in a business mind. after a glance at the documents awaiting his notice--with his head bent low over the table, the old man's sight for print or writing being defective at night--he opens the french window and steps out upon the leads. there he again walks slowly up and down in the same attitude, subsiding, if a man so cool may have any need to subside, from the story he has related downstairs. the time was once when men as knowing as mr. tulkinghorn would walk on turret-tops in the starlight and look up into the sky to read their fortunes there. hosts of stars are visible to-night, though their brilliancy is eclipsed by the splendour of the moon. if he be seeking his own star as he methodically turns and turns upon the leads, it should be but a pale one to be so rustily represented below. if he be tracing out his destiny, that may be written in other characters nearer to his hand. as he paces the leads with his eyes most probably as high above his thoughts as they are high above the earth, he is suddenly stopped in passing the window by two eyes that meet his own. the ceiling of his room is rather low; and the upper part of the door, which is opposite the window, is of glass. there is an inner baize door, too, but the night being warm he did not close it when he came upstairs. these eyes that meet his own are looking in through the glass from the corridor outside. he knows them well. the blood has not flushed into his face so suddenly and redly for many a long year as when he recognizes lady dedlock. he steps into the room, and she comes in too, closing both the doors behind her. there is a wild disturbance--is it fear or anger?--in her eyes. in her carriage and all else she looks as she looked downstairs two hours ago. is it fear or is it anger now? he cannot be sure. both might be as pale, both as intent. "lady dedlock?" she does not speak at first, nor even when she has slowly dropped into the easy-chair by the table. they look at each other, like two pictures. "why have you told my story to so many persons?" "lady dedlock, it was necessary for me to inform you that i knew it." "how long have you known it?" "i have suspected it a long while--fully known it a little while." "months?" "days." he stands before her with one hand on a chair-back and the other in his old-fashioned waistcoat and shirt-frill, exactly as he has stood before her at any time since her marriage. the same formal politeness, the same composed deference that might as well be defiance; the whole man the same dark, cold object, at the same distance, which nothing has ever diminished. "is this true concerning the poor girl?" he slightly inclines and advances his head as not quite understanding the question. "you know what you related. is it true? do her friends know my story also? is it the town-talk yet? is it chalked upon the walls and cried in the streets?" so! anger, and fear, and shame. all three contending. what power this woman has to keep these raging passions down! mr. tulkinghorn's thoughts take such form as he looks at her, with his ragged grey eyebrows a hair's breadth more contracted than usual under her gaze. "no, lady dedlock. that was a hypothetical case, arising out of sir leicester's unconsciously carrying the matter with so high a hand. but it would be a real case if they knew--what we know." "then they do not know it yet?" "no." "can i save the poor girl from injury before they know it?" "really, lady dedlock," mr. tulkinghorn replies, "i cannot give a satisfactory opinion on that point." and he thinks, with the interest of attentive curiosity, as he watches the struggle in her breast, "the power and force of this woman are astonishing!" "sir," she says, for the moment obliged to set her lips with all the energy she has, that she may speak distinctly, "i will make it plainer. i do not dispute your hypothetical case. i anticipated it, and felt its truth as strongly as you can do, when i saw mr. rouncewell here. i knew very well that if he could have had the power of seeing me as i was, he would consider the poor girl tarnished by having for a moment been, although most innocently, the subject of my great and distinguished patronage. but i have an interest in her, or i should rather say--no longer belonging to this place--i had, and if you can find so much consideration for the woman under your foot as to remember that, she will be very sensible of your mercy." mr. tulkinghorn, profoundly attentive, throws this off with a shrug of self-depreciation and contracts his eyebrows a little more. "you have prepared me for my exposure, and i thank you for that too. is there anything that you require of me? is there any claim that i can release or any charge or trouble that i can spare my husband in obtaining his release by certifying to the exactness of your discovery? i will write anything, here and now, that you will dictate. i am ready to do it." and she would do it, thinks the lawyer, watchful of the firm hand with which she takes the pen! "i will not trouble you, lady dedlock. pray spare yourself." "i have long expected this, as you know. i neither wish to spare myself nor to be spared. you can do nothing worse to me than you have done. do what remains now." "lady dedlock, there is nothing to be done. i will take leave to say a few words when you have finished." their need for watching one another should be over now, but they do it all this time, and the stars watch them both through the opened window. away in the moonlight lie the woodland fields at rest, and the wide house is as quiet as the narrow one. the narrow one! where are the digger and the spade, this peaceful night, destined to add the last great secret to the many secrets of the tulkinghorn existence? is the man born yet, is the spade wrought yet? curious questions to consider, more curious perhaps not to consider, under the watching stars upon a summer night. "of repentance or remorse or any feeling of mine," lady dedlock presently proceeds, "i say not a word. if i were not dumb, you would be deaf. let that go by. it is not for your ears." he makes a feint of offering a protest, but she sweeps it away with her disdainful hand. "of other and very different things i come to speak to you. my jewels are all in their proper places of keeping. they will be found there. so, my dresses. so, all the valuables i have. some ready money i had with me, please to say, but no large amount. i did not wear my own dress, in order that i might avoid observation. i went to be henceforward lost. make this known. i leave no other charge with you." "excuse me, lady dedlock," says mr. tulkinghorn, quite unmoved. "i am not sure that i understand you. you want--" "to be lost to all here. i leave chesney wold to-night. i go this hour." mr. tulkinghorn shakes his head. she rises, but he, without moving hand from chair-back or from old-fashioned waistcoat and shirt-frill, shakes his head. "what? not go as i have said?" "no, lady dedlock," he very calmly replies. "do you know the relief that my disappearance will be? have you forgotten the stain and blot upon this place, and where it is, and who it is?" "no, lady dedlock, not by any means." without deigning to rejoin, she moves to the inner door and has it in her hand when he says to her, without himself stirring hand or foot or raising his voice, "lady dedlock, have the goodness to stop and hear me, or before you reach the staircase i shall ring the alarm-bell and rouse the house. and then i must speak out before every guest and servant, every man and woman, in it." he has conquered her. she falters, trembles, and puts her hand confusedly to her head. slight tokens these in any one else, but when so practised an eye as mr. tulkinghorn's sees indecision for a moment in such a subject, he thoroughly knows its value. he promptly says again, "have the goodness to hear me, lady dedlock," and motions to the chair from which she has risen. she hesitates, but he motions again, and she sits down. "the relations between us are of an unfortunate description, lady dedlock; but as they are not of my making, i will not apologize for them. the position i hold in reference to sir leicester is so well known to you that i can hardly imagine but that i must long have appeared in your eyes the natural person to make this discovery." "sir," she returns without looking up from the ground on which her eyes are now fixed, "i had better have gone. it would have been far better not to have detained me. i have no more to say." "excuse me, lady dedlock, if i add a little more to hear." "i wish to hear it at the window, then. i can't breathe where i am." his jealous glance as she walks that way betrays an instant's misgiving that she may have it in her thoughts to leap over, and dashing against ledge and cornice, strike her life out upon the terrace below. but a moment's observation of her figure as she stands in the window without any support, looking out at the stars--not up--gloomily out at those stars which are low in the heavens, reassures him. by facing round as she has moved, he stands a little behind her. "lady dedlock, i have not yet been able to come to a decision satisfactory to myself on the course before me. i am not clear what to do or how to act next. i must request you, in the meantime, to keep your secret as you have kept it so long and not to wonder that i keep it too." he pauses, but she makes no reply. "pardon me, lady dedlock. this is an important subject. you are honouring me with your attention?" "i am." "thank you. i might have known it from what i have seen of your strength of character. i ought not to have asked the question, but i have the habit of making sure of my ground, step by step, as i go on. the sole consideration in this unhappy case is sir leicester." "then why," she asks in a low voice and without removing her gloomy look from those distant stars, "do you detain me in his house?" "because he is the consideration. lady dedlock, i have no occasion to tell you that sir leicester is a very proud man, that his reliance upon you is implicit, that the fall of that moon out of the sky would not amaze him more than your fall from your high position as his wife." she breathes quickly and heavily, but she stands as unflinchingly as ever he has seen her in the midst of her grandest company. "i declare to you, lady dedlock, that with anything short of this case that i have, i would as soon have hoped to root up by means of my own strength and my own hands the oldest tree on this estate as to shake your hold upon sir leicester and sir leicester's trust and confidence in you. and even now, with this case, i hesitate. not that he could doubt (that, even with him, is impossible), but that nothing can prepare him for the blow." "not my flight?" she returned. "think of it again." "your flight, lady dedlock, would spread the whole truth, and a hundred times the whole truth, far and wide. it would be impossible to save the family credit for a day. it is not to be thought of." there is a quiet decision in his reply which admits of no remonstrance. "when i speak of sir leicester being the sole consideration, he and the family credit are one. sir leicester and the baronetcy, sir leicester and chesney wold, sir leicester and his ancestors and his patrimony"--mr. tulkinghorn very dry here--"are, i need not say to you, lady dedlock, inseparable." "go on!" "therefore," says mr. tulkinghorn, pursuing his case in his jog-trot style, "i have much to consider. this is to be hushed up if it can be. how can it be, if sir leicester is driven out of his wits or laid upon a death-bed? if i inflicted this shock upon him to-morrow morning, how could the immediate change in him be accounted for? what could have caused it? what could have divided you? lady dedlock, the wall-chalking and the street-crying would come on directly, and you are to remember that it would not affect you merely (whom i cannot at all consider in this business) but your husband, lady dedlock, your husband." he gets plainer as he gets on, but not an atom more emphatic or animated. "there is another point of view," he continues, "in which the case presents itself. sir leicester is devoted to you almost to infatuation. he might not be able to overcome that infatuation, even knowing what we know. i am putting an extreme case, but it might be so. if so, it were better that he knew nothing. better for common sense, better for him, better for me. i must take all this into account, and it combines to render a decision very difficult." she stands looking out at the same stars without a word. they are beginning to pale, and she looks as if their coldness froze her. "my experience teaches me," says mr. tulkinghorn, who has by this time got his hands in his pockets and is going on in his business consideration of the matter like a machine. "my experience teaches me, lady dedlock, that most of the people i know would do far better to leave marriage alone. it is at the bottom of three fourths of their troubles. so i thought when sir leicester married, and so i always have thought since. no more about that. i must now be guided by circumstances. in the meanwhile i must beg you to keep your own counsel, and i will keep mine." "i am to drag my present life on, holding its pains at your pleasure, day by day?" she asks, still looking at the distant sky. "yes, i am afraid so, lady dedlock." "it is necessary, you think, that i should be so tied to the stake?" "i am sure that what i recommend is necessary." "i am to remain on this gaudy platform on which my miserable deception has been so long acted, and it is to fall beneath me when you give the signal?" she said slowly. "not without notice, lady dedlock. i shall take no step without forewarning you." she asks all her questions as if she were repeating them from memory or calling them over in her sleep. "we are to meet as usual?" "precisely as usual, if you please." "and i am to hide my guilt, as i have done so many years?" "as you have done so many years. i should not have made that reference myself, lady dedlock, but i may now remind you that your secret can be no heavier to you than it was, and is no worse and no better than it was. i know it certainly, but i believe we have never wholly trusted each other." she stands absorbed in the same frozen way for some little time before asking, "is there anything more to be said to-night?" "why," mr. tulkinghorn returns methodically as he softly rubs his hands, "i should like to be assured of your acquiescence in my arrangements, lady dedlock." "you may be assured of it." "good. and i would wish in conclusion to remind you, as a business precaution, in case it should be necessary to recall the fact in any communication with sir leicester, that throughout our interview i have expressly stated my sole consideration to be sir leicester's feelings and honour and the family reputation. i should have been happy to have made lady dedlock a prominent consideration, too, if the case had admitted of it; but unfortunately it does not." "i can attest your fidelity, sir." both before and after saying it she remains absorbed, but at length moves, and turns, unshaken in her natural and acquired presence, towards the door. mr. tulkinghorn opens both the doors exactly as he would have done yesterday, or as he would have done ten years ago, and makes his old-fashioned bow as she passes out. it is not an ordinary look that he receives from the handsome face as it goes into the darkness, and it is not an ordinary movement, though a very slight one, that acknowledges his courtesy. but as he reflects when he is left alone, the woman has been putting no common constraint upon herself. he would know it all the better if he saw the woman pacing her own rooms with her hair wildly thrown from her flung-back face, her hands clasped behind her head, her figure twisted as if by pain. he would think so all the more if he saw the woman thus hurrying up and down for hours, without fatigue, without intermission, followed by the faithful step upon the ghost's walk. but he shuts out the now chilled air, draws the window-curtain, goes to bed, and falls asleep. and truly when the stars go out and the wan day peeps into the turret-chamber, finding him at his oldest, he looks as if the digger and the spade were both commissioned and would soon be digging. the same wan day peeps in at sir leicester pardoning the repentant country in a majestically condescending dream; and at the cousins entering on various public employments, principally receipt of salary; and at the chaste volumnia, bestowing a dower of fifty thousand pounds upon a hideous old general with a mouth of false teeth like a pianoforte too full of keys, long the admiration of bath and the terror of every other community. also into rooms high in the roof, and into offices in court-yards, and over stables, where humbler ambition dreams of bliss, in keepers' lodges, and in holy matrimony with will or sally. up comes the bright sun, drawing everything up with it--the wills and sallys, the latent vapour in the earth, the drooping leaves and flowers, the birds and beasts and creeping things, the gardeners to sweep the dewy turf and unfold emerald velvet where the roller passes, the smoke of the great kitchen fire wreathing itself straight and high into the lightsome air. lastly, up comes the flag over mr. tulkinghorn's unconscious head cheerfully proclaiming that sir leicester and lady dedlock are in their happy home and that there is hospitality at the place in lincolnshire. chapter xlii in mr. tulkinghorn's chambers from the verdant undulations and the spreading oaks of the dedlock property, mr. tulkinghorn transfers himself to the stale heat and dust of london. his manner of coming and going between the two places is one of his impenetrabilities. he walks into chesney wold as if it were next door to his chambers and returns to his chambers as if he had never been out of lincoln's inn fields. he neither changes his dress before the journey nor talks of it afterwards. he melted out of his turret-room this morning, just as now, in the late twilight, he melts into his own square. like a dingy london bird among the birds at roost in these pleasant fields, where the sheep are all made into parchment, the goats into wigs, and the pasture into chaff, the lawyer, smoke-dried and faded, dwelling among mankind but not consorting with them, aged without experience of genial youth, and so long used to make his cramped nest in holes and corners of human nature that he has forgotten its broader and better range, comes sauntering home. in the oven made by the hot pavements and hot buildings, he has baked himself dryer than usual; and he has in his thirsty mind his mellowed port-wine half a century old. the lamplighter is skipping up and down his ladder on mr. tulkinghorn's side of the fields when that high-priest of noble mysteries arrives at his own dull court-yard. he ascends the door-steps and is gliding into the dusky hall when he encounters, on the top step, a bowing and propitiatory little man. "is that snagsby?" "yes, sir. i hope you are well, sir. i was just giving you up, sir, and going home." "aye? what is it? what do you want with me?" "well, sir," says mr. snagsby, holding his hat at the side of his head in his deference towards his best customer, "i was wishful to say a word to you, sir." "can you say it here?" "perfectly, sir." "say it then." the lawyer turns, leans his arms on the iron railing at the top of the steps, and looks at the lamplighter lighting the court-yard. "it is relating," says mr. snagsby in a mysterious low voice, "it is relating--not to put too fine a point upon it--to the foreigner, sir!" mr. tulkinghorn eyes him with some surprise. "what foreigner?" "the foreign female, sir. french, if i don't mistake? i am not acquainted with that language myself, but i should judge from her manners and appearance that she was french; anyways, certainly foreign. her that was upstairs, sir, when mr. bucket and me had the honour of waiting upon you with the sweeping-boy that night." "oh! yes, yes. mademoiselle hortense." "indeed, sir?" mr. snagsby coughs his cough of submission behind his hat. "i am not acquainted myself with the names of foreigners in general, but i have no doubt it would be that." mr. snagsby appears to have set out in this reply with some desperate design of repeating the name, but on reflection coughs again to excuse himself. "and what can you have to say, snagsby," demands mr. tulkinghorn, "about her?" "well, sir," returns the stationer, shading his communication with his hat, "it falls a little hard upon me. my domestic happiness is very great--at least, it's as great as can be expected, i'm sure--but my little woman is rather given to jealousy. not to put too fine a point upon it, she is very much given to jealousy. and you see, a foreign female of that genteel appearance coming into the shop, and hovering--i should be the last to make use of a strong expression if i could avoid it, but hovering, sir--in the court--you know it is--now ain't it? i only put it to yourself, sir." mr. snagsby, having said this in a very plaintive manner, throws in a cough of general application to fill up all the blanks. "why, what do you mean?" asks mr. tulkinghorn. "just so, sir," returns mr. snagsby; "i was sure you would feel it yourself and would excuse the reasonableness of my feelings when coupled with the known excitableness of my little woman. you see, the foreign female--which you mentioned her name just now, with quite a native sound i am sure--caught up the word snagsby that night, being uncommon quick, and made inquiry, and got the direction and come at dinner-time. now guster, our young woman, is timid and has fits, and she, taking fright at the foreigner's looks--which are fierce--and at a grinding manner that she has of speaking--which is calculated to alarm a weak mind--gave way to it, instead of bearing up against it, and tumbled down the kitchen stairs out of one into another, such fits as i do sometimes think are never gone into, or come out of, in any house but ours. consequently there was by good fortune ample occupation for my little woman, and only me to answer the shop. when she did say that mr. tulkinghorn, being always denied to her by his employer (which i had no doubt at the time was a foreign mode of viewing a clerk), she would do herself the pleasure of continually calling at my place until she was let in here. since then she has been, as i began by saying, hovering, hovering, sir"--mr. snagsby repeats the word with pathetic emphasis--"in the court. the effects of which movement it is impossible to calculate. i shouldn't wonder if it might have already given rise to the painfullest mistakes even in the neighbours' minds, not mentioning (if such a thing was possible) my little woman. whereas, goodness knows," says mr. snagsby, shaking his head, "i never had an idea of a foreign female, except as being formerly connected with a bunch of brooms and a baby, or at the present time with a tambourine and earrings. i never had, i do assure you, sir!" mr. tulkinghorn had listened gravely to this complaint and inquires when the stationer has finished, "and that's all, is it, snagsby?" "why yes, sir, that's all," says mr. snagsby, ending with a cough that plainly adds, "and it's enough too--for me." "i don't know what mademoiselle hortense may want or mean, unless she is mad," says the lawyer. "even if she was, you know, sir," mr. snagsby pleads, "it wouldn't be a consolation to have some weapon or another in the form of a foreign dagger planted in the family." "no," says the other. "well, well! this shall be stopped. i am sorry you have been inconvenienced. if she comes again, send her here." mr. snagsby, with much bowing and short apologetic coughing, takes his leave, lightened in heart. mr. tulkinghorn goes upstairs, saying to himself, "these women were created to give trouble the whole earth over. the mistress not being enough to deal with, here's the maid now! but i will be short with this jade at least!" so saying, he unlocks his door, gropes his way into his murky rooms, lights his candles, and looks about him. it is too dark to see much of the allegory overhead there, but that importunate roman, who is for ever toppling out of the clouds and pointing, is at his old work pretty distinctly. not honouring him with much attention, mr. tulkinghorn takes a small key from his pocket, unlocks a drawer in which there is another key, which unlocks a chest in which there is another, and so comes to the cellar-key, with which he prepares to descend to the regions of old wine. he is going towards the door with a candle in his hand when a knock comes. "who's this? aye, aye, mistress, it's you, is it? you appear at a good time. i have just been hearing of you. now! what do you want?" he stands the candle on the chimney-piece in the clerk's hall and taps his dry cheek with the key as he addresses these words of welcome to mademoiselle hortense. that feline personage, with her lips tightly shut and her eyes looking out at him sideways, softly closes the door before replying. "i have had great deal of trouble to find you, sir." "have you!" "i have been here very often, sir. it has always been said to me, he is not at home, he is engage, he is this and that, he is not for you." "quite right, and quite true." "not true. lies!" at times there is a suddenness in the manner of mademoiselle hortense so like a bodily spring upon the subject of it that such subject involuntarily starts and fails back. it is mr. tulkinghorn's case at present, though mademoiselle hortense, with her eyes almost shut up (but still looking out sideways), is only smiling contemptuously and shaking her head. "now, mistress," says the lawyer, tapping the key hastily upon the chimney-piece. "if you have anything to say, say it, say it." "sir, you have not use me well. you have been mean and shabby." "mean and shabby, eh?" returns the lawyer, rubbing his nose with the key. "yes. what is it that i tell you? you know you have. you have attrapped me--catched me--to give you information; you have asked me to show you the dress of mine my lady must have wore that night, you have prayed me to come in it here to meet that boy. say! is it not?" mademoiselle hortense makes another spring. "you are a vixen, a vixen!" mr. tulkinghorn seems to meditate as he looks distrustfully at her, then he replies, "well, wench, well. i paid you." "you paid me!" she repeats with fierce disdain. "two sovereign! i have not change them, i re-fuse them, i des-pise them, i throw them from me!" which she literally does, taking them out of her bosom as she speaks and flinging them with such violence on the floor that they jerk up again into the light before they roll away into corners and slowly settle down there after spinning vehemently. "now!" says mademoiselle hortense, darkening her large eyes again. "you have paid me? eh, my god, oh yes!" mr. tulkinghorn rubs his head with the key while she entertains herself with a sarcastic laugh. "you must be rich, my fair friend," he composedly observes, "to throw money about in that way!" "i am rich," she returns. "i am very rich in hate. i hate my lady, of all my heart. you know that." "know it? how should i know it?" "because you have known it perfectly before you prayed me to give you that information. because you have known perfectly that i was en-r-r-r-raged!" it appears impossible for mademoiselle to roll the letter "r" sufficiently in this word, notwithstanding that she assists her energetic delivery by clenching both her hands and setting all her teeth. "oh! i knew that, did i?" says mr. tulkinghorn, examining the wards of the key. "yes, without doubt. i am not blind. you have made sure of me because you knew that. you had reason! i det-est her." mademoiselle hortense folds her arms and throws this last remark at him over one of her shoulders. "having said this, have you anything else to say, mademoiselle?" "i am not yet placed. place me well. find me a good condition! if you cannot, or do not choose to do that, employ me to pursue her, to chase her, to disgrace and to dishonour her. i will help you well, and with a good will. it is what you do. do i not know that?" "you appear to know a good deal," mr. tulkinghorn retorts. "do i not? is it that i am so weak as to believe, like a child, that i come here in that dress to rec-eive that boy only to decide a little bet, a wager? eh, my god, oh yes!" in this reply, down to the word "wager" inclusive, mademoiselle has been ironically polite and tender, then as suddenly dashed into the bitterest and most defiant scorn, with her black eyes in one and the same moment very nearly shut and staringly wide open. "now, let us see," says mr. tulkinghorn, tapping his chin with the key and looking imperturbably at her, "how this matter stands." "ah! let us see," mademoiselle assents, with many angry and tight nods of her head. "you come here to make a remarkably modest demand, which you have just stated, and it not being conceded, you will come again." "and again," says mademoiselle with more tight and angry nods. "and yet again. and yet again. and many times again. in effect, for ever!" "and not only here, but you will go to mr. snagsby's too, perhaps? that visit not succeeding either, you will go again perhaps?" "and again," repeats mademoiselle, cataleptic with determination. "and yet again. and yet again. and many times again. in effect, for ever!" "very well. now, mademoiselle hortense, let me recommend you to take the candle and pick up that money of yours. i think you will find it behind the clerk's partition in the corner yonder." she merely throws a laugh over her shoulder and stands her ground with folded arms. "you will not, eh?" "no, i will not!" "so much the poorer you; so much the richer i! look, mistress, this is the key of my wine-cellar. it is a large key, but the keys of prisons are larger. in this city there are houses of correction (where the treadmills are, for women), the gates of which are very strong and heavy, and no doubt the keys too. i am afraid a lady of your spirit and activity would find it an inconvenience to have one of those keys turned upon her for any length of time. what do you think?" "i think," mademoiselle replies without any action and in a clear, obliging voice, "that you are a miserable wretch." "probably," returns mr. tulkinghorn, quietly blowing his nose. "but i don't ask what you think of myself; i ask what you think of the prison." "nothing. what does it matter to me?" "why, it matters this much, mistress," says the lawyer, deliberately putting away his handkerchief and adjusting his frill; "the law is so despotic here that it interferes to prevent any of our good english citizens from being troubled, even by a lady's visits against his desire. and on his complaining that he is so troubled, it takes hold of the troublesome lady and shuts her up in prison under hard discipline. turns the key upon her, mistress." illustrating with the cellar-key. "truly?" returns mademoiselle in the same pleasant voice. "that is droll! but--my faith!--still what does it matter to me?" "my fair friend," says mr. tulkinghorn, "make another visit here, or at mr. snagsby's, and you shall learn." "in that case you will send me to the prison, perhaps?" "perhaps." it would be contradictory for one in mademoiselle's state of agreeable jocularity to foam at the mouth, otherwise a tigerish expansion thereabouts might look as if a very little more would make her do it. "in a word, mistress," says mr. tulkinghorn, "i am sorry to be unpolite, but if you ever present yourself uninvited here--or there--again, i will give you over to the police. their gallantry is great, but they carry troublesome people through the streets in an ignominious manner, strapped down on a board, my good wench." "i will prove you," whispers mademoiselle, stretching out her hand, "i will try if you dare to do it!" "and if," pursues the lawyer without minding her, "i place you in that good condition of being locked up in jail, it will be some time before you find yourself at liberty again." "i will prove you," repeats mademoiselle in her former whisper. "and now," proceeds the lawyer, still without minding her, "you had better go. think twice before you come here again." "think you," she answers, "twice two hundred times!" "you were dismissed by your lady, you know," mr. tulkinghorn observes, following her out upon the staircase, "as the most implacable and unmanageable of women. now turn over a new leaf and take warning by what i say to you. for what i say, i mean; and what i threaten, i will do, mistress." she goes down without answering or looking behind her. when she is gone, he goes down too, and returning with his cobweb-covered bottle, devotes himself to a leisurely enjoyment of its contents, now and then, as he throws his head back in his chair, catching sight of the pertinacious roman pointing from the ceiling. chapter xliii esther's narrative it matters little now how much i thought of my living mother who had told me evermore to consider her dead. i could not venture to approach her or to communicate with her in writing, for my sense of the peril in which her life was passed was only to be equalled by my fears of increasing it. knowing that my mere existence as a living creature was an unforeseen danger in her way, i could not always conquer that terror of myself which had seized me when i first knew the secret. at no time did i dare to utter her name. i felt as if i did not even dare to hear it. if the conversation anywhere, when i was present, took that direction, as it sometimes naturally did, i tried not to hear: i mentally counted, repeated something that i knew, or went out of the room. i am conscious now that i often did these things when there can have been no danger of her being spoken of, but i did them in the dread i had of hearing anything that might lead to her betrayal, and to her betrayal through me. it matters little now how often i recalled the tones of my mother's voice, wondered whether i should ever hear it again as i so longed to do, and thought how strange and desolate it was that it should be so new to me. it matters little that i watched for every public mention of my mother's name; that i passed and repassed the door of her house in town, loving it, but afraid to look at it; that i once sat in the theatre when my mother was there and saw me, and when we were so wide asunder before the great company of all degrees that any link or confidence between us seemed a dream. it is all, all over. my lot has been so blest that i can relate little of myself which is not a story of goodness and generosity in others. i may well pass that little and go on. when we were settled at home again, ada and i had many conversations with my guardian of which richard was the theme. my dear girl was deeply grieved that he should do their kind cousin so much wrong, but she was so faithful to richard that she could not bear to blame him even for that. my guardian was assured of it, and never coupled his name with a word of reproof. "rick is mistaken, my dear," he would say to her. "well, well! we have all been mistaken over and over again. we must trust to you and time to set him right." we knew afterwards what we suspected then, that he did not trust to time until he had often tried to open richard's eyes. that he had written to him, gone to him, talked with him, tried every gentle and persuasive art his kindness could devise. our poor devoted richard was deaf and blind to all. if he were wrong, he would make amends when the chancery suit was over. if he were groping in the dark, he could not do better than do his utmost to clear away those clouds in which so much was confused and obscured. suspicion and misunderstanding were the fault of the suit? then let him work the suit out and come through it to his right mind. this was his unvarying reply. jarndyce and jarndyce had obtained such possession of his whole nature that it was impossible to place any consideration before him which he did not, with a distorted kind of reason, make a new argument in favour of his doing what he did. "so that it is even more mischievous," said my guardian once to me, "to remonstrate with the poor dear fellow than to leave him alone." i took one of these opportunities of mentioning my doubts of mr. skimpole as a good adviser for richard. "adviser!" returned my guardian, laughing, "my dear, who would advise with skimpole?" "encourager would perhaps have been a better word," said i. "encourager!" returned my guardian again. "who could be encouraged by skimpole?" "not richard?" i asked. "no," he replied. "such an unworldly, uncalculating, gossamer creature is a relief to him and an amusement. but as to advising or encouraging or occupying a serious station towards anybody or anything, it is simply not to be thought of in such a child as skimpole." "pray, cousin john," said ada, who had just joined us and now looked over my shoulder, "what made him such a child?" "what made him such a child?" inquired my guardian, rubbing his head, a little at a loss. "yes, cousin john." "why," he slowly replied, roughening his head more and more, "he is all sentiment, and--and susceptibility, and--and sensibility, and--and imagination. and these qualities are not regulated in him, somehow. i suppose the people who admired him for them in his youth attached too much importance to them and too little to any training that would have balanced and adjusted them, and so he became what he is. hey?" said my guardian, stopping short and looking at us hopefully. "what do you think, you two?" ada, glancing at me, said she thought it was a pity he should be an expense to richard. "so it is, so it is," returned my guardian hurriedly. "that must not be. we must arrange that. i must prevent it. that will never do." and i said i thought it was to be regretted that he had ever introduced richard to mr. vholes for a present of five pounds. "did he?" said my guardian with a passing shade of vexation on his face. "but there you have the man. there you have the man! there is nothing mercenary in that with him. he has no idea of the value of money. he introduces rick, and then he is good friends with mr. vholes and borrows five pounds of him. he means nothing by it and thinks nothing of it. he told you himself, i'll be bound, my dear?" "oh, yes!" said i. "exactly!" cried my guardian, quite triumphant. "there you have the man! if he had meant any harm by it or was conscious of any harm in it, he wouldn't tell it. he tells it as he does it in mere simplicity. but you shall see him in his own home, and then you'll understand him better. we must pay a visit to harold skimpole and caution him on these points. lord bless you, my dears, an infant, an infant!" in pursuance of this plan, we went into london on an early day and presented ourselves at mr. skimpole's door. he lived in a place called the polygon, in somers town, where there were at that time a number of poor spanish refugees walking about in cloaks, smoking little paper cigars. whether he was a better tenant than one might have supposed, in consequence of his friend somebody always paying his rent at last, or whether his inaptitude for business rendered it particularly difficult to turn him out, i don't know; but he had occupied the same house some years. it was in a state of dilapidation quite equal to our expectation. two or three of the area railings were gone, the water-butt was broken, the knocker was loose, the bell-handle had been pulled off a long time to judge from the rusty state of the wire, and dirty footprints on the steps were the only signs of its being inhabited. a slatternly full-blown girl who seemed to be bursting out at the rents in her gown and the cracks in her shoes like an over-ripe berry answered our knock by opening the door a very little way and stopping up the gap with her figure. as she knew mr. jarndyce (indeed ada and i both thought that she evidently associated him with the receipt of her wages), she immediately relented and allowed us to pass in. the lock of the door being in a disabled condition, she then applied herself to securing it with the chain, which was not in good action either, and said would we go upstairs? we went upstairs to the first floor, still seeing no other furniture than the dirty footprints. mr. jarndyce without further ceremony entered a room there, and we followed. it was dingy enough and not at all clean, but furnished with an odd kind of shabby luxury, with a large footstool, a sofa, and plenty of cushions, an easy-chair, and plenty of pillows, a piano, books, drawing materials, music, newspapers, and a few sketches and pictures. a broken pane of glass in one of the dirty windows was papered and wafered over, but there was a little plate of hothouse nectarines on the table, and there was another of grapes, and another of sponge-cakes, and there was a bottle of light wine. mr. skimpole himself reclined upon the sofa in a dressing-gown, drinking some fragrant coffee from an old china cup--it was then about mid-day--and looking at a collection of wallflowers in the balcony. he was not in the least disconcerted by our appearance, but rose and received us in his usual airy manner. "here i am, you see!" he said when we were seated, not without some little difficulty, the greater part of the chairs being broken. "here i am! this is my frugal breakfast. some men want legs of beef and mutton for breakfast; i don't. give me my peach, my cup of coffee, and my claret; i am content. i don't want them for themselves, but they remind me of the sun. there's nothing solar about legs of beef and mutton. mere animal satisfaction!" "this is our friend's consulting-room (or would be, if he ever prescribed), his sanctum, his studio," said my guardian to us. "yes," said mr. skimpole, turning his bright face about, "this is the bird's cage. this is where the bird lives and sings. they pluck his feathers now and then and clip his wings, but he sings, he sings!" he handed us the grapes, repeating in his radiant way, "he sings! not an ambitious note, but still he sings." "these are very fine," said my guardian. "a present?" "no," he answered. "no! some amiable gardener sells them. his man wanted to know, when he brought them last evening, whether he should wait for the money. 'really, my friend,' i said, 'i think not--if your time is of any value to you.' i suppose it was, for he went away." my guardian looked at us with a smile, as though he asked us, "is it possible to be worldly with this baby?" "this is a day," said mr. skimpole, gaily taking a little claret in a tumbler, "that will ever be remembered here. we shall call it saint clare and saint summerson day. you must see my daughters. i have a blue-eyed daughter who is my beauty daughter, i have a sentiment daughter, and i have a comedy daughter. you must see them all. they'll be enchanted." he was going to summon them when my guardian interposed and asked him to pause a moment, as he wished to say a word to him first. "my dear jarndyce," he cheerfully replied, going back to his sofa, "as many moments as you please. time is no object here. we never know what o'clock it is, and we never care. not the way to get on in life, you'll tell me? certainly. but we don't get on in life. we don't pretend to do it." my guardian looked at us again, plainly saying, "you hear him?" "now, harold," he began, "the word i have to say relates to rick." "the dearest friend i have!" returned mr. skimpole cordially. "i suppose he ought not to be my dearest friend, as he is not on terms with you. but he is, i can't help it; he is full of youthful poetry, and i love him. if you don't like it, i can't help it. i love him." the engaging frankness with which he made this declaration really had a disinterested appearance and captivated my guardian, if not, for the moment, ada too. "you are welcome to love him as much as you like," returned mr. jarndyce, "but we must save his pocket, harold." "oh!" said mr. skimpole. "his pocket? now you are coming to what i don't understand." taking a little more claret and dipping one of the cakes in it, he shook his head and smiled at ada and me with an ingenuous foreboding that he never could be made to understand. "if you go with him here or there," said my guardian plainly, "you must not let him pay for both." "my dear jarndyce," returned mr. skimpole, his genial face irradiated by the comicality of this idea, "what am i to do? if he takes me anywhere, i must go. and how can i pay? i never have any money. if i had any money, i don't know anything about it. suppose i say to a man, how much? suppose the man says to me seven and sixpence? i know nothing about seven and sixpence. it is impossible for me to pursue the subject with any consideration for the man. i don't go about asking busy people what seven and sixpence is in moorish--which i don't understand. why should i go about asking them what seven and sixpence is in money--which i don't understand?" "well," said my guardian, by no means displeased with this artless reply, "if you come to any kind of journeying with rick, you must borrow the money of me (never breathing the least allusion to that circumstance), and leave the calculation to him." "my dear jarndyce," returned mr. skimpole, "i will do anything to give you pleasure, but it seems an idle form--a superstition. besides, i give you my word, miss clare and my dear miss summerson, i thought mr. carstone was immensely rich. i thought he had only to make over something, or to sign a bond, or a draft, or a cheque, or a bill, or to put something on a file somewhere, to bring down a shower of money." "indeed it is not so, sir," said ada. "he is poor." "no, really?" returned mr. skimpole with his bright smile. "you surprise me. "and not being the richer for trusting in a rotten reed," said my guardian, laying his hand emphatically on the sleeve of mr. skimpole's dressing-gown, "be you very careful not to encourage him in that reliance, harold." "my dear good friend," returned mr. skimpole, "and my dear miss simmerson, and my dear miss clare, how can i do that? it's business, and i don't know business. it is he who encourages me. he emerges from great feats of business, presents the brightest prospects before me as their result, and calls upon me to admire them. i do admire them--as bright prospects. but i know no more about them, and i tell him so." the helpless kind of candour with which he presented this before us, the light-hearted manner in which he was amused by his innocence, the fantastic way in which he took himself under his own protection and argued about that curious person, combined with the delightful ease of everything he said exactly to make out my guardian's case. the more i saw of him, the more unlikely it seemed to me, when he was present, that he could design, conceal, or influence anything; and yet the less likely that appeared when he was not present, and the less agreeable it was to think of his having anything to do with any one for whom i cared. hearing that his examination (as he called it) was now over, mr. skimpole left the room with a radiant face to fetch his daughters (his sons had run away at various times), leaving my guardian quite delighted by the manner in which he had vindicated his childish character. he soon came back, bringing with him the three young ladies and mrs. skimpole, who had once been a beauty but was now a delicate high-nosed invalid suffering under a complication of disorders. "this," said mr. skimpole, "is my beauty daughter, arethusa--plays and sings odds and ends like her father. this is my sentiment daughter, laura--plays a little but don't sing. this is my comedy daughter, kitty--sings a little but don't play. we all draw a little and compose a little, and none of us have any idea of time or money." mrs. skimpole sighed, i thought, as if she would have been glad to strike out this item in the family attainments. i also thought that she rather impressed her sigh upon my guardian and that she took every opportunity of throwing in another. "it is pleasant," said mr. skimpole, turning his sprightly eyes from one to the other of us, "and it is whimsically interesting to trace peculiarities in families. in this family we are all children, and i am the youngest." the daughters, who appeared to be very fond of him, were amused by this droll fact, particularly the comedy daughter. "my dears, it is true," said mr. skimpole, "is it not? so it is, and so it must be, because like the dogs in the hymn, 'it is our nature to.' now, here is miss summerson with a fine administrative capacity and a knowledge of details perfectly surprising. it will sound very strange in miss summerson's ears, i dare say, that we know nothing about chops in this house. but we don't, not the least. we can't cook anything whatever. a needle and thread we don't know how to use. we admire the people who possess the practical wisdom we want, but we don't quarrel with them. then why should they quarrel with us? live and let live, we say to them. live upon your practical wisdom, and let us live upon you!" he laughed, but as usual seemed quite candid and really to mean what he said. "we have sympathy, my roses," said mr. skimpole, "sympathy for everything. have we not?" "oh, yes, papa!" cried the three daughters. "in fact, that is our family department," said mr. skimpole, "in this hurly-burly of life. we are capable of looking on and of being interested, and we do look on, and we are interested. what more can we do? here is my beauty daughter, married these three years. now i dare say her marrying another child, and having two more, was all wrong in point of political economy, but it was very agreeable. we had our little festivities on those occasions and exchanged social ideas. she brought her young husband home one day, and they and their young fledglings have their nest upstairs. i dare say at some time or other sentiment and comedy will bring their husbands home and have their nests upstairs too. so we get on, we don't know how, but somehow." she looked very young indeed to be the mother of two children, and i could not help pitying both her and them. it was evident that the three daughters had grown up as they could and had had just as little haphazard instruction as qualified them to be their father's playthings in his idlest hours. his pictorial tastes were consulted, i observed, in their respective styles of wearing their hair, the beauty daughter being in the classic manner, the sentiment daughter luxuriant and flowing, and the comedy daughter in the arch style, with a good deal of sprightly forehead, and vivacious little curls dotted about the corners of her eyes. they were dressed to correspond, though in a most untidy and negligent way. ada and i conversed with these young ladies and found them wonderfully like their father. in the meanwhile mr. jarndyce (who had been rubbing his head to a great extent, and hinted at a change in the wind) talked with mrs. skimpole in a corner, where we could not help hearing the chink of money. mr. skimpole had previously volunteered to go home with us and had withdrawn to dress himself for the purpose. "my roses," he said when he came back, "take care of mama. she is poorly to-day. by going home with mr. jarndyce for a day or two, i shall hear the larks sing and preserve my amiability. it has been tried, you know, and would be tried again if i remained at home." "that bad man!" said the comedy daughter. "at the very time when he knew papa was lying ill by his wallflowers, looking at the blue sky," laura complained. "and when the smell of hay was in the air!" said arethusa. "it showed a want of poetry in the man," mr. skimpole assented, but with perfect good humour. "it was coarse. there was an absence of the finer touches of humanity in it! my daughters have taken great offence," he explained to us, "at an honest man--" "not honest, papa. impossible!" they all three protested. "at a rough kind of fellow--a sort of human hedgehog rolled up," said mr. skimpole, "who is a baker in this neighbourhood and from whom we borrowed a couple of arm-chairs. we wanted a couple of arm-chairs, and we hadn't got them, and therefore of course we looked to a man who had got them, to lend them. well! this morose person lent them, and we wore them out. when they were worn out, he wanted them back. he had them back. he was contented, you will say. not at all. he objected to their being worn. i reasoned with him, and pointed out his mistake. i said, 'can you, at your time of life, be so headstrong, my friend, as to persist that an arm-chair is a thing to put upon a shelf and look at? that it is an object to contemplate, to survey from a distance, to consider from a point of sight? don't you know that these arm-chairs were borrowed to be sat upon?' he was unreasonable and unpersuadable and used intemperate language. being as patient as i am at this minute, i addressed another appeal to him. i said, 'now, my good man, however our business capacities may vary, we are all children of one great mother, nature. on this blooming summer morning here you see me' (i was on the sofa) 'with flowers before me, fruit upon the table, the cloudless sky above me, the air full of fragrance, contemplating nature. i entreat you, by our common brotherhood, not to interpose between me and a subject so sublime, the absurd figure of an angry baker!' but he did," said mr. skimpole, raising his laughing eyes in playful astonishment; "he did interpose that ridiculous figure, and he does, and he will again. and therefore i am very glad to get out of his way and to go home with my friend jarndyce." it seemed to escape his consideration that mrs. skimpole and the daughters remained behind to encounter the baker, but this was so old a story to all of them that it had become a matter of course. he took leave of his family with a tenderness as airy and graceful as any other aspect in which he showed himself and rode away with us in perfect harmony of mind. we had an opportunity of seeing through some open doors, as we went downstairs, that his own apartment was a palace to the rest of the house. i could have no anticipation, and i had none, that something very startling to me at the moment, and ever memorable to me in what ensued from it, was to happen before this day was out. our guest was in such spirits on the way home that i could do nothing but listen to him and wonder at him; nor was i alone in this, for ada yielded to the same fascination. as to my guardian, the wind, which had threatened to become fixed in the east when we left somers town, veered completely round before we were a couple of miles from it. whether of questionable childishness or not in any other matters, mr. skimpole had a child's enjoyment of change and bright weather. in no way wearied by his sallies on the road, he was in the drawing-room before any of us; and i heard him at the piano while i was yet looking after my housekeeping, singing refrains of barcaroles and drinking songs, italian and german, by the score. we were all assembled shortly before dinner, and he was still at the piano idly picking out in his luxurious way little strains of music, and talking between whiles of finishing some sketches of the ruined old verulam wall to-morrow, which he had begun a year or two ago and had got tired of, when a card was brought in and my guardian read aloud in a surprised voice, "sir leicester dedlock!" the visitor was in the room while it was yet turning round with me and before i had the power to stir. if i had had it, i should have hurried away. i had not even the presence of mind, in my giddiness, to retire to ada in the window, or to see the window, or to know where it was. i heard my name and found that my guardian was presenting me before i could move to a chair. "pray be seated, sir leicester." "mr. jarndyce," said sir leicester in reply as he bowed and seated himself, "i do myself the honour of calling here--" "you do me the honour, sir leicester." "thank you--of calling here on my road from lincolnshire to express my regret that any cause of complaint, however strong, that i may have against a gentleman who--who is known to you and has been your host, and to whom therefore i will make no farther reference, should have prevented you, still more ladies under your escort and charge, from seeing whatever little there may be to gratify a polite and refined taste at my house, chesney wold." "you are exceedingly obliging, sir leicester, and on behalf of those ladies (who are present) and for myself, i thank you very much." "it is possible, mr. jarndyce, that the gentleman to whom, for the reasons i have mentioned, i refrain from making further allusion--it is possible, mr. jarndyce, that that gentleman may have done me the honour so far to misapprehend my character as to induce you to believe that you would not have been received by my local establishment in lincolnshire with that urbanity, that courtesy, which its members are instructed to show to all ladies and gentlemen who present themselves at that house. i merely beg to observe, sir, that the fact is the reverse." my guardian delicately dismissed this remark without making any verbal answer. "it has given me pain, mr. jarndyce," sir leicester weightily proceeded. "i assure you, sir, it has given--me--pain--to learn from the housekeeper at chesney wold that a gentleman who was in your company in that part of the county, and who would appear to possess a cultivated taste for the fine arts, was likewise deterred by some such cause from examining the family pictures with that leisure, that attention, that care, which he might have desired to bestow upon them and which some of them might possibly have repaid." here he produced a card and read, with much gravity and a little trouble, through his eye-glass, "mr. hirrold--herald--harold--skampling--skumpling--i beg your pardon--skimpole." "this is mr. harold skimpole," said my guardian, evidently surprised. "oh!" exclaimed sir leicester, "i am happy to meet mr. skimpole and to have the opportunity of tendering my personal regrets. i hope, sir, that when you again find yourself in my part of the county, you will be under no similar sense of restraint." "you are very obliging, sir leicester dedlock. so encouraged, i shall certainly give myself the pleasure and advantage of another visit to your beautiful house. the owners of such places as chesney wold," said mr. skimpole with his usual happy and easy air, "are public benefactors. they are good enough to maintain a number of delightful objects for the admiration and pleasure of us poor men; and not to reap all the admiration and pleasure that they yield is to be ungrateful to our benefactors." sir leicester seemed to approve of this sentiment highly. "an artist, sir?" "no," returned mr. skimpole. "a perfectly idle man. a mere amateur." sir leicester seemed to approve of this even more. he hoped he might have the good fortune to be at chesney wold when mr. skimpole next came down into lincolnshire. mr. skimpole professed himself much flattered and honoured. "mr. skimpole mentioned," pursued sir leicester, addressing himself again to my guardian, "mentioned to the housekeeper, who, as he may have observed, is an old and attached retainer of the family--" ("that is, when i walked through the house the other day, on the occasion of my going down to visit miss summerson and miss clare," mr. skimpole airily explained to us.) "--that the friend with whom he had formerly been staying there was mr. jarndyce." sir leicester bowed to the bearer of that name. "and hence i became aware of the circumstance for which i have professed my regret. that this should have occurred to any gentleman, mr. jarndyce, but especially a gentleman formerly known to lady dedlock, and indeed claiming some distant connexion with her, and for whom (as i learn from my lady herself) she entertains a high respect, does, i assure you, give--me--pain." "pray say no more about it, sir leicester," returned my guardian. "i am very sensible, as i am sure we all are, of your consideration. indeed the mistake was mine, and i ought to apologize for it." i had not once looked up. i had not seen the visitor and had not even appeared to myself to hear the conversation. it surprises me to find that i can recall it, for it seemed to make no impression on me as it passed. i heard them speaking, but my mind was so confused and my instinctive avoidance of this gentleman made his presence so distressing to me that i thought i understood nothing, through the rushing in my head and the beating of my heart. "i mentioned the subject to lady dedlock," said sir leicester, rising, "and my lady informed me that she had had the pleasure of exchanging a few words with mr. jarndyce and his wards on the occasion of an accidental meeting during their sojourn in the vicinity. permit me, mr. jarndyce, to repeat to yourself, and to these ladies, the assurance i have already tendered to mr. skimpole. circumstances undoubtedly prevent my saying that it would afford me any gratification to hear that mr. boythorn had favoured my house with his presence, but those circumstances are confined to that gentleman himself and do not extend beyond him." "you know my old opinion of him," said mr. skimpole, lightly appealing to us. "an amiable bull who is determined to make every colour scarlet!" sir leicester dedlock coughed as if he could not possibly hear another word in reference to such an individual and took his leave with great ceremony and politeness. i got to my own room with all possible speed and remained there until i had recovered my self-command. it had been very much disturbed, but i was thankful to find when i went downstairs again that they only rallied me for having been shy and mute before the great lincolnshire baronet. by that time i had made up my mind that the period was come when i must tell my guardian what i knew. the possibility of my being brought into contact with my mother, of my being taken to her house, even of mr. skimpole's, however distantly associated with me, receiving kindnesses and obligations from her husband, was so painful that i felt i could no longer guide myself without his assistance. when we had retired for the night, and ada and i had had our usual talk in our pretty room, i went out at my door again and sought my guardian among his books. i knew he always read at that hour, and as i drew near i saw the light shining out into the passage from his reading-lamp. "may i come in, guardian?" "surely, little woman. what's the matter?" "nothing is the matter. i thought i would like to take this quiet time of saying a word to you about myself." he put a chair for me, shut his book, and put it by, and turned his kind attentive face towards me. i could not help observing that it wore that curious expression i had observed in it once before--on that night when he had said that he was in no trouble which i could readily understand. "what concerns you, my dear esther," said he, "concerns us all. you cannot be more ready to speak than i am to hear." "i know that, guardian. but i have such need of your advice and support. oh! you don't know how much need i have to-night." he looked unprepared for my being so earnest, and even a little alarmed. "or how anxious i have been to speak to you," said i, "ever since the visitor was here to-day." "the visitor, my dear! sir leicester dedlock?" "yes." he folded his arms and sat looking at me with an air of the profoundest astonishment, awaiting what i should say next. i did not know how to prepare him. "why, esther," said he, breaking into a smile, "our visitor and you are the two last persons on earth i should have thought of connecting together!" "oh, yes, guardian, i know it. and i too, but a little while ago." the smile passed from his face, and he became graver than before. he crossed to the door to see that it was shut (but i had seen to that) and resumed his seat before me. "guardian," said i, "do you remember, when we were overtaken by the thunder-storm, lady dedlock's speaking to you of her sister?" "of course. of course i do." "and reminding you that she and her sister had differed, had gone their several ways?" "of course." "why did they separate, guardian?" his face quite altered as he looked at me. "my child, what questions are these! i never knew. no one but themselves ever did know, i believe. who could tell what the secrets of those two handsome and proud women were! you have seen lady dedlock. if you had ever seen her sister, you would know her to have been as resolute and haughty as she." "oh, guardian, i have seen her many and many a time!" "seen her?" he paused a little, biting his lip. "then, esther, when you spoke to me long ago of boythorn, and when i told you that he was all but married once, and that the lady did not die, but died to him, and that that time had had its influence on his later life--did you know it all, and know who the lady was?" "no, guardian," i returned, fearful of the light that dimly broke upon me. "nor do i know yet." "lady dedlock's sister." "and why," i could scarcely ask him, "why, guardian, pray tell me why were they parted?" "it was her act, and she kept its motives in her inflexible heart. he afterwards did conjecture (but it was mere conjecture) that some injury which her haughty spirit had received in her cause of quarrel with her sister had wounded her beyond all reason, but she wrote him that from the date of that letter she died to him--as in literal truth she did--and that the resolution was exacted from her by her knowledge of his proud temper and his strained sense of honour, which were both her nature too. in consideration for those master points in him, and even in consideration for them in herself, she made the sacrifice, she said, and would live in it and die in it. she did both, i fear; certainly he never saw her, never heard of her from that hour. nor did any one." "oh, guardian, what have i done!" i cried, giving way to my grief; "what sorrow have i innocently caused!" "you caused, esther?" "yes, guardian. innocently, but most surely. that secluded sister is my first remembrance." "no, no!" he cried, starting. "yes, guardian, yes! and her sister is my mother!" i would have told him all my mother's letter, but he would not hear it then. he spoke so tenderly and wisely to me, and he put so plainly before me all i had myself imperfectly thought and hoped in my better state of mind, that, penetrated as i had been with fervent gratitude towards him through so many years, i believed i had never loved him so dearly, never thanked him in my heart so fully, as i did that night. and when he had taken me to my room and kissed me at the door, and when at last i lay down to sleep, my thought was how could i ever be busy enough, how could i ever be good enough, how in my little way could i ever hope to be forgetful enough of myself, devoted enough to him, and useful enough to others, to show him how i blessed and honoured him. chapter xliv the letter and the answer my guardian called me into his room next morning, and then i told him what had been left untold on the previous night. there was nothing to be done, he said, but to keep the secret and to avoid another such encounter as that of yesterday. he understood my feeling and entirely shared it. he charged himself even with restraining mr. skimpole from improving his opportunity. one person whom he need not name to me, it was not now possible for him to advise or help. he wished it were, but no such thing could be. if her mistrust of the lawyer whom she had mentioned were well-founded, which he scarcely doubted, he dreaded discovery. he knew something of him, both by sight and by reputation, and it was certain that he was a dangerous man. whatever happened, he repeatedly impressed upon me with anxious affection and kindness, i was as innocent of as himself and as unable to influence. "nor do i understand," said he, "that any doubts tend towards you, my dear. much suspicion may exist without that connexion." "with the lawyer," i returned. "but two other persons have come into my mind since i have been anxious. then i told him all about mr. guppy, who i feared might have had his vague surmises when i little understood his meaning, but in whose silence after our last interview i expressed perfect confidence. "well," said my guardian. "then we may dismiss him for the present. who is the other?" i called to his recollection the french maid and the eager offer of herself she had made to me. "ha!" he returned thoughtfully. "that is a more alarming person than the clerk. but after all, my dear, it was but seeking for a new service. she had seen you and ada a little while before, and it was natural that you should come into her head. she merely proposed herself for your maid, you know. she did nothing more." "her manner was strange," said i. "yes, and her manner was strange when she took her shoes off and showed that cool relish for a walk that might have ended in her death-bed," said my guardian. "it would be useless self-distress and torment to reckon up such chances and possibilities. there are very few harmless circumstances that would not seem full of perilous meaning, so considered. be hopeful, little woman. you can be nothing better than yourself; be that, through this knowledge, as you were before you had it. it is the best you can do for everybody's sake. i, sharing the secret with you--" "and lightening it, guardian, so much," said i. "--will be attentive to what passes in that family, so far as i can observe it from my distance. and if the time should come when i can stretch out a hand to render the least service to one whom it is better not to name even here, i will not fail to do it for her dear daughter's sake." i thanked him with my whole heart. what could i ever do but thank him! i was going out at the door when he asked me to stay a moment. quickly turning round, i saw that same expression on his face again; and all at once, i don't know how, it flashed upon me as a new and far-off possibility that i understood it. "my dear esther," said my guardian, "i have long had something in my thoughts that i have wished to say to you." "indeed?" "i have had some difficulty in approaching it, and i still have. i should wish it to be so deliberately said, and so deliberately considered. would you object to my writing it?" "dear guardian, how could i object to your writing anything for me to read?" "then see, my love," said he with his cheery smile, "am i at this moment quite as plain and easy--do i seem as open, as honest and old-fashioned--as i am at any time?" i answered in all earnestness, "quite." with the strictest truth, for his momentary hesitation was gone (it had not lasted a minute), and his fine, sensible, cordial, sterling manner was restored. "do i look as if i suppressed anything, meant anything but what i said, had any reservation at all, no matter what?" said he with his bright clear eyes on mine. i answered, most assuredly he did not. "can you fully trust me, and thoroughly rely on what i profess, esther?" "most thoroughly," said i with my whole heart. "my dear girl," returned my guardian, "give me your hand." he took it in his, holding me lightly with his arm, and looking down into my face with the same genuine freshness and faithfulness of manner--the old protecting manner which had made that house my home in a moment--said, "you have wrought changes in me, little woman, since the winter day in the stage-coach. first and last you have done me a world of good since that time." "ah, guardian, what have you done for me since that time!" "but," said he, "that is not to be remembered now." "it never can be forgotten." "yes, esther," said he with a gentle seriousness, "it is to be forgotten now, to be forgotten for a while. you are only to remember now that nothing can change me as you know me. can you feel quite assured of that, my dear?" "i can, and i do," i said. "that's much," he answered. "that's everything. but i must not take that at a word. i will not write this something in my thoughts until you have quite resolved within yourself that nothing can change me as you know me. if you doubt that in the least degree, i will never write it. if you are sure of that, on good consideration, send charley to me this night week--'for the letter.' but if you are not quite certain, never send. mind, i trust to your truth, in this thing as in everything. if you are not quite certain on that one point, never send!" "guardian," said i, "i am already certain, i can no more be changed in that conviction than you can be changed towards me. i shall send charley for the letter." he shook my hand and said no more. nor was any more said in reference to this conversation, either by him or me, through the whole week. when the appointed night came, i said to charley as soon as i was alone, "go and knock at mr. jarndyce's door, charley, and say you have come from me--'for the letter.'" charley went up the stairs, and down the stairs, and along the passages--the zig-zag way about the old-fashioned house seemed very long in my listening ears that night--and so came back, along the passages, and down the stairs, and up the stairs, and brought the letter. "lay it on the table, charley," said i. so charley laid it on the table and went to bed, and i sat looking at it without taking it up, thinking of many things. i began with my overshadowed childhood, and passed through those timid days to the heavy time when my aunt lay dead, with her resolute face so cold and set, and when i was more solitary with mrs. rachael than if i had had no one in the world to speak to or to look at. i passed to the altered days when i was so blest as to find friends in all around me, and to be beloved. i came to the time when i first saw my dear girl and was received into that sisterly affection which was the grace and beauty of my life. i recalled the first bright gleam of welcome which had shone out of those very windows upon our expectant faces on that cold bright night, and which had never paled. i lived my happy life there over again, i went through my illness and recovery, i thought of myself so altered and of those around me so unchanged; and all this happiness shone like a light from one central figure, represented before me by the letter on the table. i opened it and read it. it was so impressive in its love for me, and in the unselfish caution it gave me, and the consideration it showed for me in every word, that my eyes were too often blinded to read much at a time. but i read it through three times before i laid it down. i had thought beforehand that i knew its purport, and i did. it asked me, would i be the mistress of bleak house. it was not a love letter, though it expressed so much love, but was written just as he would at any time have spoken to me. i saw his face, and heard his voice, and felt the influence of his kind protecting manner in every line. it addressed me as if our places were reversed, as if all the good deeds had been mine and all the feelings they had awakened his. it dwelt on my being young, and he past the prime of life; on his having attained a ripe age, while i was a child; on his writing to me with a silvered head, and knowing all this so well as to set it in full before me for mature deliberation. it told me that i would gain nothing by such a marriage and lose nothing by rejecting it, for no new relation could enhance the tenderness in which he held me, and whatever my decision was, he was certain it would be right. but he had considered this step anew since our late confidence and had decided on taking it, if it only served to show me through one poor instance that the whole world would readily unite to falsify the stern prediction of my childhood. i was the last to know what happiness i could bestow upon him, but of that he said no more, for i was always to remember that i owed him nothing and that he was my debtor, and for very much. he had often thought of our future, and foreseeing that the time must come, and fearing that it might come soon, when ada (now very nearly of age) would leave us, and when our present mode of life must be broken up, had become accustomed to reflect on this proposal. thus he made it. if i felt that i could ever give him the best right he could have to be my protector, and if i felt that i could happily and justly become the dear companion of his remaining life, superior to all lighter chances and changes than death, even then he could not have me bind myself irrevocably while this letter was yet so new to me, but even then i must have ample time for reconsideration. in that case, or in the opposite case, let him be unchanged in his old relation, in his old manner, in the old name by which i called him. and as to his bright dame durden and little housekeeper, she would ever be the same, he knew. this was the substance of the letter, written throughout with a justice and a dignity as if he were indeed my responsible guardian impartially representing the proposal of a friend against whom in his integrity he stated the full case. but he did not hint to me that when i had been better looking he had had this same proceeding in his thoughts and had refrained from it. that when my old face was gone from me, and i had no attractions, he could love me just as well as in my fairer days. that the discovery of my birth gave him no shock. that his generosity rose above my disfigurement and my inheritance of shame. that the more i stood in need of such fidelity, the more firmly i might trust in him to the last. but i knew it, i knew it well now. it came upon me as the close of the benignant history i had been pursuing, and i felt that i had but one thing to do. to devote my life to his happiness was to thank him poorly, and what had i wished for the other night but some new means of thanking him? still i cried very much, not only in the fullness of my heart after reading the letter, not only in the strangeness of the prospect--for it was strange though i had expected the contents--but as if something for which there was no name or distinct idea were indefinitely lost to me. i was very happy, very thankful, very hopeful; but i cried very much. by and by i went to my old glass. my eyes were red and swollen, and i said, "oh, esther, esther, can that be you!" i am afraid the face in the glass was going to cry again at this reproach, but i held up my finger at it, and it stopped. "that is more like the composed look you comforted me with, my dear, when you showed me such a change!" said i, beginning to let down my hair. "when you are mistress of bleak house, you are to be as cheerful as a bird. in fact, you are always to be cheerful; so let us begin for once and for all." i went on with my hair now, quite comfortably. i sobbed a little still, but that was because i had been crying, not because i was crying then. "and so esther, my dear, you are happy for life. happy with your best friends, happy in your old home, happy in the power of doing a great deal of good, and happy in the undeserved love of the best of men." i thought, all at once, if my guardian had married some one else, how should i have felt, and what should i have done! that would have been a change indeed. it presented my life in such a new and blank form that i rang my housekeeping keys and gave them a kiss before i laid them down in their basket again. then i went on to think, as i dressed my hair before the glass, how often had i considered within myself that the deep traces of my illness and the circumstances of my birth were only new reasons why i should be busy, busy, busy--useful, amiable, serviceable, in all honest, unpretending ways. this was a good time, to be sure, to sit down morbidly and cry! as to its seeming at all strange to me at first (if that were any excuse for crying, which it was not) that i was one day to be the mistress of bleak house, why should it seem strange? other people had thought of such things, if i had not. "don't you remember, my plain dear," i asked myself, looking at the glass, "what mrs. woodcourt said before those scars were there about your marrying--" perhaps the name brought them to my remembrance. the dried remains of the flowers. it would be better not to keep them now. they had only been preserved in memory of something wholly past and gone, but it would be better not to keep them now. they were in a book, and it happened to be in the next room--our sitting-room, dividing ada's chamber from mine. i took a candle and went softly in to fetch it from its shelf. after i had it in my hand, i saw my beautiful darling, through the open door, lying asleep, and i stole in to kiss her. it was weak in me, i know, and i could have no reason for crying; but i dropped a tear upon her dear face, and another, and another. weaker than that, i took the withered flowers out and put them for a moment to her lips. i thought about her love for richard, though, indeed, the flowers had nothing to do with that. then i took them into my own room and burned them at the candle, and they were dust in an instant. on entering the breakfast-room next morning, i found my guardian just as usual, quite as frank, as open, and free. there being not the least constraint in his manner, there was none (or i think there was none) in mine. i was with him several times in the course of the morning, in and out, when there was no one there, and i thought it not unlikely that he might speak to me about the letter, but he did not say a word. so, on the next morning, and the next, and for at least a week, over which time mr. skimpole prolonged his stay. i expected, every day, that my guardian might speak to me about the letter, but he never did. i thought then, growing uneasy, that i ought to write an answer. i tried over and over again in my own room at night, but i could not write an answer that at all began like a good answer, so i thought each night i would wait one more day. and i waited seven more days, and he never said a word. at last, mr. skimpole having departed, we three were one afternoon going out for a ride; and i, being dressed before ada and going down, came upon my guardian, with his back towards me, standing at the drawing-room window looking out. he turned on my coming in and said, smiling, "aye, it's you, little woman, is it?" and looked out again. i had made up my mind to speak to him now. in short, i had come down on purpose. "guardian," i said, rather hesitating and trembling, "when would you like to have the answer to the letter charley came for?" "when it's ready, my dear," he replied. "i think it is ready," said i. "is charley to bring it?" he asked pleasantly. "no. i have brought it myself, guardian," i returned. i put my two arms round his neck and kissed him, and he said was this the mistress of bleak house, and i said yes; and it made no difference presently, and we all went out together, and i said nothing to my precious pet about it. chapter xlv in trust one morning when i had done jingling about with my baskets of keys, as my beauty and i were walking round and round the garden i happened to turn my eyes towards the house and saw a long thin shadow going in which looked like mr. vholes. ada had been telling me only that morning of her hopes that richard might exhaust his ardour in the chancery suit by being so very earnest in it; and therefore, not to damp my dear girl's spirits, i said nothing about mr. vholes's shadow. presently came charley, lightly winding among the bushes and tripping along the paths, as rosy and pretty as one of flora's attendants instead of my maid, saying, "oh, if you please, miss, would you step and speak to mr. jarndyce!" it was one of charley's peculiarities that whenever she was charged with a message she always began to deliver it as soon as she beheld, at any distance, the person for whom it was intended. therefore i saw charley asking me in her usual form of words to "step and speak" to mr. jarndyce long before i heard her. and when i did hear her, she had said it so often that she was out of breath. i told ada i would make haste back and inquired of charley as we went in whether there was not a gentleman with mr. jarndyce. to which charley, whose grammar, i confess to my shame, never did any credit to my educational powers, replied, "yes, miss. him as come down in the country with mr. richard." a more complete contrast than my guardian and mr. vholes i suppose there could not be. i found them looking at one another across a table, the one so open and the other so close, the one so broad and upright and the other so narrow and stooping, the one giving out what he had to say in such a rich ringing voice and the other keeping it in in such a cold-blooded, gasping, fish-like manner that i thought i never had seen two people so unmatched. "you know mr. vholes, my dear," said my guardian. not with the greatest urbanity, i must say. mr. vholes rose, gloved and buttoned up as usual, and seated himself again, just as he had seated himself beside richard in the gig. not having richard to look at, he looked straight before him. "mr. vholes," said my guardian, eyeing his black figure as if he were a bird of ill omen, "has brought an ugly report of our most unfortunate rick." laying a marked emphasis on "most unfortunate" as if the words were rather descriptive of his connexion with mr. vholes. i sat down between them; mr. vholes remained immovable, except that he secretly picked at one of the red pimples on his yellow face with his black glove. "and as rick and you are happily good friends, i should like to know," said my guardian, "what you think, my dear. would you be so good as to--as to speak up, mr. vholes?" doing anything but that, mr. vholes observed, "i have been saying that i have reason to know, miss summerson, as mr. c.'s professional adviser, that mr. c.'s circumstances are at the present moment in an embarrassed state. not so much in point of amount as owing to the peculiar and pressing nature of liabilities mr. c. has incurred and the means he has of liquidating or meeting the same. i have staved off many little matters for mr. c., but there is a limit to staving off, and we have reached it. i have made some advances out of pocket to accommodate these unpleasantnesses, but i necessarily look to being repaid, for i do not pretend to be a man of capital, and i have a father to support in the vale of taunton, besides striving to realize some little independence for three dear girls at home. my apprehension is, mr. c.'s circumstances being such, lest it should end in his obtaining leave to part with his commission, which at all events is desirable to be made known to his connexions." mr. vholes, who had looked at me while speaking, here emerged into the silence he could hardly be said to have broken, so stifled was his tone, and looked before him again. "imagine the poor fellow without even his present resource," said my guardian to me. "yet what can i do? you know him, esther. he would never accept of help from me now. to offer it or hint at it would be to drive him to an extremity, if nothing else did." mr. vholes hereupon addressed me again. "what mr. jarndyce remarks, miss, is no doubt the case, and is the difficulty. i do not see that anything is to be done. i do not say that anything is to be done. far from it. i merely come down here under the seal of confidence and mention it in order that everything may be openly carried on and that it may not be said afterwards that everything was not openly carried on. my wish is that everything should be openly carried on. i desire to leave a good name behind me. if i consulted merely my own interests with mr. c., i should not be here. so insurmountable, as you must well know, would be his objections. this is not a professional attendance. this can he charged to nobody. i have no interest in it except as a member of society and a father--and a son," said mr. vholes, who had nearly forgotten that point. it appeared to us that mr. vholes said neither more nor less than the truth in intimating that he sought to divide the responsibility, such as it was, of knowing richard's situation. i could only suggest that i should go down to deal, where richard was then stationed, and see him, and try if it were possible to avert the worst. without consulting mr. vholes on this point, i took my guardian aside to propose it, while mr. vholes gauntly stalked to the fire and warmed his funeral gloves. the fatigue of the journey formed an immediate objection on my guardian's part, but as i saw he had no other, and as i was only too happy to go, i got his consent. we had then merely to dispose of mr. vholes. "well, sir," said mr. jarndyce, "miss summerson will communicate with mr. carstone, and you can only hope that his position may be yet retrievable. you will allow me to order you lunch after your journey, sir." "i thank you, mr. jarndyce," said mr. vholes, putting out his long black sleeve to check the ringing of the bell, "not any. i thank you, no, not a morsel. my digestion is much impaired, and i am but a poor knife and fork at any time. if i was to partake of solid food at this period of the day, i don't know what the consequences might be. everything having been openly carried on, sir, i will now with your permission take my leave." "and i would that you could take your leave, and we could all take our leave, mr. vholes," returned my guardian bitterly, "of a cause you know of." mr. vholes, whose black dye was so deep from head to foot that it had quite steamed before the fire, diffusing a very unpleasant perfume, made a short one-sided inclination of his head from the neck and slowly shook it. "we whose ambition it is to be looked upon in the light of respectable practitioners, sir, can but put our shoulders to the wheel. we do it, sir. at least, i do it myself; and i wish to think well of my professional brethren, one and all. you are sensible of an obligation not to refer to me, miss, in communicating with mr. c.?" i said i would be careful not to do it. "just so, miss. good morning. mr. jarndyce, good morning, sir." mr. vholes put his dead glove, which scarcely seemed to have any hand in it, on my fingers, and then on my guardian's fingers, and took his long thin shadow away. i thought of it on the outside of the coach, passing over all the sunny landscape between us and london, chilling the seed in the ground as it glided along. of course it became necessary to tell ada where i was going and why i was going, and of course she was anxious and distressed. but she was too true to richard to say anything but words of pity and words of excuse, and in a more loving spirit still--my dear devoted girl!--she wrote him a long letter, of which i took charge. charley was to be my travelling companion, though i am sure i wanted none and would willingly have left her at home. we all went to london that afternoon, and finding two places in the mail, secured them. at our usual bed-time, charley and i were rolling away seaward with the kentish letters. it was a night's journey in those coach times, but we had the mail to ourselves and did not find the night very tedious. it passed with me as i suppose it would with most people under such circumstances. at one while my journey looked hopeful, and at another hopeless. now i thought i should do some good, and now i wondered how i could ever have supposed so. now it seemed one of the most reasonable things in the world that i should have come, and now one of the most unreasonable. in what state i should find richard, what i should say to him, and what he would say to me occupied my mind by turns with these two states of feeling; and the wheels seemed to play one tune (to which the burden of my guardian's letter set itself) over and over again all night. at last we came into the narrow streets of deal, and very gloomy they were upon a raw misty morning. the long flat beach, with its little irregular houses, wooden and brick, and its litter of capstans, and great boats, and sheds, and bare upright poles with tackle and blocks, and loose gravelly waste places overgrown with grass and weeds, wore as dull an appearance as any place i ever saw. the sea was heaving under a thick white fog; and nothing else was moving but a few early ropemakers, who, with the yarn twisted round their bodies, looked as if, tired of their present state of existence, they were spinning themselves into cordage. but when we got into a warm room in an excellent hotel and sat down, comfortably washed and dressed, to an early breakfast (for it was too late to think of going to bed), deal began to look more cheerful. our little room was like a ship's cabin, and that delighted charley very much. then the fog began to rise like a curtain, and numbers of ships that we had had no idea were near appeared. i don't know how many sail the waiter told us were then lying in the downs. some of these vessels were of grand size--one was a large indiaman just come home; and when the sun shone through the clouds, making silvery pools in the dark sea, the way in which these ships brightened, and shadowed, and changed, amid a bustle of boats pulling off from the shore to them and from them to the shore, and a general life and motion in themselves and everything around them, was most beautiful. the large indiaman was our great attraction because she had come into the downs in the night. she was surrounded by boats, and we said how glad the people on board of her must be to come ashore. charley was curious, too, about the voyage, and about the heat in india, and the serpents and the tigers; and as she picked up such information much faster than grammar, i told her what i knew on those points. i told her, too, how people in such voyages were sometimes wrecked and cast on rocks, where they were saved by the intrepidity and humanity of one man. and charley asking how that could be, i told her how we knew at home of such a case. i had thought of sending richard a note saying i was there, but it seemed so much better to go to him without preparation. as he lived in barracks i was a little doubtful whether this was feasible, but we went out to reconnoitre. peeping in at the gate of the barrack-yard, we found everything very quiet at that time in the morning, and i asked a sergeant standing on the guardhouse-steps where he lived. he sent a man before to show me, who went up some bare stairs, and knocked with his knuckles at a door, and left us. "now then!" cried richard from within. so i left charley in the little passage, and going on to the half-open door, said, "can i come in, richard? it's only dame durden." he was writing at a table, with a great confusion of clothes, tin cases, books, boots, brushes, and portmanteaus strewn all about the floor. he was only half dressed--in plain clothes, i observed, not in uniform--and his hair was unbrushed, and he looked as wild as his room. all this i saw after he had heartily welcomed me and i was seated near him, for he started upon hearing my voice and caught me in his arms in a moment. dear richard! he was ever the same to me. down to--ah, poor poor fellow!--to the end, he never received me but with something of his old merry boyish manner. "good heaven, my dear little woman," said he, "how do you come here? who could have thought of seeing you! nothing the matter? ada is well?" "quite well. lovelier than ever, richard!" "ah!" he said, leaning back in his chair. "my poor cousin! i was writing to you, esther." so worn and haggard as he looked, even in the fullness of his handsome youth, leaning back in his chair and crushing the closely written sheet of paper in his hand! "have you been at the trouble of writing all that, and am i not to read it after all?" i asked. "oh, my dear," he returned with a hopeless gesture. "you may read it in the whole room. it is all over here." i mildly entreated him not to be despondent. i told him that i had heard by chance of his being in difficulty and had come to consult with him what could best be done. "like you, esther, but useless, and so not like you!" said he with a melancholy smile. "i am away on leave this day--should have been gone in another hour--and that is to smooth it over, for my selling out. well! let bygones be bygones. so this calling follows the rest. i only want to have been in the church to have made the round of all the professions." "richard," i urged, "it is not so hopeless as that?" "esther," he returned, "it is indeed. i am just so near disgrace as that those who are put in authority over me (as the catechism goes) would far rather be without me than with me. and they are right. apart from debts and duns and all such drawbacks, i am not fit even for this employment. i have no care, no mind, no heart, no soul, but for one thing. why, if this bubble hadn't broken now," he said, tearing the letter he had written into fragments and moodily casting them away, by driblets, "how could i have gone abroad? i must have been ordered abroad, but how could i have gone? how could i, with my experience of that thing, trust even vholes unless i was at his back!" i suppose he knew by my face what i was about to say, but he caught the hand i had laid upon his arm and touched my own lips with it to prevent me from going on. "no, dame durden! two subjects i forbid--must forbid. the first is john jarndyce. the second, you know what. call it madness, and i tell you i can't help it now, and can't be sane. but it is no such thing; it is the one object i have to pursue. it is a pity i ever was prevailed upon to turn out of my road for any other. it would be wisdom to abandon it now, after all the time, anxiety, and pains i have bestowed upon it! oh, yes, true wisdom. it would be very agreeable, too, to some people; but i never will." he was in that mood in which i thought it best not to increase his determination (if anything could increase it) by opposing him. i took out ada's letter and put it in his hand. "am i to read it now?" he asked. as i told him yes, he laid it on the table, and resting his head upon his hand, began. he had not read far when he rested his head upon his two hands--to hide his face from me. in a little while he rose as if the light were bad and went to the window. he finished reading it there, with his back towards me, and after he had finished and had folded it up, stood there for some minutes with the letter in his hand. when he came back to his chair, i saw tears in his eyes. "of course, esther, you know what she says here?" he spoke in a softened voice and kissed the letter as he asked me. "yes, richard." "offers me," he went on, tapping his foot upon the floor, "the little inheritance she is certain of so soon--just as little and as much as i have wasted--and begs and prays me to take it, set myself right with it, and remain in the service." "i know your welfare to be the dearest wish of her heart," said i. "and, oh, my dear richard, ada's is a noble heart." "i am sure it is. i--i wish i was dead!" he went back to the window, and laying his arm across it, leaned his head down on his arm. it greatly affected me to see him so, but i hoped he might become more yielding, and i remained silent. my experience was very limited; i was not at all prepared for his rousing himself out of this emotion to a new sense of injury. "and this is the heart that the same john jarndyce, who is not otherwise to be mentioned between us, stepped in to estrange from me," said he indignantly. "and the dear girl makes me this generous offer from under the same john jarndyce's roof, and with the same john jarndyce's gracious consent and connivance, i dare say, as a new means of buying me off." "richard!" i cried out, rising hastily. "i will not hear you say such shameful words!" i was very angry with him indeed, for the first time in my life, but it only lasted a moment. when i saw his worn young face looking at me as if he were sorry, i put my hand on his shoulder and said, "if you please, my dear richard, do not speak in such a tone to me. consider!" he blamed himself exceedingly and told me in the most generous manner that he had been very wrong and that he begged my pardon a thousand times. at that i laughed, but trembled a little too, for i was rather fluttered after being so fiery. "to accept this offer, my dear esther," said he, sitting down beside me and resuming our conversation, "--once more, pray, pray forgive me; i am deeply grieved--to accept my dearest cousin's offer is, i need not say, impossible. besides, i have letters and papers that i could show you which would convince you it is all over here. i have done with the red coat, believe me. but it is some satisfaction, in the midst of my troubles and perplexities, to know that i am pressing ada's interests in pressing my own. vholes has his shoulder to the wheel, and he cannot help urging it on as much for her as for me, thank god!" his sanguine hopes were rising within him and lighting up his features, but they made his face more sad to me than it had been before. "no, no!" cried richard exultingly. "if every farthing of ada's little fortune were mine, no part of it should be spent in retaining me in what i am not fit for, can take no interest in, and am weary of. it should be devoted to what promises a better return, and should be used where she has a larger stake. don't be uneasy for me! i shall now have only one thing on my mind, and vholes and i will work it. i shall not be without means. free of my commission, i shall be able to compound with some small usurers who will hear of nothing but their bond now--vholes says so. i should have a balance in my favour anyway, but that would swell it. come, come! you shall carry a letter to ada from me, esther, and you must both of you be more hopeful of me and not believe that i am quite cast away just yet, my dear." i will not repeat what i said to richard. i know it was tiresome, and nobody is to suppose for a moment that it was at all wise. it only came from my heart. he heard it patiently and feelingly, but i saw that on the two subjects he had reserved it was at present hopeless to make any representation to him. i saw too, and had experienced in this very interview, the sense of my guardian's remark that it was even more mischievous to use persuasion with him than to leave him as he was. therefore i was driven at last to asking richard if he would mind convincing me that it really was all over there, as he had said, and that it was not his mere impression. he showed me without hesitation a correspondence making it quite plain that his retirement was arranged. i found, from what he told me, that mr. vholes had copies of these papers and had been in consultation with him throughout. beyond ascertaining this, and having been the bearer of ada's letter, and being (as i was going to be) richard's companion back to london, i had done no good by coming down. admitting this to myself with a reluctant heart, i said i would return to the hotel and wait until he joined me there, so he threw a cloak over his shoulders and saw me to the gate, and charley and i went back along the beach. there was a concourse of people in one spot, surrounding some naval officers who were landing from a boat, and pressing about them with unusual interest. i said to charley this would be one of the great indiaman's boats now, and we stopped to look. the gentlemen came slowly up from the waterside, speaking good-humouredly to each other and to the people around and glancing about them as if they were glad to be in england again. "charley, charley," said i, "come away!" and i hurried on so swiftly that my little maid was surprised. it was not until we were shut up in our cabin-room and i had had time to take breath that i began to think why i had made such haste. in one of the sunburnt faces i had recognized mr. allan woodcourt, and i had been afraid of his recognizing me. i had been unwilling that he should see my altered looks. i had been taken by surprise, and my courage had quite failed me. but i knew this would not do, and i now said to myself, "my dear, there is no reason--there is and there can be no reason at all--why it should be worse for you now than it ever has been. what you were last month, you are to-day; you are no worse, you are no better. this is not your resolution; call it up, esther, call it up!" i was in a great tremble--with running--and at first was quite unable to calm myself; but i got better, and i was very glad to know it. the party came to the hotel. i heard them speaking on the staircase. i was sure it was the same gentlemen because i knew their voices again--i mean i knew mr. woodcourt's. it would still have been a great relief to me to have gone away without making myself known, but i was determined not to do so. "no, my dear, no. no, no, no!" i untied my bonnet and put my veil half up--i think i mean half down, but it matters very little--and wrote on one of my cards that i happened to be there with mr. richard carstone, and i sent it in to mr. woodcourt. he came immediately. i told him i was rejoiced to be by chance among the first to welcome him home to england. and i saw that he was very sorry for me. "you have been in shipwreck and peril since you left us, mr. woodcourt," said i, "but we can hardly call that a misfortune which enabled you to be so useful and so brave. we read of it with the truest interest. it first came to my knowledge through your old patient, poor miss flite, when i was recovering from my severe illness." "ah! little miss flite!" he said. "she lives the same life yet?" "just the same." i was so comfortable with myself now as not to mind the veil and to be able to put it aside. "her gratitude to you, mr. woodcourt, is delightful. she is a most affectionate creature, as i have reason to say." "you--you have found her so?" he returned. "i--i am glad of that." he was so very sorry for me that he could scarcely speak. "i assure you," said i, "that i was deeply touched by her sympathy and pleasure at the time i have referred to." "i was grieved to hear that you had been very ill." "i was very ill." "but you have quite recovered?" "i have quite recovered my health and my cheerfulness," said i. "you know how good my guardian is and what a happy life we lead, and i have everything to be thankful for and nothing in the world to desire." i felt as if he had greater commiseration for me than i had ever had for myself. it inspired me with new fortitude and new calmness to find that it was i who was under the necessity of reassuring him. i spoke to him of his voyage out and home, and of his future plans, and of his probable return to india. he said that was very doubtful. he had not found himself more favoured by fortune there than here. he had gone out a poor ship's surgeon and had come home nothing better. while we were talking, and when i was glad to believe that i had alleviated (if i may use such a term) the shock he had had in seeing me, richard came in. he had heard downstairs who was with me, and they met with cordial pleasure. i saw that after their first greetings were over, and when they spoke of richard's career, mr. woodcourt had a perception that all was not going well with him. he frequently glanced at his face as if there were something in it that gave him pain, and more than once he looked towards me as though he sought to ascertain whether i knew what the truth was. yet richard was in one of his sanguine states and in good spirits and was thoroughly pleased to see mr. woodcourt again, whom he had always liked. richard proposed that we all should go to london together; but mr. woodcourt, having to remain by his ship a little longer, could not join us. he dined with us, however, at an early hour, and became so much more like what he used to be that i was still more at peace to think i had been able to soften his regrets. yet his mind was not relieved of richard. when the coach was almost ready and richard ran down to look after his luggage, he spoke to me about him. i was not sure that i had a right to lay his whole story open, but i referred in a few words to his estrangement from mr jarndyce and to his being entangled in the ill-fated chancery suit. mr. woodcourt listened with interest and expressed his regret. "i saw you observe him rather closely," said i, "do you think him so changed?" "he is changed," he returned, shaking his head. i felt the blood rush into my face for the first time, but it was only an instantaneous emotion. i turned my head aside, and it was gone. "it is not," said mr. woodcourt, "his being so much younger or older, or thinner or fatter, or paler or ruddier, as there being upon his face such a singular expression. i never saw so remarkable a look in a young person. one cannot say that it is all anxiety or all weariness; yet it is both, and like ungrown despair." "you do not think he is ill?" said i. no. he looked robust in body. "that he cannot be at peace in mind, we have too much reason to know," i proceeded. "mr. woodcourt, you are going to london?" "to-morrow or the next day." "there is nothing richard wants so much as a friend. he always liked you. pray see him when you get there. pray help him sometimes with your companionship if you can. you do not know of what service it might be. you cannot think how ada, and mr. jarndyce, and even i--how we should all thank you, mr. woodcourt!" "miss summerson," he said, more moved than he had been from the first, "before heaven, i will be a true friend to him! i will accept him as a trust, and it shall be a sacred one!" "god bless you!" said i, with my eyes filling fast; but i thought they might, when it was not for myself. "ada loves him--we all love him, but ada loves him as we cannot. i will tell her what you say. thank you, and god bless you, in her name!" richard came back as we finished exchanging these hurried words and gave me his arm to take me to the coach. "woodcourt," he said, unconscious with what application, "pray let us meet in london!" "meet?" returned the other. "i have scarcely a friend there now but you. where shall i find you?" "why, i must get a lodging of some sort," said richard, pondering. "say at vholes's, symond's inn." "good! without loss of time." they shook hands heartily. when i was seated in the coach and richard was yet standing in the street, mr. woodcourt laid his friendly hand on richard's shoulder and looked at me. i understood him and waved mine in thanks. and in his last look as we drove away, i saw that he was very sorry for me. i was glad to see it. i felt for my old self as the dead may feel if they ever revisit these scenes. i was glad to be tenderly remembered, to be gently pitied, not to be quite forgotten. chapter xlvi stop him! darkness rests upon tom-all-alone's. dilating and dilating since the sun went down last night, it has gradually swelled until it fills every void in the place. for a time there were some dungeon lights burning, as the lamp of life hums in tom-all-alone's, heavily, heavily, in the nauseous air, and winking--as that lamp, too, winks in tom-all-alone's--at many horrible things. but they are blotted out. the moon has eyed tom with a dull cold stare, as admitting some puny emulation of herself in his desert region unfit for life and blasted by volcanic fires; but she has passed on and is gone. the blackest nightmare in the infernal stables grazes on tom-all-alone's, and tom is fast asleep. much mighty speech-making there has been, both in and out of parliament, concerning tom, and much wrathful disputation how tom shall be got right. whether he shall be put into the main road by constables, or by beadles, or by bell-ringing, or by force of figures, or by correct principles of taste, or by high church, or by low church, or by no church; whether he shall be set to splitting trusses of polemical straws with the crooked knife of his mind or whether he shall be put to stone-breaking instead. in the midst of which dust and noise there is but one thing perfectly clear, to wit, that tom only may and can, or shall and will, be reclaimed according to somebody's theory but nobody's practice. and in the hopeful meantime, tom goes to perdition head foremost in his old determined spirit. but he has his revenge. even the winds are his messengers, and they serve him in these hours of darkness. there is not a drop of tom's corrupted blood but propagates infection and contagion somewhere. it shall pollute, this very night, the choice stream (in which chemists on analysis would find the genuine nobility) of a norman house, and his grace shall not be able to say nay to the infamous alliance. there is not an atom of tom's slime, not a cubic inch of any pestilential gas in which he lives, not one obscenity or degradation about him, not an ignorance, not a wickedness, not a brutality of his committing, but shall work its retribution through every order of society up to the proudest of the proud and to the highest of the high. verily, what with tainting, plundering, and spoiling, tom has his revenge. it is a moot point whether tom-all-alone's be uglier by day or by night, but on the argument that the more that is seen of it the more shocking it must be, and that no part of it left to the imagination is at all likely to be made so bad as the reality, day carries it. the day begins to break now; and in truth it might be better for the national glory even that the sun should sometimes set upon the british dominions than that it should ever rise upon so vile a wonder as tom. a brown sunburnt gentleman, who appears in some inaptitude for sleep to be wandering abroad rather than counting the hours on a restless pillow, strolls hitherward at this quiet time. attracted by curiosity, he often pauses and looks about him, up and down the miserable by-ways. nor is he merely curious, for in his bright dark eye there is compassionate interest; and as he looks here and there, he seems to understand such wretchedness and to have studied it before. on the banks of the stagnant channel of mud which is the main street of tom-all-alone's, nothing is to be seen but the crazy houses, shut up and silent. no waking creature save himself appears except in one direction, where he sees the solitary figure of a woman sitting on a door-step. he walks that way. approaching, he observes that she has journeyed a long distance and is footsore and travel-stained. she sits on the door-step in the manner of one who is waiting, with her elbow on her knee and her head upon her hand. beside her is a canvas bag, or bundle, she has carried. she is dozing probably, for she gives no heed to his steps as he comes toward her. the broken footway is so narrow that when allan woodcourt comes to where the woman sits, he has to turn into the road to pass her. looking down at her face, his eye meets hers, and he stops. "what is the matter?" "nothing, sir." "can't you make them hear? do you want to be let in?" "i'm waiting till they get up at another house--a lodging-house--not here," the woman patiently returns. "i'm waiting here because there will be sun here presently to warm me." "i am afraid you are tired. i am sorry to see you sitting in the street." "thank you, sir. it don't matter." a habit in him of speaking to the poor and of avoiding patronage or condescension or childishness (which is the favourite device, many people deeming it quite a subtlety to talk to them like little spelling books) has put him on good terms with the woman easily. "let me look at your forehead," he says, bending down. "i am a doctor. don't be afraid. i wouldn't hurt you for the world." he knows that by touching her with his skilful and accustomed hand he can soothe her yet more readily. she makes a slight objection, saying, "it's nothing"; but he has scarcely laid his fingers on the wounded place when she lifts it up to the light. "aye! a bad bruise, and the skin sadly broken. this must be very sore." "it do ache a little, sir," returns the woman with a started tear upon her cheek. "let me try to make it more comfortable. my handkerchief won't hurt you." "oh, dear no, sir, i'm sure of that!" he cleanses the injured place and dries it, and having carefully examined it and gently pressed it with the palm of his hand, takes a small case from his pocket, dresses it, and binds it up. while he is thus employed, he says, after laughing at his establishing a surgery in the street, "and so your husband is a brickmaker?" "how do you know that, sir?" asks the woman, astonished. "why, i suppose so from the colour of the clay upon your bag and on your dress. and i know brickmakers go about working at piecework in different places. and i am sorry to say i have known them cruel to their wives too." the woman hastily lifts up her eyes as if she would deny that her injury is referable to such a cause. but feeling the hand upon her forehead, and seeing his busy and composed face, she quietly drops them again. "where is he now?" asks the surgeon. "he got into trouble last night, sir; but he'll look for me at the lodging-house." "he will get into worse trouble if he often misuses his large and heavy hand as he has misused it here. but you forgive him, brutal as he is, and i say no more of him, except that i wish he deserved it. you have no young child?" the woman shakes her head. "one as i calls mine, sir, but it's liz's." "your own is dead. i see! poor little thing!" by this time he has finished and is putting up his case. "i suppose you have some settled home. is it far from here?" he asks, good-humouredly making light of what he has done as she gets up and curtsys. "it's a good two or three and twenty mile from here, sir. at saint albans. you know saint albans, sir? i thought you gave a start like, as if you did." "yes, i know something of it. and now i will ask you a question in return. have you money for your lodging?" "yes, sir," she says, "really and truly." and she shows it. he tells her, in acknowledgment of her many subdued thanks, that she is very welcome, gives her good day, and walks away. tom-all-alone's is still asleep, and nothing is astir. yes, something is! as he retraces his way to the point from which he descried the woman at a distance sitting on the step, he sees a ragged figure coming very cautiously along, crouching close to the soiled walls--which the wretchedest figure might as well avoid--and furtively thrusting a hand before it. it is the figure of a youth whose face is hollow and whose eyes have an emaciated glare. he is so intent on getting along unseen that even the apparition of a stranger in whole garments does not tempt him to look back. he shades his face with his ragged elbow as he passes on the other side of the way, and goes shrinking and creeping on with his anxious hand before him and his shapeless clothes hanging in shreds. clothes made for what purpose, or of what material, it would be impossible to say. they look, in colour and in substance, like a bundle of rank leaves of swampy growth that rotted long ago. allan woodcourt pauses to look after him and note all this, with a shadowy belief that he has seen the boy before. he cannot recall how or where, but there is some association in his mind with such a form. he imagines that he must have seen it in some hospital or refuge, still, cannot make out why it comes with any special force on his remembrance. he is gradually emerging from tom-all-alone's in the morning light, thinking about it, when he hears running feet behind him, and looking round, sees the boy scouring towards him at great speed, followed by the woman. "stop him, stop him!" cries the woman, almost breathless. "stop him, sir!" he darts across the road into the boy's path, but the boy is quicker than he, makes a curve, ducks, dives under his hands, comes up half-a-dozen yards beyond him, and scours away again. still the woman follows, crying, "stop him, sir, pray stop him!" allan, not knowing but that he has just robbed her of her money, follows in chase and runs so hard that he runs the boy down a dozen times, but each time he repeats the curve, the duck, the dive, and scours away again. to strike at him on any of these occasions would be to fell and disable him, but the pursuer cannot resolve to do that, and so the grimly ridiculous pursuit continues. at last the fugitive, hard-pressed, takes to a narrow passage and a court which has no thoroughfare. here, against a hoarding of decaying timber, he is brought to bay and tumbles down, lying gasping at his pursuer, who stands and gasps at him until the woman comes up. "oh, you, jo!" cries the woman. "what? i have found you at last!" "jo," repeats allan, looking at him with attention, "jo! stay. to be sure! i recollect this lad some time ago being brought before the coroner." "yes, i see you once afore at the inkwhich," whimpers jo. "what of that? can't you never let such an unfortnet as me alone? an't i unfortnet enough for you yet? how unfortnet do you want me fur to be? i've been a-chivied and a-chivied, fust by one on you and nixt by another on you, till i'm worritted to skins and bones. the inkwhich warn't my fault. i done nothink. he wos wery good to me, he wos; he wos the only one i knowed to speak to, as ever come across my crossing. it ain't wery likely i should want him to be inkwhiched. i only wish i wos, myself. i don't know why i don't go and make a hole in the water, i'm sure i don't." he says it with such a pitiable air, and his grimy tears appear so real, and he lies in the corner up against the hoarding so like a growth of fungus or any unwholesome excrescence produced there in neglect and impurity, that allan woodcourt is softened towards him. he says to the woman, "miserable creature, what has he done?" to which she only replies, shaking her head at the prostrate figure more amazedly than angrily, "oh, you jo, you jo. i have found you at last!" "what has he done?" says allan. "has he robbed you?" "no, sir, no. robbed me? he did nothing but what was kind-hearted by me, and that's the wonder of it." allan looks from jo to the woman, and from the woman to jo, waiting for one of them to unravel the riddle. "but he was along with me, sir," says the woman. "oh, you jo! he was along with me, sir, down at saint albans, ill, and a young lady, lord bless her for a good friend to me, took pity on him when i durstn't, and took him home--" allan shrinks back from him with a sudden horror. "yes, sir, yes. took him home, and made him comfortable, and like a thankless monster he ran away in the night and never has been seen or heard of since till i set eyes on him just now. and that young lady that was such a pretty dear caught his illness, lost her beautiful looks, and wouldn't hardly be known for the same young lady now if it wasn't for her angel temper, and her pretty shape, and her sweet voice. do you know it? you ungrateful wretch, do you know that this is all along of you and of her goodness to you?" demands the woman, beginning to rage at him as she recalls it and breaking into passionate tears. the boy, in rough sort stunned by what he hears, falls to smearing his dirty forehead with his dirty palm, and to staring at the ground, and to shaking from head to foot until the crazy hoarding against which he leans rattles. allan restrains the woman, merely by a quiet gesture, but effectually. "richard told me--" he falters. "i mean, i have heard of this--don't mind me for a moment, i will speak presently." he turns away and stands for a while looking out at the covered passage. when he comes back, he has recovered his composure, except that he contends against an avoidance of the boy, which is so very remarkable that it absorbs the woman's attention. "you hear what she says. but get up, get up!" jo, shaking and chattering, slowly rises and stands, after the manner of his tribe in a difficulty, sideways against the hoarding, resting one of his high shoulders against it and covertly rubbing his right hand over his left and his left foot over his right. "you hear what she says, and i know it's true. have you been here ever since?" "wishermaydie if i seen tom-all-alone's till this blessed morning," replies jo hoarsely. "why have you come here now?" jo looks all round the confined court, looks at his questioner no higher than the knees, and finally answers, "i don't know how to do nothink, and i can't get nothink to do. i'm wery poor and ill, and i thought i'd come back here when there warn't nobody about, and lay down and hide somewheres as i knows on till arter dark, and then go and beg a trifle of mr. snagsby. he wos allus willin fur to give me somethink he wos, though mrs. snagsby she was allus a-chivying on me--like everybody everywheres." "where have you come from?" jo looks all round the court again, looks at his questioner's knees again, and concludes by laying his profile against the hoarding in a sort of resignation. "did you hear me ask you where you have come from?" "tramp then," says jo. "now tell me," proceeds allan, making a strong effort to overcome his repugnance, going very near to him, and leaning over him with an expression of confidence, "tell me how it came about that you left that house when the good young lady had been so unfortunate as to pity you and take you home." jo suddenly comes out of his resignation and excitedly declares, addressing the woman, that he never known about the young lady, that he never heern about it, that he never went fur to hurt her, that he would sooner have hurt his own self, that he'd sooner have had his unfortnet ed chopped off than ever gone a-nigh her, and that she wos wery good to him, she wos. conducting himself throughout as if in his poor fashion he really meant it, and winding up with some very miserable sobs. allan woodcourt sees that this is not a sham. he constrains himself to touch him. "come, jo. tell me." "no. i dustn't," says jo, relapsing into the profile state. "i dustn't, or i would." "but i must know," returns the other, "all the same. come, jo." after two or three such adjurations, jo lifts up his head again, looks round the court again, and says in a low voice, "well, i'll tell you something. i was took away. there!" "took away? in the night?" "ah!" very apprehensive of being overheard, jo looks about him and even glances up some ten feet at the top of the hoarding and through the cracks in it lest the object of his distrust should be looking over or hidden on the other side. "who took you away?" "i dustn't name him," says jo. "i dustn't do it, sir. "but i want, in the young lady's name, to know. you may trust me. no one else shall hear." "ah, but i don't know," replies jo, shaking his head fearfully, "as he don't hear." "why, he is not in this place." "oh, ain't he though?" says jo. "he's in all manner of places, all at wanst." allan looks at him in perplexity, but discovers some real meaning and good faith at the bottom of this bewildering reply. he patiently awaits an explicit answer; and jo, more baffled by his patience than by anything else, at last desperately whispers a name in his ear. "aye!" says allan. "why, what had you been doing?" "nothink, sir. never done nothink to get myself into no trouble, 'sept in not moving on and the inkwhich. but i'm a-moving on now. i'm a-moving on to the berryin ground--that's the move as i'm up to." "no, no, we will try to prevent that. but what did he do with you?" "put me in a horsepittle," replied jo, whispering, "till i was discharged, then giv me a little money--four half-bulls, wot you may call half-crowns--and ses 'hook it! nobody wants you here,' he ses. 'you hook it. you go and tramp,' he ses. 'you move on,' he ses. 'don't let me ever see you nowheres within forty mile of london, or you'll repent it.' so i shall, if ever he doos see me, and he'll see me if i'm above ground," concludes jo, nervously repeating all his former precautions and investigations. allan considers a little, then remarks, turning to the woman but keeping an encouraging eye on jo, "he is not so ungrateful as you supposed. he had a reason for going away, though it was an insufficient one." "thankee, sir, thankee!" exclaims jo. "there now! see how hard you wos upon me. but ony you tell the young lady wot the genlmn ses, and it's all right. for you wos wery good to me too, and i knows it." "now, jo," says allan, keeping his eye upon him, "come with me and i will find you a better place than this to lie down and hide in. if i take one side of the way and you the other to avoid observation, you will not run away, i know very well, if you make me a promise." "i won't, not unless i wos to see him a-coming, sir." "very well. i take your word. half the town is getting up by this time, and the whole town will be broad awake in another hour. come along. good day again, my good woman." "good day again, sir, and i thank you kindly many times again." she has been sitting on her bag, deeply attentive, and now rises and takes it up. jo, repeating, "ony you tell the young lady as i never went fur to hurt her and wot the genlmn ses!" nods and shambles and shivers, and smears and blinks, and half laughs and half cries, a farewell to her, and takes his creeping way along after allan woodcourt, close to the houses on the opposite side of the street. in this order, the two come up out of tom-all-alone's into the broad rays of the sunlight and the purer air. chapter xlvii jo's will as allan woodcourt and jo proceed along the streets where the high church spires and the distances are so near and clear in the morning light that the city itself seems renewed by rest, allan revolves in his mind how and where he shall bestow his companion. "it surely is a strange fact," he considers, "that in the heart of a civilized world this creature in human form should be more difficult to dispose of than an unowned dog." but it is none the less a fact because of its strangeness, and the difficulty remains. at first he looks behind him often to assure himself that jo is still really following. but look where he will, he still beholds him close to the opposite houses, making his way with his wary hand from brick to brick and from door to door, and often, as he creeps along, glancing over at him watchfully. soon satisfied that the last thing in his thoughts is to give him the slip, allan goes on, considering with a less divided attention what he shall do. a breakfast-stall at a street-corner suggests the first thing to be done. he stops there, looks round, and beckons jo. jo crosses and comes halting and shuffling up, slowly scooping the knuckles of his right hand round and round in the hollowed palm of his left, kneading dirt with a natural pestle and mortar. what is a dainty repast to jo is then set before him, and he begins to gulp the coffee and to gnaw the bread and butter, looking anxiously about him in all directions as he eats and drinks, like a scared animal. but he is so sick and miserable that even hunger has abandoned him. "i thought i was amost a-starvin, sir," says jo, soon putting down his food, "but i don't know nothink--not even that. i don't care for eating wittles nor yet for drinking on 'em." and jo stands shivering and looking at the breakfast wonderingly. allan woodcourt lays his hand upon his pulse and on his chest. "draw breath, jo!" "it draws," says jo, "as heavy as a cart." he might add, "and rattles like it," but he only mutters, "i'm a-moving on, sir." allan looks about for an apothecary's shop. there is none at hand, but a tavern does as well or better. he obtains a little measure of wine and gives the lad a portion of it very carefully. he begins to revive almost as soon as it passes his lips. "we may repeat that dose, jo," observes allan after watching him with his attentive face. "so! now we will take five minutes' rest, and then go on again." leaving the boy sitting on the bench of the breakfast-stall, with his back against an iron railing, allan woodcourt paces up and down in the early sunshine, casting an occasional look towards him without appearing to watch him. it requires no discernment to perceive that he is warmed and refreshed. if a face so shaded can brighten, his face brightens somewhat; and by little and little he eats the slice of bread he had so hopelessly laid down. observant of these signs of improvement, allan engages him in conversation and elicits to his no small wonder the adventure of the lady in the veil, with all its consequences. jo slowly munches as he slowly tells it. when he has finished his story and his bread, they go on again. intending to refer his difficulty in finding a temporary place of refuge for the boy to his old patient, zealous little miss flite, allan leads the way to the court where he and jo first foregathered. but all is changed at the rag and bottle shop; miss flite no longer lodges there; it is shut up; and a hard-featured female, much obscured by dust, whose age is a problem, but who is indeed no other than the interesting judy, is tart and spare in her replies. these sufficing, however, to inform the visitor that miss flite and her birds are domiciled with a mrs. blinder, in bell yard, he repairs to that neighbouring place, where miss flite (who rises early that she may be punctual at the divan of justice held by her excellent friend the chancellor) comes running downstairs with tears of welcome and with open arms. "my dear physician!" cries miss flite. "my meritorious, distinguished, honourable officer!" she uses some odd expressions, but is as cordial and full of heart as sanity itself can be--more so than it often is. allan, very patient with her, waits until she has no more raptures to express, then points out jo, trembling in a doorway, and tells her how he comes there. "where can i lodge him hereabouts for the present? now, you have a fund of knowledge and good sense and can advise me." miss flite, mighty proud of the compliment, sets herself to consider; but it is long before a bright thought occurs to her. mrs. blinder is entirely let, and she herself occupies poor gridley's room. "gridley!" exclaims miss flite, clapping her hands after a twentieth repetition of this remark. "gridley! to be sure! of course! my dear physician! general george will help us out." it is hopeless to ask for any information about general george, and would be, though miss flite had not already run upstairs to put on her pinched bonnet and her poor little shawl and to arm herself with her reticule of documents. but as she informs her physician in her disjointed manner on coming down in full array that general george, whom she often calls upon, knows her dear fitz jarndyce and takes a great interest in all connected with her, allan is induced to think that they may be in the right way. so he tells jo, for his encouragement, that this walking about will soon be over now; and they repair to the general's. fortunately it is not far. from the exterior of george's shooting gallery, and the long entry, and the bare perspective beyond it, allan woodcourt augurs well. he also descries promise in the figure of mr. george himself, striding towards them in his morning exercise with his pipe in his mouth, no stock on, and his muscular arms, developed by broadsword and dumbbell, weightily asserting themselves through his light shirt-sleeves. "your servant, sir," says mr. george with a military salute. good-humouredly smiling all over his broad forehead up into his crisp hair, he then defers to miss flite, as, with great stateliness, and at some length, she performs the courtly ceremony of presentation. he winds it up with another "your servant, sir!" and another salute. "excuse me, sir. a sailor, i believe?" says mr. george. "i am proud to find i have the air of one," returns allan; "but i am only a sea-going doctor." "indeed, sir! i should have thought you was a regular blue-jacket myself." allan hopes mr. george will forgive his intrusion the more readily on that account, and particularly that he will not lay aside his pipe, which, in his politeness, he has testified some intention of doing. "you are very good, sir," returns the trooper. "as i know by experience that it's not disagreeable to miss flite, and since it's equally agreeable to yourself--" and finishes the sentence by putting it between his lips again. allan proceeds to tell him all he knows about jo, unto which the trooper listens with a grave face. "and that's the lad, sir, is it?" he inquires, looking along the entry to where jo stands staring up at the great letters on the whitewashed front, which have no meaning in his eyes. "that's he," says allan. "and, mr. george, i am in this difficulty about him. i am unwilling to place him in a hospital, even if i could procure him immediate admission, because i foresee that he would not stay there many hours if he could be so much as got there. the same objection applies to a workhouse, supposing i had the patience to be evaded and shirked, and handed about from post to pillar in trying to get him into one, which is a system that i don't take kindly to." "no man does, sir," returns mr. george. "i am convinced that he would not remain in either place, because he is possessed by an extraordinary terror of this person who ordered him to keep out of the way; in his ignorance, he believes this person to be everywhere, and cognizant of everything." "i ask your pardon, sir," says mr. george. "but you have not mentioned that party's name. is it a secret, sir?" "the boy makes it one. but his name is bucket." "bucket the detective, sir?" "the same man." "the man is known to me, sir," returns the trooper after blowing out a cloud of smoke and squaring his chest, "and the boy is so far correct that he undoubtedly is a--rum customer." mr. george smokes with a profound meaning after this and surveys miss flite in silence. "now, i wish mr. jarndyce and miss summerson at least to know that this jo, who tells so strange a story, has reappeared, and to have it in their power to speak with him if they should desire to do so. therefore i want to get him, for the present moment, into any poor lodging kept by decent people where he would be admitted. decent people and jo, mr. george," says allan, following the direction of the trooper's eyes along the entry, "have not been much acquainted, as you see. hence the difficulty. do you happen to know any one in this neighbourhood who would receive him for a while on my paying for him beforehand?" as he puts the question, he becomes aware of a dirty-faced little man standing at the trooper's elbow and looking up, with an oddly twisted figure and countenance, into the trooper's face. after a few more puffs at his pipe, the trooper looks down askant at the little man, and the little man winks up at the trooper. "well, sir," says mr. george, "i can assure you that i would willingly be knocked on the head at any time if it would be at all agreeable to miss summerson, and consequently i esteem it a privilege to do that young lady any service, however small. we are naturally in the vagabond way here, sir, both myself and phil. you see what the place is. you are welcome to a quiet corner of it for the boy if the same would meet your views. no charge made, except for rations. we are not in a flourishing state of circumstances here, sir. we are liable to be tumbled out neck and crop at a moment's notice. however, sir, such as the place is, and so long as it lasts, here it is at your service." with a comprehensive wave of his pipe, mr. george places the whole building at his visitor's disposal. "i take it for granted, sir," he adds, "you being one of the medical staff, that there is no present infection about this unfortunate subject?" allan is quite sure of it. "because, sir," says mr. george, shaking his head sorrowfully, "we have had enough of that." his tone is no less sorrowfully echoed by his new acquaintance. "still i am bound to tell you," observes allan after repeating his former assurance, "that the boy is deplorably low and reduced and that he may be--i do not say that he is--too far gone to recover." "do you consider him in present danger, sir?" inquires the trooper. "yes, i fear so." "then, sir," returns the trooper in a decisive manner, "it appears to me--being naturally in the vagabond way myself--that the sooner he comes out of the street, the better. you, phil! bring him in!" mr. squod tacks out, all on one side, to execute the word of command; and the trooper, having smoked his pipe, lays it by. jo is brought in. he is not one of mrs. pardiggle's tockahoopo indians; he is not one of mrs. jellyby's lambs, being wholly unconnected with borrioboola-gha; he is not softened by distance and unfamiliarity; he is not a genuine foreign-grown savage; he is the ordinary home-made article. dirty, ugly, disagreeable to all the senses, in body a common creature of the common streets, only in soul a heathen. homely filth begrimes him, homely parasites devour him, homely sores are in him, homely rags are on him; native ignorance, the growth of english soil and climate, sinks his immortal nature lower than the beasts that perish. stand forth, jo, in uncompromising colours! from the sole of thy foot to the crown of thy head, there is nothing interesting about thee. he shuffles slowly into mr. george's gallery and stands huddled together in a bundle, looking all about the floor. he seems to know that they have an inclination to shrink from him, partly for what he is and partly for what he has caused. he, too, shrinks from them. he is not of the same order of things, not of the same place in creation. he is of no order and no place, neither of the beasts nor of humanity. "look here, jo!" says allan. "this is mr. george." jo searches the floor for some time longer, then looks up for a moment, and then down again. "he is a kind friend to you, for he is going to give you lodging room here." jo makes a scoop with one hand, which is supposed to be a bow. after a little more consideration and some backing and changing of the foot on which he rests, he mutters that he is "wery thankful." "you are quite safe here. all you have to do at present is to be obedient and to get strong. and mind you tell us the truth here, whatever you do, jo." "wishermaydie if i don't, sir," says jo, reverting to his favourite declaration. "i never done nothink yit, but wot you knows on, to get myself into no trouble. i never was in no other trouble at all, sir, 'sept not knowin' nothink and starwation." "i believe it, now attend to mr. george. i see he is going to speak to you." "my intention merely was, sir," observes mr. george, amazingly broad and upright, "to point out to him where he can lie down and get a thorough good dose of sleep. now, look here." as the trooper speaks, he conducts them to the other end of the gallery and opens one of the little cabins. "there you are, you see! here is a mattress, and here you may rest, on good behaviour, as long as mr., i ask your pardon, sir"--he refers apologetically to the card allan has given him--"mr. woodcourt pleases. don't you be alarmed if you hear shots; they'll be aimed at the target, and not you. now, there's another thing i would recommend, sir," says the trooper, turning to his visitor. "phil, come here!" phil bears down upon them according to his usual tactics. "here is a man, sir, who was found, when a baby, in the gutter. consequently, it is to be expected that he takes a natural interest in this poor creature. you do, don't you, phil?" "certainly and surely i do, guv'ner," is phil's reply. "now i was thinking, sir," says mr. george in a martial sort of confidence, as if he were giving his opinion in a council of war at a drum-head, "that if this man was to take him to a bath and was to lay out a few shillings in getting him one or two coarse articles--" "mr. george, my considerate friend," returns allan, taking out his purse, "it is the very favour i would have asked." phil squod and jo are sent out immediately on this work of improvement. miss flite, quite enraptured by her success, makes the best of her way to court, having great fears that otherwise her friend the chancellor may be uneasy about her or may give the judgment she has so long expected in her absence, and observing "which you know, my dear physician, and general, after so many years, would be too absurdly unfortunate!" allan takes the opportunity of going out to procure some restorative medicines, and obtaining them near at hand, soon returns to find the trooper walking up and down the gallery, and to fall into step and walk with him. "i take it, sir," says mr. george, "that you know miss summerson pretty well?" yes, it appears. "not related to her, sir?" no, it appears. "excuse the apparent curiosity," says mr. george. "it seemed to me probable that you might take more than a common interest in this poor creature because miss summerson had taken that unfortunate interest in him. 'tis my case, sir, i assure you." "and mine, mr. george." the trooper looks sideways at allan's sunburnt cheek and bright dark eye, rapidly measures his height and build, and seems to approve of him. "since you have been out, sir, i have been thinking that i unquestionably know the rooms in lincoln's inn fields, where bucket took the lad, according to his account. though he is not acquainted with the name, i can help you to it. it's tulkinghorn. that's what it is." allan looks at him inquiringly, repeating the name. "tulkinghorn. that's the name, sir. i know the man, and know him to have been in communication with bucket before, respecting a deceased person who had given him offence. i know the man, sir. to my sorrow." allan naturally asks what kind of man he is. "what kind of man! do you mean to look at?" "i think i know that much of him. i mean to deal with. generally, what kind of man?" "why, then i'll tell you, sir," returns the trooper, stopping short and folding his arms on his square chest so angrily that his face fires and flushes all over; "he is a confoundedly bad kind of man. he is a slow-torturing kind of man. he is no more like flesh and blood than a rusty old carbine is. he is a kind of man--by george!--that has caused me more restlessness, and more uneasiness, and more dissatisfaction with myself than all other men put together. that's the kind of man mr. tulkinghorn is!" "i am sorry," says allan, "to have touched so sore a place." "sore?" the trooper plants his legs wider apart, wets the palm of his broad right hand, and lays it on the imaginary moustache. "it's no fault of yours, sir; but you shall judge. he has got a power over me. he is the man i spoke of just now as being able to tumble me out of this place neck and crop. he keeps me on a constant see-saw. he won't hold off, and he won't come on. if i have a payment to make him, or time to ask him for, or anything to go to him about, he don't see me, don't hear me--passes me on to melchisedech's in clifford's inn, melchisedech's in clifford's inn passes me back again to him--he keeps me prowling and dangling about him as if i was made of the same stone as himself. why, i spend half my life now, pretty well, loitering and dodging about his door. what does he care? nothing. just as much as the rusty old carbine i have compared him to. he chafes and goads me till--bah! nonsense! i am forgetting myself. mr. woodcourt," the trooper resumes his march, "all i say is, he is an old man; but i am glad i shall never have the chance of setting spurs to my horse and riding at him in a fair field. for if i had that chance, in one of the humours he drives me into--he'd go down, sir!" mr. george has been so excited that he finds it necessary to wipe his forehead on his shirt-sleeve. even while he whistles his impetuosity away with the national anthem, some involuntary shakings of his head and heavings of his chest still linger behind, not to mention an occasional hasty adjustment with both hands of his open shirt-collar, as if it were scarcely open enough to prevent his being troubled by a choking sensation. in short, allan woodcourt has not much doubt about the going down of mr. tulkinghorn on the field referred to. jo and his conductor presently return, and jo is assisted to his mattress by the careful phil, to whom, after due administration of medicine by his own hands, allan confides all needful means and instructions. the morning is by this time getting on apace. he repairs to his lodgings to dress and breakfast, and then, without seeking rest, goes away to mr. jarndyce to communicate his discovery. with him mr. jarndyce returns alone, confidentially telling him that there are reasons for keeping this matter very quiet indeed and showing a serious interest in it. to mr. jarndyce, jo repeats in substance what he said in the morning, without any material variation. only that cart of his is heavier to draw, and draws with a hollower sound. "let me lay here quiet and not be chivied no more," falters jo, "and be so kind any person as is a-passin nigh where i used fur to sleep, as jist to say to mr. sangsby that jo, wot he known once, is a-moving on right forards with his duty, and i'll be wery thankful. i'd be more thankful than i am aready if it wos any ways possible for an unfortnet to be it." he makes so many of these references to the law-stationer in the course of a day or two that allan, after conferring with mr. jarndyce, good-naturedly resolves to call in cook's court, the rather, as the cart seems to be breaking down. to cook's court, therefore, he repairs. mr. snagsby is behind his counter in his grey coat and sleeves, inspecting an indenture of several skins which has just come in from the engrosser's, an immense desert of law-hand and parchment, with here and there a resting-place of a few large letters to break the awful monotony and save the traveller from despair. mr snagsby puts up at one of these inky wells and greets the stranger with his cough of general preparation for business. "you don't remember me, mr. snagsby?" the stationer's heart begins to thump heavily, for his old apprehensions have never abated. it is as much as he can do to answer, "no, sir, i can't say i do. i should have considered--not to put too fine a point upon it--that i never saw you before, sir." "twice before," says allan woodcourt. "once at a poor bedside, and once--" "it's come at last!" thinks the afflicted stationer, as recollection breaks upon him. "it's got to a head now and is going to burst!" but he has sufficient presence of mind to conduct his visitor into the little counting-house and to shut the door. "are you a married man, sir?" "no, i am not." "would you make the attempt, though single," says mr. snagsby in a melancholy whisper, "to speak as low as you can? for my little woman is a-listening somewheres, or i'll forfeit the business and five hundred pound!" in deep dejection mr. snagsby sits down on his stool, with his back against his desk, protesting, "i never had a secret of my own, sir. i can't charge my memory with ever having once attempted to deceive my little woman on my own account since she named the day. i wouldn't have done it, sir. not to put too fine a point upon it, i couldn't have done it, i dursn't have done it. whereas, and nevertheless, i find myself wrapped round with secrecy and mystery, till my life is a burden to me." his visitor professes his regret to hear it and asks him does he remember jo. mr. snagsby answers with a suppressed groan, oh, don't he! "you couldn't name an individual human being--except myself--that my little woman is more set and determined against than jo," says mr. snagsby. allan asks why. "why?" repeats mr. snagsby, in his desperation clutching at the clump of hair at the back of his bald head. "how should i know why? but you are a single person, sir, and may you long be spared to ask a married person such a question!" with this beneficent wish, mr. snagsby coughs a cough of dismal resignation and submits himself to hear what the visitor has to communicate. "there again!" says mr. snagsby, who, between the earnestness of his feelings and the suppressed tones of his voice is discoloured in the face. "at it again, in a new direction! a certain person charges me, in the solemnest way, not to talk of jo to any one, even my little woman. then comes another certain person, in the person of yourself, and charges me, in an equally solemn way, not to mention jo to that other certain person above all other persons. why, this is a private asylum! why, not to put too fine a point upon it, this is bedlam, sir!" says mr. snagsby. but it is better than he expected after all, being no explosion of the mine below him or deepening of the pit into which he has fallen. and being tender-hearted and affected by the account he hears of jo's condition, he readily engages to "look round" as early in the evening as he can manage it quietly. he looks round very quietly when the evening comes, but it may turn out that mrs. snagsby is as quiet a manager as he. jo is very glad to see his old friend and says, when they are left alone, that he takes it uncommon kind as mr. sangsby should come so far out of his way on accounts of sich as him. mr. snagsby, touched by the spectacle before him, immediately lays upon the table half a crown, that magic balsam of his for all kinds of wounds. "and how do you find yourself, my poor lad?" inquires the stationer with his cough of sympathy. "i am in luck, mr. sangsby, i am," returns jo, "and don't want for nothink. i'm more cumfbler nor you can't think. mr. sangsby! i'm wery sorry that i done it, but i didn't go fur to do it, sir." the stationer softly lays down another half-crown and asks him what it is that he is sorry for having done. "mr. sangsby," says jo, "i went and giv a illness to the lady as wos and yit as warn't the t'other lady, and none of 'em never says nothink to me for having done it, on accounts of their being ser good and my having been s'unfortnet. the lady come herself and see me yesday, and she ses, 'ah, jo!' she ses. 'we thought we'd lost you, jo!' she ses. and she sits down a-smilin so quiet, and don't pass a word nor yit a look upon me for having done it, she don't, and i turns agin the wall, i doos, mr. sangsby. and mr. jarnders, i see him a-forced to turn away his own self. and mr. woodcot, he come fur to giv me somethink fur to ease me, wot he's allus a-doin' on day and night, and wen he come a-bending over me and a-speakin up so bold, i see his tears a-fallin, mr. sangsby." the softened stationer deposits another half-crown on the table. nothing less than a repetition of that infallible remedy will relieve his feelings. "wot i was a-thinkin on, mr. sangsby," proceeds jo, "wos, as you wos able to write wery large, p'raps?" "yes, jo, please god," returns the stationer. "uncommon precious large, p'raps?" says jo with eagerness. "yes, my poor boy." jo laughs with pleasure. "wot i wos a-thinking on then, mr. sangsby, wos, that when i wos moved on as fur as ever i could go and couldn't be moved no furder, whether you might be so good p'raps as to write out, wery large so that any one could see it anywheres, as that i wos wery truly hearty sorry that i done it and that i never went fur to do it, and that though i didn't know nothink at all, i knowd as mr. woodcot once cried over it and wos allus grieved over it, and that i hoped as he'd be able to forgive me in his mind. if the writin could be made to say it wery large, he might." "it shall say it, jo. very large." jo laughs again. "thankee, mr. sangsby. it's wery kind of you, sir, and it makes me more cumfbler nor i was afore." the meek little stationer, with a broken and unfinished cough, slips down his fourth half-crown--he has never been so close to a case requiring so many--and is fain to depart. and jo and he, upon this little earth, shall meet no more. no more. for the cart so hard to draw is near its journey's end and drags over stony ground. all round the clock it labours up the broken steps, shattered and worn. not many times can the sun rise and behold it still upon its weary road. phil squod, with his smoky gunpowder visage, at once acts as nurse and works as armourer at his little table in a corner, often looking round and saying with a nod of his green-baize cap and an encouraging elevation of his one eyebrow, "hold up, my boy! hold up!" there, too, is mr. jarndyce many a time, and allan woodcourt almost always, both thinking, much, how strangely fate has entangled this rough outcast in the web of very different lives. there, too, the trooper is a frequent visitor, filling the doorway with his athletic figure and, from his superfluity of life and strength, seeming to shed down temporary vigour upon jo, who never fails to speak more robustly in answer to his cheerful words. jo is in a sleep or in a stupor to-day, and allan woodcourt, newly arrived, stands by him, looking down upon his wasted form. after a while he softly seats himself upon the bedside with his face towards him--just as he sat in the law-writer's room--and touches his chest and heart. the cart had very nearly given up, but labours on a little more. the trooper stands in the doorway, still and silent. phil has stopped in a low clinking noise, with his little hammer in his hand. mr. woodcourt looks round with that grave professional interest and attention on his face, and glancing significantly at the trooper, signs to phil to carry his table out. when the little hammer is next used, there will be a speck of rust upon it. "well, jo! what is the matter? don't be frightened." "i thought," says jo, who has started and is looking round, "i thought i was in tom-all-alone's agin. ain't there nobody here but you, mr. woodcot?" "nobody." "and i ain't took back to tom-all-alone's. am i, sir?" "no." jo closes his eyes, muttering, "i'm wery thankful." after watching him closely a little while, allan puts his mouth very near his ear and says to him in a low, distinct voice, "jo! did you ever know a prayer?" "never knowd nothink, sir." "not so much as one short prayer?" "no, sir. nothink at all. mr. chadbands he wos a-prayin wunst at mr. sangsby's and i heerd him, but he sounded as if he wos a-speakin to hisself, and not to me. he prayed a lot, but i couldn't make out nothink on it. different times there was other genlmen come down tom-all-alone's a-prayin, but they all mostly sed as the t'other 'wuns prayed wrong, and all mostly sounded to be a-talking to theirselves, or a-passing blame on the t'others, and not a-talkin to us. we never knowd nothink. i never knowd what it wos all about." it takes him a long time to say this, and few but an experienced and attentive listener could hear, or, hearing, understand him. after a short relapse into sleep or stupor, he makes, of a sudden, a strong effort to get out of bed. "stay, jo! what now?" "it's time for me to go to that there berryin ground, sir," he returns with a wild look. "lie down, and tell me. what burying ground, jo?" "where they laid him as wos wery good to me, wery good to me indeed, he wos. it's time fur me to go down to that there berryin ground, sir, and ask to be put along with him. i wants to go there and be berried. he used fur to say to me, 'i am as poor as you to-day, jo,' he ses. i wants to tell him that i am as poor as him now and have come there to be laid along with him." "by and by, jo. by and by." "ah! p'raps they wouldn't do it if i wos to go myself. but will you promise to have me took there, sir, and laid along with him?" "i will, indeed." "thankee, sir. thankee, sir. they'll have to get the key of the gate afore they can take me in, for it's allus locked. and there's a step there, as i used for to clean with my broom. it's turned wery dark, sir. is there any light a-comin?" "it is coming fast, jo." fast. the cart is shaken all to pieces, and the rugged road is very near its end. "jo, my poor fellow!" "i hear you, sir, in the dark, but i'm a-gropin--a-gropin--let me catch hold of your hand." "jo, can you say what i say?" "i'll say anythink as you say, sir, for i knows it's good." "our father." "our father! yes, that's wery good, sir." "which art in heaven." "art in heaven--is the light a-comin, sir?" "it is close at hand. hallowed be thy name!" "hallowed be--thy--" the light is come upon the dark benighted way. dead! dead, your majesty. dead, my lords and gentlemen. dead, right reverends and wrong reverends of every order. dead, men and women, born with heavenly compassion in your hearts. and dying thus around us every day. chapter xlviii closing in the place in lincolnshire has shut its many eyes again, and the house in town is awake. in lincolnshire the dedlocks of the past doze in their picture-frames, and the low wind murmurs through the long drawing-room as if they were breathing pretty regularly. in town the dedlocks of the present rattle in their fire-eyed carriages through the darkness of the night, and the dedlock mercuries, with ashes (or hair-powder) on their heads, symptomatic of their great humility, loll away the drowsy mornings in the little windows of the hall. the fashionable world--tremendous orb, nearly five miles round--is in full swing, and the solar system works respectfully at its appointed distances. where the throng is thickest, where the lights are brightest, where all the senses are ministered to with the greatest delicacy and refinement, lady dedlock is. from the shining heights she has scaled and taken, she is never absent. though the belief she of old reposed in herself as one able to reserve whatsoever she would under her mantle of pride is beaten down, though she has no assurance that what she is to those around her she will remain another day, it is not in her nature when envious eyes are looking on to yield or to droop. they say of her that she has lately grown more handsome and more haughty. the debilitated cousin says of her that she's beauty nough--tsetup shopofwomen--but rather larming kind--remindingmanfact--inconvenient woman--who will getoutofbedandbawthstahlishment--shakespeare. mr. tulkinghorn says nothing, looks nothing. now, as heretofore, he is to be found in doorways of rooms, with his limp white cravat loosely twisted into its old-fashioned tie, receiving patronage from the peerage and making no sign. of all men he is still the last who might be supposed to have any influence upon my lady. of all women she is still the last who might be supposed to have any dread of him. one thing has been much on her mind since their late interview in his turret-room at chesney wold. she is now decided, and prepared to throw it off. it is morning in the great world, afternoon according to the little sun. the mercuries, exhausted by looking out of window, are reposing in the hall and hang their heavy heads, the gorgeous creatures, like overblown sunflowers. like them, too, they seem to run to a deal of seed in their tags and trimmings. sir leicester, in the library, has fallen asleep for the good of the country over the report of a parliamentary committee. my lady sits in the room in which she gave audience to the young man of the name of guppy. rosa is with her and has been writing for her and reading to her. rosa is now at work upon embroidery or some such pretty thing, and as she bends her head over it, my lady watches her in silence. not for the first time to-day. "rosa." the pretty village face looks brightly up. then, seeing how serious my lady is, looks puzzled and surprised. "see to the door. is it shut?" yes. she goes to it and returns, and looks yet more surprised. "i am about to place confidence in you, child, for i know i may trust your attachment, if not your judgment. in what i am going to do, i will not disguise myself to you at least. but i confide in you. say nothing to any one of what passes between us." the timid little beauty promises in all earnestness to be trustworthy. "do you know," lady dedlock asks her, signing to her to bring her chair nearer, "do you know, rosa, that i am different to you from what i am to any one?" "yes, my lady. much kinder. but then i often think i know you as you really are." "you often think you know me as i really am? poor child, poor child!" she says it with a kind of scorn--though not of rosa--and sits brooding, looking dreamily at her. "do you think, rosa, you are any relief or comfort to me? do you suppose your being young and natural, and fond of me and grateful to me, makes it any pleasure to me to have you near me?" "i don't know, my lady; i can scarcely hope so. but with all my heart, i wish it was so." "it is so, little one." the pretty face is checked in its flush of pleasure by the dark expression on the handsome face before it. it looks timidly for an explanation. "and if i were to say to-day, 'go! leave me!' i should say what would give me great pain and disquiet, child, and what would leave me very solitary." "my lady! have i offended you?" "in nothing. come here." rosa bends down on the footstool at my lady's feet. my lady, with that motherly touch of the famous ironmaster night, lays her hand upon her dark hair and gently keeps it there. "i told you, rosa, that i wished you to be happy and that i would make you so if i could make anybody happy on this earth. i cannot. there are reasons now known to me, reasons in which you have no part, rendering it far better for you that you should not remain here. you must not remain here. i have determined that you shall not. i have written to the father of your lover, and he will be here to-day. all this i have done for your sake." the weeping girl covers her hand with kisses and says what shall she do, what shall she do, when they are separated! her mistress kisses her on the cheek and makes no other answer. "now, be happy, child, under better circumstances. be beloved and happy!" "ah, my lady, i have sometimes thought--forgive my being so free--that you are not happy." "i!" "will you be more so when you have sent me away? pray, pray, think again. let me stay a little while!" "i have said, my child, that what i do, i do for your sake, not my own. it is done. what i am towards you, rosa, is what i am now--not what i shall be a little while hence. remember this, and keep my confidence. do so much for my sake, and thus all ends between us!" she detaches herself from her simple-hearted companion and leaves the room. late in the afternoon, when she next appears upon the staircase, she is in her haughtiest and coldest state. as indifferent as if all passion, feeling, and interest had been worn out in the earlier ages of the world and had perished from its surface with its other departed monsters. mercury has announced mr. rouncewell, which is the cause of her appearance. mr. rouncewell is not in the library, but she repairs to the library. sir leicester is there, and she wishes to speak to him first. "sir leicester, i am desirous--but you are engaged." oh, dear no! not at all. only mr. tulkinghorn. always at hand. haunting every place. no relief or security from him for a moment. "i beg your pardon, lady dedlock. will you allow me to retire?" with a look that plainly says, "you know you have the power to remain if you will," she tells him it is not necessary and moves towards a chair. mr. tulkinghorn brings it a little forward for her with his clumsy bow and retires into a window opposite. interposed between her and the fading light of day in the now quiet street, his shadow falls upon her, and he darkens all before her. even so does he darken her life. it is a dull street under the best conditions, where the two long rows of houses stare at each other with that severity that half-a-dozen of its greatest mansions seem to have been slowly stared into stone rather than originally built in that material. it is a street of such dismal grandeur, so determined not to condescend to liveliness, that the doors and windows hold a gloomy state of their own in black paint and dust, and the echoing mews behind have a dry and massive appearance, as if they were reserved to stable the stone chargers of noble statues. complicated garnish of iron-work entwines itself over the flights of steps in this awful street, and from these petrified bowers, extinguishers for obsolete flambeaux gasp at the upstart gas. here and there a weak little iron hoop, through which bold boys aspire to throw their friends' caps (its only present use), retains its place among the rusty foliage, sacred to the memory of departed oil. nay, even oil itself, yet lingering at long intervals in a little absurd glass pot, with a knob in the bottom like an oyster, blinks and sulks at newer lights every night, like its high and dry master in the house of lords. therefore there is not much that lady dedlock, seated in her chair, could wish to see through the window in which mr. tulkinghorn stands. and yet--and yet--she sends a look in that direction as if it were her heart's desire to have that figure moved out of the way. sir leicester begs his lady's pardon. she was about to say? "only that mr. rouncewell is here (he has called by my appointment) and that we had better make an end of the question of that girl. i am tired to death of the matter." "what can i do--to--assist?" demands sir leicester in some considerable doubt. "let us see him here and have done with it. will you tell them to send him up?" "mr. tulkinghorn, be so good as to ring. thank you. request," says sir leicester to mercury, not immediately remembering the business term, "request the iron gentleman to walk this way." mercury departs in search of the iron gentleman, finds, and produces him. sir leicester receives that ferruginous person graciously. "i hope you are well, mr. rouncewell. be seated. (my solicitor, mr. tulkinghorn.) my lady was desirous, mr. rouncewell," sir leicester skilfully transfers him with a solemn wave of his hand, "was desirous to speak with you. hem!" "i shall be very happy," returns the iron gentleman, "to give my best attention to anything lady dedlock does me the honour to say." as he turns towards her, he finds that the impression she makes upon him is less agreeable than on the former occasion. a distant supercilious air makes a cold atmosphere about her, and there is nothing in her bearing, as there was before, to encourage openness. "pray, sir," says lady dedlock listlessly, "may i be allowed to inquire whether anything has passed between you and your son respecting your son's fancy?" it is almost too troublesome to her languid eyes to bestow a look upon him as she asks this question. "if my memory serves me, lady dedlock, i said, when i had the pleasure of seeing you before, that i should seriously advise my son to conquer that--fancy." the ironmaster repeats her expression with a little emphasis. "and did you?" "oh! of course i did." sir leicester gives a nod, approving and confirmatory. very proper. the iron gentleman, having said that he would do it, was bound to do it. no difference in this respect between the base metals and the precious. highly proper. "and pray has he done so?" "really, lady dedlock, i cannot make you a definite reply. i fear not. probably not yet. in our condition of life, we sometimes couple an intention with our--our fancies which renders them not altogether easy to throw off. i think it is rather our way to be in earnest." sir leicester has a misgiving that there may be a hidden wat tylerish meaning in this expression, and fumes a little. mr. rouncewell is perfectly good-humoured and polite, but within such limits, evidently adapts his tone to his reception. "because," proceeds my lady, "i have been thinking of the subject, which is tiresome to me." "i am very sorry, i am sure." "and also of what sir leicester said upon it, in which i quite concur"--sir leicester flattered--"and if you cannot give us the assurance that this fancy is at an end, i have come to the conclusion that the girl had better leave me." "i can give no such assurance, lady dedlock. nothing of the kind." "then she had better go." "excuse me, my lady," sir leicester considerately interposes, "but perhaps this may be doing an injury to the young woman which she has not merited. here is a young woman," says sir leicester, magnificently laying out the matter with his right hand like a service of plate, "whose good fortune it is to have attracted the notice and favour of an eminent lady and to live, under the protection of that eminent lady, surrounded by the various advantages which such a position confers, and which are unquestionably very great--i believe unquestionably very great, sir--for a young woman in that station of life. the question then arises, should that young woman be deprived of these many advantages and that good fortune simply because she has"--sir leicester, with an apologetic but dignified inclination of his head towards the ironmaster, winds up his sentence--"has attracted the notice of mr rouncewell's son? now, has she deserved this punishment? is this just towards her? is this our previous understanding?" "i beg your pardon," interposes mr. rouncewell's son's father. "sir leicester, will you allow me? i think i may shorten the subject. pray dismiss that from your consideration. if you remember anything so unimportant--which is not to be expected--you would recollect that my first thought in the affair was directly opposed to her remaining here." dismiss the dedlock patronage from consideration? oh! sir leicester is bound to believe a pair of ears that have been handed down to him through such a family, or he really might have mistrusted their report of the iron gentleman's observations. "it is not necessary," observes my lady in her coldest manner before he can do anything but breathe amazedly, "to enter into these matters on either side. the girl is a very good girl; i have nothing whatever to say against her, but she is so far insensible to her many advantages and her good fortune that she is in love--or supposes she is, poor little fool--and unable to appreciate them." sir leicester begs to observe that wholly alters the case. he might have been sure that my lady had the best grounds and reasons in support of her view. he entirely agrees with my lady. the young woman had better go. "as sir leicester observed, mr. rouncewell, on the last occasion when we were fatigued by this business," lady dedlock languidly proceeds, "we cannot make conditions with you. without conditions, and under present circumstances, the girl is quite misplaced here and had better go. i have told her so. would you wish to have her sent back to the village, or would you like to take her with you, or what would you prefer?" "lady dedlock, if i may speak plainly--" "by all means." "--i should prefer the course which will the soonest relieve you of the incumbrance and remove her from her present position." "and to speak as plainly," she returns with the same studied carelessness, "so should i. do i understand that you will take her with you?" the iron gentleman makes an iron bow. "sir leicester, will you ring?" mr. tulkinghorn steps forward from his window and pulls the bell. "i had forgotten you. thank you." he makes his usual bow and goes quietly back again. mercury, swift-responsive, appears, receives instructions whom to produce, skims away, produces the aforesaid, and departs. rosa has been crying and is yet in distress. on her coming in, the ironmaster leaves his chair, takes her arm in his, and remains with her near the door ready to depart. "you are taken charge of, you see," says my lady in her weary manner, "and are going away well protected. i have mentioned that you are a very good girl, and you have nothing to cry for." "she seems after all," observes mr. tulkinghorn, loitering a little forward with his hands behind him, "as if she were crying at going away." "why, she is not well-bred, you see," returns mr. rouncewell with some quickness in his manner, as if he were glad to have the lawyer to retort upon, "and she is an inexperienced little thing and knows no better. if she had remained here, sir, she would have improved, no doubt." "no doubt," is mr. tulkinghorn's composed reply. rosa sobs out that she is very sorry to leave my lady, and that she was happy at chesney wold, and has been happy with my lady, and that she thanks my lady over and over again. "out, you silly little puss!" says the ironmaster, checking her in a low voice, though not angrily. "have a spirit, if you're fond of watt!" my lady merely waves her off with indifference, saying, "there, there, child! you are a good girl. go away!" sir leicester has magnificently disengaged himself from the subject and retired into the sanctuary of his blue coat. mr. tulkinghorn, an indistinct form against the dark street now dotted with lamps, looms in my lady's view, bigger and blacker than before. "sir leicester and lady dedlock," says mr. rouncewell after a pause of a few moments, "i beg to take my leave, with an apology for having again troubled you, though not of my own act, on this tiresome subject. i can very well understand, i assure you, how tiresome so small a matter must have become to lady dedlock. if i am doubtful of my dealing with it, it is only because i did not at first quietly exert my influence to take my young friend here away without troubling you at all. but it appeared to me--i dare say magnifying the importance of the thing--that it was respectful to explain to you how the matter stood and candid to consult your wishes and convenience. i hope you will excuse my want of acquaintance with the polite world." sir leicester considers himself evoked out of the sanctuary by these remarks. "mr. rouncewell," he returns, "do not mention it. justifications are unnecessary, i hope, on either side." "i am glad to hear it, sir leicester; and if i may, by way of a last word, revert to what i said before of my mother's long connexion with the family and the worth it bespeaks on both sides, i would point out this little instance here on my arm who shows herself so affectionate and faithful in parting and in whom my mother, i dare say, has done something to awaken such feelings--though of course lady dedlock, by her heartfelt interest and her genial condescension, has done much more." if he mean this ironically, it may be truer than he thinks. he points it, however, by no deviation from his straightforward manner of speech, though in saying it he turns towards that part of the dim room where my lady sits. sir leicester stands to return his parting salutation, mr. tulkinghorn again rings, mercury takes another flight, and mr. rouncewell and rosa leave the house. then lights are brought in, discovering mr. tulkinghorn still standing in his window with his hands behind him and my lady still sitting with his figure before her, closing up her view of the night as well as of the day. she is very pale. mr. tulkinghorn, observing it as she rises to retire, thinks, "well she may be! the power of this woman is astonishing. she has been acting a part the whole time." but he can act a part too--his one unchanging character--and as he holds the door open for this woman, fifty pairs of eyes, each fifty times sharper than sir leicester's pair, should find no flaw in him. lady dedlock dines alone in her own room to-day. sir leicester is whipped in to the rescue of the doodle party and the discomfiture of the coodle faction. lady dedlock asks on sitting down to dinner, still deadly pale (and quite an illustration of the debilitated cousin's text), whether he is gone out? yes. whether mr. tulkinghorn is gone yet? no. presently she asks again, is he gone yet? no. what is he doing? mercury thinks he is writing letters in the library. would my lady wish to see him? anything but that. but he wishes to see my lady. within a few more minutes he is reported as sending his respects, and could my lady please to receive him for a word or two after her dinner? my lady will receive him now. he comes now, apologizing for intruding, even by her permission, while she is at table. when they are alone, my lady waves her hand to dispense with such mockeries. "what do you want, sir?" "why, lady dedlock," says the lawyer, taking a chair at a little distance from her and slowly rubbing his rusty legs up and down, up and down, up and down, "i am rather surprised by the course you have taken." "indeed?" "yes, decidedly. i was not prepared for it. i consider it a departure from our agreement and your promise. it puts us in a new position, lady dedlock. i feel myself under the necessity of saying that i don't approve of it." he stops in his rubbing and looks at her, with his hands on his knees. imperturbable and unchangeable as he is, there is still an indefinable freedom in his manner which is new and which does not escape this woman's observation. "i do not quite understand you." "oh, yes you do, i think. i think you do. come, come, lady dedlock, we must not fence and parry now. you know you like this girl." "well, sir?" "and you know--and i know--that you have not sent her away for the reasons you have assigned, but for the purpose of separating her as much as possible from--excuse my mentioning it as a matter of business--any reproach and exposure that impend over yourself." "well, sir?" "well, lady dedlock," returns the lawyer, crossing his legs and nursing the uppermost knee. "i object to that. i consider that a dangerous proceeding. i know it to be unnecessary and calculated to awaken speculation, doubt, rumour, i don't know what, in the house. besides, it is a violation of our agreement. you were to be exactly what you were before. whereas, it must be evident to yourself, as it is to me, that you have been this evening very different from what you were before. why, bless my soul, lady dedlock, transparently so!" "if, sir," she begins, "in my knowledge of my secret--" but he interrupts her. "now, lady dedlock, this is a matter of business, and in a matter of business the ground cannot be kept too clear. it is no longer your secret. excuse me. that is just the mistake. it is my secret, in trust for sir leicester and the family. if it were your secret, lady dedlock, we should not be here holding this conversation." "that is very true. if in my knowledge of the secret i do what i can to spare an innocent girl (especially, remembering your own reference to her when you told my story to the assembled guests at chesney wold) from the taint of my impending shame, i act upon a resolution i have taken. nothing in the world, and no one in the world, could shake it or could move me." this she says with great deliberation and distinctness and with no more outward passion than himself. as for him, he methodically discusses his matter of business as if she were any insensible instrument used in business. "really? then you see, lady dedlock," he returns, "you are not to be trusted. you have put the case in a perfectly plain way, and according to the literal fact; and that being the case, you are not to be trusted." "perhaps you may remember that i expressed some anxiety on this same point when we spoke at night at chesney wold?" "yes," says mr. tulkinghorn, coolly getting up and standing on the hearth. "yes. i recollect, lady dedlock, that you certainly referred to the girl, but that was before we came to our arrangement, and both the letter and the spirit of our arrangement altogether precluded any action on your part founded upon my discovery. there can be no doubt about that. as to sparing the girl, of what importance or value is she? spare! lady dedlock, here is a family name compromised. one might have supposed that the course was straight on--over everything, neither to the right nor to the left, regardless of all considerations in the way, sparing nothing, treading everything under foot." she has been looking at the table. she lifts up her eyes and looks at him. there is a stern expression on her face and a part of her lower lip is compressed under her teeth. "this woman understands me," mr. tulkinghorn thinks as she lets her glance fall again. "she cannot be spared. why should she spare others?" for a little while they are silent. lady dedlock has eaten no dinner, but has twice or thrice poured out water with a steady hand and drunk it. she rises from table, takes a lounging-chair, and reclines in it, shading her face. there is nothing in her manner to express weakness or excite compassion. it is thoughtful, gloomy, concentrated. "this woman," thinks mr. tulkinghorn, standing on the hearth, again a dark object closing up her view, "is a study." he studies her at his leisure, not speaking for a time. she too studies something at her leisure. she is not the first to speak, appearing indeed so unlikely to be so, though he stood there until midnight, that even he is driven upon breaking silence. "lady dedlock, the most disagreeable part of this business interview remains, but it is business. our agreement is broken. a lady of your sense and strength of character will be prepared for my now declaring it void and taking my own course." "i am quite prepared." mr. tulkinghorn inclines his head. "that is all i have to trouble you with, lady dedlock." she stops him as he is moving out of the room by asking, "this is the notice i was to receive? i wish not to misapprehend you." "not exactly the notice you were to receive, lady dedlock, because the contemplated notice supposed the agreement to have been observed. but virtually the same, virtually the same. the difference is merely in a lawyer's mind." "you intend to give me no other notice?" "you are right. no." "do you contemplate undeceiving sir leicester to-night?" "a home question!" says mr. tulkinghorn with a slight smile and cautiously shaking his head at the shaded face. "no, not to-night." "to-morrow?" "all things considered, i had better decline answering that question, lady dedlock. if i were to say i don't know when, exactly, you would not believe me, and it would answer no purpose. it may be to-morrow. i would rather say no more. you are prepared, and i hold out no expectations which circumstances might fail to justify. i wish you good evening." she removes her hand, turns her pale face towards him as he walks silently to the door, and stops him once again as he is about to open it. "do you intend to remain in the house any time? i heard you were writing in the library. are you going to return there?" "only for my hat. i am going home." she bows her eyes rather than her head, the movement is so slight and curious, and he withdraws. clear of the room he looks at his watch but is inclined to doubt it by a minute or thereabouts. there is a splendid clock upon the staircase, famous, as splendid clocks not often are, for its accuracy. "and what do you say," mr. tulkinghorn inquires, referring to it. "what do you say?" if it said now, "don't go home!" what a famous clock, hereafter, if it said to-night of all the nights that it has counted off, to this old man of all the young and old men who have ever stood before it, "don't go home!" with its sharp clear bell it strikes three quarters after seven and ticks on again. "why, you are worse than i thought you," says mr. tulkinghorn, muttering reproof to his watch. "two minutes wrong? at this rate you won't last my time." what a watch to return good for evil if it ticked in answer, "don't go home!" he passes out into the streets and walks on, with his hands behind him, under the shadow of the lofty houses, many of whose mysteries, difficulties, mortgages, delicate affairs of all kinds, are treasured up within his old black satin waistcoat. he is in the confidence of the very bricks and mortar. the high chimney-stacks telegraph family secrets to him. yet there is not a voice in a mile of them to whisper, "don't go home!" through the stir and motion of the commoner streets; through the roar and jar of many vehicles, many feet, many voices; with the blazing shop-lights lighting him on, the west wind blowing him on, and the crowd pressing him on, he is pitilessly urged upon his way, and nothing meets him murmuring, "don't go home!" arrived at last in his dull room to light his candles, and look round and up, and see the roman pointing from the ceiling, there is no new significance in the roman's hand to-night or in the flutter of the attendant groups to give him the late warning, "don't come here!" it is a moonlight night, but the moon, being past the full, is only now rising over the great wilderness of london. the stars are shining as they shone above the turret-leads at chesney wold. this woman, as he has of late been so accustomed to call her, looks out upon them. her soul is turbulent within her; she is sick at heart and restless. the large rooms are too cramped and close. she cannot endure their restraint and will walk alone in a neighbouring garden. too capricious and imperious in all she does to be the cause of much surprise in those about her as to anything she does, this woman, loosely muffled, goes out into the moonlight. mercury attends with the key. having opened the garden-gate, he delivers the key into his lady's hands at her request and is bidden to go back. she will walk there some time to ease her aching head. she may be an hour, she may be more. she needs no further escort. the gate shuts upon its spring with a clash, and he leaves her passing on into the dark shade of some trees. a fine night, and a bright large moon, and multitudes of stars. mr. tulkinghorn, in repairing to his cellar and in opening and shutting those resounding doors, has to cross a little prison-like yard. he looks up casually, thinking what a fine night, what a bright large moon, what multitudes of stars! a quiet night, too. a very quiet night. when the moon shines very brilliantly, a solitude and stillness seem to proceed from her that influence even crowded places full of life. not only is it a still night on dusty high roads and on hill-summits, whence a wide expanse of country may be seen in repose, quieter and quieter as it spreads away into a fringe of trees against the sky with the grey ghost of a bloom upon them; not only is it a still night in gardens and in woods, and on the river where the water-meadows are fresh and green, and the stream sparkles on among pleasant islands, murmuring weirs, and whispering rushes; not only does the stillness attend it as it flows where houses cluster thick, where many bridges are reflected in it, where wharves and shipping make it black and awful, where it winds from these disfigurements through marshes whose grim beacons stand like skeletons washed ashore, where it expands through the bolder region of rising grounds, rich in cornfield wind-mill and steeple, and where it mingles with the ever-heaving sea; not only is it a still night on the deep, and on the shore where the watcher stands to see the ship with her spread wings cross the path of light that appears to be presented to only him; but even on this stranger's wilderness of london there is some rest. its steeples and towers and its one great dome grow more ethereal; its smoky house-tops lose their grossness in the pale effulgence; the noises that arise from the streets are fewer and are softened, and the footsteps on the pavements pass more tranquilly away. in these fields of mr. tulkinghorn's inhabiting, where the shepherds play on chancery pipes that have no stop, and keep their sheep in the fold by hook and by crook until they have shorn them exceeding close, every noise is merged, this moonlight night, into a distant ringing hum, as if the city were a vast glass, vibrating. what's that? who fired a gun or pistol? where was it? the few foot-passengers start, stop, and stare about them. some windows and doors are opened, and people come out to look. it was a loud report and echoed and rattled heavily. it shook one house, or so a man says who was passing. it has aroused all the dogs in the neighbourhood, who bark vehemently. terrified cats scamper across the road. while the dogs are yet barking and howling--there is one dog howling like a demon--the church-clocks, as if they were startled too, begin to strike. the hum from the streets, likewise, seems to swell into a shout. but it is soon over. before the last clock begins to strike ten, there is a lull. when it has ceased, the fine night, the bright large moon, and multitudes of stars, are left at peace again. has mr. tulkinghorn been disturbed? his windows are dark and quiet, and his door is shut. it must be something unusual indeed to bring him out of his shell. nothing is heard of him, nothing is seen of him. what power of cannon might it take to shake that rusty old man out of his immovable composure? for many years the persistent roman has been pointing, with no particular meaning, from that ceiling. it is not likely that he has any new meaning in him to-night. once pointing, always pointing--like any roman, or even briton, with a single idea. there he is, no doubt, in his impossible attitude, pointing, unavailingly, all night long. moonlight, darkness, dawn, sunrise, day. there he is still, eagerly pointing, and no one minds him. but a little after the coming of the day come people to clean the rooms. and either the roman has some new meaning in him, not expressed before, or the foremost of them goes wild, for looking up at his outstretched hand and looking down at what is below it, that person shrieks and flies. the others, looking in as the first one looked, shriek and fly too, and there is an alarm in the street. what does it mean? no light is admitted into the darkened chamber, and people unaccustomed to it enter, and treading softly but heavily, carry a weight into the bedroom and lay it down. there is whispering and wondering all day, strict search of every corner, careful tracing of steps, and careful noting of the disposition of every article of furniture. all eyes look up at the roman, and all voices murmur, "if he could only tell what he saw!" he is pointing at a table with a bottle (nearly full of wine) and a glass upon it and two candles that were blown out suddenly soon after being lighted. he is pointing at an empty chair and at a stain upon the ground before it that might be almost covered with a hand. these objects lie directly within his range. an excited imagination might suppose that there was something in them so terrific as to drive the rest of the composition, not only the attendant big-legged boys, but the clouds and flowers and pillars too--in short, the very body and soul of allegory, and all the brains it has--stark mad. it happens surely that every one who comes into the darkened room and looks at these things looks up at the roman and that he is invested in all eyes with mystery and awe, as if he were a paralysed dumb witness. so it shall happen surely, through many years to come, that ghostly stories shall be told of the stain upon the floor, so easy to be covered, so hard to be got out, and that the roman, pointing from the ceiling shall point, so long as dust and damp and spiders spare him, with far greater significance than he ever had in mr. tulkinghorn's time, and with a deadly meaning. for mr. tulkinghorn's time is over for evermore, and the roman pointed at the murderous hand uplifted against his life, and pointed helplessly at him, from night to morning, lying face downward on the floor, shot through the heart. chapter xlix dutiful friendship a great annual occasion has come round in the establishment of mr. matthew bagnet, otherwise lignum vitae, ex-artilleryman and present bassoon-player. an occasion of feasting and festival. the celebration of a birthday in the family. it is not mr. bagnet's birthday. mr. bagnet merely distinguishes that epoch in the musical instrument business by kissing the children with an extra smack before breakfast, smoking an additional pipe after dinner, and wondering towards evening what his poor old mother is thinking about it--a subject of infinite speculation, and rendered so by his mother having departed this life twenty years. some men rarely revert to their father, but seem, in the bank-books of their remembrance, to have transferred all the stock of filial affection into their mother's name. mr. bagnet is one of these. perhaps his exalted appreciation of the merits of the old girl causes him usually to make the noun-substantive "goodness" of the feminine gender. it is not the birthday of one of the three children. those occasions are kept with some marks of distinction, but they rarely overleap the bounds of happy returns and a pudding. on young woolwich's last birthday, mr. bagnet certainly did, after observing on his growth and general advancement, proceed, in a moment of profound reflection on the changes wrought by time, to examine him in the catechism, accomplishing with extreme accuracy the questions number one and two, "what is your name?" and "who gave you that name?" but there failing in the exact precision of his memory and substituting for number three the question "and how do you like that name?" which he propounded with a sense of its importance, in itself so edifying and improving as to give it quite an orthodox air. this, however, was a speciality on that particular birthday, and not a general solemnity. it is the old girl's birthday, and that is the greatest holiday and reddest-letter day in mr. bagnet's calendar. the auspicious event is always commemorated according to certain forms settled and prescribed by mr. bagnet some years since. mr. bagnet, being deeply convinced that to have a pair of fowls for dinner is to attain the highest pitch of imperial luxury, invariably goes forth himself very early in the morning of this day to buy a pair; he is, as invariably, taken in by the vendor and installed in the possession of the oldest inhabitants of any coop in europe. returning with these triumphs of toughness tied up in a clean blue and white cotton handkerchief (essential to the arrangements), he in a casual manner invites mrs. bagnet to declare at breakfast what she would like for dinner. mrs. bagnet, by a coincidence never known to fail, replying fowls, mr. bagnet instantly produces his bundle from a place of concealment amidst general amazement and rejoicing. he further requires that the old girl shall do nothing all day long but sit in her very best gown and be served by himself and the young people. as he is not illustrious for his cookery, this may be supposed to be a matter of state rather than enjoyment on the old girl's part, but she keeps her state with all imaginable cheerfulness. on this present birthday, mr. bagnet has accomplished the usual preliminaries. he has bought two specimens of poultry, which, if there be any truth in adages, were certainly not caught with chaff, to be prepared for the spit; he has amazed and rejoiced the family by their unlooked-for production; he is himself directing the roasting of the poultry; and mrs. bagnet, with her wholesome brown fingers itching to prevent what she sees going wrong, sits in her gown of ceremony, an honoured guest. quebec and malta lay the cloth for dinner, while woolwich, serving, as beseems him, under his father, keeps the fowls revolving. to these young scullions mrs. bagnet occasionally imparts a wink, or a shake of the head, or a crooked face, as they made mistakes. "at half after one." says mr. bagnet. "to the minute. they'll be done." mrs. bagnet, with anguish, beholds one of them at a standstill before the fire and beginning to burn. "you shall have a dinner, old girl," says mr. bagnet. "fit for a queen." mrs. bagnet shows her white teeth cheerfully, but to the perception of her son, betrays so much uneasiness of spirit that he is impelled by the dictates of affection to ask her, with his eyes, what is the matter, thus standing, with his eyes wide open, more oblivious of the fowls than before, and not affording the least hope of a return to consciousness. fortunately his elder sister perceives the cause of the agitation in mrs. bagnet's breast and with an admonitory poke recalls him. the stopped fowls going round again, mrs. bagnet closes her eyes in the intensity of her relief. "george will look us up," says mr. bagnet. "at half after four. to the moment. how many years, old girl. has george looked us up. this afternoon?" "ah, lignum, lignum, as many as make an old woman of a young one, i begin to think. just about that, and no less," returns mrs. bagnet, laughing and shaking her head. "old girl," says mr. bagnet, "never mind. you'd be as young as ever you was. if you wasn't younger. which you are. as everybody knows." quebec and malta here exclaim, with clapping of hands, that bluffy is sure to bring mother something, and begin to speculate on what it will be. "do you know, lignum," says mrs. bagnet, casting a glance on the table-cloth, and winking "salt!" at malta with her right eye, and shaking the pepper away from quebec with her head, "i begin to think george is in the roving way again. "george," returns mr. bagnet, "will never desert. and leave his old comrade. in the lurch. don't be afraid of it." "no, lignum. no. i don't say he will. i don't think he will. but if he could get over this money trouble of his, i believe he would be off." mr. bagnet asks why. "well," returns his wife, considering, "george seems to me to be getting not a little impatient and restless. i don't say but what he's as free as ever. of course he must be free or he wouldn't be george, but he smarts and seems put out." "he's extra-drilled," says mr. bagnet. "by a lawyer. who would put the devil out." "there's something in that," his wife assents; "but so it is, lignum." further conversation is prevented, for the time, by the necessity under which mr. bagnet finds himself of directing the whole force of his mind to the dinner, which is a little endangered by the dry humour of the fowls in not yielding any gravy, and also by the made gravy acquiring no flavour and turning out of a flaxen complexion. with a similar perverseness, the potatoes crumble off forks in the process of peeling, upheaving from their centres in every direction, as if they were subject to earthquakes. the legs of the fowls, too, are longer than could be desired, and extremely scaly. overcoming these disadvantages to the best of his ability, mr. bagnet at last dishes and they sit down at table, mrs. bagnet occupying the guest's place at his right hand. it is well for the old girl that she has but one birthday in a year, for two such indulgences in poultry might be injurious. every kind of finer tendon and ligament that is in the nature of poultry to possess is developed in these specimens in the singular form of guitar-strings. their limbs appear to have struck roots into their breasts and bodies, as aged trees strike roots into the earth. their legs are so hard as to encourage the idea that they must have devoted the greater part of their long and arduous lives to pedestrian exercises and the walking of matches. but mr. bagnet, unconscious of these little defects, sets his heart on mrs. bagnet eating a most severe quantity of the delicacies before her; and as that good old girl would not cause him a moment's disappointment on any day, least of all on such a day, for any consideration, she imperils her digestion fearfully. how young woolwich cleans the drum-sticks without being of ostrich descent, his anxious mother is at a loss to understand. the old girl has another trial to undergo after the conclusion of the repast in sitting in state to see the room cleared, the hearth swept, and the dinner-service washed up and polished in the backyard. the great delight and energy with which the two young ladies apply themselves to these duties, turning up their skirts in imitation of their mother and skating in and out on little scaffolds of pattens, inspire the highest hopes for the future, but some anxiety for the present. the same causes lead to confusion of tongues, a clattering of crockery, a rattling of tin mugs, a whisking of brooms, and an expenditure of water, all in excess, while the saturation of the young ladies themselves is almost too moving a spectacle for mrs. bagnet to look upon with the calmness proper to her position. at last the various cleansing processes are triumphantly completed; quebec and malta appear in fresh attire, smiling and dry; pipes, tobacco, and something to drink are placed upon the table; and the old girl enjoys the first peace of mind she ever knows on the day of this delightful entertainment. when mr. bagnet takes his usual seat, the hands of the clock are very near to half-past four; as they mark it accurately, mr. bagnet announces, "george! military time." it is george, and he has hearty congratulations for the old girl (whom he kisses on the great occasion), and for the children, and for mr. bagnet. "happy returns to all!" says mr. george. "but, george, old man!" cries mrs. bagnet, looking at him curiously. "what's come to you?" "come to me?" "ah! you are so white, george--for you--and look so shocked. now don't he, lignum?" "george," says mr. bagnet, "tell the old girl. what's the matter." "i didn't know i looked white," says the trooper, passing his hand over his brow, "and i didn't know i looked shocked, and i'm sorry i do. but the truth is, that boy who was taken in at my place died yesterday afternoon, and it has rather knocked me over." "poor creetur!" says mrs. bagnet with a mother's pity. "is he gone? dear, dear!" "i didn't mean to say anything about it, for it's not birthday talk, but you have got it out of me, you see, before i sit down. i should have roused up in a minute," says the trooper, making himself speak more gaily, "but you're so quick, mrs. bagnet." "you're right. the old girl," says mr. bagnet. "is as quick. as powder." "and what's more, she's the subject of the day, and we'll stick to her," cries mr. george. "see here, i have brought a little brooch along with me. it's a poor thing, you know, but it's a keepsake. that's all the good it is, mrs. bagnet." mr. george produces his present, which is greeted with admiring leapings and clappings by the young family, and with a species of reverential admiration by mr. bagnet. "old girl," says mr. bagnet. "tell him my opinion of it." "why, it's a wonder, george!" mrs. bagnet exclaims. "it's the beautifullest thing that ever was seen!" "good!" says mr. bagnet. "my opinion." "it's so pretty, george," cries mrs. bagnet, turning it on all sides and holding it out at arm's length, "that it seems too choice for me." "bad!" says mr. bagnet. "not my opinion." "but whatever it is, a hundred thousand thanks, old fellow," says mrs. bagnet, her eyes sparkling with pleasure and her hand stretched out to him; "and though i have been a crossgrained soldier's wife to you sometimes, george, we are as strong friends, i am sure, in reality, as ever can be. now you shall fasten it on yourself, for good luck, if you will, george." the children close up to see it done, and mr. bagnet looks over young woolwich's head to see it done with an interest so maturely wooden, yet pleasantly childish, that mrs. bagnet cannot help laughing in her airy way and saying, "oh, lignum, lignum, what a precious old chap you are!" but the trooper fails to fasten the brooch. his hand shakes, he is nervous, and it falls off. "would any one believe this?" says he, catching it as it drops and looking round. "i am so out of sorts that i bungle at an easy job like this!" mrs. bagnet concludes that for such a case there is no remedy like a pipe, and fastening the brooch herself in a twinkling, causes the trooper to be inducted into his usual snug place and the pipes to be got into action. "if that don't bring you round, george," says she, "just throw your eye across here at your present now and then, and the two together must do it." "you ought to do it of yourself," george answers; "i know that very well, mrs. bagnet. i'll tell you how, one way and another, the blues have got to be too many for me. here was this poor lad. 'twas dull work to see him dying as he did, and not be able to help him." "what do you mean, george? you did help him. you took him under your roof." "i helped him so far, but that's little. i mean, mrs. bagnet, there he was, dying without ever having been taught much more than to know his right hand from his left. and he was too far gone to be helped out of that." "ah, poor creetur!" says mrs. bagnet. "then," says the trooper, not yet lighting his pipe, and passing his heavy hand over his hair, "that brought up gridley in a man's mind. his was a bad case too, in a different way. then the two got mixed up in a man's mind with a flinty old rascal who had to do with both. and to think of that rusty carbine, stock and barrel, standing up on end in his corner, hard, indifferent, taking everything so evenly--it made flesh and blood tingle, i do assure you." "my advice to you," returns mrs. bagnet, "is to light your pipe and tingle that way. it's wholesomer and comfortabler, and better for the health altogether." "you're right," says the trooper, "and i'll do it." so he does it, though still with an indignant gravity that impresses the young bagnets, and even causes mr. bagnet to defer the ceremony of drinking mrs. bagnet's health, always given by himself on these occasions in a speech of exemplary terseness. but the young ladies having composed what mr. bagnet is in the habit of calling "the mixtur," and george's pipe being now in a glow, mr. bagnet considers it his duty to proceed to the toast of the evening. he addresses the assembled company in the following terms. "george. woolwich. quebec. malta. this is her birthday. take a day's march. and you won't find such another. here's towards her!" the toast having been drunk with enthusiasm, mrs. bagnet returns thanks in a neat address of corresponding brevity. this model composition is limited to the three words "and wishing yours!" which the old girl follows up with a nod at everybody in succession and a well-regulated swig of the mixture. this she again follows up, on the present occasion, by the wholly unexpected exclamation, "here's a man!" here is a man, much to the astonishment of the little company, looking in at the parlour-door. he is a sharp-eyed man--a quick keen man--and he takes in everybody's look at him, all at once, individually and collectively, in a manner that stamps him a remarkable man. "george," says the man, nodding, "how do you find yourself?" "why, it's bucket!" cries mr. george. "yes," says the man, coming in and closing the door. "i was going down the street here when i happened to stop and look in at the musical instruments in the shop-window--a friend of mine is in want of a second-hand wiolinceller of a good tone--and i saw a party enjoying themselves, and i thought it was you in the corner; i thought i couldn't be mistaken. how goes the world with you, george, at the present moment? pretty smooth? and with you, ma'am? and with you, governor? and lord," says mr. bucket, opening his arms, "here's children too! you may do anything with me if you only show me children. give us a kiss, my pets. no occasion to inquire who your father and mother is. never saw such a likeness in my life!" mr. bucket, not unwelcome, has sat himself down next to mr. george and taken quebec and malta on his knees. "you pretty dears," says mr. bucket, "give us another kiss; it's the only thing i'm greedy in. lord bless you, how healthy you look! and what may be the ages of these two, ma'am? i should put 'em down at the figures of about eight and ten." "you're very near, sir," says mrs. bagnet. "i generally am near," returns mr. bucket, "being so fond of children. a friend of mine has had nineteen of 'em, ma'am, all by one mother, and she's still as fresh and rosy as the morning. not so much so as yourself, but, upon my soul, she comes near you! and what do you call these, my darling?" pursues mr. bucket, pinching malta's cheeks. "these are peaches, these are. bless your heart! and what do you think about father? do you think father could recommend a second-hand wiolinceller of a good tone for mr. bucket's friend, my dear? my name's bucket. ain't that a funny name?" these blandishments have entirely won the family heart. mrs. bagnet forgets the day to the extent of filling a pipe and a glass for mr. bucket and waiting upon him hospitably. she would be glad to receive so pleasant a character under any circumstances, but she tells him that as a friend of george's she is particularly glad to see him this evening, for george has not been in his usual spirits. "not in his usual spirits?" exclaims mr. bucket. "why, i never heard of such a thing! what's the matter, george? you don't intend to tell me you've been out of spirits. what should you be out of spirits for? you haven't got anything on your mind, you know." "nothing particular," returns the trooper. "i should think not," rejoins mr. bucket. "what could you have on your mind, you know! and have these pets got anything on their minds, eh? not they, but they'll be upon the minds of some of the young fellows, some of these days, and make 'em precious low-spirited. i ain't much of a prophet, but i can tell you that, ma'am." mrs. bagnet, quite charmed, hopes mr. bucket has a family of his own. "there, ma'am!" says mr. bucket. "would you believe it? no, i haven't. my wife and a lodger constitute my family. mrs. bucket is as fond of children as myself and as wishful to have 'em, but no. so it is. worldly goods are divided unequally, and man must not repine. what a very nice backyard, ma'am! any way out of that yard, now?" there is no way out of that yard. "ain't there really?" says mr. bucket. "i should have thought there might have been. well, i don't know as i ever saw a backyard that took my fancy more. would you allow me to look at it? thank you. no, i see there's no way out. but what a very good-proportioned yard it is!" having cast his sharp eye all about it, mr. bucket returns to his chair next his friend mr. george and pats mr. george affectionately on the shoulder. "how are your spirits now, george?" "all right now," returns the trooper. "that's your sort!" says mr. bucket. "why should you ever have been otherwise? a man of your fine figure and constitution has no right to be out of spirits. that ain't a chest to be out of spirits, is it, ma'am? and you haven't got anything on your mind, you know, george; what could you have on your mind!" somewhat harping on this phrase, considering the extent and variety of his conversational powers, mr. bucket twice or thrice repeats it to the pipe he lights, and with a listening face that is particularly his own. but the sun of his sociality soon recovers from this brief eclipse and shines again. "and this is brother, is it, my dears?" says mr. bucket, referring to quebec and malta for information on the subject of young woolwich. "and a nice brother he is--half-brother i mean to say. for he's too old to be your boy, ma'am." "i can certify at all events that he is not anybody else's," returns mrs. bagnet, laughing. "well, you do surprise me! yet he's like you, there's no denying. lord, he's wonderfully like you! but about what you may call the brow, you know, there his father comes out!" mr. bucket compares the faces with one eye shut up, while mr. bagnet smokes in stolid satisfaction. this is an opportunity for mrs. bagnet to inform him that the boy is george's godson. "george's godson, is he?" rejoins mr. bucket with extreme cordiality. "i must shake hands over again with george's godson. godfather and godson do credit to one another. and what do you intend to make of him, ma'am? does he show any turn for any musical instrument?" mr. bagnet suddenly interposes, "plays the fife. beautiful." "would you believe it, governor," says mr. bucket, struck by the coincidence, "that when i was a boy i played the fife myself? not in a scientific way, as i expect he does, but by ear. lord bless you! 'british grenadiers'--there's a tune to warm an englishman up! could you give us 'british grenadiers,' my fine fellow?" nothing could be more acceptable to the little circle than this call upon young woolwich, who immediately fetches his fife and performs the stirring melody, during which performance mr. bucket, much enlivened, beats time and never fails to come in sharp with the burden, "british gra-a-anadeers!" in short, he shows so much musical taste that mr. bagnet actually takes his pipe from his lips to express his conviction that he is a singer. mr. bucket receives the harmonious impeachment so modestly, confessing how that he did once chaunt a little, for the expression of the feelings of his own bosom, and with no presumptuous idea of entertaining his friends, that he is asked to sing. not to be behindhand in the sociality of the evening, he complies and gives them "believe me, if all those endearing young charms." this ballad, he informs mrs. bagnet, he considers to have been his most powerful ally in moving the heart of mrs. bucket when a maiden, and inducing her to approach the altar--mr. bucket's own words are "to come up to the scratch." this sparkling stranger is such a new and agreeable feature in the evening that mr. george, who testified no great emotions of pleasure on his entrance, begins, in spite of himself, to be rather proud of him. he is so friendly, is a man of so many resources, and so easy to get on with, that it is something to have made him known there. mr. bagnet becomes, after another pipe, so sensible of the value of his acquaintance that he solicits the honour of his company on the old girl's next birthday. if anything can more closely cement and consolidate the esteem which mr. bucket has formed for the family, it is the discovery of the nature of the occasion. he drinks to mrs. bagnet with a warmth approaching to rapture, engages himself for that day twelvemonth more than thankfully, makes a memorandum of the day in a large black pocket-book with a girdle to it, and breathes a hope that mrs. bucket and mrs. bagnet may before then become, in a manner, sisters. as he says himself, what is public life without private ties? he is in his humble way a public man, but it is not in that sphere that he finds happiness. no, it must be sought within the confines of domestic bliss. it is natural, under these circumstances, that he, in his turn, should remember the friend to whom he is indebted for so promising an acquaintance. and he does. he keeps very close to him. whatever the subject of the conversation, he keeps a tender eye upon him. he waits to walk home with him. he is interested in his very boots and observes even them attentively as mr. george sits smoking cross-legged in the chimney-corner. at length mr. george rises to depart. at the same moment mr. bucket, with the secret sympathy of friendship, also rises. he dotes upon the children to the last and remembers the commission he has undertaken for an absent friend. "respecting that second-hand wiolinceller, governor--could you recommend me such a thing?" "scores," says mr. bagnet. "i am obliged to you," returns mr. bucket, squeezing his hand. "you're a friend in need. a good tone, mind you! my friend is a regular dab at it. ecod, he saws away at mozart and handel and the rest of the big-wigs like a thorough workman. and you needn't," says mr. bucket in a considerate and private voice, "you needn't commit yourself to too low a figure, governor. i don't want to pay too large a price for my friend, but i want you to have your proper percentage and be remunerated for your loss of time. that is but fair. every man must live, and ought to it." mr. bagnet shakes his head at the old girl to the effect that they have found a jewel of price. "suppose i was to give you a look in, say, at half arter ten to-morrow morning. perhaps you could name the figures of a few wiolincellers of a good tone?" says mr. bucket. nothing easier. mr. and mrs. bagnet both engage to have the requisite information ready and even hint to each other at the practicability of having a small stock collected there for approval. "thank you," says mr. bucket, "thank you. good night, ma'am. good night, governor. good night, darlings. i am much obliged to you for one of the pleasantest evenings i ever spent in my life." they, on the contrary, are much obliged to him for the pleasure he has given them in his company; and so they part with many expressions of goodwill on both sides. "now george, old boy," says mr. bucket, taking his arm at the shop-door, "come along!" as they go down the little street and the bagnets pause for a minute looking after them, mrs. bagnet remarks to the worthy lignum that mr. bucket "almost clings to george like, and seems to be really fond of him." the neighbouring streets being narrow and ill-paved, it is a little inconvenient to walk there two abreast and arm in arm. mr. george therefore soon proposes to walk singly. but mr. bucket, who cannot make up his mind to relinquish his friendly hold, replies, "wait half a minute, george. i should wish to speak to you first." immediately afterwards, he twists him into a public-house and into a parlour, where he confronts him and claps his own back against the door. "now, george," says mr. bucket, "duty is duty, and friendship is friendship. i never want the two to clash if i can help it. i have endeavoured to make things pleasant to-night, and i put it to you whether i have done it or not. you must consider yourself in custody, george." "custody? what for?" returns the trooper, thunderstruck. "now, george," says mr. bucket, urging a sensible view of the case upon him with his fat forefinger, "duty, as you know very well, is one thing, and conversation is another. it's my duty to inform you that any observations you may make will be liable to be used against you. therefore, george, be careful what you say. you don't happen to have heard of a murder?" "murder!" "now, george," says mr. bucket, keeping his forefinger in an impressive state of action, "bear in mind what i've said to you. i ask you nothing. you've been in low spirits this afternoon. i say, you don't happen to have heard of a murder?" "no. where has there been a murder?" "now, george," says mr. bucket, "don't you go and commit yourself. i'm a-going to tell you what i want you for. there has been a murder in lincoln's inn fields--gentleman of the name of tulkinghorn. he was shot last night. i want you for that." the trooper sinks upon a seat behind him, and great drops start out upon his forehead, and a deadly pallor overspreads his face. "bucket! it's not possible that mr. tulkinghorn has been killed and that you suspect me?" "george," returns mr. bucket, keeping his forefinger going, "it is certainly possible, because it's the case. this deed was done last night at ten o'clock. now, you know where you were last night at ten o'clock, and you'll be able to prove it, no doubt." "last night! last night?" repeats the trooper thoughtfully. then it flashes upon him. "why, great heaven, i was there last night!" "so i have understood, george," returns mr. bucket with great deliberation. "so i have understood. likewise you've been very often there. you've been seen hanging about the place, and you've been heard more than once in a wrangle with him, and it's possible--i don't say it's certainly so, mind you, but it's possible--that he may have been heard to call you a threatening, murdering, dangerous fellow." the trooper gasps as if he would admit it all if he could speak. "now, george," continues mr. bucket, putting his hat upon the table with an air of business rather in the upholstery way than otherwise, "my wish is, as it has been all the evening, to make things pleasant. i tell you plainly there's a reward out, of a hundred guineas, offered by sir leicester dedlock, baronet. you and me have always been pleasant together; but i have got a duty to discharge; and if that hundred guineas is to be made, it may as well be made by me as any other man. on all of which accounts, i should hope it was clear to you that i must have you, and that i'm damned if i don't have you. am i to call in any assistance, or is the trick done?" mr. george has recovered himself and stands up like a soldier. "come," he says; "i am ready." "george," continues mr. bucket, "wait a bit!" with his upholsterer manner, as if the trooper were a window to be fitted up, he takes from his pocket a pair of handcuffs. "this is a serious charge, george, and such is my duty." the trooper flushes angrily and hesitates a moment, but holds out his two hands, clasped together, and says, "there! put them on!" mr. bucket adjusts them in a moment. "how do you find them? are they comfortable? if not, say so, for i wish to make things as pleasant as is consistent with my duty, and i've got another pair in my pocket." this remark he offers like a most respectable tradesman anxious to execute an order neatly and to the perfect satisfaction of his customer. "they'll do as they are? very well! now, you see, george"--he takes a cloak from a corner and begins adjusting it about the trooper's neck--"i was mindful of your feelings when i come out, and brought this on purpose. there! who's the wiser?" "only i," returns the trooper, "but as i know it, do me one more good turn and pull my hat over my eyes." "really, though! do you mean it? ain't it a pity? it looks so." "i can't look chance men in the face with these things on," mr. george hurriedly replies. "do, for god's sake, pull my hat forward." so strongly entreated, mr. bucket complies, puts his own hat on, and conducts his prize into the streets, the trooper marching on as steadily as usual, though with his head less erect, and mr. bucket steering him with his elbow over the crossings and up the turnings. chapter l esther's narrative it happened that when i came home from deal i found a note from caddy jellyby (as we always continued to call her), informing me that her health, which had been for some time very delicate, was worse and that she would be more glad than she could tell me if i would go to see her. it was a note of a few lines, written from the couch on which she lay and enclosed to me in another from her husband, in which he seconded her entreaty with much solicitude. caddy was now the mother, and i the godmother, of such a poor little baby--such a tiny old-faced mite, with a countenance that seemed to be scarcely anything but cap-border, and a little lean, long-fingered hand, always clenched under its chin. it would lie in this attitude all day, with its bright specks of eyes open, wondering (as i used to imagine) how it came to be so small and weak. whenever it was moved it cried, but at all other times it was so patient that the sole desire of its life appeared to be to lie quiet and think. it had curious little dark veins in its face and curious little dark marks under its eyes like faint remembrances of poor caddy's inky days, and altogether, to those who were not used to it, it was quite a piteous little sight. but it was enough for caddy that she was used to it. the projects with which she beguiled her illness, for little esther's education, and little esther's marriage, and even for her own old age as the grandmother of little esther's little esthers, was so prettily expressive of devotion to this pride of her life that i should be tempted to recall some of them but for the timely remembrance that i am getting on irregularly as it is. to return to the letter. caddy had a superstition about me which had been strengthening in her mind ever since that night long ago when she had lain asleep with her head in my lap. she almost--i think i must say quite--believed that i did her good whenever i was near her. now although this was such a fancy of the affectionate girl's that i am almost ashamed to mention it, still it might have all the force of a fact when she was really ill. therefore i set off to caddy, with my guardian's consent, post-haste; and she and prince made so much of me that there never was anything like it. next day i went again to sit with her, and next day i went again. it was a very easy journey, for i had only to rise a little earlier in the morning, and keep my accounts, and attend to housekeeping matters before leaving home. but when i had made these three visits, my guardian said to me, on my return at night, "now, little woman, little woman, this will never do. constant dropping will wear away a stone, and constant coaching will wear out a dame durden. we will go to london for a while and take possession of our old lodgings." "not for me, dear guardian," said i, "for i never feel tired," which was strictly true. i was only too happy to be in such request. "for me then," returned my guardian, "or for ada, or for both of us. it is somebody's birthday to-morrow, i think." "truly i think it is," said i, kissing my darling, who would be twenty-one to-morrow. "well," observed my guardian, half pleasantly, half seriously, "that's a great occasion and will give my fair cousin some necessary business to transact in assertion of her independence, and will make london a more convenient place for all of us. so to london we will go. that being settled, there is another thing--how have you left caddy?" "very unwell, guardian. i fear it will be some time before she regains her health and strength." "what do you call some time, now?" asked my guardian thoughtfully. "some weeks, i am afraid." "ah!" he began to walk about the room with his hands in his pockets, showing that he had been thinking as much. "now, what do you say about her doctor? is he a good doctor, my love?" i felt obliged to confess that i knew nothing to the contrary but that prince and i had agreed only that evening that we would like his opinion to be confirmed by some one. "well, you know," returned my guardian quickly, "there's woodcourt." i had not meant that, and was rather taken by surprise. for a moment all that i had had in my mind in connexion with mr. woodcourt seemed to come back and confuse me. "you don't object to him, little woman?" "object to him, guardian? oh no!" "and you don't think the patient would object to him?" so far from that, i had no doubt of her being prepared to have a great reliance on him and to like him very much. i said that he was no stranger to her personally, for she had seen him often in his kind attendance on miss flite. "very good," said my guardian. "he has been here to-day, my dear, and i will see him about it to-morrow." i felt in this short conversation--though i did not know how, for she was quiet, and we interchanged no look--that my dear girl well remembered how merrily she had clasped me round the waist when no other hands than caddy's had brought me the little parting token. this caused me to feel that i ought to tell her, and caddy too, that i was going to be the mistress of bleak house and that if i avoided that disclosure any longer i might become less worthy in my own eyes of its master's love. therefore, when we went upstairs and had waited listening until the clock struck twelve in order that only i might be the first to wish my darling all good wishes on her birthday and to take her to my heart, i set before her, just as i had set before myself, the goodness and honour of her cousin john and the happy life that was in store for me. if ever my darling were fonder of me at one time than another in all our intercourse, she was surely fondest of me that night. and i was so rejoiced to know it and so comforted by the sense of having done right in casting this last idle reservation away that i was ten times happier than i had been before. i had scarcely thought it a reservation a few hours ago, but now that it was gone i felt as if i understood its nature better. next day we went to london. we found our old lodging vacant, and in half an hour were quietly established there, as if we had never gone away. mr. woodcourt dined with us to celebrate my darling's birthday, and we were as pleasant as we could be with the great blank among us that richard's absence naturally made on such an occasion. after that day i was for some weeks--eight or nine as i remember--very much with caddy, and thus it fell out that i saw less of ada at this time than any other since we had first come together, except the time of my own illness. she often came to caddy's, but our function there was to amuse and cheer her, and we did not talk in our usual confidential manner. whenever i went home at night we were together, but caddy's rest was broken by pain, and i often remained to nurse her. with her husband and her poor little mite of a baby to love and their home to strive for, what a good creature caddy was! so self-denying, so uncomplaining, so anxious to get well on their account, so afraid of giving trouble, and so thoughtful of the unassisted labours of her husband and the comforts of old mr. turveydrop; i had never known the best of her until now. and it seemed so curious that her pale face and helpless figure should be lying there day after day where dancing was the business of life, where the kit and the apprentices began early every morning in the ball-room, and where the untidy little boy waltzed by himself in the kitchen all the afternoon. at caddy's request i took the supreme direction of her apartment, trimmed it up, and pushed her, couch and all, into a lighter and more airy and more cheerful corner than she had yet occupied; then, every day, when we were in our neatest array, i used to lay my small small namesake in her arms and sit down to chat or work or read to her. it was at one of the first of these quiet times that i told caddy about bleak house. we had other visitors besides ada. first of all we had prince, who in his hurried intervals of teaching used to come softly in and sit softly down, with a face of loving anxiety for caddy and the very little child. whatever caddy's condition really was, she never failed to declare to prince that she was all but well--which i, heaven forgive me, never failed to confirm. this would put prince in such good spirits that he would sometimes take the kit from his pocket and play a chord or two to astonish the baby, which i never knew it to do in the least degree, for my tiny namesake never noticed it at all. then there was mrs. jellyby. she would come occasionally, with her usual distraught manner, and sit calmly looking miles beyond her grandchild as if her attention were absorbed by a young borrioboolan on its native shores. as bright-eyed as ever, as serene, and as untidy, she would say, "well, caddy, child, and how do you do to-day?" and then would sit amiably smiling and taking no notice of the reply or would sweetly glide off into a calculation of the number of letters she had lately received and answered or of the coffee-bearing power of borrioboola-gha. this she would always do with a serene contempt for our limited sphere of action, not to be disguised. then there was old mr. turveydrop, who was from morning to night and from night to morning the subject of innumerable precautions. if the baby cried, it was nearly stifled lest the noise should make him uncomfortable. if the fire wanted stirring in the night, it was surreptitiously done lest his rest should be broken. if caddy required any little comfort that the house contained, she first carefully discussed whether he was likely to require it too. in return for this consideration he would come into the room once a day, all but blessing it--showing a condescension, and a patronage, and a grace of manner in dispensing the light of his high-shouldered presence from which i might have supposed him (if i had not known better) to have been the benefactor of caddy's life. "my caroline," he would say, making the nearest approach that he could to bending over her. "tell me that you are better to-day." "oh, much better, thank you, mr. turveydrop," caddy would reply. "delighted! enchanted! and our dear miss summerson. she is not quite prostrated by fatigue?" here he would crease up his eyelids and kiss his fingers to me, though i am happy to say he had ceased to be particular in his attentions since i had been so altered. "not at all," i would assure him. "charming! we must take care of our dear caroline, miss summerson. we must spare nothing that will restore her. we must nourish her. my dear caroline"--he would turn to his daughter-in-law with infinite generosity and protection--"want for nothing, my love. frame a wish and gratify it, my daughter. everything this house contains, everything my room contains, is at your service, my dear. do not," he would sometimes add in a burst of deportment, "even allow my simple requirements to be considered if they should at any time interfere with your own, my caroline. your necessities are greater than mine." he had established such a long prescriptive right to this deportment (his son's inheritance from his mother) that i several times knew both caddy and her husband to be melted to tears by these affectionate self-sacrifices. "nay, my dears," he would remonstrate; and when i saw caddy's thin arm about his fat neck as he said it, i would be melted too, though not by the same process. "nay, nay! i have promised never to leave ye. be dutiful and affectionate towards me, and i ask no other return. now, bless ye! i am going to the park." he would take the air there presently and get an appetite for his hotel dinner. i hope i do old mr. turveydrop no wrong, but i never saw any better traits in him than these i faithfully record, except that he certainly conceived a liking for peepy and would take the child out walking with great pomp, always on those occasions sending him home before he went to dinner himself, and occasionally with a halfpenny in his pocket. but even this disinterestedness was attended with no inconsiderable cost, to my knowledge, for before peepy was sufficiently decorated to walk hand in hand with the professor of deportment, he had to be newly dressed, at the expense of caddy and her husband, from top to toe. last of our visitors, there was mr. jellyby. really when he used to come in of an evening, and ask caddy in his meek voice how she was, and then sit down with his head against the wall, and make no attempt to say anything more, i liked him very much. if he found me bustling about doing any little thing, he sometimes half took his coat off, as if with an intention of helping by a great exertion; but he never got any further. his sole occupation was to sit with his head against the wall, looking hard at the thoughtful baby; and i could not quite divest my mind of a fancy that they understood one another. i have not counted mr. woodcourt among our visitors because he was now caddy's regular attendant. she soon began to improve under his care, but he was so gentle, so skilful, so unwearying in the pains he took that it is not to be wondered at, i am sure. i saw a good deal of mr. woodcourt during this time, though not so much as might be supposed, for knowing caddy to be safe in his hands, i often slipped home at about the hours when he was expected. we frequently met, notwithstanding. i was quite reconciled to myself now, but i still felt glad to think that he was sorry for me, and he still was sorry for me i believed. he helped mr. badger in his professional engagements, which were numerous, and had as yet no settled projects for the future. it was when caddy began to recover that i began to notice a change in my dear girl. i cannot say how it first presented itself to me, because i observed it in many slight particulars which were nothing in themselves and only became something when they were pieced together. but i made it out, by putting them together, that ada was not so frankly cheerful with me as she used to be. her tenderness for me was as loving and true as ever; i did not for a moment doubt that; but there was a quiet sorrow about her which she did not confide to me, and in which i traced some hidden regret. now, i could not understand this, and i was so anxious for the happiness of my own pet that it caused me some uneasiness and set me thinking often. at length, feeling sure that ada suppressed this something from me lest it should make me unhappy too, it came into my head that she was a little grieved--for me--by what i had told her about bleak house. how i persuaded myself that this was likely, i don't know. i had no idea that there was any selfish reference in my doing so. i was not grieved for myself: i was quite contented and quite happy. still, that ada might be thinking--for me, though i had abandoned all such thoughts--of what once was, but was now all changed, seemed so easy to believe that i believed it. what could i do to reassure my darling (i considered then) and show her that i had no such feelings? well! i could only be as brisk and busy as possible, and that i had tried to be all along. however, as caddy's illness had certainly interfered, more or less, with my home duties--though i had always been there in the morning to make my guardian's breakfast, and he had a hundred times laughed and said there must be two little women, for his little woman was never missing--i resolved to be doubly diligent and gay. so i went about the house humming all the tunes i knew, and i sat working and working in a desperate manner, and i talked and talked, morning, noon, and night. and still there was the same shade between me and my darling. "so, dame trot," observed my guardian, shutting up his book one night when we were all three together, "so woodcourt has restored caddy jellyby to the full enjoyment of life again?" "yes," i said; "and to be repaid by such gratitude as hers is to be made rich, guardian." "i wish it was," he returned, "with all my heart." so did i too, for that matter. i said so. "aye! we would make him as rich as a jew if we knew how. would we not, little woman?" i laughed as i worked and replied that i was not sure about that, for it might spoil him, and he might not be so useful, and there might be many who could ill spare him. as miss flite, and caddy herself, and many others. "true," said my guardian. "i had forgotten that. but we would agree to make him rich enough to live, i suppose? rich enough to work with tolerable peace of mind? rich enough to have his own happy home and his own household gods--and household goddess, too, perhaps?" that was quite another thing, i said. we must all agree in that. "to be sure," said my guardian. "all of us. i have a great regard for woodcourt, a high esteem for him; and i have been sounding him delicately about his plans. it is difficult to offer aid to an independent man with that just kind of pride which he possesses. and yet i would be glad to do it if i might or if i knew how. he seems half inclined for another voyage. but that appears like casting such a man away." "it might open a new world to him," said i. "so it might, little woman," my guardian assented. "i doubt if he expects much of the old world. do you know i have fancied that he sometimes feels some particular disappointment or misfortune encountered in it. you never heard of anything of that sort?" i shook my head. "humph," said my guardian. "i am mistaken, i dare say." as there was a little pause here, which i thought, for my dear girl's satisfaction, had better be filled up, i hummed an air as i worked which was a favourite with my guardian. "and do you think mr. woodcourt will make another voyage?" i asked him when i had hummed it quietly all through. "i don't quite know what to think, my dear, but i should say it was likely at present that he will give a long trip to another country." "i am sure he will take the best wishes of all our hearts with him wherever he goes," said i; "and though they are not riches, he will never be the poorer for them, guardian, at least." "never, little woman," he replied. i was sitting in my usual place, which was now beside my guardian's chair. that had not been my usual place before the letter, but it was now. i looked up to ada, who was sitting opposite, and i saw, as she looked at me, that her eyes were filled with tears and that tears were falling down her face. i felt that i had only to be placid and merry once for all to undeceive my dear and set her loving heart at rest. i really was so, and i had nothing to do but to be myself. so i made my sweet girl lean upon my shoulder--how little thinking what was heavy on her mind!--and i said she was not quite well, and put my arm about her, and took her upstairs. when we were in our own room, and when she might perhaps have told me what i was so unprepared to hear, i gave her no encouragement to confide in me; i never thought she stood in need of it. "oh, my dear good esther," said ada, "if i could only make up my mind to speak to you and my cousin john when you are together!" "why, my love!" i remonstrated. "ada, why should you not speak to us!" ada only dropped her head and pressed me closer to her heart. "you surely don't forget, my beauty," said i, smiling, "what quiet, old-fashioned people we are and how i have settled down to be the discreetest of dames? you don't forget how happily and peacefully my life is all marked out for me, and by whom? i am certain that you don't forget by what a noble character, ada. that can never be." "no, never, esther." "why then, my dear," said i, "there can be nothing amiss--and why should you not speak to us?" "nothing amiss, esther?" returned ada. "oh, when i think of all these years, and of his fatherly care and kindness, and of the old relations among us, and of you, what shall i do, what shall i do!" i looked at my child in some wonder, but i thought it better not to answer otherwise than by cheering her, and so i turned off into many little recollections of our life together and prevented her from saying more. when she lay down to sleep, and not before, i returned to my guardian to say good night, and then i came back to ada and sat near her for a little while. she was asleep, and i thought as i looked at her that she was a little changed. i had thought so more than once lately. i could not decide, even looking at her while she was unconscious, how she was changed, but something in the familiar beauty of her face looked different to me. my guardian's old hopes of her and richard arose sorrowfully in my mind, and i said to myself, "she has been anxious about him," and i wondered how that love would end. when i had come home from caddy's while she was ill, i had often found ada at work, and she had always put her work away, and i had never known what it was. some of it now lay in a drawer near her, which was not quite closed. i did not open the drawer, but i still rather wondered what the work could be, for it was evidently nothing for herself. and i noticed as i kissed my dear that she lay with one hand under her pillow so that it was hidden. how much less amiable i must have been than they thought me, how much less amiable than i thought myself, to be so preoccupied with my own cheerfulness and contentment as to think that it only rested with me to put my dear girl right and set her mind at peace! but i lay down, self-deceived, in that belief. and i awoke in it next day to find that there was still the same shade between me and my darling. chapter li enlightened when mr. woodcourt arrived in london, he went, that very same day, to mr. vholes's in symond's inn. for he never once, from the moment when i entreated him to be a friend to richard, neglected or forgot his promise. he had told me that he accepted the charge as a sacred trust, and he was ever true to it in that spirit. he found mr. vholes in his office and informed mr. vholes of his agreement with richard that he should call there to learn his address. "just so, sir," said mr. vholes. "mr. c.'s address is not a hundred miles from here, sir, mr. c.'s address is not a hundred miles from here. would you take a seat, sir?" mr. woodcourt thanked mr. vholes, but he had no business with him beyond what he had mentioned. "just so, sir. i believe, sir," said mr. vholes, still quietly insisting on the seat by not giving the address, "that you have influence with mr. c. indeed i am aware that you have." "i was not aware of it myself," returned mr. woodcourt; "but i suppose you know best." "sir," rejoined mr. vholes, self-contained as usual, voice and all, "it is a part of my professional duty to know best. it is a part of my professional duty to study and to understand a gentleman who confides his interests to me. in my professional duty i shall not be wanting, sir, if i know it. i may, with the best intentions, be wanting in it without knowing it; but not if i know it, sir." mr. woodcourt again mentioned the address. "give me leave, sir," said mr. vholes. "bear with me for a moment. sir, mr. c. is playing for a considerable stake, and cannot play without--need i say what?" "money, i presume?" "sir," said mr. vholes, "to be honest with you (honesty being my golden rule, whether i gain by it or lose, and i find that i generally lose), money is the word. now, sir, upon the chances of mr. c.'s game i express to you no opinion, no opinion. it might be highly impolitic in mr. c., after playing so long and so high, to leave off; it might be the reverse; i say nothing. no, sir," said mr. vholes, bringing his hand flat down upon his desk in a positive manner, "nothing." "you seem to forget," returned mr. woodcourt, "that i ask you to say nothing and have no interest in anything you say." "pardon me, sir!" retorted mr. vholes. "you do yourself an injustice. no, sir! pardon me! you shall not--shall not in my office, if i know it--do yourself an injustice. you are interested in anything, and in everything, that relates to your friend. i know human nature much better, sir, than to admit for an instant that a gentleman of your appearance is not interested in whatever concerns his friend." "well," replied mr. woodcourt, "that may be. i am particularly interested in his address." "the number, sir," said mr. vholes parenthetically, "i believe i have already mentioned. if mr. c. is to continue to play for this considerable stake, sir, he must have funds. understand me! there are funds in hand at present. i ask for nothing; there are funds in hand. but for the onward play, more funds must be provided, unless mr. c. is to throw away what he has already ventured, which is wholly and solely a point for his consideration. this, sir, i take the opportunity of stating openly to you as the friend of mr. c. without funds i shall always be happy to appear and act for mr. c. to the extent of all such costs as are safe to be allowed out of the estate, not beyond that. i could not go beyond that, sir, without wronging some one. i must either wrong my three dear girls or my venerable father, who is entirely dependent on me, in the vale of taunton; or some one. whereas, sir, my resolution is (call it weakness or folly if you please) to wrong no one." mr. woodcourt rather sternly rejoined that he was glad to hear it. "i wish, sir," said mr. vholes, "to leave a good name behind me. therefore i take every opportunity of openly stating to a friend of mr. c. how mr. c. is situated. as to myself, sir, the labourer is worthy of his hire. if i undertake to put my shoulder to the wheel, i do it, and i earn what i get. i am here for that purpose. my name is painted on the door outside, with that object." "and mr. carstone's address, mr. vholes?" "sir," returned mr. vholes, "as i believe i have already mentioned, it is next door. on the second story you will find mr. c.'s apartments. mr. c. desires to be near his professional adviser, and i am far from objecting, for i court inquiry." upon this mr. woodcourt wished mr. vholes good day and went in search of richard, the change in whose appearance he began to understand now but too well. he found him in a dull room, fadedly furnished, much as i had found him in his barrack-room but a little while before, except that he was not writing but was sitting with a book before him, from which his eyes and thoughts were far astray. as the door chanced to be standing open, mr. woodcourt was in his presence for some moments without being perceived, and he told me that he never could forget the haggardness of his face and the dejection of his manner before he was aroused from his dream. "woodcourt, my dear fellow," cried richard, starting up with extended hands, "you come upon my vision like a ghost." "a friendly one," he replied, "and only waiting, as they say ghosts do, to be addressed. how does the mortal world go?" they were seated now, near together. "badly enough, and slowly enough," said richard, "speaking at least for my part of it." "what part is that?" "the chancery part." "i never heard," returned mr. woodcourt, shaking his head, "of its going well yet." "nor i," said richard moodily. "who ever did?" he brightened again in a moment and said with his natural openness, "woodcourt, i should be sorry to be misunderstood by you, even if i gained by it in your estimation. you must know that i have done no good this long time. i have not intended to do much harm, but i seem to have been capable of nothing else. it may be that i should have done better by keeping out of the net into which my destiny has worked me, but i think not, though i dare say you will soon hear, if you have not already heard, a very different opinion. to make short of a long story, i am afraid i have wanted an object; but i have an object now--or it has me--and it is too late to discuss it. take me as i am, and make the best of me." "a bargain," said mr. woodcourt. "do as much by me in return." "oh! you," returned richard, "you can pursue your art for its own sake, and can put your hand upon the plough and never turn, and can strike a purpose out of anything. you and i are very different creatures." he spoke regretfully and lapsed for a moment into his weary condition. "well, well!" he cried, shaking it off. "everything has an end. we shall see! so you will take me as i am, and make the best of me?" "aye! indeed i will." they shook hands upon it laughingly, but in deep earnestness. i can answer for one of them with my heart of hearts. "you come as a godsend," said richard, "for i have seen nobody here yet but vholes. woodcourt, there is one subject i should like to mention, for once and for all, in the beginning of our treaty. you can hardly make the best of me if i don't. you know, i dare say, that i have an attachment to my cousin ada?" mr. woodcourt replied that i had hinted as much to him. "now pray," returned richard, "don't think me a heap of selfishness. don't suppose that i am splitting my head and half breaking my heart over this miserable chancery suit for my own rights and interests alone. ada's are bound up with mine; they can't be separated; vholes works for both of us. do think of that!" he was so very solicitous on this head that mr. woodcourt gave him the strongest assurances that he did him no injustice. "you see," said richard, with something pathetic in his manner of lingering on the point, though it was off-hand and unstudied, "to an upright fellow like you, bringing a friendly face like yours here, i cannot bear the thought of appearing selfish and mean. i want to see ada righted, woodcourt, as well as myself; i want to do my utmost to right her, as well as myself; i venture what i can scrape together to extricate her, as well as myself. do, i beseech you, think of that!" afterwards, when mr. woodcourt came to reflect on what had passed, he was so very much impressed by the strength of richard's anxiety on this point that in telling me generally of his first visit to symond's inn he particularly dwelt upon it. it revived a fear i had had before that my dear girl's little property would be absorbed by mr. vholes and that richard's justification to himself would be sincerely this. it was just as i began to take care of caddy that the interview took place, and i now return to the time when caddy had recovered and the shade was still between me and my darling. i proposed to ada that morning that we should go and see richard. it a little surprised me to find that she hesitated and was not so radiantly willing as i had expected. "my dear," said i, "you have not had any difference with richard since i have been so much away?" "no, esther." "not heard of him, perhaps?" said i. "yes, i have heard of him," said ada. such tears in her eyes, and such love in her face. i could not make my darling out. should i go to richard's by myself? i said. no, ada thought i had better not go by myself. would she go with me? yes, ada thought she had better go with me. should we go now? yes, let us go now. well, i could not understand my darling, with the tears in her eyes and the love in her face! we were soon equipped and went out. it was a sombre day, and drops of chill rain fell at intervals. it was one of those colourless days when everything looks heavy and harsh. the houses frowned at us, the dust rose at us, the smoke swooped at us, nothing made any compromise about itself or wore a softened aspect. i fancied my beautiful girl quite out of place in the rugged streets, and i thought there were more funerals passing along the dismal pavements than i had ever seen before. we had first to find out symond's inn. we were going to inquire in a shop when ada said she thought it was near chancery lane. "we are not likely to be far out, my love, if we go in that direction," said i. so to chancery lane we went, and there, sure enough, we saw it written up. symond's inn. we had next to find out the number. "or mr. vholes's office will do," i recollected, "for mr. vholes's office is next door." upon which ada said, perhaps that was mr. vholes's office in the corner there. and it really was. then came the question, which of the two next doors? i was going for the one, and my darling was going for the other; and my darling was right again. so up we went to the second story, when we came to richard's name in great white letters on a hearse-like panel. i should have knocked, but ada said perhaps we had better turn the handle and go in. thus we came to richard, poring over a table covered with dusty bundles of papers which seemed to me like dusty mirrors reflecting his own mind. wherever i looked i saw the ominous words that ran in it repeated. jarndyce and jarndyce. he received us very affectionately, and we sat down. "if you had come a little earlier," he said, "you would have found woodcourt here. there never was such a good fellow as woodcourt is. he finds time to look in between-whiles, when anybody else with half his work to do would be thinking about not being able to come. and he is so cheery, so fresh, so sensible, so earnest, so--everything that i am not, that the place brightens whenever he comes, and darkens whenever he goes again." "god bless him," i thought, "for his truth to me!" "he is not so sanguine, ada," continued richard, casting his dejected look over the bundles of papers, "as vholes and i are usually, but he is only an outsider and is not in the mysteries. we have gone into them, and he has not. he can't be expected to know much of such a labyrinth." as his look wandered over the papers again and he passed his two hands over his head, i noticed how sunken and how large his eyes appeared, how dry his lips were, and how his finger-nails were all bitten away. "is this a healthy place to live in, richard, do you think?" said i. "why, my dear minerva," answered richard with his old gay laugh, "it is neither a rural nor a cheerful place; and when the sun shines here, you may lay a pretty heavy wager that it is shining brightly in an open spot. but it's well enough for the time. it's near the offices and near vholes." "perhaps," i hinted, "a change from both--" "might do me good?" said richard, forcing a laugh as he finished the sentence. "i shouldn't wonder! but it can only come in one way now--in one of two ways, i should rather say. either the suit must be ended, esther, or the suitor. but it shall be the suit, my dear girl, the suit, my dear girl!" these latter words were addressed to ada, who was sitting nearest to him. her face being turned away from me and towards him, i could not see it. "we are doing very well," pursued richard. "vholes will tell you so. we are really spinning along. ask vholes. we are giving them no rest. vholes knows all their windings and turnings, and we are upon them everywhere. we have astonished them already. we shall rouse up that nest of sleepers, mark my words!" his hopefulness had long been more painful to me than his despondency; it was so unlike hopefulness, had something so fierce in its determination to be it, was so hungry and eager, and yet so conscious of being forced and unsustainable that it had long touched me to the heart. but the commentary upon it now indelibly written in his handsome face made it far more distressing than it used to be. i say indelibly, for i felt persuaded that if the fatal cause could have been for ever terminated, according to his brightest visions, in that same hour, the traces of the premature anxiety, self-reproach, and disappointment it had occasioned him would have remained upon his features to the hour of his death. "the sight of our dear little woman," said richard, ada still remaining silent and quiet, "is so natural to me, and her compassionate face is so like the face of old days--" ah! no, no. i smiled and shook my head. "--so exactly like the face of old days," said richard in his cordial voice, and taking my hand with the brotherly regard which nothing ever changed, "that i can't make pretences with her. i fluctuate a little; that's the truth. sometimes i hope, my dear, and sometimes i--don't quite despair, but nearly. i get," said richard, relinquishing my hand gently and walking across the room, "so tired!" he took a few turns up and down and sunk upon the sofa. "i get," he repeated gloomily, "so tired. it is such weary, weary work!" he was leaning on his arm saying these words in a meditative voice and looking at the ground when my darling rose, put off her bonnet, kneeled down beside him with her golden hair falling like sunlight on his head, clasped her two arms round his neck, and turned her face to me. oh, what a loving and devoted face i saw! "esther, dear," she said very quietly, "i am not going home again." a light shone in upon me all at once. "never any more. i am going to stay with my dear husband. we have been married above two months. go home without me, my own esther; i shall never go home any more!" with those words my darling drew his head down on her breast and held it there. and if ever in my life i saw a love that nothing but death could change, i saw it then before me. "speak to esther, my dearest," said richard, breaking the silence presently. "tell her how it was." i met her before she could come to me and folded her in my arms. we neither of us spoke, but with her cheek against my own i wanted to hear nothing. "my pet," said i. "my love. my poor, poor girl!" i pitied her so much. i was very fond of richard, but the impulse that i had upon me was to pity her so much. "esther, will you forgive me? will my cousin john forgive me?" "my dear," said i, "to doubt it for a moment is to do him a great wrong. and as to me!" why, as to me, what had i to forgive! i dried my sobbing darling's eyes and sat beside her on the sofa, and richard sat on my other side; and while i was reminded of that so different night when they had first taken me into their confidence and had gone on in their own wild happy way, they told me between them how it was. "all i had was richard's," ada said; "and richard would not take it, esther, and what could i do but be his wife when i loved him dearly!" "and you were so fully and so kindly occupied, excellent dame durden," said richard, "that how could we speak to you at such a time! and besides, it was not a long-considered step. we went out one morning and were married." "and when it was done, esther," said my darling, "i was always thinking how to tell you and what to do for the best. and sometimes i thought you ought to know it directly, and sometimes i thought you ought not to know it and keep it from my cousin john; and i could not tell what to do, and i fretted very much." how selfish i must have been not to have thought of this before! i don't know what i said now. i was so sorry, and yet i was so fond of them and so glad that they were fond of me; i pitied them so much, and yet i felt a kind of pride in their loving one another. i never had experienced such painful and pleasurable emotion at one time, and in my own heart i did not know which predominated. but i was not there to darken their way; i did not do that. when i was less foolish and more composed, my darling took her wedding-ring from her bosom, and kissed it, and put it on. then i remembered last night and told richard that ever since her marriage she had worn it at night when there was no one to see. then ada blushingly asked me how did i know that, my dear. then i told ada how i had seen her hand concealed under her pillow and had little thought why, my dear. then they began telling me how it was all over again, and i began to be sorry and glad again, and foolish again, and to hide my plain old face as much as i could lest i should put them out of heart. thus the time went on until it became necessary for me to think of returning. when that time arrived it was the worst of all, for then my darling completely broke down. she clung round my neck, calling me by every dear name she could think of and saying what should she do without me! nor was richard much better; and as for me, i should have been the worst of the three if i had not severely said to myself, "now esther, if you do, i'll never speak to you again!" "why, i declare," said i, "i never saw such a wife. i don't think she loves her husband at all. here, richard, take my child, for goodness' sake." but i held her tight all the while, and could have wept over her i don't know how long. "i give this dear young couple notice," said i, "that i am only going away to come back to-morrow and that i shall be always coming backwards and forwards until symond's inn is tired of the sight of me. so i shall not say good-bye, richard. for what would be the use of that, you know, when i am coming back so soon!" i had given my darling to him now, and i meant to go; but i lingered for one more look of the precious face which it seemed to rive my heart to turn from. so i said (in a merry, bustling manner) that unless they gave me some encouragement to come back, i was not sure that i could take that liberty, upon which my dear girl looked up, faintly smiling through her tears, and i folded her lovely face between my hands, and gave it one last kiss, and laughed, and ran away. and when i got downstairs, oh, how i cried! it almost seemed to me that i had lost my ada for ever. i was so lonely and so blank without her, and it was so desolate to be going home with no hope of seeing her there, that i could get no comfort for a little while as i walked up and down in a dim corner sobbing and crying. i came to myself by and by, after a little scolding, and took a coach home. the poor boy whom i had found at st. albans had reappeared a short time before and was lying at the point of death; indeed, was then dead, though i did not know it. my guardian had gone out to inquire about him and did not return to dinner. being quite alone, i cried a little again, though on the whole i don't think i behaved so very, very ill. it was only natural that i should not be quite accustomed to the loss of my darling yet. three or four hours were not a long time after years. but my mind dwelt so much upon the uncongenial scene in which i had left her, and i pictured it as such an overshadowed stony-hearted one, and i so longed to be near her and taking some sort of care of her, that i determined to go back in the evening only to look up at her windows. it was foolish, i dare say, but it did not then seem at all so to me, and it does not seem quite so even now. i took charley into my confidence, and we went out at dusk. it was dark when we came to the new strange home of my dear girl, and there was a light behind the yellow blinds. we walked past cautiously three or four times, looking up, and narrowly missed encountering mr. vholes, who came out of his office while we were there and turned his head to look up too before going home. the sight of his lank black figure and the lonesome air of that nook in the dark were favourable to the state of my mind. i thought of the youth and love and beauty of my dear girl, shut up in such an ill-assorted refuge, almost as if it were a cruel place. it was very solitary and very dull, and i did not doubt that i might safely steal upstairs. i left charley below and went up with a light foot, not distressed by any glare from the feeble oil lanterns on the way. i listened for a few moments, and in the musty rotting silence of the house believed that i could hear the murmur of their young voices. i put my lips to the hearse-like panel of the door as a kiss for my dear and came quietly down again, thinking that one of these days i would confess to the visit. and it really did me good, for though nobody but charley and i knew anything about it, i somehow felt as if it had diminished the separation between ada and me and had brought us together again for those moments. i went back, not quite accustomed yet to the change, but all the better for that hovering about my darling. my guardian had come home and was standing thoughtfully by the dark window. when i went in, his face cleared and he came to his seat, but he caught the light upon my face as i took mine. "little woman," said he, "you have been crying." "why, yes, guardian," said i, "i am afraid i have been, a little. ada has been in such distress, and is so very sorry, guardian." i put my arm on the back of his chair, and i saw in his glance that my words and my look at her empty place had prepared him. "is she married, my dear?" i told him all about it and how her first entreaties had referred to his forgiveness. "she has no need of it," said he. "heaven bless her and her husband!" but just as my first impulse had been to pity her, so was his. "poor girl, poor girl! poor rick! poor ada!" neither of us spoke after that, until he said with a sigh, "well, well, my dear! bleak house is thinning fast." "but its mistress remains, guardian." though i was timid about saying it, i ventured because of the sorrowful tone in which he had spoken. "she will do all she can to make it happy," said i. "she will succeed, my love!" the letter had made no difference between us except that the seat by his side had come to be mine; it made none now. he turned his old bright fatherly look upon me, laid his hand on my hand in his old way, and said again, "she will succeed, my dear. nevertheless, bleak house is thinning fast, o little woman!" i was sorry presently that this was all we said about that. i was rather disappointed. i feared i might not quite have been all i had meant to be since the letter and the answer. chapter lii obstinacy but one other day had intervened when, early in the morning as we were going to breakfast, mr. woodcourt came in haste with the astounding news that a terrible murder had been committed for which mr. george had been apprehended and was in custody. when he told us that a large reward was offered by sir leicester dedlock for the murderer's apprehension, i did not in my first consternation understand why; but a few more words explained to me that the murdered person was sir leicester's lawyer, and immediately my mother's dread of him rushed into my remembrance. this unforeseen and violent removal of one whom she had long watched and distrusted and who had long watched and distrusted her, one for whom she could have had few intervals of kindness, always dreading in him a dangerous and secret enemy, appeared so awful that my first thoughts were of her. how appalling to hear of such a death and be able to feel no pity! how dreadful to remember, perhaps, that she had sometimes even wished the old man away who was so swiftly hurried out of life! such crowding reflections, increasing the distress and fear i always felt when the name was mentioned, made me so agitated that i could scarcely hold my place at the table. i was quite unable to follow the conversation until i had had a little time to recover. but when i came to myself and saw how shocked my guardian was and found that they were earnestly speaking of the suspected man and recalling every favourable impression we had formed of him out of the good we had known of him, my interest and my fears were so strongly aroused in his behalf that i was quite set up again. "guardian, you don't think it possible that he is justly accused?" "my dear, i can't think so. this man whom we have seen so open-hearted and compassionate, who with the might of a giant has the gentleness of a child, who looks as brave a fellow as ever lived and is so simple and quiet with it, this man justly accused of such a crime? i can't believe it. it's not that i don't or i won't. i can't!" "and i can't," said mr. woodcourt. "still, whatever we believe or know of him, we had better not forget that some appearances are against him. he bore an animosity towards the deceased gentleman. he has openly mentioned it in many places. he is said to have expressed himself violently towards him, and he certainly did about him, to my knowledge. he admits that he was alone on the scene of the murder within a few minutes of its commission. i sincerely believe him to be as innocent of any participation in it as i am, but these are all reasons for suspicion falling upon him." "true," said my guardian. and he added, turning to me, "it would be doing him a very bad service, my dear, to shut our eyes to the truth in any of these respects." i felt, of course, that we must admit, not only to ourselves but to others, the full force of the circumstances against him. yet i knew withal (i could not help saying) that their weight would not induce us to desert him in his need. "heaven forbid!" returned my guardian. "we will stand by him, as he himself stood by the two poor creatures who are gone." he meant mr. gridley and the boy, to both of whom mr. george had given shelter. mr. woodcourt then told us that the trooper's man had been with him before day, after wandering about the streets all night like a distracted creature. that one of the trooper's first anxieties was that we should not suppose him guilty. that he had charged his messenger to represent his perfect innocence with every solemn assurance he could send us. that mr. woodcourt had only quieted the man by undertaking to come to our house very early in the morning with these representations. he added that he was now upon his way to see the prisoner himself. my guardian said directly he would go too. now, besides that i liked the retired soldier very much and that he liked me, i had that secret interest in what had happened which was only known to my guardian. i felt as if it came close and near to me. it seemed to become personally important to myself that the truth should be discovered and that no innocent people should be suspected, for suspicion, once run wild, might run wilder. in a word, i felt as if it were my duty and obligation to go with them. my guardian did not seek to dissuade me, and i went. it was a large prison with many courts and passages so like one another and so uniformly paved that i seemed to gain a new comprehension, as i passed along, of the fondness that solitary prisoners, shut up among the same staring walls from year to year, have had--as i have read--for a weed or a stray blade of grass. in an arched room by himself, like a cellar upstairs, with walls so glaringly white that they made the massive iron window-bars and iron-bound door even more profoundly black than they were, we found the trooper standing in a corner. he had been sitting on a bench there and had risen when he heard the locks and bolts turn. when he saw us, he came forward a step with his usual heavy tread, and there stopped and made a slight bow. but as i still advanced, putting out my hand to him, he understood us in a moment. "this is a load off my mind, i do assure you, miss and gentlemen," said he, saluting us with great heartiness and drawing a long breath. "and now i don't so much care how it ends." he scarcely seemed to be the prisoner. what with his coolness and his soldierly bearing, he looked far more like the prison guard. "this is even a rougher place than my gallery to receive a lady in," said mr. george, "but i know miss summerson will make the best of it." as he handed me to the bench on which he had been sitting, i sat down, which seemed to give him great satisfaction. "i thank you, miss," said he. "now, george," observed my guardian, "as we require no new assurances on your part, so i believe we need give you none on ours." "not at all, sir. i thank you with all my heart. if i was not innocent of this crime, i couldn't look at you and keep my secret to myself under the condescension of the present visit. i feel the present visit very much. i am not one of the eloquent sort, but i feel it, miss summerson and gentlemen, deeply." he laid his hand for a moment on his broad chest and bent his head to us. although he squared himself again directly, he expressed a great amount of natural emotion by these simple means. "first," said my guardian, "can we do anything for your personal comfort, george?" "for which, sir?" he inquired, clearing his throat. "for your personal comfort. is there anything you want that would lessen the hardship of this confinement?" "well, sir," replied george, after a little cogitation, "i am equally obliged to you, but tobacco being against the rules, i can't say that there is." "you will think of many little things perhaps, by and by. whenever you do, george, let us know." "thank you, sir. howsoever," observed mr. george with one of his sunburnt smiles, "a man who has been knocking about the world in a vagabond kind of a way as long as i have gets on well enough in a place like the present, so far as that goes." "next, as to your case," observed my guardian. "exactly so, sir," returned mr. george, folding his arms upon his breast with perfect self-possession and a little curiosity. "how does it stand now?" "why, sir, it is under remand at present. bucket gives me to understand that he will probably apply for a series of remands from time to time until the case is more complete. how it is to be made more complete i don't myself see, but i dare say bucket will manage it somehow." "why, heaven save us, man," exclaimed my guardian, surprised into his old oddity and vehemence, "you talk of yourself as if you were somebody else!" "no offence, sir," said mr. george. "i am very sensible of your kindness. but i don't see how an innocent man is to make up his mind to this kind of thing without knocking his head against the walls unless he takes it in that point of view. "that is true enough to a certain extent," returned my guardian, softened. "but my good fellow, even an innocent man must take ordinary precautions to defend himself." "certainly, sir. and i have done so. i have stated to the magistrates, 'gentlemen, i am as innocent of this charge as yourselves; what has been stated against me in the way of facts is perfectly true; i know no more about it.' i intend to continue stating that, sir. what more can i do? it's the truth." "but the mere truth won't do," rejoined my guardian. "won't it indeed, sir? rather a bad look-out for me!" mr. george good-humouredly observed. "you must have a lawyer," pursued my guardian. "we must engage a good one for you." "i ask your pardon, sir," said mr. george with a step backward. "i am equally obliged. but i must decidedly beg to be excused from anything of that sort." "you won't have a lawyer?" "no, sir." mr. george shook his head in the most emphatic manner. "i thank you all the same, sir, but--no lawyer!" "why not?" "i don't take kindly to the breed," said mr. george. "gridley didn't. and--if you'll excuse my saying so much--i should hardly have thought you did yourself, sir." "that's equity," my guardian explained, a little at a loss; "that's equity, george." "is it, indeed, sir?" returned the trooper in his off-hand manner. "i am not acquainted with those shades of names myself, but in a general way i object to the breed." unfolding his arms and changing his position, he stood with one massive hand upon the table and the other on his hip, as complete a picture of a man who was not to be moved from a fixed purpose as ever i saw. it was in vain that we all three talked to him and endeavoured to persuade him; he listened with that gentleness which went so well with his bluff bearing, but was evidently no more shaken by our representations that his place of confinement was. "pray think, once more, mr. george," said i. "have you no wish in reference to your case?" "i certainly could wish it to be tried, miss," he returned, "by court-martial; but that is out of the question, as i am well aware. if you will be so good as to favour me with your attention for a couple of minutes, miss, not more, i'll endeavour to explain myself as clearly as i can." he looked at us all three in turn, shook his head a little as if he were adjusting it in the stock and collar of a tight uniform, and after a moment's reflection went on. "you see, miss, i have been handcuffed and taken into custody and brought here. i am a marked and disgraced man, and here i am. my shooting gallery is rummaged, high and low, by bucket; such property as i have--'tis small--is turned this way and that till it don't know itself; and (as aforesaid) here i am! i don't particular complain of that. though i am in these present quarters through no immediately preceding fault of mine, i can very well understand that if i hadn't gone into the vagabond way in my youth, this wouldn't have happened. it has happened. then comes the question how to meet it." he rubbed his swarthy forehead for a moment with a good-humoured look and said apologetically, "i am such a short-winded talker that i must think a bit." having thought a bit, he looked up again and resumed. "how to meet it. now, the unfortunate deceased was himself a lawyer and had a pretty tight hold of me. i don't wish to rake up his ashes, but he had, what i should call if he was living, a devil of a tight hold of me. i don't like his trade the better for that. if i had kept clear of his trade, i should have kept outside this place. but that's not what i mean. now, suppose i had killed him. suppose i really had discharged into his body any one of those pistols recently fired off that bucket has found at my place, and dear me, might have found there any day since it has been my place. what should i have done as soon as i was hard and fast here? got a lawyer." he stopped on hearing some one at the locks and bolts and did not resume until the door had been opened and was shut again. for what purpose opened, i will mention presently. "i should have got a lawyer, and he would have said (as i have often read in the newspapers), 'my client says nothing, my client reserves his defence': my client this, that, and t'other. well, 'tis not the custom of that breed to go straight, according to my opinion, or to think that other men do. say i am innocent and i get a lawyer. he would be as likely to believe me guilty as not; perhaps more. what would he do, whether or not? act as if i was--shut my mouth up, tell me not to commit myself, keep circumstances back, chop the evidence small, quibble, and get me off perhaps! but, miss summerson, do i care for getting off in that way; or would i rather be hanged in my own way--if you'll excuse my mentioning anything so disagreeable to a lady?" he had warmed into his subject now, and was under no further necessity to wait a bit. "i would rather be hanged in my own way. and i mean to be! i don't intend to say," looking round upon us with his powerful arms akimbo and his dark eyebrows raised, "that i am more partial to being hanged than another man. what i say is, i must come off clear and full or not at all. therefore, when i hear stated against me what is true, i say it's true; and when they tell me, 'whatever you say will be used,' i tell them i don't mind that; i mean it to be used. if they can't make me innocent out of the whole truth, they are not likely to do it out of anything less, or anything else. and if they are, it's worth nothing to me." taking a pace or two over the stone floor, he came back to the table and finished what he had to say. "i thank you, miss and gentlemen both, many times for your attention, and many times more for your interest. that's the plain state of the matter as it points itself out to a mere trooper with a blunt broadsword kind of a mind. i have never done well in life beyond my duty as a soldier, and if the worst comes after all, i shall reap pretty much as i have sown. when i got over the first crash of being seized as a murderer--it don't take a rover who has knocked about so much as myself so very long to recover from a crash--i worked my way round to what you find me now. as such i shall remain. no relations will be disgraced by me or made unhappy for me, and--and that's all i've got to say." the door had been opened to admit another soldier-looking man of less prepossessing appearance at first sight and a weather-tanned, bright-eyed wholesome woman with a basket, who, from her entrance, had been exceedingly attentive to all mr. george had said. mr. george had received them with a familiar nod and a friendly look, but without any more particular greeting in the midst of his address. he now shook them cordially by the hand and said, "miss summerson and gentlemen, this is an old comrade of mine, matthew bagnet. and this is his wife, mrs. bagnet." mr. bagnet made us a stiff military bow, and mrs. bagnet dropped us a curtsy. "real good friends of mine, they are," sald mr. george. "it was at their house i was taken." "with a second-hand wiolinceller," mr. bagnet put in, twitching his head angrily. "of a good tone. for a friend. that money was no object to." "mat," said mr. george, "you have heard pretty well all i have been saying to this lady and these two gentlemen. i know it meets your approval?" mr. bagnet, after considering, referred the point to his wife. "old girl," said he. "tell him. whether or not. it meets my approval." "why, george," exclaimed mrs. bagnet, who had been unpacking her basket, in which there was a piece of cold pickled pork, a little tea and sugar, and a brown loaf, "you ought to know it don't. you ought to know it's enough to drive a person wild to hear you. you won't be got off this way, and you won't be got off that way--what do you mean by such picking and choosing? it's stuff and nonsense, george." "don't be severe upon me in my misfortunes, mrs. bagnet," said the trooper lightly. "oh! bother your misfortunes," cried mrs. bagnet, "if they don't make you more reasonable than that comes to. i never was so ashamed in my life to hear a man talk folly as i have been to hear you talk this day to the present company. lawyers? why, what but too many cooks should hinder you from having a dozen lawyers if the gentleman recommended them to you." "this is a very sensible woman," said my guardian. "i hope you will persuade him, mrs. bagnet." "persuade him, sir?" she returned. "lord bless you, no. you don't know george. now, there!" mrs. bagnet left her basket to point him out with both her bare brown hands. "there he stands! as self-willed and as determined a man, in the wrong way, as ever put a human creature under heaven out of patience! you could as soon take up and shoulder an eight and forty pounder by your own strength as turn that man when he has got a thing into his head and fixed it there. why, don't i know him!" cried mrs. bagnet. "don't i know you, george! you don't mean to set up for a new character with me after all these years, i hope?" her friendly indignation had an exemplary effect upon her husband, who shook his head at the trooper several times as a silent recommendation to him to yield. between whiles, mrs. bagnet looked at me; and i understood from the play of her eyes that she wished me to do something, though i did not comprehend what. "but i have given up talking to you, old fellow, years and years," said mrs. bagnet as she blew a little dust off the pickled pork, looking at me again; "and when ladies and gentlemen know you as well as i do, they'll give up talking to you too. if you are not too headstrong to accept of a bit of dinner, here it is." "i accept it with many thanks," returned the trooper. "do you though, indeed?" said mrs. bagnet, continuing to grumble on good-humouredly. "i'm sure i'm surprised at that. i wonder you don't starve in your own way also. it would only be like you. perhaps you'll set your mind upon that next." here she again looked at me, and i now perceived from her glances at the door and at me, by turns, that she wished us to retire and to await her following us outside the prison. communicating this by similar means to my guardian and mr. woodcourt, i rose. "we hope you will think better of it, mr. george," said i, "and we shall come to see you again, trusting to find you more reasonable." "more grateful, miss summerson, you can't find me," he returned. "but more persuadable we can, i hope," said i. "and let me entreat you to consider that the clearing up of this mystery and the discovery of the real perpetrator of this deed may be of the last importance to others besides yourself." he heard me respectfully but without much heeding these words, which i spoke a little turned from him, already on my way to the door; he was observing (this they afterwards told me) my height and figure, which seemed to catch his attention all at once. "'tis curious," said he. "and yet i thought so at the time!" my guardian asked him what he meant. "why, sir," he answered, "when my ill fortune took me to the dead man's staircase on the night of his murder, i saw a shape so like miss summerson's go by me in the dark that i had half a mind to speak to it." for an instant i felt such a shudder as i never felt before or since and hope i shall never feel again. "it came downstairs as i went up," said the trooper, "and crossed the moonlighted window with a loose black mantle on; i noticed a deep fringe to it. however, it has nothing to do with the present subject, excepting that miss summerson looked so like it at the moment that it came into my head." i cannot separate and define the feelings that arose in me after this; it is enough that the vague duty and obligation i had felt upon me from the first of following the investigation was, without my distinctly daring to ask myself any question, increased, and that i was indignantly sure of there being no possibility of a reason for my being afraid. we three went out of the prison and walked up and down at some short distance from the gate, which was in a retired place. we had not waited long when mr. and mrs. bagnet came out too and quickly joined us. there was a tear in each of mrs. bagnet's eyes, and her face was flushed and hurried. "i didn't let george see what i thought about it, you know, miss," was her first remark when she came up, "but he's in a bad way, poor old fellow!" "not with care and prudence and good help," said my guardian. "a gentleman like you ought to know best, sir," returned mrs. bagnet, hurriedly drying her eyes on the hem of her grey cloak, "but i am uneasy for him. he has been so careless and said so much that he never meant. the gentlemen of the juries might not understand him as lignum and me do. and then such a number of circumstances have happened bad for him, and such a number of people will be brought forward to speak against him, and bucket is so deep." "with a second-hand wiolinceller. and said he played the fife. when a boy," mr. bagnet added with great solemnity. "now, i tell you, miss," said mrs. bagnet; "and when i say miss, i mean all! just come into the corner of the wall and i'll tell you!" mrs. bagnet hurried us into a more secluded place and was at first too breathless to proceed, occasioning mr. bagnet to say, "old girl! tell 'em!" "why, then, miss," the old girl proceeded, untying the strings of her bonnet for more air, "you could as soon move dover castle as move george on this point unless you had got a new power to move him with. and i have got it!" "you are a jewel of a woman," said my guardian. "go on!" "now, i tell you, miss," she proceeded, clapping her hands in her hurry and agitation a dozen times in every sentence, "that what he says concerning no relations is all bosh. they don't know of him, but he does know of them. he has said more to me at odd times than to anybody else, and it warn't for nothing that he once spoke to my woolwich about whitening and wrinkling mothers' heads. for fifty pounds he had seen his mother that day. she's alive and must be brought here straight!" instantly mrs. bagnet put some pins into her mouth and began pinning up her skirts all round a little higher than the level of her grey cloak, which she accomplished with surpassing dispatch and dexterity. "lignum," said mrs. bagnet, "you take care of the children, old man, and give me the umbrella! i'm away to lincolnshire to bring that old lady here." "but, bless the woman," cried my guardian with his hand in his pocket, "how is she going? what money has she got?" mrs. bagnet made another application to her skirts and brought forth a leathern purse in which she hastily counted over a few shillings and which she then shut up with perfect satisfaction. "never you mind for me, miss. i'm a soldier's wife and accustomed to travel my own way. lignum, old boy," kissing him, "one for yourself, three for the children. now i'm away into lincolnshire after george's mother!" and she actually set off while we three stood looking at one another lost in amazement. she actually trudged away in her grey cloak at a sturdy pace, and turned the corner, and was gone. "mr. bagnet," said my guardian. "do you mean to let her go in that way?" "can't help it," he returned. "made her way home once from another quarter of the world. with the same grey cloak. and same umbrella. whatever the old girl says, do. do it! whenever the old girl says, i'll do it. she does it." "then she is as honest and genuine as she looks," rejoined my guardian, "and it is impossible to say more for her." "she's colour-sergeant of the nonpareil battalion," said mr. bagnet, looking at us over his shoulder as he went his way also. "and there's not such another. but i never own to it before her. discipline must be maintained." chapter liii the track mr. bucket and his fat forefinger are much in consultation together under existing circumstances. when mr. bucket has a matter of this pressing interest under his consideration, the fat forefinger seems to rise, to the dignity of a familiar demon. he puts it to his ears, and it whispers information; he puts it to his lips, and it enjoins him to secrecy; he rubs it over his nose, and it sharpens his scent; he shakes it before a guilty man, and it charms him to his destruction. the augurs of the detective temple invariably predict that when mr. bucket and that finger are in much conference, a terrible avenger will be heard of before long. otherwise mildly studious in his observation of human nature, on the whole a benignant philosopher not disposed to be severe upon the follies of mankind, mr. bucket pervades a vast number of houses and strolls about an infinity of streets, to outward appearance rather languishing for want of an object. he is in the friendliest condition towards his species and will drink with most of them. he is free with his money, affable in his manners, innocent in his conversation--but through the placid stream of his life there glides an under-current of forefinger. time and place cannot bind mr. bucket. like man in the abstract, he is here to-day and gone to-morrow--but, very unlike man indeed, he is here again the next day. this evening he will be casually looking into the iron extinguishers at the door of sir leicester dedlock's house in town; and to-morrow morning he will be walking on the leads at chesney wold, where erst the old man walked whose ghost is propitiated with a hundred guineas. drawers, desks, pockets, all things belonging to him, mr. bucket examines. a few hours afterwards, he and the roman will be alone together comparing forefingers. it is likely that these occupations are irreconcilable with home enjoyment, but it is certain that mr. bucket at present does not go home. though in general he highly appreciates the society of mrs. bucket--a lady of a natural detective genius, which if it had been improved by professional exercise, might have done great things, but which has paused at the level of a clever amateur--he holds himself aloof from that dear solace. mrs. bucket is dependent on their lodger (fortunately an amiable lady in whom she takes an interest) for companionship and conversation. a great crowd assembles in lincoln's inn fields on the day of the funeral. sir leicester dedlock attends the ceremony in person; strictly speaking, there are only three other human followers, that is to say, lord doodle, william buffy, and the debilitated cousin (thrown in as a make-weight), but the amount of inconsolable carriages is immense. the peerage contributes more four-wheeled affliction than has ever been seen in that neighbourhood. such is the assemblage of armorial bearings on coach panels that the herald's college might be supposed to have lost its father and mother at a blow. the duke of foodle sends a splendid pile of dust and ashes, with silver wheel-boxes, patent axles, all the last improvements, and three bereaved worms, six feet high, holding on behind, in a bunch of woe. all the state coachmen in london seem plunged into mourning; and if that dead old man of the rusty garb be not beyond a taste in horseflesh (which appears impossible), it must be highly gratified this day. quiet among the undertakers and the equipages and the calves of so many legs all steeped in grief, mr. bucket sits concealed in one of the inconsolable carriages and at his ease surveys the crowd through the lattice blinds. he has a keen eye for a crowd--as for what not?--and looking here and there, now from this side of the carriage, now from the other, now up at the house windows, now along the people's heads, nothing escapes him. "and there you are, my partner, eh?" says mr. bucket to himself, apostrophizing mrs. bucket, stationed, by his favour, on the steps of the deceased's house. "and so you are. and so you are! and very well indeed you are looking, mrs. bucket!" the procession has not started yet, but is waiting for the cause of its assemblage to be brought out. mr. bucket, in the foremost emblazoned carriage, uses his two fat forefingers to hold the lattice a hair's breadth open while he looks. and it says a great deal for his attachment, as a husband, that he is still occupied with mrs. b. "there you are, my partner, eh?" he murmuringly repeats. "and our lodger with you. i'm taking notice of you, mrs. bucket; i hope you're all right in your health, my dear!" not another word does mr. bucket say, but sits with most attentive eyes until the sacked depository of noble secrets is brought down--where are all those secrets now? does he keep them yet? did they fly with him on that sudden journey?--and until the procession moves, and mr. bucket's view is changed. after which he composes himself for an easy ride and takes note of the fittings of the carriage in case he should ever find such knowledge useful. contrast enough between mr. tulkinghorn shut up in his dark carriage and mr. bucket shut up in his. between the immeasurable track of space beyond the little wound that has thrown the one into the fixed sleep which jolts so heavily over the stones of the streets, and the narrow track of blood which keeps the other in the watchful state expressed in every hair of his head! but it is all one to both; neither is troubled about that. mr. bucket sits out the procession in his own easy manner and glides from the carriage when the opportunity he has settled with himself arrives. he makes for sir leicester dedlock's, which is at present a sort of home to him, where he comes and goes as he likes at all hours, where he is always welcome and made much of, where he knows the whole establishment, and walks in an atmosphere of mysterious greatness. no knocking or ringing for mr. bucket. he has caused himself to be provided with a key and can pass in at his pleasure. as he is crossing the hall, mercury informs him, "here's another letter for you, mr. bucket, come by post," and gives it him. "another one, eh?" says mr. bucket. if mercury should chance to be possessed by any lingering curiosity as to mr. bucket's letters, that wary person is not the man to gratify it. mr. bucket looks at him as if his face were a vista of some miles in length and he were leisurely contemplating the same. "do you happen to carry a box?" says mr. bucket. unfortunately mercury is no snuff-taker. "could you fetch me a pinch from anywheres?" says mr. bucket. "thankee. it don't matter what it is; i'm not particular as to the kind. thankee!" having leisurely helped himself from a canister borrowed from somebody downstairs for the purpose, and having made a considerable show of tasting it, first with one side of his nose and then with the other, mr. bucket, with much deliberation, pronounces it of the right sort and goes on, letter in hand. now although mr. bucket walks upstairs to the little library within the larger one with the face of a man who receives some scores of letters every day, it happens that much correspondence is not incidental to his life. he is no great scribe, rather handling his pen like the pocket-staff he carries about with him always convenient to his grasp, and discourages correspondence with himself in others as being too artless and direct a way of doing delicate business. further, he often sees damaging letters produced in evidence and has occasion to reflect that it was a green thing to write them. for these reasons he has very little to do with letters, either as sender or receiver. and yet he has received a round half-dozen within the last twenty-four hours. "and this," says mr. bucket, spreading it out on the table, "is in the same hand, and consists of the same two words." what two words? he turns the key in the door, ungirdles his black pocket-book (book of fate to many), lays another letter by it, and reads, boldly written in each, "lady dedlock." "yes, yes," says mr. bucket. "but i could have made the money without this anonymous information." having put the letters in his book of fate and girdled it up again, he unlocks the door just in time to admit his dinner, which is brought upon a goodly tray with a decanter of sherry. mr. bucket frequently observes, in friendly circles where there is no restraint, that he likes a toothful of your fine old brown east inder sherry better than anything you can offer him. consequently he fills and empties his glass with a smack of his lips and is proceeding with his refreshment when an idea enters his mind. mr. bucket softly opens the door of communication between that room and the next and looks in. the library is deserted, and the fire is sinking low. mr. bucket's eye, after taking a pigeon-flight round the room, alights upon a table where letters are usually put as they arrive. several letters for sir leicester are upon it. mr. bucket draws near and examines the directions. "no," he says, "there's none in that hand. it's only me as is written to. i can break it to sir leicester dedlock, baronet, to-morrow." with that he returns to finish his dinner with a good appetite, and after a light nap, is summoned into the drawing-room. sir leicester has received him there these several evenings past to know whether he has anything to report. the debilitated cousin (much exhausted by the funeral) and volumnia are in attendance. mr. bucket makes three distinctly different bows to these three people. a bow of homage to sir leicester, a bow of gallantry to volumnia, and a bow of recognition to the debilitated cousin, to whom it airily says, "you are a swell about town, and you know me, and i know you." having distributed these little specimens of his tact, mr. bucket rubs his hands. "have you anything new to communicate, officer?" inquires sir leicester. "do you wish to hold any conversation with me in private?" "why--not to-night, sir leicester dedlock, baronet." "because my time," pursues sir leicester, "is wholly at your disposal with a view to the vindication of the outraged majesty of the law." mr. bucket coughs and glances at volumnia, rouged and necklaced, as though he would respectfully observe, "i do assure you, you're a pretty creetur. i've seen hundreds worse looking at your time of life, i have indeed." the fair volumnia, not quite unconscious perhaps of the humanizing influence of her charms, pauses in the writing of cocked-hat notes and meditatively adjusts the pearl necklace. mr. bucket prices that decoration in his mind and thinks it as likely as not that volumnia is writing poetry. "if i have not," pursues sir leicester, "in the most emphatic manner, adjured you, officer, to exercise your utmost skill in this atrocious case, i particularly desire to take the present opportunity of rectifying any omission i may have made. let no expense be a consideration. i am prepared to defray all charges. you can incur none in pursuit of the object you have undertaken that i shall hesitate for a moment to bear." mr. bucket made sir leicester's bow again as a response to this liberality. "my mind," sir leicester adds with a generous warmth, "has not, as may be easily supposed, recovered its tone since the late diabolical occurrence. it is not likely ever to recover its tone. but it is full of indignation to-night after undergoing the ordeal of consigning to the tomb the remains of a faithful, a zealous, a devoted adherent." sir leicester's voice trembles and his grey hair stirs upon his head. tears are in his eyes; the best part of his nature is aroused. "i declare," he says, "i solemnly declare that until this crime is discovered and, in the course of justice, punished, i almost feel as if there were a stain upon my name. a gentleman who has devoted a large portion of his life to me, a gentleman who has devoted the last day of his life to me, a gentleman who has constantly sat at my table and slept under my roof, goes from my house to his own, and is struck down within an hour of his leaving my house. i cannot say but that he may have been followed from my house, watched at my house, even first marked because of his association with my house--which may have suggested his possessing greater wealth and being altogether of greater importance than his own retiring demeanour would have indicated. if i cannot with my means and influence and my position bring all the perpetrators of such a crime to light, i fail in the assertion of my respect for that gentleman's memory and of my fidelity towards one who was ever faithful to me." while he makes this protestation with great emotion and earnestness, looking round the room as if he were addressing an assembly, mr. bucket glances at him with an observant gravity in which there might be, but for the audacity of the thought, a touch of compassion. "the ceremony of to-day," continues sir leicester, "strikingly illustrative of the respect in which my deceased friend"--he lays a stress upon the word, for death levels all distinctions--"was held by the flower of the land, has, i say, aggravated the shock i have received from this most horrible and audacious crime. if it were my brother who had committed it, i would not spare him." mr. bucket looks very grave. volumnia remarks of the deceased that he was the trustiest and dearest person! "you must feel it as a deprivation to you, miss," replies mr. bucket soothingly, "no doubt. he was calculated to be a deprivation, i'm sure he was." volumnia gives mr. bucket to understand, in reply, that her sensitive mind is fully made up never to get the better of it as long as she lives, that her nerves are unstrung for ever, and that she has not the least expectation of ever smiling again. meanwhile she folds up a cocked hat for that redoubtable old general at bath, descriptive of her melancholy condition. "it gives a start to a delicate female," says mr. bucket sympathetically, "but it'll wear off." volumnia wishes of all things to know what is doing? whether they are going to convict, or whatever it is, that dreadful soldier? whether he had any accomplices, or whatever the thing is called in the law? and a great deal more to the like artless purpose. "why you see, miss," returns mr. bucket, bringing the finger into persuasive action--and such is his natural gallantry that he had almost said "my dear"--"it ain't easy to answer those questions at the present moment. not at the present moment. i've kept myself on this case, sir leicester dedlock, baronet," whom mr. bucket takes into the conversation in right of his importance, "morning, noon, and night. but for a glass or two of sherry, i don't think i could have had my mind so much upon the stretch as it has been. i could answer your questions, miss, but duty forbids it. sir leicester dedlock, baronet, will very soon be made acquainted with all that has been traced. and i hope that he may find it"--mr. bucket again looks grave--"to his satisfaction." the debilitated cousin only hopes some fler'll be executed--zample. thinks more interest's wanted--get man hanged presentime--than get man place ten thousand a year. hasn't a doubt--zample--far better hang wrong fler than no fler. "you know life, you know, sir," says mr. bucket with a complimentary twinkle of his eye and crook of his finger, "and you can confirm what i've mentioned to this lady. you don't want to be told that from information i have received i have gone to work. you're up to what a lady can't be expected to be up to. lord! especially in your elevated station of society, miss," says mr. bucket, quite reddening at another narrow escape from "my dear." "the officer, volumnia," observes sir leicester, "is faithful to his duty, and perfectly right." mr. bucket murmurs, "glad to have the honour of your approbation, sir leicester dedlock, baronet." "in fact, volumnia," proceeds sir leicester, "it is not holding up a good model for imitation to ask the officer any such questions as you have put to him. he is the best judge of his own responsibility; he acts upon his responsibility. and it does not become us, who assist in making the laws, to impede or interfere with those who carry them into execution. or," says sir leicester somewhat sternly, for volumnia was going to cut in before he had rounded his sentence, "or who vindicate their outraged majesty." volumnia with all humility explains that she had not merely the plea of curiosity to urge (in common with the giddy youth of her sex in general) but that she is perfectly dying with regret and interest for the darling man whose loss they all deplore. "very well, volumnia," returns sir leicester. "then you cannot be too discreet." mr. bucket takes the opportunity of a pause to be heard again. "sir leicester dedlock, baronet, i have no objections to telling this lady, with your leave and among ourselves, that i look upon the case as pretty well complete. it is a beautiful case--a beautiful case--and what little is wanting to complete it, i expect to be able to supply in a few hours." "i am very glad indeed to hear it," says sir leicester. "highly creditable to you." "sir leicester dedlock, baronet," returns mr. bucket very seriously, "i hope it may at one and the same time do me credit and prove satisfactory to all. when i depict it as a beautiful case, you see, miss," mr. bucket goes on, glancing gravely at sir leicester, "i mean from my point of view. as considered from other points of view, such cases will always involve more or less unpleasantness. very strange things comes to our knowledge in families, miss; bless your heart, what you would think to be phenomenons, quite." volumnia, with her innocent little scream, supposes so. "aye, and even in gen-teel families, in high families, in great families," says mr. bucket, again gravely eyeing sir leicester aside. "i have had the honour of being employed in high families before, and you have no idea--come, i'll go so far as to say not even you have any idea, sir," this to the debilitated cousin, "what games goes on!" the cousin, who has been casting sofa-pillows on his head, in a prostration of boredom yawns, "vayli," being the used-up for "very likely." sir leicester, deeming it time to dismiss the officer, here majestically interposes with the words, "very good. thank you!" and also with a wave of his hand, implying not only that there is an end of the discourse, but that if high families fall into low habits they must take the consequences. "you will not forget, officer," he adds with condescension, "that i am at your disposal when you please." mr. bucket (still grave) inquires if to-morrow morning, now, would suit, in case he should be as for'ard as he expects to be. sir leicester replies, "all times are alike to me." mr. bucket makes his three bows and is withdrawing when a forgotten point occurs to him. "might i ask, by the by," he says in a low voice, cautiously returning, "who posted the reward-bill on the staircase." "i ordered it to be put up there," replies sir leicester. "would it be considered a liberty, sir leicester dedlock, baronet, if i was to ask you why?" "not at all. i chose it as a conspicuous part of the house. i think it cannot be too prominently kept before the whole establishment. i wish my people to be impressed with the enormity of the crime, the determination to punish it, and the hopelessness of escape. at the same time, officer, if you in your better knowledge of the subject see any objection--" mr. bucket sees none now; the bill having been put up, had better not be taken down. repeating his three bows he withdraws, closing the door on volumnia's little scream, which is a preliminary to her remarking that that charmingly horrible person is a perfect blue chamber. in his fondness for society and his adaptability to all grades, mr. bucket is presently standing before the hall-fire--bright and warm on the early winter night--admiring mercury. "why, you're six foot two, i suppose?" says mr. bucket. "three," says mercury. "are you so much? but then, you see, you're broad in proportion and don't look it. you're not one of the weak-legged ones, you ain't. was you ever modelled now?" mr. bucket asks, conveying the expression of an artist into the turn of his eye and head. mercury never was modelled. "then you ought to be, you know," says mr. bucket; "and a friend of mine that you'll hear of one day as a royal academy sculptor would stand something handsome to make a drawing of your proportions for the marble. my lady's out, ain't she?" "out to dinner." "goes out pretty well every day, don't she?" "yes." "not to be wondered at!" says mr. bucket. "such a fine woman as her, so handsome and so graceful and so elegant, is like a fresh lemon on a dinner-table, ornamental wherever she goes. was your father in the same way of life as yourself?" answer in the negative. "mine was," says mr. bucket. "my father was first a page, then a footman, then a butler, then a steward, then an inn-keeper. lived universally respected, and died lamented. said with his last breath that he considered service the most honourable part of his career, and so it was. i've a brother in service, and a brother-in-law. my lady a good temper?" mercury replies, "as good as you can expect." "ah!" says mr. bucket. "a little spoilt? a little capricious? lord! what can you anticipate when they're so handsome as that? and we like 'em all the better for it, don't we?" mercury, with his hands in the pockets of his bright peach-blossom small-clothes, stretches his symmetrical silk legs with the air of a man of gallantry and can't deny it. come the roll of wheels and a violent ringing at the bell. "talk of the angels," says mr. bucket. "here she is!" the doors are thrown open, and she passes through the hall. still very pale, she is dressed in slight mourning and wears two beautiful bracelets. either their beauty or the beauty of her arms is particularly attractive to mr. bucket. he looks at them with an eager eye and rattles something in his pocket--halfpence perhaps. noticing him at his distance, she turns an inquiring look on the other mercury who has brought her home. "mr. bucket, my lady." mr. bucket makes a leg and comes forward, passing his familiar demon over the region of his mouth. "are you waiting to see sir leicester?" "no, my lady, i've seen him!" "have you anything to say to me?" "not just at present, my lady." "have you made any new discoveries?" "a few, my lady." this is merely in passing. she scarcely makes a stop, and sweeps upstairs alone. mr. bucket, moving towards the staircase-foot, watches her as she goes up the steps the old man came down to his grave, past murderous groups of statuary repeated with their shadowy weapons on the wall, past the printed bill, which she looks at going by, out of view. "she's a lovely woman, too, she really is," says mr. bucket, coming back to mercury. "don't look quite healthy though." is not quite healthy, mercury informs him. suffers much from headaches. really? that's a pity! walking, mr. bucket would recommend for that. well, she tries walking, mercury rejoins. walks sometimes for two hours when she has them bad. by night, too. "are you sure you're quite so much as six foot three?" asks mr. bucket. "begging your pardon for interrupting you a moment?" not a doubt about it. "you're so well put together that i shouldn't have thought it. but the household troops, though considered fine men, are built so straggling. walks by night, does she? when it's moonlight, though?" oh, yes. when it's moonlight! of course. oh, of course! conversational and acquiescent on both sides. "i suppose you ain't in the habit of walking yourself?" says mr. bucket. "not much time for it, i should say?" besides which, mercury don't like it. prefers carriage exercise. "to be sure," says mr. bucket. "that makes a difference. now i think of it," says mr. bucket, warming his hands and looking pleasantly at the blaze, "she went out walking the very night of this business." "to be sure she did! i let her into the garden over the way." "and left her there. certainly you did. i saw you doing it." "i didn't see you," says mercury. "i was rather in a hurry," returns mr. bucket, "for i was going to visit a aunt of mine that lives at chelsea--next door but two to the old original bun house--ninety year old the old lady is, a single woman, and got a little property. yes, i chanced to be passing at the time. let's see. what time might it be? it wasn't ten." "half-past nine." "you're right. so it was. and if i don't deceive myself, my lady was muffled in a loose black mantle, with a deep fringe to it?" "of course she was." of course she was. mr. bucket must return to a little work he has to get on with upstairs, but he must shake hands with mercury in acknowledgment of his agreeable conversation, and will he--this is all he asks--will he, when he has a leisure half-hour, think of bestowing it on that royal academy sculptor, for the advantage of both parties? chapter liv springing a mine refreshed by sleep, mr. bucket rises betimes in the morning and prepares for a field-day. smartened up by the aid of a clean shirt and a wet hairbrush, with which instrument, on occasions of ceremony, he lubricates such thin locks as remain to him after his life of severe study, mr. bucket lays in a breakfast of two mutton chops as a foundation to work upon, together with tea, eggs, toast, and marmalade on a corresponding scale. having much enjoyed these strengthening matters and having held subtle conference with his familiar demon, he confidently instructs mercury "just to mention quietly to sir leicester dedlock, baronet, that whenever he's ready for me, i'm ready for him." a gracious message being returned that sir leicester will expedite his dressing and join mr. bucket in the library within ten minutes, mr. bucket repairs to that apartment and stands before the fire with his finger on his chin, looking at the blazing coals. thoughtful mr. bucket is, as a man may be with weighty work to do, but composed, sure, confident. from the expression of his face he might be a famous whist-player for a large stake--say a hundred guineas certain--with the game in his hand, but with a high reputation involved in his playing his hand out to the last card in a masterly way. not in the least anxious or disturbed is mr. bucket when sir leicester appears, but he eyes the baronet aside as he comes slowly to his easy-chair with that observant gravity of yesterday in which there might have been yesterday, but for the audacity of the idea, a touch of compassion. "i am sorry to have kept you waiting, officer, but i am rather later than my usual hour this morning. i am not well. the agitation and the indignation from which i have recently suffered have been too much for me. i am subject to--gout"--sir leicester was going to say indisposition and would have said it to anybody else, but mr. bucket palpably knows all about it--"and recent circumstances have brought it on." as he takes his seat with some difficulty and with an air of pain, mr. bucket draws a little nearer, standing with one of his large hands on the library-table. "i am not aware, officer," sir leicester observes; raising his eyes to his face, "whether you wish us to be alone, but that is entirely as you please. if you do, well and good. if not, miss dedlock would be interested--" "why, sir leicester dedlock, baronet," returns mr. bucket with his head persuasively on one side and his forefinger pendant at one ear like an earring, "we can't be too private just at present. you will presently see that we can't be too private. a lady, under the circumstances, and especially in miss dedlock's elevated station of society, can't but be agreeable to me, but speaking without a view to myself, i will take the liberty of assuring you that i know we can't be too private." "that is enough." "so much so, sir leicester dedlock, baronet," mr. bucket resumes, "that i was on the point of asking your permission to turn the key in the door." "by all means." mr. bucket skilfully and softly takes that precaution, stooping on his knee for a moment from mere force of habit so to adjust the key in the lock as that no one shall peep in from the outerside. "sir leicester dedlock, baronet, i mentioned yesterday evening that i wanted but a very little to complete this case. i have now completed it and collected proof against the person who did this crime." "against the soldier?" "no, sir leicester dedlock; not the soldier." sir leicester looks astounded and inquires, "is the man in custody?" mr. bucket tells him, after a pause, "it was a woman." sir leicester leans back in his chair, and breathlessly ejaculates, "good heaven!" "now, sir leicester dedlock, baronet," mr. bucket begins, standing over him with one hand spread out on the library-table and the forefinger of the other in impressive use, "it's my duty to prepare you for a train of circumstances that may, and i go so far as to say that will, give you a shock. but sir leicester dedlock, baronet, you are a gentleman, and i know what a gentleman is and what a gentleman is capable of. a gentleman can bear a shock when it must come, boldly and steadily. a gentleman can make up his mind to stand up against almost any blow. why, take yourself, sir leicester dedlock, baronet. if there's a blow to be inflicted on you, you naturally think of your family. you ask yourself, how would all them ancestors of yours, away to julius caesar--not to go beyond him at present--have borne that blow; you remember scores of them that would have borne it well; and you bear it well on their accounts, and to maintain the family credit. that's the way you argue, and that's the way you act, sir leicester dedlock, baronet." sir leicester, leaning back in his chair and grasping the elbows, sits looking at him with a stony face. "now, sir leicester dedlock," proceeds mr. bucket, "thus preparing you, let me beg of you not to trouble your mind for a moment as to anything having come to my knowledge. i know so much about so many characters, high and low, that a piece of information more or less don't signify a straw. i don't suppose there's a move on the board that would surprise me, and as to this or that move having taken place, why my knowing it is no odds at all, any possible move whatever (provided it's in a wrong direction) being a probable move according to my experience. therefore, what i say to you, sir leicester dedlock, baronet, is, don't you go and let yourself be put out of the way because of my knowing anything of your family affairs." "i thank you for your preparation," returns sir leicester after a silence, without moving hand, foot, or feature, "which i hope is not necessary; though i give it credit for being well intended. be so good as to go on. also"--sir leicester seems to shrink in the shadow of his figure--"also, to take a seat, if you have no objection." none at all. mr. bucket brings a chair and diminishes his shadow. "now, sir leicester dedlock, baronet, with this short preface i come to the point. lady dedlock--" sir leicester raises himself in his seat and stares at him fiercely. mr. bucket brings the finger into play as an emollient. "lady dedlock, you see she's universally admired. that's what her ladyship is; she's universally admired," says mr. bucket. "i would greatly prefer, officer," sir leicester returns stiffly, "my lady's name being entirely omitted from this discussion." "so would i, sir leicester dedlock, baronet, but--it's impossible." "impossible?" mr. bucket shakes his relentless head. "sir leicester dedlock, baronet, it's altogether impossible. what i have got to say is about her ladyship. she is the pivot it all turns on." "officer," retorts sir leicester with a fiery eye and a quivering lip, "you know your duty. do your duty, but be careful not to overstep it. i would not suffer it. i would not endure it. you bring my lady's name into this communication upon your responsibility--upon your responsibility. my lady's name is not a name for common persons to trifle with!" "sir leicester dedlock, baronet, i say what i must say, and no more." "i hope it may prove so. very well. go on. go on, sir!" glancing at the angry eyes which now avoid him and at the angry figure trembling from head to foot, yet striving to be still, mr. bucket feels his way with his forefinger and in a low voice proceeds. "sir leicester dedlock, baronet, it becomes my duty to tell you that the deceased mr. tulkinghorn long entertained mistrusts and suspicions of lady dedlock." "if he had dared to breathe them to me, sir--which he never did--i would have killed him myself!" exclaims sir leicester, striking his hand upon the table. but in the very heat and fury of the act he stops, fixed by the knowing eyes of mr. bucket, whose forefinger is slowly going and who, with mingled confidence and patience, shakes his head. "sir leicester dedlock, the deceased mr. tulkinghorn was deep and close, and what he fully had in his mind in the very beginning i can't quite take upon myself to say. but i know from his lips that he long ago suspected lady dedlock of having discovered, through the sight of some handwriting--in this very house, and when you yourself, sir leicester dedlock, were present--the existence, in great poverty, of a certain person who had been her lover before you courted her and who ought to have been her husband." mr. bucket stops and deliberately repeats, "ought to have been her husband, not a doubt about it. i know from his lips that when that person soon afterwards died, he suspected lady dedlock of visiting his wretched lodging and his wretched grave, alone and in secret. i know from my own inquiries and through my eyes and ears that lady dedlock did make such visit in the dress of her own maid, for the deceased mr. tulkinghorn employed me to reckon up her ladyship--if you'll excuse my making use of the term we commonly employ--and i reckoned her up, so far, completely. i confronted the maid in the chambers in lincoln's inn fields with a witness who had been lady dedlock's guide, and there couldn't be the shadow of a doubt that she had worn the young woman's dress, unknown to her. sir leicester dedlock, baronet, i did endeavour to pave the way a little towards these unpleasant disclosures yesterday by saying that very strange things happened even in high families sometimes. all this, and more, has happened in your own family, and to and through your own lady. it's my belief that the deceased mr. tulkinghorn followed up these inquiries to the hour of his death and that he and lady dedlock even had bad blood between them upon the matter that very night. now, only you put that to lady dedlock, sir leicester dedlock, baronet, and ask her ladyship whether, even after he had left here, she didn't go down to his chambers with the intention of saying something further to him, dressed in a loose black mantle with a deep fringe to it." sir leicester sits like a statue, gazing at the cruel finger that is probing the life-blood of his heart. "you put that to her ladyship, sir leicester dedlock, baronet, from me, inspector bucket of the detective. and if her ladyship makes any difficulty about admitting of it, you tell her that it's no use, that inspector bucket knows it and knows that she passed the soldier as you called him (though he's not in the army now) and knows that she knows she passed him on the staircase. now, sir leicester dedlock, baronet, why do i relate all this?" sir leicester, who has covered his face with his hands, uttering a single groan, requests him to pause for a moment. by and by he takes his hands away, and so preserves his dignity and outward calmness, though there is no more colour in his face than in his white hair, that mr. bucket is a little awed by him. something frozen and fixed is upon his manner, over and above its usual shell of haughtiness, and mr. bucket soon detects an unusual slowness in his speech, with now and then a curious trouble in beginning, which occasions him to utter inarticulate sounds. with such sounds he now breaks silence, soon, however, controlling himself to say that he does not comprehend why a gentleman so faithful and zealous as the late mr. tulkinghorn should have communicated to him nothing of this painful, this distressing, this unlooked-for, this overwhelming, this incredible intelligence. "again, sir leicester dedlock, baronet," returns mr. bucket, "put it to her ladyship to clear that up. put it to her ladyship, if you think it right, from inspector bucket of the detective. you'll find, or i'm much mistaken, that the deceased mr. tulkinghorn had the intention of communicating the whole to you as soon as he considered it ripe, and further, that he had given her ladyship so to understand. why, he might have been going to reveal it the very morning when i examined the body! you don't know what i'm going to say and do five minutes from this present time, sir leicester dedlock, baronet; and supposing i was to be picked off now, you might wonder why i hadn't done it, don't you see?" true. sir leicester, avoiding, with some trouble those obtrusive sounds, says, "true." at this juncture a considerable noise of voices is heard in the hall. mr. bucket, after listening, goes to the library-door, softly unlocks and opens it, and listens again. then he draws in his head and whispers hurriedly but composedly, "sir leicester dedlock, baronet, this unfortunate family affair has taken air, as i expected it might, the deceased mr. tulkinghorn being cut down so sudden. the chance to hush it is to let in these people now in a wrangle with your footmen. would you mind sitting quiet--on the family account--while i reckon 'em up? and would you just throw in a nod when i seem to ask you for it?" sir leicester indistinctly answers, "officer. the best you can, the best you can!" and mr. bucket, with a nod and a sagacious crook of the forefinger, slips down into the hall, where the voices quickly die away. he is not long in returning; a few paces ahead of mercury and a brother deity also powdered and in peach-blossomed smalls, who bear between them a chair in which is an incapable old man. another man and two women come behind. directing the pitching of the chair in an affable and easy manner, mr. bucket dismisses the mercuries and locks the door again. sir leicester looks on at this invasion of the sacred precincts with an icy stare. "now, perhaps you may know me, ladies and gentlemen," says mr. bucket in a confidential voice. "i am inspector bucket of the detective, i am; and this," producing the tip of his convenient little staff from his breast-pocket, "is my authority. now, you wanted to see sir leicester dedlock, baronet. well! you do see him, and mind you, it ain't every one as is admitted to that honour. your name, old gentleman, is smallweed; that's what your name is; i know it well." "well, and you never heard any harm of it!" cries mr. smallweed in a shrill loud voice. "you don't happen to know why they killed the pig, do you?" retorts mr. bucket with a steadfast look, but without loss of temper. "no!" "why, they killed him," says mr. bucket, "on account of his having so much cheek. don't you get into the same position, because it isn't worthy of you. you ain't in the habit of conversing with a deaf person, are you?" "yes," snarls mr. smallweed, "my wife's deaf." "that accounts for your pitching your voice so high. but as she ain't here; just pitch it an octave or two lower, will you, and i'll not only be obliged to you, but it'll do you more credit," says mr. bucket. "this other gentleman is in the preaching line, i think?" "name of chadband," mr. smallweed puts in, speaking henceforth in a much lower key. "once had a friend and brother serjeant of the same name," says mr. bucket, offering his hand, "and consequently feel a liking for it. mrs. chadband, no doubt?" "and mrs. snagsby," mr. smallweed introduces. "husband a law-stationer and a friend of my own," says mr. bucket. "love him like a brother! now, what's up?" "do you mean what business have we come upon?" mr. smallweed asks, a little dashed by the suddenness of this turn. "ah! you know what i mean. let us hear what it's all about in presence of sir leicester dedlock, baronet. come." mr. smallweed, beckoning mr. chadband, takes a moment's counsel with him in a whisper. mr. chadband, expressing a considerable amount of oil from the pores of his forehead and the palms of his hands, says aloud, "yes. you first!" and retires to his former place. "i was the client and friend of mr. tulkinghorn," pipes grandfather smallweed then; "i did business with him. i was useful to him, and he was useful to me. krook, dead and gone, was my brother-in-law. he was own brother to a brimstone magpie--leastways mrs. smallweed. i come into krook's property. i examined all his papers and all his effects. they was all dug out under my eyes. there was a bundle of letters belonging to a dead and gone lodger as was hid away at the back of a shelf in the side of lady jane's bed--his cat's bed. he hid all manner of things away, everywheres. mr. tulkinghorn wanted 'em and got 'em, but i looked 'em over first. i'm a man of business, and i took a squint at 'em. they was letters from the lodger's sweetheart, and she signed honoria. dear me, that's not a common name, honoria, is it? there's no lady in this house that signs honoria is there? oh, no, i don't think so! oh, no, i don't think so! and not in the same hand, perhaps? oh, no, i don't think so!" here mr. smallweed, seized with a fit of coughing in the midst of his triumph, breaks off to ejaculate, "oh, dear me! oh, lord! i'm shaken all to pieces!" "now, when you're ready," says mr. bucket after awaiting his recovery, "to come to anything that concerns sir leicester dedlock, baronet, here the gentleman sits, you know." "haven't i come to it, mr. bucket?" cries grandfather smallweed. "isn't the gentleman concerned yet? not with captain hawdon, and his ever affectionate honoria, and their child into the bargain? come, then, i want to know where those letters are. that concerns me, if it don't concern sir leicester dedlock. i will know where they are. i won't have 'em disappear so quietly. i handed 'em over to my friend and solicitor, mr. tulkinghorn, not to anybody else." "why, he paid you for them, you know, and handsome too," says mr. bucket. "i don't care for that. i want to know who's got 'em. and i tell you what we want--what we all here want, mr. bucket. we want more painstaking and search-making into this murder. we know where the interest and the motive was, and you have not done enough. if george the vagabond dragoon had any hand in it, he was only an accomplice, and was set on. you know what i mean as well as any man." "now i tell you what," says mr. bucket, instantaneously altering his manner, coming close to him, and communicating an extraordinary fascination to the forefinger, "i am damned if i am a-going to have my case spoilt, or interfered with, or anticipated by so much as half a second of time by any human being in creation. you want more painstaking and search-making! you do? do you see this hand, and do you think that i don't know the right time to stretch it out and put it on the arm that fired that shot?" such is the dread power of the man, and so terribly evident it is that he makes no idle boast, that mr. smallweed begins to apologize. mr. bucket, dismissing his sudden anger, checks him. "the advice i give you is, don't you trouble your head about the murder. that's my affair. you keep half an eye on the newspapers, and i shouldn't wonder if you was to read something about it before long, if you look sharp. i know my business, and that's all i've got to say to you on that subject. now about those letters. you want to know who's got 'em. i don't mind telling you. i have got 'em. is that the packet?" mr. smallweed looks, with greedy eyes, at the little bundle mr. bucket produces from a mysterious part of his coat, and identifies it as the same. "what have you got to say next?" asks mr. bucket. "now, don't open your mouth too wide, because you don't look handsome when you do it." "i want five hundred pound." "no, you don't; you mean fifty," says mr. bucket humorously. it appears, however, that mr. smallweed means five hundred. "that is, i am deputed by sir leicester dedlock, baronet, to consider (without admitting or promising anything) this bit of business," says mr. bucket--sir leicester mechanically bows his head--"and you ask me to consider a proposal of five hundred pounds. why, it's an unreasonable proposal! two fifty would be bad enough, but better than that. hadn't you better say two fifty?" mr. smallweed is quite clear that he had better not. "then," says mr. bucket, "let's hear mr. chadband. lord! many a time i've heard my old fellow-serjeant of that name; and a moderate man he was in all respects, as ever i come across!" thus invited, mr. chadband steps forth, and after a little sleek smiling and a little oil-grinding with the palms of his hands, delivers himself as follows, "my friends, we are now--rachael, my wife, and i--in the mansions of the rich and great. why are we now in the mansions of the rich and great, my friends? is it because we are invited? because we are bidden to feast with them, because we are bidden to rejoice with them, because we are bidden to play the lute with them, because we are bidden to dance with them? no. then why are we here, my friends? air we in possession of a sinful secret, and do we require corn, and wine, and oil, or what is much the same thing, money, for the keeping thereof? probably so, my friends." "you're a man of business, you are," returns mr. bucket, very attentive, "and consequently you're going on to mention what the nature of your secret is. you are right. you couldn't do better." "let us then, my brother, in a spirit of love," says mr. chadband with a cunning eye, "proceed unto it. rachael, my wife, advance!" mrs. chadband, more than ready, so advances as to jostle her husband into the background and confronts mr. bucket with a hard, frowning smile. "since you want to know what we know," says she, "i'll tell you. i helped to bring up miss hawdon, her ladyship's daughter. i was in the service of her ladyship's sister, who was very sensitive to the disgrace her ladyship brought upon her, and gave out, even to her ladyship, that the child was dead--she was very nearly so--when she was born. but she's alive, and i know her." with these words, and a laugh, and laying a bitter stress on the word "ladyship," mrs. chadband folds her arms and looks implacably at mr. bucket. "i suppose now," returns that officer, "you will be expecting a twenty-pound note or a present of about that figure?" mrs. chadband merely laughs and contemptuously tells him he can "offer" twenty pence. "my friend the law-stationer's good lady, over there," says mr. bucket, luring mrs. snagsby forward with the finger. "what may your game be, ma'am?" mrs. snagsby is at first prevented, by tears and lamentations, from stating the nature of her game, but by degrees it confusedly comes to light that she is a woman overwhelmed with injuries and wrongs, whom mr. snagsby has habitually deceived, abandoned, and sought to keep in darkness, and whose chief comfort, under her afflictions, has been the sympathy of the late mr. tulkinghorn, who showed so much commiseration for her on one occasion of his calling in cook's court in the absence of her perjured husband that she has of late habitually carried to him all her woes. everybody it appears, the present company excepted, has plotted against mrs. snagsby's peace. there is mr. guppy, clerk to kenge and carboy, who was at first as open as the sun at noon, but who suddenly shut up as close as midnight, under the influence--no doubt--of mr. snagsby's suborning and tampering. there is mr. weevle, friend of mr. guppy, who lived mysteriously up a court, owing to the like coherent causes. there was krook, deceased; there was nimrod, deceased; and there was jo, deceased; and they were "all in it." in what, mrs. snagsby does not with particularity express, but she knows that jo was mr. snagsby's son, "as well as if a trumpet had spoken it," and she followed mr. snagsby when he went on his last visit to the boy, and if he was not his son why did he go? the one occupation of her life has been, for some time back, to follow mr. snagsby to and fro, and up and down, and to piece suspicious circumstances together--and every circumstance that has happened has been most suspicious; and in this way she has pursued her object of detecting and confounding her false husband, night and day. thus did it come to pass that she brought the chadbands and mr. tulkinghorn together, and conferred with mr. tulkinghorn on the change in mr. guppy, and helped to turn up the circumstances in which the present company are interested, casually, by the wayside, being still and ever on the great high road that is to terminate in mr. snagsby's full exposure and a matrimonial separation. all this, mrs. snagsby, as an injured woman, and the friend of mrs. chadband, and the follower of mr. chadband, and the mourner of the late mr. tulkinghorn, is here to certify under the seal of confidence, with every possible confusion and involvement possible and impossible, having no pecuniary motive whatever, no scheme or project but the one mentioned, and bringing here, and taking everywhere, her own dense atmosphere of dust, arising from the ceaseless working of her mill of jealousy. while this exordium is in hand--and it takes some time--mr. bucket, who has seen through the transparency of mrs. snagsby's vinegar at a glance, confers with his familiar demon and bestows his shrewd attention on the chadbands and mr. smallweed. sir leicester dedlock remains immovable, with the same icy surface upon him, except that he once or twice looks towards mr. bucket, as relying on that officer alone of all mankind. "very good," says mr. bucket. "now i understand you, you know, and being deputed by sir leicester dedlock, baronet, to look into this little matter," again sir leicester mechanically bows in confirmation of the statement, "can give it my fair and full attention. now i won't allude to conspiring to extort money or anything of that sort, because we are men and women of the world here, and our object is to make things pleasant. but i tell you what i do wonder at; i am surprised that you should think of making a noise below in the hall. it was so opposed to your interests. that's what i look at." "we wanted to get in," pleads mr. smallweed. "why, of course you wanted to get in," mr. bucket asserts with cheerfulness; "but for a old gentleman at your time of life--what i call truly venerable, mind you!--with his wits sharpened, as i have no doubt they are, by the loss of the use of his limbs, which occasions all his animation to mount up into his head, not to consider that if he don't keep such a business as the present as close as possible it can't be worth a mag to him, is so curious! you see your temper got the better of you; that's where you lost ground," says mr. bucket in an argumentative and friendly way. "i only said i wouldn't go without one of the servants came up to sir leicester dedlock," returns mr. smallweed. "that's it! that's where your temper got the better of you. now, you keep it under another time and you'll make money by it. shall i ring for them to carry you down?" "when are we to hear more of this?" mrs. chadband sternly demands. "bless your heart for a true woman! always curious, your delightful sex is!" replies mr. bucket with gallantry. "i shall have the pleasure of giving you a call to-morrow or next day--not forgetting mr. smallweed and his proposal of two fifty." "five hundred!" exclaims mr. smallweed. "all right! nominally five hundred." mr. bucket has his hand on the bell-rope. "shall i wish you good day for the present on the part of myself and the gentleman of the house?" he asks in an insinuating tone. nobody having the hardihood to object to his doing so, he does it, and the party retire as they came up. mr. bucket follows them to the door, and returning, says with an air of serious business, "sir leicester dedlock, baronet, it's for you to consider whether or not to buy this up. i should recommend, on the whole, it's being bought up myself; and i think it may be bought pretty cheap. you see, that little pickled cowcumber of a mrs. snagsby has been used by all sides of the speculation and has done a deal more harm in bringing odds and ends together than if she had meant it. mr. tulkinghorn, deceased, he held all these horses in his hand and could have drove 'em his own way, i haven't a doubt; but he was fetched off the box head-foremost, and now they have got their legs over the traces, and are all dragging and pulling their own ways. so it is, and such is life. the cat's away, and the mice they play; the frost breaks up, and the water runs. now, with regard to the party to be apprehended." sir leicester seems to wake, though his eyes have been wide open, and he looks intently at mr. bucket as mr. bucket refers to his watch. "the party to be apprehended is now in this house," proceeds mr. bucket, putting up his watch with a steady hand and with rising spirits, "and i'm about to take her into custody in your presence. sir leicester dedlock, baronet, don't you say a word nor yet stir. there'll be no noise and no disturbance at all. i'll come back in the course of the evening, if agreeable to you, and endeavour to meet your wishes respecting this unfortunate family matter and the nobbiest way of keeping it quiet. now, sir leicester dedlock, baronet, don't you be nervous on account of the apprehension at present coming off. you shall see the whole case clear, from first to last." mr. bucket rings, goes to the door, briefly whispers mercury, shuts the door, and stands behind it with his arms folded. after a suspense of a minute or two the door slowly opens and a frenchwoman enters. mademoiselle hortense. the moment she is in the room mr. bucket claps the door to and puts his back against it. the suddenness of the noise occasions her to turn, and then for the first time she sees sir leicester dedlock in his chair. "i ask you pardon," she mutters hurriedly. "they tell me there was no one here." her step towards the door brings her front to front with mr. bucket. suddenly a spasm shoots across her face and she turns deadly pale. "this is my lodger, sir leicester dedlock," says mr. bucket, nodding at her. "this foreign young woman has been my lodger for some weeks back." "what do sir leicester care for that, you think, my angel?" returns mademoiselle in a jocular strain. "why, my angel," returns mr. bucket, "we shall see." mademoiselle hortense eyes him with a scowl upon her tight face, which gradually changes into a smile of scorn, "you are very mysterieuse. are you drunk?" "tolerable sober, my angel," returns mr. bucket. "i come from arriving at this so detestable house with your wife. your wife have left me since some minutes. they tell me downstairs that your wife is here. i come here, and your wife is not here. what is the intention of this fool's play, say then?" mademoiselle demands, with her arms composedly crossed, but with something in her dark cheek beating like a clock. mr. bucket merely shakes the finger at her. "ah, my god, you are an unhappy idiot!" cries mademoiselle with a toss of her head and a laugh. "leave me to pass downstairs, great pig." with a stamp of her foot and a menace. "now, mademoiselle," says mr. bucket in a cool determined way, "you go and sit down upon that sofy." "i will not sit down upon nothing," she replies with a shower of nods. "now, mademoiselle," repeats mr. bucket, making no demonstration except with the finger, "you sit down upon that sofy." "why?" "because i take you into custody on a charge of murder, and you don't need to be told it. now, i want to be polite to one of your sex and a foreigner if i can. if i can't, i must be rough, and there's rougher ones outside. what i am to be depends on you. so i recommend you, as a friend, afore another half a blessed moment has passed over your head, to go and sit down upon that sofy." mademoiselle complies, saying in a concentrated voice while that something in her cheek beats fast and hard, "you are a devil." "now, you see," mr. bucket proceeds approvingly, "you're comfortable and conducting yourself as i should expect a foreign young woman of your sense to do. so i'll give you a piece of advice, and it's this, don't you talk too much. you're not expected to say anything here, and you can't keep too quiet a tongue in your head. in short, the less you parlay, the better, you know." mr. bucket is very complacent over this french explanation. mademoiselle, with that tigerish expansion of the mouth and her black eyes darting fire upon him, sits upright on the sofa in a rigid state, with her hands clenched--and her feet too, one might suppose--muttering, "oh, you bucket, you are a devil!" "now, sir leicester dedlock, baronet," says mr. bucket, and from this time forth the finger never rests, "this young woman, my lodger, was her ladyship's maid at the time i have mentioned to you; and this young woman, besides being extraordinary vehement and passionate against her ladyship after being discharged--" "lie!" cries mademoiselle. "i discharge myself." "now, why don't you take my advice?" returns mr. bucket in an impressive, almost in an imploring, tone. "i'm surprised at the indiscreetness you commit. you'll say something that'll be used against you, you know. you're sure to come to it. never you mind what i say till it's given in evidence. it is not addressed to you." "discharge, too," cries mademoiselle furiously, "by her ladyship! eh, my faith, a pretty ladyship! why, i r-r-r-ruin my character by remaining with a ladyship so infame!" "upon my soul i wonder at you!" mr. bucket remonstrates. "i thought the french were a polite nation, i did, really. yet to hear a female going on like that before sir leicester dedlock, baronet!" "he is a poor abused!" cries mademoiselle. "i spit upon his house, upon his name, upon his imbecility," all of which she makes the carpet represent. "oh, that he is a great man! oh, yes, superb! oh, heaven! bah!" "well, sir leicester dedlock," proceeds mr. bucket, "this intemperate foreigner also angrily took it into her head that she had established a claim upon mr. tulkinghorn, deceased, by attending on the occasion i told you of at his chambers, though she was liberally paid for her time and trouble." "lie!" cries mademoiselle. "i ref-use his money all togezzer." "if you will parlay, you know," says mr. bucket parenthetically, "you must take the consequences. now, whether she became my lodger, sir leicester dedlock, with any deliberate intention then of doing this deed and blinding me, i give no opinion on; but she lived in my house in that capacity at the time that she was hovering about the chambers of the deceased mr. tulkinghorn with a view to a wrangle, and likewise persecuting and half frightening the life out of an unfortunate stationer." "lie!" cries mademoiselle. "all lie!" "the murder was committed, sir leicester dedlock, baronet, and you know under what circumstances. now, i beg of you to follow me close with your attention for a minute or two. i was sent for, and the case was entrusted to me. i examined the place, and the body, and the papers, and everything. from information i received (from a clerk in the same house) i took george into custody as having been seen hanging about there on the night, and at very nigh the time of the murder, also as having been overheard in high words with the deceased on former occasions--even threatening him, as the witness made out. if you ask me, sir leicester dedlock, whether from the first i believed george to be the murderer, i tell you candidly no, but he might be, notwithstanding, and there was enough against him to make it my duty to take him and get him kept under remand. now, observe!" as mr. bucket bends forward in some excitement--for him--and inaugurates what he is going to say with one ghostly beat of his forefinger in the air, mademoiselle hortense fixes her black eyes upon him with a dark frown and sets her dry lips closely and firmly together. "i went home, sir leicester dedlock, baronet, at night and found this young woman having supper with my wife, mrs. bucket. she had made a mighty show of being fond of mrs. bucket from her first offering herself as our lodger, but that night she made more than ever--in fact, overdid it. likewise she overdid her respect, and all that, for the lamented memory of the deceased mr. tulkinghorn. by the living lord it flashed upon me, as i sat opposite to her at the table and saw her with a knife in her hand, that she had done it!" mademoiselle is hardly audible in straining through her teeth and lips the words, "you are a devil." "now where," pursues mr. bucket, "had she been on the night of the murder? she had been to the theayter. (she really was there, i have since found, both before the deed and after it.) i knew i had an artful customer to deal with and that proof would be very difficult; and i laid a trap for her--such a trap as i never laid yet, and such a venture as i never made yet. i worked it out in my mind while i was talking to her at supper. when i went upstairs to bed, our house being small and this young woman's ears sharp, i stuffed the sheet into mrs. bucket's mouth that she shouldn't say a word of surprise and told her all about it. my dear, don't you give your mind to that again, or i shall link your feet together at the ankles." mr. bucket, breaking off, has made a noiseless descent upon mademoiselle and laid his heavy hand upon her shoulder. "what is the matter with you now?" she asks him. "don't you think any more," returns mr. bucket with admonitory finger, "of throwing yourself out of window. that's what's the matter with me. come! just take my arm. you needn't get up; i'll sit down by you. now take my arm, will you? i'm a married man, you know; you're acquainted with my wife. just take my arm." vainly endeavouring to moisten those dry lips, with a painful sound she struggles with herself and complies. "now we're all right again. sir leicester dedlock, baronet, this case could never have been the case it is but for mrs. bucket, who is a woman in fifty thousand--in a hundred and fifty thousand! to throw this young woman off her guard, i have never set foot in our house since, though i've communicated with mrs. bucket in the baker's loaves and in the milk as often as required. my whispered words to mrs. bucket when she had the sheet in her mouth were, 'my dear, can you throw her off continually with natural accounts of my suspicions against george, and this, and that, and t'other? can you do without rest and keep watch upon her night and day? can you undertake to say, 'she shall do nothing without my knowledge, she shall be my prisoner without suspecting it, she shall no more escape from me than from death, and her life shall be my life, and her soul my soul, till i have got her, if she did this murder?' mrs. bucket says to me, as well as she could speak on account of the sheet, 'bucket, i can!' and she has acted up to it glorious!" "lies!" mademoiselle interposes. "all lies, my friend!" "sir leicester dedlock, baronet, how did my calculations come out under these circumstances? when i calculated that this impetuous young woman would overdo it in new directions, was i wrong or right? i was right. what does she try to do? don't let it give you a turn? to throw the murder on her ladyship." sir leicester rises from his chair and staggers down again. "and she got encouragement in it from hearing that i was always here, which was done a-purpose. now, open that pocket-book of mine, sir leicester dedlock, if i may take the liberty of throwing it towards you, and look at the letters sent to me, each with the two words 'lady dedlock' in it. open the one directed to yourself, which i stopped this very morning, and read the three words 'lady dedlock, murderess' in it. these letters have been falling about like a shower of lady-birds. what do you say now to mrs. bucket, from her spy-place having seen them all 'written by this young woman? what do you say to mrs. bucket having, within this half-hour, secured the corresponding ink and paper, fellow half-sheets and what not? what do you say to mrs. bucket having watched the posting of 'em every one by this young woman, sir leicester dedlock, baronet?" mr. bucket asks, triumphant in his admiration of his lady's genius. two things are especially observable as mr. bucket proceeds to a conclusion. first, that he seems imperceptibly to establish a dreadful right of property in mademoiselle. secondly, that the very atmosphere she breathes seems to narrow and contract about her as if a close net or a pall were being drawn nearer and yet nearer around her breathless figure. "there is no doubt that her ladyship was on the spot at the eventful period," says mr. bucket, "and my foreign friend here saw her, i believe, from the upper part of the staircase. her ladyship and george and my foreign friend were all pretty close on one another's heels. but that don't signify any more, so i'll not go into it. i found the wadding of the pistol with which the deceased mr. tulkinghorn was shot. it was a bit of the printed description of your house at chesney wold. not much in that, you'll say, sir leicester dedlock, baronet. no. but when my foreign friend here is so thoroughly off her guard as to think it a safe time to tear up the rest of that leaf, and when mrs. bucket puts the pieces together and finds the wadding wanting, it begins to look like queer street." "these are very long lies," mademoiselle interposes. "you prose great deal. is it that you have almost all finished, or are you speaking always?" "sir leicester dedlock, baronet," proceeds mr. bucket, who delights in a full title and does violence to himself when he dispenses with any fragment of it, "the last point in the case which i am now going to mention shows the necessity of patience in our business, and never doing a thing in a hurry. i watched this young woman yesterday without her knowledge when she was looking at the funeral, in company with my wife, who planned to take her there; and i had so much to convict her, and i saw such an expression in her face, and my mind so rose against her malice towards her ladyship, and the time was altogether such a time for bringing down what you may call retribution upon her, that if i had been a younger hand with less experience, i should have taken her, certain. equally, last night, when her ladyship, as is so universally admired i am sure, come home looking--why, lord, a man might almost say like venus rising from the ocean--it was so unpleasant and inconsistent to think of her being charged with a murder of which she was innocent that i felt quite to want to put an end to the job. what should i have lost? sir leicester dedlock, baronet, i should have lost the weapon. my prisoner here proposed to mrs. bucket, after the departure of the funeral, that they should go per bus a little ways into the country and take tea at a very decent house of entertainment. now, near that house of entertainment there's a piece of water. at tea, my prisoner got up to fetch her pocket handkercher from the bedroom where the bonnets was; she was rather a long time gone and came back a little out of wind. as soon as they came home this was reported to me by mrs. bucket, along with her observations and suspicions. i had the piece of water dragged by moonlight, in presence of a couple of our men, and the pocket pistol was brought up before it had been there half-a-dozen hours. now, my dear, put your arm a little further through mine, and hold it steady, and i shan't hurt you!" in a trice mr. bucket snaps a handcuff on her wrist. "that's one," says mr. bucket. "now the other, darling. two, and all told!" he rises; she rises too. "where," she asks him, darkening her large eyes until their drooping lids almost conceal them--and yet they stare, "where is your false, your treacherous, and cursed wife?" "she's gone forrard to the police office," returns mr. bucket. "you'll see her there, my dear." "i would like to kiss her!" exclaims mademoiselle hortense, panting tigress-like. "you'd bite her, i suspect," says mr. bucket. "i would!" making her eyes very large. "i would love to tear her limb from limb." "bless you, darling," says mr. bucket with the greatest composure, "i'm fully prepared to hear that. your sex have such a surprising animosity against one another when you do differ. you don't mind me half so much, do you?" "no. though you are a devil still." "angel and devil by turns, eh?" cries mr. bucket. "but i am in my regular employment, you must consider. let me put your shawl tidy. i've been lady's maid to a good many before now. anything wanting to the bonnet? there's a cab at the door." mademoiselle hortense, casting an indignant eye at the glass, shakes herself perfectly neat in one shake and looks, to do her justice, uncommonly genteel. "listen then, my angel," says she after several sarcastic nods. "you are very spiritual. but can you restore him back to life?" mr. bucket answers, "not exactly." "that is droll. listen yet one time. you are very spiritual. can you make a honourable lady of her?" "don't be so malicious," says mr. bucket. "or a haughty gentleman of him?" cries mademoiselle, referring to sir leicester with ineffable disdain. "eh! oh, then regard him! the poor infant! ha! ha! ha!" "come, come, why this is worse parlaying than the other," says mr. bucket. "come along!" "you cannot do these things? then you can do as you please with me. it is but the death, it is all the same. let us go, my angel. adieu, you old man, grey. i pity you, and i despise you!" with these last words she snaps her teeth together as if her mouth closed with a spring. it is impossible to describe how mr. bucket gets her out, but he accomplishes that feat in a manner so peculiar to himself, enfolding and pervading her like a cloud, and hovering away with her as if he were a homely jupiter and she the object of his affections. sir leicester, left alone, remains in the same attitude, as though he were still listening and his attention were still occupied. at length he gazes round the empty room, and finding it deserted, rises unsteadily to his feet, pushes back his chair, and walks a few steps, supporting himself by the table. then he stops, and with more of those inarticulate sounds, lifts up his eyes and seems to stare at something. heaven knows what he sees. the green, green woods of chesney wold, the noble house, the pictures of his forefathers, strangers defacing them, officers of police coarsely handling his most precious heirlooms, thousands of fingers pointing at him, thousands of faces sneering at him. but if such shadows flit before him to his bewilderment, there is one other shadow which he can name with something like distinctness even yet and to which alone he addresses his tearing of his white hair and his extended arms. it is she in association with whom, saving that she has been for years a main fibre of the root of his dignity and pride, he has never had a selfish thought. it is she whom he has loved, admired, honoured, and set up for the world to respect. it is she who, at the core of all the constrained formalities and conventionalities of his life, has been a stock of living tenderness and love, susceptible as nothing else is of being struck with the agony he feels. he sees her, almost to the exclusion of himself, and cannot bear to look upon her cast down from the high place she has graced so well. and even to the point of his sinking on the ground, oblivious of his suffering, he can yet pronounce her name with something like distinctness in the midst of those intrusive sounds, and in a tone of mourning and compassion rather than reproach. chapter lv flight inspector bucket of the detective has not yet struck his great blow, as just now chronicled, but is yet refreshing himself with sleep preparatory to his field-day, when through the night and along the freezing wintry roads a chaise and pair comes out of lincolnshire, making its way towards london. railroads shall soon traverse all this country, and with a rattle and a glare the engine and train shall shoot like a meteor over the wide night-landscape, turning the moon paler; but as yet such things are non-existent in these parts, though not wholly unexpected. preparations are afoot, measurements are made, ground is staked out. bridges are begun, and their not yet united piers desolately look at one another over roads and streams like brick and mortar couples with an obstacle to their union; fragments of embankments are thrown up and left as precipices with torrents of rusty carts and barrows tumbling over them; tripods of tall poles appear on hilltops, where there are rumours of tunnels; everything looks chaotic and abandoned in full hopelessness. along the freezing roads, and through the night, the post-chaise makes its way without a railroad on its mind. mrs. rouncewell, so many years housekeeper at chesney wold, sits within the chaise; and by her side sits mrs. bagnet with her grey cloak and umbrella. the old girl would prefer the bar in front, as being exposed to the weather and a primitive sort of perch more in accordance with her usual course of travelling, but mrs. rouncewell is too thoughtful of her comfort to admit of her proposing it. the old lady cannot make enough of the old girl. she sits, in her stately manner, holding her hand, and regardless of its roughness, puts it often to her lips. "you are a mother, my dear soul," says she many times, "and you found out my george's mother!" "why, george," returns mrs. bagnet, "was always free with me, ma'am, and when he said at our house to my woolwich that of all the things my woolwich could have to think of when he grew to be a man, the comfortablest would be that he had never brought a sorrowful line into his mother's face or turned a hair of her head grey, then i felt sure, from his way, that something fresh had brought his own mother into his mind. i had often known him say to me, in past times, that he had behaved bad to her." "never, my dear!" returns mrs. rouncewell, bursting into tears. "my blessing on him, never! he was always fond of me, and loving to me, was my george! but he had a bold spirit, and he ran a little wild and went for a soldier. and i know he waited at first, in letting us know about himself, till he should rise to be an officer; and when he didn't rise, i know he considered himself beneath us, and wouldn't be a disgrace to us. for he had a lion heart, had my george, always from a baby!" the old lady's hands stray about her as of yore, while she recalls, all in a tremble, what a likely lad, what a fine lad, what a gay good-humoured clever lad he was; how they all took to him down at chesney wold; how sir leicester took to him when he was a young gentleman; how the dogs took to him; how even the people who had been angry with him forgave him the moment he was gone, poor boy. and now to see him after all, and in a prison too! and the broad stomacher heaves, and the quaint upright old-fashioned figure bends under its load of affectionate distress. mrs. bagnet, with the instinctive skill of a good warm heart, leaves the old housekeeper to her emotions for a little while--not without passing the back of her hand across her own motherly eyes--and presently chirps up in her cheery manner, "so i says to george when i goes to call him in to tea (he pretended to be smoking his pipe outside), 'what ails you this afternoon, george, for gracious sake? i have seen all sorts, and i have seen you pretty often in season and out of season, abroad and at home, and i never see you so melancholy penitent.' 'why, mrs. bagnet,' says george, 'it's because i am melancholy and penitent both, this afternoon, that you see me so.' 'what have you done, old fellow?' i says. 'why, mrs. bagnet,' says george, shaking his head, 'what i have done has been done this many a long year, and is best not tried to be undone now. if i ever get to heaven it won't be for being a good son to a widowed mother; i say no more.' now, ma'am, when george says to me that it's best not tried to be undone now, i have my thoughts as i have often had before, and i draw it out of george how he comes to have such things on him that afternoon. then george tells me that he has seen by chance, at the lawyer's office, a fine old lady that has brought his mother plain before him, and he runs on about that old lady till he quite forgets himself and paints her picture to me as she used to be, years upon years back. so i says to george when he has done, who is this old lady he has seen? and george tells me it's mrs. rouncewell, housekeeper for more than half a century to the dedlock family down at chesney wold in lincolnshire. george has frequently told me before that he's a lincolnshire man, and i says to my old lignum that night, 'lignum, that's his mother for five and for-ty pound!'" all this mrs. bagnet now relates for the twentieth time at least within the last four hours. trilling it out like a kind of bird, with a pretty high note, that it may be audible to the old lady above the hum of the wheels. "bless you, and thank you," says mrs. rouncewell. "bless you, and thank you, my worthy soul!" "dear heart!" cries mrs. bagnet in the most natural manner. "no thanks to me, i am sure. thanks to yourself, ma'am, for being so ready to pay 'em! and mind once more, ma'am, what you had best do on finding george to be your own son is to make him--for your sake--have every sort of help to put himself in the right and clear himself of a charge of which he is as innocent as you or me. it won't do to have truth and justice on his side; he must have law and lawyers," exclaims the old girl, apparently persuaded that the latter form a separate establishment and have dissolved partnership with truth and justice for ever and a day. "he shall have," says mrs. rouncewell, "all the help that can be got for him in the world, my dear. i will spend all i have, and thankfully, to procure it. sir leicester will do his best, the whole family will do their best. i--i know something, my dear; and will make my own appeal, as his mother parted from him all these years, and finding him in a jail at last." the extreme disquietude of the old housekeeper's manner in saying this, her broken words, and her wringing of her hands make a powerful impression on mrs. bagnet and would astonish her but that she refers them all to her sorrow for her son's condition. and yet mrs. bagnet wonders too why mrs. rouncewell should murmur so distractedly, "my lady, my lady, my lady!" over and over again. the frosty night wears away, and the dawn breaks, and the post-chaise comes rolling on through the early mist like the ghost of a chaise departed. it has plenty of spectral company in ghosts of trees and hedges, slowly vanishing and giving place to the realities of day. london reached, the travellers alight, the old housekeeper in great tribulation and confusion, mrs. bagnet quite fresh and collected--as she would be if her next point, with no new equipage and outfit, were the cape of good hope, the island of ascension, hong kong, or any other military station. but when they set out for the prison where the trooper is confined, the old lady has managed to draw about her, with her lavender-coloured dress, much of the staid calmness which is its usual accompaniment. a wonderfully grave, precise, and handsome piece of old china she looks, though her heart beats fast and her stomacher is ruffled more than even the remembrance of this wayward son has ruffled it these many years. approaching the cell, they find the door opening and a warder in the act of coming out. the old girl promptly makes a sign of entreaty to him to say nothing; assenting with a nod, he suffers them to enter as he shuts the door. so george, who is writing at his table, supposing himself to be alone, does not raise his eyes, but remains absorbed. the old housekeeper looks at him, and those wandering hands of hers are quite enough for mrs. bagnet's confirmation, even if she could see the mother and the son together, knowing what she knows, and doubt their relationship. not a rustle of the housekeeper's dress, not a gesture, not a word betrays her. she stands looking at him as he writes on, all unconscious, and only her fluttering hands give utterance to her emotions. but they are very eloquent, very, very eloquent. mrs. bagnet understands them. they speak of gratitude, of joy, of grief, of hope; of inextinguishable affection, cherished with no return since this stalwart man was a stripling; of a better son loved less, and this son loved so fondly and so proudly; and they speak in such touching language that mrs. bagnet's eyes brim up with tears and they run glistening down her sun-brown face. "george rouncewell! oh, my dear child, turn and look at me!" the trooper starts up, clasps his mother round the neck, and falls down on his knees before her. whether in a late repentance, whether in the first association that comes back upon him, he puts his hands together as a child does when it says its prayers, and raising them towards her breast, bows down his head, and cries. "my george, my dearest son! always my favourite, and my favourite still, where have you been these cruel years and years? grown such a man too, grown such a fine strong man. grown so like what i knew he must be, if it pleased god he was alive!" she can ask, and he can answer, nothing connected for a time. all that time the old girl, turned away, leans one arm against the whitened wall, leans her honest forehead upon it, wipes her eyes with her serviceable grey cloak, and quite enjoys herself like the best of old girls as she is. "mother," says the trooper when they are more composed, "forgive me first of all, for i know my need of it." forgive him! she does it with all her heart and soul. she always has done it. she tells him how she has had it written in her will, these many years, that he was her beloved son george. she has never believed any ill of him, never. if she had died without this happiness--and she is an old woman now and can't look to live very long--she would have blessed him with her last breath, if she had had her senses, as her beloved son george. "mother, i have been an undutiful trouble to you, and i have my reward; but of late years i have had a kind of glimmering of a purpose in me too. when i left home i didn't care much, mother--i am afraid not a great deal--for leaving; and went away and 'listed, harum-scarum, making believe to think that i cared for nobody, no not i, and that nobody cared for me." the trooper has dried his eyes and put away his handkerchief, but there is an extraordinary contrast between his habitual manner of expressing himself and carrying himself and the softened tone in which he speaks, interrupted occasionally by a half-stifled sob. "so i wrote a line home, mother, as you too well know, to say i had 'listed under another name, and i went abroad. abroad, at one time i thought i would write home next year, when i might be better off; and when that year was out, i thought i would write home next year, when i might be better off; and when that year was out again, perhaps i didn't think much about it. so on, from year to year, through a service of ten years, till i began to get older, and to ask myself why should i ever write." "i don't find any fault, child--but not to ease my mind, george? not a word to your loving mother, who was growing older too?" this almost overturns the trooper afresh, but he sets himself up with a great, rough, sounding clearance of his throat. "heaven forgive me, mother, but i thought there would be small consolation then in hearing anything about me. there were you, respected and esteemed. there was my brother, as i read in chance north country papers now and then, rising to be prosperous and famous. there was i a dragoon, roving, unsettled, not self-made like him, but self-unmade--all my earlier advantages thrown away, all my little learning unlearnt, nothing picked up but what unfitted me for most things that i could think of. what business had i to make myself known? after letting all that time go by me, what good could come of it? the worst was past with you, mother. i knew by that time (being a man) how you had mourned for me, and wept for me, and prayed for me; and the pain was over, or was softened down, and i was better in your mind as it was." the old lady sorrowfully shakes her head, and taking one of his powerful hands, lays it lovingly upon her shoulder. "no, i don't say that it was so, mother, but that i made it out to be so. i said just now, what good could come of it? well, my dear mother, some good might have come of it to myself--and there was the meanness of it. you would have sought me out; you would have purchased my discharge; you would have taken me down to chesney wold; you would have brought me and my brother and my brother's family together; you would all have considered anxiously how to do something for me and set me up as a respectable civilian. but how could any of you feel sure of me when i couldn't so much as feel sure of myself? how could you help regarding as an incumbrance and a discredit to you an idle dragooning chap who was an incumbrance and a discredit to himself, excepting under discipline? how could i look my brother's children in the face and pretend to set them an example--i, the vagabond boy who had run away from home and been the grief and unhappiness of my mother's life? 'no, george.' such were my words, mother, when i passed this in review before me: 'you have made your bed. now, lie upon it.'" mrs. rouncewell, drawing up her stately form, shakes her head at the old girl with a swelling pride upon her, as much as to say, "i told you so!" the old girl relieves her feelings and testifies her interest in the conversation by giving the trooper a great poke between the shoulders with her umbrella; this action she afterwards repeats, at intervals, in a species of affectionate lunacy, never failing, after the administration of each of these remonstrances, to resort to the whitened wall and the grey cloak again. "this was the way i brought myself to think, mother, that my best amends was to lie upon that bed i had made, and die upon it. and i should have done it (though i have been to see you more than once down at chesney wold, when you little thought of me) but for my old comrade's wife here, who i find has been too many for me. but i thank her for it. i thank you for it, mrs. bagnet, with all my heart and might." to which mrs. bagnet responds with two pokes. and now the old lady impresses upon her son george, her own dear recovered boy, her joy and pride, the light of her eyes, the happy close of her life, and every fond name she can think of, that he must be governed by the best advice obtainable by money and influence, that he must yield up his case to the greatest lawyers that can be got, that he must act in this serious plight as he shall be advised to act and must not be self-willed, however right, but must promise to think only of his poor old mother's anxiety and suffering until he is released, or he will break her heart. "mother, 'tis little enough to consent to," returns the trooper, stopping her with a kiss; "tell me what i shall do, and i'll make a late beginning and do it. mrs. bagnet, you'll take care of my mother, i know?" a very hard poke from the old girl's umbrella. "if you'll bring her acquainted with mr. jarndyce and miss summerson, she will find them of her way of thinking, and they will give her the best advice and assistance." "and, george," says the old lady, "we must send with all haste for your brother. he is a sensible sound man as they tell me--out in the world beyond chesney wold, my dear, though i don't know much of it myself--and will be of great service." "mother," returns the trooper, "is it too soon to ask a favour?" "surely not, my dear." "then grant me this one great favour. don't let my brother know." "not know what, my dear?" "not know of me. in fact, mother, i can't bear it; i can't make up my mind to it. he has proved himself so different from me and has done so much to raise himself while i've been soldiering that i haven't brass enough in my composition to see him in this place and under this charge. how could a man like him be expected to have any pleasure in such a discovery? it's impossible. no, keep my secret from him, mother; do me a greater kindness than i deserve and keep my secret from my brother, of all men." "but not always, dear george?" "why, mother, perhaps not for good and all--though i may come to ask that too--but keep it now, i do entreat you. if it's ever broke to him that his rip of a brother has turned up, i could wish," says the trooper, shaking his head very doubtfully, "to break it myself and be governed as to advancing or retreating by the way in which he seems to take it." as he evidently has a rooted feeling on this point, and as the depth of it is recognized in mrs. bagnet's face, his mother yields her implicit assent to what he asks. for this he thanks her kindly. "in all other respects, my dear mother, i'll be as tractable and obedient as you can wish; on this one alone, i stand out. so now i am ready even for the lawyers. i have been drawing up," he glances at his writing on the table, "an exact account of what i knew of the deceased and how i came to be involved in this unfortunate affair. it's entered, plain and regular, like an orderly-book; not a word in it but what's wanted for the facts. i did intend to read it, straight on end, whensoever i was called upon to say anything in my defence. i hope i may be let to do it still; but i have no longer a will of my own in this case, and whatever is said or done, i give my promise not to have any." matters being brought to this so far satisfactory pass, and time being on the wane, mrs. bagnet proposes a departure. again and again the old lady hangs upon her son's neck, and again and again the trooper holds her to his broad chest. "where are you going to take my mother, mrs. bagnet?" "i am going to the town house, my dear, the family house. i have some business there that must be looked to directly," mrs. rouncewell answers. "will you see my mother safe there in a coach, mrs. bagnet? but of course i know you will. why should i ask it!" why indeed, mrs. bagnet expresses with the umbrella. "take her, my old friend, and take my gratitude along with you. kisses to quebec and malta, love to my godson, a hearty shake of the hand to lignum, and this for yourself, and i wish it was ten thousand pound in gold, my dear!" so saying, the trooper puts his lips to the old girl's tanned forehead, and the door shuts upon him in his cell. no entreaties on the part of the good old housekeeper will induce mrs. bagnet to retain the coach for her own conveyance home. jumping out cheerfully at the door of the dedlock mansion and handing mrs. rouncewell up the steps, the old girl shakes hands and trudges off, arriving soon afterwards in the bosom of the bagnet family and falling to washing the greens as if nothing had happened. my lady is in that room in which she held her last conference with the murdered man, and is sitting where she sat that night, and is looking at the spot where he stood upon the hearth studying her so leisurely, when a tap comes at the door. who is it? mrs. rouncewell. what has brought mrs. rouncewell to town so unexpectedly? "trouble, my lady. sad trouble. oh, my lady, may i beg a word with you?" what new occurrence is it that makes this tranquil old woman tremble so? far happier than her lady, as her lady has often thought, why does she falter in this manner and look at her with such strange mistrust? "what is the matter? sit down and take your breath." "oh, my lady, my lady. i have found my son--my youngest, who went away for a soldier so long ago. and he is in prison." "for debt?" "oh, no, my lady; i would have paid any debt, and joyful." "for what is he in prison then?" "charged with a murder, my lady, of which he is as innocent as--as i am. accused of the murder of mr. tulkinghorn." what does she mean by this look and this imploring gesture? why does she come so close? what is the letter that she holds? "lady dedlock, my dear lady, my good lady, my kind lady! you must have a heart to feel for me, you must have a heart to forgive me. i was in this family before you were born. i am devoted to it. but think of my dear son wrongfully accused." "i do not accuse him." "no, my lady, no. but others do, and he is in prison and in danger. oh, lady dedlock, if you can say but a word to help to clear him, say it!" what delusion can this be? what power does she suppose is in the person she petitions to avert this unjust suspicion, if it be unjust? her lady's handsome eyes regard her with astonishment, almost with fear. "my lady, i came away last night from chesney wold to find my son in my old age, and the step upon the ghost's walk was so constant and so solemn that i never heard the like in all these years. night after night, as it has fallen dark, the sound has echoed through your rooms, but last night it was awfullest. and as it fell dark last night, my lady, i got this letter." "what letter is it?" "hush! hush!" the housekeeper looks round and answers in a frightened whisper, "my lady, i have not breathed a word of it, i don't believe what's written in it, i know it can't be true, i am sure and certain that it is not true. but my son is in danger, and you must have a heart to pity me. if you know of anything that is not known to others, if you have any suspicion, if you have any clue at all, and any reason for keeping it in your own breast, oh, my dear lady, think of me, and conquer that reason, and let it be known! this is the most i consider possible. i know you are not a hard lady, but you go your own way always without help, and you are not familiar with your friends; and all who admire you--and all do--as a beautiful and elegant lady, know you to be one far away from themselves who can't be approached close. my lady, you may have some proud or angry reasons for disdaining to utter something that you know; if so, pray, oh, pray, think of a faithful servant whose whole life has been passed in this family which she dearly loves, and relent, and help to clear my son! my lady, my good lady," the old housekeeper pleads with genuine simplicity, "i am so humble in my place and you are by nature so high and distant that you may not think what i feel for my child, but i feel so much that i have come here to make so bold as to beg and pray you not to be scornful of us if you can do us any right or justice at this fearful time!" lady dedlock raises her without one word, until she takes the letter from her hand. "am i to read this?" "when i am gone, my lady, if you please, and then remembering the most that i consider possible." "i know of nothing i can do. i know of nothing i reserve that can affect your son. i have never accused him." "my lady, you may pity him the more under a false accusation after reading the letter." the old housekeeper leaves her with the letter in her hand. in truth she is not a hard lady naturally, and the time has been when the sight of the venerable figure suing to her with such strong earnestness would have moved her to great compassion. but so long accustomed to suppress emotion and keep down reality, so long schooled for her own purposes in that destructive school which shuts up the natural feelings of the heart like flies in amber and spreads one uniform and dreary gloss over the good and bad, the feeling and the unfeeling, the sensible and the senseless, she had subdued even her wonder until now. she opens the letter. spread out upon the paper is a printed account of the discovery of the body as it lay face downward on the floor, shot through the heart; and underneath is written her own name, with the word "murderess" attached. it falls out of her hand. how long it may have lain upon the ground she knows not, but it lies where it fell when a servant stands before her announcing the young man of the name of guppy. the words have probably been repeated several times, for they are ringing in her head before she begins to understand them. "let him come in!" he comes in. holding the letter in her hand, which she has taken from the floor, she tries to collect her thoughts. in the eyes of mr. guppy she is the same lady dedlock, holding the same prepared, proud, chilling state. "your ladyship may not be at first disposed to excuse this visit from one who has never been welcome to your ladyship"--which he don't complain of, for he is bound to confess that there never has been any particular reason on the face of things why he should be--"but i hope when i mention my motives to your ladyship you will not find fault with me," says mr. guppy. "do so." "thank your ladyship. i ought first to explain to your ladyship," mr. guppy sits on the edge of a chair and puts his hat on the carpet at his feet, "that miss summerson, whose image, as i formerly mentioned to your ladyship, was at one period of my life imprinted on my 'eart until erased by circumstances over which i had no control, communicated to me, after i had the pleasure of waiting on your ladyship last, that she particularly wished me to take no steps whatever in any manner at all relating to her. and miss summerson's wishes being to me a law (except as connected with circumstances over which i have no control), i consequently never expected to have the distinguished honour of waiting on your ladyship again." and yet he is here now, lady dedlock moodily reminds him. "and yet i am here now," mr. guppy admits. "my object being to communicate to your ladyship, under the seal of confidence, why i am here." he cannot do so, she tells him, too plainly or too briefly. "nor can i," mr. guppy returns with a sense of injury upon him, "too particularly request your ladyship to take particular notice that it's no personal affair of mine that brings me here. i have no interested views of my own to serve in coming here. if it was not for my promise to miss summerson and my keeping of it sacred--i, in point of fact, shouldn't have darkened these doors again, but should have seen 'em further first." mr. guppy considers this a favourable moment for sticking up his hair with both hands. "your ladyship will remember when i mention it that the last time i was here i run against a party very eminent in our profession and whose loss we all deplore. that party certainly did from that time apply himself to cutting in against me in a way that i will call sharp practice, and did make it, at every turn and point, extremely difficult for me to be sure that i hadn't inadvertently led up to something contrary to miss summerson's wishes. self-praise is no recommendation, but i may say for myself that i am not so bad a man of business neither." lady dedlock looks at him in stern inquiry. mr. guppy immediately withdraws his eyes from her face and looks anywhere else. "indeed, it has been made so hard," he goes on, "to have any idea what that party was up to in combination with others that until the loss which we all deplore i was gravelled--an expression which your ladyship, moving in the higher circles, will be so good as to consider tantamount to knocked over. small likewise--a name by which i refer to another party, a friend of mine that your ladyship is not acquainted with--got to be so close and double-faced that at times it wasn't easy to keep one's hands off his 'ead. however, what with the exertion of my humble abilities, and what with the help of a mutual friend by the name of mr. tony weevle (who is of a high aristocratic turn and has your ladyship's portrait always hanging up in his room), i have now reasons for an apprehension as to which i come to put your ladyship upon your guard. first, will your ladyship allow me to ask you whether you have had any strange visitors this morning? i don't mean fashionable visitors, but such visitors, for instance, as miss barbary's old servant, or as a person without the use of his lower extremities, carried upstairs similarly to a guy?" "no!" "then i assure your ladyship that such visitors have been here and have been received here. because i saw them at the door, and waited at the corner of the square till they came out, and took half an hour's turn afterwards to avoid them." "what have i to do with that, or what have you? i do not understand you. what do you mean?" "your ladyship, i come to put you on your guard. there may be no occasion for it. very well. then i have only done my best to keep my promise to miss summerson. i strongly suspect (from what small has dropped, and from what we have corkscrewed out of him) that those letters i was to have brought to your ladyship were not destroyed when i supposed they were. that if there was anything to be blown upon, it is blown upon. that the visitors i have alluded to have been here this morning to make money of it. and that the money is made, or making." mr. guppy picks up his hat and rises. "your ladyship, you know best whether there's anything in what i say or whether there's nothing. something or nothing, i have acted up to miss summerson's wishes in letting things alone and in undoing what i had begun to do, as far as possible; that's sufficient for me. in case i should be taking a liberty in putting your ladyship on your guard when there's no necessity for it, you will endeavour, i should hope, to outlive my presumption, and i shall endeavour to outlive your disapprobation. i now take my farewell of your ladyship, and assure you that there's no danger of your ever being waited on by me again." she scarcely acknowledges these parting words by any look, but when he has been gone a little while, she rings her bell. "where is sir leicester?" mercury reports that he is at present shut up in the library alone. "has sir leicester had any visitors this morning?" several, on business. mercury proceeds to a description of them, which has been anticipated by mr. guppy. enough; he may go. so! all is broken down. her name is in these many mouths, her husband knows his wrongs, her shame will be published--may be spreading while she thinks about it--and in addition to the thunderbolt so long foreseen by her, so unforeseen by him, she is denounced by an invisible accuser as the murderess of her enemy. her enemy he was, and she has often, often, often wished him dead. her enemy he is, even in his grave. this dreadful accusation comes upon her like a new torment at his lifeless hand. and when she recalls how she was secretly at his door that night, and how she may be represented to have sent her favourite girl away so soon before merely to release herself from observation, she shudders as if the hangman's hands were at her neck. she has thrown herself upon the floor and lies with her hair all wildly scattered and her face buried in the cushions of a couch. she rises up, hurries to and fro, flings herself down again, and rocks and moans. the horror that is upon her is unutterable. if she really were the murderess, it could hardly be, for the moment, more intense. for as her murderous perspective, before the doing of the deed, however subtle the precautions for its commission, would have been closed up by a gigantic dilatation of the hateful figure, preventing her from seeing any consequences beyond it; and as those consequences would have rushed in, in an unimagined flood, the moment the figure was laid low--which always happens when a murder is done; so, now she sees that when he used to be on the watch before her, and she used to think, "if some mortal stroke would but fall on this old man and take him from my way!" it was but wishing that all he held against her in his hand might be flung to the winds and chance-sown in many places. so, too, with the wicked relief she has felt in his death. what was his death but the key-stone of a gloomy arch removed, and now the arch begins to fall in a thousand fragments, each crushing and mangling piecemeal! thus, a terrible impression steals upon and overshadows her that from this pursuer, living or dead--obdurate and imperturbable before her in his well-remembered shape, or not more obdurate and imperturbable in his coffin-bed--there is no escape but in death. hunted, she flies. the complication of her shame, her dread, remorse, and misery, overwhelms her at its height; and even her strength of self-reliance is overturned and whirled away like a leaf before a mighty wind. she hurriedly addresses these lines to her husband, seals, and leaves them on her table: if i am sought for, or accused of, his murder, believe that i am wholly innocent. believe no other good of me, for i am innocent of nothing else that you have heard, or will hear, laid to my charge. he prepared me, on that fatal night, for his disclosure of my guilt to you. after he had left me, i went out on pretence of walking in the garden where i sometimes walk, but really to follow him and make one last petition that he would not protract the dreadful suspense on which i have been racked by him, you do not know how long, but would mercifully strike next morning. i found his house dark and silent. i rang twice at his door, but there was no reply, and i came home. i have no home left. i will encumber you no more. may you, in your just resentment, be able to forget the unworthy woman on whom you have wasted a most generous devotion--who avoids you only with a deeper shame than that with which she hurries from herself--and who writes this last adieu. she veils and dresses quickly, leaves all her jewels and her money, listens, goes downstairs at a moment when the hall is empty, opens and shuts the great door, flutters away in the shrill frosty wind. chapter lvi pursuit impassive, as behoves its high breeding, the dedlock town house stares at the other houses in the street of dismal grandeur and gives no outward sign of anything going wrong within. carriages rattle, doors are battered at, the world exchanges calls; ancient charmers with skeleton throats and peachy cheeks that have a rather ghastly bloom upon them seen by daylight, when indeed these fascinating creatures look like death and the lady fused together, dazzle the eyes of men. forth from the frigid mews come easily swinging carriages guided by short-legged coachmen in flaxen wigs, deep sunk into downy hammercloths, and up behind mount luscious mercuries bearing sticks of state and wearing cocked hats broadwise, a spectacle for the angels. the dedlock town house changes not externally, and hours pass before its exalted dullness is disturbed within. but volumnia the fair, being subject to the prevalent complaint of boredom and finding that disorder attacking her spirits with some virulence, ventures at length to repair to the library for change of scene. her gentle tapping at the door producing no response, she opens it and peeps in; seeing no one there, takes possession. the sprightly dedlock is reputed, in that grass-grown city of the ancients, bath, to be stimulated by an urgent curiosity which impels her on all convenient and inconvenient occasions to sidle about with a golden glass at her eye, peering into objects of every description. certain it is that she avails herself of the present opportunity of hovering over her kinsman's letters and papers like a bird, taking a short peck at this document and a blink with her head on one side at that document, and hopping about from table to table with her glass at her eye in an inquisitive and restless manner. in the course of these researches she stumbles over something, and turning her glass in that direction, sees her kinsman lying on the ground like a felled tree. volumnia's pet little scream acquires a considerable augmentation of reality from this surprise, and the house is quickly in commotion. servants tear up and down stairs, bells are violently rung, doctors are sent for, and lady dedlock is sought in all directions, but not found. nobody has seen or heard her since she last rang her bell. her letter to sir leicester is discovered on her table, but it is doubtful yet whether he has not received another missive from another world requiring to be personally answered, and all the living languages, and all the dead, are as one to him. they lay him down upon his bed, and chafe, and rub, and fan, and put ice to his head, and try every means of restoration. howbeit, the day has ebbed away, and it is night in his room before his stertorous breathing lulls or his fixed eyes show any consciousness of the candle that is occasionally passed before them. but when this change begins, it goes on; and by and by he nods or moves his eyes or even his hand in token that he hears and comprehends. he fell down, this morning, a handsome stately gentleman, somewhat infirm, but of a fine presence, and with a well-filled face. he lies upon his bed, an aged man with sunken cheeks, the decrepit shadow of himself. his voice was rich and mellow and he had so long been thoroughly persuaded of the weight and import to mankind of any word he said that his words really had come to sound as if there were something in them. but now he can only whisper, and what he whispers sounds like what it is--mere jumble and jargon. his favourite and faithful housekeeper stands at his bedside. it is the first act he notices, and he clearly derives pleasure from it. after vainly trying to make himself understood in speech, he makes signs for a pencil. so inexpressively that they cannot at first understand him; it is his old housekeeper who makes out what he wants and brings in a slate. after pausing for some time, he slowly scrawls upon it in a hand that is not his, "chesney wold?" no, she tells him; he is in london. he was taken ill in the library this morning. right thankful she is that she happened to come to london and is able to attend upon him. "it is not an illness of any serious consequence, sir leicester. you will be much better to-morrow, sir leicester. all the gentlemen say so." this, with the tears coursing down her fair old face. after making a survey of the room and looking with particular attention all round the bed where the doctors stand, he writes, "my lady." "my lady went out, sir leicester, before you were taken ill, and don't know of your illness yet." he points again, in great agitation, at the two words. they all try to quiet him, but he points again with increased agitation. on their looking at one another, not knowing what to say, he takes the slate once more and writes "my lady. for god's sake, where?" and makes an imploring moan. it is thought better that his old housekeeper should give him lady dedlock's letter, the contents of which no one knows or can surmise. she opens it for him and puts it out for his perusal. having read it twice by a great effort, he turns it down so that it shall not be seen and lies moaning. he passes into a kind of relapse or into a swoon, and it is an hour before he opens his eyes, reclining on his faithful and attached old servant's arm. the doctors know that he is best with her, and when not actively engaged about him, stand aloof. the slate comes into requisition again, but the word he wants to write he cannot remember. his anxiety, his eagerness, and affliction at this pass are pitiable to behold. it seems as if he must go mad in the necessity he feels for haste and the inability under which he labours of expressing to do what or to fetch whom. he has written the letter b, and there stopped. of a sudden, in the height of his misery, he puts mr. before it. the old housekeeper suggests bucket. thank heaven! that's his meaning. mr. bucket is found to be downstairs, by appointment. shall he come up? there is no possibility of misconstruing sir leicester's burning wish to see him or the desire he signifies to have the room cleared of every one but the housekeeper. it is speedily done, and mr. bucket appears. of all men upon earth, sir leicester seems fallen from his high estate to place his sole trust and reliance upon this man. "sir leicester dedlock, baronet, i'm sorry to see you like this. i hope you'll cheer up. i'm sure you will, on account of the family credit." sir leicester puts her letter in his hands and looks intently in his face while he reads it. a new intelligence comes into mr. bucket's eye as he reads on; with one hook of his finger, while that eye is still glancing over the words, he indicates, "sir leicester dedlock, baronet, i understand you." sir leicester writes upon the slate. "full forgiveness. find--" mr. bucket stops his hand. "sir leicester dedlock, baronet, i'll find her. but my search after her must be begun out of hand. not a minute must be lost." with the quickness of thought, he follows sir leicester dedlock's look towards a little box upon a table. "bring it here, sir leicester dedlock, baronet? certainly. open it with one of these here keys? certainly. the littlest key? to be sure. take the notes out? so i will. count 'em? that's soon done. twenty and thirty's fifty, and twenty's seventy, and fifty's one twenty, and forty's one sixty. take 'em for expenses? that i'll do, and render an account of course. don't spare money? no i won't." the velocity and certainty of mr. bucket's interpretation on all these heads is little short of miraculous. mrs. rouncewell, who holds the light, is giddy with the swiftness of his eyes and hands as he starts up, furnished for his journey. "you're george's mother, old lady; that's about what you are, i believe?" says mr. bucket aside, with his hat already on and buttoning his coat. "yes, sir, i am his distressed mother." "so i thought, according to what he mentioned to me just now. well, then, i'll tell you something. you needn't be distressed no more. your son's all right. now, don't you begin a-crying, because what you've got to do is to take care of sir leicester dedlock, baronet, and you won't do that by crying. as to your son, he's all right, i tell you; and he sends his loving duty, and hoping you're the same. he's discharged honourable; that's about what he is; with no more imputation on his character than there is on yours, and yours is a tidy one, i'll bet a pound. you may trust me, for i took your son. he conducted himself in a game way, too, on that occasion; and he's a fine-made man, and you're a fine-made old lady, and you're a mother and son, the pair of you, as might be showed for models in a caravan. sir leicester dedlock, baronet, what you've trusted to me i'll go through with. don't you be afraid of my turning out of my way, right or left, or taking a sleep, or a wash, or a shave till i have found what i go in search of. say everything as is kind and forgiving on your part? sir leicester dedlock, baronet, i will. and i wish you better, and these family affairs smoothed over--as, lord, many other family affairs equally has been, and equally will be, to the end of time." with this peroration, mr. bucket, buttoned up, goes quietly out, looking steadily before him as if he were already piercing the night in quest of the fugitive. his first step is to take himself to lady dedlock's rooms and look all over them for any trifling indication that may help him. the rooms are in darkness now; and to see mr. bucket with a wax-light in his hand, holding it above his head and taking a sharp mental inventory of the many delicate objects so curiously at variance with himself, would be to see a sight--which nobody does see, as he is particular to lock himself in. "a spicy boudoir, this," says mr. bucket, who feels in a manner furbished up in his french by the blow of the morning. "must have cost a sight of money. rum articles to cut away from, these; she must have been hard put to it!" opening and shutting table-drawers and looking into caskets and jewel-cases, he sees the reflection of himself in various mirrors, and moralizes thereon. "one might suppose i was a-moving in the fashionable circles and getting myself up for almac's," says mr. bucket. "i begin to think i must be a swell in the guards without knowing it." ever looking about, he has opened a dainty little chest in an inner drawer. his great hand, turning over some gloves which it can scarcely feel, they are so light and soft within it, comes upon a white handkerchief. "hum! let's have a look at you," says mr. bucket, putting down the light. "what should you be kept by yourself for? what's your motive? are you her ladyship's property, or somebody else's? you've got a mark upon you somewheres or another, i suppose?" he finds it as he speaks, "esther summerson." "oh!" says mr. bucket, pausing, with his finger at his ear. "come, i'll take you." he completes his observations as quietly and carefully as he has carried them on, leaves everything else precisely as he found it, glides away after some five minutes in all, and passes into the street. with a glance upward at the dimly lighted windows of sir leicester's room, he sets off, full-swing, to the nearest coach-stand, picks out the horse for his money, and directs to be driven to the shooting gallery. mr. bucket does not claim to be a scientific judge of horses, but he lays out a little money on the principal events in that line, and generally sums up his knowledge of the subject in the remark that when he sees a horse as can go, he knows him. his knowledge is not at fault in the present instance. clattering over the stones at a dangerous pace, yet thoughtfully bringing his keen eyes to bear on every slinking creature whom he passes in the midnight streets, and even on the lights in upper windows where people are going or gone to bed, and on all the turnings that he rattles by, and alike on the heavy sky, and on the earth where the snow lies thin--for something may present itself to assist him, anywhere--he dashes to his destination at such a speed that when he stops the horse half smothers him in a cloud of steam. "unbear him half a moment to freshen him up, and i'll be back." he runs up the long wooden entry and finds the trooper smoking his pipe. "i thought i should, george, after what you have gone through, my lad. i haven't a word to spare. now, honour! all to save a woman. miss summerson that was here when gridley died--that was the name, i know--all right--where does she live?" the trooper has just come from there and gives him the address, near oxford street. "you won't repent it, george. good night!" he is off again, with an impression of having seen phil sitting by the frosty fire staring at him open-mouthed, and gallops away again, and gets out in a cloud of steam again. mr. jarndyce, the only person up in the house, is just going to bed, rises from his book on hearing the rapid ringing at the bell, and comes down to the door in his dressing-gown. "don't be alarmed, sir." in a moment his visitor is confidential with him in the hall, has shut the door, and stands with his hand upon the lock. "i've had the pleasure of seeing you before. inspector bucket. look at that handkerchief, sir, miss esther summerson's. found it myself put away in a drawer of lady dedlock's, quarter of an hour ago. not a moment to lose. matter of life or death. you know lady dedlock?" "yes." "there has been a discovery there to-day. family affairs have come out. sir leicester dedlock, baronet, has had a fit--apoplexy or paralysis--and couldn't be brought to, and precious time has been lost. lady dedlock disappeared this afternoon and left a letter for him that looks bad. run your eye over it. here it is!" mr. jarndyce, having read it, asks him what he thinks. "i don't know. it looks like suicide. anyways, there's more and more danger, every minute, of its drawing to that. i'd give a hundred pound an hour to have got the start of the present time. now, mr. jarndyce, i am employed by sir leicester dedlock, baronet, to follow her and find her, to save her and take her his forgiveness. i have money and full power, but i want something else. i want miss summerson." mr. jarndyce in a troubled voice repeats, "miss summerson?" "now, mr. jarndyce"--mr. bucket has read his face with the greatest attention all along--"i speak to you as a gentleman of a humane heart, and under such pressing circumstances as don't often happen. if ever delay was dangerous, it's dangerous now; and if ever you couldn't afterwards forgive yourself for causing it, this is the time. eight or ten hours, worth, as i tell you, a hundred pound apiece at least, have been lost since lady dedlock disappeared. i am charged to find her. i am inspector bucket. besides all the rest that's heavy on her, she has upon her, as she believes, suspicion of murder. if i follow her alone, she, being in ignorance of what sir leicester dedlock, baronet, has communicated to me, may be driven to desperation. but if i follow her in company with a young lady, answering to the description of a young lady that she has a tenderness for--i ask no question, and i say no more than that--she will give me credit for being friendly. let me come up with her and be able to have the hold upon her of putting that young lady for'ard, and i'll save her and prevail with her if she is alive. let me come up with her alone--a hard matter--and i'll do my best, but i don't answer for what the best may be. time flies; it's getting on for one o'clock. when one strikes, there's another hour gone, and it's worth a thousand pound now instead of a hundred." this is all true, and the pressing nature of the case cannot be questioned. mr. jarndyce begs him to remain there while he speaks to miss summerson. mr. bucket says he will, but acting on his usual principle, does no such thing, following upstairs instead and keeping his man in sight. so he remains, dodging and lurking about in the gloom of the staircase while they confer. in a very little time mr. jarndyce comes down and tells him that miss summerson will join him directly and place herself under his protection to accompany him where he pleases. mr. bucket, satisfied, expresses high approval and awaits her coming at the door. there he mounts a high tower in his mind and looks out far and wide. many solitary figures he perceives creeping through the streets; many solitary figures out on heaths, and roads, and lying under haystacks. but the figure that he seeks is not among them. other solitaries he perceives, in nooks of bridges, looking over; and in shadowed places down by the river's level; and a dark, dark, shapeless object drifting with the tide, more solitary than all, clings with a drowning hold on his attention. where is she? living or dead, where is she? if, as he folds the handkerchief and carefully puts it up, it were able with an enchanted power to bring before him the place where she found it and the night-landscape near the cottage where it covered the little child, would he descry her there? on the waste where the brick-kilns are burning with a pale blue flare, where the straw-roofs of the wretched huts in which the bricks are made are being scattered by the wind, where the clay and water are hard frozen and the mill in which the gaunt blind horse goes round all day looks like an instrument of human torture--traversing this deserted, blighted spot there is a lonely figure with the sad world to itself, pelted by the snow and driven by the wind, and cast out, it would seem, from all companionship. it is the figure of a woman, too; but it is miserably dressed, and no such clothes ever came through the hall and out at the great door of the dedlock mansion. chapter lvii esther's narrative i had gone to bed and fallen asleep when my guardian knocked at the door of my room and begged me to get up directly. on my hurrying to speak to him and learn what had happened, he told me, after a word or two of preparation, that there had been a discovery at sir leicester dedlock's. that my mother had fled, that a person was now at our door who was empowered to convey to her the fullest assurances of affectionate protection and forgiveness if he could possibly find her, and that i was sought for to accompany him in the hope that my entreaties might prevail upon her if his failed. something to this general purpose i made out, but i was thrown into such a tumult of alarm, and hurry and distress, that in spite of every effort i could make to subdue my agitation, i did not seem, to myself, fully to recover my right mind until hours had passed. but i dressed and wrapped up expeditiously without waking charley or any one and went down to mr. bucket, who was the person entrusted with the secret. in taking me to him my guardian told me this, and also explained how it was that he had come to think of me. mr. bucket, in a low voice, by the light of my guardian's candle, read to me in the hall a letter that my mother had left upon her table; and i suppose within ten minutes of my having been aroused i was sitting beside him, rolling swiftly through the streets. his manner was very keen, and yet considerate when he explained to me that a great deal might depend on my being able to answer, without confusion, a few questions that he wished to ask me. these were, chiefly, whether i had had much communication with my mother (to whom he only referred as lady dedlock), when and where i had spoken with her last, and how she had become possessed of my handkerchief. when i had satisfied him on these points, he asked me particularly to consider--taking time to think--whether within my knowledge there was any one, no matter where, in whom she might be at all likely to confide under circumstances of the last necessity. i could think of no one but my guardian. but by and by i mentioned mr. boythorn. he came into my mind as connected with his old chivalrous manner of mentioning my mother's name and with what my guardian had informed me of his engagement to her sister and his unconscious connexion with her unhappy story. my companion had stopped the driver while we held this conversation, that we might the better hear each other. he now told him to go on again and said to me, after considering within himself for a few moments, that he had made up his mind how to proceed. he was quite willing to tell me what his plan was, but i did not feel clear enough to understand it. we had not driven very far from our lodgings when we stopped in a by-street at a public-looking place lighted up with gas. mr. bucket took me in and sat me in an arm-chair by a bright fire. it was now past one, as i saw by the clock against the wall. two police officers, looking in their perfectly neat uniform not at all like people who were up all night, were quietly writing at a desk; and the place seemed very quiet altogether, except for some beating and calling out at distant doors underground, to which nobody paid any attention. a third man in uniform, whom mr. bucket called and to whom he whispered his instructions, went out; and then the two others advised together while one wrote from mr. bucket's subdued dictation. it was a description of my mother that they were busy with, for mr. bucket brought it to me when it was done and read it in a whisper. it was very accurate indeed. the second officer, who had attended to it closely, then copied it out and called in another man in uniform (there were several in an outer room), who took it up and went away with it. all this was done with the greatest dispatch and without the waste of a moment; yet nobody was at all hurried. as soon as the paper was sent out upon its travels, the two officers resumed their former quiet work of writing with neatness and care. mr. bucket thoughtfully came and warmed the soles of his boots, first one and then the other, at the fire. "are you well wrapped up, miss summerson?" he asked me as his eyes met mine. "it's a desperate sharp night for a young lady to be out in." i told him i cared for no weather and was warmly clothed. "it may be a long job," he observed; "but so that it ends well, never mind, miss." "i pray to heaven it may end well!" said i. he nodded comfortingly. "you see, whatever you do, don't you go and fret yourself. you keep yourself cool and equal for anything that may happen, and it'll be the better for you, the better for me, the better for lady dedlock, and the better for sir leicester dedlock, baronet." he was really very kind and gentle, and as he stood before the fire warming his boots and rubbing his face with his forefinger, i felt a confidence in his sagacity which reassured me. it was not yet a quarter to two when i heard horses' feet and wheels outside. "now, miss summerson," said he, "we are off, if you please!" he gave me his arm, and the two officers courteously bowed me out, and we found at the door a phaeton or barouche with a postilion and post horses. mr. bucket handed me in and took his own seat on the box. the man in uniform whom he had sent to fetch this equipage then handed him up a dark lantern at his request, and when he had given a few directions to the driver, we rattled away. i was far from sure that i was not in a dream. we rattled with great rapidity through such a labyrinth of streets that i soon lost all idea where we were, except that we had crossed and re-crossed the river, and still seemed to be traversing a low-lying, waterside, dense neighbourhood of narrow thoroughfares chequered by docks and basins, high piles of warehouses, swing-bridges, and masts of ships. at length we stopped at the corner of a little slimy turning, which the wind from the river, rushing up it, did not purify; and i saw my companion, by the light of his lantern, in conference with several men who looked like a mixture of police and sailors. against the mouldering wall by which they stood, there was a bill, on which i could discern the words, "found drowned"; and this and an inscription about drags possessed me with the awful suspicion shadowed forth in our visit to that place. i had no need to remind myself that i was not there by the indulgence of any feeling of mine to increase the difficulties of the search, or to lessen its hopes, or enhance its delays. i remained quiet, but what i suffered in that dreadful spot i never can forget. and still it was like the horror of a dream. a man yet dark and muddy, in long swollen sodden boots and a hat like them, was called out of a boat and whispered with mr. bucket, who went away with him down some slippery steps--as if to look at something secret that he had to show. they came back, wiping their hands upon their coats, after turning over something wet; but thank god it was not what i feared! after some further conference, mr. bucket (whom everybody seemed to know and defer to) went in with the others at a door and left me in the carriage, while the driver walked up and down by his horses to warm himself. the tide was coming in, as i judged from the sound it made, and i could hear it break at the end of the alley with a little rush towards me. it never did so--and i thought it did so, hundreds of times, in what can have been at the most a quarter of an hour, and probably was less--but the thought shuddered through me that it would cast my mother at the horses' feet. mr. bucket came out again, exhorting the others to be vigilant, darkened his lantern, and once more took his seat. "don't you be alarmed, miss summerson, on account of our coming down here," he said, turning to me. "i only want to have everything in train and to know that it is in train by looking after it myself. get on, my lad!" we appeared to retrace the way we had come. not that i had taken note of any particular objects in my perturbed state of mind, but judging from the general character of the streets. we called at another office or station for a minute and crossed the river again. during the whole of this time, and during the whole search, my companion, wrapped up on the box, never relaxed in his vigilance a single moment; but when we crossed the bridge he seemed, if possible, to be more on the alert than before. he stood up to look over the parapet, he alighted and went back after a shadowy female figure that flitted past us, and he gazed into the profound black pit of water with a face that made my heart die within me. the river had a fearful look, so overcast and secret, creeping away so fast between the low flat lines of shore--so heavy with indistinct and awful shapes, both of substance and shadow; so death-like and mysterious. i have seen it many times since then, by sunlight and by moonlight, but never free from the impressions of that journey. in my memory the lights upon the bridge are always burning dim, the cutting wind is eddying round the homeless woman whom we pass, the monotonous wheels are whirling on, and the light of the carriage-lamps reflected back looks palely in upon me--a face rising out of the dreaded water. clattering and clattering through the empty streets, we came at length from the pavement on to dark smooth roads and began to leave the houses behind us. after a while i recognized the familiar way to saint albans. at barnet fresh horses were ready for us, and we changed and went on. it was very cold indeed, and the open country was white with snow, though none was falling then. "an old acquaintance of yours, this road, miss summerson," said mr. bucket cheerfully. "yes," i returned. "have you gathered any intelligence?" "none that can be quite depended on as yet," he answered, "but it's early times as yet." he had gone into every late or early public-house where there was a light (they were not a few at that time, the road being then much frequented by drovers) and had got down to talk to the turnpike-keepers. i had heard him ordering drink, and chinking money, and making himself agreeable and merry everywhere; but whenever he took his seat upon the box again, his face resumed its watchful steady look, and he always said to the driver in the same business tone, "get on, my lad!" with all these stoppages, it was between five and six o'clock and we were yet a few miles short of saint albans when he came out of one of these houses and handed me in a cup of tea. "drink it, miss summerson, it'll do you good. you're beginning to get more yourself now, ain't you?" i thanked him and said i hoped so. "you was what you may call stunned at first," he returned; "and lord, no wonder! don't speak loud, my dear. it's all right. she's on ahead." i don't know what joyful exclamation i made or was going to make, but he put up his finger and i stopped myself. "passed through here on foot this evening about eight or nine. i heard of her first at the archway toll, over at highgate, but couldn't make quite sure. traced her all along, on and off. picked her up at one place, and dropped her at another; but she's before us now, safe. take hold of this cup and saucer, ostler. now, if you wasn't brought up to the butter trade, look out and see if you can catch half a crown in your t'other hand. one, two, three, and there you are! now, my lad, try a gallop!" we were soon in saint albans and alighted a little before day, when i was just beginning to arrange and comprehend the occurrences of the night and really to believe that they were not a dream. leaving the carriage at the posting-house and ordering fresh horses to be ready, my companion gave me his arm, and we went towards home. "as this is your regular abode, miss summerson, you see," he observed, "i should like to know whether you've been asked for by any stranger answering the description, or whether mr. jarndyce has. i don't much expect it, but it might be." as we ascended the hill, he looked about him with a sharp eye--the day was now breaking--and reminded me that i had come down it one night, as i had reason for remembering, with my little servant and poor jo, whom he called toughey. i wondered how he knew that. "when you passed a man upon the road, just yonder, you know," said mr. bucket. yes, i remembered that too, very well. "that was me," said mr. bucket. seeing my surprise, he went on, "i drove down in a gig that afternoon to look after that boy. you might have heard my wheels when you came out to look after him yourself, for i was aware of you and your little maid going up when i was walking the horse down. making an inquiry or two about him in the town, i soon heard what company he was in and was coming among the brick-fields to look for him when i observed you bringing him home here." "had he committed any crime?" i asked. "none was charged against him," said mr. bucket, coolly lifting off his hat, "but i suppose he wasn't over-particular. no. what i wanted him for was in connexion with keeping this very matter of lady dedlock quiet. he had been making his tongue more free than welcome as to a small accidental service he had been paid for by the deceased mr. tulkinghorn; and it wouldn't do, at any sort of price, to have him playing those games. so having warned him out of london, i made an afternoon of it to warn him to keep out of it now he was away, and go farther from it, and maintain a bright look-out that i didn't catch him coming back again." "poor creature!" said i. "poor enough," assented mr. bucket, "and trouble enough, and well enough away from london, or anywhere else. i was regularly turned on my back when i found him taken up by your establishment, i do assure you." i asked him why. "why, my dear?" said mr. bucket. "naturally there was no end to his tongue then. he might as well have been born with a yard and a half of it, and a remnant over." although i remember this conversation now, my head was in confusion at the time, and my power of attention hardly did more than enable me to understand that he entered into these particulars to divert me. with the same kind intention, manifestly, he often spoke to me of indifferent things, while his face was busy with the one object that we had in view. he still pursued this subject as we turned in at the garden-gate. "ah!" said mr. bucket. "here we are, and a nice retired place it is. puts a man in mind of the country house in the woodpecker-tapping, that was known by the smoke which so gracefully curled. they're early with the kitchen fire, and that denotes good servants. but what you've always got to be careful of with servants is who comes to see 'em; you never know what they're up to if you don't know that. and another thing, my dear. whenever you find a young man behind the kitchen-door, you give that young man in charge on suspicion of being secreted in a dwelling-house with an unlawful purpose." we were now in front of the house; he looked attentively and closely at the gravel for footprints before he raised his eyes to the windows. "do you generally put that elderly young gentleman in the same room when he's on a visit here, miss summerson?" he inquired, glancing at mr. skimpole's usual chamber. "you know mr. skimpole!" said i. "what do you call him again?" returned mr. bucket, bending down his ear. "skimpole, is it? i've often wondered what his name might be. skimpole. not john, i should say, nor yet jacob?" "harold," i told him. "harold. yes. he's a queer bird is harold," said mr. bucket, eyeing me with great expression. "he is a singular character," said i. "no idea of money," observed mr. bucket. "he takes it, though!" i involuntarily returned for answer that i perceived mr. bucket knew him. "why, now i'll tell you, miss summerson," he replied. "your mind will be all the better for not running on one point too continually, and i'll tell you for a change. it was him as pointed out to me where toughey was. i made up my mind that night to come to the door and ask for toughey, if that was all; but willing to try a move or so first, if any such was on the board, i just pitched up a morsel of gravel at that window where i saw a shadow. as soon as harold opens it and i have had a look at him, thinks i, you're the man for me. so i smoothed him down a bit about not wanting to disturb the family after they was gone to bed and about its being a thing to be regretted that charitable young ladies should harbour vagrants; and then, when i pretty well understood his ways, i said i should consider a fypunnote well bestowed if i could relieve the premises of toughey without causing any noise or trouble. then says he, lifting up his eyebrows in the gayest way, 'it's no use mentioning a fypunnote to me, my friend, because i'm a mere child in such matters and have no idea of money.' of course i understood what his taking it so easy meant; and being now quite sure he was the man for me, i wrapped the note round a little stone and threw it up to him. well! he laughs and beams, and looks as innocent as you like, and says, 'but i don't know the value of these things. what am i to do with this?' 'spend it, sir,' says i. 'but i shall be taken in,' he says, 'they won't give me the right change, i shall lose it, it's no use to me.' lord, you never saw such a face as he carried it with! of course he told me where to find toughey, and i found him." i regarded this as very treacherous on the part of mr. skimpole towards my guardian and as passing the usual bounds of his childish innocence. "bounds, my dear?" returned mr. bucket. "bounds? now, miss summerson, i'll give you a piece of advice that your husband will find useful when you are happily married and have got a family about you. whenever a person says to you that they are as innocent as can be in all concerning money, look well after your own money, for they are dead certain to collar it if they can. whenever a person proclaims to you 'in worldly matters i'm a child,' you consider that that person is only a-crying off from being held accountable and that you have got that person's number, and it's number one. now, i am not a poetical man myself, except in a vocal way when it goes round a company, but i'm a practical one, and that's my experience. so's this rule. fast and loose in one thing, fast and loose in everything. i never knew it fail. no more will you. nor no one. with which caution to the unwary, my dear, i take the liberty of pulling this here bell, and so go back to our business." i believe it had not been for a moment out of his mind, any more than it had been out of my mind, or out of his face. the whole household were amazed to see me, without any notice, at that time in the morning, and so accompanied; and their surprise was not diminished by my inquiries. no one, however, had been there. it could not be doubted that this was the truth. "then, miss summerson," said my companion, "we can't be too soon at the cottage where those brickmakers are to be found. most inquiries there i leave to you, if you'll be so good as to make 'em. the naturalest way is the best way, and the naturalest way is your own way." we set off again immediately. on arriving at the cottage, we found it shut up and apparently deserted, but one of the neighbours who knew me and who came out when i was trying to make some one hear informed me that the two women and their husbands now lived together in another house, made of loose rough bricks, which stood on the margin of the piece of ground where the kilns were and where the long rows of bricks were drying. we lost no time in repairing to this place, which was within a few hundred yards; and as the door stood ajar, i pushed it open. there were only three of them sitting at breakfast, the child lying asleep on a bed in the corner. it was jenny, the mother of the dead child, who was absent. the other woman rose on seeing me; and the men, though they were, as usual, sulky and silent, each gave me a morose nod of recognition. a look passed between them when mr. bucket followed me in, and i was surprised to see that the woman evidently knew him. i had asked leave to enter of course. liz (the only name by which i knew her) rose to give me her own chair, but i sat down on a stool near the fire, and mr. bucket took a corner of the bedstead. now that i had to speak and was among people with whom i was not familiar, i became conscious of being hurried and giddy. it was very difficult to begin, and i could not help bursting into tears. "liz," said i, "i have come a long way in the night and through the snow to inquire after a lady--" "who has been here, you know," mr. bucket struck in, addressing the whole group with a composed propitiatory face; "that's the lady the young lady means. the lady that was here last night, you know." "and who told you as there was anybody here?" inquired jenny's husband, who had made a surly stop in his eating to listen and now measured him with his eye. "a person of the name of michael jackson, with a blue welveteen waistcoat with a double row of mother of pearl buttons," mr. bucket immediately answered. "he had as good mind his own business, whoever he is," growled the man. "he's out of employment, i believe," said mr. bucket apologetically for michael jackson, "and so gets talking." the woman had not resumed her chair, but stood faltering with her hand upon its broken back, looking at me. i thought she would have spoken to me privately if she had dared. she was still in this attitude of uncertainty when her husband, who was eating with a lump of bread and fat in one hand and his clasp-knife in the other, struck the handle of his knife violently on the table and told her with an oath to mind her own business at any rate and sit down. "i should like to have seen jenny very much," said i, "for i am sure she would have told me all she could about this lady, whom i am very anxious indeed--you cannot think how anxious--to overtake. will jenny be here soon? where is she?" the woman had a great desire to answer, but the man, with another oath, openly kicked at her foot with his heavy boot. he left it to jenny's husband to say what he chose, and after a dogged silence the latter turned his shaggy head towards me. "i'm not partial to gentlefolks coming into my place, as you've heerd me say afore now, i think, miss. i let their places be, and it's curious they can't let my place be. there'd be a pretty shine made if i was to go a-wisitin them, i think. howsoever, i don't so much complain of you as of some others, and i'm agreeable to make you a civil answer, though i give notice that i'm not a-going to be drawed like a badger. will jenny be here soon? no she won't. where is she? she's gone up to lunnun." "did she go last night?" i asked. "did she go last night? ah! she went last night," he answered with a sulky jerk of his head. "but was she here when the lady came? and what did the lady say to her? and where is the lady gone? i beg and pray you to be so kind as to tell me," said i, "for i am in great distress to know." "if my master would let me speak, and not say a word of harm--" the woman timidly began. "your master," said her husband, muttering an imprecation with slow emphasis, "will break your neck if you meddle with wot don't concern you." after another silence, the husband of the absent woman, turning to me again, answered me with his usual grumbling unwillingness. "wos jenny here when the lady come? yes, she wos here when the lady come. wot did the lady say to her? well, i'll tell you wot the lady said to her. she said, 'you remember me as come one time to talk to you about the young lady as had been a-wisiting of you? you remember me as give you somethink handsome for a handkercher wot she had left?' ah, she remembered. so we all did. well, then, wos that young lady up at the house now? no, she warn't up at the house now. well, then, lookee here. the lady was upon a journey all alone, strange as we might think it, and could she rest herself where you're a setten for a hour or so. yes she could, and so she did. then she went--it might be at twenty minutes past eleven, and it might be at twenty minutes past twelve; we ain't got no watches here to know the time by, nor yet clocks. where did she go? i don't know where she go'd. she went one way, and jenny went another; one went right to lunnun, and t'other went right from it. that's all about it. ask this man. he heerd it all, and see it all. he knows." the other man repeated, "that's all about it." "was the lady crying?" i inquired. "devil a bit," returned the first man. "her shoes was the worse, and her clothes was the worse, but she warn't--not as i see." the woman sat with her arms crossed and her eyes upon the ground. her husband had turned his seat a little so as to face her and kept his hammer-like hand upon the table as if it were in readiness to execute his threat if she disobeyed him. "i hope you will not object to my asking your wife," said i, "how the lady looked." "come, then!" he gruffly cried to her. "you hear what she says. cut it short and tell her." "bad," replied the woman. "pale and exhausted. very bad." "did she speak much?" "not much, but her voice was hoarse." she answered, looking all the while at her husband for leave. "was she faint?" said i. "did she eat or drink here?" "go on!" said the husband in answer to her look. "tell her and cut it short." "she had a little water, miss, and jenny fetched her some bread and tea. but she hardly touched it." "and when she went from here," i was proceeding, when jenny's husband impatiently took me up. "when she went from here, she went right away nor'ard by the high road. ask on the road if you doubt me, and see if it warn't so. now, there's the end. that's all about it." i glanced at my companion, and finding that he had already risen and was ready to depart, thanked them for what they had told me, and took my leave. the woman looked full at mr. bucket as he went out, and he looked full at her. "now, miss summerson," he said to me as we walked quickly away. "they've got her ladyship's watch among 'em. that's a positive fact." "you saw it?" i exclaimed. "just as good as saw it," he returned. "else why should he talk about his 'twenty minutes past' and about his having no watch to tell the time by? twenty minutes! he don't usually cut his time so fine as that. if he comes to half-hours, it's as much as he does. now, you see, either her ladyship gave him that watch or he took it. i think she gave it him. now, what should she give it him for? what should she give it him for?" he repeated this question to himself several times as we hurried on, appearing to balance between a variety of answers that arose in his mind. "if time could be spared," said mr. bucket, "which is the only thing that can't be spared in this case, i might get it out of that woman; but it's too doubtful a chance to trust to under present circumstances. they are up to keeping a close eye upon her, and any fool knows that a poor creetur like her, beaten and kicked and scarred and bruised from head to foot, will stand by the husband that ill uses her through thick and thin. there's something kept back. it's a pity but what we had seen the other woman." i regretted it exceedingly, for she was very grateful, and i felt sure would have resisted no entreaty of mine. "it's possible, miss summerson," said mr. bucket, pondering on it, "that her ladyship sent her up to london with some word for you, and it's possible that her husband got the watch to let her go. it don't come out altogether so plain as to please me, but it's on the cards. now, i don't take kindly to laying out the money of sir leicester dedlock, baronet, on these roughs, and i don't see my way to the usefulness of it at present. no! so far our road, miss summerson, is for'ard--straight ahead--and keeping everything quiet!" we called at home once more that i might send a hasty note to my guardian, and then we hurried back to where we had left the carriage. the horses were brought out as soon as we were seen coming, and we were on the road again in a few minutes. it had set in snowing at daybreak, and it now snowed hard. the air was so thick with the darkness of the day and the density of the fall that we could see but a very little way in any direction. although it was extremely cold, the snow was but partially frozen, and it churned--with a sound as if it were a beach of small shells--under the hoofs of the horses into mire and water. they sometimes slipped and floundered for a mile together, and we were obliged to come to a standstill to rest them. one horse fell three times in this first stage, and trembled so and was so shaken that the driver had to dismount from his saddle and lead him at last. i could eat nothing and could not sleep, and i grew so nervous under those delays and the slow pace at which we travelled that i had an unreasonable desire upon me to get out and walk. yielding to my companion's better sense, however, i remained where i was. all this time, kept fresh by a certain enjoyment of the work in which he was engaged, he was up and down at every house we came to, addressing people whom he had never beheld before as old acquaintances, running in to warm himself at every fire he saw, talking and drinking and shaking hands at every bar and tap, friendly with every waggoner, wheelwright, blacksmith, and toll-taker, yet never seeming to lose time, and always mounting to the box again with his watchful, steady face and his business-like "get on, my lad!" when we were changing horses the next time, he came from the stable-yard, with the wet snow encrusted upon him and dropping off him--plashing and crashing through it to his wet knees as he had been doing frequently since we left saint albans--and spoke to me at the carriage side. "keep up your spirits. it's certainly true that she came on here, miss summerson. there's not a doubt of the dress by this time, and the dress has been seen here." "still on foot?" said i. "still on foot. i think the gentleman you mentioned must be the point she's aiming at, and yet i don't like his living down in her own part of the country neither." "i know so little," said i. "there may be some one else nearer here, of whom i never heard." "that's true. but whatever you do, don't you fall a-crying, my dear; and don't you worry yourself no more than you can help. get on, my lad!" the sleet fell all that day unceasingly, a thick mist came on early, and it never rose or lightened for a moment. such roads i had never seen. i sometimes feared we had missed the way and got into the ploughed grounds or the marshes. if i ever thought of the time i had been out, it presented itself as an indefinite period of great duration, and i seemed, in a strange way, never to have been free from the anxiety under which i then laboured. as we advanced, i began to feel misgivings that my companion lost confidence. he was the same as before with all the roadside people, but he looked graver when he sat by himself on the box. i saw his finger uneasily going across and across his mouth during the whole of one long weary stage. i overheard that he began to ask the drivers of coaches and other vehicles coming towards us what passengers they had seen in other coaches and vehicles that were in advance. their replies did not encourage him. he always gave me a reassuring beck of his finger and lift of his eyelid as he got upon the box again, but he seemed perplexed now when he said, "get on, my lad!" at last, when we were changing, he told me that he had lost the track of the dress so long that he began to be surprised. it was nothing, he said, to lose such a track for one while, and to take it up for another while, and so on; but it had disappeared here in an unaccountable manner, and we had not come upon it since. this corroborated the apprehensions i had formed, when he began to look at direction-posts, and to leave the carriage at cross roads for a quarter of an hour at a time while he explored them. but i was not to be down-hearted, he told me, for it was as likely as not that the next stage might set us right again. the next stage, however, ended as that one ended; we had no new clue. there was a spacious inn here, solitary, but a comfortable substantial building, and as we drove in under a large gateway before i knew it, where a landlady and her pretty daughters came to the carriage-door, entreating me to alight and refresh myself while the horses were making ready, i thought it would be uncharitable to refuse. they took me upstairs to a warm room and left me there. it was at the corner of the house, i remember, looking two ways. on one side to a stable-yard open to a by-road, where the ostlers were unharnessing the splashed and tired horses from the muddy carriage, and beyond that to the by-road itself, across which the sign was heavily swinging; on the other side to a wood of dark pine-trees. their branches were encumbered with snow, and it silently dropped off in wet heaps while i stood at the window. night was setting in, and its bleakness was enhanced by the contrast of the pictured fire glowing and gleaming in the window-pane. as i looked among the stems of the trees and followed the discoloured marks in the snow where the thaw was sinking into it and undermining it, i thought of the motherly face brightly set off by daughters that had just now welcomed me and of my mother lying down in such a wood to die. i was frightened when i found them all about me, but i remembered that before i fainted i tried very hard not to do it; and that was some little comfort. they cushioned me up on a large sofa by the fire, and then the comely landlady told me that i must travel no further to-night, but must go to bed. but this put me into such a tremble lest they should detain me there that she soon recalled her words and compromised for a rest of half an hour. a good endearing creature she was. she and her three fair girls, all so busy about me. i was to take hot soup and broiled fowl, while mr. bucket dried himself and dined elsewhere; but i could not do it when a snug round table was presently spread by the fireside, though i was very unwilling to disappoint them. however, i could take some toast and some hot negus, and as i really enjoyed that refreshment, it made some recompense. punctual to the time, at the half-hour's end the carriage came rumbling under the gateway, and they took me down, warmed, refreshed, comforted by kindness, and safe (i assured them) not to faint any more. after i had got in and had taken a grateful leave of them all, the youngest daughter--a blooming girl of nineteen, who was to be the first married, they had told me--got upon the carriage step, reached in, and kissed me. i have never seen her, from that hour, but i think of her to this hour as my friend. the transparent windows with the fire and light, looking so bright and warm from the cold darkness out of doors, were soon gone, and again we were crushing and churning the loose snow. we went on with toil enough, but the dismal roads were not much worse than they had been, and the stage was only nine miles. my companion smoking on the box--i had thought at the last inn of begging him to do so when i saw him standing at a great fire in a comfortable cloud of tobacco--was as vigilant as ever and as quickly down and up again when we came to any human abode or any human creature. he had lighted his little dark lantern, which seemed to be a favourite with him, for we had lamps to the carriage; and every now and then he turned it upon me to see that i was doing well. there was a folding-window to the carriage-head, but i never closed it, for it seemed like shutting out hope. we came to the end of the stage, and still the lost trace was not recovered. i looked at him anxiously when we stopped to change, but i knew by his yet graver face as he stood watching the ostlers that he had heard nothing. almost in an instant afterwards, as i leaned back in my seat, he looked in, with his lighted lantern in his hand, an excited and quite different man. "what is it?" said i, starting. "is she here?" "no, no. don't deceive yourself, my dear. nobody's here. but i've got it!" the crystallized snow was in his eyelashes, in his hair, lying in ridges on his dress. he had to shake it from his face and get his breath before he spoke to me. "now, miss summerson," said he, beating his finger on the apron, "don't you be disappointed at what i'm a-going to do. you know me. i'm inspector bucket, and you can trust me. we've come a long way; never mind. four horses out there for the next stage up! quick!" there was a commotion in the yard, and a man came running out of the stables to know if he meant up or down. "up, i tell you! up! ain't it english? up!" "up?" said i, astonished. "to london! are we going back?" "miss summerson," he answered, "back. straight back as a die. you know me. don't be afraid. i'll follow the other, by g----" "the other?" i repeated. "who?" "you called her jenny, didn't you? i'll follow her. bring those two pair out here for a crown a man. wake up, some of you!" "you will not desert this lady we are in search of; you will not abandon her on such a night and in such a state of mind as i know her to be in!" said i, in an agony, and grasping his hand. "you are right, my dear, i won't. but i'll follow the other. look alive here with them horses. send a man for'ard in the saddle to the next stage, and let him send another for'ard again, and order four on, up, right through. my darling, don't you be afraid!" these orders and the way in which he ran about the yard urging them caused a general excitement that was scarcely less bewildering to me than the sudden change. but in the height of the confusion, a mounted man galloped away to order the relays, and our horses were put to with great speed. "my dear," said mr. bucket, jumping to his seat and looking in again, "--you'll excuse me if i'm too familiar--don't you fret and worry yourself no more than you can help. i say nothing else at present; but you know me, my dear; now, don't you?" i endeavoured to say that i knew he was far more capable than i of deciding what we ought to do, but was he sure that this was right? could i not go forward by myself in search of--i grasped his hand again in my distress and whispered it to him--of my own mother. "my dear," he answered, "i know, i know, and would i put you wrong, do you think? inspector bucket. now you know me, don't you?" what could i say but yes! "then you keep up as good a heart as you can, and you rely upon me for standing by you, no less than by sir leicester dedlock, baronet. now, are you right there?" "all right, sir!" "off she goes, then. and get on, my lads!" we were again upon the melancholy road by which we had come, tearing up the miry sleet and thawing snow as if they were torn up by a waterwheel. chapter lviii a wintry day and night still impassive, as behoves its breeding, the dedlock town house carries itself as usual towards the street of dismal grandeur. there are powdered heads from time to time in the little windows of the hall, looking out at the untaxed powder falling all day from the sky; and in the same conservatory there is peach blossom turning itself exotically to the great hall fire from the nipping weather out of doors. it is given out that my lady has gone down into lincolnshire, but is expected to return presently. rumour, busy overmuch, however, will not go down into lincolnshire. it persists in flitting and chattering about town. it knows that that poor unfortunate man, sir leicester, has been sadly used. it hears, my dear child, all sorts of shocking things. it makes the world of five miles round quite merry. not to know that there is something wrong at the dedlocks' is to augur yourself unknown. one of the peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats is already apprised of all the principal circumstances that will come out before the lords on sir leicester's application for a bill of divorce. at blaze and sparkle's the jewellers and at sheen and gloss's the mercers, it is and will be for several hours the topic of the age, the feature of the century. the patronesses of those establishments, albeit so loftily inscrutable, being as nicely weighed and measured there as any other article of the stock-in-trade, are perfectly understood in this new fashion by the rawest hand behind the counter. "our people, mr. jones," said blaze and sparkle to the hand in question on engaging him, "our people, sir, are sheep--mere sheep. where two or three marked ones go, all the rest follow. keep those two or three in your eye, mr. jones, and you have the flock." so, likewise, sheen and gloss to their jones, in reference to knowing where to have the fashionable people and how to bring what they (sheen and gloss) choose into fashion. on similar unerring principles, mr. sladdery the librarian, and indeed the great farmer of gorgeous sheep, admits this very day, "why yes, sir, there certainly are reports concerning lady dedlock, very current indeed among my high connexion, sir. you see, my high connexion must talk about something, sir; and it's only to get a subject into vogue with one or two ladies i could name to make it go down with the whole. just what i should have done with those ladies, sir, in the case of any novelty you had left to me to bring in, they have done of themselves in this case through knowing lady dedlock and being perhaps a little innocently jealous of her too, sir. you'll find, sir, that this topic will be very popular among my high connexion. if it had been a speculation, sir, it would have brought money. and when i say so, you may trust to my being right, sir, for i have made it my business to study my high connexion and to be able to wind it up like a clock, sir." thus rumour thrives in the capital, and will not go down into lincolnshire. by half-past five, post meridian, horse guards' time, it has even elicited a new remark from the honourable mr. stables, which bids fair to outshine the old one, on which he has so long rested his colloquial reputation. this sparkling sally is to the effect that although he always knew she was the best-groomed woman in the stud, he had no idea she was a bolter. it is immensely received in turf-circles. at feasts and festivals also, in firmaments she has often graced, and among constellations she outshone but yesterday, she is still the prevalent subject. what is it? who is it? when was it? where was it? how was it? she is discussed by her dear friends with all the genteelest slang in vogue, with the last new word, the last new manner, the last new drawl, and the perfection of polite indifference. a remarkable feature of the theme is that it is found to be so inspiring that several people come out upon it who never came out before--positively say things! william buffy carries one of these smartnesses from the place where he dines down to the house, where the whip for his party hands it about with his snuff-box to keep men together who want to be off, with such effect that the speaker (who has had it privately insinuated into his own ear under the corner of his wig) cries, "order at the bar!" three times without making an impression. and not the least amazing circumstance connected with her being vaguely the town talk is that people hovering on the confines of mr. sladdery's high connexion, people who know nothing and ever did know nothing about her, think it essential to their reputation to pretend that she is their topic too, and to retail her at second-hand with the last new word and the last new manner, and the last new drawl, and the last new polite indifference, and all the rest of it, all at second-hand but considered equal to new in inferior systems and to fainter stars. if there be any man of letters, art, or science among these little dealers, how noble in him to support the feeble sisters on such majestic crutches! so goes the wintry day outside the dedlock mansion. how within it? sir leicester, lying in his bed, can speak a little, though with difficulty and indistinctness. he is enjoined to silence and to rest, and they have given him some opiate to lull his pain, for his old enemy is very hard with him. he is never asleep, though sometimes he seems to fall into a dull waking doze. he caused his bedstead to be moved out nearer to the window when he heard it was such inclement weather, and his head to be so adjusted that he could see the driving snow and sleet. he watches it as it falls, throughout the whole wintry day. upon the least noise in the house, which is kept hushed, his hand is at the pencil. the old housekeeper, sitting by him, knows what he would write and whispers, "no, he has not come back yet, sir leicester. it was late last night when he went. he has been but a little time gone yet." he withdraws his hand and falls to looking at the sleet and snow again until they seem, by being long looked at, to fall so thick and fast that he is obliged to close his eyes for a minute on the giddy whirl of white flakes and icy blots. he began to look at them as soon as it was light. the day is not yet far spent when he conceives it to be necessary that her rooms should be prepared for her. it is very cold and wet. let there be good fires. let them know that she is expected. please see to it yourself. he writes to this purpose on his slate, and mrs. rouncewell with a heavy heart obeys. "for i dread, george," the old lady says to her son, who waits below to keep her company when she has a little leisure, "i dread, my dear, that my lady will never more set foot within these walls." "that's a bad presentiment, mother." "nor yet within the walls of chesney wold, my dear." "that's worse. but why, mother?" "when i saw my lady yesterday, george, she looked to me--and i may say at me too--as if the step on the ghost's walk had almost walked her down." "come, come! you alarm yourself with old-story fears, mother." "no i don't, my dear. no i don't. it's going on for sixty year that i have been in this family, and i never had any fears for it before. but it's breaking up, my dear; the great old dedlock family is breaking up." "i hope not, mother." "i am thankful i have lived long enough to be with sir leicester in this illness and trouble, for i know i am not too old nor too useless to be a welcomer sight to him than anybody else in my place would be. but the step on the ghost's walk will walk my lady down, george; it has been many a day behind her, and now it will pass her and go on." "well, mother dear, i say again, i hope not." "ah, so do i, george," the old lady returns, shaking her head and parting her folded hands. "but if my fears come true, and he has to know it, who will tell him!" "are these her rooms?" "these are my lady's rooms, just as she left them." "why, now," says the trooper, glancing round him and speaking in a lower voice, "i begin to understand how you come to think as you do think, mother. rooms get an awful look about them when they are fitted up, like these, for one person you are used to see in them, and that person is away under any shadow, let alone being god knows where." he is not far out. as all partings foreshadow the great final one, so, empty rooms, bereft of a familiar presence, mournfully whisper what your room and what mine must one day be. my lady's state has a hollow look, thus gloomy and abandoned; and in the inner apartment, where mr. bucket last night made his secret perquisition, the traces of her dresses and her ornaments, even the mirrors accustomed to reflect them when they were a portion of herself, have a desolate and vacant air. dark and cold as the wintry day is, it is darker and colder in these deserted chambers than in many a hut that will barely exclude the weather; and though the servants heap fires in the grates and set the couches and the chairs within the warm glass screens that let their ruddy light shoot through to the furthest corners, there is a heavy cloud upon the rooms which no light will dispel. the old housekeeper and her son remain until the preparations are complete, and then she returns upstairs. volumnia has taken mrs. rouncewell's place in the meantime, though pearl necklaces and rouge pots, however calculated to embellish bath, are but indifferent comforts to the invalid under present circumstances. volumnia, not being supposed to know (and indeed not knowing) what is the matter, has found it a ticklish task to offer appropriate observations and consequently has supplied their place with distracting smoothings of the bed-linen, elaborate locomotion on tiptoe, vigilant peeping at her kinsman's eyes, and one exasperating whisper to herself of, "he is asleep." in disproof of which superfluous remark sir leicester has indignantly written on the slate, "i am not." yielding, therefore, the chair at the bedside to the quaint old housekeeper, volumnia sits at a table a little removed, sympathetically sighing. sir leicester watches the sleet and snow and listens for the returning steps that he expects. in the ears of his old servant, looking as if she had stepped out of an old picture-frame to attend a summoned dedlock to another world, the silence is fraught with echoes of her own words, "who will tell him!" he has been under his valet's hands this morning to be made presentable and is as well got up as the circumstances will allow. he is propped with pillows, his grey hair is brushed in its usual manner, his linen is arranged to a nicety, and he is wrapped in a responsible dressing-gown. his eye-glass and his watch are ready to his hand. it is necessary--less to his own dignity now perhaps than for her sake--that he should be seen as little disturbed and as much himself as may be. women will talk, and volumnia, though a dedlock, is no exceptional case. he keeps her here, there is little doubt, to prevent her talking somewhere else. he is very ill, but he makes his present stand against distress of mind and body most courageously. the fair volumnia, being one of those sprightly girls who cannot long continue silent without imminent peril of seizure by the dragon boredom, soon indicates the approach of that monster with a series of undisguisable yawns. finding it impossible to suppress those yawns by any other process than conversation, she compliments mrs. rouncewell on her son, declaring that he positively is one of the finest figures she ever saw and as soldierly a looking person, she should think, as what's his name, her favourite life guardsman--the man she dotes on, the dearest of creatures--who was killed at waterloo. sir leicester hears this tribute with so much surprise and stares about him in such a confused way that mrs. rouncewell feels it necessary to explain. "miss dedlock don't speak of my eldest son, sir leicester, but my youngest. i have found him. he has come home." sir leicester breaks silence with a harsh cry. "george? your son george come home, mrs. rouncewell?" the old housekeeper wipes her eyes. "thank god. yes, sir leicester." does this discovery of some one lost, this return of some one so long gone, come upon him as a strong confirmation of his hopes? does he think, "shall i not, with the aid i have, recall her safely after this, there being fewer hours in her case than there are years in his?" it is of no use entreating him; he is determined to speak now, and he does. in a thick crowd of sounds, but still intelligibly enough to be understood. "why did you not tell me, mrs. rouncewell?" "it happened only yesterday, sir leicester, and i doubted your being well enough to be talked to of such things." besides, the giddy volumnia now remembers with her little scream that nobody was to have known of his being mrs. rouncewell's son and that she was not to have told. but mrs. rouncewell protests, with warmth enough to swell the stomacher, that of course she would have told sir leicester as soon as he got better. "where is your son george, mrs. rouncewell?" asks sir leicester, mrs. rouncewell, not a little alarmed by his disregard of the doctor's injunctions, replies, in london. "where in london?" mrs. rouncewell is constrained to admit that he is in the house. "bring him here to my room. bring him directly." the old lady can do nothing but go in search of him. sir leicester, with such power of movement as he has, arranges himself a little to receive him. when he has done so, he looks out again at the falling sleet and snow and listens again for the returning steps. a quantity of straw has been tumbled down in the street to deaden the noises there, and she might be driven to the door perhaps without his hearing wheels. he is lying thus, apparently forgetful of his newer and minor surprise, when the housekeeper returns, accompanied by her trooper son. mr. george approaches softly to the bedside, makes his bow, squares his chest, and stands, with his face flushed, very heartily ashamed of himself. "good heaven, and it is really george rouncewell!" exclaims sir leicester. "do you remember me, george?" the trooper needs to look at him and to separate this sound from that sound before he knows what he has said, but doing this and being a little helped by his mother, he replies, "i must have a very bad memory, indeed, sir leicester, if i failed to remember you." "when i look at you, george rouncewell," sir leicester observes with difficulty, "i see something of a boy at chesney wold--i remember well--very well." he looks at the trooper until tears come into his eyes, and then he looks at the sleet and snow again. "i ask your pardon, sir leicester," says the trooper, "but would you accept of my arms to raise you up? you would lie easier, sir leicester, if you would allow me to move you." "if you please, george rouncewell; if you will be so good." the trooper takes him in his arms like a child, lightly raises him, and turns him with his face more towards the window. "thank you. you have your mother's gentleness," returns sir leicester, "and your own strength. thank you." he signs to him with his hand not to go away. george quietly remains at the bedside, waiting to be spoken to. "why did you wish for secrecy?" it takes sir leicester some time to ask this. "truly i am not much to boast of, sir leicester, and i--i should still, sir leicester, if you was not so indisposed--which i hope you will not be long--i should still hope for the favour of being allowed to remain unknown in general. that involves explanations not very hard to be guessed at, not very well timed here, and not very creditable to myself. however opinions may differ on a variety of subjects, i should think it would be universally agreed, sir leicester, that i am not much to boast of." "you have been a soldier," observes sir leicester, "and a faithful one." george makes his military bow. "as far as that goes, sir leicester, i have done my duty under discipline, and it was the least i could do." "you find me," says sir leicester, whose eyes are much attracted towards him, "far from well, george rouncewell." "i am very sorry both to hear it and to see it, sir leicester." "i am sure you are. no. in addition to my older malady, i have had a sudden and bad attack. something that deadens," making an endeavour to pass one hand down one side, "and confuses," touching his lips. george, with a look of assent and sympathy, makes another bow. the different times when they were both young men (the trooper much the younger of the two) and looked at one another down at chesney wold arise before them both and soften both. sir leicester, evidently with a great determination to say, in his own manner, something that is on his mind before relapsing into silence, tries to raise himself among his pillows a little more. george, observant of the action, takes him in his arms again and places him as he desires to be. "thank you, george. you are another self to me. you have often carried my spare gun at chesney wold, george. you are familiar to me in these strange circumstances, very familiar." he has put sir leicester's sounder arm over his shoulder in lifting him up, and sir leicester is slow in drawing it away again as he says these words. "i was about to add," he presently goes on, "i was about to add, respecting this attack, that it was unfortunately simultaneous with a slight misunderstanding between my lady and myself. i do not mean that there was any difference between us (for there has been none), but that there was a misunderstanding of certain circumstances important only to ourselves, which deprives me, for a little while, of my lady's society. she has found it necessary to make a journey--i trust will shortly return. volumnia, do i make myself intelligible? the words are not quite under my command in the manner of pronouncing them." volumnia understands him perfectly, and in truth he delivers himself with far greater plainness than could have been supposed possible a minute ago. the effort by which he does so is written in the anxious and labouring expression of his face. nothing but the strength of his purpose enables him to make it. "therefore, volumnia, i desire to say in your presence--and in the presence of my old retainer and friend, mrs. rouncewell, whose truth and fidelity no one can question, and in the presence of her son george, who comes back like a familiar recollection of my youth in the home of my ancestors at chesney wold--in case i should relapse, in case i should not recover, in case i should lose both my speech and the power of writing, though i hope for better things--" the old housekeeper weeping silently; volumnia in the greatest agitation, with the freshest bloom on her cheeks; the trooper with his arms folded and his head a little bent, respectfully attentive. "therefore i desire to say, and to call you all to witness--beginning, volumnia, with yourself, most solemnly--that i am on unaltered terms with lady dedlock. that i assert no cause whatever of complaint against her. that i have ever had the strongest affection for her, and that i retain it undiminished. say this to herself, and to every one. if you ever say less than this, you will be guilty of deliberate falsehood to me." volumnia tremblingly protests that she will observe his injunctions to the letter. "my lady is too high in position, too handsome, too accomplished, too superior in most respects to the best of those by whom she is surrounded, not to have her enemies and traducers, i dare say. let it be known to them, as i make it known to you, that being of sound mind, memory, and understanding, i revoke no disposition i have made in her favour. i abridge nothing i have ever bestowed upon her. i am on unaltered terms with her, and i recall--having the full power to do it if i were so disposed, as you see--no act i have done for her advantage and happiness." his formal array of words might have at any other time, as it has often had, something ludicrous in it, but at this time it is serious and affecting. his noble earnestness, his fidelity, his gallant shielding of her, his generous conquest of his own wrong and his own pride for her sake, are simply honourable, manly, and true. nothing less worthy can be seen through the lustre of such qualities in the commonest mechanic, nothing less worthy can be seen in the best-born gentleman. in such a light both aspire alike, both rise alike, both children of the dust shine equally. overpowered by his exertions, he lays his head back on his pillows and closes his eyes for not more than a minute, when he again resumes his watching of the weather and his attention to the muffled sounds. in the rendering of those little services, and in the manner of their acceptance, the trooper has become installed as necessary to him. nothing has been said, but it is quite understood. he falls a step or two backward to be out of sight and mounts guard a little behind his mother's chair. the day is now beginning to decline. the mist and the sleet into which the snow has all resolved itself are darker, and the blaze begins to tell more vividly upon the room walls and furniture. the gloom augments; the bright gas springs up in the streets; and the pertinacious oil lamps which yet hold their ground there, with their source of life half frozen and half thawed, twinkle gaspingly like fiery fish out of water--as they are. the world, which has been rumbling over the straw and pulling at the bell, "to inquire," begins to go home, begins to dress, to dine, to discuss its dear friend with all the last new modes, as already mentioned. now does sir leicester become worse, restless, uneasy, and in great pain. volumnia, lighting a candle (with a predestined aptitude for doing something objectionable), is bidden to put it out again, for it is not yet dark enough. yet it is very dark too, as dark as it will be all night. by and by she tries again. no! put it out. it is not dark enough yet. his old housekeeper is the first to understand that he is striving to uphold the fiction with himself that it is not growing late. "dear sir leicester, my honoured master," she softly whispers, "i must, for your own good, and my duty, take the freedom of begging and praying that you will not lie here in the lone darkness watching and waiting and dragging through the time. let me draw the curtains, and light the candles, and make things more comfortable about you. the church-clocks will strike the hours just the same, sir leicester, and the night will pass away just the same. my lady will come back, just the same." "i know it, mrs. rouncewell, but i am weak--and she has been so long gone." "not so very long, sir leicester. not twenty-four hours yet." "but that is a long time. oh, it is a long time!" he says it with a groan that wrings her heart. she knows that this is not a period for bringing the rough light upon him; she thinks his tears too sacred to be seen, even by her. therefore she sits in the darkness for a while without a word, then gently begins to move about, now stirring the fire, now standing at the dark window looking out. finally he tells her, with recovered self-command, "as you say, mrs. rouncewell, it is no worse for being confessed. it is getting late, and they are not come. light the room!" when it is lighted and the weather shut out, it is only left to him to listen. but they find that however dejected and ill he is, he brightens when a quiet pretence is made of looking at the fires in her rooms and being sure that everything is ready to receive her. poor pretence as it is, these allusions to her being expected keep up hope within him. midnight comes, and with it the same blank. the carriages in the streets are few, and other late sounds in that neighbourhood there are none, unless a man so very nomadically drunk as to stray into the frigid zone goes brawling and bellowing along the pavement. upon this wintry night it is so still that listening to the intense silence is like looking at intense darkness. if any distant sound be audible in this case, it departs through the gloom like a feeble light in that, and all is heavier than before. the corporation of servants are dismissed to bed (not unwilling to go, for they were up all last night), and only mrs. rouncewell and george keep watch in sir leicester's room. as the night lags tardily on--or rather when it seems to stop altogether, at between two and three o'clock--they find a restless craving on him to know more about the weather, now he cannot see it. hence george, patrolling regularly every half-hour to the rooms so carefully looked after, extends his march to the hall-door, looks about him, and brings back the best report he can make of the worst of nights, the sleet still falling and even the stone footways lying ankle-deep in icy sludge. volumnia, in her room up a retired landing on the staircase--the second turning past the end of the carving and gilding, a cousinly room containing a fearful abortion of a portrait of sir leicester banished for its crimes, and commanding in the day a solemn yard planted with dried-up shrubs like antediluvian specimens of black tea--is a prey to horrors of many kinds. not last nor least among them, possibly, is a horror of what may befall her little income in the event, as she expresses it, "of anything happening" to sir leicester. anything, in this sense, meaning one thing only; and that the last thing that can happen to the consciousness of any baronet in the known world. an effect of these horrors is that volumnia finds she cannot go to bed in her own room or sit by the fire in her own room, but must come forth with her fair head tied up in a profusion of shawl, and her fair form enrobed in drapery, and parade the mansion like a ghost, particularly haunting the rooms, warm and luxurious, prepared for one who still does not return. solitude under such circumstances being not to be thought of, volumnia is attended by her maid, who, impressed from her own bed for that purpose, extremely cold, very sleepy, and generally an injured maid as condemned by circumstances to take office with a cousin, when she had resolved to be maid to nothing less than ten thousand a year, has not a sweet expression of countenance. the periodical visits of the trooper to these rooms, however, in the course of his patrolling is an assurance of protection and company both to mistress and maid, which renders them very acceptable in the small hours of the night. whenever he is heard advancing, they both make some little decorative preparation to receive him; at other times they divide their watches into short scraps of oblivion and dialogues not wholly free from acerbity, as to whether miss dedlock, sitting with her feet upon the fender, was or was not falling into the fire when rescued (to her great displeasure) by her guardian genius the maid. "how is sir leicester now, mr. george?" inquires volumnia, adjusting her cowl over her head. "why, sir leicester is much the same, miss. he is very low and ill, and he even wanders a little sometimes." "has he asked for me?" inquires volumnia tenderly. "why, no, i can't say he has, miss. not within my hearing, that is to say." "this is a truly sad time, mr. george." "it is indeed, miss. hadn't you better go to bed?" "you had a deal better go to bed, miss dedlock," quoth the maid sharply. but volumnia answers no! no! she may be asked for, she may be wanted at a moment's notice. she never should forgive herself "if anything was to happen" and she was not on the spot. she declines to enter on the question, mooted by the maid, how the spot comes to be there, and not in her room (which is nearer to sir leicester's), but staunchly declares that on the spot she will remain. volumnia further makes a merit of not having "closed an eye"--as if she had twenty or thirty--though it is hard to reconcile this statement with her having most indisputably opened two within five minutes. but when it comes to four o'clock, and still the same blank, volumnia's constancy begins to fail her, or rather it begins to strengthen, for she now considers that it is her duty to be ready for the morrow, when much may be expected of her, that, in fact, howsoever anxious to remain upon the spot, it may be required of her, as an act of self-devotion, to desert the spot. so when the trooper reappears with his, "hadn't you better go to bed, miss?" and when the maid protests, more sharply than before, "you had a deal better go to bed, miss dedlock!" she meekly rises and says, "do with me what you think best!" mr. george undoubtedly thinks it best to escort her on his arm to the door of her cousinly chamber, and the maid as undoubtedly thinks it best to hustle her into bed with mighty little ceremony. accordingly, these steps are taken; and now the trooper, in his rounds, has the house to himself. there is no improvement in the weather. from the portico, from the eaves, from the parapet, from every ledge and post and pillar, drips the thawed snow. it has crept, as if for shelter, into the lintels of the great door--under it, into the corners of the windows, into every chink and crevice of retreat, and there wastes and dies. it is falling still; upon the roof, upon the skylight, even through the skylight, and drip, drip, drip, with the regularity of the ghost's walk, on the stone floor below. the trooper, his old recollections awakened by the solitary grandeur of a great house--no novelty to him once at chesney wold--goes up the stairs and through the chief rooms, holding up his light at arm's length. thinking of his varied fortunes within the last few weeks, and of his rustic boyhood, and of the two periods of his life so strangely brought together across the wide intermediate space; thinking of the murdered man whose image is fresh in his mind; thinking of the lady who has disappeared from these very rooms and the tokens of whose recent presence are all here; thinking of the master of the house upstairs and of the foreboding, "who will tell him!" he looks here and looks there, and reflects how he might see something now, which it would tax his boldness to walk up to, lay his hand upon, and prove to be a fancy. but it is all blank, blank as the darkness above and below, while he goes up the great staircase again, blank as the oppressive silence. "all is still in readiness, george rouncewell?" "quite orderly and right, sir leicester." "no word of any kind?" the trooper shakes his head. "no letter that can possibly have been overlooked?" but he knows there is no such hope as that and lays his head down without looking for an answer. very familiar to him, as he said himself some hours ago, george rouncewell lifts him into easier positions through the long remainder of the blank wintry night, and equally familiar with his unexpressed wish, extinguishes the light and undraws the curtains at the first late break of day. the day comes like a phantom. cold, colourless, and vague, it sends a warning streak before it of a deathlike hue, as if it cried out, "look what i am bringing you who watch there! who will tell him!" chapter lix esther's narrative it was three o'clock in the morning when the houses outside london did at last begin to exclude the country and to close us in with streets. we had made our way along roads in a far worse condition than when we had traversed them by daylight, both the fall and the thaw having lasted ever since; but the energy of my companion never slackened. it had only been, as i thought, of less assistance than the horses in getting us on, and it had often aided them. they had stopped exhausted half-way up hills, they had been driven through streams of turbulent water, they had slipped down and become entangled with the harness; but he and his little lantern had been always ready, and when the mishap was set right, i had never heard any variation in his cool, "get on, my lads!" the steadiness and confidence with which he had directed our journey back i could not account for. never wavering, he never even stopped to make an inquiry until we were within a few miles of london. a very few words, here and there, were then enough for him; and thus we came, at between three and four o'clock in the morning, into islington. i will not dwell on the suspense and anxiety with which i reflected all this time that we were leaving my mother farther and farther behind every minute. i think i had some strong hope that he must be right and could not fail to have a satisfactory object in following this woman, but i tormented myself with questioning it and discussing it during the whole journey. what was to ensue when we found her and what could compensate us for this loss of time were questions also that i could not possibly dismiss; my mind was quite tortured by long dwelling on such reflections when we stopped. we stopped in a high-street where there was a coach-stand. my companion paid our two drivers, who were as completely covered with splashes as if they had been dragged along the roads like the carriage itself, and giving them some brief direction where to take it, lifted me out of it and into a hackney-coach he had chosen from the rest. "why, my dear!" he said as he did this. "how wet you are!" i had not been conscious of it. but the melted snow had found its way into the carriage, and i had got out two or three times when a fallen horse was plunging and had to be got up, and the wet had penetrated my dress. i assured him it was no matter, but the driver, who knew him, would not be dissuaded by me from running down the street to his stable, whence he brought an armful of clean dry straw. they shook it out and strewed it well about me, and i found it warm and comfortable. "now, my dear," said mr. bucket, with his head in at the window after i was shut up. "we're a-going to mark this person down. it may take a little time, but you don't mind that. you're pretty sure that i've got a motive. ain't you?" i little thought what it was, little thought in how short a time i should understand it better, but i assured him that i had confidence in him. "so you may have, my dear," he returned. "and i tell you what! if you only repose half as much confidence in me as i repose in you after what i've experienced of you, that'll do. lord! you're no trouble at all. i never see a young woman in any station of society--and i've seen many elevated ones too--conduct herself like you have conducted yourself since you was called out of your bed. you're a pattern, you know, that's what you are," said mr. bucket warmly; "you're a pattern." i told him i was very glad, as indeed i was, to have been no hindrance to him, and that i hoped i should be none now. "my dear," he returned, "when a young lady is as mild as she's game, and as game as she's mild, that's all i ask, and more than i expect. she then becomes a queen, and that's about what you are yourself." with these encouraging words--they really were encouraging to me under those lonely and anxious circumstances--he got upon the box, and we once more drove away. where we drove i neither knew then nor have ever known since, but we appeared to seek out the narrowest and worst streets in london. whenever i saw him directing the driver, i was prepared for our descending into a deeper complication of such streets, and we never failed to do so. sometimes we emerged upon a wider thoroughfare or came to a larger building than the generality, well lighted. then we stopped at offices like those we had visited when we began our journey, and i saw him in consultation with others. sometimes he would get down by an archway or at a street corner and mysteriously show the light of his little lantern. this would attract similar lights from various dark quarters, like so many insects, and a fresh consultation would be held. by degrees we appeared to contract our search within narrower and easier limits. single police-officers on duty could now tell mr. bucket what he wanted to know and point to him where to go. at last we stopped for a rather long conversation between him and one of these men, which i supposed to be satisfactory from his manner of nodding from time to time. when it was finished he came to me looking very busy and very attentive. "now, miss summerson," he said to me, "you won't be alarmed whatever comes off, i know. it's not necessary for me to give you any further caution than to tell you that we have marked this person down and that you may be of use to me before i know it myself. i don't like to ask such a thing, my dear, but would you walk a little way?" of course i got out directly and took his arm. "it ain't so easy to keep your feet," said mr. bucket, "but take time." although i looked about me confusedly and hurriedly as we crossed the street, i thought i knew the place. "are we in holborn?" i asked him. "yes," said mr. bucket. "do you know this turning?" "it looks like chancery lane." "and was christened so, my dear," said mr. bucket. we turned down it, and as we went shuffling through the sleet, i heard the clocks strike half-past five. we passed on in silence and as quickly as we could with such a foot-hold, when some one coming towards us on the narrow pavement, wrapped in a cloak, stopped and stood aside to give me room. in the same moment i heard an exclamation of wonder and my own name from mr. woodcourt. i knew his voice very well. it was so unexpected and so--i don't know what to call it, whether pleasant or painful--to come upon it after my feverish wandering journey, and in the midst of the night, that i could not keep back the tears from my eyes. it was like hearing his voice in a strange country. "my dear miss summerson, that you should be out at this hour, and in such weather!" he had heard from my guardian of my having been called away on some uncommon business and said so to dispense with any explanation. i told him that we had but just left a coach and were going--but then i was obliged to look at my companion. "why, you see, mr. woodcourt"--he had caught the name from me--"we are a-going at present into the next street. inspector bucket." mr. woodcourt, disregarding my remonstrances, had hurriedly taken off his cloak and was putting it about me. "that's a good move, too," said mr. bucket, assisting, "a very good move." "may i go with you?" said mr. woodcourt. i don't know whether to me or to my companion. "why, lord!" exclaimed mr. bucket, taking the answer on himself. "of course you may." it was all said in a moment, and they took me between them, wrapped in the cloak. "i have just left richard," said mr. woodcourt. "i have been sitting with him since ten o'clock last night." "oh, dear me, he is ill!" "no, no, believe me; not ill, but not quite well. he was depressed and faint--you know he gets so worried and so worn sometimes--and ada sent to me of course; and when i came home i found her note and came straight here. well! richard revived so much after a little while, and ada was so happy and so convinced of its being my doing, though god knows i had little enough to do with it, that i remained with him until he had been fast asleep some hours. as fast asleep as she is now, i hope!" his friendly and familiar way of speaking of them, his unaffected devotion to them, the grateful confidence with which i knew he had inspired my darling, and the comfort he was to her; could i separate all this from his promise to me? how thankless i must have been if it had not recalled the words he said to me when he was so moved by the change in my appearance: "i will accept him as a trust, and it shall be a sacred one!" we now turned into another narrow street. "mr. woodcourt," said mr. bucket, who had eyed him closely as we came along, "our business takes us to a law-stationer's here, a certain mr. snagsby's. what, you know him, do you?" he was so quick that he saw it in an instant. "yes, i know a little of him and have called upon him at this place." "indeed, sir?" said mr. bucket. "then you will be so good as to let me leave miss summerson with you for a moment while i go and have half a word with him?" the last police-officer with whom he had conferred was standing silently behind us. i was not aware of it until he struck in on my saying i heard some one crying. "don't be alarmed, miss," he returned. "it's snagsby's servant." "why, you see," said mr. bucket, "the girl's subject to fits, and has 'em bad upon her to-night. a most contrary circumstance it is, for i want certain information out of that girl, and she must be brought to reason somehow." "at all events, they wouldn't be up yet if it wasn't for her, mr. bucket," said the other man. "she's been at it pretty well all night, sir." "well, that's true," he returned. "my light's burnt out. show yours a moment." all this passed in a whisper a door or two from the house in which i could faintly hear crying and moaning. in the little round of light produced for the purpose, mr. bucket went up to the door and knocked. the door was opened after he had knocked twice, and he went in, leaving us standing in the street. "miss summerson," said mr. woodcourt, "if without obtruding myself on your confidence i may remain near you, pray let me do so." "you are truly kind," i answered. "i need wish to keep no secret of my own from you; if i keep any, it is another's." "i quite understand. trust me, i will remain near you only so long as i can fully respect it." "i trust implicitly to you," i said. "i know and deeply feel how sacredly you keep your promise." after a short time the little round of light shone out again, and mr. bucket advanced towards us in it with his earnest face. "please to come in, miss summerson," he said, "and sit down by the fire. mr. woodcourt, from information i have received i understand you are a medical man. would you look to this girl and see if anything can be done to bring her round. she has a letter somewhere that i particularly want. it's not in her box, and i think it must be about her; but she is so twisted and clenched up that she is difficult to handle without hurting." we all three went into the house together; although it was cold and raw, it smelt close too from being up all night. in the passage behind the door stood a scared, sorrowful-looking little man in a grey coat who seemed to have a naturally polite manner and spoke meekly. "downstairs, if you please, mr. bucket," said he. "the lady will excuse the front kitchen; we use it as our workaday sitting-room. the back is guster's bedroom, and in it she's a-carrying on, poor thing, to a frightful extent!" we went downstairs, followed by mr. snagsby, as i soon found the little man to be. in the front kitchen, sitting by the fire, was mrs. snagsby, with very red eyes and a very severe expression of face. "my little woman," said mr. snagsby, entering behind us, "to wave--not to put too fine a point upon it, my dear--hostilities for one single moment in the course of this prolonged night, here is inspector bucket, mr. woodcourt, and a lady." she looked very much astonished, as she had reason for doing, and looked particularly hard at me. "my little woman," said mr. snagsby, sitting down in the remotest corner by the door, as if he were taking a liberty, "it is not unlikely that you may inquire of me why inspector bucket, mr. woodcourt, and a lady call upon us in cook's court, cursitor street, at the present hour. i don't know. i have not the least idea. if i was to be informed, i should despair of understanding, and i'd rather not be told." he appeared so miserable, sitting with his head upon his hand, and i appeared so unwelcome, that i was going to offer an apology when mr. bucket took the matter on himself. "now, mr. snagsby," said he, "the best thing you can do is to go along with mr. woodcourt to look after your guster--" "my guster, mr. bucket!" cried mr. snagsby. "go on, sir, go on. i shall be charged with that next." "and to hold the candle," pursued mr. bucket without correcting himself, "or hold her, or make yourself useful in any way you're asked. which there's not a man alive more ready to do, for you're a man of urbanity and suavity, you know, and you've got the sort of heart that can feel for another. mr. woodcourt, would you be so good as see to her, and if you can get that letter from her, to let me have it as soon as ever you can?" as they went out, mr. bucket made me sit down in a corner by the fire and take off my wet shoes, which he turned up to dry upon the fender, talking all the time. "don't you be at all put out, miss, by the want of a hospitable look from mrs. snagsby there, because she's under a mistake altogether. she'll find that out sooner than will be agreeable to a lady of her generally correct manner of forming her thoughts, because i'm a-going to explain it to her." here, standing on the hearth with his wet hat and shawls in his hand, himself a pile of wet, he turned to mrs. snagsby. "now, the first thing that i say to you, as a married woman possessing what you may call charms, you know--'believe me, if all those endearing,' and cetrer--you're well acquainted with the song, because it's in vain for you to tell me that you and good society are strangers--charms--attractions, mind you, that ought to give you confidence in yourself--is, that you've done it." mrs. snagsby looked rather alarmed, relented a little and faltered, what did mr. bucket mean. "what does mr. bucket mean?" he repeated, and i saw by his face that all the time he talked he was listening for the discovery of the letter, to my own great agitation, for i knew then how important it must be; "i'll tell you what he means, ma'am. go and see othello acted. that's the tragedy for you." mrs. snagsby consciously asked why. "why?" said mr. bucket. "because you'll come to that if you don't look out. why, at the very moment while i speak, i know what your mind's not wholly free from respecting this young lady. but shall i tell you who this young lady is? now, come, you're what i call an intellectual woman--with your soul too large for your body, if you come to that, and chafing it--and you know me, and you recollect where you saw me last, and what was talked of in that circle. don't you? yes! very well. this young lady is that young lady." mrs. snagsby appeared to understand the reference better than i did at the time. "and toughey--him as you call jo--was mixed up in the same business, and no other; and the law-writer that you know of was mixed up in the same business, and no other; and your husband, with no more knowledge of it than your great grandfather, was mixed up (by mr. tulkinghorn, deceased, his best customer) in the same business, and no other; and the whole bileing of people was mixed up in the same business, and no other. and yet a married woman, possessing your attractions, shuts her eyes (and sparklers too), and goes and runs her delicate-formed head against a wall. why, i am ashamed of you! (i expected mr. woodcourt might have got it by this time.)" mrs. snagsby shook her head and put her handkerchief to her eyes. "is that all?" said mr. bucket excitedly. "no. see what happens. another person mixed up in that business and no other, a person in a wretched state, comes here to-night and is seen a-speaking to your maid-servant; and between her and your maid-servant there passes a paper that i would give a hundred pound for, down. what do you do? you hide and you watch 'em, and you pounce upon that maid-servant--knowing what she's subject to and what a little thing will bring 'em on--in that surprising manner and with that severity that, by the lord, she goes off and keeps off, when a life may be hanging upon that girl's words!" he so thoroughly meant what he said now that i involuntarily clasped my hands and felt the room turning away from me. but it stopped. mr. woodcourt came in, put a paper into his hand, and went away again. "now, mrs. snagsby, the only amends you can make," said mr. bucket, rapidly glancing at it, "is to let me speak a word to this young lady in private here. and if you know of any help that you can give to that gentleman in the next kitchen there or can think of any one thing that's likelier than another to bring the girl round, do your swiftest and best!" in an instant she was gone, and he had shut the door. "now my dear, you're steady and quite sure of yourself?" "quite," said i. "whose writing is that?" it was my mother's. a pencil-writing, on a crushed and torn piece of paper, blotted with wet. folded roughly like a letter, and directed to me at my guardian's. "you know the hand," he said, "and if you are firm enough to read it to me, do! but be particular to a word." it had been written in portions, at different times. i read what follows: i came to the cottage with two objects. first, to see the dear one, if i could, once more--but only to see her--not to speak to her or let her know that i was near. the other object, to elude pursuit and to be lost. do not blame the mother for her share. the assistance that she rendered me, she rendered on my strongest assurance that it was for the dear one's good. you remember her dead child. the men's consent i bought, but her help was freely given. "'i came.' that was written," said my companion, "when she rested there. it bears out what i made of it. i was right." the next was written at another time: i have wandered a long distance, and for many hours, and i know that i must soon die. these streets! i have no purpose but to die. when i left, i had a worse, but i am saved from adding that guilt to the rest. cold, wet, and fatigue are sufficient causes for my being found dead, but i shall die of others, though i suffer from these. it was right that all that had sustained me should give way at once and that i should die of terror and my conscience. "take courage," said mr. bucket. "there's only a few words more." those, too, were written at another time. to all appearance, almost in the dark: i have done all i could do to be lost. i shall be soon forgotten so, and shall disgrace him least. i have nothing about me by which i can be recognized. this paper i part with now. the place where i shall lie down, if i can get so far, has been often in my mind. farewell. forgive. mr. bucket, supporting me with his arm, lowered me gently into my chair. "cheer up! don't think me hard with you, my dear, but as soon as ever you feel equal to it, get your shoes on and be ready." i did as he required, but i was left there a long time, praying for my unhappy mother. they were all occupied with the poor girl, and i heard mr. woodcourt directing them and speaking to her often. at length he came in with mr. bucket and said that as it was important to address her gently, he thought it best that i should ask her for whatever information we desired to obtain. there was no doubt that she could now reply to questions if she were soothed and not alarmed. the questions, mr. bucket said, were how she came by the letter, what passed between her and the person who gave her the letter, and where the person went. holding my mind as steadily as i could to these points, i went into the next room with them. mr. woodcourt would have remained outside, but at my solicitation went in with us. the poor girl was sitting on the floor where they had laid her down. they stood around her, though at a little distance, that she might have air. she was not pretty and looked weak and poor, but she had a plaintive and a good face, though it was still a little wild. i kneeled on the ground beside her and put her poor head upon my shoulder, whereupon she drew her arm round my neck and burst into tears. "my poor girl," said i, laying my face against her forehead, for indeed i was crying too, and trembling, "it seems cruel to trouble you now, but more depends on our knowing something about this letter than i could tell you in an hour." she began piteously declaring that she didn't mean any harm, she didn't mean any harm, mrs. snagsby! "we are all sure of that," said i. "but pray tell me how you got it." "yes, dear lady, i will, and tell you true. i'll tell true, indeed, mrs. snagsby." "i am sure of that," said i. "and how was it?" "i had been out on an errand, dear lady--long after it was dark--quite late; and when i came home, i found a common-looking person, all wet and muddy, looking up at our house. when she saw me coming in at the door, she called me back and said did i live here. and i said yes, and she said she knew only one or two places about here, but had lost her way and couldn't find them. oh, what shall i do, what shall i do! they won't believe me! she didn't say any harm to me, and i didn't say any harm to her, indeed, mrs. snagsby!" it was necessary for her mistress to comfort her--which she did, i must say, with a good deal of contrition--before she could be got beyond this. "she could not find those places," said i. "no!" cried the girl, shaking her head. "no! couldn't find them. and she was so faint, and lame, and miserable, oh so wretched, that if you had seen her, mr. snagsby, you'd have given her half a crown, i know!" "well, guster, my girl," said he, at first not knowing what to say. "i hope i should." "and yet she was so well spoken," said the girl, looking at me with wide open eyes, "that it made a person's heart bleed. and so she said to me, did i know the way to the burying ground? and i asked her which burying ground. and she said, the poor burying ground. and so i told her i had been a poor child myself, and it was according to parishes. but she said she meant a poor burying ground not very far from here, where there was an archway, and a step, and an iron gate." as i watched her face and soothed her to go on, i saw that mr. bucket received this with a look which i could not separate from one of alarm. "oh, dear, dear!" cried the girl, pressing her hair back with her hands. "what shall i do, what shall i do! she meant the burying ground where the man was buried that took the sleeping-stuff--that you came home and told us of, mr. snagsby--that frightened me so, mrs. snagsby. oh, i am frightened again. hold me!" "you are so much better now," sald i. "pray, pray tell me more." "yes i will, yes i will! but don't be angry with me, that's a dear lady, because i have been so ill." angry with her, poor soul! "there! now i will, now i will. so she said, could i tell her how to find it, and i said yes, and i told her; and she looked at me with eyes like almost as if she was blind, and herself all waving back. and so she took out the letter, and showed it me, and said if she was to put that in the post-office, it would be rubbed out and not minded and never sent; and would i take it from her, and send it, and the messenger would be paid at the house. and so i said yes, if it was no harm, and she said no--no harm. and so i took it from her, and she said she had nothing to give me, and i said i was poor myself and consequently wanted nothing. and so she said god bless you, and went." "and did she go--" "yes," cried the girl, anticipating the inquiry. "yes! she went the way i had shown her. then i came in, and mrs. snagsby came behind me from somewhere and laid hold of me, and i was frightened." mr. woodcourt took her kindly from me. mr. bucket wrapped me up, and immediately we were in the street. mr. woodcourt hesitated, but i said, "don't leave me now!" and mr. bucket added, "you'll be better with us, we may want you; don't lose time!" i have the most confused impressions of that walk. i recollect that it was neither night nor day, that morning was dawning but the street-lamps were not yet put out, that the sleet was still falling and that all the ways were deep with it. i recollect a few chilled people passing in the streets. i recollect the wet house-tops, the clogged and bursting gutters and water-spouts, the mounds of blackened ice and snow over which we passed, the narrowness of the courts by which we went. at the same time i remember that the poor girl seemed to be yet telling her story audibly and plainly in my hearing, that i could feel her resting on my arm, that the stained house-fronts put on human shapes and looked at me, that great water-gates seemed to be opening and closing in my head or in the air, and that the unreal things were more substantial than the real. at last we stood under a dark and miserable covered way, where one lamp was burning over an iron gate and where the morning faintly struggled in. the gate was closed. beyond it was a burial ground--a dreadful spot in which the night was very slowly stirring, but where i could dimly see heaps of dishonoured graves and stones, hemmed in by filthy houses with a few dull lights in their windows and on whose walls a thick humidity broke out like a disease. on the step at the gate, drenched in the fearful wet of such a place, which oozed and splashed down everywhere, i saw, with a cry of pity and horror, a woman lying--jenny, the mother of the dead child. i ran forward, but they stopped me, and mr. woodcourt entreated me with the greatest earnestness, even with tears, before i went up to the figure to listen for an instant to what mr. bucket said. i did so, as i thought. i did so, as i am sure. "miss summerson, you'll understand me, if you think a moment. they changed clothes at the cottage." they changed clothes at the cottage. i could repeat the words in my mind, and i knew what they meant of themselves, but i attached no meaning to them in any other connexion. "and one returned," said mr. bucket, "and one went on. and the one that went on only went on a certain way agreed upon to deceive and then turned across country and went home. think a moment!" i could repeat this in my mind too, but i had not the least idea what it meant. i saw before me, lying on the step, the mother of the dead child. she lay there with one arm creeping round a bar of the iron gate and seeming to embrace it. she lay there, who had so lately spoken to my mother. she lay there, a distressed, unsheltered, senseless creature. she who had brought my mother's letter, who could give me the only clue to where my mother was; she, who was to guide us to rescue and save her whom we had sought so far, who had come to this condition by some means connected with my mother that i could not follow, and might be passing beyond our reach and help at that moment; she lay there, and they stopped me! i saw but did not comprehend the solemn and compassionate look in mr. woodcourt's face. i saw but did not comprehend his touching the other on the breast to keep him back. i saw him stand uncovered in the bitter air, with a reverence for something. but my understanding for all this was gone. i even heard it said between them, "shall she go?" "she had better go. her hands should be the first to touch her. they have a higher right than ours." i passed on to the gate and stooped down. i lifted the heavy head, put the long dank hair aside, and turned the face. and it was my mother, cold and dead. chapter lx perspective i proceed to other passages of my narrative. from the goodness of all about me i derived such consolation as i can never think of unmoved. i have already said so much of myself, and so much still remains, that i will not dwell upon my sorrow. i had an illness, but it was not a long one; and i would avoid even this mention of it if i could quite keep down the recollection of their sympathy. i proceed to other passages of my narrative. during the time of my illness, we were still in london, where mrs. woodcourt had come, on my guardian's invitation, to stay with us. when my guardian thought me well and cheerful enough to talk with him in our old way--though i could have done that sooner if he would have believed me--i resumed my work and my chair beside his. he had appointed the time himself, and we were alone. "dame trot," said he, receiving me with a kiss, "welcome to the growlery again, my dear. i have a scheme to develop, little woman. i propose to remain here, perhaps for six months, perhaps for a longer time--as it may be. quite to settle here for a while, in short." "and in the meanwhile leave bleak house?" said i. "aye, my dear? bleak house," he returned, "must learn to take care of itself." i thought his tone sounded sorrowful, but looking at him, i saw his kind face lighted up by its pleasantest smile. "bleak house," he repeated--and his tone did not sound sorrowful, i found--"must learn to take care of itself. it is a long way from ada, my dear, and ada stands much in need of you." "it's like you, guardian," said i, "to have been taking that into consideration for a happy surprise to both of us." "not so disinterested either, my dear, if you mean to extol me for that virtue, since if you were generally on the road, you could be seldom with me. and besides, i wish to hear as much and as often of ada as i can in this condition of estrangement from poor rick. not of her alone, but of him too, poor fellow." "have you seen mr. woodcourt, this morning, guardian?" "i see mr. woodcourt every morning, dame durden." "does he still say the same of richard?" "just the same. he knows of no direct bodily illness that he has; on the contrary, he believes that he has none. yet he is not easy about him; who can be?" my dear girl had been to see us lately every day, some times twice in a day. but we had foreseen, all along, that this would only last until i was quite myself. we knew full well that her fervent heart was as full of affection and gratitude towards her cousin john as it had ever been, and we acquitted richard of laying any injunctions upon her to stay away; but we knew on the other hand that she felt it a part of her duty to him to be sparing of her visits at our house. my guardian's delicacy had soon perceived this and had tried to convey to her that he thought she was right. "dear, unfortunate, mistaken richard," said i. "when will he awake from his delusion!" "he is not in the way to do so now, my dear," replied my guardian. "the more he suffers, the more averse he will be to me, having made me the principal representative of the great occasion of his suffering." i could not help adding, "so unreasonably!" "ah, dame trot, dame trot," returned my guardian, "what shall we find reasonable in jarndyce and jarndyce! unreason and injustice at the top, unreason and injustice at the heart and at the bottom, unreason and injustice from beginning to end--if it ever has an end--how should poor rick, always hovering near it, pluck reason out of it? he no more gathers grapes from thorns or figs from thistles than older men did in old times." his gentleness and consideration for richard whenever we spoke of him touched me so that i was always silent on this subject very soon. "i suppose the lord chancellor, and the vice chancellors, and the whole chancery battery of great guns would be infinitely astonished by such unreason and injustice in one of their suitors," pursued my guardian. "when those learned gentlemen begin to raise moss-roses from the powder they sow in their wigs, i shall begin to be astonished too!" he checked himself in glancing towards the window to look where the wind was and leaned on the back of my chair instead. "well, well, little woman! to go on, my dear. this rock we must leave to time, chance, and hopeful circumstance. we must not shipwreck ada upon it. she cannot afford, and he cannot afford, the remotest chance of another separation from a friend. therefore i have particularly begged of woodcourt, and i now particularly beg of you, my dear, not to move this subject with rick. let it rest. next week, next month, next year, sooner or later, he will see me with clearer eyes. i can wait." but i had already discussed it with him, i confessed; and so, i thought, had mr. woodcourt. "so he tells me," returned my guardian. "very good. he has made his protest, and dame durden has made hers, and there is nothing more to be said about it. now i come to mrs. woodcourt. how do you like her, my dear?" in answer to this question, which was oddly abrupt, i said i liked her very much and thought she was more agreeable than she used to be. "i think so too," said my guardian. "less pedigree? not so much of morgan ap--what's his name?" that was what i meant, i acknowledged, though he was a very harmless person, even when we had had more of him. "still, upon the whole, he is as well in his native mountains," said my guardian. "i agree with you. then, little woman, can i do better for a time than retain mrs. woodcourt here?" no. and yet-- my guardian looked at me, waiting for what i had to say. i had nothing to say. at least i had nothing in my mind that i could say. i had an undefined impression that it might have been better if we had had some other inmate, but i could hardly have explained why even to myself. or, if to myself, certainly not to anybody else. "you see," said my guardian, "our neighbourhood is in woodcourt's way, and he can come here to see her as often as he likes, which is agreeable to them both; and she is familiar to us and fond of you." yes. that was undeniable. i had nothing to say against it. i could not have suggested a better arrangement, but i was not quite easy in my mind. esther, esther, why not? esther, think! "it is a very good plan indeed, dear guardian, and we could not do better." "sure, little woman?" quite sure. i had had a moment's time to think, since i had urged that duty on myself, and i was quite sure. "good," said my guardian. "it shall be done. carried unanimously." "carried unanimously," i repeated, going on with my work. it was a cover for his book-table that i happened to be ornamenting. it had been laid by on the night preceding my sad journey and never resumed. i showed it to him now, and he admired it highly. after i had explained the pattern to him and all the great effects that were to come out by and by, i thought i would go back to our last theme. "you said, dear guardian, when we spoke of mr. woodcourt before ada left us, that you thought he would give a long trial to another country. have you been advising him since?" "yes, little woman, pretty often." "has he decided to do so?" "i rather think not." "some other prospect has opened to him, perhaps?" said i. "why--yes--perhaps," returned my guardian, beginning his answer in a very deliberate manner. "about half a year hence or so, there is a medical attendant for the poor to be appointed at a certain place in yorkshire. it is a thriving place, pleasantly situated--streams and streets, town and country, mill and moor--and seems to present an opening for such a man. i mean a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, i dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all if it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good service leading to no other. all generous spirits are ambitious, i suppose, but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road, instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind i care for. it is woodcourt's kind." "and will he get this appointment?" i asked. "why, little woman," returned my guardian, smiling, "not being an oracle, i cannot confidently say, but i think so. his reputation stands very high; there were people from that part of the country in the shipwreck; and strange to say, i believe the best man has the best chance. you must not suppose it to be a fine endowment. it is a very, very commonplace affair, my dear, an appointment to a great amount of work and a small amount of pay; but better things will gather about it, it may be fairly hoped." "the poor of that place will have reason to bless the choice if it falls on mr. woodcourt, guardian." "you are right, little woman; that i am sure they will." we said no more about it, nor did he say a word about the future of bleak house. but it was the first time i had taken my seat at his side in my mourning dress, and that accounted for it, i considered. i now began to visit my dear girl every day in the dull dark corner where she lived. the morning was my usual time, but whenever i found i had an hour or so to spare, i put on my bonnet and bustled off to chancery lane. they were both so glad to see me at all hours, and used to brighten up so when they heard me opening the door and coming in (being quite at home, i never knocked), that i had no fear of becoming troublesome just yet. on these occasions i frequently found richard absent. at other times he would be writing or reading papers in the cause at that table of his, so covered with papers, which was never disturbed. sometimes i would come upon him lingering at the door of mr. vholes's office. sometimes i would meet him in the neighbourhood lounging about and biting his nails. i often met him wandering in lincoln's inn, near the place where i had first seen him, oh how different, how different! that the money ada brought him was melting away with the candles i used to see burning after dark in mr. vholes's office i knew very well. it was not a large amount in the beginning, he had married in debt, and i could not fail to understand, by this time, what was meant by mr. vholes's shoulder being at the wheel--as i still heard it was. my dear made the best of housekeepers and tried hard to save, but i knew that they were getting poorer and poorer every day. she shone in the miserable corner like a beautiful star. she adorned and graced it so that it became another place. paler than she had been at home, and a little quieter than i had thought natural when she was yet so cheerful and hopeful, her face was so unshadowed that i half believed she was blinded by her love for richard to his ruinous career. i went one day to dine with them while i was under this impression. as i turned into symond's inn, i met little miss flite coming out. she had been to make a stately call upon the wards in jarndyce, as she still called them, and had derived the highest gratification from that ceremony. ada had already told me that she called every monday at five o'clock, with one little extra white bow in her bonnet, which never appeared there at any other time, and with her largest reticule of documents on her arm. "my dear!" she began. "so delighted! how do you do! so glad to see you. and you are going to visit our interesting jarndyce wards? to be sure! our beauty is at home, my dear, and will be charmed to see you." "then richard is not come in yet?" said i. "i am glad of that, for i was afraid of being a little late." "no, he is not come in," returned miss flite. "he has had a long day in court. i left him there with vholes. you don't like vholes, i hope? don't like vholes. dan-gerous man!" "i am afraid you see richard oftener than ever now," said i. "my dearest," returned miss flite, "daily and hourly. you know what i told you of the attraction on the chancellor's table? my dear, next to myself he is the most constant suitor in court. he begins quite to amuse our little party. ve-ry friendly little party, are we not?" it was miserable to hear this from her poor mad lips, though it was no surprise. "in short, my valued friend," pursued miss flite, advancing her lips to my ear with an air of equal patronage and mystery, "i must tell you a secret. i have made him my executor. nominated, constituted, and appointed him. in my will. ye-es." "indeed?" said i. "ye-es," repeated miss flite in her most genteel accents, "my executor, administrator, and assign. (our chancery phrases, my love.) i have reflected that if i should wear out, he will be able to watch that judgment. being so very regular in his attendance." it made me sigh to think of him. "i did at one time mean," said miss flite, echoing the sigh, "to nominate, constitute, and appoint poor gridley. also very regular, my charming girl. i assure you, most exemplary! but he wore out, poor man, so i have appointed his successor. don't mention it. this is in confidence." she carefully opened her reticule a little way and showed me a folded piece of paper inside as the appointment of which she spoke. "another secret, my dear. i have added to my collection of birds." "really, miss flite?" said i, knowing how it pleased her to have her confidence received with an appearance of interest. she nodded several times, and her face became overcast and gloomy. "two more. i call them the wards in jarndyce. they are caged up with all the others. with hope, joy, youth, peace, rest, life, dust, ashes, waste, want, ruin, despair, madness, death, cunning, folly, words, wigs, rags, sheepskin, plunder, precedent, jargon, gammon, and spinach!" the poor soul kissed me with the most troubled look i had ever seen in her and went her way. her manner of running over the names of her birds, as if she were afraid of hearing them even from her own lips, quite chilled me. this was not a cheering preparation for my visit, and i could have dispensed with the company of mr. vholes, when richard (who arrived within a minute or two after me) brought him to share our dinner. although it was a very plain one, ada and richard were for some minutes both out of the room together helping to get ready what we were to eat and drink. mr. vholes took that opportunity of holding a little conversation in a low voice with me. he came to the window where i was sitting and began upon symond's inn. "a dull place, miss summerson, for a life that is not an official one," said mr. vholes, smearing the glass with his black glove to make it clearer for me. "there is not much to see here," said i. "nor to hear, miss," returned mr. vholes. "a little music does occasionally stray in, but we are not musical in the law and soon eject it. i hope mr. jarndyce is as well as his friends could wish him?" i thanked mr. vholes and said he was quite well. "i have not the pleasure to be admitted among the number of his friends myself," said mr. vholes, "and i am aware that the gentlemen of our profession are sometimes regarded in such quarters with an unfavourable eye. our plain course, however, under good report and evil report, and all kinds of prejudice (we are the victims of prejudice), is to have everything openly carried on. how do you find mr. c. looking, miss summerson?" "he looks very ill. dreadfully anxious." "just so," said mr. vholes. he stood behind me with his long black figure reaching nearly to the ceiling of those low rooms, feeling the pimples on his face as if they were ornaments and speaking inwardly and evenly as though there were not a human passion or emotion in his nature. "mr. woodcourt is in attendance upon mr. c., i believe?" he resumed. "mr. woodcourt is his disinterested friend," i answered. "but i mean in professional attendance, medical attendance." "that can do little for an unhappy mind," said i. "just so," said mr. vholes. so slow, so eager, so bloodless and gaunt, i felt as if richard were wasting away beneath the eyes of this adviser and there were something of the vampire in him. "miss summerson," said mr. vholes, very slowly rubbing his gloved hands, as if, to his cold sense of touch, they were much the same in black kid or out of it, "this was an ill-advised marriage of mr. c.'s." i begged he would excuse me from discussing it. they had been engaged when they were both very young, i told him (a little indignantly) and when the prospect before them was much fairer and brighter. when richard had not yielded himself to the unhappy influence which now darkened his life. "just so," assented mr. vholes again. "still, with a view to everything being openly carried on, i will, with your permission, miss summerson, observe to you that i consider this a very ill-advised marriage indeed. i owe the opinion not only to mr. c.'s connexions, against whom i should naturally wish to protect myself, but also to my own reputation--dear to myself as a professional man aiming to keep respectable; dear to my three girls at home, for whom i am striving to realize some little independence; dear, i will even say, to my aged father, whom it is my privilege to support." "it would become a very different marriage, a much happier and better marriage, another marriage altogether, mr. vholes," said i, "if richard were persuaded to turn his back on the fatal pursuit in which you are engaged with him." mr. vholes, with a noiseless cough--or rather gasp--into one of his black gloves, inclined his head as if he did not wholly dispute even that. "miss summerson," he said, "it may be so; and i freely admit that the young lady who has taken mr. c.'s name upon herself in so ill-advised a manner--you will i am sure not quarrel with me for throwing out that remark again, as a duty i owe to mr. c.'s connexions--is a highly genteel young lady. business has prevented me from mixing much with general society in any but a professional character; still i trust i am competent to perceive that she is a highly genteel young lady. as to beauty, i am not a judge of that myself, and i never did give much attention to it from a boy, but i dare say the young lady is equally eligible in that point of view. she is considered so (i have heard) among the clerks in the inn, and it is a point more in their way than in mine. in reference to mr. c.'s pursuit of his interests--" "oh! his interests, mr. vholes!" "pardon me," returned mr. vholes, going on in exactly the same inward and dispassionate manner. "mr. c. takes certain interests under certain wills disputed in the suit. it is a term we use. in reference to mr. c,'s pursuit of his interests, i mentioned to you, miss summerson, the first time i had the pleasure of seeing you, in my desire that everything should be openly carried on--i used those words, for i happened afterwards to note them in my diary, which is producible at any time--i mentioned to you that mr. c. had laid down the principle of watching his own interests, and that when a client of mine laid down a principle which was not of an immoral (that is to say, unlawful) nature, it devolved upon me to carry it out. i have carried it out; i do carry it out. but i will not smooth things over to any connexion of mr. c.'s on any account. as open as i was to mr. jarndyce, i am to you. i regard it in the light of a professional duty to be so, though it can be charged to no one. i openly say, unpalatable as it may be, that i consider mr. c.'s affairs in a very bad way, that i consider mr. c. himself in a very bad way, and that i regard this as an exceedingly ill-advised marriage. am i here, sir? yes, i thank you; i am here, mr. c., and enjoying the pleasure of some agreeable conversation with miss summerson, for which i have to thank you very much, sir!" he broke off thus in answer to richard, who addressed him as he came into the room. by this time i too well understood mr. vholes's scrupulous way of saving himself and his respectability not to feel that our worst fears did but keep pace with his client's progress. we sat down to dinner, and i had an opportunity of observing richard, anxiously. i was not disturbed by mr. vholes (who took off his gloves to dine), though he sat opposite to me at the small table, for i doubt if, looking up at all, he once removed his eyes from his host's face. i found richard thin and languid, slovenly in his dress, abstracted in his manner, forcing his spirits now and then, and at other intervals relapsing into a dull thoughtfulness. about his large bright eyes that used to be so merry there was a wanness and a restlessness that changed them altogether. i cannot use the expression that he looked old. there is a ruin of youth which is not like age, and into such a ruin richard's youth and youthful beauty had all fallen away. he ate little and seemed indifferent what it was, showed himself to be much more impatient than he used to be, and was quick even with ada. i thought at first that his old light-hearted manner was all gone, but it shone out of him sometimes as i had occasionally known little momentary glimpses of my own old face to look out upon me from the glass. his laugh had not quite left him either, but it was like the echo of a joyful sound, and that is always sorrowful. yet he was as glad as ever, in his old affectionate way, to have me there, and we talked of the old times pleasantly. these did not appear to be interesting to mr. vholes, though he occasionally made a gasp which i believe was his smile. he rose shortly after dinner and said that with the permission of the ladies he would retire to his office. "always devoted to business, vholes!" cried richard. "yes, mr. c.," he returned, "the interests of clients are never to be neglected, sir. they are paramount in the thoughts of a professional man like myself, who wishes to preserve a good name among his fellow-practitioners and society at large. my denying myself the pleasure of the present agreeable conversation may not be wholly irrespective of your own interests, mr. c." richard expressed himself quite sure of that and lighted mr. vholes out. on his return he told us, more than once, that vholes was a good fellow, a safe fellow, a man who did what he pretended to do, a very good fellow indeed! he was so defiant about it that it struck me he had begun to doubt mr. vholes. then he threw himself on the sofa, tired out; and ada and i put things to rights, for they had no other servant than the woman who attended to the chambers. my dear girl had a cottage piano there and quietly sat down to sing some of richard's favourites, the lamp being first removed into the next room, as he complained of its hurting his eyes. i sat between them, at my dear girl's side, and felt very melancholy listening to her sweet voice. i think richard did too; i think he darkened the room for that reason. she had been singing some time, rising between whiles to bend over him and speak to him, when mr. woodcourt came in. then he sat down by richard and half playfully, half earnestly, quite naturally and easily, found out how he felt and where he had been all day. presently he proposed to accompany him in a short walk on one of the bridges, as it was a moonlight airy night; and richard readily consenting, they went out together. they left my dear girl still sitting at the piano and me still sitting beside her. when they were gone out, i drew my arm round her waist. she put her left hand in mine (i was sitting on that side), but kept her right upon the keys, going over and over them without striking any note. "esther, my dearest," she said, breaking silence, "richard is never so well and i am never so easy about him as when he is with allan woodcourt. we have to thank you for that." i pointed out to my darling how this could scarcely be, because mr. woodcourt had come to her cousin john's house and had known us all there, and because he had always liked richard, and richard had always liked him, and--and so forth. "all true," said ada, "but that he is such a devoted friend to us we owe to you." i thought it best to let my dear girl have her way and to say no more about it. so i said as much. i said it lightly, because i felt her trembling. "esther, my dearest, i want to be a good wife, a very, very good wife indeed. you shall teach me." i teach! i said no more, for i noticed the hand that was fluttering over the keys, and i knew that it was not i who ought to speak, that it was she who had something to say to me. "when i married richard i was not insensible to what was before him. i had been perfectly happy for a long time with you, and i had never known any trouble or anxiety, so loved and cared for, but i understood the danger he was in, dear esther." "i know, i know, my darling." "when we were married i had some little hope that i might be able to convince him of his mistake, that he might come to regard it in a new way as my husband and not pursue it all the more desperately for my sake--as he does. but if i had not had that hope, i would have married him just the same, esther. just the same!" in the momentary firmness of the hand that was never still--a firmness inspired by the utterance of these last words, and dying away with them--i saw the confirmation of her earnest tones. "you are not to think, my dearest esther, that i fail to see what you see and fear what you fear. no one can understand him better than i do. the greatest wisdom that ever lived in the world could scarcely know richard better than my love does." she spoke so modestly and softly and her trembling hand expressed such agitation as it moved to and fro upon the silent notes! my dear, dear girl! "i see him at his worst every day. i watch him in his sleep. i know every change of his face. but when i married richard i was quite determined, esther, if heaven would help me, never to show him that i grieved for what he did and so to make him more unhappy. i want him, when he comes home, to find no trouble in my face. i want him, when he looks at me, to see what he loved in me. i married him to do this, and this supports me." i felt her trembling more. i waited for what was yet to come, and i now thought i began to know what it was. "and something else supports me, esther." she stopped a minute. stopped speaking only; her hand was still in motion. "i look forward a little while, and i don't know what great aid may come to me. when richard turns his eyes upon me then, there may be something lying on my breast more eloquent than i have been, with greater power than mine to show him his true course and win him back." her hand stopped now. she clasped me in her arms, and i clasped her in mine. "if that little creature should fail too, esther, i still look forward. i look forward a long while, through years and years, and think that then, when i am growing old, or when i am dead perhaps, a beautiful woman, his daughter, happily married, may be proud of him and a blessing to him. or that a generous brave man, as handsome as he used to be, as hopeful, and far more happy, may walk in the sunshine with him, honouring his grey head and saying to himself, 'i thank god this is my father! ruined by a fatal inheritance, and restored through me!'" oh, my sweet girl, what a heart was that which beat so fast against me! "these hopes uphold me, my dear esther, and i know they will. though sometimes even they depart from me before a dread that arises when i look at richard." i tried to cheer my darling, and asked her what it was. sobbing and weeping, she replied, "that he may not live to see his child." chapter lxi a discovery the days when i frequented that miserable corner which my dear girl brightened can never fade in my remembrance. i never see it, and i never wish to see it now; i have been there only once since, but in my memory there is a mournful glory shining on the place which will shine for ever. not a day passed without my going there, of course. at first i found mr. skimpole there, on two or three occasions, idly playing the piano and talking in his usual vivacious strain. now, besides my very much mistrusting the probability of his being there without making richard poorer, i felt as if there were something in his careless gaiety too inconsistent with what i knew of the depths of ada's life. i clearly perceived, too, that ada shared my feelings. i therefore resolved, after much thinking of it, to make a private visit to mr. skimpole and try delicately to explain myself. my dear girl was the great consideration that made me bold. i set off one morning, accompanied by charley, for somers town. as i approached the house, i was strongly inclined to turn back, for i felt what a desperate attempt it was to make an impression on mr. skimpole and how extremely likely it was that he would signally defeat me. however, i thought that being there, i would go through with it. i knocked with a trembling hand at mr. skimpole's door--literally with a hand, for the knocker was gone--and after a long parley gained admission from an irishwoman, who was in the area when i knocked, breaking up the lid of a water-butt with a poker to light the fire with. mr. skimpole, lying on the sofa in his room, playing the flute a little, was enchanted to see me. now, who should receive me, he asked. who would i prefer for mistress of the ceremonies? would i have his comedy daughter, his beauty daughter, or his sentiment daughter? or would i have all the daughters at once in a perfect nosegay? i replied, half defeated already, that i wished to speak to himself only if he would give me leave. "my dear miss summerson, most joyfully! of course," he said, bringing his chair nearer mine and breaking into his fascinating smile, "of course it's not business. then it's pleasure!" i said it certainly was not business that i came upon, but it was not quite a pleasant matter. "then, my dear miss summerson," said he with the frankest gaiety, "don't allude to it. why should you allude to anything that is not a pleasant matter? i never do. and you are a much pleasanter creature, in every point of view, than i. you are perfectly pleasant; i am imperfectly pleasant; then, if i never allude to an unpleasant matter, how much less should you! so that's disposed of, and we will talk of something else." although i was embarrassed, i took courage to intimate that i still wished to pursue the subject. "i should think it a mistake," said mr. skimpole with his airy laugh, "if i thought miss summerson capable of making one. but i don't!" "mr. skimpole," said i, raising my eyes to his, "i have so often heard you say that you are unacquainted with the common affairs of life--" "meaning our three banking-house friends, l, s, and who's the junior partner? d?" said mr. skimpole, brightly. "not an idea of them!" "--that perhaps," i went on, "you will excuse my boldness on that account. i think you ought most seriously to know that richard is poorer than he was." "dear me!" said mr. skimpole. "so am i, they tell me." "and in very embarrassed circumstances." "parallel case, exactly!" said mr. skimpole with a delighted countenance. "this at present naturally causes ada much secret anxiety, and as i think she is less anxious when no claims are made upon her by visitors, and as richard has one uneasiness always heavy on his mind, it has occurred to me to take the liberty of saying that--if you would--not--" i was coming to the point with great difficulty when he took me by both hands and with a radiant face and in the liveliest way anticipated it. "not go there? certainly not, my dear miss summerson, most assuredly not. why should i go there? when i go anywhere, i go for pleasure. i don't go anywhere for pain, because i was made for pleasure. pain comes to me when it wants me. now, i have had very little pleasure at our dear richard's lately, and your practical sagacity demonstrates why. our young friends, losing the youthful poetry which was once so captivating in them, begin to think, 'this is a man who wants pounds.' so i am; i always want pounds; not for myself, but because tradespeople always want them of me. next, our young friends begin to think, becoming mercenary, 'this is the man who had pounds, who borrowed them,' which i did. i always borrow pounds. so our young friends, reduced to prose (which is much to be regretted), degenerate in their power of imparting pleasure to me. why should i go to see them, therefore? absurd!" through the beaming smile with which he regarded me as he reasoned thus, there now broke forth a look of disinterested benevolence quite astonishing. "besides," he said, pursuing his argument in his tone of light-hearted conviction, "if i don't go anywhere for pain--which would be a perversion of the intention of my being, and a monstrous thing to do--why should i go anywhere to be the cause of pain? if i went to see our young friends in their present ill-regulated state of mind, i should give them pain. the associations with me would be disagreeable. they might say, 'this is the man who had pounds and who can't pay pounds,' which i can't, of course; nothing could be more out of the question! then kindness requires that i shouldn't go near them--and i won't." he finished by genially kissing my hand and thanking me. nothing but miss summerson's fine tact, he said, would have found this out for him. i was much disconcerted, but i reflected that if the main point were gained, it mattered little how strangely he perverted everything leading to it. i had determined to mention something else, however, and i thought i was not to be put off in that. "mr. skimpole," said i, "i must take the liberty of saying before i conclude my visit that i was much surprised to learn, on the best authority, some little time ago, that you knew with whom that poor boy left bleak house and that you accepted a present on that occasion. i have not mentioned it to my guardian, for i fear it would hurt him unnecessarily; but i may say to you that i was much surprised." "no? really surprised, my dear miss summerson?" he returned inquiringly, raising his pleasant eyebrows. "greatly surprised." he thought about it for a little while with a highly agreeable and whimsical expression of face, then quite gave it up and said in his most engaging manner, "you know what a child i am. why surprised?" i was reluctant to enter minutely into that question, but as he begged i would, for he was really curious to know, i gave him to understand in the gentlest words i could use that his conduct seemed to involve a disregard of several moral obligations. he was much amused and interested when he heard this and said, "no, really?" with ingenuous simplicity. "you know i don't intend to be responsible. i never could do it. responsibility is a thing that has always been above me--or below me," said mr. skimpole. "i don't even know which; but as i understand the way in which my dear miss summerson (always remarkable for her practical good sense and clearness) puts this case, i should imagine it was chiefly a question of money, do you know?" i incautiously gave a qualified assent to this. "ah! then you see," said mr. skimpole, shaking his head, "i am hopeless of understanding it." i suggested, as i rose to go, that it was not right to betray my guardian's confidence for a bribe. "my dear miss summerson," he returned with a candid hilarity that was all his own, "i can't be bribed." "not by mr. bucket?" said i. "no," said he. "not by anybody. i don't attach any value to money. i don't care about it, i don't know about it, i don't want it, i don't keep it--it goes away from me directly. how can i be bribed?" i showed that i was of a different opinion, though i had not the capacity for arguing the question. "on the contrary," said mr. skimpole, "i am exactly the man to be placed in a superior position in such a case as that. i am above the rest of mankind in such a case as that. i can act with philosophy in such a case as that. i am not warped by prejudices, as an italian baby is by bandages. i am as free as the air. i feel myself as far above suspicion as caesar's wife." anything to equal the lightness of his manner and the playful impartiality with which he seemed to convince himself, as he tossed the matter about like a ball of feathers, was surely never seen in anybody else! "observe the case, my dear miss summerson. here is a boy received into the house and put to bed in a state that i strongly object to. the boy being in bed, a man arrives--like the house that jack built. here is the man who demands the boy who is received into the house and put to bed in a state that i strongly object to. here is a bank-note produced by the man who demands the boy who is received into the house and put to bed in a state that i strongly object to. here is the skimpole who accepts the bank-note produced by the man who demands the boy who is received into the house and put to bed in a state that i strongly object to. those are the facts. very well. should the skimpole have refused the note? why should the skimpole have refused the note? skimpole protests to bucket, 'what's this for? i don't understand it, it is of no use to me, take it away.' bucket still entreats skimpole to accept it. are there reasons why skimpole, not being warped by prejudices, should accept it? yes. skimpole perceives them. what are they? skimpole reasons with himself, this is a tamed lynx, an active police-officer, an intelligent man, a person of a peculiarly directed energy and great subtlety both of conception and execution, who discovers our friends and enemies for us when they run away, recovers our property for us when we are robbed, avenges us comfortably when we are murdered. this active police-officer and intelligent man has acquired, in the exercise of his art, a strong faith in money; he finds it very useful to him, and he makes it very useful to society. shall i shake that faith in bucket because i want it myself; shall i deliberately blunt one of bucket's weapons; shall i positively paralyse bucket in his next detective operation? and again. if it is blameable in skimpole to take the note, it is blameable in bucket to offer the note--much more blameable in bucket, because he is the knowing man. now, skimpole wishes to think well of bucket; skimpole deems it essential, in its little place, to the general cohesion of things, that he should think well of bucket. the state expressly asks him to trust to bucket. and he does. and that's all he does!" i had nothing to offer in reply to this exposition and therefore took my leave. mr. skimpole, however, who was in excellent spirits, would not hear of my returning home attended only by "little coavinses," and accompanied me himself. he entertained me on the way with a variety of delightful conversation and assured me, at parting, that he should never forget the fine tact with which i had found that out for him about our young friends. as it so happened that i never saw mr. skimpole again, i may at once finish what i know of his history. a coolness arose between him and my guardian, based principally on the foregoing grounds and on his having heartlessly disregarded my guardian's entreaties (as we afterwards learned from ada) in reference to richard. his being heavily in my guardian's debt had nothing to do with their separation. he died some five years afterwards and left a diary behind him, with letters and other materials towards his life, which was published and which showed him to have been the victim of a combination on the part of mankind against an amiable child. it was considered very pleasant reading, but i never read more of it myself than the sentence on which i chanced to light on opening the book. it was this: "jarndyce, in common with most other men i have known, is the incarnation of selfishness." and now i come to a part of my story touching myself very nearly indeed, and for which i was quite unprepared when the circumstance occurred. whatever little lingerings may have now and then revived in my mind associated with my poor old face had only revived as belonging to a part of my life that was gone--gone like my infancy or my childhood. i have suppressed none of my many weaknesses on that subject, but have written them as faithfully as my memory has recalled them. and i hope to do, and mean to do, the same down to the last words of these pages, which i see now not so very far before me. the months were gliding away, and my dear girl, sustained by the hopes she had confided in me, was the same beautiful star in the miserable corner. richard, more worn and haggard, haunted the court day after day, listlessly sat there the whole day long when he knew there was no remote chance of the suit being mentioned, and became one of the stock sights of the place. i wonder whether any of the gentlemen remembered him as he was when he first went there. so completely was he absorbed in his fixed idea that he used to avow in his cheerful moments that he should never have breathed the fresh air now "but for woodcourt." it was only mr. woodcourt who could occasionally divert his attention for a few hours at a time and rouse him, even when he sunk into a lethargy of mind and body that alarmed us greatly, and the returns of which became more frequent as the months went on. my dear girl was right in saying that he only pursued his errors the more desperately for her sake. i have no doubt that his desire to retrieve what he had lost was rendered the more intense by his grief for his young wife, and became like the madness of a gamester. i was there, as i have mentioned, at all hours. when i was there at night, i generally went home with charley in a coach; sometimes my guardian would meet me in the neighbourhood, and we would walk home together. one evening he had arranged to meet me at eight o'clock. i could not leave, as i usually did, quite punctually at the time, for i was working for my dear girl and had a few stitches more to do to finish what i was about; but it was within a few minutes of the hour when i bundled up my little work-basket, gave my darling my last kiss for the night, and hurried downstairs. mr. woodcourt went with me, as it was dusk. when we came to the usual place of meeting--it was close by, and mr. woodcourt had often accompanied me before--my guardian was not there. we waited half an hour, walking up and down, but there were no signs of him. we agreed that he was either prevented from coming or that he had come and gone away, and mr. woodcourt proposed to walk home with me. it was the first walk we had ever taken together, except that very short one to the usual place of meeting. we spoke of richard and ada the whole way. i did not thank him in words for what he had done--my appreciation of it had risen above all words then--but i hoped he might not be without some understanding of what i felt so strongly. arriving at home and going upstairs, we found that my guardian was out and that mrs. woodcourt was out too. we were in the very same room into which i had brought my blushing girl when her youthful lover, now her so altered husband, was the choice of her young heart, the very same room from which my guardian and i had watched them going away through the sunlight in the fresh bloom of their hope and promise. we were standing by the opened window looking down into the street when mr. woodcourt spoke to me. i learned in a moment that he loved me. i learned in a moment that my scarred face was all unchanged to him. i learned in a moment that what i had thought was pity and compassion was devoted, generous, faithful love. oh, too late to know it now, too late, too late. that was the first ungrateful thought i had. too late. "when i returned," he told me, "when i came back, no richer than when i went away, and found you newly risen from a sick bed, yet so inspired by sweet consideration for others and so free from a selfish thought--" "oh, mr. woodcourt, forbear, forbear!" i entreated him. "i do not deserve your high praise. i had many selfish thoughts at that time, many!" "heaven knows, beloved of my life," said he, "that my praise is not a lover's praise, but the truth. you do not know what all around you see in esther summerson, how many hearts she touches and awakens, what sacred admiration and what love she wins." "oh, mr. woodcourt," cried i, "it is a great thing to win love, it is a great thing to win love! i am proud of it, and honoured by it; and the hearing of it causes me to shed these tears of mingled joy and sorrow--joy that i have won it, sorrow that i have not deserved it better; but i am not free to think of yours." i said it with a stronger heart, for when he praised me thus and when i heard his voice thrill with his belief that what he said was true, i aspired to be more worthy of it. it was not too late for that. although i closed this unforeseen page in my life to-night, i could be worthier of it all through my life. and it was a comfort to me, and an impulse to me, and i felt a dignity rise up within me that was derived from him when i thought so. he broke the silence. "i should poorly show the trust that i have in the dear one who will evermore be as dear to me as now"--and the deep earnestness with which he said it at once strengthened me and made me weep--"if, after her assurance that she is not free to think of my love, i urged it. dear esther, let me only tell you that the fond idea of you which i took abroad was exalted to the heavens when i came home. i have always hoped, in the first hour when i seemed to stand in any ray of good fortune, to tell you this. i have always feared that i should tell it you in vain. my hopes and fears are both fulfilled to-night. i distress you. i have said enough." something seemed to pass into my place that was like the angel he thought me, and i felt so sorrowful for the loss he had sustained! i wished to help him in his trouble, as i had wished to do when he showed that first commiseration for me. "dear mr. woodcourt," said i, "before we part to-night, something is left for me to say. i never could say it as i wish--i never shall--but--" i had to think again of being more deserving of his love and his affliction before i could go on. "--i am deeply sensible of your generosity, and i shall treasure its remembrance to my dying hour. i know full well how changed i am, i know you are not unacquainted with my history, and i know what a noble love that is which is so faithful. what you have said to me could have affected me so much from no other lips, for there are none that could give it such a value to me. it shall not be lost. it shall make me better." he covered his eyes with his hand and turned away his head. how could i ever be worthy of those tears? "if, in the unchanged intercourse we shall have together--in tending richard and ada, and i hope in many happier scenes of life--you ever find anything in me which you can honestly think is better than it used to be, believe that it will have sprung up from to-night and that i shall owe it to you. and never believe, dear dear mr. woodcourt, never believe that i forget this night or that while my heart beats it can be insensible to the pride and joy of having been beloved by you." he took my hand and kissed it. he was like himself again, and i felt still more encouraged. "i am induced by what you said just now," said i, "to hope that you have succeeded in your endeavour." "i have," he answered. "with such help from mr. jarndyce as you who know him so well can imagine him to have rendered me, i have succeeded." "heaven bless him for it," said i, giving him my hand; "and heaven bless you in all you do!" "i shall do it better for the wish," he answered; "it will make me enter on these new duties as on another sacred trust from you." "ah! richard!" i exclaimed involuntarily, "what will he do when you are gone!" "i am not required to go yet; i would not desert him, dear miss summerson, even if i were." one other thing i felt it needful to touch upon before he left me. i knew that i should not be worthier of the love i could not take if i reserved it. "mr. woodcourt," said i, "you will be glad to know from my lips before i say good night that in the future, which is clear and bright before me, i am most happy, most fortunate, have nothing to regret or desire." it was indeed a glad hearing to him, he replied. "from my childhood i have been," said i, "the object of the untiring goodness of the best of human beings, to whom i am so bound by every tie of attachment, gratitude, and love, that nothing i could do in the compass of a life could express the feelings of a single day." "i share those feelings," he returned. "you speak of mr. jarndyce." "you know his virtues well," said i, "but few can know the greatness of his character as i know it. all its highest and best qualities have been revealed to me in nothing more brightly than in the shaping out of that future in which i am so happy. and if your highest homage and respect had not been his already--which i know they are--they would have been his, i think, on this assurance and in the feeling it would have awakened in you towards him for my sake." he fervently replied that indeed indeed they would have been. i gave him my hand again. "good night," i said, "good-bye." "the first until we meet to-morrow, the second as a farewell to this theme between us for ever." "yes." "good night; good-bye." he left me, and i stood at the dark window watching the street. his love, in all its constancy and generosity, had come so suddenly upon me that he had not left me a minute when my fortitude gave way again and the street was blotted out by my rushing tears. but they were not tears of regret and sorrow. no. he had called me the beloved of his life and had said i would be evermore as dear to him as i was then, and i felt as if my heart would not hold the triumph of having heard those words. my first wild thought had died away. it was not too late to hear them, for it was not too late to be animated by them to be good, true, grateful, and contented. how easy my path, how much easier than his! chapter lxii another discovery i had not the courage to see any one that night. i had not even the courage to see myself, for i was afraid that my tears might a little reproach me. i went up to my room in the dark, and prayed in the dark, and lay down in the dark to sleep. i had no need of any light to read my guardian's letter by, for i knew it by heart. i took it from the place where i kept it, and repeated its contents by its own clear light of integrity and love, and went to sleep with it on my pillow. i was up very early in the morning and called charley to come for a walk. we bought flowers for the breakfast-table, and came back and arranged them, and were as busy as possible. we were so early that i had a good time still for charley's lesson before breakfast; charley (who was not in the least improved in the old defective article of grammar) came through it with great applause; and we were altogether very notable. when my guardian appeared he said, "why, little woman, you look fresher than your flowers!" and mrs. woodcourt repeated and translated a passage from the mewlinnwillinwodd expressive of my being like a mountain with the sun upon it. this was all so pleasant that i hope it made me still more like the mountain than i had been before. after breakfast i waited my opportunity and peeped about a little until i saw my guardian in his own room--the room of last night--by himself. then i made an excuse to go in with my housekeeping keys, shutting the door after me. "well, dame durden?" said my guardian; the post had brought him several letters, and he was writing. "you want money?" "no, indeed, i have plenty in hand." "there never was such a dame durden," said my guardian, "for making money last." he had laid down his pen and leaned back in his chair looking at me. i have often spoken of his bright face, but i thought i had never seen it look so bright and good. there was a high happiness upon it which made me think, "he has been doing some great kindness this morning." "there never was," said my guardian, musing as he smiled upon me, "such a dame durden for making money last." he had never yet altered his old manner. i loved it and him so much that when i now went up to him and took my usual chair, which was always put at his side--for sometimes i read to him, and sometimes i talked to him, and sometimes i silently worked by him--i hardly liked to disturb it by laying my hand on his breast. but i found i did not disturb it at all. "dear guardian," said i, "i want to speak to you. have i been remiss in anything?" "remiss in anything, my dear!" "have i not been what i have meant to be since--i brought the answer to your letter, guardian?" "you have been everything i could desire, my love." "i am very glad indeed to hear that," i returned. "you know, you said to me, was this the mistress of bleak house. and i said, yes." "yes," said my guardian, nodding his head. he had put his arm about me as if there were something to protect me from and looked in my face, smiling. "since then," said i, "we have never spoken on the subject except once." "and then i said bleak house was thinning fast; and so it was, my dear." "and i said," i timidly reminded him, "but its mistress remained." he still held me in the same protecting manner and with the same bright goodness in his face. "dear guardian," said i, "i know how you have felt all that has happened, and how considerate you have been. as so much time has passed, and as you spoke only this morning of my being so well again, perhaps you expect me to renew the subject. perhaps i ought to do so. i will be the mistress of bleak house when you please." "see," he returned gaily, "what a sympathy there must be between us! i have had nothing else, poor rick excepted--it's a large exception--in my mind. when you came in, i was full of it. when shall we give bleak house its mistress, little woman?" "when you please." "next month?" "next month, dear guardian." "the day on which i take the happiest and best step of my life--the day on which i shall be a man more exulting and more enviable than any other man in the world--the day on which i give bleak house its little mistress--shall be next month then," said my guardian. i put my arms round his neck and kissed him just as i had done on the day when i brought my answer. a servant came to the door to announce mr. bucket, which was quite unnecessary, for mr. bucket was already looking in over the servant's shoulder. "mr. jarndyce and miss summerson," said he, rather out of breath, "with all apologies for intruding, will you allow me to order up a person that's on the stairs and that objects to being left there in case of becoming the subject of observations in his absence? thank you. be so good as chair that there member in this direction, will you?" said mr. bucket, beckoning over the banisters. this singular request produced an old man in a black skull-cap, unable to walk, who was carried up by a couple of bearers and deposited in the room near the door. mr. bucket immediately got rid of the bearers, mysteriously shut the door, and bolted it. "now you see, mr. jarndyce," he then began, putting down his hat and opening his subject with a flourish of his well-remembered finger, "you know me, and miss summerson knows me. this gentleman likewise knows me, and his name is smallweed. the discounting line is his line principally, and he's what you may call a dealer in bills. that's about what you are, you know, ain't you?" said mr. bucket, stopping a little to address the gentleman in question, who was exceedingly suspicious of him. he seemed about to dispute this designation of himself when he was seized with a violent fit of coughing. "now, moral, you know!" said mr. bucket, improving the accident. "don't you contradict when there ain't no occasion, and you won't be took in that way. now, mr. jarndyce, i address myself to you. i've been negotiating with this gentleman on behalf of sir leicester dedlock, baronet, and one way and another i've been in and out and about his premises a deal. his premises are the premises formerly occupied by krook, marine store dealer--a relation of this gentleman's that you saw in his lifetime if i don't mistake?" my guardian replied, "yes." "well! you are to understand," said mr. bucket, "that this gentleman he come into krook's property, and a good deal of magpie property there was. vast lots of waste-paper among the rest. lord bless you, of no use to nobody!" the cunning of mr. bucket's eye and the masterly manner in which he contrived, without a look or a word against which his watchful auditor could protest, to let us know that he stated the case according to previous agreement and could say much more of mr. smallweed if he thought it advisable, deprived us of any merit in quite understanding him. his difficulty was increased by mr. smallweed's being deaf as well as suspicious and watching his face with the closest attention. "among them odd heaps of old papers, this gentleman, when he comes into the property, naturally begins to rummage, don't you see?" said mr. bucket. "to which? say that again," cried mr. smallweed in a shrill, sharp voice. "to rummage," repeated mr. bucket. "being a prudent man and accustomed to take care of your own affairs, you begin to rummage among the papers as you have come into; don't you?" "of course i do," cried mr. smallweed. "of course you do," said mr. bucket conversationally, "and much to blame you would be if you didn't. and so you chance to find, you know," mr. bucket went on, stooping over him with an air of cheerful raillery which mr. smallweed by no means reciprocated, "and so you chance to find, you know, a paper with the signature of jarndyce to it. don't you?" mr. smallweed glanced with a troubled eye at us and grudgingly nodded assent. "and coming to look at that paper at your full leisure and convenience--all in good time, for you're not curious to read it, and why should you be?--what do you find it to be but a will, you see. that's the drollery of it," said mr. bucket with the same lively air of recalling a joke for the enjoyment of mr. smallweed, who still had the same crest-fallen appearance of not enjoying it at all; "what do you find it to be but a will?" "i don't know that it's good as a will or as anything else," snarled mr. smallweed. mr. bucket eyed the old man for a moment--he had slipped and shrunk down in his chair into a mere bundle--as if he were much disposed to pounce upon him; nevertheless, he continued to bend over him with the same agreeable air, keeping the corner of one of his eyes upon us. "notwithstanding which," said mr. bucket, "you get a little doubtful and uncomfortable in your mind about it, having a very tender mind of your own." "eh? what do you say i have got of my own?" asked mr. smallweed with his hand to his ear. "a very tender mind." "ho! well, go on," said mr. smallweed. "and as you've heard a good deal mentioned regarding a celebrated chancery will case of the same name, and as you know what a card krook was for buying all manner of old pieces of furniter, and books, and papers, and what not, and never liking to part with 'em, and always a-going to teach himself to read, you begin to think--and you never was more correct in your born days--'ecod, if i don't look about me, i may get into trouble regarding this will.'" "now, mind how you put it, bucket," cried the old man anxiously with his hand at his ear. "speak up; none of your brimstone tricks. pick me up; i want to hear better. oh, lord, i am shaken to bits!" mr. bucket had certainly picked him up at a dart. however, as soon as he could be heard through mr. smallweed's coughing and his vicious ejaculations of "oh, my bones! oh, dear! i've no breath in my body! i'm worse than the chattering, clattering, brimstone pig at home!" mr. bucket proceeded in the same convivial manner as before. "so, as i happen to be in the habit of coming about your premises, you take me into your confidence, don't you?" i think it would be impossible to make an admission with more ill will and a worse grace than mr. smallweed displayed when he admitted this, rendering it perfectly evident that mr. bucket was the very last person he would have thought of taking into his confidence if he could by any possibility have kept him out of it. "and i go into the business with you--very pleasant we are over it; and i confirm you in your well-founded fears that you will get yourself into a most precious line if you don't come out with that there will," said mr. bucket emphatically; "and accordingly you arrange with me that it shall be delivered up to this present mr. jarndyce, on no conditions. if it should prove to be valuable, you trusting yourself to him for your reward; that's about where it is, ain't it?" "that's what was agreed," mr. smallweed assented with the same bad grace. "in consequence of which," said mr. bucket, dismissing his agreeable manner all at once and becoming strictly business-like, "you've got that will upon your person at the present time, and the only thing that remains for you to do is just to out with it!" having given us one glance out of the watching corner of his eye, and having given his nose one triumphant rub with his forefinger, mr. bucket stood with his eyes fastened on his confidential friend and his hand stretched forth ready to take the paper and present it to my guardian. it was not produced without much reluctance and many declarations on the part of mr. smallweed that he was a poor industrious man and that he left it to mr. jarndyce's honour not to let him lose by his honesty. little by little he very slowly took from a breast-pocket a stained, discoloured paper which was much singed upon the outside and a little burnt at the edges, as if it had long ago been thrown upon a fire and hastily snatched off again. mr. bucket lost no time in transferring this paper, with the dexterity of a conjuror, from mr. smallweed to mr. jarndyce. as he gave it to my guardian, he whispered behind his fingers, "hadn't settled how to make their market of it. quarrelled and hinted about it. i laid out twenty pound upon it. first the avaricious grandchildren split upon him on account of their objections to his living so unreasonably long, and then they split on one another. lord! there ain't one of the family that wouldn't sell the other for a pound or two, except the old lady--and she's only out of it because she's too weak in her mind to drive a bargain." "mr bucket," said my guardian aloud, "whatever the worth of this paper may be to any one, my obligations are great to you; and if it be of any worth, i hold myself bound to see mr. smallweed remunerated accordingly." "not according to your merits, you know," said mr. bucket in friendly explanation to mr. smallweed. "don't you be afraid of that. according to its value." "that is what i mean," said my guardian. "you may observe, mr. bucket, that i abstain from examining this paper myself. the plain truth is, i have forsworn and abjured the whole business these many years, and my soul is sick of it. but miss summerson and i will immediately place the paper in the hands of my solicitor in the cause, and its existence shall be made known without delay to all other parties interested." "mr. jarndyce can't say fairer than that, you understand," observed mr. bucket to his fellow-visitor. "and it being now made clear to you that nobody's a-going to be wronged--which must be a great relief to your mind--we may proceed with the ceremony of chairing you home again." he unbolted the door, called in the bearers, wished us good morning, and with a look full of meaning and a crook of his finger at parting went his way. we went our way too, which was to lincoln's inn, as quickly as possible. mr. kenge was disengaged, and we found him at his table in his dusty room with the inexpressive-looking books and the piles of papers. chairs having been placed for us by mr. guppy, mr. kenge expressed the surprise and gratification he felt at the unusual sight of mr. jarndyce in his office. he turned over his double eye-glass as he spoke and was more conversation kenge than ever. "i hope," said mr. kenge, "that the genial influence of miss summerson," he bowed to me, "may have induced mr. jarndyce," he bowed to him, "to forego some little of his animosity towards a cause and towards a court which are--shall i say, which take their place in the stately vista of the pillars of our profession?" "i am inclined to think," returned my guardian, "that miss summerson has seen too much of the effects of the court and the cause to exert any influence in their favour. nevertheless, they are a part of the occasion of my being here. mr. kenge, before i lay this paper on your desk and have done with it, let me tell you how it has come into my hands." he did so shortly and distinctly. "it could not, sir," said mr. kenge, "have been stated more plainly and to the purpose if it had been a case at law." "did you ever know english law, or equity either, plain and to the purpose?" said my guardian. "oh, fie!" said mr. kenge. at first he had not seemed to attach much importance to the paper, but when he saw it he appeared more interested, and when he had opened and read a little of it through his eye-glass, he became amazed. "mr. jarndyce," he said, looking off it, "you have perused this?" "not i!" returned my guardian. "but, my dear sir," said mr. kenge, "it is a will of later date than any in the suit. it appears to be all in the testator's handwriting. it is duly executed and attested. and even if intended to be cancelled, as might possibly be supposed to be denoted by these marks of fire, it is not cancelled. here it is, a perfect instrument!" "well!" said my guardian. "what is that to me?" "mr. guppy!" cried mr. kenge, raising his voice. "i beg your pardon, mr. jarndyce." "sir." "mr. vholes of symond's inn. my compliments. jarndyce and jarndyce. glad to speak with him." mr. guppy disappeared. "you ask me what is this to you, mr. jarndyce. if you had perused this document, you would have seen that it reduces your interest considerably, though still leaving it a very handsome one, still leaving it a very handsome one," said mr. kenge, waving his hand persuasively and blandly. "you would further have seen that the interests of mr. richard carstone and of miss ada clare, now mrs. richard carstone, are very materially advanced by it." "kenge," said my guardian, "if all the flourishing wealth that the suit brought into this vile court of chancery could fall to my two young cousins, i should be well contented. but do you ask me to believe that any good is to come of jarndyce and jarndyce?" "oh, really, mr. jarndyce! prejudice, prejudice. my dear sir, this is a very great country, a very great country. its system of equity is a very great system, a very great system. really, really!" my guardian said no more, and mr. vholes arrived. he was modestly impressed by mr. kenge's professional eminence. "how do you do, mr. vholes? will you be so good as to take a chair here by me and look over this paper?" mr. vholes did as he was asked and seemed to read it every word. he was not excited by it, but he was not excited by anything. when he had well examined it, he retired with mr. kenge into a window, and shading his mouth with his black glove, spoke to him at some length. i was not surprised to observe mr. kenge inclined to dispute what he said before he had said much, for i knew that no two people ever did agree about anything in jarndyce and jarndyce. but he seemed to get the better of mr. kenge too in a conversation that sounded as if it were almost composed of the words "receiver-general," "accountant-general," "report," "estate," and "costs." when they had finished, they came back to mr. kenge's table and spoke aloud. "well! but this is a very remarkable document, mr. vholes," said mr. kenge. mr. vholes said, "very much so." "and a very important document, mr. vholes," said mr. kenge. again mr. vholes said, "very much so." "and as you say, mr. vholes, when the cause is in the paper next term, this document will be an unexpected and interesting feature in it," said mr. kenge, looking loftily at my guardian. mr. vholes was gratified, as a smaller practitioner striving to keep respectable, to be confirmed in any opinion of his own by such an authority. "and when," asked my guardian, rising after a pause, during which mr. kenge had rattled his money and mr. vholes had picked his pimples, "when is next term?" "next term, mr. jarndyce, will be next month," said mr. kenge. "of course we shall at once proceed to do what is necessary with this document and to collect the necessary evidence concerning it; and of course you will receive our usual notification of the cause being in the paper." "to which i shall pay, of course, my usual attention." "still bent, my dear sir," said mr. kenge, showing us through the outer office to the door, "still bent, even with your enlarged mind, on echoing a popular prejudice? we are a prosperous community, mr. jarndyce, a very prosperous community. we are a great country, mr. jarndyce, we are a very great country. this is a great system, mr. jarndyce, and would you wish a great country to have a little system? now, really, really!" he said this at the stair-head, gently moving his right hand as if it were a silver trowel with which to spread the cement of his words on the structure of the system and consolidate it for a thousand ages. chapter lxiii steel and iron george's shooting gallery is to let, and the stock is sold off, and george himself is at chesney wold attending on sir leicester in his rides and riding very near his bridle-rein because of the uncertain hand with which he guides his horse. but not to-day is george so occupied. he is journeying to-day into the iron country farther north to look about him. as he comes into the iron country farther north, such fresh green woods as those of chesney wold are left behind; and coal pits and ashes, high chimneys and red bricks, blighted verdure, scorching fires, and a heavy never-lightening cloud of smoke become the features of the scenery. among such objects rides the trooper, looking about him and always looking for something he has come to find. at last, on the black canal bridge of a busy town, with a clang of iron in it, and more fires and more smoke than he has seen yet, the trooper, swart with the dust of the coal roads, checks his horse and asks a workman does he know the name of rouncewell thereabouts. "why, master," quoth the workman, "do i know my own name?" "'tis so well known here, is it, comrade?" asks the trooper. "rouncewell's? ah! you're right." "and where might it be now?" asks the trooper with a glance before him. "the bank, the factory, or the house?" the workman wants to know. "hum! rouncewell's is so great apparently," mutters the trooper, stroking his chin, "that i have as good as half a mind to go back again. why, i don't know which i want. should i find mr. rouncewell at the factory, do you think?" "tain't easy to say where you'd find him--at this time of the day you might find either him or his son there, if he's in town; but his contracts take him away." and which is the factory? why, he sees those chimneys--the tallest ones! yes, he sees them. well! let him keep his eye on those chimneys, going on as straight as ever he can, and presently he'll see 'em down a turning on the left, shut in by a great brick wall which forms one side of the street. that's rouncewell's. the trooper thanks his informant and rides slowly on, looking about him. he does not turn back, but puts up his horse (and is much disposed to groom him too) at a public-house where some of rouncewell's hands are dining, as the ostler tells him. some of rouncewell's hands have just knocked off for dinner-time and seem to be invading the whole town. they are very sinewy and strong, are rouncewell's hands--a little sooty too. he comes to a gateway in the brick wall, looks in, and sees a great perplexity of iron lying about in every stage and in a vast variety of shapes--in bars, in wedges, in sheets; in tanks, in boilers, in axles, in wheels, in cogs, in cranks, in rails; twisted and wrenched into eccentric and perverse forms as separate parts of machinery; mountains of it broken up, and rusty in its age; distant furnaces of it glowing and bubbling in its youth; bright fireworks of it showering about under the blows of the steam-hammer; red-hot iron, white-hot iron, cold-black iron; an iron taste, an iron smell, and a babel of iron sounds. "this is a place to make a man's head ache too!" says the trooper, looking about him for a counting-house. "who comes here? this is very like me before i was set up. this ought to be my nephew, if likenesses run in families. your servant, sir." "yours, sir. are you looking for any one?" "excuse me. young mr. rouncewell, i believe?" "yes." "i was looking for your father, sir. i wish to have a word with him." the young man, telling him he is fortunate in his choice of a time, for his father is there, leads the way to the office where he is to be found. "very like me before i was set up--devilish like me!" thinks the trooper as he follows. they come to a building in the yard with an office on an upper floor. at sight of the gentleman in the office, mr. george turns very red. "what name shall i say to my father?" asks the young man. george, full of the idea of iron, in desperation answers "steel," and is so presented. he is left alone with the gentleman in the office, who sits at a table with account-books before him and some sheets of paper blotted with hosts of figures and drawings of cunning shapes. it is a bare office, with bare windows, looking on the iron view below. tumbled together on the table are some pieces of iron, purposely broken to be tested at various periods of their service, in various capacities. there is iron-dust on everything; and the smoke is seen through the windows rolling heavily out of the tall chimneys to mingle with the smoke from a vaporous babylon of other chimneys. "i am at your service, mr. steel," says the gentleman when his visitor has taken a rusty chair. "well, mr. rouncewell," george replies, leaning forward with his left arm on his knee and his hat in his hand, and very chary of meeting his brother's eye, "i am not without my expectations that in the present visit i may prove to be more free than welcome. i have served as a dragoon in my day, and a comrade of mine that i was once rather partial to was, if i don't deceive myself, a brother of yours. i believe you had a brother who gave his family some trouble, and ran away, and never did any good but in keeping away?" "are you quite sure," returns the ironmaster in an altered voice, "that your name is steel?" the trooper falters and looks at him. his brother starts up, calls him by his name, and grasps him by both hands. "you are too quick for me!" cries the trooper with the tears springing out of his eyes. "how do you do, my dear old fellow? i never could have thought you would have been half so glad to see me as all this. how do you do, my dear old fellow, how do you do!" they shake hands and embrace each other over and over again, the trooper still coupling his "how do you do, my dear old fellow!" with his protestation that he never thought his brother would have been half so glad to see him as all this! "so far from it," he declares at the end of a full account of what has preceded his arrival there, "i had very little idea of making myself known. i thought if you took by any means forgivingly to my name i might gradually get myself up to the point of writing a letter. but i should not have been surprised, brother, if you had considered it anything but welcome news to hear of me." "we will show you at home what kind of news we think it, george," returns his brother. "this is a great day at home, and you could not have arrived, you bronzed old soldier, on a better. i make an agreement with my son watt to-day that on this day twelvemonth he shall marry as pretty and as good a girl as you have seen in all your travels. she goes to germany to-morrow with one of your nieces for a little polishing up in her education. we make a feast of the event, and you will be made the hero of it." mr. george is so entirely overcome at first by this prospect that he resists the proposed honour with great earnestness. being overborne, however, by his brother and his nephew--concerning whom he renews his protestations that he never could have thought they would have been half so glad to see him--he is taken home to an elegant house in all the arrangements of which there is to be observed a pleasant mixture of the originally simple habits of the father and mother with such as are suited to their altered station and the higher fortunes of their children. here mr. george is much dismayed by the graces and accomplishments of his nieces that are and by the beauty of rosa, his niece that is to be, and by the affectionate salutations of these young ladies, which he receives in a sort of dream. he is sorely taken aback, too, by the dutiful behaviour of his nephew and has a woeful consciousness upon him of being a scapegrace. however, there is great rejoicing and a very hearty company and infinite enjoyment, and mr. george comes bluff and martial through it all, and his pledge to be present at the marriage and give away the bride is received with universal favour. a whirling head has mr. george that night when he lies down in the state-bed of his brother's house to think of all these things and to see the images of his nieces (awful all the evening in their floating muslins) waltzing, after the german manner, over his counterpane. the brothers are closeted next morning in the ironmaster's room, where the elder is proceeding, in his clear sensible way, to show how he thinks he may best dispose of george in his business, when george squeezes his hand and stops him. "brother, i thank you a million times for your more than brotherly welcome, and a million times more to that for your more than brotherly intentions. but my plans are made. before i say a word as to them, i wish to consult you upon one family point. how," says the trooper, folding his arms and looking with indomitable firmness at his brother, "how is my mother to be got to scratch me?" "i am not sure that i understand you, george," replies the ironmaster. "i say, brother, how is my mother to be got to scratch me? she must be got to do it somehow." "scratch you out of her will, i think you mean?" "of course i do. in short," says the trooper, folding his arms more resolutely yet, "i mean--to--scratch me!" "my dear george," returns his brother, "is it so indispensable that you should undergo that process?" "quite! absolutely! i couldn't be guilty of the meanness of coming back without it. i should never be safe not to be off again. i have not sneaked home to rob your children, if not yourself, brother, of your rights. i, who forfeited mine long ago! if i am to remain and hold up my head, i must be scratched. come. you are a man of celebrated penetration and intelligence, and you can tell me how it's to be brought about." "i can tell you, george," replies the ironmaster deliberately, "how it is not to be brought about, which i hope may answer the purpose as well. look at our mother, think of her, recall her emotion when she recovered you. do you believe there is a consideration in the world that would induce her to take such a step against her favourite son? do you believe there is any chance of her consent, to balance against the outrage it would be to her (loving dear old lady!) to propose it? if you do, you are wrong. no, george! you must make up your mind to remain unscratched, i think." there is an amused smile on the ironmaster's face as he watches his brother, who is pondering, deeply disappointed. "i think you may manage almost as well as if the thing were done, though." "how, brother?" "being bent upon it, you can dispose by will of anything you have the misfortune to inherit in any way you like, you know." "that's true!" says the trooper, pondering again. then he wistfully asks, with his hand on his brother's, "would you mind mentioning that, brother, to your wife and family?" "not at all." "thank you. you wouldn't object to say, perhaps, that although an undoubted vagabond, i am a vagabond of the harum-scarum order, and not of the mean sort?" the ironmaster, repressing his amused smile, assents. "thank you. thank you. it's a weight off my mind," says the trooper with a heave of his chest as he unfolds his arms and puts a hand on each leg, "though i had set my heart on being scratched, too!" the brothers are very like each other, sitting face to face; but a certain massive simplicity and absence of usage in the ways of the world is all on the trooper's side. "well," he proceeds, throwing off his disappointment, "next and last, those plans of mine. you have been so brotherly as to propose to me to fall in here and take my place among the products of your perseverance and sense. i thank you heartily. it's more than brotherly, as i said before, and i thank you heartily for it," shaking him a long time by the hand. "but the truth is, brother, i am a--i am a kind of a weed, and it's too late to plant me in a regular garden." "my dear george," returns the elder, concentrating his strong steady brow upon him and smiling confidently, "leave that to me, and let me try." george shakes his head. "you could do it, i have not a doubt, if anybody could; but it's not to be done. not to be done, sir! whereas it so falls out, on the other hand, that i am able to be of some trifle of use to sir leicester dedlock since his illness--brought on by family sorrows--and that he would rather have that help from our mother's son than from anybody else." "well, my dear george," returns the other with a very slight shade upon his open face, "if you prefer to serve in sir leicester dedlock's household brigade--" "there it is, brother," cries the trooper, checking him, with his hand upon his knee again; "there it is! you don't take kindly to that idea; i don't mind it. you are not used to being officered; i am. everything about you is in perfect order and discipline; everything about me requires to be kept so. we are not accustomed to carry things with the same hand or to look at 'em from the same point. i don't say much about my garrison manners because i found myself pretty well at my ease last night, and they wouldn't be noticed here, i dare say, once and away. but i shall get on best at chesney wold, where there's more room for a weed than there is here; and the dear old lady will be made happy besides. therefore i accept of sir leicester dedlock's proposals. when i come over next year to give away the bride, or whenever i come, i shall have the sense to keep the household brigade in ambuscade and not to manoeuvre it on your ground. i thank you heartily again and am proud to think of the rouncewells as they'll be founded by you." "you know yourself, george," says the elder brother, returning the grip of his hand, "and perhaps you know me better than i know myself. take your way. so that we don't quite lose one another again, take your way." "no fear of that!" returns the trooper. "now, before i turn my horse's head homewards, brother, i will ask you--if you'll be so good--to look over a letter for me. i brought it with me to send from these parts, as chesney wold might be a painful name just now to the person it's written to. i am not much accustomed to correspondence myself, and i am particular respecting this present letter because i want it to be both straightforward and delicate." herewith he hands a letter, closely written in somewhat pale ink but in a neat round hand, to the ironmaster, who reads as follows: miss esther summerson, a communication having been made to me by inspector bucket of a letter to myself being found among the papers of a certain person, i take the liberty to make known to you that it was but a few lines of instruction from abroad, when, where, and how to deliver an enclosed letter to a young and beautiful lady, then unmarried, in england. i duly observed the same. i further take the liberty to make known to you that it was got from me as a proof of handwriting only and that otherwise i would not have given it up, as appearing to be the most harmless in my possession, without being previously shot through the heart. i further take the liberty to mention that if i could have supposed a certain unfortunate gentleman to have been in existence, i never could and never would have rested until i had discovered his retreat and shared my last farthing with him, as my duty and my inclination would have equally been. but he was (officially) reported drowned, and assuredly went over the side of a transport-ship at night in an irish harbour within a few hours of her arrival from the west indies, as i have myself heard both from officers and men on board, and know to have been (officially) confirmed. i further take the liberty to state that in my humble quality as one of the rank and file, i am, and shall ever continue to be, your thoroughly devoted and admiring servant and that i esteem the qualities you possess above all others far beyond the limits of the present dispatch. i have the honour to be, george "a little formal," observes the elder brother, refolding it with a puzzled face. "but nothing that might not be sent to a pattern young lady?" asks the younger. "nothing at all." therefore it is sealed and deposited for posting among the iron correspondence of the day. this done, mr. george takes a hearty farewell of the family party and prepares to saddle and mount. his brother, however, unwilling to part with him so soon, proposes to ride with him in a light open carriage to the place where he will bait for the night, and there remain with him until morning, a servant riding for so much of the journey on the thoroughbred old grey from chesney wold. the offer, being gladly accepted, is followed by a pleasant ride, a pleasant dinner, and a pleasant breakfast, all in brotherly communion. then they once more shake hands long and heartily and part, the ironmaster turning his face to the smoke and fires, and the trooper to the green country. early in the afternoon the subdued sound of his heavy military trot is heard on the turf in the avenue as he rides on with imaginary clank and jingle of accoutrements under the old elm-trees. chapter lxiv esther's narrative soon after i had that conversation with my guardian, he put a sealed paper in my hand one morning and said, "this is for next month, my dear." i found in it two hundred pounds. i now began very quietly to make such preparations as i thought were necessary. regulating my purchases by my guardian's taste, which i knew very well of course, i arranged my wardrobe to please him and hoped i should be highly successful. i did it all so quietly because i was not quite free from my old apprehension that ada would be rather sorry and because my guardian was so quiet himself. i had no doubt that under all the circumstances we should be married in the most private and simple manner. perhaps i should only have to say to ada, "would you like to come and see me married to-morrow, my pet?" perhaps our wedding might even be as unpretending as her own, and i might not find it necessary to say anything about it until it was over. i thought that if i were to choose, i would like this best. the only exception i made was mrs. woodcourt. i told her that i was going to be married to my guardian and that we had been engaged some time. she highly approved. she could never do enough for me and was remarkably softened now in comparison with what she had been when we first knew her. there was no trouble she would not have taken to have been of use to me, but i need hardly say that i only allowed her to take as little as gratified her kindness without tasking it. of course this was not a time to neglect my guardian, and of course it was not a time for neglecting my darling. so i had plenty of occupation, which i was glad of; and as to charley, she was absolutely not to be seen for needlework. to surround herself with great heaps of it--baskets full and tables full--and do a little, and spend a great deal of time in staring with her round eyes at what there was to do, and persuade herself that she was going to do it, were charley's great dignities and delights. meanwhile, i must say, i could not agree with my guardian on the subject of the will, and i had some sanguine hopes of jarndyce and jarndyce. which of us was right will soon appear, but i certainly did encourage expectations. in richard, the discovery gave occasion for a burst of business and agitation that buoyed him up for a little time, but he had lost the elasticity even of hope now and seemed to me to retain only its feverish anxieties. from something my guardian said one day when we were talking about this, i understood that my marriage would not take place until after the term-time we had been told to look forward to; and i thought the more, for that, how rejoiced i should be if i could be married when richard and ada were a little more prosperous. the term was very near indeed when my guardian was called out of town and went down into yorkshire on mr. woodcourt's business. he had told me beforehand that his presence there would be necessary. i had just come in one night from my dear girl's and was sitting in the midst of all my new clothes, looking at them all around me and thinking, when a letter from my guardian was brought to me. it asked me to join him in the country and mentioned by what stage-coach my place was taken and at what time in the morning i should have to leave town. it added in a postscript that i would not be many hours from ada. i expected few things less than a journey at that time, but i was ready for it in half an hour and set off as appointed early next morning. i travelled all day, wondering all day what i could be wanted for at such a distance; now i thought it might be for this purpose, and now i thought it might be for that purpose, but i was never, never, never near the truth. it was night when i came to my journey's end and found my guardian waiting for me. this was a great relief, for towards evening i had begun to fear (the more so as his letter was a very short one) that he might be ill. however, there he was, as well as it was possible to be; and when i saw his genial face again at its brightest and best, i said to myself, he has been doing some other great kindness. not that it required much penetration to say that, because i knew that his being there at all was an act of kindness. supper was ready at the hotel, and when we were alone at table he said, "full of curiosity, no doubt, little woman, to know why i have brought you here?" "well, guardian," said i, "without thinking myself a fatima or you a blue beard, i am a little curious about it." "then to ensure your night's rest, my love," he returned gaily, "i won't wait until to-morrow to tell you. i have very much wished to express to woodcourt, somehow, my sense of his humanity to poor unfortunate jo, his inestimable services to my young cousins, and his value to us all. when it was decided that he should settle here, it came into my head that i might ask his acceptance of some unpretending and suitable little place to lay his own head in. i therefore caused such a place to be looked out for, and such a place was found on very easy terms, and i have been touching it up for him and making it habitable. however, when i walked over it the day before yesterday and it was reported ready, i found that i was not housekeeper enough to know whether things were all as they ought to be. so i sent off for the best little housekeeper that could possibly be got to come and give me her advice and opinion. and here she is," said my guardian, "laughing and crying both together!" because he was so dear, so good, so admirable. i tried to tell him what i thought of him, but i could not articulate a word. "tut, tut!" said my guardian. "you make too much of it, little woman. why, how you sob, dame durden, how you sob!" "it is with exquisite pleasure, guardian--with a heart full of thanks." "well, well," said he. "i am delighted that you approve. i thought you would. i meant it as a pleasant surprise for the little mistress of bleak house." i kissed him and dried my eyes. "i know now!" said i. "i have seen this in your face a long while." "no; have you really, my dear?" said he. "what a dame durden it is to read a face!" he was so quaintly cheerful that i could not long be otherwise, and was almost ashamed of having been otherwise at all. when i went to bed, i cried. i am bound to confess that i cried; but i hope it was with pleasure, though i am not quite sure it was with pleasure. i repeated every word of the letter twice over. a most beautiful summer morning succeeded, and after breakfast we went out arm in arm to see the house of which i was to give my mighty housekeeping opinion. we entered a flower-garden by a gate in a side wall, of which he had the key, and the first thing i saw was that the beds and flowers were all laid out according to the manner of my beds and flowers at home. "you see, my dear," observed my guardian, standing still with a delighted face to watch my looks, "knowing there could be no better plan, i borrowed yours." we went on by a pretty little orchard, where the cherries were nestling among the green leaves and the shadows of the apple-trees were sporting on the grass, to the house itself--a cottage, quite a rustic cottage of doll's rooms; but such a lovely place, so tranquil and so beautiful, with such a rich and smiling country spread around it; with water sparkling away into the distance, here all overhung with summer-growth, there turning a humming mill; at its nearest point glancing through a meadow by the cheerful town, where cricket-players were assembling in bright groups and a flag was flying from a white tent that rippled in the sweet west wind. and still, as we went through the pretty rooms, out at the little rustic verandah doors, and underneath the tiny wooden colonnades garlanded with woodbine, jasmine, and honey-suckle, i saw in the papering on the walls, in the colours of the furniture, in the arrangement of all the pretty objects, my little tastes and fancies, my little methods and inventions which they used to laugh at while they praised them, my odd ways everywhere. i could not say enough in admiration of what was all so beautiful, but one secret doubt arose in my mind when i saw this, i thought, oh, would he be the happier for it! would it not have been better for his peace that i should not have been so brought before him? because although i was not what he thought me, still he loved me very dearly, and it might remind him mournfully of what be believed he had lost. i did not wish him to forget me--perhaps he might not have done so, without these aids to his memory--but my way was easier than his, and i could have reconciled myself even to that so that he had been the happier for it. "and now, little woman," said my guardian, whom i had never seen so proud and joyful as in showing me these things and watching my appreciation of them, "now, last of all, for the name of this house." "what is it called, dear guardian?" "my child," said he, "come and see," he took me to the porch, which he had hitherto avoided, and said, pausing before we went out, "my dear child, don't you guess the name?" "no!" said i. we went out of the porch and he showed me written over it, bleak house. he led me to a seat among the leaves close by, and sitting down beside me and taking my hand in his, spoke to me thus, "my darling girl, in what there has been between us, i have, i hope, been really solicitous for your happiness. when i wrote you the letter to which you brought the answer," smiling as he referred to it, "i had my own too much in view; but i had yours too. whether, under different circumstances, i might ever have renewed the old dream i sometimes dreamed when you were very young, of making you my wife one day, i need not ask myself. i did renew it, and i wrote my letter, and you brought your answer. you are following what i say, my child?" i was cold, and i trembled violently, but not a word he uttered was lost. as i sat looking fixedly at him and the sun's rays descended, softly shining through the leaves upon his bare head, i felt as if the brightness on him must be like the brightness of the angels. "hear me, my love, but do not speak. it is for me to speak now. when it was that i began to doubt whether what i had done would really make you happy is no matter. woodcourt came home, and i soon had no doubt at all." i clasped him round the neck and hung my head upon his breast and wept. "lie lightly, confidently here, my child," said he, pressing me gently to him. "i am your guardian and your father now. rest confidently here." soothingly, like the gentle rustling of the leaves; and genially, like the ripening weather; and radiantly and beneficently, like the sunshine, he went on. "understand me, my dear girl. i had no doubt of your being contented and happy with me, being so dutiful and so devoted; but i saw with whom you would be happier. that i penetrated his secret when dame durden was blind to it is no wonder, for i knew the good that could never change in her better far than she did. well! i have long been in allan woodcourt's confidence, although he was not, until yesterday, a few hours before you came here, in mine. but i would not have my esther's bright example lost; i would not have a jot of my dear girl's virtues unobserved and unhonoured; i would not have her admitted on sufferance into the line of morgan ap-kerrig, no, not for the weight in gold of all the mountains in wales!" he stopped to kiss me on the forehead, and i sobbed and wept afresh. for i felt as if i could not bear the painful delight of his praise. "hush, little woman! don't cry; this is to be a day of joy. i have looked forward to it," he said exultingly, "for months on months! a few words more, dame trot, and i have said my say. determined not to throw away one atom of my esther's worth, i took mrs. woodcourt into a separate confidence. 'now, madam,' said i, 'i clearly perceive--and indeed i know, to boot--that your son loves my ward. i am further very sure that my ward loves your son, but will sacrifice her love to a sense of duty and affection, and will sacrifice it so completely, so entirely, so religiously, that you should never suspect it though you watched her night and day.' then i told her all our story--ours--yours and mine. 'now, madam,' said i, 'come you, knowing this, and live with us. come you, and see my child from hour to hour; set what you see against her pedigree, which is this, and this'--for i scorned to mince it--'and tell me what is the true legitimacy when you shall have quite made up your mind on that subject.' why, honour to her old welsh blood, my dear," cried my guardian with enthusiasm, "i believe the heart it animates beats no less warmly, no less admiringly, no less lovingly, towards dame durden than my own!" he tenderly raised my head, and as i clung to him, kissed me in his old fatherly way again and again. what a light, now, on the protecting manner i had thought about! "one more last word. when allan woodcourt spoke to you, my dear, he spoke with my knowledge and consent--but i gave him no encouragement, not i, for these surprises were my great reward, and i was too miserly to part with a scrap of it. he was to come and tell me all that passed, and he did. i have no more to say. my dearest, allan woodcourt stood beside your father when he lay dead--stood beside your mother. this is bleak house. this day i give this house its little mistress; and before god, it is the brightest day in all my life!" he rose and raised me with him. we were no longer alone. my husband--i have called him by that name full seven happy years now--stood at my side. "allan," said my guardian, "take from me a willing gift, the best wife that ever man had. what more can i say for you than that i know you deserve her! take with her the little home she brings you. you know what she will make it, allan; you know what she has made its namesake. let me share its felicity sometimes, and what do i sacrifice? nothing, nothing." he kissed me once again, and now the tears were in his eyes as he said more softly, "esther, my dearest, after so many years, there is a kind of parting in this too. i know that my mistake has caused you some distress. forgive your old guardian, in restoring him to his old place in your affections; and blot it out of your memory. allan, take my dear." he moved away from under the green roof of leaves, and stopping in the sunlight outside and turning cheerfully towards us, said, "i shall be found about here somewhere. it's a west wind, little woman, due west! let no one thank me any more, for i am going to revert to my bachelor habits, and if anybody disregards this warning, i'll run away and never come back!" what happiness was ours that day, what joy, what rest, what hope, what gratitude, what bliss! we were to be married before the month was out, but when we were to come and take possession of our own house was to depend on richard and ada. we all three went home together next day. as soon as we arrived in town, allan went straight to see richard and to carry our joyful news to him and my darling. late as it was, i meant to go to her for a few minutes before lying down to sleep, but i went home with my guardian first to make his tea for him and to occupy the old chair by his side, for i did not like to think of its being empty so soon. when we came home we found that a young man had called three times in the course of that one day to see me and that having been told on the occasion of his third call that i was not expected to return before ten o'clock at night, he had left word that he would call about then. he had left his card three times. mr. guppy. as i naturally speculated on the object of these visits, and as i always associated something ludicrous with the visitor, it fell out that in laughing about mr. guppy i told my guardian of his old proposal and his subsequent retraction. "after that," said my guardian, "we will certainly receive this hero." so instructions were given that mr. guppy should be shown in when he came again, and they were scarcely given when he did come again. he was embarrassed when he found my guardian with me, but recovered himself and said, "how de do, sir?" "how do you do, sir?" returned my guardian. "thank you, sir, i am tolerable," returned mr. guppy. "will you allow me to introduce my mother, mrs. guppy of the old street road, and my particular friend, mr. weevle. that is to say, my friend has gone by the name of weevle, but his name is really and truly jobling." my guardian begged them to be seated, and they all sat down. "tony," said mr. guppy to his friend after an awkward silence. "will you open the case?" "do it yourself," returned the friend rather tartly. "well, mr. jarndyce, sir," mr. guppy, after a moment's consideration, began, to the great diversion of his mother, which she displayed by nudging mr. jobling with her elbow and winking at me in a most remarkable manner, "i had an idea that i should see miss summerson by herself and was not quite prepared for your esteemed presence. but miss summerson has mentioned to you, perhaps, that something has passed between us on former occasions?" "miss summerson," returned my guardian, smiling, "has made a communication to that effect to me." "that," said mr. guppy, "makes matters easier. sir, i have come out of my articles at kenge and carboy's, and i believe with satisfaction to all parties. i am now admitted (after undergoing an examination that's enough to badger a man blue, touching a pack of nonsense that he don't want to know) on the roll of attorneys and have taken out my certificate, if it would be any satisfaction to you to see it." "thank you, mr. guppy," returned my guardian. "i am quite willing--i believe i use a legal phrase--to admit the certificate." mr. guppy therefore desisted from taking something out of his pocket and proceeded without it. "i have no capital myself, but my mother has a little property which takes the form of an annuity"--here mr. guppy's mother rolled her head as if she never could sufficiently enjoy the observation, and put her handkerchief to her mouth, and again winked at me--"and a few pounds for expenses out of pocket in conducting business will never be wanting, free of interest, which is an advantage, you know," said mr. guppy feelingly. "certainly an advantage," returned my guardian. "i have some connexion," pursued mr. guppy, "and it lays in the direction of walcot square, lambeth. i have therefore taken a 'ouse in that locality, which, in the opinion of my friends, is a hollow bargain (taxes ridiculous, and use of fixtures included in the rent), and intend setting up professionally for myself there forthwith." here mr. guppy's mother fell into an extraordinary passion of rolling her head and smiling waggishly at anybody who would look at her. "it's a six-roomer, exclusive of kitchens," said mr. guppy, "and in the opinion of my friends, a commodious tenement. when i mention my friends, i refer principally to my friend jobling, who i believe has known me," mr. guppy looked at him with a sentimental air, "from boyhood's hour." mr. jobling confirmed this with a sliding movement of his legs. "my friend jobling will render me his assistance in the capacity of clerk and will live in the 'ouse," said mr. guppy. "my mother will likewise live in the 'ouse when her present quarter in the old street road shall have ceased and expired; and consequently there will be no want of society. my friend jobling is naturally aristocratic by taste, and besides being acquainted with the movements of the upper circles, fully backs me in the intentions i am now developing." mr. jobling said "certainly" and withdrew a little from the elbow of mr guppy's mother. "now, i have no occasion to mention to you, sir, you being in the confidence of miss summerson," said mr. guppy, "(mother, i wish you'd be so good as to keep still), that miss summerson's image was formerly imprinted on my 'eart and that i made her a proposal of marriage." "that i have heard," returned my guardian. "circumstances," pursued mr. guppy, "over which i had no control, but quite the contrary, weakened the impression of that image for a time. at which time miss summerson's conduct was highly genteel; i may even add, magnanimous." my guardian patted me on the shoulder and seemed much amused. "now, sir," said mr. guppy, "i have got into that state of mind myself that i wish for a reciprocity of magnanimous behaviour. i wish to prove to miss summerson that i can rise to a heighth of which perhaps she hardly thought me capable. i find that the image which i did suppose had been eradicated from my 'eart is not eradicated. its influence over me is still tremenjous, and yielding to it, i am willing to overlook the circumstances over which none of us have had any control and to renew those proposals to miss summerson which i had the honour to make at a former period. i beg to lay the 'ouse in walcot square, the business, and myself before miss summerson for her acceptance." "very magnanimous indeed, sir," observed my guardian. "well, sir," replied mr. guppy with candour, "my wish is to be magnanimous. i do not consider that in making this offer to miss summerson i am by any means throwing myself away; neither is that the opinion of my friends. still, there are circumstances which i submit may be taken into account as a set off against any little drawbacks of mine, and so a fair and equitable balance arrived at." "i take upon myself, sir," said my guardian, laughing as he rang the bell, "to reply to your proposals on behalf of miss summerson. she is very sensible of your handsome intentions, and wishes you good evening, and wishes you well." "oh!" said mr. guppy with a blank look. "is that tantamount, sir, to acceptance, or rejection, or consideration?" "to decided rejection, if you please," returned my guardian. mr. guppy looked incredulously at his friend, and at his mother, who suddenly turned very angry, and at the floor, and at the ceiling. "indeed?" said he. "then, jobling, if you was the friend you represent yourself, i should think you might hand my mother out of the gangway instead of allowing her to remain where she ain't wanted." but mrs. guppy positively refused to come out of the gangway. she wouldn't hear of it. "why, get along with you," said she to my guardian, "what do you mean? ain't my son good enough for you? you ought to be ashamed of yourself. get out with you!" "my good lady," returned my guardian, "it is hardly reasonable to ask me to get out of my own room." "i don't care for that," said mrs. guppy. "get out with you. if we ain't good enough for you, go and procure somebody that is good enough. go along and find 'em." i was quite unprepared for the rapid manner in which mrs. guppy's power of jocularity merged into a power of taking the profoundest offence. "go along and find somebody that's good enough for you," repeated mrs. guppy. "get out!" nothing seemed to astonish mr. guppy's mother so much and to make her so very indignant as our not getting out. "why don't you get out?" said mrs. guppy. "what are you stopping here for?" "mother," interposed her son, always getting before her and pushing her back with one shoulder as she sidled at my guardian, "will you hold your tongue?" "no, william," she returned, "i won't! not unless he gets out, i won't!" however, mr. guppy and mr. jobling together closed on mr. guppy's mother (who began to be quite abusive) and took her, very much against her will, downstairs, her voice rising a stair higher every time her figure got a stair lower, and insisting that we should immediately go and find somebody who was good enough for us, and above all things that we should get out. chapter lxv beginning the world the term had commenced, and my guardian found an intimation from mr. kenge that the cause would come on in two days. as i had sufficient hopes of the will to be in a flutter about it, allan and i agreed to go down to the court that morning. richard was extremely agitated and was so weak and low, though his illness was still of the mind, that my dear girl indeed had sore occasion to be supported. but she looked forward--a very little way now--to the help that was to come to her, and never drooped. it was at westminster that the cause was to come on. it had come on there, i dare say, a hundred times before, but i could not divest myself of an idea that it might lead to some result now. we left home directly after breakfast to be at westminster hall in good time and walked down there through the lively streets--so happily and strangely it seemed!--together. as we were going along, planning what we should do for richard and ada, i heard somebody calling "esther! my dear esther! esther!" and there was caddy jellyby, with her head out of the window of a little carriage which she hired now to go about in to her pupils (she had so many), as if she wanted to embrace me at a hundred yards' distance. i had written her a note to tell her of all that my guardian had done, but had not had a moment to go and see her. of course we turned back, and the affectionate girl was in that state of rapture, and was so overjoyed to talk about the night when she brought me the flowers, and was so determined to squeeze my face (bonnet and all) between her hands, and go on in a wild manner altogether, calling me all kinds of precious names, and telling allan i had done i don't know what for her, that i was just obliged to get into the little carriage and calm her down by letting her say and do exactly what she liked. allan, standing at the window, was as pleased as caddy; and i was as pleased as either of them; and i wonder that i got away as i did, rather than that i came off laughing, and red, and anything but tidy, and looking after caddy, who looked after us out of the coach-window as long as she could see us. this made us some quarter of an hour late, and when we came to westminster hall we found that the day's business was begun. worse than that, we found such an unusual crowd in the court of chancery that it was full to the door, and we could neither see nor hear what was passing within. it appeared to be something droll, for occasionally there was a laugh and a cry of "silence!" it appeared to be something interesting, for every one was pushing and striving to get nearer. it appeared to be something that made the professional gentlemen very merry, for there were several young counsellors in wigs and whiskers on the outside of the crowd, and when one of them told the others about it, they put their hands in their pockets, and quite doubled themselves up with laughter, and went stamping about the pavement of the hall. we asked a gentleman by us if he knew what cause was on. he told us jarndyce and jarndyce. we asked him if he knew what was doing in it. he said really, no he did not, nobody ever did, but as well as he could make out, it was over. over for the day? we asked him. no, he said, over for good. over for good! when we heard this unaccountable answer, we looked at one another quite lost in amazement. could it be possible that the will had set things right at last and that richard and ada were going to be rich? it seemed too good to be true. alas it was! our suspense was short, for a break-up soon took place in the crowd, and the people came streaming out looking flushed and hot and bringing a quantity of bad air with them. still they were all exceedingly amused and were more like people coming out from a farce or a juggler than from a court of justice. we stood aside, watching for any countenance we knew, and presently great bundles of paper began to be carried out--bundles in bags, bundles too large to be got into any bags, immense masses of papers of all shapes and no shapes, which the bearers staggered under, and threw down for the time being, anyhow, on the hall pavement, while they went back to bring out more. even these clerks were laughing. we glanced at the papers, and seeing jarndyce and jarndyce everywhere, asked an official-looking person who was standing in the midst of them whether the cause was over. yes, he said, it was all up with it at last, and burst out laughing too. at this juncture we perceived mr. kenge coming out of court with an affable dignity upon him, listening to mr. vholes, who was deferential and carried his own bag. mr. vholes was the first to see us. "here is miss summerson, sir," he said. "and mr. woodcourt." "oh, indeed! yes. truly!" said mr. kenge, raising his hat to me with polished politeness. "how do you do? glad to see you. mr. jarndyce is not here?" no. he never came there, i reminded him. "really," returned mr. kenge, "it is as well that he is not here to-day, for his--shall i say, in my good friend's absence, his indomitable singularity of opinion?--might have been strengthened, perhaps; not reasonably, but might have been strengthened." "pray what has been done to-day?" asked allan. "i beg your pardon?" said mr. kenge with excessive urbanity. "what has been done to-day?" "what has been done," repeated mr. kenge. "quite so. yes. why, not much has been done; not much. we have been checked--brought up suddenly, i would say--upon the--shall i term it threshold?" "is this will considered a genuine document, sir?" said allan. "will you tell us that?" "most certainly, if i could," said mr. kenge; "but we have not gone into that, we have not gone into that." "we have not gone into that," repeated mr. vholes as if his low inward voice were an echo. "you are to reflect, mr. woodcourt," observed mr. kenge, using his silver trowel persuasively and smoothingly, "that this has been a great cause, that this has been a protracted cause, that this has been a complex cause. jarndyce and jarndyce has been termed, not inaptly, a monument of chancery practice." "and patience has sat upon it a long time," said allan. "very well indeed, sir," returned mr. kenge with a certain condescending laugh he had. "very well! you are further to reflect, mr. woodcourt," becoming dignified almost to severity, "that on the numerous difficulties, contingencies, masterly fictions, and forms of procedure in this great cause, there has been expended study, ability, eloquence, knowledge, intellect, mr. woodcourt, high intellect. for many years, the--a--i would say the flower of the bar, and the--a--i would presume to add, the matured autumnal fruits of the woolsack--have been lavished upon jarndyce and jarndyce. if the public have the benefit, and if the country have the adornment, of this great grasp, it must be paid for in money or money's worth, sir." "mr. kenge," said allan, appearing enlightened all in a moment. "excuse me, our time presses. do i understand that the whole estate is found to have been absorbed in costs?" "hem! i believe so," returned mr. kenge. "mr. vholes, what do you say?" "i believe so," said mr. vholes. "and that thus the suit lapses and melts away?" "probably," returned mr. kenge. "mr. vholes?" "probably," said mr. vholes. "my dearest life," whispered allan, "this will break richard's heart!" there was such a shock of apprehension in his face, and he knew richard so perfectly, and i too had seen so much of his gradual decay, that what my dear girl had said to me in the fullness of her foreboding love sounded like a knell in my ears. "in case you should be wanting mr. c., sir," said mr. vholes, coming after us, "you'll find him in court. i left him there resting himself a little. good day, sir; good day, miss summerson." as he gave me that slowly devouring look of his, while twisting up the strings of his bag before he hastened with it after mr. kenge, the benignant shadow of whose conversational presence he seemed afraid to leave, he gave one gasp as if he had swallowed the last morsel of his client, and his black buttoned-up unwholesome figure glided away to the low door at the end of the hall. "my dear love," said allan, "leave to me, for a little while, the charge you gave me. go home with this intelligence and come to ada's by and by!" i would not let him take me to a coach, but entreated him to go to richard without a moment's delay and leave me to do as he wished. hurrying home, i found my guardian and told him gradually with what news i had returned. "little woman," said he, quite unmoved for himself, "to have done with the suit on any terms is a greater blessing than i had looked for. but my poor young cousins!" we talked about them all the morning and discussed what it was possible to do. in the afternoon my guardian walked with me to symond's inn and left me at the door. i went upstairs. when my darling heard my footsteps, she came out into the small passage and threw her arms round my neck, but she composed herself directly and said that richard had asked for me several times. allan had found him sitting in the corner of the court, she told me, like a stone figure. on being roused, he had broken away and made as if he would have spoken in a fierce voice to the judge. he was stopped by his mouth being full of blood, and allan had brought him home. he was lying on a sofa with his eyes closed when i went in. there were restoratives on the table; the room was made as airy as possible, and was darkened, and was very orderly and quiet. allan stood behind him watching him gravely. his face appeared to me to be quite destitute of colour, and now that i saw him without his seeing me, i fully saw, for the first time, how worn away he was. but he looked handsomer than i had seen him look for many a day. i sat down by his side in silence. opening his eyes by and by, he said in a weak voice, but with his old smile, "dame durden, kiss me, my dear!" it was a great comfort and surprise to me to find him in his low state cheerful and looking forward. he was happier, he said, in our intended marriage than he could find words to tell me. my husband had been a guardian angel to him and ada, and he blessed us both and wished us all the joy that life could yield us. i almost felt as if my own heart would have broken when i saw him take my husband's hand and hold it to his breast. we spoke of the future as much as possible, and he said several times that he must be present at our marriage if he could stand upon his feet. ada would contrive to take him, somehow, he said. "yes, surely, dearest richard!" but as my darling answered him thus hopefully, so serene and beautiful, with the help that was to come to her so near--i knew--i knew! it was not good for him to talk too much, and when he was silent, we were silent too. sitting beside him, i made a pretence of working for my dear, as he had always been used to joke about my being busy. ada leaned upon his pillow, holding his head upon her arm. he dozed often, and whenever he awoke without seeing him, said first of all, "where is woodcourt?" evening had come on when i lifted up my eyes and saw my guardian standing in the little hall. "who is that, dame durden?" richard asked me. the door was behind him, but he had observed in my face that some one was there. i looked to allan for advice, and as he nodded "yes," bent over richard and told him. my guardian saw what passed, came softly by me in a moment, and laid his hand on richard's. "oh, sir," said richard, "you are a good man, you are a good man!" and burst into tears for the first time. my guardian, the picture of a good man, sat down in my place, keeping his hand on richard's. "my dear rick," said he, "the clouds have cleared away, and it is bright now. we can see now. we were all bewildered, rick, more or less. what matters! and how are you, my dear boy?" "i am very weak, sir, but i hope i shall be stronger. i have to begin the world." "aye, truly; well said!" cried my guardian. "i will not begin it in the old way now," said richard with a sad smile. "i have learned a lesson now, sir. it was a hard one, but you shall be assured, indeed, that i have learned it." "well, well," said my guardian, comforting him; "well, well, well, dear boy!" "i was thinking, sir," resumed richard, "that there is nothing on earth i should so much like to see as their house--dame durden's and woodcourt's house. if i could be removed there when i begin to recover my strength, i feel as if i should get well there sooner than anywhere." "why, so have i been thinking too, rick," said my guardian, "and our little woman likewise; she and i have been talking of it this very day. i dare say her husband won't object. what do you think?" richard smiled and lifted up his arm to touch him as he stood behind the head of the couch. "i say nothing of ada," said richard, "but i think of her, and have thought of her very much. look at her! see her here, sir, bending over this pillow when she has so much need to rest upon it herself, my dear love, my poor girl!" he clasped her in his arms, and none of us spoke. he gradually released her, and she looked upon us, and looked up to heaven, and moved her lips. "when i get down to bleak house," said richard, "i shall have much to tell you, sir, and you will have much to show me. you will go, won't you?" "undoubtedly, dear rick." "thank you; like you, like you," said richard. "but it's all like you. they have been telling me how you planned it and how you remembered all esther's familiar tastes and ways. it will be like coming to the old bleak house again." "and you will come there too, i hope, rick. i am a solitary man now, you know, and it will be a charity to come to me. a charity to come to me, my love!" he repeated to ada as he gently passed his hand over her golden hair and put a lock of it to his lips. (i think he vowed within himself to cherish her if she were left alone.) "it was a troubled dream?" said richard, clasping both my guardian's hands eagerly. "nothing more, rick; nothing more." "and you, being a good man, can pass it as such, and forgive and pity the dreamer, and be lenient and encouraging when he wakes?" "indeed i can. what am i but another dreamer, rick?" "i will begin the world!" said richard with a light in his eyes. my husband drew a little nearer towards ada, and i saw him solemnly lift up his hand to warn my guardian. "when shall i go from this place to that pleasant country where the old times are, where i shall have strength to tell what ada has been to me, where i shall be able to recall my many faults and blindnesses, where i shall prepare myself to be a guide to my unborn child?" said richard. "when shall i go?" "dear rick, when you are strong enough," returned my guardian. "ada, my darling!" he sought to raise himself a little. allan raised him so that she could hold him on her bosom, which was what he wanted. "i have done you many wrongs, my own. i have fallen like a poor stray shadow on your way, i have married you to poverty and trouble, i have scattered your means to the winds. you will forgive me all this, my ada, before i begin the world?" a smile irradiated his face as she bent to kiss him. he slowly laid his face down upon her bosom, drew his arms closer round her neck, and with one parting sob began the world. not this world, oh, not this! the world that sets this right. when all was still, at a late hour, poor crazed miss flite came weeping to me and told me she had given her birds their liberty. chapter lxvi down in lincolnshire there is a hush upon chesney wold in these altered days, as there is upon a portion of the family history. the story goes that sir leicester paid some who could have spoken out to hold their peace; but it is a lame story, feebly whispering and creeping about, and any brighter spark of life it shows soon dies away. it is known for certain that the handsome lady dedlock lies in the mausoleum in the park, where the trees arch darkly overhead, and the owl is heard at night making the woods ring; but whence she was brought home to be laid among the echoes of that solitary place, or how she died, is all mystery. some of her old friends, principally to be found among the peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats, did once occasionally say, as they toyed in a ghastly manner with large fans--like charmers reduced to flirting with grim death, after losing all their other beaux--did once occasionally say, when the world assembled together, that they wondered the ashes of the dedlocks, entombed in the mausoleum, never rose against the profanation of her company. but the dead-and-gone dedlocks take it very calmly and have never been known to object. up from among the fern in the hollow, and winding by the bridle-road among the trees, comes sometimes to this lonely spot the sound of horses' hoofs. then may be seen sir leicester--invalided, bent, and almost blind, but of worthy presence yet--riding with a stalwart man beside him, constant to his bridle-rein. when they come to a certain spot before the mausoleum-door, sir leicester's accustomed horse stops of his own accord, and sir leicester, pulling off his hat, is still for a few moments before they ride away. war rages yet with the audacious boythorn, though at uncertain intervals, and now hotly, and now coolly, flickering like an unsteady fire. the truth is said to be that when sir leicester came down to lincolnshire for good, mr. boythorn showed a manifest desire to abandon his right of way and do whatever sir leicester would, which sir leicester, conceiving to be a condescension to his illness or misfortune, took in such high dudgeon, and was so magnificently aggrieved by, that mr. boythorn found himself under the necessity of committing a flagrant trespass to restore his neighbour to himself. similarly, mr. boythorn continues to post tremendous placards on the disputed thoroughfare and (with his bird upon his head) to hold forth vehemently against sir leicester in the sanctuary of his own home; similarly, also, he defies him as of old in the little church by testifying a bland unconsciousness of his existence. but it is whispered that when he is most ferocious towards his old foe, he is really most considerate, and that sir leicester, in the dignity of being implacable, little supposes how much he is humoured. as little does he think how near together he and his antagonist have suffered in the fortunes of two sisters, and his antagonist, who knows it now, is not the man to tell him. so the quarrel goes on to the satisfaction of both. in one of the lodges of the park--that lodge within sight of the house where, once upon a time, when the waters were out down in lincolnshire, my lady used to see the keeper's child--the stalwart man, the trooper formerly, is housed. some relics of his old calling hang upon the walls, and these it is the chosen recreation of a little lame man about the stable-yard to keep gleaming bright. a busy little man he always is, in the polishing at harness-house doors, of stirrup-irons, bits, curb-chains, harness bosses, anything in the way of a stable-yard that will take a polish, leading a life of friction. a shaggy little damaged man, withal, not unlike an old dog of some mongrel breed, who has been considerably knocked about. he answers to the name of phil. a goodly sight it is to see the grand old housekeeper (harder of hearing now) going to church on the arm of her son and to observe--which few do, for the house is scant of company in these times--the relations of both towards sir leicester, and his towards them. they have visitors in the high summer weather, when a grey cloak and umbrella, unknown to chesney wold at other periods, are seen among the leaves; when two young ladies are occasionally found gambolling in sequestered saw-pits and such nooks of the park; and when the smoke of two pipes wreathes away into the fragrant evening air from the trooper's door. then is a fife heard trolling within the lodge on the inspiring topic of the "british grenadiers"; and as the evening closes in, a gruff inflexible voice is heard to say, while two men pace together up and down, "but i never own to it before the old girl. discipline must be maintained." the greater part of the house is shut up, and it is a show-house no longer; yet sir leicester holds his shrunken state in the long drawing-room for all that, and reposes in his old place before my lady's picture. closed in by night with broad screens, and illumined only in that part, the light of the drawing-room seems gradually contracting and dwindling until it shall be no more. a little more, in truth, and it will be all extinguished for sir leicester; and the damp door in the mausoleum which shuts so tight, and looks so obdurate, will have opened and received him. volumnia, growing with the flight of time pinker as to the red in her face, and yellower as to the white, reads to sir leicester in the long evenings and is driven to various artifices to conceal her yawns, of which the chief and most efficacious is the insertion of the pearl necklace between her rosy lips. long-winded treatises on the buffy and boodle question, showing how buffy is immaculate and boodle villainous, and how the country is lost by being all boodle and no buffy, or saved by being all buffy and no boodle (it must be one of the two, and cannot be anything else), are the staple of her reading. sir leicester is not particular what it is and does not appear to follow it very closely, further than that he always comes broad awake the moment volumnia ventures to leave off, and sonorously repeating her last words, begs with some displeasure to know if she finds herself fatigued. however, volumnia, in the course of her bird-like hopping about and pecking at papers, has alighted on a memorandum concerning herself in the event of "anything happening" to her kinsman, which is handsome compensation for an extensive course of reading and holds even the dragon boredom at bay. the cousins generally are rather shy of chesney wold in its dullness, but take to it a little in the shooting season, when guns are heard in the plantations, and a few scattered beaters and keepers wait at the old places of appointment for low-spirited twos and threes of cousins. the debilitated cousin, more debilitated by the dreariness of the place, gets into a fearful state of depression, groaning under penitential sofa-pillows in his gunless hours and protesting that such fernal old jail's--nough t'sew fler up--frever. the only great occasions for volumnia in this changed aspect of the place in lincolnshire are those occasions, rare and widely separated, when something is to be done for the county or the country in the way of gracing a public ball. then, indeed, does the tuckered sylph come out in fairy form and proceed with joy under cousinly escort to the exhausted old assembly-room, fourteen heavy miles off, which, during three hundred and sixty-four days and nights of every ordinary year, is a kind of antipodean lumber-room full of old chairs and tables upside down. then, indeed, does she captivate all hearts by her condescension, by her girlish vivacity, and by her skipping about as in the days when the hideous old general with the mouth too full of teeth had not cut one of them at two guineas each. then does she twirl and twine, a pastoral nymph of good family, through the mazes of the dance. then do the swains appear with tea, with lemonade, with sandwiches, with homage. then is she kind and cruel, stately and unassuming, various, beautifully wilful. then is there a singular kind of parallel between her and the little glass chandeliers of another age embellishing that assembly-room, which, with their meagre stems, their spare little drops, their disappointing knobs where no drops are, their bare little stalks from which knobs and drops have both departed, and their little feeble prismatic twinkling, all seem volumnias. for the rest, lincolnshire life to volumnia is a vast blank of overgrown house looking out upon trees, sighing, wringing their hands, bowing their heads, and casting their tears upon the window-panes in monotonous depressions. a labyrinth of grandeur, less the property of an old family of human beings and their ghostly likenesses than of an old family of echoings and thunderings which start out of their hundred graves at every sound and go resounding through the building. a waste of unused passages and staircases in which to drop a comb upon a bedroom floor at night is to send a stealthy footfall on an errand through the house. a place where few people care to go about alone, where a maid screams if an ash drops from the fire, takes to crying at all times and seasons, becomes the victim of a low disorder of the spirits, and gives warning and departs. thus chesney wold. with so much of itself abandoned to darkness and vacancy; with so little change under the summer shining or the wintry lowering; so sombre and motionless always--no flag flying now by day, no rows of lights sparkling by night; with no family to come and go, no visitors to be the souls of pale cold shapes of rooms, no stir of life about it--passion and pride, even to the stranger's eye, have died away from the place in lincolnshire and yielded it to dull repose. chapter lxvii the close of esther's narrative full seven happy years i have been the mistress of bleak house. the few words that i have to add to what i have written are soon penned; then i and the unknown friend to whom i write will part for ever. not without much dear remembrance on my side. not without some, i hope, on his or hers. they gave my darling into my arms, and through many weeks i never left her. the little child who was to have done so much was born before the turf was planted on its father's grave. it was a boy; and i, my husband, and my guardian gave him his father's name. the help that my dear counted on did come to her, though it came, in the eternal wisdom, for another purpose. though to bless and restore his mother, not his father, was the errand of this baby, its power was mighty to do it. when i saw the strength of the weak little hand and how its touch could heal my darling's heart and raised hope within her, i felt a new sense of the goodness and the tenderness of god. they throve, and by degrees i saw my dear girl pass into my country garden and walk there with her infant in her arms. i was married then. i was the happiest of the happy. it was at this time that my guardian joined us and asked ada when she would come home. "both houses are your home, my dear," said he, "but the older bleak house claims priority. when you and my boy are strong enough to do it, come and take possession of your home." ada called him "her dearest cousin, john." but he said, no, it must be guardian now. he was her guardian henceforth, and the boy's; and he had an old association with the name. so she called him guardian, and has called him guardian ever since. the children know him by no other name. i say the children; i have two little daughters. it is difficult to believe that charley (round-eyed still, and not at all grammatical) is married to a miller in our neighbourhood; yet so it is; and even now, looking up from my desk as i write early in the morning at my summer window, i see the very mill beginning to go round. i hope the miller will not spoil charley; but he is very fond of her, and charley is rather vain of such a match, for he is well to do and was in great request. so far as my small maid is concerned, i might suppose time to have stood for seven years as still as the mill did half an hour ago, since little emma, charley's sister, is exactly what charley used to be. as to tom, charley's brother, i am really afraid to say what he did at school in ciphering, but i think it was decimals. he is apprenticed to the miller, whatever it was, and is a good bashful fellow, always falling in love with somebody and being ashamed of it. caddy jellyby passed her very last holidays with us and was a dearer creature than ever, perpetually dancing in and out of the house with the children as if she had never given a dancing-lesson in her life. caddy keeps her own little carriage now instead of hiring one, and lives full two miles further westward than newman street. she works very hard, her husband (an excellent one) being lame and able to do very little. still, she is more than contented and does all she has to do with all her heart. mr. jellyby spends his evenings at her new house with his head against the wall as he used to do in her old one. i have heard that mrs. jellyby was understood to suffer great mortification from her daughter's ignoble marriage and pursuits, but i hope she got over it in time. she has been disappointed in borrioboola-gha, which turned out a failure in consequence of the king of borrioboola wanting to sell everybody--who survived the climate--for rum, but she has taken up with the rights of women to sit in parliament, and caddy tells me it is a mission involving more correspondence than the old one. i had almost forgotten caddy's poor little girl. she is not such a mite now, but she is deaf and dumb. i believe there never was a better mother than caddy, who learns, in her scanty intervals of leisure, innumerable deaf and dumb arts to soften the affliction of her child. as if i were never to have done with caddy, i am reminded here of peepy and old mr. turveydrop. peepy is in the custom house, and doing extremely well. old mr. turveydrop, very apoplectic, still exhibits his deportment about town, still enjoys himself in the old manner, is still believed in in the old way. he is constant in his patronage of peepy and is understood to have bequeathed him a favourite french clock in his dressing-room--which is not his property. with the first money we saved at home, we added to our pretty house by throwing out a little growlery expressly for my guardian, which we inaugurated with great splendour the next time he came down to see us. i try to write all this lightly, because my heart is full in drawing to an end, but when i write of him, my tears will have their way. i never look at him but i hear our poor dear richard calling him a good man. to ada and her pretty boy, he is the fondest father; to me he is what he has ever been, and what name can i give to that? he is my husband's best and dearest friend, he is our children's darling, he is the object of our deepest love and veneration. yet while i feel towards him as if he were a superior being, i am so familiar with him and so easy with him that i almost wonder at myself. i have never lost my old names, nor has he lost his; nor do i ever, when he is with us, sit in any other place than in my old chair at his side, dame trot, dame durden, little woman--all just the same as ever; and i answer, "yes, dear guardian!" just the same. i have never known the wind to be in the east for a single moment since the day when he took me to the porch to read the name. i remarked to him once that the wind seemed never in the east now, and he said, no, truly; it had finally departed from that quarter on that very day. i think my darling girl is more beautiful than ever. the sorrow that has been in her face--for it is not there now--seems to have purified even its innocent expression and to have given it a diviner quality. sometimes when i raise my eyes and see her in the black dress that she still wears, teaching my richard, i feel--it is difficult to express--as if it were so good to know that she remembers her dear esther in her prayers. i call him my richard! but he says that he has two mamas, and i am one. we are not rich in the bank, but we have always prospered, and we have quite enough. i never walk out with my husband but i hear the people bless him. i never go into a house of any degree but i hear his praises or see them in grateful eyes. i never lie down at night but i know that in the course of that day he has alleviated pain and soothed some fellow-creature in the time of need. i know that from the beds of those who were past recovery, thanks have often, often gone up, in the last hour, for his patient ministration. is not this to be rich? the people even praise me as the doctor's wife. the people even like me as i go about, and make so much of me that i am quite abashed. i owe it all to him, my love, my pride! they like me for his sake, as i do everything i do in life for his sake. a night or two ago, after bustling about preparing for my darling and my guardian and little richard, who are coming to-morrow, i was sitting out in the porch of all places, that dearly memorable porch, when allan came home. so he said, "my precious little woman, what are you doing here?" and i said, "the moon is shining so brightly, allan, and the night is so delicious, that i have been sitting here thinking." "what have you been thinking about, my dear?" said allan then. "how curious you are!" said i. "i am almost ashamed to tell you, but i will. i have been thinking about my old looks--such as they were." "and what have you been thinking about them, my busy bee?" said allan. "i have been thinking that i thought it was impossible that you could have loved me any better, even if i had retained them." "'such as they were'?" said allan, laughing. "such as they were, of course." "my dear dame durden," said allan, drawing my arm through his, "do you ever look in the glass?" "you know i do; you see me do it." "and don't you know that you are prettier than you ever were?" "i did not know that; i am not certain that i know it now. but i know that my dearest little pets are very pretty, and that my darling is very beautiful, and that my husband is very handsome, and that my guardian has the brightest and most benevolent face that ever was seen, and that they can very well do without much beauty in me--even supposing--." to the last man by zane grey foreword it was inevitable that in my efforts to write romantic history of the great west i should at length come to the story of a feud. for long i have steered clear of this rock. but at last i have reached it and must go over it, driven by my desire to chronicle the stirring events of pioneer days. even to-day it is not possible to travel into the remote corners of the west without seeing the lives of people still affected by a fighting past. how can the truth be told about the pioneering of the west if the struggle, the fight, the blood be left out? it cannot be done. how can a novel be stirring and thrilling, as were those times, unless it be full of sensation? my long labors have been devoted to making stories resemble the times they depict. i have loved the west for its vastness, its contrast, its beauty and color and life, for its wildness and violence, and for the fact that i have seen how it developed great men and women who died unknown and unsung. in this materialistic age, this hard, practical, swift, greedy age of realism, it seems there is no place for writers of romance, no place for romance itself. for many years all the events leading up to the great war were realistic, and the war itself was horribly realistic, and the aftermath is likewise. romance is only another name for idealism; and i contend that life without ideals is not worth living. never in the history of the world were ideals needed so terribly as now. walter scott wrote romance; so did victor hugo; and likewise kipling, hawthorne, stevenson. it was stevenson, particularly, who wielded a bludgeon against the realists. people live for the dream in their hearts. and i have yet to know anyone who has not some secret dream, some hope, however dim, some storied wall to look at in the dusk, some painted window leading to the soul. how strange indeed to find that the realists have ideals and dreams! to read them one would think their lives held nothing significant. but they love, they hope, they dream, they sacrifice, they struggle on with that dream in their hearts just the same as others. we all are dreamers, if not in the heavy-lidded wasting of time, then in the meaning of life that makes us work on. it was wordsworth who wrote, "the world is too much with us"; and if i could give the secret of my ambition as a novelist in a few words it would be contained in that quotation. my inspiration to write has always come from nature. character and action are subordinated to setting. in all that i have done i have tried to make people see how the world is too much with them. getting and spending they lay waste their powers, with never a breath of the free and wonderful life of the open! so i come back to the main point of this foreword, in which i am trying to tell why and how i came to write the story of a feud notorious in arizona as the pleasant valley war. some years ago mr. harry adams, a cattleman of vermajo park, new mexico, told me he had been in the tonto basin of arizona and thought i might find interesting material there concerning this pleasant valley war. his version of the war between cattlemen and sheepmen certainly determined me to look over the ground. my old guide, al doyle of flagstaff, had led me over half of arizona, but never down into that wonderful wild and rugged basin between the mogollon mesa and the mazatzal mountains. doyle had long lived on the frontier and his version of the pleasant valley war differed markedly from that of mr. adams. i asked other old timers about it, and their remarks further excited my curiosity. once down there, doyle and i found the wildest, most rugged, roughest, and most remarkable country either of us had visited; and the few inhabitants were like the country. i went in ostensibly to hunt bear and lion and turkey, but what i really was hunting for was the story of that pleasant valley war. i engaged the services of a bear hunter who had three strapping sons as reserved and strange and aloof as he was. no wheel tracks of any kind had ever come within miles of their cabin. i spent two wonderful months hunting game and reveling in the beauty and grandeur of that rim rock country, but i came out knowing no more about the pleasant valley war. these texans and their few neighbors, likewise from texas, did not talk. but all i saw and felt only inspired me the more. this trip was in the fall of . the next year i went again with the best horses, outfit, and men the doyles could provide. and this time i did not ask any questions. but i rode horses--some of them too wild for me--and packed a rifle many a hundred miles, riding sometimes thirty and forty miles a day, and i climbed in and out of the deep canyons, desperately staying at the heels of one of those long-legged texans. i learned the life of those backwoodsmen, but i did not get the story of the pleasant valley war. i had, however, won the friendship of that hardy people. in i went back with a still larger outfit, equipped to stay as long as i liked. and this time, without my asking it, different natives of the tonto came to tell me about the pleasant valley war. no two of them agreed on anything concerning it, except that only one of the active participants survived the fighting. whence comes my title, to the last man. thus i was swamped in a mass of material out of which i could only flounder to my own conclusion. some of the stories told me are singularly tempting to a novelist. but, though i believe them myself, i cannot risk their improbability to those who have no idea of the wildness of wild men at a wild time. there really was a terrible and bloody feud, perhaps the most deadly and least known in all the annals of the west. i saw the ground, the cabins, the graves, all so darkly suggestive of what must have happened. i never learned the truth of the cause of the pleasant valley war, or if i did hear it i had no means of recognizing it. all the given causes were plausible and convincing. strange to state, there is still secrecy and reticence all over the tonto basin as to the facts of this feud. many descendents of those killed are living there now. but no one likes to talk about it. assuredly many of the incidents told me really occurred, as, for example, the terrible one of the two women, in the face of relentless enemies, saving the bodies of their dead husbands from being devoured by wild hogs. suffice it to say that this romance is true to my conception of the war, and i base it upon the setting i learned to know and love so well, upon the strange passions of primitive people, and upon my instinctive reaction to the facts and rumors that i gathered. zane grey. avalon, california, april, chapter i at the end of a dry, uphill ride over barren country jean isbel unpacked to camp at the edge of the cedars where a little rocky canyon green with willow and cottonwood, promised water and grass. his animals were tired, especially the pack mule that had carried a heavy load; and with slow heave of relief they knelt and rolled in the dust. jean experienced something of relief himself as he threw off his chaps. he had not been used to hot, dusty, glaring days on the barren lands. stretching his long length beside a tiny rill of clear water that tinkled over the red stones, he drank thirstily. the water was cool, but it had an acrid taste--an alkali bite that he did not like. not since he had left oregon had he tasted clear, sweet, cold water; and he missed it just as he longed for the stately shady forests he had loved. this wild, endless arizona land bade fair to earn his hatred. by the time he had leisurely completed his tasks twilight had fallen and coyotes had begun their barking. jean listened to the yelps and to the moan of the cool wind in the cedars with a sense of satisfaction that these lonely sounds were familiar. this cedar wood burned into a pretty fire and the smell of its smoke was newly pleasant. "reckon maybe i'll learn to like arizona," he mused, half aloud. "but i've a hankerin' for waterfalls an' dark-green forests. must be the indian in me.... anyway, dad needs me bad, an' i reckon i'm here for keeps." jean threw some cedar branches on the fire, in the light of which he opened his father's letter, hoping by repeated reading to grasp more of its strange portent. it had been two months in reaching him, coming by traveler, by stage and train, and then by boat, and finally by stage again. written in lead pencil on a leaf torn from an old ledger, it would have been hard to read even if the writing had been more legible. "dad's writin' was always bad, but i never saw it so shaky," said jean, thinking aloud. grass vally, arizona. son jean,--come home. here is your home and here your needed. when we left oregon we all reckoned you would not be long behind. but its years now. i am growing old, son, and you was always my steadiest boy. not that you ever was so dam steady. only your wildness seemed more for the woods. you take after mother, and your brothers bill and guy take after me. that is the red and white of it. your part indian, jean, and that indian i reckon i am going to need bad. i am rich in cattle and horses. and my range here is the best i ever seen. lately we have been losing stock. but that is not all nor so bad. sheepmen have moved into the tonto and are grazing down on grass vally. cattlemen and sheepmen can never bide in this country. we have bad times ahead. reckon i have more reasons to worry and need you, but you must wait to hear that by word of mouth. whatever your doing, chuck it and rustle for grass vally so to make here by spring. i am asking you to take pains to pack in some guns and a lot of shells. and hide them in your outfit. if you meet anyone when your coming down into the tonto, listen more than you talk. and last, son, dont let anything keep you in oregon. reckon you have a sweetheart, and if so fetch her along. with love from your dad, gaston isbel. jean pondered over this letter. judged by memory of his father, who had always been self-sufficient, it had been a surprise and somewhat of a shock. weeks of travel and reflection had not helped him to grasp the meaning between the lines. "yes, dad's growin' old," mused jean, feeling a warmth and a sadness stir in him. "he must be 'way over sixty. but he never looked old.... so he's rich now an' losin' stock, an' goin' to be sheeped off his range. dad could stand a lot of rustlin', but not much from sheepmen." the softness that stirred in jean merged into a cold, thoughtful earnestness which had followed every perusal of his father's letter. a dark, full current seemed flowing in his veins, and at times he felt it swell and heat. it troubled him, making him conscious of a deeper, stronger self, opposed to his careless, free, and dreamy nature. no ties had bound him in oregon, except love for the great, still forests and the thundering rivers; and this love came from his softer side. it had cost him a wrench to leave. and all the way by ship down the coast to san diego and across the sierra madres by stage, and so on to this last overland travel by horseback, he had felt a retreating of the self that was tranquil and happy and a dominating of this unknown somber self, with its menacing possibilities. yet despite a nameless regret and a loyalty to oregon, when he lay in his blankets he had to confess a keen interest in his adventurous future, a keen enjoyment of this stark, wild arizona. it appeared to be a different sky stretching in dark, star-spangled dome over him--closer, vaster, bluer. the strong fragrance of sage and cedar floated over him with the camp-fire smoke, and all seemed drowsily to subdue his thoughts. at dawn he rolled out of his blankets and, pulling on his boots, began the day with a zest for the work that must bring closer his calling future. white, crackling frost and cold, nipping air were the same keen spurs to action that he had known in the uplands of oregon, yet they were not wholly the same. he sensed an exhilaration similar to the effect of a strong, sweet wine. his horse and mule had fared well during the night, having been much refreshed by the grass and water of the little canyon. jean mounted and rode into the cedars with gladness that at last he had put the endless leagues of barren land behind him. the trail he followed appeared to be seldom traveled. it led, according to the meager information obtainable at the last settlement, directly to what was called the rim, and from there grass valley could be seen down in the basin. the ascent of the ground was so gradual that only in long, open stretches could it be seen. but the nature of the vegetation showed jean how he was climbing. scant, low, scraggy cedars gave place to more numerous, darker, greener, bushier ones, and these to high, full-foliaged, green-berried trees. sage and grass in the open flats grew more luxuriously. then came the pinyons, and presently among them the checker-barked junipers. jean hailed the first pine tree with a hearty slap on the brown, rugged bark. it was a small dwarf pine struggling to live. the next one was larger, and after that came several, and beyond them pines stood up everywhere above the lower trees. odor of pine needles mingled with the other dry smells that made the wind pleasant to jean. in an hour from the first line of pines he had ridden beyond the cedars and pinyons into a slowly thickening and deepening forest. underbrush appeared scarce except in ravines, and the ground in open patches held a bleached grass. jean's eye roved for sight of squirrels, birds, deer, or any moving creature. it appeared to be a dry, uninhabited forest. about midday jean halted at a pond of surface water, evidently melted snow, and gave his animals a drink. he saw a few old deer tracks in the mud and several huge bird tracks new to him which he concluded must have been made by wild turkeys. the trail divided at this pond. jean had no idea which branch he ought to take. "reckon it doesn't matter," he muttered, as he was about to remount. his horse was standing with ears up, looking back along the trail. then jean heard a clip-clop of trotting hoofs, and presently espied a horseman. jean made a pretense of tightening his saddle girths while he peered over his horse at the approaching rider. all men in this country were going to be of exceeding interest to jean isbel. this man at a distance rode and looked like all the arizonians jean had seen, he had a superb seat in the saddle, and he was long and lean. he wore a huge black sombrero and a soiled red scarf. his vest was open and he was without a coat. the rider came trotting up and halted several paces from jean "hullo, stranger!" he said, gruffly. "howdy yourself!" replied jean. he felt an instinctive importance in the meeting with the man. never had sharper eyes flashed over jean and his outfit. he had a dust-colored, sun-burned face, long, lean, and hard, a huge sandy mustache that hid his mouth, and eyes of piercing light intensity. not very much hard western experience had passed by this man, yet he was not old, measured by years. when he dismounted jean saw he was tall, even for an arizonian. "seen your tracks back a ways," he said, as he slipped the bit to let his horse drink. "where bound?" "reckon i'm lost, all right," replied jean. "new country for me." "shore. i seen thet from your tracks an' your last camp. wal, where was you headin' for before you got lost?" the query was deliberately cool, with a dry, crisp ring. jean felt the lack of friendliness or kindliness in it. "grass valley. my name's isbel," he replied, shortly. the rider attended to his drinking horse and presently rebridled him; then with long swing of leg he appeared to step into the saddle. "shore i knowed you was jean isbel," he said. "everybody in the tonto has heerd old gass isbel sent fer his boy." "well then, why did you ask?" inquired jean, bluntly. "reckon i wanted to see what you'd say." "so? all right. but i'm not carin' very much for what you say." their glances locked steadily then and each measured the other by the intangible conflict of spirit. "shore thet's natural," replied the rider. his speech was slow, and the motions of his long, brown hands, as he took a cigarette from his vest, kept time with his words. "but seein' you're one of the isbels, i'll hev my say whether you want it or not. my name's colter an' i'm one of the sheepmen gass isbel's riled with." "colter. glad to meet you," replied jean. "an' i reckon who riled my father is goin' to rile me." "shore. if thet wasn't so you'd not be an isbel," returned colter, with a grim little laugh. "it's easy to see you ain't run into any tonto basin fellers yet. wal, i'm goin' to tell you thet your old man gabbed like a woman down at greaves's store. bragged aboot you an' how you could fight an' how you could shoot an' how you could track a hoss or a man! bragged how you'd chase every sheep herder back up on the rim.... i'm tellin' you because we want you to git our stand right. we're goin' to run sheep down in grass valley." "ahuh! well, who's we?" queried jean, curtly. "what-at? ... we--i mean the sheepmen rangin' this rim from black butte to the apache country." "colter, i'm a stranger in arizona," said jean, slowly. "i know little about ranchers or sheepmen. it's true my father sent for me. it's true, i dare say, that he bragged, for he was given to bluster an' blow. an' he's old now. i can't help it if he bragged about me. but if he has, an' if he's justified in his stand against you sheepmen, i'm goin' to do my best to live up to his brag." "i get your hunch. shore we understand each other, an' thet's a powerful help. you take my hunch to your old man," replied colter, as he turned his horse away toward the left. "thet trail leadin' south is yours. when you come to the rim you'll see a bare spot down in the basin. thet 'll be grass valley." he rode away out of sight into the woods. jean leaned against his horse and pondered. it seemed difficult to be just to this colter, not because of his claims, but because of a subtle hostility that emanated from him. colter had the hard face, the masked intent, the turn of speech that jean had come to associate with dishonest men. even if jean had not been prejudiced, if he had known nothing of his father's trouble with these sheepmen, and if colter had met him only to exchange glances and greetings, still jean would never have had a favorable impression. colter grated upon him, roused an antagonism seldom felt. "heigho!" sighed the young man, "good-by to huntin' an' fishing'! dad's given me a man's job." with that he mounted his horse and started the pack mule into the right-hand trail. walking and trotting, he traveled all afternoon, toward sunset getting into heavy forest of pine. more than one snow bank showed white through the green, sheltered on the north slopes of shady ravines. and it was upon entering this zone of richer, deeper forestland that jean sloughed off his gloomy forebodings. these stately pines were not the giant firs of oregon, but any lover of the woods could be happy under them. higher still he climbed until the forest spread before and around him like a level park, with thicketed ravines here and there on each side. and presently that deceitful level led to a higher bench upon which the pines towered, and were matched by beautiful trees he took for spruce. heavily barked, with regular spreading branches, these conifers rose in symmetrical shape to spear the sky with silver plumes. a graceful gray-green moss, waved like veils from the branches. the air was not so dry and it was colder, with a scent and touch of snow. jean made camp at the first likely site, taking the precaution to unroll his bed some little distance from his fire. under the softly moaning pines he felt comfortable, having lost the sense of an immeasurable open space falling away from all around him. the gobbling of wild turkeys awakened jean, "chuga-lug, chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug-chug." there was not a great difference between the gobble of a wild turkey and that of a tame one. jean got up, and taking his rifle went out into the gray obscurity of dawn to try to locate the turkeys. but it was too dark, and finally when daylight came they appeared to be gone. the mule had strayed, and, what with finding it and cooking breakfast and packing, jean did not make a very early start. on this last lap of his long journey he had slowed down. he was weary of hurrying; the change from weeks in the glaring sun and dust-laden wind to this sweet coot darkly green and brown forest was very welcome; he wanted to linger along the shaded trail. this day he made sure would see him reach the rim. by and by he lost the trail. it had just worn out from lack of use. every now and then jean would cross an old trail, and as he penetrated deeper into the forest every damp or dusty spot showed tracks of turkey, deer, and bear. the amount of bear sign surprised him. presently his keen nostrils were assailed by a smell of sheep, and soon he rode into a broad sheep, trail. from the tracks jean calculated that the sheep had passed there the day before. an unreasonable antipathy seemed born in him. to be sure he had been prepared to dislike sheep, and that was why he was unreasonable. but on the other hand this band of sheep had left a broad bare swath, weedless, grassless, flowerless, in their wake. where sheep grazed they destroyed. that was what jean had against them. an hour later he rode to the crest of a long parklike slope, where new green grass was sprouting and flowers peeped everywhere. the pines appeared far apart; gnarled oak trees showed rugged and gray against the green wall of woods. a white strip of snow gleamed like a moving stream away down in the woods. jean heard the musical tinkle of bells and the baa-baa of sheep and the faint, sweet bleating of lambs. as he road toward these sounds a dog ran out from an oak thicket and barked at him. next jean smelled a camp fire and soon he caught sight of a curling blue column of smoke, and then a small peaked tent. beyond the clump of oaks jean encountered a mexican lad carrying a carbine. the boy had a swarthy, pleasant face, and to jean's greeting he replied, "buenas dias." jean understood little spanish, and about all he gathered by his simple queries was that the lad was not alone--and that it was "lambing time." this latter circumstance grew noisily manifest. the forest seemed shrilly full of incessant baas and plaintive bleats. all about the camp, on the slope, in the glades, and everywhere, were sheep. a few were grazing; many were lying down; most of them were ewes suckling white fleecy little lambs that staggered on their feet. everywhere jean saw tiny lambs just born. their pin-pointed bleats pierced the heavier baa-baa of their mothers. jean dismounted and led his horse down toward the camp, where he rather expected to see another and older mexican, from whom he might get information. the lad walked with him. down this way the plaintive uproar made by the sheep was not so loud. "hello there!" called jean, cheerfully, as he approached the tent. no answer was forthcoming. dropping his bridle, he went on, rather slowly, looking for some one to appear. then a voice from one side startled him. "mawnin', stranger." a girl stepped out from beside a pine. she carried a rifle. her face flashed richly brown, but she was not mexican. this fact, and the sudden conviction that she had been watching him, somewhat disconcerted jean. "beg pardon--miss," he floundered. "didn't expect, to see a--girl.... i'm sort of lost--lookin' for the rim--an' thought i'd find a sheep herder who'd show me. i can't savvy this boy's lingo." while he spoke it seemed to him an intentness of expression, a strain relaxed from her face. a faint suggestion of hostility likewise disappeared. jean was not even sure that he had caught it, but there had been something that now was gone. "shore i'll be glad to show y'u," she said. "thanks, miss. reckon i can breathe easy now," he replied, "it's a long ride from san diego. hot an' dusty! i'm pretty tired. an' maybe this woods isn't good medicine to achin' eyes!" "san diego! y'u're from the coast?" "yes." jean had doffed his sombrero at sight of her and he still held it, rather deferentially, perhaps. it seemed to attract her attention. "put on y'ur hat, stranger.... shore i can't recollect when any man bared his haid to me." she uttered a little laugh in which surprise and frankness mingled with a tint of bitterness. jean sat down with his back to a pine, and, laying the sombrero by his side, he looked full at her, conscious of a singular eagerness, as if he wanted to verify by close scrutiny a first hasty impression. if there had been an instinct in his meeting with colter, there was more in this. the girl half sat, half leaned against a log, with the shiny little carbine across her knees. she had a level, curious gaze upon him, and jean had never met one just like it. her eyes were rather a wide oval in shape, clear and steady, with shadows of thought in their amber-brown depths. they seemed to look through jean, and his gaze dropped first. then it was he saw her ragged homespun skirt and a few inches of brown, bare ankles, strong and round, and crude worn-out moccasins that failed to hide the shapeliness, of her feet. suddenly she drew back her stockingless ankles and ill-shod little feet. when jean lifted his gaze again he found her face half averted and a stain of red in the gold tan of her cheek. that touch of embarrassment somehow removed her from this strong, raw, wild woodland setting. it changed her poise. it detracted from the curious, unabashed, almost bold, look that he had encountered in her eyes. "reckon you're from texas," said jean, presently. "shore am," she drawled. she had a lazy southern voice, pleasant to hear. "how'd y'u-all guess that?" "anybody can tell a texan. where i came from there were a good many pioneers an' ranchers from the old lone star state. i've worked for several. an', come to think of it, i'd rather hear a texas girl talk than anybody." "did y'u know many texas girls?" she inquired, turning again to face him. "reckon i did--quite a good many." "did y'u go with them?" "go with them? reckon you mean keep company. why, yes, i guess i did--a little," laughed jean. "sometimes on a sunday or a dance once in a blue moon, an' occasionally a ride." "shore that accounts," said the girl, wistfully. "for what?" asked jean. "y'ur bein' a gentleman," she replied, with force. "oh, i've not forgotten. i had friends when we lived in texas.... three years ago. shore it seems longer. three miserable years in this damned country!" then she bit her lip, evidently to keep back further unwitting utterance to a total stranger. and it was that biting of her lip that drew jean's attention to her mouth. it held beauty of curve and fullness and color that could not hide a certain sadness and bitterness. then the whole flashing brown face changed for jean. he saw that it was young, full of passion and restraint, possessing a power which grew on him. this, with her shame and pathos and the fact that she craved respect, gave a leap to jean's interest. "well, i reckon you flatter me," he said, hoping to put her at her ease again. "i'm only a rough hunter an' fisherman-woodchopper an' horse tracker. never had all the school i needed--nor near enough company of nice girls like you." "am i nice?" she asked, quickly. "you sure are," he replied, smiling. "in these rags," she demanded, with a sudden flash of passion that thrilled him. "look at the holes." she showed rips and worn-out places in the sleeves of her buckskin blouse, through which gleamed a round, brown arm. "i sew when i have anythin' to sew with.... look at my skirt--a dirty rag. an' i have only one other to my name.... look!" again a color tinged her cheeks, most becoming, and giving the lie to her action. but shame could not check her violence now. a dammed-up resentment seemed to have broken out in flood. she lifted the ragged skirt almost to her knees. "no stockings! no shoes! ... how can a girl be nice when she has no clean, decent woman's clothes to wear?" "how--how can a girl..." began jean. "see here, miss, i'm beggin' your pardon for--sort of stirrin' you to forget yourself a little. reckon i understand. you don't meet many strangers an' i sort of hit you wrong--makin' you feel too much--an' talk too much. who an' what you are is none of my business. but we met.... an' i reckon somethin' has happened--perhaps more to me than to you.... now let me put you straight about clothes an' women. reckon i know most women love nice things to wear an' think because clothes make them look pretty that they're nicer or better. but they're wrong. you're wrong. maybe it 'd be too much for a girl like you to be happy without clothes. but you can be--you axe just as nice, an'--an' fine--an', for all you know, a good deal more appealin' to some men." "stranger, y'u shore must excuse my temper an' the show i made of myself," replied the girl, with composure. "that, to say the least, was not nice. an' i don't want anyone thinkin' better of me than i deserve. my mother died in texas, an' i've lived out heah in this wild country--a girl alone among rough men. meetin' y'u to-day makes me see what a hard lot they are--an' what it's done to me." jean smothered his curiosity and tried to put out of his mind a growing sense that he pitied her, liked her. "are you a sheep herder?" he asked. "shore i am now an' then. my father lives back heah in a canyon. he's a sheepman. lately there's been herders shot at. just now we're short an' i have to fill in. but i like shepherdin' an' i love the woods, and the rim rock an' all the tonto. if they were all, i'd shore be happy." "herders shot at!" exclaimed jean, thoughtfully. "by whom? an' what for?" "trouble brewin' between the cattlemen down in the basin an' the sheepmen up on the rim. dad says there'll shore be hell to pay. i tell him i hope the cattlemen chase him back to texas." "then-- are you on the ranchers' side?" queried jean, trying to pretend casual interest. "no. i'll always be on my father's side," she replied, with spirit. "but i'm bound to admit i think the cattlemen have the fair side of the argument." "how so?" "because there's grass everywhere. i see no sense in a sheepman goin' out of his way to surround a cattleman an' sheep off his range. that started the row. lord knows how it'll end. for most all of them heah are from texas." "so i was told," replied jean. "an' i heard' most all these texans got run out of texas. any truth in that?" "shore i reckon there is," she replied, seriously. "but, stranger, it might not be healthy for y'u to, say that anywhere. my dad, for one, was not run out of texas. shore i never can see why he came heah. he's accumulated stock, but he's not rich nor so well off as he was back home." "are you goin' to stay here always?" queried jean, suddenly. "if i do so it 'll be in my grave," she answered, darkly. "but what's the use of thinkin'? people stay places until they drift away. y'u can never tell.... well, stranger, this talk is keepin' y'u." she seemed moody now, and a note of detachment crept into her voice. jean rose at once and went for his horse. if this girl did not desire to talk further he certainly had no wish to annoy her. his mule had strayed off among the bleating sheep. jean drove it back and then led his horse up to where the girl stood. she appeared taller and, though not of robust build, she was vigorous and lithe, with something about her that fitted the place. jean was loath to bid her good-by. "which way is the rim?" he asked, turning to his saddle girths. "south," she replied, pointing. "it's only a mile or so. i'll walk down with y'u.... suppose y'u're on the way to grass valley?" "yes; i've relatives there," he returned. he dreaded her next question, which he suspected would concern his name. but she did not ask. taking up her rifle she turned away. jean strode ahead to her side. "reckon if you walk i won't ride." so he found himself beside a girl with the free step of a mountaineer. her bare, brown head came up nearly to his shoulder. it was a small, pretty head, graceful, well held, and the thick hair on it was a shiny, soft brown. she wore it in a braid, rather untidily and tangled, he thought, and it was tied with a string of buckskin. altogether her apparel proclaimed poverty. jean let the conversation languish for a little. he wanted to think what to say presently, and then he felt a rather vague pleasure in stalking beside her. her profile was straight cut and exquisite in line. from this side view the soft curve of lips could not be seen. she made several attempts to start conversation, all of which jean ignored, manifestly to her growing constraint. presently jean, having decided what he wanted to say, suddenly began: "i like this adventure. do you?" "adventure! meetin' me in the woods?" and she laughed the laugh of youth. "shore you must be hard up for adventure, stranger." "do you like it?" he persisted, and his eyes searched the half-averted face. "i might like it," she answered, frankly, "if--if my temper had not made a fool of me. i never meet anyone i care to talk to. why should it not be pleasant to run across some one new--some one strange in this heah wild country?" "we are as we are," said jean, simply. "i didn't think you made a fool of yourself. if i thought so, would i want to see you again?" "do y'u?" the brown face flashed on him with surprise, with a light he took for gladness. and because he wanted to appear calm and friendly, not too eager, he had to deny himself the thrill of meeting those changing eyes. "sure i do. reckon i'm overbold on such short acquaintance. but i might not have another chance to tell you, so please don't hold it against me." this declaration over, jean felt relief and something of exultation. he had been afraid he might not have the courage to make it. she walked on as before, only with her head bowed a little and her eyes downcast. no color but the gold-brown tan and the blue tracery of veins showed in her cheeks. he noticed then a slight swelling quiver of her throat; and he became alive to its graceful contour, and to how full and pulsating it was, how nobly it set into the curve of her shoulder. here in her quivering throat was the weakness of her, the evidence of her sex, the womanliness that belied the mountaineer stride and the grasp of strong brown hands on a rifle. it had an effect on jean totally inexplicable to him, both in the strange warmth that stole over him and in the utterance he could not hold back. "girl, we're strangers, but what of that? we've met, an' i tell you it means somethin' to me. i've known girls for months an' never felt this way. i don't know who you are an' i don't care. you betrayed a good deal to me. you're not happy. you're lonely. an' if i didn't want to see you again for my own sake i would for yours. some things you said i'll not forget soon. i've got a sister, an' i know you have no brother. an' i reckon ..." at this juncture jean in his earnestness and quite without thought grasped her hand. the contact checked the flow of his speech and suddenly made him aghast at his temerity. but the girl did not make any effort to withdraw it. so jean, inhaling a deep breath and trying to see through his bewilderment, held on bravely. he imagined he felt a faint, warm, returning pressure. she was young, she was friendless, she was human. by this hand in his jean felt more than ever the loneliness of her. then, just as he was about to speak again, she pulled her hand free. "heah's the rim," she said, in her quaint southern drawl. "an' there's y'ur tonto basin." jean had been intent only upon the girl. he had kept step beside her without taking note of what was ahead of him. at her words he looked up expectantly, to be struck mute. he felt a sheer force, a downward drawing of an immense abyss beneath him. as he looked afar he saw a black basin of timbered country, the darkest and wildest he had ever gazed upon, a hundred miles of blue distance across to an unflung mountain range, hazy purple against the sky. it seemed to be a stupendous gulf surrounded on three sides by bold, undulating lines of peaks, and on his side by a wall so high that he felt lifted aloft on the run of the sky. "southeast y'u see the sierra anchas," said the girl pointing. "that notch in the range is the pass where sheep are driven to phoenix an' maricopa. those big rough mountains to the south are the mazatzals. round to the west is the four peaks range. an' y'u're standin' on the rim." jean could not see at first just what the rim was, but by shifting his gaze westward he grasped this remarkable phenomenon of nature. for leagues and leagues a colossal red and yellow wall, a rampart, a mountain-faced cliff, seemed to zigzag westward. grand and bold were the promontories reaching out over the void. they ran toward the westering sun. sweeping and impressive were the long lines slanting away from them, sloping darkly spotted down to merge into the black timber. jean had never seen such a wild and rugged manifestation of nature's depths and upheavals. he was held mute. "stranger, look down," said the girl. jean's sight was educated to judge heights and depths and distances. this wall upon which he stood sheered precipitously down, so far that it made him dizzy to look, and then the craggy broken cliffs merged into red-slided, cedar-greened slopes running down and down into gorges choked with forests, and from which soared up a roar of rushing waters. slope after slope, ridge beyond ridge, canyon merging into canyon--so the tremendous bowl sunk away to its black, deceiving depths, a wilderness across which travel seemed impossible. "wonderful!" exclaimed jean. "indeed it is!" murmured the girl. "shore that is arizona. i reckon i love this. the heights an' depths--the awfulness of its wilderness!" "an' you want to leave it?" "yes an' no. i don't deny the peace that comes to me heah. but not often do i see the basin, an' for that matter, one doesn't live on grand scenery." "child, even once in a while--this sight would cure any misery, if you only see. i'm glad i came. i'm glad you showed it to me first." she too seemed under the spell of a vastness and loneliness and beauty and grandeur that could not but strike the heart. jean took her hand again. "girl, say you will meet me here," he said, his voice ringing deep in his ears. "shore i will," she replied, softly, and turned to him. it seemed then that jean saw her face for the first time. she was beautiful as he had never known beauty. limned against that scene, she gave it life--wild, sweet, young life--the poignant meaning of which haunted yet eluded him. but she belonged there. her eyes were again searching his, as if for some lost part of herself, unrealized, never known before. wondering, wistful, hopeful, glad--they were eyes that seemed surprised, to reveal part of her soul. then her red lips parted. their tremulous movement was a magnet to jean. an invisible and mighty force pulled him down to kiss them. whatever the spell had been, that rude, unconscious action broke it. he jerked away, as if he expected to be struck. "girl--i--i"--he gasped in amaze and sudden-dawning contrition--"i kissed you--but i swear it wasn't intentional--i never thought...." the anger that jean anticipated failed to materialize. he stood, breathing hard, with a hand held out in unconscious appeal. by the same magic, perhaps, that had transfigured her a moment past, she was now invested again by the older character. "shore i reckon my callin' y'u a gentleman was a little previous," she said, with a rather dry bitterness. "but, stranger, yu're sudden." "you're not insulted?" asked jean, hurriedly. "oh, i've been kissed before. shore men are all alike." "they're not," he replied, hotly, with a subtle rush of disillusion, a dulling of enchantment. "don't you class me with other men who've kissed you. i wasn't myself when i did it an' i'd have gone on my knees to ask your forgiveness.... but now i wouldn't--an' i wouldn't kiss you again, either--even if you--you wanted it." jean read in her strange gaze what seemed to him a vague doubt, as if she was questioning him. "miss, i take that back," added jean, shortly. "i'm sorry. i didn't mean to be rude. it was a mean trick for me to kiss you. a girl alone in the woods who's gone out of her way to be kind to me! i don't know why i forgot my manners. an' i ask your pardon." she looked away then, and presently pointed far out and down into the basin. "there's grass valley. that long gray spot in the black. it's about fifteen miles. ride along the rim that way till y'u cross a trail. shore y'u can't miss it. then go down." "i'm much obliged to you," replied jean, reluctantly accepting what he regarded as his dismissal. turning his horse, he put his foot in the stirrup, then, hesitating, he looked across the saddle at the girl. her abstraction, as she gazed away over the purple depths suggested loneliness and wistfulness. she was not thinking of that scene spread so wondrously before her. it struck jean she might be pondering a subtle change in his feeling and attitude, something he was conscious of, yet could not define. "reckon this is good-by," he said, with hesitation. "adios, senor," she replied, facing him again. she lifted the little carbine to the hollow of her elbow and, half turning, appeared ready to depart. "adios means good-by?" he queried. "yes, good-by till to-morrow or good-by forever. take it as y'u like." "then you'll meet me here day after to-morrow?" how eagerly he spoke, on impulse, without a consideration of the intangible thing that had changed him! "did i say i wouldn't?" "no. but i reckoned you'd not care to after--" he replied, breaking off in some confusion. "shore i'll be glad to meet y'u. day after to-morrow about mid-afternoon. right heah. fetch all the news from grass valley." "all right. thanks. that'll be--fine," replied jean, and as he spoke he experienced a buoyant thrill, a pleasant lightness of enthusiasm, such as always stirred boyishly in him at a prospect of adventure. before it passed he wondered at it and felt unsure of himself. he needed to think. "stranger shore i'm not recollectin' that y'u told me who y'u are," she said. "no, reckon i didn't tell," he returned. "what difference does that make? i said i didn't care who or what you are. can't you feel the same about me?" "shore--i felt that way," she replied, somewhat non-plussed, with the level brown gaze steadily on his face. "but now y'u make me think." "let's meet without knowin' any more about each other than we do now." "shore. i'd like that. in this big wild arizona a girl--an' i reckon a man--feels so insignificant. what's a name, anyhow? still, people an' things have to be distinguished. i'll call y'u 'stranger' an' be satisfied--if y'u say it's fair for y'u not to tell who y'u are." "fair! no, it's not," declared jean, forced to confession. "my name's jean--jean isbel." "isbel!" she exclaimed, with a violent start. "shore y'u can't be son of old gass isbel.... i've seen both his sons." "he has three," replied jean, with relief, now the secret was out. "i'm the youngest. i'm twenty-four. never been out of oregon till now. on my way--" the brown color slowly faded out of her face, leaving her quite pale, with eyes that began to blaze. the suppleness of her seemed to stiffen. "my name's ellen jorth," she burst out, passionately. "does it mean anythin' to y'u?" "never heard it in my life," protested jean. "sure i reckoned you belonged to the sheep raisers who 're on the outs with my father. that's why i had to tell you i'm jean isbel.... ellen jorth. it's strange an' pretty.... reckon i can be just as good a--a friend to you--" "no isbel, can ever be a friend to me," she said, with bitter coldness. stripped of her ease and her soft wistfulness, she stood before him one instant, entirely another girl, a hostile enemy. then she wheeled and strode off into the woods. jean, in amaze, in consternation, watched her swiftly draw away with her lithe, free step, wanting to follow her, wanting to call to her; but the resentment roused by her suddenly avowed hostility held him mute in his tracks. he watched her disappear, and when the brown-and-green wall of forest swallowed the slender gray form he fought against the insistent desire to follow her, and fought in vain. chapter ii but ellen jorth's moccasined feet did not leave a distinguishable trail on the springy pine needle covering of the ground, and jean could not find any trace of her. a little futile searching to and fro cooled his impulse and called pride to his rescue. returning to his horse, he mounted, rode out behind the pack mule to start it along, and soon felt the relief of decision and action. clumps of small pines grew thickly in spots on the rim, making it necessary for him to skirt them; at which times he lost sight of the purple basin. every time he came back to an opening through which he could see the wild ruggedness and colors and distances, his appreciation of their nature grew on him. arizona from yuma to the little colorado had been to him an endless waste of wind-scoured, sun-blasted barrenness. this black-forested rock-rimmed land of untrodden ways was a world that in itself would satisfy him. some instinct in jean called for a lonely, wild land, into the fastnesses of which he could roam at will and be the other strange self that he had always yearned to be but had never been. every few moments there intruded into his flowing consciousness the flashing face of ellen jorth, the way she had looked at him, the things she had said. "reckon i was a fool," he soliloquized, with an acute sense of humiliation. "she never saw how much in earnest i was." and jean began to remember the circumstances with a vividness that disturbed and perplexed him. the accident of running across such a girl in that lonely place might be out of the ordinary--but it had happened. surprise had made him dull. the charm of her appearance, the appeal of her manner, must have drawn him at the very first, but he had not recognized that. only at her words, "oh, i've been kissed before," had his feelings been checked in their heedless progress. and the utterance of them had made a difference he now sought to analyze. some personality in him, some voice, some idea had begun to defend her even before he was conscious that he had arraigned her before the bar of his judgment. such defense seemed clamoring in him now and he forced himself to listen. he wanted, in his hurt pride, to justify his amazing surrender to a sweet and sentimental impulse. he realized now that at first glance he should have recognized in her look, her poise, her voice the quality he called thoroughbred. ragged and stained apparel did not prove her of a common sort. jean had known a number of fine and wholesome girls of good family; and he remembered his sister. this ellen jorth was that kind of a girl irrespective of her present environment. jean championed her loyally, even after he had gratified his selfish pride. it was then--contending with an intangible and stealing glamour, unreal and fanciful, like the dream of a forbidden enchantment--that jean arrived at the part in the little woodland drama where he had kissed ellen jorth and had been unrebuked. why had she not resented his action? dispelled was the illusion he had been dreamily and nobly constructing. "oh, i've been kissed before!" the shock to him now exceeded his first dismay. half bitterly she had spoken, and wholly scornful of herself, or of him, or of all men. for she had said all men were alike. jean chafed under the smart of that, a taunt every decent man hated. naturally every happy and healthy young man would want to kiss such red, sweet lips. but if those lips had been for others--never for him! jean reflected that not since childish games had he kissed a girl--until this brown-faced ellen jorth came his way. he wondered at it. moreover, he wondered at the significance he placed upon it. after all, was it not merely an accident? why should he remember? why should he ponder? what was the faint, deep, growing thrill that accompanied some of his thoughts? riding along with busy mind, jean almost crossed a well-beaten trail, leading through a pine thicket and down over the rim. jean's pack mule led the way without being driven. and when jean reached the edge of the bluff one look down was enough to fetch him off his horse. that trail was steep, narrow, clogged with stones, and as full of sharp corners as a crosscut saw. once on the descent with a packed mule and a spirited horse, jean had no time for mind wanderings and very little for occasional glimpses out over the cedar tops to the vast blue hollow asleep under a westering sun. the stones rattled, the dust rose, the cedar twigs snapped, the little avalanches of red earth slid down, the iron-shod hoofs rang on the rocks. this slope had been narrow at the apex in the rim where the trail led down a crack, and it widened in fan shape as jean descended. he zigzagged down a thousand feet before the slope benched into dividing ridges. here the cedars and junipers failed and pines once more hid the sun. deep ravines were black with brush. from somewhere rose a roar of running water, most pleasant to jean's ears. fresh deer and bear tracks covered old ones made in the trail. those timbered ridges were but billows of that tremendous slope that now sheered above jean, ending in a magnificent yellow wall of rock, greened in niches, stained by weather rust, carved and cracked and caverned. as jean descended farther the hum of bees made melody, the roar of rapid water and the murmur of a rising breeze filled him with the content of the wild. sheepmen like colter and wild girls like ellen jorth and all that seemed promising or menacing in his father's letter could never change the indian in jean. so he thought. hard upon that conclusion rushed another--one which troubled with its stinging revelation. surely these influences he had defied were just the ones to bring out in him the indian he had sensed but had never known. the eventful day had brought new and bitter food for jean to reflect upon. the trail landed him in the bowlder-strewn bed of a wide canyon, where the huge trees stretched a canopy of foliage which denied the sunlight, and where a beautiful brook rushed and foamed. here at last jean tasted water that rivaled his oregon springs. "ah," he cried, "that sure is good!" dark and shaded and ferny and mossy was this streamway; and everywhere were tracks of game, from the giant spread of a grizzly bear to the tiny, birdlike imprints of a squirrel. jean heard familiar sounds of deer crackling the dead twigs; and the chatter of squirrels was incessant. this fragrant, cool retreat under the rim brought back to him the dim recesses of oregon forests. after all, jean felt that he would not miss anything that he had loved in the cascades. but what was the vague sense of all not being well with him--the essence of a faint regret--the insistence of a hovering shadow? and then flashed again, etched more vividly by the repetition in memory, a picture of eyes, of lips--of something he had to forget. wild and broken as this rolling basin floor had appeared from the rim, the reality of traveling over it made that first impression a deceit of distance. down here all was on a big, rough, broken scale. jean did not find even a few rods of level ground. bowlders as huge as houses obstructed the stream bed; spruce trees eight feet thick tried to lord it over the brawny pines; the ravine was a veritable canyon from which occasional glimpses through the foliage showed the rim as a lofty red-tipped mountain peak. jean's pack mule became frightened at scent of a bear or lion and ran off down the rough trail, imperiling jean's outfit. it was not an easy task to head him off nor, when that was accomplished, to keep him to a trot. but his fright and succeeding skittishness at least made for fast traveling. jean calculated that he covered ten miles under the rim before the character of ground and forest began to change. the trail had turned southeast. instead of gorge after gorge, red-walled and choked with forest, there began to be rolling ridges, some high; others were knolls; and a thick cedar growth made up for a falling off of pine. the spruce had long disappeared. juniper thickets gave way more and more to the beautiful manzanita; and soon on the south slopes appeared cactus and a scrubby live oak. but for the well-broken trail, jean would have fared ill through this tough brush. jean espied several deer, and again a coyote, and what he took to be a small herd of wild horses. no more turkey tracks showed in the dusty patches. he crossed a number of tiny brooklets, and at length came to a place where the trail ended or merged in a rough road that showed evidence of considerable travel. horses, sheep, and cattle had passed along there that day. this road turned southward, and jean began to have pleasurable expectations. the road, like the trail, led down grade, but no longer at such steep angles, and was bordered by cedar and pinyon, jack-pine and juniper, mescal and manzanita. quite sharply, going around a ridge, the road led jean's eye down to a small open flat of marshy, or at least grassy, ground. this green oasis in the wilderness of red and timbered ridges marked another change in the character of the basin. beyond that the country began to spread out and roll gracefully, its dark-green forest interspersed with grassy parks, until jean headed into a long, wide gray-green valley surrounded by black-fringed hills. his pulses quickened here. he saw cattle dotting the expanse, and here and there along the edge log cabins and corrals. as a village, grass valley could not boast of much, apparently, in the way of population. cabins and houses were widely scattered, as if the inhabitants did not care to encroach upon one another. but the one store, built of stone, and stamped also with the characteristic isolation, seemed to jean to be a rather remarkable edifice. not exactly like a fort did it strike him, but if it had not been designed for defense it certainly gave that impression, especially from the long, low side with its dark eye-like windows about the height of a man's shoulder. some rather fine horses were tied to a hitching rail. otherwise dust and dirt and age and long use stamped this grass valley store and its immediate environment. jean threw his bridle, and, getting down, mounted the low porch and stepped into the wide open door. a face, gray against the background of gloom inside, passed out of sight just as jean entered. he knew he had been seen. in front of the long, rather low-ceiled store were four men, all absorbed, apparently, in a game of checkers. two were playing and two were looking on. one of these, a gaunt-faced man past middle age, casually looked up as jean entered. but the moment of that casual glance afforded jean time enough to meet eyes he instinctively distrusted. they masked their penetration. they seemed neither curious nor friendly. they saw him as if he had been merely thin air. "good evenin'," said jean. after what appeared to jean a lapse of time sufficient to impress him with a possible deafness of these men, the gaunt-faced one said, "howdy, isbel!" the tone was impersonal, dry, easy, cool, laconic, and yet it could not have been more pregnant with meaning. jean's sharp sensibilities absorbed much. none of the slouch-sombreroed, long-mustached texans--for so jean at once classed them--had ever seen jean, but they knew him and knew that he was expected in grass valley. all but the one who had spoken happened to have their faces in shadow under the wide-brimmed black hats. motley-garbed, gun-belted, dusty-booted, they gave jean the same impression of latent force that he had encountered in colter. "will somebody please tell me where to find my father, gaston isbel?" inquired jean, with as civil a tongue as he could command. nobody paid the slightest attention. it was the same as if jean had not spoken. waiting, half amused, half irritated, jean shot a rapid glance around the store. the place had felt bare; and jean, peering back through gloomy space, saw that it did not contain much. dry goods and sacks littered a long rude counter; long rough shelves divided their length into stacks of canned foods and empty sections; a low shelf back of the counter held a generous burden of cartridge boxes, and next to it stood a rack of rifles. on the counter lay open cases of plug tobacco, the odor of which was second in strength only to that of rum. jean's swift-roving eye reverted to the men, three of whom were absorbed in the greasy checkerboard. the fourth man was the one who had spoken and he now deigned to look at jean. not much flesh was there stretched over his bony, powerful physiognomy. he stroked a lean chin with a big mobile hand that suggested more of bridle holding than familiarity with a bucksaw and plow handle. it was a lazy hand. the man looked lazy. if he spoke at all it would be with lazy speech, yet jean had not encountered many men to whom he would have accorded more potency to stir in him the instinct of self-preservation. "shore," drawled this gaunt-faced texan, "old gass lives aboot a mile down heah." with slow sweep of the big hand he indicated a general direction to the south; then, appearing to forget his questioner, he turned his attention to the game. jean muttered his thanks and, striding out, he mounted again, and drove the pack mule down the road. "reckon i've ran into the wrong folds to-day," he said. "if i remember dad right he was a man to make an' keep friends. somehow i'll bet there's goin' to be hell." beyond the store were some rather pretty and comfortable homes, little ranch houses back in the coves of the hills. the road turned west and jean saw his first sunset in the tonto basin. it was a pageant of purple clouds with silver edges, and background of deep rich gold. presently jean met a lad driving a cow. "hello, johnny!" he said, genially, and with a double purpose. "my name's jean isbel. by golly! i'm lost in grass valley. will you tell me where my dad lives?" "yep. keep right on, an' y'u cain't miss him," replied the lad, with a bright smile. "he's lookin' fer y'u." "how do you know, boy?" queried jean, warmed by that smile. "aw, i know. it's all over the valley thet y'u'd ride in ter-day. shore i wus the one thet tole yer dad an' he give me a dollar." "was he glad to hear it?" asked jean, with a queer sensation in his throat. "wal, he plumb was." "an' who told you i was goin' to ride in to-day?" "i heerd it at the store," replied the lad, with an air of confidence. "some sheepmen was talkin' to greaves. he's the storekeeper. i was settin' outside, but i heerd. a mexican come down off the rim ter-day an' he fetched the news." here the lad looked furtively around, then whispered. "an' thet greaser was sent by somebody. i never heerd no more, but them sheepmen looked pretty plumb sour. an' one of them, comin' out, give me a kick, darn him. it shore is the luckedest day fer us cowmen." "how's that, johnny?" "wal, that's shore a big fight comin' to grass valley. my dad says so an' he rides fer yer dad. an' if it comes now y'u'll be heah." "ahuh!" laughed jean. "an' what then, boy?" the lad turned bright eyes upward. "aw, now, yu'all cain't come thet on me. ain't y'u an injun, jean isbel? ain't y'u a hoss tracker thet rustlers cain't fool? ain't y'u a plumb dead shot? ain't y'u wuss'ern a grizzly bear in a rough-an'-tumble? ... now ain't y'u, shore?" jean bade the flattering lad a rather sober good day and rode on his way. manifestly a reputation somewhat difficult to live up to had preceded his entry into grass valley. jean's first sight of his future home thrilled him through. it was a big, low, rambling log structure standing well out from a wooded knoll at the edge of the valley. corrals and barns and sheds lay off at the back. to the fore stretched broad pastures where numberless cattle and horses grazed. at sunset the scene was one of rich color. prosperity and abundance and peace seemed attendant upon that ranch; lusty voices of burros braying and cows bawling seemed welcoming jean. a hound bayed. the first cool touch of wind fanned jean's cheek and brought a fragrance of wood smoke and frying ham. horses in the pasture romped to the fence and whistled at these newcomers. jean espied a white-faced black horse that gladdened his sight. "hello, whiteface! i'll sure straddle you," called jean. then up the gentle slope he saw the tall figure of his father--the same as he had seen him thousands of times, bareheaded, shirt sleeved, striding with long step. jean waved and called to him. "hi, you prodigal!" came the answer. yes, the voice of his father--and jean's boyhood memories flashed. he hurried his horse those last few rods. no--dad was not the same. his hair shone gray. "here i am, dad," called jean, and then he was dismounting. a deep, quiet emotion settled over him, stilling the hurry, the eagerness, the pang in his breast. "son, i shore am glad to see you," said his father, and wrung his hand. "wal, wal, the size of you! shore you've grown, any how you favor your mother." jean felt in the iron clasp of hand, in the uplifting of the handsome head, in the strong, fine light of piercing eyes that there was no difference in the spirit of his father. but the old smile could not hide lines and shades strange to jean. "dad, i'm as glad as you," replied jean, heartily. "it seems long we've been parted, now i see you. are you well, dad, an' all right?" "not complainin', son. i can ride all day same as ever," he said. "come. never mind your hosses. they'll be looked after. come meet the folks.... wal, wal, you got heah at last." on the porch of the house a group awaited jean's coming, rather silently, he thought. wide-eyed children were there, very shy and watchful. the dark face of his sister corresponded with the image of her in his memory. she appeared taller, more womanly, as she embraced him. "oh, jean, jean, i'm glad you've come!" she cried, and pressed him close. jean felt in her a woman's anxiety for the present as well as affection for the past. he remembered his aunt mary, though he had not seen her for years. his half brothers, bill and guy, had changed but little except perhaps to grow lean and rangy. bill resembled his father, though his aspect was jocular rather than serious. guy was smaller, wiry, and hard as rock, with snapping eyes in a brown, still face, and he had the bow-legs of a cattleman. both had married in arizona. bill's wife, kate, was a stout, comely little woman, mother of three of the children. the other wife was young, a strapping girl, red headed and freckled, with wonderful lines of pain and strength in her face. jean remembered, as he looked at her, that some one had written him about the tragedy in her life. when she was only a child the apaches had murdered all her family. then next to greet jean were the little children, all shy, yet all manifestly impressed by the occasion. a warmth and intimacy of forgotten home emotions flooded over jean. sweet it was to get home to these relatives who loved him and welcomed him with quiet gladness. but there seemed more. jean was quick to see the shadow in the eyes of the women in that household and to sense a strange reliance which his presence brought. "son, this heah tonto is a land of milk an' honey," said his father, as jean gazed spellbound at the bounteous supper. jean certainly performed gastronomic feats on this occasion, to the delight of aunt mary and the wonder of the children. "oh, he's starv-ved to death," whispered one of the little boys to his sister. they had begun to warm to this stranger uncle. jean had no chance to talk, even had he been able to, for the meal-time showed a relaxation of restraint and they all tried to tell him things at once. in the bright lamplight his father looked easier and happier as he beamed upon jean. after supper the men went into an adjoining room that appeared most comfortable and attractive. it was long, and the width of the house, with a huge stone fireplace, low ceiling of hewn timbers and walls of the same, small windows with inside shutters of wood, and home-made table and chairs and rugs. "wal, jean, do you recollect them shootin'-irons?" inquired the rancher, pointing above the fireplace. two guns hung on the spreading deer antlers there. one was a musket jean's father had used in the war of the rebellion and the other was a long, heavy, muzzle-loading flintlock kentucky, rifle with which jean had learned to shoot. "reckon i do, dad," replied jean, and with reverent hands and a rush of memory he took the old gun down. "jean, you shore handle thet old arm some clumsy," said guy isbel, dryly. and bill added a remark to the effect that perhaps jean had been leading a luxurious and tame life back there in oregon, and then added, "but i reckon he's packin' that six-shooter like a texan." "say, i fetched a gun or two along with me," replied jean, jocularly. "reckon i near broke my poor mule's back with the load of shells an' guns. dad, what was the idea askin' me to pack out an arsenal?" "son, shore all shootin' arms an' such are at a premium in the tonto," replied his father. "an' i was givin' you a hunch to come loaded." his cool, drawling voice seemed to put a damper upon the pleasantries. right there jean sensed the charged atmosphere. his brothers were bursting with utterance about to break forth, and his father suddenly wore a look that recalled to jean critical times of days long past. but the entrance of the children and the women folk put an end to confidences. evidently the youngsters were laboring under subdued excitement. they preceded their mother, the smallest boy in the lead. for him this must have been both a dreadful and a wonderful experience, for he seemed to be pushed forward by his sister and brother and mother, and driven by yearnings of his own. "there now, lee. say, 'uncle jean, what did you fetch us?' the lad hesitated for a shy, frightened look at jean, and then, gaining something from his scrutiny of his uncle, he toddled forward and bravely delivered the question of tremendous importance. "what did i fetch you, hey?" cried jean, in delight, as he took the lad up on his knee. "wouldn't you like to know? i didn't forget, lee. i remembered you all. oh! the job i had packin' your bundle of presents.... now, lee, make a guess." "i dess you fetched a dun," replied lee. "a dun!--i'll bet you mean a gun," laughed jean. "well, you four-year-old texas gunman! make another guess." that appeared too momentous and entrancing for the other two youngsters, and, adding their shrill and joyous voices to lee's, they besieged jean. "dad, where's my pack?" cried jean. "these young apaches are after my scalp." "reckon the boys fetched it onto the porch," replied the rancher. guy isbel opened the door and went out. "by golly! heah's three packs," he called. "which one do you want, jean?" "it's a long, heavy bundle, all tied up," replied jean. guy came staggering in under a burden that brought a whoop from the youngsters and bright gleams to the eyes of the women. jean lost nothing of this. how glad he was that he had tarried in san francisco because of a mental picture of this very reception in far-off wild arizona. when guy deposited the bundle on the floor it jarred the room. it gave forth metallic and rattling and crackling sounds. "everybody stand back an' give me elbow room," ordered jean, majestically. "my good folks, i want you all to know this is somethin' that doesn't happen often. the bundle you see here weighed about a hundred pounds when i packed it on my shoulder down market street in frisco. it was stolen from me on shipboard. i got it back in san diego an' licked the thief. it rode on a burro from san diego to yuma an' once i thought the burro was lost for keeps. it came up the colorado river from yuma to ehrenberg an' there went on top of a stage. we got chased by bandits an' once when the horses were gallopin' hard it near rolled off. then it went on the back of a pack horse an' helped wear him out. an' i reckon it would be somewhere else now if i hadn't fallen in with a freighter goin' north from phoenix to the santa fe trail. the last lap when it sagged the back of a mule was the riskiest an' full of the narrowest escapes. twice my mule bucked off his pack an' left my outfit scattered. worst of all, my precious bundle made the mule top heavy comin' down that place back here where the trail seems to drop off the earth. there i was hard put to keep sight of my pack. sometimes it was on top an' other times the mule. but it got here at last.... an' now i'll open it." after this long and impressive harangue, which at least augmented the suspense of the women and worked the children into a frenzy, jean leisurely untied the many knots round the bundle and unrolled it. he had packed that bundle for just such travel as it had sustained. three cloth-bound rifles he laid aside, and with them a long, very heavy package tied between two thin wide boards. from this came the metallic clink. "oo, i know what dem is!" cried lee, breaking the silence of suspense. then jean, tearing open a long flat parcel, spread before the mute, rapt-eyed youngsters such magnificent things, as they had never dreamed of--picture books, mouth-harps, dolls, a toy gun and a toy pistol, a wonderful whistle and a fox horn, and last of all a box of candy. before these treasures on the floor, too magical to be touched at first, the two little boys and their sister simply knelt. that was a sweet, full moment for jean; yet even that was clouded by the something which shadowed these innocent children fatefully born in a wild place at a wild time. next jean gave to his sister the presents he had brought her--beautiful cloth for a dress, ribbons and a bit of lace, handkerchiefs and buttons and yards of linen, a sewing case and a whole box of spools of thread, a comb and brush and mirror, and lastly a spanish brooch inlaid with garnets. "there, ann," said jean, "i confess i asked a girl friend in oregon to tell me some things my sister might like." manifestly there was not much difference in girls. ann seemed stunned by this munificence, and then awakening, she hugged jean in a way that took his breath. she was not a child any more, that was certain. aunt mary turned knowing eyes upon jean. "reckon you couldn't have pleased ann more. she's engaged, jean, an' where girls are in that state these things mean a heap.... ann, you'll be married in that!" and she pointed to the beautiful folds of material that ann had spread out. "what's this?" demanded jean. his sister's blushes were enough to convict her, and they were mightily becoming, too. "here, aunt mary," went on jean, "here's yours, an' here's somethin' for each of my new sisters." this distribution left the women as happy and occupied, almost, as the children. it left also another package, the last one in the bundle. jean laid hold of it and, lifting it, he was about to speak when he sustained a little shock of memory. quite distinctly he saw two little feet, with bare toes peeping out of worn-out moccasins, and then round, bare, symmetrical ankles that had been scratched by brush. next he saw ellen jorth's passionate face as she looked when she had made the violent action so disconcerting to him. in this happy moment the memory seemed farther off than a few hours. it had crystallized. it annoyed while it drew him. as a result he slowly laid this package aside and did not speak as he had intended to. "dad, i reckon i didn't fetch a lot for you an' the boys," continued jean. "some knives, some pipes an' tobacco. an' sure the guns." "shore, you're a regular santa claus, jean," replied his father. "wal, wal, look at the kids. an' look at mary. an' for the land's sake look at ann! wal, wal, i'm gettin' old. i'd forgotten the pretty stuff an' gimcracks that mean so much to women. we're out of the world heah. it's just as well you've lived apart from us, jean, for comin' back this way, with all that stuff, does us a lot of good. i cain't say, son, how obliged i am. my mind has been set on the hard side of life. an' it's shore good to forget--to see the smiles of the women an' the joy of the kids." at this juncture a tall young man entered the open door. he looked a rider. all about him, even his face, except his eyes, seemed old, but his eyes were young, fine, soft, and dark. "how do, y'u-all!" he said, evenly. ann rose from her knees. then jean did not need to be told who this newcomer was. "jean, this is my friend, andrew colmor." jean knew when he met colmor's grip and the keen flash of his eyes that he was glad ann had set her heart upon one of their kind. and his second impression was something akin to the one given him in the road by the admiring lad. colmor's estimate of him must have been a monument built of ann's eulogies. jean's heart suffered misgivings. could he live up to the character that somehow had forestalled his advent in grass valley? surely life was measured differently here in the tonto basin. the children, bundling their treasures to their bosoms, were dragged off to bed in some remote part of the house, from which their laughter and voices came back with happy significance. jean forthwith had an interested audience. how eagerly these lonely pioneer people listened to news of the outside world! jean talked until he was hoarse. in their turn his hearers told him much that had never found place in the few and short letters he had received since he had been left in oregon. not a word about sheepmen or any hint of rustlers! jean marked the omission and thought all the more seriously of probabilities because nothing was said. altogether the evening was a happy reunion of a family of which all living members were there present. jean grasped that this fact was one of significant satisfaction to his father. "shore we're all goin' to live together heah," he declared. "i started this range. i call most of this valley mine. we'll run up a cabin for ann soon as she says the word. an' you, jean, where's your girl? i shore told you to fetch her." "dad, i didn't have one," replied jean. "wal, i wish you had," returned the rancher. "you'll go courtin' one of these tonto hussies that i might object to." "why, father, there's not a girl in the valley jean would look twice at," interposed ann isbel, with spirit. jean laughed the matter aside, but he had an uneasy memory. aunt mary averred, after the manner of relatives, that jean would play havoc among the women of the settlement. and jean retorted that at least one member of the isbels; should hold out against folly and fight and love and marriage, the agents which had reduced the family to these few present. "i'll be the last isbel to go under," he concluded. "son, you're talkin' wisdom," said his father. "an' shore that reminds me of the uncle you're named after. jean isbel! ... wal, he was my youngest brother an' shore a fire-eater. our mother was a french creole from louisiana, an' jean must have inherited some of his fightin' nature from her. when the war of the rebellion started jean an' i enlisted. i was crippled before we ever got to the front. but jean went through three years before he was killed. his company had orders to fight to the last man. an' jean fought an' lived long enough just to be that last man." at length jean was left alone with his father. "reckon you're used to bunkin' outdoors?" queried the rancher, rather abruptly. "most of the time," replied jean. "wal, there's room in the house, but i want you to sleep out. come get your beddin' an' gun. i'll show you." they went outside on the porch, where jean shouldered his roll of tarpaulin and blankets. his rifle, in its saddle sheath, leaned against the door. his father took it up and, half pulling it out, looked at it by the starlight. "forty-four, eh? wal, wal, there's shore no better, if a man can hold straight." at the moment a big gray dog trotted up to sniff at jean. "an' heah's your bunkmate, shepp. he's part lofer, jean. his mother was a favorite shepherd dog of mine. his father was a big timber wolf that took us two years to kill. some bad wolf packs runnin' this basin." the night was cold and still, darkly bright under moon and stars; the smell of hay seemed to mingle with that of cedar. jean followed his father round the house and up a gentle slope of grass to the edge of the cedar line. here several trees with low-sweeping thick branches formed a dense, impenetrable shade. "son, your uncle jean was scout for liggett, one of the greatest rebels the south had," said the rancher. "an' you're goin' to be scout for the isbels of tonto. reckon you'll find it 'most as hot as your uncle did.... spread your bed inside. you can see out, but no one can see you. reckon there's been some queer happenin's 'round heah lately. if shepp could talk he'd shore have lots to tell us. bill an' guy have been sleepin' out, trailin' strange hoss tracks, an' all that. but shore whoever's been prowlin' around heah was too sharp for them. some bad, crafty, light-steppin' woodsmen 'round heah, jean.... three mawnin's ago, just after daylight, i stepped out the back door an' some one of these sneaks i'm talkin' aboot took a shot at me. missed my head a quarter of an inch! to-morrow i'll show you the bullet hole in the doorpost. an' some of my gray hairs that 're stickin' in it!" "dad!" ejaculated jean, with a hand outstretched. "that's awful! you frighten me." "no time to be scared," replied his father, calmly. "they're shore goin' to kill me. that's why i wanted you home.... in there with you, now! go to sleep. you shore can trust shepp to wake you if he gets scent or sound.... an' good night, my son. i'm sayin' that i'll rest easy to-night." jean mumbled a good night and stood watching his father's shining white head move away under the starlight. then the tall, dark form vanished, a door closed, and all was still. the dog shepp licked jean's hand. jean felt grateful for that warm touch. for a moment he sat on his roll of bedding, his thought still locked on the shuddering revelation of his father's words, "they're shore goin' to kill me." the shock of inaction passed. jean pushed his pack in the dark opening and, crawling inside, he unrolled it and made his bed. when at length he was comfortably settled for the night he breathed a long sigh of relief. what bliss to relax! a throbbing and burning of his muscles seemed to begin with his rest. the cool starlit night, the smell of cedar, the moan of wind, the silence--an were real to his senses. after long weeks of long, arduous travel he was home. the warmth of the welcome still lingered, but it seemed to have been pierced by an icy thrust. what lay before him? the shadow in the eyes of his aunt, in the younger, fresher eyes of his sister--jean connected that with the meaning of his father's tragic words. far past was the morning that had been so keen, the breaking of camp in the sunlit forest, the riding down the brown aisles under the pines, the music of bleating lambs that had called him not to pass by. thought of ellen jorth recurred. had he met her only that morning? she was up there in the forest, asleep under the starlit pines. who was she? what was her story? that savage fling of her skirt, her bitter speech and passionate flaming face--they haunted jean. they were crystallizing into simpler memories, growing away from his bewilderment, and therefore at once sweeter and more doubtful. "maybe she meant differently from what i thought," jean soliloquized. "anyway, she was honest." both shame and thrill possessed him at the recall of an insidious idea--dare he go back and find her and give her the last package of gifts he had brought from the city? what might they mean to poor, ragged, untidy, beautiful ellen jorth? the idea grew on jean. it could not be dispelled. he resisted stubbornly. it was bound to go to its fruition. deep into his mind had sunk an impression of her need--a material need that brought spirit and pride to abasement. from one picture to another his memory wandered, from one speech and act of hers to another, choosing, selecting, casting aside, until clear and sharp as the stars shone the words, "oh, i've been kissed before!" that stung him now. by whom? not by one man, but by several, by many, she had meant. pshaw! he had only been sympathetic and drawn by a strange girl in the woods. to-morrow he would forget. work there was for him in grass valley. and he reverted uneasily to the remarks of his father until at last sleep claimed him. a cold nose against his cheek, a low whine, awakened jean. the big dog shepp was beside him, keen, wary, intense. the night appeared far advanced toward dawn. far away a cock crowed; the near-at-hand one answered in clarion voice. "what is it, shepp?" whispered jean, and he sat up. the dog smelled or heard something suspicious to his nature, but whether man or animal jean could not tell. chapter iii the morning star, large, intensely blue-white, magnificent in its dominance of the clear night sky, hung over the dim, dark valley ramparts. the moon had gone down and all the other stars were wan, pale ghosts. presently the strained vacuum of jean's ears vibrated to a low roar of many hoofs. it came from the open valley, along the slope to the south. shepp acted as if he wanted the word to run. jean laid a hand on the dog. "hold on, shepp," he whispered. then hauling on his boots and slipping into his coat jean took his rifle and stole out into the open. shepp appeared to be well trained, for it was evident that he had a strong natural tendency to run off and hunt for whatever had roused him. jean thought it more than likely that the dog scented an animal of some kind. if there were men prowling around the ranch shepp, might have been just as vigilant, but it seemed to jean that the dog would have shown less eagerness to leave him, or none at all. in the stillness of the morning it took jean a moment to locate the direction of the wind, which was very light and coming from the south. in fact that little breeze had borne the low roar of trampling hoofs. jean circled the ranch house to the right and kept along the slope at the edge of the cedars. it struck him suddenly how well fitted he was for work of this sort. all the work he had ever done, except for his few years in school, had been in the open. all the leisure he had ever been able to obtain had been given to his ruling passion for hunting and fishing. love of the wild had been born in jean. at this moment he experienced a grim assurance of what his instinct and his training might accomplish if directed to a stern and daring end. perhaps his father understood this; perhaps the old texan had some little reason for his confidence. every few paces jean halted to listen. all objects, of course, were indistinguishable in the dark-gray obscurity, except when he came close upon them. shepp showed an increasing eagerness to bolt out into the void. when jean had traveled half a mile from the house he heard a scattered trampling of cattle on the run, and farther out a low strangled bawl of a calf. "ahuh!" muttered jean. "cougar or some varmint pulled down that calf." then he discharged his rifle in the air and yelled with all his might. it was necessary then to yell again to hold shepp back. thereupon jean set forth down the valley, and tramped out and across and around, as much to scare away whatever had been after the stock as to look for the wounded calf. more than once he heard cattle moving away ahead of him, but he could not see them. jean let shepp go, hoping the dog would strike a trail. but shepp neither gave tongue nor came back. dawn began to break, and in the growing light jean searched around until at last he stumbled over a dead calf, lying in a little bare wash where water ran in wet seasons. big wolf tracks showed in the soft earth. "lofers," said jean, as he knelt and just covered one track with his spread hand. "we had wolves in oregon, but not as big as these.... wonder where that half-wolf dog, shepp, went. wonder if he can be trusted where wolves are concerned. i'll bet not, if there's a she-wolf runnin' around." jean found tracks of two wolves, and he trailed them out of the wash, then lost them in the grass. but, guided by their direction, he went on and climbed a slope to the cedar line, where in the dusty patches he found the tracks again. "not scared much," he muttered, as he noted the slow trotting tracks. "well, you old gray lofers, we're goin' to clash." jean knew from many a futile hunt that wolves were the wariest and most intelligent of wild animals in the quest. from the top of a low foothill he watched the sun rise; and then no longer wondered why his father waxed eloquent over the beauty and location and luxuriance of this grassy valley. but it was large enough to make rich a good many ranchers. jean tried to restrain any curiosity as to his father's dealings in grass valley until the situation had been made clear. moreover, jean wanted to love this wonderful country. he wanted to be free to ride and hunt and roam to his heart's content; and therefore he dreaded hearing his father's claims. but jean threw off forebodings. nothing ever turned out so badly as it presaged. he would think the best until certain of the worst. the morning was gloriously bright, and already the frost was glistening wet on the stones. grass valley shone like burnished silver dotted with innumerable black spots. burros were braying their discordant messages to one another; the colts were romping in the fields; stallions were whistling; cows were bawling. a cloud of blue smoke hung low over the ranch house, slowly wafting away on the wind. far out in the valley a dark group of horsemen were riding toward the village. jean glanced thoughtfully at them and reflected that he seemed destined to harbor suspicion of all men new and strange to him. above the distant village stood the darkly green foothills leading up to the craggy slopes, and these ending in the rim, a red, black-fringed mountain front, beautiful in the morning sunlight, lonely, serene, and mysterious against the level skyline. mountains, ranges, distances unknown to jean, always called to him--to come, to seek, to explore, to find, but no wild horizon ever before beckoned to him as this one. and the subtle vague emotion that had gone to sleep with him last night awoke now hauntingly. it took effort to dispel the desire to think, to wonder. upon his return to the house, he went around on the valley side, so as to see the place by light of day. his father had built for permanence; and evidently there had been three constructive periods in the history of that long, substantial, picturesque log house. but few nails and little sawed lumber and no glass had been used. strong and skillful hands, axes and a crosscut saw, had been the prime factors in erecting this habitation of the isbels. "good mawnin', son," called a cheery voice from the porch. "shore we-all heard you shoot; an' the crack of that forty-four was as welcome as may flowers." bill isbel looked up from a task over a saddle girth and inquired pleasantly if jean ever slept of nights. guy isbel laughed and there was warm regard in the gaze he bent on jean. "you old indian!" he drawled, slowly. "did you get a bead on anythin'?" "no. i shot to scare away what i found to be some of your lofers," replied jean. "i heard them pullin' down a calf. an' i found tracks of two whoppin' big wolves. i found the dead calf, too. reckon the meat can be saved. dad, you must lose a lot of stock here." "wal, son, you shore hit the nail on the haid," replied the rancher. "what with lions an' bears an' lofers--an' two-footed lofers of another breed--i've lost five thousand dollars in stock this last year." "dad! you don't mean it!" exclaimed jean, in astonishment. to him that sum represented a small fortune. "i shore do," answered his father. jean shook his head as if he could not understand such an enormous loss where there were keen able-bodied men about. "but that's awful, dad. how could it happen? where were your herders an' cowboys? an' bill an' guy?" bill isbel shook a vehement fist at jean and retorted in earnest, having manifestly been hit in a sore spot. "where was me an' guy, huh? wal, my oregon brother, we was heah, all year, sleepin' more or less aboot three hours out of every twenty-four--ridin' our boots off--an' we couldn't keep down that loss." "jean, you-all have a mighty tumble comin' to you out heah," said guy, complacently. "listen, son," spoke up the rancher. "you want to have some hunches before you figure on our troubles. there's two or three packs of lofers, an' in winter time they are hell to deal with. lions thick as bees, an' shore bad when the snow's on. bears will kill a cow now an' then. an' whenever an' old silvertip comes mozyin' across from the mazatzals he kills stock. i'm in with half a dozen cattlemen. we all work together, an' the whole outfit cain't keep these vermints down. then two years ago the hash knife gang come into the tonto." "hash knife gang? what a pretty name!" replied jean. "who're they?" "rustlers, son. an' shore the real old texas brand. the old lone star state got too hot for them, an' they followed the trail of a lot of other texans who needed a healthier climate. some two hundred texans around heah, jean, an' maybe a matter of three hundred inhabitants in the tonto all told, good an' bad. reckon it's aboot half an' half." a cheery call from the kitchen interrupted the conversation of the men. "you come to breakfast." during the meal the old rancher talked to bill and guy about the day's order of work; and from this jean gathered an idea of what a big cattle business his father conducted. after breakfast jean's brothers manifested keen interest in the new rifles. these were unwrapped and cleaned and taken out for testing. the three rifles were forty-four calibre winchesters, the kind of gun jean had found most effective. he tried them out first, and the shots he made were satisfactory to him and amazing to the others. bill had used an old henry rifle. guy did not favor any particular rifle. the rancher pinned his faith to the famous old single-shot buffalo gun, mostly called needle gun. "wal, reckon i'd better stick to mine. shore you cain't teach an old dog new tricks. but you boys may do well with the forty-fours. pack 'em on your saddles an' practice when you see a coyote." jean found it difficult to convince himself that this interest in guns and marksmanship had any sinister propulsion back of it. his father and brothers had always been this way. rifles were as important to pioneers as plows, and their skillful use was an achievement every frontiersman tried to attain. friendly rivalry had always existed among the members of the isbel family: even ann isbel was a good shot. but such proficiency in the use of firearms--and life in the open that was correlative with it--had not dominated them as it had jean. bill and guy isbel were born cattlemen--chips of the old block. jean began to hope that his father's letter was an exaggeration, and particularly that the fatalistic speech of last night, "they are goin' to kill me," was just a moody inclination to see the worst side. still, even as jean tried to persuade himself of this more hopeful view, he recalled many references to the peculiar reputation of texans for gun-throwing, for feuds, for never-ending hatreds. in oregon the isbels had lived among industrious and peaceful pioneers from all over the states; to be sure, the life had been rough and primitive, and there had been fights on occasions, though no isbel had ever killed a man. but now they had become fixed in a wilder and sparsely settled country among men of their own breed. jean was afraid his hopes had only sentiment to foster them. nevertheless, be forced back a strange, brooding, mental state and resolutely held up the brighter side. whatever the evil conditions existing in grass valley, they could be met with intelligence and courage, with an absolute certainty that it was inevitable they must pass away. jean refused to consider the old, fatal law that at certain wild times and wild places in the west certain men had to pass away to change evil conditions. "wal, jean, ride around the range with the boys," said the rancher. "meet some of my neighbors, jim blaisdell, in particular. take a look at the cattle. an' pick out some hosses for yourself." "i've seen one already," declared jean, quickly. "a black with white face. i'll take him." "shore you know a hoss. to my eye he's my pick. but the boys don't agree. bill 'specially has degenerated into a fancier of pitchin' hosses. ann can ride that black. you try him this mawnin'.... an', son, enjoy yourself." true to his first impression, jean named the black horse whiteface and fell in love with him before ever he swung a leg over him. whiteface appeared spirited, yet gentle. he had been trained instead of being broken. of hard hits and quirts and spurs he had no experience. he liked to do what his rider wanted him to do. a hundred or more horses grazed in the grassy meadow, and as jean rode on among them it was a pleasure to see stallions throw heads and ears up and whistle or snort. whole troops of colts and two-year-olds raced with flying tails and manes. beyond these pastures stretched the range, and jean saw the gray-green expanse speckled by thousands of cattle. the scene was inspiring. jean's brothers led him all around, meeting some of the herders and riders employed on the ranch, one of whom was a burly, grizzled man with eyes reddened and narrowed by much riding in wind and sun and dust. his name was evans and he was father of the lad whom jean had met near the village. everts was busily skinning the calf that had been killed by the wolves. "see heah, y'u jean isbel," said everts, "it shore was aboot time y'u come home. we-all heahs y'u hev an eye fer tracks. wal, mebbe y'u can kill old gray, the lofer thet did this job. he's pulled down nine calves as' yearlin's this last two months thet i know of. an' we've not hed the spring round-up." grass valley widened to the southeast. jean would have been backward about estimating the square miles in it. yet it was not vast acreage so much as rich pasture that made it such a wonderful range. several ranches lay along the western slope of this section. jean was informed that open parks and swales, and little valleys nestling among the foothills, wherever there was water and grass, had been settled by ranchers. every summer a few new families ventured in. blaisdell struck jean as being a lionlike type of texan, both in his broad, bold face, his huge head with its upstanding tawny hair like a mane, and in the speech and force that betokened the nature of his heart. he was not as old as jean's father. he had a rolling voice, with the same drawling intonation characteristic of all texans, and blue eyes that still held the fire of youth. quite a marked contrast he presented to the lean, rangy, hard-jawed, intent-eyed men jean had begun to accept as texans. blaisdell took time for a curious scrutiny and study of jean, that, frank and kindly as it was, and evidently the adjustment of impressions gotten from hearsay, yet bespoke the attention of one used to judging men for himself, and in this particular case having reasons of his own for so doing. "wal, you're like your sister ann," said blaisdell. "which you may take as a compliment, young man. both of you favor your mother. but you're an isbel. back in texas there are men who never wear a glove on their right hands, an' shore i reckon if one of them met up with you sudden he'd think some graves had opened an' he'd go for his gun." blaisdell's laugh pealed out with deep, pleasant roll. thus he planted in jean's sensitive mind a significant thought-provoking idea about the past-and-gone isbels. his further remarks, likewise, were exceedingly interesting to jean. the settling of the tonto basin by texans was a subject often in dispute. his own father had been in the first party of adventurous pioneers who had traveled up from the south to cross over the reno pass of the mazatzals into the basin. "newcomers from outside get impressions of the tonto accordin' to the first settlers they meet," declared blaisdell. "an' shore it's my belief these first impressions never change, just so strong they are! wal, i've heard my father say there were men in his wagon train that got run out of texas, but he swore he wasn't one of them. so i reckon that sort of talk held good for twenty years, an' for all the texans who emigrated, except, of course, such notorious rustlers as daggs an' men of his ilk. shore we've got some bad men heah. there's no law. possession used to mean more than it does now. daggs an' his hash knife gang have begun to hold forth with a high hand. no small rancher can keep enough stock to pay for his labor." at the time of which blaisdell spoke there were not many sheepmen and cattlemen in the tonto, considering its vast area. but these, on account of the extreme wildness of the broken country, were limited to the comparatively open grass valley and its adjacent environs. naturally, as the inhabitants increased and stock raising grew in proportion the grazing and water rights became matters of extreme importance. sheepmen ran their flocks up on the rim in summer time and down into the basin in winter time. a sheepman could throw a few thousand sheep round a cattleman's ranch and ruin him. the range was free. it was as fair for sheepmen to graze their herds anywhere as it was for cattlemen. this of course did not apply to the few acres of cultivated ground that a rancher could call his own; but very few cattle could have been raised on such limited area. blaisdell said that the sheepmen were unfair because they could have done just as well, though perhaps at more labor, by keeping to the ridges and leaving the open valley and little flats to the ranchers. formerly there had been room enough for all; now the grazing ranges were being encroached upon by sheepmen newly come to the tonto. to blaisdell's way of thinking the rustler menace was more serious than the sheeping-off of the range, for the simple reason that no cattleman knew exactly who the rustlers were and for the more complex and significant reason that the rustlers did not steal sheep. "texas was overstocked with bad men an' fine steers," concluded blaisdell. "most of the first an' some of the last have struck the tonto. the sheepmen have now got distributin' points for wool an' sheep at maricopa an' phoenix. they're shore waxin' strong an' bold." "ahuh! ... an' what's likely to come of this mess?" queried jean. "ask your dad," replied blaisdell. "i will. but i reckon i'd be obliged for your opinion." "wal, short an' sweet it's this: texas cattlemen will never allow the range they stocked to be overrun by sheepmen." "who's this man greaves?" went on jean. "never run into anyone like him." "greaves is hard to figure. he's a snaky customer in deals. but he seems to be good to the poor people 'round heah. says he's from missouri. ha-ha! he's as much texan as i am. he rode into the tonto without even a pack to his name. an' presently he builds his stone house an' freights supplies in from phoenix. appears to buy an' sell a good deal of stock. for a while it looked like he was steerin' a middle course between cattlemen an' sheepmen. both sides made a rendezvous of his store, where he heard the grievances of each. laterly he's leanin' to the sheepmen. nobody has accused him of that yet. but it's time some cattleman called his bluff." "of course there are honest an' square sheepmen in the basin?" queried jean. "yes, an' some of them are not unreasonable. but the new fellows that dropped in on us the last few year--they're the ones we're goin' to clash with." "this--sheepman, jorth?" went on jean, in slow hesitation, as if compelled to ask what he would rather not learn. "jorth must be the leader of this sheep faction that's harryin' us ranchers. he doesn't make threats or roar around like some of them. but he goes on raisin' an' buyin' more an' more sheep. an' his herders have been grazin' down all around us this winter. jorth's got to be reckoned with." "who is he?" "wal, i don't know enough to talk aboot. your dad never said so, but i think he an' jorth knew each other in texas years ago. i never saw jorth but once. that was in greaves's barroom. your dad an' jorth met that day for the first time in this country. wal, i've not known men for nothin'. they just stood stiff an' looked at each other. your dad was aboot to draw. but jorth made no sign to throw a gun." jean saw the growing and weaving and thickening threads of a tangle that had already involved him. and the sudden pang of regret he sustained was not wholly because of sympathies with his own people. "the other day back up in the woods on the rim i ran into a sheepman who said his name was colter. who is he? "colter? shore he's a new one. what'd he look like?" jean described colter with a readiness that spoke volumes for the vividness of his impressions. "i don't know him," replied blaisdell. "but that only goes to prove my contention--any fellow runnin' wild in the woods can say he's a sheepman." "colter surprised me by callin' me by my name," continued jean. "our little talk wasn't exactly friendly. he said a lot about my bein' sent for to run sheep herders out of the country." "shore that's all over," replied blaisdell, seriously. "you're a marked man already." "what started such rumor?" "shore you cain't prove it by me. but it's not taken as rumor. it's got to the sheepmen as hard as bullets." "ahuh! that accunts for colter's seemin' a little sore under the collar. well, he said they were goin' to run sheep over grass valley, an' for me to take that hunch to my dad." blaisdell had his chair tilted back and his heavy boots against a post of the porch. down he thumped. his neck corded with a sudden rush of blood and his eyes changed to blue fire. "the hell he did!" he ejaculated, in furious amaze. jean gauged the brooding, rankling hurt of this old cattleman by his sudden break from the cool, easy texan manner. blaisdell cursed under his breath, swung his arms violently, as if to throw a last doubt or hope aside, and then relapsed to his former state. he laid a brown hand on jean's knee. "two years ago i called the cards," he said, quietly. "it means a grass valley war." not until late that afternoon did jean's father broach the subject uppermost in his mind. then at an opportune moment he drew jean away into the cedars out of sight. "son, i shore hate to make your home-comin' unhappy," he said, with evidence of agitation, "but so help me god i have to do it!" "dad, you called me prodigal, an' i reckon you were right. i've shirked my duty to you. i'm ready now to make up for it," replied jean, feelingly. "wal, wal, shore thats fine-spoken, my boy.... let's set down heah an' have a long talk. first off, what did jim blaisdell tell you?" briefly jean outlined the neighbor rancher's conversation. then jean recounted his experience with colter and concluded with blaisdell's reception of the sheepman's threat. if jean expected to see his father rise up like a lion in his wrath he made a huge mistake. this news of colter and his talk never struck even a spark from gaston isbel. "wal," he began, thoughtfully, "reckon there are only two points in jim's talk i need touch on. there's shore goin' to be a grass valley war. an' jim's idea of the cause of it seems to be pretty much the same as that of all the other cattlemen. it 'll go down a black blot on the history page of the tonto basin as a war between rival sheepmen an' cattlemen. same old fight over water an' grass! ... jean, my son, that is wrong. it 'll not be a war between sheepmen an' cattlemen. but a war of honest ranchers against rustlers maskin' as sheep-raisers! ... mind you, i don't belittle the trouble between sheepmen an' cattlemen in arizona. it's real an' it's vital an' it's serious. it 'll take law an' order to straighten out the grazin' question. some day the government will keep sheep off of cattle ranges.... so get things right in your mind, my son. you can trust your dad to tell the absolute truth. in this fight that 'll wipe out some of the isbels--maybe all of them--you're on the side of justice an' right. knowin' that, a man can fight a hundred times harder than he who knows he is a liar an' a thief." the old rancher wiped his perspiring face and breathed slowly and deeply. jean sensed in him the rise of a tremendous emotional strain. wonderingly he watched the keen lined face. more than material worries were at the root of brooding, mounting thoughts in his father's eyes. "now next take what jim said aboot your comin' to chase these sheep-herders out of the valley.... jean, i started that talk. i had my tricky reasons. i know these greaser sheep-herders an' i know the respect texans have for a gunman. some say i bragged. some say i'm an old fool in his dotage, ravin' aboot a favorite son. but they are people who hate me an' are afraid. true, son, i talked with a purpose, but shore i was mighty cold an' steady when i did it. my feelin' was that you'd do what i'd do if i were thirty years younger. no, i reckoned you'd do more. for i figured on your blood. jean, you're indian, an' texas an' french, an' you've trained yourself in the oregon woods. when you were only a boy, few marksmen i ever knew could beat you, an' i never saw your equal for eye an' ear, for trackin' a hoss, for all the gifts that make a woodsman.... wal, rememberin' this an' seein' the trouble ahaid for the isbels, i just broke out whenever i had a chance. i bragged before men i'd reason to believe would take my words deep. for instance, not long ago i missed some stock, an', happenin' into greaves's place one saturday night, i shore talked loud. his barroom was full of men an' some of them were in my black book. greaves took my talk a little testy. he said. 'wal, gass, mebbe you're right aboot some of these cattle thieves livin' among us, but ain't they jest as liable to be some of your friends or relatives as ted meeker's or mine or any one around heah?' that was where greaves an' me fell out. i yelled at him: 'no, by god, they're not! my record heah an' that of my people is open. the least i can say for you, greaves, an' your crowd, is that your records fade away on dim trails.' then he said, nasty-like, 'wal, if you could work out all the dim trails in the tonto you'd shore be surprised.' an' then i roared. shore that was the chance i was lookin' for. i swore the trails he hinted of would be tracked to the holes of the rustlers who made them. i told him i had sent for you an' when you got heah these slippery, mysterious thieves, whoever they were, would shore have hell to pay. greaves said he hoped so, but he was afraid i was partial to my indian son. then we had hot words. blaisdell got between us. when i was leavin' i took a partin' fling at him. 'greaves, you ought to know the isbels, considerin' you're from texas. maybe you've got reasons for throwin' taunts at my claims for my son jean. yes, he's got indian in him an' that 'll be the worse for the men who will have to meet him. i'm tellin' you, greaves, jean isbel is the black sheep of the family. if you ride down his record you'll find he's shore in line to be another poggin, or reddy kingfisher, or hardin', or any of the texas gunmen you ought to remember.... greaves, there are men rubbin' elbows with you right heah that my indian son is goin' to track down!'" jean bent his head in stunned cognizance of the notoriety with which his father had chosen to affront any and all tonto basin men who were under the ban of his suspicion. what a terrible reputation and trust to have saddled upon him! thrills and strange, heated sensations seemed to rush together inside jean, forming a hot ball of fire that threatened to explode. a retreating self made feeble protests. he saw his own pale face going away from this older, grimmer man. "son, if i could have looked forward to anythin' but blood spillin' i'd never have given you such a name to uphold," continued the rancher. "what i'm goin' to tell you now is my secret. my other sons an' ann have never heard it. jim blaisdell suspects there's somethin' strange, but he doesn't know. i'll shore never tell anyone else but you. an' you must promise to keep my secret now an' after i am gone." "i promise," said jean. "wal, an' now to get it out," began his father, breathing hard. his face twitched and his hands clenched. "the sheepman heah i have to reckon with is lee jorth, a lifelong enemy of mine. we were born in the same town, played together as children, an' fought with each other as boys. we never got along together. an' we both fell in love with the same girl. it was nip an' tuck for a while. ellen sutton belonged to one of the old families of the south. she was a beauty, an' much courted, an' i reckon it was hard for her to choose. but i won her an' we became engaged. then the war broke out. i enlisted with my brother jean. he advised me to marry ellen before i left. but i would not. that was the blunder of my life. soon after our partin' her letters ceased to come. but i didn't distrust her. that was a terrible time an' all was confusion. then i got crippled an' put in a hospital. an' in aboot a year i was sent back home." at this juncture jean refrained from further gaze at his father's face. "lee jorth had gotten out of goin' to war," went on the rancher, in lower, thicker voice. "he'd married my sweetheart, ellen.... i knew the story long before i got well. he had run after her like a hound after a hare.... an' ellen married him. wal, when i was able to get aboot i went to see jorth an' ellen. i confronted them. i had to know why she had gone back on me. lee jorth hadn't changed any with all his good fortune. he'd made ellen believe in my dishonor. but, i reckon, lies or no lies, ellen sutton was faithless. in my absence he had won her away from me. an' i saw that she loved him as she never had me. i reckon that killed all my generosity. if she'd been imposed upon an' weaned away by his lies an' had regretted me a little i'd have forgiven, perhaps. but she worshiped him. she was his slave. an' i, wal, i learned what hate was. "the war ruined the suttons, same as so many southerners. lee jorth went in for raisin' cattle. he'd gotten the sutton range an' after a few years he began to accumulate stock. in those days every cattleman was a little bit of a thief. every cattleman drove in an' branded calves he couldn't swear was his. wal, the isbels were the strongest cattle raisers in that country. an' i laid a trap for lee jorth, caught him in the act of brandin' calves of mine i'd marked, an' i proved him a thief. i made him a rustler. i ruined him. we met once. but jorth was one texan not strong on the draw, at least against an isbel. he left the country. he had friends an' relatives an' they started him at stock raisin' again. but he began to gamble an' he got in with a shady crowd. he went from bad to worse an' then he came back home. when i saw the change in proud, beautiful ellen sutton, an' how she still worshiped jorth, it shore drove me near mad between pity an' hate.... wal, i reckon in a texan hate outlives any other feelin'. there came a strange turn of the wheel an' my fortunes changed. like most young bloods of the day, i drank an' gambled. an' one night i run across jorth an' a card-sharp friend. he fleeced me. we quarreled. guns were thrown. i killed my man.... aboot that period the texas rangers had come into existence.... an', son, when i said i never was run out of texas i wasn't holdin' to strict truth. i rode out on a hoss. "i went to oregon. there i married soon, an' there bill an' guy were born. their mother did not live long. an' next i married your mother, jean. she had some indian blood, which, for all i could see, made her only the finer. she was a wonderful woman an' gave me the only happiness i ever knew. you remember her, of course, an' those home days in oregon. i reckon i made another great blunder when i moved to arizona. but the cattle country had always called me. i had heard of this wild tonto basin an' how texans were settlin' there. an' jim blaisdell sent me word to come--that this shore was a garden spot of the west. wal, it is. an' your mother was gone-- "three years ago lee jorth drifted into the tonto. an', strange to me, along aboot a year or so after his comin' the hash knife gang rode up from texas. jorth went in for raisin' sheep. along with some other sheepmen he lives up in the rim canyons. somewhere back in the wild brakes is the hidin' place of the hash knife gang. nobody but me, i reckon, associates colonel jorth, as he's called, with daggs an' his gang. maybe blaisdell an' a few others have a hunch. but that's no matter. as a sheepman jorth has a legitimate grievance with the cattlemen. but what could be settled by a square consideration for the good of all an' the future jorth will never settle. he'll never settle because he is now no longer an honest man. he's in with daggs. i cain't prove this, son, but i know it. i saw it in jorth's face when i met him that day with greaves. i saw more. i shore saw what he is up to. he'd never meet me at an even break. he's dead set on usin' this sheep an' cattle feud to ruin my family an' me, even as i ruined him. but he means more, jean. this will be a war between texans, an' a bloody war. there are bad men in this tonto--some of the worst that didn't get shot in texas. jorth will have some of these fellows.... now, are we goin' to wait to be sheeped off our range an' to be murdered from ambush?" "no, we are not," replied jean, quietly. "wal, come down to the house," said the rancher, and led the way without speaking until he halted by the door. there he placed his finger on a small hole in the wood at about the height of a man's head. jean saw it was a bullet hole and that a few gray hairs stuck to its edges. the rancher stepped closer to the door-post, so that his head was within an inch of the wood. then he looked at jean with eyes in which there glinted dancing specks of fire, like wild sparks. "son, this sneakin' shot at me was made three mawnin's ago. i recollect movin' my haid just when i heard the crack of a rifle. shore was surprised. but i got inside quick." jean scarcely heard the latter part of this speech. he seemed doubled up inwardly, in hot and cold convulsions of changing emotion. a terrible hold upon his consciousness was about to break and let go. the first shot had been fired and he was an isbel. indeed, his father had made him ten times an isbel. blood was thick. his father did not speak to dull ears. this strife of rising tumult in him seemed the effect of years of calm, of peace in the woods, of dreamy waiting for he knew not what. it was the passionate primitive life in him that had awakened to the call of blood ties. "that's aboot all, son," concluded the rancher. "you understand now why i feel they're goin' to kill me. i feel it heah." with solemn gesture he placed his broad hand over his heart. "an', jean, strange whispers come to me at night. it seems like your mother was callin' or tryin' to warn me. i cain't explain these queer whispers. but i know what i know." "jorth has his followers. you must have yours," replied jean, tensely. "shore, son, an' i can take my choice of the best men heah," replied the rancher, with pride. "but i'll not do that. i'll lay the deal before them an' let them choose. i reckon it 'll not be a long-winded fight. it 'll be short an bloody, after the way of texans. i'm lookin' to you, jean, to see that an isbel is the last man!" "my god--dad! is there no other way? think of my sister ann--of my brothers' wives--of--of other women! dad, these damned texas feuds are cruel, horrible!" burst out jean, in passionate protest. "jean, would it be any easier for our women if we let these men shoot us down in cold blood?" "oh no--no, i see, there's no hope of--of.... but, dad, i wasn't thinkin' about myself. i don't care. once started i'll--i'll be what you bragged i was. only it's so hard to-to give in." jean leaned an arm against the side of the cabin and, bowing his face over it, he surrendered to the irresistible contention within his breast. and as if with a wrench that strange inward hold broke. he let down. he went back. something that was boyish and hopeful--and in its place slowly rose the dark tide of his inheritance, the savage instinct of self-preservation bequeathed by his indian mother, and the fierce, feudal blood lust of his texan father. then as he raised himself, gripped by a sickening coldness in his breast, he remembered ellen jorth's face as she had gazed dreamily down off the rim--so soft, so different, with tremulous lips, sad, musing, with far-seeing stare of dark eyes, peering into the unknown, the instinct of life still unlived. with confused vision and nameless pain jean thought of her. "dad, it's hard on--the--the young folks," he said, bitterly. "the sins of the father, you know. an' the other side. how about jorth? has he any children?" what a curious gleam of surprise and conjecture jean encountered in his father's gaze! "he has a daughter. ellen jorth. named after her mother. the first time i saw ellen jorth i thought she was a ghost of the girl i had loved an' lost. sight of her was like a blade in my side. but the looks of her an' what she is--they don't gibe. old as i am, my heart--bah! ellen jorth is a damned hussy!" jean isbel went off alone into the cedars. surrender and resignation to his father's creed should have ended his perplexity and worry. his instant and burning resolve to be as his father had represented him should have opened his mind to slow cunning, to the craft of the indian, to the development of hate. but there seemed to be an obstacle. a cloud in the way of vision. a face limned on his memory. those damning words of his father's had been a shock--how little or great he could not tell. was it only a day since he had met ellen jorth? what had made all the difference? suddenly like a breath the fragrance of her hair came back to him. then the sweet coolness of her lips! jean trembled. he looked around him as if he were pursued or surrounded by eyes, by instincts, by fears, by incomprehensible things. "ahuh! that must be what ails me," he muttered. "the look of her--an' that kiss--they've gone hard me. i should never have stopped to talk. an' i'm to kill her father an' leave her to god knows what." something was wrong somewhere. jean absolutely forgot that within the hour he had pledged his manhood, his life to a feud which could be blotted out only in blood. if he had understood himself he would have realized that the pledge was no more thrilling and unintelligible in its possibilities than this instinct which drew him irresistibly. "ellen jorth! so--my dad calls her a damned hussy! so--that explains the--the way she acted--why she never hit me when i kissed her. an' her words, so easy an' cool-like. hussy? that means she's bad--bad! scornful of me--maybe disappointed because my kiss was innocent! it was, i swear. an' all she said: 'oh, i've been kissed before.'" jean grew furious with himself for the spreading of a new sensation in his breast that seemed now to ache. had he become infatuated, all in a day, with this ellen jorth? was he jealous of the men who had the privilege of her kisses? no! but his reply was hot with shame, with uncertainty. the thing that seemed wrong was outside of himself. a blunder was no crime. to be attracted by a pretty girl in the woods--to yield to an impulse was no disgrace, nor wrong. he had been foolish over a girl before, though not to such a rash extent. ellen jorth had stuck in his consciousness, and with her a sense of regret. then swiftly rang his father's bitter words, the revealing: "but the looks of her an' what she is--they don't gibe!" in the import of these words hid the meaning of the wrong that troubled him. broodingly he pondered over them. "the looks of her. yes, she was pretty. but it didn't dawn on me at first. i--i was sort of excited. i liked to look at her, but didn't think." and now consciously her face was called up, infinitely sweet and more impelling for the deliberate memory. flash of brown skin, smooth and clear; level gaze of dark, wide eyes, steady, bold, unseeing; red curved lips, sad and sweet; her strong, clean, fine face rose before jean, eager and wistful one moment, softened by dreamy musing thought, and the next stormily passionate, full of hate, full of longing, but the more mysterious and beautiful. "she looks like that, but she's bad," concluded jean, with bitter finality. "i might have fallen in love with ellen jorth if--if she'd been different." but the conviction forced upon jean did not dispel the haunting memory of her face nor did it wholly silence the deep and stubborn voice of his consciousness. later that afternoon he sought a moment with his sister. "ann, did you ever meet ellen jorth?" he asked. "yes, but not lately," replied ann. "well, i met her as i was ridin' along yesterday. she was herdin' sheep," went on jean, rapidly. "i asked her to show me the way to the rim. an' she walked with me a mile or so. i can't say the meetin' was not interestin', at least to me.... will you tell me what you know about her?" "sure, jean," replied his sister, with her dark eyes fixed wonderingly and kindly on his troubled face. "i've heard a great deal, but in this tonto basin i don't believe all i hear. what i know i'll tell you. i first met ellen jorth two years ago. we didn't know each other's names then. she was the prettiest girl i ever saw. i liked her. she liked me. she seemed unhappy. the next time we met was at a round-up. there were other girls with me and they snubbed her. but i left them and went around with her. that snub cut her to the heart. she was lonely. she had no friends. she talked about herself--how she hated the people, but loved arizona. she had nothin' fit to wear. i didn't need to be told that she'd been used to better things. just when it looked as if we were goin' to be friends she told me who she was and asked me my name. i told her. jean, i couldn't have hurt her more if i'd slapped her face. she turned white. she gasped. and then she ran off. the last time i saw her was about a year ago. i was ridin' a short-cut trail to the ranch where a friend lived. and i met ellen jorth ridin' with a man i'd never seen. the trail was overgrown and shady. they were ridin' close and didn't see me right off. the man had his arm round her. she pushed him away. i saw her laugh. then he got hold of her again and was kissin' her when his horse shied at sight of mine. they rode by me then. ellen jorth held her head high and never looked at me." "ann, do you think she's a bad girl?" demanded jean, bluntly. "bad? oh, jean!" exclaimed ann, in surprise and embarrassment. "dad said she was a damned hussy." "jean, dad hates the jorths." "sister, i'm askin' you what you think of ellen jorth. would you be friends with her if you could?" "yes." "then you don't believe she's bad." "no. ellen jorth is lonely, unhappy. she has no mother. she lives alone among rough men. such a girl can't keep men from handlin' her and kissin' her. maybe she's too free. maybe she's wild. but she's honest, jean. you can trust a woman to tell. when she rode past me that day her face was white and proud. she was a jorth and i was an isbel. she hated herself--she hated me. but no bad girl could look like that. she knows what's said of her all around the valley. but she doesn't care. she'd encourage gossip." "thank you, ann," replied jean, huskily. "please keep this--this meetin' of mine with her all to yourself, won't you?" "why, jean, of course i will." jean wandered away again, peculiarly grateful to ann for reviving and upholding something in him that seemed a wavering part of the best of him--a chivalry that had demanded to be killed by judgment of a righteous woman. he was conscious of an uplift, a gladdening of his spirit. yet the ache remained. more than that, he found himself plunged deeper into conjecture, doubt. had not the ellen jorth incident ended? he denied his father's indictment of her and accepted the faith of his sister. "reckon that's aboot all, as dad says," he soliloquized. yet was that all? he paced under the cedars. he watched the sun set. he listened to the coyotes. he lingered there after the call for supper; until out of the tumult of his conflicting emotions and ponderings there evolved the staggering consciousness that he must see ellen jorth again. chapter iv ellen jorth hurried back into the forest, hotly resentful of the accident that had thrown her in contact with an isbel. disgust filled her--disgust that she had been amiable to a member of the hated family that had ruined her father. the surprise of this meeting did not come to her while she was under the spell of stronger feeling. she walked under the trees, swiftly, with head erect, looking straight before her, and every step seemed a relief. upon reaching camp, her attention was distracted from herself. pepe, the mexican boy, with the two shepherd dogs, was trying to drive sheep into a closer bunch to save the lambs from coyotes. ellen loved the fleecy, tottering little lambs, and at this season she hated all the prowling beast of the forest. from this time on for weeks the flock would be besieged by wolves, lions, bears, the last of which were often bold and dangerous. the old grizzlies that killed the ewes to eat only the milk-bags were particularly dreaded by ellen. she was a good shot with a rifle, but had orders from her father to let the bears alone. fortunately, such sheep-killing bears were but few, and were left to be hunted by men from the ranch. mexican sheep herders could not be depended upon to protect their flocks from bears. ellen helped pepe drive in the stragglers, and she took several shots at coyotes skulking along the edge of the brush. the open glade in the forest was favorable for herding the sheep at night, and the dogs could be depended upon to guard the flock, and in most cases to drive predatory beasts away. after this task, which brought the time to sunset, ellen had supper to cook and eat. darkness came, and a cool night wind set in. here and there a lamb bleated plaintively. with her work done for the day, ellen sat before a ruddy camp fire, and found her thoughts again centering around the singular adventure that had befallen her. disdainfully she strove to think of something else. but there was nothing that could dispel the interest of her meeting with jean isbel. thereupon she impatiently surrendered to it, and recalled every word and action which she could remember. and in the process of this meditation she came to an action of hers, recollection of which brought the blood tingling to her neck and cheeks, so unusually and burningly that she covered them with her hands. "what did he think of me?" she mused, doubtfully. it did not matter what he thought, but she could not help wondering. and when she came to the memory of his kiss she suffered more than the sensation of throbbing scarlet cheeks. scornfully and bitterly she burst out, "shore he couldn't have thought much good of me." the half hour following this reminiscence was far from being pleasant. proud, passionate, strong-willed ellen jorth found herself a victim of conflicting emotions. the event of the day was too close. she could not understand it. disgust and disdain and scorn could not make this meeting with jean isbel as if it had never been. pride could not efface it from her mind. the more she reflected, the harder she tried to forget, the stronger grew a significance of interest. and when a hint of this dawned upon her consciousness she resented it so forcibly that she lost her temper, scattered the camp fire, and went into the little teepee tent to roll in her blankets. thus settled snug and warm for the night, with a shepherd dog curled at the opening of her tent, she shut her eyes and confidently bade sleep end her perplexities. but sleep did not come at her invitation. she found herself wide awake, keenly sensitive to the sputtering of the camp fire, the tinkling of bells on the rams, the bleating of lambs, the sough of wind in the pines, and the hungry sharp bark of coyotes off in the distance. darkness was no respecter of her pride. the lonesome night with its emphasis of solitude seemed to induce clamoring and strange thoughts, a confusing ensemble of all those that had annoyed her during the daytime. not for long hours did sheer weariness bring her to slumber. ellen awakened late and failed of her usual alacrity. both pepe and the shepherd dog appeared to regard her with surprise and solicitude. ellen's spirit was low this morning; her blood ran sluggishly; she had to fight a mournful tendency to feel sorry for herself. and at first she was not very successful. there seemed to be some kind of pleasure in reveling in melancholy which her common sense told her had no reason for existence. but states of mind persisted in spite of common sense. "pepe, when is antonio comin' back?" she asked. the boy could not give her a satisfactory answer. ellen had willingly taken the sheep herder's place for a few days, but now she was impatient to go home. she looked down the green-and-brown aisles of the forest until she was tired. antonio did not return. ellen spent the day with the sheep; and in the manifold task of caring for a thousand new-born lambs she forgot herself. this day saw the end of lambing-time for that season. the forest resounded to a babel of baas and bleats. when night came she was glad to go to bed, for what with loss of sleep, and weariness she could scarcely keep her eyes open. the following morning she awakened early, bright, eager, expectant, full of bounding life, strangely aware of the beauty and sweetness of the scented forest, strangely conscious of some nameless stimulus to her feelings. not long was ellen in associating this new and delightful variety of sensations with the fact that jean isbel had set to-day for his ride up to the rim to see her. ellen's joyousness fled; her smiles faded. the spring morning lost its magic radiance. "shore there's no sense in my lyin' to myself," she soliloquized, thoughtfully. "it's queer of me--feelin' glad aboot him--without knowin'. lord! i must be lonesome! to be glad of seein' an isbel, even if he is different!" soberly she accepted the astounding reality. her confidence died with her gayety; her vanity began to suffer. and she caught at her admission that jean isbel was different; she resented it in amaze; she ridiculed it; she laughed at her naive confession. she could arrive at no conclusion other than that she was a weak-minded, fluctuating, inexplicable little fool. but for all that she found her mind had been made up for her, without consent or desire, before her will had been consulted; and that inevitably and unalterably she meant to see jean isbel again. long she battled with this strange decree. one moment she won a victory over, this new curious self, only to lose it the next. and at last out of her conflict there emerged a few convictions that left her with some shreds of pride. she hated all isbels, she hated any isbel, and particularly she hated jean isbel. she was only curious--intensely curious to see if he would come back, and if he did come what he would do. she wanted only to watch him from some covert. she would not go near him, not let him see her or guess of her presence. thus she assuaged her hurt vanity--thus she stifled her miserable doubts. long before the sun had begun to slant westward toward the mid-afternoon jean isbel had set as a meeting time ellen directed her steps through the forest to the rim. she felt ashamed of her eagerness. she had a guilty conscience that no strange thrills could silence. it would be fun to see him, to watch him, to let him wait for her, to fool him. like an indian, she chose the soft pine-needle mats to tread upon, and her light-moccasined feet left no trace. like an indian also she made a wide detour, and reached the rim a quarter of a mile west of the spot where she had talked with jean isbel; and here, turning east, she took care to step on the bare stones. this was an adventure, seemingly the first she had ever had in her life. assuredly she had never before come directly to the rim without halting to look, to wonder, to worship. this time she scarcely glanced into the blue abyss. all absorbed was she in hiding her tracks. not one chance in a thousand would she risk. the jorth pride burned even while the feminine side of her dominated her actions. she had some difficult rocky points to cross, then windfalls to round, and at length reached the covert she desired. a rugged yellow point of the rim stood somewhat higher than the spot ellen wanted to watch. a dense thicket of jack pines grew to the very edge. it afforded an ambush that even the indian eyes jean isbel was credited with could never penetrate. moreover, if by accident she made a noise and excited suspicion, she could retreat unobserved and hide in the huge rocks below the rim, where a ferret could not locate her. with her plan decided upon, ellen had nothing to do but wait, so she repaired to the other side of the pine thicket and to the edge of the rim where she could watch and listen. she knew that long before she saw isbel she would hear his horse. it was altogether unlikely that he would come on foot. "shore, ellen jorth, y'u're a queer girl," she mused. "i reckon i wasn't well acquainted with y'u." beneath her yawned a wonderful deep canyon, rugged and rocky with but few pines on the north slope, thick with dark green timber on the south slope. yellow and gray crags, like turreted castles, stood up out of the sloping forest on the side opposite her. the trees were all sharp, spear pointed. patches of light green aspens showed strikingly against the dense black. the great slope beneath ellen was serrated with narrow, deep gorges, almost canyons in themselves. shadows alternated with clear bright spaces. the mile-wide mouth of the canyon opened upon the basin, down into a world of wild timbered ranges and ravines, valleys and hills, that rolled and tumbled in dark-green waves to the sierra anchas. but for once ellen seemed singularly unresponsive to this panorama of wildness and grandeur. her ears were like those of a listening deer, and her eyes continually reverted to the open places along the rim. at first, in her excitement, time flew by. gradually, however, as the sun moved westward, she began to be restless. the soft thud of dropping pine cones, the rustling of squirrels up and down the shaggy-barked spruces, the cracking of weathered bits of rock, these caught her keen ears many times and brought her up erect and thrilling. finally she heard a sound which resembled that of an unshod hoof on stone. stealthily then she took her rifle and slipped back through the pine thicket to the spot she had chosen. the little pines were so close together that she had to crawl between their trunks. the ground was covered with a soft bed of pine needles, brown and fragrant. in her hurry she pricked her ungloved hand on a sharp pine cone and drew the blood. she sucked the tiny wound. "shore i'm wonderin' if that's a bad omen," she muttered, darkly thoughtful. then she resumed her sinuous approach to the edge of the thicket, and presently reached it. ellen lay flat a moment to recover her breath, then raised herself on her elbows. through an opening in the fringe of buck brush she could plainly see the promontory where she had stood with jean isbel, and also the approaches by which he might come. rather nervously she realized that her covert was hardly more than a hundred feet from the promontory. it was imperative that she be absolutely silent. her eyes searched the openings along the rim. the gray form of a deer crossed one of these, and she concluded it had made the sound she had heard. then she lay down more comfortably and waited. resolutely she held, as much as possible, to her sensorial perceptions. the meaning of ellen jorth lying in ambush just to see an isbel was a conundrum she refused to ponder in the present. she was doing it, and the physical act had its fascination. her ears, attuned to all the sounds of the lonely forest, caught them and arranged them according to her knowledge of woodcraft. a long hour passed by. the sun had slanted to a point halfway between the zenith and the horizon. suddenly a thought confronted ellen jorth: "he's not comin'," she whispered. the instant that idea presented itself she felt a blank sense of loss, a vague regret--something that must have been disappointment. unprepared for this, she was held by surprise for a moment, and then she was stunned. her spirit, swift and rebellious, had no time to rise in her defense. she was a lonely, guilty, miserable girl, too weak for pride to uphold, too fluctuating to know her real self. she stretched there, burying her face in the pine needles, digging her fingers into them, wanting nothing so much as that they might hide her. the moment was incomprehensible to ellen, and utterly intolerable. the sharp pine needles, piercing her wrists and cheeks, and her hot heaving breast, seemed to give her exquisite relief. the shrill snort of a horse sounded near at hand. with a shock ellen's body stiffened. then she quivered a little and her feelings underwent swift change. cautiously and noiselessly she raised herself upon her elbows and peeped through the opening in the brush. she saw a man tying a horse to a bush somewhat back from the rim. drawing a rifle from its saddle sheath he threw it in the hollow of his arm and walked to the edge of the precipice. he gazed away across the basin and appeared lost in contemplation or thought. then he turned to look back into the forest, as if he expected some one. ellen recognized the lithe figure, the dark face so like an indian's. it was isbel. he had come. somehow his coming seemed wonderful and terrible. ellen shook as she leaned on her elbows. jean isbel, true to his word, in spite of her scorn, had come back to see her. the fact seemed monstrous. he was an enemy of her father. long had range rumor been bandied from lip to lip--old gass isbel had sent for his indian son to fight the jorths. jean isbel--son of a texan--unerring shot--peerless tracker--a bad and dangerous man! then there flashed over ellen a burning thought--if it were true, if he was an enemy of her father's, if a fight between jorth and isbel was inevitable, she ought to kill this jean isbel right there in his tracks as he boldly and confidently waited for her. fool he was to think she would come. ellen sank down and dropped her head until the strange tremor of her arms ceased. that dark and grim flash of thought retreated. she had not come to murder a man from ambush, but only to watch him, to try to see what he meant, what he thought, to allay a strange curiosity. after a while she looked again. isbel was sitting on an upheaved section of the rim, in a comfortable position from which he could watch the openings in the forest and gaze as well across the west curve of the basin to the mazatzals. he had composed himself to wait. he was clad in a buckskin suit, rather new, and it certainly showed off to advantage, compared with the ragged and soiled apparel ellen remembered. he did not look so large. ellen was used to the long, lean, rangy arizonians and texans. this man was built differently. he had the widest shoulders of any man she had ever seen, and they made him appear rather short. but his lithe, powerful limbs proved he was not short. whenever he moved the muscles rippled. his hands were clasped round a knee--brown, sinewy hands, very broad, and fitting the thick muscular wrists. his collar was open, and he did not wear a scarf, as did the men ellen knew. then her intense curiosity at last brought her steady gaze to jean isbel's head and face. he wore a cap, evidently of some thin fur. his hair was straight and short, and in color a dead raven black. his complexion was dark, clear tan, with no trace of red. he did not have the prominent cheek bones nor the high-bridged nose usual with white men who were part indian. still he had the indian look. ellen caught that in the dark, intent, piercing eyes, in the wide, level, thoughtful brows, in the stern impassiveness of his smooth face. he had a straight, sharp-cut profile. ellen whispered to herself: "i saw him right the other day. only, i'd not admit it.... the finest-lookin' man i ever saw in my life is a damned isbel! was that what i come out heah for?" she lowered herself once more and, folding her arms under her breast, she reclined comfortably on them, and searched out a smaller peephole from which she could spy upon isbel. and as she watched him the new and perplexing side of her mind waxed busier. why had he come back? what did he want of her? acquaintance, friendship, was impossible for them. he had been respectful, deferential toward her, in a way that had strangely pleased, until the surprising moment when he had kissed her. that had only disrupted her rather dreamy pleasure in a situation she had not experienced before. all the men she had met in this wild country were rough and bold; most of them had wanted to marry her, and, failing that, they had persisted in amorous attentions not particularly flattering or honorable. they were a bad lot. and contact with them had dulled some of her sensibilities. but this jean isbel had seemed a gentleman. she struggled to be fair, trying to forget her antipathy, as much to understand herself as to give him due credit. true, he had kissed her, crudely and forcibly. but that kiss had not been an insult. ellen's finer feeling forced her to believe this. she remembered the honest amaze and shame and contrition with which he had faced her, trying awkwardly to explain his bold act. likewise she recalled the subtle swift change in him at her words, "oh, i've been kissed before!" she was glad she had said that. still--was she glad, after all? she watched him. every little while he shifted his gaze from the blue gulf beneath him to the forest. when he turned thus the sun shone on his face and she caught the piercing gleam of his dark eyes. she saw, too, that he was listening. watching and listening for her! ellen had to still a tumult within her. it made her feel very young, very shy, very strange. all the while she hated him because he manifestly expected her to come. several times he rose and walked a little way into the woods. the last time he looked at the westering sun and shook his head. his confidence had gone. then he sat and gazed down into the void. but ellen knew he did not see anything there. he seemed an image carved in the stone of the rim, and he gave ellen a singular impression of loneliness and sadness. was he thinking of the miserable battle his father had summoned him to lead--of what it would cost--of its useless pain and hatred? ellen seemed to divine his thoughts. in that moment she softened toward him, and in her soul quivered and stirred an intangible something that was like pain, that was too deep for her understanding. but she felt sorry for an isbel until the old pride resurged. what if he admired her? she remembered his interest, the wonder and admiration, the growing light in his eyes. and it had not been repugnant to her until he disclosed his name. "what's in a name?" she mused, recalling poetry learned in her girlhood. "'a rose by any other name would smell as sweet'.... he's an isbel--yet he might be splendid--noble.... bah! he's not--and i'd hate him anyhow." all at once ellen felt cold shivers steal over her. isbel's piercing gaze was directed straight at her hiding place. her heart stopped beating. if he discovered her there she felt that she would die of shame. then she became aware that a blue jay was screeching in a pine above her, and a red squirrel somewhere near was chattering his shrill annoyance. these two denizens of the woods could be depended upon to espy the wariest hunter and make known his presence to their kind. ellen had a moment of more than dread. this keen-eyed, keen-eared indian might see right through her brushy covert, might hear the throbbing of her heart. it relieved her immeasurably to see him turn away and take to pacing the promontory, with his head bowed and his hands behind his back. he had stopped looking off into the forest. presently he wheeled to the west, and by the light upon his face ellen saw that the time was near sunset. turkeys were beginning to gobble back on the ridge. isbel walked to his horse and appeared to be untying something from the back of his saddle. when he came back ellen saw that he carried a small package apparently wrapped in paper. with this under his arm he strode off in the direction of ellen's camp and soon disappeared in the forest. for a little while ellen lay there in bewilderment. if she had made conjectures before, they were now multiplied. where was jean isbel going? ellen sat up suddenly. "well, shore this heah beats me," she said. "what did he have in that package? what was he goin' to do with it?" it took no little will power to hold her there when she wanted to steal after him through the woods and find out what he meant. but his reputation influenced even her and she refused to pit her cunning in the forest against his. it would be better to wait until he returned to his horse. thus decided, she lay back again in her covert and gave her mind over to pondering curiosity. sooner than she expected she espied isbel approaching through the forest, empty handed. he had not taken his rifle. ellen averted her glance a moment and thrilled to see the rifle leaning against a rock. verily jean isbel had been far removed from hostile intent that day. she watched him stride swiftly up to his horse, untie the halter, and mount. ellen had an impression of his arrowlike straight figure, and sinuous grace and ease. then he looked back at the promontory, as if to fix a picture of it in his mind, and rode away along the rim. she watched him out of sight. what ailed her? something was wrong with her, but she recognized only relief. when isbel had been gone long enough to assure ellen that she might safely venture forth she crawled through the pine thicket to the rim on the other side of the point. the sun was setting behind the black range, shedding a golden glory over the basin. westward the zigzag rim reached like a streamer of fire into the sun. the vast promontories jutted out with blazing beacon lights upon their stone-walled faces. deep down, the basin was turning shadowy dark blue, going to sleep for the night. ellen bent swift steps toward her camp. long shafts of gold preceded her through the forest. then they paled and vanished. the tips of pines and spruces turned gold. a hoarse-voiced old turkey gobbler was booming his chug-a-lug from the highest ground, and the softer chick of hen turkeys answered him. ellen was almost breathless when she arrived. two packs and a couple of lop-eared burros attested to the fact of antonio's return. this was good news for ellen. she heard the bleat of lambs and tinkle of bells coming nearer and nearer. and she was glad to feel that if isbel had visited her camp, most probably it was during the absence of the herders. the instant she glanced into her tent she saw the package isbel had carried. it lay on her bed. ellen stared blankly. "the--the impudence of him!" she ejaculated. then she kicked the package out of the tent. words and action seemed to liberate a dammed-up hot fury. she kicked the package again, and thought she would kick it into the smoldering camp-fire. but somehow she stopped short of that. she left the thing there on the ground. pepe and antonio hove in sight, driving in the tumbling woolly flock. ellen did not want them to see the package, so with contempt for herself, and somewhat lessening anger, she kicked it back into the tent. what was in it? she peeped inside the tent, devoured by curiosity. neat, well wrapped and tied packages like that were not often seen in the tonto basin. ellen decided she would wait until after supper, and at a favorable moment lay it unopened on the fire. what did she care what it contained? manifestly it was a gift. she argued that she was highly incensed with this insolent isbel who had the effrontery to approach her with some sort of present. it developed that the usually cheerful antonio had returned taciturn and gloomy. all ellen could get out of him was that the job of sheep herder had taken on hazards inimical to peace-loving mexicans. he had heard something he would not tell. ellen helped prepare the supper and she ate in silence. she had her own brooding troubles. antonio presently told her that her father had said she was not to start back home after dark. after supper the herders repaired to their own tents, leaving ellen the freedom of her camp-fire. wherewith she secured the package and brought it forth to burn. feminine curiosity rankled strong in her breast. yielding so far as to shake the parcel and press it, and finally tear a corner off the paper, she saw some words written in lead pencil. bending nearer the blaze, she read, "for my sister ann." ellen gazed at the big, bold hand-writing, quite legible and fairly well done. suddenly she tore the outside wrapper completely off. from printed words on the inside she gathered that the package had come from a store in san francisco. "reckon he fetched home a lot of presents for his folks--the kids--and his sister," muttered ellen. "that was nice of him. whatever this is he shore meant it for sister ann.... ann isbel. why, she must be that black-eyed girl i met and liked so well before i knew she was an isbel.... his sister!" whereupon for the second time ellen deposited the fascinating package in her tent. she could not burn it up just then. she had other emotions besides scorn and hate. and memory of that soft-voiced, kind-hearted, beautiful isbel girl checked her resentment. "i wonder if he is like his sister," she said, thoughtfully. it appeared to be an unfortunate thought. jean isbel certainly resembled his sister. "too bad they belong to the family that ruined dad." ellen went to bed without opening the package or without burning it. and to her annoyance, whatever way she lay she appeared to touch this strange package. there was not much room in the little tent. first she put it at her head beside her rifle, but when she turned over her cheek came in contact with it. then she felt as if she had been stung. she moved it again, only to touch it presently with her hand. next she flung it to the bottom of her bed, where it fell upon her feet, and whatever way she moved them she could not escape the pressure of this undesirable and mysterious gift. by and by she fell asleep, only to dream that the package was a caressing hand stealing about her, feeling for hers, and holding it with soft, strong clasp. when she awoke she had the strangest sensation in her right palm. it was moist, throbbing, hot, and the feel of it on her cheek was strangely thrilling and comforting. she lay awake then. the night was dark and still. only a low moan of wind in the pines and the faint tinkle of a sheep bell broke the serenity. she felt very small and lonely lying there in the deep forest, and, try how she would, it was impossible to think the same then as she did in the clear light of day. resentment, pride, anger--these seemed abated now. if the events of the day had not changed her, they had at least brought up softer and kinder memories and emotions than she had known for long. nothing hurt and saddened her so much as to remember the gay, happy days of her childhood, her sweet mother, her, old home. then her thought returned to isbel and his gift. it had been years since anyone had made her a gift. what could this one be? it did not matter. the wonder was that jean isbel should bring it to her and that she could be perturbed by its presence. "he meant it for his sister and so he thought well of me," she said, in finality. morning brought ellen further vacillation. at length she rolled the obnoxious package inside her blankets, saying that she would wait until she got home and then consign it cheerfully to the flames. antonio tied her pack on a burro. she did not have a horse, and therefore had to walk the several miles, to her father's ranch. she set off at a brisk pace, leading the burro and carrying her rifle. and soon she was deep in the fragrant forest. the morning was clear and cool, with just enough frost to make the sunlit grass sparkle as if with diamonds. ellen felt fresh, buoyant, singularly full of, life. her youth would not be denied. it was pulsing, yearning. she hummed an old southern tune and every step seemed one of pleasure in action, of advance toward some intangible future happiness. all the unknown of life before her called. her heart beat high in her breast and she walked as one in a dream. her thoughts were swift-changing, intimate, deep, and vague, not of yesterday or to-day, nor of reality. the big, gray, white-tailed squirrels crossed ahead of her on the trail, scampered over the piny ground to hop on tree trunks, and there they paused to watch her pass. the vociferous little red squirrels barked and chattered at her. from every thicket sounded the gobble of turkeys. the blue jays squalled in the tree tops. a deer lifted its head from browsing and stood motionless, with long ears erect, watching her go by. thus happily and dreamily absorbed, ellen covered the forest miles and soon reached the trail that led down into the wild brakes of chevelon canyon. it was rough going and less conducive to sweet wanderings of mind. ellen slowly lost them. and then a familiar feeling assailed her, one she never failed to have upon returning to her father's ranch--a reluctance, a bitter dissatisfaction with her home, a loyal struggle against the vague sense that all was not as it should be. at the head of this canyon in a little, level, grassy meadow stood a rude one-room log shack, with a leaning red-stone chimney on the outside. this was the abode of a strange old man who had long lived there. his name was john sprague and his occupation was raising burros. no sheep or cattle or horses did he own, not even a dog. rumor had said sprague was a prospector, one of the many who had searched that country for the lost dutchman gold mine. sprague knew more about the basin and rim than any of the sheepmen or ranchers. from black butte to the cibique and from chevelon butte to reno pass he knew every trail, canyon, ridge, and spring, and could find his way to them on the darkest night. his fame, however, depended mostly upon the fact that he did nothing but raise burros, and would raise none but black burros with white faces. these burros were the finest bred in all the basin and were in great demand. sprague sold a few every year. he had made a present of one to ellen, although he hated to part with them. this old man was ellen's one and only friend. upon her trip out to the rim with the sheep, uncle john, as ellen called him, had been away on one of his infrequent visits to grass valley. it pleased her now to see a blue column of smoke lazily lifting from the old chimney and to hear the discordant bray of burros. as she entered the clearing sprague saw her from the door of his shack. "hello, uncle john!" she called. "wal, if it ain't ellen!" he replied, heartily. "when i seen thet white-faced jinny i knowed who was leadin' her. where you been, girl?" sprague was a little, stoop-shouldered old man, with grizzled head and face, and shrewd gray eyes that beamed kindly on her over his ruddy cheeks. ellen did not like the tobacco stain on his grizzled beard nor the dirty, motley, ragged, ill-smelling garb he wore, but she had ceased her useless attempts to make him more cleanly. "i've been herdin' sheep," replied ellen. "and where have y'u been, uncle? i missed y'u on the way over." "been packin' in some grub. an' i reckon i stayed longer in grass valley than i recollect. but thet was only natural, considerin'--" "what?" asked ellen, bluntly, as the old man paused. sprague took a black pipe out of his vest pocket and began rimming the bowl with his fingers. the glance he bent on ellen was thoughtful and earnest, and so kind that she feared it was pity. ellen suddenly burned for news from the village. "wal, come in an' set down, won't you?" he asked. "no, thanks," replied ellen, and she took a seat on the chopping block. "tell me, uncle, what's goin' on down in the valley?" "nothin' much yet--except talk. an' there's a heap of thet." "humph! there always was talk," declared ellen, contemptuously. "a nasty, gossipy, catty hole, that grass valley!" "ellen, thar's goin' to be war--a bloody war in the ole tonto basin," went on sprague, seriously. "war! ... between whom?" "the isbels an' their enemies. i reckon most people down thar, an' sure all the cattlemen, air on old gass's side. blaisdell, gordon, fredericks, blue--they'll all be in it." "who are they goin' to fight?" queried ellen, sharply. "wal, the open talk is thet the sheepmen are forcin' this war. but thar's talk not so open, an' i reckon not very healthy for any man to whisper hyarbouts." "uncle john, y'u needn't be afraid to tell me anythin'," said ellen. "i'd never give y'u away. y'u've been a good friend to me." "reckon i want to be, ellen," he returned, nodding his shaggy head. "it ain't easy to be fond of you as i am an' keep my mouth shet.... i'd like to know somethin'. hev you any relatives away from hyar thet you could go to till this fight's over?" "no. all i have, so far as i know, are right heah." "how aboot friends?" "uncle john, i have none," she said, sadly, with bowed head. "wal, wal, i'm sorry. i was hopin' you might git away." she lifted her face. "shore y'u don't think i'd run off if my dad got in a fight?" she flashed. "i hope you will." "i'm a jorth," she said, darkly, and dropped her head again. sprague nodded gloomily. evidently he was perplexed and worried, and strongly swayed by affection for her. "would you go away with me?" he asked. "we could pack over to the mazatzals an' live thar till this blows over." "thank y'u, uncle john. y'u're kind and good. but i'll stay with my father. his troubles are mine." "ahuh! ... wal, i might hev reckoned so.... ellen, how do you stand on this hyar sheep an' cattle question?" "i think what's fair for one is fair for another. i don't like sheep as much as i like cattle. but that's not the point. the range is free. suppose y'u had cattle and i had sheep. i'd feel as free to run my sheep anywhere as y'u were to ran your cattle." "right. but what if you throwed your sheep round my range an' sheeped off the grass so my cattle would hev to move or starve?" "shore i wouldn't throw my sheep round y'ur range," she declared, stoutly. "wal, you've answered half of the question. an' now supposin' a lot of my cattle was stolen by rustlers, but not a single one of your sheep. what 'd you think then?" "i'd shore think rustlers chose to steal cattle because there was no profit in stealin' sheep." "egzactly. but wouldn't you hev a queer idee aboot it?" "i don't know. why queer? what 're y'u drivin' at, uncle john?" "wal, wouldn't you git kind of a hunch thet the rustlers was--say a leetle friendly toward the sheepmen?" ellen felt a sudden vibrating shock. the blood rushed to her temples. trembling all over, she rose. "uncle john!" she cried. "now, girl, you needn't fire up thet way. set down an' don't--" "dare y'u insinuate my father has--" "ellen, i ain't insinuatin' nothin'," interrupted the old man. "i'm jest askin' you to think. thet's all. you're 'most grown into a young woman now. an' you've got sense. thar's bad times ahead, ellen. an' i hate to see you mix in them." "oh, y'u do make me think," replied ellen, with smarting tears in her eyes. "y'u make me unhappy. oh, i know my dad is not liked in this cattle country. but it's unjust. he happened to go in for sheep raising. i wish he hadn't. it was a mistake. dad always was a cattleman till we came heah. he made enemies--who--who ruined him. and everywhere misfortune crossed his trail.... but, oh, uncle john, my dad is an honest man." "wal, child, i--i didn't mean to--to make you cry," said the old man, feelingly, and he averted his troubled gaze. "never mind what i said. i'm an old meddler. i reckon nothin' i could do or say would ever change what's goin' to happen. if only you wasn't a girl! ... thar i go ag'in. ellen, face your future an' fight your way. all youngsters hev to do thet. an' it's the right kind of fight thet makes the right kind of man or woman. only you must be sure to find yourself. an' by thet i mean to find the real, true, honest-to-god best in you an' stick to it an' die fightin' for it. you're a young woman, almost, an' a blamed handsome one. which means you'll hev more trouble an' a harder fight. this country ain't easy on a woman when once slander has marked her. "what do i care for the talk down in that basin?" returned ellen. "i know they think i'm a hussy. i've let them think it. i've helped them to." "you're wrong, child," said sprague, earnestly. "pride an' temper! you must never let anyone think bad of you, much less help them to." "i hate everybody down there," cried ellen, passionately. "i hate them so i'd glory in their thinkin' me bad.... my mother belonged to the best blood in texas. i am her daughter. i know who and what i am. that uplifts me whenever i meet the sneaky, sly suspicions of these basin people. it shows me the difference between them and me. that's what i glory in." "ellen, you're a wild, headstrong child," rejoined the old man, in severe tones. "word has been passed ag'in' your good name--your honor.... an' hevn't you given cause fer thet?" ellen felt her face blanch and all her blood rush back to her heart in sickening force. the shock of his words was like a stab from a cold blade. if their meaning and the stem, just light of the old man's glance did not kill her pride and vanity they surely killed her girlishness. she stood mute, staring at him, with her brown, trembling hands stealing up toward her bosom, as if to ward off another and a mortal blow. "ellen!" burst out sprague, hoarsely. "you mistook me. aw, i didn't mean--what you think, i swear.... ellen, i'm old an' blunt. i ain't used to wimmen. but i've love for you, child, an' respect, jest the same as if you was my own.... an' i know you're good.... forgive me.... i meant only hevn't you been, say, sort of--careless?" "care-less?" queried ellen, bitterly and low. "an' powerful thoughtless an'--an' blind--lettin' men kiss you an' fondle you--when you're really a growed-up woman now?" "yes--i have," whispered ellen. "wal, then, why did you let them? "i--i don't know.... i didn't think. the men never let me alone--never--never! i got tired everlastingly pushin' them away. and sometimes--when they were kind--and i was lonely for something i--i didn't mind if one or another fooled round me. i never thought. it never looked as y'u have made it look.... then--those few times ridin' the trail to grass valley--when people saw me--then i guess i encouraged such attentions.... oh, i must be--i am a shameless little hussy!" "hush thet kind of talk," said the old man, as he took her hand. "ellen, you're only young an' lonely an' bitter. no mother--no friends--no one but a lot of rough men! it's a wonder you hev kept yourself good. but now your eyes are open, ellen. they're brave an' beautiful eyes, girl, an' if you stand by the light in them you will come through any trouble. an' you'll be happy. don't ever forgit that. life is hard enough, god knows, but it's unfailin' true in the end to the man or woman who finds the best in them an' stands by it." "uncle john, y'u talk so--so kindly. yu make me have hope. there seemed really so little for me to live for--hope for.... but i'll never be a coward again--nor a thoughtless fool. i'll find some good in me--or make some--and never fail it, come what will. i'll remember your words. i'll believe the future holds wonderful things for me.... i'm only eighteen. shore all my life won't be lived heah. perhaps this threatened fight over sheep and cattle will blow over.... somewhere there must be some nice girl to be a friend--a sister to me.... and maybe some man who'd believe, in spite of all they say--that i'm not a hussy." "wal, ellen, you remind me of what i was wantin' to tell you when you just got here.... yestiddy i heerd you called thet name in a barroom. an' thar was a fellar thar who raised hell. he near killed one man an' made another plumb eat his words. an' he scared thet crowd stiff." old john sprague shook his grizzled head and laughed, beaming upon ellen as if the memory of what he had seen had warmed his heart. "was it--y'u?" asked ellen, tremulously. "me? aw, i wasn't nowhere. ellen, this fellar was quick as a cat in his actions an' his words was like lightnin'.' "who? she whispered. "wal, no one else but a stranger jest come to these parts--an isbel, too. jean isbel." "oh!" exclaimed ellen, faintly. "in a barroom full of men--almost all of them in sympathy with the sheep crowd--most of them on the jorth side--this jean isbel resented an insult to ellen jorth." "no!" cried ellen. something terrible was happening to her mind or her heart. "wal, he sure did," replied the old man, "an' it's goin' to be good fer you to hear all about it." chapter v old john sprague launched into his narrative with evident zest. "i hung round greaves' store most of two days. an' i heerd a heap. some of it was jest plain ole men's gab, but i reckon i got the drift of things concernin' grass valley. yestiddy mornin' i was packin' my burros in greaves' back yard, takin' my time carryin' out supplies from the store. an' as last when i went in i seen a strange fellar was thar. strappin' young man--not so young, either--an' he had on buckskin. hair black as my burros, dark face, sharp eyes--you'd took him fer an injun. he carried a rifle--one of them new forty-fours--an' also somethin' wrapped in paper thet he seemed partickler careful about. he wore a belt round his middle an' thar was a bowie-knife in it, carried like i've seen scouts an' injun fighters hev on the frontier in the 'seventies. that looked queer to me, an' i reckon to the rest of the crowd thar. no one overlooked the big six-shooter he packed texas fashion. wal, i didn't hev no idee this fellar was an isbel until i heard greaves call him thet. "'isbel,' said greaves, 'reckon your money's counterfeit hyar. i cain't sell you anythin'.' "'counterfeit? not much,' spoke up the young fellar, an' he flipped some gold twenties on the bar, where they rung like bells. 'why not? ain't this a store? i want a cinch strap.' "greaves looked particular sour thet mornin'. i'd been watchin' him fer two days. he hedn't hed much sleep, fer i hed my bed back of the store, an' i heerd men come in the night an' hev long confabs with him. whatever was in the wind hedn't pleased him none. an' i calkilated thet young isbel wasn't a sight good fer greaves' sore eyes, anyway. but he paid no more attention to isbel. acted jest as if he hedn't heerd isbel say he wanted a cinch strap. "i stayed inside the store then. thar was a lot of fellars i'd seen, an' some i knowed. couple of card games goin', an' drinkin', of course. i soon gathered thet the general atmosphere wasn't friendly to jean isbel. he seen thet quick enough, but he didn't leave. between you an' me i sort of took a likin' to him. an' i sure watched him as close as i could, not seemin' to, you know. reckon they all did the same, only you couldn't see it. it got jest about the same as if isbel hedn't been in thar, only you knowed it wasn't really the same. thet was how i got the hunch the crowd was all sheepmen or their friends. the day before i'd heerd a lot of talk about this young isbel, an' what he'd come to grass valley fer, an' what a bad hombre he was. an' when i seen him i was bound to admit he looked his reputation. "wal, pretty soon in come two more fellars, an' i knowed both of them. you know them, too, i'm sorry to say. fer i'm comin' to facts now thet will shake you. the first fellar was your father's mexican foreman, lorenzo, and the other was simm bruce. i reckon bruce wasn't drunk, but he'd sure been lookin' on red licker. when he seen isbel darn me if he didn't swell an' bustle all up like a mad ole turkey gobbler. "'greaves,' he said, 'if thet fellar's jean isbel i ain't hankerin' fer the company y'u keep.' an' he made no bones of pointin' right at isbel. greaves looked up dry an' sour an' he bit out spiteful-like: 'wal, simm, we ain't hed a hell of a lot of choice in this heah matter. thet's jean isbel shore enough. mebbe you can persuade him thet his company an' his custom ain't wanted round heah!' "jean isbel set on the counter an took it all in, but he didn't say nothin'. the way he looked at bruce was sure enough fer me to see thet thar might be a surprise any minnit. i've looked at a lot of men in my day, an' can sure feel events comin'. bruce got himself a stiff drink an' then he straddles over the floor in front of isbel. "'air you jean isbel, son of ole gass isbel?' asked bruce, sort of lolling back an' givin' a hitch to his belt. "'yes sir, you've identified me,' said isbel, nice an' polite. "'my name's bruce. i'm rangin' sheep heahaboots, an' i hev interest in kurnel lee jorth's bizness.' "'hod do, mister bruce,' replied isbel, very civil ant cool as you please. bruce hed an eye fer the crowd thet was now listenin' an' watchin'. he swaggered closer to isbel. "'we heerd y'u come into the tonto basin to run us sheepmen off the range. how aboot thet?' "'wal, you heerd wrong,' said isbel, quietly. 'i came to work fer my father. thet work depends on what happens.' "bruce began to git redder of face, an' he shook a husky hand in front of isbel. 'i'll tell y'u this heah, my nez perce isbel--' an' when he sort of choked fer more wind greaves spoke up, 'simm, i shore reckon thet nez perce handle will stick.' an' the crowd haw-hawed. then bruce got goin' ag'in. 'i'll tell y'u this heah, nez perce. thar's been enough happen already to run y'u out of arizona.' "'wal, you don't say! what, fer instance?, asked isbel, quick an' sarcastic. "thet made bruce bust out puffin' an' spittin': 'wha-tt, fer instance? huh! why, y'u darn half-breed, y'u'll git run out fer makin' up to ellen jorth. thet won't go in this heah country. not fer any isbel.' "'you're a liar,' called isbel, an' like a big cat he dropped off the counter. i heerd his moccasins pat soft on the floor. an' i bet to myself thet he was as dangerous as he was quick. but his voice an' his looks didn't change even a leetle. "'i'm not a liar,' yelled bruce. 'i'll make y'u eat thet. i can prove what i say.... y'u was seen with ellen jorth--up on the rim--day before yestiddy. y'u was watched. y'u was with her. y'u made up to her. y'u grabbed her an' kissed her! ... an' i'm heah to say, nez perce, thet y'u're a marked man on this range.' "'who saw me?' asked isbel, quiet an' cold. i seen then thet he'd turned white in the face. "'yu cain't lie out of it,' hollered bruce, wavin' his hands. 'we got y'u daid to rights. lorenzo saw y'u--follered y'u--watched y'u.' bruce pointed at the grinnin' greaser. 'lorenzo is kurnel jorth's foreman. he seen y'u maulin' of ellen jorth. an' when he tells the kurnel an' tad jorth an' jackson jorth! ... haw! haw! haw! why, hell 'd be a cooler place fer yu then this heah tonto.' "greaves an' his gang hed come round, sure tickled clean to thar gizzards at this mess. i noticed, howsomever, thet they was texans enough to keep back to one side in case this isbel started any action.... wal, isbel took a look at lorenzo. then with one swift grab he jerked the little greaser off his feet an' pulled him close. lorenzo stopped grinnin'. he began to look a leetle sick. but it was plain he hed right on his side. "'you say you saw me?' demanded isbel. "'si, senor,' replied lorenzo. "what did you see?' "'i see senor an' senorita. i hide by manzanita. i see senorita like grande senor ver mooch. she like senor keese. she--' "then isbel hit the little greaser a back-handed crack in the mouth. sure it was a crack! lorenzo went over the counter backward an' landed like a pack load of wood. an' he didn't git up. "'mister bruce,' said isbel, 'an' you fellars who heerd thet lyin' greaser, i did meet ellen jorth. an' i lost my head. i 'i kissed her.... but it was an accident. i meant no insult. i apologized--i tried to explain my crazy action.... thet was all. the greaser lied. ellen jorth was kind enough to show me the trail. we talked a little. then--i suppose--because she was young an' pretty an' sweet--i lost my head. she was absolutely innocent. thet damned greaser told a bare-faced lie when he said she liked me. the fact was she despised me. she said so. an' when she learned i was jean isbel she turned her back on me an' walked away."' at this point of his narrative the old man halted as if to impress ellen not only with what just had been told, but particularly with what was to follow. the reciting of this tale had evidently given sprague an unconscious pleasure. he glowed. he seemed to carry the burden of a secret that he yearned to divulge. as for ellen, she was deadlocked in breathless suspense. all her emotions waited for the end. she begged sprague to hurry. "wal, i wish i could skip the next chapter an' hev only the last to tell," rejoined the old man, and he put a heavy, but solicitous, hand upon hers.... simm bruce haw-hawed loud an' loud.... 'say, nez perce,' he calls out, most insolent-like, 'we air too good sheepmen heah to hev the wool pulled over our eyes. we shore know what y'u meant by ellen jorth. but y'u wasn't smart when y'u told her y'u was jean isbel! ... haw-haw!' "isbel flashed a strange, surprised look from the red-faced bruce to greaves and to the other men. i take it he was wonderin' if he'd heerd right or if they'd got the same hunch thet 'd come to him. an' i reckon he determined to make sure. "'why wasn't i smart?' he asked. "'shore y'u wasn't smart if y'u was aimin' to be one of ellen jorth's lovers,' said bruce, with a leer. 'fer if y'u hedn't give y'urself away y'u could hev been easy enough.' "thar was no mistakin' bruce's meanin' an' when he got it out some of the men thar laughed. isbel kept lookin' from one to another of them. then facin' greaves, he said, deliberately: 'greaves, this drunken bruce is excuse enough fer a show-down. i take it that you are sheepmen, an' you're goin' on jorth's side of the fence in the matter of this sheep rangin'.' "'wal, nez perce, i reckon you hit plumb center,' said greaves, dryly. he spread wide his big hands to the other men, as if to say they'd might as well own the jig was up. "'all right. you're jorth's backers. have any of you a word to say in ellen jorth's defense? i tell you the mexican lied. believin' me or not doesn't matter. but this vile-mouthed bruce hinted against thet girl's honor.' "ag'in some of the men laughed, but not so noisy, an' there was a nervous shufflin' of feet. isbel looked sort of queer. his neck had a bulge round his collar. an' his eyes was like black coals of fire. greaves spread his big hands again, as if to wash them of this part of the dirty argument. "'when it comes to any wimmen i pass--much less play a hand fer a wildcat like jorth's gurl,' said greaves, sort of cold an' thick. 'bruce shore ought to know her. accordin' to talk heahaboots an' what he says, ellen jorth has been his gurl fer two years.' "then isbel turned his attention to bruce an' i fer one begun to shake in my boots. "'say thet to me!' he called. "'shore she's my gurl, an' thet's why im a-goin' to hev y'u run off this range.' "isbel jumped at bruce. 'you damned drunken cur! you vile-mouthed liar! ... i may be an isbel, but by god you cain't slander thet girl to my face! ... then he moved so quick i couldn't see what he did. but i heerd his fist hit bruce. it sounded like an ax ag'in' a beef. bruce fell clear across the room. an' by jinny when he landed isbel was thar. as bruce staggered up, all bloody-faced, bellowin' an' spittin' out teeth isbel eyed greaves's crowd an' said: 'if any of y'u make a move it 'll mean gun-play.' nobody moved, thet's sure. in fact, none of greaves's outfit was packin' guns, at least in sight. when bruce got all the way up--he's a tall fellar--why isbel took a full swing at him an' knocked him back across the room ag'in' the counter. y'u know when a fellar's hurt by the way he yells. bruce got thet second smash right on his big red nose.... i never seen any one so quick as isbel. he vaulted over thet counter jest the second bruce fell back on it, an' then, with greaves's gang in front so he could catch any moves of theirs, he jest slugged bruce right an' left, an' banged his head on the counter. then as bruce sunk limp an' slipped down, lookin' like a bloody sack, isbel let him fall to the floor. then he vaulted back over the counter. wipin' the blood off his hands, he throwed his kerchief down in bruce's face. bruce wasn't dead or bad hurt. he'd jest been beaten bad. he was moanin' an' slobberin'. isbel kicked him, not hard, but jest sort of disgustful. then he faced thet crowd. 'greaves, thet's what i think of your simm bruce. tell him next time he sees me to run or pull a gun.' an' then isbel grabbed his rifle an' package off the counter an' went out. he didn't even look back. i seen him nount his horse an' ride away.... now, girl, what hev you to say?" ellen could only say good-by and the word was so low as to be almost inaudible. she ran to her burro. she could not see very clearly through tear-blurred eyes, and her shaking fingers were all thumbs. it seemed she had to rush away--somewhere, anywhere--not to get away from old john sprague, but from herself--this palpitating, bursting self whose feet stumbled down the trail. all--all seemed ended for her. that interminable story! it had taken so long. and every minute of it she had been helplessly torn asunder by feelings she had never known she possessed. this ellen jorth was an unknown creature. she sobbed now as she dragged the burro down the canyon trail. she sat down only to rise. she hurried only to stop. driven, pursued, barred, she had no way to escape the flaying thoughts, no time or will to repudiate them. the death of her girlhood, the rending aside of a veil of maiden mystery only vaguely instinctively guessed, the barren, sordid truth of her life as seen by her enlightened eyes, the bitter realization of the vileness of men of her clan in contrast to the manliness and chivalry of an enemy, the hard facts of unalterable repute as created by slander and fostered by low minds, all these were forces in a cataclysm that had suddenly caught her heart and whirled her through changes immense and agonizing, to bring her face to face with reality, to force upon her suspicion and doubt of all she had trusted, to warn her of the dark, impending horror of a tragic bloody feud, and lastly to teach her the supreme truth at once so glorious and so terrible--that she could not escape the doom of womanhood. about noon that day ellen jorth arrived at the knoll, which was the location of her father's ranch. three canyons met there to form a larger one. the knoll was a symmetrical hill situated at the mouth of the three canyons. it was covered with brush and cedars, with here and there lichened rocks showing above the bleached grass. below the knoll was a wide, grassy flat or meadow through which a willow-bordered stream cut its rugged boulder-strewn bed. water flowed abundantly at this season, and the deep washes leading down from the slopes attested to the fact of cloudbursts and heavy storms. this meadow valley was dotted with horses and cattle, and meandered away between the timbered slopes to lose itself in a green curve. a singular feature of this canyon was that a heavy growth of spruce trees covered the slope facing northwest; and the opposite slope, exposed to the sun and therefore less snowbound in winter, held a sparse growth of yellow pines. the ranch house of colonel jorth stood round the rough corner of the largest of the three canyons, and rather well hidden, it did not obtrude its rude and broken-down log cabins, its squalid surroundings, its black mud-holes of corrals upon the beautiful and serene meadow valley. ellen jorth approached her home slowly, with dragging, reluctant steps; and never before in the three unhappy years of her existence there had the ranch seemed so bare, so uncared for, so repugnant to her. as she had seen herself with clarified eyes, so now she saw her home. the cabin that ellen lived in with her father was a single-room structure with one door and no windows. it was about twenty feet square. the huge, ragged, stone chimney had been built on the outside, with the wide open fireplace set inside the logs. smoke was rising from the chimney. as ellen halted at the door and began unpacking her burro she heard the loud, lazy laughter of men. an adjoining log cabin had been built in two sections, with a wide roofed hall or space between them. the door in each cabin faced the other, and there was a tall man standing in one. ellen recognized daggs, a neighbor sheepman, who evidently spent more time with her father than at his own home, wherever that was. ellen had never seen it. she heard this man drawl, "jorth, heah's your kid come home." ellen carried her bed inside the cabin, and unrolled it upon a couch built of boughs in the far corner. she had forgotten jean isbel's package, and now it fell out under her sight. quickly she covered it. a mexican woman, relative of antonio, and the only servant about the place, was squatting indian fashion before the fireplace, stirring a pot of beans. she and ellen did not get along well together, and few words ever passed between them. ellen had a canvas curtain stretched upon a wire across a small triangular corner, and this afforded her a little privacy. her possessions were limited in number. the crude square table she had constructed herself. upon it was a little old-fashioned walnut-framed mirror, a brush and comb, and a dilapidated ebony cabinet which contained odds and ends the sight of which always brought a smile of derisive self-pity to her lips. under the table stood an old leather trunk. it had come with her from texas, and contained clothing and belongings of her mother's. above the couch on pegs hung her scant wardrobe. a tiny shelf held several worn-out books. when her father slept indoors, which was seldom except in winter, he occupied a couch in the opposite corner. a rude cupboard had been built against the logs next to the fireplace. it contained supplies and utensils. toward the center, somewhat closer to the door, stood a crude table and two benches. the cabin was dark and smelled of smoke, of the stale odors of past cooked meals, of the mustiness of dry, rotting timber. streaks of light showed through the roof where the rough-hewn shingles had split or weathered. a strip of bacon hung upon one side of the cupboard, and upon the other a haunch of venison. ellen detested the mexican woman because she was dirty. the inside of the cabin presented the same unkempt appearance usual to it after ellen had been away for a few days. whatever ellen had lost during the retrogression of the jorths, she had kept her habits of cleanliness, and straightway upon her return she set to work. the mexican woman sullenly slouched away to her own quarters outside and ellen was left to the satisfaction of labor. her mind was as busy as her hands. as she cleaned and swept and dusted she heard from time to time the voices of men, the clip-clop of shod horses, the bellow of cattle. and a considerable time elapsed before she was disturbed. a tall shadow darkened the doorway. "howdy, little one!" said a lazy, drawling voice. "so y'u-all got home?" ellen looked up. a superbly built man leaned against the doorpost. like most texans, he was light haired and light eyed. his face was lined and hard. his long, sandy mustache hid his mouth and drooped with a curl. spurred, booted, belted, packing a heavy gun low down on his hip, he gave ellen an entirely new impression. indeed, she was seeing everything strangely. "hello, daggs!" replied ellen. "where's my dad?" "he's playin' cairds with jackson an' colter. shore's playin' bad, too, an' it's gone to his haid." "gamblin'?" queried ellen. "mah child, when'd kurnel jorth ever play for fun?" said daggs, with a lazy laugh. "there's a stack of gold on the table. reckon yo' uncle jackson will win it. colter's shore out of luck." daggs stepped inside. he was graceful and slow. his long' spurs clinked. he laid a rather compelling hand on ellen's shoulder. "heah, mah gal, give us a kiss," he said. "daggs, i'm not your girl," replied ellen as she slipped out from under his hand. then daggs put his arm round her, not with violence or rudeness, but with an indolent, affectionate assurance, at once bold and self-contained. ellen, however, had to exert herself to get free of him, and when she had placed the table between them she looked him square in the eyes. "daggs, y'u keep your paws off me," she said. "aw, now, ellen, i ain't no bear," he remonstrated. "what's the matter, kid?" "i'm not a kid. and there's nothin' the matter. y'u're to keep your hands to yourself, that's all." he tried to reach her across the table, and his movements were lazy and slow, like his smile. his tone was coaxing. "mah dear, shore you set on my knee just the other day, now, didn't you?" ellen felt the blood sting her cheeks. "i was a child," she returned. "wal, listen to this heah grown-up young woman. all in a few days! ... doon't be in a temper, ellen.... come, give us a kiss." she deliberately gazed into his eyes. like the eyes of an eagle, they were clear and hard, just now warmed by the dalliance of the moment, but there was no light, no intelligence in them to prove he understood her. the instant separated ellen immeasurably from him and from all of his ilk. "daggs, i was a child," she said. "i was lonely--hungry for affection--i was innocent. then i was careless, too, and thoughtless when i should have known better. but i hardly understood y'u men. i put such thoughts out of my mind. i know now--know what y'u mean--what y'u have made people believe i am." "ahuh! shore i get your hunch," he returned, with a change of tone. "but i asked you to marry me?" "yes y'u did. the first day y'u got heah to my dad's house. and y'u asked me to marry y'u after y'u found y'u couldn't have your way with me. to y'u the one didn't mean any more than the other." "shore i did more than simm bruce an' colter," he retorted. "they never asked you to marry." "no, they didn't. and if i could respect them at all i'd do it because they didn't ask me." "wal, i'll be dog-goned!" ejaculated daggs, thoughtfully, as he stroked his long mustache. "i'll say to them what i've said to y'u," went on ellen. "i'll tell dad to make y'u let me alone. i wouldn't marry one of y'u--y'u loafers to save my life. i've my suspicions about y'u. y'u're a bad lot." daggs changed subtly. the whole indolent nonchalance of the man vanished in an instant. "wal, miss jorth, i reckon you mean we're a bad lot of sheepmen?" he queried, in the cool, easy speech of a texan. "no," flashed ellen. "shore i don't say sheepmen. i say y'u're a bad lot." "oh, the hell you say!" daggs spoke as he might have spoken to a man; then turning swiftly on his heel he left her. outside he encountered ellen's father. she heard daggs speak: "lee, your little wildcat is shore heah. an' take mah hunch. somebody has been talkin' to her." "who has?" asked her father, in his husky voice. ellen knew at once that he had been drinking. "lord only knows," replied daggs. "but shore it wasn't any friends of ours." "we cain't stop people's tongues," said jorth, resignedly "wal, i ain't so shore," continued daggs, with his slow, cool laugh. "reckon i never yet heard any daid men's tongues wag." then the musical tinkle of his spurs sounded fainter. a moment later ellen's father entered the cabin. his dark, moody face brightened at sight of her. ellen knew she was the only person in the world left for him to love. and she was sure of his love. her very presence always made him different. and through the years, the darker their misfortunes, the farther he slipped away from better days, the more she loved him. "hello, my ellen!" he said, and he embraced her. when he had been drinking he never kissed her. "shore i'm glad you're home. this heah hole is bad enough any time, but when you're gone it's black.... i'm hungry." ellen laid food and drink on the table; and for a little while she did not look directly at him. she was concerned about this new searching power of her eyes. in relation to him she vaguely dreaded it. lee jorth had once been a singularly handsome man. he was tall, but did not have the figure of a horseman. his dark hair was streaked with gray, and was white over his ears. his face was sallow and thin, with deep lines. under his round, prominent, brown eyes, like deadened furnaces, were blue swollen welts. he had a bitter mouth and weak chin, not wholly concealed by gray mustache and pointed beard. he wore a long frock coat and a wide-brimmed sombrero, both black in color, and so old and stained and frayed that along with the fashion of them they betrayed that they had come from texas with him. jorth always persisted in wearing a white linen shirt, likewise a relic of his southern prosperity, and to-day it was ragged and soiled as usual. ellen watched her father eat and waited for him to speak. it occured to her strangely that he never asked about the sheep or the new-born lambs. she divined with a subtle new woman's intuition that he cared nothing for his sheep. "ellen, what riled daggs?" inquired her father, presently. "he shore had fire in his eye." long ago ellen had betrayed an indignity she had suffered at the hands of a man. her father had nearly killed him. since then she had taken care to keep her troubles to herself. if her father had not been blind and absorbed in his own brooding he would have seen a thousand things sufficient to inflame his southern pride and temper. "daggs asked me to marry him again and i said he belonged to a bad lot," she replied. jorth laughed in scorn. "fool! my god! ellen, i must have dragged you low--that every damned ru--er--sheepman--who comes along thinks he can marry you." at the break in his words, the incompleted meaning, ellen dropped her eyes. little things once never noted by her were now come to have a fascinating significance. "never mind, dad," she replied. "they cain't marry me." "daggs said somebody had been talkin' to you. how aboot that?" "old john sprague has just gotten back from grass valley," said ellen. "i stopped in to see him. shore he told me all the village gossip." "anythin' to interest me?" he queried, darkly. "yes, dad, i'm afraid a good deal," she said, hesitatingly. then in accordance with a decision ellen had made she told him of the rumored war between sheepmen and cattlemen; that old isbel had blaisdell, gordon, fredericks, blue and other well-known ranchers on his side; that his son jean isbel had come from oregon with a wonderful reputation as fighter and scout and tracker; that it was no secret how colonel lee jorth was at the head of the sheepmen; that a bloody war was sure to come. "hah!" exclaimed jorth, with a stain of red in his sallow cheek. "reckon none of that is news to me. i knew all that." ellen wondered if he had heard of her meeting with jean isbel. if not he would hear as soon as simm bruce and lorenzo came back. she decided to forestall them. "dad, i met jean isbel. he came into my camp. asked the way to the rim. i showed him. we--we talked a little. and shore were gettin' acquainted when--when he told me who he was. then i left him--hurried back to camp." "colter met isbel down in the woods," replied jorth, ponderingly. "said he looked like an indian--a hard an' slippery customer to reckon with." "shore i guess i can indorse what colter said," returned ellen, dryly. she could have laughed aloud at her deceit. still she had not lied. "how'd this heah young isbel strike you?" queried her father, suddenly glancing up at her. ellen felt the slow, sickening, guilty rise of blood in her face. she was helpless to stop it. but her father evidently never saw it. he was looking at her without seeing her. "he--he struck me as different from men heah," she stammered. "did sprague tell you aboot this half-indian isbel--aboot his reputation?" "yes." "did he look to you like a real woodsman?" "indeed he did. he wore buckskin. he stepped quick and soft. he acted at home in the woods. he had eyes black as night and sharp as lightnin'. they shore saw about all there was to see." jorth chewed at his mustache and lost himself in brooding thought. "dad, tell me, is there goin' to be a war?" asked ellen, presently. what a red, strange, rolling flash blazed in his eyes! his body jerked. "shore. you might as well know." "between sheepmen and cattlemen?" "yes." "with y'u, dad, at the haid of one faction and gaston isbel the other?" "daughter, you have it correct, so far as you go." "oh! ... dad, can't this fight be avoided?" "you forget you're from texas," he replied. "cain't it be helped?" she repeated, stubbornly. "no!" he declared, with deep, hoarse passion. "why not?" "wal, we sheepmen are goin' to run sheep anywhere we like on the range. an' cattlemen won't stand for that." "but, dad, it's so foolish," declared ellen, earnestly. "y'u sheepmen do not have to run sheep over the cattle range." "i reckon we do." "dad, that argument doesn't go with me. i know the country. for years to come there will be room for both sheep and cattle without overrunnin'. if some of the range is better in water and grass, then whoever got there first should have it. that shore is only fair. it's common sense, too." "ellen, i reckon some cattle people have been prejudicin' you," said jorth, bitterly. "dad!" she cried, hotly. this had grown to be an ordeal for jorth. he seemed a victim of contending tides of feeling. some will or struggle broke within him and the change was manifest. haggard, shifty-eyed, with wabbling chin, he burst into speech. "see heah, girl. you listen. there's a clique of ranchers down in the basin, all those you named, with isbel at their haid. they have resented sheepmen comin' down into the valley. they want it all to themselves. that's the reason. shore there's another. all the isbels are crooked. they're cattle an' horse thieves--have been for years. gaston isbel always was a maverick rustler. he's gettin' old now an' rich, so he wants to cover his tracks. he aims to blame this cattle rustlin' an' horse stealin' on to us sheepmen, an' run us out of the country." gravely ellen jorth studied her father's face, and the newly found truth-seeing power of her eyes did not fail her. in part, perhaps in all, he was telling lies. she shuddered a little, loyally battling against the insidious convictions being brought to fruition. perhaps in his brooding over his failures and troubles he leaned toward false judgments. ellen could not attach dishonor to her father's motives or speeches. for long, however, something about him had troubled her, perplexed her. fearfully she believed she was coming to some revelation, and, despite her keen determination to know, she found herself shrinking. "dad, mother told me before she died that the isbels had ruined you," said ellen, very low. it hurt her so to see her father cover his face that she could hardly go on. "if they ruined you they ruined all of us. i know what we had once--what we lost again and again--and i see what we are come to now. mother hated the isbels. she taught me to hate the very name. but i never knew how they ruined you--or why--or when. and i want to know now." then it was not the face of a liar that jorth disclosed. the present was forgotten. he lived in the past. he even seemed younger 'in the revivifying flash of hate that made his face radiant. the lines burned out. hate gave him back the spirit of his youth. "gaston isbel an' i were boys together in weston, texas," began jorth, in swift, passionate voice. "we went to school together. we loved the same girl--your mother. when the war broke out she was engaged to isbel. his family was rich. they influenced her people. but she loved me. when isbel went to war she married me. he came back an' faced us. god! i'll never forget that. your mother confessed her unfaithfulness--by heaven! she taunted him with it. isbel accused me of winnin' her by lies. but she took the sting out of that. "isbel never forgave her an' he hounded me to ruin. he made me out a card-sharp, cheatin' my best friends. i was disgraced. later he tangled me in the courts--he beat me out of property--an' last by convictin' me of rustlin' cattle he run me out of texas." black and distorted now, jorth's face was a spectacle to make ellen sick with a terrible passion of despair and hate. the truth of her father's ruin and her own were enough. what mattered all else? jorth beat the table with fluttering, nerveless hands that seemed all the more significant for their lack of physical force. "an' so help me god, it's got to be wiped out in blood!" he hissed. that was his answer to the wavering and nobility of ellen. and she in her turn had no answer to make. she crept away into the corner behind the curtain, and there on her couch in the semidarkness she lay with strained heart, and a resurging, unconquerable tumult in her mind. and she lay there from the middle of that afternoon until the next morning. when she awakened she expected to be unable to rise--she hoped she could not--but life seemed multiplied in her, and inaction was impossible. something young and sweet and hopeful that had been in her did not greet the sun this morning. in their place was a woman's passion to learn for herself, to watch events, to meet what must come, to survive. after breakfast, at which she sat alone, she decided to put isbel's package out of the way, so that it would not be subjecting her to continual annoyance. the moment she picked it up the old curiosity assailed her. "shore i'll see what it is, anyway," she muttered, and with swift hands she opened the package. the action disclosed two pairs of fine, soft shoes, of a style she had never seen, and four pairs of stockings, two of strong, serviceable wool, and the others of a finer texture. ellen looked at them in amaze. of all things in the world, these would have been the last she expected to see. and, strangely, they were what she wanted and needed most. naturally, then, ellen made the mistake of taking them in her hands to feel their softness and warmth. "shore! he saw my bare legs! and he brought me these presents he'd intended for his sister.... he was ashamed for me--sorry for me.... and i thought he looked at me bold-like, as i'm used to be looked at heah! isbel or not, he's shore..." but ellen jorth could not utter aloud the conviction her intelligence tried to force upon her. "it'd be a pity to burn them," she mused. "i cain't do it. sometime i might send them to ann isbel." whereupon she wrapped them up again and hid them in the bottom of the old trunk, and slowly, as she lowered the lid, looking darkly, blankly at the wall, she whispered: "jean isbel! ... i hate him!" later when ellen went outdoors she carried her rifle, which was unusual for her, unless she intended to go into the woods. the morning was sunny and warm. a group of shirt-sleeved men lounged in the hall and before the porch of the double cabin. her father was pacing up and down, talking forcibly. ellen heard his hoarse voice. as she approached he ceased talking and his listeners relaxed their attention. ellen's glance ran over them swiftly--daggs, with his superb head, like that of a hawk, uncovered to the sun; colter with his lowered, secretive looks, his sand-gray lean face; jackson jorth, her uncle, huge, gaunt, hulking, with white in his black beard and hair, and the fire of a ghoul in his hollow eyes; tad jorth, another brother of her father's, younger, red of eye and nose, a weak-chinned drinker of rum. three other limber-legged texans lounged there, partners of daggs, and they were sun-browned, light-haired, blue-eyed men singularly alike in appearance, from their dusty high-heeled boots to their broad black sombreros. they claimed to be sheepmen. all ellen could be sure of was that rock wells spent most of his time there, doing nothing but look for a chance to waylay her; springer was a gambler; and the third, who answered to the strange name of queen, was a silent, lazy, watchful-eyed man who never wore a glove on his right hand and who never was seen without a gun within easy reach of that hand. "howdy, ellen. shore you ain't goin' to say good mawnin' to this heah bad lot?" drawled daggs, with good-natured sarcasm. "why, shore! good morning, y'u hard-working industrious manana sheep raisers," replied ellen, coolly. daggs stared. the others appeared taken back by a greeting so foreign from any to which they were accustomed from her. jackson jorth let out a gruff haw-haw. some of them doffed their sombreros, and rock wells managed a lazy, polite good morning. ellen's father seemed most significantly struck by her greeting, and the least amused. "ellen, i'm not likin' your talk," he said, with a frown. "dad, when y'u play cards don't y'u call a spade a spade?" "why, shore i do." "well, i'm calling spades spades." "ahuh!" grunted jorth, furtively dropping his eyes. "where you goin' with your gun? i'd rather you hung round heah now." "reckon i might as well get used to packing my gun all the time," replied ellen. "reckon i'll be treated more like a man." then the event ellen had been expecting all morning took place. simm bruce and lorenzo rode around the slope of the knoll and trotted toward the cabin. interest in ellen was relegated to the background. "shore they're bustin' with news," declared daggs. "they been ridin' some, you bet," remarked another. "huh!" exclaimed jorth. "bruce shore looks queer to me." "red liquor," said tad jorth, sententiously. "you-all know the brand greaves hands out." "naw, simm ain't drunk," said jackson jorth. "look at his bloody shirt." the cool, indolent interest of the crowd vanished at the red color pointed out by jackson jorth. daggs rose in a single springy motion to his lofty height. the face bruce turned to jorth was swollen and bruised, with unhealed cuts. where his right eye should have been showed a puffed dark purple bulge. his other eye, however, gleamed with hard and sullen light. he stretched a big shaking hand toward jorth. "thet nez perce isbel beat me half to death," he bellowed. jorth stared hard at the tragic, almost grotesque figure, at the battered face. but speech failed him. it was daggs who answered bruce. "wal, simm, i'll be damned if you don't look it." "beat you! what with?" burst out jorth, explosively. "i thought he was swingin' an ax, but greaves swore it was his fists," bawled bruce, in misery and fury. "where was your gun?" queried jorth, sharply. "gun? hell!" exclaimed bruce, flinging wide his arms. "ask lorenzo. he had a gun. an' he got a biff in the jaw before my turn come. ask him?" attention thus directed to the mexican showed a heavy discolored swelling upon the side of his olive-skinned face. lorenzo looked only serious. "hah! speak up," shouted jorth, impatiently. "senor isbel heet me ver quick," replied lorenzo, with expressive gesture. "i see thousand stars--then moocho black--all like night." at that some of daggs's men lolled back with dry crisp laughter. daggs's hard face rippled with a smile. but there was no humor in anything for colonel jorth. "tell us what come off. quick!" he ordered. "where did it happen? why? who saw it? what did you do?" bruce lapsed into a sullen impressiveness. "wal, i happened in greaves's store an' run into jean isbel. shore was lookin' fer him. i had my mind made up what to do, but i got to shootin' off my gab instead of my gun. i called him nez perce--an' i throwed all thet talk in his face about old gass isbel sendin' fer him---an' i told him he'd git run out of the tonto. reckon i was jest warmin' up.... but then it all happened. he slugged lorenzo jest one. an' lorenzo slid peaceful-like to bed behind the counter. i hadn't time to think of throwin' a gun before he whaled into me. he knocked out two of my teeth. an' i swallered one of them." ellen stood in the background behind three of the men and in the shadow. she did not join in the laugh that followed bruce's remarks. she had known that he would lie. uncertain yet of her reaction to this, but more bitter and furious as he revealed his utter baseness, she waited for more to be said. "wal, i'll be doggoned," drawled daggs. "what do you make of this kind of fightin'?" queried jorth, "darn if i know," replied daggs in perplexity. "shore an' sartin it's not the way of a texan. mebbe this young isbel really is what old gass swears he is. shore bruce ain't nothin' to give an edge to a real gun fighter. looks to me like isbel bluffed greaves an' his gang an' licked your men without throwin' a gun." "maybe isbel doesn't want the name of drawin' first blood," suggested jorth. "that 'd be like gass," spoke up rock wells, quietly. "i onct rode fer gass in texas." "say, bruce," said daggs, "was this heah palaverin' of yours an' jean isbel's aboot the old stock dispute? aboot his father's range an' water? an' partickler aboot, sheep?" "wal--i--i yelled a heap," declared bruce, haltingly, "but i don't recollect all i said--i was riled.... shore, though it was the same old argyment thet's been fetchin' us closer an' closer to trouble." daggs removed his keen hawklike gaze from bruce. "wal, jorth, all i'll say is this. if bruce is tellin' the truth we ain't got a hell of a lot to fear from this young isbel. i've known a heap of gun fighters in my day. an' jean isbel don't ran true to class. shore there never was a gunman who'd risk cripplin' his right hand by sluggin' anybody." "wal," broke in bruce, sullenly. "you-all can take it daid straight or not. i don't give a damn. but you've shore got my hunch thet nez perce isbel is liable to handle any of you fellars jest as he did me, an' jest as easy. what's more, he's got greaves figgered. an' you-all know thet greaves is as deep in--" "shut up that kind of gab," demanded jorth, stridently. "an' answer me. was the row in greaves's barroom aboot sheep?" "aw, hell! i said so, didn't i?" shouted bruce, with a fierce uplift of his distorted face. ellen strode out from the shadow of the tall men who had obscured her. "bruce, y'u're a liar," she said, bitingly. the surprise of her sudden appearance seemed to root bruce to the spot. all but the discolored places on his face turned white. he held his breath a moment, then expelled it hard. his effort to recover from the shock was painfully obvious. he stammered incoherently. "shore y'u're more than a liar, too," cried ellen, facing him with blazing eyes. and the rifle, gripped in both hands, seemed to declare her intent of menace. "that row was not about sheep.... jean isbel didn't beat y'u for anythin' about sheep.... old john sprague was in greaves's store. he heard y'u. he saw jean isbel beat y'u as y'u deserved.... an' he told me!" ellen saw bruce shrink in fear of his life; and despite her fury she was filled with disgust that he could imagine she would have his blood on her hands. then she divined that bruce saw more in the gathering storm in her father's eyes than he had to fear from her. "girl, what the hell are y'u sayin'?" hoarsely called jorth, in dark amaze. "dad, y'u leave this to me," she retorted. daggs stepped beside jorth, significantly on his right side. "let her alone lee," he advised, coolly. "she's shore got a hunch on bruce." "simm bruce, y'u cast a dirty slur on my name," cried ellen, passionately. it was then that daggs grasped jorth's right arm and held it tight, "jest what i thought," he said. "stand still, lee. let's see the kid make him showdown." "that's what jean isbel beat y'u for," went on ellen. "for slandering a girl who wasn't there.... me! y'u rotten liar!" "but, ellen, it wasn't all lies," said bruce, huskily. "i was half drunk--an' horrible jealous.... you know lorenzo seen isbel kissin' you. i can prove thet." ellen threw up her head and a scarlet wave of shame and wrath flooded her face. "yes," she cried, ringingly. "he saw jean isbel kiss me. once! ... an' it was the only decent kiss i've had in years. he meant no insult. i didn't know who he was. an' through his kiss i learned a difference between men.... y'u made lorenzo lie. an' if i had a shred of good name left in grass valley you dishonored it.... y'u made him think i was your girl! damn y'u! i ought to kill y'u.... eat your words now--take them back--or i'll cripple y'u for life!" ellen lowered the cocked rifle toward his feet. "shore, ellen, i take back--all i said," gulped bruce. he gazed at the quivering rifle barrel and then into the face of ellen's father. instinct told him where his real peril lay. here the cool and tactful daggs showed himself master of the situation. "heah, listen!" he called. "ellen, i reckon bruce was drunk an' out of his haid. he's shore ate his words. now, we don't want any cripples in this camp. let him alone. your dad got me heah to lead the jorths, an' that's my say to you.... simm, you're shore a low-down lyin' rascal. keep away from ellen after this or i'll bore you myself.... jorth, it won't be a bad idee for you to forget you're a texan till you cool off. let bruce stop some isbel lead. shore the jorth-isbel war is aboot on, an' i reckon we'd be smart to believe old gass's talk aboot his nez perce son." chapter vi from this hour ellen jorth bent all of her lately awakened intelligence and will to the only end that seemed to hold possible salvation for her. in the crisis sure to come she did not want to be blind or weak. dreaming and indolence, habits born in her which were often a comfort to one as lonely as she, would ill fit her for the hard test she divined and dreaded. in the matter of her father's fight she must stand by him whatever the issue or the outcome; in what pertained to her own principles, her womanhood, and her soul she stood absolutely alone. therefore, ellen put dreams aside, and indolence of mind and body behind her. many tasks she found, and when these were done for a day she kept active in other ways, thus earning the poise and peace of labor. jorth rode off every day, sometimes with one or two of the men, often with a larger number. if he spoke of such trips to ellen it was to give an impression of visiting the ranches of his neighbors or the various sheep camps. often he did not return the day he left. when he did get back he smelled of rum and appeared heavy from need of sleep. his horses were always dust and sweat covered. during his absences ellen fell victim to anxious dread until he returned. daily he grew darker and more haggard of face, more obsessed by some impending fate. often he stayed up late, haranguing with the men in the dim-lit cabin, where they drank and smoked, but seldom gambled any more. when the men did not gamble something immediate and perturbing was on their minds. ellen had not yet lowered herself to the deceit and suspicion of eavesdropping, but she realized that there was a climax approaching in which she would deliberately do so. in those closing may days ellen learned the significance of many things that previously she had taken as a matter of course. her father did not run a ranch. there was absolutely no ranching done, and little work. often ellen had to chop wood herself. jorth did not possess a plow. ellen was bound to confess that the evidence of this lack dumfounded her. even old john sprague raised some hay, beets, turnips. jorth's cattle and horses fared ill during the winter. ellen remembered how they used to clean up four-inch oak saplings and aspens. many of them died in the snow. the flocks of sheep, however, were driven down into the basin in the fall, and across the reno pass to phoenix and maricopa. ellen could not discover a fence post on the ranch, nor a piece of salt for the horses and cattle, nor a wagon, nor any sign of a sheep-shearing outfit. she had never seen any sheep sheared. ellen could never keep track of the many and different horses running loose and hobbled round the ranch. there were droves of horses in the woods, and some of them wild as deer. according to her long-established understanding, her father and her uncles were keen on horse trading and buying. then the many trails leading away from the jorth ranch--these grew to have a fascination for ellen; and the time came when she rode out on them to see for herself where they led. the sheep ranch of daggs, supposed to be only a few miles across the ridges, down in bear canyon, never materialized at all for ellen. this circumstance so interested her that she went up to see her friend sprague and got him to direct her to bear canyon, so that she would be sure not to miss it. and she rode from the narrow, maple-thicketed head of it near the rim down all its length. she found no ranch, no cabin, not even a corral in bear canyon. sprague said there was only one canyon by that name. daggs had assured her of the exact location on his place, and so had her father. had they lied? were they mistaken in the canyon? there were many canyons, all heading up near the rim, all running and widening down for miles through the wooded mountain, and vastly different from the deep, short, yellow-walled gorges that cut into the rim from the basin side. ellen investigated the canyons within six or eight miles of her home, both to east and to west. all she discovered was a couple of old log cabins, long deserted. still, she did not follow out all the trails to their ends. several of them led far into the deepest, roughest, wildest brakes of gorge and thicket that she had seen. no cattle or sheep had ever been driven over these trails. this riding around of ellen's at length got to her father's ears. ellen expected that a bitter quarrel would ensue, for she certainly would refuse to be confined to the camp; but her father only asked her to limit her riding to the meadow valley, and straightway forgot all about it. in fact, his abstraction one moment, his intense nervousness the next, his harder drinking and fiercer harangues with the men, grew to be distressing for ellen. they presaged his further deterioration and the ever-present evil of the growing feud. one day jorth rode home in the early morning, after an absence of two nights. ellen heard the clip-clop of, horses long before she saw them. "hey, ellen! come out heah," called her father. ellen left her work and went outside. a stranger had ridden in with her father, a young giant whose sharp-featured face appeared marked by ferret-like eyes and a fine, light, fuzzy beard. he was long, loose jointed, not heavy of build, and he had the largest hands and feet ellen bad ever seen. next ellen espied a black horse they had evidently brought with them. her father was holding a rope halter. at once the black horse struck ellen as being a beauty and a thoroughbred. "ellen, heah's a horse for you," said jorth, with something of pride. "i made a trade. reckon i wanted him myself, but he's too gentle for me an' maybe a little small for my weight." delight visited ellen for the first time in many days. seldom had she owned a good horse, and never one like this. "oh, dad!" she exclaimed, in her gratitude. "shore he's yours on one condition," said her father. "what's that?" asked ellen, as she laid caressing hands on the restless horse. "you're not to ride him out of the canyon." "agreed.... all daid black, isn't he, except that white face? what's his name, dad? "i forgot to ask," replied jorth, as he began unsaddling his own horse. "slater, what's this heah black's name?" the lanky giant grinned. "i reckon it was spades." "spades?" ejaculated ellen, blankly. "what a name! ... well, i guess it's as good as any. he's shore black." "ellen, keep him hobbled when you're not ridin' him," was her father's parting advice as he walked off with the stranger. spades was wet and dusty and his satiny skin quivered. he had fine, dark, intelligent eyes that watched ellen's every move. she knew how her father and his friends dragged and jammed horses through the woods and over the rough trails. it did not take her long to discover that this horse had been a pet. ellen cleaned his coat and brushed him and fed him. then she fitted her bridle to suit his head and saddled him. his evident response to her kindness assured her that he was gentle, so she mounted and rode him, to discover he had the easiest gait she had ever experienced. he walked and trotted to suit her will, but when left to choose his own gait he fell into a graceful little pace that was very easy for her. he appeared quite ready to break into a run at her slightest bidding, but ellen satisfied herself on this first ride with his slower gaits. "spades, y'u've shore cut out my burro jinny," said ellen, regretfully. "well, i reckon women are fickle." next day she rode up the canyon to show spades to her friend john sprague. the old burro breeder was not at home. as his door was open, however, and a fire smoldering, ellen concluded he would soon return. so she waited. dismounting, she left spades free to graze on the new green grass that carpeted the ground. the cabin and little level clearing accentuated the loneliness and wildness of the forest. ellen always liked it here and had once been in the habit of visiting the old man often. but of late she had stayed away, for the reason that sprague's talk and his news and his poorly hidden pity depressed her. presently she heard hoof beats on the hard, packed trail leading down the canyon in the direction from which she had come. scarcely likely was it that sprague should return from this direction. ellen thought her father had sent one of the herders for her. but when she caught a glimpse of the approaching horseman, down in the aspens, she failed to recognize him. after he had passed one of the openings she heard his horse stop. probably the man had seen her; at least she could not otherwise account for his stopping. the glimpse she had of him had given her the impression that he was bending over, peering ahead in the trail, looking for tracks. then she heard the rider come on again, more slowly this time. at length the horse trotted out into the opening, to be hauled up short. ellen recognized the buckskin-clad figure, the broad shoulders, the dark face of jean isbel. ellen felt prey to the strangest quaking sensation she had ever suffered. it took violence of her new-born spirit to subdue that feeling. isbel rode slowly across the clearing toward her. for ellen his approach seemed singularly swift--so swift that her surprise, dismay, conjecture, and anger obstructed her will. the outwardly calm and cold ellen jorth was a travesty that mocked her--that she felt he would discern. the moment isbel drew close enough for ellen to see his face she experienced a strong, shuddering repetition of her first shock of recognition. he was not the same. the light, the youth was gone. this, however, did not cause her emotion. was it not a sudden transition of her nature to the dominance of hate? ellen seemed to feel the shadow of her unknown self standing with her. isbel halted his horse. ellen had been standing near the trunk of a fallen pine and she instinctively backed against it. how her legs trembled! isbel took off his cap and crushed it nervously in his bare, brown hand. "good mornin', miss ellen!" he said. ellen did not return his greeting, but queried, almost breathlessly, "did y'u come by our ranch?" "no. i circled," he replied. "jean isbel! what do y'u want heah?" she demanded. "don't you know?" he returned. his eyes were intensely black and piercing. they seemed to search ellen's very soul. to meet their gaze was an ordeal that only her rousing fury sustained. ellen felt on her lips a scornful allusion to his half-breed indian traits and the reputation that had preceded him. but she could not utter it. "no," she replied. "it's hard to call a woman a liar," he returned, bitterly. but you must be--seein' you're a jorth. "liar! not to y'u, jean isbel," she retorted. "i'd not lie to y'u to save my life." he studied her with keen, sober, moody intent. the dark fire of his eyes thrilled her. "if that's true, i'm glad," he said. "shore it's true. i've no idea why y'u came heah." ellen did have a dawning idea that she could not force into oblivion. but if she ever admitted it to her consciousness, she must fail in the contempt and scorn and fearlessness she chose to throw in this man's face. "does old sprague live here?" asked isbel. "yes. i expect him back soon.... did y'u come to see him?" "no.... did sprague tell you anythin' about the row he saw me in?" "he--did not," replied ellen, lying with stiff lips. she who had sworn she could not lie! she felt the hot blood leaving her heart, mounting in a wave. all her conscious will seemed impelled to deceive. what had she to hide from jean isbel? and a still, small voice replied that she had to hide the ellen jorth who had waited for him that day, who had spied upon him, who had treasured a gift she could not destroy, who had hugged to her miserable heart the fact that he had fought for her name. "i'm glad of that," isbel was saying, thoughtfully. "did you come heah to see me?" interrupted ellen. she felt that she could not endure this reiterated suggestion of fineness, of consideration in him. she would betray herself--betray what she did not even realize herself. she must force other footing--and that should be the one of strife between the jorths and isbels. "no--honest, i didn't, miss ellen," he rejoined, humbly. "i'll tell you, presently, why i came. but it wasn't to see you.... i don't deny i wanted ... but that's no matter. you didn't meet me that day on the rim." "meet y'u!" she echoed, coldly. "shore y'u never expected me?" "somehow i did," he replied, with those penetrating eyes on her. "i put somethin' in your tent that day. did you find it?" "yes," she replied, with the same casual coldness. "what did you do with it?" "i kicked it out, of course," she replied. she saw him flinch. "and you never opened it?" "certainly not," she retorted, as if forced. "doon't y'u know anythin' about--about people? ... shore even if y'u are an isbel y'u never were born in texas." "thank god i wasn't!" he replied. "i was born in a beautiful country of green meadows and deep forests and white rivers, not in a barren desert where men live dry and hard as the cactus. where i come from men don't live on hate. they can forgive." "forgive! ... could y'u forgive a jorth?" "yes, i could." "shore that's easy to say--with the wrongs all on your side," she declared, bitterly. "ellen jorth, the first wrong was on your side," retorted jean, his voice fall. "your father stole my father's sweetheart--by lies, by slander, by dishonor, by makin' terrible love to her in his absence." "it's a lie," cried ellen, passionately. "it is not," he declared, solemnly. "jean isbel, i say y'u lie!" "no! i say you've been lied to," he thundered. the tremendous force of his spirit seemed to fling truth at ellen. it weakened her. "but--mother loved dad--best." "yes, afterward. no wonder, poor woman! ... but it was the action of your father and your mother that ruined all these lives. you've got to know the truth, ellen jorth.... all the years of hate have borne their fruit. god almighty can never save us now. blood must be spilled. the jorths and the isbels can't live on the same earth.... and you've got to know the truth because the worst of this hell falls on you and me." the hate that he spoke of alone upheld her. "never, jean isbel!" she cried. "i'll never know truth from y'u.... i'll never share anythin' with y'u--not even hell." isbel dismounted and stood before her, still holding his bridle reins. the bay horse champed his bit and tossed his head. "why do you hate me so?" he asked. "i just happen to be my father's son. i never harmed you or any of your people. i met you ... fell in love with you in a flash--though i never knew it till after.... why do you hate me so terribly?" ellen felt a heavy, stifling pressure within her breast. "y'u're an isbel.... doon't speak of love to me." "i didn't intend to. but your--your hate seems unnatural. and we'll probably never meet again.... i can't help it. i love you. love at first sight! jean isbel and ellen jorth! strange, isn't it? ... it was all so strange. my meetin' you so lonely and unhappy, my seein' you so sweet and beautiful, my thinkin' you so good in spite of--" "shore it was strange," interrupted ellen, with scornful laugh. she had found her defense. in hurting him she could hide her own hurt. "thinking me so good in spite of-- ha-ha! and i said i'd been kissed before!" "yes, in spite of everything," he said. ellen could not look at him as he loomed over her. she felt a wild tumult in her heart. all that crowded to her lips for utterance was false. "yes--kissed before i met you--and since," she said, mockingly. "and i laugh at what y'u call love, jean isbel." "laugh if you want--but believe it was sweet, honorable--the best in me," he replied, in deep earnestness. "bah!" cried ellen, with all the force of her pain and shame and hate. "by heaven, you must be different from what i thought!" exclaimed isbel, huskily. "shore if i wasn't, i'd make myself.... now, mister jean isbel, get on your horse an' go!" something of composure came to ellen with these words of dismissal, and she glanced up at him with half-veiled eyes. his changed aspect prepared her for some blow. "that's a pretty black horse." "yes," replied ellen, blankly. "do you like him?" "i--i love him." "all right, i'll give him to you then. he'll have less work and kinder treatment than if i used him. i've got some pretty hard rides ahead of me." "y'u--y'u give--" whispered ellen, slowly stiffening. "yes. he's mine," replied isbel. with that he turned to whistle. spades threw up his head, snorted, and started forward at a trot. he came faster the closer he got, and if ever ellen saw the joy of a horse at sight of a beloved master she saw it then. isbel laid a hand on the animal's neck and caressed him, then, turning back to ellen, he went on speaking: "i picked him from a lot of fine horses of my father's. we got along well. my sister ann rode him a good deal.... he was stolen from our pasture day before yesterday. i took his trail and tracked him up here. never lost his trail till i got to your ranch, where i had to circle till i picked it up again." "stolen--pasture--tracked him up heah?" echoed ellen, without any evidence of emotion whatever. indeed, she seemed to have been turned to stone. "trackin' him was easy. i wish for your sake it 'd been impossible," he said, bluntly. "for my sake?" she echoed, in precisely the same tone, manifestly that tone irritated isbel beyond control. he misunderstood it. with a hand far from gentle he pushed her bent head back so he could look into her face. "yes, for your sake!" he declared, harshly. "haven't you sense enough to see that? ... what kind of a game do you think you can play with me?" "game i ... game of what?" she asked. "why, a--a game of ignorance--innocence--any old game to fool a man who's tryin' to be decent." this time ellen mutely looked her dull, blank questioning. and it inflamed isbel. "you know your father's a horse thief!" he thundered. outwardly ellen remained the same. she had been prepared for an unknown and a terrible blow. it had fallen. and her face, her body, her hands, locked with the supreme fortitude of pride and sustained by hate, gave no betrayal of the crashing, thundering ruin within her mind and soul. motionless she leaned there, meeting the piercing fire of isbel's eyes, seeing in them a righteous and terrible scorn. in one flash the naked truth seemed blazed at her. the faith she had fostered died a sudden death. a thousand perplexing problems were solved in a second of whirling, revealing thought. "ellen jorth, you know your father's in with this hash knife gang of rustlers," thundered isbel. "shore," she replied, with the cool, easy, careless defiance of a texan. "you know he's got this daggs to lead his faction against the isbels?" "shore." "you know this talk of sheepmen buckin' the cattlemen is all a blind?" "shore," reiterated ellen. isbel gazed darkly down upon her. with his anger spent for the moment, he appeared ready to end the interview. but he seemed fascinated by the strange look of her, by the incomprehensible something she emanated. havoc gleamed in his pale, set face. he shook his dark head and his broad hand went to his breast. "to think i fell in love with such as you!" he exclaimed, and his other hand swept out in a tragic gesture of helpless pathos and impotence. the hell isbel had hinted at now possessed ellen--body, mind, and soul. disgraced, scorned by an isbel! yet loved by him! in that divination there flamed up a wild, fierce passion to hurt, to rend, to flay, to fling back upon him a stinging agony. her thought flew upon her like whips. pride of the jorths! pride of the old texan blue blood! it lay dead at her feet, killed by the scornful words of the last of that family to whom she owed her degradation. daughter of a horse thief and rustler! dark and evil and grim set the forces within her, accepting her fate, damning her enemies, true to the blood of the jorths. the sins of the father must be visited upon the daughter. "shore y'u might have had me--that day on the rim--if y'u hadn't told your name," she said, mockingly, and she gazed into his eyes with all the mystery of a woman's nature. isbel's powerful frame shook as with an ague. "girl, what do you mean?" "shore, i'd have been plumb fond of havin' y'u make up to me," she drawled. it possessed her now with irresistible power, this fact of the love he could not help. some fiendish woman's satisfaction dwelt in her consciousness of her power to kill the noble, the faithful, the good in him. "ellen jorth, you lie!" he burst out, hoarsely. "jean, shore i'd been a toy and a rag for these rustlers long enough. i was tired of them.... i wanted a new lover.... and if y'u hadn't give yourself away--" isbel moved so swiftly that she did not realize his intention until his hard hand smote her mouth. instantly she tasted the hot, salty blood from a cut lip. "shut up, you hussy!" he ordered, roughly. "have you no shame? ... my sister ann spoke well of you. she made excuses--she pitied you." that for ellen seemed the culminating blow under which she almost sank. but one moment longer could she maintain this unnatural and terrible poise. "jean isbel--go along with y'u," she said, impatiently. "i'm waiting heah for simm bruce!" at last it was as if she struck his heart. because of doubt of himself and a stubborn faith in her, his passion and jealousy were not proof against this last stab. instinctive subtlety inherent in ellen had prompted the speech that tortured isbel. how the shock to him rebounded on her! she gasped as he lunged for her, too swift for her to move a hand. one arm crushed round her like a steel band; the other, hard across her breast and neck, forced her head back. then she tried to wrestle away. but she was utterly powerless. his dark face bent down closer and closer. suddenly ellen ceased trying to struggle. she was like a stricken creature paralyzed by the piercing, hypnotic eyes of a snake. yet in spite of her terror, if he meant death by her, she welcomed it. "ellen jorth, i'm thinkin' yet--you lie!" he said, low and tense between his teeth. "no! no!" she screamed, wildly. her nerve broke there. she could no longer meet those terrible black eyes. her passionate denial was not only the last of her shameful deceit; it was the woman of her, repudiating herself and him, and all this sickening, miserable situation. isbel took her literally. she had convinced him. and the instant held blank horror for ellen. "by god--then i'll have somethin'--of you anyway!" muttered isbel, thickly. ellen saw the blood bulge in his powerful neck. she saw his dark, hard face, strange now, fearful to behold, come lower and lower, till it blurred and obstructed her gaze. she felt the swell and ripple and stretch--then the bind of his muscles, like huge coils of elastic rope. then with savage rude force his mouth closed on hers. all ellen's senses reeled, as if she were swooning. she was suffocating. the spasm passed, and a bursting spurt of blood revived her to acute and terrible consciousness. for the endless period of one moment he held her so that her breast seemed crushed. his kisses burned and braised her lips. and then, shifting violently to her neck, they pressed so hard that she choked under them. it was as if a huge bat had fastened upon her throat. suddenly the remorseless binding embraces--the hot and savage kisses--fell away from her. isbel had let go. she saw him throw up his hands, and stagger back a little, all the while with his piercing gaze on her. his face had been dark purple: now it was white. "no--ellen jorth," he panted, "i don't--want any of you--that way." and suddenly he sank on the log and covered his face with his hands. "what i loved in you--was what i thought--you were." like a wildcat ellen sprang upon him, beating him with her fists, tearing at his hair, scratching his face, in a blind fury. isbel made no move to stop her, and her violence spent itself with her strength. she swayed back from him, shaking so that she could scarcely stand. "y'u--damned--isbel!" she gasped, with hoarse passion. "y'u insulted me!" "insulted you?..." laughed isbel, in bitter scorn. "it couldn't be done." "oh! ... i'll kill y'u!" she hissed. isbel stood up and wiped the red scratches on his face. "go ahead. there's my gun," he said, pointing to his saddle sheath. "somebody's got to begin this jorth-isbel feud. it'll be a dirty business. i'm sick of it already.... kill me! ... first blood for ellen jorth!" suddenly the dark grim tide that had seemed to engulf ellen's very soul cooled and receded, leaving her without its false strength. she began to sag. she stared at isbel's gun. "kill him," whispered the retreating voices of her hate. but she was as powerless as if she were still held in jean isbel's giant embrace. "i--i want to--kill y'u," she whispered, "but i cain't.... leave me." "you're no jorth--the same as i'm no isbel. we oughtn't be mixed in this deal," he said, somberly. "i'm sorrier for you than i am for myself.... you're a girl.... you once had a good mother--a decent home. and this life you've led here--mean as it's been--is nothin' to what you'll face now. damn the men that brought you to this! i'm goin' to kill some of them." with that he mounted and turned away. ellen called out for him to take his horse. he did not stop nor look back. she called again, but her voice was fainter, and isbel was now leaving at a trot. slowly she sagged against the tree, lower and lower. he headed into the trail leading up the canyon. how strange a relief ellen felt! she watched him ride into the aspens and start up the slope, at last to disappear in the pines. it seemed at the moment that he took with him something which had been hers. a pain in her head dulled the thoughts that wavered to and fro. after he had gone she could not see so well. her eyes were tired. what had happened to her? there was blood on her hands. isbel's blood! she shuddered. was it an omen? lower she sank against the tree and closed her eyes. old john sprague did not return. hours dragged by--dark hours for ellen jorth lying prostrate beside the tree, hiding the blue sky and golden sunlight from her eyes. at length the lethargy of despair, the black dull misery wore away; and she gradually returned to a condition of coherent thought. what had she learned? sight of the black horse grazing near seemed to prompt the trenchant replies. spades belonged to jean isbel. he had been stolen by her father or by one of her father's accomplices. isbel's vaunted cunning as a tracker had been no idle boast. her father was a horse thief, a rustler, a sheepman only as a blind, a consort of daggs, leader of the hash knife gang. ellen well remembered the ill repute of that gang, way back in texas, years ago. her father had gotten in with this famous band of rustlers to serve his own ends--the extermination of the isbels. it was all very plain now to ellen. "daughter of a horse thief an' rustler!" she muttered. and her thoughts sped back to the days of her girlhood. only the very early stage of that time had been happy. in the light of isbel's revelation the many changes of residence, the sudden moves to unsettled parts of texas, the periods of poverty and sudden prosperity, all leading to the final journey to this god-forsaken arizona--these were now seen in their true significance. as far back as she could remember her father had been a crooked man. and her mother had known it. he had dragged her to her ruin. that degradation had killed her. ellen realized that with poignant sorrow, with a sudden revolt against her father. had gaston isbel truly and dishonestly started her father on his downhill road? ellen wondered. she hated the isbels with unutterable and growing hate, yet she had it in her to think, to ponder, to weigh judgments in their behalf. she owed it to something in herself to be fair. but what did it matter who was to blame for the jorth-isbel feud? somehow ellen was forced to confess that deep in her soul it mattered terribly. to be true to herself--the self that she alone knew--she must have right on her side. if the jorths were guilty, and she clung to them and their creed, then she would be one of them. "but i'm not," she mused, aloud. "my name's jorth, an' i reckon i have bad blood.... but it never came out in me till to-day. i've been honest. i've been good--yes, good, as my mother taught me to be--in spite of all.... shore my pride made me a fool.... an' now have i any choice to make? i'm a jorth. i must stick to my father." all this summing up, however, did not wholly account for the pang in her breast. what had she done that day? and the answer beat in her ears like a great throbbing hammer-stroke. in an agony of shame, in the throes of hate, she had perjured herself. she had sworn away her honor. she had basely made herself vile. she had struck ruthlessly at the great heart of a man who loved her. ah! that thrust had rebounded to leave this dreadful pang in her breast. loved her? yes, the strange truth, the insupportable truth! she had to contend now, not with her father and her disgrace, not with the baffling presence of jean isbel, but with the mysteries of her own soul. wonder of all wonders was it that such love had been born for her. shame worse than all other shame was it that she should kill it by a poisoned lie. by what monstrous motive had she done that? to sting isbel as he had stung her! but that had been base. never could she have stopped so low except in a moment of tremendous tumult. if she had done sore injury to isbel what bad she done to herself? how strange, how tenacious had been his faith in her honor! could she ever forget? she must forget it. but she could never forget the way he had scorned those vile men in greaves's store--the way he had beaten bruce for defiling her name--the way he had stubbornly denied her own insinuations. she was a woman now. she had learned something of the complexity of a woman's heart. she could not change nature. and all her passionate being thrilled to the manhood of her defender. but even while she thrilled she acknowledged her hate. it was the contention between the two that caused the pang in her breast. "an' now what's left for me?" murmured ellen. she did not analyze the significance of what had prompted that query. the most incalculable of the day's disclosures was the wrong she had done herself. "shore i'm done for, one way or another.... i must stick to dad.... or kill myself?" ellen rode spades back to the ranch. she rode like the wind. when she swung out of the trail into the open meadow in plain sight of the ranch her appearance created a commotion among the loungers before the cabin. she rode spades at a full run. "who's after you?" yelled her father, as she pulled the black to a halt. jorth held a rifle. daggs, colter, the other jorths were there, likewise armed, and all watchful, strung with expectancy. "shore nobody's after me," replied ellen. "cain't i run a horse round heah without being chased?" jorth appeared both incensed and relieved. "hah! ... what you mean, girl, runnin' like a streak right down on us? you're actin' queer these days, an' you look queer. i'm not likin' it." "reckon these are queer times--for the jorths," replied ellen, sarcastically. "daggs found strange horse tracks crossin' the meadow," said her father. "an' that worried us. some one's been snoopin' round the ranch. an' when we seen you runnin' so wild we shore thought you was bein' chased." "no. i was only trying out spades to see how fast he could run," returned ellen. "reckon when we do get chased it'll take some running to catch me." "haw! haw!" roared daggs. "it shore will, ellen." "girl, it's not only your runnin' an' your looks that's queer," declared jorth, in dark perplexity. "you talk queer." "shore, dad, y'u're not used to hearing spades called spades," said ellen, as she dismounted. "humph!" ejaculated her father, as if convinced of the uselessness of trying to understand a woman. "say, did you see any strange horse tracks?" "i reckon i did. and i know who made them." jorth stiffened. all the men behind him showed a sudden intensity of suspense. "who?" demanded jorth. "shore it was jean isbel," replied ellen, coolly. "he came up heah tracking his black horse." "jean--isbel--trackin'--his--black horse," repeated her father. "yes. he's not overrated as a tracker, that's shore." blank silence ensued. ellen cast a slow glance over her father and the others, then she began to loosen the cinches of her saddle. presently jorth burst the silence with a curse, and daggs followed with one of his sardonic laughs. "wal, boss, what did i tell you?" he drawled. jorth strode to ellen, and, whirling her around with a strong hand, he held her facing him. "did y'u see isbel?" "yes," replied ellen, just as sharply as her father had asked. "did y'u talk to him?" "yes." "what did he want up heah?" "i told y'u. he was tracking the black horse y'u stole." jorth's hand and arm dropped limply. his sallow face turned a livid hue. amaze merged into discomfiture and that gave place to rage. he raised a hand as if to strike ellen. and suddenly daggs's long arm shot out to clutch jorth's wrist. wrestling to free himself, jorth cursed under his breath. "let go, daggs," he shouted, stridently. "am i drunk that you grab me?" "wal, y'u ain't drunk, i reckon," replied the rustler, with sarcasm. "but y'u're shore some things i'll reserve for your private ear." jorth gained a semblance of composure. but it was evident that he labored under a shock. "ellen, did jean isbel see this black horse?" "yes. he asked me how i got spades an' i told him." "did he say spades belonged to him?" "shore i reckon he, proved it. y'u can always tell a horse that loves its master." "did y'u offer to give spades back?" "yes. but isbel wouldn't take him." "hah! ... an' why not?" "he said he'd rather i kept him. he was about to engage in a dirty, blood-spilling deal, an' he reckoned he'd not be able to care for a fine horse.... i didn't want spades. i tried to make isbel take him. but he rode off.... and that's all there is to that." "maybe it's not," replied jorth, chewing his mustache and eying ellen with dark, intent gaze. "y'u've met this isbel twice." "it wasn't any fault of mine," retorted ellen. "i heah he's sweet on y'u. how aboot that?" ellen smarted under the blaze of blood that swept to neck and cheek and temple. but it was only memory which fired this shame. what her father and his crowd might think were matters of supreme indifference. yet she met his suspicious gaze with truthful blazing eyes. "i heah talk from bruce an' lorenzo," went on her father. "an' daggs heah--" "daggs nothin'!" interrupted that worthy. "don't fetch me in. i said nothin' an' i think nothin'." "yes, jean isbel was sweet on me, dad ... but he will never be again," returned ellen, in low tones. with that she pulled her saddle off spades and, throwing it over her shoulder, she walked off to her cabin. hardly had she gotten indoors when her father entered. "ellen, i didn't know that horse belonged to isbel," he began, in the swift, hoarse, persuasive voice so familiar to ellen. "i swear i didn't. i bought him--traded with slater for him.... honest to god, i never had any idea he was stolen! ... why, when y'u said 'that horse y'u stole,' i felt as if y'u'd knifed me...." ellen sat at the table and listened while her father paced to and fro and, by his restless action and passionate speech, worked himself into a frenzy. he talked incessantly, as if her silence was condemnatory and as if eloquence alone could convince her of his honesty. it seemed that ellen saw and heard with keener faculties than ever before. he had a terrible thirst for her respect. not so much for her love, she divined, but that she would not see how he had fallen! she pitied him with all her heart. she was all he had, as he was all the world to her. and so, as she gave ear to his long, illogical rigmarole of argument and defense, she slowly found that her pity and her love were making vital decisions for her. as of old, in poignant moments, her father lapsed at last into a denunciation of the isbels and what they had brought him to. his sufferings were real, at least, in ellen's presence. she was the only link that bound him to long-past happier times. she was her mother over again--the woman who had betrayed another man for him and gone with him to her ruin and death. "dad, don't go on so," said ellen, breaking in upon her father's rant. "i will be true to y'u--as my mother was.... i am a jorth. your place is my place--your fight is my fight.... never speak of the past to me again. if god spares us through this feud we will go away and begin all over again, far off where no one ever heard of a jorth.... if we're not spared we'll at least have had our whack at these damned isbels." chapter vii during june jean isbel did not ride far away from grass valley. another attempt had been made upon gaston isbel's life. another cowardly shot had been fired from ambush, this time from a pine thicket bordering the trail that led to blaisdell's ranch. blaisdell heard this shot, so near his home was it fired. no trace of the hidden foe could be found. the 'ground all around that vicinity bore a carpet of pine needles which showed no trace of footprints. the supposition was that this cowardly attempt had been perpetrated, or certainly instigated, by the jorths. but there was no proof. and gaston isbel had other enemies in the tonto basin besides the sheep clan. the old man raged like a lion about this sneaking attack on him. and his friend blaisdell urged an immediate gathering of their kin and friends. "let's quit ranchin' till this trouble's settled," he declared. "let's arm an' ride the trails an' meet these men half-way.... it won't help our side any to wait till you're shot in the back." more than one of isbel's supporters offered the same advice. "no; we'll wait till we know for shore," was the stubborn cattleman's reply to all these promptings. "know! wal, hell! didn't jean find the black hoss up at jorth's ranch?" demanded blaisdell. "what more do we want?" "jean couldn't swear jorth stole the black." "wal, by thunder, i can swear to it!" growled blaisdell. "an' we're losin' cattle all the time. who's stealin' 'em?" "we've always lost cattle ever since we started ranchin' heah." "gas, i reckon yu want jorth to start this fight in the open." "it'll start soon enough," was isbel's gloomy reply. jean had not failed altogether in his tracking of lost or stolen cattle. circumstances had been against him, and there was something baffling about this rustling. the summer storms set in early, and it had been his luck to have heavy rains wash out fresh tracks that he might have followed. the range was large and cattle were everywhere. sometimes a loss was not discovered for weeks. gaston isbel's sons were now the only men left to ride the range. two of his riders had quit because of the threatened war, and isbel had let another go. so that jean did not often learn that cattle had been stolen until their tracks were old. added to that was the fact that this grass valley country was covered with horse tracks and cattle tracks. the rustlers, whoever they were, had long been at the game, and now that there was reason for them to show their cunning they did it. early in july the hot weather came. down on the red ridges of the tonto it was hot desert. the nights were cool, the early mornings were pleasant, but the day was something to endure. when the white cumulus clouds rolled up out of the southwest, growing larger and thicker and darker, here and there coalescing into a black thundercloud, jean welcomed them. he liked to see the gray streamers of rain hanging down from a canopy of black, and the roar of rain on the trees as it approached like a trampling army was always welcome. the grassy flats, the red ridges, the rocky slopes, the thickets of manzanita and scrub oak and cactus were dusty, glaring, throat-parching places under the hot summer sun. jean longed for the cool heights of the rim, the shady pines, the dark sweet verdure under the silver spruces, the tinkle and murmur of the clear rills. he often had another longing, too, which he bitterly stifled. jean's ally, the keen-nosed shepherd clog, had disappeared one day, and had never returned. among men at the ranch there was a difference of opinion as to what had happened to shepp. the old rancher thought he had been poisoned or shot; bill and guy isbel believed he had been stolen by sheep herders, who were always stealing dogs; and jean inclined to the conviction that shepp had gone off with the timber wolves. the fact was that shepp did not return, and jean missed him. one morning at dawn jean heard the cattle bellowing and trampling out in the valley; and upon hurrying to a vantage point he was amazed to see upward of five hundred steers chasing a lone wolf. jean's father had seen such a spectacle as this, but it was a new one for jean. the wolf was a big gray and black fellow, rangy and powerful, and until he got the steers all behind him he was rather hard put to it to keep out of their way. probably he had dogged the herd, trying to sneak in and pull down a yearling, and finally the steers had charged him. jean kept along the edge of the valley in the hope they would chase him within range of a rifle. but the wary wolf saw jean and sheered off, gradually drawing away from his pursuers. jean returned to the house for his breakfast, and then set off across the valley. his father owned one small flock of sheep that had not yet been driven up on the rim, where all the sheep in the country were run during the hot, dry summer down on the tonto. young evarts and a mexican boy named bernardino had charge of this flock. the regular mexican herder, a man of experience, had given up his job; and these boys were not equal to the task of risking the sheep up in the enemies' stronghold. this flock was known to be grazing in a side draw, well up from grass valley, where the brush afforded some protection from the sun, and there was good water and a little feed. before jean reached his destination he heard a shot. it was not a rifle shot, which fact caused jean a little concern. evarts and bernardino had rifles, but, to his knowledge, no small arms. jean rode up on one of the black-brushed conical hills that rose on the south side of grass valley, and from there he took a sharp survey of the country. at first he made out only cattle, and bare meadowland, and the low encircling ridges and hills. but presently up toward the head of the valley he descried a bunch of horsemen riding toward the village. he could not tell their number. that dark moving mass seemed to jean to be instinct with life, mystery, menace. who were they? it was too far for him to recognize horses, let alone riders. they were moving fast, too. jean watched them out of sight, then turned his horse downhill again, and rode on his quest. a number of horsemen like that was a very unusual sight around grass valley at any time. what then did it portend now? jean experienced a little shock of uneasy dread that was a new sensation for him. brooding over this he proceeded on his way, at length to turn into the draw where the camp of the sheep-herders was located. upon coming in sight of it he heard a hoarse shout. young evarts appeared running frantically out of the brush. jean urged his horse into a run and soon covered the distance between them. evarts appeared beside himself with terror. "boy! what's the matter?" queried jean, as he dismounted, rifle in hand, peering quickly from evarts's white face to the camp, and all around. "ber-nardino! ber-nardino!" gasped the boy, wringing his hands and pointing. jean ran the few remaining rods to the sheep camp. he saw the little teepee, a burned-out fire, a half-finished meal--and then the mexican lad lying prone on the ground, dead, with a bullet hole in his ghastly face. near him lay an old six-shooter. "whose gun is that?" demanded jean, as he picked it up. "ber-nardino's," replied evarts, huskily. "he--he jest got it--the other day." "did he shoot himself accidentally?" "oh no! no! he didn't do it--atall." "who did, then?" "the men--they rode up--a gang-they did it," panted evarts. "did you know who they were?" "no. i couldn't tell. i saw them comin' an' i was skeered. bernardino had gone fer water. i run an' hid in the brush. i wanted to yell, but they come too close.... then i heerd them talkin'. bernardino come back. they 'peared friendly-like. thet made me raise up, to look. an' i couldn't see good. i heerd one of them ask bernardino to let him see his gun. an' bernardino handed it over. he looked at the gun an' haw-hawed, an' flipped it up in the air, an' when it fell back in his hand it--it went off bang! ... an' bernardino dropped.... i hid down close. i was skeered stiff. i heerd them talk more, but not what they said. then they rode away.... an' i hid there till i seen y'u comin'." "have you got a horse?" queried jean, sharply. "no. but i can ride one of bernardino's burros." "get one. hurry over to blaisdell. tell him to send word to blue and gordon and fredericks to ride like the devil to my father's ranch. hurry now!" young evarts ran off without reply. jean stood looking down at the limp and pathetic figure of the mexican boy. "by heaven!" he exclaimed, grimly "the jorth-isbel war is on! ... deliberate, cold-blooded murder! i'll gamble daggs did this job. he's been given the leadership. he's started it.... bernardino, greaser or not, you were a faithful lad, and you won't go long unavenged." jean had no time to spare. tearing a tarpaulin out of the teepee he covered the lad with it and then ran for, his horse. mounting, he galloped down the draw, over the little red ridges, out into the valley, where he put his horse to a run. action changed the sickening horror that sight of bernardino had engendered. jean even felt a strange, grim relief. the long, dragging days of waiting were over. jorth's gang had taken the initiative. blood had begun to flow. and it would continue to flow now till the last man of one faction stood over the dead body of the last man of the other. would it be a jorth or an isbel? "my instinct was right," he muttered, aloud. "that bunch of horses gave me a queer feelin'." jean gazed all around the grassy, cattle-dotted valley he was crossing so swiftly, and toward the village, but he did not see any sign of the dark group of riders. they had gone on to greaves's store, there, no doubt, to drink and to add more enemies of the isbels to their gang. suddenly across jean's mind flashed a thought of ellen jorth. "what 'll become of her? ... what 'll become of all the women? my sister? ... the little ones?" no one was in sight around the ranch. never had it appeared more peaceful and pastoral to jean. the grazing cattle and horses in the foreground, the haystack half eaten away, the cows in the fenced pasture, the column of blue smoke lazily ascending, the cackle of hens, the solid, well-built cabins--all these seemed to repudiate jean's haste and his darkness of mind. this place was, his father's farm. there was not a cloud in the blue, summer sky. as jean galloped up the lane some one saw him from the door, and then bill and guy and their gray-headed father came out upon the porch. jean saw how he' waved the womenfolk back, and then strode out into the lane. bill and guy reached his side as jean pulled his heaving horse to a halt. they all looked at jean, swiftly and intently, with a little, hard, fiery gleam strangely identical in the eyes of each. probably before a word was spoken they knew what to expect. "wal, you shore was in a hurry," remarked the father. "what the hell's up?" queried bill, grimly. guy isbel remained silent and it was he who turned slightly pale. jean leaped off his horse. "bernardino has just been killed--murdered with his own gun." gaston isbel seemed to exhale a long-dammed, bursting breath that let his chest sag. a terrible deadly glint, pale and cold as sunlight on ice, grew slowly to dominate his clear eyes. "a-huh!" ejaculated bill isbel, hoarsely. not one of the three men asked who had done the killing. they were silent a moment, motionless, locked in the secret seclusion of their own minds. then they listened with absorption to jean's brief story. "wal, that lets us in," said his father. "i wish we had more time. reckon i'd done better to listen to you boys an' have my men close at hand. jacobs happened to ride over. that makes five of us besides the women." "aw, dad, you don't reckon they'll round us up heah?" asked guy isbel. "boys, i always feared they might," replied the old man. "but i never really believed they'd have the nerve. shore i ought to have figgered daggs better. this heah secret bizness an' shootin' at us from ambush looked aboot jorth's size to me. but i reckon now we'll have to fight without our friends." "let them come," said jean. "i sent for blaisdell, blue, gordon, and fredericks. maybe they'll get here in time. but if they don't it needn't worry us much. we can hold out here longer than jorth's gang can hang around. we'll want plenty of water, wood, and meat in the house." "wal, i'll see to that," rejoined his father. "jean, you go out close by, where you can see all around, an' keep watch." "who's goin' to tell the women?" asked guy isbel. the silence that momentarily ensued was an eloquent testimony to the hardest and saddest aspect of this strife between men. the inevitableness of it in no wise detracted from its sheer uselessness. men from time immemorial had hated, and killed one another, always to the misery and degradation of their women. old gaston isbel showed this tragic realization in his lined face. "wal, boys, i'll tell the women," he said. "shore you needn't worry none aboot them. they'll be game." jean rode away to an open knoll a short distance from the house, and here he stationed himself to watch all points. the cedared ridge back of the ranch was the one approach by which jorth's gang might come close without being detected, but even so, jean could see them and ride to the house in time to prevent a surprise. the moments dragged by, and at the end of an hour jean was in hopes that blaisdell would soon come. these hopes were well founded. presently he heard a clatter of hoofs on hard ground to the south, and upon wheeling to look he saw the friendly neighbor coming fast along the road, riding a big white horse. blaisdell carried a rifle in his hand, and the sight of him gave jean a glow of warmth. he was one of the texans who would stand by the isbels to the last man. jean watched him ride to the house--watched the meeting between him and his lifelong friend. there floated out to jean old blaisdell's roar of rage. then out on the green of grass valley, where a long, swelling plain swept away toward the village, there appeared a moving dark patch. a bunch of horses! jean's body gave a slight start--the shock of sudden propulsion of blood through all his veins. those horses bore riders. they were coming straight down the open valley, on the wagon road to isbel's ranch. no subterfuge nor secrecy nor sneaking in that advance! a hot thrill ran over jean. "by heaven! they mean business!" he muttered. up to the last moment he had unconsciously hoped jorth's gang would not come boldly like that. the verifications of all a texan's inherited instincts left no doubts, no hopes, no illusions--only a grim certainty that this was not conjecture nor probability, but fact. for a moment longer jean watched the slowly moving dark patch of horsemen against the green background, then he hurried back to the ranch. his father saw him coming--strode out as before. "dad--jorth is comin'," said jean, huskily. how he hated to be forced to tell his father that! the boyish love of old had flashed up. "whar?" demanded the old man, his eagle gaze sweeping the horizon. "down the road from grass valley. you can't see from here." "wal, come in an' let's get ready." isbel's house had not been constructed with the idea of repelling an attack from a band of apaches. the long living room of the main cabin was the one selected for defense and protection. this room had two windows and a door facing the lane, and a door at each end, one of which opened into the kitchen and the other into an adjoining and later-built cabin. the logs of this main cabin were of large size, and the doors and window coverings were heavy, affording safer protection from bullets than the other cabins. when jean went in he seemed to see a host of white faces lifted to him. his sister ann, his two sisters-in-law, the children, all mutely watched him with eyes that would haunt him. "wal, blaisdell, jean says jorth an' his precious gang of rustlers are on the way heah," announced the rancher. "damn me if it's not a bad day fer lee jorth!" declared blaisdell. "clear off that table," ordered isbel, "an' fetch out all the guns an' shells we got." once laid upon the table these presented a formidable arsenal, which consisted of the three new . winchesters that jean had brought with him from the coast; the enormous buffalo, or so-called "needle" gun, that gaston isbel had used for years; a henry rifle which blaisdell had brought, and half a dozen six-shooters. piles and packages of ammunition littered the table. "sort out these heah shells," said isbel. "everybody wants to get hold of his own." jacobs, the neighbor who was present, was a thick-set, bearded man, rather jovial among those lean-jawed texans. he carried a . rifle of an old pattern. "wal, boys, if i'd knowed we was in fer some fun i'd hev fetched more shells. only got one magazine full. mebbe them new . 's will fit my gun." it was discovered that the ammunition jean had brought in quantity fitted jacob's rifle, a fact which afforded peculiar satisfaction to all the men present. "wal, shore we're lucky," declared gaston isbel. the women sat apart, in the corner toward the kitchen, and there seemed to be a strange fascination for them in the talk and action of the men. the wife of jacobs was a little woman, with homely face and very bright eyes. jean thought she would be a help in that household during the next doubtful hours. every moment jean would go to the window and peer out down the road. his companions evidently relied upon him, for no one else looked out. now that the suspense of days and weeks was over, these texans faced the issue with talk and act not noticeably different from those of ordinary moments. at last jean espied the dark mass of horsemen out in the valley road. they were close together, walking their mounts, and evidently in earnest conversation. after several ineffectual attempts jean counted eleven horses, every one of which he was sure bore a rider. "dad, look out!" called jean. gaston isbel strode to the door and stood looking, without a word. the other men crowded to the windows. blaisdell cursed under his breath. jacobs said: "by golly! come to pay us a call!" the women sat motionless, with dark, strained eyes. the children ceased their play and looked fearfully to their mother. when just out of rifle shot of the cabins the band of horsemen halted and lined up in a half circle, all facing the ranch. they were close enough for jean to see their gestures, but he could not recognize any of their faces. it struck him singularly that not one of them wore a mask. "jean, do you know any of them?" asked his father "no, not yet. they're too far off." "dad, i'll get your old telescope," said guy isbel, and he ran out toward the adjoining cabin. blaisdell shook his big, hoary head and rumbled out of his bull-like neck, "wal, now you're heah, you sheep fellars, what are you goin' to do aboot it?" guy isbel returned with a yard-long telescope, which he passed to his father. the old man took it with shaking hands and leveled it. suddenly it was as if he had been transfixed; then he lowered the glass, shaking violently, and his face grew gray with an exceeding bitter wrath. "jorth!" he swore, harshly. jean had only to look at his father to know that recognition had been like a mortal shock. it passed. again the rancher leveled the glass. "wal, blaisdell, there's our old texas friend, daggs," he drawled, dryly. "an' greaves, our honest storekeeper of grass valley. an' there's stonewall jackson jorth. an' tad jorth, with the same old red nose! ... an', say, damn if one of that gang isn't queen, as bad a gun fighter as texas ever bred. shore i thought he'd been killed in the big bend country. so i heard.... an' there's craig, another respectable sheepman of grass valley. haw-haw! an', wal, i don't recognize any more of them." jean forthwith took the glass and moved it slowly across the faces of that group of horsemen. "simm bruce," he said, instantly. "i see colter. and, yes, greaves is there. i've seen the man next to him--face like a ham...." "shore that is craig," interrupted his father. jean knew the dark face of lee jorth by the resemblance it bore to ellen's, and the recognition brought a twinge. he thought, too, that he could tell the other jorths. he asked his father to describe daggs and then queen. it was not likely that jean would fail to know these several men in the future. then blaisdell asked for the telescope and, when he got through looking and cursing, he passed it on to others, who, one by one, took a long look, until finally it came back to the old rancher. "wal, daggs is wavin' his hand heah an' there, like a general aboot to send out scouts. haw-haw! ... an' 'pears to me he's not overlookin' our hosses. wal, that's natural for a rustler. he'd have to steal a hoss or a steer before goin' into a fight or to dinner or to a funeral." "it 'll be his funeral if he goes to foolin' 'round them hosses," declared guy isbel, peering anxiously out of the door. "wal, son, shore it 'll be somebody's funeral," replied his father. jean paid but little heed to the conversation. with sharp eyes fixed upon the horsemen, he tried to grasp at their intention. daggs pointed to the horses in the pasture lot that lay between him and the house. these animals were the best on the range and belonged mostly to guy isbel, who was the horse fancier and trader of the family. his horses were his passion. "looks like they'd do some horse stealin'," said jean. "lend me that glass," demanded guy, forcefully. he surveyed the band of men for a long moment, then he handed the glass back to jean. "i'm goin' out there after my hosses," he declared. "no!" exclaimed his father. "that gang come to steal an' not to fight. can't you see that? if they meant to fight they'd do it. they're out there arguin' about my hosses." guy picked up his rifle. he looked sullenly determined and the gleam in his eye was one of fearlessness. "son, i know daggs," said his father. "an' i know jorth. they've come to kill us. it 'll be shore death for y'u to go out there." "i'm goin', anyhow. they can't steal my hosses out from under my eyes. an' they ain't in range." "wal, guy, you ain't goin' alone," spoke up jacobs, cheerily, as he came forward. the red-haired young wife of guy isbel showed no change of her grave face. she had been reared in a stern school. she knew men in times like these. but jacobs's wife appealed to him, "bill, don't risk your life for a horse or two." jacobs laughed and answered, "not much risk," and went out with guy. to jean their action seemed foolhardy. he kept a keen eye on them and saw instantly when the band became aware of guy's and jacobs's entrance into the pasture. it took only another second then to realize that daggs and jorth had deadly intent. jean saw daggs slip out of his saddle, rifle in hand. others of the gang did likewise, until half of them were dismounted. "dad, they're goin' to shoot," called out jean, sharply. "yell for guy and jacobs. make them come back." the old man shouted; bill isbel yelled; blaisdell lifted his stentorian voice. jean screamed piercingly: "guy! run! run!" but guy isbel and his companion strode on into the pasture, as if they had not heard, as if no menacing horse thieves were within miles. they had covered about a quarter of the distance across the pasture, and were nearing the horses, when jean saw red flashes and white puffs of smoke burst out from the front of that dark band of rustlers. then followed the sharp, rattling crack of rifles. guy isbel stopped short, and, dropping his gun, he threw up his arms and fell headlong. jacobs acted as if he had suddenly encountered an invisible blow. he had been hit. turning, he began to run and ran fast for a few paces. there were more quick, sharp shots. he let go of his rifle. his running broke. walking, reeling, staggering, he kept on. a hoarse cry came from him. then a single rifle shot pealed out. jean heard the bullet strike. jacobs fell to his knees, then forward on his face. jean isbel felt himself turned to marble. the suddenness of this tragedy paralyzed him. his gaze remained riveted on those prostrate forms. a hand clutched his arm--a shaking woman's hand, slim and hard and tense. "bill's--killed!" whispered a broken voice. "i was watchin'.... they're both dead!" the wives of jacobs and guy isbel had slipped up behind jean and from behind him they had seen the tragedy. "i asked bill--not to--go," faltered the jacobs woman, and, covering her face with her hands, she groped back to the corner of the cabin, where the other women, shaking and white, received her in their arms. guy isbel's wife stood at the window, peering over jean's shoulder. she had the nerve of a man. she had looked out upon death before. "yes, they're dead," she said, bitterly. "an' how are we goin' to get their bodies?" at this gaston isbel seemed to rouse from the cold spell that had transfixed him. "god, this is hell for our women," he cried out, hoarsely. "my son--my son! ... murdered by the jorths!" then he swore a terrible oath. jean saw the remainder of the mounted rustlers get off, and then, all of them leading their horses, they began to move around to the left. "dad, they're movin' round," said jean. "up to some trick," declared bill isbel. "bill, you make a hole through the back wall, say aboot the fifth log up," ordered the father. "shore we've got to look out." the elder son grasped a tool and, scattering the children, who had been playing near the back corner, he began to work at the point designated. the little children backed away with fixed, wondering, grave eyes. the women moved their chairs, and huddled together as if waiting and listening. jean watched the rustlers until they passed out of his sight. they had moved toward the sloping, brushy ground to the north and west of the cabins. "let me know when you get a hole in the back wall," said jean, and he went through the kitchen and cautiously out another door to slip into a low-roofed, shed-like end of the rambling cabin. this small space was used to store winter firewood. the chinks between the walls had not been filled with adobe clay, and he could see out on three sides. the rustlers were going into the juniper brush. they moved out of sight, and presently reappeared without their horses. it looked to jean as if they intended to attack the cabins. then they halted at the edge of the brush and held a long consultation. jean could see them distinctly, though they were too far distant for him to recognize any particular man. one of them, however, stood and moved apart from the closely massed group. evidently, from his strides and gestures, he was exhorting his listeners. jean concluded this was either daggs or jorth. whoever it was had a loud, coarse voice, and this and his actions impressed jean with a suspicion that the man was under the influence of the bottle. presently bill isbel called jean in a low voice. "jean, i got the hole made, but we can't see anyone." "i see them," jean replied. "they're havin' a powwow. looks to me like either jorth or daggs is drunk. he's arguin' to charge us, an' the rest of the gang are holdin' back.... tell dad, an' all of you keep watchin'. i'll let you know when they make a move." jorth's gang appeared to be in no hurry to expose their plan of battle. gradually the group disintegrated a little; some of them sat down; others walked to and fro. presently two of them went into the brush, probably back to the horses. in a few moments they reappeared, carrying a pack. and when this was deposited on the ground all the rustlers sat down around it. they had brought food and drink. jean had to utter a grim laugh at their coolness; and he was reminded of many dare-devil deeds known to have been perpetrated by the hash knife gang. jean was glad of a reprieve. the longer the rustlers put off an attack the more time the allies of the isbels would have to get here. rather hazardous, however, would it be now for anyone to attempt to get to the isbel cabins in the daytime. night would be more favorable. twice bill isbel came through the kitchen to whisper to jean. the strain in the large room, from which the rustlers could not be seen, must have been great. jean told him all he had seen and what he thought about it. "eatin' an' drinkin'!" ejaculated bill. "well, i'll be--! that 'll jar the old man. he wants to get the fight over. "tell him i said it'll be over too quick--for us--unless are mighty careful," replied jean, sharply. bill went back muttering to himself. then followed a long wait, fraught with suspense, during which jean watched the rustlers regale themselves. the day was hot and still. and the unnatural silence of the cabin was broken now and then by the gay laughter of the children. the sound shocked and haunted jean. playing children! then another sound, so faint he had to strain to hear it, disturbed and saddened him--his father's slow tread up and down the cabin floor, to and fro, to and fro. what must be in his father's heart this day! at length the rustlers rose and, with rifles in hand, they moved as one man down the slope. they came several hundred yards closer, until jean, grimly cocking his rifle, muttered to himself that a few more rods closer would mean the end of several of that gang. they knew the range of a rifle well enough, and once more sheered off at right angles with the cabin. when they got even with the line of corrals they stooped down and were lost to jean's sight. this fact caused him alarm. they were, of course, crawling up on the cabins. at the end of that line of corrals ran a ditch, the bank of which was high enough to afford cover. moreover, it ran along in front of the cabins, scarcely a hundred yards, and it was covered with grass and little clumps of brush, from behind which the rustlers could fire into the windows and through the clay chinks without any considerable risk to themselves. as they did not come into sight again, jean concluded he had discovered their plan. still, he waited awhile longer, until he saw faint, little clouds of dust rising from behind the far end of the embankment. that discovery made him rush out, and through the kitchen to the large cabin, where his sudden appearance startled the men. "get back out of sight!" he ordered, sharply, and with swift steps he reached the door and closed it. "they're behind the bank out there by the corrals. an' they're goin' to crawl down the ditch closer to us.... it looks bad. they'll have grass an' brush to shoot from. we've got to be mighty careful how we peep out." "ahuh! all right," replied his father. "you women keep the kids with you in that corner. an' you all better lay down flat." blaisdell, bill isbel, and the old man crouched at the large window, peeping through cracks in the rough edges of the logs. jean took his post beside the small window, with his keen eyes vibrating like a compass needle. the movement of a blade of grass, the flight of a grasshopper could not escape his trained sight. "look sharp now!" he called to the other men. "i see dust.... they're workin' along almost to that bare spot on the bank.... i saw the tip of a rifle ... a black hat ... more dust. they're spreadin' along behind the bank." loud voices, and then thick clouds of yellow dust, coming from behind the highest and brushiest line of the embankment, attested to the truth of jean's observation, and also to a reckless disregard of danger. suddenly jean caught a glint of moving color through the fringe of brush. instantly he was strung like a whipcord. then a tall, hatless and coatless man stepped up in plain sight. the sun shone on his fair, ruffled hair. daggs! "hey, you -- -- isbels!" he bawled, in magnificent derisive boldness. "come out an' fight!" quick as lightning jean threw up his rifle and fired. he saw tufts of fair hair fly from daggs's head. he saw the squirt of red blood. then quick shots from his comrades rang out. they all hit the swaying body of the rustler. but jean knew with a terrible thrill that his bullet had killed daggs before the other three struck. daggs fell forward, his arms and half his body resting over, the embankment. then the rustlers dragged him back out of sight. hoarse shouts rose. a cloud of yellow dust drifted away from the spot. "daggs!" burst out gaston isbel. "jean, you knocked off the top of his haid. i seen that when i was pullin' trigger. shore we over heah wasted our shots." "god! he must have been crazy or drunk--to pop up there--an' brace us that way," said blaisdell, breathing hard. "arizona is bad for texans," replied isbel, sardonically. "shore it's been too peaceful heah. rustlers have no practice at fightin'. an' i reckon daggs forgot." "daggs made as crazy a move as that of guy an' jacobs," spoke up jean. "they were overbold, an' he was drunk. let them be a lesson to us." jean had smelled whisky upon his entrance to this cabin. bill was a hard drinker, and his father was not immune. blaisdell, too, drank heavily upon occasions. jean made a mental note that he would not permit their chances to become impaired by liquor. rifles began to crack, and puffs of smoke rose all along the embankment for the space of a hundred feet. bullets whistled through the rude window casing and spattered on the heavy door, and one split the clay between the logs before jean, narrowly missing him. another volley followed, then another. the rustlers had repeating rifles and they were emptying their magazines. jean changed his position. the other men profited by his wise move. the volleys had merged into one continuous rattling roar of rifle shots. then came a sudden cessation of reports, with silence of relief. the cabin was full of dust, mingled with the smoke from the shots of jean and his companions. jean heard the stifled breaths of the children. evidently they were terror-stricken, but they did not cry out. the women uttered no sound. a loud voice pealed from behind the embankment. "come out an' fight! do you isbels want to be killed like sheep?" this sally gained no reply. jean returned to his post by the window and his comrades followed his example. and they exercised extreme caution when they peeped out. "boys, don't shoot till you see one," said gaston isbel. "maybe after a while they'll get careless. but jorth will never show himself." the rustlers did not again resort to volleys. one by one, from different angles, they began to shoot, and they were not firing at random. a few bullets came straight in at the windows to pat into the walls; a few others ticked and splintered the edges of the windows; and most of them broke through the clay chinks between the logs. it dawned upon jean that these dangerous shots were not accident. they were well aimed, and most of them hit low down. the cunning rustlers had some unerring riflemen and they were picking out the vulnerable places all along the front of the cabin. if jean had not been lying flat he would have been hit twice. presently he conceived the idea of driving pegs between the logs, high up, and, kneeling on these, he managed to peep out from the upper edge of the window. but this position was awkward and difficult to hold for long. he heard a bullet hit one of his comrades. whoever had been struck never uttered a sound. jean turned to look. bill isbel was holding his shoulder, where red splotches appeared on his shirt. he shook his head at jean, evidently to make light of the wound. the women and children were lying face down and could not see what was happening. plain is was that bill did not want them to know. blaisdell bound up the bloody shoulder with a scarf. steady firing from the rustlers went on, at the rate of one shot every few minutes. the isbels did not return these. jean did not fire again that afternoon. toward sunset, when the besiegers appeared to grow restless or careless, blaisdell fired at something moving behind the brush; and gaston isbel's huge buffalo gun boomed out. "wal, what 're they goin' to do after dark, an' what 're we goin' to do?" grumbled blaisdell. "reckon they'll never charge us," said gaston. "they might set fire to the cabins," added bill isbel. he appeared to be the gloomiest of the isbel faction. there was something on his mind. "wal, the jorths are bad, but i reckon they'd not burn us alive," replied blaisdell. "hah!" ejaculated gaston isbel. "much you know aboot lee jorth. he would skin me alive an' throw red-hot coals on my raw flesh." so they talked during the hour from sunset to dark. jean isbel had little to say. he was revolving possibilities in his mind. darkness brought a change in the attack of the rustlers. they stationed men at four points around the cabins; and every few minutes one of these outposts would fire. these bullets embedded themselves in the logs, causing but little anxiety to the isbels. "jean, what you make of it?" asked the old rancher. "looks to me this way," replied jean. "they're set for a long fight. they're shootin' just to let us know they're on the watch." "ahuh! wal, what 're you goin' to do aboot it?" "i'm goin' out there presently." gaston isbel grunted his satisfaction at this intention of jean's. all was pitch dark inside the cabin. the women had water and food at hand. jean kept a sharp lookout from his window while he ate his supper of meat, bread, and milk. at last the children, worn out by the long day, fell asleep. the women whispered a little in their corner. about nine o'clock jean signified his intention of going out to reconnoitre. "dad, they've got the best of us in the daytime," he said, "but not after dark." jean buckled on a belt that carried shells, a bowie knife, and revolver, and with rifle in hand he went out through the kitchen to the yard. the night was darker than usual, as some of the stars were hidden by clouds. he leaned against the log cabin, waiting for his eyes to become perfectly adjusted to the darkness. like an indian, jean could see well at night. he knew every point around cabins and sheds and corrals, every post, log, tree, rock, adjacent to the ranch. after perhaps a quarter of an hour watching, during which time several shots were fired from behind the embankment and one each from the rustlers at the other locations, jean slipped out on his quest. he kept in the shadow of the cabin walls, then the line of orchard trees, then a row of currant bushes. here, crouching low, he halted to look and listen. he was now at the edge of the open ground, with the gently rising slope before him. he could see the dark patches of cedar and juniper trees. on the north side of the cabin a streak of fire flashed in the blackness, and a shot rang out. jean heard the bullet bit the cabin. then silence enfolded the lonely ranch and the darkness lay like a black blanket. a low hum of insects pervaded the air. dull sheets of lightning illumined the dark horizon to the south. once jean heard voices, but could not tell from which direction they came. to the west of him then flared out another rifle shot. the bullet whistled down over jean to thud into the cabin. jean made a careful study of the obscure, gray-black open before him and then the background to his rear. so long as he kept the dense shadows behind him he could not be seen. he slipped from behind his covert and, gliding with absolutely noiseless footsteps, he gained the first clump of junipers. here he waited patiently and motionlessly for another round of shots from the rustlers. after the second shot from the west side jean sheered off to the right. patches of brush, clumps of juniper, and isolated cedars covered this slope, affording jean a perfect means for his purpose, which was to make a detour and come up behind the rustler who was firing from that side. jean climbed to the top of the ridge, descended the opposite slope, made his turn to the left, and slowly worked up behind the point near where he expected to locate the rustler. long habit in the open, by day and night, rendered his sense of direction almost as perfect as sight itself. the first flash of fire he saw from this side proved that he had come straight up toward his man. jean's intention was to crawl up on this one of the jorth gang and silently kill him with a knife. if the plan worked successfully, jean meant to work round to the next rustler. laying aside his rifle, he crawled forward on hands and knees, making no more sound than a cat. his approach was slow. he had to pick his way, be careful not to break twigs nor rattle stones. his buckskin garments made no sound against the brush. jean located the rustler sitting on the top of the ridge in the center of an open space. he was alone. jean saw the dull-red end of the cigarette he was smoking. the ground on the ridge top was rocky and not well adapted for jean's purpose. he had to abandon the idea of crawling up on the rustler. whereupon, jean turned back, patiently and slowly, to get his rifle. upon securing it he began to retrace his course, this time more slowly than before, as he was hampered by the rifle. but he did not make the slightest sound, and at length he reached the edge of the open ridge top, once more to espy the dark form of the rustler silhouetted against the sky. the distance was not more than fifty yards. as jean rose to his knee and carefully lifted his rifle round to avoid the twigs of a juniper he suddenly experienced another emotion besides the one of grim, hard wrath at the jorths. it was an emotion that sickened him, made him weak internally, a cold, shaking, ungovernable sensation. suppose this man was ellen jorth's father! jean lowered the rifle. he felt it shake over his knee. he was trembling all over. the astounding discovery that he did not want to kill ellen's father--that he could not do it--awakened jean to the despairing nature of his love for her. in this grim moment of indecision, when he knew his indian subtlety and ability gave him a great advantage over the jorths, he fully realized his strange, hopeless, and irresistible love for the girl. he made no attempt to deny it any longer. like the night and the lonely wilderness around him, like the inevitableness of this jorth-isbel feud, this love of his was a thing, a fact, a reality. he breathed to his own inward ear, to his soul--he could not kill ellen jorth's father. feud or no feud, isbel or not, he could not deliberately do it. and why not? there was no answer. was he not faithless to his father? he had no hope of ever winning ellen jorth. he did not want the love of a girl of her character. but he loved her. and his struggle must be against the insidious and mysterious growth of that passion. it swayed him already. it made him a coward. through his mind and heart swept the memory of ellen jorth, her beauty and charm, her boldness and pathos, her shame and her degradation. and the sweetness of her outweighed the boldness. and the mystery of her arrayed itself in unquenchable protest against her acknowledged shame. jean lifted his face to the heavens, to the pitiless white stars, to the infinite depths of the dark-blue sky. he could sense the fact of his being an atom in the universe of nature. what was he, what was his revengeful father, what were hate and passion and strife in comparison to the nameless something, immense and everlasting, that he sensed in this dark moment? but the rustlers--daggs--the jorths--they had killed his brother guy--murdered him brutally and ruthlessly. guy had been a playmate of jean's--a favorite brother. bill had been secretive and selfish. jean had never loved him as he did guy. guy lay dead down there on the meadow. this feud had begun to run its bloody course. jean steeled his nerve. the hot blood crept back along his veins. the dark and masterful tide of revenge waved over him. the keen edge of his mind then cut out sharp and trenchant thoughts. he must kill when and where he could. this man could hardly be ellen jorth's father. jorth would be with the main crowd, directing hostilities. jean could shoot this rustler guard and his shot would be taken by the gang as the regular one from their comrade. then swiftly jean leveled his rifle, covered the dark form, grew cold and set, and pressed the trigger. after the report he rose and wheeled away. he did not look nor listen for the result of his shot. a clammy sweat wet his face, the hollow of his hands, his breast. a horrible, leaden, thick sensation oppressed his heart. nature had endowed him with indian gifts, but the exercise of them to this end caused a revolt in his soul. nevertheless, it was the isbel blood that dominated him. the wind blew cool on his face. the burden upon his shoulders seemed to lift. the clamoring whispers grew fainter in his ears. and by the time he had retraced his cautious steps back to the orchard all his physical being was strung to the task at hand. something had come between his reflective self and this man of action. crossing the lane, he took to the west line of sheds, and passed beyond them into the meadow. in the grass he crawled silently away to the right, using the same precaution that had actuated him on the slope, only here he did not pause so often, nor move so slowly. jean aimed to go far enough to the right to pass the end of the embankment behind which the rustlers had found such efficient cover. this ditch had been made to keep water, during spring thaws and summer storms, from pouring off the slope to flood the corrals. jean miscalculated and found he had come upon the embankment somewhat to the left of the end, which fact, however, caused him no uneasiness. he lay there awhile to listen. again he heard voices. after a time a shot pealed out. he did not see the flash, but he calculated that it had come from the north side of the cabins. the next quarter of an hour discovered to jean that the nearest guard was firing from the top of the embankment, perhaps a hundred yards distant, and a second one was performing the same office from a point apparently only a few yards farther on. two rustlers close together! jean had not calculated upon that. for a little while he pondered on what was best to do, and at length decided to crawl round behind them, and as close as the situation made advisable. he found the ditch behind the embankment a favorable path by which to stalk these enemies. it was dry and sandy, with borders of high weeds. the only drawback was that it was almost impossible for him to keep from brushing against the dry, invisible branches of the weeds. to offset this he wormed his way like a snail, inch by inch, taking a long time before he caught sight of the sitting figure of a man, black against the dark-blue sky. this rustler had fired his rifle three times during jean's slow approach. jean watched and listened a few moments, then wormed himself closer and closer, until the man was within twenty steps of him. jean smelled tobacco smoke, but could see no light of pipe or cigarette, because the fellow's back was turned. "say, ben," said this man to his companion sitting hunched up a few yards distant, "shore it strikes me queer thet somers ain't shootin' any over thar." jean recognized the dry, drawling voice of greaves, and the shock of it seemed to contract the muscles of his whole thrilling body, like that of a panther about to spring. chapter viii "was shore thinkin' thet same," said the other man. "an', say, didn't thet last shot sound too sharp fer somers's forty-five?" "come to think of it, i reckon it did," replied greaves. "wal, i'll go around over thar an' see." the dark form of the rustler slipped out of sight over the embankment. "better go slow an' careful," warned greaves. "an' only go close enough to call somers.... mebbe thet damn half-breed isbel is comin' some injun on us." jean heard the soft swish of footsteps through wet grass. then all was still. he lay flat, with his cheek on the sand, and he had to look ahead and upward to make out the dark figure of greaves on the bank. one way or another he meant to kill greaves, and he had the will power to resist the strongest gust of passion that had ever stormed his breast. if he arose and shot the rustler, that act would defeat his plan of slipping on around upon the other outposts who were firing at the cabins. jean wanted to call softly to greaves, "you're right about the half-breed!" and then, as he wheeled aghast, to kill him as he moved. but it suited jean to risk leaping upon the man. jean did not waste time in trying to understand the strange, deadly instinct that gripped him at the moment. but he realized then he had chosen the most perilous plan to get rid of greaves. jean drew a long, deep breath and held it. he let go of his rifle. he rose, silently as a lifting shadow. he drew the bowie knife. then with light, swift bounds he glided up the bank. greaves must have heard a rustling--a soft, quick pad of moccasin, for he turned with a start. and that instant jean's left arm darted like a striking snake round greaves's neck and closed tight and hard. with his right hand free, holding the knife, jean might have ended the deadly business in just one move. but when his bared arm felt the hot, bulging neck something terrible burst out of the depths of him. to kill this enemy of his father's was not enough! physical contact had unleashed the savage soul of the indian. yet there was more, and as jean gave the straining body a tremendous jerk backward, he felt the same strange thrill, the dark joy that he had known when his fist had smashed the face of simm bruce. greaves had leered--he had corroborated bruce's vile insinuation about ellen jorth. so it was more than hate that actuated jean isbel. greaves was heavy and powerful. he whirled himself, feet first, over backward, in a lunge like that of a lassoed steer. but jean's hold held. they rolled down the bank into the sandy ditch, and jean landed uppermost, with his body at right angles with that of his adversary. "greaves, your hunch was right," hissed jean. "it's the half-breed.... an' i'm goin' to cut you--first for ellen jorth--an' then for gaston isbel!" jean gazed down into the gleaming eyes. then his right arm whipped the big blade. it flashed. it fell. low down, as far as jean could reach, it entered greaves's body. all the heavy, muscular frame of greaves seemed to contract and burst. his spring was that of an animal in terror and agony. it was so tremendous that it broke jean's hold. greaves let out a strangled yell that cleared, swelling wildly, with a hideous mortal note. he wrestled free. the big knife came out. supple and swift, he got to his, knees. he had his gun out when jean reached him again. like a bear jean enveloped him. greaves shot, but he could not raise the gun, nor twist it far enough. then jean, letting go with his right arm, swung the bowie. greaves's strength went out in an awful, hoarse cry. his gun boomed again, then dropped from his hand. he swayed. jean let go. and that enemy of the isbels sank limply in the ditch. jean's eyes roved for his rifle and caught the starlit gleam of it. snatching it up, he leaped over the embankment and ran straight for the cabins. from all around yells of the jorth faction attested to their excitement and fury. a fence loomed up gray in the obscurity. jean vaulted it, darted across the lane into the shadow of the corral, and soon gained the first cabin. here he leaned to regain his breath. his heart pounded high and seemed too large for his breast. the hot blood beat and surged all over his body. sweat poured off him. his teeth were clenched tight as a vise, and it took effort on his part to open his mouth so he could breathe more freely and deeply. but these physical sensations were as nothing compared to the tumult of his mind. then the instinct, the spell, let go its grip and he could think. he had avenged guy, he had depleted the ranks of the jorths, he had made good the brag of his father, all of which afforded him satisfaction. but these thoughts were not accountable for all that he felt, especially for the bittersweet sting of the fact that death to the defiler of ellen jorth could not efface the doubt, the regret which seemed to grow with the hours. groping his way into the woodshed, he entered the kitchen and, calling low, he went on into the main cabin. "jean! jean!" came his father's shaking voice. "yes, i'm back," replied jean. "are--you--all right?" "yes. i think i've got a bullet crease on my leg. i didn't know i had it till now.... it's bleedin' a little. but it's nothin'." jean heard soft steps and some one reached shaking hands for him. they belonged to his sister ann. she embraced him. jean felt the heave and throb of her breast. "why, ann, i'm not hurt," he said, and held her close. "now you lie down an' try to sleep." in the black darkness of the cabin jean led her back to the corner and his heart was full. speech was difficult, because the very touch of ann's hands had made him divine that the success of his venture in no wise changed the plight of the women. "wal, what happened out there?" demanded blaisdell. "i got two of them," replied jean. "that fellow who was shootin' from the ridge west. an' the other was greaves." "hah!" exclaimed his father. "shore then it was greaves yellin'," declared blaisdell. "by god, i never heard such yells! whad 'd you do, jean?" "i knifed him. you see, i'd planned to slip up on one after another. an' i didn't want to make noise. but i didn't get any farther than greaves." "wal, i reckon that 'll end their shootin' in the dark," muttered gaston isbel. "we've got to be on the lookout for somethin' else--fire, most likely." the old rancher's surmise proved to be partially correct. jorth's faction ceased the shooting. nothing further was seen or heard from them. but this silence and apparent break in the siege were harder to bear than deliberate hostility. the long, dark hours dragged by. the men took turns watching and resting, but none of them slept. at last the blackness paled and gray dawn stole out of the east. the sky turned rose over the distant range and daylight came. the children awoke hungry and noisy, having slept away their fears. the women took advantage of the quiet morning hour to get a hot breakfast. "maybe they've gone away," suggested guy isbel's wife, peering out of the window. she had done that several times since daybreak. jean saw her somber gaze search the pasture until it rested upon the dark, prone shape of her dead husband, lying face down in the grass. her look worried jean. "no, esther, they've not gone yet," replied jean. "i've seen some of them out there at the edge of the brush." blaisdell was optimistic. he said jean's night work would have its effect and that the jorth contingent would not renew the siege very determinedly. it turned out, however, that blaisdell was wrong. directly after sunrise they began to pour volleys from four sides and from closer range. during the night jorth's gang had thrown earth banks and constructed log breastworks, from behind which they were now firing. jean and his comrades could see the flashes of fire and streaks of smoke to such good advantage that they began to return the volleys. in half an hour the cabin was so full of smoke that jean could not see the womenfolk in their corner. the fierce attack then abated somewhat, and the firing became more intermittent, and therefore more carefully aimed. a glancing bullet cut a furrow in blaisdell's hoary head, making a painful, though not serious wound. it was esther isbel who stopped the flow of blood and bound blaisdell's head, a task which she performed skillfully and without a tremor. the old texan could not sit still during this operation. sight of the blood on his hands, which he tried to rub off, appeared to inflame him to a great degree. "isbel, we got to go out thar," he kept repeating, "an' kill them all." "no, we're goin' to stay heah," replied gaston isbel. "shore i'm lookin' for blue an' fredericks an' gordon to open up out there. they ought to be heah, an' if they are y'u shore can bet they've got the fight sized up." isbel's hopes did not materialize. the shooting continued without any lull until about midday. then the jorth faction stopped. "wal, now what's up?" queried isbel. "boys, hold your fire an' let's wait." gradually the smoke wafted out of the windows and doors, until the room was once more clear. and at this juncture esther isbel came over to take another gaze out upon the meadows. jean saw her suddenly start violently, then stiffen, with a trembling hand outstretched. "look!" she cried. "esther, get back," ordered the old rancher. "keep away from that window." "what the hell!" muttered blaisdell. "she sees somethin', or she's gone dotty." esther seemed turned to stone. "look! the hogs have broken into the pasture! ... they'll eat guy's body!" everyone was frozen with horror at esther's statement. jean took a swift survey of the pasture. a bunch of big black hogs had indeed appeared on the scene and were rooting around in the grass not far from where lay the bodies of guy isbel and jacobs. this herd of hogs belonged to the rancher and was allowed to run wild. "jane, those hogs--" stammered esther isbel, to the wife of jacobs. "come! look! ... do y'u know anythin' about hogs?" the woman ran to the window and looked out. she stiffened as had esther. "dad, will those hogs--eat human flesh?" queried jean, breathlessly. the old man stared out of the window. surprise seemed to hold him. a completely unexpected situation had staggered him. "jean--can you--can you shoot that far?" he asked, huskily. "to those hogs? no, it's out of range." "then, by god, we've got to stay trapped in heah an' watch an awful sight," ejaculated the old man, completely unnerved. "see that break in the fence! ... jorth's done that.... to let in the hogs!" "aw, isbel, it's not so bad as all that," remonstrated blaisdell, wagging his bloody head. "jorth wouldn't do such a hell-bent trick." "it's shore done." "wal, mebbe the hogs won't find guy an' jacobs," returned blaisdell, weakly. plain it was that he only hoped for such a contingency and certainly doubted it. "look!" cried esther isbel, piercingly. "they're workin' straight up the pasture!" indeed, to jean it appeared to be the fatal truth. he looked blankly, feeling a little sick. ann isbel came to peer out of the window and she uttered a cry. jacobs's wife stood mute, as if dazed. blaisdell swore a mighty oath. "-- -- --! isbel, we cain't stand heah an' watch them hogs eat our people!" "wal, we'll have to. what else on earth can we do?" esther turned to the men. she was white and cold, except her eyes, which resembled gray flames. "somebody can run out there an' bury our dead men," she said. "why, child, it'd be shore death. y'u saw what happened to guy an' jacobs.... we've jest got to bear it. shore nobody needn't look out--an' see." jean wondered if it would be possible to keep from watching. the thing had a horrible fascination. the big hogs were rooting and tearing in the grass, some of them lazy, others nimble, and all were gradually working closer and closer to the bodies. the leader, a huge, gaunt boar, that had fared ill all his life in this barren country, was scarcely fifty feet away from where guy isbel lay. "ann, get me some of your clothes, an' a sunbonnet--quick," said jean, forced out of his lethargy. "i'll run out there disguised. maybe i can go through with it." "no!" ordered his father, positively, and with dark face flaming. "guy an' jacobs are dead. we cain't help them now." "but, dad--" pleaded jean. he had been wrought to a pitch by esther's blaze of passion, by the agony in the face of the other woman. "i tell y'u no!" thundered gaston isbel, flinging his arms wide. "i will go!" cried esther, her voice ringing. "you won't go alone!" instantly answered the wife of jacobs, repeating unconsciously the words her husband had spoken. "you stay right heah," shouted gaston isbel, hoarsely. "i'm goin'," replied esther. "you've no hold over me. my husband is dead. no one can stop me. i'm goin' out there to drive those hogs away an' bury him." "esther, for heaven's sake, listen," replied isbel. "if y'u show yourself outside, jorth an' his gang will kin y'u." "they may be mean, but no white men could be so low as that." then they pleaded with her to give up her purpose. but in vain! she pushed them back and ran out through the kitchen with jacobs's wife following her. jean turned to the window in time to see both women run out into the lane. jean looked fearfully, and listened for shots. but only a loud, "haw! haw!" came from the watchers outside. that coarse laugh relieved the tension in jean's breast. possibly the jorths were not as black as his father painted them. the two women entered an open shed and came forth with a shovel and spade. "shore they've got to hurry," burst out gaston isbel. shifting his gaze, jean understood the import of his father's speech. the leader of the hogs had no doubt scented the bodies. suddenly he espied them and broke into a trot. "run, esther, run!" yelled jean, with all his might. that urged the women to flight. jean began to shoot. the hog reached the body of guy. jean's shots did not reach nor frighten the beast. all the hogs now had caught a scent and went ambling toward their leader. esther and her companion passed swiftly out of sight behind a corral. loud and piercingly, with some awful note, rang out their screams. the hogs appeared frightened. the leader lifted his long snout, looked, and turned away. the others had halted. then they, too, wheeled and ran off. all was silent then in the cabin and also outside wherever the jorth faction lay concealed. all eyes manifestly were fixed upon the brave wives. they spaded up the sod and dug a grave for guy isbel. for a shroud esther wrapped him in her shawl. then they buried him. next they hurried to the side of jacobs, who lay some yards away. they dug a grave for him. mrs. jacobs took off her outer skirt to wrap round him. then the two women labored hard to lift him and lower him. jacobs was a heavy man. when he had been covered his widow knelt beside his grave. esther went back to the other. but she remained standing and did not look as if she prayed. her aspect was tragic--that of a woman who had lost father, mother, sisters, brother, and now her husband, in this bloody arizona land. the deed and the demeanor of these wives of the murdered men surely must have shamed jorth and his followers. they did not fire a shot during the ordeal nor give any sign of their presence. inside the cabin all were silent, too. jean's eyes blurred so that he continually had to wipe them. old isbel made no effort to hide his tears. blaisdell nodded his shaggy head and swallowed hard. the women sat staring into space. the children, in round-eyed dismay, gazed from one to the other of their elders. "wal, they're comin' back," declared isbel, in immense relief. "an' so help me--jorth let them bury their daid!" the fact seemed to have been monstrously strange to gaston isbel. when the women entered the old man said, brokenly: "i'm shore glad.... an' i reckon i was wrong to oppose you ... an' wrong to say what i did aboot jorth." no one had any chance to reply to isbel, for the jorth gang, as if to make up for lost time and surcharged feelings of shame, renewed the attack with such a persistent and furious volleying that the defenders did not risk a return shot. they all had to lie flat next to the lowest log in order to keep from being hit. bullets rained in through the window. and all the clay between the logs low down was shot away. this fusillade lasted for more than an hour, then gradually the fire diminished on one side and then on the other until it became desultory and finally ceased. "ahuh! shore they've shot their bolt," declared gaston isbel. "wal, i doon't know aboot that," returned blaisdell, "but they've shot a hell of a lot of shells." "listen," suddenly called jean. "somebody's yellin'." "hey, isbel!" came in loud, hoarse voice. "let your women fight for you." gaston isbel sat up with a start and his face turned livid. jean needed no more to prove that the derisive voice from outside had belonged to jorth. the old rancher lunged up to his full height and with reckless disregard of life he rushed to the window. "jorth," he roared, "i dare you to meet me--man to man!" this elicited no answer. jean dragged his father away from the window. after that a waiting silence ensued, gradually less fraught with suspense. blaisdell started conversation by saying he believed the fight was over for that particular time. no one disputed him. evidently gaston isbel was loath to believe it. jean, however, watching at the back of the kitchen, eventually discovered that the jorth gang had lifted the siege. jean saw them congregate at the edge of the brush, somewhat lower down than they had been the day before. a team of mules, drawing a wagon, appeared on the road, and turned toward the slope. saddled horses were led down out of the junipers. jean saw bodies, evidently of dead men, lifted into the wagon, to be hauled away toward the village. seven mounted men, leading four riderless horses, rode out into the valley and followed the wagon. "dad, they've gone," declared jean. "we had the best of this fight.... if only guy an' jacobs had listened!" the old man nodded moodily. he had aged considerably during these two trying days. his hair was grayer. now that the blaze and glow of the fight had passed he showed a subtle change, a fixed and morbid sadness, a resignation to a fate he had accepted. the ordinary routine of ranch life did not return for the isbels. blaisdell returned home to settle matters there, so that he could devote all his time to this feud. gaston isbel sat down to wait for the members of his clan. the male members of the family kept guard in turn over the ranch that night. and another day dawned. it brought word from blaisdell that blue, fredericks, gordon, and colmor were all at his house, on the way to join the isbels. this news appeared greatly to rejuvenate gaston isbel. but his enthusiasm did not last long. impatient and moody by turns, he paced or moped around the cabin, always looking out, sometimes toward blaisdell's ranch, but mostly toward grass valley. it struck jean as singular that neither esther isbel nor mrs. jacobs suggested a reburial of their husbands. the two bereaved women did not ask for assistance, but repaired to the pasture, and there spent several hours working over the graves. they raised mounds, which they sodded, and then placed stones at the heads and feet. lastly, they fenced in the graves. "i reckon i'll hitch up an' drive back home," said mrs. jacobs, when she returned to the cabin. "i've much to do an' plan. probably i'll go to my mother's home. she's old an' will be glad to have me." "if i had any place to go to i'd sure go," declared esther isbel, bitterly. gaston isbel heard this remark. he raised his face from his hands, evidently both nettled and hurt. "esther, shore that's not kind," he said. the red-haired woman--for she did not appear to be a girl any more--halted before his chair and gazed down at him, with a terrible flare of scorn in her gray eyes. "gaston isbel, all i've got to say to you is this," she retorted, with the voice of a man. "seein' that you an' lee jorth hate each other, why couldn't you act like men? ... you damned texans, with your bloody feuds, draggin' in every relation, every friend to murder each other! that's not the way of arizona men.... we've all got to suffer--an' we women be ruined for life--because you had differences with jorth. if you were half a man you'd go out an' kill him yourself, an' not leave a lot of widows an' orphaned children!" jean himself writhed under the lash of her scorn. gaston isbel turned a dead white. he could not answer her. he seemed stricken with merciless truth. slowly dropping his head, he remained motionless, a pathetic and tragic figure; and he did not stir until the rapid beat of hoofs denoted the approach of horsemen. blaisdell appeared on his white charger, leading a pack animal. and behind rode a group of men, all heavily armed, and likewise with packs. "get down an' come in," was isbel's greeting. "bill--you look after their packs. better leave the hosses saddled." the booted and spurred riders trooped in, and their demeanor fitted their errand. jean was acquainted with all of them. fredericks was a lanky texan, the color of dust, and he had yellow, clear eyes, like those of a hawk. his mother had been an isbel. gordon, too, was related to jean's family, though distantly. he resembled an industrious miner more than a prosperous cattleman. blue was the most striking of the visitors, as he was the most noted. a little, shrunken gray-eyed man, with years of cowboy written all over him, he looked the quiet, easy, cool, and deadly texan he was reputed to be. blue's texas record was shady, and was seldom alluded to, as unfavorable comment had turned out to be hazardous. he was the only one of the group who did not carry a rifle. but he packed two guns, a habit not often noted in texans, and almost never in arizonians. colmor, ann isbel's fiance, was the youngest member of the clan, and the one closest to jean. his meeting with ann affected jean powerfully, and brought to a climax an idea that had been developing in jean's mind. his sister devotedly loved this lean-faced, keen-eyed arizonian; and it took no great insight to discover that colmor reciprocated her affection. they were young. they had long life before them. it seemed to jean a pity that colmor should be drawn into this war. jean watched them, as they conversed apart; and he saw ann's hands creep up to colmor's breast, and he saw her dark eyes, eloquent, hungry, fearful, lifted with queries her lips did not speak. jean stepped beside them, and laid an arm over both their shoulders. "colmor, for ann's sake you'd better back out of this jorth-isbel fight," he whispered. colmor looked insulted. "but, jean, it's ann's father," he said. "i'm almost one of the family." "you're ann's sweetheart, an', by heaven, i say you oughtn't to go with us!" whispered jean. "go--with--you," faltered ann. "yes. dad is goin' straight after jorth. can't you tell that? an' there 'll be one hell of a fight." ann looked up into colmor's face with all her soul in her eyes, but she did not speak. her look was noble. she yearned to guide him right, yet her lips were sealed. and colmor betrayed the trouble of his soul. the code of men held him bound, and he could not break from it, though he divined in that moment how truly it was wrong. "jean, your dad started me in the cattle business," said colmor, earnestly. "an' i'm doin' well now. an' when i asked him for ann he said he'd be glad to have me in the family.... well, when this talk of fight come up, i asked your dad to let me go in on his side. he wouldn't hear of it. but after a while, as the time passed an' he made more enemies, he finally consented. i reckon he needs me now. an' i can't back out, not even for ann." "i would if i were you," replied jean, and knew that he lied. "jean, i'm gamblin' to come out of the fight," said colmor, with a smile. he had no morbid fears nor presentiments, such as troubled jean. "why, sure--you stand as good a chance as anyone," rejoined jean. "it wasn't that i was worryin' about so much." "what was it, then?" asked ann, steadily. "if andrew does come through alive he'll have blood on his hands," returned jean, with passion. "he can't come through without it.... i've begun to feel what it means to have killed my fellow men.... an' i'd rather your husband an' the father of your children never felt that." colmor did not take jean as subtly as ann did. she shrunk a little. her dark eyes dilated. but colmor showed nothing of her spiritual reaction. he was young. he had wild blood. he was loyal to the isbels. "jean, never worry about my conscience," he said, with a keen look. "nothin' would tickle me any more than to get a shot at every damn one of the jorths." that established colmor's status in regard to the jorth-isbel feud. jean had no more to say. he respected ann's friend and felt poignant sorrow for ann. gaston isbel called for meat and drink to be set on the table for his guests. when his wishes had been complied with the women took the children into the adjoining cabin and shut the door. "hah! wal, we can eat an' talk now." first the newcomers wanted to hear particulars of what had happened. blaisdell had told all he knew and had seen, but that was not sufficient. they plied gaston isbel with questions. laboriously and ponderously he rehearsed the experiences of the fight at the ranch, according to his impressions. bill isbel was exhorted to talk, but he had of late manifested a sullen and taciturn disposition. in spite of jean's vigilance bill had continued to imbibe red liquor. then jean was called upon to relate all he had seen and done. it had been jean's intention to keep his mouth shut, first for his own sake and, secondly, because he did not like to talk of his deeds. but when thus appealed to by these somber-faced, intent-eyed men he divined that the more carefully he described the cruelty and baseness of their enemies, and the more vividly he presented his participation in the first fight of the feud the more strongly he would bind these friends to the isbel cause. so he talked for an hour, beginning with his meeting with colter up on the rim and ending with an account of his killing greaves. his listeners sat through this long narrative with unabated interest and at the close they were leaning forward, breathless and tense. "ah! so greaves got his desserts at last," exclaimed gordon. all the men around the table made comments, and the last, from blue, was the one that struck jean forcibly. "shore thet was a strange an' a hell of a way to kill greaves. why'd you do thet, jean?" "i told you. i wanted to avoid noise an' i hoped to get more of them." blue nodded his lean, eagle-like head and sat thoughtfully, as if not convinced of anything save jean's prowess. after a moment blue spoke again. "then, goin' back to jean's tellin' aboot trackin' rustled cattle, i've got this to say. i've long suspected thet somebody livin' right heah in the valley has been drivin' off cattle an' dealin' with rustlers. an' now i'm shore of it." this speech did not elicit the amaze from gaston isbel that jean expected it would. "you mean greaves or some of his friends?" "no. they wasn't none of them in the cattle business, like we are. shore we all knowed greaves was crooked. but what i'm figgerin' is thet some so-called honest man in our settlement has been makin' crooked deals." blue was a man of deeds rather than words, and so much strong speech from him, whom everybody knew to be remarkably reliable and keen, made a profound impression upon most of the isbel faction. but, to jean's surprise, his father did not rave. it was blaisdell who supplied the rage and invective. bill isbel, also, was strangely indifferent to this new element in the condition of cattle dealing. suddenly jean caught a vague flash of thought, as if he had intercepted the thought of another's mind, and he wondered--could his brother bill know anything about this crooked work alluded to by blue? dismissing the conjecture, jean listened earnestly. "an' if it's true it shore makes this difference--we cain't blame all the rustlin' on to jorth," concluded blue. "wal, it's not true," declared gaston isbel, roughly. "jorth an' his hash knife gang are at the bottom of all the rustlin' in the valley for years back. an' they've got to be wiped out!" "isbel, i reckon we'd all feel better if we talk straight," replied blue, coolly. "i'm heah to stand by the isbels. an' y'u know what thet means. but i'm not heah to fight jorth because he may be a rustler. the others may have their own reasons, but mine is this--you once stood by me in texas when i was needin' friends. wal, i'm standin' by y'u now. jorth is your enemy, an' so he is mine." gaston isbel bowed to this ultimatum, scarcely less agitated than when esther isbel had denounced him. his rabid and morbid hate of jorth had eaten into his heart to take possession there, like the parasite that battened upon the life of its victim. blue's steely voice, his cold, gray eyes, showed the unbiased truth of the man, as well as his fidelity to his creed. here again, but in a different manner, gaston isbel had the fact flung at him that other men must suffer, perhaps die, for his hate. and the very soul of the old rancher apparently rose in passionate revolt against the blind, headlong, elemental strength of his nature. so it seemed to jean, who, in love and pity that hourly grew, saw through his father. was it too late? alas! gaston isbel could never be turned back! yet something was altering his brooding, fixed mind. "wal," said blaisdell, gruffly, "let's get down to business.... i'm for havin' blue be foreman of this heah outfit, an' all of us to do as he says." gaston isbel opposed this selection and indeed resented it. he intended to lead the isbel faction. "all right, then. give us a hunch what we're goin' to do," replied blaisdell. "we're goin' to ride off on jorth's trail--an' one way or another--kill him--kill him! ... i reckon that'll end the fight." what did old isbel have in his mind? his listeners shook their heads. "no," asserted blaisdell. "killin' jorth might be the end of your desires, isbel, but it 'd never end our fight. we'll have gone too far.... if we take jorth's trail from heah it means we've got to wipe out that rustier gang, or stay to the last man." "yes, by god!" exclaimed fredericks. "let's drink to thet!" said blue. strangely they turned to this texas gunman, instinctively recognizing in him the brain and heart, and the past deeds, that fitted him for the leadership of such a clan. blue had all in life to lose, and nothing to gain. yet his spirit was such that he could not lean to all the possible gain of the future, and leave a debt unpaid. then his voice, his look, his influence were those of a fighter. they all drank with him, even jean, who hated liquor. and this act of drinking seemed the climax of the council. preparations were at once begun for their departure on jorth's trail. jean took but little time for his own needs. a horse, a blanket, a knapsack of meat and bread, a canteen, and his weapons, with all the ammunition he could pack, made up his outfit. he wore his buckskin suit, leggings, and moccasins. very soon the cavalcade was ready to depart. jean tried not to watch bill isbel say good-by to his children, but it was impossible not to. whatever bill was, as a man, he was father of those children, and he loved them. how strange that the little ones seemed to realize the meaning of this good-by? they were grave, somber-eyed, pale up to the last moment, then they broke down and wept. did they sense that their father would never come back? jean caught that dark, fatalistic presentiment. bill isbel's convulsed face showed that he also caught it. jean did not see bill say good-by to his wife. but he heard her. old gaston isbel forgot to speak to the children, or else could not. he never looked at them. and his good-by to ann was as if he were only riding to the village for a day. jean saw woman's love, woman's intuition, woman's grief in her eyes. he could not escape her. "oh, jean! oh, brother!" she whispered as she enfolded him. "it's awful! it's wrong! wrong! wrong! ... good-by! ... if killing must be--see that y'u kill the jorths! ... good-by!" even in ann, gentle and mild, the isbel blood spoke at the last. jean gave ann over to the pale-faced colmor, who took her in his arms. then jean fled out to his horse. this cold-blooded devastation of a home was almost more than he could bear. there was love here. what would be left? colmor was the last one to come out to the horses. he did not walk erect, nor as one whose sight was clear. then, as the silent, tense, grim men mounted their horses, bill isbel's eldest child, the boy, appeared in the door. his little form seemed instinct with a force vastly different from grief. his face was the face of an isbel. "daddy--kill 'em all!" he shouted, with a passion all the fiercer for its incongruity to the treble voice. so the poison had spread from father to son. chapter ix half a mile from the isbel ranch the cavalcade passed the log cabin of evarts, father of the boy who had tended sheep with bernardino. it suited gaston isbel to halt here. no need to call! evarts and his son appeared so quickly as to convince observers that they had been watching. "howdy, jake!" said isbel. "i'm wantin' a word with y'u alone." "shore, boss, git down an' come in," replied evarts. isbel led him aside, and said something forcible that jean divined from the very gesture which accompanied it. his father was telling evarts that he was not to join in the isbel-jorth war. evarts had worked for the isbels a long time, and his faithfulness, along with something stronger and darker, showed in his rugged face as he stubbornly opposed isbel. the old man raised his voice: "no, i tell you. an' that settles it." they returned to the horses, and, before mounting, isbel, as if he remembered something, directed his somber gaze on young evarts. "son, did you bury bernardino?" "dad an' me went over yestiddy," replied the lad. "i shore was glad the coyotes hadn't been round." "how aboot the sheep?" "i left them there. i was goin' to stay, but bein' all alone--i got skeered.... the sheep was doin' fine. good water an' some grass. an' this ain't time fer varmints to hang round." "jake, keep your eye on that flock," returned isbel. "an' if i shouldn't happen to come back y'u can call them sheep yours.... i'd like your boy to ride up to the village. not with us, so anybody would see him. but afterward. we'll be at abel meeker's." again jean was confronted with an uneasy premonition as to some idea or plan his father had not shared with his followers. when the cavalcade started on again jean rode to his father's side and asked him why he had wanted the evarts boy to come to grass valley. and the old man replied that, as the boy could run to and fro in the village without danger, he might be useful in reporting what was going on at greaves's store, where undoubtedly the jorth gang would hold forth. this appeared reasonable enough, therefore jean smothered the objection he had meant to make. the valley road was deserted. when, a mile farther on, the riders passed a group of cabins, just on the outskirts of the village, jean's quick eye caught sight of curious and evidently frightened people trying to see while they avoided being seen. no doubt the whole settlement was in a state of suspense and terror. not unlikely this dark, closely grouped band of horsemen appeared to them as jorth's gang had looked to jean. it was an orderly, trotting march that manifested neither hurry nor excitement. but any western eye could have caught the singular aspect of such a group, as if the intent of the riders was a visible thing. soon they reached the outskirts of the village. here their approach bad been watched for or had been already reported. jean saw men, women, children peeping from behind cabins and from half-opened doors. farther on jean espied the dark figures of men, slipping out the back way through orchards and gardens and running north, toward the center of the village. could these be friends of the jorth crowd, on the way with warnings of the approach of the isbels? jean felt convinced of it. he was learning that his father had not been absolutely correct in his estimation of the way jorth and his followers were regarded by their neighbors. not improbably there were really many villagers who, being more interested in sheep raising than in cattle, had an honest leaning toward the jorths. some, too, no doubt, had leanings that were dishonest in deed if not in sincerity. gaston isbel led his clan straight down the middle of the wide road of grass valley until he reached a point opposite abel meeker's cabin. jean espied the same curiosity from behind meeker's door and windows as had been shown all along the road. but presently, at isbel's call, the door opened and a short, swarthy man appeared. he carried a rifle. "howdy, gass!" he said. "what's the good word?" "wal, abel, it's not good, but bad. an' it's shore started," replied isbel. "i'm askin' y'u to let me have your cabin." "you're welcome. i'll send the folks 'round to jim's," returned meeker. "an' if y'u want me, i'm with y'u, isbel." "thanks, abel, but i'm not leadin' any more kin an' friends into this heah deal." "wal, jest as y'u say. but i'd like damn bad to jine with y'u.... my brother ted was shot last night." "ted! is he daid?" ejaculated isbel, blankly. "we can't find out," replied meeker. "jim says thet jeff campbell said thet ted went into greaves's place last night. greaves allus was friendly to ted, but greaves wasn't thar--" "no, he shore wasn't," interrupted isbel, with a dark smile, "an' he never will be there again." meeker nodded with slow comprehension and a shade crossed his face. "wal, campbell claimed he'd heerd from some one who was thar. anyway, the jorths were drinkin' hard, an' they raised a row with ted--same old sheep talk an' somebody shot him. campbell said ted was thrown out back, an' he was shore he wasn't killed." "ahuh! wal, i'm sorry, abel, your family had to lose in this. maybe ted's not bad hurt. i shore hope so.... an' y'u an' jim keep out of the fight, anyway." "all right, isbel. but i reckon i'll give y'u a hunch. if this heah fight lasts long the whole damn basin will be in it, on one side or t'other." "abe, you're talkin' sense," broke in blaisdell. "an' that's why we're up heah for quick action." "i heerd y'u got daggs," whispered meeker, as he peered all around. "wal, y'u heerd correct," drawled blaisdell. meeker muttered strong words into his beard. "say, was daggs in thet jorth outfit?" "he was. but he walked right into jean's forty-four.... an' i reckon his carcass would show some more." "an' whar's guy isbel?" demanded meeker. "daid an' buried, abel," replied gaston isbel. "an' now i'd be obliged if y'u 'll hurry your folks away, an' let us have your cabin an' corral. have yu got any hay for the hosses?" "shore. the barn's half full," replied meeker, as he turned away. "come on in." "no. we'll wait till you've gone." when meeker had gone, isbel and his men sat their horses and looked about them and spoke low. their advent had been expected, and the little town awoke to the imminence of the impending battle. inside meeker's house there was the sound of indistinct voices of women and the bustle incident to a hurried vacating. across the wide road people were peering out on all sides, some hiding, others walking to and fro, from fence to fence, whispering in little groups. down the wide road, at the point where it turned, stood greaves's fort-like stone house. low, flat, isolated, with its dark, eye-like windows, it presented a forbidding and sinister aspect. jean distinctly saw the forms of men, some dark, others in shirt sleeves, come to the wide door and look down the road. "wal, i reckon only aboot five hundred good hoss steps are separatin' us from that outfit," drawled blaisdell. no one replied to his jocularity. gaston isbel's eyes narrowed to a slit in his furrowed face and he kept them fastened upon greaves's store. blue, likewise, had a somber cast of countenance, not, perhaps, any darker nor grimmer than those of his comrades, but more representative of intense preoccupation of mind. the look of him thrilled jean, who could sense its deadliness, yet could not grasp any more. altogether, the manner of the villagers and the watchful pacing to and fro of the jorth followers and the silent, boding front of isbel and his men summed up for jean the menace of the moment that must very soon change to a terrible reality. at a call from meeker, who stood at the back of the cabin, gaston isbel rode into the yard, followed by the others of his party. "somebody look after the hosses," ordered isbel, as he dismounted and took his rifle and pack. "better leave the saddles on, leastways till we see what's comin' off." jean and bill isbel led the horses back to the corral. while watering and feeding them, jean somehow received the impression that bill was trying to speak, to confide in him, to unburden himself of some load. this peculiarity of bill's had become marked when he was perfectly sober. yet he had never spoken or even begun anything unusual. upon the present occasion, however, jean believed that his brother might have gotten rid of his emotion, or whatever it was, had they not been interrupted by colmor. "boys, the old man's orders are for us to sneak round on three sides of greaves's store, keepin' out of gunshot till we find good cover, an' then crawl closer an' to pick off any of jorth's gang who shows himself." bill isbel strode off without a reply to colmor. "well, i don't think so much of that," said jean, ponderingly. "jorth has lots of friends here. somebody might pick us off." "i kicked, but the old man shut me up. he's not to be bucked ag'in' now. struck me as powerful queer. but no wonder." "maybe he knows best. did he say anythin' about what he an' the rest of them are goin' to do?" "nope. blue taxed him with that an' got the same as me. i reckon we'd better try it out, for a while, anyway." "looks like he wants us to keep out of the fight," replied jean, thoughtfully. "maybe, though ... dad's no fool. colmor, you wait here till i get out of sight. i'll go round an' come up as close as advisable behind greaves's store. you take the right side. an' keep hid." with that jean strode off, going around the barn, straight out the orchard lane to the open flat, and then climbing a fence to the north of the village. presently he reached a line of sheds and corrals, to which he held until he arrived at the road. this point was about a quarter of a mile from greaves's store, and around the bend. jean sighted no one. the road, the fields, the yards, the backs of the cabins all looked deserted. a blight had settled down upon the peaceful activities of grass valley. crossing the road, jean began to circle until he came close to several cabins, around which he made a wide detour. this took him to the edge of the slope, where brush and thickets afforded him a safe passage to a line directly back of greaves's store. then he turned toward it. soon he was again approaching a cabin of that side, and some of its inmates descried him, their actions attested to their alarm. jean half expected a shot from this quarter, such were his growing doubts, but he was mistaken. a man, unknown to jean, closely watched his guarded movements and then waved a hand, as if to signify to jean that he had nothing to fear. after this act he disappeared. jean believed that he had been recognized by some one not antagonistic to the isbels. therefore he passed the cabin and, coming to a thick scrub-oak tree that offered shelter, he hid there to watch. from this spot he could see the back of greaves's store, at a distance probably too far for a rifle bullet to reach. before him, as far as the store, and on each side, extended the village common. in front of the store ran the road. jean's position was such that he could not command sight of this road down toward meeker's house, a fact that disturbed him. not satisfied with this stand, he studied his surroundings in the hope of espying a better. and he discovered what he thought would be a more favorable position, although he could not see much farther down the road. jean went back around the cabin and, coming out into the open to the right, he got the corner of greaves's barn between him and the window of the store. then he boldly hurried into the open, and soon reached an old wagon, from behind which he proposed to watch. he could not see either window or door of the store, but if any of the jorth contingent came out the back way they would be within reach of his rifle. jean took the risk of being shot at from either side. so sharp and roving was his sight that he soon espied colmor slipping along behind the trees some hundred yards to the left. all his efforts to catch a glimpse of bill, however, were fruitless. and this appeared strange to jean, for there were several good places on the right from which bill could have commanded the front of greaves's store and the whole west side. colmor disappeared among some shrubbery, and jean seemed left alone to watch a deserted, silent village. watching and listening, he felt that the time dragged. yet the shadows cast by the sun showed him that, no matter how tense he felt and how the moments seemed hours, they were really flying. suddenly jean's ears rang with the vibrant shock of a rifle report. he jerked up, strung and thrilling. it came from in front of the store. it was followed by revolver shots, heavy, booming. three he counted, and the rest were too close together to enumerate. a single hoarse yell pealed out, somehow trenchant and triumphant. other yells, not so wild and strange, muffled the first one. then silence clapped down on the store and the open square. jean was deadly certain that some of the jorth clan would show themselves. he strained to still the trembling those sudden shots and that significant yell had caused him. no man appeared. no more sounds caught jean's ears. the suspense, then, grew unbearable. it was not that he could not wait for an enemy to appear, but that he could not wait to learn what had happened. every moment that he stayed there, with hands like steel on his rifle, with eyes of a falcon, but added to a dreadful, dark certainty of disaster. a rifle shot swiftly followed by revolver shots! what could, they mean? revolver shots of different caliber, surely fired by different men! what could they mean? it was not these shots that accounted for jean's dread, but the yell which had followed. all his intelligence and all his nerve were not sufficient to fight down the feeling of calamity. and at last, yielding to it, he left his post, and ran like a deer across the open, through the cabin yard, and around the edge of the slope to the road. here his caution brought him to a halt. not a living thing crossed his vision. breaking into a run, he soon reached the back of meeker's place and entered, to hurry forward to the cabin. colmor was there in the yard, breathing hard, his face working, and in front of him crouched several of the men with rifles ready. the road, to jean's flashing glance, was apparently deserted. blue sat on the doorstep, lighting a cigarette. then on the moment blaisdell strode to the door of the cabin. jean had never seen him look like that. "jean--look--down the road," he said, brokenly, and with big hand shaking he pointed down toward greaves's store. like lightning jean's glance shot down--down--down--until it stopped to fix upon the prostrate form of a man, lying in the middle of the road. a man of lengthy build, shirt-sleeved arms flung wide, white head in the dust--dead! jean's recognition was as swift as his sight. his father! they had killed him! the jorths! it was done. his father's premonition of death had not been false. and then, after these flashing thoughts, came a sense of blankness, momentarily almost oblivion, that gave place to a rending of the heart. that pain jean had known only at the death of his mother. it passed, this agonizing pang, and its icy pressure yielded to a rushing gust of blood, fiery as hell. "who--did it?" whispered jean. "jorth!" replied blaisdell, huskily. "son, we couldn't hold your dad back.... we couldn't. he was like a lion.... an' he throwed his life away! oh, if it hadn't been for that it 'd not be so awful. shore, we come heah to shoot an' be shot. but not like that.... by god, it was murder--murder!" jean's mute lips framed a query easily read. "tell him, blue. i cain't," continued blaisdell, and he tramped back into the cabin. "set down, jean, an' take things easy," said blue, calmly. "you know we all reckoned we'd git plugged one way or another in this deal. an' shore it doesn't matter much how a fellar gits it. all thet ought to bother us is to make shore the other outfit bites the dust--same as your dad had to." under this man's tranquil presence, all the more quieting because it seemed to be so deadly sure and cool, jean felt the uplift of his dark spirit, the acceptance of fatality, the mounting control of faculties that must wait. the little gunman seemed to have about his inert presence something that suggested a rattlesnake's inherent knowledge of its destructiveness. jean sat down and wiped his clammy face. "jean, your dad reckoned to square accounts with jorth, an' save us all," began blue, puffing out a cloud of smoke. "but he reckoned too late. mebbe years; ago--or even not long ago--if he'd called jorth out man to man there'd never been any jorth-isbel war. gaston isbel's conscience woke too late. that's how i figger it." "hurry! tell me--how it--happen," panted jean. "wal, a little while after y'u left i seen your dad writin' on a leaf he tore out of a book--meeker's bible, as yu can see. i thought thet was funny. an' blaisdell gave me a hunch. pretty soon along comes young evarts. the old man calls him out of our hearin' an' talks to him. then i seen him give the boy somethin', which i afterward figgered was what he wrote on the leaf out of the bible. me an' blaisdell both tried to git out of him what thet meant. but not a word. i kept watchin' an' after a while i seen young evarts slip out the back way. mebbe half an hour i seen a bare-legged kid cross, the road an' go into greaves's store.... then shore i tumbled to your dad. he'd sent a note to jorth to come out an' meet him face to face, man to man! ... shore it was like readin' what your dad had wrote. but i didn't say nothin' to blaisdell. i jest watched." blue drawled these last words, as if he enjoyed remembrance of his keen reasoning. a smile wreathed his thin lips. he drew twice on the cigarette and emitted another cloud of smoke. quite suddenly then he changed. he made a rapid gesture--the whip of a hand, significant and passionate. and swift words followed: "colonel lee jorth stalked out of the store--out into the road--mebbe a hundred steps. then he halted. he wore his long black coat an' his wide black hat, an' he stood like a stone. "'what the hell!' burst out blaisdell, comin' out of his trance. "the rest of us jest looked. i'd forgot your dad, for the minnit. so had all of us. but we remembered soon enough when we seen him stalk out. everybody had a hunch then. i called him. blaisdell begged him to come back. all the fellars; had a say. no use! then i shore cussed him an' told him it was plain as day thet jorth didn't hit me like an honest man. i can sense such things. i knew jorth had trick up his sleeve. i've not been a gun fighter fer nothin'. "your dad had no rifle. he packed his gun at his hip. he jest stalked down thet road like a giant, goin' faster an' faster, holdin' his head high. it shore was fine to see him. but i was sick. i heerd blaisdell groan, an' fredericks thar cussed somethin' fierce.... when your dad halted--i reckon aboot fifty steps from jorth--then we all went numb. i heerd your dad's voice--then jorth's. they cut like knives. y'u could shore heah the hate they hed fer each other." blue had become a little husky. his speech had grown gradually to denote his feeling. underneath his serenity there was a different order of man. "i reckon both your dad an' jorth went fer their guns at the same time--an even break. but jest as they drew, some one shot a rifle from the store. must hev been a forty-five seventy. a big gun! the bullet must have hit your dad low down, aboot the middle. he acted thet way, sinkin' to his knees. an' he was wild in shootin'--so wild thet he must hev missed. then he wabbled--an' jorth run in a dozen steps, shootin' fast, till your dad fell over.... jorth run closer, bent over him, an' then straightened up with an apache yell, if i ever heerd one.... an' then jorth backed slow--lookin' all the time--backed to the store, an' went in." blue's voice ceased. jean seemed suddenly released from an impelling magnet that now dropped him to some numb, dizzy depth. blue's lean face grew hazy. then jean bowed his head in his hands, and sat there, while a slight tremor shook all his muscles at once. he grew deathly cold and deathly sick. this paroxysm slowly wore away, and jean grew conscious of a dull amaze at the apparent deadness of his spirit. blaisdell placed a huge, kindly hand on his shoulder. "brace up, son!" he said, with voice now clear and resonant. "shore it's what your dad expected--an' what we all must look for.... if yu was goin' to kill jorth before--think how -- -- shore y'u're goin' to kill him now." "blaisdell's talkin'," put in blue, and his voice had a cold ring. "lee jorth will never see the sun rise ag'in!" these calls to the primitive in jean, to the indian, were not in vain. but even so, when the dark tide rose in him, there was still a haunting consciousness of the cruelty of this singular doom imposed upon him. strangely ellen jorth's face floated back in the depths of his vision, pale, fading, like the face of a spirit floating by. "blue," said blaisdell, "let's get isbel's body soon as we dare, an' bury it. reckon we can, right after dark." "shore," replied blue. "but y'u fellars figger thet out. i'm thinkin' hard. i've got somethin' on my mind." jean grew fascinated by the looks and speech and action of the little gunman. blue, indeed, had something on his mind. and it boded ill to the men in that dark square stone house down the road. he paced to and fro in the yard, back and forth on the path to the gate, and then he entered the cabin to stalk up and down, faster and faster, until all at once he halted as if struck, to upfling his right arm in a singular fierce gesture. "jean, call the men in," he said, tersely. they all filed in, sinister and silent, with eager faces turned to the little texan. his dominance showed markedly. "gordon, y'u stand in the door an' keep your eye peeled," went on blue. "... now, boys, listen! i've thought it all out. this game of man huntin' is the same to me as cattle raisin' is to y'u. an' my life in texas all comes back to me, i reckon, in good stead fer us now. i'm goin' to kill lee jorth! him first, an' mebbe his brothers. i had to think of a good many ways before i hit on one i reckon will be shore. it's got to be shore. jorth has got to die! wal, heah's my plan.... thet jorth outfit is drinkin' some, we can gamble on it. they're not goin' to leave thet store. an' of course they'll be expectin' us to start a fight. i reckon they'll look fer some such siege as they held round isbel's ranch. but we shore ain't goin' to do thet. i'm goin' to surprise thet outfit. there's only one man among them who is dangerous, an' thet's queen. i know queen. but he doesn't know me. an' i'm goin' to finish my job before he gets acquainted with me. after thet, all right!" blue paused a moment, his eyes narrowing down, his whole face setting in hard cast of intense preoccupation, as if he visualized a scene of extraordinary nature. "wal, what's your trick?" demanded blaisdell. "y'u all know greaves's store," continued blue. "how them winders have wooden shutters thet keep a light from showin' outside? wal, i'm gamblin' thet as soon as it's dark jorth's gang will be celebratin'. they'll be drinkin' an' they'll have a light, an' the winders will be shut. they're not goin' to worry none aboot us. thet store is like a fort. it won't burn. an' shore they'd never think of us chargin' them in there. wal, as soon as it's dark, we'll go round behind the lots an' come up jest acrost the road from greaves's. i reckon we'd better leave isbel where he lays till this fight's over. mebbe y'u 'll have more 'n him to bury. we'll crawl behind them bushes in front of coleman's yard. an' heah's where jean comes in. he'll take an ax, an' his guns, of course, an' do some of his injun sneakin' round to the back of greaves's store.... an', jean, y'u must do a slick job of this. but i reckon it 'll be easy fer you. back there it 'll be dark as pitch, fer anyone lookin' out of the store. an' i'm figgerin' y'u can take your time an' crawl right up. now if y'u don't remember how greaves's back yard looks i'll tell y'u." here blue dropped on one knee to the floor and with a finger he traced a map of greaves's barn and fence, the back door and window, and especially a break in the stone foundation which led into a kind of cellar where greaves stored wood and other things that could be left outdoors. "jean, i take particular pains to show y'u where this hole is," said blue, "because if the gang runs out y'u could duck in there an' hide. an' if they run out into the yard--wal, y'u'd make it a sorry run fer them.... wal, when y'u've crawled up close to greaves's back door, an' waited long enough to see an' listen--then you're to run fast an' swing your ax smash ag'in' the winder. take a quick peep in if y'u want to. it might help. then jump quick an' take a swing at the door. y'u 'll be standin' to one side, so if the gang shoots through the door they won't hit y'u. bang thet door good an' hard.... wal, now's where i come in. when y'u swing thet ax i'll shore run fer the front of the store. jorth an' his outfit will be some attentive to thet poundin' of yours on the back door. so i reckon. an' they'll be lookin' thet way. i'll run in--yell--an' throw my guns on jorth." "humph! is that all?" ejaculated blaisdell. "i reckon thet's all an' i'm figgerin' it's a hell of a lot," responded blue, dryly. "thet's what jorth will think." "where do we come in?" "wal, y'u all can back me up," replied blue, dubiously. "y'u see, my plan goes as far as killin' jorth--an' mebbe his brothers. mebbe i'll get a crack at queen. but i'll be shore of jorth. after thet all depends. mebbe it 'll be easy fer me to get out. an' if i do y'u fellars will know it an' can fill thet storeroom full of bullets." "wal, blue, with all due respect to y'u, i shore don't like your plan," declared blaisdell. "success depends upon too many little things any one of which might go wrong." "blaisdell, i reckon i know this heah game better than y'u," replied blue. "a gun fighter goes by instinct. this trick will work." "but suppose that front door of greaves's store is barred," protested blaisdell. "it hasn't got any bar," said blue. "y'u're shore?" "yes, i reckon," replied blue. "hell, man! aren't y'u takin' a terrible chance?" queried blaisdell. blue's answer to that was a look that brought the blood to blaisdell's face. only then did the rancher really comprehend how the little gunman had taken such desperate chances before, and meant to take them now, not with any hope or assurance of escaping with his life, but to live up to his peculiar code of honor. "blaisdell, did y'u ever heah of me in texas?" he queried, dryly. "wal, no, blue, i cain't swear i did," replied the rancher, apologetically. "an' isbel was always sort of' mysterious aboot his acquaintance with you." "my name's not blue." "ahuh! wal, what is it, then--if i'm safe to ask?" returned blaisdell, gruffly. "it's king fisher," replied blue. the shock that stiffened blaisdell must have been communicated to the others. jean certainly felt amaze, and some other emotion not fully realized, when he found himself face to face with one of the most notorious characters ever known in texas--an outlaw long supposed to be dead. "men, i reckon i'd kept my secret if i'd any idee of comin' out of this isbel-jorth war alive," said blue. "but i'm goin' to cash. i feel it heah.... isbel was my friend. he saved me from bein' lynched in texas. an' so i'm goin' to kill jorth. now i'll take it kind of y'u--if any of y'u come out of this alive--to tell who i was an' why i was on the isbel side. because this sheep an' cattle war--this talk of jorth an' the hash knife gang--it makes me, sick. i know there's been crooked work on isbel's side, too. an' i never want it on record thet i killed jorth because he was a rustler." "by god, blue! it's late in the day for such talk," burst out blaisdell, in rage and amaze. "but i reckon y'u know what y'u're talkin' aboot.... wal, i shore don't want to heah it." at this juncture bill isbel quietly entered the cabin, too late to hear any of blue's statement. jean was positive of that, for as blue was speaking those last revealing words bill's heavy boots had resounded on the gravel path outside. yet something in bill's look or in the way blue averted his lean face or in the entrance of bill at that particular moment, or all these together, seemed to jean to add further mystery to the long secret causes leading up to the jorth-isbel war. did bill know what blue knew? jean had an inkling that he did. and on the moment, so perplexing and bitter, jean gazed out the door, down the deserted road to where his dead father lay, white-haired and ghastly in the sunlight. "blue, you could have kept that to yourself, as well as your real name," interposed jean, with bitterness. "it's too late now for either to do any good.... but i appreciate your friendship for dad, an' i'm ready to help carry out your plan." that decision of jean's appeared to put an end to protest or argument from blaisdell or any of the others. blue's fleeting dark smile was one of satisfaction. then upon most of this group of men seemed to settle a grim restraint. they went out and walked and watched; they came in again, restless and somber. jean thought that he must have bent his gaze a thousand times down the road to the tragic figure of his father. that sight roused all emotions in his breast, and the one that stirred there most was pity. the pity of it! gaston isbel lying face down in the dust of the village street! patches of blood showed on the back of his vest and one white-sleeved shoulder. he had been shot through. every time jean saw this blood he had to stifle a gathering of wild, savage impulses. meanwhile the afternoon hours dragged by and the village remained as if its inhabitants had abandoned it. not even a dog showed on the side road. jorth and some of his men came out in front of the store and sat on the steps, in close convening groups. every move they, made seemed significant of their confidence and importance. about sunset they went back into the store, closing door and window shutters. then blaisdell called the isbel faction to have food and drink. jean felt no hunger. and blue, who had kept apart from the others, showed no desire to eat. neither did he smoke, though early in the day he had never been without a cigarette between his lips. twilight fell and darkness came. not a light showed anywhere in the blackness. "wal, i reckon it's aboot time," said blue, and he led the way out of the cabin to the back of the lot. jean strode behind him, carrying his rifle and an ax. silently the other men followed. blue turned to the left and led through the field until he came within sight of a dark line of trees. "thet's where the road turns off," he said to jean. "an' heah's the back of coleman's place.... wal, jean, good luck!" jean felt the grip of a steel-like hand, and in the darkness he caught the gleam of blue's eyes. jean had no response in words for the laconic blue, but he wrung the hard, thin hand and hurried away in the darkness. once alone, his part of the business at hand rushed him into eager thrilling action. this was the sort of work he was fitted to do. in this instance it was important, but it seemed to him that blue had coolly taken the perilous part. and this cowboy with gray in his thin hair was in reality the great king fisher! jean marveled at the fact. and he shivered all over for jorth. in ten minutes--fifteen, more or less, jorth would lie gasping bloody froth and sinking down. something in the dark, lonely, silent, oppressive summer night told jean this. he strode on swiftly. crossing the road at a run, he kept on over the ground he had traversed during the afternoon, and in a few moments he stood breathing hard at the edge of the common behind greaves's store. a pin point of light penetrated the blackness. it made jean's heart leap. the jorth contingent were burning the big lamp that hung in the center of greaves's store. jean listened. loud voices and coarse laughter sounded discord on the melancholy silence of the night. what blue had called his instinct had surely guided him aright. death of gaston isbel was being celebrated by revel. in a few moments jean had regained his breath. then all his faculties set intensely to the action at hand. he seemed to magnify his hearing and his sight. his movements made no sound. he gained the wagon, where he crouched a moment. the ground seemed a pale, obscure medium, hardly more real than the gloom above it. through this gloom of night, which looked thick like a cloud, but was really clear, shone the thin, bright point of light, accentuating the black square that was greaves's store. above this stood a gray line of tree foliage, and then the intensely dark-blue sky studded with white, cold stars. a hound bayed lonesomely somewhere in the distance. voices of men sounded more distinctly, some deep and low, others loud, unguarded, with the vacant note of thoughtlessness. jean gathered all his forces, until sense of sight and hearing were in exquisite accord with the suppleness and lightness of his movements. he glided on about ten short, swift steps before he halted. that was as far as his piercing eyes could penetrate. if there had been a guard stationed outside the store jean would have seen him before being seen. he saw the fence, reached it, entered the yard, glided in the dense shadow of the barn until the black square began to loom gray--the color of stone at night. jean peered through the obscurity. no dark figure of a man showed against that gray wall--only a black patch, which must be the hole in the foundation mentioned. a ray of light now streaked out from the little black window. to the right showed the wide, black door. farther on jean glided silently. then he halted. there was no guard outside. jean heard the clink of a cap, the lazy drawl of a texan, and then a strong, harsh voice--jorth's. it strung jean's whole being tight and vibrating. inside he was on fire while cold thrills rippled over his skin. it took tremendous effort of will to hold himself back another instant to listen, to look, to feel, to make sure. and that instant charged him with a mighty current of hot blood, straining, throbbing, damming. when jean leaped this current burst. in a few swift bounds he gained his point halfway between door and window. he leaned his rifle against the stone wall. then he swung the ax. crash! the window shutter split and rattled to the floor inside. the silence then broke with a hoarse, "what's thet?" with all his might jean swung the heavy ax on the door. smash! the lower half caved in and banged to the floor. bright light flared out the hole. "look out!" yelled a man, in loud alarm. "they're batterin' the back door!" jean swung again, high on the splintered door. crash! pieces flew inside. "they've got axes," hoarsely shouted another voice. "shove the counter ag'in' the door." "no!" thundered a voice of authority that denoted terror as well. "let them come in. pull your guns an' take to cover!" "they ain't comin' in," was the hoarse reply. "they'll shoot in on us from the dark." "put out the lamp!" yelled another. jean's third heavy swing caved in part of the upper half of the door. shouts and curses intermingled with the sliding of benches across the floor and the hard shuffle of boots. this confusion seemed to be split and silenced by a piercing yell, of different caliber, of terrible meaning. it stayed jean's swing--caused him to drop the ax and snatch up his rifle. "don't anybody move!" like a steel whip this voice cut the silence. it belonged to blue. jean swiftly bent to put his eye to a crack in the door. most of those visible seemed to have been frozen into unnatural positions. jorth stood rather in front of his men, hatless and coatless, one arm outstretched, and his dark profile set toward a little man just inside the door. this man was blue. jean needed only one flashing look at blue's face, at his leveled, quivering guns, to understand why he had chosen this trick. "who're---you?" demanded jorth, in husky pants. "reckon i'm isbel's right-hand man," came the biting reply. "once tolerable well known in texas.... king fisher!" the name must have been a guarantee of death. jorth recognized this outlaw and realized his own fate. in the lamplight his face turned a pale greenish white. his outstretched hand began to quiver down. blue's left gun seemed to leap up and flash red and explode. several heavy reports merged almost as one. jorth's arm jerked limply, flinging his gun. and his body sagged in the middle. his hands fluttered like crippled wings and found their way to his abdomen. his death-pale face never changed its set look nor position toward blue. but his gasping utterance was one of horrible mortal fury and terror. then he began to sway, still with that strange, rigid set of his face toward his slayer, until he fell. his fall broke the spell. even blue, like the gunman he was, had paused to watch jorth in his last mortal action. jorth's followers began to draw and shoot. jean saw blue's return fire bring down a huge man, who fell across jorth's body. then jean, quick as the thought that actuated him, raised his rifle and shot at the big lamp. it burst in a flare. it crashed to the floor. darkness followed--a blank, thick, enveloping mantle. then red flashes of guns emphasized the blackness. inside the store there broke loose a pandemonium of shots, yells, curses, and thudding boots. jean shoved his rifle barrel inside the door and, holding it low down, he moved it to and fro while he worked lever and trigger until the magazine was empty. then, drawing his six-shooter, he emptied that. a roar of rifles from the front of the store told jean that his comrades had entered the fray. bullets zipped through the door he had broken. jean ran swiftly round the corner, taking care to sheer off a little to the left, and when he got clear of the building he saw a line of flashes in the middle of the road. blaisdell and the others were firing into the door of the store. with nimble fingers jean reloaded his rifle. then swiftly he ran across the road and down to get behind his comrades. their shooting had slackened. jean saw dark forms coming his way. "hello, blaisdell!" he called, warningly. "that y'u, jean?" returned the rancher, looming up. "wal, we wasn't worried aboot y'u." "blue?" queried jean, sharply. a little, dark figure shuffled past jean. "howdy, jean!" said blue, dryly. "y'u shore did your part. reckon i'll need to be tied up, but i ain't hurt much." "colmor's hit," called the voice of gordon, a few yards distant. "help me, somebody!" jean ran to help gordon uphold the swaying colmor. "are you hurt--bad?" asked jean, anxiously. the young man's head rolled and hung. he was breathing hard and did not reply. they had almost to carry him. "come on, men!" called blaisdell, turning back toward the others who were still firing. "we'll let well enough alone.... fredericks, y'u an' bill help me find the body of the old man. it's heah somewhere." farther on down the road the searchers stumbled over gaston isbel. they picked him up and followed jean and gordon, who were supporting the wounded colmor. jean looked back to see blue dragging himself along in the rear. it was too dark to see distinctly; nevertheless, jean got the impression that blue was more severely wounded than he had claimed to be. the distance to meeker's cabin was not far, but it took what jean felt to be a long and anxious time to get there. colmor apparently rallied somewhat. when this procession entered meeker's yard, blue was lagging behind. "blue, how air y'u?" called blaisdell, with concern. "wal, i got--my boots--on--anyhow," replied blue, huskily. he lurched into the yard and slid down on the grass and stretched out. "man! y'u're hurt bad!" exclaimed blaisdell. the others halted in their slow march and, as if by tacit, unspoken word, lowered the body of isbel to the ground. then blaisdell knelt beside blue. jean left colmor to gordon and hurried to peer down into blue's dim face. "no, i ain't--hurt," said blue, in a much weaker voice. "i'm--jest killed! ... it was queen! ... y'u all heerd me--queen was--only bad man in that lot. i knowed it.... i could--hev killed him.... but i was--after lee jorth an' his brothers...." blue's voice failed there. "wal!" ejaculated blaisdell. "shore was funny--jorth's face--when i said--king fisher," whispered blue. "funnier--when i bored--him through.... but it--was--queen--" his whisper died away. "blue!" called blaisdell, sharply. receiving no answer, he bent lower in the starlight and placed a hand upon the man's breast. "wal, he's gone.... i wonder if he really was the old texas king fisher. no one would ever believe it.... but if he killed the jorths, i'll shore believe him." chapter x two weeks of lonely solitude in the forest had worked incalculable change in ellen jorth. late in june her father and her two uncles had packed and ridden off with daggs, colter, and six other men, all heavily armed, some somber with drink, others hard and grim with a foretaste of fight. ellen had not been given any orders. her father had forgotten to bid her good-by or had avoided it. their dark mission was stamped on their faces. they had gone and, keen as had been ellen's pang, nevertheless, their departure was a relief. she had heard them bluster and brag so often that she had her doubts of any great jorth-isbel war. barking dogs did not bite. somebody, perhaps on each side, would be badly wounded, possibly killed, and then the feud would go on as before, mostly talk. many of her former impressions had faded. development had been so rapid and continuous in her that she could look back to a day-by-day transformation. at night she had hated the sight of herself and when the dawn came she would rise, singing. jorth had left ellen at home with the mexican woman and antonio. ellen saw them only at meal times, and often not then, for she frequently visited old john sprague or came home late to do her own cooking. it was but a short distance up to sprague's cabin, and since she had stopped riding the black horse, spades, she walked. spades was accustomed to having grain, and in the mornings he would come down to the ranch and whistle. ellen had vowed she would never feed the horse and bade antonio do it. but one morning antonio was absent. she fed spades herself. when she laid a hand on him and when he rubbed his nose against her shoulder she was not quite so sure she hated him. "why should i?" she queried. "a horse cain't help it if he belongs to--to--" ellen was not sure of anything except that more and more it grew good to be alone. a whole day in the lonely forest passed swiftly, yet it left a feeling of long time. she lived by her thoughts. always the morning was bright, sunny, sweet and fragrant and colorful, and her mood was pensive, wistful, dreamy. and always, just as surely as the hours passed, thought intruded upon her happiness, and thought brought memory, and memory brought shame, and shame brought fight. sunset after sunset she had dragged herself back to the ranch, sullen and sick and beaten. yet she never ceased to struggle. the july storms came, and the forest floor that had been so sear and brown and dry and dusty changed as if by magic. the green grass shot up, the flowers bloomed, and along the canyon beds of lacy ferns swayed in the wind and bent their graceful tips over the amber-colored water. ellen haunted these cool dells, these pine-shaded, mossy-rocked ravines where the brooks tinkled and the deer came down to drink. she wandered alone. but there grew to be company in the aspens and the music of the little waterfalls. if she could have lived in that solitude always, never returning to the ranch home that reminded her of her name, she could have forgotten and have been happy. she loved the storms. it was a dry country and she had learned through years to welcome the creamy clouds that rolled from the southwest. they came sailing and clustering and darkening at last to form a great, purple, angry mass that appeared to lodge against the mountain rim and burst into dazzling streaks of lightning and gray palls of rain. lightning seldom struck near the ranch, but up on the rim there was never a storm that did not splinter and crash some of the noble pines. during the storm season sheep herders and woodsmen generally did not camp under the pines. fear of lightning was inborn in the natives, but for ellen the dazzling white streaks or the tremendous splitting, crackling shock, or the thunderous boom and rumble along the battlements of the rim had no terrors. a storm eased her breast. deep in her heart was a hidden gathering storm. and somehow, to be out when the elements were warring, when the earth trembled and the heavens seemed to burst asunder, afforded her strange relief. the summer days became weeks, and farther and farther they carried ellen on the wings of solitude and loneliness until she seemed to look back years at the self she had hated. and always, when the dark memory impinged upon peace, she fought and fought until she seemed to be fighting hatred itself. scorn of scorn and hate of hate! yet even her battles grew to be dreams. for when the inevitable retrospect brought back jean isbel and his love and her cowardly falsehood she would shudder a little and put an unconscious hand to her breast and utterly fail in her fight and drift off down to vague and wistful dreams. the clean and healing forest, with its whispering wind and imperious solitude, had come between ellen and the meaning of the squalid sheep ranch, with its travesty of home, its tragic owner. and it was coming between her two selves, the one that she had been forced to be and the other that she did not know--the thinker, the dreamer, the romancer, the one who lived in fancy the life she loved. the summer morning dawned that brought ellen strange tidings. they must have been created in her sleep, and now were realized in the glorious burst of golden sun, in the sweep of creamy clouds across the blue, in the solemn music of the wind in the pines, in the wild screech of the blue jays and the noble bugle of a stag. these heralded the day as no ordinary day. something was going to happen to her. she divined it. she felt it. and she trembled. nothing beautiful, hopeful, wonderful could ever happen to ellen jorth. she had been born to disaster, to suffer, to be forgotten, and die alone. yet all nature about her seemed a magnificent rebuke to her morbidness. the same spirit that came out there with the thick, amber light was in her. she lived, and something in her was stronger than mind. ellen went to the door of her cabin, where she flung out her arms, driven to embrace this nameless purport of the morning. and a well-known voice broke in upon her rapture. "wal, lass, i like to see you happy an' i hate myself fer comin'. because i've been to grass valley fer two days an' i've got news." old john sprague stood there, with a smile that did not hide a troubled look. "oh! uncle john! you startled me," exclaimed ellen, shocked back to reality. and slowly she added: "grass valley! news?" she put out an appealing hand, which sprague quickly took in his own, as if to reassure her. "yes, an' not bad so far as you jorths are concerned," he replied. "the first jorth-isbel fight has come off.... reckon you remember makin' me promise to tell you if i heerd anythin'. wal, i didn't wait fer you to come up." "so ellen heard her voice calmly saying. what was this lying calm when there seemed to be a stone hammer at her heart? the first fight--not so bad for the jorths! then it had been bad for the isbels. a sudden, cold stillness fell upon her senses. "let's sit down--outdoors," sprague was saying. "nice an' sunny this--mornin'. i declare--i'm out of breath. not used to walkin'. an' besides, i left grass valley, in the night--an' i'm tired. but excoose me from hangin' round thet village last night! there was shore--" "who--who was killed?" interrupted ellen, her voice breaking low and deep. "guy isbel an' bill jacobs on the isbel side, an' daggs, craig, an' greaves on your father's side," stated sprague, with something of awed haste. "ah!" breathed ellen, and she relaxed to sink back against the cabin wall. sprague seated himself on the log beside her, turning to face her, and he seemed burdened with grave and important matters. "i heerd a good many conflictin' stories," he said, earnestly. "the village folks is all skeered an' there's no believin' their gossip. but i got what happened straight from jake evarts. the fight come off day before yestiddy. your father's gang rode down to isbel's ranch. daggs was seen to be wantin' some of the isbel hosses, so evarts says. an' guy isbel an' jacobs ran out in the pasture. daggs an' some others shot them down." "killed them--that way?" put in ellen, sharply. "so evarts says. he was on the ridge an' swears he seen it all. they killed guy an' jacobs in cold blood. no chance fer their lives--not even to fight! ... wall, hen they surrounded the isbel cabin. the fight last all thet day an' all night an' the next day. evarts says guy an' jacobs laid out thar all this time. an' a herd of hogs broke in the pasture an' was eatin' the dead bodies ..." "my god!" burst out ellen. "uncle john, y'u shore cain't mean my father wouldn't stop fightin' long enough to drive the hogs off an' bury those daid men?" "evarts says they stopped fightin', all right, but it was to watch the hogs," declared sprague. "an' then, what d' ye think? the wimminfolks come out--the red-headed one, guy's wife, an' jacobs's wife--they drove the hogs away an' buried their husbands right there in the pasture. evarts says he seen the graves." "it is the women who can teach these bloody texans a lesson," declared ellen, forcibly. "wal, daggs was drunk, an' he got up from behind where the gang was hidin', an' dared the isbels to come out. they shot him to pieces. an' thet night some one of the isbels shot craig, who was alone on guard.... an' last--this here's what i come to tell you--jean isbel slipped up in the dark on greaves an' knifed him." "why did y'u want to tell me that particularly?" asked ellen, slowly. "because i reckon the facts in the case are queer--an' because, ellen, your name was mentioned," announced sprague, positively. "my name--mentioned?" echoed ellen. her horror and disgust gave way to a quickening process of thought, a mounting astonishment. "by whom?" "jean isbel," replied sprague, as if the name and the fact were momentous. ellen sat still as a stone, her hands between her knees. slowly she felt the blood recede from her face, prickling her kin down below her neck. that name locked her thought. "ellen, it's a mighty queer story--too queer to be a lie," went on sprague. "now you listen! evarts got this from ted meeker. an' ted meeker heerd it from greaves, who didn't die till the next day after jean isbel knifed him. an' your dad shot ted fer tellin' what he heerd.... no, greaves wasn't killed outright. he was cut somethin' turrible--in two places. they wrapped him all up an' next day packed him in a wagon back to grass valley. evarts says ted meeker was friendly with greaves an' went to see him as he was layin' in his room next to the store. wal, accordin' to meeker's story, greaves came to an' talked. he said he was sittin' there in the dark, shootin' occasionally at isbel's cabin, when he heerd a rustle behind him in the grass. he knowed some one was crawlin' on him. but before he could get his gun around he was jumped by what he thought was a grizzly bear. but it was a man. he shut off greaves's wind an' dragged him back in the ditch. an' he said: 'greaves, it's the half-breed. an' he's goin' to cut you--first for ellen jorth! an' then for gaston isbel!' ... greaves said jean ripped him with a bowie knife.... an' thet was all greaves remembered. he died soon after tellin' this story. he must hev fought awful hard. thet second cut isbel gave him went clear through him.... some of the gang was thar when greaves talked, an' naturally they wondered why jean isbel had said 'first for ellen jorth.' ... somebody remembered thet greaves had cast a slur on your good name, ellen. an' then they had jean isbel's reason fer sayin' thet to greaves. it caused a lot of talk. an' when simm bruce busted in some of the gang haw-hawed him an' said as how he'd get the third cut from jean isbel's bowie. bruce was half drunk an' he began to cuss an' rave about jean isbel bein' in love with his girl.... as bad luck would have it, a couple of more fellars come in an' asked meeker questions. he jest got to thet part, 'greaves, it's the half-breed, an' he's goin' to cut you--first for ellen jorth,' when in walked your father! ... then it all had to come out--what jean isbel had said an' done--an' why. how greaves had backed simm bruce in slurrin' you!" sprague paused to look hard at ellen. "oh! then--what did dad do?" whispered ellen. "he said, 'by god! half-breed or not, there's one isbel who's a man!' an' he killed bruce on the spot an' gave meeker a nasty wound. somebody grabbed him before he could shoot meeker again. they threw meeker out an' he crawled to a neighbor's house, where he was when evarts seen him." ellen felt sprague's rough but kindly hand shaking her. "an' now what do you think of jean isbel?" he queried. a great, unsurmountable wall seemed to obstruct ellen's thought. it seemed gray in color. it moved toward her. it was inside her brain. "i tell you, ellen jorth," declared the old man, "thet jean isbel loves you--loves you turribly--an' he believes you're good." "oh no--he doesn't!" faltered ellen. "wal, he jest does." "oh, uncle john, he cain't believe that!" she cried. "of course he can. he does. you are good--good as gold, ellen, an' he knows it.... what a queer deal it all is! poor devil! to love you thet turribly an' hev to fight your people! ellen, your dad had it correct. isbel or not, he's a man.... an' i say what a shame you two are divided by hate. hate thet you hed nothin' to do with." sprague patted her head and rose to go. "mebbe thet fight will end the trouble. i reckon it will. don't cross bridges till you come to them, ellen.... i must hurry back now. i didn't take time to unpack my burros. come up soon.... an', say, ellen, don't think hard any more of thet jean isbel." sprague strode away, and ellen neither heard nor saw him go. she sat perfectly motionless, yet had a strange sensation of being lifted by invisible and mighty power. it was like movement felt in a dream. she was being impelled upward when her body seemed immovable as stone. when her blood beat down this deadlock of an her physical being and rushed on and on through her veins it gave her an irresistible impulse to fly, to sail through space, to ran and run and ran. and on the moment the black horse, spades, coming from the meadow, whinnied at sight of her. ellen leaped up and ran swiftly, but her feet seemed to be stumbling. she hugged the horse and buried her hot face in his mane and clung to him. then just as violently she rushed for her saddle and bridle and carried the heavy weight as easily as if it had been an empty sack. throwing them upon him, she buckled and strapped with strong, eager hands. it never occurred to her that she was not dressed to ride. up she flung herself. and the horse, sensing her spirit, plunged into strong, free gait down the canyon trail. the ride, the action, the thrill, the sensations of violence were not all she needed. solitude, the empty aisles of the forest, the far miles of lonely wilderness--were these the added all? spades took a swinging, rhythmic lope up the winding trail. the wind fanned her hot face. the sting of whipping aspen branches was pleasant. a deep rumble of thunder shook the sultry air. up beyond the green slope of the canyon massed the creamy clouds, shading darker and darker. spades loped on the levels, leaped the washes, trotted over the rocky ground, and took to a walk up the long slope. ellen dropped the reins over the pommel. her hands could not stay set on anything. they pressed her breast and flew out to caress the white aspens and to tear at the maple leaves, and gather the lavender juniper berries, and came back again to her heart. her heart that was going to burst or break! as it had swelled, so now it labored. it could not keep pace with her needs. all that was physical, all that was living in her had to be unleashed. spades gained the level forest. how the great, brown-green pines seemed to bend their lofty branches over her, protectively, understandingly. patches of azure-blue sky flashed between the trees. the great white clouds sailed along with her, and shafts of golden sunlight, flecked with gleams of falling pine needles, shone down through the canopy overhead. away in front of her, up the slow heave of forest land, boomed the heavy thunderbolts along the battlements of the rim. was she riding to escape from herself? for no gait suited her until spades was running hard and fast through the glades. then the pressure of dry wind, the thick odor of pine, the flashes of brown and green and gold and blue, the soft, rhythmic thuds of hoofs, the feel of the powerful horse under her, the whip of spruce branches on her muscles contracting and expanding in hard action--all these sensations seemed to quell for the time the mounting cataclysm in her heart. the oak swales, the maple thickets, the aspen groves, the pine-shaded aisles, and the miles of silver spruce all sped by her, as if she had ridden the wind; and through the forest ahead shone the vast open of the basin, gloomed by purple and silver cloud, shadowed by gray storm, and in the west brightened by golden sky. straight to the rim she had ridden, and to the point where she had watched jean isbel that unforgetable day. she rode to the promontory behind the pine thicket and beheld a scene which stayed her restless hands upon her heaving breast. the world of sky and cloud and earthly abyss seemed one of storm-sundered grandeur. the air was sultry and still, and smelled of the peculiar burnt-wood odor caused by lightning striking trees. a few heavy drops of rain were pattering down from the thin, gray edge of clouds overhead. to the east hung the storm--a black cloud lodged against the rim, from which long, misty veils of rain streamed down into the gulf. the roar of rain sounded like the steady roar of the rapids of a river. then a blue-white, piercingly bright, ragged streak of lightning shot down out of the black cloud. it struck with a splitting report that shocked the very wall of rock under ellen. then the heavens seemed to burst open with thundering crash and close with mighty thundering boom. long roar and longer rumble rolled away to the eastward. the rain poured down in roaring cataracts. the south held a panorama of purple-shrouded range and canyon, canyon and range, on across the rolling leagues to the dim, lofty peaks, all canopied over with angry, dusky, low-drifting clouds, horizon-wide, smoky, and sulphurous. and as ellen watched, hands pressed to her breast, feeling incalculable relief in sight of this tempest and gulf that resembled her soul, the sun burst out from behind the long bank of purple cloud in the west and flooded the world there with golden lightning. "it is for me!" cried ellen. "my mind--my heart--my very soul.... oh, i know! i know now! ... i love him--love him--love him!" she cried it out to the elements. "oh, i love jean isbel--an' my heart will burst or break!" the might of her passion was like the blaze of the sun. before it all else retreated, diminished. the suddenness of the truth dimmed her sight. but she saw clearly enough to crawl into the pine thicket, through the clutching, dry twigs, over the mats of fragrant needles to the covert where she had once spied upon jean isbel. and here she lay face down for a while, hands clutching the needles, breast pressed hard upon the ground, stricken and spent. but vitality was exceeding strong in her. it passed, that weakness of realization, and she awakened to the consciousness of love. but in the beginning it was not consciousness of the man. it was new, sensorial life, elemental, primitive, a liberation of a million inherited instincts, quivering and physical, over which ellen had no more control than she had over the glory of the sun. if she thought at all it was of her need to be hidden, like an animal, low down near the earth, covered by green thicket, lost in the wildness of nature. she went to nature, unconsciously seeking a mother. and love was a birth from the depths of her, like a rushing spring of pure water, long underground, and at last propelled to the surface by a convulsion. ellen gradually lost her tense rigidity and relaxed. her body softened. she rolled over until her face caught the lacy, golden shadows cast by sun and bough. scattered drops of rain pattered around her. the air was hot, and its odor was that of dry pine and spruce fragrance penetrated by brimstone from the lightning. the nest where she lay was warm and sweet. no eye save that of nature saw her in her abandonment. an ineffable and exquisite smile wreathed her lips, dreamy, sad, sensuous, the supremity of unconscious happiness. over her dark and eloquent eyes, as ellen gazed upward, spread a luminous film, a veil. she was looking intensely, yet she did not see. the wilderness enveloped her with its secretive, elemental sheaths of rock, of tree, of cloud, of sunlight. through her thrilling skin poured the multiple and nameless sensations of the living organism stirred to supreme sensitiveness. she could not lie still, but all her movements were gentle, involuntary. the slow reaching out of her hand, to grasp at nothing visible, was similar to the lazy stretching of her limbs, to the heave of her breast, to the ripple of muscle. ellen knew not what she felt. to live that sublime hour was beyond thought. such happiness was like the first dawn of the world to the sight of man. it had to do with bygone ages. her heart, her blood, her flesh, her very bones were filled with instincts and emotions common to the race before intellect developed, when the savage lived only with his sensorial perceptions. of all happiness, joy, bliss, rapture to which man was heir, that of intense and exquisite preoccupation of the senses, unhindered and unburdened by thought, was the greatest. ellen felt that which life meant with its inscrutable design. love was only the realization of her mission on the earth. the dark storm cloud with its white, ragged ropes of lightning and down-streaming gray veils of rain, the purple gulf rolling like a colored sea to the dim mountains, the glorious golden light of the sun--these had enchanted her eyes with her beauty of the universe. they had burst the windows of her blindness. when she crawled into the green-brown covert it was to escape too great perception. she needed to be encompassed by close, tangible things. and there her body paid the tribute to the realization of life. shock, convulsion, pain, relaxation, and then unutterable and insupportable sensing of her environment and the heart! in one way she was a wild animal alone in the woods, forced into the mating that meant reproduction of its kind. in another she was an infinitely higher being shot through and through with the most resistless and mysterious transport that life could give to flesh. and when that spell slackened its hold there wedged into her mind a consciousness of the man she loved--jean isbel. then emotion and thought strove for mastery over her. it was not herself or love that she loved, but a living man. suddenly he existed so clearly for her that she could see him, hear him, almost feel him. her whole soul, her very life cried out to him for protection, for salvation, for love, for fulfillment. no denial, no doubt marred the white blaze of her realization. from the instant that she had looked up into jean isbel's dark face she had loved him. only she had not known. she bowed now, and bent, and humbly quivered under the mastery of something beyond her ken. thought clung to the beginnings of her romance--to the three times she had seen him. every look, every word, every act of his returned to her now in the light of the truth. love at first sight! he had sworn it, bitterly, eloquently, scornful of her doubts. and now a blind, sweet, shuddering ecstasy swayed her. how weak and frail seemed her body--too small, too slight for this monstrous and terrible engine of fire and lightning and fury and glory--her heart! it must burst or break. relentlessly memory pursued ellen, and her thoughts whirled and emotion conquered her. at last she quivered up to her knees as if lashed to action. it seemed that first kiss of isbel's, cool and gentle and timid, was on her lips. and her eyes closed and hot tears welled from under her lids. her groping hands found only the dead twigs and the pine boughs of the trees. had she reached out to clasp him? then hard and violent on her mouth and cheek and neck burned those other kisses of isbel's, and with the flashing, stinging memory came the truth that now she would have bartered her soul for them. utterly she surrendered to the resistlessness of this love. her loss of mother and friends, her wandering from one wild place to another, her lonely life among bold and rough men, had developed her for violent love. it overthrew all pride, it engendered humility, it killed hate. ellen wiped the tears from her eyes, and as she knelt there she swept to her breast a fragrant spreading bough of pine needles. "i'll go to him," she whispered. "i'll tell him of--of my--my love. i'll tell him to take me away--away to the end of the world--away from heah--before it's too late!" it was a solemn, beautiful moment. but the last spoken words lingered hauntingly. "too late?" she whispered. and suddenly it seemed that death itself shuddered in her soul. too late! it was too late. she had killed his love. that jorth blood in her--that poisonous hate--had chosen the only way to strike this noble isbel to the heart. basely, with an abandonment of womanhood, she had mockingly perjured her soul with a vile lie. she writhed, she shook under the whip of this inconceivable fact. lost! lost! she wailed her misery. she might as well be what she had made jean isbel think she was. if she had been shamed before, she was now abased, degraded, lost in her own sight. and if she would have given her soul for his kisses, she now would have killed herself to earn back his respect. jean isbel had given her at sight the deference that she had unconsciously craved, and the love that would have been her salvation. what a horrible mistake she had made of her life! not her mother's blood, but her father's--the jorth blood--had been her ruin. again ellen fell upon the soft pine-needle mat, face down, and she groveled and burrowed there, in an agony that could not bear the sense of light. all she had suffered was as nothing to this. to have awakened to a splendid and uplifting love for a man whom she had imagined she hated, who had fought for her name and had killed in revenge for the dishonor she had avowed--to have lost his love and what was infinitely more precious to her now in her ignominy--his faith in her purity--this broke her heart. chapter xi when ellen, utterly spent in body and mind, reached home that day a melancholy, sultry twilight was falling. fitful flares of sheet lightning swept across the dark horizon to the east. the cabins were deserted. antonio and the mexican woman were gone. the circumstances made ellen wonder, but she was too tired and too sunken in spirit to think long about it or to care. she fed and watered her horse and left him in the corral. then, supperless and without removing her clothes, she threw herself upon the bed, and at once sank into heavy slumber. sometime during the night she awoke. coyotes were yelping, and from that sound she concluded it was near dawn. her body ached; her mind seemed dull. drowsily she was sinking into slumber again when she heard the rapid clip-clop of trotting horses. startled, she raised her head to listen. the men were coming back. relief and dread seemed to clear her stupor. the trotting horses stopped across the lane from her cabin, evidently at the corral where she had left spades. she heard him whistle. from the sound of hoofs she judged the number of horses to be six or eight. low voices of men mingled with thuds and cracking of straps and flopping of saddles on the ground. after that the heavy tread of boots sounded on the porch of the cabin opposite. a door creaked on its hinges. next a slow footstep, accompanied by clinking of spurs, approached ellen's door, and a heavy hand banged upon it. she knew this person could not be her father. "hullo, ellen!" she recognized the voice as belonging to colter. somehow its tone, or something about it, sent a little shiver clown her spine. it acted like a revivifying current. ellen lost her dragging lethargy. "hey, ellen, are y'u there?" added colter, louder voice. "yes. of course i'm heah," she replied. "what do y'u want?" "wal--i'm shore glad y'u're home," he replied. "antonio's gone with his squaw. an' i was some worried aboot y'u." "who's with y'u, colter?" queried ellen, sitting up. "rock wells an' springer. tad jorth was with us, but we had to leave him over heah in a cabin." "what's the matter with him?" "wal, he's hurt tolerable bad," was the slow reply. ellen heard colter's spurs jangle, as if he had uneasily shifted his feet. "where's dad an' uncle jackson?" asked ellen. a silence pregnant enough to augment ellen's dread finally broke to colter's voice, somehow different. "shore they're back on the trail. an' we're to meet them where we left tad." "are yu goin' away again?" "i reckon.... an', ellen, y'u're goin' with us." "i am not," she retorted. "wal, y'u are, if i have to pack y'u," he replied, forcibly. "it's not safe heah any more. that damned half-breed isbel with his gang are on our trail." that name seemed like a red-hot blade at ellen's leaden heart. she wanted to fling a hundred queries on colter, but she could not utter one. "ellen, we've got to hit the trail an' hide," continued colter, anxiously. "y'u mustn't stay heah alone. suppose them isbels would trap y'u! ... they'd tear your clothes off an' rope y'u to a tree. ellen, shore y'u're goin'.... y'u heah me!" "yes--i'll go," she replied, as if forced. "wal--that's good," he said, quickly. "an' rustle tolerable lively. we've got to pack." the slow jangle of colter's spurs and his slow steps moved away out of ellen's hearing. throwing off the blankets, she put her feet to the floor and sat there a moment staring at the blank nothingness of the cabin interior in the obscure gray of dawn. cold, gray, dreary, obscure--like her life, her future! and she was compelled to do what was hateful to her. as a jorth she must take to the unfrequented trails and hide like a rabbit in the thickets. but the interest of the moment, a premonition of events to be, quickened her into action. ellen unbarred the door to let in the light. day was breaking with an intense, clear, steely light in the east through which the morning star still shone white. a ruddy flare betokened the advent of the sun. ellen unbraided her tangled hair and brushed and combed it. a queer, still pang came to her at sight of pine needles tangled in her brown locks. then she washed her hands and face. breakfast was a matter of considerable work and she was hungry. the sun rose and changed the gray world of forest. for the first time in her life ellen hated the golden brightness, the wonderful blue of sky, the scream of the eagle and the screech of the jay; and the squirrels she had always loved to feed were neglected that morning. colter came in. either ellen had never before looked attentively at him or else he had changed. her scrutiny of his lean, hard features accorded him more texan attributes than formerly. his gray eyes were as light, as clear, as fierce as those of an eagle. and the sand gray of his face, the long, drooping, fair mustache hid the secrets of his mind, but not its strength. the instant ellen met his gaze she sensed a power in him that she instinctively opposed. colter had not been so bold nor so rude as daggs, but he was the same kind of man, perhaps the more dangerous for his secretiveness, his cool, waiting inscrutableness. "'mawnin', ellen!" he drawled. "y'u shore look good for sore eyes." "don't pay me compliments, colter," replied ellen. "an' your eyes are not sore." "wal, i'm shore sore from fightin' an' ridin' an' layin' out," he said, bluntly. "tell me--what's happened," returned ellen. "girl, it's a tolerable long story," replied colter. "an' we've no time now. wait till we get to camp." "am i to pack my belongin's or leave them heah?" asked ellen. "reckon y'u'd better leave--them heah." "but if we did not come back--" "wal, i reckon it's not likely we'll come--soon," he said, rather evasively. "colter, i'll not go off into the woods with just the clothes i have on my back." "ellen, we shore got to pack all the grab we can. this shore ain't goin' to be a visit to neighbors. we're shy pack hosses. but y'u make up a bundle of belongin's y'u care for, an' the things y'u'll need bad. we'll throw it on somewhere." colter stalked away across the lane, and ellen found herself dubiously staring at his tall figure. was it the situation that struck her with a foreboding perplexity or was her intuition steeling her against this man? ellen could not decide. but she had to go with him. her prejudice was unreasonable at this portentous moment. and she could not yet feel that she was solely responsible to herself. when it came to making a small bundle of her belongings she was in a quandary. she discarded this and put in that, and then reversed the order. next in preciousness to her mother's things were the long-hidden gifts of jean isbel. she could part with neither. while she was selecting and packing this bundle colter again entered and, without speaking, began to rummage in the corner where her father kept his possessions. this irritated ellen. "what do y'u want there?" she demanded. "wal, i reckon your dad wants his papers--an' the gold he left heah--an' a change of clothes. now doesn't he?" returned colter, coolly. "of course. but i supposed y'u would have me pack them." colter vouchsafed no reply to this, but deliberately went on rummaging, with little regard for how he scattered things. ellen turned her back on him. at length, when he left, she went to her father's corner and found that, as far as she was able to see, colter had taken neither papers nor clothes, but only the gold. perhaps, however, she had been mistaken, for she had not observed colter's departure closely enough to know whether or not he carried a package. she missed only the gold. her father's papers, old and musty, were scattered about, and these she gathered up to slip in her own bundle. colter, or one of the men, had saddled spades, and he was now tied to the corral fence, champing his bit and pounding the sand. ellen wrapped bread and meat inside her coat, and after tying this behind her saddle she was ready to go. but evidently she would have to wait, and, preferring to remain outdoors, she stayed by her horse. presently, while watching the men pack, she noticed that springer wore a bandage round his head under the brim of his sombrero. his motions were slow and lacked energy. shuddering at the sight, ellen refused to conjecture. all too soon she would learn what had happened, and all too soon, perhaps, she herself would be in the midst of another fight. she watched the men. they were making a hurried slipshod job of packing food supplies from both cabins. more than once she caught colter's gray gleam of gaze on her, and she did not like it. "i'll ride up an' say good-by to sprague," she called to colter. "shore y'u won't do nothin' of the kind," he called back. there was authority in his tone that angered ellen, and something else which inhibited her anger. what was there about colter with which she must reckon? the other two texans laughed aloud, to be suddenly silenced by colter's harsh and lowered curses. ellen walked out of hearing and sat upon a log, where she remained until colter hailed her. "get up an' ride," he called. ellen complied with this order and, riding up behind the three mounted men, she soon found herself leaving what for years had been her home. not once did she look back. she hoped she would never see the squalid, bare pretension of a ranch again. colter and the other riders drove the pack horses across the meadow, off of the trails, and up the slope into the forest. not very long did it take ellen to see that colter's object was to hide their tracks. he zigzagged through the forest, avoiding the bare spots of dust, the dry, sun-baked flats of clay where water lay in spring, and he chose the grassy, open glades, the long, pine-needle matted aisles. ellen rode at their heels and it pleased her to watch for their tracks. colter manifestly had been long practiced in this game of hiding his trail, and he showed the skill of a rustler. but ellen was not convinced that he could ever elude a real woodsman. not improbably, however, colter was only aiming to leave a trail difficult to follow and which would allow him and his confederates ample time to forge ahead of pursuers. ellen could not accept a certainty of pursuit. yet colter must have expected it, and springer and wells also, for they had a dark, sinister, furtive demeanor that strangely contrasted with the cool, easy manner habitual to them. they were not seeking the level routes of the forest land, that was sure. they rode straight across the thick-timbered ridge down into another canyon, up out of that, and across rough, rocky bluffs, and down again. these riders headed a little to the northwest and every mile brought them into wilder, more rugged country, until ellen, losing count of canyons and ridges, had no idea where she was. no stop was made at noon to rest the laboring, sweating pack animals. under circumstances where pleasure might have been possible ellen would have reveled in this hard ride into a wonderful forest ever thickening and darkening. but the wild beauty of glade and the spruce slopes and the deep, bronze-walled canyons left her cold. she saw and felt, but had no thrill, except now and then a thrill of alarm when spades slid to his haunches down some steep, damp, piny declivity. all the woodland, up and down, appeared to be richer greener as they traveled farther west. grass grew thick and heavy. water ran in all ravines. the rocks were bronze and copper and russet, and some had green patches of lichen. ellen felt the sun now on her left cheek and knew that the day was waning and that colter was swinging farther to the northwest. she had never before ridden through such heavy forest and down and up such wild canyons. toward sunset the deepest and ruggedest canyon halted their advance. colter rode to the right, searching for a place to get down through a spruce thicket that stood on end. presently he dismounted and the others followed suit. ellen found she could not lead spades because he slid down upon her heels, so she looped the end of her reins over the pommel and left him free. she herself managed to descend by holding to branches and sliding all the way down that slope. she heard the horses cracking the brush, snorting and heaving. one pack slipped and had to be removed from the horse, and rolled down. at the bottom of this deep, green-walled notch roared a stream of water. shadowed, cool, mossy, damp, this narrow gulch seemed the wildest place ellen had ever seen. she could just see the sunset-flushed, gold-tipped spruces far above her. the men repacked the horse that had slipped his burden, and once more resumed their progress ahead, now turning up this canyon. there was no horse trail, but deer and bear trails were numerous. the sun sank and the sky darkened, but still the men rode on; and the farther they traveled the wilder grew the aspect of the canyon. at length colter broke a way through a heavy thicket of willows and entered a side canyon, the mouth of which ellen had not even descried. it turned and widened, and at length opened out into a round pocket, apparently inclosed, and as lonely and isolated a place as even pursued rustlers could desire. hidden by jutting wall and thicket of spruce were two old log cabins joined together by roof and attic floor, the same as the double cabin at the jorth ranch. ellen smelled wood smoke, and presently, on going round the cabins, saw a bright fire. one man stood beside it gazing at colter's party, which evidently he had heard approaching. "hullo, queen!" said colter. "how's tad?" "he's holdin' on fine," replied queen, bending over the fire, where he turned pieces of meat. "where's father?" suddenly asked ellen, addressing colter. as if he had not heard her, he went on wearily loosening a pack. queen looked at her. the light of the fire only partially shone on his face. ellen could not see its expression. but from the fact that queen did not answer her question she got further intimation of an impending catastrophe. the long, wild ride had helped prepare her for the secrecy and taciturnity of men who had resorted to flight. perhaps her father had been delayed or was still off on the deadly mission that had obsessed him; or there might, and probably was, darker reason for his absence. ellen shut her teeth and turned to the needs of her horse. and presently, returning to the fire, she thought of her uncle. "queen, is my uncle tad heah?" she asked. "shore. he's in there," replied queen, pointing at the nearer cabin. ellen hurried toward the dark doorway. she could see how the logs of the cabin had moved awry and what a big, dilapidated hovel it was. as she looked in, colter loomed over her--placed a familiar and somehow masterful hand upon her. ellen let it rest on her shoulder a moment. must she forever be repulsing these rude men among whom her lot was cast? did colter mean what daggs had always meant? ellen felt herself weary, weak in body, and her spent spirit had not rallied. yet, whatever colter meant by his familiarity, she could not bear it. so she slipped out from under his hand. "uncle tad, are y'u heah?" she called into the blackness. she heard the mice scamper and rustle and she smelled the musty, old, woody odor of a long-unused cabin. "hello, ellen!" came a voice she recognized as her uncle's, yet it was strange. "yes. i'm heah--bad luck to me! ... how 're y'u buckin' up, girl?" "i'm all right, uncle tad--only tired an' worried. i--" "tad, how's your hurt?" interrupted colter. "reckon i'm easier," replied jorth, wearily, "but shore i'm in bad shape. i'm still spittin' blood. i keep tellin' queen that bullet lodged in my lungs—but he says it went through." "wal, hang on, tad!" replied colter, with a cheerfulness ellen sensed was really indifferent. "oh, what the hell's the use!" exclaimed jorth. "it's all--up with us--colter!" "wal, shut up, then," tersely returned colter. "it ain't doin' y'u or us any good to holler." tad jorth did not reply to this. ellen heard his breathing and it did not seem natural. it rasped a little--came hurriedly--then caught in his throat. then he spat. ellen shrunk back against the door. he was breathing through blood. "uncle, are y'u in pain?" she asked. "yes, ellen--it burns like hell," he said. "oh! i'm sorry.... isn't there something i can do?" "i reckon not. queen did all anybody could do for me--now--unless it's pray." colter laughed at this--the slow, easy, drawling laugh of a texan. but ellen felt pity for this wounded uncle. she had always hated him. he had been a drunkard, a gambler, a waster of her father's property; and now he was a rustler and a fugitive, lying in pain, perhaps mortally hurt. "yes, uncle--i will pray for y'u," she said, softly. the change in his voice held a note of sadness that she had been quick to catch. "ellen, y'u're the only good jorth--in the whole damned lot," he said. "god! i see it all now.... we've dragged y'u to hell!" "yes, uncle tad, i've shore been dragged some--but not yet--to hell," she responded, with a break in her voice. "y'u will be--ellen--unless--" "aw, shut up that kind of gab, will y'u?" broke in colter, harshly. it amazed ellen that colter should dominate her uncle, even though he was wounded. tad jorth had been the last man to take orders from anyone, much less a rustler of the hash knife gang. this colter began to loom up in ellen's estimate as he loomed physically over her, a lofty figure, dark motionless, somehow menacing. "ellen, has colter told y'u yet--aboot--aboot lee an' jackson?" inquired the wounded man. the pitch-black darkness of the cabin seemed to help fortify ellen to bear further trouble. "colter told me dad an' uncle jackson would meet us heah," she rejoined, hurriedly. jorth could be heard breathing in difficulty, and he coughed and spat again, and seemed to hiss. "ellen, he lied to y'u. they'll never meet us--heah!" "why not?" whispered ellen. "because--ellen--" he replied, in husky pants, "your dad an'--uncle jackson--are daid--an' buried!" if ellen suffered a terrible shock it was a blankness, a deadness, and a slow, creeping failure of sense in her knees. they gave way under her and she sank on the grass against the cabin wall. she did not faint nor grow dizzy nor lose her sight, but for a while there was no process of thought in her mind. suddenly then it was there--the quick, spiritual rending of her heart--followed by a profound emotion of intimate and irretrievable loss--and after that grief and bitter realization. an hour later ellen found strength to go to the fire and partake of the food and drink her body sorely needed. colter and the men waited on her solicitously, and in silence, now and then stealing furtive glances at her from under the shadow of their black sombreros. the dark night settled down like a blanket. there were no stars. the wind moaned fitfully among the pines, and all about that lonely, hidden recess was in harmony with ellen's thoughts. "girl, y'u're shore game," said colter, admiringly. "an' i reckon y'u never got it from the jorths." "tad in there--he's game," said queen, in mild protest. "not to my notion," replied colter. "any man can be game when he's croakin', with somebody around.... but lee jorth an' jackson--they always was yellow clear to their gizzards. they was born in louisiana--not texas.... shore they're no more texans than i am. ellen heah, she must have got another strain in her blood." to ellen their words had no meaning. she rose and asked, "where can i sleep?" "i'll fetch a light presently an' y'u can make your bed in there by tad," replied colter. "yes, i'd like that." "wal, if y'u reckon y'u can coax him to talk you're shore wrong," declared colter, with that cold timbre of voice that struck like steel on ellen's nerves. "i cussed him good an' told him he'd keep his mouth shut. talkin' makes him cough an' that fetches up the blood.... besides, i reckon i'm the one to tell y'u how your dad an' uncle got killed. tad didn't see it done, an' he was bad hurt when it happened. shore all the fellars left have their idee aboot it. but i've got it straight." "colter--tell me now," cried ellen. "wal, all right. come over heah," he replied, and drew her away from the camp fire, out in the shadow of gloom. "poor kid! i shore feel bad aboot it." he put a long arm around her waist and drew her against him. ellen felt it, yet did not offer any resistance. all her faculties seemed absorbed in a morbid and sad anticipation. "ellen, y'u shore know i always loved y'u--now don't y 'u?" he asked, with suppressed breath. "no, colter. it's news to me--an' not what i want to heah." "wal, y'u may as well heah it right now," he said. "it's true. an' what's more--your dad gave y'u to me before he died." "what! colter, y'u must be a liar." "ellen, i swear i'm not lyin'," he returned, in eager passion. "i was with your dad last an' heard him last. he shore knew i'd loved y'u for years. an' he said he'd rather y'u be left in my care than anybody's." "my father gave me to y'u in marriage!" ejaculated ellen, in bewilderment. colter's ready assurance did not carry him over this point. it was evident that her words somewhat surprised and disconcerted him for the moment. "to let me marry a rustler--one of the hash knife gang!" exclaimed ellen, with weary incredulity. "wal, your dad belonged to daggs's gang, same as i do," replied colter, recovering his cool ardor. "no!" cried ellen. "yes, he shore did, for years," declared colter, positively. "back in texas. an' it was your dad that got daggs to come to arizona." ellen tried to fling herself away. but her strength and her spirit were ebbing, and colter increased the pressure of his arm. all at once she sank limp. could she escape her fate? nothing seemed left to fight with or for. "all right--don't hold me--so tight," she panted. "now tell me how dad was killed ... an' who--who--" colter bent over so he could peer into her face. in the darkness ellen just caught the gleam of his eyes. she felt the virile force of the man in the strain of his body as he pressed her close. it all seemed unreal--a hideous dream--the gloom, the moan of the wind, the weird solitude, and this rustler with hand and will like cold steel. "we'd come back to greaves's store," colter began. "an' as greaves was daid we all got free with his liquor. shore some of us got drunk. bruce was drunk, an' tad in there--he was drunk. your dad put away more 'n i ever seen him. but shore he wasn't exactly drunk. he got one of them weak an' shaky spells. he cried an' he wanted some of us to get the isbels to call off the fightin'.... he shore was ready to call it quits. i reckon the killin' of daggs--an' then the awful way greaves was cut up by jean isbel--took all the fight out of your dad. he said to me, 'colter, we'll take ellen an' leave this heah country--an' begin life all over again--where no one knows us.'" "oh, did he really say that? ... did he--really mean it?" murmured ellen, with a sob. "i'll swear it by the memory of my daid mother," protested colter. "wal, when night come the isbels rode down on us in the dark an' began to shoot. they smashed in the door--tried to burn us out--an' hollered around for a while. then they left an' we reckoned there'd be no more trouble that night. all the same we kept watch. i was the soberest one an' i bossed the gang. we had some quarrels aboot the drinkin'. your dad said if we kept it up it 'd be the end of the jorths. an' he planned to send word to the isbels next mawnin' that he was ready for a truce. an' i was to go fix it up with gaston isbel. wal, your dad went to bed in greaves's room, an' a little while later your uncle jackson went in there, too. some of the men laid down in the store an' went to sleep. i kept guard till aboot three in the mawnin'. an' i got so sleepy i couldn't hold my eyes open. so i waked up wells an' slater an' set them on guard, one at each end of the store. then i laid down on the counter to take a nap." colter's low voice, the strain and breathlessness of him, the agitation with which he appeared to be laboring, and especially the simple, matter-of-fact detail of his story, carried absolute conviction to ellen jorth. her vague doubt of him had been created by his attitude toward her. emotion dominated her intelligence. the images, the scenes called up by colter's words, were as true as the gloom of the wild gulch and the loneliness of the night solitude--as true as the strange fact that she lay passive in the arm of a rustler. "wall, after a while i woke up," went on colter, clearing his throat. "it was gray dawn. all was as still as death.... an' somethin' shore was wrong. wells an' slater had got to drinkin' again an' now laid daid drunk or asleep. anyways, when i kicked them they never moved. then i heard a moan. it came from the room where your dad an' uncle was. i went in. it was just light enough to see. your uncle jackson was layin' on the floor--cut half in two--daid as a door nail.... your dad lay on the bed. he was alive, breathin' his last.... he says, 'that half-breed isbel--knifed us--while we slept!' ... the winder shutter was open. i seen where jean isbel had come in an' gone out. i seen his moccasin tracks in the dirt outside an' i seen where he'd stepped in jackson's blood an' tracked it to the winder. y'u shore can see them bloody tracks yourself, if y'u go back to greaves's store.... your dad was goin' fast.... he said, 'colter--take care of ellen,' an' i reckon he meant a lot by that. he kept sayin', 'my god! if i'd only seen gaston isbel before it was too late!' an' then he raved a little, whisperin' out of his haid.... an' after that he died.... i woke up the men, an' aboot sunup we carried your dad an' uncle out of town an' buried them.... an' them isbels shot at us while we were buryin' our daid! that's where tad got his hurt.... then we hit the trail for jorth's ranch.... an now, ellen, that's all my story. your dad was ready to bury the hatchet with his old enemy. an' that nez perce jean isbel, like the sneakin' savage he is, murdered your uncle an' your dad.... cut him horrible--made him suffer tortures of hell--all for isbel revenge!" when colter's husky voice ceased ellen whispered through lips as cold and still as ice, "let me go ... leave me--heah--alone!" "why, shore! i reckon i understand," replied colter. "i hated to tell y'u. but y'u had to heah the truth aboot that half-breed.... i'll carry your pack in the cabin an' unroll your blankets." releasing her, colter strode off in the gloom. like a dead weight, ellen began to slide until she slipped down full length beside the log. and then she lay in the cool, damp shadow, inert and lifeless so far as outward physical movement was concerned. she saw nothing and felt nothing of the night, the wind, the cold, the falling dew. for the moment or hour she was crushed by despair, and seemed to see herself sinking down and down into a black, bottomless pit, into an abyss where murky tides of blood and furious gusts of passion contended between her body and her soul. into the stormy blast of hell! in her despair she longed, she ached for death. born of infidelity, cursed by a taint of evil blood, further cursed by higher instinct for good and happy life, dragged from one lonely and wild and sordid spot to another, never knowing love or peace or joy or home, left to the companionship of violent and vile men, driven by a strange fate to love with unquenchable and insupportable love a' half-breed, a savage, an isbel, the hereditary enemy of her people, and at last the ruthless murderer of her father--what in the name of god had she left to live for? revenge! an eye for an eye! a life for a life! but she could not kill jean isbel. woman's love could turn to hate, but not the love of ellen jorth. he could drag her by the hair in the dust, beat her, and make her a thing to loathe, and cut her mortally in his savage and implacable thirst for revenge--but with her last gasp she would whisper she loved him and that she had lied to him to kill his faith. it was that--his strange faith in her purity--which had won her love. of all men, that he should be the one to recognize the truth of her, the womanhood yet unsullied--how strange, how terrible, how overpowering! false, indeed, was she to the jorths! false as her mother had been to an isbel! this agony and destruction of her soul was the bitter dead sea fruit--the sins of her parents visited upon her. "i'll end it all," she whispered to the night shadows that hovered over her. no coward was she--no fear of pain or mangled flesh or death or the mysterious hereafter could ever stay her. it would be easy, it would be a last thrill, a transport of self-abasement and supreme self-proof of her love for jean isbel to kiss the rim rock where his feet had trod and then fling herself down into the depths. she was the last jorth. so the wronged isbels would be avenged. "but he would never know--never know--i lied to him!" she wailed to the night wind. she was lost--lost on earth and to hope of heaven. she had right neither to live nor to die. she was nothing but a little weed along the trail of life, trampled upon, buried in the mud. she was nothing but a single rotten thread in a tangled web of love and hate and revenge. and she had broken. lower and lower she seemed to sink. was there no end to this gulf of despair? if colter had returned he would have found her a rag and a toy--a creature degraded, fit for his vile embrace. to be thrust deeper into the mire--to be punished fittingly for her betrayal of a man's noble love and her own womanhood--to be made an end of, body, mind, and soul. but colter did not return. the wind mourned, the owls hooted, the leaves rustled, the insects whispered their melancholy night song, the camp-fire flickered and faded. then the wild forestland seemed to close imponderably over ellen. all that she wailed in her despair, all that she confessed in her abasement, was true, and hard as life could be--but she belonged to nature. if nature had not failed her, had god failed her? it was there--the lonely land of tree and fern and flower and brook, full of wild birds and beasts, where the mossy rocks could speak and the solitude had ears, where she had always felt herself unutterably a part of creation. thus a wavering spark of hope quivered through the blackness of her soul and gathered light. the gloom of the sky, the shifting clouds of dull shade, split asunder to show a glimpse of a radiant star, piercingly white, cold, pure, a steadfast eye of the universe, beyond all understanding and illimitable with its meaning of the past and the present and the future. ellen watched it until the drifting clouds once more hid it from her strained sight. what had that star to do with hell? she might be crushed and destroyed by life, but was there not something beyond? just to be born, just to suffer, just to die--could that be all? despair did not loose its hold on ellen, the strife and pang of her breast did not subside. but with the long hours and the strange closing in of the forest around her and the fleeting glimpse of that wonderful star, with a subtle divination of the meaning of her beating heart and throbbing mind, and, lastly, with a voice thundering at her conscience that a man's faith in a woman must not be greater, nobler, than her faith in god and eternity--with these she checked the dark flight of her soul toward destruction. chapter xii a chill, gray, somber dawn was breaking when ellen dragged herself into the cabin and crept under her blankets, there to sleep the sleep of exhaustion. when she awoke the hour appeared to be late afternoon. sun and sky shone through the sunken and decayed roof of the old cabin. her uncle, tad jorth, lay upon a blanket bed upheld by a crude couch of boughs. the light fell upon his face, pale, lined, cast in a still mold of suffering. he was not dead, for she heard his respiration. the floor underneath ellen's blankets was bare clay. she and jorth were alone in this cabin. it contained nothing besides their beds and a rank growth of weeds along the decayed lower logs. half of the cabin had a rude ceiling of rough-hewn boards which formed a kind of loft. this attic extended through to the adjoining cabin, forming the ceiling of the porch-like space between the two structures. there was no partition. a ladder of two aspen saplings, pegged to the logs, and with braces between for steps, led up to the attic. ellen smelled wood smoke and the odor of frying meat, and she heard the voices of men. she looked out to see that slater and somers had joined their party--an addition that might have strengthened it for defense, but did not lend her own situation anything favorable. somers had always appeared the one best to avoid. colter espied her and called her to "come an' feed your pale face." his comrades laughed, not loudly, but guardedly, as if noise was something to avoid. nevertheless, they awoke tad jorth, who began to toss and moan on the bed. ellen hurried to his side and at once ascertained that he had a high fever and was in a critical condition. every time he tossed he opened a wound in his right breast, rather high up. for all she could see, nothing had been done for him except the binding of a scarf round his neck and under his arm. this scant bandage had worked loose. going to the door, she called out: "fetch me some water." when colter brought it, ellen was rummaging in her pack for some clothing or towel that she could use for bandages. "weren't any of y'u decent enough to look after my uncle?" she queried. "huh! wal, what the hell!" rejoined colter. "we shore did all we could. i reckon y'u think it wasn't a tough job to pack him up the rim. he was done for then an' i said so." "i'll do all i can for him," said ellen. "shore. go ahaid. when i get plugged or knifed by that half-breed i shore hope y'u'll be round to nurse me." "y'u seem to be pretty shore of your fate, colter." "shore as hell!" he bit out, darkly. "somers saw isbel an' his gang trailin' us to the jorth ranch." "are y'u goin' to stay heah--an' wait for them?" "shore i've been quarrelin' with the fellars out there over that very question. i'm for leavin' the country. but queen, the damn gun fighter, is daid set to kill that cowman, blue, who swore he was king fisher, the old texas outlaw. none but queen are spoilin' for another fight. all the same they won't leave tad jorth heah alone." then colter leaned in at the door and whispered: "ellen, i cain't boss this outfit. so let's y'u an' me shake 'em. i've got your dad's gold. let's ride off to-night an' shake this country." colter, muttering under his breath, left the door and returned to his comrades. ellen had received her first intimation of his cowardice; and his mention of her father's gold started a train of thought that persisted in spite of her efforts to put all her mind to attending her uncle. he grew conscious enough to recognize her working over him, and thanked her with a look that touched ellen deeply. it changed the direction of her mind. his suffering and imminent death, which she was able to alleviate and retard somewhat, worked upon her pity and compassion so that she forgot her own plight. half the night she was tending him, cooling his fever, holding him quiet. well she realized that but for her ministrations he would have died. at length he went to sleep. and ellen, sitting beside him in the lonely, silent darkness of that late hour, received again the intimation of nature, those vague and nameless stirrings of her innermost being, those whisperings out of the night and the forest and the sky. something great would not let go of her soul. she pondered. attention to the wounded man occupied ellen; and soon she redoubled her activities in this regard, finding in them something of protection against colter. he had waylaid her as she went to a spring for water, and with a lunge like that of a bear he had tried to embrace her. but ellen had been too quick. "wal, are y'u goin' away with me?" he demanded. "no. i'll stick by my uncle," she replied. that motive of hers seemed to obstruct his will. ellen was keen to see that colter and his comrades were at a last stand and disintegrating under a severe strain. nerve and courage of the open and the wild they possessed, but only in a limited degree. colter seemed obsessed by his passion for her, and though ellen in her stubborn pride did not yet fear him, she realized she ought to. after that incident she watched closely, never leaving her uncle's bedside except when colter was absent. one or more of the men kept constant lookout somewhere down the canyon. day after day passed on the wings of suspense, of watching, of ministering to her uncle, of waiting for some hour that seemed fixed. colter was like a hound upon her trail. at every turn he was there to importune her to run off with him, to frighten her with the menace of the isbels, to beg her to give herself to him. it came to pass that the only relief she had was when she ate with the men or barred the cabin door at night. not much relief, however, was there in the shut and barred door. with one thrust of his powerful arm colter could have caved it in. he knew this as well as ellen. still she did not have the fear she should have had. there was her rifle beside her, and though she did not allow her mind to run darkly on its possible use, still the fact of its being there at hand somehow strengthened her. colter was a cat playing with a mouse, but not yet sure of his quarry. ellen came to know hours when she was weak--weak physically, mentally, spiritually, morally--when under the sheer weight of this frightful and growing burden of suspense she was not capable of fighting her misery, her abasement, her low ebb of vitality, and at the same time wholly withstanding colter's advances. he would come into the cabin and, utterly indifferent to tad jorth, he would try to make bold and unrestrained love to ellen. when he caught her in one of her unresisting moments and was able to hold her in his arms and kiss her he seemed to be beside himself with the wonder of her. at such moments, if he had any softness or gentleness in him, they expressed themselves in his sooner or later letting her go, when apparently she was about to faint. so it must have become fascinatingly fixed in colter's mind that at times ellen repulsed him with scorn and at others could not resist him. ellen had escaped two crises in her relation with this man, and as a morbid doubt, like a poisonous fungus, began to strangle her mind, she instinctively divined that there was an approaching and final crisis. no uplift of her spirit came this time--no intimations--no whisperings. how horrible it all was! to long to be good and noble--to realize that she was neither--to sink lower day by day! must she decay there like one of these rotting logs? worst of all, then, was the insinuating and ever-growing hopelessness. what was the use? what did it matter? who would ever think of ellen jorth? "o god!" she whispered in her distraction, "is there nothing left--nothing at all?" a period of several days of less torment to ellen followed. her uncle apparently took a turn for the better and colter let her alone. this last circumstance nonplused ellen. she was at a loss to understand it unless the isbel menace now encroached upon colter so formidably that he had forgotten her for the present. then one bright august morning, when she had just begun to relax her eternal vigilance and breathe without oppression, colter encountered her and, darkly silent and fierce, he grasped her and drew her off her feet. ellen struggled violently, but the total surprise had deprived her of strength. and that paralyzing weakness assailed her as never before. without apparent effort colter carried her, striding rapidly away from the cabins into the border of spruce trees at the foot of the canyon wall. "colter--where--oh, where are y'u takin' me?" she found voice to cry out. "by god! i don't know," he replied, with strong, vibrant passion. "i was a fool not to carry y'u off long ago. but i waited. i was hopin' y'u'd love me! ... an' now that isbel gang has corralled us. somers seen the half-breed up on the rocks. an' springer seen the rest of them sneakin' around. i run back after my horse an' y'u." "but uncle tad! ... we mustn't leave him alone," cried ellen. "we've got to," replied colter, grimly. "tad shore won't worry y'u no more--soon as jean isbel gets to him." "oh, let me stay," implored ellen. "i will save him." colter laughed at the utter absurdity of her appeal and claim. suddenly he set her down upon her feet. "stand still," he ordered. ellen saw his big bay horse, saddled, with pack and blanket, tied there in the shade of a spruce. with swift hands colter untied him and mounted him, scarcely moving his piercing gaze from ellen. he reached to grasp her. "up with y'u! ... put your foot in the stirrup!" his will, like his powerful arm, was irresistible for ellen at that moment. she found herself swung up behind him. then the horse plunged away. what with the hard motion and colter's iron grasp on her ellen was in a painful position. her knees and feet came into violent contact with branches and snags. he galloped the horse, tearing through the dense thicket of willows that served to hide the entrance to the side canyon, and when out in the larger and more open canyon he urged him to a run. presently when colter put the horse to a slow rise of ground, thereby bringing him to a walk, it was just in time to save ellen a serious bruising. again the sunlight appeared to shade over. they were in the pines. suddenly with backward lunge colter halted the horse. ellen heard a yell. she recognized queen's voice. "turn back, colter! turn back!" with an oath colter wheeled his mount. "if i didn't run plump into them," he ejaculated, harshly. and scarcely had the goaded horse gotten a start when a shot rang out. ellen felt a violent shock, as if her momentum had suddenly met with a check, and then she felt herself wrenched from colter, from the saddle, and propelled into the air. she alighted on soft ground and thick grass, and was unhurt save for the violent wrench and shaking that had rendered her breathless. before she could rise colter was pulling at her, lifting her to her feet. she saw the horse lying with bloody head. tall pines loomed all around. another rifle cracked. "run!" hissed colter, and he bounded off, dragging her by the hand. another yell pealed out. "here we are, colter!". again it was queen's shrill voice. ellen ran with all her might, her heart in her throat, her sight failing to record more than a blur of passing pines and a blank green wall of spruce. then she lost her balance, was falling, yet could not fall because of that steel grip on her hand, and was dragged, and finally carried, into a dense shade. she was blinded. the trees whirled and faded. voices and shots sounded far away. then something black seemed to be wiped across her feeling. it turned to gray, to moving blankness, to dim, hazy objects, spectral and tall, like blanketed trees, and when ellen fully recovered consciousness she was being carried through the forest. "wal, little one, that was a close shave for y'u," said colter's hard voice, growing clearer. "reckon your keelin' over was natural enough." he held her lightly in both arms, her head resting above his left elbow. ellen saw his face as a gray blur, then taking sharper outline, until it stood out distinctly, pale and clammy, with eyes cold and wonderful in their intense flare. as she gazed upward colter turned his head to look back through the woods, and his motion betrayed a keen, wild vigilance. the veins of his lean, brown neck stood out like whipcords. two comrades were stalking beside him. ellen heard their stealthy steps, and she felt colter sheer from one side or the other. they were proceeding cautiously, fearful of the rear, but not wholly trusting to the fore. "reckon we'd better go slow an' look before we leap," said one whose voice ellen recognized as springer's. "shore. that open slope ain't to my likin', with our nez perce friend prowlin' round," drawled colter, as he set ellen down on her feet. another of the rustlers laughed. "say, can't he twinkle through the forest? i had four shots at him. harder to hit than a turkey runnin' crossways." this facetious speaker was the evil-visaged, sardonic somers. he carried two rifles and wore two belts of cartridges. "ellen, shore y'u ain't so daid white as y'u was," observed colter, and he chucked her under the chin with familiar hand. "set down heah. i don't want y'u stoppin' any bullets. an' there's no tellin'." ellen was glad to comply with his wish. she had begun to recover wits and strength, yet she still felt shaky. she observed that their position then was on the edge of a well-wooded slope from which she could see the grassy canyon floor below. they were on a level bench, projecting out from the main canyon wall that loomed gray and rugged and pine fringed. somers and cotter and springer gave careful attention to all points of the compass, especially in the direction from which they had come. they evidently anticipated being trailed or circled or headed off, but did not manifest much concern. somers lit a cigarette; springer wiped his face with a grimy hand and counted the shells in his belt, which appeared to be half empty. colter stretched his long neck like a vulture and peered down the slope and through the aisles of the forest up toward the canyon rim. "listen!" he said, tersely, and bent his head a little to one side, ear to the slight breeze. they all listened. ellen heard the beating of her heart, the rustle of leaves, the tapping of a woodpecker, and faint, remote sounds that she could not name. "deer, i reckon," spoke up somers. "ahuh! wal, i reckon they ain't trailin' us yet," replied colter. "we gave them a shade better 'n they sent us." "short an' sweet!" ejaculated springer, and he removed his black sombrero to poke a dirty forefinger through a buffet hole in the crown. "thet's how close i come to cashin'. i was lyin' behind a log, listenin' an' watchin', an' when i stuck my head up a little--zam! somebody made my bonnet leak." "where's queen?" asked colter. "he was with me fust off," replied somers. "an' then when the shootin' slacked--after i'd plugged thet big, red-faced, white-haired pal of isbel's--" "reckon thet was blaisdell," interrupted springer. "queen--he got tired layin' low," went on somers. "he wanted action. i heerd him chewin' to himself, an' when i asked him what was eatin' him he up an' growled he was goin' to quit this injun fightin'. an' he slipped off in the woods." "wal, that's the gun fighter of it," declared colter, wagging his head, "ever since that cowman, blue, braced us an' said he was king fisher, why queen has been sulkier an' sulkier. he cain't help it. he'll do the same trick as blue tried. an' shore he'll get his everlastin'. but he's the texas breed all right." "say, do you reckon blue really is king fisher?" queried somers. "naw!" ejaculated colter, with downward sweep of his hand. "many a would-be gun slinger has borrowed fisher's name. but fisher is daid these many years." "ahuh! wal, mebbe, but don't you fergit it--thet blue was no would-be," declared somers. "he was the genuine article." "i should smile!" affirmed springer. the subject irritated colter, and he dismissed it with another forcible gesture and a counter question. "how many left in that isbel outfit?" "no tellin'. there shore was enough of them," replied somers. "anyhow, the woods was full of flyin' bullets.... springer, did you account for any of them?" "nope--not thet i noticed," responded springer, dryly. "i had my chance at the half-breed.... reckon i was nervous." "was slater near you when he yelled out?" "no. he was lyin' beside somers." "wasn't thet a queer way fer a man to act?" broke in somers. "a bullet hit slater, cut him down the back as he was lyin' flat. reckon it wasn't bad. but it hurt him so thet he jumped right up an' staggered around. he made a target big as a tree. an' mebbe them isbels didn't riddle him!" "that was when i got my crack at bill isbel," declared colter, with grim satisfaction. "when they shot my horse out from under me i had ellen to think of an' couldn't get my rifle. shore had to run, as yu seen. wal, as i only had my six-shooter, there was nothin' for me to do but lay low an' listen to the sping of lead. wells was standin' up behind a tree about thirty yards off. he got plugged, an' fallin' over he began to crawl my way, still holdin' to his rifle. i crawled along the log to meet him. but he dropped aboot half-way. i went on an' took his rifle an' belt. when i peeped out from behind a spruce bush then i seen bill isbel. he was shootin' fast, an' all of them was shootin' fast. that war, when they had the open shot at slater.... wal, i bored bill isbel right through his middle. he dropped his rifle an', all bent double, he fooled around in a circle till he flopped over the rim. i reckon he's layin' right up there somewhere below that daid spruce. i'd shore like to see him." "i wal, you'd be as crazy as queen if you tried thet," declared somers. "we're not out of the woods yet." "i reckon not," replied colter. "an' i've lost my horse. where'd y'u leave yours?" "they're down the canyon, below thet willow brake. an' saddled an' none of them tied. reckon we'll have to look them up before dark." "colter, what 're we goin' to do?" demanded springer. "wait heah a while--then cross the canyon an' work round up under the bluff, back to the cabin." "an' then what?" queried somers, doubtfully eying colter. "we've got to eat--we've got to have blankets," rejoined colter, testily. "an' i reckon we can hide there an' stand a better show in a fight than runnin' for it in the woods." "wal, i'm givin' you a hunch thet it looked like you was runnin' fer it," retorted somers. "yes, an' packin' the girl," added springer. "looks funny to me." both rustlers eyed colter with dark and distrustful glances. what he might have replied never transpired, for the reason that his gaze, always shifting around, had suddenly fixed on something. "is that a wolf?" he asked, pointing to the rim. both his comrades moved to get in line with his finger. ellen could not see from her position. "shore thet's a big lofer," declared somers. "reckon he scented us." "there he goes along the rim," observed colter. "he doesn't act leary. looks like a good sign to me. mebbe the isbels have gone the other way." "looks bad to me," rejoined springer, gloomily. "an' why?" demanded colter. "i seen thet animal. fust time i reckoned it was a lofer. second time it was right near them isbels. an' i'm damned now if i don't believe it's thet half-lofer sheep dog of gass isbel's." "wal, what if it is?" "ha! ... shore we needn't worry about hidin' out," replied springer, sententiously. "with thet dog jean isbel could trail a grasshopper." "the hell y'u say!" muttered colter. manifestly such a possibility put a different light upon the present situation. the men grew silent and watchful, occupied by brooding thoughts and vigilant surveillance of all points. somers slipped off into the brush, soon to return, with intent look of importance. "i heerd somethin'," he whispered, jerking his thumb backward. "rollin' gravel--crackin' of twigs. no deer! ... reckon it'd be a good idee for us to slip round acrost this bench." "wal, y'u fellars go, an' i'll watch heah," returned colter. "not much," said somers, while springer leered knowingly. colter became incensed, but he did not give way to it. pondering a moment, he finally turned to ellen. "y'u wait heah till i come back. an' if i don't come in reasonable time y'u slip across the canyon an' through the willows to the cabins. wait till aboot dark." with that he possessed himself of one of the extra rifles and belts and silently joined his comrades. together they noiselessly stole into the brush. ellen had no other thought than to comply with colter's wishes. there was her wounded uncle who had been left unattended, and she was anxious to get back to him. besides, if she had wanted to run off from colter, where could she go? alone in the woods, she would get lost and die of starvation. her lot must be cast with the jorth faction until the end. that did not seem far away. her strained attention and suspense made the moments fly. by and by several shots pealed out far across the side canyon on her right, and they were answered by reports sounding closer to her. the fight was on again. but these shots were not repeated. the flies buzzed, the hot sun beat down and sloped to the west, the soft, warm breeze stirred the aspens, the ravens croaked, the red squirrels and blue jays chattered. suddenly a quick, short, yelp electrified ellen, brought her upright with sharp, listening rigidity. surely it was not a wolf and hardly could it be a coyote. again she heard it. the yelp of a sheep dog! she had heard that' often enough to know. and she rose to change her position so she could command a view of the rocky bluff above. presently she espied what really appeared to be a big timber wolf. but another yelp satisfied her that it really was a dog. she watched him. soon it became evident that he wanted to get down over the bluff. he ran to and fro, and then out of sight. in a few moments his yelp sounded from lower down, at the base of the bluff, and it was now the cry of an intelligent dog that was trying to call some one to his aid. ellen grew convinced that the dog was near where colter had said bill isbel had plunged over the declivity. would the dog yelp that way if the man was dead? ellen thought not. no one came, and the continuous yelping of the dog got on ellen's nerves. it was a call for help. and finally she surrendered to it. since her natural terror when colter's horse was shot from under her and she had been dragged away, she had not recovered from fear of the isbels. but calm consideration now convinced her that she could hardly be in a worse plight in their hands than if she remained in colter's. so she started out to find the dog. the wooded bench was level for a few hundred yards, and then it began to heave in rugged, rocky bulges up toward the rim. it did not appear far to where the dog was barking, but the latter part of the distance proved to be a hard climb over jumbled rocks and through thick brush. panting and hot, she at length reached the base of the bluff, to find that it was not very high. the dog espied her before she saw him, for he was coming toward her when she discovered him. big, shaggy, grayish white and black, with wild, keen face and eyes he assuredly looked the reputation springer had accorded him. but sagacious, guarded as was his approach, he appeared friendly. "hello--doggie!" panted ellen. "what's--wrong--up heah?" he yelped, his ears lost their stiffness, his body sank a little, and his bushy tail wagged to and fro. what a gray, clear, intelligent look he gave her! then he trotted back. ellen followed him around a corner of bluff to see the body of a man lying on his back. fresh earth and gravel lay about him, attesting to his fall from above. he had on neither coat nor hat, and the position of his body and limbs suggested broken bones. as ellen hurried to his side she saw that the front of his shirt, low down, was a bloody blotch. but he could lift his head; his eyes were open; he was perfectly conscious. ellen did not recognize the dusty, skinned face, yet the mold of features, the look of the eyes, seemed strangely familiar. "you're--jorth's--girl," he said, in faint voice of surprise. "yes, i'm ellen jorth," she replied. "an' are y'u bill isbel?" "all thet's left of me. but i'm thankin' god somebody come--even a jorth." ellen knelt beside him and examined the wound in his abdomen. a heavy bullet had indeed, as colter had avowed, torn clear through his middle. even if he had not sustained other serious injury from the fall over the cliff, that terrible bullet wound meant death very shortly. ellen shuddered. how inexplicable were men! how cruel, bloody, mindless! "isbel, i'm sorry--there's no hope," she said, low voiced. "y'u've not long to live. i cain't help y'u. god knows i'd do so if i could." "all over!" he sighed, with his eyes looking beyond her. "i reckon--i'm glad.... but y'u can--do somethin' for or me. will y'u?" "indeed, yes. tell me," she replied, lifting his dusty head on her knee. her hands trembled as she brushed his wet hair back from his clammy brow. "i've somethin'--on my conscience," he whispered. the woman, the sensitive in ellen, understood and pitied him then. "yes," she encouraged him. "i stole cattle--my dad's an' blaisdell's--an' made deals--with daggs.... all the crookedness--wasn't on--jorth's side.... i want--my brother jean--to know." "i'll try--to tell him," whispered ellen, out of her great amaze. "we were all--a bad lot--except jean," went on isbel. "dad wasn't fair.... god! how he hated jorth! jorth, yes, who was--your father.... wal, they're even now." "how--so?" faltered ellen. "your father killed dad.... at the last--dad wanted to--save us. he sent word--he'd meet him--face to face--an' let thet end the feud. they met out in the road.... but some one shot dad down--with a rifle--an' then your father finished him." "an' then, isbel," added ellen, with unconscious mocking bitterness, "your brother murdered my dad!" "what!" whispered bill isbel. "shore y'u've got--it wrong. i reckon jean--could have killed--your father.... but he didn't. queer, we all thought." "ah! ... who did kill my father?" burst out ellen, and her voice rang like great hammers at her ears. "it was blue. he went in the store--alone--faced the whole gang alone. bluffed them--taunted them--told them he was king fisher.... then he killed--your dad--an' jackson jorth.... jean was out--back of the store. we were out--front. there was shootin'. colmor was hit. then blue ran out--bad hurt.... both of them--died in meeker's yard." "an' so jean isbel has not killed a jorth!" said ellen, in strange, deep voice. "no," replied isbel, earnestly. "i reckon this feud--was hardest on jean. he never lived heah.... an' my sister ann said--he got sweet on y'u.... now did he?" slow, stinging tears filled ellen's eyes, and her head sank low and lower. "yes--he did," she murmured, tremulously. "ahuh! wal, thet accounts," replied isbel, wonderingly. "too bad! ... it might have been.... a man always sees--different when--he's dyin'.... if i had--my life--to live over again! ... my poor kids--deserted in their babyhood--ruined for life! all for nothin'.... may god forgive--" then he choked and whispered for water. ellen laid his head back and, rising, she took his sombrero and started hurriedly down the slope, making dust fly and rocks roll. her mind was a seething ferment. leaping, bounding, sliding down the weathered slope, she gained the bench, to run across that, and so on down into the open canyon to the willow-bordered brook. here she filled the sombrero with water and started back, forced now to walk slowly and carefully. it was then, with the violence and fury of intense muscular activity denied her, that the tremendous import of bill isbel's revelation burst upon her very flesh and blood and transfiguring the very world of golden light and azure sky and speaking forestland that encompassed her. not a drop of the precious water did she spill. not a misstep did she make. yet so great was the spell upon her that she was not aware she had climbed the steep slope until the dog yelped his welcome. then with all the flood of her emotion surging and resurging she knelt to allay the parching thirst of this dying enemy whose words had changed frailty to strength, hate to love, and, the gloomy hell of despair to something unutterable. but she had returned too late. bill isbel was dead. chapter xiii jean isbel, holding the wolf-dog shepp in leash, was on the trail of the most dangerous of jorth's gang, the gunman queen. dark drops of blood on the stones and plain tracks of a rider's sharp-heeled boots behind coverts indicated the trail of a wounded, slow-traveling fugitive. therefore, jean isbel held in the dog and proceeded with the wary eye and watchful caution of an indian. queen, true to his class, and emulating blue with the same magnificent effrontery and with the same paralyzing suddenness of surprise, had appeared as if by magic at the last night camp of the isbel faction. jean had seen him first, in time to leap like a panther into the shadow. but he carried in his shoulder queen's first bullet of that terrible encounter. upon gordon and fredericks fell the brunt of queen's fusillade. and they, shot to pieces, staggering and falling, held passionate grip on life long enough to draw and still queen's guns and send him reeling off into the darkness of the forest. unarmed, and hindered by a painful wound, jean had kept a vigil near camp all that silent and menacing night. morning disclosed gordon and fredericks stark and ghastly beside the burned-out camp-fire, their guns clutched immovably in stiffened hands. jean buried them as best he could, and when they were under ground with flat stones on their graves he knew himself to be indeed the last of the isbel clan. and all that was wild and savage in his blood and desperate in his spirit rose to make him more than man and less than human. then for the third time during these tragic last days the wolf-dog shepp came to him. jean washed the wound queen had given him and bound it tightly. the keen pang and burn of the lead was a constant and all-powerful reminder of the grim work left for him to do. the whole world was no longer large enough for him and whoever was left of the jorths. the heritage of blood his father had bequeathed him, the unshakable love for a worthless girl who had so dwarfed and obstructed his will and so bitterly defeated and reviled his poor, romantic, boyish faith, the killing of hostile men, so strange in its after effects, the pursuits and fights, and loss of one by one of his confederates--these had finally engendered in jean isbel a wild, unslakable thirst, these had been the cause of his retrogression, these had unalterably and ruthlessly fixed in his darkened mind one fierce passion--to live and die the last man of that jorth-isbel feud. at sunrise jean left this camp, taking with him only a small knapsack of meat and bread, and with the eager, wild shepp in leash he set out on queen's bloody trail. black drops of blood on the stones and an irregular trail of footprints proved to jean that the gunman was hard hit. here he had fallen, or knelt, or sat down, evidently to bind his wounds. jean found strips of scarf, red and discarded. and the blood drops failed to show on more rocks. in a deep forest of spruce, under silver-tipped spreading branches, queen had rested, perhaps slept. then laboring with dragging steps, not improbably with a lame leg, he had gone on, up out of the dark-green ravine to the open, dry, pine-tipped ridge. here he had rested, perhaps waited to see if he were pursued. from that point his trail spoke an easy language for jean's keen eye. the gunman knew he was pursued. he had seen his enemy. therefore jean proceeded with a slow caution, never getting within revolver range of ambush, using all his woodcraft to trail this man and yet save himself. queen traveled slowly, either because he was wounded or else because he tried to ambush his pursuer, and jean accommodated his pace to that of queen. from noon of that day they were never far apart, never out of hearing of a rifle shot. the contrast of the beauty and peace and loneliness of the surroundings to the nature of queen's flight often obtruded its strange truth into the somber turbulence of jean's mind, into that fixed columnar idea around which fleeting thoughts hovered and gathered like shadows. early frost had touched the heights with its magic wand. and the forest seemed a temple in which man might worship nature and life rather than steal through the dells and under the arched aisles like a beast of prey. the green-and-gold leaves of aspens quivered in the glades; maples in the ravines fluttered their red-and-purple leaves. the needle-matted carpet under the pines vied with the long lanes of silvery grass, alike enticing to the eye of man and beast. sunny rays of light, flecked with dust and flying insects, slanted down from the overhanging brown-limbed, green-massed foliage. roar of wind in the distant forest alternated with soft breeze close at hand. small dove-gray squirrels ran all over the woodland, very curious about jean and his dog, rustling the twigs, scratching the bark of trees, chattering and barking, frisky, saucy, and bright-eyed. a plaintive twitter of wild canaries came from the region above the treetops--first voices of birds in their pilgrimage toward the south. pine cones dropped with soft thuds. the blue jays followed these intruders in the forest, screeching their displeasure. like rain pattered the dropping seeds from the spruces. a woody, earthy, leafy fragrance, damp with the current of life, mingled with a cool, dry, sweet smell of withered grass and rotting pines. solitude and lonesomeness, peace and rest, wild life and nature, reigned there. it was a golden-green region, enchanting to the gaze of man. an indian would have walked there with his spirits. and even as jean felt all this elevating beauty and inscrutable spirit his keen eye once more fastened upon the blood-red drops queen had again left on the gray moss and rock. his wound had reopened. jean felt the thrill of the scenting panther. the sun set, twilight gathered, night fell. jean crawled under a dense, low-spreading spruce, ate some bread and meat, fed the dog, and lay down to rest and sleep. his thoughts burdened him, heavy and black as the mantle of night. a wolf mourned a hungry cry for a mate. shepp quivered under jean's hand. that was the call which had lured him from the ranch. the wolf blood in him yearned for the wild. jean tied the cowhide leash to his wrist. when this dark business was at an end shepp could be free to join the lonely mate mourning out there in the forest. then jean slept. dawn broke cold, clear, frosty, with silvered grass sparkling, with a soft, faint rustling of falling aspen leaves. when the sun rose red jean was again on the trail of queen. by a frosty-ferned brook, where water tinkled and ran clear as air and cold as ice, jean quenched his thirst, leaning on a stone that showed drops of blood. queen, too, had to quench his thirst. what good, what help, jean wondered, could the cold, sweet, granite water, so dear to woodsmen and wild creatures, do this wounded, hunted rustler? why did he not wait in the open to fight and face the death he had meted? where was that splendid and terrible daring of the gunman? queen's love of life dragged him on and on, hour by hour, through the pine groves and spruce woods, through the oak swales and aspen glades, up and down the rocky gorges, around the windfalls and over the rotting logs. the time came when queen tried no more ambush. he gave up trying to trap his pursuer by lying in wait. he gave up trying to conceal his tracks. he grew stronger or, in desperation, increased his energy, so that he redoubled his progress through the wilderness. that, at best, would count only a few miles a day. and he began to circle to the northwest, back toward the deep canyon where blaisdell and bill isbel had reached the end of their trails. queen had evidently left his comrades, had lone-handed it in his last fight, but was now trying to get back to them. somewhere in these wild, deep forest brakes the rest of the jorth faction had found a hiding place. jean let queen lead him there. ellen jorth would be with them. jean had seen her. it had been his shot that killed colter's horse. and he had withheld further fire because colter had dragged the girl behind him, protecting his body with hers. sooner or later jean would come upon their camp. she would be there. the thought of her dark beauty, wasted in wantonness upon these rustlers, added a deadly rage to the blood lust and righteous wrath of his vengeance. let her again flaunt her degradation in his face and, by the god she had forsaken, he would kill her, and so end the race of jorths! another night fell, dark and cold, without starlight. the wind moaned in the forest. shepp was restless. he sniffed the air. there was a step on his trail. again a mournful, eager, wild, and hungry wolf cry broke the silence. it was deep and low, like that of a baying hound, but infinitely wilder. shepp strained to get away. during the night, while jean slept, he managed to chew the cowhide leash apart and run off. next day no dog was needed to trail queen. fog and low-drifting clouds in the forest and a misty rain had put the rustler off his bearings. he was lost, and showed that he realized it. strange how a matured man, fighter of a hundred battles, steeped in bloodshed, and on his last stand, should grow panic-stricken upon being lost! so jean isbel read the signs of the trail. queen circled and wandered through the foggy, dripping forest until he headed down into a canyon. it was one that notched the rim and led down and down, mile after mile into the basin. not soon had queen discovered his mistake. when he did do so, night overtook him. the weather cleared before morning. red and bright the sun burst out of the east to flood that low basin land with light. jean found that queen had traveled on and on, hoping, no doubt, to regain what he had lost. but in the darkness he had climbed to the manzanita slopes instead of back up the canyon. and here he had fought the hold of that strange brush of spanish name until he fell exhausted. surely queen would make his stand and wait somewhere in this devilish thicket for jean to catch up with him. many and many a place jean would have chosen had he been in queen's place. many a rock and dense thicket jean circled or approached with extreme care. manzanita grew in patches that were impenetrable except for a small animal. the brush was a few feet high, seldom so high that jean could not look over it, and of a beautiful appearance, having glossy, small leaves, a golden berry, and branches of dark-red color. these branches were tough and unbendable. every bush, almost, had low branches that were dead, hard as steel, sharp as thorns, as clutching as cactus. progress was possible only by endless detours to find the half-closed aisles between patches, or else by crashing through with main strength or walking right over the tops. jean preferred this last method, not because it was the easiest, but for the reason that he could see ahead so much farther. so he literally walked across the tips of the manzanita brush. often he fell through and had to step up again; many a branch broke with him, letting him down; but for the most part he stepped from fork to fork, on branch after branch, with balance of an indian and the patience of a man whose purpose was sustaining and immutable. on that south slope under the rim the sun beat down hot. there was no breeze to temper the dry air. and before midday jean was laboring, wet with sweat, parching with thirst, dusty and hot and tiring. it amazed him, the doggedness and tenacity of life shown by this wounded rustler. the time came when under the burning rays of the sun he was compelled to abandon the walk across the tips of the manzanita bushes and take to the winding, open threads that ran between. it would have been poor sight indeed that could not have followed queen's labyrinthine and broken passage through the brush. then the time came when jean espied queen, far ahead and above, crawling like a black bug along the bright-green slope. sight then acted upon jean as upon a hound in the chase. but he governed his actions if he could not govern his instincts. slowly but surely he followed the dusty, hot trail, and never a patch of blood failed to send a thrill along his veins. queen, headed up toward the rim, finally vanished from sight. had he fallen? was he hiding? but the hour disclosed that he was crawling. jean's keen eye caught the slow moving of the brush and enabled him to keep just so close to the rustler, out of range of the six-shooters he carried. and so all the interminable hours of the hot afternoon that snail-pace flight and pursuit kept on. halfway up the rim the growth of manzanita gave place to open, yellow, rocky slope dotted with cedars. queen took to a slow-ascending ridge and left his bloody tracks all the way to the top, where in the gathering darkness the weary pursuer lost them. another night passed. daylight was relentless to the rustler. he could not hide his trail. but somehow in a desperate last rally of strength he reached a point on the heavily timbered ridge that jean recognized as being near the scene of the fight in the canyon. queen was nearing the rendezvous of the rustlers. jean crossed tracks of horses, and then more tracks that he was certain had been made days past by his own party. to the left of this ridge must be the deep canyon that had frustrated his efforts to catch up with the rustlers on the day blaisdell lost his life, and probably bill isbel, too. something warned jean that he was nearing the end of the trail, and an unaccountable sense of imminent catastrophe seemed foreshadowed by vague dreads and doubts in his gloomy mind. jean felt the need of rest, of food, of ease from the strain of the last weeks. but his spirit drove him implacably. queen's rally of strength ended at the edge of an open, bald ridge that was bare of brush or grass and was surrounded by a line of forest on three sides, and on the fourth by a low bluff which raised its gray head above the pines. across this dusty open queen had crawled, leaving unmistakable signs of his condition. jean took long survey of the circle of trees and of the low, rocky eminence, neither of which he liked. it might be wiser to keep to cover, jean thought, and work around to where queen's trail entered the forest again. but he was tired, gloomy, and his eternal vigilance was failing. nevertheless, he stilled for the thousandth time that bold prompting of his vengeance and, taking to the edge of the forest, he went to considerable pains to circle the open ground. and suddenly sight of a man sitting back against a tree halted jean. he stared to make sure his eyes did not deceive him. many times stumps and snags and rocks had taken on strange resemblance to a standing or crouching man. this was only another suggestive blunder of the mind behind his eyes--what he wanted to see he imagined he saw. jean glided on from tree to tree until he made sure that this sitting image indeed was that of a man. he sat bolt upright, facing back across the open, hands resting on his knees--and closer scrutiny showed jean that he held a gun in each hand. queen! at the last his nerve had revived. he could not crawl any farther, he could never escape, so with the courage of fatality he chose the open, to face his foe and die. jean had a thrill of admiration for the rustler. then he stalked out from under the pines and strode forward with his rifle ready. a watching man could not have failed to espy jean. but queen never made the slightest move. moreover, his stiff, unnatural position struck jean so singularly that he halted with a muttered exclamation. he was now about fifty paces from queen, within range of those small guns. jean called, sharply, "queen!" still the figure never relaxed in the slightest. jean advanced a few more paces, rifle up, ready to fire the instant queen lifted a gun. the man's immobility brought the cold sweat to jean's brow. he stopped to bend the full intense power of his gaze upon this inert figure. suddenly over jean flashed its meaning. queen was dead. he had backed up against the pine, ready to face his foe, and he had died there. not a shadow of a doubt entered jean's mind as he started forward again. he knew. after all, queen's blood would not be on his hands. gordon and fredericks in their death throes had given the rustler mortal wounds. jean kept on, marveling the while. how ghastly thin and hard! those four days of flight had been hell for queen. jean reached him--looked down with staring eyes. the guns were tied to his hands. jean started violently as the whole direction of his mind shifted. a lightning glance showed that queen had been propped against the tree--another showed boot tracks in the dust. "by heaven, they've fooled me!" hissed jean, and quickly as he leaped behind the pine he was not quick enough to escape the cunning rustlers who had waylaid him thus. he felt the shock, the bite and burn of lead before he heard a rifle crack. a bullet had ripped through his left forearm. from behind the tree he saw a puff of white smoke along the face of the bluff--the very spot his keen and gloomy vigilance had descried as one of menace. then several puffs of white smoke and ringing reports betrayed the ambush of the tricksters. bullets barked the pine and whistled by. jean saw a man dart from behind a rock and, leaning over, run for another. jean's swift shot stopped him midway. he fell, got up, and floundered behind a bush scarcely large enough to conceal him. into that bush jean shot again and again. he had no pain in his wounded arm, but the sense of the shock clung in his consciousness, and this, with the tremendous surprise of the deceit, and sudden release of long-dammed overmastering passion, caused him to empty the magazine of his winchester in a terrible haste to kill the man he had hit. these were all the loads he had for his rifle. blood passion had made him blunder. jean cursed himself, and his hand moved to his belt. his six-shooter was gone. the sheath had been loose. he had tied the gun fast. but the strings had been torn apart. the rustlers were shooting again. bullets thudded into the pine and whistled by. bending carefully, jean reached one of queen's guns and jerked it from his hand. the weapon was empty. both of his guns were empty. jean peeped out again to get the line in which the bullets were coming and, marking a course from his position to the cover of the forest, he ran with all his might. he gained the shelter. shrill yells behind warned him that he had been seen, that his reason for flight had been guessed. looking back, he saw two or three men scrambling down the bluff. then the loud neigh of a frightened horse pealed out. jean discarded his useless rifle, and headed down the ridge slope, keeping to the thickest line of pines and sheering around the clumps of spruce. as he ran, his mind whirled with grim thoughts of escape, of his necessity to find the camp where gordon and fredericks were buried, there to procure another rifle and ammunition. he felt the wet blood dripping down his arm, yet no pain. the forest was too open for good cover. he dared not run uphill. his only course was ahead, and that soon ended in an abrupt declivity too precipitous to descend. as he halted, panting for breath, he heard the ring of hoofs on stone, then the thudding beat of running horses on soft ground. the rustlers had sighted the direction he had taken. jean did not waste time to look. indeed, there was no need, for as he bounded along the cliff to the right a rifle cracked and a bullet whizzed over his head. it lent wings to his feet. like a deer he sped along, leaping cracks and logs and rocks, his ears filled by the rush of wind, until his quick eye caught sight of thick-growing spruce foliage close to the precipice. he sprang down into the green mass. his weight precipitated him through the upper branches. but lower down his spread arms broke his fall, then retarded it until he caught. a long, swaying limb let him down and down, where he grasped another and a stiffer one that held his weight. hand over hand he worked toward the trunk of this spruce and, gaining it, he found other branches close together down which he hastened, hold by hold and step by step, until all above him was black, dense foliage, and beneath him the brown, shady slope. sure of being unseen from above, he glided noiselessly down under the trees, slowly regaining freedom from that constriction of his breast. passing on to a gray-lichened cliff, overhanging and gloomy, he paused there to rest and to listen. a faint crack of hoof on stone came to him from above, apparently farther on to the right. eventually his pursuers would discover that he had taken to the canyon. but for the moment he felt safe. the wound in his forearm drew his attention. the bullet had gone clear through without breaking either bone. his shirt sleeve was soaked with blood. jean rolled it back and tightly wrapped his scarf around the wound, yet still the dark-red blood oozed out and dripped down into his hand. he became aware of a dull, throbbing pain. not much time did jean waste in arriving at what was best to do. for the time being he had escaped, and whatever had been his peril, it was past. in dense, rugged country like this he could not be caught by rustlers. but he had only a knife left for a weapon, and there was very little meat in the pocket of his coat. salt and matches he possessed. therefore the imperative need was for him to find the last camp, where he could get rifle and ammunition, bake bread, and rest up before taking again the trail of the rustlers. he had reason to believe that this canyon was the one where the fight on the rim, and later, on a bench of woodland below, had taken place. thereupon he arose and glided down under the spruces toward the level, grassy open he could see between the trees. and as he proceeded, with the slow step and wary eye of an indian, his mind was busy. queen had in his flight unerringly worked in the direction of this canyon until he became lost in the fog; and upon regaining his bearings he had made a wonderful and heroic effort to surmount the manzanita slope and the rim and find the rendezvous of his comrades. but he had failed up there on the ridge. in thinking it over jean arrived at a conclusion that queen, finding he could go no farther, had waited, guns in hands, for his pursuer. and he had died in this position. then by strange coincidence his comrades had happened to come across him and, recognizing the situation, they had taken the shells from his guns and propped him up with the idea of luring jean on. they had arranged a cunning trick and ambush, which had all but snuffed out the last of the isbels. colter probably had been at the bottom of this crafty plan. since the fight at the isbel ranch, now seemingly far back in the past, this man colter had loomed up more and more as a stronger and more dangerous antagonist then either jorth or daggs. before that he had been little known to any of the isbel faction. and it was colter now who controlled the remnant of the gang and who had ellen jorth in his possession. the canyon wall above jean, on the right, grew more rugged and loftier, and the one on the left began to show wooded slopes and brakes, and at last a wide expanse with a winding, willow border on the west and a long, low, pine-dotted bench on the east. it took several moments of study for jean to recognize the rugged bluff above this bench. on up that canyon several miles was the site where queen had surprised jean and his comrades at their campfire. somewhere in this vicinity was the hiding place of the rustlers. thereupon jean proceeded with the utmost stealth, absolutely certain that he would miss no sound, movement, sign, or anything unnatural to the wild peace of the canyon. and his first sense to register something was his keen smell. sheep! he was amazed to smell sheep. there must be a flock not far away. then from where he glided along under the trees he saw down to open places in the willow brake and noticed sheep tracks in the dark, muddy bank of the brook. next he heard faint tinkle of bells, and at length, when he could see farther into the open enlargement of the canyon, his surprised gaze fell upon an immense gray, woolly patch that blotted out acres and acres of grass. thousands of sheep were grazing there. jean knew there were several flocks of jorth's sheep on the mountain in the care of herders, but he had never thought of them being so far west, more than twenty miles from chevelon canyon. his roving eyes could not descry any herders or dogs. but he knew there must be dogs close to that immense flock. and, whatever his cunning, he could not hope to elude the scent and sight of shepherd dogs. it would be best to go back the way he had come, wait for darkness, then cross the canyon and climb out, and work around to his objective point. turning at once, he started to glide back. but almost immediately he was brought stock-still and thrilling by the sound of hoofs. horses were coming in the direction he wished to take. they were close. his swift conclusion was that the men who had pursued him up on the rim had worked down into the canyon. one circling glance showed him that he had no sure covert near at hand. it would not do to risk their passing him there. the border of woodland was narrow and not dense enough for close inspection. he was forced to turn back up the canyon, in the hope of soon finding a hiding place or a break in the wall where he could climb up. hugging the base of the wall, he slipped on, passing the point where he had espied the sheep, and gliding on until he was stopped by a bend in the dense line of willows. it sheered to the west there and ran close to the high wall. jean kept on until he was stooping under a curling border of willow thicket, with branches slim and yellow and masses of green foliage that brushed against the wall. suddenly he encountered an abrupt corner of rock. he rounded it, to discover that it ran at right angles with the one he had just passed. peering up through the willows, he ascertained that there was a narrow crack in the main wall of the canyon. it had been concealed by willows low down and leaning spruces above. a wild, hidden retreat! along the base of the wall there were tracks of small animals. the place was odorous, like all dense thickets, but it was not dry. water ran through there somewhere. jean drew easier breath. all sounds except the rustling of birds or mice in the willows had ceased. the brake was pervaded by a dreamy emptiness. jean decided to steal on a little farther, then wait till he felt he might safely dare go back. the golden-green gloom suddenly brightened. light showed ahead, and parting the willows, he looked out into a narrow, winding canyon, with an open, grassy, willow-streaked lane in the center and on each side a thin strip of woodland. his surprise was short lived. a crashing of horses back of him in the willows gave him a shock. he ran out along the base of the wall, back of the trees. like the strip of woodland in the main canyon, this one was scant and had but little underbrush. there were young spruces growing with thick branches clear to the grass, and under these he could have concealed himself. but, with a certainty of sheep dogs in the vicinity, he would not think of hiding except as a last resource. these horsemen, whoever they were, were as likely to be sheep herders as not. jean slackened his pace to look back. he could not see any moving objects, but he still heard horses, though not so close now. ahead of him this narrow gorge opened out like the neck of a bottle. he would run on to the head of it and find a place to climb to the top. hurried and anxious as jean was, he yet received an impression of singular, wild nature of this side gorge. it was a hidden, pine-fringed crack in the rock-ribbed and canyon-cut tableland. above him the sky seemed a winding stream of blue. the walls were red and bulged out in spruce-greened shelves. from wall to wall was scarcely a distance of a hundred feet. jumbles of rock obstructed his close holding to the wall. he had to walk at the edge of the timber. as he progressed, the gorge widened into wilder, ruggeder aspect. through the trees ahead he saw where the wall circled to meet the cliff on the left, forming an oval depression, the nature of which he could not ascertain. but it appeared to be a small opening surrounded by dense thickets and the overhanging walls. anxiety augmented to alarm. he might not be able to find a place to scale those rough cliffs. breathing hard, jean halted again. the situation was growing critical again. his physical condition was worse. loss of sleep and rest, lack of food, the long pursuit of queen, the wound in his arm, and the desperate run for his life--these had weakened him to the extent that if he undertook any strenuous effort he would fail. his cunning weighed all chances. the shade of wall and foliage above, and another jumble of ruined cliff, hindered his survey of the ground ahead, and he almost stumbled upon a cabin, hidden on three sides, with a small, bare clearing in front. it was an old, ramshackle structure like others he had run across in the canons. cautiously he approached and peeped around the corner. at first swift glance it had all the appearance of long disuse. but jean had no time for another look. a clip-clop of trotting horses on hard ground brought the same pell-mell rush of sensations that had driven him to wild flight scarcely an hour past. his body jerked with its instinctive impulse, then quivered with his restraint. to turn back would be risky, to run ahead would be fatal, to hide was his one hope. no covert behind! and the clip-clop of hoofs sounded closer. one moment longer jean held mastery over his instincts of self-preservation. to keep from running was almost impossible. it was the sheer primitive animal sense to escape. he drove it back and glided along the front of the cabin. here he saw that the cabin adjoined another. reaching the door, he was about to peep in when the thud of hoofs and voices close at hand transfixed him with a grim certainty that he had not an instant to lose. through the thin, black-streaked line of trees he saw moving red objects. horses! he must run. passing the door, his keen nose caught a musty, woody odor and the tail of his eye saw bare dirt floor. this cabin was unused. he halted--gave a quick look back. and the first thing his eye fell upon was a ladder, right inside the door, against the wall. he looked up. it led to a loft that, dark and gloomy, stretched halfway across the cabin. an irresistible impulse drove jean. slipping inside, he climbed up the ladder to the loft. it was like night up there. but he crawled on the rough-hewn rafters and, turning with his head toward the opening, he stretched out and lay still. what seemed an interminable moment ended with a trample of hoofs outside the cabin. it ceased. jean's vibrating ears caught the jingle of spurs and a thud of boots striking the ground. "wal, sweetheart, heah we are home again," drawled a slow, cool, mocking texas voice. "home! i wonder, colter--did y'u ever have a home--a mother--a sister--much less a sweetheart?" was the reply, bitter and caustic. jean's palpitating, hot body suddenly stretched still and cold with intensity of shock. his very bones seemed to quiver and stiffen into ice. during the instant of realization his heart stopped. and a slow, contracting pressure enveloped his breast and moved up to constrict his throat. that woman's voice belonged to ellen jorth. the sound of it had lingered in his dreams. he had stumbled upon the rendezvous of the jorth faction. hard indeed had been the fates meted out to those of the isbels and jorths who had passed to their deaths. but, no ordeal, not even queen's, could compare with this desperate one jean must endure. he had loved ellen jorth, strangely, wonderfully, and he had scorned repute to believe her good. he had spared her father and her uncle. he had weakened or lost the cause of the isbels. he loved her now, desperately, deathlessly, knowing from her own lips that she was worthless--loved her the more because he had felt her terrible shame. and to him--the last of the isbels--had come the cruelest of dooms--to be caught like a crippled rat in a trap; to be compelled to lie helpless, wounded, without a gun; to listen, and perhaps to see ellen jorth enact the very truth of her mocking insinuation. his will, his promise, his creed, his blood must hold him to the stem decree that he should be the last man of the jorth-isbel war. but could he lie there to hear--to see--when he had a knife and an arm? chapter xiv then followed the leathery flop of saddles to the soft turf and the stamp, of loosened horses. jean heard a noise at the cabin door, a rustle, and then a knock of something hard against wood. silently he moved his head to look down through a crack between the rafters. he saw the glint of a rifle leaning against the sill. then the doorstep was darkened. ellen jorth sat down with a long, tired sigh. she took off her sombrero and the light shone on the rippling, dark-brown hair, hanging in a tangled braid. the curved nape of her neck showed a warm tint of golden tan. she wore a gray blouse, soiled and torn, that clung to her lissome shoulders. "colter, what are y'u goin' to do?" she asked, suddenly. her voice carried something jean did not remember. it thrilled into the icy fixity of his senses. "we'll stay heah," was the response, and it was followed by a clinking step of spurred boot. "shore i won't stay heah," declared ellen. "it makes me sick when i think of how uncle tad died in there alone--helpless--sufferin'. the place seems haunted." "wal, i'll agree that it's tough on y'u. but what the hell can we do?" a long silence ensued which ellen did not break. "somethin' has come off round heah since early mawnin'," declared colter. "somers an' springer haven't got back. an' antonio's gone.... now, honest, ellen, didn't y'u heah rifle shots off somewhere?" "i reckon i did," she responded, gloomily. "an' which way?" "sounded to me up on the bluff, back pretty far." "wal, shore that's my idee. an' it makes me think hard. y'u know somers come across the last camp of the isbels. an' he dug into a grave to find the bodies of jim gordon an' another man he didn't know. queen kept good his brag. he braced that isbel gang an' killed those fellars. but either him or jean isbel went off leavin' bloody tracks. if it was queen's y'u can bet isbel was after him. an' if it was isbel's tracks, why shore queen would stick to them. somers an' springer couldn't follow the trail. they're shore not much good at trackin'. but for days they've been ridin' the woods, hopin' to run across queen.... wal now, mebbe they run across isbel instead. an' if they did an' got away from him they'll be heah sooner or later. if isbel was too many for them he'd hunt for my trail. i'm gamblin' that either queen or jean isbel is daid. i'm hopin' it's isbel. because if he ain't daid he's the last of the isbels, an' mebbe i'm the last of jorth's gang.... shore i'm not hankerin' to meet the half-breed. that's why i say we'll stay heah. this is as good a hidin' place as there is in the country. we've grub. there's water an' grass." "me--stay heah with y'u--alone!" the tone seemed a contradiction to the apparently accepted sense of her words. jean held his breath. but he could not still the slowly mounting and accelerating faculties within that were involuntarily rising to meet some strange, nameless import. he felt it. he imagined it would be the catastrophe of ellen jorth's calm acceptance of colter's proposition. but down in jean's miserable heart lived something that would not die. no mere words could kill it. how poignant that moment of her silence! how terribly he realized that if his intelligence and his emotion had believed her betraying words, his soul had not! but ellen jorth did not speak. her brown head hung thoughtfully. her supple shoulders sagged a little. "ellen, what's happened to y'u?" went on colter. "all the misery possible to a woman," she replied, dejectedly. "shore i don't mean that way," he continued, persuasively. "i ain't gainsayin' the hard facts of your life. it's been bad. your dad was no good.... but i mean i can't figger the change in y'u." "no, i reckon y'u cain't," she said. "whoever was responsible for your make-up left out a mind--not to say feeling." colter drawled a low laugh. "wal, have that your own way. but how much longer are yu goin' to be like this heah?" "like what?" she rejoined, sharply. "wal, this stand-offishness of yours?" "colter, i told y'u to let me alone," she said, sullenly. "shore. an' y'u did that before. but this time y'u're different.... an' wal, i'm gettin' tired of it." here the cool, slow voice of the texan sounded an inflexibility before absent, a timber that hinted of illimitable power. ellen jorth shrugged her lithe shoulders and, slowly rising, she picked up the little rifle and turned to step into the cabin. "colter," she said, "fetch my pack an' my blankets in heah." "shore," he returned, with good nature. jean saw ellen jorth lay the rifle lengthwise in a chink between two logs and then slowly turn, back to the wall. jean knew her then, yet did not know her. the brown flash of her face seemed that of an older, graver woman. his strained gaze, like his waiting mind, had expected something, he knew not what--a hardened face, a ghost of beauty, a recklessness, a distorted, bitter, lost expression in keeping with her fortunes. but he had reckoned falsely. she did not look like that. there was incalculable change, but the beauty remained, somehow different. her red lips were parted. her brooding eyes, looking out straight from under the level, dark brows, seemed sloe black and wonderful with their steady, passionate light. jean, in his eager, hungry devouring of the beloved face, did not on the first instant grasp the significance of its expression. he was seeing the features that had haunted him. but quickly he interpreted her expression as the somber, hunted look of a woman who would bear no more. under the torn blouse her full breast heaved. she held her hands clenched at her sides. she was' listening, waiting for that jangling, slow step. it came, and with the sound she subtly changed. she was a woman hiding her true feelings. she relaxed, and that strong, dark look of fury seemed to fade back into her eyes. colter appeared at the door, carrying a roll of blankets and a pack. "throw them heah," she said. "i reckon y'u needn't bother coming in." that angered the man. with one long stride he stepped over the doorsill, down into the cabin, and flung the blankets at her feet and then the pack after it. whereupon he deliberately sat down in the door, facing her. with one hand he slid off his sombrero, which fell outside, and with the other he reached in his upper vest pocket for the little bag of tobacco that showed there. all the time he looked at her. by the light now unobstructed jean descried colter's face; and sight of it then sounded the roll and drum of his passions. "wal, ellen, i reckon we'll have it out right now an' heah," he said, and with tobacco in one hand, paper in the other he began the operations of making a cigarette. however, he scarcely removed his glance from her. "yes?" queried ellen jorth. "i'm goin' to have things the way they were before--an' more," he declared. the cigarette paper shook in his fingers. "what do y'u mean?" she demanded. "y'u know what i mean," he retorted. voice and action were subtly unhinging this man's control over himself. "maybe i don't. i reckon y'u'd better talk plain." the rustler had clear gray-yellow eyes, flawless, like, crystal, and suddenly they danced with little fiery flecks. "the last time i laid my hand on y'u i got hit for my pains. an' shore that's been ranklin'." "colter, y'u'll get hit again if y'u put your hands on me," she said, dark, straight glance on him. a frown wrinkled the level brows. "y'u mean that?" he asked, thickly. "i shore, do." manifestly he accepted her assertion. something of incredulity and bewilderment, that had vied with his resentment, utterly disappeared from his face. "heah i've been waitin' for y'u to love me," he declared, with a gesture not without dignified emotion. "your givin' in without that wasn't so much to me." and at these words of the rustler's jean isbel felt an icy, sickening shudder creep into his soul. he shut his eyes. the end of his dream had been long in coming, but at last it had arrived. a mocking voice, like a hollow wind, echoed through that region--that lonely and ghost-like hall of his heart which had harbored faith. she burst into speech, louder and sharper, the first words of which jean's strangely throbbing ears did not distinguish. "-- -- you! ... i never gave in to y'u an' i never will." "but, girl--i kissed y'u--hugged y'u--handled y'u--" he expostulated, and the making of the cigarette ceased. "yes, y'u did--y'u brute--when i was so downhearted and weak i couldn't lift my hand," she flashed. "ahuh! y'u mean i couldn't do that now?" "i should smile i do, jim colter!" she replied. "wal, mebbe--i'll see--presently," he went on, straining with words. "but i'm shore curious.... daggs, then--he was nothin' to y'u?" "no more than y'u," she said, morbidly. "he used to run after me--long ago, it seems..... i was only a girl then--innocent--an' i'd not known any but rough men. i couldn't all the time--every day, every hour--keep him at arm's length. sometimes before i knew--i didn't care. i was a child. a kiss meant nothing to me. but after i knew--" ellen dropped her head in brooding silence. "say, do y'u expect me to believe that?" he queried, with a derisive leer. "bah! what do i care what y'u believe?" she cried, with lifting head. "how aboot simm brace?" "that coyote! ... he lied aboot me, jim colter. and any man half a man would have known he lied." "wal, simm always bragged aboot y'u bein' his girl," asserted colter. "an' he wasn't over--particular aboot details of your love-makin'." ellen gazed out of the door, over colter's head, as if the forest out there was a refuge. she evidently sensed more about the man than appeared in his slow talk, in his slouching position. her lips shut in a firm line, as if to hide their trembling and to still her passionate tongue. jean, in his absorption, magnified his perceptions. not yet was ellen jorth afraid of this man, but she feared the situation. jean's heart was at bursting pitch. all within him seemed chaos--a wreck of beliefs and convictions. nothing was true. he would wake presently out of a nightmare. yet, as surely as he quivered there, he felt the imminence of a great moment--a lightning flash--a thunderbolt--a balance struck. colter attended to the forgotten cigarette. he rolled it, lighted it, all the time with lowered, pondering head, and when he had puffed a cloud of smoke he suddenly looked up with face as hard as flint, eyes as fiery as molten steel. "wal, ellen--how aboot jean isbel--our half-breed nez perce friend--who was shore seen handlin' y'u familiar?" he drawled. ellen jorth quivered as under a lash, and her brown face turned a dusty scarlet, that slowly receding left her pale. "damn y'u, jim colter!" she burst out, furiously. "i wish jean isbel would jump in that door--or down out of that loft! ... he killed greaves for defiling my name! ... he'd kill y'u for your dirty insult.... and i'd like to watch him do it.... y'u cold-blooded texan! y'u thieving rustler! y'u liar! ... y'u lied aboot my father's death. and i know why. y'u stole my father's gold.... an' now y'u want me--y'u expect me to fall into your arms.... my heaven! cain't y'u tell a decent woman? was your mother decent? was your sister decent? ... bah! i'm appealing to deafness. but y'u'll heah this, jim colter! ... i'm not what yu think i am! i'm not the--the damned hussy y'u liars have made me out.... i'm a jorth, alas! i've no home, no relatives, no friends! i've been forced to live my life with rustlers--vile men like y'u an' daggs an' the rest of your like.... but i've been good! do y'u heah that? ... i am good--so help me god, y'u an' all your rottenness cain't make me bad!" colter lounged to his tall height and the laxity of the man vanished. vanished also was jean isbel's suspended icy dread, the cold clogging of his fevered mind--vanished in a white, living, leaping flame. silently he drew his knife and lay there watching with the eyes of a wildcat. the instant colter stepped far enough over toward the edge of the loft jean meant to bound erect and plunge down upon him. but jean could wait now. colter had a gun at his hip. he must never have a chance to draw it. "ahuh! so y'u wish jean isbel would hop in heah, do y'u?" queried colter. "wal, if i had any pity on y'u, that's done for it." a sweep of his long arm, so swift ellen had no time to move, brought his hand in clutching contact with her. and the force of it flung her half across the cabin room, leaving the sleeve of her blouse in his grasp. pantingly she put out that bared arm and her other to ward him off as he took long, slow strides toward her. jean rose half to his feet, dragged by almost ungovernable passion to risk all on one leap. but the distance was too great. colter, blind as he was to all outward things, would hear, would see in time to make jean's effort futile. shaking like a leaf, jean sank back, eye again to the crack between the rafters. ellen did not retreat, nor scream, nor move. every line of her body was instinct with fight, and the magnificent blaze of her eyes would have checked a less callous brute. colter's big hand darted between ellen's arms and fastened in the front of her blouse. he did not try to hold her or draw her close. the unleashed passion of the man required violence. in one savage pull he tore off her blouse, exposing her white, rounded shoulders and heaving bosom, where instantly a wave of red burned upward. overcome by the tremendous violence and spirit of the rustler, ellen sank to her knees, with blanched face and dilating eyes, trying with folded arms and trembling hand to hide her nudity. at that moment the rapid beat of hoofs on the hard trail outside halted colter in his tracks. "hell!" he exclaimed. "an' who's that?" with a fierce action he flung the remnants of ellen's blouse in her face and turned to leap out the door. jean saw ellen catch the blouse and try to wrap it around her, while she sagged against the wall and stared at the door. the hoof beats pounded to a solid thumping halt just outside. "jim--thar's hell to pay!" rasped out a panting voice. "wal, springer, i reckon i wished y'u'd paid it without spoilin' my deals," retorted colter, cool and sharp. "deals? ha! y'u'll be forgettin'--your lady love in a minnit," replied springer. "when i catch--my breath." "where's somers?" demanded colter. "i reckon he's all shot up--if my eyes didn't fool me." "where is he?" yelled colter. "jim--he's layin' up in the bushes round thet bluff. i didn't wait to see how he was hurt. but he shore stopped some lead. an' he flopped like a chicken with its--haid cut off." "where's antonio?" "he run like the greaser he is," declared springer, disgustedly. "ahuh! an' where's queen?" queried colter, after a significant pause. "dead!" the silence ensuing was fraught with a suspense that held jean in cold bonds. he saw the girl below rise from her knees, one hand holding the blouse to her breast, the other extended, and with strange, repressed, almost frantic look she swayed toward the door. "wal, talk," ordered colter, harshly. "jim, there ain't a hell of a lot," replied springer; drawing a deep breath, "but what there is is shore interestin'.... me an' somers took antonio with us. he left his woman with the sheep. an' we rode up the canyon, clumb out on top, an' made a circle back on the ridge. that's the way we've been huntin' fer tracks. up thar in a bare spot we run plump into queen sittin' against a tree, right out in the open. queerest sight y'u ever seen! the damn gunfighter had set down to wait for isbel, who was trailin' him, as we suspected---an' he died thar. he wasn't cold when we found him.... somers was quick to see a trick. so he propped queen up an' tied the guns to his hands--an', jim, the queerest thing aboot that deal was this--queen's guns was empty! not a shell left! it beat us holler.... we left him thar, an' hid up high on the bluff, mebbe a hundred yards off. the hosses we left back of a thicket. an' we waited thar a long time. but, sure enough, the half-breed come. he was too smart. too much injun! he would not cross the open, but went around. an' then he seen queen. it was great to watch him. after a little he shoved his rifle out an' went right fer queen. this is when i wanted to shoot. i could have plugged him. but somers says wait an' make it sure. when isbel got up to queen he was sort of half hid by the tree. an' i couldn't wait no longer, so i shot. i hit him, too. we all begun to shoot. somers showed himself, an' that's when isbel opened up. he used up a whole magazine on somers an' then, suddenlike, he quit. it didn't take me long to figger mebbe he was out of shells. when i seen him run i was certain of it. then we made for the hosses an' rode after isbel. pretty soon i seen him runnin' like a deer down the ridge. i yelled an' spurred after him. there is where antonio quit me. but i kept on. an' i got a shot at isbel. he ran out of sight. i follered him by spots of blood on the stones an' grass until i couldn't trail him no more. he must have gone down over the cliffs. he couldn't have done nothin' else without me seein' him. i found his rifle, an' here it is to prove what i say. i had to go back to climb down off the rim, an' i rode fast down the canyon. he's somewhere along that west wall, hidin' in the brush, hard hit if i know anythin' aboot the color of blood." "wal! ... that beats me holler, too," ejaculated colter. "jim, what's to be done?" inquired springer, eagerly. "if we're sharp we can corral that half-breed. he's the last of the isbels." "more, pard. he's the last of the isbel outfit," declared colter. "if y'u can show me blood in his tracks i'll trail him." "y'u can bet i'll show y'u," rejoined the other rustler. "but listen! wouldn't it be better for us first to see if he crossed the canyon? i reckon he didn't. but let's make sure. an' if he didn't we'll have him somewhar along that west canyon wall. he's not got no gun. he'd never run thet way if he had.... jim, he's our meat!" "shore, he'll have that knife," pondered colter. "we needn't worry about thet," said the other, positively. "he's hard hit, i tell y'u. all we got to do is find thet bloody trail again an' stick to it--goin' careful. he's layin' low like a crippled wolf." "springer, i want the job of finishin' that half-breed," hissed colter. "i'd give ten years of my life to stick a gun down his throat an' shoot it off." "all right. let's rustle. mebbe y'u'll not have to give much more 'n ten minnits. because i tell y'u i can find him. it'd been easy--but, jim, i reckon i was afraid." "leave your hoss for me an' go ahaid," the rustler then said, brusquely. "i've a job in the cabin heah." "haw-haw! ... wal, jim, i'll rustle a bit down the trail an' wait. no huntin' jean isbel alone--not fer me. i've had a queer feelin' about thet knife he used on greaves. an' i reckon y'u'd oughter let thet jorth hussy alone long enough to--" "springer, i reckon i've got to hawg-tie her--" his voice became indistinguishable, and footfalls attested to a slow moving away of the men. jean had listened with ears acutely strung to catch every syllable while his gaze rested upon ellen who stood beside the door. every line of her body denoted a listening intensity. her back was toward jean, so that he could not see her face. and he did not want to see, but could not help seeing her naked shoulders. she put her head out of the door. suddenly she drew it in quickly and half turned her face, slowly raising her white arm. this was the left one and bore the marks of colter's hard fingers. she gave a little gasp. her eyes became large and staring. they were bent on the hand that she had removed from a step on the ladder. on hand and wrist showed a bright-red smear of blood. jean, with a convulsive leap of his heart, realized that he had left his bloody tracks on the ladder as he had climbed. that moment seemed the supremely terrible one of his life. ellen jorth's face blanched and her eyes darkened and dilated with exceeding amaze and flashing thought to become fixed with horror. that instant was the one in which her reason connected the blood on the ladder with the escape of jean isbel. one moment she leaned there, still as a stone except for her heaving breast, and then her fixed gaze changed to a swift, dark blaze, comprehending, yet inscrutable, as she flashed it up the ladder to the loft. she could see nothing, yet she knew and jean knew that she knew he was there. a marvelous transformation passed over her features and even over her form. jean choked with the ache in his throat. slowly she put the bloody hand behind her while with the other she still held the torn blouse to her breast. colter's slouching, musical step sounded outside. and it might have been a strange breath of infinitely vitalizing and passionate life blown into the well-springs of ellen jorth's being. isbel had no name for her then. the spirit of a woman had been to him a thing unknown. she swayed back from the door against the wall in singular, softened poise, as if all the steel had melted out of her body. and as colter's tall shadow fell across the threshold jean isbel felt himself staring with eyeballs that ached--straining incredulous sight at this woman who in a few seconds had bewildered his senses with her transfiguration. he saw but could not comprehend. "jim--i heard--all springer told y'u," she said. the look of her dumfounded colter and her voice seemed to shake him visibly. "suppose y'u did. what then?" he demanded, harshly, as he halted with one booted foot over the threshold. malignant and forceful, he eyed her darkly, doubtfully. "i'm afraid," she whispered. "what of? me?" "no. of--of jean isbel. he might kill y'u and--then where would i be?" "wal, i'm damned!" ejaculated the rustler. "what's got into y'u?" he moved to enter, but a sort of fascination bound him. "jim, i hated y'u a moment ago," she burst out. "but now--with that jean isbel somewhere near--hidin'--watchin' to kill y'u--an' maybe me, too--i--i don't hate y'u any more.... take me away." "girl, have y'u lost your nerve?" he demanded. "my god! colter--cain't y'u see?" she implored. "won't y'u take me away?" "i shore will--presently," he replied, grimly. "but y'u'll wait till i've shot the lights out of this isbel." "no!" she cried. "take me away now.... an' i'll give in--i'll be what y'u--want.... y'u can do with me--as y'u like." colter's lofty frame leaped as if at the release of bursting blood. with a lunge he cleared the threshold to loom over her. "am i out of my haid, or are y'u?" he asked, in low, hoarse voice. his darkly corded face expressed extremest amaze. "jim, i mean it," she whispered, edging an inch nearer him, her white face uplifted, her dark eyes unreadable in their eloquence and mystery. "i've no friend but y'u. i'll be--yours.... i'm lost.... what does it matter? if y'u want me--take me now--before i kill myself." "ellen jorth, there's somethin' wrong aboot y'u," he responded. "did y'u tell the truth--when y'u denied ever bein' a sweetheart of simm bruce?" "yes, i told y'u the truth." "ahuh! an' how do y'u account for layin' me out with every dirty name y'u could give tongue to?" "oh, it was temper. i wanted to be let alone." "temper! wal, i reckon y'u've got one," he retorted, grimly. "an' i'm not shore y'u're not crazy or lyin'. an hour ago i couldn't touch y'u." "y'u may now--if y'u promise to take me away--at once. this place has got on my nerves. i couldn't sleep heah with that isbel hidin' around. could y'u?" "wal, i reckon i'd not sleep very deep." "then let us go." he shook his lean, eagle-like head in slow, doubtful vehemence, and his piercing gaze studied her distrustfully. yet all the while there was manifest in his strung frame an almost irrepressible violence, held in abeyance to his will. "that aboot your bein' so good?" he inquired, with a return of the mocking drawl. "never mind what's past," she flashed, with passion dark as his. "i've made my offer." "shore there's a lie aboot y'u somewhere," he muttered, thickly. "man, could i do more?" she demanded, in scorn. "no. but it's a lie," he returned. "y'u'll get me to take y'u away an' then fool me--run off--god knows what. women are all liars." manifestly he could not believe in her strange transformation. memory of her wild and passionate denunciation of him and his kind must have seared even his calloused soul. but the ruthless nature of him had not weakened nor softened in the least as to his intentions. this weather-vane veering of hers bewildered him, obsessed him with its possibilities. he had the look of a man who was divided between love of her and hate, whose love demanded a return, but whose hate required a proof of her abasement. not proof of surrender, but proof of her shame! the ignominy of him thirsted for its like. he could grind her beauty under his heel, but he could not soften to this feminine inscrutableness. and whatever was the truth of ellen jorth in this moment, beyond colter's gloomy and stunted intelligence, beyond even the love of jean isbel, it was something that held the balance of mastery. she read colter's mind. she dropped the torn blouse from her hand and stood there, unashamed, with the wave of her white breast pulsing, eyes black as night and full of hell, her face white, tragic, terrible, yet strangely lovely. "take me away," she whispered, stretching one white arm toward him, then the other. colter, even as she moved, had leaped with inarticulate cry and radiant face to meet her embrace. but it seemed, just as her left arm flashed up toward his neck, that he saw her bloody hand and wrist. strange how that checked his ardor--threw up his lean head like that striking bird of prey. "blood! what the hell!" he ejaculated, and in one sweep he grasped her. "how'd yu do that? are y'u cut? ... hold still." ellen could not release her hand. "i scratched myself," she said. "where?... all that blood!" and suddenly he flung her hand back with fierce gesture, and the gleams of his yellow eyes were like the points of leaping flames. they pierced her--read the secret falsity of her. slowly he stepped backward, guardedly his hand moved to his gun, and his glance circled and swept the interior of the cabin. as if he had the nose of a hound and sight to follow scent, his eyes bent to the dust of the ground before the door. he quivered, grew rigid as stone, and then moved his head with exceeding slowness as if searching through a microscope in the dust--farther to the left--to the foot of the ladder--and up one step--another--a third--all the way up to the loft. then he whipped out his gun and wheeled to face the girl. "ellen, y'u've got your half-breed heah!" he said, with a terrible smile. she neither moved nor spoke. there was a suggestion of collapse, but it was only a change where the alluring softness of her hardened into a strange, rapt glow. and in it seemed the same mastery that had characterized her former aspect. herein the treachery of her was revealed. she had known what she meant to do in any case. colter, standing at the door, reached a long arm toward the ladder, where he laid his hand on a rung. taking it away he held it palm outward for her to see the dark splotch of blood. "see?" "yes, i see," she said, ringingly. passion wrenched him, transformed him. "all that--aboot leavin' heah--with me--aboot givin' in--was a lie!" "no, colter. it was the truth. i'll go--yet--now--if y'u'll spare--him!" she whispered the last word and made a slight movement of her hand toward the loft. "girl!" he exploded, incredulously. "y'u love this half-breed--this isbel! ... y'u love him!" "with all my heart! ... thank god! it has been my glory.... it might have been my salvation.... but now i'll go to hell with y'u--if y'u'll spare him." "damn my soul!" rasped out the rustler, as if something of respect was wrung from that sordid deep of him. "y'u--y'u woman! ... jorth will turn over in his grave. he'd rise out of his grave if this isbel got y'u." "hurry! hurry!" implored ellen. "springer may come back. i think i heard a call." "wal, ellen jorth, i'll not spare isbel--nor y'u," he returned, with dark and meaning leer, as he turned to ascend the ladder. jean isbel, too, had reached the climax of his suspense. gathering all his muscles in a knot he prepared to leap upon colter as he mounted the ladder. but, ellen jorth screamed piercingly and snatched her rifle from its resting place and, cocking it, she held it forward and low. "colter!" her scream and his uttered name stiffened him. "y'u will spare jean isbel!" she rang out. "drop that gun-drop it!" "shore, ellen.... easy now. remember your temper.... i'll let isbel off," he panted, huskily, and all his body sank quiveringly to a crouch. "drop your gun! don't turn round.... colter!--i'll kill y'u!" but even then he failed to divine the meaning and the spirit of her. "aw, now, ellen," he entreated, in louder, huskier tones, and as if dragged by fatal doubt of her still, he began to turn. crash! the rifle emptied its contents in colter's breast. all his body sprang up. he dropped the gun. both hands fluttered toward her. and an awful surprise flashed over his face. "so--help--me--god!" he whispered, with blood thick in his voice. then darkly, as one groping, he reached for her with shaking hands. "y'u--y'u white-throated hussy!... i'll ..." he grasped the quivering rifle barrel. crash! she shot him again. as he swayed over her and fell she had to leap aside, and his clutching hand tore the rifle from her grasp. then in convulsion he writhed, to heave on his back, and stretch out--a ghastly spectacle. ellen backed away from it, her white arms wide, a slow horror blotting out the passion of her face. then from without came a shrill call and the sound of rapid footsteps. ellen leaned against the wall, staring still at colter. "hey, jim--what's the shootin'?" called springer, breathlessly. as his form darkened the doorway jean once again gathered all his muscular force for a tremendous spring. springer saw the girl first and he appeared thunderstruck. his jaw dropped. he needed not the white gleam of her person to transfix him. her eyes did that and they were riveted in unutterable horror upon something on the ground. thus instinctively directed, springer espied colter. "y'u--y'u shot him!" he shrieked. "what for--y'u hussy? ... ellen jorth, if y'u've killed him, i'll..." he strode toward where colter lay. then jean, rising silently, took a step and like a tiger he launched himself into the air, down upon the rustler. even as he leaped springer gave a quick, upward look. and he cried out. jean's moccasined feet struck him squarely and sent him staggering into the wall, where his head hit hard. jean fell, but bounded up as the half-stunned springer drew his gun. then jean lunged forward with a single sweep of his arm--and looked no more. ellen ran swaying out of the door, and, once clear of the threshold, she tottered out on the grass, to sink to her knees. the bright, golden sunlight gleamed upon her white shoulders and arms. jean had one foot out of the door when he saw her and he whirled back to get her blouse. but springer had fallen upon it. snatching up a blanket, jean ran out. "ellen! ellen! ellen!" he cried. "it's over!" and reaching her, he tried to wrap her in the blanket. she wildly clutched his knees. jean was conscious only of her white, agonized face and the dark eyes with their look of terrible strain. "did y'u--did y'u..." she whispered. "yes--it's over," he said, gravely. "ellen, the isbel-jorth feud is ended." "oh, thank--god!" she cried, in breaking voice. "jean--y'u are wounded... the blood on the step!" "my arm. see. it's not bad.... ellen, let me wrap this round you." folding the blanket around her shoulders, he held it there and entreated her to get up. but she only clung the closer. she hid her face on his knees. long shudders rippled over her, shaking the blanket, shaking jean's hands. distraught, he did not know what to do. and his own heart was bursting. "ellen, you must not kneel--there--that way," he implored. "jean! jean!" she moaned, and clung the tighter. he tried to lift her up, but she was a dead weight, and with that hold on him seemed anchored at his feet. "i killed colter," she gasped. "i had to--kill him! ... i offered--to fling myself away...." "for me!" he cried, poignantly. "oh, ellen! ellen! the world has come to an end! ... hush! don't keep sayin' that. of course you killed him. you saved my life. for i'd never have let you go off with him .... yes, you killed him.... you're a jorth an' i'm an isbel ... we've blood on our hands--both of us--i for you an' you for me!" his voice of entreaty and sadness strengthened her and she raised her white face, loosening her clasp to lean back and look up. tragic, sweet, despairing, the loveliness of her--the significance of her there on her knees--thrilled him to his soul. "blood on my hands!" she whispered. "yes. it was awful--killing him.... but--all i care for in this world is for your forgiveness--and your faith that saved my soul!" "child, there's nothin' to forgive," he responded. "nothin'... please, ellen..." "i lied to y'u!" she cried. "i lied to y'u!" "ellen, listen--darlin'." and the tender epithet brought her head and arms back close-pressed to him. "i know--now," he faltered on. "i found out to-day what i believed. an' i swear to god--by the memory of my dead mother--down in my heart i never, never, never believed what they--what y'u tried to make me believe. never!" "jean--i love y'u--love y'u--love y'u!" she breathed with exquisite, passionate sweetness. her dark eyes burned up into his. "ellen, i can't lift you up," he said, in trembling eagerness, signifying his crippled arm. "but i can kneel with you! ..." *********************************************************************** there is an improved edition of this title which may be viewed at ebook (# ) which contains an illustrated html file *********************************************************************** the scarlet letter by nathaniel hawthorne editor's note nathaniel hawthorne was already a man of forty-six, and a tale writer of some twenty-four years' standing, when "the scarlet letter" appeared. he was born at salem, mass., on july th, , son of a sea-captain. he led there a shy and rather sombre life; of few artistic encouragements, yet not wholly uncongenial, his moody, intensely meditative temperament being considered. its colours and shadows are marvelously reflected in his "twice-told tales" and other short stories, the product of his first literary period. even his college days at bowdoin did not quite break through his acquired and inherited reserve; but beneath it all, his faculty of divining men and women was exercised with almost uncanny prescience and subtlety. "the scarlet letter," which explains as much of this unique imaginative art, as is to be gathered from reading his highest single achievement, yet needs to be ranged with his other writings, early and late, to have its last effect. in the year that saw it published, he began "the house of the seven gables," a later romance or prose-tragedy of the puritan-american community as he had himself known it-- defrauded of art and the joy of life, "starving for symbols" as emerson has it. nathaniel hawthorne died at plymouth, new hampshire, on may th, . the following is the table of his romances, stories, and other works: fanshawe, published anonymously, ; twice-told tales, st series, ; nd series, ; grandfather's chair, a history for youth, : famous old people (grandfather's chair), liberty tree: with the last words of grandfather's chair, ; biographical stories for children, ; mosses from an old manse, ; the scarlet letter, ; the house of the seven gables, : true stories from history and biography (the whole history of grandfather's chair), a wonder book for girls and boys, ; the snow image and other tales, : the blithedale romance, ; life of franklin pierce, ; tanglewood tales ( nd series of the wonder book), ; a rill from the town-pump, with remarks, by telba, ; the marble faun; or, the romance of monte beni ( editor's note) (published in england under the title of "transformation"), , our old home, ; dolliver romance ( st part in "atlantic monthly"), ; in parts, ; pansie, a fragment, hawthorne' last literary effort, ; american note-books, ; english note books, edited by sophia hawthorne, ; french and italian note books, ; septimius felton; or, the elixir of life (from the "atlantic monthly"), ; doctor grimshawe's secret, with preface and notes by julian hawthorne, . tales of the white hills, legends of new england, legends of the province house, , contain tales which had already been printed in book form in "twice-told tales" and the "mosses" "sketched and studies," . hawthorne's contributions to magazines were numerous, and most of his tales appeared first in periodicals, chiefly in "the token," - , "new england magazine," , ; "knickerbocker," - ; "democratic review," - ; "atlantic monthly," - (scenes from the dolliver romance, septimius felton, and passages from hawthorne's note-books). works: in volumes, ; in volumes, with introductory notes by lathrop, riverside edition, . biography, etc.; a. h. japp (pseud. h. a. page), memoir of n. hawthorne, ; j. t. field's "yesterdays with authors," g. p. lathrop, "a study of hawthorne," ; henry james english men of letters, ; julian hawthorne, "nathaniel hawthorne and his wife," ; moncure d. conway, life of nathaniel hawthorne, ; analytical index of hawthorne's works, by e. m. o'connor . contents introductory. the custom-house chapter i. the prison-door chapter ii. the market-place chapter iii. the recognition chapter iv. the interview chapter v. hester at her needle chapter vi. pearl chapter vii. the governor's hall chapter viii. the elf-child and the minister chapter ix. the leech chapter x. the leech and his patient chapter xi. the interior of a heart chapter xii. the minister's vigil chapter xiii. another view of hester chapter xiv. hester and the physician chapter xv. hester and pearl chapter xvi. a forest walk chapter xvii. the pastor and his parishioner chapter xviii. a flood of sunshine chapter xix. the child at the brook-side chapter xx. the minister in a maze chapter xxi. the new england holiday chapter xxii. the procession chapter xxiii. the revelation of the scarlet letter chapter xxiv. conclusion the custom-house introductory to "the scarlet letter" it is a little remarkable, that--though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends--an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public. the first time was three or four years since, when i favoured the reader--inexcusably, and for no earthly reason that either the indulgent reader or the intrusive author could imagine--with a description of my way of life in the deep quietude of an old manse. and now--because, beyond my deserts, i was happy enough to find a listener or two on the former occasion--i again seize the public by the button, and talk of my three years' experience in a custom-house. the example of the famous "p. p., clerk of this parish," was never more faithfully followed. the truth seems to be, however, that when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside his volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand him better than most of his schoolmates or lifemates. some authors, indeed, do far more than this, and indulge themselves in such confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be addressed only and exclusively to the one heart and mind of perfect sympathy; as if the printed book, thrown at large on the wide world, were certain to find out the divided segment of the writer's own nature, and complete his circle of existence by bringing him into communion with it. it is scarcely decorous, however, to speak all, even where we speak impersonally. but, as thoughts are frozen and utterance benumbed, unless the speaker stand in some true relation with his audience, it may be pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive, though not the closest friend, is listening to our talk; and then, a native reserve being thawed by this genial consciousness, we may prate of the circumstances that lie around us, and even of ourself, but still keep the inmost me behind its veil. to this extent, and within these limits, an author, methinks, may be autobiographical, without violating either the reader's rights or his own. it will be seen, likewise, that this custom-house sketch has a certain propriety, of a kind always recognised in literature, as explaining how a large portion of the following pages came into my possession, and as offering proofs of the authenticity of a narrative therein contained. this, in fact--a desire to put myself in my true position as editor, or very little more, of the most prolix among the tales that make up my volume--this, and no other, is my true reason for assuming a personal relation with the public. in accomplishing the main purpose, it has appeared allowable, by a few extra touches, to give a faint representation of a mode of life not heretofore described, together with some of the characters that move in it, among whom the author happened to make one. in my native town of salem, at the head of what, half a century ago, in the days of old king derby, was a bustling wharf--but which is now burdened with decayed wooden warehouses, and exhibits few or no symptoms of commercial life; except, perhaps, a bark or brig, half-way down its melancholy length, discharging hides; or, nearer at hand, a nova scotia schooner, pitching out her cargo of firewood--at the head, i say, of this dilapidated wharf, which the tide often overflows, and along which, at the base and in the rear of the row of buildings, the track of many languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty grass--here, with a view from its front windows adown this not very enlivening prospect, and thence across the harbour, stands a spacious edifice of brick. from the loftiest point of its roof, during precisely three and a half hours of each forenoon, floats or droops, in breeze or calm, the banner of the republic; but with the thirteen stripes turned vertically, instead of horizontally, and thus indicating that a civil, and not a military, post of uncle sam's government is here established. its front is ornamented with a portico of half-a-dozen wooden pillars, supporting a balcony, beneath which a flight of wide granite steps descends towards the street. over the entrance hovers an enormous specimen of the american eagle, with outspread wings, a shield before her breast, and, if i recollect aright, a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw. with the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive community; and especially to warn all citizens careful of their safety against intruding on the premises which she overshadows with her wings. nevertheless, vixenly as she looks, many people are seeking at this very moment to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal eagle; imagining, i presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an eiderdown pillow. but she has no great tenderness even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later--oftener soon than late--is apt to fling off her nestlings with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound from her barbed arrows. the pavement round about the above-described edifice--which we may as well name at once as the custom-house of the port--has grass enough growing in its chinks to show that it has not, of late days, been worn by any multitudinous resort of business. in some months of the year, however, there often chances a forenoon when affairs move onward with a livelier tread. such occasions might remind the elderly citizen of that period, before the last war with england, when salem was a port by itself; not scorned, as she is now, by her own merchants and ship-owners, who permit her wharves to crumble to ruin while their ventures go to swell, needlessly and imperceptibly, the mighty flood of commerce at new york or boston. on some such morning, when three or four vessels happen to have arrived at once usually from africa or south america--or to be on the verge of their departure thitherward, there is a sound of frequent feet passing briskly up and down the granite steps. here, before his own wife has greeted him, you may greet the sea-flushed ship-master, just in port, with his vessel's papers under his arm in a tarnished tin box. here, too, comes his owner, cheerful, sombre, gracious or in the sulks, accordingly as his scheme of the now accomplished voyage has been realized in merchandise that will readily be turned to gold, or has buried him under a bulk of incommodities such as nobody will care to rid him of. here, likewise--the germ of the wrinkle-browed, grizzly-bearded, careworn merchant--we have the smart young clerk, who gets the taste of traffic as a wolf-cub does of blood, and already sends adventures in his master's ships, when he had better be sailing mimic boats upon a mill-pond. another figure in the scene is the outward-bound sailor, in quest of a protection; or the recently arrived one, pale and feeble, seeking a passport to the hospital. nor must we forget the captains of the rusty little schooners that bring firewood from the british provinces; a rough-looking set of tarpaulins, without the alertness of the yankee aspect, but contributing an item of no slight importance to our decaying trade. cluster all these individuals together, as they sometimes were, with other miscellaneous ones to diversify the group, and, for the time being, it made the custom-house a stirring scene. more frequently, however, on ascending the steps, you would discern-- in the entry if it were summer time, or in their appropriate rooms if wintry or inclement weathers--a row of venerable figures, sitting in old-fashioned chairs, which were tipped on their hind legs back against the wall. oftentimes they were asleep, but occasionally might be heard talking together, in voices between a speech and a snore, and with that lack of energy that distinguishes the occupants of alms-houses, and all other human beings who depend for subsistence on charity, on monopolized labour, or anything else but their own independent exertions. these old gentlemen--seated, like matthew at the receipt of custom, but not very liable to be summoned thence, like him, for apostolic errands--were custom-house officers. furthermore, on the left hand as you enter the front door, is a certain room or office, about fifteen feet square, and of a lofty height, with two of its arched windows commanding a view of the aforesaid dilapidated wharf, and the third looking across a narrow lane, and along a portion of derby street. all three give glimpses of the shops of grocers, block-makers, slop-sellers, and ship-chandlers, around the doors of which are generally to be seen, laughing and gossiping, clusters of old salts, and such other wharf-rats as haunt the wapping of a seaport. the room itself is cobwebbed, and dingy with old paint; its floor is strewn with grey sand, in a fashion that has elsewhere fallen into long disuse; and it is easy to conclude, from the general slovenliness of the place, that this is a sanctuary into which womankind, with her tools of magic, the broom and mop, has very infrequent access. in the way of furniture, there is a stove with a voluminous funnel; an old pine desk with a three-legged stool beside it; two or three wooden-bottom chairs, exceedingly decrepit and infirm; and--not to forget the library--on some shelves, a score or two of volumes of the acts of congress, and a bulky digest of the revenue laws. a tin pipe ascends through the ceiling, and forms a medium of vocal communication with other parts of the edifice. and here, some six months ago--pacing from corner to corner, or lounging on the long-legged stool, with his elbow on the desk, and his eyes wandering up and down the columns of the morning newspaper--you might have recognised, honoured reader, the same individual who welcomed you into his cheery little study, where the sunshine glimmered so pleasantly through the willow branches on the western side of the old manse. but now, should you go thither to seek him, you would inquire in vain for the locofoco surveyor. the besom of reform hath swept him out of office, and a worthier successor wears his dignity and pockets his emoluments. this old town of salem--my native place, though i have dwelt much away from it both in boyhood and maturer years--possesses, or did possess, a hold on my affection, the force of which i have never realized during my seasons of actual residence here. indeed, so far as its physical aspect is concerned, with its flat, unvaried surface, covered chiefly with wooden houses, few or none of which pretend to architectural beauty--its irregularity, which is neither picturesque nor quaint, but only tame--its long and lazy street, lounging wearisomely through the whole extent of the peninsula, with gallows hill and new guinea at one end, and a view of the alms-house at the other--such being the features of my native town, it would be quite as reasonable to form a sentimental attachment to a disarranged checker-board. and yet, though invariably happiest elsewhere, there is within me a feeling for old salem, which, in lack of a better phrase, i must be content to call affection. the sentiment is probably assignable to the deep and aged roots which my family has stuck into the soil. it is now nearly two centuries and a quarter since the original briton, the earliest emigrant of my name, made his appearance in the wild and forest-bordered settlement which has since become a city. and here his descendants have been born and died, and have mingled their earthly substance with the soil, until no small portion of it must necessarily be akin to the mortal frame wherewith, for a little while, i walk the streets. in part, therefore, the attachment which i speak of is the mere sensuous sympathy of dust for dust. few of my countrymen can know what it is; nor, as frequent transplantation is perhaps better for the stock, need they consider it desirable to know. but the sentiment has likewise its moral quality. the figure of that first ancestor, invested by family tradition with a dim and dusky grandeur, was present to my boyish imagination as far back as i can remember. it still haunts me, and induces a sort of home-feeling with the past, which i scarcely claim in reference to the present phase of the town. i seem to have a stronger claim to a residence here on account of this grave, bearded, sable-cloaked, and steeple-crowned progenitor--who came so early, with his bible and his sword, and trode the unworn street with such a stately port, and made so large a figure, as a man of war and peace--a stronger claim than for myself, whose name is seldom heard and my face hardly known. he was a soldier, legislator, judge; he was a ruler in the church; he had all the puritanic traits, both good and evil. he was likewise a bitter persecutor; as witness the quakers, who have remembered him in their histories, and relate an incident of his hard severity towards a woman of their sect, which will last longer, it is to be feared, than any record of his better deeds, although these were many. his son, too, inherited the persecuting spirit, and made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches, that their blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him. so deep a stain, indeed, that his dry old bones, in the charter-street burial-ground, must still retain it, if they have not crumbled utterly to dust! i know not whether these ancestors of mine bethought themselves to repent, and ask pardon of heaven for their cruelties; or whether they are now groaning under the heavy consequences of them in another state of being. at all events, i, the present writer, as their representative, hereby take shame upon myself for their sakes, and pray that any curse incurred by them--as i have heard, and as the dreary and unprosperous condition of the race, for many a long year back, would argue to exist--may be now and henceforth removed. doubtless, however, either of these stern and black-browed puritans would have thought it quite a sufficient retribution for his sins that, after so long a lapse of years, the old trunk of the family tree, with so much venerable moss upon it, should have borne, as its topmost bough, an idler like myself. no aim that i have ever cherished would they recognise as laudable; no success of mine--if my life, beyond its domestic scope, had ever been brightened by success--would they deem otherwise than worthless, if not positively disgraceful. "what is he?" murmurs one grey shadow of my forefathers to the other. "a writer of story books! what kind of business in life--what mode of glorifying god, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation--may that be? why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler!" such are the compliments bandied between my great grandsires and myself, across the gulf of time! and yet, let them scorn me as they will, strong traits of their nature have intertwined themselves with mine. planted deep, in the town's earliest infancy and childhood, by these two earnest and energetic men, the race has ever since subsisted here; always, too, in respectability; never, so far as i have known, disgraced by a single unworthy member; but seldom or never, on the other hand, after the first two generations, performing any memorable deed, or so much as putting forward a claim to public notice. gradually, they have sunk almost out of sight; as old houses, here and there about the streets, get covered half-way to the eaves by the accumulation of new soil. from father to son, for above a hundred years, they followed the sea; a grey-headed shipmaster, in each generation, retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast, confronting the salt spray and the gale which had blustered against his sire and grandsire. the boy, also in due time, passed from the forecastle to the cabin, spent a tempestuous manhood, and returned from his world-wanderings, to grow old, and die, and mingle his dust with the natal earth. this long connexion of a family with one spot, as its place of birth and burial, creates a kindred between the human being and the locality, quite independent of any charm in the scenery or moral circumstances that surround him. it is not love but instinct. the new inhabitant--who came himself from a foreign land, or whose father or grandfather came--has little claim to be called a salemite; he has no conception of the oyster-like tenacity with which an old settler, over whom his third century is creeping, clings to the spot where his successive generations have been embedded. it is no matter that the place is joyless for him; that he is weary of the old wooden houses, the mud and dust, the dead level of site and sentiment, the chill east wind, and the chillest of social atmospheres;--all these, and whatever faults besides he may see or imagine, are nothing to the purpose. the spell survives, and just as powerfully as if the natal spot were an earthly paradise. so has it been in my case. i felt it almost as a destiny to make salem my home; so that the mould of features and cast of character which had all along been familiar here--ever, as one representative of the race lay down in the grave, another assuming, as it were, his sentry-march along the main street--might still in my little day be seen and recognised in the old town. nevertheless, this very sentiment is an evidence that the connexion, which has become an unhealthy one, should at last be severed. human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and re-planted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. my children have had other birth-places, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth. on emerging from the old manse, it was chiefly this strange, indolent, unjoyous attachment for my native town that brought me to fill a place in uncle sam's brick edifice, when i might as well, or better, have gone somewhere else. my doom was on me. it was not the first time, nor the second, that i had gone away--as it seemed, permanently--but yet returned, like the bad halfpenny, or as if salem were for me the inevitable centre of the universe. so, one fine morning i ascended the flight of granite steps, with the president's commission in my pocket, and was introduced to the corps of gentlemen who were to aid me in my weighty responsibility as chief executive officer of the custom-house. i doubt greatly--or, rather, i do not doubt at all--whether any public functionary of the united states, either in the civil or military line, has ever had such a patriarchal body of veterans under his orders as myself. the whereabouts of the oldest inhabitant was at once settled when i looked at them. for upwards of twenty years before this epoch, the independent position of the collector had kept the salem custom-house out of the whirlpool of political vicissitude, which makes the tenure of office generally so fragile. a soldier--new england's most distinguished soldier--he stood firmly on the pedestal of his gallant services; and, himself secure in the wise liberality of the successive administrations through which he had held office, he had been the safety of his subordinates in many an hour of danger and heart-quake. general miller was radically conservative; a man over whose kindly nature habit had no slight influence; attaching himself strongly to familiar faces, and with difficulty moved to change, even when change might have brought unquestionable improvement. thus, on taking charge of my department, i found few but aged men. they were ancient sea-captains, for the most part, who, after being tossed on every sea, and standing up sturdily against life's tempestuous blast, had finally drifted into this quiet nook, where, with little to disturb them, except the periodical terrors of a presidential election, they one and all acquired a new lease of existence. though by no means less liable than their fellow-men to age and infirmity, they had evidently some talisman or other that kept death at bay. two or three of their number, as i was assured, being gouty and rheumatic, or perhaps bed-ridden, never dreamed of making their appearance at the custom-house during a large part of the year; but, after a torpid winter, would creep out into the warm sunshine of may or june, go lazily about what they termed duty, and, at their own leisure and convenience, betake themselves to bed again. i must plead guilty to the charge of abbreviating the official breath of more than one of these venerable servants of the republic. they were allowed, on my representation, to rest from their arduous labours, and soon afterwards--as if their sole principle of life had been zeal for their country's service--as i verily believe it was--withdrew to a better world. it is a pious consolation to me that, through my interference, a sufficient space was allowed them for repentance of the evil and corrupt practices into which, as a matter of course, every custom-house officer must be supposed to fall. neither the front nor the back entrance of the custom-house opens on the road to paradise. the greater part of my officers were whigs. it was well for their venerable brotherhood that the new surveyor was not a politician, and though a faithful democrat in principle, neither received nor held his office with any reference to political services. had it been otherwise--had an active politician been put into this influential post, to assume the easy task of making head against a whig collector, whose infirmities withheld him from the personal administration of his office--hardly a man of the old corps would have drawn the breath of official life within a month after the exterminating angel had come up the custom-house steps. according to the received code in such matters, it would have been nothing short of duty, in a politician, to bring every one of those white heads under the axe of the guillotine. it was plain enough to discern that the old fellows dreaded some such discourtesy at my hands. it pained, and at the same time amused me, to behold the terrors that attended my advent, to see a furrowed cheek, weather-beaten by half a century of storm, turn ashy pale at the glance of so harmless an individual as myself; to detect, as one or another addressed me, the tremor of a voice which, in long-past days, had been wont to bellow through a speaking-trumpet, hoarsely enough to frighten boreas himself to silence. they knew, these excellent old persons, that, by all established rule--and, as regarded some of them, weighed by their own lack of efficiency for business--they ought to have given place to younger men, more orthodox in politics, and altogether fitter than themselves to serve our common uncle. i knew it, too, but could never quite find in my heart to act upon the knowledge. much and deservedly to my own discredit, therefore, and considerably to the detriment of my official conscience, they continued, during my incumbency, to creep about the wharves, and loiter up and down the custom-house steps. they spent a good deal of time, also, asleep in their accustomed corners, with their chairs tilted back against the walls; awaking, however, once or twice in the forenoon, to bore one another with the several thousandth repetition of old sea-stories and mouldy jokes, that had grown to be passwords and countersigns among them. the discovery was soon made, i imagine, that the new surveyor had no great harm in him. so, with lightsome hearts and the happy consciousness of being usefully employed--in their own behalf at least, if not for our beloved country--these good old gentlemen went through the various formalities of office. sagaciously under their spectacles, did they peep into the holds of vessels. mighty was their fuss about little matters, and marvellous, sometimes, the obtuseness that allowed greater ones to slip between their fingers whenever such a mischance occurred--when a waggon-load of valuable merchandise had been smuggled ashore, at noonday, perhaps, and directly beneath their unsuspicious noses--nothing could exceed the vigilance and alacrity with which they proceeded to lock, and double-lock, and secure with tape and sealing-wax, all the avenues of the delinquent vessel. instead of a reprimand for their previous negligence, the case seemed rather to require an eulogium on their praiseworthy caution after the mischief had happened; a grateful recognition of the promptitude of their zeal the moment that there was no longer any remedy. unless people are more than commonly disagreeable, it is my foolish habit to contract a kindness for them. the better part of my companion's character, if it have a better part, is that which usually comes uppermost in my regard, and forms the type whereby i recognise the man. as most of these old custom-house officers had good traits, and as my position in reference to them, being paternal and protective, was favourable to the growth of friendly sentiments, i soon grew to like them all. it was pleasant in the summer forenoons--when the fervent heat, that almost liquefied the rest of the human family, merely communicated a genial warmth to their half torpid systems--it was pleasant to hear them chatting in the back entry, a row of them all tipped against the wall, as usual; while the frozen witticisms of past generations were thawed out, and came bubbling with laughter from their lips. externally, the jollity of aged men has much in common with the mirth of children; the intellect, any more than a deep sense of humour, has little to do with the matter; it is, with both, a gleam that plays upon the surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike to the green branch and grey, mouldering trunk. in one case, however, it is real sunshine; in the other, it more resembles the phosphorescent glow of decaying wood. it would be sad injustice, the reader must understand, to represent all my excellent old friends as in their dotage. in the first place, my coadjutors were not invariably old; there were men among them in their strength and prime, of marked ability and energy, and altogether superior to the sluggish and dependent mode of life on which their evil stars had cast them. then, moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found to be the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good repair. but, as respects the majority of my corps of veterans, there will be no wrong done if i characterize them generally as a set of wearisome old souls, who had gathered nothing worth preservation from their varied experience of life. they seemed to have flung away all the golden grain of practical wisdom, which they had enjoyed so many opportunities of harvesting, and most carefully to have stored their memory with the husks. they spoke with far more interest and unction of their morning's breakfast, or yesterday's, to-day's, or tomorrow's dinner, than of the shipwreck of forty or fifty years ago, and all the world's wonders which they had witnessed with their youthful eyes. the father of the custom-house--the patriarch, not only of this little squad of officials, but, i am bold to say, of the respectable body of tide-waiters all over the united states--was a certain permanent inspector. he might truly be termed a legitimate son of the revenue system, dyed in the wool, or rather born in the purple; since his sire, a revolutionary colonel, and formerly collector of the port, had created an office for him, and appointed him to fill it, at a period of the early ages which few living men can now remember. this inspector, when i first knew him, was a man of fourscore years, or thereabouts, and certainly one of the most wonderful specimens of winter-green that you would be likely to discover in a lifetime's search. with his florid cheek, his compact figure smartly arrayed in a bright-buttoned blue coat, his brisk and vigorous step, and his hale and hearty aspect, altogether he seemed--not young, indeed--but a kind of new contrivance of mother nature in the shape of man, whom age and infirmity had no business to touch. his voice and laugh, which perpetually re-echoed through the custom-house, had nothing of the tremulous quaver and cackle of an old man's utterance; they came strutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or the blast of a clarion. looking at him merely as an animal--and there was very little else to look at--he was a most satisfactory object, from the thorough healthfulness and wholesomeness of his system, and his capacity, at that extreme age, to enjoy all, or nearly all, the delights which he had ever aimed at or conceived of. the careless security of his life in the custom-house, on a regular income, and with but slight and infrequent apprehensions of removal, had no doubt contributed to make time pass lightly over him. the original and more potent causes, however, lay in the rare perfection of his animal nature, the moderate proportion of intellect, and the very trifling admixture of moral and spiritual ingredients; these latter qualities, indeed, being in barely enough measure to keep the old gentleman from walking on all-fours. he possessed no power of thought, no depth of feeling, no troublesome sensibilities: nothing, in short, but a few commonplace instincts, which, aided by the cheerful temper which grew inevitably out of his physical well-being, did duty very respectably, and to general acceptance, in lieu of a heart. he had been the husband of three wives, all long since dead; the father of twenty children, most of whom, at every age of childhood or maturity, had likewise returned to dust. here, one would suppose, might have been sorrow enough to imbue the sunniest disposition through and through with a sable tinge. not so with our old inspector. one brief sigh sufficed to carry off the entire burden of these dismal reminiscences. the next moment he was as ready for sport as any unbreeched infant: far readier than the collector's junior clerk, who at nineteen years was much the elder and graver man of the two. i used to watch and study this patriarchal personage with, i think, livelier curiosity than any other form of humanity there presented to my notice. he was, in truth, a rare phenomenon; so perfect, in one point of view; so shallow, so delusive, so impalpable such an absolute nonentity, in every other. my conclusion was that he had no soul, no heart, no mind; nothing, as i have already said, but instincts; and yet, withal, so cunningly had the few materials of his character been put together that there was no painful perception of deficiency, but, on my part, an entire contentment with what i found in him. it might be difficult--and it was so--to conceive how he should exist hereafter, so earthly and sensuous did he seem; but surely his existence here, admitting that it was to terminate with his last breath, had been not unkindly given; with no higher moral responsibilities than the beasts of the field, but with a larger scope of enjoyment than theirs, and with all their blessed immunity from the dreariness and duskiness of age. one point in which he had vastly the advantage over his four-footed brethren was his ability to recollect the good dinners which it had made no small portion of the happiness of his life to eat. his gourmandism was a highly agreeable trait; and to hear him talk of roast meat was as appetizing as a pickle or an oyster. as he possessed no higher attribute, and neither sacrificed nor vitiated any spiritual endowment by devoting all his energies and ingenuities to subserve the delight and profit of his maw, it always pleased and satisfied me to hear him expatiate on fish, poultry, and butcher's meat, and the most eligible methods of preparing them for the table. his reminiscences of good cheer, however ancient the date of the actual banquet, seemed to bring the savour of pig or turkey under one's very nostrils. there were flavours on his palate that had lingered there not less than sixty or seventy years, and were still apparently as fresh as that of the mutton chop which he had just devoured for his breakfast. i have heard him smack his lips over dinners, every guest at which, except himself, had long been food for worms. it was marvellous to observe how the ghosts of bygone meals were continually rising up before him--not in anger or retribution, but as if grateful for his former appreciation, and seeking to reduplicate an endless series of enjoyment, at once shadowy and sensual: a tenderloin of beef, a hind-quarter of veal, a spare-rib of pork, a particular chicken, or a remarkably praiseworthy turkey, which had perhaps adorned his board in the days of the elder adams, would be remembered; while all the subsequent experience of our race, and all the events that brightened or darkened his individual career, had gone over him with as little permanent effect as the passing breeze. the chief tragic event of the old man's life, so far as i could judge, was his mishap with a certain goose, which lived and died some twenty or forty years ago: a goose of most promising figure, but which, at table, proved so inveterately tough, that the carving-knife would make no impression on its carcase, and it could only be divided with an axe and handsaw. but it is time to quit this sketch; on which, however, i should be glad to dwell at considerably more length, because of all men whom i have ever known, this individual was fittest to be a custom-house officer. most persons, owing to causes which i may not have space to hint at, suffer moral detriment from this peculiar mode of life. the old inspector was incapable of it; and, were he to continue in office to the end of time, would be just as good as he was then, and sit down to dinner with just as good an appetite. there is one likeness, without which my gallery of custom-house portraits would be strangely incomplete, but which my comparatively few opportunities for observation enable me to sketch only in the merest outline. it is that of the collector, our gallant old general, who, after his brilliant military service, subsequently to which he had ruled over a wild western territory, had come hither, twenty years before, to spend the decline of his varied and honourable life. the brave soldier had already numbered, nearly or quite, his three-score years and ten, and was pursuing the remainder of his earthly march, burdened with infirmities which even the martial music of his own spirit-stirring recollections could do little towards lightening. the step was palsied now, that had been foremost in the charge. it was only with the assistance of a servant, and by leaning his hand heavily on the iron balustrade, that he could slowly and painfully ascend the custom-house steps, and, with a toilsome progress across the floor, attain his customary chair beside the fireplace. there he used to sit, gazing with a somewhat dim serenity of aspect at the figures that came and went, amid the rustle of papers, the administering of oaths, the discussion of business, and the casual talk of the office; all which sounds and circumstances seemed but indistinctly to impress his senses, and hardly to make their way into his inner sphere of contemplation. his countenance, in this repose, was mild and kindly. if his notice was sought, an expression of courtesy and interest gleamed out upon his features, proving that there was light within him, and that it was only the outward medium of the intellectual lamp that obstructed the rays in their passage. the closer you penetrated to the substance of his mind, the sounder it appeared. when no longer called upon to speak or listen--either of which operations cost him an evident effort--his face would briefly subside into its former not uncheerful quietude. it was not painful to behold this look; for, though dim, it had not the imbecility of decaying age. the framework of his nature, originally strong and massive, was not yet crumpled into ruin. to observe and define his character, however, under such disadvantages, was as difficult a task as to trace out and build up anew, in imagination, an old fortress, like ticonderoga, from a view of its grey and broken ruins. here and there, perchance, the walls may remain almost complete; but elsewhere may be only a shapeless mound, cumbrous with its very strength, and overgrown, through long years of peace and neglect, with grass and alien weeds. nevertheless, looking at the old warrior with affection--for, slight as was the communication between us, my feeling towards him, like that of all bipeds and quadrupeds who knew him, might not improperly be termed so,--i could discern the main points of his portrait. it was marked with the noble and heroic qualities which showed it to be not a mere accident, but of good right, that he had won a distinguished name. his spirit could never, i conceive, have been characterized by an uneasy activity; it must, at any period of his life, have required an impulse to set him in motion; but once stirred up, with obstacles to overcome, and an adequate object to be attained, it was not in the man to give out or fail. the heat that had formerly pervaded his nature, and which was not yet extinct, was never of the kind that flashes and flickers in a blaze; but rather a deep red glow, as of iron in a furnace. weight, solidity, firmness--this was the expression of his repose, even in such decay as had crept untimely over him at the period of which i speak. but i could imagine, even then, that, under some excitement which should go deeply into his consciousness--roused by a trumpet's peal, loud enough to awaken all of his energies that were not dead, but only slumbering--he was yet capable of flinging off his infirmities like a sick man's gown, dropping the staff of age to seize a battle-sword, and starting up once more a warrior. and, in so intense a moment his demeanour would have still been calm. such an exhibition, however, was but to be pictured in fancy; not to be anticipated, nor desired. what i saw in him--as evidently as the indestructible ramparts of old ticonderoga, already cited as the most appropriate simile--was the features of stubborn and ponderous endurance, which might well have amounted to obstinacy in his earlier days; of integrity, that, like most of his other endowments, lay in a somewhat heavy mass, and was just as unmalleable or unmanageable as a ton of iron ore; and of benevolence which, fiercely as he led the bayonets on at chippewa or fort erie, i take to be of quite as genuine a stamp as what actuates any or all the polemical philanthropists of the age. he had slain men with his own hand, for aught i know--certainly, they had fallen like blades of grass at the sweep of the scythe before the charge to which his spirit imparted its triumphant energy--but, be that as it might, there was never in his heart so much cruelty as would have brushed the down off a butterfly's wing. i have not known the man to whose innate kindliness i would more confidently make an appeal. many characteristics--and those, too, which contribute not the least forcibly to impart resemblance in a sketch--must have vanished, or been obscured, before i met the general. all merely graceful attributes are usually the most evanescent; nor does nature adorn the human ruin with blossoms of new beauty, that have their roots and proper nutriment only in the chinks and crevices of decay, as she sows wall-flowers over the ruined fortress of ticonderoga. still, even in respect of grace and beauty, there were points well worth noting. a ray of humour, now and then, would make its way through the veil of dim obstruction, and glimmer pleasantly upon our faces. a trait of native elegance, seldom seen in the masculine character after childhood or early youth, was shown in the general's fondness for the sight and fragrance of flowers. an old soldier might be supposed to prize only the bloody laurel on his brow; but here was one who seemed to have a young girl's appreciation of the floral tribe. there, beside the fireplace, the brave old general used to sit; while the surveyor--though seldom, when it could be avoided, taking upon himself the difficult task of engaging him in conversation--was fond of standing at a distance, and watching his quiet and almost slumberous countenance. he seemed away from us, although we saw him but a few yards off; remote, though we passed close beside his chair; unattainable, though we might have stretched forth our hands and touched his own. it might be that he lived a more real life within his thoughts than amid the unappropriate environment of the collector's office. the evolutions of the parade; the tumult of the battle; the flourish of old heroic music, heard thirty years before--such scenes and sounds, perhaps, were all alive before his intellectual sense. meanwhile, the merchants and ship-masters, the spruce clerks and uncouth sailors, entered and departed; the bustle of his commercial and custom-house life kept up its little murmur round about him; and neither with the men nor their affairs did the general appear to sustain the most distant relation. he was as much out of place as an old sword--now rusty, but which had flashed once in the battle's front, and showed still a bright gleam along its blade--would have been among the inkstands, paper-folders, and mahogany rulers on the deputy collector's desk. there was one thing that much aided me in renewing and re-creating the stalwart soldier of the niagara frontier--the man of true and simple energy. it was the recollection of those memorable words of his--"i'll try, sir"--spoken on the very verge of a desperate and heroic enterprise, and breathing the soul and spirit of new england hardihood, comprehending all perils, and encountering all. if, in our country, valour were rewarded by heraldic honour, this phrase--which it seems so easy to speak, but which only he, with such a task of danger and glory before him, has ever spoken--would be the best and fittest of all mottoes for the general's shield of arms. it contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual health to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate. the accidents of my life have often afforded me this advantage, but never with more fulness and variety than during my continuance in office. there was one man, especially, the observation of whose character gave me a new idea of talent. his gifts were emphatically those of a man of business; prompt, acute, clear-minded; with an eye that saw through all perplexities, and a faculty of arrangement that made them vanish as by the waving of an enchanter's wand. bred up from boyhood in the custom-house, it was his proper field of activity; and the many intricacies of business, so harassing to the interloper, presented themselves before him with the regularity of a perfectly comprehended system. in my contemplation, he stood as the ideal of his class. he was, indeed, the custom-house in himself; or, at all events, the mainspring that kept its variously revolving wheels in motion; for, in an institution like this, where its officers are appointed to subserve their own profit and convenience, and seldom with a leading reference to their fitness for the duty to be performed, they must perforce seek elsewhere the dexterity which is not in them. thus, by an inevitable necessity, as a magnet attracts steel-filings, so did our man of business draw to himself the difficulties which everybody met with. with an easy condescension, and kind forbearance towards our stupidity--which, to his order of mind, must have seemed little short of crime--would he forth-with, by the merest touch of his finger, make the incomprehensible as clear as daylight. the merchants valued him not less than we, his esoteric friends. his integrity was perfect; it was a law of nature with him, rather than a choice or a principle; nor can it be otherwise than the main condition of an intellect so remarkably clear and accurate as his to be honest and regular in the administration of affairs. a stain on his conscience, as to anything that came within the range of his vocation, would trouble such a man very much in the same way, though to a far greater degree, than an error in the balance of an account, or an ink-blot on the fair page of a book of record. here, in a word--and it is a rare instance in my life--i had met with a person thoroughly adapted to the situation which he held. such were some of the people with whom i now found myself connected. i took it in good part, at the hands of providence, that i was thrown into a position so little akin to my past habits; and set myself seriously to gather from it whatever profit was to be had. after my fellowship of toil and impracticable schemes with the dreamy brethren of brook farm; after living for three years within the subtle influence of an intellect like emerson's; after those wild, free days on the assabeth, indulging fantastic speculations, beside our fire of fallen boughs, with ellery channing; after talking with thoreau about pine-trees and indian relics in his hermitage at walden; after growing fastidious by sympathy with the classic refinement of hillard's culture; after becoming imbued with poetic sentiment at longfellow's hearthstone--it was time, at length, that i should exercise other faculties of my nature, and nourish myself with food for which i had hitherto had little appetite. even the old inspector was desirable, as a change of diet, to a man who had known alcott. i looked upon it as an evidence, in some measure, of a system naturally well balanced, and lacking no essential part of a thorough organization, that, with such associates to remember, i could mingle at once with men of altogether different qualities, and never murmur at the change. literature, its exertions and objects, were now of little moment in my regard. i cared not at this period for books; they were apart from me. nature--except it were human nature--the nature that is developed in earth and sky, was, in one sense, hidden from me; and all the imaginative delight wherewith it had been spiritualized passed away out of my mind. a gift, a faculty, if it had not been departed, was suspended and inanimate within me. there would have been something sad, unutterably dreary, in all this, had i not been conscious that it lay at my own option to recall whatever was valuable in the past. it might be true, indeed, that this was a life which could not, with impunity, be lived too long; else, it might make me permanently other than i had been, without transforming me into any shape which it would be worth my while to take. but i never considered it as other than a transitory life. there was always a prophetic instinct, a low whisper in my ear, that within no long period, and whenever a new change of custom should be essential to my good, change would come. meanwhile, there i was, a surveyor of the revenue and, so far as i have been able to understand, as good a surveyor as need be. a man of thought, fancy, and sensibility (had he ten times the surveyor's proportion of those qualities), may, at any time, be a man of affairs, if he will only choose to give himself the trouble. my fellow-officers, and the merchants and sea-captains with whom my official duties brought me into any manner of connection, viewed me in no other light, and probably knew me in no other character. none of them, i presume, had ever read a page of my inditing, or would have cared a fig the more for me if they had read them all; nor would it have mended the matter, in the least, had those same unprofitable pages been written with a pen like that of burns or of chaucer, each of whom was a custom-house officer in his day, as well as i. it is a good lesson--though it may often be a hard one--for a man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world's dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized and to find how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at. i know not that i especially needed the lesson, either in the way of warning or rebuke; but at any rate, i learned it thoroughly: nor, it gives me pleasure to reflect, did the truth, as it came home to my perception, ever cost me a pang, or require to be thrown off in a sigh. in the way of literary talk, it is true, the naval officer--an excellent fellow, who came into the office with me, and went out only a little later--would often engage me in a discussion about one or the other of his favourite topics, napoleon or shakespeare. the collector's junior clerk, too a young gentleman who, it was whispered occasionally covered a sheet of uncle sam's letter paper with what (at the distance of a few yards) looked very much like poetry--used now and then to speak to me of books, as matters with which i might possibly be conversant. this was my all of lettered intercourse; and it was quite sufficient for my necessities. no longer seeking nor caring that my name should be blasoned abroad on title-pages, i smiled to think that it had now another kind of vogue. the custom-house marker imprinted it, with a stencil and black paint, on pepper-bags, and baskets of anatto, and cigar-boxes, and bales of all kinds of dutiable merchandise, in testimony that these commodities had paid the impost, and gone regularly through the office. borne on such queer vehicle of fame, a knowledge of my existence, so far as a name conveys it, was carried where it had never been before, and, i hope, will never go again. but the past was not dead. once in a great while, the thoughts that had seemed so vital and so active, yet had been put to rest so quietly, revived again. one of the most remarkable occasions, when the habit of bygone days awoke in me, was that which brings it within the law of literary propriety to offer the public the sketch which i am now writing. in the second storey of the custom-house there is a large room, in which the brick-work and naked rafters have never been covered with panelling and plaster. the edifice--originally projected on a scale adapted to the old commercial enterprise of the port, and with an idea of subsequent prosperity destined never to be realized--contains far more space than its occupants know what to do with. this airy hall, therefore, over the collector's apartments, remains unfinished to this day, and, in spite of the aged cobwebs that festoon its dusky beams, appears still to await the labour of the carpenter and mason. at one end of the room, in a recess, were a number of barrels piled one upon another, containing bundles of official documents. large quantities of similar rubbish lay lumbering the floor. it was sorrowful to think how many days, and weeks, and months, and years of toil had been wasted on these musty papers, which were now only an encumbrance on earth, and were hidden away in this forgotten corner, never more to be glanced at by human eyes. but then, what reams of other manuscripts--filled, not with the dulness of official formalities, but with the thought of inventive brains and the rich effusion of deep hearts--had gone equally to oblivion; and that, moreover, without serving a purpose in their day, as these heaped-up papers had, and--saddest of all--without purchasing for their writers the comfortable livelihood which the clerks of the custom-house had gained by these worthless scratchings of the pen. yet not altogether worthless, perhaps, as materials of local history. here, no doubt, statistics of the former commerce of salem might be discovered, and memorials of her princely merchants--old king derby--old billy gray--old simon forrester--and many another magnate in his day, whose powdered head, however, was scarcely in the tomb before his mountain pile of wealth began to dwindle. the founders of the greater part of the families which now compose the aristocracy of salem might here be traced, from the petty and obscure beginnings of their traffic, at periods generally much posterior to the revolution, upward to what their children look upon as long-established rank. prior to the revolution there is a dearth of records; the earlier documents and archives of the custom-house having, probably, been carried off to halifax, when all the king's officials accompanied the british army in its flight from boston. it has often been a matter of regret with me; for, going back, perhaps, to the days of the protectorate, those papers must have contained many references to forgotten or remembered men, and to antique customs, which would have affected me with the same pleasure as when i used to pick up indian arrow-heads in the field near the old manse. but, one idle and rainy day, it was my fortune to make a discovery of some little interest. poking and burrowing into the heaped-up rubbish in the corner, unfolding one and another document, and reading the names of vessels that had long ago foundered at sea or rotted at the wharves, and those of merchants never heard of now on 'change, nor very readily decipherable on their mossy tombstones; glancing at such matters with the saddened, weary, half-reluctant interest which we bestow on the corpse of dead activity--and exerting my fancy, sluggish with little use, to raise up from these dry bones an image of the old town's brighter aspect, when india was a new region, and only salem knew the way thither--i chanced to lay my hand on a small package, carefully done up in a piece of ancient yellow parchment. this envelope had the air of an official record of some period long past, when clerks engrossed their stiff and formal chirography on more substantial materials than at present. there was something about it that quickened an instinctive curiosity, and made me undo the faded red tape that tied up the package, with the sense that a treasure would here be brought to light. unbending the rigid folds of the parchment cover, i found it to be a commission, under the hand and seal of governor shirley, in favour of one jonathan pue, as surveyor of his majesty's customs for the port of salem, in the province of massachusetts bay. i remembered to have read (probably in felt's "annals") a notice of the decease of mr. surveyor pue, about fourscore years ago; and likewise, in a newspaper of recent times, an account of the digging up of his remains in the little graveyard of st. peter's church, during the renewal of that edifice. nothing, if i rightly call to mind, was left of my respected predecessor, save an imperfect skeleton, and some fragments of apparel, and a wig of majestic frizzle, which, unlike the head that it once adorned, was in very satisfactory preservation. but, on examining the papers which the parchment commission served to envelop, i found more traces of mr. pue's mental part, and the internal operations of his head, than the frizzled wig had contained of the venerable skull itself. they were documents, in short, not official, but of a private nature, or, at least, written in his private capacity, and apparently with his own hand. i could account for their being included in the heap of custom-house lumber only by the fact that mr. pue's death had happened suddenly, and that these papers, which he probably kept in his official desk, had never come to the knowledge of his heirs, or were supposed to relate to the business of the revenue. on the transfer of the archives to halifax, this package, proving to be of no public concern, was left behind, and had remained ever since unopened. the ancient surveyor--being little molested, i suppose, at that early day with business pertaining to his office--seems to have devoted some of his many leisure hours to researches as a local antiquarian, and other inquisitions of a similar nature. these supplied material for petty activity to a mind that would otherwise have been eaten up with rust. a portion of his facts, by-the-by, did me good service in the preparation of the article entitled "main street," included in the present volume. the remainder may perhaps be applied to purposes equally valuable hereafter, or not impossibly may be worked up, so far as they go, into a regular history of salem, should my veneration for the natal soil ever impel me to so pious a task. meanwhile, they shall be at the command of any gentleman, inclined and competent, to take the unprofitable labour off my hands. as a final disposition i contemplate depositing them with the essex historical society. but the object that most drew my attention to the mysterious package was a certain affair of fine red cloth, much worn and faded, there were traces about it of gold embroidery, which, however, was greatly frayed and defaced, so that none, or very little, of the glitter was left. it had been wrought, as was easy to perceive, with wonderful skill of needlework; and the stitch (as i am assured by ladies conversant with such mysteries) gives evidence of a now forgotten art, not to be discovered even by the process of picking out the threads. this rag of scarlet cloth--for time, and wear, and a sacrilegious moth had reduced it to little other than a rag--on careful examination, assumed the shape of a letter. it was the capital letter a. by an accurate measurement, each limb proved to be precisely three inches and a quarter in length. it had been intended, there could be no doubt, as an ornamental article of dress; but how it was to be worn, or what rank, honour, and dignity, in by-past times, were signified by it, was a riddle which (so evanescent are the fashions of the world in these particulars) i saw little hope of solving. and yet it strangely interested me. my eyes fastened themselves upon the old scarlet letter, and would not be turned aside. certainly there was some deep meaning in it most worthy of interpretation, and which, as it were, streamed forth from the mystic symbol, subtly communicating itself to my sensibilities, but evading the analysis of my mind. when thus perplexed--and cogitating, among other hypotheses, whether the letter might not have been one of those decorations which the white men used to contrive in order to take the eyes of indians--i happened to place it on my breast. it seemed to me--the reader may smile, but must not doubt my word--it seemed to me, then, that i experienced a sensation not altogether physical, yet almost so, as of burning heat, and as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron. i shuddered, and involuntarily let it fall upon the floor. in the absorbing contemplation of the scarlet letter, i had hitherto neglected to examine a small roll of dingy paper, around which it had been twisted. this i now opened, and had the satisfaction to find recorded by the old surveyor's pen, a reasonably complete explanation of the whole affair. there were several foolscap sheets, containing many particulars respecting the life and conversation of one hester prynne, who appeared to have been rather a noteworthy personage in the view of our ancestors. she had flourished during the period between the early days of massachusetts and the close of the seventeenth century. aged persons, alive in the time of mr. surveyor pue, and from whose oral testimony he had made up his narrative, remembered her, in their youth, as a very old, but not decrepit woman, of a stately and solemn aspect. it had been her habit, from an almost immemorial date, to go about the country as a kind of voluntary nurse, and doing whatever miscellaneous good she might; taking upon herself, likewise, to give advice in all matters, especially those of the heart, by which means--as a person of such propensities inevitably must--she gained from many people the reverence due to an angel, but, i should imagine, was looked upon by others as an intruder and a nuisance. prying further into the manuscript, i found the record of other doings and sufferings of this singular woman, for most of which the reader is referred to the story entitled "the scarlet letter"; and it should be borne carefully in mind that the main facts of that story are authorized and authenticated by the document of mr. surveyor pue. the original papers, together with the scarlet letter itself--a most curious relic--are still in my possession, and shall be freely exhibited to whomsoever, induced by the great interest of the narrative, may desire a sight of them. i must not be understood affirming that, in the dressing up of the tale, and imagining the motives and modes of passion that influenced the characters who figure in it, i have invariably confined myself within the limits of the old surveyor's half-a-dozen sheets of foolscap. on the contrary, i have allowed myself, as to such points, nearly, or altogether, as much license as if the facts had been entirely of my own invention. what i contend for is the authenticity of the outline. this incident recalled my mind, in some degree, to its old track. there seemed to be here the groundwork of a tale. it impressed me as if the ancient surveyor, in his garb of a hundred years gone by, and wearing his immortal wig--which was buried with him, but did not perish in the grave--had met me in the deserted chamber of the custom-house. in his port was the dignity of one who had borne his majesty's commission, and who was therefore illuminated by a ray of the splendour that shone so dazzlingly about the throne. how unlike alas the hangdog look of a republican official, who, as the servant of the people, feels himself less than the least, and below the lowest of his masters. with his own ghostly hand, the obscurely seen, but majestic, figure had imparted to me the scarlet symbol and the little roll of explanatory manuscript. with his own ghostly voice he had exhorted me, on the sacred consideration of my filial duty and reverence towards him--who might reasonably regard himself as my official ancestor--to bring his mouldy and moth-eaten lucubrations before the public. "do this," said the ghost of mr. surveyor pue, emphatically nodding the head that looked so imposing within its memorable wig; "do this, and the profit shall be all your own. you will shortly need it; for it is not in your days as it was in mine, when a man's office was a life-lease, and oftentimes an heirloom. but i charge you, in this matter of old mistress prynne, give to your predecessor's memory the credit which will be rightfully due" and i said to the ghost of mr. surveyor pue--"i will". on hester prynne's story, therefore, i bestowed much thought. it was the subject of my meditations for many an hour, while pacing to and fro across my room, or traversing, with a hundredfold repetition, the long extent from the front door of the custom-house to the side entrance, and back again. great were the weariness and annoyance of the old inspector and the weighers and gaugers, whose slumbers were disturbed by the unmercifully lengthened tramp of my passing and returning footsteps. remembering their own former habits, they used to say that the surveyor was walking the quarter-deck. they probably fancied that my sole object--and, indeed, the sole object for which a sane man could ever put himself into voluntary motion--was to get an appetite for dinner. and, to say the truth, an appetite, sharpened by the east wind that generally blew along the passage, was the only valuable result of so much indefatigable exercise. so little adapted is the atmosphere of a custom-house to the delicate harvest of fancy and sensibility, that, had i remained there through ten presidencies yet to come, i doubt whether the tale of "the scarlet letter" would ever have been brought before the public eye. my imagination was a tarnished mirror. it would not reflect, or only with miserable dimness, the figures with which i did my best to people it. the characters of the narrative would not be warmed and rendered malleable by any heat that i could kindle at my intellectual forge. they would take neither the glow of passion nor the tenderness of sentiment, but retained all the rigidity of dead corpses, and stared me in the face with a fixed and ghastly grin of contemptuous defiance. "what have you to do with us?" that expression seemed to say. "the little power you might have once possessed over the tribe of unrealities is gone! you have bartered it for a pittance of the public gold. go then, and earn your wages!" in short, the almost torpid creatures of my own fancy twitted me with imbecility, and not without fair occasion. it was not merely during the three hours and a half which uncle sam claimed as his share of my daily life that this wretched numbness held possession of me. it went with me on my sea-shore walks and rambles into the country, whenever--which was seldom and reluctantly--i bestirred myself to seek that invigorating charm of nature which used to give me such freshness and activity of thought, the moment that i stepped across the threshold of the old manse. the same torpor, as regarded the capacity for intellectual effort, accompanied me home, and weighed upon me in the chamber which i most absurdly termed my study. nor did it quit me when, late at night, i sat in the deserted parlour, lighted only by the glimmering coal-fire and the moon, striving to picture forth imaginary scenes, which, the next day, might flow out on the brightening page in many-hued description. if the imaginative faculty refused to act at such an hour, it might well be deemed a hopeless case. moonlight, in a familiar room, falling so white upon the carpet, and showing all its figures so distinctly--making every object so minutely visible, yet so unlike a morning or noontide visibility--is a medium the most suitable for a romance-writer to get acquainted with his illusive guests. there is the little domestic scenery of the well-known apartment; the chairs, with each its separate individuality; the centre-table, sustaining a work-basket, a volume or two, and an extinguished lamp; the sofa; the book-case; the picture on the wall--all these details, so completely seen, are so spiritualised by the unusual light, that they seem to lose their actual substance, and become things of intellect. nothing is too small or too trifling to undergo this change, and acquire dignity thereby. a child's shoe; the doll, seated in her little wicker carriage; the hobby-horse--whatever, in a word, has been used or played with during the day is now invested with a quality of strangeness and remoteness, though still almost as vividly present as by daylight. thus, therefore, the floor of our familiar room has become a neutral territory, somewhere between the real world and fairy-land, where the actual and the imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the nature of the other. ghosts might enter here without affrighting us. it would be too much in keeping with the scene to excite surprise, were we to look about us and discover a form, beloved, but gone hence, now sitting quietly in a streak of this magic moonshine, with an aspect that would make us doubt whether it had returned from afar, or had never once stirred from our fireside. the somewhat dim coal fire has an essential influence in producing the effect which i would describe. it throws its unobtrusive tinge throughout the room, with a faint ruddiness upon the walls and ceiling, and a reflected gleam upon the polish of the furniture. this warmer light mingles itself with the cold spirituality of the moon-beams, and communicates, as it were, a heart and sensibilities of human tenderness to the forms which fancy summons up. it converts them from snow-images into men and women. glancing at the looking-glass, we behold--deep within its haunted verge--the smouldering glow of the half-extinguished anthracite, the white moon-beams on the floor, and a repetition of all the gleam and shadow of the picture, with one remove further from the actual, and nearer to the imaginative. then, at such an hour, and with this scene before him, if a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances. but, for myself, during the whole of my custom-house experience, moonlight and sunshine, and the glow of firelight, were just alike in my regard; and neither of them was of one whit more avail than the twinkle of a tallow-candle. an entire class of susceptibilities, and a gift connected with them--of no great richness or value, but the best i had--was gone from me. it is my belief, however, that had i attempted a different order of composition, my faculties would not have been found so pointless and inefficacious. i might, for instance, have contented myself with writing out the narratives of a veteran shipmaster, one of the inspectors, whom i should be most ungrateful not to mention, since scarcely a day passed that he did not stir me to laughter and admiration by his marvelous gifts as a story-teller. could i have preserved the picturesque force of his style, and the humourous colouring which nature taught him how to throw over his descriptions, the result, i honestly believe, would have been something new in literature. or i might readily have found a more serious task. it was a folly, with the materiality of this daily life pressing so intrusively upon me, to attempt to fling myself back into another age, or to insist on creating the semblance of a world out of airy matter, when, at every moment, the impalpable beauty of my soap-bubble was broken by the rude contact of some actual circumstance. the wiser effort would have been to diffuse thought and imagination through the opaque substance of to-day, and thus to make it a bright transparency; to spiritualise the burden that began to weigh so heavily; to seek, resolutely, the true and indestructible value that lay hidden in the petty and wearisome incidents, and ordinary characters with which i was now conversant. the fault was mine. the page of life that was spread out before me seemed dull and commonplace only because i had not fathomed its deeper import. a better book than i shall ever write was there; leaf after leaf presenting itself to me, just as it was written out by the reality of the flitting hour, and vanishing as fast as written, only because my brain wanted the insight, and my hand the cunning, to transcribe it. at some future day, it may be, i shall remember a few scattered fragments and broken paragraphs, and write them down, and find the letters turn to gold upon the page. these perceptions had come too late. at the instant, i was only conscious that what would have been a pleasure once was now a hopeless toil. there was no occasion to make much moan about this state of affairs. i had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good surveyor of the customs. that was all. but, nevertheless, it is anything but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling away, or exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out of a phial; so that, at every glance, you find a smaller and less volatile residuum. of the fact there could be no doubt and, examining myself and others, i was led to conclusions, in reference to the effect of public office on the character, not very favourable to the mode of life in question. in some other form, perhaps, i may hereafter develop these effects. suffice it here to say that a custom-house officer of long continuance can hardly be a very praiseworthy or respectable personage, for many reasons; one of them, the tenure by which he holds his situation, and another, the very nature of his business, which--though, i trust, an honest one--is of such a sort that he does not share in the united effort of mankind. an effect--which i believe to be observable, more or less, in every individual who has occupied the position--is, that while he leans on the mighty arm of the republic, his own proper strength departs from him. he loses, in an extent proportioned to the weakness or force of his original nature, the capability of self-support. if he possesses an unusual share of native energy, or the enervating magic of place do not operate too long upon him, his forfeited powers may be redeemable. the ejected officer--fortunate in the unkindly shove that sends him forth betimes, to struggle amid a struggling world--may return to himself, and become all that he has ever been. but this seldom happens. he usually keeps his ground just long enough for his own ruin, and is then thrust out, with sinews all unstrung, to totter along the difficult footpath of life as he best may. conscious of his own infirmity--that his tempered steel and elasticity are lost--he for ever afterwards looks wistfully about him in quest of support external to himself. his pervading and continual hope--a hallucination, which, in the face of all discouragement, and making light of impossibilities, haunts him while he lives, and, i fancy, like the convulsive throes of the cholera, torments him for a brief space after death--is, that finally, and in no long time, by some happy coincidence of circumstances, he shall be restored to office. this faith, more than anything else, steals the pith and availability out of whatever enterprise he may dream of undertaking. why should he toil and moil, and be at so much trouble to pick himself up out of the mud, when, in a little while hence, the strong arm of his uncle will raise and support him? why should he work for his living here, or go to dig gold in california, when he is so soon to be made happy, at monthly intervals, with a little pile of glittering coin out of his uncle's pocket? it is sadly curious to observe how slight a taste of office suffices to infect a poor fellow with this singular disease. uncle sam's gold--meaning no disrespect to the worthy old gentleman--has, in this respect, a quality of enchantment like that of the devil's wages. whoever touches it should look well to himself, or he may find the bargain to go hard against him, involving, if not his soul, yet many of its better attributes; its sturdy force, its courage and constancy, its truth, its self-reliance, and all that gives the emphasis to manly character. here was a fine prospect in the distance. not that the surveyor brought the lesson home to himself, or admitted that he could be so utterly undone, either by continuance in office or ejectment. yet my reflections were not the most comfortable. i began to grow melancholy and restless; continually prying into my mind, to discover which of its poor properties were gone, and what degree of detriment had already accrued to the remainder. i endeavoured to calculate how much longer i could stay in the custom-house, and yet go forth a man. to confess the truth, it was my greatest apprehension--as it would never be a measure of policy to turn out so quiet an individual as myself; and it being hardly in the nature of a public officer to resign--it was my chief trouble, therefore, that i was likely to grow grey and decrepit in the surveyorship, and become much such another animal as the old inspector. might it not, in the tedious lapse of official life that lay before me, finally be with me as it was with this venerable friend--to make the dinner-hour the nucleus of the day, and to spend the rest of it, as an old dog spends it, asleep in the sunshine or in the shade? a dreary look-forward, this, for a man who felt it to be the best definition of happiness to live throughout the whole range of his faculties and sensibilities. but, all this while, i was giving myself very unnecessary alarm. providence had meditated better things for me than i could possibly imagine for myself. a remarkable event of the third year of my surveyorship--to adopt the tone of "p. p. "--was the election of general taylor to the presidency. it is essential, in order to form a complete estimate of the advantages of official life, to view the incumbent at the in-coming of a hostile administration. his position is then one of the most singularly irksome, and, in every contingency, disagreeable, that a wretched mortal can possibly occupy; with seldom an alternative of good on either hand, although what presents itself to him as the worst event may very probably be the best. but it is a strange experience, to a man of pride and sensibility, to know that his interests are within the control of individuals who neither love nor understand him, and by whom, since one or the other must needs happen, he would rather be injured than obliged. strange, too, for one who has kept his calmness throughout the contest, to observe the bloodthirstiness that is developed in the hour of triumph, and to be conscious that he is himself among its objects! there are few uglier traits of human nature than this tendency--which i now witnessed in men no worse than their neighbours--to grow cruel, merely because they possessed the power of inflicting harm. if the guillotine, as applied to office-holders, were a literal fact, instead of one of the most apt of metaphors, it is my sincere belief that the active members of the victorious party were sufficiently excited to have chopped off all our heads, and have thanked heaven for the opportunity! it appears to me--who have been a calm and curious observer, as well in victory as defeat--that this fierce and bitter spirit of malice and revenge has never distinguished the many triumphs of my own party as it now did that of the whigs. the democrats take the offices, as a general rule, because they need them, and because the practice of many years has made it the law of political warfare, which unless a different system be proclaimed, it was weakness and cowardice to murmur at. but the long habit of victory has made them generous. they know how to spare when they see occasion; and when they strike, the axe may be sharp indeed, but its edge is seldom poisoned with ill-will; nor is it their custom ignominiously to kick the head which they have just struck off. in short, unpleasant as was my predicament, at best, i saw much reason to congratulate myself that i was on the losing side rather than the triumphant one. if, heretofore, i had been none of the warmest of partisans i began now, at this season of peril and adversity, to be pretty acutely sensible with which party my predilections lay; nor was it without something like regret and shame that, according to a reasonable calculation of chances, i saw my own prospect of retaining office to be better than those of my democratic brethren. but who can see an inch into futurity beyond his nose? my own head was the first that fell. the moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or never, i am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life. nevertheless, like the greater part of our misfortunes, even so serious a contingency brings its remedy and consolation with it, if the sufferer will but make the best rather than the worst, of the accident which has befallen him. in my particular case the consolatory topics were close at hand, and, indeed, had suggested themselves to my meditations a considerable time before it was requisite to use them. in view of my previous weariness of office, and vague thoughts of resignation, my fortune somewhat resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and although beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered. in the custom-house, as before in the old manse, i had spent three years--a term long enough to rest a weary brain: long enough to break off old intellectual habits, and make room for new ones: long enough, and too long, to have lived in an unnatural state, doing what was really of no advantage nor delight to any human being, and withholding myself from toil that would, at least, have stilled an unquiet impulse in me. then, moreover, as regarded his unceremonious ejectment, the late surveyor was not altogether ill-pleased to be recognised by the whigs as an enemy; since his inactivity in political affairs--his tendency to roam, at will, in that broad and quiet field where all mankind may meet, rather than confine himself to those narrow paths where brethren of the same household must diverge from one another--had sometimes made it questionable with his brother democrats whether he was a friend. now, after he had won the crown of martyrdom (though with no longer a head to wear it on), the point might be looked upon as settled. finally, little heroic as he was, it seemed more decorous to be overthrown in the downfall of the party with which he had been content to stand than to remain a forlorn survivor, when so many worthier men were falling: and at last, after subsisting for four years on the mercy of a hostile administration, to be compelled then to define his position anew, and claim the yet more humiliating mercy of a friendly one. meanwhile, the press had taken up my affair, and kept me for a week or two careering through the public prints, in my decapitated state, like irving's headless horseman, ghastly and grim, and longing to be buried, as a political dead man ought. so much for my figurative self. the real human being all this time, with his head safely on his shoulders, had brought himself to the comfortable conclusion that everything was for the best; and making an investment in ink, paper, and steel pens, had opened his long-disused writing desk, and was again a literary man. now it was that the lucubrations of my ancient predecessor, mr. surveyor pue, came into play. rusty through long idleness, some little space was requisite before my intellectual machinery could be brought to work upon the tale with an effect in any degree satisfactory. even yet, though my thoughts were ultimately much absorbed in the task, it wears, to my eye, a stern and sombre aspect: too much ungladdened by genial sunshine; too little relieved by the tender and familiar influences which soften almost every scene of nature and real life, and undoubtedly should soften every picture of them. this uncaptivating effect is perhaps due to the period of hardly accomplished revolution, and still seething turmoil, in which the story shaped itself. it is no indication, however, of a lack of cheerfulness in the writer's mind: for he was happier while straying through the gloom of these sunless fantasies than at any time since he had quitted the old manse. some of the briefer articles, which contribute to make up the volume, have likewise been written since my involuntary withdrawal from the toils and honours of public life, and the remainder are gleaned from annuals and magazines, of such antique date, that they have gone round the circle, and come back to novelty again. keeping up the metaphor of the political guillotine, the whole may be considered as the posthumous papers of a decapitated surveyor: and the sketch which i am now bringing to a close, if too autobiographical for a modest person to publish in his lifetime, will readily be excused in a gentleman who writes from beyond the grave. peace be with all the world! my blessing on my friends! my forgiveness to my enemies! for i am in the realm of quiet! the life of the custom-house lies like a dream behind me. the old inspector--who, by-the-bye, i regret to say, was overthrown and killed by a horse some time ago, else he would certainly have lived for ever--he, and all those other venerable personages who sat with him at the receipt of custom, are but shadows in my view: white-headed and wrinkled images, which my fancy used to sport with, and has now flung aside for ever. the merchants--pingree, phillips, shepard, upton, kimball, bertram, hunt--these and many other names, which had such classic familiarity for my ear six months ago,--these men of traffic, who seemed to occupy so important a position in the world--how little time has it required to disconnect me from them all, not merely in act, but recollection! it is with an effort that i recall the figures and appellations of these few. soon, likewise, my old native town will loom upon me through the haze of memory, a mist brooding over and around it; as if it were no portion of the real earth, but an overgrown village in cloud-land, with only imaginary inhabitants to people its wooden houses and walk its homely lanes, and the unpicturesque prolixity of its main street. henceforth it ceases to be a reality of my life; i am a citizen of somewhere else. my good townspeople will not much regret me, for--though it has been as dear an object as any, in my literary efforts, to be of some importance in their eyes, and to win myself a pleasant memory in this abode and burial-place of so many of my forefathers--there has never been, for me, the genial atmosphere which a literary man requires in order to ripen the best harvest of his mind. i shall do better amongst other faces; and these familiar ones, it need hardly be said, will do just as well without me. it may be, however--oh, transporting and triumphant thought--that the great-grandchildren of the present race may sometimes think kindly of the scribbler of bygone days, when the antiquary of days to come, among the sites memorable in the town's history, shall point out the locality of the town pump. the scarlet letter i. the prison door a throng of bearded men, in sad-coloured garments and grey steeple-crowned hats, inter-mixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes. the founders of a new colony, whatever utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognised it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison. in accordance with this rule it may safely be assumed that the forefathers of boston had built the first prison-house somewhere in the vicinity of cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground, on isaac johnson's lot, and round about his grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres in the old churchyard of king's chapel. certain it is that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. the rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the new world. like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era. before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-pern, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilised society, a prison. but on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of june, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of nature could pity and be kind to him. this rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in history; but whether it had merely survived out of the stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks that originally overshadowed it, or whether, as there is fair authority for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted ann hutchinson as she entered the prison-door, we shall not take upon us to determine. finding it so directly on the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers, and present it to the reader. it may serve, let us hope, to symbolise some sweet moral blossom that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow. ii. the market-place the grass-plot before the jail, in prison lane, on a certain summer morning, not less than two centuries ago, was occupied by a pretty large number of the inhabitants of boston, all with their eyes intently fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door. amongst any other population, or at a later period in the history of new england, the grim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these good people would have augured some awful business in hand. it could have betokened nothing short of the anticipated execution of some noted culprit, on whom the sentence of a legal tribunal had but confirmed the verdict of public sentiment. but, in that early severity of the puritan character, an inference of this kind could not so indubitably be drawn. it might be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an undutiful child, whom his parents had given over to the civil authority, was to be corrected at the whipping-post. it might be that an antinomian, a quaker, or other heterodox religionist, was to be scourged out of the town, or an idle or vagrant indian, whom the white man's firewater had made riotous about the streets, was to be driven with stripes into the shadow of the forest. it might be, too, that a witch, like old mistress hibbins, the bitter-tempered widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the gallows. in either case, there was very much the same solemnity of demeanour on the part of the spectators, as befitted a people among whom religion and law were almost identical, and in whose character both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable and awful. meagre, indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold. on the other hand, a penalty which, in our days, would infer a degree of mocking infamy and ridicule, might then be invested with almost as stern a dignity as the punishment of death itself. it was a circumstance to be noted on the summer morning when our story begins its course, that the women, of whom there were several in the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in whatever penal infliction might be expected to ensue. the age had not so much refinement, that any sense of impropriety restrained the wearers of petticoat and farthingale from stepping forth into the public ways, and wedging their not unsubstantial persons, if occasion were, into the throng nearest to the scaffold at an execution. morally, as well as materially, there was a coarser fibre in those wives and maidens of old english birth and breeding than in their fair descendants, separated from them by a series of six or seven generations; for, throughout that chain of ancestry, every successive mother had transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer beauty, and a slighter physical frame, if not character of less force and solidity than her own. the women who were now standing about the prison-door stood within less than half a century of the period when the man-like elizabeth had been the not altogether unsuitable representative of the sex. they were her countrywomen: and the beef and ale of their native land, with a moral diet not a whit more refined, entered largely into their composition. the bright morning sun, therefore, shone on broad shoulders and well-developed busts, and on round and ruddy cheeks, that had ripened in the far-off island, and had hardly yet grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere of new england. there was, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speech among these matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would startle us at the present day, whether in respect to its purport or its volume of tone. "goodwives," said a hard-featured dame of fifty, "i'll tell ye a piece of my mind. it would be greatly for the public behoof if we women, being of mature age and church-members in good repute, should have the handling of such malefactresses as this hester prynne. what think ye, gossips? if the hussy stood up for judgment before us five, that are now here in a knot together, would she come off with such a sentence as the worshipful magistrates have awarded? marry, i trow not." "people say," said another, "that the reverend master dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart that such a scandal should have come upon his congregation." "the magistrates are god-fearing gentlemen, but merciful overmuch--that is a truth," added a third autumnal matron. "at the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on hester prynne's forehead. madame hester would have winced at that, i warrant me. but she--the naughty baggage--little will she care what they put upon the bodice of her gown! why, look you, she may cover it with a brooch, or such like heathenish adornment, and so walk the streets as brave as ever!" "ah, but," interposed, more softly, a young wife, holding a child by the hand, "let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart." "what do we talk of marks and brands, whether on the bodice of her gown or the flesh of her forehead?" cried another female, the ugliest as well as the most pitiless of these self-constituted judges. "this woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die; is there not law for it? truly there is, both in the scripture and the statute-book. then let the magistrates, who have made it of no effect, thank themselves if their own wives and daughters go astray." "mercy on us, goodwife!" exclaimed a man in the crowd, "is there no virtue in woman, save what springs from a wholesome fear of the gallows? that is the hardest word yet! hush now, gossips for the lock is turning in the prison-door, and here comes mistress prynne herself." the door of the jail being flung open from within there appeared, in the first place, like a black shadow emerging into sunshine, the grim and grisly presence of the town-beadle, with a sword by his side, and his staff of office in his hand. this personage prefigured and represented in his aspect the whole dismal severity of the puritanic code of law, which it was his business to administer in its final and closest application to the offender. stretching forth the official staff in his left hand, he laid his right upon the shoulder of a young woman, whom he thus drew forward, until, on the threshold of the prison-door, she repelled him, by an action marked with natural dignity and force of character, and stepped into the open air as if by her own free will. she bore in her arms a child, a baby of some three months old, who winked and turned aside its little face from the too vivid light of day; because its existence, heretofore, had brought it acquaintance only with the grey twilight of a dungeon, or other darksome apartment of the prison. when the young woman--the mother of this child--stood fully revealed before the crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to clasp the infant closely to her bosom; not so much by an impulse of motherly affection, as that she might thereby conceal a certain token, which was wrought or fastened into her dress. in a moment, however, wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her arm, and with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed, looked around at her townspeople and neighbours. on the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter a. it was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore, and which was of a splendour in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony. the young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. she had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam; and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes. she was ladylike, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days; characterised by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace which is now recognised as its indication. and never had hester prynne appeared more ladylike, in the antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the prison. those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped. it may be true that, to a sensitive observer, there was some thing exquisitely painful in it. her attire, which indeed, she had wrought for the occasion in prison, and had modelled much after her own fancy, seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and picturesque peculiarity. but the point which drew all eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer--so that both men and women who had been familiarly acquainted with hester prynne were now impressed as if they beheld her for the first time--was that scarlet letter, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. it had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself. "she hath good skill at her needle, that's certain," remarked one of her female spectators; "but did ever a woman, before this brazen hussy, contrive such a way of showing it? why, gossips, what is it but to laugh in the faces of our godly magistrates, and make a pride out of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a punishment?" "it were well," muttered the most iron-visaged of the old dames, "if we stripped madame hester's rich gown off her dainty shoulders; and as for the red letter which she hath stitched so curiously, i'll bestow a rag of mine own rheumatic flannel to make a fitter one!" "oh, peace, neighbours--peace!" whispered their youngest companion; "do not let her hear you! not a stitch in that embroidered letter but she has felt it in her heart." the grim beadle now made a gesture with his staff. "make way, good people--make way, in the king's name!" cried he. "open a passage; and i promise ye, mistress prynne shall be set where man, woman, and child may have a fair sight of her brave apparel from this time till an hour past meridian. a blessing on the righteous colony of the massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine! come along, madame hester, and show your scarlet letter in the market-place!" a lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of spectators. preceded by the beadle, and attended by an irregular procession of stern-browed men and unkindly visaged women, hester prynne set forth towards the place appointed for her punishment. a crowd of eager and curious schoolboys, understanding little of the matter in hand, except that it gave them a half-holiday, ran before her progress, turning their heads continually to stare into her face and at the winking baby in her arms, and at the ignominious letter on her breast. it was no great distance, in those days, from the prison door to the market-place. measured by the prisoner's experience, however, it might be reckoned a journey of some length; for haughty as her demeanour was, she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung into the street for them all to spurn and trample upon. in our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvellous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it. with almost a serene deportment, therefore, hester prynne passed through this portion of her ordeal, and came to a sort of scaffold, at the western extremity of the market-place. it stood nearly beneath the eaves of boston's earliest church, and appeared to be a fixture there. in fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine, which now, for two or three generations past, has been merely historical and traditionary among us, but was held, in the old time, to be as effectual an agent, in the promotion of good citizenship, as ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of france. it was, in short, the platform of the pillory; and above it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline, so fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up to the public gaze. the very ideal of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron. there can be no outrage, methinks, against our common nature--whatever be the delinquencies of the individual--no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame; as it was the essence of this punishment to do. in hester prynne's instance, however, as not unfrequently in other cases, her sentence bore that she should stand a certain time upon the platform, but without undergoing that gripe about the neck and confinement of the head, the proneness to which was the most devilish characteristic of this ugly engine. knowing well her part, she ascended a flight of wooden steps, and was thus displayed to the surrounding multitude, at about the height of a man's shoulders above the street. had there been a papist among the crowd of puritans, he might have seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind him of the image of divine maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied with one another to represent; something which should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world. here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost for the infant that she had borne. the scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow-creature, before society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering at it. the witnesses of hester prynne's disgrace had not yet passed beyond their simplicity. they were stern enough to look upon her death, had that been the sentence, without a murmur at its severity, but had none of the heartlessness of another social state, which would find only a theme for jest in an exhibition like the present. even had there been a disposition to turn the matter into ridicule, it must have been repressed and overpowered by the solemn presence of men no less dignified than the governor, and several of his counsellors, a judge, a general, and the ministers of the town, all of whom sat or stood in a balcony of the meeting-house, looking down upon the platform. when such personages could constitute a part of the spectacle, without risking the majesty, or reverence of rank and office, it was safely to be inferred that the infliction of a legal sentence would have an earnest and effectual meaning. accordingly, the crowd was sombre and grave. the unhappy culprit sustained herself as best a woman might, under the heavy weight of a thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her, and concentrated at her bosom. it was almost intolerable to be borne. of an impulsive and passionate nature, she had fortified herself to encounter the stings and venomous stabs of public contumely, wreaking itself in every variety of insult; but there was a quality so much more terrible in the solemn mood of the popular mind, that she longed rather to behold all those rigid countenances contorted with scornful merriment, and herself the object. had a roar of laughter burst from the multitude--each man, each woman, each little shrill-voiced child, contributing their individual parts--hester prynne might have repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful smile. but, under the leaden infliction which it was her doom to endure, she felt, at moments, as if she must needs shriek out with the full power of her lungs, and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the ground, or else go mad at once. yet there were intervals when the whole scene, in which she was the most conspicuous object, seemed to vanish from her eyes, or, at least, glimmered indistinctly before them, like a mass of imperfectly shaped and spectral images. her mind, and especially her memory, was preternaturally active, and kept bringing up other scenes than this roughly hewn street of a little town, on the edge of the western wilderness: other faces than were lowering upon her from beneath the brims of those steeple-crowned hats. reminiscences, the most trifling and immaterial, passages of infancy and school-days, sports, childish quarrels, and the little domestic traits of her maiden years, came swarming back upon her, intermingled with recollections of whatever was gravest in her subsequent life; one picture precisely as vivid as another; as if all were of similar importance, or all alike a play. possibly, it was an instinctive device of her spirit to relieve itself by the exhibition of these phantasmagoric forms, from the cruel weight and hardness of the reality. be that as it might, the scaffold of the pillory was a point of view that revealed to hester prynne the entire track along which she had been treading, since her happy infancy. standing on that miserable eminence, she saw again her native village, in old england, and her paternal home: a decayed house of grey stone, with a poverty-stricken aspect, but retaining a half obliterated shield of arms over the portal, in token of antique gentility. she saw her father's face, with its bold brow, and reverend white beard that flowed over the old-fashioned elizabethan ruff; her mother's, too, with the look of heedful and anxious love which it always wore in her remembrance, and which, even since her death, had so often laid the impediment of a gentle remonstrance in her daughter's pathway. she saw her own face, glowing with girlish beauty, and illuminating all the interior of the dusky mirror in which she had been wont to gaze at it. there she beheld another countenance, of a man well stricken in years, a pale, thin, scholar-like visage, with eyes dim and bleared by the lamp-light that had served them to pore over many ponderous books. yet those same bleared optics had a strange, penetrating power, when it was their owner's purpose to read the human soul. this figure of the study and the cloister, as hester prynne's womanly fancy failed not to recall, was slightly deformed, with the left shoulder a trifle higher than the right. next rose before her in memory's picture-gallery, the intricate and narrow thoroughfares, the tall, grey houses, the huge cathedrals, and the public edifices, ancient in date and quaint in architecture, of a continental city; where new life had awaited her, still in connexion with the misshapen scholar: a new life, but feeding itself on time-worn materials, like a tuft of green moss on a crumbling wall. lastly, in lieu of these shifting scenes, came back the rude market-place of the puritan settlement, with all the townspeople assembled, and levelling their stern regards at hester prynne--yes, at herself--who stood on the scaffold of the pillory, an infant on her arm, and the letter a, in scarlet, fantastically embroidered with gold thread, upon her bosom. could it be true? she clutched the child so fiercely to her breast that it sent forth a cry; she turned her eyes downward at the scarlet letter, and even touched it with her finger, to assure herself that the infant and the shame were real. yes these were her realities--all else had vanished! iii. the recognition from this intense consciousness of being the object of severe and universal observation, the wearer of the scarlet letter was at length relieved, by discerning, on the outskirts of the crowd, a figure which irresistibly took possession of her thoughts. an indian in his native garb was standing there; but the red men were not so infrequent visitors of the english settlements that one of them would have attracted any notice from hester prynne at such a time; much less would he have excluded all other objects and ideas from her mind. by the indian's side, and evidently sustaining a companionship with him, stood a white man, clad in a strange disarray of civilized and savage costume. he was small in stature, with a furrowed visage, which as yet could hardly be termed aged. there was a remarkable intelligence in his features, as of a person who had so cultivated his mental part that it could not fail to mould the physical to itself and become manifest by unmistakable tokens. although, by a seemingly careless arrangement of his heterogeneous garb, he had endeavoured to conceal or abate the peculiarity, it was sufficiently evident to hester prynne that one of this man's shoulders rose higher than the other. again, at the first instant of perceiving that thin visage, and the slight deformity of the figure, she pressed her infant to her bosom with so convulsive a force that the poor babe uttered another cry of pain. but the mother did not seem to hear it. at his arrival in the market-place, and some time before she saw him, the stranger had bent his eyes on hester prynne. it was carelessly at first, like a man chiefly accustomed to look inward, and to whom external matters are of little value and import, unless they bear relation to something within his mind. very soon, however, his look became keen and penetrative. a writhing horror twisted itself across his features, like a snake gliding swiftly over them, and making one little pause, with all its wreathed intervolutions in open sight. his face darkened with some powerful emotion, which, nevertheless, he so instantaneously controlled by an effort of his will, that, save at a single moment, its expression might have passed for calmness. after a brief space, the convulsion grew almost imperceptible, and finally subsided into the depths of his nature. when he found the eyes of hester prynne fastened on his own, and saw that she appeared to recognize him, he slowly and calmly raised his finger, made a gesture with it in the air, and laid it on his lips. then touching the shoulder of a townsman who stood near to him, he addressed him in a formal and courteous manner: "i pray you, good sir," said he, "who is this woman?--and wherefore is she here set up to public shame?" "you must needs be a stranger in this region, friend," answered the townsman, looking curiously at the questioner and his savage companion, "else you would surely have heard of mistress hester prynne and her evil doings. she hath raised a great scandal, i promise you, in godly master dimmesdale's church." "you say truly," replied the other; "i am a stranger, and have been a wanderer, sorely against my will. i have met with grievous mishaps by sea and land, and have been long held in bonds among the heathen-folk to the southward; and am now brought hither by this indian to be redeemed out of my captivity. will it please you, therefore, to tell me of hester prynne's--have i her name rightly?--of this woman's offences, and what has brought her to yonder scaffold?" "truly, friend; and methinks it must gladden your heart, after your troubles and sojourn in the wilderness," said the townsman, "to find yourself at length in a land where iniquity is searched out and punished in the sight of rulers and people, as here in our godly new england. yonder woman, sir, you must know, was the wife of a certain learned man, english by birth, but who had long ago dwelt in amsterdam, whence some good time agone he was minded to cross over and cast in his lot with us of the massachusetts. to this purpose he sent his wife before him, remaining himself to look after some necessary affairs. marry, good sir, in some two years, or less, that the woman has been a dweller here in boston, no tidings have come of this learned gentleman, master prynne; and his young wife, look you, being left to her own misguidance--" "ah!--aha!--i conceive you," said the stranger with a bitter smile. "so learned a man as you speak of should have learned this too in his books. and who, by your favour, sir, may be the father of yonder babe--it is some three or four months old, i should judge--which mistress prynne is holding in her arms?" "of a truth, friend, that matter remaineth a riddle; and the daniel who shall expound it is yet a-wanting," answered the townsman. "madame hester absolutely refuseth to speak, and the magistrates have laid their heads together in vain. peradventure the guilty one stands looking on at this sad spectacle, unknown of man, and forgetting that god sees him." "the learned man," observed the stranger with another smile, "should come himself to look into the mystery." "it behoves him well if he be still in life," responded the townsman. "now, good sir, our massachusetts magistracy, bethinking themselves that this woman is youthful and fair, and doubtless was strongly tempted to her fall, and that, moreover, as is most likely, her husband may be at the bottom of the sea, they have not been bold to put in force the extremity of our righteous law against her. the penalty thereof is death. but in their great mercy and tenderness of heart they have doomed mistress prynne to stand only a space of three hours on the platform of the pillory, and then and thereafter, for the remainder of her natural life to wear a mark of shame upon her bosom." "a wise sentence," remarked the stranger, gravely, bowing his head. "thus she will be a living sermon against sin, until the ignominious letter be engraved upon her tombstone. it irks me, nevertheless, that the partner of her iniquity should not at least, stand on the scaffold by her side. but he will be known--he will be known!--he will be known!" he bowed courteously to the communicative townsman, and whispering a few words to his indian attendant, they both made their way through the crowd. while this passed, hester prynne had been standing on her pedestal, still with a fixed gaze towards the stranger--so fixed a gaze that, at moments of intense absorption, all other objects in the visible world seemed to vanish, leaving only him and her. such an interview, perhaps, would have been more terrible than even to meet him as she now did, with the hot mid-day sun burning down upon her face, and lighting up its shame; with the scarlet token of infamy on her breast; with the sin-born infant in her arms; with a whole people, drawn forth as to a festival, staring at the features that should have been seen only in the quiet gleam of the fireside, in the happy shadow of a home, or beneath a matronly veil at church. dreadful as it was, she was conscious of a shelter in the presence of these thousand witnesses. it was better to stand thus, with so many betwixt him and her, than to greet him face to face--they two alone. she fled for refuge, as it were, to the public exposure, and dreaded the moment when its protection should be withdrawn from her. involved in these thoughts, she scarcely heard a voice behind her until it had repeated her name more than once, in a loud and solemn tone, audible to the whole multitude. "hearken unto me, hester prynne!" said the voice. it has already been noticed that directly over the platform on which hester prynne stood was a kind of balcony, or open gallery, appended to the meeting-house. it was the place whence proclamations were wont to be made, amidst an assemblage of the magistracy, with all the ceremonial that attended such public observances in those days. here, to witness the scene which we are describing, sat governor bellingham himself with four sergeants about his chair, bearing halberds, as a guard of honour. he wore a dark feather in his hat, a border of embroidery on his cloak, and a black velvet tunic beneath--a gentleman advanced in years, with a hard experience written in his wrinkles. he was not ill-fitted to be the head and representative of a community which owed its origin and progress, and its present state of development, not to the impulses of youth, but to the stern and tempered energies of manhood and the sombre sagacity of age; accomplishing so much, precisely because it imagined and hoped so little. the other eminent characters by whom the chief ruler was surrounded were distinguished by a dignity of mien, belonging to a period when the forms of authority were felt to possess the sacredness of divine institutions. they were, doubtless, good men, just and sage. but, out of the whole human family, it would not have been easy to select the same number of wise and virtuous persons, who should be less capable of sitting in judgment on an erring woman's heart, and disentangling its mesh of good and evil, than the sages of rigid aspect towards whom hester prynne now turned her face. she seemed conscious, indeed, that whatever sympathy she might expect lay in the larger and warmer heart of the multitude; for, as she lifted her eyes towards the balcony, the unhappy woman grew pale, and trembled. the voice which had called her attention was that of the reverend and famous john wilson, the eldest clergyman of boston, a great scholar, like most of his contemporaries in the profession, and withal a man of kind and genial spirit. this last attribute, however, had been less carefully developed than his intellectual gifts, and was, in truth, rather a matter of shame than self-congratulation with him. there he stood, with a border of grizzled locks beneath his skull-cap, while his grey eyes, accustomed to the shaded light of his study, were winking, like those of hester's infant, in the unadulterated sunshine. he looked like the darkly engraved portraits which we see prefixed to old volumes of sermons, and had no more right than one of those portraits would have to step forth, as he now did, and meddle with a question of human guilt, passion, and anguish. "hester prynne," said the clergyman, "i have striven with my young brother here, under whose preaching of the word you have been privileged to sit"--here mr. wilson laid his hand on the shoulder of a pale young man beside him--"i have sought, i say, to persuade this godly youth, that he should deal with you, here in the face of heaven, and before these wise and upright rulers, and in hearing of all the people, as touching the vileness and blackness of your sin. knowing your natural temper better than i, he could the better judge what arguments to use, whether of tenderness or terror, such as might prevail over your hardness and obstinacy, insomuch that you should no longer hide the name of him who tempted you to this grievous fall. but he opposes to me--with a young man's over-softness, albeit wise beyond his years--that it were wronging the very nature of woman to force her to lay open her heart's secrets in such broad daylight, and in presence of so great a multitude. truly, as i sought to convince him, the shame lay in the commission of the sin, and not in the showing of it forth. what say you to it, once again, brother dimmesdale? must it be thou, or i, that shall deal with this poor sinner's soul?" there was a murmur among the dignified and reverend occupants of the balcony; and governor bellingham gave expression to its purport, speaking in an authoritative voice, although tempered with respect towards the youthful clergyman whom he addressed: "good master dimmesdale," said he, "the responsibility of this woman's soul lies greatly with you. it behoves you; therefore, to exhort her to repentance and to confession, as a proof and consequence thereof." the directness of this appeal drew the eyes of the whole crowd upon the reverend mr. dimmesdale--young clergyman, who had come from one of the great english universities, bringing all the learning of the age into our wild forest land. his eloquence and religious fervour had already given the earnest of high eminence in his profession. he was a person of very striking aspect, with a white, lofty, and impending brow; large, brown, melancholy eyes, and a mouth which, unless when he forcibly compressed it, was apt to be tremulous, expressing both nervous sensibility and a vast power of self restraint. notwithstanding his high native gifts and scholar-like attainments, there was an air about this young minister--an apprehensive, a startled, a half-frightened look--as of a being who felt himself quite astray, and at a loss in the pathway of human existence, and could only be at ease in some seclusion of his own. therefore, so far as his duties would permit, he trod in the shadowy by-paths, and thus kept himself simple and childlike, coming forth, when occasion was, with a freshness, and fragrance, and dewy purity of thought, which, as many people said, affected them like the speech of an angel. such was the young man whom the reverend mr. wilson and the governor had introduced so openly to the public notice, bidding him speak, in the hearing of all men, to that mystery of a woman's soul, so sacred even in its pollution. the trying nature of his position drove the blood from his cheek, and made his lips tremulous. "speak to the woman, my brother," said mr. wilson. "it is of moment to her soul, and, therefore, as the worshipful governor says, momentous to thine own, in whose charge hers is. exhort her to confess the truth!" the reverend mr. dimmesdale bent his head, in silent prayer, as it seemed, and then came forward. "hester prynne," said he, leaning over the balcony and looking down steadfastly into her eyes, "thou hearest what this good man says, and seest the accountability under which i labour. if thou feelest it to be for thy soul's peace, and that thy earthly punishment will thereby be made more effectual to salvation, i charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer! be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so than to hide a guilty heart through life. what can thy silence do for him, except it tempt him--yea, compel him, as it were--to add hypocrisy to sin? heaven hath granted thee an open ignominy, that thereby thou mayest work out an open triumph over the evil within thee and the sorrow without. take heed how thou deniest to him--who, perchance, hath not the courage to grasp it for himself--the bitter, but wholesome, cup that is now presented to thy lips!" the young pastor's voice was tremulously sweet, rich, deep, and broken. the feeling that it so evidently manifested, rather than the direct purport of the words, caused it to vibrate within all hearts, and brought the listeners into one accord of sympathy. even the poor baby at hester's bosom was affected by the same influence, for it directed its hitherto vacant gaze towards mr. dimmesdale, and held up its little arms with a half-pleased, half-plaintive murmur. so powerful seemed the minister's appeal that the people could not believe but that hester prynne would speak out the guilty name, or else that the guilty one himself in whatever high or lowly place he stood, would be drawn forth by an inward and inevitable necessity, and compelled to ascend the scaffold. hester shook her head. "woman, transgress not beyond the limits of heaven's mercy!" cried the reverend mr. wilson, more harshly than before. "that little babe hath been gifted with a voice, to second and confirm the counsel which thou hast heard. speak out the name! that, and thy repentance, may avail to take the scarlet letter off thy breast." "never," replied hester prynne, looking, not at mr. wilson, but into the deep and troubled eyes of the younger clergyman. "it is too deeply branded. ye cannot take it off. and would that i might endure his agony as well as mine!" "speak, woman!" said another voice, coldly and sternly, proceeding from the crowd about the scaffold, "speak; and give your child a father!" "i will not speak!" answered hester, turning pale as death, but responding to this voice, which she too surely recognised. "and my child must seek a heavenly father; she shall never know an earthly one!" "she will not speak!" murmured mr. dimmesdale, who, leaning over the balcony, with his hand upon his heart, had awaited the result of his appeal. he now drew back with a long respiration. "wondrous strength and generosity of a woman's heart! she will not speak!" discerning the impracticable state of the poor culprit's mind, the elder clergyman, who had carefully prepared himself for the occasion, addressed to the multitude a discourse on sin, in all its branches, but with continual reference to the ignominious letter. so forcibly did he dwell upon this symbol, for the hour or more during which his periods were rolling over the people's heads, that it assumed new terrors in their imagination, and seemed to derive its scarlet hue from the flames of the infernal pit. hester prynne, meanwhile, kept her place upon the pedestal of shame, with glazed eyes, and an air of weary indifference. she had borne that morning all that nature could endure; and as her temperament was not of the order that escapes from too intense suffering by a swoon, her spirit could only shelter itself beneath a stony crust of insensibility, while the faculties of animal life remained entire. in this state, the voice of the preacher thundered remorselessly, but unavailingly, upon her ears. the infant, during the latter portion of her ordeal, pierced the air with its wailings and screams; she strove to hush it mechanically, but seemed scarcely to sympathise with its trouble. with the same hard demeanour, she was led back to prison, and vanished from the public gaze within its iron-clamped portal. it was whispered by those who peered after her that the scarlet letter threw a lurid gleam along the dark passage-way of the interior. iv. the interview after her return to the prison, hester prynne was found to be in a state of nervous excitement, that demanded constant watchfulness, lest she should perpetrate violence on herself, or do some half-frenzied mischief to the poor babe. as night approached, it proving impossible to quell her insubordination by rebuke or threats of punishment, master brackett, the jailer, thought fit to introduce a physician. he described him as a man of skill in all christian modes of physical science, and likewise familiar with whatever the savage people could teach in respect to medicinal herbs and roots that grew in the forest. to say the truth, there was much need of professional assistance, not merely for hester herself, but still more urgently for the child--who, drawing its sustenance from the maternal bosom, seemed to have drank in with it all the turmoil, the anguish and despair, which pervaded the mother's system. it now writhed in convulsions of pain, and was a forcible type, in its little frame, of the moral agony which hester prynne had borne throughout the day. closely following the jailer into the dismal apartment, appeared that individual, of singular aspect whose presence in the crowd had been of such deep interest to the wearer of the scarlet letter. he was lodged in the prison, not as suspected of any offence, but as the most convenient and suitable mode of disposing of him, until the magistrates should have conferred with the indian sagamores respecting his ransom. his name was announced as roger chillingworth. the jailer, after ushering him into the room, remained a moment, marvelling at the comparative quiet that followed his entrance; for hester prynne had immediately become as still as death, although the child continued to moan. "prithee, friend, leave me alone with my patient," said the practitioner. "trust me, good jailer, you shall briefly have peace in your house; and, i promise you, mistress prynne shall hereafter be more amenable to just authority than you may have found her heretofore." "nay, if your worship can accomplish that," answered master brackett, "i shall own you for a man of skill, indeed! verily, the woman hath been like a possessed one; and there lacks little that i should take in hand, to drive satan out of her with stripes." the stranger had entered the room with the characteristic quietude of the profession to which he announced himself as belonging. nor did his demeanour change when the withdrawal of the prison keeper left him face to face with the woman, whose absorbed notice of him, in the crowd, had intimated so close a relation between himself and her. his first care was given to the child, whose cries, indeed, as she lay writhing on the trundle-bed, made it of peremptory necessity to postpone all other business to the task of soothing her. he examined the infant carefully, and then proceeded to unclasp a leathern case, which he took from beneath his dress. it appeared to contain medical preparations, one of which he mingled with a cup of water. "my old studies in alchemy," observed he, "and my sojourn, for above a year past, among a people well versed in the kindly properties of simples, have made a better physician of me than many that claim the medical degree. here, woman! the child is yours--she is none of mine--neither will she recognise my voice or aspect as a father's. administer this draught, therefore, with thine own hand." hester repelled the offered medicine, at the same time gazing with strongly marked apprehension into his face. "wouldst thou avenge thyself on the innocent babe?" whispered she. "foolish woman!" responded the physician, half coldly, half soothingly. "what should ail me to harm this misbegotten and miserable babe? the medicine is potent for good, and were it my child--yea, mine own, as well as thine! i could do no better for it." as she still hesitated, being, in fact, in no reasonable state of mind, he took the infant in his arms, and himself administered the draught. it soon proved its efficacy, and redeemed the leech's pledge. the moans of the little patient subsided; its convulsive tossings gradually ceased; and in a few moments, as is the custom of young children after relief from pain, it sank into a profound and dewy slumber. the physician, as he had a fair right to be termed, next bestowed his attention on the mother. with calm and intent scrutiny, he felt her pulse, looked into her eyes--a gaze that made her heart shrink and shudder, because so familiar, and yet so strange and cold--and, finally, satisfied with his investigation, proceeded to mingle another draught. "i know not lethe nor nepenthe," remarked he; "but i have learned many new secrets in the wilderness, and here is one of them--a recipe that an indian taught me, in requital of some lessons of my own, that were as old as paracelsus. drink it! it may be less soothing than a sinless conscience. that i cannot give thee. but it will calm the swell and heaving of thy passion, like oil thrown on the waves of a tempestuous sea." he presented the cup to hester, who received it with a slow, earnest look into his face; not precisely a look of fear, yet full of doubt and questioning as to what his purposes might be. she looked also at her slumbering child. "i have thought of death," said she--"have wished for it--would even have prayed for it, were it fit that such as i should pray for anything. yet, if death be in this cup, i bid thee think again, ere thou beholdest me quaff it. see! it is even now at my lips." "drink, then," replied he, still with the same cold composure. "dost thou know me so little, hester prynne? are my purposes wont to be so shallow? even if i imagine a scheme of vengeance, what could i do better for my object than to let thee live--than to give thee medicines against all harm and peril of life--so that this burning shame may still blaze upon thy bosom?" as he spoke, he laid his long fore-finger on the scarlet letter, which forthwith seemed to scorch into hester's breast, as if it had been red hot. he noticed her involuntary gesture, and smiled. "live, therefore, and bear about thy doom with thee, in the eyes of men and women--in the eyes of him whom thou didst call thy husband--in the eyes of yonder child! and, that thou mayest live, take off this draught." without further expostulation or delay, hester prynne drained the cup, and, at the motion of the man of skill, seated herself on the bed, where the child was sleeping; while he drew the only chair which the room afforded, and took his own seat beside her. she could not but tremble at these preparations; for she felt that--having now done all that humanity, or principle, or, if so it were, a refined cruelty, impelled him to do for the relief of physical suffering--he was next to treat with her as the man whom she had most deeply and irreparably injured. "hester," said he, "i ask not wherefore, nor how thou hast fallen into the pit, or say, rather, thou hast ascended to the pedestal of infamy on which i found thee. the reason is not far to seek. it was my folly, and thy weakness. i--a man of thought--the book-worm of great libraries--a man already in decay, having given my best years to feed the hungry dream of knowledge--what had i to do with youth and beauty like thine own? misshapen from my birth-hour, how could i delude myself with the idea that intellectual gifts might veil physical deformity in a young girl's fantasy? men call me wise. if sages were ever wise in their own behoof, i might have foreseen all this. i might have known that, as i came out of the vast and dismal forest, and entered this settlement of christian men, the very first object to meet my eyes would be thyself, hester prynne, standing up, a statue of ignominy, before the people. nay, from the moment when we came down the old church-steps together, a married pair, i might have beheld the bale-fire of that scarlet letter blazing at the end of our path!" "thou knowest," said hester--for, depressed as she was, she could not endure this last quiet stab at the token of her shame--"thou knowest that i was frank with thee. i felt no love, nor feigned any." "true," replied he. "it was my folly! i have said it. but, up to that epoch of my life, i had lived in vain. the world had been so cheerless! my heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire. i longed to kindle one! it seemed not so wild a dream--old as i was, and sombre as i was, and misshapen as i was--that the simple bliss, which is scattered far and wide, for all mankind to gather up, might yet be mine. and so, hester, i drew thee into my heart, into its innermost chamber, and sought to warm thee by the warmth which thy presence made there!" "i have greatly wronged thee," murmured hester. "we have wronged each other," answered he. "mine was the first wrong, when i betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay. therefore, as a man who has not thought and philosophised in vain, i seek no vengeance, plot no evil against thee. between thee and me, the scale hangs fairly balanced. but, hester, the man lives who has wronged us both! who is he?" "ask me not!" replied hester prynne, looking firmly into his face. "that thou shalt never know!" "never, sayest thou?" rejoined he, with a smile of dark and self-relying intelligence. "never know him! believe me, hester, there are few things whether in the outward world, or, to a certain depth, in the invisible sphere of thought--few things hidden from the man who devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly to the solution of a mystery. thou mayest cover up thy secret from the prying multitude. thou mayest conceal it, too, from the ministers and magistrates, even as thou didst this day, when they sought to wrench the name out of thy heart, and give thee a partner on thy pedestal. but, as for me, i come to the inquest with other senses than they possess. i shall seek this man, as i have sought truth in books: as i have sought gold in alchemy. there is a sympathy that will make me conscious of him. i shall see him tremble. i shall feel myself shudder, suddenly and unawares. sooner or later, he must needs be mine." the eyes of the wrinkled scholar glowed so intensely upon her, that hester prynne clasped her hand over her heart, dreading lest he should read the secret there at once. "thou wilt not reveal his name? not the less he is mine," resumed he, with a look of confidence, as if destiny were at one with him. "he bears no letter of infamy wrought into his garment, as thou dost, but i shall read it on his heart. yet fear not for him! think not that i shall interfere with heaven's own method of retribution, or, to my own loss, betray him to the gripe of human law. neither do thou imagine that i shall contrive aught against his life; no, nor against his fame, if as i judge, he be a man of fair repute. let him live! let him hide himself in outward honour, if he may! not the less he shall be mine!" "thy acts are like mercy," said hester, bewildered and appalled; "but thy words interpret thee as a terror!" "one thing, thou that wast my wife, i would enjoin upon thee," continued the scholar. "thou hast kept the secret of thy paramour. keep, likewise, mine! there are none in this land that know me. breathe not to any human soul that thou didst ever call me husband! here, on this wild outskirt of the earth, i shall pitch my tent; for, elsewhere a wanderer, and isolated from human interests, i find here a woman, a man, a child, amongst whom and myself there exist the closest ligaments. no matter whether of love or hate: no matter whether of right or wrong! thou and thine, hester prynne, belong to me. my home is where thou art and where he is. but betray me not!" "wherefore dost thou desire it?" inquired hester, shrinking, she hardly knew why, from this secret bond. "why not announce thyself openly, and cast me off at once?" "it may be," he replied, "because i will not encounter the dishonour that besmirches the husband of a faithless woman. it may be for other reasons. enough, it is my purpose to live and die unknown. let, therefore, thy husband be to the world as one already dead, and of whom no tidings shall ever come. recognise me not, by word, by sign, by look! breathe not the secret, above all, to the man thou wottest of. shouldst thou fail me in this, beware! his fame, his position, his life will be in my hands. beware!" "i will keep thy secret, as i have his," said hester. "swear it!" rejoined he. and she took the oath. "and now, mistress prynne," said old roger chillingworth, as he was hereafter to be named, "i leave thee alone: alone with thy infant and the scarlet letter! how is it, hester? doth thy sentence bind thee to wear the token in thy sleep? art thou not afraid of nightmares and hideous dreams?" "why dost thou smile so at me?" inquired hester, troubled at the expression of his eyes. "art thou like the black man that haunts the forest round about us? hast thou enticed me into a bond that will prove the ruin of my soul?" "not thy soul," he answered, with another smile. "no, not thine!" v. hester at her needle hester prynne's term of confinement was now at an end. her prison-door was thrown open, and she came forth into the sunshine, which, falling on all alike, seemed, to her sick and morbid heart, as if meant for no other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter on her breast. perhaps there was a more real torture in her first unattended footsteps from the threshold of the prison than even in the procession and spectacle that have been described, where she was made the common infamy, at which all mankind was summoned to point its finger. then, she was supported by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all the combative energy of her character, which enabled her to convert the scene into a kind of lurid triumph. it was, moreover, a separate and insulated event, to occur but once in her lifetime, and to meet which, therefore, reckless of economy, she might call up the vital strength that would have sufficed for many quiet years. the very law that condemned her--a giant of stern features but with vigour to support, as well as to annihilate, in his iron arm--had held her up through the terrible ordeal of her ignominy. but now, with this unattended walk from her prison door, began the daily custom; and she must either sustain and carry it forward by the ordinary resources of her nature, or sink beneath it. she could no longer borrow from the future to help her through the present grief. tomorrow would bring its own trial with it; so would the next day, and so would the next: each its own trial, and yet the very same that was now so unutterably grievous to be borne. the days of the far-off future would toil onward, still with the same burden for her to take up, and bear along with her, but never to fling down; for the accumulating days and added years would pile up their misery upon the heap of shame. throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast--at her, the child of honourable parents--at her, the mother of a babe that would hereafter be a woman--at her, who had once been innocent--as the figure, the body, the reality of sin. and over her grave, the infamy that she must carry thither would be her only monument. it may seem marvellous that, with the world before her--kept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of the puritan settlement, so remote and so obscure--free to return to her birth-place, or to any other european land, and there hide her character and identity under a new exterior, as completely as if emerging into another state of being--and having also the passes of the dark, inscrutable forest open to her, where the wildness of her nature might assimilate itself with a people whose customs and life were alien from the law that had condemned her--it may seem marvellous that this woman should still call that place her home, where, and where only, she must needs be the type of shame. but there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has given the colour to their lifetime; and, still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. her sin, her ignominy, were the roots which she had struck into the soil. it was as if a new birth, with stronger assimilations than the first, had converted the forest-land, still so uncongenial to every other pilgrim and wanderer, into hester prynne's wild and dreary, but life-long home. all other scenes of earth--even that village of rural england, where happy infancy and stainless maidenhood seemed yet to be in her mother's keeping, like garments put off long ago--were foreign to her, in comparison. the chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling to her inmost soul, but could never be broken. it might be, too--doubtless it was so, although she hid the secret from herself, and grew pale whenever it struggled out of her heart, like a serpent from its hole--it might be that another feeling kept her within the scene and pathway that had been so fatal. there dwelt, there trode, the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in a union that, unrecognised on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final judgment, and make that their marriage-altar, for a joint futurity of endless retribution. over and over again, the tempter of souls had thrust this idea upon hester's contemplation, and laughed at the passionate and desperate joy with which she seized, and then strove to cast it from her. she barely looked the idea in the face, and hastened to bar it in its dungeon. what she compelled herself to believe--what, finally, she reasoned upon as her motive for continuing a resident of new england--was half a truth, and half a self-delusion. here, she said to herself had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul, and work out another purity than that which she had lost: more saint-like, because the result of martyrdom. hester prynne, therefore, did not flee. on the outskirts of the town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close vicinity to any other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage. it had been built by an earlier settler, and abandoned, because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation, while its comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that social activity which already marked the habits of the emigrants. it stood on the shore, looking across a basin of the sea at the forest-covered hills, towards the west. a clump of scrubby trees, such as alone grew on the peninsula, did not so much conceal the cottage from view, as seem to denote that here was some object which would fain have been, or at least ought to be, concealed. in this little lonesome dwelling, with some slender means that she possessed, and by the licence of the magistrates, who still kept an inquisitorial watch over her, hester established herself, with her infant child. a mystic shadow of suspicion immediately attached itself to the spot. children, too young to comprehend wherefore this woman should be shut out from the sphere of human charities, would creep nigh enough to behold her plying her needle at the cottage-window, or standing in the doorway, or labouring in her little garden, or coming forth along the pathway that led townward, and, discerning the scarlet letter on her breast, would scamper off with a strange contagious fear. lonely as was hester's situation, and without a friend on earth who dared to show himself, she, however, incurred no risk of want. she possessed an art that sufficed, even in a land that afforded comparatively little scope for its exercise, to supply food for her thriving infant and herself. it was the art, then, as now, almost the only one within a woman's grasp--of needle-work. she bore on her breast, in the curiously embroidered letter, a specimen of her delicate and imaginative skill, of which the dames of a court might gladly have availed themselves, to add the richer and more spiritual adornment of human ingenuity to their fabrics of silk and gold. here, indeed, in the sable simplicity that generally characterised the puritanic modes of dress, there might be an infrequent call for the finer productions of her handiwork. yet the taste of the age, demanding whatever was elaborate in compositions of this kind, did not fail to extend its influence over our stern progenitors, who had cast behind them so many fashions which it might seem harder to dispense with. public ceremonies, such as ordinations, the installation of magistrates, and all that could give majesty to the forms in which a new government manifested itself to the people, were, as a matter of policy, marked by a stately and well-conducted ceremonial, and a sombre, but yet a studied magnificence. deep ruffs, painfully wrought bands, and gorgeously embroidered gloves, were all deemed necessary to the official state of men assuming the reins of power, and were readily allowed to individuals dignified by rank or wealth, even while sumptuary laws forbade these and similar extravagances to the plebeian order. in the array of funerals, too--whether for the apparel of the dead body, or to typify, by manifold emblematic devices of sable cloth and snowy lawn, the sorrow of the survivors--there was a frequent and characteristic demand for such labour as hester prynne could supply. baby-linen--for babies then wore robes of state--afforded still another possibility of toil and emolument. by degrees, not very slowly, her handiwork became what would now be termed the fashion. whether from commiseration for a woman of so miserable a destiny; or from the morbid curiosity that gives a fictitious value even to common or worthless things; or by whatever other intangible circumstance was then, as now, sufficient to bestow, on some persons, what others might seek in vain; or because hester really filled a gap which must otherwise have remained vacant; it is certain that she had ready and fairly requited employment for as many hours as she saw fit to occupy with her needle. vanity, it may be, chose to mortify itself, by putting on, for ceremonials of pomp and state, the garments that had been wrought by her sinful hands. her needle-work was seen on the ruff of the governor; military men wore it on their scarfs, and the minister on his band; it decked the baby's little cap; it was shut up, to be mildewed and moulder away, in the coffins of the dead. but it is not recorded that, in a single instance, her skill was called in to embroider the white veil which was to cover the pure blushes of a bride. the exception indicated the ever relentless vigour with which society frowned upon her sin. hester sought not to acquire anything beyond a subsistence, of the plainest and most ascetic description, for herself, and a simple abundance for her child. her own dress was of the coarsest materials and the most sombre hue, with only that one ornament--the scarlet letter--which it was her doom to wear. the child's attire, on the other hand, was distinguished by a fanciful, or, we may rather say, a fantastic ingenuity, which served, indeed, to heighten the airy charm that early began to develop itself in the little girl, but which appeared to have also a deeper meaning. we may speak further of it hereafter. except for that small expenditure in the decoration of her infant, hester bestowed all her superfluous means in charity, on wretches less miserable than herself, and who not unfrequently insulted the hand that fed them. much of the time, which she might readily have applied to the better efforts of her art, she employed in making coarse garments for the poor. it is probable that there was an idea of penance in this mode of occupation, and that she offered up a real sacrifice of enjoyment in devoting so many hours to such rude handiwork. she had in her nature a rich, voluptuous, oriental characteristic--a taste for the gorgeously beautiful, which, save in the exquisite productions of her needle, found nothing else, in all the possibilities of her life, to exercise itself upon. women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle. to hester prynne it might have been a mode of expressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of her life. like all other joys, she rejected it as sin. this morbid meddling of conscience with an immaterial matter betokened, it is to be feared, no genuine and steadfast penitence, but something doubtful, something that might be deeply wrong beneath. in this manner, hester prynne came to have a part to perform in the world. with her native energy of character and rare capacity, it could not entirely cast her off, although it had set a mark upon her, more intolerable to a woman's heart than that which branded the brow of cain. in all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it. every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished, and as much alone as if she inhabited another sphere, or communicated with the common nature by other organs and senses than the rest of human kind. she stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt; no more smile with the household joy, nor mourn with the kindred sorrow; or, should it succeed in manifesting its forbidden sympathy, awakening only terror and horrible repugnance. these emotions, in fact, and its bitterest scorn besides, seemed to be the sole portion that she retained in the universal heart. it was not an age of delicacy; and her position, although she understood it well, and was in little danger of forgetting it, was often brought before her vivid self-perception, like a new anguish, by the rudest touch upon the tenderest spot. the poor, as we have already said, whom she sought out to be the objects of her bounty, often reviled the hand that was stretched forth to succour them. dames of elevated rank, likewise, whose doors she entered in the way of her occupation, were accustomed to distil drops of bitterness into her heart; sometimes through that alchemy of quiet malice, by which women can concoct a subtle poison from ordinary trifles; and sometimes, also, by a coarser expression, that fell upon the sufferer's defenceless breast like a rough blow upon an ulcerated wound. hester had schooled herself long and well; and she never responded to these attacks, save by a flush of crimson that rose irrepressibly over her pale cheek, and again subsided into the depths of her bosom. she was patient--a martyr, indeed--but she forebore to pray for enemies, lest, in spite of her forgiving aspirations, the words of the blessing should stubbornly twist themselves into a curse. continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she feel the innumerable throbs of anguish that had been so cunningly contrived for her by the undying, the ever-active sentence of the puritan tribunal. clergymen paused in the streets, to address words of exhortation, that brought a crowd, with its mingled grin and frown, around the poor, sinful woman. if she entered a church, trusting to share the sabbath smile of the universal father, it was often her mishap to find herself the text of the discourse. she grew to have a dread of children; for they had imbibed from their parents a vague idea of something horrible in this dreary woman gliding silently through the town, with never any companion but one only child. therefore, first allowing her to pass, they pursued her at a distance with shrill cries, and the utterances of a word that had no distinct purport to their own minds, but was none the less terrible to her, as proceeding from lips that babbled it unconsciously. it seemed to argue so wide a diffusion of her shame, that all nature knew of it; it could have caused her no deeper pang had the leaves of the trees whispered the dark story among themselves--had the summer breeze murmured about it--had the wintry blast shrieked it aloud! another peculiar torture was felt in the gaze of a new eye. when strangers looked curiously at the scarlet letter--and none ever failed to do so--they branded it afresh in hester's soul; so that, oftentimes, she could scarcely refrain, yet always did refrain, from covering the symbol with her hand. but then, again, an accustomed eye had likewise its own anguish to inflict. its cool stare of familiarity was intolerable. from first to last, in short, hester prynne had always this dreadful agony in feeling a human eye upon the token; the spot never grew callous; it seemed, on the contrary, to grow more sensitive with daily torture. but sometimes, once in many days, or perchance in many months, she felt an eye--a human eye--upon the ignominious brand, that seemed to give a momentary relief, as if half of her agony were shared. the next instant, back it all rushed again, with still a deeper throb of pain; for, in that brief interval, she had sinned anew. (had hester sinned alone?) her imagination was somewhat affected, and, had she been of a softer moral and intellectual fibre would have been still more so, by the strange and solitary anguish of her life. walking to and fro, with those lonely footsteps, in the little world with which she was outwardly connected, it now and then appeared to hester--if altogether fancy, it was nevertheless too potent to be resisted--she felt or fancied, then, that the scarlet letter had endowed her with a new sense. she shuddered to believe, yet could not help believing, that it gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts. she was terror-stricken by the revelations that were thus made. what were they? could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman, as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides hester prynne's? or, must she receive those intimations--so obscure, yet so distinct--as truth? in all her miserable experience, there was nothing else so awful and so loathsome as this sense. it perplexed, as well as shocked her, by the irreverent inopportuneness of the occasions that brought it into vivid action. sometimes the red infamy upon her breast would give a sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable minister or magistrate, the model of piety and justice, to whom that age of antique reverence looked up, as to a mortal man in fellowship with angels. "what evil thing is at hand?" would hester say to herself. lifting her reluctant eyes, there would be nothing human within the scope of view, save the form of this earthly saint! again a mystic sisterhood would contumaciously assert itself, as she met the sanctified frown of some matron, who, according to the rumour of all tongues, had kept cold snow within her bosom throughout life. that unsunned snow in the matron's bosom, and the burning shame on hester prynne's--what had the two in common? or, once more, the electric thrill would give her warning--"behold hester, here is a companion!" and, looking up, she would detect the eyes of a young maiden glancing at the scarlet letter, shyly and aside, and quickly averted, with a faint, chill crimson in her cheeks as if her purity were somewhat sullied by that momentary glance. o fiend, whose talisman was that fatal symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing, whether in youth or age, for this poor sinner to revere?--such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin. be it accepted as a proof that all was not corrupt in this poor victim of her own frailty, and man's hard law, that hester prynne yet struggled to believe that no fellow-mortal was guilty like herself. the vulgar, who, in those dreary old times, were always contributing a grotesque horror to what interested their imaginations, had a story about the scarlet letter which we might readily work up into a terrific legend. they averred that the symbol was not mere scarlet cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-pot, but was red-hot with infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all alight whenever hester prynne walked abroad in the night-time. and we must needs say it seared hester's bosom so deeply, that perhaps there was more truth in the rumour than our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit. vi. pearl we have as yet hardly spoken of the infant; that little creature, whose innocent life had sprung, by the inscrutable decree of providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance of a guilty passion. how strange it seemed to the sad woman, as she watched the growth, and the beauty that became every day more brilliant, and the intelligence that threw its quivering sunshine over the tiny features of this child! her pearl--for so had hester called her; not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of the calm, white, unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated by the comparison. but she named the infant "pearl," as being of great price--purchased with all she had--her mother's only treasure! how strange, indeed! man had marked this woman's sin by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could reach her, save it were sinful like herself. god, as a direct consequence of the sin which man thus punished, had given her a lovely child, whose place was on that same dishonoured bosom, to connect her parent for ever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven! yet these thoughts affected hester prynne less with hope than apprehension. she knew that her deed had been evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be good. day after day she looked fearfully into the child's expanding nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity that should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being. certainly there was no physical defect. by its perfect shape, its vigour, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried limbs, the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in eden: worthy to have been left there to be the plaything of the angels after the world's first parents were driven out. the child had a native grace which does not invariably co-exist with faultless beauty; its attire, however simple, always impressed the beholder as if it were the very garb that precisely became it best. but little pearl was not clad in rustic weeds. her mother, with a morbid purpose that may be better understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore before the public eye. so magnificent was the small figure when thus arrayed, and such was the splendour of pearl's own proper beauty, shining through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a paler loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around her on the darksome cottage floor. and yet a russet gown, torn and soiled with the child's rude play, made a picture of her just as perfect. pearl's aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety; in this one child there were many children, comprehending the full scope between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the pomp, in little, of an infant princess. throughout all, however, there was a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she never lost; and if in any of her changes, she had grown fainter or paler, she would have ceased to be herself--it would have been no longer pearl! this outward mutability indicated, and did not more than fairly express, the various properties of her inner life. her nature appeared to possess depth, too, as well as variety; but--or else hester's fears deceived her--it lacked reference and adaptation to the world into which she was born. the child could not be made amenable to rules. in giving her existence a great law had been broken; and the result was a being whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder, or with an order peculiar to themselves, amidst which the point of variety and arrangement was difficult or impossible to be discovered. hester could only account for the child's character--and even then most vaguely and imperfectly--by recalling what she herself had been during that momentous period while pearl was imbibing her soul from the spiritual world, and her bodily frame from its material of earth. the mother's impassioned state had been the medium through which were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its moral life; and, however white and clear originally, they had taken the deep stains of crimson and gold, the fiery lustre, the black shadow, and the untempered light of the intervening substance. above all, the warfare of hester's spirit at that epoch was perpetuated in pearl. she could recognize her wild, desperate, defiant mood, the flightiness of her temper, and even some of the very cloud-shapes of gloom and despondency that had brooded in her heart. they were now illuminated by the morning radiance of a young child's disposition, but, later in the day of earthly existence, might be prolific of the storm and whirlwind. the discipline of the family in those days was of a far more rigid kind than now. the frown, the harsh rebuke, the frequent application of the rod, enjoined by scriptural authority, were used, not merely in the way of punishment for actual offences, but as a wholesome regimen for the growth and promotion of all childish virtues. hester prynne, nevertheless, the loving mother of this one child, ran little risk of erring on the side of undue severity. mindful, however, of her own errors and misfortunes, she early sought to impose a tender but strict control over the infant immortality that was committed to her charge. but the task was beyond her skill. after testing both smiles and frowns, and proving that neither mode of treatment possessed any calculable influence, hester was ultimately compelled to stand aside and permit the child to be swayed by her own impulses. physical compulsion or restraint was effectual, of course, while it lasted. as to any other kind of discipline, whether addressed to her mind or heart, little pearl might or might not be within its reach, in accordance with the caprice that ruled the moment. her mother, while pearl was yet an infant, grew acquainted with a certain peculiar look, that warned her when it would be labour thrown away to insist, persuade or plead. it was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable, perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that hester could not help questioning at such moments whether pearl was a human child. she seemed rather an airy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the cottage floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. whenever that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it invested her with a strange remoteness and intangibility: it was as if she were hovering in the air, and might vanish, like a glimmering light that comes we know not whence and goes we know not whither. beholding it, hester was constrained to rush towards the child--to pursue the little elf in the flight which she invariably began--to snatch her to her bosom with a close pressure and earnest kisses--not so much from overflowing love as to assure herself that pearl was flesh and blood, and not utterly delusive. but pearl's laugh, when she was caught, though full of merriment and music, made her mother more doubtful than before. heart-smitten at this bewildering and baffling spell, that so often came between herself and her sole treasure, whom she had bought so dear, and who was all her world, hester sometimes burst into passionate tears. then, perhaps--for there was no foreseeing how it might affect her--pearl would frown, and clench her little fist, and harden her small features into a stern, unsympathising look of discontent. not seldom she would laugh anew, and louder than before, like a thing incapable and unintelligent of human sorrow. or--but this more rarely happened--she would be convulsed with rage of grief and sob out her love for her mother in broken words, and seem intent on proving that she had a heart by breaking it. yet hester was hardly safe in confiding herself to that gusty tenderness: it passed as suddenly as it came. brooding over all these matters, the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit, but, by some irregularity in the process of conjuration, has failed to win the master-word that should control this new and incomprehensible intelligence. her only real comfort was when the child lay in the placidity of sleep. then she was sure of her, and tasted hours of quiet, sad, delicious happiness; until--perhaps with that perverse expression glimmering from beneath her opening lids--little pearl awoke! how soon--with what strange rapidity, indeed--did pearl arrive at an age that was capable of social intercourse beyond the mother's ever-ready smile and nonsense-words! and then what a happiness would it have been could hester prynne have heard her clear, bird-like voice mingling with the uproar of other childish voices, and have distinguished and unravelled her own darling's tones, amid all the entangled outcry of a group of sportive children. but this could never be. pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. an imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants. nothing was more remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with which the child comprehended her loneliness: the destiny that had drawn an inviolable circle round about her: the whole peculiarity, in short, of her position in respect to other children. never since her release from prison had hester met the public gaze without her. in all her walks about the town, pearl, too, was there: first as the babe in arms, and afterwards as the little girl, small companion of her mother, holding a forefinger with her whole grasp, and tripping along at the rate of three or four footsteps to one of hester's. she saw the children of the settlement on the grassy margin of the street, or at the domestic thresholds, disporting themselves in such grim fashions as the puritanic nurture would permit; playing at going to church, perchance, or at scourging quakers; or taking scalps in a sham fight with the indians, or scaring one another with freaks of imitative witchcraft. pearl saw, and gazed intently, but never sought to make acquaintance. if spoken to, she would not speak again. if the children gathered about her, as they sometimes did, pearl would grow positively terrible in her puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, with shrill, incoherent exclamations, that made her mother tremble, because they had so much the sound of a witch's anathemas in some unknown tongue. the truth was, that the little puritans, being of the most intolerant brood that ever lived, had got a vague idea of something outlandish, unearthly, or at variance with ordinary fashions, in the mother and child, and therefore scorned them in their hearts, and not unfrequently reviled them with their tongues. pearl felt the sentiment, and requited it with the bitterest hatred that can be supposed to rankle in a childish bosom. these outbreaks of a fierce temper had a kind of value, and even comfort for the mother; because there was at least an intelligible earnestness in the mood, instead of the fitful caprice that so often thwarted her in the child's manifestations. it appalled her, nevertheless, to discern here, again, a shadowy reflection of the evil that had existed in herself. all this enmity and passion had pearl inherited, by inalienable right, out of hester's heart. mother and daughter stood together in the same circle of seclusion from human society; and in the nature of the child seemed to be perpetuated those unquiet elements that had distracted hester prynne before pearl's birth, but had since begun to be soothed away by the softening influences of maternity. at home, within and around her mother's cottage, pearl wanted not a wide and various circle of acquaintance. the spell of life went forth from her ever-creative spirit, and communicated itself to a thousand objects, as a torch kindles a flame wherever it may be applied. the unlikeliest materials--a stick, a bunch of rags, a flower--were the puppets of pearl's witchcraft, and, without undergoing any outward change, became spiritually adapted to whatever drama occupied the stage of her inner world. her one baby-voice served a multitude of imaginary personages, old and young, to talk withal. the pine-trees, aged, black, and solemn, and flinging groans and other melancholy utterances on the breeze, needed little transformation to figure as puritan elders; the ugliest weeds of the garden were their children, whom pearl smote down and uprooted most unmercifully. it was wonderful, the vast variety of forms into which she threw her intellect, with no continuity, indeed, but darting up and dancing, always in a state of preternatural activity--soon sinking down, as if exhausted by so rapid and feverish a tide of life--and succeeded by other shapes of a similar wild energy. it was like nothing so much as the phantasmagoric play of the northern lights. in the mere exercise of the fancy, however, and the sportiveness of a growing mind, there might be a little more than was observable in other children of bright faculties; except as pearl, in the dearth of human playmates, was thrown more upon the visionary throng which she created. the singularity lay in the hostile feelings with which the child regarded all these offsprings of her own heart and mind. she never created a friend, but seemed always to be sowing broadcast the dragon's teeth, whence sprung a harvest of armed enemies, against whom she rushed to battle. it was inexpressibly sad--then what depth of sorrow to a mother, who felt in her own heart the cause--to observe, in one so young, this constant recognition of an adverse world, and so fierce a training of the energies that were to make good her cause in the contest that must ensue. gazing at pearl, hester prynne often dropped her work upon her knees, and cried out with an agony which she would fain have hidden, but which made utterance for itself betwixt speech and a groan--"o father in heaven--if thou art still my father--what is this being which i have brought into the world?" and pearl, overhearing the ejaculation, or aware through some more subtile channel, of those throbs of anguish, would turn her vivid and beautiful little face upon her mother, smile with sprite-like intelligence, and resume her play. one peculiarity of the child's deportment remains yet to be told. the very first thing which she had noticed in her life, was--what?--not the mother's smile, responding to it, as other babies do, by that faint, embryo smile of the little mouth, remembered so doubtfully afterwards, and with such fond discussion whether it were indeed a smile. by no means! but that first object of which pearl seemed to become aware was--shall we say it?--the scarlet letter on hester's bosom! one day, as her mother stooped over the cradle, the infant's eyes had been caught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about the letter; and putting up her little hand she grasped at it, smiling, not doubtfully, but with a decided gleam, that gave her face the look of a much older child. then, gasping for breath, did hester prynne clutch the fatal token, instinctively endeavouring to tear it away, so infinite was the torture inflicted by the intelligent touch of pearl's baby-hand. again, as if her mother's agonised gesture were meant only to make sport for her, did little pearl look into her eyes, and smile. from that epoch, except when the child was asleep, hester had never felt a moment's safety: not a moment's calm enjoyment of her. weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during which pearl's gaze might never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter; but then, again, it would come at unawares, like the stroke of sudden death, and always with that peculiar smile and odd expression of the eyes. once this freakish, elvish cast came into the child's eyes while hester was looking at her own image in them, as mothers are fond of doing; and suddenly--for women in solitude, and with troubled hearts, are pestered with unaccountable delusions--she fancied that she beheld, not her own miniature portrait, but another face in the small black mirror of pearl's eye. it was a face, fiend-like, full of smiling malice, yet bearing the semblance of features that she had known full well, though seldom with a smile, and never with malice in them. it was as if an evil spirit possessed the child, and had just then peeped forth in mockery. many a time afterwards had hester been tortured, though less vividly, by the same illusion. in the afternoon of a certain summer's day, after pearl grew big enough to run about, she amused herself with gathering handfuls of wild flowers, and flinging them, one by one, at her mother's bosom; dancing up and down like a little elf whenever she hit the scarlet letter. hester's first motion had been to cover her bosom with her clasped hands. but whether from pride or resignation, or a feeling that her penance might best be wrought out by this unutterable pain, she resisted the impulse, and sat erect, pale as death, looking sadly into little pearl's wild eyes. still came the battery of flowers, almost invariably hitting the mark, and covering the mother's breast with hurts for which she could find no balm in this world, nor knew how to seek it in another. at last, her shot being all expended, the child stood still and gazed at hester, with that little laughing image of a fiend peeping out--or, whether it peeped or no, her mother so imagined it--from the unsearchable abyss of her black eyes. "child, what art thou?" cried the mother. "oh, i am your little pearl!" answered the child. but while she said it, pearl laughed, and began to dance up and down with the humoursome gesticulation of a little imp, whose next freak might be to fly up the chimney. "art thou my child, in very truth?" asked hester. nor did she put the question altogether idly, but, for the moment, with a portion of genuine earnestness; for, such was pearl's wonderful intelligence, that her mother half doubted whether she were not acquainted with the secret spell of her existence, and might not now reveal herself. "yes; i am little pearl!" repeated the child, continuing her antics. "thou art not my child! thou art no pearl of mine!" said the mother half playfully; for it was often the case that a sportive impulse came over her in the midst of her deepest suffering. "tell me, then, what thou art, and who sent thee hither?" "tell me, mother!" said the child, seriously, coming up to hester, and pressing herself close to her knees. "do thou tell me!" "thy heavenly father sent thee!" answered hester prynne. but she said it with a hesitation that did not escape the acuteness of the child. whether moved only by her ordinary freakishness, or because an evil spirit prompted her, she put up her small forefinger and touched the scarlet letter. "he did not send me!" cried she, positively. "i have no heavenly father!" "hush, pearl, hush! thou must not talk so!" answered the mother, suppressing a groan. "he sent us all into the world. he sent even me, thy mother. then, much more thee! or, if not, thou strange and elfish child, whence didst thou come?" "tell me! tell me!" repeated pearl, no longer seriously, but laughing and capering about the floor. "it is thou that must tell me!" but hester could not resolve the query, being herself in a dismal labyrinth of doubt. she remembered--betwixt a smile and a shudder--the talk of the neighbouring townspeople, who, seeking vainly elsewhere for the child's paternity, and observing some of her odd attributes, had given out that poor little pearl was a demon offspring: such as, ever since old catholic times, had occasionally been seen on earth, through the agency of their mother's sin, and to promote some foul and wicked purpose. luther, according to the scandal of his monkish enemies, was a brat of that hellish breed; nor was pearl the only child to whom this inauspicious origin was assigned among the new england puritans. vii. the governor's hall hester prynne went one day to the mansion of governor bellingham, with a pair of gloves which she had fringed and embroidered to his order, and which were to be worn on some great occasion of state; for, though the chances of a popular election had caused this former ruler to descend a step or two from the highest rank, he still held an honourable and influential place among the colonial magistracy. another and far more important reason than the delivery of a pair of embroidered gloves, impelled hester, at this time, to seek an interview with a personage of so much power and activity in the affairs of the settlement. it had reached her ears that there was a design on the part of some of the leading inhabitants, cherishing the more rigid order of principles in religion and government, to deprive her of her child. on the supposition that pearl, as already hinted, was of demon origin, these good people not unreasonably argued that a christian interest in the mother's soul required them to remove such a stumbling-block from her path. if the child, on the other hand, were really capable of moral and religious growth, and possessed the elements of ultimate salvation, then, surely, it would enjoy all the fairer prospect of these advantages by being transferred to wiser and better guardianship than hester prynne's. among those who promoted the design, governor bellingham was said to be one of the most busy. it may appear singular, and, indeed, not a little ludicrous, that an affair of this kind, which in later days would have been referred to no higher jurisdiction than that of the select men of the town, should then have been a question publicly discussed, and on which statesmen of eminence took sides. at that epoch of pristine simplicity, however, matters of even slighter public interest, and of far less intrinsic weight than the welfare of hester and her child, were strangely mixed up with the deliberations of legislators and acts of state. the period was hardly, if at all, earlier than that of our story, when a dispute concerning the right of property in a pig not only caused a fierce and bitter contest in the legislative body of the colony, but resulted in an important modification of the framework itself of the legislature. full of concern, therefore--but so conscious of her own right that it seemed scarcely an unequal match between the public on the one side, and a lonely woman, backed by the sympathies of nature, on the other--hester prynne set forth from her solitary cottage. little pearl, of course, was her companion. she was now of an age to run lightly along by her mother's side, and, constantly in motion from morn till sunset, could have accomplished a much longer journey than that before her. often, nevertheless, more from caprice than necessity, she demanded to be taken up in arms; but was soon as imperious to be let down again, and frisked onward before hester on the grassy pathway, with many a harmless trip and tumble. we have spoken of pearl's rich and luxuriant beauty--a beauty that shone with deep and vivid tints, a bright complexion, eyes possessing intensity both of depth and glow, and hair already of a deep, glossy brown, and which, in after years, would be nearly akin to black. there was fire in her and throughout her: she seemed the unpremeditated offshoot of a passionate moment. her mother, in contriving the child's garb, had allowed the gorgeous tendencies of her imagination their full play, arraying her in a crimson velvet tunic of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered in fantasies and flourishes of gold thread. so much strength of colouring, which must have given a wan and pallid aspect to cheeks of a fainter bloom, was admirably adapted to pearl's beauty, and made her the very brightest little jet of flame that ever danced upon the earth. but it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, and indeed, of the child's whole appearance, that it irresistibly and inevitably reminded the beholder of the token which hester prynne was doomed to wear upon her bosom. it was the scarlet letter in another form: the scarlet letter endowed with life! the mother herself--as if the red ignominy were so deeply scorched into her brain that all her conceptions assumed its form--had carefully wrought out the similitude, lavishing many hours of morbid ingenuity to create an analogy between the object of her affection and the emblem of her guilt and torture. but, in truth, pearl was the one as well as the other; and only in consequence of that identity had hester contrived so perfectly to represent the scarlet letter in her appearance. as the two wayfarers came within the precincts of the town, the children of the puritans looked up from their play,--or what passed for play with those sombre little urchins--and spoke gravely one to another. "behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet letter: and of a truth, moreover, there is the likeness of the scarlet letter running along by her side! come, therefore, and let us fling mud at them!" but pearl, who was a dauntless child, after frowning, stamping her foot, and shaking her little hand with a variety of threatening gestures, suddenly made a rush at the knot of her enemies, and put them all to flight. she resembled, in her fierce pursuit of them, an infant pestilence--the scarlet fever, or some such half-fledged angel of judgment--whose mission was to punish the sins of the rising generation. she screamed and shouted, too, with a terrific volume of sound, which, doubtless, caused the hearts of the fugitives to quake within them. the victory accomplished, pearl returned quietly to her mother, and looked up, smiling, into her face. without further adventure, they reached the dwelling of governor bellingham. this was a large wooden house, built in a fashion of which there are specimens still extant in the streets of our older towns now moss-grown, crumbling to decay, and melancholy at heart with the many sorrowful or joyful occurrences, remembered or forgotten, that have happened and passed away within their dusky chambers. then, however, there was the freshness of the passing year on its exterior, and the cheerfulness, gleaming forth from the sunny windows, of a human habitation, into which death had never entered. it had, indeed, a very cheery aspect, the walls being overspread with a kind of stucco, in which fragments of broken glass were plentifully intermixed; so that, when the sunshine fell aslant-wise over the front of the edifice, it glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been flung against it by the double handful. the brilliancy might have be fitted aladdin's palace rather than the mansion of a grave old puritan ruler. it was further decorated with strange and seemingly cabalistic figures and diagrams, suitable to the quaint taste of the age which had been drawn in the stucco, when newly laid on, and had now grown hard and durable, for the admiration of after times. pearl, looking at this bright wonder of a house began to caper and dance, and imperatively required that the whole breadth of sunshine should be stripped off its front, and given her to play with. "no, my little pearl!" said her mother; "thou must gather thine own sunshine. i have none to give thee!" they approached the door, which was of an arched form, and flanked on each side by a narrow tower or projection of the edifice, in both of which were lattice-windows, the wooden shutters to close over them at need. lifting the iron hammer that hung at the portal, hester prynne gave a summons, which was answered by one of the governor's bond servant--a free-born englishman, but now a seven years' slave. during that term he was to be the property of his master, and as much a commodity of bargain and sale as an ox, or a joint-stool. the serf wore the customary garb of serving-men at that period, and long before, in the old hereditary halls of england. "is the worshipful governor bellingham within?" inquired hester. "yea, forsooth," replied the bond-servant, staring with wide-open eyes at the scarlet letter, which, being a new-comer in the country, he had never before seen. "yea, his honourable worship is within. but he hath a godly minister or two with him, and likewise a leech. ye may not see his worship now." "nevertheless, i will enter," answered hester prynne; and the bond-servant, perhaps judging from the decision of her air, and the glittering symbol in her bosom, that she was a great lady in the land, offered no opposition. so the mother and little pearl were admitted into the hall of entrance. with many variations, suggested by the nature of his building materials, diversity of climate, and a different mode of social life, governor bellingham had planned his new habitation after the residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his native land. here, then, was a wide and reasonably lofty hall, extending through the whole depth of the house, and forming a medium of general communication, more or less directly, with all the other apartments. at one extremity, this spacious room was lighted by the windows of the two towers, which formed a small recess on either side of the portal. at the other end, though partly muffled by a curtain, it was more powerfully illuminated by one of those embowed hall windows which we read of in old books, and which was provided with a deep and cushioned seat. here, on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the chronicles of england, or other such substantial literature; even as, in our own days, we scatter gilded volumes on the centre table, to be turned over by the casual guest. the furniture of the hall consisted of some ponderous chairs, the backs of which were elaborately carved with wreaths of oaken flowers; and likewise a table in the same taste, the whole being of the elizabethan age, or perhaps earlier, and heirlooms, transferred hither from the governor's paternal home. on the table--in token that the sentiment of old english hospitality had not been left behind--stood a large pewter tankard, at the bottom of which, had hester or pearl peeped into it, they might have seen the frothy remnant of a recent draught of ale. on the wall hung a row of portraits, representing the forefathers of the bellingham lineage, some with armour on their breasts, and others with stately ruffs and robes of peace. all were characterised by the sternness and severity which old portraits so invariably put on, as if they were the ghosts, rather than the pictures, of departed worthies, and were gazing with harsh and intolerant criticism at the pursuits and enjoyments of living men. at about the centre of the oaken panels that lined the hall was suspended a suit of mail, not, like the pictures, an ancestral relic, but of the most modern date; for it had been manufactured by a skilful armourer in london, the same year in which governor bellingham came over to new england. there was a steel head-piece, a cuirass, a gorget and greaves, with a pair of gauntlets and a sword hanging beneath; all, and especially the helmet and breastplate, so highly burnished as to glow with white radiance, and scatter an illumination everywhere about upon the floor. this bright panoply was not meant for mere idle show, but had been worn by the governor on many a solemn muster and training field, and had glittered, moreover, at the head of a regiment in the pequod war. for, though bred a lawyer, and accustomed to speak of bacon, coke, noye, and finch, as his professional associates, the exigencies of this new country had transformed governor bellingham into a soldier, as well as a statesman and ruler. little pearl, who was as greatly pleased with the gleaming armour as she had been with the glittering frontispiece of the house, spent some time looking into the polished mirror of the breastplate. "mother," cried she, "i see you here. look! look!" hester looked by way of humouring the child; and she saw that, owing to the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter was represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance. in truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it. pearl pointed upwards also, at a similar picture in the head-piece; smiling at her mother, with the elfish intelligence that was so familiar an expression on her small physiognomy. that look of naughty merriment was likewise reflected in the mirror, with so much breadth and intensity of effect, that it made hester prynne feel as if it could not be the image of her own child, but of an imp who was seeking to mould itself into pearl's shape. "come along, pearl," said she, drawing her away, "come and look into this fair garden. it may be we shall see flowers there; more beautiful ones than we find in the woods." pearl accordingly ran to the bow-window, at the further end of the hall, and looked along the vista of a garden walk, carpeted with closely-shaven grass, and bordered with some rude and immature attempt at shrubbery. but the proprietor appeared already to have relinquished as hopeless, the effort to perpetuate on this side of the atlantic, in a hard soil, and amid the close struggle for subsistence, the native english taste for ornamental gardening. cabbages grew in plain sight; and a pumpkin-vine, rooted at some distance, had run across the intervening space, and deposited one of its gigantic products directly beneath the hall window, as if to warn the governor that this great lump of vegetable gold was as rich an ornament as new england earth would offer him. there were a few rose-bushes, however, and a number of apple-trees, probably the descendants of those planted by the reverend mr. blackstone, the first settler of the peninsula; that half mythological personage who rides through our early annals, seated on the back of a bull. pearl, seeing the rose-bushes, began to cry for a red rose, and would not be pacified. "hush, child--hush!" said her mother, earnestly. "do not cry, dear little pearl! i hear voices in the garden. the governor is coming, and gentlemen along with him." in fact, adown the vista of the garden avenue, a number of persons were seen approaching towards the house. pearl, in utter scorn of her mother's attempt to quiet her, gave an eldritch scream, and then became silent, not from any notion of obedience, but because the quick and mobile curiosity of her disposition was excited by the appearance of those new personages. viii. the elf-child and the minister governor bellingham, in a loose gown and easy cap--such as elderly gentlemen loved to endue themselves with, in their domestic privacy--walked foremost, and appeared to be showing off his estate, and expatiating on his projected improvements. the wide circumference of an elaborate ruff, beneath his grey beard, in the antiquated fashion of king james's reign, caused his head to look not a little like that of john the baptist in a charger. the impression made by his aspect, so rigid and severe, and frost-bitten with more than autumnal age, was hardly in keeping with the appliances of worldly enjoyment wherewith he had evidently done his utmost to surround himself. but it is an error to suppose that our great forefathers--though accustomed to speak and think of human existence as a state merely of trial and warfare, and though unfeignedly prepared to sacrifice goods and life at the behest of duty--made it a matter of conscience to reject such means of comfort, or even luxury, as lay fairly within their grasp. this creed was never taught, for instance, by the venerable pastor, john wilson, whose beard, white as a snow-drift, was seen over governor bellingham's shoulders, while its wearer suggested that pears and peaches might yet be naturalised in the new england climate, and that purple grapes might possibly be compelled to flourish against the sunny garden-wall. the old clergyman, nurtured at the rich bosom of the english church, had a long established and legitimate taste for all good and comfortable things, and however stern he might show himself in the pulpit, or in his public reproof of such transgressions as that of hester prynne, still, the genial benevolence of his private life had won him warmer affection than was accorded to any of his professional contemporaries. behind the governor and mr. wilson came two other guests--one, the reverend arthur dimmesdale, whom the reader may remember as having taken a brief and reluctant part in the scene of hester prynne's disgrace; and, in close companionship with him, old roger chillingworth, a person of great skill in physic, who for two or three years past had been settled in the town. it was understood that this learned man was the physician as well as friend of the young minister, whose health had severely suffered of late by his too unreserved self-sacrifice to the labours and duties of the pastoral relation. the governor, in advance of his visitors, ascended one or two steps, and, throwing open the leaves of the great hall window, found himself close to little pearl. the shadow of the curtain fell on hester prynne, and partially concealed her. "what have we here?" said governor bellingham, looking with surprise at the scarlet little figure before him. "i profess, i have never seen the like since my days of vanity, in old king james's time, when i was wont to esteem it a high favour to be admitted to a court mask! there used to be a swarm of these small apparitions in holiday time, and we called them children of the lord of misrule. but how gat such a guest into my hall?" "ay, indeed!" cried good old mr. wilson. "what little bird of scarlet plumage may this be? methinks i have seen just such figures when the sun has been shining through a richly painted window, and tracing out the golden and crimson images across the floor. but that was in the old land. prithee, young one, who art thou, and what has ailed thy mother to bedizen thee in this strange fashion? art thou a christian child--ha? dost know thy catechism? or art thou one of those naughty elfs or fairies whom we thought to have left behind us, with other relics of papistry, in merry old england?" "i am mother's child," answered the scarlet vision, "and my name is pearl!" "pearl?--ruby, rather--or coral!--or red rose, at the very least, judging from thy hue!" responded the old minister, putting forth his hand in a vain attempt to pat little pearl on the cheek. "but where is this mother of thine? ah! i see," he added; and, turning to governor bellingham, whispered, "this is the selfsame child of whom we have held speech together; and behold here the unhappy woman, hester prynne, her mother!" "sayest thou so?" cried the governor. "nay, we might have judged that such a child's mother must needs be a scarlet woman, and a worthy type of her of babylon! but she comes at a good time, and we will look into this matter forthwith." governor bellingham stepped through the window into the hall, followed by his three guests. "hester prynne," said he, fixing his naturally stern regard on the wearer of the scarlet letter, "there hath been much question concerning thee of late. the point hath been weightily discussed, whether we, that are of authority and influence, do well discharge our consciences by trusting an immortal soul, such as there is in yonder child, to the guidance of one who hath stumbled and fallen amid the pitfalls of this world. speak thou, the child's own mother! were it not, thinkest thou, for thy little one's temporal and eternal welfare that she be taken out of thy charge, and clad soberly, and disciplined strictly, and instructed in the truths of heaven and earth? what canst thou do for the child in this kind?" "i can teach my little pearl what i have learned from this!" answered hester prynne, laying her finger on the red token. "woman, it is thy badge of shame!" replied the stern magistrate. "it is because of the stain which that letter indicates that we would transfer thy child to other hands." "nevertheless," said the mother, calmly, though growing more pale, "this badge hath taught me--it daily teaches me--it is teaching me at this moment--lessons whereof my child may be the wiser and better, albeit they can profit nothing to myself." "we will judge warily," said bellingham, "and look well what we are about to do. good master wilson, i pray you, examine this pearl--since that is her name--and see whether she hath had such christian nurture as befits a child of her age." the old minister seated himself in an arm-chair and made an effort to draw pearl betwixt his knees. but the child, unaccustomed to the touch or familiarity of any but her mother, escaped through the open window, and stood on the upper step, looking like a wild tropical bird of rich plumage, ready to take flight into the upper air. mr. wilson, not a little astonished at this outbreak--for he was a grandfatherly sort of personage, and usually a vast favourite with children--essayed, however, to proceed with the examination. "pearl," said he, with great solemnity, "thou must take heed to instruction, that so, in due season, thou mayest wear in thy bosom the pearl of great price. canst thou tell me, my child, who made thee?" now pearl knew well enough who made her, for hester prynne, the daughter of a pious home, very soon after her talk with the child about her heavenly father, had begun to inform her of those truths which the human spirit, at whatever stage of immaturity, imbibes with such eager interest. pearl, therefore--so large were the attainments of her three years' lifetime--could have borne a fair examination in the new england primer, or the first column of the westminster catechisms, although unacquainted with the outward form of either of those celebrated works. but that perversity, which all children have more or less of, and of which little pearl had a tenfold portion, now, at the most inopportune moment, took thorough possession of her, and closed her lips, or impelled her to speak words amiss. after putting her finger in her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good mr. wilson's question, the child finally announced that she had not been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of wild roses that grew by the prison-door. this phantasy was probably suggested by the near proximity of the governor's red roses, as pearl stood outside of the window, together with her recollection of the prison rose-bush, which she had passed in coming hither. old roger chillingworth, with a smile on his face, whispered something in the young clergyman's ear. hester prynne looked at the man of skill, and even then, with her fate hanging in the balance, was startled to perceive what a change had come over his features--how much uglier they were, how his dark complexion seemed to have grown duskier, and his figure more misshapen--since the days when she had familiarly known him. she met his eyes for an instant, but was immediately constrained to give all her attention to the scene now going forward. "this is awful!" cried the governor, slowly recovering from the astonishment into which pearl's response had thrown him. "here is a child of three years old, and she cannot tell who made her! without question, she is equally in the dark as to her soul, its present depravity, and future destiny! methinks, gentlemen, we need inquire no further." hester caught hold of pearl, and drew her forcibly into her arms, confronting the old puritan magistrate with almost a fierce expression. alone in the world, cast off by it, and with this sole treasure to keep her heart alive, she felt that she possessed indefeasible rights against the world, and was ready to defend them to the death. "god gave me the child!" cried she. "he gave her in requital of all things else which ye had taken from me. she is my happiness--she is my torture, none the less! pearl keeps me here in life! pearl punishes me, too! see ye not, she is the scarlet letter, only capable of being loved, and so endowed with a millionfold the power of retribution for my sin? ye shall not take her! i will die first!" "my poor woman," said the not unkind old minister, "the child shall be well cared for--far better than thou canst do for it." "god gave her into my keeping!" repeated hester prynne, raising her voice almost to a shriek. "i will not give her up!" and here by a sudden impulse, she turned to the young clergyman, mr. dimmesdale, at whom, up to this moment, she had seemed hardly so much as once to direct her eyes. "speak thou for me!" cried she. "thou wast my pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me better than these men can. i will not lose the child! speak for me! thou knowest--for thou hast sympathies which these men lack--thou knowest what is in my heart, and what are a mother's rights, and how much the stronger they are when that mother has but her child and the scarlet letter! look thou to it! i will not lose the child! look to it!" at this wild and singular appeal, which indicated that hester prynne's situation had provoked her to little less than madness, the young minister at once came forward, pale, and holding his hand over his heart, as was his custom whenever his peculiarly nervous temperament was thrown into agitation. he looked now more careworn and emaciated than as we described him at the scene of hester's public ignominy; and whether it were his failing health, or whatever the cause might be, his large dark eyes had a world of pain in their troubled and melancholy depth. "there is truth in what she says," began the minister, with a voice sweet, tremulous, but powerful, insomuch that the hall re-echoed and the hollow armour rang with it--"truth in what hester says, and in the feeling which inspires her! god gave her the child, and gave her, too, an instinctive knowledge of its nature and requirements--both seemingly so peculiar--which no other mortal being can possess. and, moreover, is there not a quality of awful sacredness in the relation between this mother and this child?" "ay--how is that, good master dimmesdale?" interrupted the governor. "make that plain, i pray you!" "it must be even so," resumed the minister. "for, if we deem it otherwise, do we not thereby say that the heavenly father, the creator of all flesh, hath lightly recognised a deed of sin, and made of no account the distinction between unhallowed lust and holy love? this child of its father's guilt and its mother's shame has come from the hand of god, to work in many ways upon her heart, who pleads so earnestly and with such bitterness of spirit the right to keep her. it was meant for a blessing--for the one blessing of her life! it was meant, doubtless, the mother herself hath told us, for a retribution, too; a torture to be felt at many an unthought-of moment; a pang, a sting, an ever-recurring agony, in the midst of a troubled joy! hath she not expressed this thought in the garb of the poor child, so forcibly reminding us of that red symbol which sears her bosom?" "well said again!" cried good mr. wilson. "i feared the woman had no better thought than to make a mountebank of her child!" "oh, not so!--not so!" continued mr. dimmesdale. "she recognises, believe me, the solemn miracle which god hath wrought in the existence of that child. and may she feel, too--what, methinks, is the very truth--that this boon was meant, above all things else, to keep the mother's soul alive, and to preserve her from blacker depths of sin into which satan might else have sought to plunge her! therefore it is good for this poor, sinful woman, that she hath an infant immortality, a being capable of eternal joy or sorrow, confided to her care--to be trained up by her to righteousness, to remind her, at every moment, of her fall, but yet to teach her, as if it were by the creator's sacred pledge, that, if she bring the child to heaven, the child also will bring its parents thither! herein is the sinful mother happier than the sinful father. for hester prynne's sake, then, and no less for the poor child's sake, let us leave them as providence hath seen fit to place them!" "you speak, my friend, with a strange earnestness," said old roger chillingworth, smiling at him. "and there is a weighty import in what my young brother hath spoken," added the rev. mr. wilson. "what say you, worshipful master bellingham? hath he not pleaded well for the poor woman?" "indeed hath he," answered the magistrate; "and hath adduced such arguments, that we will even leave the matter as it now stands; so long, at least, as there shall be no further scandal in the woman. care must be had nevertheless, to put the child to due and stated examination in the catechism, at thy hands or master dimmesdale's. moreover, at a proper season, the tithing-men must take heed that she go both to school and to meeting." the young minister, on ceasing to speak had withdrawn a few steps from the group, and stood with his face partially concealed in the heavy folds of the window-curtain; while the shadow of his figure, which the sunlight cast upon the floor, was tremulous with the vehemence of his appeal. pearl, that wild and flighty little elf stole softly towards him, and taking his hand in the grasp of both her own, laid her cheek against it; a caress so tender, and withal so unobtrusive, that her mother, who was looking on, asked herself--"is that my pearl?" yet she knew that there was love in the child's heart, although it mostly revealed itself in passion, and hardly twice in her lifetime had been softened by such gentleness as now. the minister--for, save the long-sought regards of woman, nothing is sweeter than these marks of childish preference, accorded spontaneously by a spiritual instinct, and therefore seeming to imply in us something truly worthy to be loved--the minister looked round, laid his hand on the child's head, hesitated an instant, and then kissed her brow. little pearl's unwonted mood of sentiment lasted no longer; she laughed, and went capering down the hall so airily, that old mr. wilson raised a question whether even her tiptoes touched the floor. "the little baggage hath witchcraft in her, i profess," said he to mr. dimmesdale. "she needs no old woman's broomstick to fly withal!" "a strange child!" remarked old roger chillingworth. "it is easy to see the mother's part in her. would it be beyond a philosopher's research, think ye, gentlemen, to analyse that child's nature, and, from it make a mould, to give a shrewd guess at the father?" "nay; it would be sinful, in such a question, to follow the clue of profane philosophy," said mr. wilson. "better to fast and pray upon it; and still better, it may be, to leave the mystery as we find it, unless providence reveal it of its own accord. thereby, every good christian man hath a title to show a father's kindness towards the poor, deserted babe." the affair being so satisfactorily concluded, hester prynne, with pearl, departed from the house. as they descended the steps, it is averred that the lattice of a chamber-window was thrown open, and forth into the sunny day was thrust the face of mistress hibbins, governor bellingham's bitter-tempered sister, and the same who, a few years later, was executed as a witch. "hist, hist!" said she, while her ill-omened physiognomy seemed to cast a shadow over the cheerful newness of the house. "wilt thou go with us to-night? there will be a merry company in the forest; and i well-nigh promised the black man that comely hester prynne should make one." "make my excuse to him, so please you!" answered hester, with a triumphant smile. "i must tarry at home, and keep watch over my little pearl. had they taken her from me, i would willingly have gone with thee into the forest, and signed my name in the black man's book too, and that with mine own blood!" "we shall have thee there anon!" said the witch-lady, frowning, as she drew back her head. but here--if we suppose this interview betwixt mistress hibbins and hester prynne to be authentic, and not a parable--was already an illustration of the young minister's argument against sundering the relation of a fallen mother to the offspring of her frailty. even thus early had the child saved her from satan's snare. ix. the leech under the appellation of roger chillingworth, the reader will remember, was hidden another name, which its former wearer had resolved should never more be spoken. it has been related, how, in the crowd that witnessed hester prynne's ignominious exposure, stood a man, elderly, travel-worn, who, just emerging from the perilous wilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he hoped to find embodied the warmth and cheerfulness of home, set up as a type of sin before the people. her matronly fame was trodden under all men's feet. infamy was babbling around her in the public market-place. for her kindred, should the tidings ever reach them, and for the companions of her unspotted life, there remained nothing but the contagion of her dishonour; which would not fail to be distributed in strict accordance and proportion with the intimacy and sacredness of their previous relationship. then why--since the choice was with himself--should the individual, whose connexion with the fallen woman had been the most intimate and sacred of them all, come forward to vindicate his claim to an inheritance so little desirable? he resolved not to be pilloried beside her on her pedestal of shame. unknown to all but hester prynne, and possessing the lock and key of her silence, he chose to withdraw his name from the roll of mankind, and, as regarded his former ties and interest, to vanish out of life as completely as if he indeed lay at the bottom of the ocean, whither rumour had long ago consigned him. this purpose once effected, new interests would immediately spring up, and likewise a new purpose; dark, it is true, if not guilty, but of force enough to engage the full strength of his faculties. in pursuance of this resolve, he took up his residence in the puritan town as roger chillingworth, without other introduction than the learning and intelligence of which he possessed more than a common measure. as his studies, at a previous period of his life, had made him extensively acquainted with the medical science of the day, it was as a physician that he presented himself and as such was cordially received. skilful men, of the medical and chirurgical profession, were of rare occurrence in the colony. they seldom, it would appear, partook of the religious zeal that brought other emigrants across the atlantic. in their researches into the human frame, it may be that the higher and more subtle faculties of such men were materialised, and that they lost the spiritual view of existence amid the intricacies of that wondrous mechanism, which seemed to involve art enough to comprise all of life within itself. at all events, the health of the good town of boston, so far as medicine had aught to do with it, had hitherto lain in the guardianship of an aged deacon and apothecary, whose piety and godly deportment were stronger testimonials in his favour than any that he could have produced in the shape of a diploma. the only surgeon was one who combined the occasional exercise of that noble art with the daily and habitual flourish of a razor. to such a professional body roger chillingworth was a brilliant acquisition. he soon manifested his familiarity with the ponderous and imposing machinery of antique physic; in which every remedy contained a multitude of far-fetched and heterogeneous ingredients, as elaborately compounded as if the proposed result had been the elixir of life. in his indian captivity, moreover, he had gained much knowledge of the properties of native herbs and roots; nor did he conceal from his patients that these simple medicines, nature's boon to the untutored savage, had quite as large a share of his own confidence as the european pharmacopoeia, which so many learned doctors had spent centuries in elaborating. this learned stranger was exemplary as regarded at least the outward forms of a religious life; and early after his arrival, had chosen for his spiritual guide the reverend mr. dimmesdale. the young divine, whose scholar-like renown still lived in oxford, was considered by his more fervent admirers as little less than a heavenly ordained apostle, destined, should he live and labour for the ordinary term of life, to do as great deeds, for the now feeble new england church, as the early fathers had achieved for the infancy of the christian faith. about this period, however, the health of mr. dimmesdale had evidently begun to fail. by those best acquainted with his habits, the paleness of the young minister's cheek was accounted for by his too earnest devotion to study, his scrupulous fulfilment of parochial duty, and more than all, to the fasts and vigils of which he made a frequent practice, in order to keep the grossness of this earthly state from clogging and obscuring his spiritual lamp. some declared, that if mr. dimmesdale were really going to die, it was cause enough that the world was not worthy to be any longer trodden by his feet. he himself, on the other hand, with characteristic humility, avowed his belief that if providence should see fit to remove him, it would be because of his own unworthiness to perform its humblest mission here on earth. with all this difference of opinion as to the cause of his decline, there could be no question of the fact. his form grew emaciated; his voice, though still rich and sweet, had a certain melancholy prophecy of decay in it; he was often observed, on any slight alarm or other sudden accident, to put his hand over his heart with first a flush and then a paleness, indicative of pain. such was the young clergyman's condition, and so imminent the prospect that his dawning light would be extinguished, all untimely, when roger chillingworth made his advent to the town. his first entry on the scene, few people could tell whence, dropping down as it were out of the sky or starting from the nether earth, had an aspect of mystery, which was easily heightened to the miraculous. he was now known to be a man of skill; it was observed that he gathered herbs and the blossoms of wild-flowers, and dug up roots and plucked off twigs from the forest-trees like one acquainted with hidden virtues in what was valueless to common eyes. he was heard to speak of sir kenelm digby and other famous men--whose scientific attainments were esteemed hardly less than supernatural--as having been his correspondents or associates. why, with such rank in the learned world, had he come hither? what, could he, whose sphere was in great cities, be seeking in the wilderness? in answer to this query, a rumour gained ground--and however absurd, was entertained by some very sensible people--that heaven had wrought an absolute miracle, by transporting an eminent doctor of physic from a german university bodily through the air and setting him down at the door of mr. dimmesdale's study! individuals of wiser faith, indeed, who knew that heaven promotes its purposes without aiming at the stage-effect of what is called miraculous interposition, were inclined to see a providential hand in roger chillingworth's so opportune arrival. this idea was countenanced by the strong interest which the physician ever manifested in the young clergyman; he attached himself to him as a parishioner, and sought to win a friendly regard and confidence from his naturally reserved sensibility. he expressed great alarm at his pastor's state of health, but was anxious to attempt the cure, and, if early undertaken, seemed not despondent of a favourable result. the elders, the deacons, the motherly dames, and the young and fair maidens of mr. dimmesdale's flock, were alike importunate that he should make trial of the physician's frankly offered skill. mr. dimmesdale gently repelled their entreaties. "i need no medicine," said he. but how could the young minister say so, when, with every successive sabbath, his cheek was paler and thinner, and his voice more tremulous than before--when it had now become a constant habit, rather than a casual gesture, to press his hand over his heart? was he weary of his labours? did he wish to die? these questions were solemnly propounded to mr. dimmesdale by the elder ministers of boston, and the deacons of his church, who, to use their own phrase, "dealt with him," on the sin of rejecting the aid which providence so manifestly held out. he listened in silence, and finally promised to confer with the physician. "were it god's will," said the reverend mr. dimmesdale, when, in fulfilment of this pledge, he requested old roger chillingworth's professional advice, "i could be well content that my labours, and my sorrows, and my sins, and my pains, should shortly end with me, and what is earthly of them be buried in my grave, and the spiritual go with me to my eternal state, rather than that you should put your skill to the proof in my behalf." "ah," replied roger chillingworth, with that quietness, which, whether imposed or natural, marked all his deportment, "it is thus that a young clergyman is apt to speak. youthful men, not having taken a deep root, give up their hold of life so easily! and saintly men, who walk with god on earth, would fain be away, to walk with him on the golden pavements of the new jerusalem." "nay," rejoined the young minister, putting his hand to his heart, with a flush of pain flitting over his brow, "were i worthier to walk there, i could be better content to toil here." "good men ever interpret themselves too meanly," said the physician. in this manner, the mysterious old roger chillingworth became the medical adviser of the reverend mr. dimmesdale. as not only the disease interested the physician, but he was strongly moved to look into the character and qualities of the patient, these two men, so different in age, came gradually to spend much time together. for the sake of the minister's health, and to enable the leech to gather plants with healing balm in them, they took long walks on the sea-shore, or in the forest; mingling various walks with the splash and murmur of the waves, and the solemn wind-anthem among the tree-tops. often, likewise, one was the guest of the other in his place of study and retirement. there was a fascination for the minister in the company of the man of science, in whom he recognised an intellectual cultivation of no moderate depth or scope; together with a range and freedom of ideas, that he would have vainly looked for among the members of his own profession. in truth, he was startled, if not shocked, to find this attribute in the physician. mr. dimmesdale was a true priest, a true religionist, with the reverential sentiment largely developed, and an order of mind that impelled itself powerfully along the track of a creed, and wore its passage continually deeper with the lapse of time. in no state of society would he have been what is called a man of liberal views; it would always be essential to his peace to feel the pressure of a faith about him, supporting, while it confined him within its iron framework. not the less, however, though with a tremulous enjoyment, did he feel the occasional relief of looking at the universe through the medium of another kind of intellect than those with which he habitually held converse. it was as if a window were thrown open, admitting a freer atmosphere into the close and stifled study, where his life was wasting itself away, amid lamp-light, or obstructed day-beams, and the musty fragrance, be it sensual or moral, that exhales from books. but the air was too fresh and chill to be long breathed with comfort. so the minister, and the physician with him, withdrew again within the limits of what their church defined as orthodox. thus roger chillingworth scrutinised his patient carefully, both as he saw him in his ordinary life, keeping an accustomed pathway in the range of thoughts familiar to him, and as he appeared when thrown amidst other moral scenery, the novelty of which might call out something new to the surface of his character. he deemed it essential, it would seem, to know the man, before attempting to do him good. wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these. in arthur dimmesdale, thought and imagination were so active, and sensibility so intense, that the bodily infirmity would be likely to have its groundwork there. so roger chillingworth--the man of skill, the kind and friendly physician--strove to go deep into his patient's bosom, delving among his principles, prying into his recollections, and probing everything with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a dark cavern. few secrets can escape an investigator, who has opportunity and licence to undertake such a quest, and skill to follow it up. a man burdened with a secret should especially avoid the intimacy of his physician. if the latter possess native sagacity, and a nameless something more,--let us call it intuition; if he show no intrusive egotism, nor disagreeable prominent characteristics of his own; if he have the power, which must be born with him, to bring his mind into such affinity with his patient's, that this last shall unawares have spoken what he imagines himself only to have thought; if such revelations be received without tumult, and acknowledged not so often by an uttered sympathy as by silence, an inarticulate breath, and here and there a word to indicate that all is understood; if to these qualifications of a confidant be joined the advantages afforded by his recognised character as a physician;--then, at some inevitable moment, will the soul of the sufferer be dissolved, and flow forth in a dark but transparent stream, bringing all its mysteries into the daylight. roger chillingworth possessed all, or most, of the attributes above enumerated. nevertheless, time went on; a kind of intimacy, as we have said, grew up between these two cultivated minds, which had as wide a field as the whole sphere of human thought and study to meet upon; they discussed every topic of ethics and religion, of public affairs, and private character; they talked much, on both sides, of matters that seemed personal to themselves; and yet no secret, such as the physician fancied must exist there, ever stole out of the minister's consciousness into his companion's ear. the latter had his suspicions, indeed, that even the nature of mr. dimmesdale's bodily disease had never fairly been revealed to him. it was a strange reserve! after a time, at a hint from roger chillingworth, the friends of mr. dimmesdale effected an arrangement by which the two were lodged in the same house; so that every ebb and flow of the minister's life-tide might pass under the eye of his anxious and attached physician. there was much joy throughout the town when this greatly desirable object was attained. it was held to be the best possible measure for the young clergyman's welfare; unless, indeed, as often urged by such as felt authorised to do so, he had selected some one of the many blooming damsels, spiritually devoted to him, to become his devoted wife. this latter step, however, there was no present prospect that arthur dimmesdale would be prevailed upon to take; he rejected all suggestions of the kind, as if priestly celibacy were one of his articles of church discipline. doomed by his own choice, therefore, as mr. dimmesdale so evidently was, to eat his unsavoury morsel always at another's board, and endure the life-long chill which must be his lot who seeks to warm himself only at another's fireside, it truly seemed that this sagacious, experienced, benevolent old physician, with his concord of paternal and reverential love for the young pastor, was the very man, of all mankind, to be constantly within reach of his voice. the new abode of the two friends was with a pious widow, of good social rank, who dwelt in a house covering pretty nearly the site on which the venerable structure of king's chapel has since been built. it had the graveyard, originally isaac johnson's home-field, on one side, and so was well adapted to call up serious reflections, suited to their respective employments, in both minister and man of physic. the motherly care of the good widow assigned to mr. dimmesdale a front apartment, with a sunny exposure, and heavy window-curtains, to create a noontide shadow when desirable. the walls were hung round with tapestry, said to be from the gobelin looms, and, at all events, representing the scriptural story of david and bathsheba, and nathan the prophet, in colours still unfaded, but which made the fair woman of the scene almost as grimly picturesque as the woe-denouncing seer. here the pale clergyman piled up his library, rich with parchment-bound folios of the fathers, and the lore of rabbis, and monkish erudition, of which the protestant divines, even while they vilified and decried that class of writers, were yet constrained often to avail themselves. on the other side of the house, old roger chillingworth arranged his study and laboratory: not such as a modern man of science would reckon even tolerably complete, but provided with a distilling apparatus and the means of compounding drugs and chemicals, which the practised alchemist knew well how to turn to purpose. with such commodiousness of situation, these two learned persons sat themselves down, each in his own domain, yet familiarly passing from one apartment to the other, and bestowing a mutual and not incurious inspection into one another's business. and the reverend arthur dimmesdale's best discerning friends, as we have intimated, very reasonably imagined that the hand of providence had done all this for the purpose--besought in so many public and domestic and secret prayers--of restoring the young minister to health. but, it must now be said, another portion of the community had latterly begun to take its own view of the relation betwixt mr. dimmesdale and the mysterious old physician. when an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived. when, however, it forms its judgment, as it usually does, on the intuitions of its great and warm heart, the conclusions thus attained are often so profound and so unerring as to possess the character of truth supernaturally revealed. the people, in the case of which we speak, could justify its prejudice against roger chillingworth by no fact or argument worthy of serious refutation. there was an aged handicraftsman, it is true, who had been a citizen of london at the period of sir thomas overbury's murder, now some thirty years agone; he testified to having seen the physician, under some other name, which the narrator of the story had now forgotten, in company with dr. forman, the famous old conjurer, who was implicated in the affair of overbury. two or three individuals hinted that the man of skill, during his indian captivity, had enlarged his medical attainments by joining in the incantations of the savage priests, who were universally acknowledged to be powerful enchanters, often performing seemingly miraculous cures by their skill in the black art. a large number--and many of these were persons of such sober sense and practical observation that their opinions would have been valuable in other matters--affirmed that roger chillingworth's aspect had undergone a remarkable change while he had dwelt in town, and especially since his abode with mr. dimmesdale. at first, his expression had been calm, meditative, scholar-like. now there was something ugly and evil in his face, which they had not previously noticed, and which grew still the more obvious to sight the oftener they looked upon him. according to the vulgar idea, the fire in his laboratory had been brought from the lower regions, and was fed with infernal fuel; and so, as might be expected, his visage was getting sooty with the smoke. to sum up the matter, it grew to be a widely diffused opinion that the rev. arthur dimmesdale, like many other personages of special sanctity, in all ages of the christian world, was haunted either by satan himself or satan's emissary, in the guise of old roger chillingworth. this diabolical agent had the divine permission, for a season, to burrow into the clergyman's intimacy, and plot against his soul. no sensible man, it was confessed, could doubt on which side the victory would turn. the people looked, with an unshaken hope, to see the minister come forth out of the conflict transfigured with the glory which he would unquestionably win. meanwhile, nevertheless, it was sad to think of the perchance mortal agony through which he must struggle towards his triumph. alas! to judge from the gloom and terror in the depth of the poor minister's eyes, the battle was a sore one, and the victory anything but secure. x. the leech and his patient old roger chillingworth, throughout life, had been calm in temperament, kindly, though not of warm affections, but ever, and in all his relations with the world, a pure and upright man. he had begun an investigation, as he imagined, with the severe and equal integrity of a judge, desirous only of truth, even as if the question involved no more than the air-drawn lines and figures of a geometrical problem, instead of human passions, and wrongs inflicted on himself. but, as he proceeded, a terrible fascination, a kind of fierce, though still calm, necessity, seized the old man within its gripe, and never set him free again until he had done all its bidding. he now dug into the poor clergyman's heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather, like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man's bosom, but likely to find nothing save mortality and corruption. alas, for his own soul, if these were what he sought! sometimes a light glimmered out of the physician's eyes, burning blue and ominous, like the reflection of a furnace, or, let us say, like one of those gleams of ghastly fire that darted from bunyan's awful doorway in the hillside, and quivered on the pilgrim's face. the soil where this dark miner was working had perchance shown indications that encouraged him. "this man," said he, at one such moment, to himself, "pure as they deem him--all spiritual as he seems--hath inherited a strong animal nature from his father or his mother. let us dig a little further in the direction of this vein!" then after long search into the minister's dim interior, and turning over many precious materials, in the shape of high aspirations for the welfare of his race, warm love of souls, pure sentiments, natural piety, strengthened by thought and study, and illuminated by revelation--all of which invaluable gold was perhaps no better than rubbish to the seeker--he would turn back, discouraged, and begin his quest towards another point. he groped along as stealthily, with as cautious a tread, and as wary an outlook, as a thief entering a chamber where a man lies only half asleep--or, it may be, broad awake--with purpose to steal the very treasure which this man guards as the apple of his eye. in spite of his premeditated carefulness, the floor would now and then creak; his garments would rustle; the shadow of his presence, in a forbidden proximity, would be thrown across his victim. in other words, mr. dimmesdale, whose sensibility of nerve often produced the effect of spiritual intuition, would become vaguely aware that something inimical to his peace had thrust itself into relation with him. but old roger chillingworth, too, had perceptions that were almost intuitive; and when the minister threw his startled eyes towards him, there the physician sat; his kind, watchful, sympathising, but never intrusive friend. yet mr. dimmesdale would perhaps have seen this individual's character more perfectly, if a certain morbidness, to which sick hearts are liable, had not rendered him suspicious of all mankind. trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared. he therefore still kept up a familiar intercourse with him, daily receiving the old physician in his study, or visiting the laboratory, and, for recreation's sake, watching the processes by which weeds were converted into drugs of potency. one day, leaning his forehead on his hand, and his elbow on the sill of the open window, that looked towards the grave-yard, he talked with roger chillingworth, while the old man was examining a bundle of unsightly plants. "where," asked he, with a look askance at them--for it was the clergyman's peculiarity that he seldom, now-a-days, looked straight forth at any object, whether human or inanimate, "where, my kind doctor, did you gather those herbs, with such a dark, flabby leaf?" "even in the graveyard here at hand," answered the physician, continuing his employment. "they are new to me. i found them growing on a grave, which bore no tombstone, no other memorial of the dead man, save these ugly weeds, that have taken upon themselves to keep him in remembrance. they grew out of his heart, and typify, it may be, some hideous secret that was buried with him, and which he had done better to confess during his lifetime." "perchance," said mr. dimmesdale, "he earnestly desired it, but could not." "and wherefore?" rejoined the physician. "wherefore not; since all the powers of nature call so earnestly for the confession of sin, that these black weeds have sprung up out of a buried heart, to make manifest, an outspoken crime?" "that, good sir, is but a phantasy of yours," replied the minister. "there can be, if i forbode aright, no power, short of the divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried in the human heart. the heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall be revealed. nor have i so read or interpreted holy writ, as to understand that the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds, then to be made, is intended as a part of the retribution. that, surely, were a shallow view of it. no; these revelations, unless i greatly err, are meant merely to promote the intellectual satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand waiting, on that day, to see the dark problem of this life made plain. a knowledge of men's hearts will be needful to the completest solution of that problem. and, i conceive moreover, that the hearts holding such miserable secrets as you speak of, will yield them up, at that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy unutterable." "then why not reveal it here?" asked roger chillingworth, glancing quietly aside at the minister. "why should not the guilty ones sooner avail themselves of this unutterable solace?" "they mostly do," said the clergyman, griping hard at his breast, as if afflicted with an importunate throb of pain. "many, many a poor soul hath given its confidence to me, not only on the death-bed, but while strong in life, and fair in reputation. and ever, after such an outpouring, oh, what a relief have i witnessed in those sinful brethren! even as in one who at last draws free air, after a long stifling with his own polluted breath. how can it be otherwise? why should a wretched man--guilty, we will say, of murder--prefer to keep the dead corpse buried in his own heart, rather than fling it forth at once, and let the universe take care of it!" "yet some men bury their secrets thus," observed the calm physician. "true; there are such men," answered mr. dimmesdale. "but not to suggest more obvious reasons, it may be that they are kept silent by the very constitution of their nature. or--can we not suppose it?--guilty as they may be, retaining, nevertheless, a zeal for god's glory and man's welfare, they shrink from displaying themselves black and filthy in the view of men; because, thenceforward, no good can be achieved by them; no evil of the past be redeemed by better service. so, to their own unutterable torment, they go about among their fellow-creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow, while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid themselves." "these men deceive themselves," said roger chillingworth, with somewhat more emphasis than usual, and making a slight gesture with his forefinger. "they fear to take up the shame that rightfully belongs to them. their love for man, their zeal for god's service--these holy impulses may or may not coexist in their hearts with the evil inmates to which their guilt has unbarred the door, and which must needs propagate a hellish breed within them. but, if they seek to glorify god, let them not lift heavenward their unclean hands! if they would serve their fellowmen, let them do it by making manifest the power and reality of conscience, in constraining them to penitential self-abasement! would thou have me to believe, o wise and pious friend, that a false show can be better--can be more for god's glory, or man' welfare--than god's own truth? trust me, such men deceive themselves!" "it may be so," said the young clergyman, indifferently, as waiving a discussion that he considered irrelevant or unseasonable. he had a ready faculty, indeed, of escaping from any topic that agitated his too sensitive and nervous temperament.--"but, now, i would ask of my well-skilled physician, whether, in good sooth, he deems me to have profited by his kindly care of this weak frame of mine?" before roger chillingworth could answer, they heard the clear, wild laughter of a young child's voice, proceeding from the adjacent burial-ground. looking instinctively from the open window--for it was summer-time--the minister beheld hester prynne and little pearl passing along the footpath that traversed the enclosure. pearl looked as beautiful as the day, but was in one of those moods of perverse merriment which, whenever they occurred, seemed to remove her entirely out of the sphere of sympathy or human contact. she now skipped irreverently from one grave to another; until coming to the broad, flat, armorial tombstone of a departed worthy--perhaps of isaac johnson himself--she began to dance upon it. in reply to her mother's command and entreaty that she would behave more decorously, little pearl paused to gather the prickly burrs from a tall burdock which grew beside the tomb. taking a handful of these, she arranged them along the lines of the scarlet letter that decorated the maternal bosom, to which the burrs, as their nature was, tenaciously adhered. hester did not pluck them off. roger chillingworth had by this time approached the window and smiled grimly down. "there is no law, nor reverence for authority, no regard for human ordinances or opinions, right or wrong, mixed up with that child's composition," remarked he, as much to himself as to his companion. "i saw her, the other day, bespatter the governor himself with water at the cattle-trough in spring lane. what, in heaven's name, is she? is the imp altogether evil? hath she affections? hath she any discoverable principle of being?" "none, save the freedom of a broken law," answered mr. dimmesdale, in a quiet way, as if he had been discussing the point within himself, "whether capable of good, i know not." the child probably overheard their voices, for, looking up to the window with a bright, but naughty smile of mirth and intelligence, she threw one of the prickly burrs at the rev. mr. dimmesdale. the sensitive clergyman shrank, with nervous dread, from the light missile. detecting his emotion, pearl clapped her little hands in the most extravagant ecstacy. hester prynne, likewise, had involuntarily looked up, and all these four persons, old and young, regarded one another in silence, till the child laughed aloud, and shouted--"come away, mother! come away, or yonder old black man will catch you! he hath got hold of the minister already. come away, mother or he will catch you! but he cannot catch little pearl!" so she drew her mother away, skipping, dancing, and frisking fantastically among the hillocks of the dead people, like a creature that had nothing in common with a bygone and buried generation, nor owned herself akin to it. it was as if she had been made afresh out of new elements, and must perforce be permitted to live her own life, and be a law unto herself without her eccentricities being reckoned to her for a crime. "there goes a woman," resumed roger chillingworth, after a pause, "who, be her demerits what they may, hath none of that mystery of hidden sinfulness which you deem so grievous to be borne. is hester prynne the less miserable, think you, for that scarlet letter on her breast?" "i do verily believe it," answered the clergyman. "nevertheless, i cannot answer for her. there was a look of pain in her face which i would gladly have been spared the sight of. but still, methinks, it must needs be better for the sufferer to be free to show his pain, as this poor woman hester is, than to cover it up in his heart." there was another pause, and the physician began anew to examine and arrange the plants which he had gathered. "you inquired of me, a little time agone," said he, at length, "my judgment as touching your health." "i did," answered the clergyman, "and would gladly learn it. speak frankly, i pray you, be it for life or death." "freely then, and plainly," said the physician, still busy with his plants, but keeping a wary eye on mr. dimmesdale, "the disorder is a strange one; not so much in itself nor as outwardly manifested,--in so far, at least as the symptoms have been laid open to my observation. looking daily at you, my good sir, and watching the tokens of your aspect now for months gone by, i should deem you a man sore sick, it may be, yet not so sick but that an instructed and watchful physician might well hope to cure you. but i know not what to say, the disease is what i seem to know, yet know it not." "you speak in riddles, learned sir," said the pale minister, glancing aside out of the window. "then, to speak more plainly," continued the physician, "and i crave pardon, sir, should it seem to require pardon, for this needful plainness of my speech. let me ask as your friend, as one having charge, under providence, of your life and physical well being, hath all the operations of this disorder been fairly laid open and recounted to me?" "how can you question it?" asked the minister. "surely it were child's play to call in a physician and then hide the sore!" "you would tell me, then, that i know all?" said roger chillingworth, deliberately, and fixing an eye, bright with intense and concentrated intelligence, on the minister's face. "be it so! but again! he to whom only the outward and physical evil is laid open, knoweth, oftentimes, but half the evil which he is called upon to cure. a bodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part. your pardon once again, good sir, if my speech give the shadow of offence. you, sir, of all men whom i have known, are he whose body is the closest conjoined, and imbued, and identified, so to speak, with the spirit whereof it is the instrument." "then i need ask no further," said the clergyman, somewhat hastily rising from his chair. "you deal not, i take it, in medicine for the soul!" "thus, a sickness," continued roger chillingworth, going on, in an unaltered tone, without heeding the interruption, but standing up and confronting the emaciated and white-cheeked minister, with his low, dark, and misshapen figure,--"a sickness, a sore place, if we may so call it, in your spirit hath immediately its appropriate manifestation in your bodily frame. would you, therefore, that your physician heal the bodily evil? how may this be unless you first lay open to him the wound or trouble in your soul?" "no, not to thee! not to an earthly physician!" cried mr. dimmesdale, passionately, and turning his eyes, full and bright, and with a kind of fierceness, on old roger chillingworth. "not to thee! but, if it be the soul's disease, then do i commit myself to the one physician of the soul! he, if it stand with his good pleasure, can cure, or he can kill. let him do with me as, in his justice and wisdom, he shall see good. but who art thou, that meddlest in this matter? that dares thrust himself between the sufferer and his god?" with a frantic gesture he rushed out of the room. "it is as well to have made this step," said roger chillingworth to himself, looking after the minister, with a grave smile. "there is nothing lost. we shall be friends again anon. but see, now, how passion takes hold upon this man, and hurrieth him out of himself! as with one passion so with another. he hath done a wild thing ere now, this pious master dimmesdale, in the hot passion of his heart." it proved not difficult to re-establish the intimacy of the two companions, on the same footing and in the same degree as heretofore. the young clergyman, after a few hours of privacy, was sensible that the disorder of his nerves had hurried him into an unseemly outbreak of temper, which there had been nothing in the physician's words to excuse or palliate. he marvelled, indeed, at the violence with which he had thrust back the kind old man, when merely proffering the advice which it was his duty to bestow, and which the minister himself had expressly sought. with these remorseful feelings, he lost no time in making the amplest apologies, and besought his friend still to continue the care which, if not successful in restoring him to health, had, in all probability, been the means of prolonging his feeble existence to that hour. roger chillingworth readily assented, and went on with his medical supervision of the minister; doing his best for him, in all good faith, but always quitting the patient's apartment, at the close of the professional interview, with a mysterious and puzzled smile upon his lips. this expression was invisible in mr. dimmesdale's presence, but grew strongly evident as the physician crossed the threshold. "a rare case," he muttered. "i must needs look deeper into it. a strange sympathy betwixt soul and body! were it only for the art's sake, i must search this matter to the bottom." it came to pass, not long after the scene above recorded, that the reverend mr. dimmesdale, noon-day, and entirely unawares, fell into a deep, deep slumber, sitting in his chair, with a large black-letter volume open before him on the table. it must have been a work of vast ability in the somniferous school of literature. the profound depth of the minister's repose was the more remarkable, inasmuch as he was one of those persons whose sleep ordinarily is as light as fitful, and as easily scared away, as a small bird hopping on a twig. to such an unwonted remoteness, however, had his spirit now withdrawn into itself that he stirred not in his chair when old roger chillingworth, without any extraordinary precaution, came into the room. the physician advanced directly in front of his patient, laid his hand upon his bosom, and thrust aside the vestment, that hitherto had always covered it even from the professional eye. then, indeed, mr. dimmesdale shuddered, and slightly stirred. after a brief pause, the physician turned away. but with what a wild look of wonder, joy, and horror! with what a ghastly rapture, as it were, too mighty to be expressed only by the eye and features, and therefore bursting forth through the whole ugliness of his figure, and making itself even riotously manifest by the extravagant gestures with which he threw up his arms towards the ceiling, and stamped his foot upon the floor! had a man seen old roger chillingworth, at that moment of his ecstasy, he would have had no need to ask how satan comports himself when a precious human soul is lost to heaven, and won into his kingdom. but what distinguished the physician's ecstasy from satan's was the trait of wonder in it! xi. the interior of a heart after the incident last described, the intercourse between the clergyman and the physician, though externally the same, was really of another character than it had previously been. the intellect of roger chillingworth had now a sufficiently plain path before it. it was not, indeed, precisely that which he had laid out for himself to tread. calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man, which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy. to make himself the one trusted friend, to whom should be confided all the fear, the remorse, the agony, the ineffectual repentance, the backward rush of sinful thoughts, expelled in vain! all that guilty sorrow, hidden from the world, whose great heart would have pitied and forgiven, to be revealed to him, the pitiless--to him, the unforgiving! all that dark treasure to be lavished on the very man, to whom nothing else could so adequately pay the debt of vengeance! the clergyman's shy and sensitive reserve had balked this scheme. roger chillingworth, however, was inclined to be hardly, if at all, less satisfied with the aspect of affairs, which providence--using the avenger and his victim for its own purposes, and, perchance, pardoning, where it seemed most to punish--had substituted for his black devices. a revelation, he could almost say, had been granted to him. it mattered little for his object, whether celestial or from what other region. by its aid, in all the subsequent relations betwixt him and mr. dimmesdale, not merely the external presence, but the very inmost soul of the latter, seemed to be brought out before his eyes, so that he could see and comprehend its every movement. he became, thenceforth, not a spectator only, but a chief actor in the poor minister's interior world. he could play upon him as he chose. would he arouse him with a throb of agony? the victim was for ever on the rack; it needed only to know the spring that controlled the engine: and the physician knew it well. would he startle him with sudden fear? as at the waving of a magician's wand, up rose a grisly phantom--up rose a thousand phantoms--in many shapes, of death, or more awful shame, all flocking round about the clergyman, and pointing with their fingers at his breast! all this was accomplished with a subtlety so perfect, that the minister, though he had constantly a dim perception of some evil influence watching over him, could never gain a knowledge of its actual nature. true, he looked doubtfully, fearfully--even, at times, with horror and the bitterness of hatred--at the deformed figure of the old physician. his gestures, his gait, his grizzled beard, his slightest and most indifferent acts, the very fashion of his garments, were odious in the clergyman's sight; a token implicitly to be relied on of a deeper antipathy in the breast of the latter than he was willing to acknowledge to himself. for, as it was impossible to assign a reason for such distrust and abhorrence, so mr. dimmesdale, conscious that the poison of one morbid spot was infecting his heart's entire substance, attributed all his presentiments to no other cause. he took himself to task for his bad sympathies in reference to roger chillingworth, disregarded the lesson that he should have drawn from them, and did his best to root them out. unable to accomplish this, he nevertheless, as a matter of principle, continued his habits of social familiarity with the old man, and thus gave him constant opportunities for perfecting the purpose to which--poor forlorn creature that he was, and more wretched than his victim--the avenger had devoted himself. while thus suffering under bodily disease, and gnawed and tortured by some black trouble of the soul, and given over to the machinations of his deadliest enemy, the reverend mr. dimmesdale had achieved a brilliant popularity in his sacred office. he won it indeed, in great part, by his sorrows. his intellectual gifts, his moral perceptions, his power of experiencing and communicating emotion, were kept in a state of preternatural activity by the prick and anguish of his daily life. his fame, though still on its upward slope, already overshadowed the soberer reputations of his fellow-clergymen, eminent as several of them were. there are scholars among them, who had spent more years in acquiring abstruse lore, connected with the divine profession, than mr. dimmesdale had lived; and who might well, therefore, be more profoundly versed in such solid and valuable attainments than their youthful brother. there were men, too, of a sturdier texture of mind than his, and endowed with a far greater share of shrewd, hard iron, or granite understanding; which, duly mingled with a fair proportion of doctrinal ingredient, constitutes a highly respectable, efficacious, and unamiable variety of the clerical species. there were others again, true saintly fathers, whose faculties had been elaborated by weary toil among their books, and by patient thought, and etherealised, moreover, by spiritual communications with the better world, into which their purity of life had almost introduced these holy personages, with their garments of mortality still clinging to them. all that they lacked was, the gift that descended upon the chosen disciples at pentecost, in tongues of flame; symbolising, it would seem, not the power of speech in foreign and unknown languages, but that of addressing the whole human brotherhood in the heart's native language. these fathers, otherwise so apostolic, lacked heaven's last and rarest attestation of their office, the tongue of flame. they would have vainly sought--had they ever dreamed of seeking--to express the highest truths through the humblest medium of familiar words and images. their voices came down, afar and indistinctly, from the upper heights where they habitually dwelt. not improbably, it was to this latter class of men that mr. dimmesdale, by many of his traits of character, naturally belonged. to the high mountain peaks of faith and sanctity he would have climbed, had not the tendency been thwarted by the burden, whatever it might be, of crime or anguish, beneath which it was his doom to totter. it kept him down on a level with the lowest; him, the man of ethereal attributes, whose voice the angels might else have listened to and answered! but this very burden it was that gave him sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind; so that his heart vibrated in unison with theirs, and received their pain into itself and sent its own throb of pain through a thousand other hearts, in gushes of sad, persuasive eloquence. oftenest persuasive, but sometimes terrible! the people knew not the power that moved them thus. they deemed the young clergyman a miracle of holiness. they fancied him the mouth-piece of heaven's messages of wisdom, and rebuke, and love. in their eyes, the very ground on which he trod was sanctified. the virgins of his church grew pale around him, victims of a passion so imbued with religious sentiment, that they imagined it to be all religion, and brought it openly, in their white bosoms, as their most acceptable sacrifice before the altar. the aged members of his flock, beholding mr. dimmesdale's frame so feeble, while they were themselves so rugged in their infirmity, believed that he would go heavenward before them, and enjoined it upon their children that their old bones should be buried close to their young pastor's holy grave. and all this time, perchance, when poor mr. dimmesdale was thinking of his grave, he questioned with himself whether the grass would ever grow on it, because an accursed thing must there be buried! it is inconceivable, the agony with which this public veneration tortured him. it was his genuine impulse to adore the truth, and to reckon all things shadow-like, and utterly devoid of weight or value, that had not its divine essence as the life within their life. then what was he?--a substance?--or the dimmest of all shadows? he longed to speak out from his own pulpit at the full height of his voice, and tell the people what he was. "i, whom you behold in these black garments of the priesthood--i, who ascend the sacred desk, and turn my pale face heavenward, taking upon myself to hold communion in your behalf with the most high omniscience--i, in whose daily life you discern the sanctity of enoch--i, whose footsteps, as you suppose, leave a gleam along my earthly track, whereby the pilgrims that shall come after me may be guided to the regions of the blest--i, who have laid the hand of baptism upon your children--i, who have breathed the parting prayer over your dying friends, to whom the amen sounded faintly from a world which they had quitted--i, your pastor, whom you so reverence and trust, am utterly a pollution and a lie!" more than once, mr. dimmesdale had gone into the pulpit, with a purpose never to come down its steps until he should have spoken words like the above. more than once he had cleared his throat, and drawn in the long, deep, and tremulous breath, which, when sent forth again, would come burdened with the black secret of his soul. more than once--nay, more than a hundred times--he had actually spoken! spoken! but how? he had told his hearers that he was altogether vile, a viler companion of the vilest, the worst of sinners, an abomination, a thing of unimaginable iniquity, and that the only wonder was that they did not see his wretched body shrivelled up before their eyes by the burning wrath of the almighty! could there be plainer speech than this? would not the people start up in their seats, by a simultaneous impulse, and tear him down out of the pulpit which he defiled? not so, indeed! they heard it all, and did but reverence him the more. they little guessed what deadly purport lurked in those self-condemning words. "the godly youth!" said they among themselves. "the saint on earth! alas! if he discern such sinfulness in his own white soul, what horrid spectacle would he behold in thine or mine!" the minister well knew--subtle, but remorseful hypocrite that he was!--the light in which his vague confession would be viewed. he had striven to put a cheat upon himself by making the avowal of a guilty conscience, but had gained only one other sin, and a self-acknowledged shame, without the momentary relief of being self-deceived. he had spoken the very truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood. and yet, by the constitution of his nature, he loved the truth, and loathed the lie, as few men ever did. therefore, above all things else, he loathed his miserable self! his inward trouble drove him to practices more in accordance with the old, corrupted faith of rome than with the better light of the church in which he had been born and bred. in mr. dimmesdale's secret closet, under lock and key, there was a bloody scourge. oftentimes, this protestant and puritan divine had plied it on his own shoulders, laughing bitterly at himself the while, and smiting so much the more pitilessly because of that bitter laugh. it was his custom, too, as it has been that of many other pious puritans, to fast--not however, like them, in order to purify the body, and render it the fitter medium of celestial illumination--but rigorously, and until his knees trembled beneath him, as an act of penance. he kept vigils, likewise, night after night, sometimes in utter darkness, sometimes with a glimmering lamp, and sometimes, viewing his own face in a looking-glass, by the most powerful light which he could throw upon it. he thus typified the constant introspection wherewith he tortured, but could not purify himself. in these lengthened vigils, his brain often reeled, and visions seemed to flit before him; perhaps seen doubtfully, and by a faint light of their own, in the remote dimness of the chamber, or more vividly and close beside him, within the looking-glass. now it was a herd of diabolic shapes, that grinned and mocked at the pale minister, and beckoned him away with them; now a group of shining angels, who flew upward heavily, as sorrow-laden, but grew more ethereal as they rose. now came the dead friends of his youth, and his white-bearded father, with a saint-like frown, and his mother turning her face away as she passed by. ghost of a mother--thinnest fantasy of a mother--methinks she might yet have thrown a pitying glance towards her son! and now, through the chamber which these spectral thoughts had made so ghastly, glided hester prynne leading along little pearl, in her scarlet garb, and pointing her forefinger, first at the scarlet letter on her bosom, and then at the clergyman's own breast. none of these visions ever quite deluded him. at any moment, by an effort of his will, he could discern substances through their misty lack of substance, and convince himself that they were not solid in their nature, like yonder table of carved oak, or that big, square, leather-bound and brazen-clasped volume of divinity. but, for all that, they were, in one sense, the truest and most substantial things which the poor minister now dealt with. it is the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his, that it steals the pith and substance out of whatever realities there are around us, and which were meant by heaven to be the spirit's joy and nutriment. to the untrue man, the whole universe is false--it is impalpable--it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. and he himself in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist. the only truth that continued to give mr. dimmesdale a real existence on this earth was the anguish in his inmost soul, and the undissembled expression of it in his aspect. had he once found power to smile, and wear a face of gaiety, there would have been no such man! on one of those ugly nights, which we have faintly hinted at, but forborne to picture forth, the minister started from his chair. a new thought had struck him. there might be a moment's peace in it. attiring himself with as much care as if it had been for public worship, and precisely in the same manner, he stole softly down the staircase, undid the door, and issued forth. xii. the minister's vigil walking in the shadow of a dream, as it were, and perhaps actually under the influence of a species of somnambulism, mr. dimmesdale reached the spot where, now so long since, hester prynne had lived through her first hours of public ignominy. the same platform or scaffold, black and weather-stained with the storm or sunshine of seven long years, and foot-worn, too, with the tread of many culprits who had since ascended it, remained standing beneath the balcony of the meeting-house. the minister went up the steps. it was an obscure night in early may. an unvaried pall of cloud muffled the whole expanse of sky from zenith to horizon. if the same multitude which had stood as eye-witnesses while hester prynne sustained her punishment could now have been summoned forth, they would have discerned no face above the platform nor hardly the outline of a human shape, in the dark grey of the midnight. but the town was all asleep. there was no peril of discovery. the minister might stand there, if it so pleased him, until morning should redden in the east, without other risk than that the dank and chill night air would creep into his frame, and stiffen his joints with rheumatism, and clog his throat with catarrh and cough; thereby defrauding the expectant audience of to-morrow's prayer and sermon. no eye could see him, save that ever-wakeful one which had seen him in his closet, wielding the bloody scourge. why, then, had he come hither? was it but the mockery of penitence? a mockery, indeed, but in which his soul trifled with itself! a mockery at which angels blushed and wept, while fiends rejoiced with jeering laughter! he had been driven hither by the impulse of that remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose own sister and closely linked companion was that cowardice which invariably drew him back, with her tremulous gripe, just when the other impulse had hurried him to the verge of a disclosure. poor, miserable man! what right had infirmity like his to burden itself with crime? crime is for the iron-nerved, who have their choice either to endure it, or, if it press too hard, to exert their fierce and savage strength for a good purpose, and fling it off at once! this feeble and most sensitive of spirits could do neither, yet continually did one thing or another, which intertwined, in the same inextricable knot, the agony of heaven-defying guilt and vain repentance. and thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this vain show of expiation, mr. dimmesdale was overcome with a great horror of mind, as if the universe were gazing at a scarlet token on his naked breast, right over his heart. on that spot, in very truth, there was, and there had long been, the gnawing and poisonous tooth of bodily pain. without any effort of his will, or power to restrain himself, he shrieked aloud: an outcry that went pealing through the night, and was beaten back from one house to another, and reverberated from the hills in the background; as if a company of devils, detecting so much misery and terror in it, had made a plaything of the sound, and were bandying it to and fro. "it is done!" muttered the minister, covering his face with his hands. "the whole town will awake and hurry forth, and find me here!" but it was not so. the shriek had perhaps sounded with a far greater power, to his own startled ears, than it actually possessed. the town did not awake; or, if it did, the drowsy slumberers mistook the cry either for something frightful in a dream, or for the noise of witches, whose voices, at that period, were often heard to pass over the settlements or lonely cottages, as they rode with satan through the air. the clergyman, therefore, hearing no symptoms of disturbance, uncovered his eyes and looked about him. at one of the chamber-windows of governor bellingham's mansion, which stood at some distance, on the line of another street, he beheld the appearance of the old magistrate himself with a lamp in his hand a white night-cap on his head, and a long white gown enveloping his figure. he looked like a ghost evoked unseasonably from the grave. the cry had evidently startled him. at another window of the same house, moreover appeared old mistress hibbins, the governor's sister, also with a lamp, which even thus far off revealed the expression of her sour and discontented face. she thrust forth her head from the lattice, and looked anxiously upward. beyond the shadow of a doubt, this venerable witch-lady had heard mr. dimmesdale's outcry, and interpreted it, with its multitudinous echoes and reverberations, as the clamour of the fiends and night-hags, with whom she was well known to make excursions in the forest. detecting the gleam of governor bellingham's lamp, the old lady quickly extinguished her own, and vanished. possibly, she went up among the clouds. the minister saw nothing further of her motions. the magistrate, after a wary observation of the darkness--into which, nevertheless, he could see but little further than he might into a mill-stone--retired from the window. the minister grew comparatively calm. his eyes, however, were soon greeted by a little glimmering light, which, at first a long way off was approaching up the street. it threw a gleam of recognition, on here a post, and there a garden fence, and here a latticed window-pane, and there a pump, with its full trough of water, and here again an arched door of oak, with an iron knocker, and a rough log for the door-step. the reverend mr. dimmesdale noted all these minute particulars, even while firmly convinced that the doom of his existence was stealing onward, in the footsteps which he now heard; and that the gleam of the lantern would fall upon him in a few moments more, and reveal his long-hidden secret. as the light drew nearer, he beheld, within its illuminated circle, his brother clergyman--or, to speak more accurately, his professional father, as well as highly valued friend--the reverend mr. wilson, who, as mr. dimmesdale now conjectured, had been praying at the bedside of some dying man. and so he had. the good old minister came freshly from the death-chamber of governor winthrop, who had passed from earth to heaven within that very hour. and now surrounded, like the saint-like personage of olden times, with a radiant halo, that glorified him amid this gloomy night of sin--as if the departed governor had left him an inheritance of his glory, or as if he had caught upon himself the distant shine of the celestial city, while looking thitherward to see the triumphant pilgrim pass within its gates--now, in short, good father wilson was moving homeward, aiding his footsteps with a lighted lantern! the glimmer of this luminary suggested the above conceits to mr. dimmesdale, who smiled--nay, almost laughed at them--and then wondered if he was going mad. as the reverend mr. wilson passed beside the scaffold, closely muffling his geneva cloak about him with one arm, and holding the lantern before his breast with the other, the minister could hardly restrain himself from speaking-- "a good evening to you, venerable father wilson. come up hither, i pray you, and pass a pleasant hour with me!" good heavens! had mr. dimmesdale actually spoken? for one instant he believed that these words had passed his lips. but they were uttered only within his imagination. the venerable father wilson continued to step slowly onward, looking carefully at the muddy pathway before his feet, and never once turning his head towards the guilty platform. when the light of the glimmering lantern had faded quite away, the minister discovered, by the faintness which came over him, that the last few moments had been a crisis of terrible anxiety, although his mind had made an involuntary effort to relieve itself by a kind of lurid playfulness. shortly afterwards, the like grisly sense of the humorous again stole in among the solemn phantoms of his thought. he felt his limbs growing stiff with the unaccustomed chilliness of the night, and doubted whether he should be able to descend the steps of the scaffold. morning would break and find him there. the neighbourhood would begin to rouse itself. the earliest riser, coming forth in the dim twilight, would perceive a vaguely-defined figure aloft on the place of shame; and half-crazed betwixt alarm and curiosity, would go knocking from door to door, summoning all the people to behold the ghost--as he needs must think it--of some defunct transgressor. a dusky tumult would flap its wings from one house to another. then--the morning light still waxing stronger--old patriarchs would rise up in great haste, each in his flannel gown, and matronly dames, without pausing to put off their night-gear. the whole tribe of decorous personages, who had never heretofore been seen with a single hair of their heads awry, would start into public view with the disorder of a nightmare in their aspects. old governor bellingham would come grimly forth, with his king james' ruff fastened askew, and mistress hibbins, with some twigs of the forest clinging to her skirts, and looking sourer than ever, as having hardly got a wink of sleep after her night ride; and good father wilson too, after spending half the night at a death-bed, and liking ill to be disturbed, thus early, out of his dreams about the glorified saints. hither, likewise, would come the elders and deacons of mr. dimmesdale's church, and the young virgins who so idolized their minister, and had made a shrine for him in their white bosoms, which now, by-the-bye, in their hurry and confusion, they would scantly have given themselves time to cover with their kerchiefs. all people, in a word, would come stumbling over their thresholds, and turning up their amazed and horror-stricken visages around the scaffold. whom would they discern there, with the red eastern light upon his brow? whom, but the reverend arthur dimmesdale, half-frozen to death, overwhelmed with shame, and standing where hester prynne had stood! carried away by the grotesque horror of this picture, the minister, unawares, and to his own infinite alarm, burst into a great peal of laughter. it was immediately responded to by a light, airy, childish laugh, in which, with a thrill of the heart--but he knew not whether of exquisite pain, or pleasure as acute--he recognised the tones of little pearl. "pearl! little pearl!" cried he, after a moment's pause; then, suppressing his voice--"hester! hester prynne! are you there?" "yes; it is hester prynne!" she replied, in a tone of surprise; and the minister heard her footsteps approaching from the side-walk, along which she had been passing. "it is i, and my little pearl." "whence come you, hester?" asked the minister. "what sent you hither?" "i have been watching at a death-bed," answered hester prynne "at governor winthrop's death-bed, and have taken his measure for a robe, and am now going homeward to my dwelling." "come up hither, hester, thou and little pearl," said the reverend mr. dimmesdale. "ye have both been here before, but i was not with you. come up hither once again, and we will stand all three together." she silently ascended the steps, and stood on the platform, holding little pearl by the hand. the minister felt for the child's other hand, and took it. the moment that he did so, there came what seemed a tumultuous rush of new life, other life than his own pouring like a torrent into his heart, and hurrying through all his veins, as if the mother and the child were communicating their vital warmth to his half-torpid system. the three formed an electric chain. "minister!" whispered little pearl. "what wouldst thou say, child?" asked mr. dimmesdale. "wilt thou stand here with mother and me, to-morrow noontide?" inquired pearl. "nay; not so, my little pearl," answered the minister; for, with the new energy of the moment, all the dread of public exposure, that had so long been the anguish of his life, had returned upon him; and he was already trembling at the conjunction in which--with a strange joy, nevertheless--he now found himself--"not so, my child. i shall, indeed, stand with thy mother and thee one other day, but not to-morrow." pearl laughed, and attempted to pull away her hand. but the minister held it fast. "a moment longer, my child!" said he. "but wilt thou promise," asked pearl, "to take my hand, and mother's hand, to-morrow noontide?" "not then, pearl," said the minister; "but another time." "and what other time?" persisted the child. "at the great judgment day," whispered the minister; and, strangely enough, the sense that he was a professional teacher of the truth impelled him to answer the child so. "then, and there, before the judgment-seat, thy mother, and thou, and i must stand together. but the daylight of this world shall not see our meeting!" pearl laughed again. but before mr. dimmesdale had done speaking, a light gleamed far and wide over all the muffled sky. it was doubtless caused by one of those meteors, which the night-watcher may so often observe burning out to waste, in the vacant regions of the atmosphere. so powerful was its radiance, that it thoroughly illuminated the dense medium of cloud betwixt the sky and earth. the great vault brightened, like the dome of an immense lamp. it showed the familiar scene of the street with the distinctness of mid-day, but also with the awfulness that is always imparted to familiar objects by an unaccustomed light. the wooden houses, with their jutting storeys and quaint gable-peaks; the doorsteps and thresholds with the early grass springing up about them; the garden-plots, black with freshly-turned earth; the wheel-track, little worn, and even in the market-place margined with green on either side--all were visible, but with a singularity of aspect that seemed to give another moral interpretation to the things of this world than they had ever borne before. and there stood the minister, with his hand over his heart; and hester prynne, with the embroidered letter glimmering on her bosom; and little pearl, herself a symbol, and the connecting link between those two. they stood in the noon of that strange and solemn splendour, as if it were the light that is to reveal all secrets, and the daybreak that shall unite all who belong to one another. there was witchcraft in little pearl's eyes; and her face, as she glanced upward at the minister, wore that naughty smile which made its expression frequently so elvish. she withdrew her hand from mr. dimmesdale's, and pointed across the street. but he clasped both his hands over his breast, and cast his eyes towards the zenith. nothing was more common, in those days, than to interpret all meteoric appearances, and other natural phenomena that occurred with less regularity than the rise and set of sun and moon, as so many revelations from a supernatural source. thus, a blazing spear, a sword of flame, a bow, or a sheaf of arrows seen in the midnight sky, prefigured indian warfare. pestilence was known to have been foreboded by a shower of crimson light. we doubt whether any marked event, for good or evil, ever befell new england, from its settlement down to revolutionary times, of which the inhabitants had not been previously warned by some spectacle of its nature. not seldom, it had been seen by multitudes. oftener, however, its credibility rested on the faith of some lonely eye-witness, who beheld the wonder through the coloured, magnifying, and distorted medium of his imagination, and shaped it more distinctly in his after-thought. it was, indeed, a majestic idea that the destiny of nations should be revealed, in these awful hieroglyphics, on the cope of heaven. a scroll so wide might not be deemed too expensive for providence to write a people's doom upon. the belief was a favourite one with our forefathers, as betokening that their infant commonwealth was under a celestial guardianship of peculiar intimacy and strictness. but what shall we say, when an individual discovers a revelation addressed to himself alone, on the same vast sheet of record. in such a case, it could only be the symptom of a highly disordered mental state, when a man, rendered morbidly self-contemplative by long, intense, and secret pain, had extended his egotism over the whole expanse of nature, until the firmament itself should appear no more than a fitting page for his soul's history and fate. we impute it, therefore, solely to the disease in his own eye and heart that the minister, looking upward to the zenith, beheld there the appearance of an immense letter--the letter a--marked out in lines of dull red light. not but the meteor may have shown itself at that point, burning duskily through a veil of cloud, but with no such shape as his guilty imagination gave it, or, at least, with so little definiteness, that another's guilt might have seen another symbol in it. there was a singular circumstance that characterised mr. dimmesdale's psychological state at this moment. all the time that he gazed upward to the zenith, he was, nevertheless, perfectly aware that little pearl was pointing her finger towards old roger chillingworth, who stood at no great distance from the scaffold. the minister appeared to see him, with the same glance that discerned the miraculous letter. to his feature as to all other objects, the meteoric light imparted a new expression; or it might well be that the physician was not careful then, as at all other times, to hide the malevolence with which he looked upon his victim. certainly, if the meteor kindled up the sky, and disclosed the earth, with an awfulness that admonished hester prynne and the clergyman of the day of judgment, then might roger chillingworth have passed with them for the arch-fiend, standing there with a smile and scowl, to claim his own. so vivid was the expression, or so intense the minister's perception of it, that it seemed still to remain painted on the darkness after the meteor had vanished, with an effect as if the street and all things else were at once annihilated. "who is that man, hester?" gasped mr. dimmesdale, overcome with terror. "i shiver at him! dost thou know the man? i hate him, hester!" she remembered her oath, and was silent. "i tell thee, my soul shivers at him!" muttered the minister again. "who is he? who is he? canst thou do nothing for me? i have a nameless horror of the man!" "minister," said little pearl, "i can tell thee who he is!" "quickly, then, child!" said the minister, bending his ear close to her lips. "quickly, and as low as thou canst whisper." pearl mumbled something into his ear that sounded, indeed, like human language, but was only such gibberish as children may be heard amusing themselves with by the hour together. at all events, if it involved any secret information in regard to old roger chillingworth, it was in a tongue unknown to the erudite clergyman, and did but increase the bewilderment of his mind. the elvish child then laughed aloud. "dost thou mock me now?" said the minister. "thou wast not bold!--thou wast not true!" answered the child. "thou wouldst not promise to take my hand, and mother's hand, to-morrow noon-tide!" "worthy sir," answered the physician, who had now advanced to the foot of the platform--"pious master dimmesdale! can this be you? well, well, indeed! we men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need to be straitly looked after! we dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep. come, good sir, and my dear friend, i pray you let me lead you home!" "how knewest thou that i was here?" asked the minister, fearfully. "verily, and in good faith," answered roger chillingworth, "i knew nothing of the matter. i had spent the better part of the night at the bedside of the worshipful governor winthrop, doing what my poor skill might to give him ease. he, going home to a better world, i, likewise, was on my way homeward, when this light shone out. come with me, i beseech you, reverend sir, else you will be poorly able to do sabbath duty to-morrow. aha! see now how they trouble the brain--these books!--these books! you should study less, good sir, and take a little pastime, or these night whimsies will grow upon you." "i will go home with you," said mr. dimmesdale. with a chill despondency, like one awakening, all nerveless, from an ugly dream, he yielded himself to the physician, and was led away. the next day, however, being the sabbath, he preached a discourse which was held to be the richest and most powerful, and the most replete with heavenly influences, that had ever proceeded from his lips. souls, it is said, more souls than one, were brought to the truth by the efficacy of that sermon, and vowed within themselves to cherish a holy gratitude towards mr. dimmesdale throughout the long hereafter. but as he came down the pulpit steps, the grey-bearded sexton met him, holding up a black glove, which the minister recognised as his own. "it was found," said the sexton, "this morning on the scaffold where evil-doers are set up to public shame. satan dropped it there, i take it, intending a scurrilous jest against your reverence. but, indeed, he was blind and foolish, as he ever and always is. a pure hand needs no glove to cover it!" "thank you, my good friend," said the minister, gravely, but startled at heart; for so confused was his remembrance, that he had almost brought himself to look at the events of the past night as visionary. "yes, it seems to be my glove, indeed!" "and, since satan saw fit to steal it, your reverence must needs handle him without gloves henceforward," remarked the old sexton, grimly smiling. "but did your reverence hear of the portent that was seen last night? a great red letter in the sky--the letter a, which we interpret to stand for angel. for, as our good governor winthrop was made an angel this past night, it was doubtless held fit that there should be some notice thereof!" "no," answered the minister; "i had not heard of it." xiii. another view of hester in her late singular interview with mr. dimmesdale, hester prynne was shocked at the condition to which she found the clergyman reduced. his nerve seemed absolutely destroyed. his moral force was abased into more than childish weakness. it grovelled helpless on the ground, even while his intellectual faculties retained their pristine strength, or had perhaps acquired a morbid energy, which disease only could have given them. with her knowledge of a train of circumstances hidden from all others, she could readily infer that, besides the legitimate action of his own conscience, a terrible machinery had been brought to bear, and was still operating, on mr. dimmesdale's well-being and repose. knowing what this poor fallen man had once been, her whole soul was moved by the shuddering terror with which he had appealed to her--the outcast woman--for support against his instinctively discovered enemy. she decided, moreover, that he had a right to her utmost aid. little accustomed, in her long seclusion from society, to measure her ideas of right and wrong by any standard external to herself, hester saw--or seemed to see--that there lay a responsibility upon her in reference to the clergyman, which she owned to no other, nor to the whole world besides. the links that united her to the rest of humankind--links of flowers, or silk, or gold, or whatever the material--had all been broken. here was the iron link of mutual crime, which neither he nor she could break. like all other ties, it brought along with it its obligations. hester prynne did not now occupy precisely the same position in which we beheld her during the earlier periods of her ignominy. years had come and gone. pearl was now seven years old. her mother, with the scarlet letter on her breast, glittering in its fantastic embroidery, had long been a familiar object to the townspeople. as is apt to be the case when a person stands out in any prominence before the community, and, at the same time, interferes neither with public nor individual interests and convenience, a species of general regard had ultimately grown up in reference to hester prynne. it is to the credit of human nature that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility. in this matter of hester prynne there was neither irritation nor irksomeness. she never battled with the public, but submitted uncomplainingly to its worst usage; she made no claim upon it in requital for what she suffered; she did not weigh upon its sympathies. then, also, the blameless purity of her life during all these years in which she had been set apart to infamy was reckoned largely in her favour. with nothing now to lose, in the sight of mankind, and with no hope, and seemingly no wish, of gaining anything, it could only be a genuine regard for virtue that had brought back the poor wanderer to its paths. it was perceived, too, that while hester never put forward even the humblest title to share in the world's privileges--further than to breathe the common air and earn daily bread for little pearl and herself by the faithful labour of her hands--she was quick to acknowledge her sisterhood with the race of man whenever benefits were to be conferred. none so ready as she to give of her little substance to every demand of poverty, even though the bitter-hearted pauper threw back a gibe in requital of the food brought regularly to his door, or the garments wrought for him by the fingers that could have embroidered a monarch's robe. none so self-devoted as hester when pestilence stalked through the town. in all seasons of calamity, indeed, whether general or of individuals, the outcast of society at once found her place. she came, not as a guest, but as a rightful inmate, into the household that was darkened by trouble, as if its gloomy twilight were a medium in which she was entitled to hold intercourse with her fellow-creature. there glimmered the embroidered letter, with comfort in its unearthly ray. elsewhere the token of sin, it was the taper of the sick chamber. it had even thrown its gleam, in the sufferer's hard extremity, across the verge of time. it had shown him where to set his foot, while the light of earth was fast becoming dim, and ere the light of futurity could reach him. in such emergencies hester's nature showed itself warm and rich--a well-spring of human tenderness, unfailing to every real demand, and inexhaustible by the largest. her breast, with its badge of shame, was but the softer pillow for the head that needed one. she was self-ordained a sister of mercy, or, we may rather say, the world's heavy hand had so ordained her, when neither the world nor she looked forward to this result. the letter was the symbol of her calling. such helpfulness was found in her--so much power to do, and power to sympathise--that many people refused to interpret the scarlet a by its original signification. they said that it meant able, so strong was hester prynne, with a woman's strength. it was only the darkened house that could contain her. when sunshine came again, she was not there. her shadow had faded across the threshold. the helpful inmate had departed, without one backward glance to gather up the meed of gratitude, if any were in the hearts of those whom she had served so zealously. meeting them in the street, she never raised her head to receive their greeting. if they were resolute to accost her, she laid her finger on the scarlet letter, and passed on. this might be pride, but was so like humility, that it produced all the softening influence of the latter quality on the public mind. the public is despotic in its temper; it is capable of denying common justice when too strenuously demanded as a right; but quite as frequently it awards more than justice, when the appeal is made, as despots love to have it made, entirely to its generosity. interpreting hester prynne's deportment as an appeal of this nature, society was inclined to show its former victim a more benign countenance than she cared to be favoured with, or, perchance, than she deserved. the rulers, and the wise and learned men of the community, were longer in acknowledging the influence of hester's good qualities than the people. the prejudices which they shared in common with the latter were fortified in themselves by an iron frame-work of reasoning, that made it a far tougher labour to expel them. day by day, nevertheless, their sour and rigid wrinkles were relaxing into something which, in the due course of years, might grow to be an expression of almost benevolence. thus it was with the men of rank, on whom their eminent position imposed the guardianship of the public morals. individuals in private life, meanwhile, had quite forgiven hester prynne for her frailty; nay, more, they had begun to look upon the scarlet letter as the token, not of that one sin for which she had borne so long and dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since. "do you see that woman with the embroidered badge?" they would say to strangers. "it is our hester--the town's own hester--who is so kind to the poor, so helpful to the sick, so comfortable to the afflicted!" then, it is true, the propensity of human nature to tell the very worst of itself, when embodied in the person of another, would constrain them to whisper the black scandal of bygone years. it was none the less a fact, however, that in the eyes of the very men who spoke thus, the scarlet letter had the effect of the cross on a nun's bosom. it imparted to the wearer a kind of sacredness, which enabled her to walk securely amid all peril. had she fallen among thieves, it would have kept her safe. it was reported, and believed by many, that an indian had drawn his arrow against the badge, and that the missile struck it, and fell harmless to the ground. the effect of the symbol--or rather, of the position in respect to society that was indicated by it--on the mind of hester prynne herself was powerful and peculiar. all the light and graceful foliage of her character had been withered up by this red-hot brand, and had long ago fallen away, leaving a bare and harsh outline, which might have been repulsive had she possessed friends or companions to be repelled by it. even the attractiveness of her person had undergone a similar change. it might be partly owing to the studied austerity of her dress, and partly to the lack of demonstration in her manners. it was a sad transformation, too, that her rich and luxuriant hair had either been cut off, or was so completely hidden by a cap, that not a shining lock of it ever once gushed into the sunshine. it was due in part to all these causes, but still more to something else, that there seemed to be no longer anything in hester's face for love to dwell upon; nothing in hester's form, though majestic and statue like, that passion would ever dream of clasping in its embrace; nothing in hester's bosom to make it ever again the pillow of affection. some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. if she be all tenderness, she will die. if she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or--and the outward semblance is the same--crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more. the latter is perhaps the truest theory. she who has once been a woman, and ceased to be so, might at any moment become a woman again, if there were only the magic touch to effect the transformation. we shall see whether hester prynne were ever afterwards so touched and so transfigured. much of the marble coldness of hester's impression was to be attributed to the circumstance that her life had turned, in a great measure, from passion and feeling to thought. standing alone in the world--alone, as to any dependence on society, and with little pearl to be guided and protected--alone, and hopeless of retrieving her position, even had she not scorned to consider it desirable--she cast away the fragment of a broken chain. the world's law was no law for her mind. it was an age in which the human intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a more active and a wider range than for many centuries before. men of the sword had overthrown nobles and kings. men bolder than these had overthrown and rearranged--not actually, but within the sphere of theory, which was their most real abode--the whole system of ancient prejudice, wherewith was linked much of ancient principle. hester prynne imbibed this spirit. she assumed a freedom of speculation, then common enough on the other side of the atlantic, but which our forefathers, had they known it, would have held to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatised by the scarlet letter. in her lonesome cottage, by the seashore, thoughts visited her such as dared to enter no other dwelling in new england; shadowy guests, that would have been as perilous as demons to their entertainer, could they have been seen so much as knocking at her door. it is remarkable that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society. the thought suffices them, without investing itself in the flesh and blood of action. so it seemed to be with hester. yet, had little pearl never come to her from the spiritual world, it might have been far otherwise. then she might have come down to us in history, hand in hand with ann hutchinson, as the foundress of a religious sect. she might, in one of her phases, have been a prophetess. she might, and not improbably would, have suffered death from the stern tribunals of the period, for attempting to undermine the foundations of the puritan establishment. but, in the education of her child, the mother's enthusiasm of thought had something to wreak itself upon. providence, in the person of this little girl, had assigned to hester's charge, the germ and blossom of womanhood, to be cherished and developed amid a host of difficulties. everything was against her. the world was hostile. the child's own nature had something wrong in it which continually betokened that she had been born amiss--the effluence of her mother's lawless passion--and often impelled hester to ask, in bitterness of heart, whether it were for ill or good that the poor little creature had been born at all. indeed, the same dark question often rose into her mind with reference to the whole race of womanhood. was existence worth accepting even to the happiest among them? as concerned her own individual existence, she had long ago decided in the negative, and dismissed the point as settled. a tendency to speculation, though it may keep women quiet, as it does man, yet makes her sad. she discerns, it may be, such a hopeless task before her. as a first step, the whole system of society is to be torn down and built up anew. then the very nature of the opposite sex, or its long hereditary habit, which has become like nature, is to be essentially modified before woman can be allowed to assume what seems a fair and suitable position. finally, all other difficulties being obviated, woman cannot take advantage of these preliminary reforms until she herself shall have undergone a still mightier change, in which, perhaps, the ethereal essence, wherein she has her truest life, will be found to have evaporated. a woman never overcomes these problems by any exercise of thought. they are not to be solved, or only in one way. if her heart chance to come uppermost, they vanish. thus hester prynne, whose heart had lost its regular and healthy throb, wandered without a clue in the dark labyrinth of mind; now turned aside by an insurmountable precipice; now starting back from a deep chasm. there was wild and ghastly scenery all around her, and a home and comfort nowhere. at times a fearful doubt strove to possess her soul, whether it were not better to send pearl at once to heaven, and go herself to such futurity as eternal justice should provide. the scarlet letter had not done its office. now, however, her interview with the reverend mr. dimmesdale, on the night of his vigil, had given her a new theme of reflection, and held up to her an object that appeared worthy of any exertion and sacrifice for its attainment. she had witnessed the intense misery beneath which the minister struggled, or, to speak more accurately, had ceased to struggle. she saw that he stood on the verge of lunacy, if he had not already stepped across it. it was impossible to doubt that, whatever painful efficacy there might be in the secret sting of remorse, a deadlier venom had been infused into it by the hand that proffered relief. a secret enemy had been continually by his side, under the semblance of a friend and helper, and had availed himself of the opportunities thus afforded for tampering with the delicate springs of mr. dimmesdale's nature. hester could not but ask herself whether there had not originally been a defect of truth, courage, and loyalty on her own part, in allowing the minister to be thrown into a position where so much evil was to be foreboded and nothing auspicious to be hoped. her only justification lay in the fact that she had been able to discern no method of rescuing him from a blacker ruin than had overwhelmed herself except by acquiescing in roger chillingworth's scheme of disguise. under that impulse she had made her choice, and had chosen, as it now appeared, the more wretched alternative of the two. she determined to redeem her error so far as it might yet be possible. strengthened by years of hard and solemn trial, she felt herself no longer so inadequate to cope with roger chillingworth as on that night, abased by sin and half-maddened by the ignominy that was still new, when they had talked together in the prison-chamber. she had climbed her way since then to a higher point. the old man, on the other hand, had brought himself nearer to her level, or, perhaps, below it, by the revenge which he had stooped for. in fine, hester prynne resolved to meet her former husband, and do what might be in her power for the rescue of the victim on whom he had so evidently set his gripe. the occasion was not long to seek. one afternoon, walking with pearl in a retired part of the peninsula, she beheld the old physician with a basket on one arm and a staff in the other hand, stooping along the ground in quest of roots and herbs to concoct his medicine withal. xiv. hester and the physician hester bade little pearl run down to the margin of the water, and play with the shells and tangled sea-weed, until she should have talked awhile with yonder gatherer of herbs. so the child flew away like a bird, and, making bare her small white feet went pattering along the moist margin of the sea. here and there she came to a full stop, and peeped curiously into a pool, left by the retiring tide as a mirror for pearl to see her face in. forth peeped at her, out of the pool, with dark, glistening curls around her head, and an elf-smile in her eyes, the image of a little maid whom pearl, having no other playmate, invited to take her hand and run a race with her. but the visionary little maid on her part, beckoned likewise, as if to say--"this is a better place; come thou into the pool." and pearl, stepping in mid-leg deep, beheld her own white feet at the bottom; while, out of a still lower depth, came the gleam of a kind of fragmentary smile, floating to and fro in the agitated water. meanwhile her mother had accosted the physician. "i would speak a word with you," said she--"a word that concerns us much." "aha! and is it mistress hester that has a word for old roger chillingworth?" answered he, raising himself from his stooping posture. "with all my heart! why, mistress, i hear good tidings of you on all hands! no longer ago than yester-eve, a magistrate, a wise and godly man, was discoursing of your affairs, mistress hester, and whispered me that there had been question concerning you in the council. it was debated whether or no, with safety to the commonweal, yonder scarlet letter might be taken off your bosom. on my life, hester, i made my intreaty to the worshipful magistrate that it might be done forthwith." "it lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates to take off the badge," calmly replied hester. "were i worthy to be quit of it, it would fall away of its own nature, or be transformed into something that should speak a different purport." "nay, then, wear it, if it suit you better," rejoined he, "a woman must needs follow her own fancy touching the adornment of her person. the letter is gaily embroidered, and shows right bravely on your bosom!" all this while hester had been looking steadily at the old man, and was shocked, as well as wonder-smitten, to discern what a change had been wrought upon him within the past seven years. it was not so much that he had grown older; for though the traces of advancing life were visible he bore his age well, and seemed to retain a wiry vigour and alertness. but the former aspect of an intellectual and studious man, calm and quiet, which was what she best remembered in him, had altogether vanished, and been succeeded by an eager, searching, almost fierce, yet carefully guarded look. it seemed to be his wish and purpose to mask this expression with a smile, but the latter played him false, and flickered over his visage so derisively that the spectator could see his blackness all the better for it. ever and anon, too, there came a glare of red light out of his eyes, as if the old man's soul were on fire and kept on smouldering duskily within his breast, until by some casual puff of passion it was blown into a momentary flame. this he repressed as speedily as possible, and strove to look as if nothing of the kind had happened. in a word, old roger chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office. this unhappy person had effected such a transformation by devoting himself for seven years to the constant analysis of a heart full of torture, and deriving his enjoyment thence, and adding fuel to those fiery tortures which he analysed and gloated over. the scarlet letter burned on hester prynne's bosom. here was another ruin, the responsibility of which came partly home to her. "what see you in my face," asked the physician, "that you look at it so earnestly?" "something that would make me weep, if there were any tears bitter enough for it," answered she. "but let it pass! it is of yonder miserable man that i would speak." "and what of him?" cried roger chillingworth, eagerly, as if he loved the topic, and were glad of an opportunity to discuss it with the only person of whom he could make a confidant. "not to hide the truth, mistress hester, my thoughts happen just now to be busy with the gentleman. so speak freely and i will make answer." "when we last spake together," said hester, "now seven years ago, it was your pleasure to extort a promise of secrecy as touching the former relation betwixt yourself and me. as the life and good fame of yonder man were in your hands there seemed no choice to me, save to be silent in accordance with your behest. yet it was not without heavy misgivings that i thus bound myself, for, having cast off all duty towards other human beings, there remained a duty towards him, and something whispered me that i was betraying it in pledging myself to keep your counsel. since that day no man is so near to him as you. you tread behind his every footstep. you are beside him, sleeping and waking. you search his thoughts. you burrow and rankle in his heart! your clutch is on his life, and you cause him to die daily a living death, and still he knows you not. in permitting this i have surely acted a false part by the only man to whom the power was left me to be true!" "what choice had you?" asked roger chillingworth. "my finger, pointed at this man, would have hurled him from his pulpit into a dungeon, thence, peradventure, to the gallows!" "it had been better so!" said hester prynne. "what evil have i done the man?" asked roger chillingworth again. "i tell thee, hester prynne, the richest fee that ever physician earned from monarch could not have bought such care as i have wasted on this miserable priest! but for my aid his life would have burned away in torments within the first two years after the perpetration of his crime and thine. for, hester, his spirit lacked the strength that could have borne up, as thine has, beneath a burden like thy scarlet letter. oh, i could reveal a goodly secret! but enough. what art can do, i have exhausted on him. that he now breathes and creeps about on earth is owing all to me!" "better he had died at once!" said hester prynne. "yea, woman, thou sayest truly!" cried old roger chillingworth, letting the lurid fire of his heart blaze out before her eyes. "better had he died at once! never did mortal suffer what this man has suffered. and all, all, in the sight of his worst enemy! he has been conscious of me. he has felt an influence dwelling always upon him like a curse. he knew, by some spiritual sense--for the creator never made another being so sensitive as this--he knew that no friendly hand was pulling at his heartstrings, and that an eye was looking curiously into him, which sought only evil, and found it. but he knew not that the eye and hand were mine! with the superstition common to his brotherhood, he fancied himself given over to a fiend, to be tortured with frightful dreams and desperate thoughts, the sting of remorse and despair of pardon, as a foretaste of what awaits him beyond the grave. but it was the constant shadow of my presence, the closest propinquity of the man whom he had most vilely wronged, and who had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison of the direst revenge! yea, indeed, he did not err, there was a fiend at his elbow! a mortal man, with once a human heart, has become a fiend for his especial torment." the unfortunate physician, while uttering these words, lifted his hands with a look of horror, as if he had beheld some frightful shape, which he could not recognise, usurping the place of his own image in a glass. it was one of those moments--which sometimes occur only at the interval of years--when a man's moral aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind's eye. not improbably he had never before viewed himself as he did now. "hast thou not tortured him enough?" said hester, noticing the old man's look. "has he not paid thee all?" "no, no! he has but increased the debt!" answered the physician, and as he proceeded, his manner lost its fiercer characteristics, and subsided into gloom. "dost thou remember me, hester, as i was nine years agone? even then i was in the autumn of my days, nor was it the early autumn. but all my life had been made up of earnest, studious, thoughtful, quiet years, bestowed faithfully for the increase of mine own knowledge, and faithfully, too, though this latter object was but casual to the other--faithfully for the advancement of human welfare. no life had been more peaceful and innocent than mine; few lives so rich with benefits conferred. dost thou remember me? was i not, though you might deem me cold, nevertheless a man thoughtful for others, craving little for himself--kind, true, just and of constant, if not warm affections? was i not all this?" "all this, and more," said hester. "and what am i now?" demanded he, looking into her face, and permitting the whole evil within him to be written on his features. "i have already told thee what i am--a fiend! who made me so?" "it was myself," cried hester, shuddering. "it was i, not less than he. why hast thou not avenged thyself on me?" "i have left thee to the scarlet letter," replied roger chillingworth. "if that has not avenged me, i can do no more!" he laid his finger on it with a smile. "it has avenged thee," answered hester prynne. "i judged no less," said the physician. "and now what wouldst thou with me touching this man?" "i must reveal the secret," answered hester, firmly. "he must discern thee in thy true character. what may be the result i know not. but this long debt of confidence, due from me to him, whose bane and ruin i have been, shall at length be paid. so far as concerns the overthrow or preservation of his fair fame and his earthly state, and perchance his life, he is in my hands. nor do i--whom the scarlet letter has disciplined to truth, though it be the truth of red-hot iron entering into the soul--nor do i perceive such advantage in his living any longer a life of ghastly emptiness, that i shall stoop to implore thy mercy. do with him as thou wilt! there is no good for him, no good for me, no good for thee. there is no good for little pearl. there is no path to guide us out of this dismal maze." "woman, i could well-nigh pity thee," said roger chillingworth, unable to restrain a thrill of admiration too, for there was a quality almost majestic in the despair which she expressed. "thou hadst great elements. peradventure, hadst thou met earlier with a better love than mine, this evil had not been. i pity thee, for the good that has been wasted in thy nature." "and i thee," answered hester prynne, "for the hatred that has transformed a wise and just man to a fiend! wilt thou yet purge it out of thee, and be once more human? if not for his sake, then doubly for thine own! forgive, and leave his further retribution to the power that claims it! i said, but now, that there could be no good event for him, or thee, or me, who are here wandering together in this gloomy maze of evil, and stumbling at every step over the guilt wherewith we have strewn our path. it is not so! there might be good for thee, and thee alone, since thou hast been deeply wronged and hast it at thy will to pardon. wilt thou give up that only privilege? wilt thou reject that priceless benefit?" "peace, hester--peace!" replied the old man, with gloomy sternness--"it is not granted me to pardon. i have no such power as thou tellest me of. my old faith, long forgotten, comes back to me, and explains all that we do, and all we suffer. by thy first step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil; but since that moment it has all been a dark necessity. ye that have wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical illusion; neither am i fiend-like, who have snatched a fiend's office from his hands. it is our fate. let the black flower blossom as it may! now, go thy ways, and deal as thou wilt with yonder man." he waved his hand, and betook himself again to his employment of gathering herbs. xv. hester and pearl so roger chillingworth--a deformed old figure with a face that haunted men's memories longer than they liked--took leave of hester prynne, and went stooping away along the earth. he gathered here and there a herb, or grubbed up a root and put it into the basket on his arm. his gray beard almost touched the ground as he crept onward. hester gazed after him a little while, looking with a half fantastic curiosity to see whether the tender grass of early spring would not be blighted beneath him and show the wavering track of his footsteps, sere and brown, across its cheerful verdure. she wondered what sort of herbs they were which the old man was so sedulous to gather. would not the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by the sympathy of his eye, greet him with poisonous shrubs of species hitherto unknown, that would start up under his fingers? or might it suffice him that every wholesome growth should be converted into something deleterious and malignant at his touch? did the sun, which shone so brightly everywhere else, really fall upon him? or was there, as it rather seemed, a circle of ominous shadow moving along with his deformity whichever way he turned himself? and whither was he now going? would he not suddenly sink into the earth, leaving a barren and blasted spot, where, in due course of time, would be seen deadly nightshade, dogwood, henbane, and whatever else of vegetable wickedness the climate could produce, all flourishing with hideous luxuriance? or would he spread bat's wings and flee away, looking so much the uglier the higher he rose towards heaven? "be it sin or no," said hester prynne, bitterly, as still she gazed after him, "i hate the man!" she upbraided herself for the sentiment, but could not overcome or lessen it. attempting to do so, she thought of those long-past days in a distant land, when he used to emerge at eventide from the seclusion of his study and sit down in the firelight of their home, and in the light of her nuptial smile. he needed to bask himself in that smile, he said, in order that the chill of so many lonely hours among his books might be taken off the scholar's heart. such scenes had once appeared not otherwise than happy, but now, as viewed through the dismal medium of her subsequent life, they classed themselves among her ugliest remembrances. she marvelled how such scenes could have been! she marvelled how she could ever have been wrought upon to marry him! she deemed it her crime most to be repented of, that she had ever endured and reciprocated the lukewarm grasp of his hand, and had suffered the smile of her lips and eyes to mingle and melt into his own. and it seemed a fouler offence committed by roger chillingworth than any which had since been done him, that, in the time when her heart knew no better, he had persuaded her to fancy herself happy by his side. "yes, i hate him!" repeated hester more bitterly than before. "he betrayed me! he has done me worse wrong than i did him!" let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! else it may be their miserable fortune, as it was roger chillingworth's, when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality. but hester ought long ago to have done with this injustice. what did it betoken? had seven long years, under the torture of the scarlet letter, inflicted so much of misery and wrought out no repentance? the emotion of that brief space, while she stood gazing after the crooked figure of old roger chillingworth, threw a dark light on hester's state of mind, revealing much that she might not otherwise have acknowledged to herself. he being gone, she summoned back her child. "pearl! little pearl! where are you?" pearl, whose activity of spirit never flagged, had been at no loss for amusement while her mother talked with the old gatherer of herbs. at first, as already told, she had flirted fancifully with her own image in a pool of water, beckoning the phantom forth, and--as it declined to venture--seeking a passage for herself into its sphere of impalpable earth and unattainable sky. soon finding, however, that either she or the image was unreal, she turned elsewhere for better pastime. she made little boats out of birch-bark, and freighted them with snailshells, and sent out more ventures on the mighty deep than any merchant in new england; but the larger part of them foundered near the shore. she seized a live horse-shoe by the tail, and made prize of several five-fingers, and laid out a jelly-fish to melt in the warm sun. then she took up the white foam that streaked the line of the advancing tide, and threw it upon the breeze, scampering after it with winged footsteps to catch the great snowflakes ere they fell. perceiving a flock of beach-birds that fed and fluttered along the shore, the naughty child picked up her apron full of pebbles, and, creeping from rock to rock after these small sea-fowl, displayed remarkable dexterity in pelting them. one little gray bird, with a white breast, pearl was almost sure had been hit by a pebble, and fluttered away with a broken wing. but then the elf-child sighed, and gave up her sport, because it grieved her to have done harm to a little being that was as wild as the sea-breeze, or as wild as pearl herself. her final employment was to gather seaweed of various kinds, and make herself a scarf or mantle, and a head-dress, and thus assume the aspect of a little mermaid. she inherited her mother's gift for devising drapery and costume. as the last touch to her mermaid's garb, pearl took some eel-grass and imitated, as best she could, on her own bosom the decoration with which she was so familiar on her mother's. a letter--the letter a--but freshly green instead of scarlet. the child bent her chin upon her breast, and contemplated this device with strange interest, even as if the one only thing for which she had been sent into the world was to make out its hidden import. "i wonder if mother will ask me what it means?" thought pearl. just then she heard her mother's voice, and, flitting along as lightly as one of the little sea-birds, appeared before hester prynne dancing, laughing, and pointing her finger to the ornament upon her bosom. "my little pearl," said hester, after a moment's silence, "the green letter, and on thy childish bosom, has no purport. but dost thou know, my child, what this letter means which thy mother is doomed to wear?" "yes, mother," said the child. "it is the great letter a. thou hast taught me in the horn-book." hester looked steadily into her little face; but though there was that singular expression which she had so often remarked in her black eyes, she could not satisfy herself whether pearl really attached any meaning to the symbol. she felt a morbid desire to ascertain the point. "dost thou know, child, wherefore thy mother wears this letter?" "truly do i!" answered pearl, looking brightly into her mother's face. "it is for the same reason that the minister keeps his hand over his heart!" "and what reason is that?" asked hester, half smiling at the absurd incongruity of the child's observation; but on second thoughts turning pale. "what has the letter to do with any heart save mine?" "nay, mother, i have told all i know," said pearl, more seriously than she was wont to speak. "ask yonder old man whom thou hast been talking with,--it may be he can tell. but in good earnest now, mother dear, what does this scarlet letter mean?--and why dost thou wear it on thy bosom?--and why does the minister keep his hand over his heart?" she took her mother's hand in both her own, and gazed into her eyes with an earnestness that was seldom seen in her wild and capricious character. the thought occurred to hester, that the child might really be seeking to approach her with childlike confidence, and doing what she could, and as intelligently as she knew how, to establish a meeting-point of sympathy. it showed pearl in an unwonted aspect. heretofore, the mother, while loving her child with the intensity of a sole affection, had schooled herself to hope for little other return than the waywardness of an april breeze, which spends its time in airy sport, and has its gusts of inexplicable passion, and is petulant in its best of moods, and chills oftener than caresses you, when you take it to your bosom; in requital of which misdemeanours it will sometimes, of its own vague purpose, kiss your cheek with a kind of doubtful tenderness, and play gently with your hair, and then be gone about its other idle business, leaving a dreamy pleasure at your heart. and this, moreover, was a mother's estimate of the child's disposition. any other observer might have seen few but unamiable traits, and have given them a far darker colouring. but now the idea came strongly into hester's mind, that pearl, with her remarkable precocity and acuteness, might already have approached the age when she could have been made a friend, and intrusted with as much of her mother's sorrows as could be imparted, without irreverence either to the parent or the child. in the little chaos of pearl's character there might be seen emerging and could have been from the very first--the steadfast principles of an unflinching courage--an uncontrollable will--sturdy pride, which might be disciplined into self-respect--and a bitter scorn of many things which, when examined, might be found to have the taint of falsehood in them. she possessed affections, too, though hitherto acrid and disagreeable, as are the richest flavours of unripe fruit. with all these sterling attributes, thought hester, the evil which she inherited from her mother must be great indeed, if a noble woman do not grow out of this elfish child. pearl's inevitable tendency to hover about the enigma of the scarlet letter seemed an innate quality of her being. from the earliest epoch of her conscious life, she had entered upon this as her appointed mission. hester had often fancied that providence had a design of justice and retribution, in endowing the child with this marked propensity; but never, until now, had she bethought herself to ask, whether, linked with that design, there might not likewise be a purpose of mercy and beneficence. if little pearl were entertained with faith and trust, as a spirit messenger no less than an earthly child, might it not be her errand to soothe away the sorrow that lay cold in her mother's heart, and converted it into a tomb?--and to help her to overcome the passion, once so wild, and even yet neither dead nor asleep, but only imprisoned within the same tomb-like heart? such were some of the thoughts that now stirred in hester's mind, with as much vivacity of impression as if they had actually been whispered into her ear. and there was little pearl, all this while, holding her mother's hand in both her own, and turning her face upward, while she put these searching questions, once and again, and still a third time. "what does the letter mean, mother? and why dost thou wear it? and why does the minister keep his hand over his heart?" "what shall i say?" thought hester to herself. "no! if this be the price of the child's sympathy, i cannot pay it." then she spoke aloud-- "silly pearl," said she, "what questions are these? there are many things in this world that a child must not ask about. what know i of the minister's heart? and as for the scarlet letter, i wear it for the sake of its gold thread." in all the seven bygone years, hester prynne had never before been false to the symbol on her bosom. it may be that it was the talisman of a stern and severe, but yet a guardian spirit, who now forsook her; as recognising that, in spite of his strict watch over her heart, some new evil had crept into it, or some old one had never been expelled. as for little pearl, the earnestness soon passed out of her face. but the child did not see fit to let the matter drop. two or three times, as her mother and she went homeward, and as often at supper-time, and while hester was putting her to bed, and once after she seemed to be fairly asleep, pearl looked up, with mischief gleaming in her black eyes. "mother," said she, "what does the scarlet letter mean?" and the next morning, the first indication the child gave of being awake was by popping up her head from the pillow, and making that other enquiry, which she had so unaccountably connected with her investigations about the scarlet letter-- "mother!--mother!--why does the minister keep his hand over his heart?" "hold thy tongue, naughty child!" answered her mother, with an asperity that she had never permitted to herself before. "do not tease me; else i shall put thee into the dark closet!" xvi. a forest walk hester prynne remained constant in her resolve to make known to mr. dimmesdale, at whatever risk of present pain or ulterior consequences, the true character of the man who had crept into his intimacy. for several days, however, she vainly sought an opportunity of addressing him in some of the meditative walks which she knew him to be in the habit of taking along the shores of the peninsula, or on the wooded hills of the neighbouring country. there would have been no scandal, indeed, nor peril to the holy whiteness of the clergyman's good fame, had she visited him in his own study, where many a penitent, ere now, had confessed sins of perhaps as deep a dye as the one betokened by the scarlet letter. but, partly that she dreaded the secret or undisguised interference of old roger chillingworth, and partly that her conscious heart imparted suspicion where none could have been felt, and partly that both the minister and she would need the whole wide world to breathe in, while they talked together--for all these reasons hester never thought of meeting him in any narrower privacy than beneath the open sky. at last, while attending a sick chamber, whither the rev. mr. dimmesdale had been summoned to make a prayer, she learnt that he had gone, the day before, to visit the apostle eliot, among his indian converts. he would probably return by a certain hour in the afternoon of the morrow. betimes, therefore, the next day, hester took little pearl--who was necessarily the companion of all her mother's expeditions, however inconvenient her presence--and set forth. the road, after the two wayfarers had crossed from the peninsula to the mainland, was no other than a foot-path. it straggled onward into the mystery of the primeval forest. this hemmed it in so narrowly, and stood so black and dense on either side, and disclosed such imperfect glimpses of the sky above, that, to hester's mind, it imaged not amiss the moral wilderness in which she had so long been wandering. the day was chill and sombre. overhead was a gray expanse of cloud, slightly stirred, however, by a breeze; so that a gleam of flickering sunshine might now and then be seen at its solitary play along the path. this flitting cheerfulness was always at the further extremity of some long vista through the forest. the sportive sunlight--feebly sportive, at best, in the predominant pensiveness of the day and scene--withdrew itself as they came nigh, and left the spots where it had danced the drearier, because they had hoped to find them bright. "mother," said little pearl, "the sunshine does not love you. it runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom. now, see! there it is, playing a good way off. stand you here, and let me run and catch it. i am but a child. it will not flee from me--for i wear nothing on my bosom yet!" "nor ever will, my child, i hope," said hester. "and why not, mother?" asked pearl, stopping short, just at the beginning of her race. "will not it come of its own accord when i am a woman grown?" "run away, child," answered her mother, "and catch the sunshine. it will soon be gone." pearl set forth at a great pace, and as hester smiled to perceive, did actually catch the sunshine, and stood laughing in the midst of it, all brightened by its splendour, and scintillating with the vivacity excited by rapid motion. the light lingered about the lonely child, as if glad of such a playmate, until her mother had drawn almost nigh enough to step into the magic circle too. "it will go now," said pearl, shaking her head. "see!" answered hester, smiling; "now i can stretch out my hand and grasp some of it." as she attempted to do so, the sunshine vanished; or, to judge from the bright expression that was dancing on pearl's features, her mother could have fancied that the child had absorbed it into herself, and would give it forth again, with a gleam about her path, as they should plunge into some gloomier shade. there was no other attribute that so much impressed her with a sense of new and untransmitted vigour in pearl's nature, as this never failing vivacity of spirits: she had not the disease of sadness, which almost all children, in these latter days, inherit, with the scrofula, from the troubles of their ancestors. perhaps this, too, was a disease, and but the reflex of the wild energy with which hester had fought against her sorrows before pearl's birth. it was certainly a doubtful charm, imparting a hard, metallic lustre to the child's character. she wanted--what some people want throughout life--a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanise and make her capable of sympathy. but there was time enough yet for little pearl. "come, my child!" said hester, looking about her from the spot where pearl had stood still in the sunshine--"we will sit down a little way within the wood, and rest ourselves." "i am not aweary, mother," replied the little girl. "but you may sit down, if you will tell me a story meanwhile." "a story, child!" said hester. "and about what?" "oh, a story about the black man," answered pearl, taking hold of her mother's gown, and looking up, half earnestly, half mischievously, into her face. "how he haunts this forest, and carries a book with him a big, heavy book, with iron clasps; and how this ugly black man offers his book and an iron pen to everybody that meets him here among the trees; and they are to write their names with their own blood; and then he sets his mark on their bosoms. didst thou ever meet the black man, mother?" "and who told you this story, pearl," asked her mother, recognising a common superstition of the period. "it was the old dame in the chimney corner, at the house where you watched last night," said the child. "but she fancied me asleep while she was talking of it. she said that a thousand and a thousand people had met him here, and had written in his book, and have his mark on them. and that ugly tempered lady, old mistress hibbins, was one. and, mother, the old dame said that this scarlet letter was the black man's mark on thee, and that it glows like a red flame when thou meetest him at midnight, here in the dark wood. is it true, mother? and dost thou go to meet him in the nighttime?" "didst thou ever awake and find thy mother gone?" asked hester. "not that i remember," said the child. "if thou fearest to leave me in our cottage, thou mightest take me along with thee. i would very gladly go! but, mother, tell me now! is there such a black man? and didst thou ever meet him? and is this his mark?" "wilt thou let me be at peace, if i once tell thee?" asked her mother. "yes, if thou tellest me all," answered pearl. "once in my life i met the black man!" said her mother. "this scarlet letter is his mark!" thus conversing, they entered sufficiently deep into the wood to secure themselves from the observation of any casual passenger along the forest track. here they sat down on a luxuriant heap of moss; which at some epoch of the preceding century, had been a gigantic pine, with its roots and trunk in the darksome shade, and its head aloft in the upper atmosphere. it was a little dell where they had seated themselves, with a leaf-strewn bank rising gently on either side, and a brook flowing through the midst, over a bed of fallen and drowned leaves. the trees impending over it had flung down great branches from time to time, which choked up the current, and compelled it to form eddies and black depths at some points; while, in its swifter and livelier passages there appeared a channel-way of pebbles, and brown, sparkling sand. letting the eyes follow along the course of the stream, they could catch the reflected light from its water, at some short distance within the forest, but soon lost all traces of it amid the bewilderment of tree-trunks and underbrush, and here and there a huge rock covered over with gray lichens. all these giant trees and boulders of granite seemed intent on making a mystery of the course of this small brook; fearing, perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing loquacity, it should whisper tales out of the heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth surface of a pool. continually, indeed, as it stole onward, the streamlet kept up a babble, kind, quiet, soothing, but melancholy, like the voice of a young child that was spending its infancy without playfulness, and knew not how to be merry among sad acquaintance and events of sombre hue. "oh, brook! oh, foolish and tiresome little brook!" cried pearl, after listening awhile to its talk, "why art thou so sad? pluck up a spirit, and do not be all the time sighing and murmuring!" but the brook, in the course of its little lifetime among the forest trees, had gone through so solemn an experience that it could not help talking about it, and seemed to have nothing else to say. pearl resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from a well-spring as mysterious, and had flowed through scenes shadowed as heavily with gloom. but, unlike the little stream, she danced and sparkled, and prattled airily along her course. "what does this sad little brook say, mother?" inquired she. "if thou hadst a sorrow of thine own, the brook might tell thee of it," answered her mother, "even as it is telling me of mine. but now, pearl, i hear a footstep along the path, and the noise of one putting aside the branches. i would have thee betake thyself to play, and leave me to speak with him that comes yonder." "is it the black man?" asked pearl. "wilt thou go and play, child?" repeated her mother, "but do not stray far into the wood. and take heed that thou come at my first call." "yes, mother," answered pearl, "but if it be the black man, wilt thou not let me stay a moment, and look at him, with his big book under his arm?" "go, silly child!" said her mother impatiently. "it is no black man! thou canst see him now, through the trees. it is the minister!" "and so it is!" said the child. "and, mother, he has his hand over his heart! is it because, when the minister wrote his name in the book, the black man set his mark in that place? but why does he not wear it outside his bosom, as thou dost, mother?" "go now, child, and thou shalt tease me as thou wilt another time," cried hester prynne. "but do not stray far. keep where thou canst hear the babble of the brook." the child went singing away, following up the current of the brook, and striving to mingle a more lightsome cadence with its melancholy voice. but the little stream would not be comforted, and still kept telling its unintelligible secret of some very mournful mystery that had happened--or making a prophetic lamentation about something that was yet to happen--within the verge of the dismal forest. so pearl, who had enough of shadow in her own little life, chose to break off all acquaintance with this repining brook. she set herself, therefore, to gathering violets and wood-anemones, and some scarlet columbines that she found growing in the crevice of a high rock. when her elf-child had departed, hester prynne made a step or two towards the track that led through the forest, but still remained under the deep shadow of the trees. she beheld the minister advancing along the path entirely alone, and leaning on a staff which he had cut by the wayside. he looked haggard and feeble, and betrayed a nerveless despondency in his air, which had never so remarkably characterised him in his walks about the settlement, nor in any other situation where he deemed himself liable to notice. here it was wofully visible, in this intense seclusion of the forest, which of itself would have been a heavy trial to the spirits. there was a listlessness in his gait, as if he saw no reason for taking one step further, nor felt any desire to do so, but would have been glad, could he be glad of anything, to fling himself down at the root of the nearest tree, and lie there passive for evermore. the leaves might bestrew him, and the soil gradually accumulate and form a little hillock over his frame, no matter whether there were life in it or no. death was too definite an object to be wished for or avoided. to hester's eye, the reverend mr. dimmesdale exhibited no symptom of positive and vivacious suffering, except that, as little pearl had remarked, he kept his hand over his heart. xvii. the pastor and his parishioner slowly as the minister walked, he had almost gone by before hester prynne could gather voice enough to attract his observation. at length she succeeded. "arthur dimmesdale!" she said, faintly at first, then louder, but hoarsely--"arthur dimmesdale!" "who speaks?" answered the minister. gathering himself quickly up, he stood more erect, like a man taken by surprise in a mood to which he was reluctant to have witnesses. throwing his eyes anxiously in the direction of the voice, he indistinctly beheld a form under the trees, clad in garments so sombre, and so little relieved from the gray twilight into which the clouded sky and the heavy foliage had darkened the noontide, that he knew not whether it were a woman or a shadow. it may be that his pathway through life was haunted thus by a spectre that had stolen out from among his thoughts. he made a step nigher, and discovered the scarlet letter. "hester! hester prynne!", said he; "is it thou? art thou in life?" "even so." she answered. "in such life as has been mine these seven years past! and thou, arthur dimmesdale, dost thou yet live?" it was no wonder that they thus questioned one another's actual and bodily existence, and even doubted of their own. so strangely did they meet in the dim wood that it was like the first encounter in the world beyond the grave of two spirits who had been intimately connected in their former life, but now stood coldly shuddering in mutual dread, as not yet familiar with their state, nor wonted to the companionship of disembodied beings. each a ghost, and awe-stricken at the other ghost. they were awe-stricken likewise at themselves, because the crisis flung back to them their consciousness, and revealed to each heart its history and experience, as life never does, except at such breathless epochs. the soul beheld its features in the mirror of the passing moment. it was with fear, and tremulously, and, as it were, by a slow, reluctant necessity, that arthur dimmesdale put forth his hand, chill as death, and touched the chill hand of hester prynne. the grasp, cold as it was, took away what was dreariest in the interview. they now felt themselves, at least, inhabitants of the same sphere. without a word more spoken--neither he nor she assuming the guidance, but with an unexpressed consent--they glided back into the shadow of the woods whence hester had emerged, and sat down on the heap of moss where she and pearl had before been sitting. when they found voice to speak, it was at first only to utter remarks and inquiries such as any two acquaintances might have made, about the gloomy sky, the threatening storm, and, next, the health of each. thus they went onward, not boldly, but step by step, into the themes that were brooding deepest in their hearts. so long estranged by fate and circumstances, they needed something slight and casual to run before and throw open the doors of intercourse, so that their real thoughts might be led across the threshold. after awhile, the minister fixed his eyes on hester prynne's. "hester," said he, "hast thou found peace?" she smiled drearily, looking down upon her bosom. "hast thou?" she asked. "none--nothing but despair!" he answered. "what else could i look for, being what i am, and leading such a life as mine? were i an atheist--a man devoid of conscience--a wretch with coarse and brutal instincts--i might have found peace long ere now. nay, i never should have lost it. but, as matters stand with my soul, whatever of good capacity there originally was in me, all of god's gifts that were the choicest have become the ministers of spiritual torment. hester, i am most miserable!" "the people reverence thee," said hester. "and surely thou workest good among them! doth this bring thee no comfort?" "more misery, hester!--only the more misery!" answered the clergyman with a bitter smile. "as concerns the good which i may appear to do, i have no faith in it. it must needs be a delusion. what can a ruined soul like mine effect towards the redemption of other souls?--or a polluted soul towards their purification? and as for the people's reverence, would that it were turned to scorn and hatred! canst thou deem it, hester, a consolation that i must stand up in my pulpit, and meet so many eyes turned upward to my face, as if the light of heaven were beaming from it!--must see my flock hungry for the truth, and listening to my words as if a tongue of pentecost were speaking!--and then look inward, and discern the black reality of what they idolise? i have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what i seem and what i am! and satan laughs at it!" "you wrong yourself in this," said hester gently. "you have deeply and sorely repented. your sin is left behind you in the days long past. your present life is not less holy, in very truth, than it seems in people's eyes. is there no reality in the penitence thus sealed and witnessed by good works? and wherefore should it not bring you peace?" "no, hester--no!" replied the clergyman. "there is no substance in it! it is cold and dead, and can do nothing for me! of penance, i have had enough! of penitence, there has been none! else, i should long ago have thrown off these garments of mock holiness, and have shown myself to mankind as they will see me at the judgment-seat. happy are you, hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! mine burns in secret! thou little knowest what a relief it is, after the torment of a seven years' cheat, to look into an eye that recognises me for what i am! had i one friend--or were it my worst enemy!--to whom, when sickened with the praises of all other men, i could daily betake myself, and be known as the vilest of all sinners, methinks my soul might keep itself alive thereby. even thus much of truth would save me! but now, it is all falsehood!--all emptiness!--all death!" hester prynne looked into his face, but hesitated to speak. yet, uttering his long-restrained emotions so vehemently as he did, his words here offered her the very point of circumstances in which to interpose what she came to say. she conquered her fears, and spoke: "such a friend as thou hast even now wished for," said she, "with whom to weep over thy sin, thou hast in me, the partner of it!" again she hesitated, but brought out the words with an effort.--"thou hast long had such an enemy, and dwellest with him, under the same roof!" the minister started to his feet, gasping for breath, and clutching at his heart, as if he would have torn it out of his bosom. "ha! what sayest thou?" cried he. "an enemy! and under mine own roof! what mean you?" hester prynne was now fully sensible of the deep injury for which she was responsible to this unhappy man, in permitting him to lie for so many years, or, indeed, for a single moment, at the mercy of one whose purposes could not be other than malevolent. the very contiguity of his enemy, beneath whatever mask the latter might conceal himself, was enough to disturb the magnetic sphere of a being so sensitive as arthur dimmesdale. there had been a period when hester was less alive to this consideration; or, perhaps, in the misanthropy of her own trouble, she left the minister to bear what she might picture to herself as a more tolerable doom. but of late, since the night of his vigil, all her sympathies towards him had been both softened and invigorated. she now read his heart more accurately. she doubted not that the continual presence of roger chillingworth--the secret poison of his malignity, infecting all the air about him--and his authorised interference, as a physician, with the minister's physical and spiritual infirmities--that these bad opportunities had been turned to a cruel purpose. by means of them, the sufferer's conscience had been kept in an irritated state, the tendency of which was, not to cure by wholesome pain, but to disorganize and corrupt his spiritual being. its result, on earth, could hardly fail to be insanity, and hereafter, that eternal alienation from the good and true, of which madness is perhaps the earthly type. such was the ruin to which she had brought the man, once--nay, why should we not speak it?--still so passionately loved! hester felt that the sacrifice of the clergyman's good name, and death itself, as she had already told roger chillingworth, would have been infinitely preferable to the alternative which she had taken upon herself to choose. and now, rather than have had this grievous wrong to confess, she would gladly have laid down on the forest leaves, and died there, at arthur dimmesdale's feet. "oh, arthur!" cried she, "forgive me! in all things else, i have striven to be true! truth was the one virtue which i might have held fast, and did hold fast, through all extremity; save when thy good--thy life--thy fame--were put in question! then i consented to a deception. but a lie is never good, even though death threaten on the other side! dost thou not see what i would say? that old man!--the physician!--he whom they call roger chillingworth!--he was my husband!" the minister looked at her for an instant, with all that violence of passion, which--intermixed in more shapes than one with his higher, purer, softer qualities--was, in fact, the portion of him which the devil claimed, and through which he sought to win the rest. never was there a blacker or a fiercer frown than hester now encountered. for the brief space that it lasted, it was a dark transfiguration. but his character had been so much enfeebled by suffering, that even its lower energies were incapable of more than a temporary struggle. he sank down on the ground, and buried his face in his hands. "i might have known it," murmured he--"i did know it! was not the secret told me, in the natural recoil of my heart at the first sight of him, and as often as i have seen him since? why did i not understand? oh, hester prynne, thou little, little knowest all the horror of this thing! and the shame!--the indelicacy!--the horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat over it! woman, woman, thou art accountable for this!--i cannot forgive thee!" "thou shalt forgive me!" cried hester, flinging herself on the fallen leaves beside him. "let god punish! thou shalt forgive!" with sudden and desperate tenderness she threw her arms around him, and pressed his head against her bosom, little caring though his cheek rested on the scarlet letter. he would have released himself, but strove in vain to do so. hester would not set him free, lest he should look her sternly in the face. all the world had frowned on her--for seven long years had it frowned upon this lonely woman--and still she bore it all, nor ever once turned away her firm, sad eyes. heaven, likewise, had frowned upon her, and she had not died. but the frown of this pale, weak, sinful, and sorrow-stricken man was what hester could not bear, and live! "wilt thou yet forgive me?" she repeated, over and over again. "wilt thou not frown? wilt thou forgive?" "i do forgive you, hester," replied the minister at length, with a deep utterance, out of an abyss of sadness, but no anger. "i freely forgive you now. may god forgive us both. we are not, hester, the worst sinners in the world. there is one worse than even the polluted priest! that old man's revenge has been blacker than my sin. he has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart. thou and i, hester, never did so!" "never, never!" whispered she. "what we did had a consecration of its own. we felt it so! we said so to each other. hast thou forgotten it?" "hush, hester!" said arthur dimmesdale, rising from the ground. "no; i have not forgotten!" they sat down again, side by side, and hand clasped in hand, on the mossy trunk of the fallen tree. life had never brought them a gloomier hour; it was the point whither their pathway had so long been tending, and darkening ever, as it stole along--and yet it unclosed a charm that made them linger upon it, and claim another, and another, and, after all, another moment. the forest was obscure around them, and creaked with a blast that was passing through it. the boughs were tossing heavily above their heads; while one solemn old tree groaned dolefully to another, as if telling the sad story of the pair that sat beneath, or constrained to forbode evil to come. and yet they lingered. how dreary looked the forest-track that led backward to the settlement, where hester prynne must take up again the burden of her ignominy and the minister the hollow mockery of his good name! so they lingered an instant longer. no golden light had ever been so precious as the gloom of this dark forest. here seen only by his eyes, the scarlet letter need not burn into the bosom of the fallen woman! here seen only by her eyes, arthur dimmesdale, false to god and man, might be, for one moment true! he started at a thought that suddenly occurred to him. "hester!" cried he, "here is a new horror! roger chillingworth knows your purpose to reveal his true character. will he continue, then, to keep our secret? what will now be the course of his revenge?" "there is a strange secrecy in his nature," replied hester, thoughtfully; "and it has grown upon him by the hidden practices of his revenge. i deem it not likely that he will betray the secret. he will doubtless seek other means of satiating his dark passion." "and i!--how am i to live longer, breathing the same air with this deadly enemy?" exclaimed arthur dimmesdale, shrinking within himself, and pressing his hand nervously against his heart--a gesture that had grown involuntary with him. "think for me, hester! thou art strong. resolve for me!" "thou must dwell no longer with this man," said hester, slowly and firmly. "thy heart must be no longer under his evil eye!" "it were far worse than death!" replied the minister. "but how to avoid it? what choice remains to me? shall i lie down again on these withered leaves, where i cast myself when thou didst tell me what he was? must i sink down there, and die at once?" "alas! what a ruin has befallen thee!" said hester, with the tears gushing into her eyes. "wilt thou die for very weakness? there is no other cause!" "the judgment of god is on me," answered the conscience-stricken priest. "it is too mighty for me to struggle with!" "heaven would show mercy," rejoined hester, "hadst thou but the strength to take advantage of it." "be thou strong for me!" answered he. "advise me what to do." "is the world, then, so narrow?" exclaimed hester prynne, fixing her deep eyes on the minister's, and instinctively exercising a magnetic power over a spirit so shattered and subdued that it could hardly hold itself erect. "doth the universe lie within the compass of yonder town, which only a little time ago was but a leaf-strewn desert, as lonely as this around us? whither leads yonder forest-track? backward to the settlement, thou sayest! yes; but, onward, too! deeper it goes, and deeper into the wilderness, less plainly to be seen at every step; until some few miles hence the yellow leaves will show no vestige of the white man's tread. there thou art free! so brief a journey would bring thee from a world where thou hast been most wretched, to one where thou mayest still be happy! is there not shade enough in all this boundless forest to hide thy heart from the gaze of roger chillingworth?" "yes, hester; but only under the fallen leaves!" replied the minister, with a sad smile. "then there is the broad pathway of the sea!" continued hester. "it brought thee hither. if thou so choose, it will bear thee back again. in our native land, whether in some remote rural village, or in vast london--or, surely, in germany, in france, in pleasant italy--thou wouldst be beyond his power and knowledge! and what hast thou to do with all these iron men, and their opinions? they have kept thy better part in bondage too long already!" "it cannot be!" answered the minister, listening as if he were called upon to realise a dream. "i am powerless to go. wretched and sinful as i am, i have had no other thought than to drag on my earthly existence in the sphere where providence hath placed me. lost as my own soul is, i would still do what i may for other human souls! i dare not quit my post, though an unfaithful sentinel, whose sure reward is death and dishonour, when his dreary watch shall come to an end!" "thou art crushed under this seven years' weight of misery," replied hester, fervently resolved to buoy him up with her own energy. "but thou shalt leave it all behind thee! it shall not cumber thy steps, as thou treadest along the forest-path: neither shalt thou freight the ship with it, if thou prefer to cross the sea. leave this wreck and ruin here where it hath happened. meddle no more with it! begin all anew! hast thou exhausted possibility in the failure of this one trial? not so! the future is yet full of trial and success. there is happiness to be enjoyed! there is good to be done! exchange this false life of thine for a true one. be, if thy spirit summon thee to such a mission, the teacher and apostle of the red men. or, as is more thy nature, be a scholar and a sage among the wisest and the most renowned of the cultivated world. preach! write! act! do anything, save to lie down and die! give up this name of arthur dimmesdale, and make thyself another, and a high one, such as thou canst wear without fear or shame. why shouldst thou tarry so much as one other day in the torments that have so gnawed into thy life? that have made thee feeble to will and to do? that will leave thee powerless even to repent? up, and away!" "oh, hester!" cried arthur dimmesdale, in whose eyes a fitful light, kindled by her enthusiasm, flashed up and died away, "thou tellest of running a race to a man whose knees are tottering beneath him! i must die here! there is not the strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, difficult world alone!" it was the last expression of the despondency of a broken spirit. he lacked energy to grasp the better fortune that seemed within his reach. he repeated the word--"alone, hester!" "thou shall not go alone!" answered she, in a deep whisper. then, all was spoken! xviii. a flood of sunshine arthur dimmesdale gazed into hester's face with a look in which hope and joy shone out, indeed, but with fear betwixt them, and a kind of horror at her boldness, who had spoken what he vaguely hinted at, but dared not speak. but hester prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity, and for so long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed from society, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogether foreign to the clergyman. she had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness, as vast, as intricate, and shadowy as the untamed forest, amid the gloom of which they were now holding a colloquy that was to decide their fate. her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild indian in his woods. for years past she had looked from this estranged point of view at human institutions, and whatever priests or legislators had established; criticising all with hardly more reverence than the indian would feel for the clerical band, the judicial robe, the pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or the church. the tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. the scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. shame, despair, solitude! these had been her teachers--stern and wild ones--and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss. the minister, on the other hand, had never gone through an experience calculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally received laws; although, in a single instance, he had so fearfully transgressed one of the most sacred of them. but this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose. since that wretched epoch, he had watched with morbid zeal and minuteness, not his acts--for those it was easy to arrange--but each breath of emotion, and his every thought. at the head of the social system, as the clergymen of that day stood, he was only the more trammelled by its regulations, its principles, and even its prejudices. as a priest, the framework of his order inevitably hemmed him in. as a man who had once sinned, but who kept his conscience all alive and painfully sensitive by the fretting of an unhealed wound, he might have been supposed safer within the line of virtue than if he had never sinned at all. thus we seem to see that, as regarded hester prynne, the whole seven years of outlaw and ignominy had been little other than a preparation for this very hour. but arthur dimmesdale! were such a man once more to fall, what plea could be urged in extenuation of his crime? none; unless it avail him somewhat that he was broken down by long and exquisite suffering; that his mind was darkened and confused by the very remorse which harrowed it; that, between fleeing as an avowed criminal, and remaining as a hypocrite, conscience might find it hard to strike the balance; that it was human to avoid the peril of death and infamy, and the inscrutable machinations of an enemy; that, finally, to this poor pilgrim, on his dreary and desert path, faint, sick, miserable, there appeared a glimpse of human affection and sympathy, a new life, and a true one, in exchange for the heavy doom which he was now expiating. and be the stern and sad truth spoken, that the breach which guilt has once made into the human soul is never, in this mortal state, repaired. it may be watched and guarded, so that the enemy shall not force his way again into the citadel, and might even in his subsequent assaults, select some other avenue, in preference to that where he had formerly succeeded. but there is still the ruined wall, and near it the stealthy tread of the foe that would win over again his unforgotten triumph. the struggle, if there were one, need not be described. let it suffice that the clergyman resolved to flee, and not alone. "if in all these past seven years," thought he, "i could recall one instant of peace or hope, i would yet endure, for the sake of that earnest of heaven's mercy. but now--since i am irrevocably doomed--wherefore should i not snatch the solace allowed to the condemned culprit before his execution? or, if this be the path to a better life, as hester would persuade me, i surely give up no fairer prospect by pursuing it! neither can i any longer live without her companionship; so powerful is she to sustain--so tender to soothe! o thou to whom i dare not lift mine eyes, wilt thou yet pardon me?" "thou wilt go!" said hester calmly, as he met her glance. the decision once made, a glow of strange enjoyment threw its flickering brightness over the trouble of his breast. it was the exhilarating effect--upon a prisoner just escaped from the dungeon of his own heart--of breathing the wild, free atmosphere of an unredeemed, unchristianised, lawless region. his spirit rose, as it were, with a bound, and attained a nearer prospect of the sky, than throughout all the misery which had kept him grovelling on the earth. of a deeply religious temperament, there was inevitably a tinge of the devotional in his mood. "do i feel joy again?" cried he, wondering at himself. "methought the germ of it was dead in me! oh, hester, thou art my better angel! i seem to have flung myself--sick, sin-stained, and sorrow-blackened--down upon these forest leaves, and to have risen up all made anew, and with new powers to glorify him that hath been merciful! this is already the better life! why did we not find it sooner?" "let us not look back," answered hester prynne. "the past is gone! wherefore should we linger upon it now? see! with this symbol i undo it all, and make it as if it had never been!" so speaking, she undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet letter, and, taking it from her bosom, threw it to a distance among the withered leaves. the mystic token alighted on the hither verge of the stream. with a hand's-breadth further flight, it would have fallen into the water, and have given the little brook another woe to carry onward, besides the unintelligible tale which it still kept murmuring about. but there lay the embroidered letter, glittering like a lost jewel, which some ill-fated wanderer might pick up, and thenceforth be haunted by strange phantoms of guilt, sinkings of the heart, and unaccountable misfortune. the stigma gone, hester heaved a long, deep sigh, in which the burden of shame and anguish departed from her spirit. o exquisite relief! she had not known the weight until she felt the freedom! by another impulse, she took off the formal cap that confined her hair, and down it fell upon her shoulders, dark and rich, with at once a shadow and a light in its abundance, and imparting the charm of softness to her features. there played around her mouth, and beamed out of her eyes, a radiant and tender smile, that seemed gushing from the very heart of womanhood. a crimson flush was glowing on her cheek, that had been long so pale. her sex, her youth, and the whole richness of her beauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable past, and clustered themselves with her maiden hope, and a happiness before unknown, within the magic circle of this hour. and, as if the gloom of the earth and sky had been but the effluence of these two mortal hearts, it vanished with their sorrow. all at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn trees. the objects that had made a shadow hitherto, embodied the brightness now. the course of the little brook might be traced by its merry gleam afar into the wood's heart of mystery, which had become a mystery of joy. such was the sympathy of nature--that wild, heathen nature of the forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by higher truth--with the bliss of these two spirits! love, whether newly-born, or aroused from a death-like slumber, must always create a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world. had the forest still kept its gloom, it would have been bright in hester's eyes, and bright in arthur dimmesdale's! hester looked at him with a thrill of another joy. "thou must know pearl!" said she. "our little pearl! thou hast seen her--yes, i know it!--but thou wilt see her now with other eyes. she is a strange child! i hardly comprehend her! but thou wilt love her dearly, as i do, and wilt advise me how to deal with her!" "dost thou think the child will be glad to know me?" asked the minister, somewhat uneasily. "i have long shrunk from children, because they often show a distrust--a backwardness to be familiar with me. i have even been afraid of little pearl!" "ah, that was sad!" answered the mother. "but she will love thee dearly, and thou her. she is not far off. i will call her. pearl! pearl!" "i see the child," observed the minister. "yonder she is, standing in a streak of sunshine, a good way off, on the other side of the brook. so thou thinkest the child will love me?" hester smiled, and again called to pearl, who was visible at some distance, as the minister had described her, like a bright-apparelled vision in a sunbeam, which fell down upon her through an arch of boughs. the ray quivered to and fro, making her figure dim or distinct--now like a real child, now like a child's spirit--as the splendour went and came again. she heard her mother's voice, and approached slowly through the forest. pearl had not found the hour pass wearisomely while her mother sat talking with the clergyman. the great black forest--stern as it showed itself to those who brought the guilt and troubles of the world into its bosom--became the playmate of the lonely infant, as well as it knew how. sombre as it was, it put on the kindest of its moods to welcome her. it offered her the partridge-berries, the growth of the preceding autumn, but ripening only in the spring, and now red as drops of blood upon the withered leaves. these pearl gathered, and was pleased with their wild flavour. the small denizens of the wilderness hardly took pains to move out of her path. a partridge, indeed, with a brood of ten behind her, ran forward threateningly, but soon repented of her fierceness, and clucked to her young ones not to be afraid. a pigeon, alone on a low branch, allowed pearl to come beneath, and uttered a sound as much of greeting as alarm. a squirrel, from the lofty depths of his domestic tree, chattered either in anger or merriment--for the squirrel is such a choleric and humorous little personage, that it is hard to distinguish between his moods--so he chattered at the child, and flung down a nut upon her head. it was a last year's nut, and already gnawed by his sharp tooth. a fox, startled from his sleep by her light footstep on the leaves, looked inquisitively at pearl, as doubting whether it were better to steal off, or renew his nap on the same spot. a wolf, it is said--but here the tale has surely lapsed into the improbable--came up and smelt of pearl's robe, and offered his savage head to be patted by her hand. the truth seems to be, however, that the mother-forest, and these wild things which it nourished, all recognised a kindred wilderness in the human child. and she was gentler here than in the grassy-margined streets of the settlement, or in her mother's cottage. the bowers appeared to know it, and one and another whispered as she passed, "adorn thyself with me, thou beautiful child, adorn thyself with me!"--and, to please them, pearl gathered the violets, and anemones, and columbines, and some twigs of the freshest green, which the old trees held down before her eyes. with these she decorated her hair and her young waist, and became a nymph child, or an infant dryad, or whatever else was in closest sympathy with the antique wood. in such guise had pearl adorned herself, when she heard her mother's voice, and came slowly back. slowly--for she saw the clergyman! xix. the child at the brookside "thou wilt love her dearly," repeated hester prynne, as she and the minister sat watching little pearl. "dost thou not think her beautiful? and see with what natural skill she has made those simple flowers adorn her! had she gathered pearls, and diamonds, and rubies in the wood, they could not have become her better! she is a splendid child! but i know whose brow she has!" "dost thou know, hester," said arthur dimmesdale, with an unquiet smile, "that this dear child, tripping about always at thy side, hath caused me many an alarm? methought--oh, hester, what a thought is that, and how terrible to dread it!--that my own features were partly repeated in her face, and so strikingly that the world might see them! but she is mostly thine!" "no, no! not mostly!" answered the mother, with a tender smile. "a little longer, and thou needest not to be afraid to trace whose child she is. but how strangely beautiful she looks with those wild flowers in her hair! it is as if one of the fairies, whom we left in dear old england, had decked her out to meet us." it was with a feeling which neither of them had ever before experienced, that they sat and watched pearl's slow advance. in her was visible the tie that united them. she had been offered to the world, these seven past years, as the living hieroglyphic, in which was revealed the secret they so darkly sought to hide--all written in this symbol--all plainly manifest--had there been a prophet or magician skilled to read the character of flame! and pearl was the oneness of their being. be the foregone evil what it might, how could they doubt that their earthly lives and future destinies were conjoined when they beheld at once the material union, and the spiritual idea, in whom they met, and were to dwell immortally together; thoughts like these--and perhaps other thoughts, which they did not acknowledge or define--threw an awe about the child as she came onward. "let her see nothing strange--no passion or eagerness--in thy way of accosting her," whispered hester. "our pearl is a fitful and fantastic little elf sometimes. especially she is generally intolerant of emotion, when she does not fully comprehend the why and wherefore. but the child hath strong affections! she loves me, and will love thee!" "thou canst not think," said the minister, glancing aside at hester prynne, "how my heart dreads this interview, and yearns for it! but, in truth, as i already told thee, children are not readily won to be familiar with me. they will not climb my knee, nor prattle in my ear, nor answer to my smile, but stand apart, and eye me strangely. even little babes, when i take them in my arms, weep bitterly. yet pearl, twice in her little lifetime, hath been kind to me! the first time--thou knowest it well! the last was when thou ledst her with thee to the house of yonder stern old governor." "and thou didst plead so bravely in her behalf and mine!" answered the mother. "i remember it; and so shall little pearl. fear nothing. she may be strange and shy at first, but will soon learn to love thee!" by this time pearl had reached the margin of the brook, and stood on the further side, gazing silently at hester and the clergyman, who still sat together on the mossy tree-trunk waiting to receive her. just where she had paused, the brook chanced to form a pool so smooth and quiet that it reflected a perfect image of her little figure, with all the brilliant picturesqueness of her beauty, in its adornment of flowers and wreathed foliage, but more refined and spiritualized than the reality. this image, so nearly identical with the living pearl, seemed to communicate somewhat of its own shadowy and intangible quality to the child herself. it was strange, the way in which pearl stood, looking so steadfastly at them through the dim medium of the forest gloom, herself, meanwhile, all glorified with a ray of sunshine, that was attracted thitherward as by a certain sympathy. in the brook beneath stood another child--another and the same--with likewise its ray of golden light. hester felt herself, in some indistinct and tantalizing manner, estranged from pearl, as if the child, in her lonely ramble through the forest, had strayed out of the sphere in which she and her mother dwelt together, and was now vainly seeking to return to it. there were both truth and error in the impression; the child and mother were estranged, but through hester's fault, not pearl's. since the latter rambled from her side, another inmate had been admitted within the circle of the mother's feelings, and so modified the aspect of them all, that pearl, the returning wanderer, could not find her wonted place, and hardly knew where she was. "i have a strange fancy," observed the sensitive minister, "that this brook is the boundary between two worlds, and that thou canst never meet thy pearl again. or is she an elfish spirit, who, as the legends of our childhood taught us, is forbidden to cross a running stream? pray hasten her, for this delay has already imparted a tremor to my nerves." "come, dearest child!" said hester encouragingly, and stretching out both her arms. "how slow thou art! when hast thou been so sluggish before now? here is a friend of mine, who must be thy friend also. thou wilt have twice as much love henceforward as thy mother alone could give thee! leap across the brook and come to us. thou canst leap like a young deer!" pearl, without responding in any manner to these honey-sweet expressions, remained on the other side of the brook. now she fixed her bright wild eyes on her mother, now on the minister, and now included them both in the same glance, as if to detect and explain to herself the relation which they bore to one another. for some unaccountable reason, as arthur dimmesdale felt the child's eyes upon himself, his hand--with that gesture so habitual as to have become involuntary--stole over his heart. at length, assuming a singular air of authority, pearl stretched out her hand, with the small forefinger extended, and pointing evidently towards her mother's breast. and beneath, in the mirror of the brook, there was the flower-girdled and sunny image of little pearl, pointing her small forefinger too. "thou strange child! why dost thou not come to me?" exclaimed hester. pearl still pointed with her forefinger, and a frown gathered on her brow--the more impressive from the childish, the almost baby-like aspect of the features that conveyed it. as her mother still kept beckoning to her, and arraying her face in a holiday suit of unaccustomed smiles, the child stamped her foot with a yet more imperious look and gesture. in the brook, again, was the fantastic beauty of the image, with its reflected frown, its pointed finger, and imperious gesture, giving emphasis to the aspect of little pearl. "hasten, pearl, or i shall be angry with thee!" cried hester prynne, who, however, inured to such behaviour on the elf-child's part at other seasons, was naturally anxious for a more seemly deportment now. "leap across the brook, naughty child, and run hither! else i must come to thee!" but pearl, not a whit startled at her mother's threats any more than mollified by her entreaties, now suddenly burst into a fit of passion, gesticulating violently, and throwing her small figure into the most extravagant contortions. she accompanied this wild outbreak with piercing shrieks, which the woods reverberated on all sides, so that, alone as she was in her childish and unreasonable wrath, it seemed as if a hidden multitude were lending her their sympathy and encouragement. seen in the brook once more was the shadowy wrath of pearl's image, crowned and girdled with flowers, but stamping its foot, wildly gesticulating, and, in the midst of all, still pointing its small forefinger at hester's bosom. "i see what ails the child," whispered hester to the clergyman, and turning pale in spite of a strong effort to conceal her trouble and annoyance, "children will not abide any, the slightest, change in the accustomed aspect of things that are daily before their eyes. pearl misses something that she has always seen me wear!" "i pray you," answered the minister, "if thou hast any means of pacifying the child, do it forthwith! save it were the cankered wrath of an old witch like mistress hibbins," added he, attempting to smile, "i know nothing that i would not sooner encounter than this passion in a child. in pearl's young beauty, as in the wrinkled witch, it has a preternatural effect. pacify her if thou lovest me!" hester turned again towards pearl with a crimson blush upon her cheek, a conscious glance aside clergyman, and then a heavy sigh, while, even before she had time to speak, the blush yielded to a deadly pallor. "pearl," said she sadly, "look down at thy feet! there!--before thee!--on the hither side of the brook!" the child turned her eyes to the point indicated, and there lay the scarlet letter so close upon the margin of the stream that the gold embroidery was reflected in it. "bring it hither!" said hester. "come thou and take it up!" answered pearl. "was ever such a child!" observed hester aside to the minister. "oh, i have much to tell thee about her! but, in very truth, she is right as regards this hateful token. i must bear its torture yet a little longer--only a few days longer--until we shall have left this region, and look back hither as to a land which we have dreamed of. the forest cannot hide it! the mid-ocean shall take it from my hand, and swallow it up for ever!" with these words she advanced to the margin of the brook, took up the scarlet letter, and fastened it again into her bosom. hopefully, but a moment ago, as hester had spoken of drowning it in the deep sea, there was a sense of inevitable doom upon her as she thus received back this deadly symbol from the hand of fate. she had flung it into infinite space! she had drawn an hour's free breath! and here again was the scarlet misery glittering on the old spot! so it ever is, whether thus typified or no, that an evil deed invests itself with the character of doom. hester next gathered up the heavy tresses of her hair and confined them beneath her cap. as if there were a withering spell in the sad letter, her beauty, the warmth and richness of her womanhood, departed like fading sunshine, and a gray shadow seemed to fall across her. when the dreary change was wrought, she extended her hand to pearl. "dost thou know thy mother now, child?", asked she, reproachfully, but with a subdued tone. "wilt thou come across the brook, and own thy mother, now that she has her shame upon her--now that she is sad?" "yes; now i will!" answered the child, bounding across the brook, and clasping hester in her arms "now thou art my mother indeed! and i am thy little pearl!" in a mood of tenderness that was not usual with her, she drew down her mother's head, and kissed her brow and both her cheeks. but then--by a kind of necessity that always impelled this child to alloy whatever comfort she might chance to give with a throb of anguish--pearl put up her mouth and kissed the scarlet letter, too. "that was not kind!" said hester. "when thou hast shown me a little love, thou mockest me!" "why doth the minister sit yonder?" asked pearl. "he waits to welcome thee," replied her mother. "come thou, and entreat his blessing! he loves thee, my little pearl, and loves thy mother, too. wilt thou not love him? come he longs to greet thee!" "doth he love us?" said pearl, looking up with acute intelligence into her mother's face. "will he go back with us, hand in hand, we three together, into the town?" "not now, my child," answered hester. "but in days to come he will walk hand in hand with us. we will have a home and fireside of our own; and thou shalt sit upon his knee; and he will teach thee many things, and love thee dearly. thou wilt love him--wilt thou not?" "and will he always keep his hand over his heart?" inquired pearl. "foolish child, what a question is that!" exclaimed her mother. "come, and ask his blessing!" but, whether influenced by the jealousy that seems instinctive with every petted child towards a dangerous rival, or from whatever caprice of her freakish nature, pearl would show no favour to the clergyman. it was only by an exertion of force that her mother brought her up to him, hanging back, and manifesting her reluctance by odd grimaces; of which, ever since her babyhood, she had possessed a singular variety, and could transform her mobile physiognomy into a series of different aspects, with a new mischief in them, each and all. the minister--painfully embarrassed, but hoping that a kiss might prove a talisman to admit him into the child's kindlier regards--bent forward, and impressed one on her brow. hereupon, pearl broke away from her mother, and, running to the brook, stooped over it, and bathed her forehead, until the unwelcome kiss was quite washed off and diffused through a long lapse of the gliding water. she then remained apart, silently watching hester and the clergyman; while they talked together and made such arrangements as were suggested by their new position and the purposes soon to be fulfilled. and now this fateful interview had come to a close. the dell was to be left in solitude among its dark, old trees, which, with their multitudinous tongues, would whisper long of what had passed there, and no mortal be the wiser. and the melancholy brook would add this other tale to the mystery with which its little heart was already overburdened, and whereof it still kept up a murmuring babble, with not a whit more cheerfulness of tone than for ages heretofore. xx. the minister in a maze as the minister departed, in advance of hester prynne and little pearl, he threw a backward glance, half expecting that he should discover only some faintly traced features or outline of the mother and the child, slowly fading into the twilight of the woods. so great a vicissitude in his life could not at once be received as real. but there was hester, clad in her gray robe, still standing beside the tree-trunk, which some blast had overthrown a long antiquity ago, and which time had ever since been covering with moss, so that these two fated ones, with earth's heaviest burden on them, might there sit down together, and find a single hour's rest and solace. and there was pearl, too, lightly dancing from the margin of the brook--now that the intrusive third person was gone--and taking her old place by her mother's side. so the minister had not fallen asleep and dreamed! in order to free his mind from this indistinctness and duplicity of impression, which vexed it with a strange disquietude, he recalled and more thoroughly defined the plans which hester and himself had sketched for their departure. it had been determined between them that the old world, with its crowds and cities, offered them a more eligible shelter and concealment than the wilds of new england or all america, with its alternatives of an indian wigwam, or the few settlements of europeans scattered thinly along the sea-board. not to speak of the clergyman's health, so inadequate to sustain the hardships of a forest life, his native gifts, his culture, and his entire development would secure him a home only in the midst of civilization and refinement; the higher the state the more delicately adapted to it the man. in furtherance of this choice, it so happened that a ship lay in the harbour; one of those unquestionable cruisers, frequent at that day, which, without being absolutely outlaws of the deep, yet roamed over its surface with a remarkable irresponsibility of character. this vessel had recently arrived from the spanish main, and within three days' time would sail for bristol. hester prynne--whose vocation, as a self-enlisted sister of charity, had brought her acquainted with the captain and crew--could take upon herself to secure the passage of two individuals and a child with all the secrecy which circumstances rendered more than desirable. the minister had inquired of hester, with no little interest, the precise time at which the vessel might be expected to depart. it would probably be on the fourth day from the present. "this is most fortunate!" he had then said to himself. now, why the reverend mr. dimmesdale considered it so very fortunate we hesitate to reveal. nevertheless--to hold nothing back from the reader--it was because, on the third day from the present, he was to preach the election sermon; and, as such an occasion formed an honourable epoch in the life of a new england clergyman, he could not have chanced upon a more suitable mode and time of terminating his professional career. "at least, they shall say of me," thought this exemplary man, "that i leave no public duty unperformed or ill-performed!" sad, indeed, that an introspection so profound and acute as this poor minister's should be so miserably deceived! we have had, and may still have, worse things to tell of him; but none, we apprehend, so pitiably weak; no evidence, at once so slight and irrefragable, of a subtle disease that had long since begun to eat into the real substance of his character. no man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true. the excitement of mr. dimmesdale's feelings as he returned from his interview with hester, lent him unaccustomed physical energy, and hurried him townward at a rapid pace. the pathway among the woods seemed wilder, more uncouth with its rude natural obstacles, and less trodden by the foot of man, than he remembered it on his outward journey. but he leaped across the plashy places, thrust himself through the clinging underbrush, climbed the ascent, plunged into the hollow, and overcame, in short, all the difficulties of the track, with an unweariable activity that astonished him. he could not but recall how feebly, and with what frequent pauses for breath he had toiled over the same ground, only two days before. as he drew near the town, he took an impression of change from the series of familiar objects that presented themselves. it seemed not yesterday, not one, not two, but many days, or even years ago, since he had quitted them. there, indeed, was each former trace of the street, as he remembered it, and all the peculiarities of the houses, with the due multitude of gable-peaks, and a weather-cock at every point where his memory suggested one. not the less, however, came this importunately obtrusive sense of change. the same was true as regarded the acquaintances whom he met, and all the well-known shapes of human life, about the little town. they looked neither older nor younger now; the beards of the aged were no whiter, nor could the creeping babe of yesterday walk on his feet to-day; it was impossible to describe in what respect they differed from the individuals on whom he had so recently bestowed a parting glance; and yet the minister's deepest sense seemed to inform him of their mutability. a similar impression struck him most remarkably as he passed under the walls of his own church. the edifice had so very strange, and yet so familiar an aspect, that mr. dimmesdale's mind vibrated between two ideas; either that he had seen it only in a dream hitherto, or that he was merely dreaming about it now. this phenomenon, in the various shapes which it assumed, indicated no external change, but so sudden and important a change in the spectator of the familiar scene, that the intervening space of a single day had operated on his consciousness like the lapse of years. the minister's own will, and hester's will, and the fate that grew between them, had wrought this transformation. it was the same town as heretofore, but the same minister returned not from the forest. he might have said to the friends who greeted him--"i am not the man for whom you take me! i left him yonder in the forest, withdrawn into a secret dell, by a mossy tree trunk, and near a melancholy brook! go, seek your minister, and see if his emaciated figure, his thin cheek, his white, heavy, pain-wrinkled brow, be not flung down there, like a cast-off garment!" his friends, no doubt, would still have insisted with him--"thou art thyself the man!" but the error would have been their own, not his. before mr. dimmesdale reached home, his inner man gave him other evidences of a revolution in the sphere of thought and feeling. in truth, nothing short of a total change of dynasty and moral code, in that interior kingdom, was adequate to account for the impulses now communicated to the unfortunate and startled minister. at every step he was incited to do some strange, wild, wicked thing or other, with a sense that it would be at once involuntary and intentional, in spite of himself, yet growing out of a profounder self than that which opposed the impulse. for instance, he met one of his own deacons. the good old man addressed him with the paternal affection and patriarchal privilege which his venerable age, his upright and holy character, and his station in the church, entitled him to use and, conjoined with this, the deep, almost worshipping respect, which the minister's professional and private claims alike demanded. never was there a more beautiful example of how the majesty of age and wisdom may comport with the obeisance and respect enjoined upon it, as from a lower social rank, and inferior order of endowment, towards a higher. now, during a conversation of some two or three moments between the reverend mr. dimmesdale and this excellent and hoary-bearded deacon, it was only by the most careful self-control that the former could refrain from uttering certain blasphemous suggestions that rose into his mind, respecting the communion-supper. he absolutely trembled and turned pale as ashes, lest his tongue should wag itself in utterance of these horrible matters, and plead his own consent for so doing, without his having fairly given it. and, even with this terror in his heart, he could hardly avoid laughing, to imagine how the sanctified old patriarchal deacon would have been petrified by his minister's impiety. again, another incident of the same nature. hurrying along the street, the reverend mr. dimmesdale encountered the eldest female member of his church, a most pious and exemplary old dame, poor, widowed, lonely, and with a heart as full of reminiscences about her dead husband and children, and her dead friends of long ago, as a burial-ground is full of storied gravestones. yet all this, which would else have been such heavy sorrow, was made almost a solemn joy to her devout old soul, by religious consolations and the truths of scripture, wherewith she had fed herself continually for more than thirty years. and since mr. dimmesdale had taken her in charge, the good grandam's chief earthly comfort--which, unless it had been likewise a heavenly comfort, could have been none at all--was to meet her pastor, whether casually, or of set purpose, and be refreshed with a word of warm, fragrant, heaven-breathing gospel truth, from his beloved lips, into her dulled, but rapturously attentive ear. but, on this occasion, up to the moment of putting his lips to the old woman's ear, mr. dimmesdale, as the great enemy of souls would have it, could recall no text of scripture, nor aught else, except a brief, pithy, and, as it then appeared to him, unanswerable argument against the immortality of the human soul. the instilment thereof into her mind would probably have caused this aged sister to drop down dead, at once, as by the effect of an intensely poisonous infusion. what he really did whisper, the minister could never afterwards recollect. there was, perhaps, a fortunate disorder in his utterance, which failed to impart any distinct idea to the good widows comprehension, or which providence interpreted after a method of its own. assuredly, as the minister looked back, he beheld an expression of divine gratitude and ecstasy that seemed like the shine of the celestial city on her face, so wrinkled and ashy pale. again, a third instance. after parting from the old church member, he met the youngest sister of them all. it was a maiden newly-won--and won by the reverend mr. dimmesdale's own sermon, on the sabbath after his vigil--to barter the transitory pleasures of the world for the heavenly hope that was to assume brighter substance as life grew dark around her, and which would gild the utter gloom with final glory. she was fair and pure as a lily that had bloomed in paradise. the minister knew well that he was himself enshrined within the stainless sanctity of her heart, which hung its snowy curtains about his image, imparting to religion the warmth of love, and to love a religious purity. satan, that afternoon, had surely led the poor young girl away from her mother's side, and thrown her into the pathway of this sorely tempted, or--shall we not rather say?--this lost and desperate man. as she drew nigh, the arch-fiend whispered him to condense into small compass, and drop into her tender bosom a germ of evil that would be sure to blossom darkly soon, and bear black fruit betimes. such was his sense of power over this virgin soul, trusting him as she did, that the minister felt potent to blight all the field of innocence with but one wicked look, and develop all its opposite with but a word. so--with a mightier struggle than he had yet sustained--he held his geneva cloak before his face, and hurried onward, making no sign of recognition, and leaving the young sister to digest his rudeness as she might. she ransacked her conscience--which was full of harmless little matters, like her pocket or her work-bag--and took herself to task, poor thing! for a thousand imaginary faults, and went about her household duties with swollen eyelids the next morning. before the minister had time to celebrate his victory over this last temptation, he was conscious of another impulse, more ludicrous, and almost as horrible. it was--we blush to tell it--it was to stop short in the road, and teach some very wicked words to a knot of little puritan children who were playing there, and had but just begun to talk. denying himself this freak, as unworthy of his cloth, he met a drunken seaman, one of the ship's crew from the spanish main. and here, since he had so valiantly forborne all other wickedness, poor mr. dimmesdale longed at least to shake hands with the tarry black-guard, and recreate himself with a few improper jests, such as dissolute sailors so abound with, and a volley of good, round, solid, satisfactory, and heaven-defying oaths! it was not so much a better principle, as partly his natural good taste, and still more his buckramed habit of clerical decorum, that carried him safely through the latter crisis. "what is it that haunts and tempts me thus?" cried the minister to himself, at length, pausing in the street, and striking his hand against his forehead. "am i mad? or am i given over utterly to the fiend? did i make a contract with him in the forest, and sign it with my blood? and does he now summon me to its fulfilment, by suggesting the performance of every wickedness which his most foul imagination can conceive?" at the moment when the reverend mr. dimmesdale thus communed with himself, and struck his forehead with his hand, old mistress hibbins, the reputed witch-lady, is said to have been passing by. she made a very grand appearance, having on a high head-dress, a rich gown of velvet, and a ruff done up with the famous yellow starch, of which anne turner, her especial friend, had taught her the secret, before this last good lady had been hanged for sir thomas overbury's murder. whether the witch had read the minister's thoughts or no, she came to a full stop, looked shrewdly into his face, smiled craftily, and--though little given to converse with clergymen--began a conversation. "so, reverend sir, you have made a visit into the forest," observed the witch-lady, nodding her high head-dress at him. "the next time i pray you to allow me only a fair warning, and i shall be proud to bear you company. without taking overmuch upon myself my good word will go far towards gaining any strange gentleman a fair reception from yonder potentate you wot of." "i profess, madam," answered the clergyman, with a grave obeisance, such as the lady's rank demanded, and his own good breeding made imperative--"i profess, on my conscience and character, that i am utterly bewildered as touching the purport of your words! i went not into the forest to seek a potentate, neither do i, at any future time, design a visit thither, with a view to gaining the favour of such personage. my one sufficient object was to greet that pious friend of mine, the apostle eliot, and rejoice with him over the many precious souls he hath won from heathendom!" "ha, ha, ha!" cackled the old witch-lady, still nodding her high head-dress at the minister. "well, well! we must needs talk thus in the daytime! you carry it off like an old hand! but at midnight, and in the forest, we shall have other talk together!" she passed on with her aged stateliness, but often turning back her head and smiling at him, like one willing to recognise a secret intimacy of connexion. "have i then sold myself," thought the minister, "to the fiend whom, if men say true, this yellow-starched and velveted old hag has chosen for her prince and master?" the wretched minister! he had made a bargain very like it! tempted by a dream of happiness, he had yielded himself with deliberate choice, as he had never done before, to what he knew was deadly sin. and the infectious poison of that sin had been thus rapidly diffused throughout his moral system. it had stupefied all blessed impulses, and awakened into vivid life the whole brotherhood of bad ones. scorn, bitterness, unprovoked malignity, gratuitous desire of ill, ridicule of whatever was good and holy, all awoke to tempt, even while they frightened him. and his encounter with old mistress hibbins, if it were a real incident, did but show its sympathy and fellowship with wicked mortals, and the world of perverted spirits. he had by this time reached his dwelling on the edge of the burial ground, and, hastening up the stairs, took refuge in his study. the minister was glad to have reached this shelter, without first betraying himself to the world by any of those strange and wicked eccentricities to which he had been continually impelled while passing through the streets. he entered the accustomed room, and looked around him on its books, its windows, its fireplace, and the tapestried comfort of the walls, with the same perception of strangeness that had haunted him throughout his walk from the forest dell into the town and thitherward. here he had studied and written; here gone through fast and vigil, and come forth half alive; here striven to pray; here borne a hundred thousand agonies! there was the bible, in its rich old hebrew, with moses and the prophets speaking to him, and god's voice through all. there on the table, with the inky pen beside it, was an unfinished sermon, with a sentence broken in the midst, where his thoughts had ceased to gush out upon the page two days before. he knew that it was himself, the thin and white-cheeked minister, who had done and suffered these things, and written thus far into the election sermon! but he seemed to stand apart, and eye this former self with scornful pitying, but half-envious curiosity. that self was gone. another man had returned out of the forest--a wiser one--with a knowledge of hidden mysteries which the simplicity of the former never could have reached. a bitter kind of knowledge that! while occupied with these reflections, a knock came at the door of the study, and the minister said, "come in!"--not wholly devoid of an idea that he might behold an evil spirit. and so he did! it was old roger chillingworth that entered. the minister stood white and speechless, with one hand on the hebrew scriptures, and the other spread upon his breast. "welcome home, reverend sir," said the physician "and how found you that godly man, the apostle eliot? but methinks, dear sir, you look pale, as if the travel through the wilderness had been too sore for you. will not my aid be requisite to put you in heart and strength to preach your election sermon?" "nay, i think not so," rejoined the reverend mr. dimmesdale. "my journey, and the sight of the holy apostle yonder, and the free air which i have breathed have done me good, after so long confinement in my study. i think to need no more of your drugs, my kind physician, good though they be, and administered by a friendly hand." all this time roger chillingworth was looking at the minister with the grave and intent regard of a physician towards his patient. but, in spite of this outward show, the latter was almost convinced of the old man's knowledge, or, at least, his confident suspicion, with respect to his own interview with hester prynne. the physician knew then that in the minister's regard he was no longer a trusted friend, but his bitterest enemy. so much being known, it would appear natural that a part of it should be expressed. it is singular, however, how long a time often passes before words embody things; and with what security two persons, who choose to avoid a certain subject, may approach its very verge, and retire without disturbing it. thus the minister felt no apprehension that roger chillingworth would touch, in express words, upon the real position which they sustained towards one another. yet did the physician, in his dark way, creep frightfully near the secret. "were it not better," said he, "that you use my poor skill tonight? verily, dear sir, we must take pains to make you strong and vigorous for this occasion of the election discourse. the people look for great things from you, apprehending that another year may come about and find their pastor gone." "yes, to another world," replied the minister with pious resignation. "heaven grant it be a better one; for, in good sooth, i hardly think to tarry with my flock through the flitting seasons of another year! but touching your medicine, kind sir, in my present frame of body i need it not." "i joy to hear it," answered the physician. "it may be that my remedies, so long administered in vain, begin now to take due effect. happy man were i, and well deserving of new england's gratitude, could i achieve this cure!" "i thank you from my heart, most watchful friend," said the reverend mr. dimmesdale with a solemn smile. "i thank you, and can but requite your good deeds with my prayers." "a good man's prayers are golden recompense!" rejoined old roger chillingworth, as he took his leave. "yea, they are the current gold coin of the new jerusalem, with the king's own mint mark on them!" left alone, the minister summoned a servant of the house, and requested food, which, being set before him, he ate with ravenous appetite. then flinging the already written pages of the election sermon into the fire, he forthwith began another, which he wrote with such an impulsive flow of thought and emotion, that he fancied himself inspired; and only wondered that heaven should see fit to transmit the grand and solemn music of its oracles through so foul an organ pipe as he. however, leaving that mystery to solve itself, or go unsolved for ever, he drove his task onward with earnest haste and ecstasy. thus the night fled away, as if it were a winged steed, and he careering on it; morning came, and peeped, blushing, through the curtains; and at last sunrise threw a golden beam into the study, and laid it right across the minister's bedazzled eyes. there he was, with the pen still between his fingers, and a vast, immeasurable tract of written space behind him! xxi. the new england holiday betimes in the morning of the day on which the new governor was to receive his office at the hands of the people, hester prynne and little pearl came into the market-place. it was already thronged with the craftsmen and other plebeian inhabitants of the town, in considerable numbers, among whom, likewise, were many rough figures, whose attire of deer-skins marked them as belonging to some of the forest settlements, which surrounded the little metropolis of the colony. on this public holiday, as on all other occasions for seven years past, hester was clad in a garment of coarse gray cloth. not more by its hue than by some indescribable peculiarity in its fashion, it had the effect of making her fade personally out of sight and outline; while again the scarlet letter brought her back from this twilight indistinctness, and revealed her under the moral aspect of its own illumination. her face, so long familiar to the townspeople, showed the marble quietude which they were accustomed to behold there. it was like a mask; or, rather like the frozen calmness of a dead woman's features; owing this dreary resemblance to the fact that hester was actually dead, in respect to any claim of sympathy, and had departed out of the world with which she still seemed to mingle. it might be, on this one day, that there was an expression unseen before, nor, indeed, vivid enough to be detected now; unless some preternaturally gifted observer should have first read the heart, and have afterwards sought a corresponding development in the countenance and mien. such a spiritual seer might have conceived, that, after sustaining the gaze of the multitude through several miserable years as a necessity, a penance, and something which it was a stern religion to endure, she now, for one last time more, encountered it freely and voluntarily, in order to convert what had so long been agony into a kind of triumph. "look your last on the scarlet letter and its wearer!"--the people's victim and lifelong bond-slave, as they fancied her, might say to them. "yet a little while, and she will be beyond your reach! a few hours longer and the deep, mysterious ocean will quench and hide for ever the symbol which ye have caused to burn on her bosom!" nor were it an inconsistency too improbable to be assigned to human nature, should we suppose a feeling of regret in hester's mind, at the moment when she was about to win her freedom from the pain which had been thus deeply incorporated with her being. might there not be an irresistible desire to quaff a last, long, breathless draught of the cup of wormwood and aloes, with which nearly all her years of womanhood had been perpetually flavoured. the wine of life, henceforth to be presented to her lips, must be indeed rich, delicious, and exhilarating, in its chased and golden beaker, or else leave an inevitable and weary languor, after the lees of bitterness wherewith she had been drugged, as with a cordial of intensest potency. pearl was decked out with airy gaiety. it would have been impossible to guess that this bright and sunny apparition owed its existence to the shape of gloomy gray; or that a fancy, at once so gorgeous and so delicate as must have been requisite to contrive the child's apparel, was the same that had achieved a task perhaps more difficult, in imparting so distinct a peculiarity to hester's simple robe. the dress, so proper was it to little pearl, seemed an effluence, or inevitable development and outward manifestation of her character, no more to be separated from her than the many-hued brilliancy from a butterfly's wing, or the painted glory from the leaf of a bright flower. as with these, so with the child; her garb was all of one idea with her nature. on this eventful day, moreover, there was a certain singular inquietude and excitement in her mood, resembling nothing so much as the shimmer of a diamond, that sparkles and flashes with the varied throbbings of the breast on which it is displayed. children have always a sympathy in the agitations of those connected with them: always, especially, a sense of any trouble or impending revolution, of whatever kind, in domestic circumstances; and therefore pearl, who was the gem on her mother's unquiet bosom, betrayed, by the very dance of her spirits, the emotions which none could detect in the marble passiveness of hester's brow. this effervescence made her flit with a bird-like movement, rather than walk by her mother's side. she broke continually into shouts of a wild, inarticulate, and sometimes piercing music. when they reached the market-place, she became still more restless, on perceiving the stir and bustle that enlivened the spot; for it was usually more like the broad and lonesome green before a village meeting-house, than the centre of a town's business. "why, what is this, mother?" cried she. "wherefore have all the people left their work to-day? is it a play-day for the whole world? see, there is the blacksmith! he has washed his sooty face, and put on his sabbath-day clothes, and looks as if he would gladly be merry, if any kind body would only teach him how! and there is master brackett, the old jailer, nodding and smiling at me. why does he do so, mother?" "he remembers thee a little babe, my child," answered hester. "he should not nod and smile at me, for all that--the black, grim, ugly-eyed old man!" said pearl. "he may nod at thee, if he will; for thou art clad in gray, and wearest the scarlet letter. but see, mother, how many faces of strange people, and indians among them, and sailors! what have they all come to do, here in the market-place?" "they wait to see the procession pass," said hester. "for the governor and the magistrates are to go by, and the ministers, and all the great people and good people, with the music and the soldiers marching before them." "and will the minister be there?" asked pearl. "and will he hold out both his hands to me, as when thou ledst me to him from the brook-side?" "he will be there, child," answered her mother, "but he will not greet thee to-day, nor must thou greet him." "what a strange, sad man is he!" said the child, as if speaking partly to herself. "in the dark nighttime he calls us to him, and holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood with him on the scaffold yonder! and in the deep forest, where only the old trees can hear, and the strip of sky see it, he talks with thee, sitting on a heap of moss! and he kisses my forehead, too, so that the little brook would hardly wash it off! but, here, in the sunny day, and among all the people, he knows us not; nor must we know him! a strange, sad man is he, with his hand always over his heart!" "be quiet, pearl--thou understandest not these things," said her mother. "think not now of the minister, but look about thee, and see how cheery is everybody's face to-day. the children have come from their schools, and the grown people from their workshops and their fields, on purpose to be happy, for, to-day, a new man is beginning to rule over them; and so--as has been the custom of mankind ever since a nation was first gathered--they make merry and rejoice: as if a good and golden year were at length to pass over the poor old world!" it was as hester said, in regard to the unwonted jollity that brightened the faces of the people. into this festal season of the year--as it already was, and continued to be during the greater part of two centuries--the puritans compressed whatever mirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity; thereby so far dispelling the customary cloud, that, for the space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more grave than most other communities at a period of general affliction. but we perhaps exaggerate the gray or sable tinge, which undoubtedly characterized the mood and manners of the age. the persons now in the market-place of boston had not been born to an inheritance of puritanic gloom. they were native englishmen, whose fathers had lived in the sunny richness of the elizabethan epoch; a time when the life of england, viewed as one great mass, would appear to have been as stately, magnificent, and joyous, as the world has ever witnessed. had they followed their hereditary taste, the new england settlers would have illustrated all events of public importance by bonfires, banquets, pageantries, and processions. nor would it have been impracticable, in the observance of majestic ceremonies, to combine mirthful recreation with solemnity, and give, as it were, a grotesque and brilliant embroidery to the great robe of state, which a nation, at such festivals, puts on. there was some shadow of an attempt of this kind in the mode of celebrating the day on which the political year of the colony commenced. the dim reflection of a remembered splendour, a colourless and manifold diluted repetition of what they had beheld in proud old london--we will not say at a royal coronation, but at a lord mayor's show--might be traced in the customs which our forefathers instituted, with reference to the annual installation of magistrates. the fathers and founders of the commonwealth--the statesman, the priest, and the soldier--seemed it a duty then to assume the outward state and majesty, which, in accordance with antique style, was looked upon as the proper garb of public and social eminence. all came forth to move in procession before the people's eye, and thus impart a needed dignity to the simple framework of a government so newly constructed. then, too, the people were countenanced, if not encouraged, in relaxing the severe and close application to their various modes of rugged industry, which at all other times, seemed of the same piece and material with their religion. here, it is true, were none of the appliances which popular merriment would so readily have found in the england of elizabeth's time, or that of james--no rude shows of a theatrical kind; no minstrel, with his harp and legendary ballad, nor gleeman with an ape dancing to his music; no juggler, with his tricks of mimic witchcraft; no merry andrew, to stir up the multitude with jests, perhaps a hundred years old, but still effective, by their appeals to the very broadest sources of mirthful sympathy. all such professors of the several branches of jocularity would have been sternly repressed, not only by the rigid discipline of law, but by the general sentiment which give law its vitality. not the less, however, the great, honest face of the people smiled--grimly, perhaps, but widely too. nor were sports wanting, such as the colonists had witnessed, and shared in, long ago, at the country fairs and on the village-greens of england; and which it was thought well to keep alive on this new soil, for the sake of the courage and manliness that were essential in them. wrestling matches, in the different fashions of cornwall and devonshire, were seen here and there about the market-place; in one corner, there was a friendly bout at quarterstaff; and--what attracted most interest of all--on the platform of the pillory, already so noted in our pages, two masters of defence were commencing an exhibition with the buckler and broadsword. but, much to the disappointment of the crowd, this latter business was broken off by the interposition of the town beadle, who had no idea of permitting the majesty of the law to be violated by such an abuse of one of its consecrated places. it may not be too much to affirm, on the whole, (the people being then in the first stages of joyless deportment, and the offspring of sires who had known how to be merry, in their day), that they would compare favourably, in point of holiday keeping, with their descendants, even at so long an interval as ourselves. their immediate posterity, the generation next to the early emigrants, wore the blackest shade of puritanism, and so darkened the national visage with it, that all the subsequent years have not sufficed to clear it up. we have yet to learn again the forgotten art of gaiety. the picture of human life in the market-place, though its general tint was the sad gray, brown, or black of the english emigrants, was yet enlivened by some diversity of hue. a party of indians--in their savage finery of curiously embroidered deerskin robes, wampum-belts, red and yellow ochre, and feathers, and armed with the bow and arrow and stone-headed spear--stood apart with countenances of inflexible gravity, beyond what even the puritan aspect could attain. nor, wild as were these painted barbarians, were they the wildest feature of the scene. this distinction could more justly be claimed by some mariners--a part of the crew of the vessel from the spanish main--who had come ashore to see the humours of election day. they were rough-looking desperadoes, with sun-blackened faces, and an immensity of beard; their wide short trousers were confined about the waist by belts, often clasped with a rough plate of gold, and sustaining always a long knife, and in some instances, a sword. from beneath their broad-brimmed hats of palm-leaf, gleamed eyes which, even in good-nature and merriment, had a kind of animal ferocity. they transgressed without fear or scruple, the rules of behaviour that were binding on all others: smoking tobacco under the beadle's very nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling; and quaffing at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-vitae from pocket flasks, which they freely tendered to the gaping crowd around them. it remarkably characterised the incomplete morality of the age, rigid as we call it, that a licence was allowed the seafaring class, not merely for their freaks on shore, but for far more desperate deeds on their proper element. the sailor of that day would go near to be arraigned as a pirate in our own. there could be little doubt, for instance, that this very ship's crew, though no unfavourable specimens of the nautical brotherhood, had been guilty, as we should phrase it, of depredations on the spanish commerce, such as would have perilled all their necks in a modern court of justice. but the sea in those old times heaved, swelled, and foamed very much at its own will, or subject only to the tempestuous wind, with hardly any attempts at regulation by human law. the buccaneer on the wave might relinquish his calling and become at once if he chose, a man of probity and piety on land; nor, even in the full career of his reckless life, was he regarded as a personage with whom it was disreputable to traffic or casually associate. thus the puritan elders in their black cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled not unbenignantly at the clamour and rude deportment of these jolly seafaring men; and it excited neither surprise nor animadversion when so reputable a citizen as old roger chillingworth, the physician, was seen to enter the market-place in close and familiar talk with the commander of the questionable vessel. the latter was by far the most showy and gallant figure, so far as apparel went, anywhere to be seen among the multitude. he wore a profusion of ribbons on his garment, and gold lace on his hat, which was also encircled by a gold chain, and surmounted with a feather. there was a sword at his side and a sword-cut on his forehead, which, by the arrangement of his hair, he seemed anxious rather to display than hide. a landsman could hardly have worn this garb and shown this face, and worn and shown them both with such a galliard air, without undergoing stern question before a magistrate, and probably incurring a fine or imprisonment, or perhaps an exhibition in the stocks. as regarded the shipmaster, however, all was looked upon as pertaining to the character, as to a fish his glistening scales. after parting from the physician, the commander of the bristol ship strolled idly through the market-place; until happening to approach the spot where hester prynne was standing, he appeared to recognise, and did not hesitate to address her. as was usually the case wherever hester stood, a small vacant area--a sort of magic circle--had formed itself about her, into which, though the people were elbowing one another at a little distance, none ventured or felt disposed to intrude. it was a forcible type of the moral solitude in which the scarlet letter enveloped its fated wearer; partly by her own reserve, and partly by the instinctive, though no longer so unkindly, withdrawal of her fellow-creatures. now, if never before, it answered a good purpose by enabling hester and the seaman to speak together without risk of being overheard; and so changed was hester prynne's repute before the public, that the matron in town, most eminent for rigid morality, could not have held such intercourse with less result of scandal than herself. "so, mistress," said the mariner, "i must bid the steward make ready one more berth than you bargained for! no fear of scurvy or ship fever this voyage. what with the ship's surgeon and this other doctor, our only danger will be from drug or pill; more by token, as there is a lot of apothecary's stuff aboard, which i traded for with a spanish vessel." "what mean you?" inquired hester, startled more than she permitted to appear. "have you another passenger?" "why, know you not," cried the shipmaster, "that this physician here--chillingworth he calls himself--is minded to try my cabin-fare with you? ay, ay, you must have known it; for he tells me he is of your party, and a close friend to the gentleman you spoke of--he that is in peril from these sour old puritan rulers." "they know each other well, indeed," replied hester, with a mien of calmness, though in the utmost consternation. "they have long dwelt together." nothing further passed between the mariner and hester prynne. but at that instant she beheld old roger chillingworth himself, standing in the remotest corner of the market-place and smiling on her; a smile which--across the wide and bustling square, and through all the talk and laughter, and various thoughts, moods, and interests of the crowd--conveyed secret and fearful meaning. xxii. the procession before hester prynne could call together her thoughts, and consider what was practicable to be done in this new and startling aspect of affairs, the sound of military music was heard approaching along a contiguous street. it denoted the advance of the procession of magistrates and citizens on its way towards the meeting-house: where, in compliance with a custom thus early established, and ever since observed, the reverend mr. dimmesdale was to deliver an election sermon. soon the head of the procession showed itself, with a slow and stately march, turning a corner, and making its way across the market-place. first came the music. it comprised a variety of instruments, perhaps imperfectly adapted to one another, and played with no great skill; but yet attaining the great object for which the harmony of drum and clarion addresses itself to the multitude--that of imparting a higher and more heroic air to the scene of life that passes before the eye. little pearl at first clapped her hands, but then lost for an instant the restless agitation that had kept her in a continual effervescence throughout the morning; she gazed silently, and seemed to be borne upward like a floating sea-bird on the long heaves and swells of sound. but she was brought back to her former mood by the shimmer of the sunshine on the weapons and bright armour of the military company, which followed after the music, and formed the honorary escort of the procession. this body of soldiery--which still sustains a corporate existence, and marches down from past ages with an ancient and honourable fame--was composed of no mercenary materials. its ranks were filled with gentlemen who felt the stirrings of martial impulse, and sought to establish a kind of college of arms, where, as in an association of knights templars, they might learn the science, and, so far as peaceful exercise would teach them, the practices of war. the high estimation then placed upon the military character might be seen in the lofty port of each individual member of the company. some of them, indeed, by their services in the low countries and on other fields of european warfare, had fairly won their title to assume the name and pomp of soldiership. the entire array, moreover, clad in burnished steel, and with plumage nodding over their bright morions, had a brilliancy of effect which no modern display can aspire to equal. and yet the men of civil eminence, who came immediately behind the military escort, were better worth a thoughtful observer's eye. even in outward demeanour they showed a stamp of majesty that made the warrior's haughty stride look vulgar, if not absurd. it was an age when what we call talent had far less consideration than now, but the massive materials which produce stability and dignity of character a great deal more. the people possessed by hereditary right the quality of reverence, which, in their descendants, if it survive at all, exists in smaller proportion, and with a vastly diminished force in the selection and estimate of public men. the change may be for good or ill, and is partly, perhaps, for both. in that old day the english settler on these rude shores--having left king, nobles, and all degrees of awful rank behind, while still the faculty and necessity of reverence was strong in him--bestowed it on the white hair and venerable brow of age--on long-tried integrity--on solid wisdom and sad-coloured experience--on endowments of that grave and weighty order which gave the idea of permanence, and comes under the general definition of respectability. these primitive statesmen, therefore--bradstreet, endicott, dudley, bellingham, and their compeers--who were elevated to power by the early choice of the people, seem to have been not often brilliant, but distinguished by a ponderous sobriety, rather than activity of intellect. they had fortitude and self-reliance, and in time of difficulty or peril stood up for the welfare of the state like a line of cliffs against a tempestuous tide. the traits of character here indicated were well represented in the square cast of countenance and large physical development of the new colonial magistrates. so far as a demeanour of natural authority was concerned, the mother country need not have been ashamed to see these foremost men of an actual democracy adopted into the house of peers, or make the privy council of the sovereign. next in order to the magistrates came the young and eminently distinguished divine, from whose lips the religious discourse of the anniversary was expected. his was the profession at that era in which intellectual ability displayed itself far more than in political life; for--leaving a higher motive out of the question it offered inducements powerful enough in the almost worshipping respect of the community, to win the most aspiring ambition into its service. even political power--as in the case of increase mather--was within the grasp of a successful priest. it was the observation of those who beheld him now, that never, since mr. dimmesdale first set his foot on the new england shore, had he exhibited such energy as was seen in the gait and air with which he kept his pace in the procession. there was no feebleness of step as at other times; his frame was not bent, nor did his hand rest ominously upon his heart. yet, if the clergyman were rightly viewed, his strength seemed not of the body. it might be spiritual and imparted to him by angelical ministrations. it might be the exhilaration of that potent cordial which is distilled only in the furnace-glow of earnest and long-continued thought. or perchance his sensitive temperament was invigorated by the loud and piercing music that swelled heaven-ward, and uplifted him on its ascending wave. nevertheless, so abstracted was his look, it might be questioned whether mr. dimmesdale even heard the music. there was his body, moving onward, and with an unaccustomed force. but where was his mind? far and deep in its own region, busying itself, with preternatural activity, to marshal a procession of stately thoughts that were soon to issue thence; and so he saw nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing of what was around him; but the spiritual element took up the feeble frame and carried it along, unconscious of the burden, and converting it to spirit like itself. men of uncommon intellect, who have grown morbid, possess this occasional power of mighty effort, into which they throw the life of many days and then are lifeless for as many more. hester prynne, gazing steadfastly at the clergyman, felt a dreary influence come over her, but wherefore or whence she knew not, unless that he seemed so remote from her own sphere, and utterly beyond her reach. one glance of recognition she had imagined must needs pass between them. she thought of the dim forest, with its little dell of solitude, and love, and anguish, and the mossy tree-trunk, where, sitting hand-in-hand, they had mingled their sad and passionate talk with the melancholy murmur of the brook. how deeply had they known each other then! and was this the man? she hardly knew him now! he, moving proudly past, enveloped as it were, in the rich music, with the procession of majestic and venerable fathers; he, so unattainable in his worldly position, and still more so in that far vista of his unsympathizing thoughts, through which she now beheld him! her spirit sank with the idea that all must have been a delusion, and that, vividly as she had dreamed it, there could be no real bond betwixt the clergyman and herself. and thus much of woman was there in hester, that she could scarcely forgive him--least of all now, when the heavy footstep of their approaching fate might be heard, nearer, nearer, nearer!--for being able so completely to withdraw himself from their mutual world--while she groped darkly, and stretched forth her cold hands, and found him not. pearl either saw and responded to her mother's feelings, or herself felt the remoteness and intangibility that had fallen around the minister. while the procession passed, the child was uneasy, fluttering up and down, like a bird on the point of taking flight. when the whole had gone by, she looked up into hester's face-- "mother," said she, "was that the same minister that kissed me by the brook?" "hold thy peace, dear little pearl!" whispered her mother. "we must not always talk in the marketplace of what happens to us in the forest." "i could not be sure that it was he--so strange he looked," continued the child. "else i would have run to him, and bid him kiss me now, before all the people, even as he did yonder among the dark old trees. what would the minister have said, mother? would he have clapped his hand over his heart, and scowled on me, and bid me begone?" "what should he say, pearl," answered hester, "save that it was no time to kiss, and that kisses are not to be given in the market-place? well for thee, foolish child, that thou didst not speak to him!" another shade of the same sentiment, in reference to mr. dimmesdale, was expressed by a person whose eccentricities--insanity, as we should term it--led her to do what few of the townspeople would have ventured on--to begin a conversation with the wearer of the scarlet letter in public. it was mistress hibbins, who, arrayed in great magnificence, with a triple ruff, a broidered stomacher, a gown of rich velvet, and a gold-headed cane, had come forth to see the procession. as this ancient lady had the renown (which subsequently cost her no less a price than her life) of being a principal actor in all the works of necromancy that were continually going forward, the crowd gave way before her, and seemed to fear the touch of her garment, as if it carried the plague among its gorgeous folds. seen in conjunction with hester prynne--kindly as so many now felt towards the latter--the dread inspired by mistress hibbins had doubled, and caused a general movement from that part of the market-place in which the two women stood. "now, what mortal imagination could conceive it?" whispered the old lady confidentially to hester. "yonder divine man! that saint on earth, as the people uphold him to be, and as--i must needs say--he really looks! who, now, that saw him pass in the procession, would think how little while it is since he went forth out of his study--chewing a hebrew text of scripture in his mouth, i warrant--to take an airing in the forest! aha! we know what that means, hester prynne! but truly, forsooth, i find it hard to believe him the same man. many a church member saw i, walking behind the music, that has danced in the same measure with me, when somebody was fiddler, and, it might be, an indian powwow or a lapland wizard changing hands with us! that is but a trifle, when a woman knows the world. but this minister. couldst thou surely tell, hester, whether he was the same man that encountered thee on the forest path?" "madam, i know not of what you speak," answered hester prynne, feeling mistress hibbins to be of infirm mind; yet strangely startled and awe-stricken by the confidence with which she affirmed a personal connexion between so many persons (herself among them) and the evil one. "it is not for me to talk lightly of a learned and pious minister of the word, like the reverend mr. dimmesdale." "fie, woman--fie!" cried the old lady, shaking her finger at hester. "dost thou think i have been to the forest so many times, and have yet no skill to judge who else has been there? yea, though no leaf of the wild garlands which they wore while they danced be left in their hair! i know thee, hester, for i behold the token. we may all see it in the sunshine! and it glows like a red flame in the dark. thou wearest it openly, so there need be no question about that. but this minister! let me tell thee in thine ear! when the black man sees one of his own servants, signed and sealed, so shy of owning to the bond as is the reverend mr. dimmesdale, he hath a way of ordering matters so that the mark shall be disclosed, in open daylight, to the eyes of all the world! what is that the minister seeks to hide, with his hand always over his heart? ha, hester prynne?" "what is it, good mistress hibbins?" eagerly asked little pearl. "hast thou seen it?" "no matter, darling!" responded mistress hibbins, making pearl a profound reverence. "thou thyself wilt see it, one time or another. they say, child, thou art of the lineage of the prince of air! wilt thou ride with me some fine night to see thy father? then thou shalt know wherefore the minister keeps his hand over his heart!" laughing so shrilly that all the market-place could hear her, the weird old gentlewoman took her departure. by this time the preliminary prayer had been offered in the meeting-house, and the accents of the reverend mr. dimmesdale were heard commencing his discourse. an irresistible feeling kept hester near the spot. as the sacred edifice was too much thronged to admit another auditor, she took up her position close beside the scaffold of the pillory. it was in sufficient proximity to bring the whole sermon to her ears, in the shape of an indistinct but varied murmur and flow of the minister's very peculiar voice. this vocal organ was in itself a rich endowment, insomuch that a listener, comprehending nothing of the language in which the preacher spoke, might still have been swayed to and fro by the mere tone and cadence. like all other music, it breathed passion and pathos, and emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to the human heart, wherever educated. muffled as the sound was by its passage through the church walls, hester prynne listened with such intenseness, and sympathized so intimately, that the sermon had throughout a meaning for her, entirely apart from its indistinguishable words. these, perhaps, if more distinctly heard, might have been only a grosser medium, and have clogged the spiritual sense. now she caught the low undertone, as of the wind sinking down to repose itself; then ascended with it, as it rose through progressive gradations of sweetness and power, until its volume seemed to envelop her with an atmosphere of awe and solemn grandeur. and yet, majestic as the voice sometimes became, there was for ever in it an essential character of plaintiveness. a loud or low expression of anguish--the whisper, or the shriek, as it might be conceived, of suffering humanity, that touched a sensibility in every bosom! at times this deep strain of pathos was all that could be heard, and scarcely heard sighing amid a desolate silence. but even when the minister's voice grew high and commanding--when it gushed irrepressibly upward--when it assumed its utmost breadth and power, so overfilling the church as to burst its way through the solid walls, and diffuse itself in the open air--still, if the auditor listened intently, and for the purpose, he could detect the same cry of pain. what was it? the complaint of a human heart, sorrow-laden, perchance guilty, telling its secret, whether of guilt or sorrow, to the great heart of mankind; beseeching its sympathy or forgiveness,--at every moment,--in each accent,--and never in vain! it was this profound and continual undertone that gave the clergyman his most appropriate power. during all this time, hester stood, statue-like, at the foot of the scaffold. if the minister's voice had not kept her there, there would, nevertheless, have been an inevitable magnetism in that spot, whence she dated the first hour of her life of ignominy. there was a sense within her--too ill-defined to be made a thought, but weighing heavily on her mind--that her whole orb of life, both before and after, was connected with this spot, as with the one point that gave it unity. little pearl, meanwhile, had quitted her mother's side, and was playing at her own will about the market-place. she made the sombre crowd cheerful by her erratic and glistening ray, even as a bird of bright plumage illuminates a whole tree of dusky foliage by darting to and fro, half seen and half concealed amid the twilight of the clustering leaves. she had an undulating, but oftentimes a sharp and irregular movement. it indicated the restless vivacity of her spirit, which to-day was doubly indefatigable in its tip-toe dance, because it was played upon and vibrated with her mother's disquietude. whenever pearl saw anything to excite her ever active and wandering curiosity, she flew thitherward, and, as we might say, seized upon that man or thing as her own property, so far as she desired it, but without yielding the minutest degree of control over her motions in requital. the puritans looked on, and, if they smiled, were none the less inclined to pronounce the child a demon offspring, from the indescribable charm of beauty and eccentricity that shone through her little figure, and sparkled with its activity. she ran and looked the wild indian in the face, and he grew conscious of a nature wilder than his own. thence, with native audacity, but still with a reserve as characteristic, she flew into the midst of a group of mariners, the swarthy-cheeked wild men of the ocean, as the indians were of the land; and they gazed wonderingly and admiringly at pearl, as if a flake of the sea-foam had taken the shape of a little maid, and were gifted with a soul of the sea-fire, that flashes beneath the prow in the night-time. one of these seafaring men the shipmaster, indeed, who had spoken to hester prynne was so smitten with pearl's aspect, that he attempted to lay hands upon her, with purpose to snatch a kiss. finding it as impossible to touch her as to catch a humming-bird in the air, he took from his hat the gold chain that was twisted about it, and threw it to the child. pearl immediately twined it around her neck and waist with such happy skill, that, once seen there, it became a part of her, and it was difficult to imagine her without it. "thy mother is yonder woman with the scarlet letter," said the seaman, "wilt thou carry her a message from me?" "if the message pleases me, i will," answered pearl. "then tell her," rejoined he, "that i spake again with the black-a-visaged, hump shouldered old doctor, and he engages to bring his friend, the gentleman she wots of, aboard with him. so let thy mother take no thought, save for herself and thee. wilt thou tell her this, thou witch-baby?" "mistress hibbins says my father is the prince of the air!" cried pearl, with a naughty smile. "if thou callest me that ill-name, i shall tell him of thee, and he will chase thy ship with a tempest!" pursuing a zigzag course across the marketplace, the child returned to her mother, and communicated what the mariner had said. hester's strong, calm steadfastly-enduring spirit almost sank, at last, on beholding this dark and grim countenance of an inevitable doom, which at the moment when a passage seemed to open for the minister and herself out of their labyrinth of misery--showed itself with an unrelenting smile, right in the midst of their path. with her mind harassed by the terrible perplexity in which the shipmaster's intelligence involved her, she was also subjected to another trial. there were many people present from the country round about, who had often heard of the scarlet letter, and to whom it had been made terrific by a hundred false or exaggerated rumours, but who had never beheld it with their own bodily eyes. these, after exhausting other modes of amusement, now thronged about hester prynne with rude and boorish intrusiveness. unscrupulous as it was, however, it could not bring them nearer than a circuit of several yards. at that distance they accordingly stood, fixed there by the centrifugal force of the repugnance which the mystic symbol inspired. the whole gang of sailors, likewise, observing the press of spectators, and learning the purport of the scarlet letter, came and thrust their sunburnt and desperado-looking faces into the ring. even the indians were affected by a sort of cold shadow of the white man's curiosity and, gliding through the crowd, fastened their snake-like black eyes on hester's bosom, conceiving, perhaps, that the wearer of this brilliantly embroidered badge must needs be a personage of high dignity among her people. lastly, the inhabitants of the town (their own interest in this worn-out subject languidly reviving itself, by sympathy with what they saw others feel) lounged idly to the same quarter, and tormented hester prynne, perhaps more than all the rest, with their cool, well-acquainted gaze at her familiar shame. hester saw and recognized the selfsame faces of that group of matrons, who had awaited her forthcoming from the prison-door seven years ago; all save one, the youngest and only compassionate among them, whose burial-robe she had since made. at the final hour, when she was so soon to fling aside the burning letter, it had strangely become the centre of more remark and excitement, and was thus made to sear her breast more painfully, than at any time since the first day she put it on. while hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy, where the cunning cruelty of her sentence seemed to have fixed her for ever, the admirable preacher was looking down from the sacred pulpit upon an audience whose very inmost spirits had yielded to his control. the sainted minister in the church! the woman of the scarlet letter in the marketplace! what imagination would have been irreverent enough to surmise that the same scorching stigma was on them both! xxiii. the revelation of the scarlet letter the eloquent voice, on which the souls of the listening audience had been borne aloft as on the swelling waves of the sea, at length came to a pause. there was a momentary silence, profound as what should follow the utterance of oracles. then ensued a murmur and half-hushed tumult, as if the auditors, released from the high spell that had transported them into the region of another's mind, were returning into themselves, with all their awe and wonder still heavy on them. in a moment more the crowd began to gush forth from the doors of the church. now that there was an end, they needed more breath, more fit to support the gross and earthly life into which they relapsed, than that atmosphere which the preacher had converted into words of flame, and had burdened with the rich fragrance of his thought. in the open air their rapture broke into speech. the street and the market-place absolutely babbled, from side to side, with applauses of the minister. his hearers could not rest until they had told one another of what each knew better than he could tell or hear. according to their united testimony, never had man spoken in so wise, so high, and so holy a spirit, as he that spake this day; nor had inspiration ever breathed through mortal lips more evidently than it did through his. its influence could be seen, as it were, descending upon him, and possessing him, and continually lifting him out of the written discourse that lay before him, and filling him with ideas that must have been as marvellous to himself as to his audience. his subject, it appeared, had been the relation between the deity and the communities of mankind, with a special reference to the new england which they were here planting in the wilderness. and, as he drew towards the close, a spirit as of prophecy had come upon him, constraining him to its purpose as mightily as the old prophets of israel were constrained, only with this difference, that, whereas the jewish seers had denounced judgments and ruin on their country, it was his mission to foretell a high and glorious destiny for the newly gathered people of the lord. but, throughout it all, and through the whole discourse, there had been a certain deep, sad undertone of pathos, which could not be interpreted otherwise than as the natural regret of one soon to pass away. yes; their minister whom they so loved--and who so loved them all, that he could not depart heavenward without a sigh--had the foreboding of untimely death upon him, and would soon leave them in their tears. this idea of his transitory stay on earth gave the last emphasis to the effect which the preacher had produced; it was as if an angel, in his passage to the skies, had shaken his bright wings over the people for an instant--at once a shadow and a splendour--and had shed down a shower of golden truths upon them. thus, there had come to the reverend mr. dimmesdale--as to most men, in their various spheres, though seldom recognised until they see it far behind them--an epoch of life more brilliant and full of triumph than any previous one, or than any which could hereafter be. he stood, at this moment, on the very proudest eminence of superiority, to which the gifts or intellect, rich lore, prevailing eloquence, and a reputation of whitest sanctity, could exalt a clergyman in new england's earliest days, when the professional character was of itself a lofty pedestal. such was the position which the minister occupied, as he bowed his head forward on the cushions of the pulpit at the close of his election sermon. meanwhile hester prynne was standing beside the scaffold of the pillory, with the scarlet letter still burning on her breast! now was heard again the clamour of the music, and the measured tramp of the military escort issuing from the church door. the procession was to be marshalled thence to the town hall, where a solemn banquet would complete the ceremonies of the day. once more, therefore, the train of venerable and majestic fathers were seen moving through a broad pathway of the people, who drew back reverently, on either side, as the governor and magistrates, the old and wise men, the holy ministers, and all that were eminent and renowned, advanced into the midst of them. when they were fairly in the marketplace, their presence was greeted by a shout. this--though doubtless it might acquire additional force and volume from the child-like loyalty which the age awarded to its rulers--was felt to be an irrepressible outburst of enthusiasm kindled in the auditors by that high strain of eloquence which was yet reverberating in their ears. each felt the impulse in himself, and in the same breath, caught it from his neighbour. within the church, it had hardly been kept down; beneath the sky it pealed upward to the zenith. there were human beings enough, and enough of highly wrought and symphonious feeling to produce that more impressive sound than the organ tones of the blast, or the thunder, or the roar of the sea; even that mighty swell of many voices, blended into one great voice by the universal impulse which makes likewise one vast heart out of the many. never, from the soil of new england had gone up such a shout! never, on new england soil had stood the man so honoured by his mortal brethren as the preacher! how fared it with him, then? were there not the brilliant particles of a halo in the air about his head? so etherealised by spirit as he was, and so apotheosised by worshipping admirers, did his footsteps, in the procession, really tread upon the dust of earth? as the ranks of military men and civil fathers moved onward, all eyes were turned towards the point where the minister was seen to approach among them. the shout died into a murmur, as one portion of the crowd after another obtained a glimpse of him. how feeble and pale he looked, amid all his triumph! the energy--or say, rather, the inspiration which had held him up, until he should have delivered the sacred message that had brought its own strength along with it from heaven--was withdrawn, now that it had so faithfully performed its office. the glow, which they had just before beheld burning on his cheek, was extinguished, like a flame that sinks down hopelessly among the late decaying embers. it seemed hardly the face of a man alive, with such a death-like hue: it was hardly a man with life in him, that tottered on his path so nervously, yet tottered, and did not fall! one of his clerical brethren--it was the venerable john wilson--observing the state in which mr. dimmesdale was left by the retiring wave of intellect and sensibility, stepped forward hastily to offer his support. the minister tremulously, but decidedly, repelled the old man's arm. he still walked onward, if that movement could be so described, which rather resembled the wavering effort of an infant, with its mother's arms in view, outstretched to tempt him forward. and now, almost imperceptible as were the latter steps of his progress, he had come opposite the well-remembered and weather-darkened scaffold, where, long since, with all that dreary lapse of time between, hester prynne had encountered the world's ignominious stare. there stood hester, holding little pearl by the hand! and there was the scarlet letter on her breast! the minister here made a pause; although the music still played the stately and rejoicing march to which the procession moved. it summoned him onward--inward to the festival!--but here he made a pause. bellingham, for the last few moments, had kept an anxious eye upon him. he now left his own place in the procession, and advanced to give assistance judging, from mr. dimmesdale's aspect that he must otherwise inevitably fall. but there was something in the latter's expression that warned back the magistrate, although a man not readily obeying the vague intimations that pass from one spirit to another. the crowd, meanwhile, looked on with awe and wonder. this earthly faintness, was, in their view, only another phase of the minister's celestial strength; nor would it have seemed a miracle too high to be wrought for one so holy, had he ascended before their eyes, waxing dimmer and brighter, and fading at last into the light of heaven! he turned towards the scaffold, and stretched forth his arms. "hester," said he, "come hither! come, my little pearl!" it was a ghastly look with which he regarded them; but there was something at once tender and strangely triumphant in it. the child, with the bird-like motion, which was one of her characteristics, flew to him, and clasped her arms about his knees. hester prynne--slowly, as if impelled by inevitable fate, and against her strongest will--likewise drew near, but paused before she reached him. at this instant old roger chillingworth thrust himself through the crowd--or, perhaps, so dark, disturbed, and evil was his look, he rose up out of some nether region--to snatch back his victim from what he sought to do! be that as it might, the old man rushed forward, and caught the minister by the arm. "madman, hold! what is your purpose?" whispered he. "wave back that woman! cast off this child! all shall be well! do not blacken your fame, and perish in dishonour! i can yet save you! would you bring infamy on your sacred profession?" "ha, tempter! methinks thou art too late!" answered the minister, encountering his eye, fearfully, but firmly. "thy power is not what it was! with god's help, i shall escape thee now!" he again extended his hand to the woman of the scarlet letter. "hester prynne," cried he, with a piercing earnestness, "in the name of him, so terrible and so merciful, who gives me grace, at this last moment, to do what--for my own heavy sin and miserable agony--i withheld myself from doing seven years ago, come hither now, and twine thy strength about me! thy strength, hester; but let it be guided by the will which god hath granted me! this wretched and wronged old man is opposing it with all his might!--with all his own might, and the fiend's! come, hester--come! support me up yonder scaffold." the crowd was in a tumult. the men of rank and dignity, who stood more immediately around the clergyman, were so taken by surprise, and so perplexed as to the purport of what they saw--unable to receive the explanation which most readily presented itself, or to imagine any other--that they remained silent and inactive spectators of the judgement which providence seemed about to work. they beheld the minister, leaning on hester's shoulder, and supported by her arm around him, approach the scaffold, and ascend its steps; while still the little hand of the sin-born child was clasped in his. old roger chillingworth followed, as one intimately connected with the drama of guilt and sorrow in which they had all been actors, and well entitled, therefore to be present at its closing scene. "hadst thou sought the whole earth over," said he looking darkly at the clergyman, "there was no one place so secret--no high place nor lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me--save on this very scaffold!" "thanks be to him who hath led me hither!" answered the minister. yet he trembled, and turned to hester, with an expression of doubt and anxiety in his eyes, not the less evidently betrayed, that there was a feeble smile upon his lips. "is not this better," murmured he, "than what we dreamed of in the forest?" "i know not! i know not!" she hurriedly replied. "better? yea; so we may both die, and little pearl die with us!" "for thee and pearl, be it as god shall order," said the minister; "and god is merciful! let me now do the will which he hath made plain before my sight. for, hester, i am a dying man. so let me make haste to take my shame upon me!" partly supported by hester prynne, and holding one hand of little pearl's, the reverend mr. dimmesdale turned to the dignified and venerable rulers; to the holy ministers, who were his brethren; to the people, whose great heart was thoroughly appalled yet overflowing with tearful sympathy, as knowing that some deep life-matter--which, if full of sin, was full of anguish and repentance likewise--was now to be laid open to them. the sun, but little past its meridian, shone down upon the clergyman, and gave a distinctness to his figure, as he stood out from all the earth, to put in his plea of guilty at the bar of eternal justice. "people of new england!" cried he, with a voice that rose over them, high, solemn, and majestic--yet had always a tremor through it, and sometimes a shriek, struggling up out of a fathomless depth of remorse and woe--"ye, that have loved me!--ye, that have deemed me holy!--behold me here, the one sinner of the world! at last--at last!--i stand upon the spot where, seven years since, i should have stood, here, with this woman, whose arm, more than the little strength wherewith i have crept hitherward, sustains me at this dreadful moment, from grovelling down upon my face! lo, the scarlet letter which hester wears! ye have all shuddered at it! wherever her walk hath been--wherever, so miserably burdened, she may have hoped to find repose--it hath cast a lurid gleam of awe and horrible repugnance round about her. but there stood one in the midst of you, at whose brand of sin and infamy ye have not shuddered!" it seemed, at this point, as if the minister must leave the remainder of his secret undisclosed. but he fought back the bodily weakness--and, still more, the faintness of heart--that was striving for the mastery with him. he threw off all assistance, and stepped passionately forward a pace before the woman and the children. "it was on him!" he continued, with a kind of fierceness; so determined was he to speak out the whole. "god's eye beheld it! the angels were for ever pointing at it! (the devil knew it well, and fretted it continually with the touch of his burning finger!) but he hid it cunningly from men, and walked among you with the mien of a spirit, mournful, because so pure in a sinful world!--and sad, because he missed his heavenly kindred! now, at the death-hour, he stands up before you! he bids you look again at hester's scarlet letter! he tells you, that, with all its mysterious horror, it is but the shadow of what he bears on his own breast, and that even this, his own red stigma, is no more than the type of what has seared his inmost heart! stand any here that question god's judgment on a sinner! behold! behold, a dreadful witness of it!" with a convulsive motion, he tore away the ministerial band from before his breast. it was revealed! but it were irreverent to describe that revelation. for an instant, the gaze of the horror-stricken multitude was concentrated on the ghastly miracle; while the minister stood, with a flush of triumph in his face, as one who, in the crisis of acutest pain, had won a victory. then, down he sank upon the scaffold! hester partly raised him, and supported his head against her bosom. old roger chillingworth knelt down beside him, with a blank, dull countenance, out of which the life seemed to have departed. "thou hast escaped me!" he repeated more than once. "thou hast escaped me!" "may god forgive thee!" said the minister. "thou, too, hast deeply sinned!" he withdrew his dying eyes from the old man, and fixed them on the woman and the child. "my little pearl," said he, feebly and there was a sweet and gentle smile over his face, as of a spirit sinking into deep repose; nay, now that the burden was removed, it seemed almost as if he would be sportive with the child--"dear little pearl, wilt thou kiss me now? thou wouldst not, yonder, in the forest! but now thou wilt?" pearl kissed his lips. a spell was broken. the great scene of grief, in which the wild infant bore a part had developed all her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father's cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. towards her mother, too, pearl's errand as a messenger of anguish was fulfilled. "hester," said the clergyman, "farewell!" "shall we not meet again?" whispered she, bending her face down close to his. "shall we not spend our immortal life together? surely, surely, we have ransomed one another, with all this woe! thou lookest far into eternity, with those bright dying eyes! then tell me what thou seest!" "hush, hester--hush!" said he, with tremulous solemnity. "the law we broke!--the sin here awfully revealed!--let these alone be in thy thoughts! i fear! i fear! it may be, that, when we forgot our god--when we violated our reverence each for the other's soul--it was thenceforth vain to hope that we could meet hereafter, in an everlasting and pure reunion. god knows; and he is merciful! he hath proved his mercy, most of all, in my afflictions. by giving me this burning torture to bear upon my breast! by sending yonder dark and terrible old man, to keep the torture always at red-heat! by bringing me hither, to die this death of triumphant ignominy before the people! had either of these agonies been wanting, i had been lost for ever! praised be his name! his will be done! farewell!" that final word came forth with the minister's expiring breath. the multitude, silent till then, broke out in a strange, deep voice of awe and wonder, which could not as yet find utterance, save in this murmur that rolled so heavily after the departed spirit. xxiv. conclusion after many days, when time sufficed for the people to arrange their thoughts in reference to the foregoing scene, there was more than one account of what had been witnessed on the scaffold. most of the spectators testified to having seen, on the breast of the unhappy minister, a scarlet letter--the very semblance of that worn by hester prynne--imprinted in the flesh. as regarded its origin there were various explanations, all of which must necessarily have been conjectural. some affirmed that the reverend mr. dimmesdale, on the very day when hester prynne first wore her ignominious badge, had begun a course of penance--which he afterwards, in so many futile methods, followed out--by inflicting a hideous torture on himself. others contended that the stigma had not been produced until a long time subsequent, when old roger chillingworth, being a potent necromancer, had caused it to appear, through the agency of magic and poisonous drugs. others, again and those best able to appreciate the minister's peculiar sensibility, and the wonderful operation of his spirit upon the body--whispered their belief, that the awful symbol was the effect of the ever-active tooth of remorse, gnawing from the inmost heart outwardly, and at last manifesting heaven's dreadful judgment by the visible presence of the letter. the reader may choose among these theories. we have thrown all the light we could acquire upon the portent, and would gladly, now that it has done its office, erase its deep print out of our own brain, where long meditation has fixed it in very undesirable distinctness. it is singular, nevertheless, that certain persons, who were spectators of the whole scene, and professed never once to have removed their eyes from the reverend mr. dimmesdale, denied that there was any mark whatever on his breast, more than on a new-born infant's. neither, by their report, had his dying words acknowledged, nor even remotely implied, any--the slightest--connexion on his part, with the guilt for which hester prynne had so long worn the scarlet letter. according to these highly-respectable witnesses, the minister, conscious that he was dying--conscious, also, that the reverence of the multitude placed him already among saints and angels--had desired, by yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman, to express to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of man's own righteousness. after exhausting life in his efforts for mankind's spiritual good, he had made the manner of his death a parable, in order to impress on his admirers the mighty and mournful lesson, that, in the view of infinite purity, we are sinners all alike. it was to teach them, that the holiest amongst us has but attained so far above his fellows as to discern more clearly the mercy which looks down, and repudiate more utterly the phantom of human merit, which would look aspiringly upward. without disputing a truth so momentous, we must be allowed to consider this version of mr. dimmesdale's story as only an instance of that stubborn fidelity with which a man's friends--and especially a clergyman's--will sometimes uphold his character, when proofs, clear as the mid-day sunshine on the scarlet letter, establish him a false and sin-stained creature of the dust. the authority which we have chiefly followed--a manuscript of old date, drawn up from the verbal testimony of individuals, some of whom had known hester prynne, while others had heard the tale from contemporary witnesses fully confirms the view taken in the foregoing pages. among many morals which press upon us from the poor minister's miserable experience, we put only this into a sentence:--"be true! be true! be true! show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!" nothing was more remarkable than the change which took place, almost immediately after mr. dimmesdale's death, in the appearance and demeanour of the old man known as roger chillingworth. all his strength and energy--all his vital and intellectual force--seemed at once to desert him, insomuch that he positively withered up, shrivelled away and almost vanished from mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in the sun. this unhappy man had made the very principle of his life to consist in the pursuit and systematic exercise of revenge; and when, by its completest triumph consummation that evil principle was left with no further material to support it--when, in short, there was no more devil's work on earth for him to do, it only remained for the unhumanised mortal to betake himself whither his master would find him tasks enough, and pay him his wages duly. but, to all these shadowy beings, so long our near acquaintances--as well roger chillingworth as his companions we would fain be merciful. it is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual fife upon another: each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his subject. philosophically considered, therefore, the two passions seem essentially the same, except that one happens to be seen in a celestial radiance, and the other in a dusky and lurid glow. in the spiritual world, the old physician and the minister--mutual victims as they have been--may, unawares, have found their earthly stock of hatred and antipathy transmuted into golden love. leaving this discussion apart, we have a matter of business to communicate to the reader. at old roger chillingworth's decease, (which took place within the year), and by his last will and testament, of which governor bellingham and the reverend mr. wilson were executors, he bequeathed a very considerable amount of property, both here and in england to little pearl, the daughter of hester prynne. so pearl--the elf child--the demon offspring, as some people up to that epoch persisted in considering her--became the richest heiress of her day in the new world. not improbably this circumstance wrought a very material change in the public estimation; and had the mother and child remained here, little pearl at a marriageable period of life might have mingled her wild blood with the lineage of the devoutest puritan among them all. but, in no long time after the physician's death, the wearer of the scarlet letter disappeared, and pearl along with her. for many years, though a vague report would now and then find its way across the sea--like a shapeless piece of driftwood tossed ashore with the initials of a name upon it--yet no tidings of them unquestionably authentic were received. the story of the scarlet letter grew into a legend. its spell, however, was still potent, and kept the scaffold awful where the poor minister had died, and likewise the cottage by the sea-shore where hester prynne had dwelt. near this latter spot, one afternoon some children were at play, when they beheld a tall woman in a gray robe approach the cottage-door. in all those years it had never once been opened; but either she unlocked it or the decaying wood and iron yielded to her hand, or she glided shadow-like through these impediments--and, at all events, went in. on the threshold she paused--turned partly round--for perchance the idea of entering alone and all so changed, the home of so intense a former life, was more dreary and desolate than even she could bear. but her hesitation was only for an instant, though long enough to display a scarlet letter on her breast. and hester prynne had returned, and taken up her long-forsaken shame! but where was little pearl? if still alive she must now have been in the flush and bloom of early womanhood. none knew--nor ever learned with the fulness of perfect certainty--whether the elf-child had gone thus untimely to a maiden grave; or whether her wild, rich nature had been softened and subdued and made capable of a woman's gentle happiness. but through the remainder of hester's life there were indications that the recluse of the scarlet letter was the object of love and interest with some inhabitant of another land. letters came, with armorial seals upon them, though of bearings unknown to english heraldry. in the cottage there were articles of comfort and luxury such as hester never cared to use, but which only wealth could have purchased and affection have imagined for her. there were trifles too, little ornaments, beautiful tokens of a continual remembrance, that must have been wrought by delicate fingers at the impulse of a fond heart. and once hester was seen embroidering a baby-garment with such a lavish richness of golden fancy as would have raised a public tumult had any infant thus apparelled, been shown to our sober-hued community. in fine, the gossips of that day believed--and mr. surveyor pue, who made investigations a century later, believed--and one of his recent successors in office, moreover, faithfully believes--that pearl was not only alive, but married, and happy, and mindful of her mother; and that she would most joyfully have entertained that sad and lonely mother at her fireside. but there was a more real life for hester prynne, here, in new england, than in that unknown region where pearl had found a home. here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence. she had returned, therefore, and resumed--of her own free will, for not the sternest magistrate of that iron period would have imposed it--resumed the symbol of which we have related so dark a tale. never afterwards did it quit her bosom. but, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and self-devoted years that made up hester's life, the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world's scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too. and, as hester prynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own profit and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble. women, more especially--in the continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced, or erring and sinful passion--or with the dreary burden of a heart unyielded, because unvalued and unsought came to hester's cottage, demanding why they were so wretched, and what the remedy! hester comforted and counselled them, as best she might. she assured them, too, of her firm belief that, at some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in heaven's own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. earlier in life, hester had vainly imagined that she herself might be the destined prophetess, but had long since recognised the impossibility that any mission of divine and mysterious truth should be confided to a woman stained with sin, bowed down with shame, or even burdened with a life-long sorrow. the angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman, indeed, but lofty, pure, and beautiful, and wise; moreover, not through dusky grief, but the ethereal medium of joy; and showing how sacred love should make us happy, by the truest test of a life successful to such an end. so said hester prynne, and glanced her sad eyes downward at the scarlet letter. and, after many, many years, a new grave was delved, near an old and sunken one, in that burial-ground beside which king's chapel has since been built. it was near that old and sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle. yet one tomb-stone served for both. all around, there were monuments carved with armorial bearings; and on this simple slab of slate--as the curious investigator may still discern, and perplex himself with the purport--there appeared the semblance of an engraved escutcheon. it bore a device, a herald's wording of which may serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend; so sombre is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow:-- "on a field, sable, the letter a, gules" the broken gate _a novel_ by emerson hough author of "the man next door," "the magnificent adventure," " ° ' or fight," "the mississippi bubble," etc. illustrated by m. leone bracker d. appleton and company new york london copyright, , by emerson hough copyright, , by the pictorial review company printed in the united states of america to arthur t. vance faithful and kindly counselor [illustration: he felt her hands resting on his head as though in shelter.] contents i. the homecoming of dieudonnÉ lane ii. aurora lane iii. two mothers iv. in open court v. closed doors vi. the dividing line vii. at midnight viii. the extraordinary horace brooks ix. the other woman concerned x. the murder xi. in the name of the law xii. anne oglesby xiii. "as you believe in god!" xiv. aurora and anne xv. the angels and miss julia xvi. horace brooks, attorney at law xvii. at church xviii. at the county jail xix. the mob xx. the idiot xxi. a true bill xxii. miss julia xxiii. the state _vs._ dieudonnÉ lane xxiv. the sackcloth of spring valley xxv. because she was a woman list of illustrations he felt her hands resting on his head as though in shelter. "your honor," said he, "i presume i am the defendant in this case." "i was kissing you and saying good-by ... when miss julia came in----" "anne! what made you come?" the broken gate chapter i the homecoming of dieudonnÉ lane "eejit! my son john! whip ary man in jackson county! whoop! come along! who'll fight old eph adamson?" the populace of spring valley, largely assembled in the shade of the awnings which served as shelter against an ardent june sun, remained cold to the foregoing challenge. it had been repeated more than once by a stout, middle-aged man in shirt sleeves and a bent straw hat, who still turned a truculent gaze this side and that, taking in the straggling buildings which lined the public square--a quadrangle which had for its center the brick courthouse, surrounded by a plat of scorched and faded greensward. at his side walked a taller though younger man, grinning amiably. the audience remained indifferent, although the challenger now shifted his position to the next path leading out to a street entrance; and repeated this until he had quite traversed the square. only, at the farther corner back of him, a woman paused as she entered the courthouse inclosure--paused and turned back as she caught sight of the challenger and heard his raucous summons, although evidently she had been hurrying upon some errand. ephraim adamson walked hither and thither, his muscular arms now bared to the elbows; and at his side stalked his stalwart son, who now and then beat his fists together, and cracked his knuckles with a vehemence like that of pistol shots. but none paid great attention to either of the adamsons. indeed, the eyes of most now were following the comely figure of this woman, as usually was the case when she appeared. "take her now, right how she is," said one of the sidewalk philosophers, "and you got to admit yonder's the handsomest woman in this town, and has been for twenty years." he nodded to where she stood, hesitating. that she was a tallish woman, of less than middle age and of good figure, was perceptible even at some distance as she finally advanced. she was well clad enough, and with a certain grace and trimness in her appointings--indeed seemed smart in a quiet and unobtrusive way--very neat as to hands and feet, and trim as to the small turban which served now as her only defense against the heat of the summer sun. "'rory lane," said one languid citizen to another, as they sat on comfortable boxes in front of the leading grocery store. "wonder where _she's_ goin', this time of day? anyhow, she runs into old man adamson on his regular weekly spree. he wants to fight, as usual, him and his half-wit boy. it's a shame." "but they kin do it," responded the other ruminatingly. "it's got so lately, every saturday afternoon regular, him and his half-wit yonder stands off the whole town. no man wants to fight a eejit--it ain't proper." "some has," remarked the first citizen thoughtfully. "well, anyways, old joel tarbush, the town marshal, had ought to look after such things. there he sets now, over yonder under the awnings in front of the golden eagle, and he sees them two plain enough." his crony only chuckled. "reckon old man tarbush knows when he's well off," was his sententious reply. the first speaker again pointed a thumb toward the courthouse grounds, where the woman now was crossing toward the street. she was walking rapidly, apparently anxious to escape the notice of the two men in the yard, and intent on her purpose, as though she feared being late at some appointment. the younger and taller was hastening toward her, but shrinking from him she hurried on across through the turnstile, and out into the street. she advanced with a nod here and there to those whom she met along the street front, but she showed no effusiveness, and did not pause to talk with anyone, although all seemed to know her. some women smiled at her faintly. some men smiled at her also--after she had passed. all talked of her, sometimes nodding, head to head. the woman so frankly discussed presently disappeared around the corner of the street which led down to the railway station, a half-mile distant. and now could be heard the rumble of the town "bus," bringing in its tribute from the train to the solitary hotel. "huh!" said one of these twain, "'rory was too late, like enough, if she was plannin' to meet number four, fer any reason. here comes the bus a'ready." aurora lane had indeed been too late to meet the train, but not too late to attain the purpose of her hurried walk. a moment later the two watchers on the sidewalk, and all the other saturday loafers, saw her emerge again from the street that led up from the railway station. she was not alone now. a young man had spied her from his place in the hotel bus, and, whether in answer to a signal from her, or wholly of his own notion--regarding which there was later discussion by the two gossips above mentioned--had sprung out to join her on the street. he walked by her side now, holding her by the arm, patting her shoulder, talking to her volubly, excitedly, all the time--a tall young man in modern garb; a young man with good shoulders and a strong and easy stride. his face seemed flushed with eagerness and happiness. his hat, pushed back on his brow, showed the short curling auburn hair, strong and dense above the brown cheeks. those who were close might have seen the kindly, frank and direct gaze of his open blue eyes. a certain aloof distinction seemed to cling about the young man also as he advanced now, laughing and bubbling over with very joy of life and eagerness at greeting this woman at his side--this woman whose face suddenly was glorified with a light none ever had seen it bear before. why not? it was his mother--aurora lane, the best known woman of spring valley, and the woman with least reputation. the two passed directly into the center of the town's affairs, and yet they seemed apart in some strange way. they met greetings, but the greetings were vague, curious. no one knew this young man. "huh!" exclaimed one of the two town critics once more. "there they go. pretty sight, ain't it! who's he?" old silas kneebone leaned to his friend, aaron craybill, on the adjacent store box. "taller'n she is, and got red hair, too, like hers. i wonder--but law!--no, good law! no! it kain't be. she ain't nobody's wife, and never was." "but there they go, walking through the streets in broad daylight, as bold as you please," commented his crony. "i dunno as i'd call her bold, neither," rejoined silas. "'rory lane, she's kept up her head all these years, and i must say she's minded her own business. everybody knows, these twenty years, she had a baby, and that the baby died; but that's about all anybody ever did know. the baby's dad, if it had one, has hid damned well--the man nor the woman neither don't live in this town that can even guess who he was. but who's this young feller? some relative o' hern from somewheres, like enough--reckon she must 'a' been goin' down to the train to meet him. never told nobody, and just like her not to. she sure is close-mouthed. they're going on over towards her place, seems like," he continued. "say, don't she look proud? seems like she's glad over something. but why--that's what i want to know--why?" the two persons thus in the public eye of spring valley by this time had come again to the corner of the courthouse inclosure, and apparently purposed to pass diagonally through the courthouse yard. now and again the young man turned in friendly fashion to the onlookers, none of whom he knew, but whom he fancied to be acquaintances of his companion. he himself was altogether a stranger in the town. he felt a chill at the curious stares, the silent half smiles he encountered, but attributed that to bucolic reticence, so shrugged his shoulders and turned to aurora lane. had any at that time heard his speech, they surely must have felt yet more surprise. "mom!" said he. "mother! i've got a mother, after all--and such a splendid one! i can't believe it at all--it must all be a dream. to be an orphan all my life--and then to get word that i'm not--that i've a mother, after all--and you! why, i'd have known you anyhow, i'm sure, if i'd never seen you, even from the picture i had. it was when you were a girl. but you've not changed--you couldn't. and it's you who've been my mother all the time. it's fine to be home with you at last. so this is the town where you have lived--that i've never seen. and here are all your friends?" "yes, don," said she, "all i have, pretty much." aurora lane's speaking voice was of extraordinary sweetness. "well, you have lived here all your life." "yes," she smiled. "and they all know you." "oh, yes," noncommittally. "it was too bad you had to be away from me, don, boy. you seem like a stranger to me--i can't realize you are here, that you are my own boy, dieudonné! i'm afraid of you--i don't know you--and i'm so proud and frightened, so surprised, so _glad_--why, i don't know what to do. but i'd have known you anywhere--i _did_ know you. you're just as i've always dreamed of you--and i'm glad--i'm so very glad!" "mom! i loved your little picture, but i never knew how much i loved _you_ till now--why--you're my _mother_! my mother! and i've never seen you--i've never known you--till right now. you're a ripper, that's what you are! "and is that where you live, over yonder?" he added quickly, to conceal the catch in his throat, the quick moisture in his eyes. his mother! and never in all his life had he seen her face--this sweet, strange, wistful, wonderful face. his mother! he had not even known she was alive. and now, so overwhelmed was he, he did not as yet even think of unraveling the veil of ignorance or deceit--call it what one might--which had left him in orphanage all his life till now. "yes, over yonder," said aurora, and pointed across the square. "that little house under the shade trees, just at the corner. that's home and workshop for me, don." she spoke softly, her eyes still fixed on him, the color of her cheeks deepening. "not so much of a house, is it?" laughed the boy, tears on his face, born of his new emotion, so sudden, so tremendous and so strange. "not so very much," she assented, laughing gayly also, and also in tears, which gave him sudden grief--"but it has served." "well, never mind. we're going to do better out west, mom. we're going to have you with us right away, as soon as i can get started." "what--what do you say--with _us_! with _us_?" she spoke in swift dismay, halting in her walk. "what do you mean, don--_us_?" "i didn't tell you the news," said he, "for i've just got it myself. "what a week! i heard of you--that you were alive, that you were living here--though why you never told me i can't dream--and now, today, anne! two such women--and for me. i can call god kind to me. as if i deserved it!" he did not see her face as he went on rapidly: "we didn't know it ourselves much more than an hour or so ago--anne and i. she came out on the same train with me--we finished school together, don't you see! anne lives in columbus, fifty miles west. she's fine! i haven't had time to tell you." he didn't have time now--did not have time to note even yet the sudden pallor which came upon his mother's face. "anne?" she began. "huh!" said silas kneebone again from his place under the awning, "there she goes--'rory lane. wonder who that kin be with her! and i wonder what old eph adamson's goin' to say to them! watch at them now." the young man and his mother by this time were within the courthouse fence and coming face to face with the two public challengers, who had so fervently notified all mankind of their wish to engage in personal combat. those beneath the awnings now saw the tall figure of the half-wit boy, johnnie adamson, advance toward aurora lane. they saw her and the tall young stranger halt suddenly--saw the young man gently push the woman back of him and stand full front, frowning, questioning, almost directly against the half-wit. he reached out a hand and thrust him back, sternly, fearlessly, half contemptuously. "wait, don! come back!" called out aurora lane. "don't get into trouble here--come--come away!" she plucked at the sleeve of his coat to draw him back. it was too late. the half-wit, cracking his knuckles now yet more loudly, and knocking his fists together, had wholly lost his amiable smile. something primordial was going on, deep down in his rudimentary brain. as for eph adamson, he also stood scowling and silent, a sudden wave of resentment filling his soul at seeing the happiness of these two. "no, you don't--just you leave him be!" called out eph adamson, as the young man pushed the half-wit back from him, his own blue eyes now beginning to glint. "leave him alone, unless you want to fight. he can lick you anyways, whoever you are. do you want to fight?" "no, why should i? i don't know you." don lane turned toward the stranger, still frowning and somewhat wondering, but in no terror whatever. "i don't know you neither, nor what you're doin' here, but you've got to fight or 'pologize," said eph adamson, arriving at this conclusion through certain mental processes of his own not apparent. "you got to have our consent to cross this here courtyard. this is my son john, and you shan't insult him." "get on away--step back," said don lane. "i guess it's all right, but let my mother and myself alone--we're just going home." a sudden wave of rage and wonder, mingled, filled the soul of drunken eph adamson as his venom rose to the boiling point. "mother!" he half screamed, "your _mother_? who're you? you're a pretty pair, you two, ain't you? she said her baby died twenty years ago. did she have some more? who're you? _mother?_--say, after all, are _you_ the town's boy--coming pushing past my son with her--your _mother_! what do you mean? if you're her son, you ain't _got_ no mother, nor no father neither." and now there came a pause, an icy pause--icy it was, out there in the glare of the hot summer sun. these four who stood in view of all the village might have been statues for the time, so motionless, so tense was each. not many actually heard the words of old eph adamson--words wrung out of the bitterness of his own soul perhaps, but words intolerable none the less. none had heard the words of aurora lane and the young man as they had spoken previous to this. none guessed who the stranger was or might be--none but drunken eph adamson. but all could see what now happened. for one instant the young man stood almost like a statue. then with one sudden thrust of his fist he smote the old man full in the mouth, so swift and hard a blow that adamson dropped prostrate, and for the time motionless. a sudden, instantaneous, electric buzz, a murmur, ran all around the square. a sound of shuffling feet and falling boxes might have been heard as men here and there rose eagerly, their necks craned out toward this swiftly made arena. they saw the half-wit boy now advance upon don lane with a roar or bawl of rage, his arms swinging flail-like. all expected to see the newcomer turn and run. not so. he simply stood for a half instant, sidestepped, and again swung in close upon his foe. old silas kneebone described the affair many a time afterwards, at a time when spring valley knew more about don lane. "you see, the eejit, he gets up again, hollering, and he goes in again at dewdonny, bound for to knock his head off. but dewdonny, he ducks down like a regular prize-fighter--i hear tell, at colleges, them athaletes they have to learn all them sort of things--and he put up a fight like a regular old hand. but all the time he keeps hollering to the crowd, 'take him away! take him away! keep him off, i say! i don't want to hit him!' "well, folks begun to laugh at dewdonny then--before they knowed who he was--thinking he was afraid of that eejit; yet it didn't seem like he was, neither, for he didn't run away. at last he hits the eejit fair a second time, and he knocks him down flat. folks then begun to allow he could hit him whenever he wanted to, and knock him down whenever he pleased. "now, the eejit, he gets up and begins to beller like a calf. he puts his hand on his face where dewdonny lane had done hit him the last time or two and he hollers out, 'pa, he hit me!' "but his pa could only set up on the grass and shake his head. i reckon old eph was soberer then than he had been five minutes sooner. say, that boy had a punch like the kick of a full growed mule! "of course, you all know what happened then. it was then that old man tarbush come in, seeing the boy had both of them two licked. he got up his own nerve after that. so now he goes over there to the courthouse ground, through the gate where they all was, and he lays his hand on dewdonny lane and then on the eejit. "'i arrest you both for disturbing of the peace,' says he then. 'come on now, in the name of the law.' "'the law be damned!' says dewdonny lane then. 'go take this man to jail. are you crazy--what do you mean by arresting me when i'm just walking home with my mother? this wasn't my fault. i didn't want to hit him. "'come on, mom!' says he, and before tarbush could help hisself he'd took 'rory lane by the arm again and off they went, and right soon they was in their house--them two, the milliner and her boy. "and joel tarbush he heard him call her 'mom' right there--that's how it all begun to git out. "that's right--this was the town milliner and the boy she sent away, that never died none at all nohow.--'rory lane, and her boy we all thought was dead. and we'd never knowed it nor dreamed it till he spoke, right there in the public square! 'my mother!' says he. can you beat that? "then 'rory lane turns around and fronts the whole lot of them. says she: 'yes, it's true! this is my son, dewdonny lane,' says she. she said it cold. "that was before we knowed all about how she had put him through college, and that this was his first visit home, and the first time he'd ever seen her--his own mother! i heard as how he'd thought all his life he was a orphan, and someone on the inside that very week--just when he'd finished in college--had wrote him that he wasn't no orphan, but had a mother living right here! so here he comes, hot foot--and didn't he spill the beans! "she'd tried her durnedest to keep it all covered up--and you must say she'd made one big fight of it, fer it's hard fer a woman to keep her eyes and her hands off of her own flesh and blood, even if it ain't legal. but, somehow, it's hard to keep that sort of thing covered up, for a woman. it all comes out, time'n again--ain't it the truth? how she done it for twenty years is a miracle. but law! what's twenty years, come to forgettin' things like what she done?" chapter ii aurora lane while the doughty town marshal, endowed now with a courage long foreign to his nature, was leading away his sobbing prisoner, followed by the prisoner's dazed yet angered parent, these other two, mother and son, continued rapidly on their way toward the home of aurora lane. the young man walked in silence, his enthusiasm stilled, although he held his mother's hand tight and close as it lay upon his arm. his face, frowning and stern, seemed suddenly grown strangely older. they arrived at the corner of the tawny grassplot of the courthouse yard, crossed the street once more, and turned in at the long shady lane of maples which made off from that corner of the square. here, just in the neutral strip between business and residence property, opposite a wagon-making and blacksmith shop, and adjoining the humble abode of a day-laborer, they came to a little gate which swung upon a decrepit hinge. it made in upon a strip of narrow brick walk, swept scrupulously clean, lined with well-kept tulips; a walk which in turn arrived at the foot of a short and narrow stair leading up to the porch of the green-shuttered house itself. it was a small place of some half-dozen rooms, and it served now, as it had for these twenty years, as home and workshop alike for its tenant. aurora lane had lived here so long that most folk thought she owned the place. as a matter of fact, she owned only a vast sheaf of receipted bills for rent paid to nels jorgens, the wagon-maker across the street. in all these twenty years her rent had been paid promptly, as were all her other bills. aurora lane was a milliner, who sometimes did dress-making as well--the only milliner in spring valley--and had held that honor for many years. a tiny sign above the door announced her calling. a certain hat, red of brim and pronounced of plume, which for unknown years had reposed in the front window of the place--the sort of hat which proved bread-winning among farmers' wives and in the families of villagers of moderate income--likewise announced that here one might find millinery. when she first had moved into these quarters so many years ago, scarce more than a young girl, endeavoring to make a living in the world, the maples had not been quite so wide, the grass along the sidewalk not quite so dusty. it was here that for twenty years aurora lane had made her fight against the world. it had been the dream, the fierce, flaming ambition of all her life, that her son, her son beloved, her son born out of holy wedlock, might after all have some chance in life. it was for this that she aided in his disappearance in his infancy, studiously giving out to all--without doubt even to the unknown father of the boy--the word that the child had died, still in its infancy, in a distant state, among relatives of her own. she herself, caught in the shallows of poverty and unable to travel, had not seen him in all these years--had not dared to see him--had in all the dulled but not dead agony of a mother's yearning postponed her sweet dream of a mother's love, and with unmeasurable bravery held her secret all these awful years. schooling here and there, at length the long term in college, had kept the boy altogether a stranger to his native town, a stranger even to his own mother. he did not know his own past, nor hers. he did not dream how life had been made smooth for him, nor at what fearful cost. shielded about always by a mother's love, he had not known he had a mother. this was as his mother had wished. as for him, in some way he received the requisite funds. he wondered only that he knew so little of his own people, half orphan though he was. he had been told that his father, long since dead, had left a certain sum for the purpose of his education, although further of his own history he knew nothing. that he was not of honorable birth he never once had dreamed. and now he had heard this charge for the first time--heard it made publicly, openly, before all the world, on this which was to have been the happiest day in all his life. but if don lane knew little about himself, there lacked not knowledge of his story, actual or potential, here in spring valley, once his presence called up the past to spring valley's languid mind. there had not yet been excitement enough for one day. everyone, male and female, surging here and there in swift gossiping, now called up the bitter story so long hid in aurora lane's bosom. as for aurora, she had before this well won her fight of all these years. she was known as the town milliner, a woman honorable in her business transactions and prompt with all her bills. socially she had no place. she was not invited to any home, any table. the best people of the town, the banker's wife, the families of the leading merchants, bought bonnets of her. ministers--while yet new in their pulpits--had been known to call upon her sometimes--one had even offered to kneel and pray with her in her workroom, promising her salvation even yet, and telling her the story of the thief upon the cross. once aurora lane went to church and sat far back, unseen, but she did so no longer now, had not for many years, feeling that she dared not appear in the church--the church which had not ratified her nuptial night! she had her place, definite and yet indefinite, accepted and yet rejected, here in this village. but gradually, dumbly, doggedly she had fought on; and she had won. long since, spring valley had ceased openly to call up her story. if once she had been wearer of the scarlet letter, the color thereof had faded these years back. she was the town milliner, a young woman under suspicion always, but no man could bring true word against her character. she had sinned--once--no more. if she had known opportunity for other sins than her first one, she held her peace. human nature were here as it is elsewhere--women as keen; men as lewd. but the triumph of aurora lane might now have been called complete. she had "lived it down." this long and terrible battle of one woman against so many strangely enough had not wholly embittered her life, so strong and sweet and true and normal had it originally been. she still could smile--smile in two fashions. one was a pleasant, sunny and open smile for those who came in the surface affairs of life. the other was deeper, a slow, wry smile, very wise, and yet perhaps charitable, after all. aurora lane knew! but all these years she had worked on with but one purpose--to bring up her boy and to keep her boy in ignorance of his birth. he had never known--not in all these years! it had been her dream, her prayer, that he might never know. and now he knew--he must know. they stepped through the little picket gate, up the tiny brick walk and across the little narrow porch together, into the tiny apartments which had been the arena for aurora lane--in which she had fought for her own life, her own soul, and for the life of her son, her tribute to the scheme of life itself. here lay the _penetralia_ of this domicile, this weak fortification against the world. in this room were odds and ends of furniture, a few pictures not ill-chosen--pictures not in crude colors, but good blacks and whites. woman or girl, aurora lane had had her own longings for the great things, the beautiful things of life, for the wide world which she never was to see. her taste for good things was instinctive, perhaps hereditary. had she herself not been an orphan, perhaps she had not dared the attempt to orphan her own son. there were books and magazines upon the table, mixed in with odds and ends of scraps of work sometimes brought hither; the margin between her personal and her professional life being a very vague matter. back of this central room, through the open door, showed the small white bed in the tiny sleeping room. at the side of this was the yet more tiny kitchen where aurora lane all these years had cooked for herself and washed for herself and drawn wood and water for herself. she had no servant, or at least usually had not. daily she wrought a woman's miracles in economy. year by year she had, in some inscrutable fashion, been able to keep up appearances, and to pay her bills, and to send money to her son--her son whom she had not seen in twenty years--her son for whom her eyes and her heart ached every hour of every day. she sewed. she made hats. what wonder if the scarlet of the hat in the window had faded somewhat--and what wonder if the scarlet of the letter on her bosom had faded even more?... because it had all been for him, her son, her first-born. and he must never, never know! he must have his chance in the world. though the woman should fail, at least the man must not. so it was thus that, heavy-hearted enough now, she brought him to see the place where his mother had lived these twenty years. and now he knew about it, must know. it took all her courage--the last drop of her splendid, unflinching woman-courage. "come in, don," she said. "welcome home!" he looked about him, still frowning with what was on his mind. "home?" said he. "don!" she said softly. "tough work, wasn't it, waiting for me to get through, dear mom? for i know you did wait. i know you meant that some day----" he laid a hand on her head, his lips trembling. he knew he was postponing, evading. she shrank back in some conviction also of postponing, evading. all her soul was honest. she hated deceit--though all her life she had been engaged in this glorious deceit which now was about to end. "tough sometimes, yes," she said, smiling up at him. "but don't you like it?" "if my dad had lived," said don, "or if he had had very much to give either of us, you'd never have lived this way at all. too bad he died, wasn't it, mom?" he smiled also, or tried to smile, yet restraint was upon them both, neither dared ask why. she caught up his hand suddenly, spying upon it a strand of blood. "don!" she exclaimed, wiping it with her kerchief, "you are hurt!" he laughed at this. "surely you don't know much of boxing or football," said he. "you ought not to fight," she reproved him. "on your first day--and all the town saw it, don! you and i--we ought not to fight. what--on the first day i've seen you in all these years--the first day you're out of college--the first day i could ever in all my life claim you for my very own? i believe i _would_ have claimed you--yes, i do! but you came--when you knew you had a mother, why you came to her, didn't you, don? even me. but you mustn't fight." "why?" he turned upon her quickly, his voice suddenly harsh, his eyes narrowing under drawn brows. "why shouldn't i fight?" he seemed suddenly grown graver, more mature, strong, masterful, his eye threatening. she almost smiled as she looked at him, goodly as he was, her pride that she had borne him overpowering all, her exultation that she had brought a man into the world, a strong man, one fit to prevail, scornful of hurt--one who had fought for her! for the first time in her life a man had fought for her, and not against her. but on the soul of aurora lane still sat the ancient dread. she saw the issue coming now. "mother----" said he, throwing his hat upon the table and walking toward her quickly. "yes, don." (she had named her son dieudonné--"god-given." those who did not know what this might mean later called him "dewdonny," and hence "don.") "i didn't thrash them half enough, those fellows, just now." "don't say that, don. it was too bad--it was terrible that it had to be today, right when you were first coming here. i had been waiting for you so long, and i wanted----" "well, i tell you what i want--i want you just to come away with me. i want to get you away from this town, right away, at once, as quick as i can. i'm beginning to see some things and to wonder about others. i am ashamed i have cost you so much--in spite of what dad left, you had to live close--i can see that now--although i never knew a thing about it until right now. i feel like a big loafer, spending all the money i have, while you have lived like this. where did you get it, mom?" she swept a gesture about her with both hands. "i got it here," said she suddenly. "it _all_ came from--here. you father sent you--nothing! i've not let you know all the truth--you've known almost nothing of the truth." then her native instinct forced her to amend. "at least half of it came from here. it was honest money, don, you know it was that, don't you--you believe it was honest?" "money that would have burned my fingers if i had known how it came. but i didn't. what's up here? have you fooled me, tricked me--made a loafer of me? i supposed my father set aside enough for my education--and enough for you, too. what's been wrong here? what's under all this? tell me, now!" his mother's eyes were turned away from him. "at least we have done it, don," said she, with her shrewd, crooked smile. "we've not to do it over again. you can't forget what you have learned--you can't get away from your college education now, can you? you've got it--your diploma, your degree in engineering. you're a college man, don, the only one in spring valley. and i'm so proud, and i'm so glad. oh! don--don----" she laid a hand on his breast shyly, almost afraid of him now--the first hand she had ever laid upon the heart of any man these twenty years. it was her son, a man finished, a gentleman, she hoped.... could he not be a gentleman? so many things of that sort happened here in america. poor boys had come up and come through--had they not? and even a poor boy might grow up to be a gentleman--was not that true--oh, might it not after all be true? he laid his own hand over hers now, the hand on which the blood was not yet dried. "mom," said he, "i ought to go back and thrash the life out of that man yet. i ought to wring the neck of that doddering old fool marshal. i ought to whip every drunken loafer on those streets. whose business was it? couldn't we cross the square without all that?" he stopped suddenly, the fatal thought ever recurring to his mind. but he lacked courage. why should he not? was this not far worse than facing death for both of them? their eyes no longer sought one another. "mom----" said he, with effort now. "yes, my boy." "_where's my dad?_" a long silence fell. could she lie to him now? "the truth now!" he said after a time. "you have none, don!" said she gaspingly at last. "he's gone. isn't that enough? he's dead--yes--call him dead--for he's gone." he pushed back roughly and looked at her straight. "did he really leave any money for my education?" she looked at him, her throat fluttering. "i wish i could lie," said she. "i do wish i could lie to you. i have almost forgot how. i have been trying so long to live on the square--i don't believe, don, i know how to do any different. i've been trying to live so that--so that----" "so what, mother?" "so i could be worthy of _you_, don! that's been about all my life." "_i have no father?_" she could not reply. "then was what--what that man said--was _that the truth_?" after what seemed to both of them an age of agony she looked up. she nodded mutely. then her hand gripped fiercely at his coat lapel. a great dread filled her. must she lose also her boy, for whom she had lived, for whom she had denied herself all these years--the boy who was more than life itself to her? her face was white. she looked up into another face, a strange face, that of her son; and it was white as her own. "i didn't know it," said he simply at length. "of course, if i had known, i wouldn't have done what i did. i would have worked." "no, no! now you are just fitted to work. it's over--it's done--we have put you through." "you told me my father was dead. where is he--who is he?" "i will never tell you, don," said she steadily, "not so long as you live will i tell you. i have never told anyone on earth, and i never will." "then how do they know--then why should that man say what he did?" "they know--about you--that--that you happened--that's all. they thought you died as a child, a baby--we sent you away. they don't know who it was--your father--i couldn't have lived here if anyone had known--that was my secret--my one secret--and i will keep it all my life. but here are you, my boy! i will not say i am sorry--i will never say that again! i am glad--i'm glad for anything that's given me _you_! and you fought for me--the first time anyone ever did, don." he was turning away from her now slowly, and she followed after him, agonized. "it wasn't _your_ fault, don!" said she. "try to remember that always. haven't i taken it up with god--there on my knees?" she pointed to the little room where the corner of the white bed showed. "on my knees!" she followed him as he still walked away. "oh, don," she cried, "what do you mean, and what are you going to do?" "i'm going to try to forget everything of all my life. god! if i could undo it--if i could forget how i got my education," said he. "tell me, didn't he help at all--did you, all alone, bring me up, far away, never seeing me, educating me, keeping me--taking care of me--didn't he, my father, do anything at all--for you?" "no, i did it--or at least half of it." "and who the other half?" "never mind, don, never mind." she patted eagerly on the lapel of his coat, which once more she had caught and was fingering. "oh, this was to have been my very happiest day--i have been living and working for this all these long, long years--for the day when i'd see you. let me have a little of it, can't you, don? if you should forsake me now, i will know that god has; and then i'll know i never had a chance." quickly he laid a hand upon her shoulder. "no, i'll wait." "what do you mean?" she asked. "what is it that you will do?" "find out who he was," said he, his face haggard. "you will never do that, don." "oh, yes. and when i do----" "what then?" "i'll kill him, probably. at least i'll choke this lie or this truth, whichever it is, down the throats of this town. god! i'm _filius nullius_! i'm the son of no man! i'm worse. i'm a loafer. i've been supported by a woman--my own mother, who had so little, who was left alone--oh, god! god!" "don," she cried out now. "don, i'd died if i could have kept it from you. oh, my son--my son!" chapter iii two mothers the young man stood motionless, facing the white-faced woman who had pronounced his fate for him. happily it chanced that there came interruption, for a moment relieving both of the necessity of speech. the click of the little crippled gate as it swung to brought aurora lane to her senses now. she hastened to the door, toward the outer stair. she met someone at the door. "julia!" she exclaimed. "come in. oh, i'm so glad. come! he's here--he's come--he's right here now!" there entered now the figure of a youngish-looking woman, her hair just tinged with gray here and there upon the temples; a woman perhaps the junior of aurora lane by a year or so. of middle stature, she was of dark hair, and of brown eyes singularly luminous and soft. not uncomely, one would have called her at first sight. the second glance would have shown the limp with which julia delafield walked, the bent-top cane which was her constant companion. she was one of those handicapped in the race of life, a cripple from her childhood, but a cripple in body only. one might not look in her face without the feeling that here was a nature of much charm. miss julia likewise was owner of two smiles. the one was sad, pathetic, the smile of the hopeless soul. the other, and that usually seen by those about her, was wide and winning beyond words--the smile which had given her her place in the hearts of all spring valley. these many years "miss julia," as she was known to all, had held her place as "city librarian," in which quasi-public capacity she was known of all, and loved of all as well. she came in now smiling, and kissed aurora lane before she allowed herself to see, standing in the inner room, the tall young man, who seemed to fill up the little apartment. a swift color came into her face as, with a sort of summoning up of her courage, she went up to him, holding out her hands. even she put up her cheek to be kissed by him. it was her peculiarity when feeling any emotion, any eagerness, to flush brightly. she did so now. "oh, miss julia!" exclaimed don. "i'm glad to see you. why, i know you too--i feel as though i've always known you just as you are! so--you're my fairy godmother, who's got a real mother for me! all these years--till i was a man grown--how could you?--but i'd know you anywhere, because you're just the image of the picture you sent me with that of her. i mean when you wrote me last week for the first time--that wonderful letter--and told me i had a mother, and she was here, but that i mustn't ever come to see her. of course, i wired at once i _was_ coming! see now----" "you are tall, don," said miss julia softly. "you are very tall. you are--you are fine! i'm so glad you grew up tall. all the heroes in my books are tall, you know." she laughed aloud now, a rippling, joyous little laugh, and hooking her cane across the chair arm, sank back into aurora lane's largest rocker, her tender, wistful face very much suffused. don fetched his mother also a chair, and seated himself, still regarding miss julia curiously. he saw the two women look at one another, and could not quite tell what lay in the look. as for miss julia, she was still in ignorance of the late events in the public square, because she had come directly across to aurora lane's house after the closing of her own duties at the library this saturday afternoon, when most of her own patrons were disposed for the open than for books. "yes, don," said she again, "you are fine!" her eyes were all alight with genuine pride in him. "i'm so glad after all you came to see us before you went on west--even when i told you you mustn't! oh, believe me, your mother scolded me! but i presume you are in a hurry to get away? and you've grown up! after all, twenty years is only a little time. must you be in a hurry to leave us?" "i ought not to be," said he, smiling pleasantly after all. "surely i ought to come and see you two good partners first--i could not go away without that. oh, mother has told me about you--or at least i'm sure she was just going to when you came in. strange--i've got to get acquainted with my mother--and you. but i know you--you're two good partners, that's what you are--two good scouts together--isn't it true?" miss julia flushed brightly. his chance word had gone passing close to the truth, but he did not know the truth. don lane did not know that here sat almost the only woman friend aurora lane could claim in all spring valley. miss julia in fact was silent partner in this very millinery shop--and silent partner in yet other affairs of which don lane was yet to learn. this was a great day for miss julia as well as for don's mother. time and again these two women had sat in this very room and planned for this homecoming of the boy--this boy--time and again planned, and then agreed he must not come--their son. for--yes--they _both_ called him son! if don lane, dieudonné lane, was _filius nullius_, at least he might boast two mothers. how came this to pass? one would need to go back into the story of miss julia's life as well as that of aurora lane. she had been lame from birth, hopelessly so, disfiguringly so. yet callous nature had been kind to her, had been compassionate. it gave to her a face of wondrous sweetness, a heart of wondrous softness thereto. hopeless and resigned, yet never pathetic and never seeking pity, no living soul had ever heard an unkind or impatient word from julia delafield's lips, not in all her life, even when she was a child. she had suffered, yes. the story of that was written on her face--she knew she might not hope--and yet she hoped. she knew all the great romances of the world, and knew likewise more than the greatest romancer ever wrote of women. for her--even with her wistful smile, the sudden flashing of her wistful eyes--there could be no romance, and she knew that well. not for her was to be ever the love of man. she was of those cruelly defective in body, who may not hope for any love worth having. surrounded daily by her friends, her books, miss julia was an eager reader, and an eager lover. she knew more of life's philosophy perhaps than any soul in all her town, and yet she might enjoy less of life's rewards than any other. a woman to the heart, feminine in every item, flaming with generous instincts, and yet denied all hope of motherhood; a woman steeped in philosophy and yet trained in emotion--what must she do--what could she do--she, one of the denied? what miss julia had done long years ago was to select as her best friend the girl who of all in that heartless little town most needed a friend--aurora lane. she knew aurora's secret--in part. in full she never yet had asked to know, so large was she herself of heart. all spring valley had scorned aurora lane, for that she had no father for her child. and--with what logic or lack of logic, who shall say?--julia delafield had taken aurora lane close to her own heart--_because_ she had the child! it is not too much to say that these two hopeless women, the one outcast of society, the other outcast of god, had brought up that child between them. those who say women have no secrets they can keep should have noted this strange partnership in business, in life, in maternity! this had gone on for twenty years, and not a soul in spring valley could have told the truth of it. don lane did not know of it even now. "why, aurora," said miss julia more than once in those early years to her friend, "you must not grieve. see what god has given you--a son!--and such a son! how glad, how proud, how contented you ought to be. you have a son! look at me!" so aurora lane did look at julia delafield. they comforted one another. it was from miss julia that year by year, falteringly, she learned to hope, learned to hold up her head. thus gradually, by the aid of the love of another woman--a rare and beautiful thing, a wondrous thing--a thing so very rare in that world of jealousy in which by fate women so largely live--she got back some hold on life--she, mother of the son of no man, at the urge of a woman who could never have a son! "oh, we will plan, aurora!" said miss julia in those piteous earlier times. "we will plan--we will get on. we'll fight it out together." and so they had, shoulder to shoulder, unnoted, unpraised and unadvised, year by year; and because they knew she had at least one friend, those who sat in judgment on aurora lane came little by little to forgive or to forget her sin, as it once was called of all the pulpits there. and now a drunken tongue had recalled sharply, unforgivably, unescapably, that past which had so long lain buried--a past to which neither of them ever referred. in all these years time had been doing what it could to repair what had been. time wreathes the broken tree with vines to bind up its wounds. it covers the scarred earth with grasses presently. in all these years some men had died, others had left the village. certain old women, poisonous of heart, also had died, and so the better for all concerned. other women mayhap had their sacrifices--and their secrets. but as for aurora lane, at least she had won and held one friend. and so they two had had between them a child, a son, a man. one had gathered of the philosophy of life, of the world's great minds. the other had brought into the partnership the great equipment with which nature forever defies all law and all philosophy save her own. now, product of their twenty years of friendship, here he stood, tall and strong--don lane, their boy, blood on his hand because of that truth which he swiftly--too swiftly--had declared to be a lie; and which was no lie but the very truth. but don lane still was ignorant of the closeness of truth of his last remark. he only put such face now on all this as he might. "miss julia," said he lamely, and giving her instinctively the title which the town gave her, "i know you have been good to my mother." "why, no, i haven't, don," said she, "not at all. i've been so busy i have hardly seen your mother for a month or so. but we have kept track of you--why, don, i've got your class records, every one. you don't know how i got them? isn't it true, aurie?" "i don't know what i would ever have done without her," said aurora lane slowly. don lane laughed suddenly. "why," said he, "it's almost as if i had _two_ mothers, isn't it?" both women grew red now, and poor don, knowing little as he did, grew red as well. "but what's the matter with your hand, don--you've cut yourself! i've told your mother she ought to fix that gate-latch." don looked once more at his wounded hand, and sought to cover the blood-stain with his kerchief. he saw that miss julia had heard nothing of the affair of a few moments earlier in the public square. "why, that's nothing," he mumbled. this was too much for the straightforward nature of aurora lane, and rapidly as she might she gave some account to miss julia of these late events. she told all--except the basic and essential truth. a sad shame held her back from talking even before miss julia of the fact that her boy now knew he was the child of shame itself. "that's too bad," said julia delafield slowly, gravely, as she heard the half news. "i'm awfully sorry--i'm awfully sorry for your mother, don. you fought? my! i wish i had been there to see it." miss julia's face flushed once more, indicative of the heroic soul which lay in her own misshapen body. "i didn't want to hit that fellow," said don. "of course, they had no chance, either of them, with a man who could box a bit." "and you learned that--in college, don?" he only grinned in reply, and thrust the wounded hand into his pocket, out of sight. "i'll warrant you, don," said miss julia, "that if it hadn't been for you old tarbush, the town marshal, never would have taken johnnie adamson to jail. those two were a public nuisance every saturday afternoon. i'm glad you have ended it. but tell me, what made them pick on you?" don lane struggled for a time, not daring to look at his mother, before he spoke. "the half-wit wouldn't let us pass, and then his father called me a name--if that man or any other ever calls me that again, i'm going to beat him up till his own people won't know him. i can't tell you," he went on, flushing. he did not catch the sudden look which now passed between the two women. a sudden paleness replaced the flush on miss julia's cheek. a horror sat in her eye. "what does he know?" was the question she asked of aurora lane, eye only speaking the query. "at least, miss julia," said poor don, "you somehow certainly must know about me. i'll get all my debts squared around some time. as soon as i can get settled down in my new place west--i've got a fine engineering job out in wyoming already--i'm going to have my mother come. and if ever i get on in the world, there are some other things i'm not going to forget. any friend of hers----" his big hand, waved toward his mother, told the rest of what he could not speak. they sat on, uncomfortable, for a time, neither of the three knowing how much the others knew, nor how much each ought to know. of the three, aurora lane was most prepared. for twenty years she had been learning to be prepared. for twenty years she had been praying that her boy never would know what now he did know. don lane looked at his mother's face, but could not fathom it. life to him thus far had been more or less made up of small things--sports, books, joys, small things, no great ponderings, no problems, no introspections, no self-communings--and until but very recently no love, no great emotion, no passion to unsettle him. this shadow which now fell over him--he could not have suspected that. but his mother all these years had known that perhaps at any unforeseen time this very hour might come--had prayed against it, but known always in her heart that it might come, nay, indeed one day must come. "damn the place, anyhow!" he broke out at length. "you've lived here long enough, both of you. it's nothing but a little gossiping hell, that's all. i'll take you away from here, both of you, that's what i'll do!" he stretched out a hand suddenly to his mother, who took it, stroking it softly. "don, boy," said she, "i didn't run away. why should we run away now? if we did, we'd take ourselves with us wherever we went, wouldn't we? this is as good a place to live out life as any i could have found. you can't really evade things, you know." "as though i asked to! i'd rather fight things than evade them." "i think so," said his mother mournfully. "i suppose that's true." "but you've got to be happy, mother," said he, again taking her hand in his. "i'll _make_ you happy. i'm ready to work for you now--i'll pay you back." "and miss julia?" smiled his mother. "it was she who told you the news, you know, and you didn't obey her--you came against orders." "why, yes, of course. she's been so awfully good to you. i know what she's been, be sure of that." (as though he did know!) "don't be too bitter, don," said miss julia delafield, slowly now, hoping only to salve a wound she felt he might have, yet not sure herself what the wound might be. "don't be unrelenting. why, it seems to me, as we grow older and begin to read and think, we find out the best of life is just being--well, being charitable--just forgetting. nothing matters so very much, don. that's doctrine, isn't it?" don lane never finished what reply he might have made. there came yet another interruption, yet another footfall on the little walk without, following the clash of the crippled gate as it swung to. it was a man's footfall which they heard on the gallery. they all rose now as aurora threw open the door. it was the solemn visage of joel tarbush, the town marshal, which met aurora lane. "how do you do, mr. tarbush?" asked she. "won't you come in?" the gentleman accosted gave a quick glance up the street and down. "i'm a married man," said he, with something of a vile grin on his face as he looked at her. she answered him only with the level gaze of her own eyes, and pushed open the door. he followed her in, hesitatingly, and then saw the others in the little room. "ma'am," said he, "i come to summons you to the justice court this afternoon." "yes," said aurora lane. "why?" "it's that adamson case," said he--"he knows." he turned now to the tall figure of dieudonné lane, instinctively stepping back as he did so. "in what way do you want us?" asked don lane now. "as witnesses? my mother----?" "i want your--your _ma_ as a witness, yes," said tarbush, grinning, "since you've said it. for you, you'll have to come along on charge of resisting a officer; likewise for assault and battery, charge brought by ephraim adamson; likewise for disturbing the peace. likewise we're going to test the case of _habeas chorus_. old man adamson's got money. he's sober now, and he's got a lawyer--the best lawyer in town. they're going to get the eejit out of jail, and old man adamson's going to make trouble for you." how much longer tarbush might have prattled on in his double capacity of officer and gossip remained uncertain. miss julia turned upon him, her large dark eyes flashing: "why do you bring her into it? she's just told me--they were only crossing the square--she was only trying to go home--she wasn't troubling anyone in all the world! leave her out of it." "i ain't got no choice in it," said tarbush. "i'm serving the papers now. miss lane and the boy both comes. not that i got any feeling in the matter." "why should you have?" asked don lane, with a cynical smile. "you've been letting that ruffian run this town every saturday for years, they tell me, and you didn't dare call his bluff till you saw he was whipped. all right, we'll go. i'll see this thing through--but i want to tell you, you've started something that will be almighty hard to stop. you needn't think i'm going to let this thing drop here." "oh, now," began the man of authority, "i wish't you wouldn't feel thataway. i done my duty as i seen it. didn't i take him to jail?" "yes, you did, after i had turned him over to you. but you took the wrong man at that." "who should i of took?" "i don't know," laughed don lane bitterly. "all the town, i think. we'll see." this was too cryptic for joel tarbush. weakly he felt in his pocket for tobacco. "well," said he at length, "i done summonsed you." "we have no choice," said aurora lane, after a time. "we'll get ready. miss julia, can't you go with me?" "of course," said julia delafield quietly. chapter iv in open court in his narrow little room upstairs in one of the two-story brick buildings which framed the public square of spring valley sat j. b. blackman, justice of the peace, upholder of the majesty of the law. his throne was a knock-kneed, broken chair. in front of him stood a large scarred table, whereon rested the equipment of well-thumbed tomes which bolstered him in his administration of justice. in the room beyond stood a few scattered chairs, a long bench or two. on one wall, by way of ornament, was a steel engraving of daniel webster. on the opposite wall hung certain lithographs of political candidates of like party persuasion with blackman himself, for this was a presidential year, and certain crises of political sort existed, among others the choosing of a senator of the united states. among lesser likenesses on blackman's grimy wall loomed large the portrait of his party's candidate, to wit: the honorable william henderson, late county attorney, late district judge, late member of the legislature, late candidate for governor, late chairman of the state republican committee; and by virtue of the death of the late incumbent in the office of united states senator, himself now present candidate for that lofty honor. otherwise than as to these purposeful decorations the room had small adornment and appeared judicially austere. the hour was mid-afternoon, but so swiftly had the news of recent events spread abroad in the little village that already the room of justice of peace blackman was packed. aurora lane's baby--why, she had fooled everybody--her boy never had died at all--here he was--he had been through college--he'd been somewhere all the time and now he had come to life all at once, and had fought eph adamson and the eejit, and had been arrested and was going to be tried. naturally, the stair leading to the justice's office was lined, and sundry citizens were grouped about the bottom or under the adjacent awnings. much speculation existed as to the exact issue of the legal proceedings which, it seemed, had been instituted by old eph adamson. when that worthy appeared, escorted by the clerk of judge henderson's law office, room respectfully was made for the two, it being taken for granted that judge henderson would appear for adamson, as he always had in earlier embroglios. much greater excitement prevailed when presently there came none less than tarbush, city marshal, followed by don lane and the two women. then indeed all spring valley well-nigh choked of its own unsated curiosity. they walked steadily, these three, staring ahead, following close after the marshal, who now officiously ordered room for himself and his charges. when they entered blackman's court that worthy looked up, coughed solemnly, and resumed his occupation of poring over the legal authorities spread before him on the table. don lane made room for his mother and miss julia, and took his own place at the side of the marshal. the latter laid his hand upon his arm, as if to show the assembled multitude that he had no fear of his prisoner. don shook off the hand impatiently. outside, unable to restrain themselves sufficiently to be seated within the room, old kneebone and his friend craybill walked up and down in the narrow hall--lined with signs of attorneys, real estate men, and insurance agents--from which made off the door of blackman's office. "they'll bind him over," said old silas to his friend. "they'll do that shore." "bind who over, silas," said craybill. "you mean old man adamson and his eejit, don't you? the eejit's arrested, anyhow. but what's it all about? you don't believe it's true this here _is_ 'rory's son, now do you? how can that come?" "well, i ain't saying," replied old silas cryptically, and nodding only in the general direction of the door, "but you'll see." old aaron helped himself to a chew of tobacco thoughtfully. "they say old eph has got his dander up now, and's going to make plenty of trouble all along the line. reckon he's ashamed of his son being licked thataway by just a kid like this. come to think of it, it looks like eph ain't got much glory out of it so far, has he?" "no, and i'll bet he had to dig up some money--the judge, he likely wouldn't think of it for less'n fifteen dollars anyways. that's the price of a good shoat these days. if the case was appealed, or if it got into a court of _nisy prisus_, or maybe got over into another county on a change of _venoo_, you can bet judge henderson wouldn't be doing none of them things for nothing, neither. the law's all right for them that has plenty of money. sometimes i think there's other ways." "huh," said his companion, "old adamson tried the other way, didn't he? now look at him! if i was old man adamson, or if i was his eejit son either, the best thing we could do, seems to me, would be to get out of town. this here boy's a fighter, if i'm any judge. wonder if it is her boy! if it is, whoever was his father, huh? and how was he kep' hid for more'n twenty year?" "he looks sort of changed since a couple of hours ago," said his friend judicially. "he's quieter now--why, when he come into town he was just laughing and talking like a kid. of course, he must have knew--he knows who his father is all right. now, come to think of it, if this here boy had any money he could sue them adamsons for deefamation of character." "how comes it he could? i hear say that all old man adamson said was to call him nobody's son, and that's true enough, if he's her boy. if you call the truth to a man, that ain't no deefamation of character. as to 'rory lane, everybody knows the truth about her. you can't deefame a woman nohow, least of all her. we all know she had a baby when she was a girl, and it was sent away, and it died. leastways, we _thought_ we knew. i ain't right shore what we've knew. it looks like that woman had put up some sort of game on this town. what right had she to do that?" "she was right white," said the other, somewhat irrelevantly. "never seen no one no whiter than she was when she went in that door right now." "i don't reckon we can get no seats any more--the room's plumb full." they both were looking wistfully in at the packed assembly, when they had occasion to make room for the dignified figure of a man who now pushed his way through the throng. "how do, judge henderson," said old silas kneebone, who knew everybody. the newcomer nodded somewhat coldly. he nodded also, none too warmly, to another man who stood near the door--a tall man, of loose and bulky figure, with a fringe of red beard under his chin, a wide and smiling mouth, blue eyes, and a broad face which showed shrewdness and humor alike. "how are you, hod?" said henderson carelessly; thus accosting the only man at the spring valley bar for whom really he had much respect or fear--horace brooks, popularly known in spring valley as "old hod brooks," perhaps the most carelessly dressed man physically and the most exactly appointed man mentally then practising before that bar. a little sign far down the narrow hall betokened that the office of horace brooks might thereabouts be found by any in search of counsel in the law. "oh, are you retained in this case, hod?" judge hendenson spoke over his shoulder. "not at all, judge, not at all," said the other. none the less he himself followed on into the crowded little room. as judge henderson entered all eyes were turned upon him. conscious of the fact that he honored this assemblage, he comported himself with dignity proper for a candidate. he was a man well used to success in any undertaking, and he looked his part now. the full, florid face, the broad brow, sloping back to a ridge of iron-gray hair, the full blue eyes, the loose, easy lips, the curved chin, the large, white hands, the full chest, the soft body, the reddening skin of the face--all of these offered good index to the character of william henderson. lawyer, judge, politician and leading citizen--he was the type of these things, the village cæsar, and knew well enough the tribute due to cæsar. a few eyes turned from the adequate figure of judge henderson to the loose and shambling form of the man who edged in to the front of the table. rumor had it that in the early times, twenty years or more ago, judge henderson had come to that city with a single law book under his arm as his sole capital in his profession. old hod brooks had made his own advent in precisely similar fashion, belated much in life by reason of his having to work his way through school. since then his life had been one steady combat, mostly arrayed against henderson himself. perhaps it might have been said that they two from the first were rivals for the leading place at the local bar, little as henderson himself now cared for that. he was well intrenched, and all opponents, such as this shambling giant with the red beard and nondescript carriage, must attack in the open. judge blackman coughed ominously once more. "order in the court!" he intoned, pounding on the table in front of him. there was a general shuffling and scraping of chairs. those standing seated themselves so far as was possible. judge henderson alone stood for a time in front of the table of justice blackman. the afternoon was very warm, but he represented the full traditions of his profession, for he appeared in long black coat, white waistcoat, and folded collar, tied with a narrow white tie. in some way he had the appearance of always being freshly laundered. his fresh pink cheeks were smooth and clean, his hands were immaculate as his linen. one might have said that at one time in his life he had been a handsome man, a fine young man in his earlier days, and that he still was "well preserved." not so much might have been said of old hod brooks, who had slumped into a seat close to tarbush and his prisoner. that worthy wore an alpaca coat, a pair of trousers which shrieked of the golden eagle clothing store, no waistcoat at all, and it must be confessed, no collar at all, beyond a limp strip of wilted linen decorated by no cravat whatever. as he sat now brooks suddenly cast a keen, curious gaze upon the face of the young defendant who sat at the left of the city marshal--a gaze which, passing at length, rested steadily, intently, on the face of aurora lane, who sat, icy pale, staring straight in front of her. her left hand lay in that of miss julia delafield. the eyes of the latter--whose face was flushed, as was usual with her in any time of mental emotion--remained fixed upon the man who was to prosecute this boy, whose life was linked so closely with her own. the great lawyer seemed not to see these women at all, and at first cast no glance whatever at the defendant. the whole thing was rather trivial for him; for although his fee really had been five hundred dollars--in form of a note from ephraim adamson secured by a certain mortgage on certain live stock--he knew well enough he honored adamson and this court by appearing here in a mere justice trial. "order in the court!" said blackman once more. "the case coming on for trial is city of spring valley on the complaint of ephraim adamson against dewdonny lane." at this bold declaration of what had been a half credited secret to spring valley, all spring valley now straightened and sat up, expectant. a sort of sigh, half a murmur of intense curiosity went over the audience. it was indeed a great day for spring valley. "lane--dewdonny lane." so he _was_ the son of aurora lane--and had no family name for his own! justice blackman paused and looked inquiringly at the battered visage of old eph adamson. he coughed hesitatingly. "i understand this case is one of assault and battery. i believe, judge henderson, that you represent the plaintiff in this case?" "yes, your honor," said judge henderson slowly, turning his full eye upon the court from its late resting place upon the campaign portrait of himself as it appeared on the wall. "i have consented to be of such service as i may in the case. mr. ephraim adamson, our well-known friend here, is ready for the trial of the cause now, as i understand. i may say further, your honor, that there will be a writ of _habeas corpus_ sued out in due course demanding the body of the son of ephraim adamson, who is wrongfully restrained of his liberty at present in our city jail. "as for this defendant----" judge henderson turned and cast an insolently inquiring eye upon the young man at the side of the town marshal. "who appears for the defendant?" demanded judge blackman austerely, casting a glance upon the prisoner at the bar. don lane arose, half hesitatingly. "your honor," said he, "i presume i am the defendant in this case, although i hardly know what it's all about. i haven't any lawyer--i don't know anybody here--i'm just in town. all this has come on me very suddenly, and i haven't had time to look around. i don't see how i am guilty of anything----" [illustration: "your honor," said he, "i presume i am the defendant in this case."] just then arose the soft and kindly tones of a large voice which easily filled all the room. old hod brooks half rose. "your honor," said he, "it isn't customary for a member of the bar to offer his services unsolicited. i would say, however, that if the court desires to appoint me as counsel for this young man i will do the best i can for him, since he seems a stranger here and unprepared for a defense at law. if there were any other younger lawyer here i would not suggest this course to your honor--indeed, i have no right to do so now. i trust, however,"--and he smiled at judge henderson at the other end of the table--"that my learned brother will not accuse me of champerty, maintenance, or any other offense against my office as a servant of justice in this community. of course, i may add, your honor"--he turned to justice blackman again--"that in such circumstances my own services, such as they are, would be rendered entirely free of charge." people wondered, turning curious looks on the big, gaunt speaker thus suddenly offering himself as champion in a rôle evidently unpopular. justice blackman hesitated, and cast again a glance of query at judge henderson, on whom he much relied in all decisions. the latter waved a hand of impatient assent, and began to whisper with his clerk. "the court will allow this procedure," said justice blackman. "does the defendant accept mr. brooks as counsel?" don lane, embarrassed and somewhat red of face, half rose again, meeting full the fascinated, absorbed look on the face of hod brooks--a look which the keen eye of henderson also saw. he puckered a lip and frowned estimatingly. rumor said that old hod brooks was going to come out as candidate for u. s. senator on the opposing ticket. henderson began now to speculate as to what he could do with hod brooks, if ever they should meet on the hustings. he studied him now as a boxer, none too certain of himself, studies his antagonist when he strips and goes to his corner opposite in the ring. "your honor," said don, "i don't know this gentleman, but what he says seems to me most kind. i surely shall be glad to have his assistance now." he did not look at his mother's face, did not see the quick look with which hod brooks turned from him to her. "does my learned brother require time for preparation of his case?" inquired judge henderson sarcastically. "i will agree to a brief recess of the court in such case." "oh, not at all, not at all," said old hod brooks. "i know all about this case, better than my learned brother does. not having any special interest in anything but this case--that is to say, not any alien interest, political or otherwise--i am ready to go to trial right now to defend this young man. if judge henderson will move his chair so he can get a better look at his own picture on the wall, i don't see but what we might as well begin the trial." certain smiles passed over the faces of a few in the audience as they saw the quick flush spring to the face of judge henderson. the chief delight in life of old hod brooks was to bait his learned brother by some such jibes as this, whenever the fortunes of the law brought them together on opposing sides. judge henderson coughed. "your honor," said he hastily, "i am glad that in the course of justice this young man has secured counsel--even counsel such as that of my learned brother--who also, i am informed, is not beyond aspirations of a political nature. i have no time for idle jests. if the defense is ready i may perhaps state briefly what we propose to prove." "by criminy!" whispered silas to aaron at the hall door, peering in. "by criminy! i believe old hod's got him rattled right now!" but judge henderson pulled himself together. he now assumed his regular oratorical position, an eye upon his audience. "your honor," he said, "this case is very plain and simple. the quiet of our city has been violated by this young man, who has publicly assaulted one of our best-known citizens." "which one do you mean?" interrupted hod brooks, most unethically, and smiling behind his hand. "which do you mean, the old drunkard or the young idiot?" "order in the court!" rapped blackman, as still further smiles and shufflings became apparent at the rear of the room. judge henderson went on, flushing yet more. "my client, your honor," he said, "was standing peacefully in the public square, accompanied by his son. they were beaten up, both of them, by this young man who has been brought into this court by our properly constituted officer of the law. without any provocation whatever, this defendant inflicted great personal injury upon my client." "we will make eph's face 'exhibit a,' and let it go into evidence," smiled hod brooks amicably; and the audience smiled and shuffled yet more. "as to the unlawful detention of the son of my client," resumed judge henderson, beet-red now, "we have chosen the remedy of _habeas corpus_ rather than a simple discharge, because we wish to bring before our people the full enormity of the offense which has been committed here in the public view, actually upon the grounds of our temple of justice. we shall show----" "your honor," interrupted old hod brooks at this point, half rising, "if this were a political gathering indeed, and not the trial of a cause in a justice court, i would rise to a point of order. as it is, i rise to a point of law." "state your point," said justice blackman. "we are trying, as i understand it, the case of this defendant, dewdonny lane, accused by this plaintiff, ephraim adamson, of assault and battery?" justice blackman nodded gravely. "then why does my learned brother speak of _habeas corpus_ in this case, and what is the case which he is trying, or thinks he is trying? what is his evidence going to be? and why does he not get on?" "your honor," blazed henderson, "i shall not endure this sort of thing." "oh, yes, you will, my learned brother," said hod brooks, still smiling gently. if henderson had other resources, he needed them now, for keenly enough he sensed himself as slipping in this battle of wits before assembled electors; and it really was politics alone that had brought him here--he scented a crowd afar off. he now lost his temper utterly. "if the court will excuse us for a brief moment of recess," said he savagely, "i should like to ask the privilege of a brief personal consultation with the attorney for the defense. if he will retire with me for just a moment i'll make him eat his words! after that we can better shape these proceedings." the blue eye that hod brooks turned upon his opponent was calmly inquiring, but wholly fearless. on the other hand, some sudden idea seemed to strike him now. he resolved to change his tactics. he was shrewd enough to know that, irritated beyond a certain point, henderson would fight his case hard; and hod brooks did not want to lose this case. henderson, with a little wave of the hand, his face livid in anger, edged away from the table of the justice of the peace. hod brooks followed him out into the hall. "order in the court!" intoned the justice yet again. there was a rush toward the door. "there now, go back, men," said hod brooks, raising a hand. "there's not going to be any fight. let us two alone--we want to talk, that's all." don lane looked steadily at the face of justice blackman. aurora lane stared ahead, still icy pale, her hand clasped in that of miss julia's. she felt, rather than saw, the gazes of all these others boring into her very soul. here were her enemies--here in what had been her home. it seemed an hour to her before at length those standing about the door shuffled apart to allow the two forensic enemies to reënter, though really it had not been above ten minutes. neither man bore any traces of personal combat. the face of judge henderson was a shade triumphant--strangely enough, since now he was to admit his own defeat. * * * * * "i tell you, i heard the whole business," said old silas later on to his crony, who owned to a certain defect in one ear in hot weather such as this. "i heard the whole business. there wasn't no fight at all--not that neither of them seemed a bit a-scared. hod, he raises a hand, and that made the judge slow down. "'it's what you might expect, judge,' says hod, for appearing in a measly little justice court case.' he's got a mighty nasty way of smiling, hod has. but scared? no. not none. "'i'll fight this case as long as you like,' says the judge, 'and i'll win it, too.' "'maybe, maybe, judge,' says hod. 'but they's more ways than one of skinning a cat. suppose you do win it, what've you won? it's all plumb wrong anyhow, and it orto be stopped. these people all orto go on home.' "'so you want to try the case here, huh?' says the judge; and says hod: "'that's just what i do. i mean i don't want to try it none at all. i've got various reasons, beside, why i don't want to try this case, or have it tried. are you a good guesser?' i didn't know what he meant by that. "'what're you getting at?' says the judge. 'i know you've got something hid. there's a sleeper in here somewheres.' "'well, let it stay hid,' says hod. 'but one thing is sure, you ain't hiding it none that you're out for senator?' "'why should i? i'll win it, too,' says the judge. "'maybe, maybe,' says hod. 'all i was going to say was, maybe you'd like to have me help you, say left-handed, thataway? even left-handed help is some good.' "'what do you mean, hod?' says he. 'they tell me you're mentioned strong for the other ticket and are out after the place your own self?' he takes a kind of look-over at hod, no collar nor nothing, and that sleazy coat of his'n. "'that's so,' says hod. 'i've got a chance anyhow. even every bad-chance candidate out of your way is so much to the candy for you, judge, ain't it so?' says he. "'say now, you don't mean you'd talk of withdrawing?' judge henderson he was all lit up when he says this. 'on what terms?' says he. 'of course, there's terms of some sort.' "'easiest terms in the world,' says hod--though i don't think it was easy for him to say it, for he's got as good a chance as the judge, like enough. but he says, 'easiest sort of terms,' and laughs. "'talk fast,' says the judge. "'dismiss this suit--withdraw from this case--and i'll withdraw from all candidacy on any ticket! that goes!' he said it savage. "'do you mean it?' says the judge, and hod he says he does. 'i've got reasons for not wanting this case to go on,' says he. 'it's politics brought you here, judge, and i know that, but it's mighty good politics you'll be playing not never to try this case at all. drop it, judge. politics against politics; you win. lawyer against lawyer, _i_ win. but i pay the biggest price, and you know it mighty well, even if you're a poor guesser why i'm doing this. since you're getting all the best of the bargain, is it a bargain, then?' "henderson he thinks for a while, and says he at last, 'anyhow, i never knew you to break your word,' says he. "'no,' says hod, simple, 'i don't do that,' "'i'll go you!' says the judge, sudden, and he sticks out his hand. 'i shake politically, judge,' says hod. 'no more; but it's enough. we don't neither of us need explain no more,' and _damn me_! if they didn't quit right there, where it seemed to me a whole lot of explaining what they meant 'd a-ben a right good thing for me anyways, for i couldn't gether what it was all about. "but i heard the whole business--and there wasn't no fight, nor nothing, just only that talk like i said, and i don't know nothing of _why_ they done it, i only know what they done. _that's_ why there wasn't no fight, no trial after all--and us setting there that long! i want to say, some things is beginning to look mighty mysterious to me. but i ain't saying what i think. you'll see." * * * * * hod brooks was first to address the court. he stood, a tall and hulking figure, one hand upon the shoulder of dieudonné lane--stood in such fashion as in part to shield don's mother from the gaze alike of court and audience. "your honor," said he, and his face now was very grave; "i assume the court has been in recess. after conference with my learned brother i believe that he has some statement to make to the court." he turned now toward henderson, who straightened up. "may it please the court," he began, "i find it incumbent upon me to withdraw as counsel in this case. my learned brother has lived up to the full traditions of courtesy in our profession, but i will only say that i have learned certain facts which render it impossible for me to represent this client properly in this cause. there would seem to have been certain justifying circumstances, not at first put before me, which leave me more reluctant to prosecute this defendant. i shall counsel my client to withdraw his suit." blackman in his surprise scarcely heard the deep voice of don lane's attorney as he spoke in turn. "may it please the court," said he gently, "it is the best function of an attorney to counsel restraint and moderation; it is most honorable of any great counsel to decline any case which does not enlist his full convictions. it is the duty of all of us to uphold the actual peace and actual dignity of this community. i have never entertained a fuller respect for my learned brother than i have at this moment. i withdraw what i said about his portrait yonder--and may say i do not blame any man for being well content even in the offer of an honor which i cannot and do not contemplate for myself--the great honor of the candidacy for the senate of the united states. it is my own function, none the less, to state that there is no cause why my client should be longer detained. he and others, these witnesses, are virtually restrained of their liberty. i therefore move the dismissal of this case. i think these people all ought to go home. i further suggest that this court adjourn--if this latter suggestion be fully within my own province." he turned an inquiring gaze upon tarbush, city marshal, who by this time had fairly sunken down into the depths of his coat collar. "how about the plaintiff?" said blackman, turning a hesitating glance upon judge henderson, who seemed much relieved by what his opponent in fact and in _posse_ had said. "there is other counsel for him," said judge henderson, "but if he will take my own advice, he will drop the case now and at this point." "what does the plaintiff say?" blackman bent an inquiring gaze on the battered visage of ephraim adamson. the latter lifted up a swollen eyelid with thumb and finger, and turned a still confused gaze upon court and counsel. his reply, crestfallen though it was, brought a titter from the audience. "i guess i'm satisfied," said he. blackman looked from one to the other, and then back to the faces of the disappointed audience of the citizens of spring valley. "order in the court!" exclaimed blackman, j. p., fiercely. "this court is adjourned!" he spoke with a certain disgust, as of one aware of participation in a fiasco. with a rush and a surge the room began to empty. judge henderson departed, well in advance, looking straight ahead, and acknowledging none of the greetings which met him. he evidently was above such work, even disgusted with the whole affair. hod brooks remained, his curious glance still riveted on don lane. don stood hesitating before the table of justice. he had not known before that his burly counsel had any acquaintance with his mother, but he saw plainly the glance of recognition which passed between them. aurora lane and miss julia waited until the stair was clear, but as don would have followed them, hod brooks beckoned to him, in his blue eyes a sort of puzzled wonderment, a surprise that seemed half conviction. "i thank you, mr. brooks," said don lane, turning to his counsel. he wondered curiously why the big man should seem so red of face and so perturbed. "what can i do for you--i have not much----" the great face of hod brooks flushed yet more. "don't talk to me about pay, my boy," said he--"don't talk to me about anything. wait till things straighten out a little. the prosecution's dropped. that's all--or that's enough. now, listen. i knew you when i saw you come in here! they told me you were dead, but i knew you when first my eyes fell on you. you're like your mother. i've known your mother for years--i think a lot of her and her friend miss julia, don't you see? it's strange news to me you are alive, but you are, and that's enough. i must be going now. i'll see you and your mother both. but before i do, just come with me, for i've a little more counsel to give you--it won't cost you anything, and i think it will do some good." he beckoned don to join him once more in the hall, and what he said required but a moment. an instant later, and old brooks had hurried down the stair. a part of his words to don had been overheard by old silas, but the latter could only wonder what it all might mean. "aaron," said he, "i ain't no detecative, and don't claim to be, but now, some day if anything should happen--well, i ain't sayin', but i know what i know, and some day, some day, aaron, i may have to tell." brooks joined aurora lane and miss julia and walked with them along the shady street. they walked in silence, aurora lane still staring straight ahead, icy cold. it was not until they three halted at her little gate that she could find voice. "how can we thank you?" said she. "how can we pay?" the deep color came into the big man's moody face once more. he waved a hand. "you mustn't talk of that," said he. "i reckon i owe you that much and more--a lot more. i'm not done yet. i've done what i thought was right. but as for the case, i didn't fight it, and i didn't win it--the judge and i, we just didn't make any fight at all, that's all. we settled it out of court, on terms that suited him, anyhow. i'm sorry for blackman,--he was just honing to soak that boy the limit! _your_ boy, aurora--that ought to have stayed dead, i'm afraid, but didn't. "but peace and dignity," he added--"listen to me--we'll make a sabbath school out of this town yet! i can't talk very much more now." with a great uproarious laugh, somewhat nervous, very much perturbed, he raised his hat clumsily, turned upon his heel clumsily, and would have walked off clumsily. an exclamation from miss julia stopped him. "where's don?" asked she. "and what's that over yonder--what does the crowd mean?" she pointed down to the corner of the courthouse square, where indeed a closely packed group was thrusting this way and that, apparently about some center of interest. "oh, that?" said hod brooks, carelessly, turning his gaze thither; "that's nothing. pray don't be excited--it's only my--my client, carrying out the last of my legal instructions to him." "but what does it mean?" demanded aurora lane in sudden terror--"what's going on there? is there more trouble?" hod brooks broke off a spear of grass from its place between the sidewalk and the fence, and meditatively began to chew it. "oh, no, i think not," said he gently. "i don't think the boy will have much trouble. he's doing what i counseled him to do." "what have you told him--what is he doing--what does it all mean?" demanded aurora lane. "nothing," said the big man, still gazing ruminatingly at the scene beyond. "as a member of the bar i was bound to give him such counsel as should be of most practical benefit to him--i swore that in my oath of admission to the bar. so i told him that as soon as court was adjourned he ought to take old eph adamson and thrash him this time good and proper. i told him nothing would come of it if he did. i told him it was his plain duty to do it, and if he didn't do it i'd do it myself, because the dogs have got to be put to sleep again now in this town.... i must say," he added, "i am inclined to believe that my client is following his instructions to the letter!" after which hod brooks strolled on away. the crowd at the farther corner of the square broke apart before long. "by jinks! silas," said old aaron to his friend, "who'd a thought it? i've seen some fights, but that was the shortest i ever did see. and he made old eph adamson holler 'enough!' by criminy! he done that very thing. looks to me, safest thing right is not to talk too much about 'rory lane!" don lane emerged from the thick of the crowd, his coat over his arm, his face pale in anger, his eye seeking any other champion who might oppose him. "listen to me now, you people!" he said. "if there's another one of you that ever does what that man there has done, or says what he said, he'll get the same he did, or worse. you hear me, now--i'll thrash the life out of any man that raises his voice against anyone of my family. you hear me, now?" he cast a straight and steady gaze upon old man tarbush, who stood irresolute. "no, you'll not arrest me again," said he. "you know you won't. you'll leave me alone. if you don't, you'll be the next. i don't love you any too well the way it is. "get out now, all of you--you most of all," he added, and gave marshal tarbush a contemptuous shove as he elbowed his own way on out of the crowd. old hod brooks passed on down the street and took the opposite side of the public square, paying no attention to all this. he ambled on until he found his own office at length. a half hour later he might have been seen in his customary attitude, slouched deep down into his chair, his head sunk between his shoulders, his feet propped up on the table, and his eyes bent on the pages of a volume of the law. he had in his lap now no less an authority than "chitty on pleadings." he had sat there for some moments--and he had not seen a word on all the page. chapter v closed doors by the time don lane had reached his mother's house he partially had pulled himself together, but his face was still pale and sullen, not yet recovered from the late encounter. he cast himself down in a chair, his chin in his hand, looking everywhere but at his mother. his wounds, poor lad, were of the soul, slow to heal. the white-faced woman who sat looking at him had also her wounds, scarred though they were, these years. her features seemed sharpened, her eyes larger for the dark shadows now about them. but she was first to speak. "wasn't it enough, don," said she--"didn't i have enough without all this? and on the very day i have looked forward to so long--so long! you don't know how i have worked and waited for this very day. why, it's the first time i've ever seen you, since you were a baby. you're a stranger to me--i don't know you yet. and then all this comes--now, on my one happy day." "well, how about it, then?" he demanded brusquely. "you know what they've been saying--i couldn't let it go. i _had_ to fight!" "yes, yes, you have--and in a few hours you've undone twenty years of work for me. the sleeping dogs were lying. why waken them this late?" "_who was my father?_" demanded the young man, now, sternly. "come, it's time for me to know. i couldn't help loving you--no one could. but--him! tell me--was it that man who defended me? is my name don brooks?" she made him no answer, though her throat throbbed and she half started as though at a blow. "oh, no, oh, no! what am i saying! of course you understand, mother," he went on after a long, long silence, "i don't believe anything of this, not even what you have said to me about my being--well, _filius nullius_. there was a quick divorce--a hidden decree--you separated, you two--he was poor--that often happens. women never like to talk about it. i can't blame you for calling me 'nobody's son,' for that sort of thing does happen--secret and suppressed divorces, you know. but as to that other----" for a long time aurora lane sat facing a temptation to accept this loophole of escape which thus crudely her boy offered her--escape from the bitter truth. he would fight! he--and hod brooks--those two might defy all the town--might cow them all to silence even now. but--once more her inborn honesty and courage, her years-old resolution triumphed. "i cannot tell you who your father was, don," said she quietly, at length, ash pale, trembling. "when were you married--when--where?" "i was _never_ married, don! what i told you was true! oh, you make me say a thing to you i ought never to have been asked to say, but it is the truth. you may believe it--you must believe it--it's--it's no good keeping on evading--for it's true, all of it." she was gasping, choking, now. "this is a ghastly thing to have to do," she cried at last. "ah, it oughtn't ever to have been asked of me." the boy's breath also came in a quick sob now. "mother, that's not true--it _can't_ be! why, where does that leave you--where does it leave _me_?" her voice rose as she looked at him, so young and strong, so fine, so manly. "but i'm not sorry," she exclaimed, "i'm not--i'm _not_!" "so what they told me--what i made them all take back--_it was true_?" he sank back in his chair. "yes, don. we can't fight. we are ruined." "born out of wedlock!--but my father only ran away--you told me he was dead." "regard him so, don." "where is he--who was he? why did that man tell me to fight them all?" "i will never tell you, don, never." her dark eyes were turned upon him now, eyes unspeakably sad. "but you must! you wouldn't deny me my own chance in the world?" "you will have to make your own chance, don, as i did. we all must. i have my secret. the door is closed. there is no power ever can open that door--not even my love for you, my boy. besides, the knowledge could be of no use to you." "yes? is that indeed so? you would debar me from the one great right of all my life? tell me, is my guess right? i'll make that man marry you." "ah, you mean revenge?" he nodded, savagely, his jaws shut tight. but his brow grew troubled. "but not if he came out and stood by me and you, even this late. i suppose----" "there is no revenge for a woman, don. they only dream there is--once i dreamed there might be for me. i don't want it now. i am content. there's more pity than revenge about me now. i only want to be fair now, if i can, and now i'm glad--this is my one glorious day. for you're mine. you are my boy--and i'll never say that i am sorry. because i've got you. they can't help that, can they, don?" "he got us out of worse trouble, didn't he? why did he do that, mother? what made him look at us the way he did? and what made the other lawyer, henderson, drop the case? how did they settle it out of court? lucky for us--but _why_?" he spoke sharply, abruptly. a trifle of color came to aurora lane's cheeks. "it was his way," she said. "he's a good lawyer--advancing right along, more and more every year, they say. he's always had a hard time getting a start. he's like me." don lane sat silent for a time, but what he thought he held. he cast a discontented glance about him at the meager surroundings of his mother's home, with which he could claim no familiarity. "how did you manage it, mother?" he asked, at length. "how did you get me through--big, ignorant loafer that i've been all my life. you say he never helped any. was he so poor as all that?" "i couldn't have done it alone," said aurora lane, slowly. mechanically she smoothed down the folds of her gown in her lap as she spoke. "i have told you you had two mothers, if no father," said she at last, suddenly. "that's almost true. you don't know how much you owe to miss julia. she helped me put you through school! it was her little salary and my little earnings--well, they have proved enough." "go on!" said he, bitterly. "tell me more! humiliate me all you can! tell me more of what i ought to know. good god!" he squared his shoulders as if to throw off some weight which he felt upon them. his mother looked at him in silence for some time. "shall i tell you all about it, don?" she said. "all that i may?" he nodded, frowning. "let's have it over and done with." "when i came here i was young," said aurora lane, slowly, after a long time. "julia was young, too, just a girl. we both had to make our way. then--then--it happened." "you didn't love me, mother? you hated me?" "oh, yes, i loved you--you don't know what you say--you don't know how i loved you. but everything was very hard and cruel.... well, one night i had made up my mind what i must do.... "i washed you all clean that night. i dressed you the best i could--i didn't have much for you. but you were a sweet baby, and strong. i was kissing you and saying good-by to you then, when miss julia came in, right at the door." [illustration: "i was kissing you and saying good-bye ... when miss julia came in--"] "you were going to put me in a home--in some institution?" "no!" she spoke now in short, quick, sobbing breaths.... "don, do you know the little stream that runs through the edge of the town? do you know the deep pool beneath the bridge where the water turns around? well, i had washed you and dressed you.... i was going to put you _there_.... it was then that julia came." he turned upon her a face which it seemed to her never again could be happy and free from care. "i didn't know all this, mother," said he, quietly, whitely. "i ask your pardon. i ask you to forgive me." "no, i have told you i wanted to spare you all this--i wanted that door to remain closed forever. but now it is open--you have opened it. i will have to tell you what there is behind." it seemed many moments before she could summon self-control to go on. "...so we two sat here in this little room, julia and i. you were in my lap, holding up your hands and kicking up your feet, and we two wept over you--we prayed over you, too--she, that little crippled girl, hopeless, who could never have a boy of her own! i told her what i was going to do with you. she fought me and took you away from me.... and she saved you ... and she saved me. "so now you have it." he heard her voice trailing on somewhere at a distance which seemed immeasurable. "you owe your life not to one woman, but to two, after all. now you know why i called you dieudonné. god sent you to me. as i have known how, i have resolved to pay my debt to god--for you. i want to pity, not hate. i want to be grateful. i want to be fair, if i can learn how." aurora spoke no more for some moments, nor did her son. "we two talked it all over between us," said she after a time. "she asked me then, once, who was your father--julia did. i said he was poor. i told her never to ask me again. she never has. oh, a good woman, julia delafield--fine, fine as the lord ever made! "but she knew--we both knew--that i did not have the means of bringing you up. we put our hearts together--to own you. we put our little purses together--to bring you up. she took you away from me, pretty soon. she sent you to some of her people, very distant relatives. they were poor, too, but they took you in and they never knew--they died, both of them, who took you in. "then for a time we sent you to an institution for orphans. but we told everybody here that you had died. i told him so--your--your father--and i forbade him ever to speak to me again. i told you he was dead. i told him you were dead. he _is_ dead. so are _you_ dead. but all the dead have come to life. the lost is found. oh, don, don, the lost is found! i've found so much today--so much, so much. you're my boy, my own boy. a man!" he sat mute. at length she went on. "we schemed and saved and contrived, all the little ways that we could to save our money--we have both done that all our lives for you. we wanted to educate you, your mothers did. and oh! above all things we wanted the secret kept. i did the best i knew. they all thought you died. i didn't want you to come here--it was miss julia. i didn't know you were coming till you wired. i was going to tell you not to come up--even from the depot. but you got in the bus. i was delayed there in the square by those men. and then all this happened. and after twenty years!" she sat silent, using all her splendid command of her own soul to still the stubborn fluttering in her throat. dieudonné lane looked everywhere but at her. "mother," said he at length, "did you--did you ever--love him?" his own face flushed at the cruelty of this question, too late, after the words were gone. he saw her wince. "i don't know, don," said she, simply. "it happened. it couldn't again. you don't know about women. seal your lips now, as mine are sealed. never again a question such as that to me." the sight of her suffering at his own words stirred the elemental rage in his heart. "tell me," he demanded again and again. "who was he? is that the man? i begin to see--i'd kill him if i knew for sure." she only shook her head. "but you must!" said he at last. "you are cruel. you don't know." "what is that, don? what do you mean? oh, i see--_it is because of her_. it's anne! there's someone else you love, more than you do me." "yes!" he confessed, "more than i do life. _that's_ the reason i must know all about myself. can't you see i've got to play fair? there's anne!" "who is she, don--you've never told me very much yet." "anne oglesby--her family lived at columbus before she was left alone. you know her--why, she's the ward of judge henderson, here in town. i believe she was left a considerable estate, and he handles it for her. she's been here. she's told me about this place--she's seen you, maybe--before i ever did. yes--it's anne! i've got to think of her. i don't dare drag her into trouble--my hands are tied." he rose now, and in his excitement walked away from his mother, so that he did not note her face at the moment. "you see, we met from time to time back east in our college town. i never told her much about myself, because i didn't know much about myself, really, when it comes to that. i said i was an orphan, and poor. but--i'd made all the teams--and i've studied, too. i was valedictorian, in spite of all, mother. they don't amount to much, usually--valedictorians--but i was sure i would--when i knew that anne---- "i didn't know about our caring for one another until we found we had to part--just now, today, this morning on the train before i got off here. then we couldn't part, you know. so just before we passed through this town, right on the train--today, in less than half an hour before i met you--this morning, this very day, i--we--well----" "yes, don," she said, "i know!" her eyes were very large, her face very pale. he choked. "but now we've got to part," said he. "if i am nobody, or worse, i've got to be fair with her." a look of pride came into his mother's face at his words. "i'm glad, don," said she. "you've got honor in you. but in no case could i see you marry that girl." he turned upon her in sudden astonishment. "isn't she as good as we are? isn't her family--don't you know the oglesbys of columbus--who they are and what they stand for--where they came from? can we say as much?" "they are better than we can claim to be, don, yes," said she, ignoring his brutal frankness. "i know her, yes. i knew her years ago--the ward of judge henderson. sometimes she has been here and kept his household for him--some day she'll live with judge henderson even if she marries. he's very fond of her. but as to your marrying anne oglesby, you must not think of it." "what on earth!" he began. "what have you against her?" "it is enough that i feel as i do about any girl who has been here and who knows about--about the way--the way i've lived. will she know who i am when she knows who _you_ are--and what you are not? has she identified us two--have you really been fair with her?" now the color began to rise in her paled cheeks. "i've not had time yet! i told you it all happened just a moment ago." then, still brutally, he went on. "why, what do you know of love? what do you know about the way i feel toward anne?" "be as cruel as you like," said she, flushing now under such words. "i presume you feel as all men think they feel sometimes. they see that woman for that moment--they think that they believe what they say--they think they must do what they do. you are a man, yes, don, or you could not have said to me what you have." he flung out his arms, impatient. "i am having a fine start, am i not? i'm a beggar, a pauper, and worse than that. i've got to pay you and miss julia. i've got to go on through life, with that secret on my mind. i can't confront that man and tell him. you and i--just today meeting--why, we begin to argue. and now i've got to face anne oglesby with that secret. it can't be a secret from her. i'd never ask her to join her life to one like mine. and--god! a woman like her.... i can't tell you.... death--why, i believe this is worse." "don't tell me, don, don't try." she turned to him, her voice hoarse and low. "it's a wrong thing for you to talk to me about things of that sort. birds out of the nest begin all over again--this must begin again, i suppose--but it's too awful--too terrible. i don't want to hear any more talk about love. but rather than see you live with her, rather than see you talk that way of her, it seems to me i'd rather die. because, she knows all about _me_--or will. what made you come? why didn't you stay away? why couldn't you find some other girl to love, away from here?" "which shows how much you really care for my happiness! i suppose, like many women, you are stubborn. is that it, mother?" she winced under this, wringing her hands. "if i could only lie--if i only could!" "and if i only could, also!" he repeated after her. "but she's coming tomorrow, mother--i've made her promise she'd come to see you. she said she'd make some excuse to come down and see her guardian. i'm going to meet her tomorrow. and when i do, i've got to tell her what i've learned today--every word of it--all--all! and i'll be helpless. i'll not be able to fight. i'll have to take it." "that's right, don, that's right. even if i loved her as you do, even if it were the best thing in the world for you if you could marry her, i'd say that you should not. don, whatever you do, don't ever be crooked with a woman. she's a woman, too. no matter what it cost, i couldn't see her suffer by finding out anything after it was too late." "it won't take long," said he, simply. "we'll part tomorrow. but oh! why did you save me--why did miss julia come that night? my place was under the water--there! then the door would have been closed indeed. but now all the doors are closed on ahead, and none behind. i'll never be happy again. and i'm making her unhappy, too, who's not to blame. it runs far, doesn't it?--far and long." "as you grow older, don," said she, "you will find it doesn't so much matter whether or not you are happy." he shook his head. "i'm done. it's over. there's nothing ahead for me. i never had a chance. mother, you and miss julia made a bad mistake." it seemed that she scarcely heard him, or as though his words, brutal, cruel though they were, no longer impinged upon her consciousness. she spoke faintly, as though almost breathless, yet addressed herself to him. "why, don, it was here in this very room ... and you lay in my arms and looked up at me and laughed. you were so sweet.... but what shall i do? i love you, and i want you to love me, and you can't. what have i done to you? oh, wasn't the world cruel enough to me, don? oh, yes, yes, it runs far--far and long, a woman's sin! you are my sin. and oh! i love you, and i will not repent! god do so to me--i'll not repent!" he looked at her, still frowning, but with tenderness under the pain of his own brow. at last he flung himself on his knees before her and dropped his head into her lap. he felt her hands resting on his head as though in shelter--hands that lay side by side, hands long and shapely once, but bruised and worn now with labor could he but have seen them--aurora's hands--he could not have helped but realize her long years of toil. he heard her faint, steady sobbing now. after a time she bent lower above his head as he knelt there, silent and motionless. slowly her hand began once more to stroke his hair. chapter vi the dividing line the commonplace sound of the telephone's ring broke the silence in the little room. aurora lane arose and passed into the adjoining room to answer it. her son regarded her with lackluster eyes when she returned. "it was miss julia," said she, "at the library. she wanted to know if you were here. she says we must be sure to come out tonight." "come out--to what?" "it's her annual jubilee, when she reports progress to the town. she is very proud of her new books and rugs and pictures. everybody will be there. you see, don, we don't have much in a town like this to entertain us. why, if i could see a real theater once--i don't know how happy i would be. we've had movies, and now and then a lecture--and miss julia." "i don't want to go, mother." "neither do i, don; so i'm going." "why should we go? it's nothing to us." "it's everything to miss julia--and it's everything to us, don. stop to think and you will realize what i mean. we can't run away under fire." "there's something in that," he rejoined after a time, slowly. "besides, what miss julia wishes we both ought to do." hands in pockets, he began once more gloomily to pace up and down the narrow room. "i can't stand this much longer, mother," said he. "i've got to get out--i've got to get hold of some money somehow." "yes," said she. "as for me, i have collected the last money due me--it went for your graduation suit. i don't know how you saved your railway fare home. i didn't want you to know these things, of course, but as things have happened, you had to know. a great many things today--well, they've gotten away from me." "it's i who have spoiled everything, too. but how could i help it--i just couldn't submit." "it's hard to submit, don," said she slowly. "perhaps a man ought not to learn it. a woman has to learn it." he turned to look at her wonderingly, and at length went over and put a hand on her shoulder. "dear mom!" said he gently. "you're wonderful. you are fine--splendid! i'm just getting acquainted with you, am i not? you're a good woman, mother; i'm so glad." she looked at him now with eyes suddenly wet, her face working strangely, and turned away. "come, don," said she after a time. "we must get ready for our little supper. spring valley, you see," she added, gaily, "dines at six and goes to the movies at seven." presently she left him to his own devices for a time, before calling him out into the little kitchen which served her also as a dining-room. "it's not much," said she, shrugging and spreading out her hands, "but it's all i'd have had--bread and milk and cereal. i don't use much sugar or butter." then, hurriedly, seeing the pain she had caused him, she went on. "you soon get used to such things. why, i have only two gowns to my name, and i put on my best one to meet you, when you wired you were coming, and i saw i'd have to meet you. this hat has been fixed over i don't know how many times--once more, for you. you will see, i'll not be at much trouble to dress for the entertainment tonight." she opened upon the table cover her little pocket book and showed its contents--one small, tightly-folded, much-creased bill, which still lay within its depths. "my last!" said she, grimacing. "that's our capital in life, don! and we have all the world against us now. we must fight, whether or not we want to fight." "but now," she added, "i can't talk any more. let us go. it may do us good. miss julia at least will be glad to see us, if no one else is." early as they were, they were not the first arrivals at the library room where miss julia delafield had devised her entertainment. she had borrowed certain benches from the public school, certain chairs as well. already a goodly portion of spring valley's best people filled these. the seats made back from the little raised platform which usually served as the librarian's desk place. this now was enlarged by the removal of all the desks. back of this narrow dais was draped a large flag of our union, and in the center of its folds was the campaign portrait of judge henderson, chief speaker of the evening. aurora lane and her son entered unnoticed for the time, and quietly took seats in the last row of benches at the rear, near to some awkward youths who had straggled in and seemed uncomfortable in their surroundings. not even miss julia noted them, for presently it became her flushing duty to escort judge henderson, and several of her other speakers, to the edge of the little platform, where they took their places back of the conventional table and pitcher of water. the leader in the town's affairs bent over affably to speak with his associates--three ministers of the gospel, reverend augustus wilson, of the u. p. church, reverend henry fullerton, of the congregationalist church, and reverend william b. burnham, of the methodists. there were many other ministers of the gospel in spring valley, which rejoiced exceedingly in the multiplicity of its churches; but to these, in the belief of miss julia, had more specially been given the gift of tongues. there came presently and seated himself on the bench next to aurora lane yet another minister of the gospel, old mr. rawlins, of the church of christ, the least important denomination of the village, so few of numbers and so scant of means that its house of worship must needs be located just at the edge of town, where land was very cheap. a kindly man, parson rawlins, and of mysterious life, for none might say whence came his raven-brought revenue. questioned, brother rawlins admitted that he was not in the least sure whether or not he had a definite creed. he held out his hand smilingly to aurora lane.... an old man he was, with white hair and a thin face, his chin shaven smooth and shining between his bushy white side whiskers. his eyes were very mild. "how do you do, aurora?" said he. "now, don't say a word to me--i know this boy." and he shook hands with don also. "i know him," said he, "and i know all he has done today--we all know all about it, aurora, so don't talk to me. tut, tut, my son! but had i been in your place very likely i should have done the same thing--i might have whipped old eph adamson. you know, sometimes even a minister asks, 'lord, shall we smite with the sword?'" the face of the old man grew grave as he looked from one to the other. some presentiment told him that a change had come across aurora lane's manner of life. could it be possible that she had grown defiant--was she restive under the weight of the years? had this sudden and sensational resurrection of her past brought rebellion to her heart, all these years so patient, so gentle? he waved a hand towards the backs of the assemblage. "i suppose you recognize some of your own handicraft, don't you, 'rory?" said he, laughing. aurora laughed, also. "a good many," said she frankly. "but the mail order business in ready-trimmed hats has cut into my trade a great deal of late. then there are excursions into columbus. still, i see some of my bonnets here and there--even now and then a gown." they both laughed yet again, cheerily, both knowing the philosophy of the poor. further conversation at the time was cut off by the entrance of the musicians of the evening, an organization known as the spring valley cornet band. these young men, a dozen in number, made their way solemnly to a place adjacent to the platform, where presently they busied themselves with certain mild tapping of drums and soft moanings of alto horns and subdued tootlings of cornets. the leader of the band was the chief clerk in the first national bank, mr. jerome westbrook by name, himself spring valley's glass of fashion and mold of form, and not unconscious of the public attention attracted to himself in his present capacity. now and again he looked out over the audience to see if he could locate a certain young lady, none less than sallie lester, the daughter of the president of his bank, upon whom he had bestowed the honor of his affections. he was willing to add thereto eke the honor of his hand. it was as aurora lane had said--this annual gathering of miss julia's was the social clearing house of the community. and this typical attendance, representative of the little city at its best, offered that strange contrast of the sexes so notable in any american assemblage. the men were ordinary of look and garb, astonishingly ordinary, if one might use the term; stalwart enough, but slouchy, shapeless, and ill-clad. not so the women, who seemed as though of another and superior social world. if here and there the face of a man seemed stolid, cloddish, peasant-like, not so any of the half dozen faces of the women next adjoining him. type, class--call what you like that which is owned by the average american woman, even of middle class--that distinction was as obvious as is usual in all such gatherings. scattered here and there through this audience, as in any audience of even the humblest sort in america, were a half dozen faces of young women, any of whom must have been called very beautiful, strikingly beautiful--beautiful as aurora lane must once have been. the apparel of the men was nondescript. that of the women, however or wherever secured, made them creatures apart. the men, too, sat uncommunicative, silent; whereas their daughters or spouses turned, chattering, laughing, waving a hand to this or that friend. in short, the women availed themselves fully, as women will, of this opportunity of social intercourse. and always, as head turned to head, there was a look, a whispered word, of woman to woman. little by little, in the mysterious way of such assemblages, every woman in the house came to know that aurora lane and her boy--who had only been hid, and not dead, all these years--were seated on the back seat, next to old man rawlins. did anyone ever hear the like of _that_? in reality spring valley was out to hear the rest of the news about aurora lane and her unfathered boy as soon as possible. gossip covers all the nuances, the shades, the inner and hidden things of information, especially when information may be classified as scandal. this is the real news. it never needs wings. it needed no wings now. naturally, it was incumbent upon judge henderson to introduce a minister of the gospel to open the meeting with prayer--we americans apologize to providence at all public occasions, even our political conventions. naturally thereafter judge henderson rose once more, took a drink of water, and signaled to the leader of the spring valley silver cornet band; whereupon mr. jerome westbrook, wiping all previous trace of german silver from below his mustache, essayed once more the leadership in concord of sweet sounds. this brought judge henderson up to his introductory remarks, properly so-called. he made no ill figure as he stood, immaculately clad as was his custom, his costume still being the long black coat, his white waistcoat, the white tie, which he had worn that afternoon in court. it was charged against him, by certain of his enemies, that judge henderson had been known to change his shirt twice in one day, but this was not commonly believed. that he changed it at least once every day had, however, come to be accepted in common credence, although this also was held as his sheer eccentricity. his face was smooth-shaven, for really he was shaved daily, and not merely on saturday nights. his wide, easy, good-humored mouth, his large features, his well-defined brows, his full eye, his commanding figure, gave him a presence good enough for almost any stage. he stood easily now, accepting as his right the applause which greeted him, and smiled as he placed on the table beside him the inevitable glass of water at which he had sipped. some said that in his own office judge henderson did not confine himself to water--but any leading citizen must have his enemies. the worthy judge made precisely what manner of address must be made on precisely such occasions. to him his audience was made up of fellow citizens, ladies and gentlemen. he accosted them with the deference and yet the confidence of some statesman of old. indeed, he might have been scarce less a figure than senator thomas hart benton himself, so profuse--and so inaccurate--were the classical quotations which he saw fit to employ. it had grown his custom to do this with care-free mind. indeed, there was but one here in this audience tonight who perhaps might have chided him for his greek--a young man who sat far back in the rear, in a place near the door--a young man who none the less, it must be confessed, paid small attention to the hendersonian allusions which had to do with literature, with history, the gentle arts, the culture, the progress of our proud republic, and of this particular american community. so now it came on to the time of reverend henry b. fullerton, who likewise spoke of literature and culture, patriotism and the glories of our republic. the other ministers also in due course, after certain uneasy consultation of the clock upon the opposite wall, spoke much in similar fashion. after these formidable preliminaries, it was time for judge henderson to give the real address of the evening--this latter now delivered with frequent consultations of the large watch which he placed beside him on the table. so presently he came to such portion of his speech as requires the orator to say, "but, my friends, the hour grows late." whereafter presently, figuratively, he dismissed the audience with his blessing, well satisfied from the applause that his campaign was doing well. he had but casually and incidentally allowed it to be known that his own annual check to the city library was for a thousand dollars--no more than would cover the librarian's salary. by this time, it was a half-hour past midnight, and none present might say that he had not had full worth of all the moneys expended for this entertainment. it had been a great evening for the candidate. moreover, most of the old ladies present had enjoyed themselves in social conversation regarding the absorbing news of the day. as for the half dozen young village beauties present, there was not one who did not know precisely where don lane sat--not even sally lester, who irritated jerome westbrook beyond measure when he saw her pretending to look at the clock at the back of the hall to see what time it was. really, as jerome westbrook knew very well, she was only trying to see don lane, the newest young man in town--wholly impossible socially, but one who had made sudden history of interest in feminine eyes. moody and intent upon his own thoughts, don lane himself by no means realized the importance of the occasion so far as he himself and his mother were concerned. he did not know that he was on trial here, that they two were on inspection. his ears were deaf to the impassioned words of all and several of the orators of the evening. before his eyes appeared only one face. it was that of a young girl with a face clean-cut and high-browed, with sweet and kindly eyes--the girl he was to meet tomorrow, to whom he was to say good-by--anne oglesby. "anne! anne!" his heart was exclaiming all the time. for now he knew that he in turn must bruise yet another human heart, because of what had been, and in his brain was room now for no other thought, no other scene, no other face. there swept down upon him, if he thought of it at all now and then, only a feeling of the insufficiency, the narrowness, the unworthiness, the tawdriness, of all this which lay about him. and yet it was this to which he must come back--this was his world--this at least was the world in which his mother had made her own battle--had won for a time, and now had lost. after midnight, when the assembly was dismissed, spring valley felt it had done its duty--it had come out to see miss julia's library. everyone who passed miss julia, as she stood near the door, flushed and pleased, congratulated her on the progress she had made, on the neatness of her desks and shelves. some said a word about the great work she was doing. others shook hands with the elevated elbow, smiled sweetly, and repeated, parrot-like, "so glad!" and "thanks so much!" in any case, little by little the room was cleared. there remained only the unspeakable desolation of any room lately occupied by a crowd--the litter of paper and odds and ends, the dulled lights, the heavy and oppressive air. in her place, back of the dividing line which fenced off the socially elect, stood aurora lane, pale, weary, and yet composed, her hands folded low before her. she looked straight ahead, nor asked any of these people passing out for that recognition which she knew they would not give her. don himself, speaking now and then to the kindly old man who retained his place at their side, found himself now and again in spite of himself wondering that of all these who passed, and of these many who turned and gazed their way, none ventured a greeting. his own face grew hard. all life to him had been a sweet, happy, sunny thing till now. he never had known any contest but that of sport, and there, even in defeat, he had met sportsmanship. he had not learned that in human life as we live it, honor and fair play and generosity and justice are things not in any great demand, nor sportsmanship in any general practice. "come, we must go," said aurora at length. they were the last to leave the room, although they might have been the first. in a brief lesson don lane's mother had taught him much. chapter vii at midnight miss julia, late mistress of ceremonies, passed here and there, turning out the lights. the bonnets and blouses all had departed, the coughs and shufflings had subsided. she might give way now to the weariness, the reaction, attendant upon long hours of eager enterprise. strange, she did not look about to find her friend, aurora lane, did not even hasten to take the hand of don lane before he had left the room. the little group at the door--aurora, don and the old minister, now was increased in the entry way by the addition of none less than the tall and awkward figure of horace brooks, who came forward, smiling uncertainly as the other three finally emerged from the door. aurora, quickly divining his purpose, made some hesitating excuse, and darted back into the hall, where now miss julia had well accomplished the purpose of extinguishing the lights. but what aurora saw caused her to withdraw softly, and not to speak to miss julia at all that evening! one by one the switches had cut off the side lights, the desk lights, those of the ceiling. two lights remained burning at the back of the little platform where the speakers had sat, one electrolier on each side of the portrait over which still hung the draped flag of the union--the portrait of the honorable william henderson, lawyer, judge, politician and leading citizen. before this portrait stood julia delafield, her smooth-topped stick resting on the little table against which she supported herself now. she stood, both her hands clasped at her bosom. she was looking up directly at the lighted features of this portrait, and on her face was so rapt a look, her gaze was so much that of one adoring a being of another world--so much ardor was in her face, pale as it was--that aurora lane, seeing and knowing much, all with a sudden wrench of her own heart, withdrew silently, thankful that miss julia had not known. "miss julia's tired," said she to her companions, who still stood waiting at the entry way. "we'll not disturb her tonight, don, after all. i know she wants to see you. you can imagine she has a thousand things to talk about--books, pictures, everything. but tonight we'll just go on home. we'll come again tomorrow." the people of spring valley scattered this way and that from the classical front of the carnegie library. they passed away in long streams in each direction on the street, which, arched across in places by the wide branches of the soft maples, lay half lighted by the moon, and yet more by the flickering arc light sputtering at the top of its mast at the corner of the public square, which made the shadows sheer black. so close did the trees stand to the street that the summer wind could not get through them to lighten the pall of the night's sultriness. in spring valley the climate in the summer time was at times so balefully hot that common folk were forced to take the mattress from the bed and spread it on the floor at the front door in order to get a partial breath of air. the atmosphere was close and heavy under the trees tonight, and some commented on the fact as they passed on toward the public square where yet further separations of the scattered groups must ensue. they passed along a street lined by residence houses, some small, others large, all hedged about with shrubs or trees, all with little flower beds; a certain conformity to accepted canons in good taste being exacted of all who dwelt in the village. each one of this dispersing assemblage knew his neighbor, and all the other neighbors of the town. this was general plebiscite. moreover, it seemed to have a certain purpose--an ultimate purpose of justice. this was the actual jury of peers--this long stream of halting, hesitating figures who at midnight strolled on across the patch-work shadows of the maples. and before it had come on for trial the case of aurora lane and her unfathered boy. "look at them go!" said old hod brooks, chuckling bitterly to himself as he and his companions turned toward the public square, this same thought occurring to him. "for instance, there's an even dozen just ahead of us now, if we cared to poll them." had this jury been polled it might have been found in some part resembling the original concourse which filled noah's ark, since for the most part they walked two and two. ben mcquaid, traveling salesman--the deadly rival of jerome westbrook in matters of fashion--who traveled out of chicago but had his home in spring valley, because it was cheaper living there--walked now arm in arm with newman, the clothing merchant of the golden eagle. he inquired solicitously as to the condition of business. newman said he "gouldn't gomplaim, though gollections mide be better." but that was not in the least what both were thinking of at that time. "seems like there was a little rukus on the square today," said mcquaid casually. "i just heard of it--number four come in a little late today." "vell, yes," said newman, looking around to see that he might not be heard. "i ain't saying a vord about it--but listen, that kid has the punch in either hand--the last time you should have seen it--you see, they got at it twice now already----" they drew apart, because they now saw approaching them too closely at the rear two of the ministers of the gospel. these found themselves none too happily assorted. "i enjoyed your remarks very much indeed, brother burnham," said reverend fullerton, with a mendacity for which no doubt the recording angel dropped a suitable tear. "i agree with you that the tendency towards looseness of living in modern life----" reverend fullerton coughed ominously. anyone very close to him might have heard half-whispered words of "brazen exhibition" and "necessity of public measures." but these did not speak freely, because close behind them came yet two--dr. arthur bowling, the homeopathic physician, who somewhat against his will had fallen into the company of miss elvira sonsteby. now, miss elvira sonsteby was the town's professional invalid. she tried regularly all the doctors in turn as they arrived. it was well known of all that she had suffered all the diseases ever known to man, as well as many of which no man ever had known. just now, with much eagerness, she was explaining to dr. bowling that she feared her neuritis had become complicated with valvular heart trouble, and that she suspected gall stones as well. as to her rheumatism, of course she had long since given up all hope of that--but this trouble in her arm----; and much other conversation extremely painful to dr. bowling at that time, because he was much possessed of the inclination to step forward a few paces and walk with sally lester, the banker's daughter. but even they hit common ground of converse when miss sonsteby voiced her belief that it was an outrage for a public personage like a certain milliner she could name if she cared to say, to appear in public on an occasion such as this, when only the most refined personages of the town should have been invited. "i am sure," said she in tense tones to the young doctor, "that although alone in the world myself--not so old as some would try to make me out, either--i would die rather than have anyone voice the slightest suspicion of blame against me--the slightest blemish on my name. now, _that_ woman...." back of these two came yet others. old mr. rawlins had gently said his farewells to aurora and her son when they emerged upon the open street, and as he advanced passed certain of these groups, until presently he fell in with none less than miss hattie clarkson, soprano and elocutionist of spring valley, who had favored the assemblage that evening with two selections, but who, it seemed, was not wholly satisfied. "it seemed to me, mr. rawlins," said she, throwing about her shoulders the light scarf of tulle which she always wore when entertaining professionally--"that the exercises rather dragged tonight. of course, we know what to expect when judge henderson speaks--he's very entertaining, to be sure. but it seemed to me that had there been a selection or two more of elocutionary sort it might have lightened up the evening----who is that coming just back of us?" she whispered, looking back over her shoulder. "that's aurora lane, my dear," said mr. rawlins, quietly. "her son is with her." "indeed!" "yes, indeed! there's one of the best women i ever knew, my dear." miss clarkson drew herself up proudly, and bent upon him an icy glance. by now they had approached the corner of public square. "i think i must say good _night_, mr. rawlins!" said she, with icy emphasis. "good night, my dear," said the old minister, sighing. not far ahead of ben mcquaid and merchant newman walked two other citizens, j.b. saunders, leading grocer and prominent knight templar, and nels jorgens, village blacksmith--the same whose shop was across the way from the home of aurora lane. it was said of mr. saunders that it would have been difficult to surprise him at any hour of the day or night when he was not in his uniform of a knight templar, or carrying his sword case and hat. for some reasons best known to himself, and anticipating all possible surprises, he had taken with him to the meeting this evening the two latter accessories of his wardrobe, which now he carried as he walked on in conversation. his neighbor wore an alpaca coat and no necktie whatever--a reticent, gray-whiskered man, whose bank account had a goodliness perhaps not to be suspected from first look at its owner. the two talked of many things, but naturally came around to the only topic which was in the mind of all. "what'll he do--old eph adamson," asked saunders. "it looks like he couldn't stand for what's been handed to him. that young fellow has pounded him up a couple of times. if i was adamson i certainly would have the law on him good and plenty." "well," said old man jorgens, comfortably, "i don't know much about it anyway, but it looks to me adamson has got pretty near enough already. he pays a lawyer to get him clear, and when he gets out of that court already he gets licked once more again. and he knows the boy can lick him." "you think he'll like enough lick him again?" "yeh, that's like enough, yeh. i heard things have been said of his mother by adamson. oh, yes, the news is out now--she couldn't hide it no more now--there is the boy she said was dead. but, you know, after all, my friend, a mother is a mother, and men is men. when they say things of how we was born, you would fought, i hope? me, i hope too. no man likes to hear his mother called of names. and she is his mother. too bad it is--a bad business all around." "but then--why, nels, we know----" "yes, we all know," said jorgens stolidly. "i know and you know, and we all know. and what i know is this:--for twenty years she lives across the street from me, as straight and as good a woman as anyone in this town--each first day of the month right in my hand here she pays the rent, not a month missed in twenty years. i rather rent a house to her as to any business man in this town, and i say she is straight as any woman in this town! no man goes there, not any more now in twenty years. the man who meets her on the public street he takes his hat off--now. her boy--well, he looks citified to me, but at least he can fight. yeh, i vote he was in the right. tomorrow my wife shall take some more eggs to aurora lane in her house; yeh, and coffee." there were two other members of the unpolled jury, and they paused now in the full light which came from the mast at the corner of the public square. judge henderson, wearied by the exertions of the evening, was disposed to ascend the stair to his own office in search of a manner of refreshment which he well knew he would find there. turning in this laudable enterprise he met face to face the city marshal, old man tarbush, who halted him for a moment's speech, drawing him apart to the edge of the sidewalk. "i just thought i'd ask you, judge, since i see you," said tarbush, "whether you think i done right or not." "what do you mean, mr. marshal," inquired the judge, none too happy at being interrupted. "you know how it was. he licked old man adamson again right at the foot of the stair, before the record of his trial was hardly dry on the books. it was unlawful, of course. i didn't arrest him no more, because i seen what had happened in the other trial. you pulled out of that. i didn't want to make no needless expense for the county. but i been sort of uneasy in my mind about it, and i just thought i'd ask you." "exactly, exactly," rejoined judge henderson. "well, now, tarbush, come to think it over, that matter came up for trial, and we concluded the best thing to do was to sort of let things take their course--you see, the young man in all likelihood will leave town very soon. in the conduct of my own affairs i sometimes have seen that it is well enough not to stir things up. leave them alone, and sometimes they will smooth themselves down." "then you wouldn't run him in if you was me?" "no, i think not, i think not. let it go for the time. perhaps there may be further developments, but with such information as i have at hand now, i would be disposed to approve your conduct. there's nothing like letting bygones be bygones in this world--isn't that the truth?" "but now, about the eejit, johnnie," resumed the city marshal once more, reaching out his hand still to detain the other, "i don't know as i done right about him, neither." "what have you done then, tarbush?" "well, i let him go. you see, i don't know but maybe the _habeas chorus_ proceedings would be squashed like the rest. besides, the eejit boy has been raising all kinds of hell down at the jail, raving and shouting and threatening me. about a hour ago or less i concluded to let him loose, so as to get shut of him." "you did let him go? and he was not discharged?" "well, now, what's the difference, judge," said the old man. "we couldn't really get no sleep down there, he was making so much fuss, so i just let him out. he lit out upon the street right thataway, towards home--not so very long ago." judge henderson gazed moodily in the direction to which tarbush pointed. "well," said he, "maybe you did right, and in any case this isn't the time and place to discuss it. my professional hours"--and he turned away and walked slowly up the stairs to his own office, intent upon the purpose already prominent in his mind. the arc light illumined fully the great town clock in the cupola of the courthouse. the hands pointed to a quarter of one, after midnight. the deliberations of the jury of spring valley might have been said to have concluded at the time when aurora lane, her son don, and old hod brooks--the last group of the slow procession--themselves turned the corner and emerged upon the public square. the matter of bringing in the verdict was another affair. chapter viii the extraordinary horace brooks something made aurora lane uneasy. she turned now and extended her hand to the tall man who walked at her side. "good night, mr. brooks," said she. but old hod brooks only put his hands deeper in his pockets and slouched on alongside. "i'll just go on along with you to the gate. it's hot tonight, isn't it? i don't know when we've had such a spell." she could not well dismiss him now, so indeed the three walked yet a while together. don lane still was silent, moody. there was little of the jesuit in his own frank soul. he knew nothing of dissembling, and had no art of putting a good face upon a bad matter. all these complications which so swiftly had come into his life seemed to him only a terrible and overwhelming thing in the total. the morrow was coming for him--nay, it already was at hand, and he knew what that must bring of additional grief. anne! anne! he must tell her. he must leave her. never in all his care-free life had he been so wretched, so miserable, as he was now. moreover, for reasons he could not stifle he did not like the presence of brooks here, even though he and his mother must acknowledge the debt under which he had laid them that day. "i'll tell you, mother," said he after a time, when he had turned off the square into their own street. "just excuse me for a few minutes, won't you? it's so hot and stuffy that i don't feel that i can sleep. i'll just take a little run down the street, if you don't mind." "but why, don?" she inquired. "you see, i've always been used to keeping fit, and i don't like to break my training--we always had to exercise in college, on the teams. i don't feel good when i don't. i'm used to doing my half mile or so every night just before i go to sleep." "huh!" said old hod brooks, looking at the young man appraisingly. "so that's how you keep in training, eh? well, it seems to work all right!" his sudden gusty laughter sounded loud in the night, but it lacked the note of ease. "go on, go on," he added--"as you get older maybe you'll find it takes all your gimp to take care of your mind and your money, and you'll let your body just about take care of itself. but go ahead--i'll just walk on down with your mother." "don't be long, don," said aurora lane; and she meant it, for she felt uneasy at thus being accompanied to her own gate, a thing unknown in her history. she was glad that old nels jorgens, on ahead, had just turned in at his own gate. don lane trotted off slowly, with long elastic stride, up on his toes, with his elbows tucked in and his chin high, filling his lungs as best he might with the hot and lifeless air. the sound of his footfalls passed down the street, and was lost as he turned at the further corner of the square. "good night, now," said aurora lane once more, as she and her companion approached her little gate. but hod brooks did not turn away, although he made no attempt to enter. instead he reached out a large hand impulsively and arrested hers as it would have pulled together the little crippled gate behind her. still she did close the gate--until the sudden impact of his own weight snapped off its last remaining hinge. he picked it up carelessly and set it within the fence, himself leaning against the post, filling the gap, his hands back in his pockets. "aurora," said he, with a strange softness in his voice, "this seems to me almost like providence." "what do you mean?" she said. "i must go----" "please, not yet," said he. "just think--how else could it have been possible for me to talk with you?" "without compromising yourself?" she smiled slowly and bitterly, but did not see the hot blood rise to his face. "that's not right!" said he. "without compromising _you_--that's what i meant. i only meant that there is no place where we well could meet. and i wanted to say something to you, at last--what sometime has got to be said between us." "we both know everything now, so why talk?" said she. "it was fine of you today in the trial. we owe so much--we'll pay when we can." the dull red in his face deepened. "you may stop that, if you please," said he. "it's not right between us. the showdown has come. why not settle up, at last?" she turned, not knowing what to do, unwilling to leave him standing there. "it's been years, aurora. now, listen--i'm going on up in the world myself, at last. i want to take you with me. i didn't want to say anything till the right time. it's been a long, hard pull for me, too, here in this town. it's hard for men like me to talk." "you mustn't talk," said she. "you mustn't say a word--you mustn't be seen here even." he looked at her slowly. "i'm here deliberately," said he. "listen now--i must tell you some things, aurora. i've loved you from the first day i saw you. can't you credit me at least a little? you're splendid--you're beautiful--and you're good." she choked a bit, raised a hand in swift protest. "you're still young, aurora," said he, not paying attention to what she said. "of course i'm older, but there's a lot of time left yet for you and me--a lot of living. you've had mighty little out of life, here by yourself. now i've stood it as long as i can. since the whole truth about the boy has broken out today and can't ever be covered up again, it seemed to me i just had to tell you that you needed me to take care of you--someone more than just yourself. things may go harder for you now. they've been hard enough already. you need help. who more natural to help you than myself, feeling as i have, as i do?" "oh, you _mustn't_ talk that way!" her voice trembled. "you must go on away. i'm not--good----" "you're good enough for me--good as i am, surely--and i want to get into this game with you now. you need me. that means we've got to be married. oh, the boy's fine, yes, but he'll be going away. you need a man--a husband--someone you can depend on, aurora. isn't there anything welcome in that thought for you? aurora, i want to marry you--at once, right away. i say that right now and here." aurora lane looked this way and that, every way. her gaze happened to go down the long vista beneath the maples, to fall upon the face of the town clock on the courthouse. the hour hand with a short jerk moved forward and the deep note of the bell boomed out--it was one o'clock of the night; and all was not well. she turned as she felt the tense grasp of his great knotted hands still upon her own. "you say that--to me----" she managed to say at last. "why, everybody knows--all the town knows----" her voice shook. "i suppose i'll have to leave here now after what's happened. but _you'd_ have to leave if you took up with such as me--even this late, it would ruin you. don't you think of your own prospects? why, i couldn't marry you, no matter how much i loved you." "you don't love me at all?" "how could i?" "that's true," said he simply. "how could you?" "i don't mean that," she corrected herself hastily. "it's just what i said," he rejoined. "this seems providential to me. i can't allow these people to murder you a dozen times a week the way they will do now. you can't make this fight alone any more, aurora--i can't any longer bear to see you try it. it's all out now. it's going to be harder for you after this." she did not make any answer to him at all, but she heard his big voice murmuring on. "i reckon it's love, after all, aurora--i don't know. i don't know much about women. i just feel as though i had to take care of you--i feel as though you ought to depend on me. can't you believe that?" "i ought not to believe that of any man," she broke out. "like enough, like enough," he nodded, "but you've known only one man--that's your full horizon. now, having had so hard a fight in business, i have put marrying to one side. let's not say that we're both young--for we're not. but let's remember what i told you--there's a lot of life left for you and me yet if you'll only say the word. don't you want to make anybody happy?" "oh, you mustn't say that to me!" said aurora lane. "but you would want me to be honest, wouldn't you? you wouldn't want me to lie? somehow, i've never learned to lie very much." "no," said he simply; "no, i reckon not. you never have." "no matter what----" "no matter what." "then tell me, how could i say i loved you now? for twenty years--all my life--i have put that thought away from me. i'm old and cold now. my heart's ashes, that part, can't you understand? and you're a man." "yes," he nodded, "i'm a man. that's so, aurora. but now you're just troubled. you've not had time to think. i've held my secret, too. i've never spoken out to you before. i tell you, you're too good a woman to be lost--that isn't right." "you pity me!" "maybe. but i want to marry you, aurora." "what could i do--what could be done--where would you have any pay in that?" "don't trouble about the pay. how much have the past twenty years paid you?" "little enough," said she bitterly, "little enough. about all they've given me--about all i've got left--is the boy. but i want to play fair." "that's it," said he. "so do i. that's why i tell you you're too good for me, when it comes to that, after all." "why, it would all have to come out--one way or the other. it all _has_ come out, as you say. we couldn't evade that now--it's too late. here's the proof--dieudonné--and i can't deny him." he nodded gravely. she went on: "everyone knows about the boy now--everybody knows he's--got no father. _that's_ my boy. too late now to explain--he's ruined all that by coming here. and yet you ask me to marry you. if i did, one of two things surely would be said, and either of them would make you wretched all your life." he turned to her and looked at her steadily. "they might say i was the father?" she nodded, flushing painfully. "they might guess. and a few might think that after all these years----" "maybe," said he slowly. "but you see, after all, it's only a theoretical hurt i'm taking if i stand between you and these damned harpies here. they're going to torture you, aurora, going to flay and burn you alive. i'd like to do about anything i could for you, anything a man can in such a case as ours. as for sacrifice--why, whatever you think i think of you, i believe we can both call it sure that i want to stand between you and the world. i want to have the _right_ to take care of you. it's what i want to do--must do. i've waited too long. but it's what i always have intended. you'd never let me. i never seemed to get around to it before. but now----" "impossible!" she whispered, white, her great eyes somber. "there is no way. love of man has gone by for me. it knocked once. it has gone by." "wait now, let us go on with the argument just a little further, my dear!" said he gently. "we have argued too long already," she said faintly. "you must go. please go--please don't talk to me. you must not." "i wish i could agree with you," said he, disturbed and frowning, "because i don't want to make you any more unhappy. but listen, it just seemed to me that this was providential--i had to come to you and tell you what i have told you tonight. why, widows remarry--time and again widows marry." "yes, _widows_!" he could barely hear the sob which she stifled in her throat. "well, then," said he, "how about you and me? i don't think it's a fair argument, but i ought to point out to you that perhaps i've got a chance in the world. they wanted me, for instance, to make the run for the senatorship--against judge henderson. today i agreed with him not to accept the candidacy. in return he agreed to drop that case against don. well, you've traded me out of the united states senate, aurora. but i made that trade--for you and the boy." she looked up at him in sudden astonishment. she could not evade the feeling of shelter in his great presence as he stood there, speaking calmly, absolutely in hand, a grotesque and yet a great soul--yes, a great soul as it seemed to her, so used to littler souls. after all, she never really had known this man. sacrifice? had he not given freely, as a sacrifice, the greatest gift a man has--his hope for power and preferment? and he spoke of it as though it were a little thing. aurora lane was large enough to know a large act, belittled though it were by the doer of the deed. "you see," he began, "we're old enough perhaps to talk plainly, plainer than young folks can--mostly i presume they don't talk at all--but i may talk plainly?" "oh, yes," said she, sighing. "i suppose we've made that certain." "now, now, don't say that--nothing of the sort, my dear. your past is out of this question altogether. you're a _widow_, that's all. your unknown husband is dead--he is unknown, but he is dead. that's the record, and accepted here. and isn't that our solution--the only one in all the world possible for us?" she did not answer at all. "the boy and i--i reckon the two of us could keep most of the people in this town or in this world attending to their own business, and not bothering about ours. don't you believe that, aurora? we've made a start--a sort of preliminary demonstration already." but still she did not answer, and, agonized now, he went on: "i'm a plain man, aurora, pretty ignorant, i expect. i didn't come from anywhere--there's no family much back of me--i have had really very little schooling, and i've had to fight my own way. i can't play bridge--i don't know one card from another. i don't dance--there's no human being could ever teach a dance step to me. i've never been in society, because i don't belong there. but, as i said, i've got some standards of a man and some feelings of a man. i love you a lot more than you can tell from what i've said, or what i've done. it'll be a great deal more to you than you can believe now. i'll do a great deal more for you than you can realize. i'll give you at last--later than i ought to have done it--something you've never had--your _life_--your _chance_ in the world--your chance at real love and real affection and real loyalty. you've never had that, aurora. i couldn't offer it, for i had my own secret to keep, and my own fight to make. but love and loyalty--they'd be sweet, wouldn't they?" she bent her head down upon her hands, which lay folded at the top of the pickets of the little fence. "sweet--sweet--yes, yes!" he heard her murmur. "well, then, why not end the argument?" he said. "why, i've seen you here, all these years. i know every hair of your head. i have come really to love you, all of you, as a man ought to love his wife. i can't resist it--it's an awful thing. i don't think i'll forget--it's too late in life for me to begin over again, it's you or nothing for me. there's never been any other woman for me--and that ought at least to speak for me. there's been no other man for you. so why not end it? the world's been cruel enough for you as it is. i'll not say it hasn't been cruel to me, too. i've sat tight and eaten my heart. i've had to fight, too. but don't i understand you, your fight, what it means to buck a game where all the cards are stacked? don't i know?" "it has been cruel, yes," said she at length, finding herself able to speak, "but it seems it has not been quite so cruel as it could be until--until now." "why, what do you mean? am i cruel? why?" "you said--you said something about my being a widow." he nodded. "yes. i pick you up now--it's as though i find you new--i know you now at a later stage altogether in your life. you've grown. i see you as new and fresh as though you were just risen from the sea.... and all the past is nothing to me." "you must not talk," said she, "because it only is to make us both the more unhappy. you are quixotic enough, or great enough--i don't know which--i can't tell which it is--to say you'd take the shame on your own shoulders in order to take it off of mine! you can't mean that! no! no! one life ruined is enough--you've ruined yours enough now, today, by what you've done for don and me." he seemed not to hear her. "i've watched you all these years, and you've lived like a recluse, like a widow. i can't reproach you. god! which of us may first cast a stone?" aurora lane turned to him now a brave face, the same brave face she had turned to the world all these years. "oh," said she, "if only i had learned to lie! maybe some women could lie to you. and women get so tired--so awfully tired sometimes--i couldn't blame them. i might marry you, yes--i believe i could. but i would never lie to you--i won't lie to you now." "what are you going to say to me, aurie?" "what i'm going to say to all the world! i've never been married to anyone and can't be now. it would be more horrible to me than--that other. it's too late. it--it means too much to me--marriage--marriage--marriage! don't--don't--you mustn't say some things to a woman. oh, if all this had happened twenty years ago, when i was young, i might have been weak enough to listen to what you say. i was weak and frightened then--i didn't know how i'd ever get on--all life was a terror to me. but that was twenty years ago. i've made my fight now, and i've learned that after a fashion at least i could get on--i did--i have. i can go on through alone the rest of the way, and it's right that i should. that's what i'm going to do!" she saw the great hand clutch the more tightly on two picket tops. they broke under the closing grip of his great hand. "that's right hard," said he simply. "we can't be married now? but--tell me, can't i help you?" "oh, no, no, don't--don't talk of that!" she said. she was weeping now. "don't try to help me," she sobbed bitterly. "you can't help me--nobody can help me--there's no help in the world--not even god can help me! you've been cruel--all the world has been nothing but cruel to me all my life. i've nothing to hope--there's nothing that can help me, nothing. i'm one of the lost, that's all. until today, i'd hoped. i never will hope again." now she felt the great hand closing once more on top of hers above the broken pickets. "listen, aurora," said he, "if it doesn't seem that you and i can be married, there's nothing in the world which makes it wrong for me to help you all i can--you mustn't think i didn't love you. you don't think that, do you?" "i don't know what i think!" said she, rubbing at the ceaseless tears, so new to her. "all these matters have been out of my life--forever, as i thought. but sometimes--i've been so lonesome, you know, and so helpless--i'm tempted. it's hard for a woman to live all alone--it's almost a thing impossible--she's so lonesome--sometimes i almost think i could depend on you, even now." "that's fine!" said he, choking up; "that's fine. i expect that's about all i had coming to me after all. so i oughtn't to be sorry--i ought to be very happy. that's about the finest thing i ever heard in all my life." "and about the sweetest words i ever heard in all my life were what you said just now--after knowing all you do about me." "but you won't tell me that you'll marry me now?" he bent and picked up her hand in both his great ones. "i know you will not." he kissed her hand reverently. "good night," said he gently. and presently she was sensible that his shambling figure was passing away down the street under the checkered shadows of the maples. aurora lane stood yet for just a moment, how long she did not know. there came to her ear the sound of running footsteps. her boy came down the street, passing horace brooks with a wave of his hand. he reached her side now as she still stood at the gate. he was panting, perspiring a trifle. "fine!" said he. "let's go in. maybe i can sleep--i'd like to sleep." "what kept you so late?" asked aurora lane. she hurried in ahead of him. chapter ix the other woman concerned the sultry night at last was broken by a breathless dawn, the sun rising a red ball over the farm lands beyond the massed maple trees of the town. not much refreshed by the attempt at sleep in the stuffy little rooms, don and his mother met once more in the little kitchen dining-room where she had prepared the simple breakfast. he did not know, as he picked at the crisp bacon strips, that bacon, or even eggs, made an unusual breakfast in his mother's household. he trifled with his cereal and his coffee, happily too considerate to mention the lack of butter and cream, but grumblingly sensible all the time that the bread was no longer fresh. he was living in a new world, the world of the very poor. his time had not yet been sufficient therein to give him much understanding. he looked about him at the scantily furnished rooms, and in spite of himself there rose before his mind pictures he had known these last few years--wide green parks, with oaks and elms, stately buildings draped with ivy, flowers about, and everywhere the air of quiet ease. he recalled the fellowship of fresh-cheeked roistering youths like himself, full of the zest of life, youth well-clad, with the stamp of having known the good things of life; young women well-clad, well-appointed, also. books, art, the touch of the wide world of thought, the quiet, the comfort, the beauty, the physical well-being of everything about him--these had been a daily experience for him for years. he unthinkingly had supposed that all life, all the world, must continue much like this. he had supposed, had he given it any thought at all, that the last meager bill in his pockets when he started home would in some magic way always remain unneeded, always unspent. he had opportunity waiting for him in his profession, and he knew he would get on. never before in all his life had he known the widow's cruse. so this was life, then--this little room, this tawdry, sullen town, this hot and lifeless air, this hopelessly banal and uninteresting place that had been his mother's home all these years--this was his beginning of actual life! the first lesson he had had yesterday; the next, yet more bitter, he must have today. the uninviting little kitchen seemed to him the center of a drab and dismal world, in which could never be aught of happiness for him or his. "it's not much, don," said his mother, smiling bravely as her eyes noted his abstraction. "i live so simply--i'm afraid a big man like you won't get enough to eat with me." she did not mention her special preparations for his arrival. he did not know that the half-dozen new serviettes had been bought for his coming. he did not know that a new chair also had been purchased, and that he himself was sitting in it at that very time. in short, he knew nothing of the many sacrifices needful even for these inexpensive things about him. he did not know that marvel of the widow's cruse, filled against dire need by the hand of merciful providence. "it's all right, mother," said he, toying with his fork; "fine, fine." "coffee strong enough, don?" she looked at him anxiously. usually she made it weak for herself. "oh, they never let us have it at all when we're training, mother," said he, "and not strong at any time. i know the simple life." he smiled as best he might. "i have lived it here, too, don," said she slowly, "because i couldn't well help it. i don't suppose anybody likes it when it's too simple. i like things nice, so much. i've always longed to travel. you know, don, i hear of people going over to europe, and i'm guilty of the sin of envy. i live right here in this little place all the time--i've done so all my life. i've scarcely been out of this town in twenty years. if i could see pictures--if i could go to see the great actors--if i could see a real theater--just once, don--you don't know how happy i'd be. and i'm sure there must be more beautiful countries than this. still"--and here she sighed--"miss julia and i have lived quite a life together--in the books, the magazines--pictures too, sometimes." he looked at her dumbly now, trying to understand the steady heroism of a life such as hers. the real character of his own mother never yet fully had impressed itself upon him. don lane was a college graduate, but now for the first time in his life he was beginning to think. "one thing," she added, "i'd never do. i'd never pretend to be what i was not--i didn't ever pretend to have what i didn't have. you see me, don, and my life, pretty much as we are." "and all this has been for me?" "yes," simply. "but although we grew up apart, i don't think i could endure it if i thought we really were to part--if you would leave me now. "i was half hoping," she went on musingly, "that you could find it in your heart to stay here in this town." he shook his head. "impossible! that's one thing you really mustn't ask of me." "yes, i feared you would think of it in that way! but, as for me, this is my place--i've made my bed here, and i must lie in it. i know the people of this town--i know what they'll all do to me now. you see, you don't know these things yet." "no," said he, "but you and miss julia both will be paid back--the money part of it--some time. as for me, i'm not going to have any home." she sat silent for quite a time, the meager breakfast now being ended for both. "oh, can't you forget her, don? can't you give her up?" she said finally. "i can't forget her, mother, but i'll have to give her up. it all happened there on the car--just at once--in public." "i'm glad you never kissed her, don," said she. "you're both so young." she shook her head slowly as she went on. "love has to be loved in any case. that means--i suppose it means--that for the very young, if it be not one, it may later be another." he only smiled bitterly at this. "it all comes to the same thing in any case," said he. "i'll have to tell her what i know, and we'll have to part. it would be the same with any other woman, if there could be any other. there can't be." "i've been frank with you, don, and i don't know whether to be glad or sorry for that. i'd love nothing so much in the world as to see you happily married--but nothing in the world could so much hurt me as to see you marry anne oglesby." "no fear of it!" "you'll tell her?" "yes. today." chapter x the murder once more the strident call of the telephone broke in, and aurora lane stepped aside. "it's miss julia," said she excitedly, turning upon her son eyes suddenly grown large. "why, it's something awful! don--a terrible thing has happened--last night." "what's wrong--what's happened?" he demanded. "mr. tarbush--the city marshal--why, you know--he was killed--murdered--last night--found this morning! it was about one o'clock, as near as they can tell, miss julia says. it's all over town." an exclamation left the young man's lips. "what's that? murdered?" "yes, yes--wait----" she spoke on into the telephone. "yes, julia, don and i were just at breakfast--no, we've not been on the street yet--one o'clock, you said? that was when we were just coming home from the library!" "mother," said don, "that's right! it must have been just about one o'clock, wasn't it?" she looked at him steadily for a time, as she dropped the receiver, her own face a trifle pale. "yes--we hadn't gone to sleep at the time it happened. he was killed right in front of his own house, miss julia says." "and where is that?--you see, i don't know much about the town." "beyond the square, about three blocks from the farther corner--the little house with the low fence in front, and the deep front yard." "we didn't pass that when we came up from the station?" "no, we came another street. but, don----" "yes?" "when you were running last night, you must have passed right close to there! you didn't see anything strange?" "of course not! i'd have looked into it. i don't recall that particular house. "well," he added, after a moment's silence, "in spite of all that happened yesterday between him and us, i'm not going to call him anything but a good man--now." she looked at him strangely--studied his face steadily. "i'll be going out now, i think--i'm going to run over to see julia for a time. please don't go out on the street, don. stay right here. we got into trouble enough yesterday." "you needn't fear," said he. "there's nothing and nobody in this town i want to see. i'll be glad when i shake the dust of it off my feet--when i once get squared away in my own business you shall leave this place and live with me." and then, as there came to him again and again the anticipated pain of parting with the one he himself loved, he came up to his mother and put his arms once more upon her shoulders. again her hands found his hair. she cast a quick glance about her, as though in his defense. "don," said she, "i think i'll never get over thinking of you as just a boy, a little boy." he tried to smile. "pity you didn't drown me in the pool yonder," said he. it was the most cruel thing he could have found to say, although he spoke only in his own bitterness, careless, as a man so often is, of a woman's hurts. but she left him without comment; and soon he had resumed his own restless walking up and down in the narrow quarters which seemed to him such a prison. meantime all spring valley was afoot and agog over this news. it was the most sensational thing that had happened, as aaron craybill said, since ben wilson's wife went crazy out on the farm, come four years ago, and killed her four babies, and hid in the haystack until they found her three days later, and sent her to the asylum. and so forth, and so forth. all the good folk met in groups at home or in the streets, so that within an hour after breakfast there was not a soul in all spring valley did not know that the town marshal had just been killed by some unknown person for some unknown reason. the news seemed dulling, stupefying. the clerks who opened the drug stores around the public square, the only shops open of the sunday, were slow in their sweeping out that morning. pedestrians on the streets walked slowly. the entire life of the town seemed slow. the sluggish, arresting solemnity of death sat upon all the little community. spring valley had no daily newspaper, and even the weekly _clarion_, a production of some six pages, had its trials in making a living there, so close was the village to larger towns which reached out and covered most of its commercial needs in this time of telegraph and trolley. the editor of the _clarion_ was, naturally, the correspondent of the largest daily of the near-by metropolis. twice in all his life he had had opportunity for a first page story in the great city daily. his first metropolitan opportunity was when the aforementioned farmer's wife had killed her children, some four years ago. and now here was something quite as big. editor anderson sat at his own breakfast table for more than half an hour pondering on the opening sentence which he was going to write in his dispatch to the morning daily. by eleven-thirty he had written his story, and had taken it down to the station agent for transmission by wire; and that worthy told him that as soon as number five got by he would begin to send the message. "i can't stop for anything so long as that now," said he. it was somewhat longer as written than as printed, but mr. anderson described the murder of the city marshal in the following terms: the progressive little city of spring valley, jackson county, this state, was electrified this morning by the startling news of the murder of the well-known city marshal, mr. joel tarbush, a man of sterling qualities, who has held the office for many years, and who had endeared himself in the hearts of the community not only for his discharge of his official duties, but for his kindliness of heart. the funeral will occur tomorrow afternoon at half-past three. reverend william d. rawlins will give the funeral address. the city of spring valley is all excitement at this writing. no trace of the cowardly assassin has yet been found, and the entire affair remains shrouded in the deepest mystery, which not even the keenest intellects have been able to penetrate. there is no one who can ascribe a motive sufficient to inspire the murder of so respected and harmless a citizen. some have ascribed the fiendish act to some hobo or tramp who may have taken revenge on the marshal for some real or fancied injury in the past. but no one can recall any instance in which the deceased has ever incurred the enmity of any such characters, so that all remain at a loss how to account for this act. there seems to have been no eyewitness, and therefore all is but mere conjecture. your reporter was among the first at the premises early this morning, and thus gained all the information that can be secured at this writing. he has interviewed miss audrey tarbush, daughter of the deceased, who had for many years kept house for him in their residence on mulberry street, about five blocks from the courthouse, where the deceased had a small garden and raised vegetables and flowers which he sold in the best families of our flourishing city. miss audrey tarbush, when interviewed by our reporter, said that she had last night, according to her usual custom, retired at the hour of half-past nine. she did not attend the exercises at the city library, where most of the elite of the town were present last night, because of a headache from which she suffered. she left the front door unlocked, as was her custom, for the entry of her father when he had finished the duties of his day's work. usually, marshal tarbush came home at about ten o'clock, and himself then retired. on this night, by reason of certain extraordinary occurrences during the preceding day, he thought it wise to remain out later than usual. this was in accordance with his well-known courage and his conscientious endeavor to protect the residents of the city against any possible danger. it was about a quarter after one o'clock, as near as miss audrey tarbush can recall, that she was awakened by the sound of footfalls on the front porch. she called out, "who's there?" but got no answer. as she went to the door her father succeeded in opening it and staggered in. he sank down into a chair near the center table. she saw then that he was very pale, and had a wound upon his head from which blood was still flowing. much alarmed, she inquired of him what had occurred. the deceased was unable to answer. he seemed to be approaching a sort of coma. "who was it? who did it?" miss audrey tarbush demanded of him. it was a dramatic situation. the deceased was unable to make an intelligent reply. "someone hit me," he muttered. that was all he could manage to say, and that was all she could catch of his last words. before long his head sank forward and he breathed his last almost in her arms. unassisted she was able to carry the body of her father to the near-by sofa. at that late hour the telephone operator had gone home, so she was unable to call any of the neighbors by means of the telephone. she does not recall how long she was alone with the dead body of her esteemed parent, but after a time her cries from the front porch were heard. the neighbors came to her assistance, but nothing could be done. examination of the remains of the deceased revealed a long and ragged wound over the upper and left-hand part of the head, breaking the cuticle for a distance of some four or five inches. the marshal's hat had been on when he was struck. the skull was broken for a distance of more than two inches, according to the examination of dr. amos n. beals, who examined the body, the left parietal bone being crushed in as by some heavy instrument. your reporter deduces the following theory of the crime. at a late hour, after city marshal tarbush had finished his duties in the public square, he went towards his home, the public meeting at the library having by this time been dismissed. at a distance of perhaps fifty feet west of the front gate of his own home the deceased was approached by some miscreant, who with some heavy blunt instrument struck him down from behind, and who then made his escape, leaving no sign behind him. no club or weapon of any kind was found. after receiving his death blow this estimable citizen seems to have walked, steadying himself against the top rail of the fence, until he reached the gate. the bloody finger prints upon the top of the fence were no doubt made by his own fingers, which he must have raised up to his head. he was able to enter his own gate, come up his own walk, and ascend his own front steps. up to that time no one can tell the story. what ensued after that has been told by your reporter in the interview with miss audrey tarbush, his loving daughter. so ended a long and honorable life. the pallbearers will be chosen from leading citizens of the town, but their names have not yet been determined. he will be buried by the knights templar, to which order he belonged, probably on sunday afternoon, because, although such haste may appear unseemly, this early funeral will allow a representative attendance of all the members of the order, including practically all our leading citizens, with their full music, so that the concluding exercises may thus show a greater tribute of respect, the attendance at any later day being sure to be far less general. your reporter has interviewed prominent citizens as to the cause of this crime which has so shocked our community. when approached by your reporter, judge william henderson, well-known candidate for the united states senatorship, former member of the republic state central committee and prominent citizen in this state, said, "i cannot hazard even a guess at the perpetrator of this ghastly crime which has so shocked our community." the story written by mr. anderson ended at this point. as printed it ended considerably in advance of this point; but at least, as he later told his wife, he had done his best to give his paper a good story. by the time his message was waiting in the hands of the station agent, telephone wires were busy between spring valley and other larger towns. the early afternoon papers in columbus were on the streets by eleven-thirty with big headlines, and a few lines of type about the murder of "county sheriff abel tarbush of spring valley, jackson county, for which murder four tramps had been suspected and placed in jail." the deceased was described as a prominent mason. by that time the star reporters of the morning dailies were on the through train, number five, bound east from columbus to spring valley, as many learned by telephone; so that the arrival of number five this day would be a matter of special importance. of exact details in all these matters, don lane knew but little. it was for reasons of his own, easily obvious, that he went down to the little station to meet the through train from the west. anne oglesby was coming! his mother did not accompany him, of course, and he therefore was quite alone. of all those whom he encountered hurrying in the same direction, all those who packed the little platform and who stood here and there in groups speaking solemnly one with the other, he could count not a friend, not an acquaintance. dully he felt that here and there an eye was turned upon him, that here and there a word was spoken about him. he dismissed it as part of the aftermath of his own troubles of the previous day. he walked nervously up and down, impatiently looking westward down the line of rails, his own contemptuous hatred for all these lost in the greater emotion that filled his heart. anne was coming--she was almost here! and he must say good-by. meantime, in the courthouse, there was going forward due action on the part of the officers of the law intrusted with the solution of such mysteries as this murder. the sheriff, a large and solid man, dan cowles by name, was one of the first to inspect the premises where the crime had been committed. shortly after that he went over to the office of blackman, justice of the peace and coroner, who by ten o'clock that morning had summoned his jury of six men--nels jorgens, the blacksmith; mr. rawlins, the minister of the church of christ; ben mcquaid, the traveling man; newman, the clothing merchant; j. b. saunders, the knight templar; jerome westbrook, clerk in the first national bank. it chanced that the county prosecutor, a young man by the name of slattery, was out of town at this time, so that the executive side of the law for a moment hesitated. the sheriff therefore called up judge henderson and asked his presence at the courthouse for a consultation. the two were closeted for some time in the sheriff's office. at this time the deliberations of the coroner's jury would have been well advanced; therefore, sheriff cowles took up the telephone and called up coroner blackman at the tarbush residence, just as the latter was upon the point of calling for a verdict of the jury in the accustomed words, "murder at the hands of party or parties unknown." "wait, mr. coroner!" said sheriff cowles. "there's going to be some more witnesses. keep your jury together." a few moments later the long shrieking whistle of number five was heard as she came up out of the paw paw creek bottoms, climbing the hill at the brick yards, and swung around the curve through south spring valley into the stretch of straight track leading down to the station. as the grinding brakes brought the heavy train finally to a standstill, three or four young men swung down from the day coaches--reporters from outside towns. don lane elbowed his way to the edge of the platform. his eye was searching eagerly along the train exits for someone else--someone else whom he longed and yet dreaded to see. chapter xi in the name of the law don's moody face suddenly lighted up. a young woman was stepping down from one of the cars at the farther end of the train, the porter assisting her to the footstool. now she was coming steadily along the edge of the platform, carrying in one hand a trim little bag, in the other a trim little umbrella. now she was looking about, expectant. it was she--anne! his heart leaped out to her, his love rose surgingly at sight of her, sweet and beautiful as she seemed, and all so fit for love of man. a tall young girl she was, who walked with head well up and the suggestion of tennis about her--an indefinable something of chic also about her, as indicative of physical well-being as that suggested by some of the young faces on the magazine covers of the day; which would explain why in her college anne oglesby always was known as "the magazine girl." she had straightforward gray eyes, a fine mouth of much sweetness. above her forehead rose a deep and narrow ruff of dense brown hair, golden brown. trim, yet well-appointed, she was one of those types whom unhesitatingly we class as aristocrats. a young woman fit for any higher class, qualified for any rank, she seemed--and a creature utterly apart from the crowd that now jostled her on the narrow platform. her eyes, too, lighted up at sight of the young man who now hurried forward to meet her, but no unseemly agitation marked her own personal conduct in public. demure, clean, cool and sweet, all in hand, she did not hasten nor hold back. dieudonné lane had told his mother that never yet had he kissed anne oglesby. now, at sight of her and at the thought that almost at once they must part forever, a great rebellion rose in his heart. he stepped forward swiftly, impulsively, irresistibly. he caught her quickly in his arms before all the crowd and kissed her--once. it was his great salutation to love--a salutation of great longing--a salutation which meant farewell. she gasped, flushed rosy red, but walked straight along with him as he caught the bag from her hands. she looked up at him, astonished, yet not wholly resentful. it was no place for speech on the part of either. the dust of the street seemed naught to him or her, and as for this curious crowd, they did not chill nor offend--anne oglesby suddenly wished to take all the world into her arms and greet it. anne oglesby at that moment loved--the touch of this man's lips on hers had wrought the irrevocable, immortal, awful change. they had not yet spoken a word, these two, at the time he left her to call some vehicle for her use. he turned and looked directly into the face of dan cowles, sheriff, a man whom he had never seen before, but who now reached out and laid a hand upon his shoulder. cowles had that instant reached the station platform. don would have passed, but the sheriff spoke: "i want you. come with me." the tempestuous blood of the young man flamed at this, but now, as he looked into the solemn face before him, he found something to give him pause. "what's up?" he demanded. "who are you?" "i'm the sheriff of this county," said cowles. "come with me." "what do you want?" again demanded don. "i'm with this young lady." "that's no difference," said cowles. "it must be about the tarbush matter," said dewdonny lane. "i'll testify, but i know nothing of that. i'll come on over directly. this young lady is going to judge henderson's." the sheriff looked at the young girl curiously. the crowd now had surged about them. like so many cattle at the smell of blood, a strange low sound, animal-like, a sort of moan of curiosity, seemed to rise. wide-eyed, the girl turned. "what is it, don?" she exclaimed. "what has happened? the tarbush case--what do you mean?" "i'm going to take him to the coroner's hearing, miss," said the sheriff in a low tone of voice. "why, you see, anne," began don, "the city marshal of this town was killed last night. i suppose the coroner is looking into it. it's a terrible thing--the town's all upset--haven't you heard anything of it?" "why, no. i left home before any of our papers came out. how did it happen?" don felt the sheriff again touch his arm. "step into my car," said he, "both of you--you get on the front seat with me." a moment later they were whirling off up the dusty street toward the central part of the town. the crowd, breaking into little groups, came hurrying on along the sidewalks, some even falling into a run in the middle of the street. "well, he got him!" said one citizen to another. "quick work for the sher'ff, wasn't it? a little more and that fellow would 'a' got off on that train, like enough. that's what he was down here for. i seen him lookin' for the train." "yes, and that young fellow had a dangerous look on him, too," said another. "he's _bad_, that's what he is! look how he showed it yesterday--right after court, too." each had this or that comment to make, but all followed on now toward the scenes where the further action in the drama of the day must now ensue. cowles pulled up on the side of the square on which judge henderson had his office. "you may get out here, miss," said he. "i think you'll find the judge in right now." "but why--what's the reason----" she began, much perturbed, and looking at don. "what's wrong, don? aren't you coming?" "yes, mr. sheriff," said don, "let me go up with her. i'll be right on over." the big man looked at the two, a sort of pity in his face. "i'm sorry," said he, "but you'll have to come with me right away. tell me, are you miss oglesby, his kin from over columbus way?" "yes, yes," said she. "i've been here before. but tell me, what does this mean--this murder? it's an awful thing, isn't it? it seems to me i remember the marshal's name--maybe i've seen him. who did it--whom do they suspect?" "that's what we don't know for sure," said the sheriff, "and it's what we've got to find out." "why, who would ever have thought it of this little town!" "things happen in this little town, i reckon, about the same as they do anywhere," said the sheriff. "don----" she turned to him once more as she stood on the pavement, he still remaining on the front seat of the car where the sheriff's hand restrained him. "why, don----" but the sheriff's solemn face was turned towards her. he shook his head. an instant and the car had whirled away from the curb. they had parted, almost before they had met! to dieudonné lane, ignorant as he was of the cause of all this, it seemed that the final parting of all had come, and, bitterly he reflected, they had had no chance--no chance whatever--for what was due them from their love, their life itself. anne oglesby, the kiss of her lover's lips still sweet and trembling upon her mouth, her own mind confused, her own heart disturbed, turned towards the dusty stair, all her senses in a whirl. and within five minutes don lane, very pale and much distressed, was in the front part of the little home of joel tarbush. the officer had brought him before justice blackman, the coroner, and the coroner's jury, six solemn-faced men who sat now in the front parlor which had no other occupants save the red-eyed daughter of the dead man, and save the long and shrouded figure which lay upon the couch near by. don lane could not misread the hostility of the gaze turned upon him by most of these whom now he saw. something suddenly caught at his heart--his first feeling of fear, of uncertainty; but even this was mingled with a rage at fate, which could be so cruelly unjust to him. and always, in spite of himself, he felt his eyes turning to look, awed, terrified, upon the long thing which lay upon the couch. and always the eyes of these six men saw what he did, saw what he saw. "this is dewdonny lane," said the sheriff briefly, and himself sat down to await the progress of events. the formalities were few. "you may be sworn," said the coroner to him--"it's just as well." then the oath administered, blackman began the regular questions, and don answered steadily. "my name is dieudonné lane. i am twenty-two years of age. i have no residence as yet. i am a graduate in engineering. i'm going to wyoming some time this month to take up my work there." there was a little silence in the room, and then the coroner began again: "where were you just now?" he asked. "we sent for you at your home." "i was at the station--i went to meet a friend." "what friend was it?" don lane flushed red. "what difference is it? oh, if i must answer, it was miss anne oglesby, of columbus. i went down to the train to meet her." sheriff cowles nodded. "that's true," said he. "i took her up to judge henderson's office myself." "what relations have you with this young lady?" asked blackman. "that's not the business of anyone," said don lane hotly. "do you want counsel to protect you now?" "no, why should i? i am perfectly willing to tell all i know about the case, and that's all i can do. there's no lawyer i'd send for anyhow." "where were you last night at about midnight?" "i was at the library meeting with my mother." "when did you leave there?" "it must have been midnight or later--oh, yes, i remember seeing the town clock as we passed through the square. that was just before one o'clock--perhaps ten or fifteen minutes. we were out late--every one was." "who was with you when you were going home?" "my mother, and for a time mr. rawlins here--one of you gentlemen of the jury. he will know. just as we left the library we were joined by mr. horace brooks." "where did you go?" "we three walked on together. it was at the second corner of the square, where mulberry street turns off, that mr. brooks left me." nels jorgens, one of the jury, now spoke up. "that's true," said he. "i saw the three of them walking along the front of the square, and saw them turn in at mulberry street. across from where i live i saw two people at the gate. it was a man--a tall man--and her--aurora lane." "you yourself were not at the gate then?" "no," said don, "i had left just at the corner of the square." "why did you leave them?" "well, i wanted to have a little run before i went to bed. i'm used to taking exercise every night--i always did at college, to keep up my training." "where did you go when you were running?" "i may be mistaken in the directions, but it was across the square, opposite from mulberry street. i turned to the right. i must have run perhaps four or five blocks, i don't know just how far it was. it was quite warm." "did you come into this street?" "i don't really know." "you didn't see anybody?" "not a soul. i didn't hear a sound." "what time was that?" "i heard the clock strike one before i turned back." "gentlemen of the jury," said the coroner, "it was just about that time that joel tarbush was killed, right here." "that's true," said don lane. "it's terrible to think of--but why----" "you heard judge henderson's testimony, gentlemen," went on the coroner. "he told of seeing these three people pass by on the square in front of his office stair. just before that he had said good night to tarbush himself. he saw tarbush start right over this way for his home. now, just in time to catch him before he got into his home--if a man was running fast--a man _did_ run from the square over in this direction!" the members of the jury remained silent. their faces were extremely grave. "and, gentlemen, you have heard the testimony of other witnesses here before now, stating that this witness was heard to make threats to tarbush yesterday afternoon, right after he was dismissed from my own court upstairs. mr. jorgens, i believe you were there. what did this young man say after he had for the second time assaulted ephraim adamson--twice in one day, and entirely regardless of the rebuke of the law?" "he said, mr. coroner," replied nels jorgens gravely, even with sadness in his face, "just when he came out of the crowd where he had left adamson laying on the ground already--he said to tarbush, 'you'll come next'--or i'll get you next'--something of that kind." "was he angry at that time?" "yes, mr. coroner, he was," said nels jorgens, against his will. ben mcquaid leaned over to whisper to jerome westbrook. "it seems like this young fellow comes in here with his college education and undertakes to run this whole town. pretty coarse work, it looks like to me." jerome westbrook nodded slowly. he recalled sally lester's look. of all the six faces turned toward him from the scattered little group of the coroner's jury, not more than two showed the least compassion or sympathy. don lane's hot temper smarted under the renewed sense of the injustice which had assailed him yet again. "what's the game?" he demanded. "why am i brought here? what's the matter with you people? do you mean to charge me with killing this man? what have i done to any of you? damn your town, anyhow--the rotten, lying, hypocritical lot of you all!" "the less you say the better," said the coroner; and the sheriff's steady gaze cautioned don lane yet more. "now, gentlemen," went on blackman, "we have heard a number of witnesses here, and we have not found any man here that could bring forward any sight or sound of any suspicious character in this town. there hasn't been a tramp or outsider seen here, unless we except this young man now testifying here. the man on whose body we now are a-setting hadn't a enemy in this town, so far as has been shown here--no, nor so far as anyone of us knows. there has been no motive proved up here which would lead us to suspect anyone else of this crime." ben mcquaid once more leaned over to whisper to his seat-mate: "it's a likely thing a man would be running for his health, a night like last night, when he didn't have to! ain't that the truth?" the coroner rapped with his pencil on the table top. he was well filled with the sense of his own importance. in his mind he was procureur-general for spring valley. and in his mind still rankled the thought of the fiasco in his courtroom but the day before, in which he had made so small a figure. "i want to ask you, mr. cowles," he said, turning to the sheriff, "if you ever have seen this young man before." "only once," said the sheriff, standing up. "last night or this morning, just after the clock had struck one--say, two or three minutes or so after one o'clock--i was going out of my office and going over to the east side of the square. i met this young man then. as he says, he was running--that is, he was coming back from this direction, and running toward the southeast corner of the square, the direction of his own home." "was he in a hurry--did he seem excited?" "he was panting a little bit. he was running. he didn't seem to see me." "oh, yes, i did," said don. "i remember you perfectly--that is, i remember perfectly passing some man in the half darkness under the trees as i came along that side of the square. as i said, it was warm." "now, gentlemen, we have thought it over for a long time," said the coroner, after a solemn pause. "we must bring in our verdict before long. it must either be 'party or parties unknown,' or we must hold someone we do suspect. "we have had no one here that we could suspect until now. take this young man--he is practically a stranger. he proves himself to be of violent and ungovernable temper. allowed to go once from the justice of the law, he forgets that and goes violent again. he assaults a second time one of our citizens, mr. adamson. he resists arrest once by a officer of the law, and in the same afternoon he threatens that officer. he says, 'i'll get you.' "this young man is seen just before one o'clock running over in this direction. just a little ahead of him the victim of this crime was seen walking. he was killed, as his daughter testifies, somewhere just about one o'clock--it was at that time that he staggered into the house here. "just after one o'clock this young man is seen running--one of the hottest nights we have had this summer--running away from the scene of the crime, and toward his own home. "i don't want to lead your own convictions in any way. i am willing to say, however, that if we have not found a man to hold for this crime, then we ain't apt to find him!" "but, gentlemen, you don't mean"--poor don began, his face pale for the first time, a sudden terror in his soul--"you _can't_ mean that _i_ did this!" but he gazed into the faces of six men, upon whom rested the duty of vengeance for the wrong done to the society which they represented. of these six all but two were openly hostile to him, and those two were sad. rawlins, minister of the church of christ; nels jorgens, the blacksmith--they two were sad. but they two also were citizens. "this witness," went on coroner blackman, "has in a way both abused us and defied us. he said he was not on trial. that is true. we can't try him. all we can do is to hold any man on whom a reas'nable suspicion of this crime may be fixed. we could hold several suspects here, if there was that many. all we do is to pass the whole question on to the grand jury when it meets here. that's tomorrow morning. before the grand jury any man accused can have his own counsel and the case can be taken up more conclusive. so the question for us now is, shall we call it 'party or parties unknown,' or shall we----" don lane dropped into a seat, his face in his hands, in his heart the bitter cry that all the world and all the powers of justice governing the world had now utterly forsaken him. the sheriff rose, and taking him by the arm, led him into another room. in ten minutes a half-dozen reporters, trooping up from the train and waiting impatiently at the outer door, knew the nature of the verdict: "we the jury sitting upon the body of joel tarbush, deceased by violence, find that deceased came to his death by a blow from a blunt instrument held in the hands of dieudonné lane." chapter xii anne oglesby judge william henderson was sitting alone in the front room of his cool and spacious office, before him his long table with its clean glass top, so different from the work-bench of the average country lawyer. everything about him was modern and perfect in his office equipment, for the judge had reached the period in his development in which he brought in most of his own personal ideas from an outer and a wider world--that same world which now occupied him as a field proper for one of his ambitions. as he sat he was a not unpleasing figure of middle-aged success. his gray hair was swept back smoothly from his temples; his red cheeks, fresh reaped, bore the tinge of health. the large white hand before him on the glass-topped table betokened prosperity and success in every faint and fat-hid line. judge henderson now was absorbed in the contemplation of a bit of paper which lay in his hand. it was a message from the telephone company, and it came from slattery, county prosecutor. something in it was of disturbing nature. judge henderson's brow was furrowed, his face was troubled. he seemed, thus alone and not stimulated by an audience, years older than he had been but now. he had been looking at this bit of paper for some time so intently that now he did not hear his hall door open--did not see one who paused there and then came, lightfooted, swiftly, across the space, to catch him and blindfold him as he sat. he heard the rustle of her skirts, and knew at once the deep counterfeit of her voice. "who is it?" she demanded, her hand over his eyes. "anne!" he exclaimed, catching at her hand. "you are here--when did you come?" she went round and kissed him. "just now," said she, "on the train from the city. you were not expecting me?" "no, not at all." "well, here i am, nunkie,"--she sometimes called her guardian by this pet name, although really they were not akin--"i'm finished and turned out complete--i'm done my college work now and ready for what we graduates call the battle of life. do you think i'll do?" she drew back and made him a pretty curtsey, spreading out her skirts. indeed, she was very fair to look upon and he smiled at her admiringly. "you are beautiful, anne," said he. "you are very beautiful--you are fine." "do i please you in every way?" said she. "perfectly, my dear. you cannot do otherwise." she looked at him demurely. "i'm not so sure," said she. "wait until you have heard all i have to tell you." "what's wrong? are you in debt?" "worse than that, nunkie dear--i'm engaged!" now indeed he looked at her with sudden consternation in his face. "what's that? you haven't told me anything of the sort." "i never knew it until just now--at the station." she came now and sat down upon the arm of his chair. "it just happened yesterday--and today." she put up a finger to her lips and rubbed them, fearing that he might see there the flame of the kiss they but now had borne. "who is the young man--if you are really in earnest about all this? where did you meet him? whoever he is, you've hardly done your duty by me. i'm your guardian--i stand _in loco parentis_ for you. when did all this happen?" "yesterday, on the train. i didn't expect it myself. but i promised. he's promised me. we were going to tell you about it at once." she was the very picture of happy and contented young womanhood as she spoke. not so happy was the man whom she addressed. "i can't guess at all whom you mean," said he. "is he anybody--is he a man of station--has he any business--has he any means? how old is he--who is he?" "i can't answer so many questions all at once, nunkie," said she. "but i'm going to be very happy, i know that. perhaps you can answer some of the questions for yourself--perhaps you know him. well, it's dieudonné lane!--he's in town right now--a schoolmate of mine for four years. surely, i know all about him." judge henderson swiftly turned and looked at her steadily, cold consternation on his face. "anne!" he exclaimed. "that can't be! it's absurd." "oh, i expected that," said she easily. "that's because he hasn't any money. i knew that. as for his family--he told me long ago that he was an orphan, that his father died when he was very young, and left only enough for his education, and that he would have to make his own way. very well, some men have had to do that--you have had to yourself, nunkie, isn't it true? and don was born here in this very town----" he put out his hand over hers as it lay upon the table-top. "anne!" said he. "my child! you're but a child--an impulsive, foolish child. what have you done? you have not pledged your word--to _him_?" "oh, yes, i have. i'm promised--my promise is given. more----" "it's folly and worse than folly. it can't be--i won't have it--you hear me?" he broke out savagely now. "i heard you--yes, but i'll jolly well not pay too much attention to you, even when you roar at me that way. as i understand it, i'm of age. i've been studying for four years to get ready to be able to know my own mind--and i do! my own heart also. and i know what's due me." her voice was low and very sweet, but the man who heard her winced at its cutting calm. "you would marry a man like that, of no family, of no place, of no name?" "yes, i've just said that. i know all about it. we'll have to start at the bottom; and i ask you, didn't you start that way?" "that's an entirely different proposition, my dear girl," said her guardian. "times were different then. you are an heiress--you are a woman of family and place--and you don't have to go back to the old days--you don't need to ruin your own life through such terrible beginnings. "but now, do you know who this young man's people are?" he asked this last after a considerable pause, during which his ward sat silent, looking at him steadily. "oh, yes. he told me he is an orphan--his father's dead long ago. and his mother----" "you know his mother?" "yes, a milliner--i believe. but a good woman." "ah!" she still looked at him, smiling. "i am 'advanced,' you see, nunkie! in college we studied things. i don't care for the social rank--i want to marry a _man_. i love don. i love--well, that kind of man. i'm so happy!" she squeezed him tight in a sudden warm embrace. "i love all the world, i believe, nunkie--even you, and you are an old bear, as everybody knows! and i thank you for all those papers in the long envelopes--with the lines and the crosses on them, and the pencil mark 'sign here'--powers of attorney and receipts, and bonds and shares and mortgages and certificates--all that sort of thing. am i very rich, nunkie?" "not very, as heiresses go these days," said he. "you're worth maybe four or five hundred thousand dollars, not very much. but that's not the question. that's not really everything there is at stake in this--although i'm well enough satisfied that's all this young man cares for." "thank you!" said she proudly. "i had not known that." "a good many things you have not known, my dear. now listen here. do you know what this marriage would mean to me? i want to be united states senator from this state--and everything bids fair to see my ambition gratified. but politics is a ticklish game." "well, what on earth has that to do with me and don?" "it has everything to do! i'm _not_ 'advanced,' i'm old fashioned enough to know that social rank does count in my business at least. in politics every little thing counts; so i tell you, for every reason in the world you must dismiss this young man from your thoughts. you are quixotic, i know--you are stubborn, like your mother--a good woman, but stubborn." he was arguing with her, but anne could not read his face, although she sought to do so--there seemed some veil hiding his real thoughts. and his face was troubled. she thought he had aged very much. "in one particular matter," said she slowly, at last. "it seems to me a woman should be stubborn. she should have her own say about the man she is to marry." "how much time have you had to decide on this?" "plenty. twenty-four hours, or a little less--no, i'll say twenty minutes. plenty. uncle--he kissed me--before the world. i can't take it back--we have given--i have promised. uncle, i have promised--well, all through me." "stop where you are!" said he. "have you disgraced us all so soon? has it gone so far? however that is, you shall go no further." he rose, his fingers on the table-top, rapping in emphasis. "my dear," he said, "i am older than you, and i have seen the world more than you have. i recognize fully enough the dynamic quality of what you call love--what i call merely sex in younger human beings. it is a thing of extreme seriousness, that's true. but the surest thing about all that sort of thing is that it changes, it passes. you will forget all this." "you do me much honor!" said anne oglesby, coloring. "you speak with much delicacy. but love me, love my lover." the swift resistance of a strong nature seemed suddenly to flash out at judge henderson from her gray eyes. suddenly he turned and took her arm. he escorted her to the inner room, which served as his own study and consultation chambers. "come here," said he. "well have to talk this thing over quietly. this is a terrible matter--you don't know how terrible. there's a lot under this that you don't know at all. anne, my dear girl, what can i say to you to alter you in this foolish resolve?" "nothing! i'm going to see his mother this very afternoon. he told me to come, so i could meet his mother----" "you're going to do nothing of the kind!" said judge henderson in sudden anger. "you're going to stay here and listen to reason, that's what you're going to do! you undertake to go into a situation which reaches wider than this town, wider than this state, do you? it is your duty, then, to prevent me from _my_ duty? are you so selfish, so egotistic as all that?" she smiled at him amusedly, cynically, a wide and frank smile, which irritated him unspeakably. he frowned. "it is time now for you to reflect. first--as you say--this young man has no father. his mother----" he paused suddenly, his pallid face working strangely now. the shrill summons of the telephone close at his hand as he sat had caused him to start, but it was with relief. he took down the receiver and placed his hand for the moment over the mouthpiece. "aurora lane--you don't know about her?" he began. then she saw a sudden change of expression which passed over his face. "yes--yes," he said, into the telephone. "the jury has brought in its verdict? _what's that?_----" the phone dropped clattering from his hand on the desk, so shaking and uncertain was his grasp. he turned to his ward slowly. "you don't know!" said he. "you don't know what that was i have just heard this moment! well, i'll tell you. dieudonné lane has been held to the grand jury--while we've been sitting here. they've charged him with the murder of tarbush, the city marshal. my god! anne----" it seemed an hour to both before she spoke. her face, first flushed, then pale, became set and cold as she looked toward the man who brought this news. once she flinched; then pulled together. but yesterday a girl, this hour a young woman, now she was all at once mature, resolved. "you heard me, did you not?" he went on, his voice rising. "charged--with murder! no one in the world knew he was alive--no one but you, and you never told me of him--no one ever dreamed of him till the last twenty-four hours, when he came blundering in here--out of his grave, i say! and in twenty-four hours he has made his record here--and _this_ is his record. do you know what this means? he may not come through--i want to say the chances look bad for him, very bad indeed." judge henderson's smooth face showed more agitation than ever it had in all his life before. "uncle," she said, after a long time, reaching out a hand to him, "now is your opportunity!" "what do you mean? _my_ opportunity? it's--it's a terrible thing--you don't know." "yes, yes. but you say you have been in the place of a parent to me. that's true--i owe you much--you have been good--you have been kind. be good, be kind now! oh, don't you see what is your duty? now you can use your learning, your wisdom, your oratory. you can save don--for me. you're my parent--can't you be his, too? we're both orphans--can't you be a father for us both? of _course_ you will defend him. he hasn't much. he couldn't pay you now. but i have money--you've just told me that i have. "oh, no, i don't mean that, about the money--but listen," she went on, since he made no reply. "do you think _i'd_ desert him now that he's in trouble? do you think any woman of my family would do that? we're not so low, i trust, either of us, either side. you are not so low as that, i trust, yourself. why, you'd not desert anyone, surely not an orphan boy, just starting out--you'd never in the world do that, i know." in answer he smoothed out before her on the desk top the crumpled paper he had held in his hand. "this," said he, "was brought to me just before you came in yourself. before you told me of this affair, i was retained by the state's attorney to assist in the prosecution of the perpetrator of this crime, _whoever he might be_. i must say it is one of the most terrible crimes ever known in this community. the man who did it must pass from among his fellow men forever. it is my duty to accept this retainer for the prosecution, as i have done----" "what--as you _have_ done?--you'd help prosecute him--you'd help send him to the gallows, if you could--as innocent as he is? you--you--and he has no one to counsel with--only a poor woman, a widow, who's never had a chance--he an orphan, without a friend! you'd do _that_?" his large white hand was raised restrainingly. "we must both be calm," said he. "i've got to think." "why, where will don go--where will they put him?" "he will go to jail, and be there until the grand jury meets--longer than that, perhaps--and yet longer, if the trial judge and jury bring a verdict against him!" "but that's taking him away from me--right now--that's not right!--can't he get out?" "he might perhaps be released on bail if the bail were large enough, but the crime is the maximum crime, and the suspicion is most severe. i don't know what means he can command, but he needs counsel now. "but one thing, anne," he added, "i forbid you. you must have nothing to do with him. keep away from him. go home, and don't meddle in this case. it must take its course." "i would follow him to the foot of the gallows, if need be, judge henderson!" broke out anne oglesby in a sudden flare of passionate anger. "ah, fine!--to give your word, your promise--to give your love, and then within an hour forget it all--to leave the one you love when the trouble comes! is that all one gains--is that all one may expect--is that all a woman ought to do for the man she loves? is that all she ought to expect from a man? suppose it were i in trouble--would _he_ forget me? would _he_ forsake me? then shall i? you don't know me if you think that of me! "you don't know me at all," she blazed on at him, as he turned away. "i've tried to reason. whatever my success at that, the answer's in my own heart now." (her heart, now beating so fast under the heaving bosom on which both her hands were clasped.) "and you forget me? i--i'm in trouble now--it's awful--it's a terrible trouble that i'm in now." judge henderson's voice was trembling, his face was pale. "you--in what way am i bound to you? trouble--what do you mean? why, listen!--all your life you have lived with just one aim and purpose and ambition in your heart--and that was yourself! your own ambition--your own pleasure, your own comfort--those were the things that have controlled you always--don't i know, haven't i heard? you've been a very leech in this town--you have taken _all_ the success in it--_all_ the success of everybody, from _all_ its people--and used it for yourself! it has been so common to you--you are so used to it--that you can't think of anything else--you can't visualize anything else. you think of yourself as the source and center of all good--you can't help that--that's your nature. so i suppose you think you are altogether within your rights when you tell me that i must wreck and ruin my own life to save you and your ambition! why, you are--you're a _sponge_--that's what you are--you are just soaking in _all_ the happiness of others--_all_ the success of others, i tell you--taking it _all_ for yourself. 'our most prominent citizen!' great god! but what has it cost this community to produce you--what are you asking it to cost me and those i love? drops in the same bucket? food for you and your ambition? do you think i am going to stand that, when it comes to me--me and him--the man i have promised--the man i love? you don't know me! you don't know him! we'll fight!" he sat, so astounded at this sudden outburst--the first thing of the kind he had ever heard from any human being in all his life--that for the time he could make no reply at all. she went on bitterly now: "men like you, sponges like yourself, have made what they call success in all the ages of the world--yes, that's true. great kings, great cardinals, great politicians, great business men, great thieves have made that kind of a success, that's true enough--i've read about them, yes. men of that sort--judge henderson--sometimes they stop at nothing. they'd betray their very own. i'm not your blood, but if i were, i'd not trust you! men like you are so absorbed with their own vanity, their own selfishness--they're so used to having everything given to them without exertion, without cost, they grow regardless of what that cost may be to the ones that do the giving. in time they begin to think themselves apart from the rest of the world--don't you think that about yourself now? oh, are you better than the world? or are you just a man, like the rest of them? didn't you ever know--didn't you ever kiss a woman in all your life and know what that meant?" he had sat, his shocked face turned toward her, too stunned for answer. but she saw him start as though under the blow of a dagger at her last words. "don't think this hasn't hurt," said she, more composedly now. "it's the truth as far as i know it. with your power, your influence, you could get him free--soon--very soon--perhaps. you could make us both happy. but, so you say, that would make _you_ unhappy! i know you well enough to know what the decision will be in a case like that, judge henderson! "as for me--" she was closer to him now, utterly fearless, as a woman is who loves and sees the object of her love threatened--"our paths part here, now! i'm of age and my own mistress. i know my own mind, as i've told you. i'm going to stay--i'm going to stick--do you hear? i'm going to love him long as he lives. i'm going to _marry_ him, if it's in a jail!" judge henderson only began to wag his head now from side to side. his face had gone ghastly. "why, uncle dear"--she came over to him now--"forgive me if i've been too outspoken--it's only because i'm so strained." "myself also," he groaned. "strain? why, yes. you don't know--you don't know!" suddenly she changed once more, still the woman, still the young girl, as yet half ignorant of life, her hands still on her heaving bosom now, the faint flush back in her cheeks. "he _kissed_ me, uncle!" said she. "i don't know much, but it seems to me if a man kisses a woman--in that way--it's _life_ for her and him! they can't help it after that. after that, a woman's got to do just all she can in the game of life--and he's got to do the best he knows. they can't help it. he _kissed_ me.... and i told you i'll not desert him. it wouldn't be right. and, right or wrong, i can't--i _can't_!" panting, the tears now almost ready to drop from her moist eyes, she stood, a beautiful picture of young womanhood, so soft, so fully fitted for love and love's caresses; and now so wronged out of her love by sudden fate. but in her there was no sign of weakness or of yielding. the man who faced her felt the truth of that. his own face now was far the more irresolute of the two--far the more agitated. suddenly, haggard, frowning, he rose, at a sound which he heard in the outer room. someone had entered. as he stepped to the door between the two rooms, judge henderson turned, his finger on his lips, and made signs that anne should remain where she was, undiscovered. the door hung just a trifle, wedged open by the corner of a fallen rug. judge henderson had not time, or did not think, to close it wholly. he stood face to face with the newcomer. it was aurora lane! chapter xiii "as you believe in god!" aurora lane and judge henderson both started back as they faced one another. for the moment neither spoke. aurora was pale, quite beyond her wont, haggard-looking about the eyes. she had come direct from her home, without alteration of her usual daily costume. in spite of all, she was very far from uncomely as she stood now, about her the old indefinable stamp of class which always had clung to her. certainly she was quite the equal in appearance of this tall man, soft from easy living, who faced her now, a trifle pasty of skin, a trifle soft about the jaws, a trifle indefinite about the waist--a man with a face as pale and haggard as her own. tense as she was, her long schooling in repression stood her in such stead as to leave her in the better possession of self-control. "my dear--my dear madam----" began judge henderson. the hearer in the room beyond must have caught the pause in his voice, its agitation--and must have heard the even tones of the woman as she spoke at last, after a long silence. "i have come to your office, as you know, for the first time," said aurora lane. she gave him no title, no formal address. "it is the first time in twenty years." "you have lived a somewhat secluded life, yes, my dear madam." his voice, his manner, his attitude, all were labored. he at least knew or suspected that he was talking to two women, and not one; for there was no way for anne to escape and no way in which he could be sure she did not hear. "you know about him--about the boy? of course, everyone in town does. he didn't die. he's been away--in college. i never wanted him to see this place. but now he's come back--you know all about it. he's in jail. we've been thinking perhaps you could do something--that you would help us." her high, clear, staccato voice, easily audible far, now showed her own keyed-up condition. judge henderson raised a large white hand. "my dear madam," said he, himself very far from calm, "let us be calm! let us above all things be calm and practical." aurora lane's face froze into a sudden icy mask of wonder, of astonishment. she gulped a little. "i'm trying to be calm. i'm desperate, or i'd never have come here. you know that." he was mumbling and clucking in his throat, gesturing imploringly, trying to stop her swift speech, which might be overheard, but she went on, not understanding. "until just now i was so happy. he was done with his schooling--ready to go out at his work. the expenses were very heavy for us, but we've managed. look!" she drew from her worn pocketbook the single bill that she had left in all the world, a tight-creased, worn thing. "in some way i've managed to hold on to this," said she. "it's all i've got left in all the world. that's my twenty-odd years of savings--except what i've spent to bring up my boy. i've got no more." "my dear madam," said judge henderson again, sighing, "life certainly has its trials at times." a remark sufficiently banal to pass muster with both his hearers, aurora lane here and anne oglesby in the room beyond. but, still ignorant of any other auditor, aurora went on as though she had not heard him: "i thought i'd come and talk to you--at last. if only don could get out, i'd be willing to leave with him. we'd never trouble anybody any more." her face was turned to him beseechingly. "i know, of course, that you could save him if you liked.... i've had a pretty hard time of it. don't you want to do this for him--for us--how can you _help_ wanting to? you, of all men! my god! oh, my god!" "hush! hush! don't speak so loud! pray compose yourself, my dear madam," exclaimed judge henderson, himself so far from composed. his own face was ghastly in its open apprehension. "he's ruined himself, that's all, that boy," he concluded lamely. she stood before him, stony cold, for a time, growing whiter and whiter. "and what about my own ruin? what does it leave to me, if they take my boy--all i have in the world? i didn't think you could hesitate a moment--not even you!" her voice, icy cold, was that of another woman. he turned from her, flinging out his hands. "he has disgraced you----" he began, still weakly; for he at least knew he was doubly on the defensive now, before these two women, terrible in their love. "no, he has not!" flared aurora lane at last. "if i've had disgrace it's not through any fault of his. if he raised a hand in my defense, it was the first man's hand that has been raised for me in all this town--in all my life!" she held before him again the tight-folded little bill, seeking with trembling fingers to unfold it so that he might see its pitifully small denomination. she shook it in his face in sudden rage. "that's my life savings! if there was such a thing as justice in the world, would i be helpless as this--so helpless that i could find it possible to come here to talk to you? justice? justice! ah, my god in heaven!" aurora lane's voice was slightly rising. she was fronting him in the last courage of despair. "you'd see that boy perish--you'd let him die? if i thought that was true, i'd be willing to do everything i could to ruin this town. i'd pull the roof down on it if i were strong enough. i'd throw myself away, indeed. i'd curse god--i'd die. above all, i'd curse you, with my last breath." anne, in the next room, rooted in the horror of her silence, could not have heard his reply, but almost she might have pictured him, standing white, ghastly, trembling, as he was when he heard these words. "but you can't do it--you can't deny him--he's a human being like yourself--he's part of----ah, you'll get him free, i know!" aurora's voice was pleading now. judge henderson's own voice was hoarse, unnatural, when at last he got it. "look at this message," he croaked, in a half whisper; and showed her the crumpled bit of paper which he had held in his own hand. he beckoned to her--yet again--for silence, but she did not understand. "what is it?" asked aurora. "what do you mean?" "from the state's attorney! i have accepted this retainer. i'm of the prosecution! you have come too late. what can i do?" "prosecution--what do you mean? prosecute him--_don_? too late--my god! am i always too late--is it always in all the world for me--too late! prosecute _him_? what do you _mean_?" the sudden, wailing cry broke from her. then her voice trailed off into a whisper--a whisper which might have been heard very far--which was heard through the half-closed door which led to the inner room. "too late!" and at length the long-tried soul of aurora lane broke out in a final and uncontrolled rebellion, all bounds down, all restraint forgotten, every instinct at last released of its long fettering: "you disown him--you'd disown your own flesh and blood--you'd let him die! why, you'd betray your own master for the price of office and of honor! oh, i know, i know! the limelight! publicity! oh, you judas!--ah, judas! judas! you, his father! _your own son!_" then sobs, deep, convulsive. came sudden rustling of garments in the adjoining room. the intervening door was flung wide. anne oglesby, her face pale, tense, came out into the room where stood these two. "what is this?" she demanded of judge henderson. "this is mrs. lane? _don's your son?_" she turned to aurora inquiringly. "i have heard--i could not help hearing. his father! don told me his father was dead. what's all this? tell me!" for a moment they stood apart, three individuals only. then, slowly, with subtle affiliation of sex, the women drew together, allied against the man. it was anne who again was first to speak. her voice was high, clear, cold as ice, with a patrician note which came from somewhere out of the past. "let me have all this quite plain," said she. "mrs. lane said 'flesh and blood!' mrs. lane said '_your own son!_' i heard her. what does it mean?" "this is what it means!" said aurora lane, suddenly drawing anne to her closely, after her one swift glance. "my boy's in jail. this--this man--judge henderson--is his father. he says he's hired to murder him--and he's our child." "i didn't know!" broke out judge henderson, now facing both his hearers. "i never knew! you said he was dead--you told me so. it's all half a lifetime ago. i've had nothing to do with you, nor you with me, since we broke off more than twenty years ago. that was as you wished. god! i was only a man. you _said_ the child died." "yes," said aurora lane, turning to anne; "that's true--i did. i told that one lie to protect the boy. i sent him away when he was a baby to protect him. i said he was dead--to protect him--to keep him from ever knowing. but you know--you saw him--you _felt_ it--you must have known, yesterday." she confronted the trembling man once more. "yesterday?" said anne oglesby. "yes. there was another trial then--and judge henderson prosecuted then also!" she turned again to him for his answer. "i dropped the case." "you dropped it because you were paid to drop it! you traded another man out of his own life's ambition--a better man than you are--that's what you did when you dropped the case. there's nothing more to trade--we've nothing more to pay--but how can you prosecute him--now--when his very life's at stake--when he's charged with murder? the punishment's death! you'd send him to the gallows now--my boy--and yours? you didn't know him then! is it likely? don't lie about it--if you didn't know him, _why_ didn't you? were you so busy looking at your own picture on the wall--so wrapped up in your own ambitions, that you couldn't see anything else? couldn't you see your own flesh and blood--and mine? what's twenty years? haven't i lived them, and wouldn't i know him--didn't i--when i saw him? you judas!" motionless, she stood looking at the speechless man before her, until she felt the closer drawing to her of the tall young beauty at her side. "and you're anne?" she said, turning to the girl, her own large dark eyes now soft. "i know. he loves you, don. has he said good-by to you? has he said he wasn't worthy of you, because he had--no father? _this_ is his father--don's father--judge william henderson. he'll not deny it. i told don he mustn't think of you--of all women in the world--just because you are so close to judge henderson--don's father. "now you see why i told my boy that lie--i didn't want him ever to know his father--yes, i'd told him his father was dead. and i don't want to seem a worse liar to my own boy--i've been bad enough, the way it is." she felt anne oglesby's arm draw her closer yet, felt the soft warm body of the girl against her own. "i make only trouble," said aurora, murmuring. "and you--you're so beautiful. i don't blame him." "i love him, too!" said anne oglesby steadily. "i'm not going to give him up." aurora lane's tears came then. "you--you two women--" gasped judge henderson--"do you know what you're doing here? do you think i don't suffer, too?" then anne saw that every accusation aurora lane had made was true and more than true. "about that trial yesterday"--he turned to aurora--"i _did_ have some sort of superstitious feeling--i own that--i couldn't account for it--i couldn't explain it. but you had assured me that your--our--er--the child--had died in infancy. i thought--i hoped it was only my own guilty conscience making me see things. i--i _have_ had a conscience. but i knew nothing--we'd not met for years." "that's all true," said aurora to anne, nodding toward judge henderson. "i've scarce spoken more than twenty words to him in twenty years. i've kept the secret, and carried the blame. until yesterday don never knew about himself--about his having no father. he hasn't a guess even now who his father was--or is--at least he'll never make the right guess. no one has, no one ever will. they may wrong another man, but they'll not suspect the right one." she felt the strong young arm of anne still about her, and so went on, nodding again toward judge henderson--"i asked him to defend his own son--you heard me, then? and he's told me he's hired to hang his son! and i called him 'judas.' and i pray god to sink him in hell if he does this work. after all, there must be a hell somewhere--i think there must be. this is not right--it's not right! i've stood it all till now, but i can't stand this." "wait!" exclaimed judge henderson. "give me time to think, i tell you! my whole life's up on this, as well as yours. you've had twenty years to think about this, and i've not had that many minutes. you and i've not met, i say--our paths have lain totally apart. it was in the past--we'd lived it down." "_we_ had lived it down!" aurora lane's laugh was bitter enough, and she made no other comment. still she felt, closer and closer, the warm young body of the girl who stood by her as the two women faced the man in the ancient and undying battle of sex. "well, i dropped that case," resumed judge henderson, "name or claim the reason as you like. but _this_ case is different----" "why?" asked anne oglesby. "what's the difference between the two cases? you say you didn't know, then. now you know." "but i've my reputation to keep clean, anne! the higher you climb, the riskier the ladder. i could drop that little case yesterday, but let me drop _this_ case, with all the whole town back of it--and all my whole political party back of it, too--that's another matter!" "is it, indeed!" "yes!" he rasped. "i put judge reeves on the bench here. it's a big case. if i withdrew a second time--if things got stirred up and people began to talk--why, that would be enough to put old hod brooks on the scent. he'd well enough take care of all the rest! it would be the end of my career--in twenty minutes. there'd be nothing left of my chances--there'd be nothing left of my reputation--the work of twenty years would be undone. i'd be ruined!" "the work of twenty years!" whispered aurora lane to herself. "twenty years! and--ruin!" her voice rose again. "what about us others? you're talking about yourself, your reputation, your success--how about don? his _life's_ at stake. so is mine--i'd not survive it if they killed my boy." "what's he to you, anyhow?" broke out judge henderson--"this man brooks? are you in any conspiracy of his? what's under this? what's he to you? was he ever--has he ever----" "stop!" said aurora lane, her voice sharp, her face cameo-cold. "not another word!" and even the sullen and distracted soul of the man before her acknowledged the imperative command. "you traded him out of his place. you're trying to trade now in your own son's life! is that--can that really be true of any man?" "don't bait me too far!" he rejoined savagely. "don't you go on now and drive me into fighting these charges." "i don't think you would, uncle," said the calm voice of anne oglesby. "i don't think you would. "so this," she added softly, "is what my guardian was! _in loco parentis!_" the man before her writhed in his own bitter suffering, flinging out his hands imploringly under the lash of her words. "anne! anne!"--aurora turned to the girl at her side--"i wish all this might have been spared you. you're so young! but it all had to come out some time, i suppose, and i'd rather have you learn it from me than from don. you've not seen him--he has not told you?" "no. we only had a moment--not alone--just a little while ago. they took him away--i didn't know why, till just now. we've just heard what the coroner's jury said. but i'll not leave him till he tells me, to, and only then if he says he doesn't love me." "he could never say that!" said aurora lane. "but i told him he must leave you." "did he say he would?" "yes, yes, of course! but when i told him that, i didn't know you; and i did not think don ever would know who his father was. he doesn't know even now." judge henderson turned suddenly, catching at a thought which came to him from aurora's words. "why should anyone _ever_ know!" he began. "if this whole matter could be quieted down--if this case could be dismissed---- "would you promise me," he turned toward aurora--"if i could manage in some way to get all this hushed down--if i could save the boy's life--would you promise me, both of you, never to tell a soul in the world--never to let anyone get a breath of this? you are the only two that really know it at all--you said, aurora, that even the boy doesn't know it all. why should he, ever? it's been hid this long, why not longer?" "anne and i, and yourself, are the only human beings in the world who know it all," said aurora lane. "can _you_ keep such a secret?" judge henderson turned more doubtfully to anne oglesby, whose cold, quiet scorn had cut him even more deeply than the bitterer words of the older woman. "i'd do anything for don--anything i thought he'd be willing to have me do. but i don't see how such a thing as this could be kept down. how can the law be set aside?" "listen here," he said, facing her, a little color of hope at last in his face. "you don't in the least know what you've been starting here, and you don't know anything about the remedy for it. the law? it's close to politics, sometimes! if i fall--can't you see--i drag down plenty of others--i drag down my own town--i drag down my whole judiciary--i've been on the bench here myself. oh, you two don't know all about how things are done in politics. i'd drag down all the machinery of my own party in this state--the thing would go even wider than that--i'd be compromising the national administration itself. i tell you, it's ruin, ruin, if this thing gets out. this is the very crisis of all my life--my whole fate, my whole past and future, are in your hands now, and much more beside--in the hands of you two women. "but i've got to fight the best i may," he added, walking excitedly apart, and smiting one hand into the other. "look here, now," and he turned to them with a new look on his haggard face. "your fate's _in my hands_, too! go beyond reason with me--threaten and goad me too far--and i'll see what can be done to ruin you two, if you succeed in ruining me!" "i've not asked that," said aurora lane. "i don't care about that. what's revenge to me? and what's ruin? i've asked nothing of you--nothing, but my boy's life, and never that till now. you gave it to me once, unasked. i'm asking it again, now--his life--my boy's. i bore him in grief and sorrow. it's your time of travail now. that's all." judge henderson almost wept in his own self-pity. "think how horribly, how grotesquely unjust all this is," his voice trembled--"raking up all the deeds of a man's youth. the past ought to be _forgotten_. a man's past----" "or a woman's?" said aurora. "well, yes, or a woman's. but it's men like me who have to build up things, do things, administer things, wisely and justly. i've been a judge on the bench here, before the world, i say. and here you two women--why, it's ghastly, it's terrible, its _criminal_. your dragging me down--it--it's a hellish thing to do." "what? what's that?" the voice of aurora lane rose again. "if there's any hell, it's for a false judge. you once sat on the bench, yonder--yes. oh, judas--worse--you are ten times worse than judas!--drag you down--drag all the town, all the state, all the society down? why, yes, i would if i could! i will, i will!" but, sobbing as she was, and desperate, she felt the light hand of anne oglesby now swiftly patting her shoulder for silence. the girl faced her guardian with the same light smile on her lips, cool and contemptuous. "wait a minute, uncle," she said. "a moment ago you spoke of our fate being in your hands, too--of one ruin offset against another. come now, you're a trader--you have been all your life, uncle--it seems you're always willing to trade in the practice of the law. that's how you've got up where you are." her smile, her words, cut him beyond measure, but he clung to his idea. "very well, then. now, suppose we trade!" he spoke sneeringly, but inwardly he was trembling, for he knew not what moment aurora lane might publicly make good her threat. "what can he mean?" aurora turned to anne. but anne, shrewder at the time, broke in: "leave him alone. let him go on." "well, now," said judge henderson, and actually half began to clear his throat, so sweet did his new thought appear to him, "as i was saying--there's no actual indictment yet--there's been no trial--the coroner has only held him over. say i'd take on this prosecution, ostensibly--ostensibly--conditionally--ostensibly--to keep down any suspicion; and then, later on, after several continuances and delays, you know, and the disappearance of all the witnesses for the state--hum!--yes, i'll say it might be done. i'm not sure it couldn't be done more or less easily, now i come to think of it--i know reeves, and i know how much he'd like to be governor of this state--they have to come downstate every once in a while for available timber. "so, my dear girl," he turned to anne in virtuous triumph, "after all, since this would do two things--save the boy's life and save my reputation, it might not be discreditable to be what you call a 'trader'!" there really was exultation in his smile. "what do you want for it?" asked anne oglesby coldly. "where would it leave don? in jail indefinitely?" "i could not state it more precisely! _he looks like me!_ oh, i'll admit that--my feeling was right, my conscience was right! he _is_ my son. but _because_ he is and _because_ he looks like me, he's got to stay in jail where he'll not be _seen_,--a year or two, perhaps. there can't be any bail." the two white-faced women looked each into the other's face, sad-eyed. anne's breath came tremblingly. "it's the best we can do!" said she at last; and aurora, seeing how it was, nodded mutely. "what do you want for it, uncle?" demanded anne contemptuously again. "i want--silence!" said he harshly, at last beginning to assert himself. "silence! and i've got to be sure about it." suddenly he pulled open a drawer in the table before him. the women started, fearing a weapon; but it was only a book he drew out--an old, dusty book, the edges of its leaves once gilded--a copy of the holy scriptures, very old and dusty. judge henderson by accident now saw the fly leaf, for the first time in years. it was the little bible his own father had given him, half a lifetime ago, when he was first starting out into the practice of the law. on the yellowed leaf in paled ink could still be seen the inscription his father had written there in latin for his son: "_filio meo; crede deo._--to my son; believe in god!" "will you swear on the bible?" demanded judge henderson, "both of you, that you'll never tell nor hint a word of this to any human being in the world--not even to him--the boy?" the hand which held the dusty little volume was trembling, but judge henderson was not thinking of his own father, nor of the inscription in the little book. "yes!" said aurora lane at once. but anne oglesby raised a hand for pause. "i'll not swear to keep back anything from him, my husband. i'm not sure i could." "your husband----" "i'm going to marry him, unless he sends me away." "it can't be soon--it may be very long--it will be years----" judge henderson was getting back a little color now, a little self-assertiveness, a little more readiness to argue. "i can wait," said anne. "but i can't buy him cheap--don wouldn't let me. i know who his father is, and he ought to know it, too. that's his right." "anne," said aurora lane, "i denied him that right. you got my secret by accident. can't you keep it, too? it's a heavy weight that judge henderson has laid on more than one woman--a load to be borne by three women, myself, miss julia, and you. but this is to save don's life." "you'll swear secrecy on the book?" broke in judge henderson. "yes!" said anne oglesby at length. "if you'll swear to perjure yourself against your oath of office as judge and as attorney--as you've said you would--i'll swear. is that the trade?" "it's the only hope he has, the only hope that you have, and the only hope that i have. absolute silence! absolute secrecy! i'm going to save him--but i'm going to save my own self, too." a slight color was in henderson's gray face. "oh, you trader!" said anne oglesby, all her scorn for him now patent, fully voiced. "you sepulcher of a man! you failure! oh, yes, yes, i'll swear! and i'll keep my oaths and my promises all my life, so help me god! lift up the book! you, too, aurora." "i swore it twenty years ago," said aurora lane. "i will again. you judas! you coward! lift up the book! lift it up, so that i may see! is that the book they call the bible--that tells of love and mercy, and truth, and justice, and forgiveness of sins? lift it up, so that i may see!" they faced him, their right hands raised, and he held up the book, his thumb under the cover, exposing the inscription which he had not seen for years and did not now see. "as you believe in god!" began judge william henderson. chapter xiv aurora and anne when judge henderson passed down the office stair, and out across the street toward the narrow little brick walk of the courthouse--which even on that day of the week now held a certain crowd--so disturbed, so preoccupied, was he that he gave no greeting to one or two belated loiterers about the store fronts. "i reckon that young feller'll get his dose now," said old aaron craybill, demi-chorus to this tragedy, following with his bleared eyes the tall and well-groomed figure, frock-coated, top-hatted, which now was passing toward the temple of justice. "i wouldn't like to have no man like the jedge after me if i'd done what that boy done. he's a-going to get _hung_, that's what's going to happen to him. everybody knows slattery ain't big enough for this case. with a 'nited states senator a-prosecutin' it, though, and ten reporters from the cities--well, i guess spring valley'll be heard from some!" "i wonder when the funer'l's goin' to be," said his neighbor, silas kneebone. "of course rawlins is goin' to preach the sermon. he's good on funer'ls. seems like he's e'en--a'most as comfortin' at a funer'l as ary minister you could get in this town--and there's quite some ministers here, too." they hurried on away now presently even as judge henderson disappeared in the courthouse door. a strain of music had come to their ears, the sound of reeds and brasses. "thar's the band now!" exclaimed aaron craybill. "knight templar, too! they're goin' over to the hall to practice for the funer'l. come on ahead! hurry, silas!" down the street, audible also through the open windows of judge henderson's office, came the music. jerome westbrook had hastened from his duties on the coroner's jury only to assume his labors as leader of the spring valley silver cornet band; and as it was the duty of that band to head the procession of the knights templar in the funeral march of joel tarbush, himself a brother of the order, it seemed that a certain rehearsal in the infrequent effort of playing under march was needful on this sabbath day. slow-paced, with swords reversed and even step, with eyes looking neither to the right nor to the left, following the music of the wailing horns, the muffled tapping of the drums, it came now into the civic center of the town, this solemn procession. at its head walked saunders, master in the order, his opportunity now at hand; and behind him, in full regalia, came many others, all the leading citizens of this community, the pillars of the church, the props of the business structure of this village, the leaders and formers of its customs and its social order; all these anxious that the appearance of the secret order in public should be in all ways above reproach, even at cost of this quasi-public rehearsal. joel tarbush dead was receiving more tribute than ever had joel tarbush living. in accordance with ritual or custom, after the actual march to the tomb, the musicians must render that selection which has spoken for so many hearts bowed down in weight of woe; but jerome westbrook knew that his men needed practice on pleyel's hymn; so they gave it now tentatively, in advance, as they passed through the public square on the way to the hall. to the strained senses of aurora lane, still sitting with anne in the office where they had lingered, the wailing of the music seemed a thing unbearable. she caught her hands to her ears. "oh, god!" she whispered. "oh, god! if only they would not." the white, sad-faced young woman at her side took her trembling hand in her own. "it will pass," said she. "everything passes. you have been brave all these years. i ought to be brave too! even now--after what you've told me." "and i never knew you," said aurora lane after a time. "not many women have ever said much to me." "nor did i know you," rejoined anne oglesby. "you were a stranger to me when i saw you now, right here--don's mother! we were so excited, don and i, that i never identified you two, although--yes--i knew--something about--about----what shall i call you--you see, maybe i'll be your daughter yet." "some call me--mrs. lane. some--miss lane. you can't call me 'mother.' for most part i am the village milliner, my dear--nothing more than that. i'm nobody. but generally, i'm 'aurora lane.' ... now you know it all. i'm so sorry for you, my dear girl. you're fine--you're splendid. you're a good girl; and you're so very beautiful. if only you belonged with--with him--with me. it's too bad for you." anne oglesby, the more composed of the two, impulsively stroked back the thick ruff of auburn hair from aurora's face. "you mustn't bother about me," she said. "but i must bother about you! you must give him up. my dear, my dear, it can't be! i'm just learning now how hard that would be for him because it's so hard for me." "he kissed me," said anne oglesby simply. "after that it was too late." "why, what do you mean, my dear?" "he didn't have to do anything more after that," said anne oglesby slowly. "he had not had time to say anything before that." "he should not have kissed you," said aurora lane. "but that was his farewell to you." "it was not farewell!" said anne oglesby. "it was our beginning! i will _not_ give him up. if he had not kissed me--just when he did--just as he did--i would not have known! i'm glad!" aurora lane looked at her searchingly, slowly. "poor girl!" said she. "dear girl! he could not help loving you--i cannot help it myself. you are the only woman in the world, i think, for him." "i am not good enough," said anne oglesby stoutly. but then suddenly she cast both her strong young arms about the neck of aurora lane and dropped her head upon aurora's shoulder. "oh, yes i am!" she said; "oh, yes i _am_! i know i must have been meant for him, or else--else--" but she did not as yet reveal the secret of the sphinx. they both fell silent. "ah, sacrifice!" said aurora, wearily, after a time. "sacrifice always for the woman. we are all so bent on that." "there's much more than that," said anne oglesby, sagely. "besides, sacrifice itself is not an odious thing. you sacrificed much of your life, your happiness, your freedom. are you sorry for that now, or proud?" "dear girl!" murmured aurora lane, patting her on the shoulder. "ah, you sweet girl! if you could only just remain always this young and wise--and ignorant!" but anne oglesby seemed not to hear her. she was looking out of the window musingly now, her yellow-gloved hands supported on her tight-rolled umbrella, her hat making a half-shadow for her dark hair and her clear, definite features. now the red sun ball, having well completed its circuit over the parched and breathless town, was sinking to yet another lurid sunset. there lay over all a blanket of that humid heat which so often arrests activity in communities such as this, situated in the interior, where few cooling breezes come. the dry, dust-covered leaves of the maples hung unmoved. here and there, still hitched to the iron piping which served as a rail on all sides of the courthouse fence, stood the teams of farmers still tarrying, unwilling to face the hot ride home from town, even though the duty of church attendance was long since past. a murder and a funeral--a knights templar funeral--spring valley had never known the like! and there was going to be a trial--a murder trial. court would sit tomorrow. what village could ask more than was the portion of spring valley in these few hurrying days? and it was her boy, 'rory lane's; and she'd fooled everybody--but now----! spring valley licked its chops as it said "but now----" the two women in judge henderson's office sat still in the sultry heat, looking out of the window over the sultry, sordid, solemn little town; how long they did not know; until now there came again across the heat-hazy spaces of the maples, over the hot tops of the two-storied brick buildings, the sound of the wailing music--the same music which may come from the noblest organs of the world, the same music which may have pealed on fields of battle after heroes have fallen, speaking, as music may, of a soul passed, of a life ended, so soon to be forgot. for a time let the wailing of the horns, the tapping even of these unskilled drums, record the duty of this man's fellows to give him at least a moment's full remembrance. in this hot lifeless air of the somber sabbath afternoon the burden of sorrow, the weight of solemnity, seemed yet heavier and more oppressive. if a soldier dies the music plays some lilting air which speaks forgetfulness on the march home; but now, for the second time came this reiterated mournful wailing for a passing soul. the band had learned its lesson by now. the dirge for the dead arose in a volume well regulated and sustained as the men marched from the hall at last for the final trial on the street. to the tapping rhythm of the anthem of the dead, sometimes such a community as this does take thought--these uniforms are justified, these white plumes, these reversed swords are justified; for an humble man who has passed is dignified before his fellow men; and he has had his tribute. sometimes at least men thus stand shoulder to shoulder, heads bared, and forget envy, backbiting, little jealousies, forget cynicism and ridicule. the diapason of the drums surely had its hearing. it sank deep to the soul of aurora lane, striking some chord long left unresponsive. "anne!" said she, her hand lying in that of the wet-eyed girl at her side, "it's over--for him." the girl nodded. but after all, anne was young. she raised her head in the arrogance of youth, even as there passed more and more remotely the mournful cadence of the drums. "but he was old!" she said, defensively. all of youth and hope was in her protest. aurora turned upon her her own large eyes, dark-ringed today. her mouth, long drawn down in resolution, was wondrous sweet now as it trembled a little in its once ripe red fulness. it became the mouth of a young woman--not made for sorrow. "you still can hope, then?" she smiled. and anne nodded, bravely. so, seeing replica of her own soul, aurora lane could do no more nor less than to fold her in her own arms, the two understanding perfectly a thousand unsaid things. "but come!" said anne oglesby at last. "we must make plans. there's a lot to be done yet, and we must start." "i have no money," said aurora lane. "i don't know what to do." "money isn't everything," said anne oglesby, with the assurance of those who have all the money that they need. "i suppose i have plenty of money if my guardian will let me have it." "even if your guardian allowed it," said aurora lane proudly, "don would not. he would not let you help him, nor would i, though we are paupers--worse than that. did you know that, anne?" "i am finding out these things one by one," was the girl's reply. "but they have come after my decision." she spoke with her own quaint primness and certainty of her mind. "there's just one man could help us," said aurora lane, hesitating, and coloring a trifle. "i mean mr. brooks, horace brooks. he's a good lawyer. some say he is the equal of judge henderson--i don't know. you heard what judge henderson said of him. it's fear of horace brooks, as much as his own conscience, that's influencing judge henderson." "and why couldn't we go to horace brooks then?" demanded anne oglesby. "what is the objection--why can't you go to him?" "i'd rather not tell you," said aurora lane, and in spite of herself felt the color rise yet more to her face. anne oglesby sat looking at her for some time in silence. "there are complications sometimes, are there not?" said she. so silence fell between them. the drums had passed by now. the sun had almost sunk to the edge of the last row of dust-crowned maples. the farmers here and there below were unhitching the sunburned horses at the courthouse rail. "i see," said anne at length. "you love him--or did--don's father. or do you still pity him!" "who are you?" said aurora lane, looking at her steadfastly. "you, so young! you talk of pity. where have you learned so much--so soon? when you grow older, perhaps you may find it hard _not_ to forgive. everything's so little after all, and it's all so soon over." unsmilingly anne oglesby held her peace. "why don't you want to ask mr. brooks to act as our attorney?" she asked. "and who is he--i don't know him, you see." aurora did not answer the first part of her question. "i'll tell you where mr. brooks' office is," said she--"you see that little stair just across the courthouse yard? sometimes he spends sunday afternoon in his office. it's--well--it's hard for me to go over there and ask him." "has he--has he--ever been much to you?" asked anne oglesby, directly. "in a way, yes," said aurora lane, quite truthfully, but flushing red. "outside of my own son, he is the only man that's ever raised voice or hand in my defense here in this town. beyond that--don't ask me." anne oglesby did not ask her beyond that. but when she spoke, there was decision in her tones. "it is no doubt your duty to go to mr. brooks at once. will he too refuse us?" aurora lane's face remained flushed in spite of herself. "i don't think he will refuse," said she. "but only don's danger would ever induce me to ask him for any help. i'll ask him--for don and you." twilight fell, and they still sat silent. there came at last the footfalls on the office stairs, and the two arose in the dim light to face the door. judge henderson entered slowly, hesitatingly. he half started as, looking within the unlightened room, he saw standing silhouetted against the window front the tall, trimly-clad figure of his ward, and at her side, equally tall, the dim, vague outline of aurora, clad in black. the two stood hand in hand, and for the time made no speech. "i must go," said aurora lane, at length. anne would have passed out with her, but her guardian raised a hand. "i must ask you where you are going?" said he. "not with me," said aurora, quickly. "no, no, you must not." and so, quickly hurrying down the stair, she herself turned into the open street. "anne," said judge henderson, "i am deeply distressed. this all is terrible--it's an awful thing. did you hear that funeral march? god! an awful thing, right when i am in this terrible dilemma. i've just been on the long distance 'phone trying to get slattery--i can't find either him or reeves; and i've got to act before court actually opens." "what do you mean by a dilemma?" she asked coldly. "does any dilemma last long with you, uncle, when there is any question of your own self-interest?" his face flushed under the cool insolence of her tone. "it's a fine courtesy you have learned in your schooling!" "have you heard all her history now?" he asked after an icy pause. "not all of it, no. enough to admire her, yes. enough to understand how this town feels toward her, yes. why don't you all burn her as a witch in the public square?" "you have a bitter tongue, anne," said he. "you are not like your sainted mother." "a while ago you said i was! but my sainted mother, whom i never knew, never found herself in a situation such as this," rejoined anne oglesby. "at least, while my father lived, she had a man to fend for her. i have none. we are women only in this case." "so it was your plan to marry a nameless man? you've sworn he always shall be nameless." the man's face showed a curious mixture of eagerness and anxiety. he wished to argue, to expound, but dared not face this young girl with the icy smile. "yes, i've sworn silence. it is a great and grave responsibility," said she. "i'm sadder for that, that's true. but there are many things in the world besides just being happy, don't you think? you see, i've no dilemma at all!" judge henderson passed a hand over his forehead. he had fought hard cases at the bar, but never had he fought a case like this. "anne," said he presently, "i'm very weary. i've had a hard day. i want you to go on up to the house now--the servants will make you comfortable until i come. just now i was afraid you were going on over with aurora lane to her house." "not yet, uncle," said she. "perhaps at some later time, if you cast me out." he only groaned at this thrust. she passed, a cool picture of youth, self-possessed and calm. he heard her foot tapping fainter as it descended the stair, listened to hear if she might come back again. but anne went on down the street steadily, looking straight ahead of her. already, it seemed to her, she had grown old. to those who saw her she seemed a beautiful young woman. "that's don lane's girl," said one ancient to another, back of his hand. "lives over at columbus. he kissed her right there on the depot platform, this very morning. huh!" "i don't blame him," rejoined the other, with a coarse laugh. "but he ain't apt to get many more chances now. i wonder how he fooled her about himself--and her the judge's ward, or something." "nerve?" said his friend. "he's got nerve enough to a-done anything. but i guess they got him dead to rights this time." "yeh. the _town's_ got him dead to rights. no matter what the law----" he stopped, his head up, as though sniffing at something in the air. "gawd!" said he. "wasn't that music a awful thing! i can feel it in my bones right now. it makes me feel----" "it makes a feller feel like doing something more'n being just sad! it makes a feller feel like--well----" "like _startin'_ something!" the other nodded, grimly, his mouth caved in at the corners, tight shut now. chapter xv the angels and miss julia anne scarcely had left the office when judge henderson, stepping into the inner room, pulled open a certain door of a cabinet beneath the washhand-stand. he drew forth a half-filled bottle of whisky, shook it once meditatively, and poured himself an adequate drink, refreshing himself with water at the tap. he stood for a moment, the half-emptied glass in his hand, looking at his features in the little glass which hung above the cabinet. not an unpleasant face it seemed to him; for so slowly had the lines come in his features, so slowly the gray in his hair, that almost he was persuaded they were not there at all. delayed by the mirror to the extent of having consumed but half of his refreshing draft, yet purposing further imbibition, judge henderson paused at the sound of some person ascending the outer stair. it was a very halting and uncertain step that came this time, one which seemed to double on each lift of the stair, with an accentuating tap-tap, as of a stick used in aid. but after a time he sensed its pause at his door. there was a rap, a faint little rap, although the door itself was ajar. judge henderson discreetly returned to the cabinet his half-finished glass of whisky and water, and stepped into the other room. it was miss julia delafield whom he met. she was standing, her hand on the knob of the door, as if seeking support, or rather as though ready for flight. her eyes were especially large and luminous now, as always they were when any supreme emotion governed her. her cheeks were flushed in that fashion which she never yet had learned to control. her smooth brown hair was held tightly back under her cool summer hat, and the hands resting on her smooth-topped cane were well gloved. not ill-looking she was as she stood, stooped a trifle, bent over a bit. she was half a-tremble now with the excitement that she felt. to any chance observer, even at this hour of this sabbath day, it must have seemed that here was only a client come with purpose of consultation with an attorney. to the angels above who looked down on such matters as this, it must have seemed a pathetic scene, this in which miss julia figured now. to any human being knowing all the facts it must have been apparent that this call upon judge henderson was miss julia delafield's great adventure. it _was_ her great adventure--the greatest ever known in all her life; and she had dared it now only because of two of the strongest emotions known to a woman's soul. these are two. they both come under a common name. that name is love. it was love had brought miss julia hither. love in the first place for dieudonné lane--or was it, really, in the first place, love for him? for we, who know as much as aurora lane knew of miss julia's secret--who once saw her gazing adoringly at a certain framed portrait when she fancied herself alone--would have known that there was more than one mansion in the heart of the little lame librarian. helpless, resigned--but yet a woman--miss julia loved in the first place as every woman with any touch of normality does love in spite of all. she had known all these years that her love was hopeless, that it was wrong, that it was a sin--she classed it as her sin. and her sin being her own, she hugged it to her bosom and wept over it these twenty years--became repentant over it--became defiant for it; prayed over it and clung to it--in short, comported herself as any woman would. and now miss julia, being what she was, stood flushed, her tiding pulses rising to her eyes, staining her fair skin deep to her very neck, as she faced her great adventure--as she stood looking into the face she had framed on her wall, framed on her desk, framed in her heart as well, in silver and gold and all the brilliants and the gems of a woman's soul. but she was here by reason of a twofold love. always in her heart, since she could remember, there had been the great secondary longing for something small to love, to hold in her arms--the desire for a child of her own--the one thing which, as miss julia knew, might never be for her. indeed, this great craving had always remained unformulated, unidentified, until that time, years and years ago, when she first saw the baby of aurora lane lifting up its hands to her. so she had become one-half a mother, at the least. he was half her boy, at least, he who now lay in prison. a woman is a coward as to revealing her love for her chosen mate--she will conceal that, deny that, to the death. but for the child her love is different--then she becomes bold--she will defy all the world--will force herself even into situations otherwise unthinkable. except for her love for don lane, the fatherless, miss julia would never have undertaken to find a father for him. but that child had a father! each must have. ah! how must the angels have wept over that piteous spectacle of miss julia in her own room, looking smilingly at the face she saw pictured here in her own hand--the face of one whom she held to be a great man, a noble man, a man good, just, wise, one with love and kindness in his heart as well as brawn and brains in his physical self. yes, there was a father.... and he was perfect, heroic, for her; her love being thus much blessed by that divine blindness love works within us all. now, the face which miss julia saw in her boudoir, the face which she saw framed upon the wall of her library room, was the same which she saw now close at hand! she started, flushed, trembled, finding difference between a picture and a man. judge henderson was urbane, as always with a woman. he led her to a seat, taking pains to turn on another clip of the electric light, which miss julia suddenly wished he had not done, since now she was most sensible of her uncontrollable blushes. yes, it was a great adventure! she had never before been alone with him--not in all her life. she had never been this close to him before. it was somewhat cruel now; but the angels have their ways of being cruel with us at times. "miss julia," he began with an extra unctuousness in his tones, "miss julia, my dear girl, i surely am delighted to see you here. you have never before been here, i am persuaded--this is the first time in all our long and pleasant acquaintance. if ever in the past i have been able to be of service to you----" in any conversation judge henderson was sure to bring the talk around to himself, to his own deeds, his own ambitions. his was an egotism so extreme as to be almost beyond accountability--he was a moron not in mentality but in sense of proportion. he could not have put two square blocks together if one of these blocks had to do with the interest of another but himself. there are such men, and at times they go far. miss julia flushed again prettily, but she was too much the lady to giggle or squirm or do any of those unlovable things by which the hopeless female makes herself more hopeless. she was used to hearing herself addressed as "miss julia" by all the world; but it seemed none the less especially sweet to hear the words in these rich, full, manly tones. (in her diary she wrote, "he addressed me in rich, full, manly tones.") "yes, i came as soon as my duties allowed me to get away today, judge. it was a busy day for me, although it is the sabbath. i was classifying some of the books. thanks to your generosity, we have just received a good shipment. "but you see, the town is all wrapped up in all these other things that have happened--that's why i came, judge henderson." "i presume you have reference to that unfortunate young man who now lies in prison? in what capacity then can i serve you, miss julia?" his tone now was icy and reserved. "i came to you, judge henderson, because i knew i would find in you a champion for justice. why, all the town has come to depend on you for almost _everything_! i suppose that is why i came--it seemed the natural thing to do." judge henderson, regretting his half-finished glass, now impossible, coughed behind his hand. "i am afraid, miss julia," said he, "that you don't quite know who he is, that boy." "ah, do i not! why, he is _my_ boy, my _own_ boy!" "i beg pardon, but what do you mean, miss julia?" "i say he's my boy! what i say about that is privileged--it's professional, judge henderson. no one else has heard me say what i am telling you now. but he _is_ my boy--my love has gone into him, the same as if i were his mother." he only stared as she rushed on. "i know his mother--we have been friends here since we were girls, real friends. i'm the only friend she's got in this town--and the only fair and kind thing this town has ever done has been to allow me to be the friend of aurora lane. i suppose that's because i am only the little lame librarian! i don't count. she doesn't count. but--well, between us two--we've had a boy!" he stared, pale, as she went on: "between us two, we've brought him up. we've educated him. between us two, we have saved our money--it wasn't much--and we've managed to give him something of an education, something of a life more than he could have gotten in this town. we have put him through college--we have given him a profession--we were going to give him a start. "i say 'we,' and i mean that. but, it isn't the money of mine that went into him--it's my _love_--it's the _love_ i felt for him! why, judge, i've seen him grow up. i've held him in my two hands, this way, when he was so little ... oh, very little.... so you see, he's my boy, too! "and so," she added inconsequently, as he made no answer, "i came to you." (what the angels understood in miss julia's unspoken words then they did not make plain to the ears of the man who heard them.) judge henderson sat astounded, looking at her steadily, unable to grasp all the emotion which evidently she felt, unable wholly to understand an act of clean unselfishness on the part of any human being. "you see," said miss julia tremblingly, after a time--"his father--i never knew his father. she'd never tell me--i never asked but once. but you see, i only _fancied_ that he had a father. i fancied i was his mother. i fancied----" but now miss julia's voice failed her, and her blushes alone spoke. "i see," said judge henderson, not unkindly, and breathing more freely, "you fancied that you held an undivided interest in this child, this young man." she did not see his face very plainly, did not catch his hesitation as he engaged on this touchy theme. miss julia nodded rapidly, swallowing hard. her face was very beautiful indeed now. (the angels must have smiled with tears in their eyes as they looked down upon her now and saw how pathetically beautiful she was!) "and that interest is still undivided?" "yes, we've not seen each other very much, aurora and i, today, because things have been traveling so fast, but we are--we are partners in this trouble, as in everything else. we've got to have a lawyer, of course. there's not much money left between us--even my next month's salary is pledged. it cost more than we thought to get him through the graduation. there were clothes, you know--many things." and now she flushed again vividly. she was thinking of don's little clothes, which once long ago she had helped to sew; and the angels knew this, gravely. "he's a _splendid_ young man, our boy!" she broke out again at length. "can't you see that? good in his classes--and an athlete--a splendid one. he's such a gentleman in all his ways, judge henderson, a son worthy of a father, of some good father, if only he had one! his father died, you know, when don was just a baby." she was not looking at him now, not daring, as she went on. "but you see, we are in trouble about him. that may come to anyone. why, even you yourself, judge henderson, successful as you are--some time even you may know such a thing as trouble. it is the common human lot. and i have been told enough----" "if i were in trouble," said judge henderson gallantly, and with a push of a full ounce of monongahela back of his words, "i would go to just some such woman as you for help. but women don't seem to see any of the intervening obstacles that exist, do they, miss julia?" "if we did, the world would stop," said miss julia, simply. and spoke a great truth. "none the less there are obstacles," said he, after a time. "i fear there are insuperable ones, my dear." ("he called me 'my dear!'" wrote miss julia in her diary.) "why, not at all! i can't believe that, judge. we'll manage it all in some way, aurora and i. and, naturally we come to you as our champion--who should help us if not you yourself? do i say too much, judge henderson?" she inquired timidly. "no, not too much," said he with much modesty, "not too much, i trust. i hope i have always had, at every stage of my own career, the confidence of all my friends in this community." there was a little pause. "but also, miss julia," he continued, raising a hand, "wait a minute--wait a minute. in order to deserve the confidence of all my friends i have always been forced to adhere to that course which to me and my own conscience seemed just and right. i will not undertake to disguise the truth, miss julia, i am already retained for the prosecution of this case. i must not listen to you coming to ask me to act for the defense. that at least is the present status of affairs. i shall be guided all along by my sense of right and duty. at present i cannot take the case for the defense." she was feeling at the head of her stick, stumblingly, half rising. suddenly it seemed to her that the walls were closing in upon her, that she must get away, get out into the open. "that's cruel!" she exclaimed. "at times it is necessary for us to be cruel," said judge henderson, virtuously. "if i am cruel, i regret with all my heart that it must be cruelty to one whom so long i have held in such esteem as i do you. we have long known your life, how exquisitely ordered it has been. i have never known before, of course, how much it was wrapped up with this young man's life. i am astonished at what i have learned. it is only my own high standard of honor, my dear--that same standard to which i have unflinchingly adhered at whatever cost it might entail upon me--which enables me to refuse any request that you might make me. now i am pained and grieved, i am indeed." a tear stood in the corner of judge henderson's eyes. it was an argument which he always had at hand if need were--an argument which had won him perhaps more than one case before a jury. and now he felt himself, as always, the central figure, appealing to a jury, extenuating, explaining, expounding. moreover, he felt himself misjudged, an injured man. he did not care at the time to divulge any of the plan he but now had confided to aurora and anne. "i have hurt you!" said miss julia, impulsively. "oh, i would never mean to do that." she held out a hand swiftly, in part forgetful of her errand. he took her hand in both his own--small and white it was, and veined somewhat, ink-stained as to some of the fingers--a hand which rested trembling in his own. (now, what the angels saw is not for mortals to inquire! "he took my hand in both his own!" wrote miss julia in her diary.) judge henderson gallantly clasped the hand and drew it a trifle closer to his bosom. "you believe me, do you not, my dear?" said he. "it grieves me to give you any pain. as for me, it does not matter." he dashed the tear from his eye. but now miss julia's courage failed her. her double sacrifice for the child and the child's unknown and uncreated father had failed! she limped toward the door. her great adventure was ended. but, at least, she had been alone in the presence of the great man whom she had loved these many years. and she had found him in all ways worthy! he was still a hero in her eyes, a great man, a noble man--yes, she was sure of that. how must the angels have sighed as miss julia stumbled down the stair with this thing in her heart! for, in all her heart, she knew that, had she been young as aurora lane once was young, and had such a man as this asked of her anything--anything--she would have given! she would have yielded gladly all she had to yield--she would have given her life into his keeping.... for of such is the kingdom of love, if not the kingdom of heaven. and as to that last let the angels say, who watched poor miss julia as she stumbled down the stair. chapter xvi horace brooks, attorney at law as for aurora lane, at about the time miss julia was leaving judge henderson's office, she herself was in the office of another lawyer upon the opposite side of the square--the man henderson hated and feared more than any other human being. horace brooks, after his usual fashion, was spending his sunday afternoon in his legal chambers. he lived as a bachelor, the sole boarder of a family far out toward the edge of town--a family that had no social standing, but that never became accustomed to the ways of mr. brooks, who came and went, ate, slept, and acted, as one largely in a trance, so occupied was he with thoughts of his business affairs. never was a soul less concerned with conventions or formalities than he; nor one more absorbed, more concentrated of purpose in large things. he was sitting now, as often he might have been seen to sit, tilted back in his chair, with his feet on his table, where rested in extreme disorder many volumes of the law, some opened, face-down, others piled in untidy masses here and there. mr. brooks had no clerk and no partner. when he cited an authority in his library he left the book where last it was used, and searched for it pellmell if later need arose. this same system applied to every other article of use in the entire office--it was all chance medley, and the pursuit of the desired article was short or long in accordance with the luck of the searcher. around him on the floor lay countless burned matches, a pipe or two which scattered tobacco. the floor itself was covered layers deep with the ruins of two sunday papers--at which form of journalism horace brooks openly scoffed, but none the less ruthlessly devoured after his own fashion each sabbath afternoon. he sat with his bearded chin sunk in his shirt bosom, his mild blue eye seeing nothing at all, his hands idle in his lap. he was concluding his sabbath as usually he did, in the midst of the scenes surrounding his daily toil throughout the week. he started at the sound of aurora lane's knock on the door. "come in!" he called. he supposed it was some young lawyer from one of the offices down the hall, where struggling students, or clerks from the abstract offices, sometimes brought knotty problems for him to solve. these folk still lived in the rear of their offices--as indeed horace brooks but recently had done himself. a disorderly couch still might have been found in the room beyond, fragments of soap, a soiled towel or so, a broken comb, a sidelong mirror--traces of his own humble and arduous beginnings in the law. but he turned half about now, and dropped his feet to the floor as he heard the rustle of a gown. he sat half leaning forward as aurora lane entered. he had small training in the social usages--he did not always rise when a woman entered the room, unless some special reason for that act existed. so he sat for just a time, and looked at her, the fact of her presence seeming slowly to filter into his brain. then quickly he stood and went forward to her, his rare smile illuminating his homely features. "come in," said he. "will you be seated? why have you come here?" he was simple and direct of habit. aurora lane looked at him not only with the eyes of a client, but with the eyes of a woman. she saw plainly the quick look of eagerness, the swift hopefulness which came into his eyes. but she must forestall all that. "mr. brooks," said she, "i've come to you for help--i need your professional services." he sat looking at her gravely for some time, the light in his face slowly fading away. "help?" said he. "as how?" he was of the plain people, and at times lapsed into the colloquial inelegancies of his early life. but he needed little divination now to know that aurora lane came to him for no personal reasons that offered him any hope. "it's about my boy," said aurora. "you know--don." he nodded slowly. "yes, i know--the coroner's jury has held him over." "but he's in jail." "yes, they had that right--to hold him for the investigation of the grand jury. and this is a grand jury matter, as you must know. court opens tomorrow. the grand jury sits tomorrow morning. at least the preliminaries won't take long. but the outlook is bad, aurora--they mean to get him if they can." aurora lane for a third time that day produced from her shabby pocket book the little worn bill which represented her sole worldly fortune. a flush rose to her temples now as she held it hesitatingly between her fingers. he saw it very plainly, and caught something of her meaning in the pause. a slow red came also into his own face. "you'd better keep that for the present," said he slowly after a time. he pushed her fingers back with the bill. "i know this is professional, but i can't take money from you now--not that money--because i know very well you've got none you can afford to spend. aurora, there's no use trying to have secrets from me--we know each other too well." "but what right do you leave me then to come to you?" "i don't know that you have any right to come to me at all," said he slowly. "i've my own right to decline to deal with you at all in business matters. and you come here on business." aurora sank back into her chair. "then what could i do?" she said faintly. "have you tried henderson?" "yes," she said, faintly, and with much reluctance, "i did." "why, if you wanted me?" "i can't tell you that. but i did. he refused to have anything to do with the defense for my boy." "very naturally--very naturally. didn't you know he would before you went to ask him? couldn't you guess that?--couldn't you have figured out that much for your own self? didn't you know that man? he's not with the under dog." "it seems not," said aurora lane, wearily. "so i came to you." "even after last night?" "yes, after last night. at first it was hard to think of it." "aurora," said he, "i reckon i'm not a very practical sort of man. if i were--if i were a man like judge henderson, say, i'd clamp on the screws right now. i'd try to get you to alter what you said to me last night." "it wouldn't be like you. you've never yet--in all our lives--done anything like that." "no? i'm second choice--that's my fate, is it--that's as high as i get? yes, i reckon that's about a fair estimate of me--i'm a typical second choice man. i suppose i'll have to accept that fact." and now he laughed uproariously, though none too happily. "well, aurora," said he after a time, "you have broken in here, anyway--just as i broke down your gate last night in my own clumsiness. suppose we call it quits. let's not figure too close on the moving consideration. there's nothing you can give horace brooks, attorney at law, in the way of pay. and you need horace brooks--_only_ as attorney at law. what can i do for you?' "i don't know, but all that can be done now for him you can do. i've nowhere else to go. it wasn't easy for me to come here, but i'd make any sacrifice for my boy." "sacrifices are at a discount in a lawyer's office. i don't ask you to reconsider your decision, as to me--as to me as your husband. but speaking of sacrifices, i only point out to you that so far as i'm concerned as a lawyer in this town, i might as well be your husband or your lover as your lawyer of record in this case! since the trial yesterday, and my walk home with you last night, there'll be plenty who'll think so anyway. i may be held as a man worse than i ever was--and neither of us gain by that." "that may be so," said she, bending her face forward in her hands. "god! what a trial, what a risk, what a peril i am to myself and everyone i meet! i've brought loss, suspicion, wrong on you--you who're noble! and after twenty years----" "yes, aurora. twenty years outlaws a claim in the law--for men--but not for women. now, i take on those twenty years of yours when i take on this case. i'm clear about that. i can see this thing straight enough. this town will go into two camps. ours is the hopeless one, as things stand now. we are the under dog. if i took this case--maybe even if i won it--i'd be hated by the men and snubbed by the women of this town. now, i see all that clearly. and speaking of pay----" "oh, if you would," she exclaimed, leaning toward him, her hands extended, "i'd do anything you asked me. do you understand that--_anything_!" she paused. in the silence the little clock on the mantel ticked so loud it seemed almost to burst the walls. he sat for a long time motionless, and she went on, leaning yet more toward him. "i've thought it all over again," she said desperately. "i'd--i'd begin it again--i'd do anything--i'd do _anything_ you asked me----why, i've nothing--nothing--oh, so little to give! but--as to what you said last night--i've thought of that. i'm ready--what is it that you wish?" he looked at her dumbly for a long time, and she thought it was in condemnation. for almost the first time she voiced in her life--continually on the defensive. "i don't understand it all," said she. "i've tried very hard since then. i was so young. i didn't know much at first--i didn't feel that it was all so wrong--i didn't know much of anything at all, don't you see?" now he raised his great hand, his lips trembling. "just wait a bit, my dear," said he. "we'll take what you've said as proof of your love for your own son. we'll let it stop right there, please. we'll forget what happened last night at your broken gate--we'll forget what's happened just now inside my broken gate. i told you if i ever married you i'd do it on such a basis that i could look you in the face, and you could me. that's the only way, aurora. there's not any other way. i reckon i'll always love you--but only on the square." "but what can we do--you refuse to help us--and the boy's innocent!" "wait, my dear," said he slowly. "i've not a woman's wit, so i can't leap on quite so fast as you do. a lawyer reads word by word. i'm still in the preliminaries, not even into the argument of this case yet." "but you have refused--you have said it meant ruin to you--i know--i mean that to everyone." "you've meant a great deal more than that to me, my dear," said horace brooks, "and no matter what you mean--no matter what my decision may do to my future--no matter what it may cost me in my larger ambitions, which i entertain, or once did, the same as any other man here in america--why, let it go." "but what are you going to do? i'm costing you everything, everything--and i can give you nothing, nothing--and i'm asking still of you everything, everything." "tut, tut! aurora," said horace brooks, "i'm going to take this case--for better or for worse! didn't i tell you i wanted to stand between you and trouble--any trouble? a man likes to do things for a woman--for the woman he loves." she sat for a long time, white, motionless, looking at him. "the pay----" she began stumblingly. "i'd rather not hear you say anything about that," he replied simply. "you did not say anything at all. this is the _office_ of horace brooks, attorney at law. as i understand it, i'm duly retained for the defense in the case of the state against dieudonné lane, charged with murder." the blood came pouring back into aurora lane's face as she straightened. "you are a good man," said she. "i always knew it. i----" he raised a hand once more. "these are business hours," said he, "and believe me, no time is left for anyone to do anything but work on this case." "he's innocent, of course. he couldn't have done this--who was it, do you think?" "oh, now, i don't _know_ who it was. it may have been don himself. all men are human. a lawyer has to look all the facts in any case square in the face." "but, my god! you can't think--you don't believe----" "please let me act as attorney. now, i'm to blame in a sort of way in this case. i started a good deal of this trouble. i gave your boy the advice which threw him in jail--when i told him to thrash any man who said a word against his mother--you. he's made a certain threat or two. he's been found in very compromising circumstances indeed. the case looks bad against him. yes, he needs a lawyer--but he's got one! we'll fight it through. you see," and he smiled again his wide and winning smile, "all my life, i've had a sort of leaning for the under dog. "now," said he, abruptly rising, "i'm in this case, and i'm going to take my chances. i've lost my chances on the senatorship of the united states. i've kept my promise to henderson and i've sent word to our central committee. i'm the under dog. but before all this is over, the people of spring valley are going to know there are two sides to this fight--and all these fights! "now, listen, aurora," he went on in his careless paternal fashion, as he walked, his great head drooped, his hands thrust into his pockets. "figure it over. last night we three walked home together--before them all. everybody saw us. everybody saw tarbush. it can be proved that don left us and went over, following after tarbush. it can be proved that he was seen running away from that place--at just the wrong time--in just the wrong way." "but it was someone else who killed him--it wasn't my boy----" "you can't convince a jury by assertions. if it was not this man, they will ask, who was it? who was the other man, and why do you think so? now, who _was_ that other man, aurora?" "i don't know." "neither do i. but we've got to find him. there's no trace of him. but as for don, the boy, it's a trail, a plain one, and it leads----" he threw out his hands widely, as though reluctant to name the truth. "but," he went on, "if he isn't guilty someone else is guilty. under this criminal act in all its phases there lies some cause, of course--there is some criminal, of course. there has been crime committed, a very beastly, brutal sort of crime, almost inhuman--and that was done by some man. if i could put my hand on that man, why then----" "it would mean life and happiness to me. it would mean satisfaction to you?" "more than that," he smiled. "it would mean the life of your boy--many years yet for you and him together--once i'd have said maybe it might mean six years in the united states senate for me. i don't know--i can't tell. the chances now are rather that even if i clear the boy, it means i'll have to close up this office and go somewhere else to hunt a law practice. but we'll take our chances." "you are a great man, horace brooks," said aurora lane; and there was a sort of reverence in her tone. "even after what has been between us, i can say that. oh, i so much like--i so much admire a man who is not afraid, and who doesn't parley and weigh and dicker with himself when it comes to any hard decision. i like a brave man, a good man. you'll understand." he raised a hand, a large hand, nervous, full-veined, gnarled, awkward, a hand never in all his life to be freed from toil's indelible imprint. "please don't," said he. "but how can i say what i want?" said she. "i've always wanted to pay all my debts--that's to make up for all my faults, don't you see? i must be scrupulous--because----" "yes," said he, "i see. i've seen that for more than twenty years, ever since i've known you. because that's true of you, and is true of so few women, so very few, is why i wished last night--that you were a widow! "now, that's about all. when you _wish_ that you could pay this debt--which isn't any debt so far--you've paid it, so far as i'm concerned. it is the _wish_ to pay your debts that amounts to moral principle--and to business success too--in this world. "and so," he laughed again his great resounding laugh, and thrust out his hand toward her, "i reckon you can call yourself something of a business success tonight after all. now go home, and see that you sleep." chapter xvii at church that sunday evening aurora lane sat alone in her dingy little home. the walls seemed to her close as those of any prison. she found about her nothing of comfort. for once the little white bedside, all her life her shrine, failed in its ministration. there rose in her heart a great vague hunger for gregarious worship--the sort which all these others had freely offered every week of all their lives--that same wish for gregarious worship on which are based all the churches, all the creeds, of all the world. as never in her life before aurora felt now that she could no longer fight alone, in solitude--she needed something--she needed the sight of other faces, the touch of other hearts; needed the assemblage, the crowd--needed, in short, the world _en masse_, as we all do. she had lived without association and without sympathy too long. now her starved nature at last rebelled. so, having prayed faithfully, aurora lane rose not wholly comforted; and therefore she resolved to break the habit of her life, as she had lived it more than twenty years in this little town. in all that time she had not been within the door of any church, but now she felt that she must go--must be at least in part like to all these others on this evening of the sabbath day. the main note of such a community as spring valley is that of a resigned acceptance of life. this means a drab middle course, of small heroics, which yet does not debar from a quiet sympathy and mutual understanding. this in turn essentially implies some manner of religious belief, for the most part of the passive, un-investigative sort. without doubt the church of this or that denomination--and in any such community there will be many--is the club and the court alike to those who maintain its beliefs--aye, and it is their hope and stay as well. aurora chose the largest church, where there was most apt to be the largest congregation. passing there, she had heard the organ roll in its moving appeal. it seemed to her that she must hear music or she must starve, must die. the drain on her nature now had been so great that, much as every impulse drew her to yonder other edifice, the one with iron bars where lay her own son, a prisoner, she could not go there, could not see him again, until she herself had had restoration of some of the forces of her own life. she wanted music--she wanted light--she wanted the presence, close, near to her, of other human beings. surely they must know--surely they too must some time have suffered, have grieved, have yearned. the slow life of the little town, which the excitement of this extraordinary sabbath had so largely diverted from its usual channels, now began to reassemble and to trickle toward the conventional meeting grounds. those who had been delinquent at the morning services were at least tonight devout. there is a sort of life of affairs, a sort of business life, of any church in any community. thus, there may be many meetings beside that of the sabbath day, in each church in any community. there must fall the practice of the choir, weekly, usually of wednesday, sometimes of saturday evenings as well, if the anthem prove especially difficult of mastery. as to the choir proper, there must of course be the soprano--not always elocutionist, as was the soprano in this church of spring valley--but always well-clad, most frequently with long and glossy curls of chestnut and the most modish hat of any in the church. most tenors are bank clerks or cashiers. it is the function of the tenor in any such choir to escort the soprano to her home. the contralto is for the most part married, beginning to show _embonpoint_. she is brunette, with wide and pleasant mouth; is able to make excellent currant jelly, of which she gives her neighbors generously. her attire is apt to be not quite so well-appointed as that of the soprano, which indeed should not be expected of the mother of three, the arrangement of those white starched collars in a part of each sunday's task. the basso may sometimes be a school teacher, yet some of the best have been owners of livery barns, no more; modest folk withal, and covetous of the back seat in the choir. to this essential personnel of the church choir there may be added others, supplements or understudies for this or that musical part, young men with large cameo pins in their cravats, young women with spectacles. all these who sing soprano or contralto, at least all who still are young, must be taken home after services--not only the regular services of the church, but those of the choir practice midway of the week or at the week's close. and thereto, one must count the weekly prayer meetings, mostly for the old, but for the young in part. it is, therefore, easy to be seen that the vestibule of any spring valley church of a wednesday evening, sometimes of a thursday evening, quite often a saturday evening, and always of a sunday evening, must hold a certain lay representation of the community. it is, or once was, one of the proper functions of the village church to act as social meeting ground. practically all of the respectable marriages in spring valley actually were contracted, at least as to the preliminary stages, under the eaves of this or that church. the vestibule was crowded this sunday evening, as was customary, when aurora lane, quite alone, turned in from the sidewalk and ascended the eight broad wooden steps up to the church door. passing thence to the inner door, she felt the silence which came upon the boys and young men who loitered there, waiting for the entrance or the exit of those of the opposite sex. she felt the stares which fell upon her--felt, rather than saw, the icy disapproval which greeted her even here, even among these. but she passed by, entered the house of worship, and sank into a seat very far back in the long, bare, ghastly, rectangular room. before or after the entry of aurora lane, there failed not in coming those who sit in judgment upon the lives of their fellows--the baker, the butcher, the school teacher, the hanger of paper, the maker of candlesticks as well. all these were here, parts of the life of this community. miss julia was not there, as aurora lane discovered. she wondered dully if it had not been her duty to go around to the library and ask for miss julia; but the longing for personal solitude had been as strong in her heart as the longing for silent human companionship, so she had come alone. in truth miss julia was recreant tonight. she was alone in her own room--alone with her diary--that is to say, face to face with the picture of the same man whom aurora lane had met that afternoon. in the slowly filling pews there reigned now silence, broken only by the shuffling footfalls of the arrivals, that uneasy, solemn silence which holds those seated and waiting for the services at church. a school teacher who was born in the east somewhere leaned her head forward on the back of the seat before her, and with a certain ostentation prayed, or seemed to pray. others would have done this very fetching thing as well, but lacked the courage, so sat coldly, stiffly, unhappily, bolt upright, awaiting the arrival of the minister. the tenor came after a time, soon following the soprano, models alike of social graces and correct attire. they passed modestly, seemingly unregardful of the glances bent upon them. the bass singer was more conscious of his ill-fitting clothes as he hurried up the aisle, his adam's apple agitated, betokening his lack of ease. the soprano by this time was shaking out her curls, fussing among the music sheets at the top of the organ, pushing back the stool, twirling its top about--all the while still quite highly unmindful of the gazes of the audience. the contralto came last, her brow furrowed with the thought that perhaps she had not left the cold meat on the table where her husband, the doctor, would find it when he came back from the country. came also in due and proper time the minister of church, the pillar of it all, bearing in his hand, rolled in its leather case, the sermon which he had written last thursday morning--and which perforce he had been obliged wholly to rewrite since saturday at noon! for, be sure, this sermon must take up the issues of the day--must stand for the weekly platform of the town's morality. the eyes of all now were bent upon the little roll of leather in the preacher's hand. they knew what must be there. in a way they moistened their lips. this was why the attendance was so large and prompt tonight. but aurora lane, unskilled in any of these things, the prey to so many conflicting emotions at this hour, a novice in the house of god, sat silent, her hands folded, well enough aware she was not welcomed by those who saw her there, yet craving of them, dumbly, anguished, all their tolerance in her time of need. now the organ rolled after its fashion. there were voices not too highly skilled, perhaps, yet after all productive of a certain melody. the music softened the ice of aurora lane's heart. she felt that after all she was a human being, as these others all about her. was not this anthem universal in its wording? did it not say "come unto me"? did it not say something about "all ye"?--something about "whosoever"? and aurora lane, all her life debarred from this manner of human classification, felt her heart tremble within her bosom as she heard these universal, all-embracing words. those about her, righteous, virtuous, heard them not at all, because they had been sung so oft before. the text of the evening matters little. everyone there, excepting aurora lane, knew that the real text was the red-handed young criminal lying in the prison. the preacher invoked the wrath of god upon him who had raised his hand against the life of one of the town's beloved. he read large lessons as to right living, educed all proper morals from these events, so startling, which had come upon this peaceful town. in short, he preached what manner of sermon he must have preached in this manner of church and this manner of town. at times his voice was low and tense, at times his tones grew thunderous. and every word he said he felt was true, or thought was true, or hoped to be the truth; because he himself had written it; and this was the lord's day; and these were the services wherein the lord is worshiped regularly. but the music of the anthem remained in aurora lane's soul, so that she was practically unconscious of all this. her mind was vague, dazed. she did not know her son had been tried and found guilty. the words clung in her heart; "all ye"; "whosoever." and presently they sang yet another hymn, and in it again were the words, "come unto me!" there was great emotional uplift in all spring valley this day. the minister felt the emotion, here upon the souls of his audience. he prayed for what he termed an awakening. but aurora was not awakened. on the contrary, for a time her strained senses seemed dull, relaxed. only she heard the music, only the divine words still lingered in her consciousness. it seemed but a moment to her before she saw all the others rising noisily, opening hymn books, for the final hymn. she herself therefore rose and stood silently, her hands folded before her, her eyes fixed forward. they sang a dismissal hymn. perhaps there were some who really praised god, from whom all blessings flow. the minister raised his hands in that benediction which sent them all away full of a sense of duty done, albeit a trifle guilty as to that moral awakening regarding which the minister righteously had upbraided them. all this was but the usual and regular experience of the congregation. to this woman, this outcast, the unconscious object of the wrath so lately uttered from the pulpit, it had been a great and gracious experience. yes, she said to herself, she had been one of these others! she was within sight and touch of other women. there were boys and girls, young human beings, close to her, all about her. and nothing had happened to her after all! her precious words, assimilated rather from the hymns than from the sermon, were uppermost in her consciousness as, absorbed, almost unseeing, she stepped out once more into the vestibule. "all ye ... _all_ ye...." many passed her; none addressed her; a few drew aside their gowns as she came near. all stared. a sort of commotion therefore existed in the back portion of the vestibule as she emerged. the eyes of many young men were upon her boldly, curiously, insultingly, perhaps--she did not know. it is a part of the formula of village life in such a community as spring valley, for the young men thus lingering in the vestibule to accost the maidens of their choice as they emerge from the body proper of the church building. the youth steps forward--preceding any rival if he may--removes his hat, at least in part, and having gained the maiden's eye, speaks the unvarying phrase, "may i see you home tonight?" whereupon the young lady, smiling if favorably disposed to him, is expected to take his arm in sight of all; and they thus, arm in arm, descend the eight wooden steps to the sidewalk, and so walk away undisturbed. thus there gradually ensues a general pairing off of all. the swain or the maid left alone is not rated of the social elect. this is the selecting place of the sexes, far more than the sacred parlor with its horsehair chairs and its album midway on the table of the marble top. but now, as the little assemblage in the vestibule dissipated, there came an added commotion, not at the rear, but at the front of the vestibule. someone was pushing on inside of the door--someone who apparently did not belong there. it was the half-witted son of ephraim adamson, john, commonly called johnnie, the idiot! why he had come hither, why he was allowed to come, none might say, nor why he came unattended by any of his kin as was the usual custom. but none molested him. a bold youth said "hello, johnnie," and johnnie respectfully took off his hat to him with an amiable grin. they would have mocked him had they dared, but in truth none knew what to do with him. when aurora lane had passed in part the gauntlet of the loitering youths, and was about to step down the stair into the street, she felt a heavy hand fall on her arm. then a peal of laughter rose back of her--laughter on the threshold of the church itself. for what the half-wit did was what he had seen these others do. sidling up to her, his hat off, he said, "may i see--may i see you home this--this evening?" this was accounted the greatest jest, the most unfailingly mirthful thing in the recountal, ever known in the annals of spring valley. aurora lane started back from him in sudden shocked loathing, swiftly resentful also of the mocking laughter that she heard from those who still stood within the sanctuary. sanctuary? was there such a place as sanctuary for her in all the world? was there any place where she might be safe, where she might be unmolested? "go on away!" she said sharply, and would have hurried down the stair. she looked this way and that. there was not a man to whom she might appeal as her champion--not one! she must trust herself. "go along!" said she. but actually she saw tears in the eyes of the half-witted giant now. "no, johnnie; but i'll walk with you with these others as far as the corner of the square." "all right," said he. "i'll do--i'll do that." a wide gap opened in the ranks of the slow procession on the sidewalk now as these two joined in. not too wide, however, for there were certain ones who must keep track of all details regarding this epochal event. "where is your father, johnnie?" asked aurora lane, quietly and distinctly, so that all might hear. "he--he--i don't--i don't know. i ain't--i ain't been home. i'm out!" said johnnie. "you've not been home? what do you mean?" "wasn't there--wasn't there a funer'l for somebody today?" he asked mysteriously. "i can whip any man in jackson county. my pa said so. we've--we've done it--we'd done it then if he--if he hadn't pitched on to me. he done that." a sudden terror caught aurora lane's soul as she realized that the addled mind of this half-wit was more than to a usual extent gone wrong. she feared him with every fiber in her body. she stepped aside quickly as he made a loutish thrust at her arm, as though to pinch her. "i'll pinch you!" said he. "you know why?" "no, don't! go away!" she exclaimed, and pushed out her hand. "'cause--'cause i like you!" said the half-wit. "that's why!" then for a time those who crowded up at the rear heard little, until he resumed. "oh, i know a lot more i could tell you some time. i ain't--i ain't been home at all. i'm just looking round. ain't no one can stop me. there was some sort of--of funer'l, wasn't there, in town today? me and my father, we can lick ary two men in jackson county." he would have made some sort of rude approach once more. but now even the tardy chivalry of these men of spring valley came back to them. two or three stepped in between him and aurora lane. "here, you," said the voice of one, "that'll do! quit it now." aurora lane did not have time to thank her rescuers. the painful situation was relieved suddenly. just as they were turning at the corner of the public square there hurried up a man, an oldish man, untidy even in his sunday garb, half running toward the group which now he saw approaching. "hello, pa," exclaimed the half-wit, and laughed long and loud. "i didn't come home," said he. "i'm--i'm out!" the sad face of ephraim adamson was seen by all, as he pushed in among them and took his son by the arm. they walked away briskly now together, johnnie looking back over his shoulder. but now, to the surprise of all--to her own surprise as well, so sudden was her resolve--aurora lane hurried after these two. "mr. adamson," said she, "wait, don't whip him--i'm not angry--i understand." adamson halted for just a moment. "he's been away all day," said he, his face showing no resentment of her presence. "i didn't know they let him out last night--he didn't come home. i began looking for him as soon as i knew he was out--i thought he might be hiding in the fields--he does sometimes. he always runs away whenever he gets a chance. i'm sorry if he's done wrong--has he been bad to you?" "i understand everything," said aurora lane. many heard her say that. "don't mind. tomorrow, will you both be in town?--i might talk to you." "no, ma'am," said adamson briefly. "he can't come any more. i may be here. what do you want of me--after what i've said--after what i've done to you? and here you come and bring him back to me." his own face showed whitish blue in the flicker of the great arc light. "ma'am," he went on again, "there's a lot about you--you're some woman after all. where have you been--at church?" "yes," said aurora lane, "i was at church." "i ain't been there in years," said eph adamson sadly. "neither have i," rejoined aurora lane, "twenty years, i think--perhaps more." he gazed at her now out of his old, bleared, sad eyes. "i wouldn't of been here now but for what's happened," said he. "already i was sad--and i was drunk before i was. and i was--well, i felt like i was a rebel, that was all, yesterday. that boy of yours looked so fine, i couldn't stand it. look at mine! i done wrong, ma'am. i said what i had no right to say. i'm sorry, clean through--with all my heart i'm sorry for what i done yesterday." she made no answer to him, and he went on. "it seems like some folks was sort of born under a cloud, don't it? i'm one of them, i reckon. all this has been my fault. i'm sorry as i can be. can't you forgive me, miss lane, can't you forgive me any?" "you didn't hear the anthem," said aurora lane, "because you were not in church. it said 'whosoever.' it said 'all ye.'" "in some ways," said eph adamson slowly--they had been for some time quite apart from the others, walking on slowly--"it seems like you and me was living our lives pretty much alike, don't it, miss lane? it's funny, ain't it--we hadn't either of us been to church--not in twenty years!" none the less, as of old, these others passed by upon the other side, and left unattended those whose wounds were grievous. at the corner of her street aurora lane paused. "good-by, mr. adamson," said she. "good night. i don't want to be unjust to anyone. i'm going to try not to blame you--i'd like to forgive all the world if i could. i'm in great trouble now." he broke out in a sullen rage. "forgive? do that if you can," said he. "i can't. maybe a woman can--but forgiving ain't in my line. well, i'd give anything i could in the world if i hadn't said what i did yesterday right there on the public square. all this has come out of that--this whole trouble. you're different from what i thought. you're a good woman. i take off my hat to you." "i take off my hat to you," mowed the idiot also, imitating what he saw and heard.... "may i see you home--may i see you home tonight? i'm--i'm out--i was out all last night. they can't pitch on us. whip any man in jackson county. good night--good night, ma'am. i'm sorry--i'm sorry, too." chapter xviii at the county jail neither judge henderson nor his ward attended church services this sunday evening, the former because of a certain physical reaction which disposed him to slumber, the latter because she had other plans of her own. the great white house, with its wide flanking grounds, where judge henderson had so long lived in somewhat solitary state, was now lighted up from top to bottom; but presently a light in an upper window vanished. anne oglesby tiptoed down the stair side by side with the housekeeper. she cast a glance of inquiry into the front parlor, where, prone upon a large couch, was judge henderson--rendering audible tribute to morpheus. "he's violating the town ordinance about the muffler cut-out," said anne smilingly to the housekeeper. "oh, don't wake him--i'll be back presently--tell him." she hurried through the yard and down the street toward the central part of the town. the streets about the square now were well-nigh deserted, since most folk were in the churches. her own destination was a square or two beyond the courthouse, where stood another brick building of public interest; in short, the county jail. it was the duty of the sheriff to care for the tenants of his jail, and he made his own home in a part of the brick building which served in that capacity--a small building with iron grates on the lower windows, arranged at about the height of a man's eyes as he would stand within on the cement floor of a cell, so that he might look out just above the greensward, his face visible to any who passed by. many a boy had thus gazed with horror on the unshaven face of some ruffian who begged him for tobacco, or some tramp who had trifled too long with the patience of the community, usually so generous with its alms. many a school child could show you the very place where the woman who killed her children was confined before they took her away--could point out the very window where she stood looking and weeping and wringing her hands--"just like this"--as any child would tell you. and some day perhaps children would point out this very window where now stood looking out, motionless--"not saying a word to nobody"--the "man who killed the city marshal." don lane was standing at his grated window and looking out when anne oglesby crossed the grass plot and came up the brick sidewalk, fenced in by chains supported on little iron posts, which led to the jail's iron-bound door. his heart gave a great leap. he saw her. she was coming to him--the one faithful, his beloved! not even miss julia--not even his mother--had come, but here was anne! but at the next instant he stepped back from the window, hoping that she would not gain admission. shame, deep and unspeakable, additional shame, twofold shame, compassed him as soon as he reflected. the bitterest of all was the fact that he must yield her up forever. he must tell her why. and now she had come--to see him in a cell! it was here that he must break his heart, and hers. sheriff cowles opened the door when anne oglesby rang the bell. he stood for a moment looking out into the twilight. "who is it?" he asked. then he recognized the girl whom he had brought down town from the railway station in his car that morning. anne oglesby was not a person easily to be forgotten. "you know who i am, mr. cowles," said she--"i am miss oglesby, judge henderson's ward. i'm--i am respectable." "yes," said cowles, "i know that, but why are you here?" "because i'd not be respectable if i were not here," she said quietly. "you probably know." "does the judge know you have come?" "no, he wouldn't have let me come if he had known. i want to see him--that young man, you know." her own color was high by this time. the sheriff hesitated. "well," said he, "i don't want to do anything that isn't right, anything that isn't fair. i reckon i know how you feel." "we're engaged to be married," said anne oglesby simply, and looked him directly in the face. "that gives me some rights, doesn't it?" "in one way, maybe, but no legal rights," replied the sheriff, who was much perplexed, but who could not escape the compelling fact of anne oglesby's presence, the compelling charm of anne oglesby herself. "he's not really committed as yet, of course, only bound over by the coroner's jury; but the grand jury meets tomorrow, and they'll indict him sure. you know that. i can't take any chances of his getting away. i have to be sure." "your wife may come with me," said anne oglesby. "it's my right to talk to him a little while, don't you think? i'm not going to try to get him out. he hasn't had anyone to help him--he hasn't had any legal counsel." "who'd he send for, anyway?" asked the sheriff. "he's a sort of a waif, isn't he--her boy? i suppose you've heard about him fighting here around town yesterday?" "i don't know why he fought, but i know that if he did he had cause. i hope he fought well." "they said it was about his mother," began sheriff cowles. "some word about her was passed----" "you needn't say any more," said anne oglesby. "he hasn't told me to send for any lawyer for him," said cowles. "it don't seem like he's thought of it. he's just sort of quiet--mighty still all the time. ha-hum!--i don't know what to say about your seeing him. why didn't you ask your uncle, judge henderson?" "don't call him my uncle," said anne oglesby. "he's only my guardian in law. i've just told you he wouldn't let me come. that's why i've got to hurry." "well," hesitated the sheriff, "i'll have to warn you not to talk about this case where i can hear it. i'll have to hear all you say." "would you like to do that?" the sheriff flushed. "no," said he, "not special; but you see my own duty is right clear. i can't play any favorites. if you was his lawyer, now, it might be different." "i am his lawyer, the only one he's got so far as i know." "yes, i reckon the judge wouldn't care to take his case." the sheriff wagged his head. "he's no ways rich--not beyond four dollars and seventy-five cents and a pocket knife and some keys on a ring. he's broke, all right." "he's never been anything else," said anne oglesby, hotly. "he's never had a chance. do you want to keep a man from his chance all his life--do you want to help railroad him to the gallows? that's for the courts, not for you. do you want to hang a man--are you anxious to begin that?" cowles' face grew pale. "god knows i don't! i never done that in my life, and i don't want to have to, neither. don't talk about that to me, miss." "then don't talk to me any more about those other things. i give you my word i'll not try to get him out, but i want to see him--i must see him--he'll want to see me. don't you know--we've--we've just begun to be engaged." "some things i can't understand no ways," pondered sheriff cowles. "he's nobody, so far as i can learn. you're the judge's ward--why, you're rich, they say." "i'd give every cent i have to see him walk out right now. i suppose you were young once yourself. were you ever in love, mr. cowles?" "yes," said the sheriff, slowly. "i was--i am yet, some. i can remember back. i don't believe i ought to let you in. but i'm afraid i'll have to, because you are young--like we all was once--and because you're in love. did anyone see you coming over here?" "i don't know; but all the town knows about him and me. well, let them." "you must promise not to help him in any way to get out--not to do anything you hadn't ought to do, nor against the law." "i give you my promise," said anne oglesby. without more speech the sheriff turned and led the way down the stone-paved hall to the short cement stairs which made down upon the half-floor below, at the level of the cells. he turned the switch of an electric light, so that they might see the better in the hall. there was but one tenant, and from beyond his door there came no sound, not even when cowles unlocked the iron-shod door and stood, his revolver easy at his belt. as anne entered she saw don lane sitting on the edge of the narrow pallet, looking at the door. he had not risen. he had been sitting with his head in his hands. he groaned now. "my god!" said he. "anne! what made you come?" [illustration: "anne! what made you come?"] the sheriff stepped within the door at the side of anne oglesby. "i'd stay about ten minutes or so if i was you," said he, and tried to look unconscious and impersonal. don lane rose now, but stood still apart. "why do you say that, don?" asked anne, stepping closer to him. "didn't you know i'd come?" she reached out her hands to him, and he caught both of them in his. "i ought to have known you would," said he, "and i know you oughtn't to. it makes it very hard. i said good-by to you--this morning--today." "won't you kiss me--again, don?" asked anne oglesby. he kissed her again, his face white. "it's hard to know you for so little a while," said he, his young face drawn, his voice trembling--"awfully hard. what time there's left to me--i'll have it all to remember you. but we must never meet after this. it's over." "don, if i thought it was all over, do you suppose i'd let you kiss me now?" "it's like heaven," said he. "it's all i'll have to remember." "a long time, don--a very long time!" "i can't tell. they are not apt to lose much time with my case. the only crime of my life was in ever lifting my eyes to you, anne. oh, you know i'd never have done that if i had known--what i found out yesterday. but then i've said good-by to you." "_i_ didn't say good-by, don!" he half raised a hand, shaking his head sadly. "you must forget me, no matter what happens--no matter whether i am cleared or not. i'll never be the coward to ask you to remember me--that wouldn't be right. i'm beyond all hope, whichever way it goes." "i've come tonight, don," said she, quietly, "to see about your lawyer." he half laughed. "there'll be small need for one, and if there were i've got no funds. it will take a lot of money." "well, what of that? i've got a lot of money. my guardian told me so today. i'm worth somewhere between a quarter and a half million dollars anyway--i'm not rich--but that would help us." he laughed at this harshly. "i didn't know you had any money at all. and you think i'd be coward enough to take your money to get out of here--after what i have learned about myself since yesterday? do you suppose i'd take my life from you--such a life as it's got to be now?" "what do you mean, don?--you won't let me go, will you? you don't mean----" she stepped toward him, in sudden terror of his resolution. "why, _don_!" "yes, yes. i spent all the afternoon here alone trying to think. well, i won't compromise. i never meant to pull you into this--i'll not let you be dragged into it by your own great-heartedness. but, anne, anne, dearest, dearest, surely you know that when i spoke to you yesterday i didn't know what i know today! i thought i had a father. you _know_ i'd not deceive you--you _do_ know that?" there was a shuffle on the stone floor of the cell. sheriff cowles, coughing loudly, was turning away from them. a moment later the door closed behind him. "ha-hum!" said he to himself outside the door. "oh, hell! i wish't i wasn't sher'ff." they were alone. with the door closed the cell was dark, save for the twilight filtering through the barred windows high up along the wall. anne came closer to him and put her hands upon his shoulders. "oh, don," said she, "it's hard, awfully hard, isn't it, to start with such a handicap? but when did all the men in the world start even? and is it always the one who starts first that finishes best? don, you played the game in college--so did i--we've both got to play the game now! we'll have to take our handicap. but you mustn't talk about sending me away. i can't stand everything. oh, don't! i can't stand that!" her voice was choking now. she was sobbing, striving not to do so. he caught her wrists in his hands, as her hands still lay upon his shoulders; but he did not draw her to him. "anne," said he, "the time comes in every man's life for him to die. i heard once about a man who could not swim and who saw his wife drown in the stream by him, almost at his side. he ran along and shouted, and said he could not swim. well, he lived. the woman died. suppose that had been our case. if we both went down together, it wouldn't be so bad, perhaps. but i'll not have my life as that sort of a gift." "you won't let me help you, don?" "no! i won't let you have anything to do with me! i'll never allow your name to come on my lips, and you must never think of mentioning mine! only--anne, anne--surely you don't think i had any idea before yesterday--about my father? i wouldn't buy my own happiness at that price. i'm no one's son. i'm dead, and doubly dead. but i never knew." "no," said she, "i know you did not--i know you would not." they both were so young, as they talked on now, wisely, soberly. "so you are free," he said, casting away her hands from him, and standing back. "you never were anything but free." "i'll never be free again, don," said she, shaking her head. "you kissed me! i'm not a girl any more--i'm a woman now. i can't go back. and now you tell me to go away! don't you love me, don? why, i love you--so much!" "my god, don't!" he groaned. "don't! i can't stand everything. but i can't take anything but the best and truest sort of love." "isn't mine?" "no. it's pity, maybe--i can't tell. this is no place for us to talk of that now. you must go away. i hope you will forget you ever saw me. i don't even know my father's name--i don't know whether he is living--i don't know anything! i have been walled in all my life--i'm walled in now. i never ought to have touched even the hem of your garment, for i wasn't fit. but i couldn't help it." "that's the trouble," said anne. "i can't help it, either." "ah!" he half groaned, "you ought to be kept from yourself." "kept from myself, don? if that were true of all the women in the world, how much world would there be left? that's why i'm here--why, don, i had to come!" "anne! it can't be. it's only cruel for you to tear me up by coming here--by staying here--by standing here. i love you! anne! anne! i don't see how it could be hard as this for any man to part from any woman." he was trembling through all his strong frame now. "but we promised!" "the law says that a promise is such only when two minds meet. our minds never met--i didn't know the facts--you didn't know about me--we have just found out about it now." "our minds didn't meet?" said anne oglesby. "our _minds_? did not our _hearts_ meet--don't they meet now--and isn't _that_ what it all means between a man and a woman?" he stood, trembling, apart from her in the twilight. "don't!" he whispered. "i love you! i will love you all my life! you must go away. oh, go now, go quickly!" a merciful footfall sounded on the stone floor of the outer hall. the door opened, letting in a shaft of light with it. cowles stood hesitating, looking at the two young people, still separated, standing wretchedly. "i hate to say anything," said the sheriff, "but i reckon----" "she must go," said don lane. "take her away. good-by--anne! anne! oh, good-by!" "won't you kiss me, don?" said anne oglesby--"when i love you so much?" there were four tears, two great, sudden drops from each eye, that sprang now on dan cowles' wrinkled, sunburned cheeks. but don lane had cast himself down once more on the pallet and was trying with all his power to be silent until after she had gone. "in some ways," said dan cowles to his wife later that night, "he's got me guessing, that young fellow. he don't act like no murderer to me. but since she left, and since all this here happened, he's wild--lord! he's wild!" chapter xix the mob anne oglesby left the jail shortly after the time when church services were ending. as she hurried by aurora lane's house in mulberry street she saw a light shining from the windows, but she did not enter--she could not have spoken to anyone now. she evaded any meeting with her guardian after she had made her way back home. judge henderson had not known of her absence and was not aware of her return. anne thus by a certain period of time missed seeing what dan cowles presently saw. it was noticeable that sabbath day that more than the usual number of farmers' wagons remained in town, quite past the time when the country church members usually started back for their homes. the farmers seemed to be in no hurry, even although they had seen a double church service. there was something restless, something vague, disturbing, over the town. a number of townsmen also seemed impelled to walk back toward the public square. some strange indefinite summons drew them thither. little knots of men stood here and there. groups of women gathered at this or that gallery front. no one knows the point where in vague public thought a general resolution actually begins. the ripple in the pool spreads widely when a stone is cast. what chance word, or what deliberate resolve, may have started the slowly growing resolution of spring valley may not be known; but now a sort of stealthy silence fell over the village as groups gathered here and there, speaking cautiously, in low tones. a knot of men stood near the corner of the square looking down the street to the light which shone red from the shaded window of aurora lane. "i know what was done right in this here town thirty year ago," said one high pitched voice. "it was old eph adamson's father that led them, too. them was days when----" "why ain't eph in town today?" asked another voice. "i seen considerable of his neighbors around in town today." "he was, a while back," said someone. "that must have been about a hour ago," said some other, looking about furtively at the faces of his neighbors. "let's take a stroll over towards the open lots near the jail," suggested someone else. so, following the first to start with definite purpose, little straggling groups passed on beyond the corner of the square, beyond the jail itself, to a sort of open space not yet encroached upon by public or private buildings. there was no shouting, no loud talking. the light was dim. the crowd itself moved vaguely, milling about, like cattle restive and ready to stampede, but not yet determined on their course. "god! did you hear that music this afternoon--they're done a-buryin' poor old joel tarbush by now, but i can hear it yet, seems to me! now, what had poor old joel ever done--all his life--to deserve bein' murdered like a dog? it makes my blood sort of rise up to think of that. now, them that done that--them that was back of that----" his friend, accosted, nodded grimly, his mouth was shut tight and turned down deep at the corners. there did not lack one or two willing at least to talk further. one was a young man, rather well dressed, apparently fresh from church. he spoke to any who would listen. "what i mean to say, men, is this," said he, "we've got to do something to clean up this town. it's the _people_ that's behind the law anyhow. am i right?" "he talks like a lawyer--what he says is pretty true," said one farmer to another. "that was a strong sermon our minister preached tonight," said yet another. "he said we'd have to stamp out crime and make a warnin'. the preacher e'en--a'most pointed out what we ought to do." "... we'd ought to make a clean sweep of this whole family," said the same young man, more boldly now. "they're a bad lot--both her son and her." "... we could break into the jail easy," said someone, after a time. "cowles couldn't keep us from it. maybe he wouldn't want to." "... the trouble is," resumed the voice of the young man who had earlier spoken, "it's hard to make a law case stick. we've seen how that worked out in the trial yesterday--he came clear--they dropped the case, and nothing was done. old eph adamson had to take all the medicine. but we ought to take our place as a law-abiding community--i've always said that." "and god-fearin'," said a devout voice. "yes, a god-fearing community! it's been twenty years now that that woman has flaunted her vice in the face of this community." "ain't a man in this town that don't know about her--it's just sort o' quieted down, that's all," said a gray-bearded, peak-chinned man grimly; which was more or less true, as more than one man present knew, himself not guiltless enough of heart at least to cast the first stone at aurora lane. "in the old times," grinned one stoutish man, chewing tobacco and speaking to a neighbor who held a hand cupped at his ear, "the folks wouldn't of stood it. they'd just 'a' had a little feather party. they rid such people out of town on a rail them days--that's what they done. and they didn't never come back after that--never in the world. as for a murderer--they made a eend of him!" "and so could we make a eend of it all right now, this very night, if we had a little sand," said another voice. for a time all these speakers fell silent, seeking resolve, waiting for an order, a command. but as they became silent they grew more uneasy. they broke ground, shifted, milled about, still like cattle. then head was laid to head, beard wagged to beard again. and then, all at once, it broke! "_come on, boys!_" cried a loud voice at last--not that of the young man who first had spoken--not that of any of these others speakers who had hesitated, lacking courage of definite sort. "_come on! who's with me?_" the town of spring valley never mentioned the name of this speaker. the report got out in a general way that he was a farmer who lived a few miles out in the country. indeed, sympathy for ephraim adamson's bad fortune in this case was no doubt largely at the bottom of this affair tonight--along with these other things; sympathy for tarbush; the sermons of the preachers; the emotional spell of the dirge music, still lingering on these crude souls. no mob reasons. it was plain that most of the men, though not all, were farmers. but now they all fell in behind the leader as he started, a motley procession. some folded handkerchiefs and tied them about their faces. yet others reversed their coats, wearing them with the linings outside. others pulled their hats down over their eyes. their feet, although not keeping time, none the less caught a ragged unison, in a sound which could have been heard at a considerable distance. dan cowles heard it now, and came to the door of the county jail. as he saw the crowd, he drew a long breath. "they're coming here!" said he to himself at length. "i reckon they'll try to get him. i'll hold him anyways, and they know that." quickly he darted back into the jail. the procession debouched at the edge of the jail yard square, halted for a moment, then came on steadily, because someone at their head walked steadily. perhaps there were seventy-five or a hundred of them in all. most of them were neighbors, nearly every man knew who was his neighbor here, even in the darkness. not one of these could precisely have told why he was here. by some process of self-persuasion, some working of hysteria, some general acceptance of the auto-suggestion of the mob, most had persuaded themselves that they were there to "do their duty." it sounded well. if, indeed, they had been brought hither merely by the excitement of it, merely under the hypnosis of it, they forgot that, or tried to forget it, and said they were there to do their duty--their duty to their god-fearing town.... but in the mind of each was a picture out of the past of which we may not inquire. that night far worse than murder might have been done. "we want him, dan. bring him out!" the voice of the leader sounded dry and hoarse, but he did not waver, for he saw the sheriff make no move of resistance. "you can't get him," said dan cowles. "you couldn't even if he was here. but he ain't here." "what do you mean, he ain't here? we know he is!" "come in and see," said cowles, stepping back. "i just been to his cell and he ain't there. come in and search the whole jail." they did come in and search the jail, piling into the corridors, opening every door, looking into every room even of the sheriff's living quarters, but the jail was empty! there was no prisoner there at all. "we want don lane, that killed the city marshal," repeated the husky voice of the leader once more. "where is he?" "i don't know," said sheriff cowles. "if i did, i wouldn't tell you." and indeed he spoke only truth in both these statements. "i know!" screamed a high voice in the middle of the man pack. "he's maybe up at her house--'rory lane's. let's go search the place--we'll get him yet!" it was enough. the mob, thus resisted, disappointed, began to mutter, to talk now, in a low, hoarse half roar of united voices. they turned away on a new trail. some broke into shouts as they began to hurry down the brick walk of the jail yard. they jostled and crowded in the street, as they came into the corner of the public square. a general outcry arose as they caught sight of the light in the window of aurora lane's little home, a half block down the street, beyond the corner of the square. aurora heard the sound of their feet coming down the sidewalk. she heard the noise at her gate--heard the crash as the gate was kicked off its new-mended hinges--heard the men crowd up her little walk, heard their feet clumping on the little gallery floor. her heart stopped. she stood white-faced, her hands clasped. what was it? what did they mean? were they going to kill her boy? had they killed him? were they going to tell her that? were they going to kill her, too? "come on out!" she heard someone calling to her. it seemed to her that she must go. in some strange hypnosis, her feet began to move, unsanctioned by her volition.... she stood at the door facing them all, her eyes large, her face showing her distress, her query, her new terror. on her face indeed was written now the whole story of her despair, her failure, her terrible unhappiness. she had aged by years, these last twenty-four hours. now sheer terror was written there also. the mob! the lynchers! the avengers! what had they not and more than once done in this little savage town?... a picture rose before her mind ... a horrible picture out of the past. wide-eyed, she caught at the throat of her gown, caught at the covering of her bosom--and then went at bay, as does any despairing creature that has been pressed too hard. she looked down at them. those nearest to her were masked. back of them rose groups of shoulders, rough clad, hats pulled down.... no, she did not know one of them; she did not recognize even a face--or was not sure she had done so. they jostled and shifted and pushed forward. "no! no! go back! go on away!" she cried, pale, her eyes starting. and again she called aloud, piteously, on that god who seemed to have forsaken her. "come on out!" cried a voice, thick and husky. "come on out, and hurry up about it. bring him out--we know he's here. we want don lane, and we're going to git him--or we'll git you. damn you, look out, or we'll git you both! where's that boy, that killed the marshal?" "he's not here," answered aurora, in a voice she would not have known to be her own. "i don't know where he is. believe me, if he's not there in the jail, i don't know where he is. what do you want of him? he's not here--i give you my word he's not." she still stood, near the door, her hands clutching at her clothing, a mortal terror in her soul, her frail woman's body the only fence now for her home, no longer sanctuary. "you lie! we know he is here--he ain't in the jail. if the sher'f let him out, he'd come here. you've got him hid. bring him out--it's no use trying to get him away from us. we want him, and we've come to git him." the words of the leader got their support in the rumble of fourscore throats. "i'm telling you the truth," quavered poor aurora lane. "men, can't you believe me? have i ever lied to you?" a roar of brutish laughter greeted this. "listen at her talk!" cried one tall young man. "fine, ain't it! she's been just a angel here! oh, no, she wouldn't lie to us about that boy--oh! no, she never has! why, you ain't never done nothing _but_ lie, all your life!" they laughed again at this, and became impatient. "this is her little old place," began the same voice. "i've never been in it before. i bet they's been goings-on, right here, more'n once." "that's so!" said a man whose mouth corners were drawn down hard. "and in this here god-fearin' town o' ours, that's always wanted to be respectable." "sure we did, all of us!" encored the cracking treble of the same tall, well-dressed young man. "whose fault if we ain't? she's his mother. this whole business come of her bein' what she is--looser'n hell, that's all. we stood it all for years--but this is too much--killin' the city marshal----" "i didn't!" cried aurora lane, ghastly pale. "he never did. i've tried to live here clean for twenty years. not one of you can raise a voice against me--you cowards, you liars! my boy--if he were here, not any ten of you'd dare say that! you'd not dare to touch him. oh, you brutes--you low-down cowards!" "we'll show you if we don't dare!" rejoined the steady voice of the leader. "fetch him out now and we'll show you about that. we're goin' to git him, first 'r last, and it's no use trying to stop it. we'll reg'late this town now, in our own way. if that boy's out of jail, he's either skipped or else he's here. either way, the safest thing to do is to come on through with him. if you don't, we'll see about _you_--and we'll do it mighty soon. bring him out." "oh, hell!" shrilled a falsetto voice, "you're wastin' time with her. go on in after him--she's got him hid--she's kep' him hid for twenty years and she's keepin' him hid now--and you can gamble on it! go on in and git him!" there came a shuffling of feet on the walk, on the gallery floor. aurora was conscious that the blur of faces was closer to her.... she saw masks, hats, kerchiefs, stubbled chins crowding in, close up to her. a reek of the man pack came to her, close, stifling, mingled of tobacco, alcohol, and the worse effluvia of many men excited.... the terror, the horror, the disgust, the repugnance of it all fell on her like a blanket, stifling, suffocating, terrifying. she no longer reasoned--it was only desperation, terror, which made her spread out her arms from lintel to lintel of her little deserted door, where the last sacred shred of her personal privacy now was periled. the last instinctive, virginal--yes, virginal--terror at the intrusion of man, of men, of many men, was hers now. home--sanctuary--refuge--all, all was gone. she stood, disheveled, her gown now half loosed at the neck as she spread her weak arms open across her door. her eyes were large, round, open, staring, her face a tragic mask as she stood trying--a woman, weak and quite alone--to beat back the passion of these who now had come to rob her of the last--the very last--of the things dear to her; the last of the things sacred to her, the things any woman ought to claim inviolate and under sanctuary, no matter who or what she is or ever may have been. but the fever, the hysteria of these no longer left either reason or decency to them, neither any manner of respect for the sacredness of womanhood; a thing for the most part inherent even under the severest strains ever brought to bear on man to make him lower than the brute--the brute which at its basest never lacks acknowledgment of the claims of sex. these men had reverted, dropped, declined as only man himself, noblest and lowest of all animals, may do. there was no mercy in them, indeed no comprehension, else the appeal of the outraged horror on the face of aurora lane must have driven them back, or have struck them down where they stood. "you git on out of the way now!" she heard the coarse voice of someone say in her face.... she held her arms out across her door only for an instant longer--she never knew by whom it was, or when, that they were swept down, and she herself swept aside, crumpled in a corner of her room. the mob was in her home; she had no sanctuary! she caught glimpses of dark shoulders, compacted by the narrowness of the little rooms, surging on in and over everything, into every room, testing every crack and crevice. she heard laughs, oaths, obscenity such as she had never dreamed men used--for she knew little of the man animal--heard the rising unison of voices recording a renewed disappointment and chagrin. "damn her! she's got away with him!" called out someone. "sure she has--we might of expected it," rejoined another. "she always gets by with it somehow--she's pulled the wool over our eyes all her life. she's fooled us now once more." "what'll we do, boys?" cried out the falsetto of the tall young man, whose face was not set strong with a man's beard-roots. "are we going to let her get away with it like this?" he made some sort of answer for himself, for there came the crash of broken glass as he flung some object across the room. it was enough--it was the cue. "smash her up, boys!" cried out another voice. "put her out of business now! she's fooled us for the last time." they did not find don lane, not though they searched this house as they had the jail. so now their anger caught them, resentful, unreasoning, unfeeling, brutal anger.... so they wrecked the little house of aurora lane. they tore down the pictures from the walls, the curtains from the windows, broke in the windows themselves. they smashed one piece of furniture against another. they even tore up the little white bed--at which for twenty years nightly aurora lane had kneeled to pray. someone caught up one of the pillows, laughing loudly. "here you are, here's plenty, i reckon! damn you! you're lucky we don't give you a ride. tar'n feathers, 'n a ride on a rail--that's the medicine for such as you." the thought of escape, of rescue, of resistance now had passed from the mind of aurora lane. frozen, speechless, motionless, she waited, helpless before this blind fury. they had been after don, and they had not found him. where was don? and what would they now do to her? what was that last coarse, terrible threat that they had meant? she caught her torn frock again to her throat as she saw, not a definite movement toward her, but a cessation of movement, a pause, a silence, which seemed more terrible and more ominous than anything yet in all this hour of torment and terror. what would they do now? they had halted, paused, they stood irresolute, still a pack, a mass, a mob, not yet resolved into units of thinking, reasoning, human beings; when without warning suddenly, there came something to give them cause for thought. there was still a rather dense crowd around the gate, on the walk, where some score or more lingered, who either had not entered the house or who had emerged from it. it was against the edge of this mass that a heavily built man, heavy of face, heavy of hand, cast himself as he now came running up. it was the sheriff, dan cowles. he thrust a revolver barrel into the face of the nearest man, caught another by the shoulder. a halt, a pause, whether of irresolution or of doubt, of indecision or of shame, came like a falling and restraining hand upon all this lately demoniacal assemblage. they did not move. it was as though a net had been sprung above them all. "halt!" called out the voice of the sheriff, high and clear. "what are you doing here?" "it's the sher'f!" croaked one gray beard farther back. "god! what'll he do to us now?" the feeling of apprehension gave courage to some of the bolder. two or three sprang upon cowles from behind and broke him down. he fell, his revolver pulled from his hand. he looked up into faces that he knew. "make a move and you'll get it," said a hoarse, croaking voice above him. "shut up now and keep quiet, and keep to yourself what you seen. we're just having a little surprise party, that's all. we're only cleaning up this town." but now another figure came running--more than one. judge henderson himself had heard the tumult on the streets. it was he who first hurried up to the edge of the crowd. "men!" he cried, holding up his hand. "what are you doing? disperse, in the name of the law! i command it!" they had long been used to obeying the voice of judge henderson. he was their guide, their counselor, their leader. some hesitated now. and then judge henderson pushed into the little group, looked over their heads, their shoulders--and saw what ruin had been wrought in aurora lane's little home. he saw aurora standing there, outraged in every fiber, desecrated in her very soul, the ruins of her lost sanctuary lying all about her and on her face the last, last anguish of a woman who has said farewell to all, everything--life, happiness, peace, hope, and trust in god. henderson cast his own hands to his face as he pushed back from that sight. he stood trembling and silent, unstrung by one swift, remorseless blow from his own soul, his own long sleeping conscience. afar off, in the village, someone rang a bell--that at the engine house. its summons of alarm called out every townsman not already in the streets. but before this time reaction had begun in the mob. something about judge henderson--the sudden change in his attitude--the blanched terror, the awful horror which showed now in his face--seemed to bring reason to their own inflamed and muddled minds. and now, as they hesitated, they felt the impact of two other strong men who flung themselves against them, shouldered their way through, up to the side of the struggling sheriff. those in the way looked into the barrels of two revolvers, one held in each hand of a tall man, a giant in his rugged strength, as those knew whom he jostled aside in his savage on-coming. "hold on, men!" cried out the great voice of horace brooks. "i'll kill the first man that makes a move. law or no law, i'll kill you if you move. what are you doing here?" at his side there was another, a young man--white-faced--a tall young man whom not all of them had seen before, whom not many recognized now in the sudden confusion as they swayed back, jostling one and another in the attempt to get away--the young man, the prisoner they had wanted and not found. the young man swung at one arm of hod brooks, tried to wrest from him one of the revolvers--sought to gain some weapon with which he might kill. but hod brooks kept him away. "get back," he said, "leave it to us. god! don't look at that! they've smashed her place all to hell!" still another man came, running, shouting--calling out--calling some of those present by their own names. it was old eph adamson, and tears were streaming down his face. "you men!" he called out, and he named them one after another. "you're my neighbors, you're my friends. what are you doing here--oh, my god!--my god! what have you done? she's a good woman--i tell you she's a good woman." the three of these newcomers broke their way in to the side of the sheriff, who by this time was up to his knees. they caught his gun away from the man who had taken it. "give it to me!" said the low, cold voice of the young man who was fighting--and before his straight thudding blows a man dropped every now and then as he came on, struggling desperately to get the weapon. "give it to me!" he reached out his hand for the sheriff's gun; but still they put him away, gasping, his eyes with murder in them. "get back," cried horace brooks. "leave it alone. get back. look out, men--he'll shoot!" there were five of them now who made a little group. two others came running to join them--nels jorgens, the wagon-maker and blacksmith--at his side the spare figure of the gray-bearded minister, rawlins, of the church of christ. "get into them now, dan!" cried the great voice of horace brooks. "break through." so they broke through. men fell and stumbled, whether from blows or in the confusion of their own efforts to escape. at the edges of the crowd men turned and ran--ran as fast as they could. after a time they of the smaller party were almost alone. the sheriff turned away, picking up a coat which he found lying on the ground. the tall young man who had fought at his side stood now leaning against the fence, his face dropped into his hands, shaking his head from side to side, unable to weep. cowles stepped up to him. "i'm glad you come, boy," said he, "but it's no place for you here. i must have left the door open when i went away--i plumb forgot it. where've you been, anyhow?" "you forgot--you left the door unlocked after she went away--anne. but i wasn't trying to escape--i wasn't going out of town." "where was you, then?" "i was down at the bridge--i was thinking what to do. once my mother was going to take me there.... but i thought of her--anne, you know, and my mother, too. i hardly knew what was right.... i heard the noise...." dan cowles looked at him soberly. "run on down to the jail now, son, and tell my wife to lock you in. tell her i'll be on down, soon's i can." judge henderson, white-faced, trembling, looked in the starlight into the face of the one man whom he classed as his rival, his enemy in this town--it was a wide, white face with narrow and burning eyes, a berserker face framed with its fringe of red. horace brooks himself was still almost sobbing with sheer fighting rage. there was that in his eye terrible to look upon. "oh, my god!" said judge henderson again and again. "oh, my god!--my god!----" he supported himself against the broken posts of what had been the little gate of aurora lane. chapter xx the idiot at seven o'clock of monday morning, johnnie adamson stood at the roadside at the front of his father's farmhouse. he held in his hands a wagon stake which he had found somewhere and with it smote aimlessly at anything which came in his way. his usual amiable smile was gone. a low scowl, like that of some angered anthropoid, had replaced it. his mother, seeing that some unusual turn had taken place in his affliction, stood at the window of the farmhouse looking out at him and wringing her hands. she long ago had ceased to weep--the fountain of tears had dried within her soul. there came to her now and then the sound of his hoarse defiance, hurled at all who passed by on the road. "son john!--eejit!--whip any man in jackson county!" ephraim adamson was at the time in the field at work. his wife at length crept out to the back porch and pulled the cord of the dinner bell. its sound rang out across the fields. her husband came running, more than half suspicious of the cause of the alarm. long had their lives been lived in vague dread of this very thing--a violent turn in the son's affliction. the father's anxious face spoke the question. "yes, he's bad," said the wife to him. "i'm afraid of him--he's getting worse." the father walked out into the front yard. the youth came toward him, grinning pleasantly. he fell into the position of a batsman, swinging his club back and forth as he must some time have seen ball players do. "now you--now you throw it at me--and i'll hit it," said the half-wit. "you--you throw it at me--and i'll hit--i'll hit it." to humor him, his father pitched at him a broken apple that lay on the ground near by. johnny struck at it and by chance caught it fair, crushing it to fragments. at this he laughed in glee. "now--now--another one," said he. "i'll hit--i'll hit them all." his father walked up to him and reached out a hand, but for the first time the boy resented his control. he broke away, swinging his club menacingly, striking at everything in his way. ephraim adamson followed him; but still evading, the half-wit passed out through the gate which led into the garden patch at the rear of the house. with his club he cut at the tops of everything green that he passed. especially, with many yells of glee, he fell upon the rows of cabbages, then beginning to head out. with heavy blows of his club he cut down one after another. the game seemed to excite him more and more. at last it seemed to enrage him more and more. he struck with greater viciousness. "eejit!" said he. "i'm out--they can't pick on me! i can hit them! i will, too, hit them! i'll hit him!" his father, following him, saw the face of the club all stained now--stained dark--black or red--stained green. he caught at the stick, but for once found his own strength insufficient to cope with that of his son. the latter wrestled with him. in a direct grip, one against the other, in which both struggled for the club, the father was unable to wrest it from him; and continually he saw a new and savage light come into the eyes of his son. the boy threatened him, menaced him with the club. his father drew back, for the first time afraid. he went back into the house, to his wife, on whom he turned a gray, sad face. "i'm afraid," said he slowly, "i'm afraid we'll have to send him away. he's awfully bad--he might do anything. i'd rather see him dead." the nod of the sad-faced woman was full assent. she gazed out of the window blankly, barrenly. ephraim adamson went out again into the yard. he passed the boy, unseen, went out into the stable yard, and caught up his team, which soon he had harnessed to his light wagon. by this time johnnie had gone to the woodpile and taken up the ax. he was endeavoring to split some cordwood, but he rarely could hit twice in the same place, all his correlations being bad. his father now threw open the gate and drove into the yard. "want a ride, johnnie?" he asked; and the boy docilely came and climbed into the front seat beside him. not even looking at his wife, adamson started out at good speed for the eight-mile drive into spring valley. for the most part the boy was quiet now, but once in a while the return of a paroxysm would lead him to shout and fling up his hands, to grin or make faces at any who passed. in town, at the corner of the public square, johnnie became unruly. some vague memory was in his mind. he pointed down the head of mulberry street. "i want to go--i want to go there!" said he. before his father could stop him he had sprung out of the wagon and run on ahead. adamson as quickly as possible hitched his team at the nearest rack and followed at full speed, sudden terror now renewed in his own soul. the boy had turned in at the gate of the little house of aurora lane--that little house now scarce longer to be called a home! aurora lane was alive, within. she moved about dully, slowly, her mind numb at the horror of all she had gone through. the feeling possessed her that she was without help or hope in all the world, that her god himself had forsaken her. she heard the sound of running footsteps, and, gazing through the window, saw the idiot son of ephraim adamson standing just inside the gate. she heard him come up the steps, heard him begin to pound on the door. "quick! miss lane," called adamson as he came following up on the run--he hoped that aurora would hear him. "don't let him in. telephone--get the sher'f as soon as you can." he walked up the steps now and took the boy by the arm as he hammered at the door with the head of the club. "come on, johnnie," said he. "we'll go see the pictures. come along." it was not better than an animal, the creature who now turned facing him, growling. "get out!" said johnnie to him. "no one--no one can pick on me! i'll hit--i'll hit you. whip any man in jackson county. i'm out--i'll hit anybody touches me. i guess i know!" his sweeping blows about him with the club forced his father back, and showed that any attempt to close with him would be dangerous. adamson retired to the gate. johnnie went on smashing everything about him, flower beds, chairs, a little table which stood on the front gallery--anything left undestroyed by the more intelligent but not less malignant visitors of the night before, who thus had set a pattern for him. "i want in," he said pleasantly after a time, seating himself on the front steps. "eejit--best man in jackson county. she was good to me. she spoke to me kind. i won't hurt her." aurora lane could see him as she gazed out from behind the window curtain. her call on the telephone to the officer of the law had been loud, insistent, the appeal of a woman in terror. but now, as she looked out at johnnie adamson, something other than terror was in her wan face;--something like surprise--something like conviction! the thought brought with it no additional terror--rather it carried a swift ray of hope! it was toward eight o'clock in the morning now. few were abroad on the streets of spring valley, but now and then a passer-by turned to gaze at a man who was hurrying across from the court and turning into mulberry street. it was dan cowles, the sheriff, and they wondered where he was going now. ephraim adamson heard the hurrying approach as dan cowles came down the street. the boy still was sitting on the steps. suddenly he turned--and caught sight of the face of aurora lane at the window. he rose, removed his hat, and smirked. "may i see you home?" said he. "eejit--the best man in jackson county. i can hit anybody! i'll show you." he was mowing, smirking, talking to her through the glass of the window pane, jerking and twitching about, but he turned now when he heard the steps of his father and the sheriff on the brick walk back of him. "he's gone bad, dan," said adamson in a low tone to the sheriff. "we'll have to lock him up. he'll have to go to the asylum. he's dangerous. look out!" suddenly the half-wit turned upon them. his eyes seemed fixed on the star shining on the coat of dan cowles--identically the same star that city marshal tarbush had worn, cowles having for the time taken on the deceased man's duties also. the sight enraged him. he brandished his club. "there he is!" he cried. "i hit him once--i killed him--i'm going to kill him again! you can't pick on me. i'm out. i'll kill you again!" "my god! _what's he saying, dan_?" quavered the voice of the unhappy man, the father of this wild creature. "what's he _saying_?" "johnnie!" he himself called out aloud. "johnnie, tell me--tell me who it was, and i'll take you to see the pictures right away." "him!" shrieked johnnie. "him--there's that shiny thing." "when was it, johnnie--what do you mean about this man?" the sheriff now spoke to him. "i hit you--that night--i'll hit you again now! nobody going to pick on johnnie. best man in jackson county--eejit!" "you're going to take me away to jail again," said he cunningly. "but you can't. i was just going to talk to her before, and you come and took me away. but i hit him. now i'll kill you so you'll stay dead." slowly, cautiously creeping down the steps, club in hand, he followed the two men, who backed away from him--backed out through the gate on to the sidewalk, into the street. from across the street nels jorgens in his wagon shop saw what was going on, and came running, a stout wagon spoke caught up in his own hand. he passed this to ephraim adamson. "look out, sheriff!" he called out. "he's wild. he'll kill somebody yet." nels jorgens and one or two others saw what then happened. the madman, now murderously excited, stopped in his deliberate advance. his eyes flamed green with hatred at all this before him. the lust of blood showed on his features, usually so mild. he saw his father standing now, this weapon in his hand; and forgetting every tie in the world, if ever he had felt one, sprang at him with a scream of rage. ephraim adamson stepped back, tripped, fell. he saw above him the face of his son, with murder in his eyes. he closed his own eyes. and then nels jorgens and one or two others who came hurrying up saw a puff of smoke, heard the roar of a shot dan cowles had fired just in time.... there was no need to send poor johnnie adamson to the asylum. he had gone now to a farther country. he sank, a vast bulk, at his full length along the narrow strip of dusty grass between the curb and the walk. his shoulders heaved once or twice, his arms fell lax. dan cowles, solemn-faced, his weapon still in his hand, turned to gaze at the haggard man who rose slowly, turning away from that which he now saw. "it was the act of committing a felony," said dan cowles slowly. "it was to save human life. he resisted arrest, and he was armed. it was a felony." but when old ephraim adamson turned his gray face to that of the officer of the law, in his sad eyes there was no resentment. he held out his hand. "dan," said he, "thank god you done it! thank god it's over!" chapter xxi a true bill now it was nine o'clock of the monday morning. the grand jury was in session thus early, and it had thus early brought in a true bill against one dieudonné lane for murder in the first degree. the session of the jury had just begun. none of the jury knew of these late events at the house of aurora lane. in his office judge henderson was pacing up and down all that morning. he had failed in every attempt to stop the progress of the law. he could not on sunday afternoon reach by telephone or otherwise the men he wished to see; on sunday night had seen this horror; and now, early on monday, there was no way by which even he could arrest the procedure of the grand jury, made up of men who lived here, and who before this had made up their minds on the bill which slattery, state's attorney, zealous as they, had rushed through at a late session with his own clerks on sunday night after he had ended his sabbath motor ride to an adjoining town. fate conspired against judge henderson and his shrewd plan for delay which was to have left him secure in his ambition and saved in his own conceit. these things now seemed shrunk, faded, unimportant. he had not slept at all that night. before him now swept such a panorama as it seemed to him would never let him sleep again. he was indeed facing now the crisis of his life--a crisis not in his material affairs alone, but a crisis of his moral nature. he had learned in one swift lesson what others sometimes learn more deliberately--that the world is not for the use of any one man alone, but for the use of all men who dwell in it. it is the world of human beings who are partners in its use. they stand alike on its soil, they fight there for the same end. they are brothers, even though savage brothers, after all. and among these are fathers, too. it was his own son who lay in yonder jail. now at last some thought, a new, stirring and compelling emotion came into his soul. it was not her boy, but his--it was his son! and now he knew he had been indeed a judas and a coward. judge henderson's dulled senses heard a sound, a distinct and unusual sound. he stepped out into the hall and spoke to a neighbor who also was looking out of his office door. "what was that shot?" he asked. "i don't know," said the other. "where was it at--around that corner? oh, i reckon it was probably a tire blew out at nels jorgen's wagon shop--he has automobiles there sometimes." henderson turned back to his own office, his nerves twitching. he was obliged to face the duties of this day. what was to happen now to william henderson, the leading citizen of spring valley? actually, he now did not so much care. it was his son--his own son--in yonder jail! the heart of a father began to be born in him, thus late, thus very, very late.... he had seen her face, last night. he walked slowly down his stair and across the street to the courthouse. his course was such that he could not see into mulberry street. some persons were hurrying in that direction, but he did not join them. he was too preoccupied to pay much attention to the sounds which came to his ears. as for himself, he could have gone anywhere rather than near to the house of aurora lane that morning. a great terror filled his soul, a terror largely of these people among whom he had lived thus long. they had wrecked her home. they might have done worse in their savagery. but it was he himself who was the real cause of that. would she still keep her oath now, after this? could she be silent now? he walked on now into the courthouse and down the long hall. he was about to step into the county clerk's office, when he came face to face with a tall man just stepping out. it was horace brooks. "well, judge," said the latter, "how is it with you today?" he spoke not unkindly, although his own face was haggard and gray. neither had he slept that night. "it goes badly enough," said henderson. "nothing could be much worse. well?" "you want to know if the grand jury has voted that bill? they have--i have just heard. of course you know i am counsel of record for the defense." "i didn't know it." "yes, judge, there's going to be a fight on this case," said hod brooks grimly. "that is, if you really want to fight. i've got nothing left to trade--but, judge, do you think you and i really ought to fight--over this particular case?" "i can't forswear my own professional duties," began judge henderson, his mouth dry in his dull dread, his heart wrenched. he wondered what hod brooks knew, what he was going to do. he knew what must come, but he was not ready for the hour. "come into this room," said horace brooks suddenly. "i won't go to your office, and i won't ask you to come to mine. but come in here, and let's have a little talk." they stepped over to the door of the county treasurer's office, across the hall. it was a room of the sort usual in a country courthouse, with its high stools and desks, its map-hung walls, its scattered chairs, its great red record books lying here and there upon the desk top. a young woman sat making some entry in a book. "miss carrie," said horace brooks to her, "judge henderson and i want to talk a little together privately. please keep us from being disturbed. you run away--we won't steal the county funds." smilingly the clerk obeyed. brooks turned to judge henderson abruptly. "look here, judge," said he. he pointed to a large framed lithograph which hung on the wall--the same which had hung on the wall in the library at the exercises of saturday night. it was a portrait of the candidate for the united states senate--judge henderson himself. the latter looked at it for a moment without comment, and turned back with an inquiring eye. brooks was fumbling in the side pocket of his alpaca coat, and now he drew out from it a good-sized photograph, which he placed face upward on the desk beside them. it was done in half-profile, as was the portrait upon the wall. "look at this picture too, judge, if you please," said he, "and then look back again at the lithograph. that was taken some years ago, when you were young, wasn't it?" judge henderson flushed lividly. "i leave all those things to the committee," croaked he. "--but this one here," said horace brooks slowly, "was taken when you were still younger, _say, when you were twenty-two_, wasn't it?" he moved back so that judge henderson might look at the photograph. he saw the face of the great man grow yellow pale. "where did you get this?" he whispered. "how?" "i got it of miss julia delafield, at the library, early this morning," said horace brooks. "i told miss julia, whatever she did, to stay in the library and not to go over to aurora lane's house. i--i didn't want her to see what had happened there. she was busy, but she found this picture for me. and we both know that really it is a photograph of the young man against whom the grand jury have just brought a true bill--within the last ten minutes." there was silence in the dusty little room. the large white hand on the desk top was visibly trembling. hod brooks' voice was low as he went on: "now, as to trying this case, judge, i brought you in here to ask you what you really want to do? i don't my own self very often try cases out of court--although i have sometimes--sometimes. yes, sometimes that's the way to serve the ends of substantial justice." henderson made no reply--he scarcely could have spoken. he could feel the net tightening; he knew what he was to expect now. "now, here are these two pictures," resumed brooks. "suppose i _were_ trying this case _in_ court. i'm not sure, but i think i could get them both introduced in evidence, these two pictures. i think they are both germane to this case--don't you? you've been on the bench--we've both read law. do you think as a judge you could keep a good lawyer from getting these two pictures introduced in evidence in that case?" "i don't see how you could," said the hoarse voice of judge henderson. "it would be altogether immaterial and incompetent." "perhaps, perhaps," said hod brooks. "that's another good reason why i'd rather try the case here, if it suits you! but just suppose i enlarged this photograph to the exact size of the lithograph on the wall, and suppose i did get them both into evidence, and suppose i unveiled the two at just the psychological moment--i presume you would trust me to do that? "now if i hadn't seen you last night just where you were, if i hadn't hoped, from what i saw of you, that you were part man at least--_that's how i would try this case_! what do you think about it?" "i think you are practising politics again, and not law," sneered henderson. but his face was white. "yes? well, i'll tell you, i don't want to see you go to the united states senate. in the first place, though i agreed not to run at all, i never agreed to help you run. in the second place, i never did think you were a good enough man to go there, and now i think it less than ever. and since you ask me a direct question of political bearing, i'll say that, if the public records--that is to say, the court records and all the newspapers--showed the similarity of these two pictures side by side, the effect on your political future might be very considerable! what do you think? "now, if you take you and that boy side by side today," he went on, having had no reply, "the resemblance between you two might not be noticed. but get the _ages_ together--get the view of the face the same in each case--take him at his age and you at something near the same age--and don't you think there is much truth in what i said? the boy has red hair, like me! but in black and white he looks like you!" judge henderson, unable to make reply, had turned away. he was staring out from the window over the courthouse yard. "some excitement over there," he said. hod brooks did not hear him. "that face on the wall there, judge henderson," said he, "is the face of a murderer! the face of this boy is not that of a murderer. but _you_ murdered a woman twenty years ago--not a man, but a woman--and damn you, you know it, absolutely well! i saw last night that at last you realized your own crime, that crime--you had _guilt_ on your face. i am going to charge you--just as you maybe were planning to charge that boy--with murder, worse than murder in the first degree, if that be possible--worse even than prosecuting your own son for murder when you know he's innocent! "_you_ murdered that woman whom we two saw last night! _you_ made that beastly mob a possible thing--not now, but years ago. do you think the people of this community will want to send you to the united states senate if they ever get a look at that act? do you think they would relish the thought that _you're_ the special prosecutor where _your son_ is on trial for his life? i say it--_your son_! you know it, and i know it. you'd jeopardize the life that you yourself gave to him and were too cowardly to acknowledge! do you think you'd have a chance on earth here if those things were known--if they knew you'd refused to defend him--that you'd denied your own son? and do you think for a moment these things will _not_ be known if i take this case?" "this is blackmail!" exclaimed judge henderson, swinging around. "i'll not stand for this." "of course, it's blackmail, judge. i know that. but it's justice. and you will stand for it! i didn't take this boy's case to get him hanged, but to get him clear. i don't care a damn how i do it, but i'm going to do it. i'd fight a man like you with anything i could get my hands on. this is blackmail, yes; and it's politics--but it's justice." "i didn't think this was possible," began henderson, his voice shaking. "i didn't think this of you." "there's a lot of things people never thought of me," smiled hod brooks. "i'm something of a trader my own self. here's where we trade again. "listen. i didn't have the start that you had. i started far back beyond the flag, and i have had to run hard to get into any place. maybe i'll lose all my place through this, i don't know. but i never got anywhere in my life by shirking or sidestepping." "you have some hidden interest in this." "yes! now you have come to it! i'm not so much thinking of myself, not so much thinking of you. i'm thinking of that woman." he could not find henderson's eyes now, for henderson's face was buried in his hands. "i was thinking of something of the sort," brooks went on slowly, "in that other case, in blackman's court last saturday. why didn't you try that case, judge? didn't you know then he was your boy?" the suddenly aged man before him did not make any reply. his full eyes seemed to protrude yet more. "i felt something--i wasn't sure. she'd told me years ago the boy was dead. how could i believe i was his father? don't ask me." "i wish to god _i_ could have been the father of that boy!" said hod brooks deliberately. "we seem to be talking freely enough!" said henderson. the perspiration was breaking out on his forehead. but horace brooks took no shame to himself for what he had said. "the mother of that boy," he went on, "is the one woman i ever cared for, judge. i'll admit that to you. if there were any way in the world so that i could take that woman's troubles on my own shoulders, i'd do it.... so, you see, this wasn't blackmail after all, judge. it wasn't really politics after all. i was doing this for _her_." "for her?" "yes. now listen. you met her as a girl, when she didn't know much. i never met her really to know much about her until she was a grown woman, with a character--a splendid character whose like you'll not find anywhere in this town, nor in many another town. you never had the courage to come out and say that she was your wife--you never had the courage to make her your wife. you thought you could last her out in this town, because she was a person of no consequence--because she was a woman. and all the time she was the grandest woman in this town. but she didn't have any friends. now, it seemed to me, she ought to have a friend. "do you call it blackmail now, judge?" he asked presently. "is this politics?" but he ceased in his assault as he saw the pallor of the face of his antagonist. "you've got me, hod!" said judge william henderson, gasping. "i confess! it's over. you've got me!" "yes, i've got you, but i don't want you," said hod brooks. "i'm not after you socially, legally, politically, or any other way. i tell you, i'm thinking of those two women who put your son through college--who had all they could do to keep their souls in their bodies, while you lived the way you have lived here. they paid your debts for you--they advanced cash and character _both_ for you--just two poor women. the question now is, how are you going to pay any of your debts? there'll be considerable accrued interest." "i didn't know it all, i tell you," broke out judge henderson. "she hasn't spoken to me for years, you might say--we never met. i didn't know the boy was alive--she told me twenty years ago that he'd died, a baby. this has all come up in a day--i've not had time to learn, to think, to plan, to adjust----god! don't you think it's terrible enough, with him there in jail?" "she never asked you for help?" "no, not till yesterday." "she was game. i was sure. that was one reason why i went to that woman night before last and asked her if she'd marry me." "what--you did that?" "i did that! i told her _i_ would take the boy and give him a father. i said i'd even call him my own--i'd come that close to losing my own self-respect in just this one case in the world. but, i told her, of course i couldn't do that unless she was a widow. and, judge, i learned--from her--that she wasn't a widow. oh, no, she didn't tell me about you--and i never figured it out all clean till just now--that the late district judge of this county, and the senatorial candidate for this state--was the father of the boy, don lane. huh? oh, stand up to it--you've got to take it. "now, this boy of yours had no father and two mothers--it's an odd case. but how did i learn who was the father of that boy? not from aurora lane. no, i learned that from the other mother--this morning--miss julia. and as soon as i did--as soon as i was convinced i had proofs--i started over to find you." "my god! man, what could you have meant?--you told her you would marry her?" judge henderson's sheer astonishment overcame all other emotions. "i meant every word i said. if it could have been humanly possible for me to marry her, i'd have done that. yes--i wanted to give her her chance. i couldn't give her her chance. it looks as though she didn't have one, never has had, never can have. "now, if i hadn't seen you last night right where i did--if i didn't believe that somewhere inside of you there was just a trace of manhood--it's not very much--it's damned little--i wouldn't have asked you to come in here to talk. i'd have waited until i got you in the courtroom. i'd have waited until i got you on the platform, and then i'd have taken your heart out in public. i'd have broken you before the people of this town. i'd have flayed you alive and prayed your hide to grow so i could take it off again, and i'd have hung it on the public fence. but, you see--last night----my god! "i wouldn't trade places with you now, judge henderson," said hod brooks, after a time. "if i knew i had been responsible for what we saw last night, as you were responsible--i'd never raise my head again. "as for the united states senate, judge, do you think you're fit to go there? do you think this is blackmail now? do you think you want to try this murder case? do you think you want to try this case against this boy--your son--her son? there may be men worse than you in the united states senate, but i will say it might be full of better. you're never going there, judge. and you're never going to try this case." "you've got me, hod," croaked the ashy-faced man. "yeh, judge, i have! but that's not the question." "what do you mean?" "you swore the oath of justice and support of the law when you were admitted to this bar. you've broken your oath--all your oaths. are you going to throw yourself on the court now and ask for forgiveness?" henderson stood weakly, half supporting himself against the desk edge. he seemed shrunken all at once, his clothing fitted him less snugly. a roughened place showed on the side of his shining top hat--the only top hat in spring valley. "i've tried this case," said hod brooks sharply. "i've tried it before your own conscience. it took twenty years for a woman to square herself. i'm going to ask the court to send you up for twenty years. you murdered a good woman. that's a light sentence." a large fly was buzzing on the window-pane in the sunlight, and the sound was distinctly audible in the silence that now fell in the little room. it might indeed have been twenty years that had passed here in as many minutes, so swift a revolution had taken place. the making over of a soul; the cleansing of a life; the changing of an entire creed of conduct; the surrender of a dominating inborn trait; the tearing down and building over a vain and wholly selfish man. "i think she's a good woman," said hod brooks simply, after a time. "so do i!" broke out judge henderson at length, with a sudden gasp. "so do i! she's a good woman. i knew it last night. i've known it all along, in a way. it all came over me last night--i saw it all plain for the first time in all these years. hod! you're right. i don't deserve mercy. i don't ask it--i'd be ashamed to." "religion," said hod brooks, quite irrelevantly, "is not altogether confined to churches, you know. a man's conviction may hit him anywhere--even in the office of the county treasurer of jackson county. but if i was a preacher, judge henderson, i'd be mighty glad to hear you say what you have said." in his face there showed some sort of strange emotion of his own, a sort of yearning for the understanding of his own nature by this other man; and some sort of rude man's sympathy for the broken man who stood before him. "you both were young," said he softly and irrelevantly. "i'm not your judge." "hod," said judge henderson--"i'm done! i wouldn't go to the senate tomorrow if they'd let me. for twenty years she's taken her fate. she's never told my name. she's never blamed me. she's paid all her debts. in the next twenty years--can i live as well as that?" "yes, she's paid her debts. we've all got to do that some time--there doesn't seem to be any good way of getting clear of an honest debt, does there? it costs considerable, sometimes." hod brooks' voice held no wavering, but it was not unkind. "but now, judge," he resumed, "we get around to my profession, which is that of the practice of the law. there's a true bill against the boy. state's attorney slattery don't amount to much--i know about a lot of things. you're the real intended prosecutor here. now, i don't want any passing over of this case to another term of court--i'm not going to let that boy lie in jail." "that was what i meant to do--i wasn't going to try for a conviction--i was going to try for delay." "come into court with me and openly ask the quashing of this indictment," said hod brooks. "and we can beat that delay game a thousand ways of the deck! but now, now--you _did_ have the heart of a father, then? so, so--well, well! say, judge, we're not opponents--we're partners in this case." "hod----" began the other; but hod brooks was the master mind. "i believe we can show, some time, somehow," said he, "that the boy didn't do it. i know the boy's _mother_. of course, his father wasn't so much!" he broke out into his great laugh, but in the corners of his eyes there was visible a dampness. judge henderson hesitated for just a moment. "believe at least this much, hod," said he. "i didn't know as much at first as i do now. she--she told me all--i saw it all--last night. i want to tell the truth--near as i know. when i saw the boy in blackman's court--it didn't seem possible, and yet it did. but who gave you the notion? what made _you_ suspect it? you didn't suspect it then, in the justice court, did you?" "only vaguely," said hod brooks; "not so very much. i'll tell you who did--a woman." "aurora?" "no--miss julia. miss julia sat there looking from the face of don lane to your own face. there was something in her face--i can't tell what. why, hell! i don't suppose a man ever does know what's going on in a woman's heart, least of all a crude man like me, that never had any fine feelings in all his life. but there was something there in miss julia's face--i can't tell what. in some way, in her mind, she was connecting those two faces that she saw before her. if i hadn't seen her face, i wouldn't ever have suspected you of being the father of that boy! "but something stuck in my mind. now, this morning, getting ready to prepare my case, defending this boy, i went over to miss julia's library. i still remembered what i had seen. i found this picture there--she had that other picture there, hanging on her wall, too. she had them both! one was on the wall and the other on her desk. now, she had certainly established some connection in her own mind between those two pictures, or else she wouldn't have had them there both right before her." "then you, too, know," interrupted henderson, "the story of those two women--how they brought him up from babyhood--and kept the secret? why did miss julia do that?" "because she was a woman." "but why didn't she tell?" "because she was a woman." "but why--what makes you suppose she ever would care in the first place for this boy when he was a baby?" "again, because she was a woman, judge!" "she came and told me all about her friendship for aurora. but she admitted she didn't know who the father of the boy was. then why should she connect me with this?" "the same reason, judge--because she was a woman! "and when you come to that," he added as he turned toward the door, "that covers our whole talk today. that's why i got you to come here. that's why i'm interested in this case. that's why i've made you try this case yourself, here, now, judge, before the court of your own conscience. a crime worse than murder has been done here in this town to aurora lane--because she was a woman! she's borne the brunt of it--paid all her debts--carried all her awful, unspeakable, unbelievable load--because she was a woman! "and," he concluded, "if you ask me why i was specially interested in the boy's case and yours and hers--i'll tell you. i gave up--to you--all my hope of success and honor and preferment just so as to help her all i could; to stand between her and the world all i could; to help her and her boy all i could. it was because she was a woman--the very best i ever knew." chapter xxii miss julia it was now ten o'clock of this eventful morning in quiet old spring valley. a hush seemed to have fallen on all the town. the streets were well-nigh deserted so far as one might see from the public square. only one figure seemed animated by a definite purpose. miss julia delafield came rapidly as she might across the street from the foot of the stair that led up to judge henderson's office. she had hobbled up the stair and hobbled down again, and now was crossing the street that led to the courthouse. she came through the little turnstile and tap-tapped her way up the wide brick walk. her face, turned up eagerly, was flushed, full of great emotions. miss julia was clad in her best finery. she had on a bright new hat--which she had had over from aurora's shop but recently. she had worn it at the great event of don lane's homecoming--worn it to make tribute to her "son." she wore it now in search of that son's father--and she had not the slightest idea in the world who that father in fact might be. miss julia's divination was only such stuff as dreams are made on. the father of don, the unborn father of her unborn beloved--was not yet caught out of chaos, not yet resolved out of time--he was but a creature of her dreams. so miss julia walked haltingly through star dust. it whirled all about her as she crossed the dirty street. around her spun all the nebulæ of life yet to be. somewhere on beyond and back of this was a soft, gray, vague light, the light of creation itself, of the dawn, of the birth of time. perhaps some would have said it was the light shining down through the courthouse hall from the farther open door. who would deny poor little miss julia her splendid dreams? for miss julia was very, very happy. she had found how the world was made and why it was made. and mighty few wise men ever have learned so much as that. she searched for the father of her first-born--a man tall and splendid and beautiful--a man strong and just and noble. such only might be the father of her boy.... and she met him at the door of the county treasurer's office, his silk hat slightly rumpled on one side. "oh!" she cried, and started back. she had only been thinking. but here he was. this was proof to miss julia's mind that god actually does engage in our daily lives. for here he was! now she could bring father and son together; and that would correlate this world of question and doubt with that world of the star dust and the whirling nebulæ. "miss julia!" the judge stopped, suddenly embarrassed. he flushed, which was all the better, for he had been ashen pale. "oh, i'm so glad!" she exclaimed. "i was looking for you, all over. i was at your office, but did not find you. of course you have heard?" "heard? no, what was it?" "why, the death of johnnie adamson--it was the sheriff, just now--dan cowles shot him, right in front of aurora lane's house. he must have been trying to break in or something. his father was there." "why, great heavens!--what are you telling me? the sheriff shot him? where is cowles? i must see him." "he's here in the courthouse now, they say. but it's all over now. where have you been? i was going over to aurora's house early this morning, but mr. brooks came in. i must go over at once----" "come this way, miss julia," he interrupted. he led her into the room he had just left. racked as he was himself, he knew it would be too cruel an unkindness to tell miss julia now of what had befallen aurora lane the night before. "the reason i came to you first," said miss julia--"before i went to aurora--was about the boy--about don. you see, he confessed--the half-wit did--before he was killed. the sheriff and others and his own father heard him say that he had killed tarbush, don't you see? he'd gone wild, don't you see--he was a maniac. it was a madman killed tarbush. why, don didn't do it--i _told_ you he couldn't have done it! didn't i? "so now it's all cleared--and i'm so glad!" she concluded, breathless. "what's all this you are telling me, miss julia? why, this is basic evidence--it does end the case! but you say there were witnesses to this confession?" a vast relief came into judge henderson's ashen face. "yes, yes, the sheriff and eph adamson and nels jorgens--they all heard him. and the poor boy--his body's in the justice's office now. they've sent a messenger after his mother--poor thing--oh, poor woman that she is!" "where is adamson now--where's the sheriff?" "as i said, the sheriff is here in the building somewhere. old eph adamson won't speak to anyone. he seems half out of his own mind now. but he doesn't blame the sheriff. they say he's sorry for aurora. why? "so you see," said miss julia, leaping over a vast sea of intervening facts, "everything's all right now." and she sighed a great soft sigh of complete content. "of course don didn't do it. i knew that all along." "where's anne--my ward?" asked judge henderson suddenly. "i want to speak to her a moment." "i don't know," said miss julia. but she smiled, and all her choicest dimples came out in fine array. "i shouldn't wonder if she was in jail! now i've got to go over to aurora's. all this news, you know----" but miss julia did not hasten away. to the contrary, she seemed not unwilling to linger yet a time--unconsciously. the truth was that all her heart was happy, with the one supreme happiness possible for her in all her life. for a second time she was here, standing face to face with her hero. so she sighed and smiled and dimpled and talked over this thing and that--until at length she turned and caught sight of the two pictures, the one on the wall, the other on the desk--which both men had left there, forgotten. "why, what's this?" said she. "i gave mr. brooks this one this morning," she said. "he might at least have returned it to me. he said he wanted to borrow it for a little while. was he here?" "he just went away," said judge henderson uneasily. "he was here just now." miss julia was taking up the little photograph and looking from it to the lithograph with soft eyes. "isn't it fine?" said she. "fine!" but she did not say which one of the two faces she saw before her was most in her mind.... and then in the little room with its dusty windows and its tumbled books and map-hung walls, miss julia leaped to the great fundamental conclusion of her own life. she saw out far into the time of star dust and the soft vague light and the whirling nebulæ. she saw all the great truths--saw the one great truth for any woman--saw her hero standing here--the dream father of her own dream child.... but miss julia never grasped the real, the inferior, the human truth at all. on the contrary, she made a vast and very beautiful mistake. she had assigned a dream father to her dream son, but no more. that judge william henderson was the father indeed of dieudonné lane she no more suspected than she suspected herself to be his actual mother. so, therefore, it had been only a path of dreams that horace brooks had followed when he saw her look from the boy's to the father's face. it was only a path of dreams now that again her eyes followed, as she looked from the portrait of the youth to the man who stood before her. ah! miss julia. poor, little, happy miss julia! "so now, judge," said she at last, "you can clear him, after all. it will be so fine for you to do that--so dramatic--so fitting, won't it?" if judge henderson could have spoken, perhaps he would have done so; but she misunderstood his choking silence. she was miles away from the actual truth; and never was to know it in all her life. "don hadn't any father," said she. "his father's dead long ago, or aurora would have told me. he's in his grave--and she'll not open it even for me, who have loved her so much. but if he had had a father..." her voice ceased wistfully. judge henderson coughed, his hands at his throat. she did not see his face. "... if only he could have had a father like--this!" her own little hand fell gently--ever so gently--on the lithographed face of the great man, her hero, her champion--who always was to be such for her. it was the boldest act of all her quiet life. her hand was very gentle, but as it fell, perhaps it dealt the heaviest blow to the vanity, the egotism, the innate selfishness of the man ever he had known, even in this swift series of blows he was now receiving. for once remorse, regret, understanding smote him sore. he saw how little he had earned what life had given him. he saw--himself! "but then," she added hastily, and flushed to the roots of her hair--"i beg your pardon. that could not have been, of course. don's father--the way he was born--why, _don's_ father couldn't have been a man like _you_! we all know that." miss julia hobbled on away now to find her friend, aurora lane. she did not know the story of the night before. miss julia was very, very happy. she had her boy and his father after all--and both were above reproach! and she never told, not in all her life--and she never knew, not in all her life. and as she hobbled now up the walk beyond the little gate--somewhat repentant that her own eagerness had kept her away thus long from aurora, she felt no remorse in her heart that she had not told aurora lane the real secret of her own life. "because," remarked miss julia, to herself, like any woman, "there is one secret she has never told me--she has never told me who was don's father!" poor little miss julia! ah, very happy, very happy, little miss julia! because she was a woman. chapter xxiii the state vs. dieudonnÉ lane judge henderson, haggard, shaken, turned and walked down one of the halls which traversed the courthouse building. in the central space, where the two halls crossed at right angles, was a curving stair leading up to the courtrooms and the offices of the immediate servants of justice. as he stood here he saw again the tall figure of horace brooks approaching. he walked even more stooped forward than was usually his case, shambling, his feet turned out at wide angles. his great face in its fringe of red beard hung forward--but it bore now nothing but smiles. it showed nothing of triumph over the man he saw standing here waiting, humble and broken. he himself had said that he lacked birth and breeding. if so, whence got he this strange gentleness which marked his face now, as he stepped up to judge henderson--the man who but now had stood between him and success--who must always, so long as he lived, stand between him and happiness--the man whom he had beaten? "judge," said horace brooks, "i reckon about the best thing we can do is to go right on up to the court and get this thing cleaned up. you've heard the news by now?" henderson nodded. "yes, just now." "well, that softens up a lot of things, doesn't it? it will make things easier for everyone concerned--a whole lot easier for you and me, judge. now we can ask for the quashing of this indictment and the court can't help granting it. cowles is there. he's just gone up. adamson is with him." so they went up before the court, and the judge listened to the story of the sad-faced officer and the sad-faced old man with him. and presently the clerk at his side inscribed in the records: "the state vs. dieudonné lane, murder in the first degree. indictment quashed on motion of assistant state's attorney." "you will discharge the prisoner from custody, mr. sheriff," said the judge. "i'd like to say, if it please the court," said cowles, drawing a large and adequate handkerchief from his pocket and blowing a large and adequate nose, "that last night, at the time of the--the disturbance which these gentlemen here helped me to quell--this same young man that's just been discharged--why, he helped me as much as anybody." "what do you mean?" demanded the judge severely. "you let him out of your custody when he was under commitment?" "yes, your honor. i may have been short in some of my duties, your honor. i let a woman--a young woman--go in there last night to see him for a few minutes. when she went out i must have forgot to lock the door. what they said, now, it must have stirred me up some way. when the mob formed and came to the jail the prisoner had walked out. but right at the worst of it, there he was. and after it he went on back to jail alone. when i got back he was in his cell. the door wasn't locked even then. my wife wasn't there. "i reckon, your honor, we've all of us sort of made a general mistake," concluded dan cowles deprecatingly. "i allowed i'd tell this court about it." so, amid the frowning silence of the court, and the silence as well of all who heard this, the two attorneys, the sheriff and ephraim adamson walked on down the winding stairs. adamson saw coming across the courthouse yard the figure of an angular woman, dressed in calico, a sun-bonnet on her head, a sodden handkerchief in her hand. he walked on hurriedly to meet her. at the very spot where so lately he and his son had stood to challenge the world to combat, he took this gaunt old woman in his arms, in the sunlight before all the world. "mother!" said he. and at about this same time--since after all the world and life and swift keen joy of living must go on just the same--two young persons stood not far distant from that scene; stood not in the full light of the sun, stood not in the wisdom and sadness of middle age, but in youth--in youth and the glory and splendor of the vast, ineffable, indispensable illusion. the dim twilight which lighted them might have been the soft, vague light of the world's own dawning--the same which poor miss julia had seen that very day. cowles hastened away from the door after he had thrown back the bolts--the bolts and bars which had been laughed at by love all this time. the young man came out into the stone-floored hall where anne oglesby stood waiting for him--all beautiful and fresh and clean and sweet--fragrant as a very flower in her worthiness for love. "don!" she said, and held out her arms, running toward him. "oh, anne! anne!" his arms went about her. and this time there was no one there to see. chapter xxiv the sackcloth of spring valley number five roared eastward through the town that day on time. no one stepped down from the train, and no one took passage on it. spring valley had dropped back into its customary uneventfulness so far as the outer world might tell. it was but a little hamlet on the long line of fields and trees that lies along the way of number five. hurrying on toward the vast confusion of the metropolis, number five gave up its tenants to be lost in the cosmic focus of the great city, where all about were the lights and the anxious faces. the city, with its tall, dentated outline against the sky--wonderful, beautiful, alluring; the city with its unceasing strife, its vast and brooding peace, where walk side by side the ablest men, the most beautiful women of all the world, all keyed to the highest pitch of effort, all living at white heat of emotion and passion, of joy and of sorrow--the city and its ways--we may not know these unless we, too, embark on number five. in the silk-lined recesses of one of the city's greatest hostelries, where anything in the world may be bought, there sat, soon after the arrival of number five at the metropolis, the traveling man, ben mcquaid of spring valley, and a little milliner from a town east of spring valley which ben mcquaid "made" in his regular travel for his "house." he had bought for her now the most expensive viands, the most confusing and inspiring wines that all the city could offer. soft-footed servants were attending them both. they were having their little fling. to the city that was a matter of small consequence. nor, when it comes to that, was all the city itself of so much consequence. the great fact is that, while ben mcquaid and the little milliner were speeding east on number five, at midday, when the dusty maples of spring valley still were motionless under the heat of the inland summer day--old nels jorgens' wife was walking across the way with a covered dish in her hands.... in the dish, you say, there was only some crude cottage cheese for aurora lane? was that all you saw? seek again: for you, too, are human and neither may you escape the great things of life, nor ought you to miss its great discoveries. mrs. nels jorgens had on no hat. her gown was god knows what--gingham or calico or silk or cloth of gold, who shall say? she was a woman of fifty-eight. her sunken stomach protruded far below her flattened and withered bosom as she walked. her stringy hair was gray and uncomely. but her face--now her face--have you not seen it? perhaps not in the city. but the little supper in the city (not yet come to the time of sack-cloth) was by no means so great a thing as the service of mrs. nels jorgens, the wagon-maker's wife, when she carried across to aurora lane a dish of something for her luncheon. and others came. from the byways of this late cruel-hearted village came women, surely not cruel-hearted after all. they seemed to have some common errand. they were paying off the debt of years, though what they brought was not in silver dishes and there was no bubbling wine. so far from calling this a merciless, ignorant town, a hopeless town, at noon of that day, had you been there and seen these women and their ways, you would have called it charitable, kindly, beautiful; though after all it was and had been only human. over the breathless maples there seemed now to hang a stratum of another atmosphere, as sensible, as appreciable, as though a physical thing itself. the sympathy of spring valley was awake at last--after twenty years! "'rory, i just thought i'd come over and bring you a dish of this--i had some already made. i said to myself, says i, if we can eat this all the time, maybe you can just once"--it was the old jest, humble but kind. it sounded wondrous sweet to aurora lane--after twenty years. after these had gone away again, a little awed by the white, sad dignity of aurora lane--even nature seemed to relent. ben mcquaid and the little milliner were cooled by swiftly revolving electric fans yonder in the city. but along in the evening of this summer day in spring valley the leaves of the maples were stirred by softly moving breezes done by nature's hand. "aaron," said old silas kneebone to his crony, "seems like we're goin' to get a change of weather. maybe the hot spell's broke at last." "i'll tell you what i'll do, silas," said his friend suddenly, straightening up on his staff. "i'll tell you what i'll do with you, silas. even if it _is_ goin' to be cool before long--i'll just take you over to the drug store and buy you a drink of ice-cream sody at the fountain!" "time comes," he continued after a time, "when a fellow's been feelin' kind of stirred up, some way--when he feels just like he didn't care a hang for no expense. ain't that the truth?" chapter xxv because she was a woman the blessed change in the weather came on apace. the sultry air softened and became more life-giving. folk moved into the open, sat out upon the steps of the front galleries, rich and poor alike, willing to take the air. there was an unusual silence, an unwonted scarcity of callings back and forth across the fences. the people of the town did not care to revive the memories of the last two days. but the narrow little porch in front of the millinery shop on mulberry street held no occupant. there was a light within, but the blinds were close drawn. none who passed could hear any sound. aurora lane had sat for hours, almost motionless, at the side of the table where customarily she worked. she made no pretense to read in her bible now. her little white bed was unrumpled by any pressure of her body bowed at its side in prayer, although it was her hour now for these things. she was trying to think. her mind had been crushed. she sat dazed. it seemed to her an age since these women--these strangely kind-hearted, newly charitable women--had been here. or, had she only dreamed that they were here? had it been a passage of angels she herself had witnessed here? she had told miss julia not to let don come to see her just yet. so, though she had heard the great news of his release, she had not met him. "i'll have to think, julia," she said. "i don't know what i'll do. i must be alone." the window of her shop was still unmended. the red hat which had been so long, in one redressing or another, the sign of her wares, now was bent and broken beyond all possibility of restoration. the walls were bare, the furniture was broken. it was wreck and ruin that lay about her, as dully she still was conscious. twenty years of it--and this was the climax! what place was there left for her in all the world? as she sat, hour after hour, alone, aurora lane was thinking of the dark pool under the bridge, of how cool and comforting it might be. her bosom rose, torn now and then with deep, slow sobs, like the ground swell of a sea moved by some vast, remote, invisible cause. she had been sobbing thus for some twenty-four hours. she had not moved about very much today in her household, had not often left her chair here at the table. the mob had destroyed most of her pitiful store of gear, so there was small choice left her. somewhere she had found, deep down in a trunk tray, an old and faded garment, its silken sleeves so worn that the creases were now open--a blouse which she had put away long, long ago--twenty years and more ago. she wore it as best she might; and over the neck where the silk was gone she had cast a white shawl, also of silk, a thing likewise come down, treasured, from her meager girlhood days. this would serve her, so she thought, until she could find heart to go to bed and endeavor to find sleep.... yes. they may have been of her own mother's wedding finery. yes. perhaps she one day had planned they might be parts of her own wedding gear.... but she had had no wedding. she had done her hair, with miss julia's weeping aid, as simply as might be--as she had when she was younger. it lay now in long, heavy, deep rolls, down the nape of her white neck, along the sides of her head, covering her little ears, still shapely. her face was white as death, but still it held traces in its features, sharpened and refined, of what once was a tender and joyous beauty of its own--a beauty now high and spiritual. in her time aurora lane had been known far and wide as a very beautiful girl; self-willed, yes; wild--but beautiful. she did not remember these things now, not in the least; and there was no mirror left unbroken in the place. the evening waxed on, approaching nine of the clock, at which time good folk began to turn up the porch chairs against the wall so that the rain might not hurt them if it came, and to draw back into the stuffy rooms and to prepare for the use of the stuffy beds. fathers of families now drank deeply at the pitcher of ice water left on the center table. one little group after another, visible here and there on the porches or the stairs along the little street, lessened and gradually disappeared. one by one the lights went out all over the town. by ten o'clock the town would have settled down to slumber. it was monday, and on monday night not even the most ardent swains frequent hammocks or front parlors at an hour so late as ten o'clock in our town, saturday night and the lord's day being more especially set apart for these usages. but the light in aurora lane's house still burned. she did not know how late it was. the clock on the mantel was silent, for it had been broken by the men who had been there the night before. she sat motionless as a woman of stone. not even her boy was there--not even miss julia was there. she was alone--with her future, and with her past. it must have been toward midnight when at length aurora lane raised her head, turned a little. she had heard a sound! a sharp pang of terror caught at her--sheer, unreasoning terror. were they coming again? but no, it was not the sound of many footfalls, not the sound of many voices. what came to her now was a single sound, not made up of others--a low, definite sound. and it was not at her door in front--it was at the side of the house--it was at her window! it was a slight sound--a sort of tapping rhythmically repeated--a signal! aurora lane stopped breathing--her heart stopped in her bosom. the face was icy white which she turned toward the window back of which she heard this sound, this signal. she thought she had gone mad. she believed that at last her mind had broken under all the trials that had been heaped upon it. then her eyes began to move about, startled, like those of a wild deer, seeking which way to leap. it seemed to her she heard now another sound in addition, a sort of low call, a word.... yes, it was her name: "aurora! aurora!" what could it mean? it was some visitor come there in insult--it could be no more than that. and yet what impiousness, what mockery! because, what she heard, she had heard before! it had been twenty years since, and more--but she had heard it then. resolved suddenly to brave the worst, whatever it might be, she rose and swiftly stepped to the side door which made out upon the narrow yard. a man was standing near the door, now turning away from the window--a tall man, slouching down like an old man. "who's there?" she cried, intending to call out aloud to give the alarm, but failing to raise her voice above a whisper, such was her fear. yes, it was someone come here to offer yet another insult. but the man came into the field of light which shone around her through the door--came closer, reaching out his hands to her. she heard him struggling with his own voice, trying to speak. at last: "aurora! aurora! let me in! will you let me in?" she threw open the door so that the light might come. but it was late. the town slept. no one saw the light. no one saw the man who entered her door. he came on slowly, bending down, groaning, almost sobbing, it seemed to her. he entered the room, sank down into a chair. he was that pitiable thing, a man with his nerves set loose by cataclysm of the emotions. not less than this had william henderson met this day. it had shortened actually his physical stature, had altered every line in his face. he was twenty years and more older now than when she had seen him last. in one short day william henderson had burned down to a speck in the cosmic plan. he had learned for himself how little is any man. and vanity torn out by the roots--a megalomaniac egotism done away by a capital operation--a life-long self-content, an ingrown selfishness, all wrenched out at once--that sort of thing takes its toll in the doing. william henderson was paying his debts all at once--with interest accrued, as hod brooks had said to him. it was an old, old, ashen-faced man who turned to her at last, as he came into the little lighted room. neither had spoken since he came within. the door now was closed back of him. no one without could have any inkling of what went on within this little room.... the drawn curtains ... the low light ... the man ... the woman ... midnight! all which had been here twenty years before for setting, that same now was here! and if there was ruin now of what here once was fresh and fair, if ruin lay about them now, who had wrought that ruin? ... yes, it had been here. it was at this very place--when she was just starting, struggling, young--all the vague, soft, mysterious, compelling impulses of youth and life just now hers--so strange, so strong, so sweet, so ineffable, so indispensable, so little understood.... that had been his signal! and when he had rapped before--when he was young and comely, not old and ashen--she could no more have helped opening the door than the white wisps from the cottonwoods could cease to pass upon the air in their ancient seeking, blown by the spirit of life, coming from thither, passing thence, under an impulse soft, sweet, gentle, unsought but irresistible. "will!" she said at length. "will, what's wrong? what have you done? what does this mean?" in some sense, swiftly, the past seemed back again, its twenty years effaced, so that she thought in terms of other days. he raised his head. "what, you speak to me? you said 'will'? oh, aurie, aurie, don't!--i can't stand it. i'm not good enough for this." "what's happened?" she insisted. "why are you here?" he sat, his lips loosely working now, his eyes red, his face flabby, his gray hair tumbled on his temples. it was as though all life's excesses and indulgences had culminated and taken full revenge on him in this one day. "and you can say that to me?" he murmured. it was very difficult for him to talk. he was broken--he was gone--he was just an old man--a shell, a rim, a ruin of a man, now seeing himself as he actually had been all these years--god knows, a pitiable sight, that, for many and many a man of us all. "i'm--i'm afraid, will! last night--it broke me, someway--i don't think much more can happen.... i can't think--i can't pull together, someway.... i was going down to the bridge tonight.... but i thought of don." "but you couldn't think of _me_, aurora?--have you ever, in all these years?" she made him no answer at all. "no. you could only hate the thought of me," he said. "what a coward i've been, what a cur! ah, what a coward i've been all these years!" "i wish you wouldn't, will," she said. dazed, troubled, she was trying to think in terms of the present; trying, as she had said, to pull together. "you are don's father.... well, you were a man, will," she added, sighing. "i was only a woman." she had neither sarcasm nor resentfulness in her words. it was simply what she had learned by herself, in her own life, without any great horizon in the world. "it was pretty hard sometimes," said she, after a time, slowly. "i had to contrive so much. putting the boy through college--it began to cost more the last four years--so much more than we had supposed it would. you know, sometimes i was almost----" she flushed and paused. "what was it, aurie?" "at one time not long ago, the bills were so large that we had to pay--it was so hard to get the money, i was almost on the point of going to you--for him, you know--and to ask you for a little help. but that's all over now." "oh, i ought to have come through--i ought to have owned it all up!" "yes, will, you ought." "why did you keep it--why didn't you name me? i always thought, for a long time, that you would, that you must." "i don't know. don't ask me anything. but at least, don's out now. thank god! he's clear--he's innocent, and they all know it now. they can't keep him down, can they? he won't have as hard a time as i've had? he'll succeed, won't he? he must, after it all!" "yes," said the man, shaking as in a palsy, "after it all, he ought to, and i pray he may." but he could talk no more. "and he's such a fine boy! i don't see how you could----" "how i could disown him? yesterday?" she nodded. "i can't understand that. i never could. i can't see how you could hesitate. i--i wish you hadn't. i--i can't forgive that." her voice rose slightly at last, a spot of color came into her pallid cheek. "i didn't have the courage to come through square, and that's the truth about it. i've never had, all along. maybe a man doesn't have the same feeling that a woman does about a child--i don't know. but i was worse than the average man--more selfish. i got caught up in politics, in business. success?--well, i saw how hard it is. i thought i had to keep down the past. well, it's over now. but as for you----" "i lived it down for a good many years. don's twenty-two now." "but how could you keep that secret--what made you? why didn't you go into court and force me to do my duty to my own flesh and blood--and to you?" "i don't know," she answered. "i told you, i don't know. maybe i was proud. maybe i thought i'd wait till you shamed your own self into coming. i'm glad you've come now, at last. i don't know--maybe i thought some day you would." "i'm not judge henderson!" he broke out bitterly. "i'm arthur dimmesdale! i ought to be in the pillory, on the gallows, before this town. i'm a thief and a coward, and i deserve no pity, neither of man nor of god himself. you've carried all the blame, when i was the one to blame. and i can't see why you didn't tell, aurie--what made you keep it all a secret?" "i don't know," said she simply again. "i don't know. it seemed--it seemed somehow to me--_sacred_--what was between us! it was--don! i have never told anyone. i was waiting, hoping you'd come--for your own sake. why should i rob you of your chance?" "thank god that you did keep the secret!" he broke out at length. "it's all the chance i have left to be a man. at least i'll confess the truth." "why, will, what do you mean? i'll never tell. i told you i wouldn't--i swore i wouldn't. "i'll be going away before long, will," she added. "i can't stay here now. i suppose don and i will go away somewhere. i'm glad he's found a good girl. ah!--anne, she's splendid.... i'm not going to make any objections to his marrying _her_. and, you see, i'll know that you came here. and some time he will know--who was his father. he doesn't, yet. in justice, some time he will. god will attend to that, not any of us." "all the world shall know it, aurora!" said the man at her side. "i saw them a little while ago, walking together. he was listening to the drums. he was looking at the flag--and so was she. they are up at my house now. they're happy. god bless them." "but they don't know--you've not told?" "no, i've been walking out in the country--all evening. i was up there--on the road to the calvary cemetery. i'm going to tell don the truth tomorrow. "but look at your house--your poor little home." he cast about him a gaze which took in the ruin that had been made of all her belongings. "oh, my god, aurora! it was my own fault. it was _i_ who made that mob a possible thing. and you were a good woman. you've been a good woman all the time. i never knew before what a splendid thing a woman can be. why--strong!... and you called me 'will' just now. what made you do that?" "i don't know," said aurora lane. "i suppose a woman never does quite forget the--the first man of--of her life." "but how sweet it all was," he broke out, "in spite of it all, in spite of everything! oh, aurie, don't you remember when i'd come and tap there on the window--and you'd come and let me in? i don't deserve even that memory ... a woman like you--and a man like me. but i can't forget it. and you let me come in now--that's my one last joy left for all my life. why, it's the one thing i can never think of again without a shudder. yes, i've come without your asking--and you--you've let me in. "aurie," he went on, "that's what leaves me so helpless. i know what i deserve--but i don't want to be despised.... i want more than i deserve! i've always had more than i deserved. it's about all any man can say. it's life itself, i suppose. i don't know what it is. but, aurie, aurie, i do see a thousand things now i never saw before." she still sat, white, dumb. only, now, her head began to move, slowly, from side to side. he caught the evidence of negative, and a new resolution came to him at last. "let it all go!" he said at length--and now indeed he was on his knees at her side. "what i have lost is nothing. i'll never ask for office until i have lived here twenty years, openly, as you have. i must have loved you! i did--i do! i do! i wish i were fit to love you now. because, in twenty years more.... the years pass, aurie. won't they pass? my sentence----" his gray head was bent down low in her lap now, as her son's had been at this very place but a day before. her hands--hands stained with needle work, rough on the finger ends, the taper gone there into a little square--were the same long shapely hands that had touched his hair at another time. the eyes that looked down at him now under long, soft, dark lashes were the same. but they were more brooding--tender, yes, but more sad, more wise. there was no passion in her gaze, in her touch. what was hatred or revenge to her? his face was hid deep in his hands as he knelt. it lay there in that haven, the lap of woman, the place of forgiveness--and of hope, as some vague memory seemed to say to him. indeed, all the wisdom and all the mercy and all the hope of a world or of a universe of worlds were in the low voice of aurora lane as she stroked back his hair--the gray hair of an old man, who knelt beside her. it was the ancient pitying instinct of woman that was in her touch. hardly she knew she touched him, so impersonal was it all to her. "will, you poor boy, you poor boy! oh, poor boy!" he heard her voice once more. suddenly he raised his head, he sprang up, he stood before her. "you do forgive me!" a sort of triumph was in the eager note of his voice. "you say 'poor boy!' you do forgive me!" he advanced toward her. but aurora also had risen quickly. now, suddenly, some shock came to her, vivifying, clarifying. the needle of her heart swung on the dial of today. "forgive you!" she exclaimed, her color suddenly gone high. "forgive you--what do you mean?--what do you _mean_?" "you said you pitied me----" "pity you, yes, i do. i'm sorry for you from the bottom of my heart. i'd be sorry to see any man go through what you've got to face. yes, _pity_ you--but--love you? what do you mean? is that what you mean? _respect_ you--is that what you mean? oh, no! oh, no! use for you, in any way in the world?--oh, no! oh, no! don't mistake. _pity_--that's all! don't i know what it means to descend into hell? and that's what you must do." "but, aurie--aurie--you just said----" "i said i was sorry for you, and so i am, in all my heart. but he's our boy. i've paid my share in anguish. so must you." "haven't i? haven't i?" "not yet! you're only beginning. it takes twenty years.--oh, not of hidden and secret repentance--but _open_ repentance, before all the world! and square living. and your prayer to god each night for twenty years for understanding and forgiveness! "go out and earn it," she said, walking to the door and opening it. "pity?--yes. love? no--no--_no_! i've no use for you. i don't need you now. my boy doesn't need you--we're able to stand alone. we've _succeeded_! you? you're a failure--you're a broken-down, used-up, hopeless failure--so much, i'm sorry for you, sorry. "you didn't really think i'd ever take you back, did you, will?" she went on, eager to be fair even now. "i was only _sorry_ for you, that's all. god knows, i'm sorry for any human being, woman or man, that has to go through hell as i have. twenty years? that'll leave you old, will. but--go serve it, in this town, as i have! and god have mercy on your soul!" she flung the door yet wider, and stumbling, he began to grope toward it. the black wall of the night lay beyond. slowly the color faded from the cheeks of the woman now left alone yet again. she sank down, crumpling, white, her face marble clear, her eyes staring straight ahead at what picture none may ask. then, as the white column of her throat fluttered again, she beat one hand slightly against the other, ere she crushed them both together in her lap, ere she flung them wide above her. "god! god!" cried aurora lane. "if it wasn't right, why did he say, 'suffer little children'? it was in the book ... little ... little children ... the kingdom of heaven!" it was more than an hour before she, too, rose and, stepping toward the door, looked out again into the night. a red light showed here or there. homes--the homes of our town. by emerson hough the broken gate the man next door the magnificent adventure let us go afield out of doors the story of the cowboy the girl at the halfway house transcriber's notes: . page scan source: http://www.archive.org/details/chiefjusticenove franiala . the diphthong oe is represented by [oe]. heinemann's international library. editor's note. there is nothing in which the anglo-saxon world differs more from the world of the continent of europe than in its fiction. english readers are accustomed to satisfy their curiosity with english novels, and it is rarely indeed that we turn aside to learn something of the interior life of those other countries the exterior scenery of which is often so familiar to us. we climb the alps, but are content to know nothing of the pastoral romances of switzerland. we steam in and out of the picturesque fjords of norway, but never guess what deep speculation into life and morals is made by the novelists of that sparsely peopled but richly endowed nation. we stroll across the courts of the alhambra, we are listlessly rowed upon venetian canals and lombard lakes, we hasten by night through the roaring factories of belgium; but we never pause to inquire whether there is now flourishing a spanish, an italian, a flemish school of fiction. of russian novels we have lately been taught to become partly aware, but we do not ask ourselves whether poland may not possess a dostoieffsky and portugal a tolstoi. yet, as a matter of fact, there is no european country that has not, within the last half-century, felt the dew of revival on the threshing-floor of its worn-out schools of romance. everywhere there has been shown by young men, endowed with a talent for narrative, a vigorous determination to devote themselves to a vivid and sympathetic interpretation of nature and of man. in almost every language, too, this movement has tended to display itself more and more in the direction of what is reported and less of what is created. fancy has seemed to these young novelists a poorer thing than observation; the world of dreams fainter than the world of men. they have not been occupied mainly with what might be or what should be, but with what is, and, in spite of all their shortcomings, they have combined to produce a series of pictures of existing society in each of their several countries such as cannot fail to form an archive of documents invaluable to futurity. but to us they should be still more valuable. to travel in a foreign country is but to touch its surface. under the guidance of a novelist of genius we penetrate to the secrets of a nation, and talk the very language of its citizens. we may go to normandy summer after summer and know less of the manner of life that proceeds under those gnarled orchards of apple-blossom than we learn from one tale of guy de maupassant's. the present series is intended to be a guide to the inner geography of europe. it presents to our readers a series of spiritual baedekers and murrays. it will endeavour to keep pace with every truly characteristic and vigorous expression of the novelist's art in each of the principal european countries, presenting what is quite new if it is also good, side by side with what is old, if it has not hitherto been presented to our public. that will be selected which gives with most freshness and variety the different aspects of continental feeling, the only limits of selection being that a book shall be, on the one hand, amusing, and, on the other, wholesome. one difficulty which must be frankly faced is that of subject. life is now treated in fiction by every race but our own with singular candour. the novelists of the lutheran north are not more fully emancipated from prejudice in this respect than the novelists of the catholic south. everywhere in europe a novel is looked upon now as an impersonal work, from which the writer, as a mere observer, stands aloof, neither blaming nor applauding. continental fiction has learned to exclude, in the main, from among the subjects of its attention, all but those facts which are of common experience, and thus the novelists have determined to disdain nothing and to repudiate nothing which is common to humanity; much is freely discussed, even in the novels of holland and of denmark, which our race is apt to treat with a much more gingerly discretion. it is not difficult, however, we believe--it is certainly not impossible--to discard all which may justly give offence, and yet to offer to an english public as many of the masterpieces of european fiction as we can ever hope to see included in this library. it will be the endeavour of the editor to search on all hands and in all languages for such books as combine the greatest literary value with the most curious and amusing qualities of manner and matter. edmund gosse. the chief justice the chief justice a novel by emil franzos translated from the german by miles corbet london william heinemann [_all rights reserved_] introduction. the remote austrian province of galicia has, in our generation, produced two of the most original of modern novelists, leopold von sacher-masoch and karl emil franzos. the latter, who is the author of the volume here presented to english readers, was born on the th of october , just over the frontier, in a ranger's house in the midst of one of the vast forests of russian podolia. his father, a polish jew, was the district doctor of the town of czorskow, in galicia, where the boy received his first lessons in literature from his german mother. in franzos was sent, on the death of his father, to the german college at czernowitz; at the age of fourteen, according to the published accounts of his life, he was left entirely to his own resources, and gained a precarious livelihood by teaching. after various attempts at making a path for himself in science and in law, and finding that his being a jew stood in the way of a professional career, he turned, as so many german israelites have done before and since, to journalism, first in vienna, then at pesth, then in vienna again, where he still continues to reside. in franzos published his first book, two volumes entitled _aus halb-asia_ ("from semi-asia"), a series of ethnological studies on the peoples of galicia, bukowina, south russia, and roumania, whom he described as in a twilight of semi-barbaric darkness, not wholly in the sunshine of europe. this was followed in by _vom don zur donau_ ("from the don to the danube"), a similar series of studies in ethnography. meanwhile, in _die juden von barnow_ ("the jews of barnow"), , he had published his first collection of tales drawn from his early experience. he followed it in by _junge liebe_ ("young love"), two short stories, "brown rosa" and "brandenegg's cousins," extremely romantic in character, and written in an elaborate and somewhat extravagant style. these volumes achieved a great and instant success. the succeeding novels of franzos have been numerous, and unequal in value. _moschko von parma_, , was a pathetic study of the vicissitudes of a young jewish soldier in the wars. in the same year franzos published _die hexe_ ("the witch"). the best known of his writings in this country is _ein kampf um's recht_ ("a battle for the right"), , which was published in english, with an introduction by mr. george macdonald, and attracted the favourable, and even enthusiastic, notice of mr. gladstone. _der präsident_, which is here translated, appeared in germany in . edmund gosse. the chief justice. chapter i. in the higher court of bolosch, an important germano-slavonic town of northern austria, there sat as chief justice some thirty years ago, one of the bravest and best of those men on whom true justice might hopefully rely in that sorely tried land. charles victor, baron von sendlingen, as he may be called in this record of his fate, was the last descendant of a very ancient and meritorious race which could trace its origin to a collateral branch of the franconian emperors, and which had once upon a time possessed rich lands and mines on the shores of the wörther see: now indeed by reason of an adverse fate and the love of splendour of some of its scions, there had gradually come to be nothing left of all this save a series of high sounding titles. but the decline of fame and influence had not kept pace with the loss of lands and wealth; the sendlingens had entered the service of the hapsburgs and in the last two hundred years had given the austrian hereditary dominions not only several brave generals, but an almost unbroken line of administrators and guardians of justice. and so, although they were entirely dependent on their slender official salaries, they were reckoned with good reason among the first families of the empire, and a sendlingen might from his cradle count upon the office of chief justice of one of the higher courts. even unkind envy, to say nothing of honest report, was obliged to admit that these hereditary patricians of justice had always shown themselves worthy of their sacred office, and just as they regularly inherited certain physical characteristics--great stature, bright eyes and coal-black curly hair--so also gifted intellects, iron industry and a sense of duty which often enough bordered on self-denial, were always theirs. "the majesty of the law is the most sacred majesty on earth." thus spake the first of this family who had entered the service of the imperial courts of justice, the baron victor amadeus, chief judge of the vienna senate, in answer to an irregular demand of ferdinand the catholic, and his descendants held fast to the maxim in good days and evil, even in those worst days when themis threatened, in this country also, to sink to the level of the venal mistress of princes. the greatest of the hapsburgs, joseph ii., knew how to value this at its right worth, and although he much disliked hereditary offices, he on this account appointed the baron charles victor, in spite of his youth, as his father's successor in one of the most important offices of the state. this was the grandfather of that sendlingen whose story is to be told here, a powerful man of unusual strength of will who had again raised the reputation of the family to a most flourishing condition. but although everything went so well with him, the dearest wish of his heart was not to be realized: he was not to transmit office and reputation to his son. this son, franz victor, our hero's father, had to pass his life wretchedly in an insignificant position, the only one among the sendlingens who went to his grave in mature years, unrenowned and indeed despised. this fate had not overtaken him through lack of ability or industry. he too proved himself a true son of this admirable race; gifted, persevering, thorough, devoted heart and soul to his studies and his official duties. but a youthful escapade had embroiled him in the beginning of his career with father and relations: a girl of the lower orders, the daughter of the concierge at the courts where his father presided, had become dear to him and in a moment of passion he had betrayed her. when the girl could no longer conceal the consequences of her fault, she went and threw herself at the feet of the chief justice imploring him to protect her from her parent's wrath. the old man could hardly contain his agony of indignation, but he summoned his son and having heard from his lips the truth of the accusation, he resolved the matter by saying: "the wedding will take place next sunday. a sendlingen may be thoughtless, he must never be a scoundrel." they were married without show and in complete secresy, and at once started for a little spot in the tyrolean mountains whither baron von sendlingen had caused his son and heir to be transferred. this event made a tremendous sensation. for the first time a sendlingen had married out of his rank, the daughter of a menial too, and constrained to it by his father! people hardly knew how to decide which of the two, father or son, had sinned most against the dignity of the family; similar affairs were usually settled by the nobles of the land in all secresy and without leaving a stain on their genealogical tree. even kaiser franz, although his opinions about morality were so rigid, once signified something of the kind to the honourable old judge, but he received the same answer as was given to his son. the embittered old man was indeed equally steadfast in maintaining a complete severance of the bonds between him and his only son; the letters which every mail from the tyrol brought, were left unopened, and even in his last illness he would not suffer the outcast to be recalled. after the death of the judge, his son came to be completely forgotten: only occasionally his aristocratic relations used to recount with a shrug of the shoulders, that they had again been obliged to return a letter of this insolent fellow to the place where it came from. nevertheless they learnt the contents of these letters from a good-natured old aunt: they told of the death of his first child, then of the birth of a boy whom he had called after his grandfather, and while he obstinately kept silence about the happiness or unhappiness of his marriage, he more and more urgently begged for deliverance from the god-forsaken corner of the globe in which he languished and for promotion to a worthier post. although the only person who read these letters was, with all her pity, unable to help him, he never grew weary of writing. the tone of his letters became year by year more bitter and despairing, and whereas he had at first asked for special favours, he now fiercely demanded the cessation of these hostile intrigues. perhaps the embittered man was unjust to his relations in making this reproach,--they seemed in no way to concern themselves about him whether to his interest or his injury--, but he really was badly treated, and leaving out the influence of his name, he was not even able to obtain what he might have expected according to the regulations of the service. an excellent judge of exemplary industry, he was forced to continue for years in this tyrolean wilderness until at length, one day, he was promoted to a judgeship on the klagenfurth circuit. but he was not long able to enjoy his improved position: bitter repentance and the struggle with wretchedness had prematurely undermined his strength. he died, soon after his wife, and his last concern on earth was an imploring prayer to his relations to adopt his boy. this prayer would perhaps not have been necessary to secure the orphan that sympathy which his much-to-be-pitied father had in vain sought to obtain for himself. charles victor, now fourteen years of age, was carried off in a sort of triumph and brought to vienna: even the emperor gratefully remembered the faithful services which this noble house had for centuries rendered to his throne, and he caused its last surviving male to be educated at his expense in the academy of maria theresa. the beautiful, slender boy won the sympathies of his natural guardians by his mere appearance, the serious expression peculiar to his family and his surprising resemblance to his grandfather; excellent gifts, a quiet, steady love of work and a self-contained, manly sweetness of disposition, made him dear to both his masters and his comrades. he was the best scholar at the academy, and he justified the hopes which he had aroused by the brilliant success of his legal studies. but his eagerness to obtain a knowledge of the world and to see foreign countries was equally great, and the modest fortune left him by his grandfather made the fulfilment of these desires possible. when, being of age, he returned to austria and entered on his legal duties, it needed no particular insight to prophesy a rapid advancement in his career. in fact after a brief term of office as judge-advocate in the eastern provinces, he was transferred to bohemia, and shortly afterwards married a beautiful, proud girl who had been much sought after, a daughter of one of the most important counts of the empire. nobody was surprised that the lucky man had also this good luck, but the marriage remained childless. this only served to unite the stately pair more closely to one another, and this wedded love and the judge's triumphs on the bench and in the world of letters, sufficed to fully occupy his life. his treatises on criminal law were among the best of the kind, and the practical nature of his judgments obtained for him the reputation of one of the most thorough and sagacious judges of austria. and so it was more owing to his services than to the influence attached to the name and associations of this remarkable man, that he succeeded in scaling by leaps and bounds that ladder of advancement on the lowest rung of which, his unfortunate father had remained in life-long torture. as early as in his fortieth year he had obtained the important and honourable position of chief justice of bolosch. the stormy times in which he lived served as a good test of his character and abilities. the fierce flames of had been extinguished and from the ruins rose the exhalation of countless political trials. those were sad days, making the strongest demands on the independence of a judge, and many an honest but weak man became the compliant servant of the authorities. the chief justice von sendlingen, a member of the oldest nobility, bound to the imperial house by ties of personal gratitude, related by marriage to the leaders of the reaction, was nevertheless not one of the weak and cowardly judges; just as in that stormy year he had boldly confessed his loyalty to the emperor, so now he showed that justice was not to be abased to an instrument of political revenge. this boldness was indeed not without danger; his brother-in-law stormed, his wife was in tears; first warnings, then threats, rained in upon him, but he kept his course unmoved, acting as his sense of justice bade him. if those in authority did not actually interfere with him, he owed this entirely to his past services, which had made him almost indispensable. the methods of administering justice were constantly changed, juries were empanelled and then dismissed, the regulations of the courts were repeatedly altered: everywhere there were cases in arrear, and confusion and uncertainty. the bolosch circuit was one of the few exceptions. the chief justice remained unmolested by the ministry, and the citizens honoured him as the embodiment of justice, and lawyers as the ornament of their profession. respected throughout the whole empire, he was in his immediate circle the object of almost idolatrous love. and certainly the personal characteristics of this stately and serious man with his almost youthful beauty, were enough to justify this feeling. he was gentle but determined; dignified but affectionate: faithful in the extreme to duty, and yet no stickler for forms. when his wife died suddenly in , the sympathetic love and veneration of all were manifested in the most touching manner. he felt the loss keenly, but only his best friend, dr. george berger, learnt how deep was the wound. this dr. berger was one of the most respected barristers of the town, and in spite of the difference of their political convictions--berger was a radical--he enjoyed an almost fraternal intimacy with sendlingen. this faithful friend did what he could for the lonely judge; and his best helper in the work of sympathy was his sense of duty which forbade a weak surrender to sorrow. he gradually became quiet and composed again, and some premature grey hairs at the temples alone showed how exceedingly he had suffered. in the midst of the regular work of his profession--it was in may, --he was surprised by a laconic command from the minister of justice ordering him forthwith to surrender the conduct of his court to the judge next him in position, von werner, and to be in vienna within three days. this news caused general amazement; the reactionary party was growing stronger, and it was thought that this sudden call might mean the commencement of an inquiry into the conduct of this true but independent judge. he himself was prepared for the worst, but his friend berger took a more hopeful view; rudeness, he said, had become the fashion again in vienna, and perhaps something good was in store for him. this supposition proved correct; the minister wished the assistance of the learned specialist in drawing up a new statute for the administration of justice. the commission of inquiry, originally called for two months, continued its deliberations till the autumn. it was not till the beginning of november that sendlingen started for home, having received as a mark of the minister's gratitude the nomination as chief justice of the higher court at pfalicz, a post which he was to enter upon in four months. this was a brilliant and unexampled appointment for one of his years, but the thought of leaving the much-loved circle of his labours made him sorrowful. and this feeling was increased when the citizens testified by a public reception at the station, how greatly they were rejoiced at his return. his lonely dwelling too had been decorated by a friendly hand, as also the courts of justice. he found it difficult to announce his departure in answer to the speech of welcome delivered by his deputy. and indeed his announcement was received with exclamations of regret and amazement, and it was only by degrees that his auditors sufficiently recovered themselves to congratulate their beloved chief. only one of them did so with a really happy heart, his deputy, von werner, an old, industrious if not very gifted official, who now likewise saw a certain hope of promotion. with a pleased smile, the little weazened man followed sendlingen into his chambers in order to give him an account of the judicial proceedings of the last six months. herr von werner was a sworn enemy of all oral reports, and had therefore not only prepared two beautifully drawn-up lists of the civil and criminal trials, but had written a memorial which he now read out by way of introduction. sendlingen listened patiently to this lengthy document. but when werner was going to take up the lists with the same intention, the chief justice with a pleasant smile anticipated him. "we will look through them together," he said, and began with the criminal list. it contained the name, age and calling of the accused, the date of their gaol-delivery, their crime, as well as the present position of the trial. "there are more arrears than i expected," he said with some surprise. "but the number of crimes has unfortunately greatly increased," objected herr von werner, zealously. "especially the cases of child-murder." "you are right." sendlingen glanced through the columns specifying the crimes and then remained plunged in deep thought. "the number is nearly double," he resumed. "and it is not only here, but in the whole empire, that this horrible phenomenon is evident! the minister of justice complained of it to me with much concern." "but what else could one expect?" cried old werner. "this accursed revolution has undermined all discipline, morals and religion! and then the leniency with which these inhuman women are treated--why it is years since the death-sentence has been carried out in a case of child-murder." "that will unfortunately soon be changed," answered sendlingen in a troubled tone. "the minister of justice thinks as you do, and would like an immediate example to be made. it is unfortunate, i repeat, and not only because, from principle, i am an opponent of the theory of deterring by fear. of all social evils this can least of all be cured by the hangman. and if it is so rank nowadays, i do not think the reason is to be found where you and his excellency seek it, but in the sudden impoverishment, the uncertainty of circumstances and the brutality which, everywhere and always, follow upon a great war. the true physicians are the political economist, the priest and the schoolmaster!... or have you ever perhaps known of a case among educated people?" "oh certainly!" answered herr von werner importantly. "i have, as it happens, to preside to-morrow,--that is to say unless you will take the case--at the conclusion of a trial against a criminal of that class; at least she must be well-educated as she was governess in the house of a countess. see here--case no. on the list." he pointed with his finger to the place. then a dreadful thing happened. hardly had sendlingen glanced at the name which werner indicated, than he uttered a hollow choking cry, a cry of deadly anguish. his face was livid, his features were distorted by an expression of unutterable terror, his eyes started out of their sockets and stared in a sort of fascination at the list before him. "great heavens!" cried werner, himself much alarmed, as he seized his chief's hand. "what is the matter with you? do you know this girl?" sendlingen made no reply. he closed his eyes, rested both arms on the table and tried to rise. but his limbs refused to support him, and he sank down in his chair like one in a faint. "water! help!" cried werner, making for the bell. a movement of sendlingen's stopped him. "it is nothing," he gasped with white lips and parched throat. "an attack of my heart disease. it has lately--become--much worse." "oh!" cried werner with genuine sympathy. "i never even suspected this before. everybody thought you were in the best of health. what do the doctors say?" again there was no answer. breathing with difficulty, livid, his head sunk on his breast, his eyes closed, sendlingen lay back in his chair. and when he raised his eyelids werner met such a hopeless, despairing look, that the old gentleman involuntarily started back. "may i," he began timidly, "call a doctor----" "no!" sendlingen's refusal was almost angry. again he attempted to rise and this time he succeeded. "thank you," he said feebly. "i must have frightened you. i am better now and shall soon be quite well." "but you are going home?" "why should i? i will rest in this comfortable chair for half an hour and then, my dear colleague, i shall be quite at your service again." the old gentleman departed but not without hesitation: even he was really attached to sendlingen. the other officials also received the news of this attack with genuine regret, especially as werner several times repeated in his important manner: "any external cause is quite out of the question, gentlemen, quite out of the question. we were just quietly talking about judicial matters. ah, heart disease is treacherous, gentlemen, very treacherous." hardly had the door closed, when sendlingen sank down in his chair, drew the lists towards him and again stared at that particular spot with a look on his face as if his sentence of death was written there. the entry read thus: "victorine lippert. born th january at radautz in the bukowina. governess. child-murder. transferred here from the district court at gölotz on the th june . confessed. trial to be concluded th november ." the column headed "sentence" was still empty. "death!" he muttered. "death!" he repeated, loud and shrill, and a shudder ran through his every fibre. he sank back and hid his face which had suddenly become wasted. "o my god!" he groaned. "i dare not let her die--her blood would cry out against me, against me only." and he drew the paper towards him again and stared at the entry, piteously and beseechingly, as though he expected a miracle from heaven, as though the letters must change beneath the intensity of his gaze. the mid-day bells of the neighbouring cathedral aroused him from his gloomy brooding. he rose, smoothed his disarranged hair, forced on his accustomed look of quiet, and betook himself to werner's room. "you see," he said. "i have kept my word and am all right again. are there any pressing matters to be rid of?" "only one," answered werner. "the committee of discipline has waited your return, as it did not wish to decide an important case without you." "good, summon the committee for five o'clock today." he now went the round of the other offices, answered the anxious inquiries with the assurance that he was quite well again, and then went down a long corridor to his own quarters which were in another wing of the large building. his step was still elastic, his face pale but almost cheerful. not until he had given his servant orders to admit nobody, not even his friend berger, and until he had bolted his study-door, did he sink down and then give himself up, without restraint, to the fury of a wild, despairing agony. chapter ii. for an hour or more the unhappy man lay groaning, and writhing like a worm under the intensity of his wretchedness. then he rose and with unsteady gait went to his secretaire, and began to rummage in the secret drawers of the old-fashioned piece of furniture. "i no longer remember where it is," he muttered to himself. "it is long since i thought of the old story--but god has not forgotten it." at length he discovered what he was looking for: a small packet of letters grown yellow with time. as he unloosed the string which tied them, a small watercolour portrait in a narrow silver frame fell out: it depicted the gentle, sweet features of a young, fair, grey-eyed girl. his eyes grew moist as he looked at it, and bitter tears suddenly coursed down his cheeks. he then unfolded the papers and began to read: they were long letters, except the last but one which filled no more than two small sheets. this he read with the greatest attention of all, read and re-read it with ever-increasing emotion. "and i could resist such words!" he murmured. "oh wretched man that i am." then he opened the last of the letters. "you evidently did not yourself expect that i would take your gift," he read out in an undertone. and then: "i do not curse you; on the contrary, i ardently hope that you may at least not have given me up in vain." he folded the letters and tied them up. then he undid them again and buried himself once more in their melancholy contents. a knock at the door interrupted him: his housekeeper announced that dinner was ready. this housekeeper was an honest, elderly spinster, fräulein brigitta, whom he usually treated with the greatest consideration. to-day he only answered her with a curt, impatient, "presently!" and he vouchsafed no lengthier reply to her question how he was. but then he remembered some one else. "i must not fall ill," he said. "i must keep up my strength. i shall need it all!" and after he had locked up the letters, he went to the dining-room. he forced himself to take two or three spoonfuls of soup, and hastily emptied a glass of old rhine-wine. his man-servant, franz, likewise a faithful old soul, replenished it, but hesitatingly and with averted countenance. "where is fräulein brigitta?" asked sendlingen. "crying!" growled the old man. "hasn't got used to the new state of things! nor have i! nice conduct, my lord! we arrive in the morning ill, we say nothing to an old and faithful servant, we go straight into the courts. there we fall down several times; we send for no doctor, but writhe alone in pain like a wounded stag." the faithful old fellow's eyes were wet. "i am quite well again, franz," said sendlingen re-assuringly. "we were groaning!" said the old man in a tone of the bitterest reproach. "and since when have we declined to admit herr berger?" "has he been here?" "yes, on most important business, and would not believe that we ourselves had ordered him to be turned away.... and now we are eating nothing," he continued vehemently, as sendlingen pushed his plate from him and rose. "my lord, what does this mean! we look as if we had seen a ghost!" "no, only an old grumbler!" he intended this for an airy pleasantry but its success was poor. "do not be too angry with me." then he returned to his chambers. "the old fellow is right," he thought. "it was a ghost, a very ancient ghost, and its name is nemesis!" his eyes fell on the large calendar on the door: " th november " he read aloud. "a day like every other--and yet ..." then he passed his hand over his brow as if trying to recall who he was, and rang the bell. "get me," he said to the clerk who entered, "the documents relating to the next three criminal trials." he stepped to the window and awaited the clerk's return with apparent calm. he had not long to wait; the clerk entered and laid two goodly bundles of papers on the table. "i have to inform you, my lord," said the clerk standing at attention (he had been a soldier), "that only the papers relating to the trials of the th and th november are in the court-house. those for tomorrow's trial of victorine lippert for child-murder are still in the hands of counsel for the accused, dr. george berger." sendlingen started. "did the accused choose her counsel?" "no, my lord, she refused any defence because she is, so to speak, a poor despairing creature who would prefer to die. herr von werner therefore, ex-officio, allotted her dr. kraushoffer as counsel, and, when he became ill, dr. berger. dr. kraushoffer was only taken ill the day before yesterday and therefore dr. berger has been allowed to keep the papers till tomorrow morning early. does your lordship desire that i should ask him for them?" "no. that will do." he went back to the niche by the window. "a poor creature who would prefer to die!" he said slowly and gloomily. frightful images thronged into his mind, but the poor worn brain could no longer grasp any clear idea. he began to pace up and down his room rapidly, almost staggering as he went. "night! night!" he groaned: he felt as if he were wandering aimlessly in pitchy darkness, while every pulsation of lost time might involve the sacrifice of a human life. then his face brightened again, it seemed a good omen that berger was defending the girl: he knew his friend to be the most conscientious barrister on the circuit. "and if i were to tell him fully what she is to me--" but he left the sentence unfinished and shook his head. "i could not get the words out," he murmured looking round quite scared, "not even to him!" "and why should i?" he then thought. "berger will in any case, from his own love of justice, do all that is in his power." but what result was to be expected? the old judges, unaccustomed to speeches, regarded the concluding proceedings rather as a formality, and decided on their verdict from the documents, whatever counsel might say. it depended entirely on their opinion and what werner thought of the crime he had explained a few hours ago! and even if before that he had been of another opinion, now that he knew the opinion of the minister of justice.... "fool that i am," said sendlingen between his teeth, "it was i who told him!" again he looked half-maddened by his anguish and wandered about the room wringing his hands. suddenly he stopped. his face grew more livid, his brows contracted in a dark frown, his lips were tightly pressed together. a new idea had apparently occurred to him, a dark uncanny inspiration, against which he was struggling but which returned again and again, and took possession of him. "that would be salvation," he muttered. "if to-morrow's sentence is only for a short term of imprisonment, the higher court would never increase it to a sentence of death!" he paced slowly to the window, his head bowed as if the weight of that thought lay upon his neck like a material burden, and stared out into the street. the early shades of the autumn evening were falling; on the other side of a window in a building opposite, a young woman entered with a lamp for her husband. she placed it on his work-table, and lightly touched his hair with her lips. sendlingen saw it plainly, he could distinguish every piece of furniture in the room and also the features of the couple, and as he knew them, he involuntarily whispered their names. but his brain unceasingly continued to spin that dark web, and at times his thoughts escaped him in a low whisper. "what is there to prevent me? nobody knows my relationship to her and she herself has no suspicion. i am entitled to it, and it would arouse no suspicion. certainly it would be difficult, it would be a horrible time, but how much depends on me!" "wretch!" he suddenly cried, in a hard, hoarse voice. "the world does not know your relationship, but you know it! what you intend is a crime, it is against justice and law!" "oh my god!" he groaned: "help me! enlighten my poor brain! would it not be the lesser crime if i were to save her by dishonourable means, than if i were to stand by with folded arms and see her delivered to the hangman! can this be against thy will, thou who art a god of love and mercy? can my honour be more sacred than her life?" he sank back and buried his face in his hands. "but it does not concern my honour alone," he said. "it would be a crime against justice, against the most sacred thing on earth! o my god, have mercy upon me!" while he lay there in the dark irresolute, his body a prey to fever, his soul torn by worse paroxysms, he heard first of all a gentle, then a louder knocking at the door. at length it was opened. "my lord!" said a loud voice: it was herr von werner. "here i am," quickly answered sendlingen rising. "in the dark?" asked old werner with astonishment. "i thought perhaps you had forgotten the appointment--it is five o'clock and the members of the committee of discipline are waiting for us. has your indisposition perhaps returned?" "no! i was merely sitting in deep thought and forgot to light the candles. come, i am quite ready." "will you allow me a question?" asked werner, stepping forward as far as the light which streamed in from the corridor. "in fact it is a request. the clerk told me that you had been asking to see the documents relating to to-morrow's trial. would you perhaps like to preside at it?" sendlingen did not answer at once. "i am not posted up in the matter," he at length said with uncertain voice. "the case is very simple and a glance at the deed of accusation would sufficiently inform you. in fact i took the liberty of asking this question in order to have the documents fetched at once from herr berger. i myself--hm, my daughter, the wife of the finance counsellor, is in fact expecting, as i just learn, tomorrow for the first time--hm,--a happy event. it is natural that i should none the less be at the disposal of the court, but--hm,--trusting to your official goodnature----" sendlingen had supported himself firmly against the back of the chair. his pulses leapt and his voice trembled as he answered: "i will take the case." then both the men started for the court. when they came out into the full light of the corridor, werner looked anxiously at his chief. "but indeed you are still very white!" he cried. "and your face has quite a strange expression. you appear to be seriously unwell, and i have just asked you----" "it is nothing!" interrupted sendlingen impatiently. "whom does our present transaction relate to?" "you will be sorry to hear of it," was the answer, "i know that you too had the best opinion of the young man. it relates to herbich, an assistant at the board of trade office: he has unfortunately been guilty of a gross misuse of his official position." "oh--in what way?" "money matters," answered werner cursorily, and he beckoned to a messenger and sent him to berger's. they then entered the court where the three eldest judges were already waiting for them. the chief justice opened the sitting and called for a report of the case to be read. it was different from what one would have expected from werner's intimation: herbich had not become a criminal through greed of gain. his mother, an old widow, had, on his advice, lent her slender fortune which was to have served as her only daughter's dowry, to a friend of his, a young merchant of excellent reputation. without any one suspecting it, this honourable man had through necessity gradually become bankrupt, and when herbich one morning entered his office at the board of trade, he found the manager of a factory there who, to his alarm, demanded a decree summoning a meeting of his friend's creditors. instead of fulfilling this in accordance with the duties of his office, he hurried to the merchant and induced him by piteous prayers to return the loan on the spot. not till then did he go back to the office and draw up the necessary document. by the inquiries of other creditors whose fractional share had been diminished by this, the matter came to light. herbich was suspended, though left at liberty. there was no permanent loss to the creditors, as the sister had in the meantime returned the whole of the amount to the administrator of the estate. the report recommended that the full severity of the law should take effect, and that the young man should not only be deprived of his position, but should forthwith be handed over to justice. sendlingen had listened to the lengthy report motionless. only once had he risen, to arrange the lampshade so that his face remained in complete shadow. then he asked whether the committee would examine the accused. it was in no way bound to do so, though entitled to, and therefore herbich had been instructed to hold himself in waiting at the court at the hour of the inquiry. the conductor of the inquiry was opposed to any examination. not so baron dernegg, one of the judges, a comfortable looking man with a broad, kindly face. it seemed to him, he explained, that the examination was a necessity, as in this way alone could the motives of the act be brought fully to light. the committee was equally divided on the subject: the casting vote therefore lay with sendlingen. he hesitated a long while, but at length said with a choking voice: "it seems to me, too, that it would be humane and just to hear the unfortunate man." herbich entered. his white, grief-worn face flushed crimson as he saw the judges, and his gait was so unsteady that baron dernegg compassionately motioned him to sit down. the trembling wretch supported himself on the back of a chair as he began laboriously, and almost stutteringly, to reply to the chief justice's question as to what he had to say in his defence. he told of his intimate friendship with the merchant and how it was entirely his own doing that the loan had been made. when he came to speak of his offence his voice failed him until at length he blurted out almost sobbing: "no words can express how i felt then!... my sister had recently been betrothed to an officer. the money was to have served as the guarantee required by the war-office; if it was lost the wedding could not take place and the life's happiness of the poor girl would have been destroyed. i did not think of the criminality of what i was doing. i only followed the voice of my heart which cried out: 'your sister must not be made unhappy through your fault!' my friend's resistance first made me conscious of what i had begun to do! i sought to reassure him and myself by sophisms, pointing out how insignificant the sum was compared with his other debts, and that any other creditor would have taken advantage of making the discovery at the last moment. i seemed to have convinced him, but, as for myself, i went away with the consciousness of being a criminal." he stopped, but as he continued his voice grew stronger and more composed. "a criminal certainly! but my conscience tells me that of two crimes i chose the lesser. but to no purpose: the thing came out; my sister sacrificed her money and her happiness. i look upon my act now as i did then. happy is the man who is spared a conflict between two duties, whose heart is not rent, whose honour destroyed, as mine has been; but if he were visited as i was, he would act as i acted if he were a man at all! and now i await your verdict, for what i have left to say, namely what i once was, you know as well as i do!" a deep silence followed these words. it was for sendlingen to break it either by another question or by dismissing the accused. he, however, was staring silently into space like one lost to his surroundings. at length he murmured: "you may go." the discussion among the judges then began and was hotly carried on, as two opposite views were sharply outlined. baron dernegg and the fourth judge were in favour of simple dismissal without any further punishment, while the promoter, supported by werner, was in favour of his original proposition. the matter had become generally known, he contended, and therefore the dignity of justice demanded a conspicuous satisfaction for the outraged law. the decision again rested with sendlingen, but it seemed difficult for him to pronounce it. "it is desirable, gentlemen," he said, "that your verdict should be unanimous. perhaps you will agree more easily in an informal discussion. i raise the formal sitting for a few minutes." but he himself took no part in their discussion, but stepped to the window. he pressed his burning forehead against the cool glass: his face again wore that expression of torturing uncertainty. but gradually his features grew composed and assumed a look of quiet resolve. when werner approached and informed him that both parties still adhered obstinately to their own opinion, he stepped back to the table and said in a loud, calm voice: "i cast my vote for the opinion of baron dernegg. the dignity of justice does not, in my opinion, require to be vindicated only by excessive severity; dismissal from office and ruin for life are surely sufficient punishment for a fatal _error_." werner in spite of his boundless respect for superiors, could not suppress a movement of surprise. sendlingen noticed it. "an error!" he repeated emphatically. "whoever can put himself in the place of this unfortunate man, whoever can comprehend the struggles of his soul, must see that, according to his own ideas, he had indeed to choose between two crimes. his error was to consider that the lesser crime which in reality was the greater. i have never been a blind partisan of the maxim: 'fiat justitia et pereat mundus,'--but i certainly do consider it a sacred matter that every judge should act according to law and duty, even if he should break his heart in doing so! however, i repeat, it was an error, and therefore it seems to me that the milder of the two opinions enforces sufficient atonement." then he went up to werner. "forgive me," he said, "if i withdraw my promise in regard to tomorrow's trial. i am really not well enough to preside." "oh! please--hm!--well if it must be so." "it must be so," said sendlingen, kindly but resolutely. "good evening, gentlemen." chapter iii. sendlingen went to his own quarters; his old manservant let him in and followed him with anxious looks into his study. "you may go, franz!" he said shortly and sharply. "i am not at home to anybody." "and should dr. berger?" "berger?" he shook his head decidedly. then he seemed to remember some one else. "i will see him," he said, drawing a deep breath. the old man went out hesitatingly: sendlingen was alone. but after a few minutes the voice of his friend was audible in the lobby, and berger entered with a formidable bundle of documents under his arm. "well, how goes it now?" cried the portly man, still standing in the doorway. "better, certainly, as you are going to preside to-morrow. here are the papers." he laid the bundle on the table and grasped sendlingen's outstretched hand. "a mill-stone was rolled from my neck when the messenger came. in the first place, i knew you were better again, and secondly the chief object of my visit at noon to-day was attained without my own intervention." "did you come on that account?" "yes, victor,--and not merely to greet you." the advocate's broad, open face grew very serious. "i wanted to draw your attention to to-morrow's trial, not only from motives of pity for the unfortunate girl, but also in the interests of justice. old werner, who gets more and more impressed with the idea that he is combating the revolution in every case of child-murder, is not the right judge for this girl. 'there are cases,' once wrote an authority on criminal law, 'where a sentence of death accords with the letter of the law, but almost amounts to judicial murder.' i hope you will let this authority weigh with you, though you yourself are he. now then, if werner is put in a position to-morrow to carry out the practice to which he has accustomed himself in the last few weeks, we shall have one of these frightful cases." sendlingen made no reply. his limbs seemed to grow rigid and the beating of his heart threatened to stop. "how--how does the case stand?" he at length blurted out hoarsely and with great effort. "your voice is hoarse," remarked berger innocently. "you must have caught cold on the journey. well, as to the case." he settled himself comfortably in his chair. "it is only one of the usual, sad stories, but it moved me profoundly after i had seen and spoken to the poor wretch. victorine lippert is herself an illegitimate child and has never found out who her father was; even after her mother's death no hint of it was found among her possessions. as she was born in radautz, a small town in the bukowina, and as her mother was governess in the house of a boyar, it is probable that she was seduced by one of these half-savages or perhaps even a victim to violence. i incline to the latter belief, because hermine lippert's subsequent mode of life and touching care for her child, are against the surmise that she was of thoughtless disposition. she settled in a small town in styria and made a scanty living by music lessons. forced by necessity, she hazarded the pious fraud of passing as a widow,--otherwise she and her child must have starved. after eight years a mere chance disclosed the deception and put an end to her life in the town. she was obliged to leave, but obtained a situation as companion to a kind-hearted lady in buda-pesth, and being now no longer able to keep her little daughter with her, she had her brought up at a school in gratz. mother and child saw one another only once a year, but kept up a most affectionate correspondence. victorine was diligent in her studies, grave and accomplished beyond her years, and justified the hope that she would one day earn a livelihood by her abilities. this sad necessity came soon enough. she lost her mother when she was barely fifteen: the hungarian lady paid her school fees for a short time, and then the orphan had to help herself. her excellent testimonials procured her the post of governess in the family of the widowed countess riesner-graskowitz at graskowitz near golotz. she had the charge of two small nieces of the countess and was patient in her duties, in spite of the hardness of a harsh and utterly avaricious woman. in june of last year, her only son, count henry, came home for a lengthy visit." sendlingen sighed deeply and raised his hand. "you divine the rest?" asked berger. "and indeed it is not difficult to do so! the young man had just concluded his initiation into the diplomatic service at our embassy in paris, and was to have gone on to munich in september as attaché. naturally he felt bored in the lonely castle, and just as naturally he sought to banish his boredom by trying to seduce the wondrously beautiful, girlish governess. he heaped upon her letters full of glowing protestations--i mean to read some specimens to-morrow, and amongst them a valid promise of marriage--and the girl of seventeen was easily fooled. she liked the handsome, well-dressed fellow, believed in his love as a divine revelation and trusted in his oaths. you will spare me details, i fancy; this sort of thing has often happened." "often happened!" repeated sendlingen mechanically, passing his hand over his eyes and forehead. "well to be brief! when the noble count henry saw that the girl was going to become a mother before she herself had any suspicion of it, he determined to entirely avoid any unpleasantness with his formidable mother, and had himself sent to st. petersburg. meantime a good-natured servant girl had explained her condition to the poor wretch and had faithfully comforted her in her boundless anguish of mind, and helped her to avoid discovery. her piteous prayers to her lover remained unanswered. at length there came a letter--and this, too, i shall read to-morrow--in which the scoundrel forbade any further molestation and even threatened the law. and now picture the girl's despair when, almost at the same time, the countess discovered her secret,--whether by chance or by a letter of the brave count, is still uncertain. certainly less from moral indignation than from fear of the expense, this noble lady was now guilty of the shocking brutality of having the poor creature driven out into the night by the men-servants of the house! it was a dark, cold, wet night in april: shaken with fever and weary to death, the poor wretch dragged herself towards the nearest village. she did not reach it; halfway, in a wood, some peasants from graskowitz found her the next morning, unconscious. beside her lay her dead, her murdered child." sendlingen groaned and buried his face in his hands. "her fate moves you?" asked berger. "it is certainly piteous enough! the men brought her to the village and informed the police at golotz. the preliminary examination took place the next day. it could only establish that the child had been strangled; it was impossible to take the depositions of the murderess: she was in the wildest delirium, and the prison-doctor expected her to die. but fate," berger rose and his voice trembled--"fate was not so merciful. she recovered, and was sent first to golotz and then brought here. she admitted that in the solitude of that dreadful night, overcome by her pains, forsaken of god and man, she formed the resolve to kill herself and the child--when and how she did the deed she could not say. i am persuaded that this is no lie, and i believe her affirmation that it was only unconsciousness that prevented her suicide. doesn't that appear probable to you too?" sendlingen did not answer. "probable," he at length muttered, "highly probable!" berger nodded. "thus much," he continued, "is recorded in the judicial documents, and as all this is certainly enough to arouse sympathy, i went to see her as soon as the defence was allotted to me. since that i have learnt more. i have learnt that a true and noble nature has been wrecked by the baseness of man. she must have been not only fascinatingly beautiful, but a character of unusual depth and purity. one can still see it, just as fragments of china enable us to guess the former beauty of a work of art. for this vessel is broken in pieces, and her one prayer to me was: not to hinder the sentence of death!... but i cannot grant this prayer," he concluded. "she must not die, were it only for justice's sake! and a load is taken off my heart to think that a human being is to preside at the trial to-morrow, and not a rhetoric machine!" he had spoken with increasing warmth, and with a conviction of spirit which this quiet, and indeed temperate man, seldom evinced. his own emotion prevented him from noticing how peculiar was his friend's demeanour. sendlingen sat there for a while motionless, his face still covered with his hands, and when he at length let them fall, he bowed his head so low that his forehead rested on the edge of the writing-table. in this position he at last blurted forth: "i cannot preside to-morrow." "why not?" asked berger in astonishment. "are you really ill?" and as he gently raised his friend's head and looked into his worn face he cried out anxiously: "why of course--you are in a fever." sendlingen shook his head. "i am quite well, george! but even if it cost me my life, i would not hand over this girl to the tender mercies of others, if only i dared. but i dare not!" "you _dare_ not!" "the law forbids it!" "the law? you are raving!" "no! no!" cried the unhappy man springing up. "i would that i were either mad or dead, but such is not my good fortune! the law forbids it, for a father----" "victor!" "everything tallies, everything! the mother's name--the place--the year of birth--and her name is victorine." "oh my god! she is your----" "my daughter," cried the unfortunate wretch in piercing tones and then quite broke down. berger stood still for an instant as if paralysed by pity and amazement! then he hurried to his friend, raised him and placed him in his arm-chair. "keep calm!" he murmured. "oh! it is frightful!... take courage!... the poor child!" he was himself as if crushed by the weight of this terrible discovery. breathing heavily, sendlingen lay there, his breast heaving convulsively; then he began to sob gently; far more piteously than words or tears, did these despairing, painfully subdued groans betray how exceedingly he suffered. berger stood before him helplessly; he could think of no fitting words of comfort, and he knew that whatever he could say would be said in vain. the door was suddenly opened loudly and noisily; old franz had heard the bitter lamenting and could no longer rest in the lobby. "my lord!" he screamed, darting to the sufferer. "my dear good master." "begone!" sendlingen raised himself hastily. "go, franz--i beg!" he repeated, more gently. but franz did not budge. "we are in pain," he muttered, "and fräulein brigitta may not come in and i am sent away! what else is franz in the world for?" he did not go until berger by entreaties and gentle force pushed him out of the door. sendlingen nodded gratefully to his friend. "sit here," he said, pointing to a chair near his own. "closer still--so! you must know all, if only for her sake! you shall have no shred of doubt as to whom you are defending to-morrow, and perhaps you may discover the expedient for which i have racked my brain in vain. and indeed i desire it on my own account. since the moment i discovered it i feel as if i had lost everything. everything--even myself! you are one of the most upright men i know; you shall judge me, george, and in the same way that you will defend this poor girl, with your noble heart and clear head. perhaps you will decide that some other course is opened to me beside----" he stopped and cast a timid glance at a small neat case that lay on his writing-table. berger knew that it contained a revolver. "victor!" he cried angrily and almost revolted. "oh, if you knew what i suffer! but you are right, it would be contemptible. i dare not think of myself. i dare not slink out of the world. i have a duty to my child. i have neglected it long enough,--i must hold on now and pay my debt. ah! how i felt only this morning, and now everything lies around me shivered to atoms. forgive me, my poor brain can still form no clear thought! but--i will--i must. listen, i will tell you, as if you were the eternal judge himself, how everything came about." chapter iv. after a pause he began: "i must first of all speak of myself and what i was like in those days. you have only known me for ten years: of my parents, of my childhood, you know scarcely anything. mine was a frightful childhood, more full of venom and misery than a man can often have been condemned to endure. my parents' marriage--it was hell upon earth, george! in our profession we get to know many fearful things, but i have hardly since come across anything like it. how they came to be married, you know,--all the world knows. i am convinced that they never loved one another; her beauty pleased his senses, and his condescension may have flattered her. no matter! from the moment that they were indissolubly bound, they hated one another. it is difficult to decide with whom the fault began; perhaps it lay first of all at my father's door. perhaps the common, low-born woman would have been grateful to him for having made her a baroness and raised her to a higher rank in life, if only he had vouchsafed her a little patience and love. but he could not do that, he hated her as the cause of his misfortune, and she repaid him ten-fold in insult and abuse, and in holding him up, humbled enough already, to the derision and gossip of the little town. "betwixt these two people i grew up. i should have soon got to know the terms they were on even if they had striven anxiously to conceal them, but that they did not do. or rather: he attempted to do so, and that was quite sufficient reason for her to drag me designedly into their quarrels, for she knew that this was a weapon wherewith to wound him deeply. and when she saw that he idolized me as any poor wretch does the last hope and joy that fate has left him, she hated me. on that account and on that account alone, she knew that every scolding, every blow, she gave me, cut him to the quick. no wonder that i hated and feared her, as much as i loved and honoured my father. "what he had done i already accurately knew by the time i was a boy of six: he had married out of his rank and a sendlingen might not do that! for doing so his father had disowned him, for doing so he had to go through life in trouble and misery, in a paltry hole and corner where the people mocked at his misfortune. my mother was our curse!--oh, how i hated her for this, how by every fresh ill-usage at her hands, my heart was more and more filled with bitter rancour. "you shudder, george?" he said stopping in his story. "this glimpse into a child's soul makes you tremble? well--it is the truth, and you shall hear everything that happened. "if i did not become wicked, i have to thank my father for it. i was diligent because it gave him pleasure. i was kind and attentive to people because he commanded it. he was often ill; what would have become of me if i had lost him then and grown up under my mother's scourge, i dare not think. i was spared this greatest evil: his protecting hand continued to be stretched out over me, and when we moved to klagenfurth he began to live again. the intercourse with educated people revived him and he was once more full of hope and endeavour. my mother now began to be ill and a few months after our arrival she died. we neither of us rejoiced at her death, but what we felt as we stood by her open coffin was a sort of silent horror. "and now came more happy days, but they did not last long. mental torture had destroyed my father's vitality, and the rough mountain-climate had injured his lungs. the mild air of the plain seemed to restore him for a time, but then the treacherous disease broke out in all its virulence. he did not deceive himself about his condition, but he tried to confirm me in hope and succeeded in doing so. when, after a melancholy winter, in the first days of spring, his cough was easier and his cheeks took colour, i, like a thoughtless boy, shouted for joy,--he however knew that it was the bloom of death. "and he acted accordingly. one may morning--i had just completed my fourteenth year--he came to my bed-side very early and told me to dress myself with all speed. 'we are going for an excursion,' he said. there was a carriage at the door. we drove through the slumbering town and towards the wörther-see. it was a lovely morning, and my father was so affectionate--it seemed to me the happiest hour i had ever had! when we got to maria wörth, the carriage turned off from the lake-side and we proceeded towards the tauer mountains through a rocky valley, until we stopped at the foot of a hill crowned with a ruin. slowly we climbed up the weed-grown path; every step cost the poor invalid effort and pain, but when i tried to dissuade him he only shook his head. 'it must be so!' he said, with a peculiarly earnest look. at length we reached the top. of the old building, little remained standing except the outer walls and an arched gateway. 'look up yonder,' he said, solemnly. 'do you recognize that coat of arms?' it consisted of two swords and a st. andrew's cross with stars in the field." "your arms?" asked berger. sendlingen nodded. "they were the ruins of sendlingen castle, once our chief possession on austrian soil. my father told me this, and began to recount old stories, how our ancestor was a cousin of kaiser conrad and had been a potentate of the empire, holding lands in franconia and suabia, and how his grandson, a friend of one of the hapsburgs, had come to carinthia and there won fresh glory for the old arms. it was a beautiful and affecting moment,--at our feet the wild, lonely landscape, dreamily beautiful in the blue atmosphere of a spring day, no sound around us save the gentle murmur of the wind in the wild elder-trees, and with all this the tones of his earnest, enthusiastic voice. my father had never before spoken as he did then, and while he spoke, there rose before my eyes with palpable clearness the long line of honourable nobles who had all gloriously borne first the sword and then the ermine, and the more familiar their age and their names became, the higher beat my heart, the prouder were my thoughts and every thought was a vow to follow in their footsteps. "my father may have guessed what was passing in my heart, he drew me tenderly to him, and as he told me of his own father, the first judge and nobleman of the land, tears started from his eyes. 'he was the last sendlingen worthy of the name,' he concluded, 'the last!' "'father,' i sobbed, 'whatever i can and may do will be done, but you too will now have a better fate.' "'i!' he broke in, 'i have lived miserably and shall die miserably! but i will not complain of my fate, if it serves as a warning to you. listen to me, victor, my life may be reckoned by weeks, perhaps by days, but if i know my cousins aright, they will not let you stand alone after my death. they will not forget that you are a sendlingen, so long as you don't forget it yourself. and in order that you may continue mindful of it, i have brought you hither before i die! unhappy children mature early; you have been in spite of all my love, a very unhappy child, victor, and you have long since known exactly why my life went to pieces. swear to me to keep this in mind and that you will be strict and honourable in your conduct, as a sendlingen is in duty bound to be.' "'i swear it!' i exclaimed amid my tears. "'one thing more!' he continued, 'i must tell you, although you are still a boy, but i have short time to stay and better now than not at all! it is with regard to women. you will resist my temptations, i am sure. but if you meet a woman who is noble and good but yet not of your own rank, and if your heart is drawn to her, imperiously, irresistibly, so that it seems as if it would burst and break within your breast unless you win her, then fly from her, for no blessing can come of it but only curses for you both. curses and remorse, victor--believe your father who knows the world as it is.... swear to me that you will never marry out of your rank!' "'i swear it!' i repeated. "'well and good,' he said solemnly. 'now i have fulfilled my duty and am ready ... let us go, victor.' "he was going to rise, but he had taxed his wasted lungs beyond their strength: he sank back and a stream of blood gushed from his lips. it was a frightful moment. there i stood, paralysed with fear, helpless, senseless, beside the bleeding man--and when i called for help, there was not a soul to hear me in that deep solitude. i had to look on while the blood gushed forth until my father utterly broke down. i thought he was dead but he had only fainted. a shepherd heard the cry with which i threw myself down beside him, he fetched the driver, they got us into the carriage and then to klagenfurth. two days later my poor father died." he stopped and closed his eyes, then drew a deep breath and continued: "you know what became of me afterwards. my dying father was not deceived in his confidence: the innocent boy, the last of the sendlingens, was suddenly overwhelmed with favours and kindness. it was strange how this affected me, neither moving me, nor exalting, nor humbling me. whatever kindness was done me, i received as my just due; it was not done to me, but to my race in requital for their services, and i had to make a return by showing myself worthy of that race. all my actions were rooted in this pride of family: seldom surely has a descendant of princes been more mightily possessed of it. if i strove with almost superhuman effort to fulfil all the hopes that were set on me at school, if i pitilessly suppressed every evil or low stirring of the heart, i owe it to this pride in my family: the sendlingen had always been strong in knowledge, strict to themselves, just and good to others,--_must_ i not be the same? and if duty at times seemed too hard, my father's bitter fate rose before me like a terrifying spectre, and his white face of suffering was there as a pathetic admonition--both spurring me onward. but the same instinct too preserved me from all exultation now that praise and honour were flowing in upon me; it might be a merit for ordinary men to distinguish themselves, with a sendlingen it was a duty! "and so i continued all those years, first at school, then at the university, moderate, but a good companion, serious but not averse to innocent pleasures. i had a liking for the arts, i was foremost in the ball-room and in the students' réunions,--in one thing only i kept out of the run of pleasure: i had never had a love-affair. my father's warning terrified me, and so did that old saying: 'a sendlingen can never be a scoundrel!' and however much travelling changed my views in the next few years, in this one thing i continued true to myself. certainly this cost me no great struggle. many a girl whom i had met in the society i frequented appeared lovable enough, but i had not fallen in love with any, much less with a girl not of my own rank, of whom i hardly knew even one. "so i passed in this respect as an exemplary young man, too exemplary, some thought, and perhaps not without reason. but whoever had taken me at the time i entered upon my legal career, for an unfeeling calculator with a list of the competitors to be outstripped at all costs, in the place where other people carry a palpitating heart, would have done me a great injustice. i was ambitious, i strove for special promotion, not by shifts and wiles, but by special merit. and as to my heart,--oh! george, how soon i was to know what heart-ache was, and bliss and intoxication, and love and damnation!" he rose, opened his writing-table, and felt for the secret drawer. but he did not open it; he shook his head and withdrew his hand. "it would be of no use," he murmured, and remained for awhile silently brooding. "that was in the beginning of your career?" said berger, to recall him. "yes," he answered. "it was more than twenty years ago, in the winter of . i had just finished my year of probation at lemburg under the eyes of the nearest and most affectionate of my relations, count warnberg, who was second in position among the judges there. he was an uncle, husband of my father's only sister. he had evinced the most cruel hardness to his brother-in-law, to me he became a second father. at his suggestion and in accordance with my own wish, i was promoted to be criminal judge in the district of suczawa. the post was considered one of the worst in the circuit, both my uncle and i thought it the best thing for me, because it was possible here within a very short time, to give conclusive proof of my ability. such opportunities, however, were more abundant than the most zealous could desire: in those days there prevailed in the southern border-lands of the bukowina, such a state of things as now exists only in the balkan provinces or in albania. it was perhaps the most wretched post in the whole empire, and in all other respects exceptionally difficult. the ancient town, once the capital of the moldavian princes, was at that time a mere confusion of crumbling ruins and poverty-stricken mud-cabins crowded with dirty, half-brutalized roumanians, jews and armenians. moreover my only colleague in the place was the civil judge, a ruined man, whom i had never seen sober. my only alternative therefore was either to live like an anchorite, or to go about among the aristocracy of the neighborhood. "when i got to know these noble boyars, the most educated of them ten times more ignorant, the most refined ten times more coarse, the most civilized ten times more unbridled than the most ignorant, the coarsest and the most unbridled squireen of the west, i had no difficulty in choosing: i buried myself in my books and papers. but man is a gregarious animal--and i was so young and spoiled, and so much in need of distraction from the comfortless impressions of the day, that i grew weary after a few weeks and began to accept invitations. the entertainments were always the same: first there was inordinate eating, then inordinate drinking, and then they played hazard till all hours. as i remained sober and never touched a card, i was soon voted a wearisome, insupportable bore. even the ladies were of this opinion, for i neither made pretty speeches, nor would i understand the looks with which they sometimes favoured me. that i none the less received daily invitations was not to be wondered at; a real live baron of the empire was, whatever he might be, a rare ornament for their 'salons,' and to many of these worthy noblemen it seemed desirable in any case to be on a good footing with the criminal judge. "one of them had particular reason for this, alexander von mirescul, a roumanianised greek; his property lay close to the moldavian frontier and passed for the head-quarters of the trade in tobacco smuggling. he was not to be found out, and when i saw him for the first time, i realized that that would be a difficult business; the little man with his yellow, unctuous face seemed as if he consisted not of flesh and bone, but of condensed oil. it was in his voice and manner. he was manifestly much better educated and better mannered than the rest, as he was also much more cunning and contemptible. i did not get rid of this first impression for a long while, but at length he managed to get me into his house; i gradually became more favourable to him as he was, in one respect at least, an agreeable exception; he was a tolerably educated man, his daughters were being brought up by a german governess and he had a library of german books which he really read. i had such a longing for the atmosphere of an educated household that one evening i went to see him. "this evening influenced years of my life, or rather, as i have learnt to-day, my whole life. i am no liar, george, and no fanciful dreamer, it is the literal truth: i loved this girl from the first instant that i beheld her." berger looked up in astonishment. "from the first instant," sendlingen repeated, and he struggled with all speed through his next words. "i entered, mirescul welcomed me: my eye swept over black and grey heads, over well-known, sharp-featured, olive-faces. only one was unknown to me: the face of an exquisitely beautiful girl encircled by heavy, silver-blond, plaited hair. her slender, supple figure was turned away from me, i could only see her profile; it was not quite regular, the forehead was too high, the chin too peculiarly prominent; i saw all that, and yet i seemed as if i had never seen a girl more beautiful and my heart began to beat passionately. i had to tear my looks away, and talk to the lady of the house, but then i stared again, as if possessed, at the beautiful, white unknown who stood shyly in a corner gazing out into the night. 'our governess, fräulein lippert,' said frau von mirescul, quietly smiling as she followed the direction of my looks. "'i know,' i answered nervously, almost impatiently; i had guessed that at once. frau von mirescul looked at me with astonishment, but i had risen and hurried over to the lonely girl: one of the most insolent of the company, the little bald popowicz, had approached her. i was, afraid that he might wound her by some insulting speech. how should this poor, pale, timorous child defend herself alone against such a man? he had leant over her and was whispering something with his insolent smile, but the next instant he started back as if hurled against the wall by an invisible hand, and yet it was only a look of those gentle, veiled, grey eyes, now fixed in such a cold, hard stare that i trembled as they rested on me. but they remained fixed upon me and suddenly became again so pathetically anxious and helpless. "at length i was beside her: i no longer required to defend her from the elderly scamp, he had disappeared. i could only offer her my hand and ask: 'did that brute insult you?' but she took my hand and held it tight as if she must otherwise have fallen, her eyelids closed in an effort to keep back her tears. 'thank you,' she stammered. 'you are a german, are you not baron sendlingen? i guessed as much when you came in! oh if you knew!' "but i do know all, i know what she suffers in this 'salon,' and now we begin to talk of our life among these people and our conversation flows on as if it had been interrupted yesterday. we hardly need words: i understand every sigh that comes from those small lips at other times so tightly closed, she, every glance that i cast upon the assembly. but my glances are only fugitive for i prefer looking straight into that beautiful face so sweetly and gently attractive, although the mouth and chin speak of such firm determination. she often changes colour, but it is more wonderful that i am at times suddenly crippled by the same embarrassment, while at the next moment i feel as if my heart has at length reached home after years and years,--perhaps a life-time's sojourn in a chill strange land. "an hour or more passed thus. we did not notice it; we did not suspect how much our demeanour surprised the others until mirescul approached and asked me to take his wife in to supper. we went in; hermine was not there. 'fräulein hermine usually retires even earlier,' remarked frau von mirescul with the same smile as before. i understood her, and with difficulty suppressed a bitter reply: naturally this girl of inferior rank, whose father had only been a schoolmaster, was unworthy of the society of cattle-merchants, horse-dealers and slave-drivers whose fathers had been ennobled by kaiser franz! "after supper i took my leave. mirescul hoped to see me soon again and i eagerly promised: 'as soon as possible.' and while i drove home through the snow-lit winter's night, i kept repeating these words, for how was i henceforth to live without seeing her?" "after the first evening?" said berger, shaking his head. "that was like a disease!" "it was like a fatality!" cried sendlingen. "and how is it to be explained? i do not know! i wanted at first to show you her likeness, but i have not done so, for however beautiful she may have been, her beauty does not unsolve the riddle. i had met girls equally beautiful, equally full of character before, without taking fire. was it because i met her in surroundings which threw into sharpest relief all that was most charming in her, because i was lonelier than i had ever been before, because i at once knew that she shared my feelings? then besides, i had not as a young fellow lived at high pressure. i had not squandered my heart's power of loving; the later the passion of love entered my life, the stronger, the deeper would be its hold upon me. "reasons like these may perhaps satisfy you; me they do not. he who has himself not experienced a miracle, but learns of it on the report of another, will gladly enough accept a natural explanation; but to him whose senses it has blinded, whose heart it has convulsed, to him it remains a miracle, because it is the only possible conception of the strange, overmastering feelings of such a moment. when i think of those days and how she and i felt--no words can tell, no subtlest speculation explain it. look at it as you may, i will content myself by simply narrating the facts. "and it is a fact that from that evening i was completely metamorphosed. for two days i forced myself to do my regular duties, on the third i went to oronesti, to mirescul's. the fellow was too cunning to betray his astonishment, he brimmed over with pleasure and suggested a drive in sleighs, and as the big sleigh was broken we had to go in couples in small ones, i with hermine. this arrangement was evident enough, but how could i show surprise at what made me so blessed? even hermine was only startled for a moment and then, like me, gave herself up unreservedly to her feelings. "and so it was in all our intercourse in the next two weeks. we talked a great deal and between whiles there were long silences; perhaps these blissful moments of speechlessness were precisely the most beautiful. during those days i scarcely touched her hand: we did not kiss one another, we did not speak of our hearts: the simple consciousness of our love was enough. it was not the presence of others that kept us within these bounds; we were much alone; mirescul took care of that." "and did that never occur to you?" asked berger. "yes, at times, but in a way that may be highly significant of the spell under which my soul and senses laboured at the time. a man in a mesmeric trance distinctly feels the prick of a needle in his arm; he knows that he is being hurt; but he has lost his sense of pain. in some such way i looked upon mirescul's friendliness as an insult and a danger, but my whole being was so filled with fantastic, feverish bliss that no sensation of pain could have penetrated my consciousness." "and did you never think what would come of this?" "no, i could swear to it, never! i speculated as little about my love, as the first man about his life: he was on the earth to breathe and to be happy; of death he knew nothing. and she was just the same; i know it from her letters later, at that time we did not write. and so we lived on, in a dream, in exaltation, without a thought of the morrow." "it must have been a cruel awakening," said berger. "frightful, it was frightful!" he spoke with difficulty, and his looks were veiled. "immediately, in the twinkling of an eye, happiness was succeeded by misery, the most intoxicating happiness by the most lamentable, hideous misery.... one stormy night in march i had had to stay at mirescul's because my horses were taken ill, very likely through the food which mirescul had given them.... i was given a room next to hermine's. "on the next day but one--i was in my office at the time--the customs superintendent of the neighbouring border district entered the room. he was a sturdy, honourable greybeard, who had once been a captain in the army. 'we have caught the rascal at last,' he announced. 'he has suddenly forgotten his usual caution. we took him to-night in the act of unloading bales of tobacco at his warehouses. here he is!' "mirescul entered, ushered in by two of the frontier guards. "'my dear friend!' he cried. 'i have come to complain of an unheard-of act of violence!' "i stared at him, speechless; had he not the right to call me his friend,--how often had i not called him friend in the last few weeks. "'send these men away.' i was dumb. the superintendent looked at me in amazement. i nodded silently, he shrugged his shoulders and left the room with his officials. 'the long and the short of it is,' said mirescul, 'that my arrest was a misunderstanding: the officials can be let off with a caution!' "'the matter must first be inquired into,' i answered at length. "'among friends one's word is enough.' "'duty comes before friendship.' "'then you take a different view of it from what i do,' he answered coming still closer to me. 'it would have been my duty to protect the honour of a respectable girl living in my house as a member of the family. it would now be my duty to drive your mistress in disgrace and dishonour from my doors. i sacrifice this duty to my friendship!' "ah, how the words cut me! i can feel it yet, but i cannot yet describe it. he went, and i was alone with my wild remorse and helpless misery." sendlingen rose and walked up and down excitedly. then he stood still in front of his friend. "that was the heaviest hour of my life, george--excepting the present. a man may perhaps feel as helpless who is suddenly struck blind. the worst torture of all was doubt in my beloved; the hideous suspicion that she might have been a conscious tool in the hands of this villain. and even when i stifled this thought, what abominations there were besides! i should act disgracefully if for her sake i neglected my duty, disgracefully if i heartlessly abandoned her to the vengeance of this man! she had a claim upon me--could i make her my wife? my oath to my dying father bound me, and still more, even though i did not like to admit it, my ambition, my whole existence as it had been until i knew her. my father's fate--my future ruined--may a man fight against himself in this way? still--'a sendlingen can never be a scoundrel'--and how altogether differently this saying affected me compared to my father! he had only an offence to expiate, i had a sacred duty to fulfil: he perhaps had only to reproach himself with thoughtlessness--but i with dishonour. "and did i really love her? it is incomprehensible to me now how i could ever have questioned it, how i could ever have had those hideous doubts: perhaps my nature was unconsciously revenging herself for the strange, overpowering compulsion laid on her in the last few weeks, perhaps since everything, even the ugliest things, had appeared beautiful and harmonious in my dream, perhaps it was natural, now that my heart had been so rudely shaken, that even the most beautiful things should appear ugly. perhaps--for who knows himself and his own heart? "enough! this is how i felt on that day and on the night of that day. oh! how i writhed and suffered! but when at last the faint red light of early morning peeped in at my window, i was resolved. i would do my duty as a judge and a man of honour: i would have mirescul imprisoned, i would make hermine my wife. i no longer had doubts about her or my love, but even if it had not been so, my conscience compelled me to act thus and not otherwise, without regard to the hopes of my life. "i went to my chambers almost before it was day, had the clerk roused from bed and dictated the record of the superintendent's information and a citation to the latter. then i wrote a few lines to hermine, begging her to leave mirescul's house at once and to come to me. 'trust in god and me,' i concluded. this letter i sent with my carriage to oronesti; two hours later i myself intended to set out to the place with gendarmes to search the house and arrest mirescul. but a few minutes after my coachman had left the court, the jewish waiter from the hotel of the little town brought me a letter from my dear one. 'i have been here since midnight and am expecting you.' the lady looked very unwell, added the messenger compassionately, and was no doubt ill. "i hastened to her. when she came towards me in the little room with tottering steps, my heart stood still from pity and fear; shame, remorse and despair--what ravages in her fresh beauty had they not caused in this short space? i opened my arms and with a cry she sank on my breast. 'god is merciful,' she sobbed. 'you do not despise me because i have loved you more than myself: so i will not complain.' "then she told me how mirescul--she had kept her room for the two last days for it seemed to her as if she could never look anyone in the face again--had compelled her to grant him an interview yesterday evening. he requested her to write begging me to take no steps against him, otherwise he would expose and ruin us both. 'oh, how hateful it was!' she cried out, with a shudder. 'it seemed to me as if i should never survive the ignominy of that hour. but i composed myself; whatever was to become of me, you should not break your oath as judge. i told him that i would not write the letter, that i would leave his house at once, and when he showed signs of detaining me by force, i threatened to kill myself that night. then he let me go,--and now do you decide my fate: is it to be life or death!' "'you shall live, my wife,' i swore, 'you shall live for me.' "'i believe you,' said she, 'but it is difficult. oh! can perfect happiness ever come from what has been so hideously disfigured!' "i comforted her as well as i could, for my heart gave utterance to the same piteous question. "then we took counsel about the future; she could not remain in suczawa: we could see what vulgar gossip there would be even without this. so we resolved that she should go to the nearest large town, to czernowitz, and wait there till our speedy marriage. with that we parted: it was to have been a separation for weeks and it proved to be for a lifetime: i never saw the unhappy girl again. "how did it come about that i broke my oath? there is no justification for it, at best but an explanation. i do not want to defend myself before you any more than i have done: i am only confessing to you as i would to a priest if i were a believer in the church. "a stroke of fate struck me in that hour of my growth, i might have overcome it but now came its pricks and stabs. when i left hermine to return to my chambers, i met the customs superintendent. i greeted him. 'have you received my citation?' i asked. he looked at me contemptuously and passed on without answering. 'what does this mean?' cried i angrily, catching hold of his arm. "'it means,' he replied, shaking himself loose, 'that in future i shall only speak to you, even on official matters, when my duty obliges me. that, for a time, is no longer necessary. you released mirescul yesterday, you did not record my depositions. both were contrary to your duty: i have advised my superiors in the matter and await their commands.' "he passed on; i remained rooted to the spot a long while like one struck down; the honourable man was quite right! "but i roused myself; now at least i would neglect my duty no longer. scarcely, however, had i got back to my chambers, when my colleague, the civil-judge entered; he was as usual not quite sober, but it was early in the day and he had sufficient control of his tongue to insult me roundly. 'so you are really going to oronesti,' he began. 'i should advise you not, the man[oe]uvre is too patent. after twenty-four hours nothing will be found, as we set about searching the house just to show our good intentions--eh?' "'i don't require to be taught by you,' i cried flaring up. "'oh, but, perhaps you do, though!' he replied. 'i might for instance teach you something about the danger of little german blondes. but--as you like--i wish you every success!' "smarting under these sensations, i drove to oronesti. mirescul met me in the most brazen-faced way; he protested against such inroads undertaken from motives of personal revenge. and he added this further protest to his formal deposition; he would submit to examination at the hands of any judge but me who had yesterday testified that the accusation was a mistake and promised to punish the customs officials, and to-day suddenly appeared on the scene with gendarmes. between yesterday and to-day nothing had happened except that he had turned my mistress out of his house, and surely this act of domestic propriety could not establish his guilt as a smuggler. you know, george, that i was obliged to take down his protest--but with what sensations! "the search brought to light nothing suspicious; the servants, carters, and peasants whom i examined had all been evidently well-drilled beforehand. i had to have mirescul arrested: were there not the bales of tobacco which the superintendent had seized? not having the ordinary means of transit at night, he had had them temporarily stored in one of the parish buildings at oronesti under the care of two officials. i now had them brought at once to the town. "when i got back to my chambers in the evening and thought over the events of this accursed day, and read over the depositions in which my honour and my bride's honour were dragged in the mire, i had not a single consolation left except perhaps this solitary one, that my neglect would not hinder the course of justice, for the smuggled wares would clearly prove the wretch's guilt. "but even this comfort was to be denied me. the next morning mirescul's solicitor called on me and demanded an immediate examination of the bales: his client, he said, maintained that they did not contain smuggled tobacco from moldavia, but leaf tobacco of the country grown by himself and other planters, and which he was about to prepare for the state factories. the request was quite legitimate; i at once summoned the customs superintendent as being an expert; the old man appeared, gruffly made over the documents to my keeping and accompanied us to the cellars of the court house where the confiscated goods had been stored. when his eye fell on them he started back indignantly, pale with anger: 'scandalous!' he cried, 'unheard of! these bales are much smaller--they have been changed!' "'how is it possible?' "'you know that better than i do,' he answered grimly. "the bales were opened; they really contained tobacco in the leaf. my brain whirled. after i had with difficulty composed myself, i examined the two officials who had watched the goods at oronesti; the exchange could only have been effected there; the men protested their innocence; they had done their duty to the best of their ability; certainly this was the third night which they had kept watch although the superintendent, before hurrying to the town, had promised to release them within a few hours. this too i had to take down; the proof namely that my hesitation in doing my duty had not been without harm. and now my conscience forbade me to arrest mirescul, although by not doing so, i only made my case worse. "so things stood when two days later an official from czernowitz circuit arrived in suczawa to inquire into the case. you know him george; he was a relation of yours, matthias berger, an honest, conscientious man. 'grave accusations have been made against you,' he explained, 'by mirescul's solicitor, by the civil judge and by the customs superintendent, but they contradict each other: i still firmly believe in your innocence: tell me the whole truth.' "but that i could not do: i could not be the means of dragging my bride's name into legal documents, even if i were otherwise to be utterly ruined. so in answer to the questions why i had delayed twenty-four hours, i could only answer that an overwhelming private matter had deprived me of the physical strength to attend to my duties. with regard to hermine, i refused to answer any questions. berger shook his head sadly; he was sorry for me, but he could not help me. he must suspend me from my functions while the inquiry lasted and appoint a substitute from czernowitz: moreover he exacted an oath from me not to leave the place without permission of the court. mirescul was let out on bail. "a fortnight went by. it clings to my memory like an eternity of grief and misery. i have told you what i strove for and hoped for, you will be able to judge how i suffered. four weeks before i was one of the most rising officers of the state: now i was a prisoner on parole, oppressed by the scorn and spite of men, held up to the ignominy of all eyes. i dared hope nothing from my relations, least of all from my uncle, count warnberg: i knew that he would not save me so that i might marry a governess about whom--mirescul and his friends took care of that--there were the ugliest reports in circulation. and you will consider it human, conceivable, that every letter of hermine's was a stab in my heart. "she wrote daily. when she spoke of her feelings during our brief span of joy, it seemed to me as if she depicted my own innermost experiences. this at least gave me the consolation of knowing that i was not tied to an unworthy woman: but the bonds were none the less galling and cut into the heart of my life. only rarely, very gently, and therefore with a twofold pathos, did she complain of her fate; but her grief on my account was wild and passionate; she had heard of my plight but not through me. i sought to comfort her as well as i might; but ah me! there was no word of release or deliverance: how could i have broached it, how have claimed it from her? "one day there came her usual letter; it was written with a visibly trembling hand. my uncle had been to see her; he was hurrying from lemberg in great anxiety to see me, and had stopped at czernowitz to treat with her of the price for which she would release me. in every line there was the deepest pathos; she had shown him the door. "'he will implore you to leave me,' she concluded; 'act as your conscience bids you. and i will tell you something that i refused to tell count warnberg; he asked me whether i had another, a more sacred claim upon you. i don't know, victor, but as i understand our bond in which i live and suffer, that does not affect it; if you will not make me your wife for my own sake, neither could regard for the mother of your child be binding on you!' "two hours after i received this letter, my uncle arrived. i was terrified at the sight of him, his face was so dark, and hard, and strange. my father had once said to me shortly before his death: 'take care never to turn that iron hand against you; it would crush you as it has crushed me.' i had never before understood these words, indeed i had completely forgotten them, but now they came back to me and i understood them before my uncle opened his mouth. "'tell your story,' he began, and his voice sounded to me as if i had never heard it before. 'tell the whole truth. this at least i expect of you. you surely don't wish to sink lower than--than another member of your family. a sendlingen has at all events never lied! now tell your story.' "i obeyed: he was told what you have just been told, though no doubt it sounded different; confused, passionate and scarcely intelligible. but he understood it; he had no single question to ask after i had finished. "'the same story as before,' he said, 'but uglier, much uglier. the father only sullied his coat of arms, the son his judge's honour as well.' "i fired up. i tried to defend myself, he would not allow it. 'tirades serve no good purpose,' he said, coldly. 'you wish to convince me that you were not in criminal collusion with mirescul? i have never thought so. that he is really guilty and can be convicted in spite of your neglect of duty? i have been through the papers and have just cross-examined the customs superintendent. the police are already on the way to re-arrest him; he will be put in prison. but your fault will be none the less in consequence; if there is no lasting stigma on the administration of justice, there is upon your honour. your conduct in this man's house, your hesitation,--it would be bad for you if you had to suffer what you have merited! according to justice and the laws, your fate is sealed; it is only a question whether you will prove yourself worthy of pardon and pity!' "'in anything that you may ask,' i answered, 'except only in one thing: hermine is to be my wife. a sendlingen can never be a scoundrel.' "he drew himself up to his full height and stepped close up to me. 'now listen to me, victor, i will be brief and explicit. whether you stain your honour by marrying this girl, or whether you do so by not marrying her, the all-just god above us knows. we, his creatures, can only judge according to our knowledge and conscience, and in my judgment, the girl is unworthy of you. in this matter there is your conviction against my conviction. but what i do know better than you is, that this marriage would load you with ignominy before the whole world! you will perhaps answer: better the contempt of others than self-contempt, but that is not the question. if you marry this girl, i am as sure as i am of my existence, that you will soon be ashamed of it, not only before others but in your own heart. for pure happiness could not come of such a beginning--it is impossible. the gossip of the world, the ruin of your hopes, would poison your mind and hers,--you would be wretched yourself and make her wretched, and would at length become bad and miserable. the man who forgets his duty to himself and to the world for a matter of weeks and then recovers himself, is worthy of commiseration and help; but he who is guilty of a moral suicide deserves no pity. and therefore listen to me and choose. if you marry this girl your subsequent fate is indifferent to me; you will very likely be stripped of your office; or in the most favourable event, transferred, by way of punishment, to some out of the way place where your father's fate may be repeated in you. if you give her up you may still be saved, for yourself, for our family and for the state: then i will do for you, what my conscience would allow me to do for any subordinate of whose sincere repentance i was convinced, and i will intercede for the emperor's pardon as if you were my own son. to-morrow i return to lemberg, whether alone or with you--you must decide by to-morrow.' he went." sendlingen paused. "how i struggled with myself," he began again, but his voice failed him, until at length he gasped forth with hollow voice and trembling lips: "oh! what a night it was! the next morning i wrote a farewell letter to hermine, and started with count warnberg to lemberg." then there followed a long silence. at length berger asked: "you did not know that she bore your child in her bosom?" "no, i know it to-day for the first time. in that last letter of mine i had offered her a maintenance: she declined it at once. then i left that part of the country. a few months later i inquired after her; i could only learn that she had disappeared without leaving a trace. and then i forgot her, i considered that all was blotted out and washed away like writing from a slate, and rarely, very rarely, in the dusk, or in a sleepless night, did the strange reminiscence recur to me. but fate keeps a good reckoning--o george! i would i were dead!" "no, no!" said berger with gentle reproof. he was deeply moved, his eyes glistened with tears, but he constrained himself to be composed. "thank god, you are alive and willing, and i trust able to pay your debt. how great this debt may be--or how slight--i will not determine. only one thing i do know: you are, in spite of all, worthy of the love and esteem of men, even of the best men, of better men than i am. when i think of it all; your life up to that event and what it has been since, what you have made of your life for yourself and others, then indeed it overcomes me and i feel as if i had never known a fate among the children of men more worthy of the purest pity. this is no mere sad fate, it is a tragic one. against the burden of such a fate, no parade of sophistry, no petty concealments or prevarications will be of avail. you say it is against your feelings to preside at to-morrow's trial?" "yes," replied sendlingen. "it seems to me both cowardly and dishonourable; cowardly, to sacrifice the law instead of myself, dishonourable to break my judge's oath! but i shrink from doing so for another reason; an offence should not be expiated by an injustice; i dread the all-just fates." "i cannot gainsay you," said berger rising. "but in this one thing we are agreed. let us wait for the verdict, and then we will consider what your duty is. it is long past midnight, the trial will begin in seven hours. i will try and get some sleep. i shall need all my strength to-morrow. follow my example, victor, perhaps sleep may be merciful to you." he seized his friend's hands and held them affectionately in his; his feelings again threatened to overcome him and he hastily left the room with a choking farewell on his lips. sendlingen was alone. after brooding awhile, he again went to the secret drawer of his writing-table. at this moment the old servant entered. "we will go to bed now," he said. "we will do it out of pity for ourselves, and fräulein brigitta, and me!" his look and tone were so beseeching that sendlingen could not refuse him. he suffered himself to be undressed, put out the lamp, and closed his eyes. but sleep refused to visit his burning lids. chapter v. when the grey morning appeared, he could no longer endure to lie quietly in his bed while his soul was tormented with unrest, he got up, dressed himself, left his room and went out of doors. it was a damp, cold, horrid autumn morning: the fog clung to the houses and to the uneven pavement of the old town: a heavy, yellow vapor, the smoke of a factory chimney kept sinking down lower and lower. the lonely wanderer met few people, those who recognized him greeted him respectfully, he did not often acknowledge the greeting and when he did, it was unconsciously. most of them looked after him in utter astonishment; what could have brought the chief justice so early out of doors? it seemed at times as if he were looking for something he had lost; he would walk along slowly for a stretch with his looks fixed on the ground, then he would stop and go back the same way. and how broken down, how weary he looked today!--as if he had suddenly become an old man, the people thought. freezing with cold, while his pulses beat at fever-speed, he thus wandered for a long while aimlessly through the desolate streets, first this way, then that, until the morning bells of the cathedral sounded in his ears. he stood still and listened as if he had never heard their mighty sound before; they appeared to vibrate in his heart; his features changed and grew gentler as he listened; a ray of tender longing gleamed in his white face, and, as if drawn by invisible cords, he hurried faster and faster towards the cathedral. but when he stood before its open door and looked into the dark space, lit only by a dim light, the sanctuary lamp before the high-altar, he hesitated; he shook his head and sighed deeply, and his features again resumed their gloomy, painful look. he looked up at the cathedral clock, the hands were pointing to seven. "an hour more," he murmured and went over towards the court-house. it was a huge, straggling, rectangular building, standing on its own ground. in front were the chief justice's residence and the offices; at the back the criminal prison. he turned towards his own quarters. he had just set his foot on the steps, when a new idea seemed to occur to him. he hesitated. "i must," he hissed between his teeth and he clenched his hands till the nails ran painfully into the flesh; "i must, if only for a minute." he stepped back into the street, went around the building and up to the door at the back. it was locked; there was a sentinel in front of it. he rang the bell, a warder opened the door and seeing the chief justice respectfully pulled off his hat. "fetch the governor," muttered sendlingen, so indistinctly that the man hardly understood him. but he hurried away and the governor of the prison appeared. he was visibly much astonished. "does your lordship wish to make an inspection?" he asked. "no, only in one or two particular cases." "which are they, my lord?" but the unhappy man felt that his strength was leaving him. "later on," he muttered, groping for the handle of the door so as to support himself. "another time." the governor hastened towards him. "your lordship is ill again--just as you were yesterday--we are all much concerned! may i accompany you back to your residence? the nearest way is through the prison-yard, if you choose." he opened a door and they stepped out into the prison-yard; it was separated by a wall from the front building; the only means of communication was an unostentatious little door in the bare, high, slippery wall. it seemed to be seldom used; the governor was a long time finding the key on his bunch and when at length it opened, the lock and hinges creaked loudly. "thank you," said sendlingen. "i have never observed this means of communication before." "your predecessor had it made," answered the governor, "so that he might inspect the prison without being announced. the key must be in your possession." "very likely," answered sendlingen, and he went back to his residence. franz placed his breakfast before him. "there'll be a nice ending to this," he growled. "we are dangerously ill and yet we trapse about the streets in all weathers. dr. berger, too, is surprised at our new ways." "has he been here already?" "he was here a few minutes ago, but will be back at eight.... but now we have got to drink our tea." he did not budge till the cup had been emptied. with growing impatience sendlingen looked at the clock. "he can have nothing fresh to say," he thought. "he must guess my intention and want to hinder me. he will not succeed." but he did succeed. as he entered, sendlingen had just taken up his hat and stick. "you are going to the trial?" began his faithful friend almost roughly, "you must not, victor, i implore you. i forbid you. what will the judges think if you are too ill to preside, and yet well enough to be present with no apparent object. but the main thing is not to torment yourself, it is unmanly. do not lessen your strength, you may require it." he wrested his hat from him and forced him into an armchair. "my restlessness will kill me if i stay here," muttered sendlingen. "you would not be better in there, but worse. i shall come back to you at once; i think, i fear, it will not last long. don't buoy yourself up with any hopes, victor. before a jury, i could get her acquitted, with other judges, at a different time, we might have expected a short term of imprisonment ... but now----" "death!" like a shriek the words escaped from his stifled breast. "but she may not, she will not die!" continued berger. "i will set my face against it as long as there is breath in my body, nay, i would have done so even if she had not been your daughter. god bless you, victor." berger gathered up his bundle of papers and proceeded along the corridor and up some stairs, until he found himself outside the court where the trial was to take place. even here a hum of noise reached him, for the court was densely crowded with spectators. as far as he could see by the glimmer of grey morning light that broke its difficult way in by the round windows, it was a well-dressed audience in which ladies preponderated. "naturally," he muttered contemptuously. for a few seconds eye-glasses and opera-glasses were directed upon him, to be then again immediately turned on the accused. but her face could not be seen; she was cowering in a state of collapse on her wooden seat, her forehead resting on the ledge of the dock; her left arm was spread out in front of her, her right hung listlessly by her side. public curiosity had nothing to sate itself on but the shudders that at times convulsed her poor body; one of the long plaits of her coal-black, wavy hair had escaped from beneath the kerchief on her head and hung down low, almost to the ground, touching the muddy boots of the soldier who did duty as sentinel close beside her. berger stepped to his place behind her; she did not notice him until he gently touched her icy cold hand. "be brave, my poor child," he whispered. she started up in terror. "ah!" went from every mouth in court: now at length they could see her face. berger drew himself up to his full height; his eyes blazed with anger as he stepped between her and the crowd. "oh, what crowds of people!" murmured the poor girl. her cheeks and forehead glowed in a fever-heat of shame: but the colour soon went and her grief-worn face was white again; the look of her eyes was weary and faint. "to think that one should have to suffer so much before dying." "you will not die!" he spoke slowly, distinctly, as one speaks to a deaf person. "you will live, and after you have satisfied the justice of men, you will begin life over again. and when you do friendship and love will not be wanting to you." while he was saying this, and at the same time looking her full in the face, her resemblance to his friend almost overpowered him. she was like her father in the colour of her hair and eyes, in her mouth and her forehead. "love and care are waiting for you!" he continued with growing warmth. "this i can swear. do you hear? i swear that it is so! as regards the trial, i can only give you this advice: tell, as you have hitherto done, the whole truth. bear up as well as you can; oppose every lie, every unjust accusation." she had heard him without stirring, without a sign of agreement or dissent. it was doubtful whether she had understood him. but he had not time to repeat his admonition; the crown-advocate and the five judges had entered with werner at their head. if berger had hitherto cherished any hope, it must have vanished now; two of the other judges were among the sternest on the bench; the fourth never listened and then always chimed in with the majority; it was but a slender consolation to berger when he finally saw the wise and humane baron dernegg take his place beside the judges. werner opened the proceedings and the deed of accusation was then read out by the secretary of the court. its compiler--a young, fashionably dressed junior crown-advocate of an old aristocratic family, who had only been in the profession a short time,--listened to the recital of his composition with visible satisfaction. and indeed his representation of the matter was very effective. according to him the countess riesner-graskowitz was one of the noblest women who ever lived, the accused one of the most abandoned. a helpless orphan, called by unexampled generosity to fill a post which neither her years nor abilities had fitted her for, she had requited this kindness by entangling the young count henry in her wiles in order to force him into a marriage. after he had disentangled himself from these unworthy bonds, and after victorine lippert knew her condition, instead of repentantly confiding in her noble protectress, she had exhausted all the arts of crafty dissembling in order not to be found out. and when at length she was, as a most just punishment, suddenly dismissed from the castle, she in cold blood murdered her child so as to be free from the consequences of her fault. in his opinion, the accused's pretended unconsciousness was a manifest fable, and the crime a premeditated one, as her conduct at the castle sufficiently proved. her character was not against the assumption, she was plainly corrupted at an early age, being the daughter of a woman of loose character. "it is a lie! a scandalous lie!" like a cry from the deepest recesses of the heart, these words suddenly vibrated through the court with piercing clearness. it was the accused who had spoken. she had listened to the greatest part of the document without a sound, without the slightest change of countenance, as if she were deaf. only once at the place where it spoke of "manifest fable" she had gently and imperceptibly shaken her head; it was the first intimation berger had that she was listening and understood the accusation. but now, hardly had the libel on her dead mother been read, when she rose to her feet and uttered those words so suddenly that berger was not less motionless and dumfounded than the rest. and then broke forth the hubbub; such an interruption, and in such language, had never before occurred in court. the spectators had risen and were talking excitedly; the crown-advocate stood there helplessly; even herr von werner had to clear his throat repeatedly before he could ejaculate "silence!" but the command was superfluous for hardly had the poor girl uttered the words, when she fell back upon her seat, from thence to the ground, and was now lying in a faint on the boards. she was carried out; it was noticed by many and caused much scandal, that the counsel for the accused lifted the lifeless body and helped carry it, instead of leaving this to the warders. the proceedings had to be interrupted. it was another half hour before the accused appeared in court again, leaning on berger's arm, her features set like those of an animated corpse. there was a satirical murmur in the crowd, and werner, too, reflected whether he should not, there and then, reprove the counsel for unseemly behaviour. and this determined him to be all the severer in the reprimand which he addressed to the accused on account of her unheard of impertinence. she should not escape her just punishment, the nature and extent of which he would determine by the opinion of the prison-doctor. then the reading of the deed of accusation was finished; the examination began. there was a murmur of eager expectation among the spectators; their curiosity was briefly but abundantly satisfied. to the question whether she pleaded guilty, victorine lippert answered quietly but with a steadier voice than one would have supposed her capable of: "yes!... what i know about my deed, i have already told in evidence. i deserve death, i wish to die. it is a matter of indifference to one about to die what men may think of her; god knows the truth. he knows that much, yes most, of what has just been read here, is incorrect. i do not contest it, but one thing i swear in the face of death, and may god have no mercy on me in my last hour if i lie; my mother was noble and good; no mother can ever have been better and no wife more pure. she trusted an unworthy wretch, and he must have been worse than ever any man was, if he could forsake her--but she was good. i implore you, read her testimonials, her letters to me--i beseech you, i conjure you, just a few of these letters.-for myself i have nothing to ask--" her voice broke, her strength again seemed to forsake her and she sank down on her seat. there was a deep silence after she had ended: in her words, in her voice, there must have been something that the hearts of those present could not shut out; even the crown-advocate looked embarrassed. herr von werner alone was so resolutely armed to meet the hydra of the social revolution, which he was bent on combating in this forlorn creature, as to be above all pity. he would certainly have begun a wearisome examination and have spared the poor creature no single detail, but his daughter was expecting a happy event to-day, and baron sendlingen had, notwithstanding, not had sufficient professional consideration to take over the conduct of this trial, and the half hour's faint of the accused had already unduly prolonged the proceedings--so he determined to cut the matter as short as was compatible with his position. the accused had just again unreservedly repeated her confession; further questions, he explained, would be superfluous. the examination of the witnesses could be proceeded with at once. this also was quickly got through. there were the peasants, who had found victorine and her lifeless child on the morrow of the deed, and the prison doctor, none of whom could advance any fresh or material fact. the only witness of importance to the accused was the servant-girl who had helped her in her last few months at the castle. the girl had been shortly after dismissed from the countess' service, and in the preliminary inquiry, she had confirmed all victorine's statements; if she to-day remained firm to her previous declarations, the accusation of premeditated murder would be severely shaken. to berger's alarm she now evasively answered that her memory was weak,--she had in the meantime gone into service at graskowitz again. in spite of this and of the protest of the defence, she was sworn: berger announced his intention of appealing for a nullification of the trial. then the depositions of the countess and her son were read; the court had declined to subp[oe]na them. the countess had not spared time or trouble in depicting the murderess in all her abandonment; but the depositions which count henry had made at his embassy, were brief enough: as far as he recollected he had made the girl no promise of marriage, and indeed there was no reason for doing so. berger demanded, as proof to the contrary, that the letters which had been taken from the accused and put with the other papers, should he read aloud; this the court also declined because they did not affect the question of her guilt. then followed the speeches for and against. the crown-advocate was brief enough: the trial, he contended, had established the correctness of the charge. if ever at all, then in the present case, should the full rigour of the law be enforced. by her protestation that she had received a most careful bringing up from a most excellent mother, she had herself cut from under her feet the only ground for mitigation. all the more energetically and fully did berger plead for the utmost possible leniency; his knowledge of law, his intellect and his oratorical gifts had perhaps never before been so brilliantly displayed. when he had finished, the people in court broke out into tumultuous applause. the judges retired to consider their verdict. they were not long absent; in twenty minutes they again appeared in court. werner pronounced sentence: death by hanging. the qualification of "unanimous" was wanting. baron dernegg had been opposed to it. there was much excitement among the spectators. berger, although not unprepared for the sentence, could with difficulty calm himself sufficiently to announce that every form of appeal would be resorted to. the accused had closed her eyes for a moment and her limbs trembled like aspen-leaves, but she was able to rise by herself to follow the warders. "thank you," she said pressing berger's hands. "but the appeal----" "will be lodged by me," he said hastily interrupting her. "i shall come and see you about it to-day." he hurried away down the stairs. but when he got into the long corridor that led to sendlingen's quarters, he relaxed his pace and at length stood still. "this is a difficult business," he murmured and he stepped to a window, opened it and eagerly drank in the cool autumn air as if to strengthen himself. when a few minutes after he found himself in sendlingen's lobby, he met baron dernegg coming out of his friend's study. "too late!" he thought with alarm. "and he has had to hear it from some one else." the usually comfortable-looking judge was much excited. "you are no doubt coming on the same errand, dr. berger," he began. "i felt myself in duty bound to let the chief justice know about this sentence without delay. the way in which he received it showed me once more what a splendid man he is, the pattern of a judge, the embodiment of justice! i assure you, he almost fainted, this--hm!--questionable sentence affected him like a personal misfortune. please do not excite him any more about it and talk of something else first." "certainly," muttered berger as he walked into the study. sendlingen lay back in his arm-chair, both hands pressed to his face. his friend approached him without a word; it was a long, sad silence. "victor," he said at last, gently touching his shoulder, "we knew it would be so!" sendlingen let his hands fall. "and does that comfort me?" he cried wildly. and then he bowed his head still lower. "tell me all!" he murmured. berger then began to narrate everything. one thing only he omitted: how victorine had spoken of her mother's betrayer. "this very day," he concluded, "i shall lodge a nullity appeal with the supreme court. perhaps it will consider the reasons weighty enough to order a new trial; in any case when it examines the question, it will alter the sentence." "in any case?" cried sendlingen bitterly. "we cannot but expect as much from the sense of justice of our highest judges. perhaps the chief witness's suspicious weakness of memory may prove a lucky thing for us. if she had stuck by her former depositions, or if the court had not put her on her oath, then a simple appeal to the supreme court would alone have been possible. now, the case is more striking and more sensational." "and therefore all the worse!" interrupted sendlingen. "woe to him for whom in these days the voice of the people makes itself heard; to the gentry in vienna it is worse than the voice of the devil. besides, just now, according to the opinion of the minister of justice, the world is to be rid of child-murder by the offices of the hangman! and this is the first case in educated circles, a much talked of case,--what a magnificent opportunity of striking terror!" "you take too black a view of the matter, victor." "perhaps!--and therefore an unjust view! but how can a man in my position be just and reasonable. oh, george, i am so desolate and perplexed! what shall i do; merciful heaven, what shall i do?" "first of all--wait!" answered berger. "the decision of the supreme court will be known in a comparatively short time, at latest in two months!" "wait--only two months!" sendlingen wrung his hands. "though what do i care for myself! but she--two months in the fear of death! to sit thus in a lonely cell without light or air, or consolation,--behind her unutterable misery, before her death----. oh, she must either go mad or die!" "i shall often be with her, and father rohn, too, i hope. and then, too," he added, half-heartedly, "one or other of the ladies of the women's society for befriending female criminals. certainly these comforters are not worth much." "they are worth nothing," cried sendlingen vehemently. "oh, how they will torture the poor girl with their unctuous virtue and self-satisfied piety! i have to tolerate these tormentors, the minister of justice insists on it, but at least they shall not enter this cell, i will not allow it--or at least, only the single one among them who is any good, my old brigitta----" "your housekeeper?" asked berger, in perplexity and consternation. "that must not be! she might guess the truth. the girl!" he hesitated again--"is like you, very like you victor--and anyone who sees you so often and knows you so well as brigitta----" "what does that matter?" sendlingen rose. "she is discreet, and if she were not--what does it matter, i repeat. do you suppose that i never mean to enter that cell?" "you! impossible!" "i shall and i must! i will humour you in everything except in this one thing!" "but under what pretext? have you ever visited and repeatedly visited other condemned criminals?" "what does that matter to me? a father must stand by his child!" "and will you tell other people so?" "not until i am obliged; but then without a moment's hesitation. she, however, must be told at once, in fact this very day." "you must not do that, victor. spare the poor girl this sudden revelation." "then prepare her beforehand! but to-morrow it must be!" berger was helpless; he knew what victorine would say to her father if she suddenly encountered him. "give her a little more time!" he begged, "out of pity for her shattered nerves and agitated mind, which will not bear any immediate shock." this was a request that sendlingen could not refuse. "very well, i will wait," he promised. "but you will not wish to prevent me from seeing her to-morrow. i have in any case to inspect the prison. but i promise you: i will not betray myself and the governor of the jail shall accompany me." chapter vi. weighed down by sorrow, berger proceeded homewards. to the solitary bachelor sendlingen was more than a friend, he was a dearly loved brother. he was struck to the heart, as by a personal affliction, with compassion for this fate, this terrible fate, so suddenly and destructively breaking in upon a beneficent life, like a desolating flood. would this flood ever subside again and the soil bring forth flowers and fruit? the strong man's looks darkened as he thought of the future: worse than the evil itself seemed to him the manner in which it affected his friend. alas! how changed and desolated was this splendid soul, how hopeless and helpless this brave heart! and it was just their last interview, that sudden flight from the most melancholy helplessness to the heights of an almost heroic resolve, that gave berger the greatest uneasiness. "and it will not last!" he reflected with much concern. "most certainly it will not! perhaps even now, five minutes after, he is again lying back in his arm chair, broken down, without another thought, another feeling, save that of his misery! and could anything else be expected? that was not the energetic resolve of a clear, courageous soul, but the diseased, visionary effort of feverishly excited nerves! again he does not know whether he will see her or what he ought to do.... and do i know, would any one know in the presence of such a fate?" had he deserved this fate? "no!" cried berger to himself. "no!" he passionately repeated as he paced up and down his study, trying to frame the wording of the appeal. clumsy and uncouth, blind and cruel, seemed to him the power that had ordered things as they had come about. it seemed no better than some rude elemental force. "he can no more help it," he muttered, "than the fields can help a flood breaking in upon them." but he could not long maintain this view, comforting as it was to him, much as he strove to harbour it. "he has done wrong," he thought, "and retribution is only the severer because delayed." other cases in his experience occurred to him: long concealed wrongs and sins that had afterwards come into the light of day, doubly frightful. "and such offences increase by the interest accruing until they are paid," he was obliged to think. from the moment that he heard his friend's story, all the facts it brought to light seemed to him like the diabolical sport of chance; but now he no longer thought it chance but in everything saw necessity, and he was overcome by the same idea to which he had given voice at the conclusion of his friend's narration, namely that this was no mere sad fate, but a tragic one. it was a singular idea, compounded of fear and reverence. when berger reflected how one act dovetailed into another, how link fitted into link in the chain of cause and effect, how all these people could not have acted otherwise than they were obliged to act, how guilt had of necessity supervened, and now retribution, the strong man shuddered from head to foot: he had to bow his head before that pitiless, all-just power for which he knew no name ... but was it really all-just? if all these people, if sendlingen and victorine had not acted otherwise than their nature and circumstances commanded, why had they to suffer for it so frightfully? and why was there no end to this suffering, a great, a liberating, a redeeming end? "no!" cried an inward voice of his deeply agitated soul, "there must be such a glorious solution. it cannot be our destiny to be dragged into sin by blind powers which we cannot in any way control, like puppets by the cords in a showman's hands, and then again, when it pleases those powers, into still greater sins, or into an atonement a thousand times greater than the sin itself, and so, on and on, until death snaps the cords. no! that cannot be our destiny, and if it were, then we should be greater than this fate, greater, juster, more reasonable! there must be in sendlingen's case also, a solution bringing freedom, there _must_--and in his case precisely most of all! it would have been an extraordinary fate, no matter whom it had overtaken, but had it befallen a commonplace man, it would never have grown to such a crushing tragedy. a scoundrel would have lied to himself: 'she is not my daughter, her mother was a woman of loose character,' and he would have repeated this so often that he would have come to believe it. and if remorse had eventually supervened, he would have buried it in the confessional or in the bottle. "another man, no scoundrel,--on the contrary! a man of honour of the sort whose name is legion,--would not have hesitated for a moment to preside in court in order to obtain by his authority as chief justice, the mildest possible sentence. then he would have been assiduous in ameliorating the lot of the prisoner by special privileges, and after she had been set at liberty, he would have bought her, somewhere at a distance, a little millinery business or a husband, and every time he thought of the matter, he would have said with emotion: 'what a good fellow you are!' this has only become a tragic fate because it has struck one of the most upright, most sensitive and noble of men, and because this is so, there must come from that most noble and upright heart a solution, an act of liberation bursting these iron bonds! there must be a means of escape by which he and his poor child and justice herself will have their due! there _must_ be--simply because he is what he is!" there was a gleam of light in berger's usually placid, contented face, the reflection of the thought that filled his soul and raised him above the misery of the moment. notwithstanding, his looks became serious and gloomy again. "but what is this solution?" he asked, continuing his over-wrought reflections. "and how shall this broken-down, sick man, weary with his tortures, find it? and i--i know of none, perhaps no one save himself can find it. 'against the burden of such a fate, no parade of sophistry will be of any avail,' i said to him yesterday. but can small expedients be of any use? will it be a solution if i succeed with my appeal, if the sentence of death is commuted to penal servitude for life or for twenty years? can this lessen the burden of the fate?--for her, for him?" "what to do?" he suddenly exclaimed aloud. he wrung his hands and stared before him. suddenly there was a curious twitching about his mouth, and his eyes gleamed with an almost weird light. "no, no!" he muttered vehemently, "how can such a thought even occur to me. i feel it, i am myself becoming ill and unstrung!" he bounded up with a heavy stamp and hastily passed his hand over his forehead, as though the thought which had just passed through his brain stood written there and must be swiftly wiped away. but that thought returned again and again and would not be scared away, that enticing but fearful thought; how she might be forcibly liberated from prison and carried off to new life and happiness in a distant country? "madness!" he muttered and added in thought: "he would rather die and let her die, than give his consent to this or set his hand to such a deed! he whose conscience would not allow him to preside at the trial! and if in his perplexity and despair he were to go so far, i should have to bar the way and stop him even if it cost me my life.... what was it he said yesterday: 'an offence should not be expiated by an injustice!' and will he attempt it by another offence. 'cowardly and dishonourable!' yes, that it would be, and not that great deed of which i dream; greater and more just than fate itself." he seized the notes which he had made from the papers connected with the trial, and forced himself to read them through deliberately, to weigh them again point by point. this expedient helped him: that horrible thought did not return, but a new thought rose, bringing comfort in its train and took shape: "when a great act cannot be achieved, we should not on that account omit even the smallest thing that can possibly be done. i will set my energies against the sentence of death, because it is the most frightful thing that could happen!" and now he recovered courage and eagerness for work. he sat at his writing table hour after hour, marshalling his reasons and objections into a solid phalanx which in the fervour of the moment seemed to him as if they must sweep away every obstacle, even prejudice, even ill-will. he had bolted himself in, nobody was to disturb him, he only interrupted himself for a few minutes to snatch a hasty meal. then he worked away until the last sentence stood on the paper. for the first time he now looked at the clock; it was pointing to ten. it was too late to visit the poor prisoner, and he was grieved that he had not kept his promise. if she was perhaps secretly nourishing the hope of being saved, she would now be doubly despairing. but it could not now be helped and he resolved to make good his remissness early the next morning. sendlingen, however, he would go and see. "perhaps he is in want of me," he thought. "i should be much surprised if he were not now more helpless than ever." he made his way through the wet, cold, foggy autumn night; things he had never dreamt of were in store for him. when he pulled the bell, the door was at once opened: fräulein brigitta stood before him. the candlestick in her hand trembled: the plump, well-nourished face of the worthy lady was so full of anguish that berger started. "what has happened?" he cried. "nothing!" she answered. "nothing at all! it is only that i am so silly." but her hand was trembling so much that she had to put down her candle and the tears streamed down her cheeks as she continued with an effort: "he went out--and has not come back--and so i thought--but i am so silly." "so it seems," berger roughly exclaimed, trying to encourage both her and himself, but a sudden anguish so choked his utterance that what he next said sounded almost unintelligible. "may he not pay a visit to a friend and stay to supper there? is he so much under your thumb that he must give you previous notice of his intention? he is at baron dernegg's i suppose." "no," she sobbed. "he is not there, and franz has already looked for him in vain in all the places where he might be. he was twice at your house, but your servant would not admit him. and now the old man is scouring the streets. he will not find him!" she suddenly screamed, burying her face in her hands. "nonsense!" cried berger almost angrily. he forced the trembling woman into a chair, sat down beside her and took her hand. "let us talk like reasonable beings," he said, "like men, fräulein brigitta. when did he go out?" "seven hours ago, just after his dinner, which he hardly touched; it must have been about four o'clock. and how he has been behaving ... and especially since mid-day yesterday.... dr. berger," she cried imploringly, clasping her hands, "what happened yesterday in chambers? when he came back from vienna he was still calm and cheerful. it must be here and yesterday that some misfortune struck him. i thought at first that it was illness, but i know better now: it is a misfortune, a great misfortune! dr. berger, for christ's sake, tell me what it is!" she would have sunk down at his feet, if he had not hastily prevented her. "be reasonable!" he urged, "it is an illness, fräulein brigitta,--the heart, the nerves." she shook her head vigorously. "i guess what it is." she pointed in the direction of the jail. "something has happened in the prison over there that is a matter of life and death to him." he started. "why do you suppose that?" "because he behaved so strangely--just listen to this." but she had first the difficult task of calming herself before she could proceed. "well, when i went into his room to-day to tell him dinner was ready, he was standing in front of his writing-table rummaging in all the drawers. 'what are you looking for, my lord?' i asked. 'nothing,' he muttered and he sent me away, saying he was just coming. twenty minutes later i ventured to go back again; he was still searching. 'have you ever,' he now himself asked, 'heard of any keys that my predecessor is said to have handed over?' 'yes,' i replied, 'the keys of the residence.' 'no, others, and among them the key of the door which----' he checked himself suddenly and turned away as though he had already said too much. 'what door?' i asked in utter astonishment. he muttered something unintelligible and then roughly told me the soup could wait. it cuts me to the heart. dear heaven, how wretched he looks, and i am not accustomed to be spoken to by him in that way; but what does that matter? i went and spoke to franz. 'perhaps,' he said, 'he means the keys that are in the top drawer of his business table.' so we went and looked and there, sure enough, was a bunch of keys--quite rusty, dr. berger." "go on, to the point," said berger impatiently. "well, i took them to him; as i said, a whole bunch with a written label on each. he looked through them with trembling hands. dr. berger, and at last his face lit up. 'that's the one!' he muttered and took the key off the bunch and put it in his breast pocket. then he turned round and when he saw me--great heaven! what eyes he had--wicked, frightened eyes. 'are you still here?' he said flaring up into a rage. 'what do you want playing the spy here?' yes, dr. berger, he said 'playing the spy'--and he has known me for fifteen years." "he is ill you see!" said berger soothingly. "but go on!" "then he sat down to dinner and there he behaved very strangely. god forgive me ... usually he only drinks one glass of rhine-wine--you know the sort--to-day he gulped down three glasses one after another, took a few spoonfuls of soup and then went back to his room. and then i said: franz, i said--but you won't want to hear that. dr. berger. but what follows you must hear; it's very strange--god help us! only too strange." "well?" "after about ten minutes or so, i heard his step in the lobby; the door slammed; well, he had gone out. 'by all that's sacred!' thinks i in great trouble of mind. then franz came in quite upset. 'fräulein!' he whispered, 'he's going up and down in the court outside!' 'impossible!' said i, 'what does he want there?' we went to the bedroom window that looks down into the court and there, sure enough, is his lordship! he was going--or rather he was creeping along by the wall that separates our court from the prison yard. it was drizzling at the time and it was no longer quite light, but i could see his face plainly: it was the face of a man who doesn't know what to do--ah me! worse still--the face of a man who doesn't know what he's doing. and he behaved like it, dr. berger! he stopped in front of the little door in the wall, looked anxiously up at the windows to see if anyone was watching him--but the clerks and officials had all gone, we were the only people who saw him--he pulled out that key from his breast pocket and tried to unlock the door. for a long time he couldn't succeed, but at last the door opened. however, he only shut it again quickly and locked it. then he began anxiously to pace up and down again. it was just as if he had only wanted to try whether the key would open the door. what do you think of that?" "the door through which one can get from here into the prison?" berger spoke slowly, in a muffled tone, as if he were speaking to himself. then he continued in the same tone: "oh, how frightful that would be! this soul in the mire, this splendid soul!--go on!" he then muttered as he saw that the housekeeper was looking at him in amazement. "well, then he went quickly back through the hall into the street and on towards the square. franz crept after him at a distance. he seemed at first as if he wanted to go to your house, then he came back here, but to the other door, on the prison side. there he stood, close up to it, for a long time, a quarter of an hour franz says, and then went to the left down cross street and then--what do you think, dr. berger?" "back the same way," said berger slowly, "and again stood for a long time in front of the prison." "how can you know that?" asked the old lady in astonishment. berger's answer was a strange one. "i can see it!" he said. and indeed, with the eyes of his soul, berger could see his unhappy friend wandering about in the misty darkness, dragged hither and thither, by whirling, conflicting thoughts. "perhaps he is at this moment standing there again!" he had not meant to say this, but the thought had involuntarily given itself voice. "what now!" fräulein brigitta crossed herself. "we will go and see at once! come! oh, that would be a good thing! i will just go and fetch my shawl. but you see i was right. this trouble is connected with the prison; some injustice has been done, and he feels it nearly because he is such a just judge." "because he is such a just judge," repeated berger, mechanically, without thinking of what he was saying, for while he spoke those words he was saying to himself: "he has gone mad!" then, however, he shook off the spell of this horror that threatened to cripple both soul and body. "you stay at home," he said in a tone of command. "i will find him and bring him back, you may rely upon that. one thing more, where did franz leave him?" "ah, he was too simple! when his lordship came into the square for the third time, franz went up to him and begged him to come home. upon that he became very angry and sent franz off with the strongest language. but he called after him that he was going to baron dernegg's, only as i said, he has not been there, and----" "keep up your spirits, fräulein brigitta! i shall be back soon." he went down the steps, "keep up your spirits!" he called back to her once more; she was standing at the top of the steps holding the candle at arm's length before her. berger stepped into the street and walked swiftly round the building to the prison door. he himself was in need of the exhortation he had given: he felt as if in the next moment he might see something frightful. but there was nothing to be seen when he at length reached the place and approached the door, nothing save the muddy slippery ground, the trickling, mouldy walls, the iron-work of the door shining in the wet--nothing else, so far as the red, smoky light of the two lanterns above the door could show through the fog and rain. and there was nothing to be heard save the low pattering of the rain-drops on the soft earth or, when a sudden gust of the east-wind blew, the creaking of some loosened rafter and a whirring, long-drawn, complaining sound that came from the bare trees on the ramparts when they writhed and bent beneath its icy breath. "victor!" there was a movement in the sentry box by the door; the poor, frozen venetian soldier of the dom miguel regiment who had sheltered himself inside as well as he could from the rain and cold, poked out his heavy sleepy head so that the shine of his wet leather shako was visible for an instant. he muttered an oath and wrapped himself the closer in his damp overcoat. berger sighed deeply. a minute before he was sure he had seen the poor madman standing motionless in the desolate night, his eyes rigidly fixed upon the door that separated him from his daughter, and now that he was spared the sight, he could take no comfort, for a far worse foreboding convulsed his brain. hesitatingly he returned to the front part of the building and, increasing his pace, he went down the street towards the market-place, aimlessly, but always swifter, as if he had to go where chance led him, so as to arrive in time to stop some frightful deed. the streets were deserted, nothing but the wind roamed through the drenching solitude, nothing but the voices of the night greeted his ear; that ceaseless murmur and rustle and stir, which, drowned by the noise of the day, moves in the dark stillness, as though dead and dumb things had now first found a voice to reach the sense of men. he often had to stop; it seemed to him as if he heard the piteous groaning of a sick man, or the half stifled cry for help of one wounded. but it was nothing; the wind had shaken some rotting roof, or somewhere in the far distance a watch-dog had given a short, sharp bark. the lonely wanderer held his breath in order to hear better, looked also perhaps into some dark corner and then hurried on. he reached the market place. here he came upon human beings again, the sentries before the principal guard-house, and as he passed the column commemorative of the cholera in the middle of the square, there was the night-watchman who had pitched upon a dry sleeping place in one of the niches of the irregular monument. berger stopped irresolutely; should he wake him up and question him? another form at this moment emerged from a neighbouring street; a man who with bowed head and halting pace glided along by the houses: was this not franz? berger could not yet, by the light of the meagre lamps, accurately distinguish him in the all-pervading fog. but the man came nearer and nearer; he was behaving peculiarly; he was looking into every door-way, and when he came to the "sign of the arbour," a very ancient shop full of recesses, he went into each of these recesses, so that a spectator saw him alternately appearing and disappearing. when he at length reappeared just under a lamp berger recognised him; it was really the old servant. "like a faithful dog seeking his master," he said to himself as he hurried towards him. franz rushed to meet him. "you know nothing of him?" "be quiet, man. we will look for him together." "no, separately!" he seized berger's arm and grasped it convulsively. "you by the river-side and i up here. there is not a moment to lose." berger asked no more questions but hurried down the broad, inclined street that led to the river. here, in cross street, where most of the pleasure-resorts were, there were still signs of life; he had repeatedly to get out of the way of drunken men who passed along bawling; poor forlorn looking girls brushed past him. in one of the quieter streets he noticed a moving light coming nearer and nearer: it was a large lantern in the hand of a servant who was carefully lighting the gentleman who followed him. berger recognised the features of the little, wizened creature who, in spite of the awful weather was contentedly tripping along, with satisfaction in every lineament, under the shelter of a mighty umbrella; it was the deputy chief-justice, herr von werner. he would have passed by without a word, but werner recognised him and called to him. "eh! eh! it's dr. berger!" he snickered. "out so late! hee, hee! i seem to be meeting all the important people! first--hee! hee! the lord chief justice and now----" "have you seen him?" "why yes. you are surprised? so was i! just as i stepped out of my son-in-law's house, he passed by. i called after him because i wanted to tell him the news. for you may congratulate me, dr. berger. certainly, you annoyed me this morning, you annoyed me very much i but in my joy i will forgive you! my first grandson, a splendid boy, and how he can cry!" "where did you see him? when?" "eh! goodness me, what is the matter with you? it was scarcely five minutes ago, he was going--only fancy--towards wurst street. you seem upset! and he wouldn't listen to me! why, what is the matter?" berger made no reply. without a word of farewell, he rushed precipitately down the street out of which werner had come and turned to the right into a narrow, dirty slum which led by a steep incline to the river. this was wurst street, the poorest district of the town, the haunt of porters, boatmen and raftsmen; alongside the narrow quay in which the street ended, lay their craft; the corner building next the river was the public house which they frequented. a light still glimmered behind its small window-panes and, as berger hurried by, the sound of rough song and laughter greeted his ears. he did not stop till he came right up to the river's edge. its waters were swollen by the autumn rains; swift and tumultuous they coursed along its broad bed, perceptible to the ear only, not to the eye, so fearfully dark was the night. berger could not even distinguish the wooden foot-bridge that here crossed the river, until he was close up to it. hesitatingly he stepped upon the shaky structure. the bridge was scarcely two foot broad, its balustrade was rotten and the footway slippery. over on the other side a solitary light, a lantern, was struggling against wind and fog; its reflection swayed uncertainly on the soaking bridge; when it suddenly flared up in the wind, its flickering, red light revealed for a moment the angry, swollen flood. berger stood still irresolutely; the place was so desolate, so uncanny; should he stay any longer? then suddenly a low cry escaped him and he darted forward a step. the lantern opposite had just flared up and by its reflection he had seen a man approach the bridge and step upon it. it seemed to berger as if this were sendlingen, but he did not know for certain, as the lantern was again giving only the faintest glimmer. the man approached nearer, slowly, and with uncertain step, groping for the balustrade as he came. once more the lantern flared up--there was the long inverness, the gray hat--berger doubted no longer. "victor!" he would have shouted at the top of his voice, but the word passed over his lips huskily, almost inaudibly: he would have darted forward ... but could only take one solitary step more, so greatly had the weirdness of the situation overpowered him. sendlingen did not perceive him: he stopped scarcely ten paces from his friend and bent over the balustrade. resting on both arms, there he stood, staring at the wild and turbulent water. thus passed a few seconds. again the lantern flickered up, for a moment only it gave a clear light. sendlingen had suddenly raised himself and berger saw, or thought he saw, that the unfortunate man was now only resting with one hand on the railing, that his body was lifted up.... "victor!" in two bounds, in two seconds, he was beside him, had seized him, clasped him in his arms. "george!" awful, thrilling was the cry--a cry for help?--or a cry of baffled rage? then berger felt this convulsive body suddenly grow stiff and heavy--he was holding an unconscious burden in his arms. chapter vii. shortly after there was such vigorous knocking at the windows of the little river-side inn that the panes were broken. the landlord and his customers rushed out into the street, cursing. but they ceased when they saw the scared looking figure with its singular burden; silently they helped to bring the prostrate form into the house. the landlord had recognized the features; he whispered the news to the others, and so great was the love and reverence that attached to this name, that the rough, half-drunken fellows stood about in the bare inn-parlor, as orderly and reverent as if they were in church. the body lay motionless on the bench which they had fetched; a feather, held to the lips, scarcely moved, so feebly did the breath come and go. the one remedy in the poor place, the brandy with which his breast and pulses were moistened, proved useless; not till the parish doctor, whom a raftsman hurriedly fetched, had applied his essences, did the unconscious man begin to breathe more deeply and at length open his eyes. but his look was fixed and weird; the white lips muttered confused words. then the deep red eyelids closed again; they showed, as did the tear-stains on his cheeks, how bitterly the poor wretch had been weeping in his aimless wanderings. "we must get him home at once," said the doctor. "there is brain fever coming on." berger sent to the hospital for a litter; it was soon on the spot; the sick man was carefully laid on it. the bearers stepped away rapidly; the doctor and berger walked alongside. when they reached the market-place they came across franz. "dead?" he screamed; but when he heard the contrary, he said not another word, but hurried on ahead. in this way fräulein brigitta was informed; she behaved more calmly than berger could have believed. the bed was all ready; the doctor attached to the courts was soon on the spot. he was of the same opinion as his colleague. "a mortal sickness," he told berger, "the fever is increasing, his consciousness is entirely clouded. perhaps it is owing to overwork at the inquiry in vienna?" he added. "he may have caught a severe cold on the top of it." the parish doctor departed, franz was obliged to go to the chemist's; berger and the resident doctor remained alone with the invalid. the barrister had a severe struggle with himself; should he tell the doctor the whole truth? to any unsuspecting person, sendlingen's demeanor must have seemed like the paroxysm of a fever, but he knew better! certainly the sufferer was physically ailing, but it was not under the weight of empty fancies that he was gently sobbing, or burying his anguish-stricken face in the pillow; the excess of his suffering, the terror of his lonely wanderings had completely broken down his strength; all mastery of self had vanished; he showed himself as he was; in a torment of helplessness. and that which seemed to the doctor the most convincing proof of a mind unhinged berger understood only too well; as for instance when sendlingen beckoned to him, and beseechingly whispered, as if filled with the deepest shame: "go, george, can't you understand that i can no longer bear your looks?" after this berger went out and sank into a chair in the lobby, and the gruesome scene rose before him again; the lonely bridge lit by the flickering lantern; the roaring current beneath him ... "oh, what misery!" he groaned, and for the first time for many years, for the first time perhaps, since his boyhood, he broke out into sobs, even though his eyes remained dry. a rapid footstep disturbed him. it was franz returning with the medicine. berger told him to send the doctor to him at once. "doctor," he said, "you shall know the truth as far as i am at liberty to tell it." a misfortune, he told him, had befallen sendlingen, a misfortune great enough to crush the strongest man. "your art," he concluded, "cannot heal the soul, i know. but you can give my poor friend what he most of all needs; sleep! otherwise his torture will wear out both body and soul." the doctor asked no questions; for a long while he looked silently on the ground. then he said, briefly: "good! fortunately i have the necessary means with me." he went back to the sick-room. ten minutes later, he opened the door and made berger come in. sendlingen was in a deep sleep; and it must have been dreamless, for his features had smoothed themselves again. "how long will this sleep last?" asked berger. "perhaps till mid-day to-morrow," replied the doctor, "perhaps longer, since the body is so exhausted. at least, we shall know to-morrow whether there is a serious illness in store. but even if there is not, if it is only the torture of the mind that returns, it will be bad enough. very bad, in fact. do you know no remedy for it?" "none!" answered the honest lawyer, feebly. they parted without a word in the deepest distress. by earliest dawn, when the bells of the cathedral rang forth for the first time, berger was back again in his friend's lobby. "thank god, he is still sleeping," whispered fräulein brigitta. "the worse has past, hasn't it?" "we will hope so," he replied, constrainedly. for a long time he stood at the window and stared out into the court-yard; involuntarily his gaze fixed itself on the little door in the wall which was so small and low that he had never noticed it before; now he observed it for the first time. then he roused himself and went to the other part of the building to see his unfortunate client. "how is victorine lippert?" he asked of the governor who happened to be at the door. "poor thing!" he said, with a shrug of the shoulders. "it will soon be all over with her, and that will be the best thing for her." "has she been suddenly taken ill?" "no, dr. berger, she is just the same as before, but the doctor does not think she will last much longer. 'snuffed out like a candle,' he says. if she had any sort of hope to which her poor soul might cling; but as it is ... herr von werner had sent him to her to see what punishment she could bear for yesterday's scene in court, but the doctor said to him afterward: 'it would be sheer barbarity! let her die in peace!' but herr von werner was of opinion that he could not pass over the offence without some punishment, and that she would survive one day of the dark cell; he only relented when father rohn interceded for her. the priest was with her yesterday at two o'clock, and has made her peace with god. do you still intend to appeal? well, as you think best. but it will be labor in vain, dr. berger! she will die before you receive the decision." "god forbid!" cried berger. the governor shook his head. "she would be free in that case," he said. "why should you wish her to live? what do you hope to attain? commutation to penal servitude for life, or imprisonment for twenty years! does that strike you as being better? i don't think so; in my profession it is impossible to believe it, dr. berger. well, as you think best! if you want to speak to victorine lippert, the warder shall take you round." the governor departed; berger stood looking after him a long while. then he stepped out into the prison yard and paced up and down; he felt the need of quieting himself before going into her cell. "that would be frightful," he thought. "and yet, perhaps, the man is right, perhaps it would really be best for her--and for him!" he tried to shake off the thought, but it returned. "and it would mean the end of this fearful complication, a sad, a pitiable end--but still an end!" but then he checked himself. "no, it would be no end, because it would be no solution. in misery he would drag out his whole existence; in remorse; in despair! no, on the contrary, her death might be the worst blow that could befal him! but what is to be done to prevent it? it would be possible to get her ordered better food, a lighter cell, and more exercise in the open. but all that would be no use if she is really as bad as the doctor thinks! she will die--o god! she will die before the decision of the supreme court arrives." more perplexed and despairing than before, he now repaired to her cell. the warder unlocked it and he entered. victorine was reclining on her couch, her head pressed against the wall. at his entrance, she tried to rise, but he prevented her. "how are you?" he asked. "better, i hope?" "yes," she answered softly, "and all will soon be well with me." he knew what she meant and alas! it was only too plainly visible that this hope at least was not fallacious. paler than she had latterly been it was almost impossible that she should become, but more haggard berger certainly thought her; her whole bearing was more broken down and feeble. "she is right," he thought, but he forced himself and made every endeavour to appear more confident than he really was. "i am glad of that!" he tried to say it in the most unconstrained manner in the world, but could only blurt it out in a suppressed tone of voice. "i hope----" she looked at him, and, in the face of this look of immeasurable grief, of longing for death, the like of which he had never seen in any human eyes, the words died on his lips. it seemed to him unworthy any longer to keep up the pretence of not understanding her. "my poor child," he murmured, taking her hand, "i know. i know. but you are still young, why will you cease to hope? i have drawn up the appeal, i shall lodge it to-day--i am sure you will be pardoned." "that would be frightful!" she said in a low tone. "i begged you so earnestly to leave it alone. but i am not angry with you. you have done it because your pity constrained you, perhaps, too, your conscience and sense of justice--and to me it is all one! my life at all events, is only a matter of weeks: i shall never leave this cell alive! thank heaven! since yesterday afternoon this has become a certainty!" "the doctor told you? oh, that was not right of him." "do not blame him!" she begged. "it was an act of humanity. if he had only told me to relieve me of the fear of the hangman, he should be commended, not reproved. but it happened differently; at first he did not want to tell me the truth, it was evident from what he was saying, and when the truth had once slipped out, he could no longer deny it. he was exhorting me to hope, to cling to life, he spoke to me as you do, 'for otherwise' he said, 'you are lost! my medicines cannot give you vital energy!' his pity moved him to dwell on this more and more pointedly and decidedly. 'if you do not rouse yourself,' he said at last, 'you will be your own executioner.' he was frightened at what he had said almost before he had finished, and still more when i thanked him as for the greatest kindness he could have done me. he only left me to send father rohn. he came too, but----" she sighed deeply and stopped. "he surely didn't torture you with bigoted speeches?" asked berger. "i know him. father rohn is a worthy man who knows life; he is a human being ..." "of course! but just because he is no hypocrite he could say nothing that would really comfort me for this life. at most for that other life, which perhaps--no certainly!" she said hurriedly. "so many people believe in it, good earnest men who have seen and suffered much misfortune, how should a simple girl dare to doubt it? certainly, dr. berger, when i think of my own life and my mother's life, it is not easy to believe in an all-just, all-merciful god. but i do believe in him--yes! though so good a man as father rohn could only say: amends will be made up there. only the way he said it fully convinced me! but, after all, he could only give me hope in death, not hope for life." "certainly against his will," cried berger. "you did not want to understand him." "yes, dr. berger, i did want to understand him and understood him--in everything--excepting only one thing," she added hesitatingly. "but that was not in my power--i could not! and whatever trouble he took it was in vain." "and what was this one thing?" "he asked me if there was no one i was attached to, who loved me, to whom my life or death mattered? no, i answered, nobody--and then he asked--but why touch upon the hateful subject! let us leave it alone, dr. berger." "no," cried berger, white with emotion, "i implore you, let us talk about it. he asked you whether you did not know your father." she nodded; a faint red overspread her pale cheeks. "and you answered?" "what i have told you: that i did not know him, that if he were living i should not love and reverence him as my father, but hate and despise him as the wretch who ruined my mother!" she had half raised herself, and had spoken with a strength and energy that berger had not believed possible. now she sank back on her couch. he sighed deeply. "and you adhered to that," he began again, "whatever father rohn might say? he told you that on the threshold of--that in your situation one should not hate, but forgive, that whoever hopes for god's mercy must not himself condemn unmercifully!" "yes," she replied, "he said so, if perhaps in gentler words. for he seemed to feel that i did not require to depend on god's mercy, but only on his justice." "forgive me!" muttered berger. "for i know your fate and know you. but just because i know your affectionate nature and your need of affection----" he stopped. "gently," he thought, "i must be cautious." "don't consider me unfeeling," he then continued, "if i dwell upon this matter, however painful it may be to you. just this one thing: does it follow that this man must be a wretch? were there not perhaps fatal circumstances that bound him against his will and prevented him doing his duty to your poor mother?" "no," she answered. "i know there were not!" "you know there were not?" murmured berger in the greatest consternation. "but do you know him?" "yes. i know his heart, his character, and that is enough. what does it matter to me what his name is, or his station? whether he is living or dead? to me he has never lived! i know him from my mother's judgment, and that she, the gentlest of women, could not judge otherwise, proves his unworthiness. only one single time did she speak to me of him, when i was old enough to ask and to be told why people sometimes spoke of us with a shrug of the shoulders. 'if he had been thoughtless and weak,' she said to me, 'i could have forgiven him. but i have never known a man who viewed life more earnestly and intelligently: none who was so strong and brave and resolute as he. it was only from boundless selfishness, after mature, cold-blooded calculation that he delivered me to dishonor, because i was an obstacle in his career.' you see he was more pitiless than the man whom i trusted." "no," cried berger in the greatest excitement. "you do him injustice!" "injustice! how do you know that? do you know him?" he turned away and was silent. "no," he then murmured, "how should i know him?" "then why do you dissent from me with such conviction? oh, i understand," she went on bitterly, "you, even you, don't think my mother's words trustworthy, and simply because she allowed herself to be deluded by a wretch!" "no, indeed!" returned berger, trying to compose himself, "for i know how noble, how true and good your mother was, i know it from her letters. the remark escaped me unawares. but you are right. let us drop this subject." then he asked her if she would like to have some books. she answered in the negative and he left the cell. "sendlingen must never see her!" he thought when he was back in the street. "if he were to enter her cell he would betray himself and then learn what she thinks of him! it would utterly crush him. that, at least, he shall be spared." but the next few minutes were to show him that he had been planning impossibilities. as he passed the chief justice's residence, an upstairs window opened; he heard his name called loud and anxiously. it was fräulein brigitta. "quickly," cried she, beckoning him to come up. he hurried up the stairs, she rushed to meet him. "heaven has sent you to us," she cried, weeping and wringing her hands. "how fortunate that i accidentally saw you passing. we were at our wits' end? he insists on going out. franz is to dress him. we do not know what has excited him so. father rohn has been to see him, but he talked so quietly with him that we breathed again indeed. it is manifestly a sudden attack of fever, but we cannot use force to him." berger hurried to the bedroom. sendlingen was reclining in an arm-chair, franz was attending to him. at his friend's entrance he coloured, and held up his hand deprecatingly. "they have fetched you," he cried impatiently. "it is useless! i am not going to be prevented!" berger signed to franz to leave the room. not until the door was closed behind him did he approach the sick man, and take his hand, and look searchingly into his face. it reassured him to see that, though his eyes were dim, they no longer looked wild and restless as they did a few hours ago. "you are going to her?" he asked. "that must not be." "i must!" cried sendlingen despairingly. "it is the one thought to which i cling to avoid madness. when i awoke--i was so perplexed and desolate, i felt my misery returning--then i heard rohn's voice in the next room. they were going to send him away: i was still asleep, they said,--but i made him come in, because i wanted to hear some other voice than that of my conscience, and because i was afraid of myself. i did not dream that he was bringing me a staff by which i could raise myself again." "you asked him about her?" "no, by the merest chance he began to tell me of his talk with her yesterday, and how she was wasting away because there was no one on earth for whose sake she could or would rouse herself. oh, what i felt! despair shook my heart more deeply than ever, and yet i could have thanked him on my knees for these good tidings. now my life has an object again, and i know why fate has allowed me to survive this day." berger was silent--should he, dared he, tell the truth? "think it over a while," he begged. "if you were to betray yourself to the officials----" "i shall not do so. and if i did, how could that trouble me? don't you see that a man in my situation cannot think of himself or any such secondary consideration?" "that would be no secondary consideration. and could you save her by such a step? the situation remains as it was!" "are you cruel enough to remind me of that?" cried sendlingen. "but, thank god! i am clear enough to give you the right answer instead of allowing myself to be oppressed by misery. now listen; i shall do what i can! from the hangman, from the prison, i may not be able to save my child, but perhaps i can save her from despair, from wasting away. i shall say to her: live for your father, as your father lives for you! perhaps this thought will affect her as it has affected me; it has saved me from the worst. another night like last night, george!" he stopped and a shudder ran through his body. "such a night shall not come again! i do not know what is to be done later on, but my immediate duty is clear. i have been fighting against the instinct that drew me to her, as against a suggestion of madness; i now see that it was leading me aright." he laid his hand on the bell to summon franz. berger prevented him, "wait another hour," he implored. "i will not try to hinder you any more; i see that it would be useless, perhaps unjust. but let me speak to her first. humour me in this one thing only. you agreed to do so yesterday." "so be it!" said sendlingen. "but you must promise not to keep me waiting a minute longer than is absolutely necessary." berger promised and took his leave. he was not a religious man in the popular sense of the word, and yet as he again rang the prison bell, he felt as if he must pray that his words would be of effect as a man only can pray for a favour for himself. the warder was astonished when he again asked admission to the cell, and victorine looked at him with surprise. he went up to her. "listen to me," he begged. "i have hitherto wished to conceal the truth from you, with the best intentions, but still it was not right. for falsehood kills and truth saves, always and everywhere--i ought to have remembered that. well then; i know your father; he is my best friend, a man so noble and good, so upright and full of heart, as are few men on this poor earth." she rose. "if that were so my mother would have lied," she cried. "can i believe you rather than my mother? can you expect that of me?" "no," he replied. "your mother judged him quite correctly. he did not betray her through thoughtlessness, nor forsake her through weakness. but much less still from cold-blooded calculation. no external constraint weighed upon him but an internal,--the constraint of education, of his convictions, of his views of the world and men, in short, of his whole being, so that he could hardly have acted differently. with all this there was such a fatal, peculiar concatenation of external circumstances, that it would have needed a giant soul not to have succumbed. we are all of us but men. i would not trust anyone i know, not even myself, to have been stronger than he was! not one, victorine! will you believe me?" "my mother judged otherwise!" she replied. "and will you perhaps also attempt to justify the fact that he never concerned himself about his child?" "he knew nothing of you," cried berger. "he did not dream that he had a child in the world! and one thing i can assure you: if he had accidentally heard that you were alive, he would not have rested until he had drawn you to his heart, he would have sheltered you in his arms, in his house, from the battle with misery and the wickedness of men. not only his heart would have dictated this, but the absence of children by his marriage, and his sense of justice: so as to make good through you what he could no longer make good to your poor mother. if you could only imagine how he suffers!--you must surely be able to feel for him: a noble man, who suddenly learns that his offence is ten times greater than he had thought or dreamt; that he has a child in the world against whom also he has transgressed, and who learns all this at a moment when he can make no reparation--in such a moment--can you grasp this, victorine?" her face remained unmoved. "what shall i say?" she exclaimed gloomily. "if he really suffers, the punishment is only just. what did my mother not suffer on his account! and i!" "but can we ascribe all the blame to him?" he cried. "all, victorine?" "perhaps," she answered. "but if not all, then the most, so much that i will certainly believe you in one thing; if he is a human being at all, then he should now be suffering all the tortures of remorse. still, as great as my sorrow, his cannot be! and is my guilt greater than his? and has he, too, to expiate it with honour and life?" "quite possibly!" he cried. "perhaps with his life, seeing that he cannot, situated as he now is, expiate it with his honour. oh, if you knew all! if you knew what an unprecedented combination of circumstances has heightened the sense of his guilt, has increased his sorrow to infinite proportions. and you shall know all." "i will not hear it," she cried with a swift movement of repulsion, "i do not care, i may not care about it. i will not be robbed of my feelings against this man. i will not! his punishment is just--let us drop the subject." "just! still this talk about just! you are young but you have experienced enough of life, you have suffered enough, to know how far this justice will bring us. an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth--shall this pitiless web of guilt and expiation continue to spin itself everlastingly from generation to generation? can't you understand that this life would be unendurable if a high-minded deed, a noble victory over self, did not at times rend the web? you should understand this, poor child, you more than anyone. do such a deed, forgive this unhappy man!" "did he send you to me on this mission?" "no. i will be truthful in the smallest detail: i myself wrested from him permission to prepare you for his coming. i wished to spare you and him the emotions of a melancholy contest. for he does not even suspect what you think of him." "he does not suspect it?" she cried. "he thinks that the balance is struck, if he graces a fallen, a condemned creature with a visit! oh, and this man is noble and sensitive!" "you are unjust to him in that, too," protested berger. "and in that most of all. that he who can usually read the hearts of men like a book, has not thought of this most obvious and natural thing, shows best of all how greatly his misery has distracted and desolated him. he only wants one thing: to come to you, to console you, to console himself in you." "i will not see him, you must prevent it." "i cannot. i have tried in vain. he will come; his reason, perhaps his life, depend upon the way you may receive him." "do not burden me with such responsibilities," she sobbed despairingly. "i cannot forgive him. but i desire nobody's death, i do not wish him to die. tell him what you like, even that i forgive him, but keep him away, i implore you." she would have thrown herself at his feet but he prevented her. "no, not that," he murmured. "i will not urge any more. as god wills." a few minutes later he was again with sendlingen. "she knows all," he told him, "except your name and station. she does not desire your visit--she--dreads the excitement." he stopped short and looked anxiously at his friend; he feared another sudden outburst of despair. but it did not come. sendlingen certainly started as in pain, but then he drew himself up to his full height. "you are concealing the truth from me," he said. "she does not wish to see her mother's betrayer. i did not think of it before, but i read it at once in your looks of alarm. that is bad, very bad--but stop me, it cannot. where the stranger has tried in vain the father will succeed. my heart tells me so." he called for his hat and stick and leaning on berger's arm, went down the steps. in the street he loosed his hold: the energy of his soul had given his body new strength. with a firm step he walked to the prison door, and the quiver in his voice was scarcely perceptible as he gave the warder the order to open victorine lippert's cell. the official obeyed. the prisoner hardly looked up when she heard the bolts rattle yet another time. the warder felt himself in duty bound to call her attention to the importance of the visit she was about to receive. "his lordship, the chief justice, baron sendlingen!" he whispered to her. "inspection of the cells. stand up." he stepped back respectfully to admit sendlingen and locked the door after him. the two were alone. victorine had risen as she had been told: once only did she cast a transient and nonchalant look at the tall figure before her, then she remained standing with bowed head. similar inspections had frequently taken place before; in each case the functionary had briefly asked whether the prisoner wished anything or had any complaint to make. this question she was waiting for now in order to reply as briefly in the negative; she wanted nothing more. but he was silent, and as she looked up surprised--"merciful god!" she cried, and reeled back on to her couch, covering her face with her trembling hands. she knew who this man was at once, at the first glance. how she had recognised him with such lightning speed, she could not determine, even later when she thought the matter over. it was half dark in the cell, she had not properly seen his features and expression. perhaps it was his attitude which betrayed him. with bowed head, his hands listlessly hanging by his sides, he stood there like a criminal before his judge. at her exclamation, he looked up and came nearer. "victorine," he murmured. she did not understand him, so low was his stifled articulation. "my child!" he then cried aloud and darted towards her. she rose to her feet and stretched out her hands as if to repel him, gazing at him all the while with widely opened eyes. and again she did not know what it was that suddenly penetrated and moved her heart. was it because his face seemed familiar to her, mysteriously familiar, as if she had seen it ever since she could think?... yes, it was so! for what unknown to herself, had overpowered her, was the likeness to her own face. or was it perhaps the silent misery of his face, the beseeching look of his eyes? she felt the bitter animosity to which she had despairingly clung, the one feeling of which she would not be robbed, suddenly melt away. "i cannot," she still faltered, but in the same breath she lifted up her arms. "father!" she cried and threw herself on his breast. he caught her in his arms and covered her head and face with tears and kisses. then he drew her upon his knees and laid her head on his breast. thus they sat and neither spoke a word; only their tears flowed on and on. chapter viii. half an hour might have passed since sendlingen entered his daughter's cell: to berger, who was pacing up and down outside as sentry, it seemed an eternity. the warder, too, was struck by the proceeding. this zealous, but very loquacious official, whom berger had known for many years, approached him with a confidential smile. "there must--naturally enough--be something strange going on in there," he said as he pointed with a smirk towards the cell. "something very strange." berger at first stared at the man as much disconcerted as if he had said that he knew the secret. "what do you mean by that," he then said roughly. "your opinions are not wanted." the warder looked at him amazed. "well, such as we--naturally enough--are at least entitled to our thoughts," he replied. "there has been a run upon this cell since yesterday as if it contained a princess! first the doctor. father rohn and you, herr berger--and now his lordship the chief justice, and all in little more than an hour's time. that doesn't occur every day, and i know the reason for it." berger forced himself to smile. "of course you do, because you're such a smart fellow, höbinger! what is the reason of it?" "well with you, dr. berger, i can--naturally enough--talk about the matter," replied the warder flattered, "although you are the prisoner's counsel and a friend of the chief justice. but in you made great speeches and were always on the side of the people; you will not betray me, dr. berger. well--naturally enough--it is the old story: there is no such thing as equality in this world! if she, in there, were a servant-girl who had been led astray by a servant-man, not a soul would trouble their heads about her! but she is an educated person, and what is the principal thing--her seducer is a count--that alters matters. of course she had to be condemned--naturally enough--because the law requires it, but afterwards every care is taken of her, and if she were to get off with a slight punishment i, for one, shouldn't be surprised. of course the governor says that that's nonsense; if it were a case of favouritism he says, herr von werner would have behaved differently to her; the vice chief justice, he says, has a very keen scent for favouritism; you, höbinger, he says--naturally enough--are an ass! but i know what i know, and since his lordship has taken the trouble to come, not in a general inspection, but on a special visit that is lasting longer than anything that has ever been heard or dreamt of, i am quite convinced that it is not i, but on the contrary, the governor...." but the crafty fellow did not allow this disrespect to his superior to pass his lips, but contented himself by triumphantly concluding: "naturally enough--is it not, dr. berger?" berger thought it best to give no definite answer. if this chatter-box were to confide his suspicions to the other prison officials, it would at least be the most harmless interpretation and therefore he only said: "you think too much, höbinger. that has often proved dangerous to many men." another half hour had gone by and berger's anxiety and impatience reached the highest pitch. he was uncertain whether to put a favourable or an unfavourable interpretation upon this long stay of sendlingen's, and even if he had succeeded in touching his child's heart, yet any further talk in this place and under these conditions was a danger. how great a danger, berger was soon to see plainly enough. the artful höbinger was slinking about near the cell more and more restlessly. only berger's presence kept him from listening at the key-hole, or from opening the little peep-hole at the door, through which, unobserved by the prisoner, he could see the inside of every cell. the desire was getting stronger and stronger; his fingers itched to press the spring that would open it. at last, just as berger had turned his back, he succumbed to his curiosity; the little wooden door flew open noiselessly--he was going to fix his eyes in the opening.... at that moment berger happened to turn round. "what are you doing there?" he cried in such a way that the man started and stepped back. in a second berger was beside him, had seized his arms and flung him aside. "what impertinence!" he cried. the warder was trembling in every limb. "for god's sake," he begged, "don't ruin me. i only wanted to see whether--whether his lordship was all right." "that's a lie!" cried berger with intentional loudness. "you have dared----" he did not require to finish the sentence; his object was attained: sendlingen opened the door and came out of the cell. his face bore once more its wonted expression of kindly repose; he seemed to have recovered complete mastery of himself. "you can lock up again," he said to the warder. he seemed to understand what had just passed for he asked no questions. still höbinger thought it necessary to excuse himself. "my lord," he stammered, "i only wanted to do my duty. it sometimes happens that--that criminals become infuriated and attack the visitors." "does that poor creature in here strike you as being dangerous?" asked sendlingen. it seemed to berger almost unnatural that he could put forth the effort to say this, nay more, that he could at the same time force a smile. "my lord----" "never mind, höbinger! you were perhaps a little inquisitive, but that shall be overlooked in consideration of your former good conduct. besides, prisoners are allowed no secrets, at all events after their sentence." turning to berger he continued: "she must be taken to the infirmary this afternoon, it is a necessity. have you anything else to do here? no? well, come back with me." it all sounded so calm, so business-like--berger could hardly contain his astonishment. he would never have believed his friend capable of such strength and especially after such a night--after such an interview! "i admire your strength of nerve," cried he when they got out into the street. "that was a fearful moment." "indeed it was!" agreed sendlingen, his voice trembling for the first time. "if the fellow had cast one single look through the peep-hole, we should have both been lost! fancy höbinger, the warder, seeing the chief justice with a criminal in his arms!" "ah then, it came to that?" "should i otherwise be so calm? i am calm because i have now an object again, because i see a way of doing my duty. oh, george, how right you were: happy indeed am i that i live and can pay my debt." "what do you think of doing?" "first of all the most important thing: to preserve her life, to prepare her for life. as i just said, she shall be allotted a cell in the infirmary and have a patient's diet. i may do this without dereliction of duty: i should have to take such measures with anyone else if i knew the circumstances as accurately as i do in this case." "but you will not be able to visit her too often in the infirmary," objected berger. "certainly not," replied sendlingen. "i see that the danger is too great, and i told her so. yes, you were right in that too: it is no secondary consideration whether our relationship remains undiscovered or not. i cannot understand how it was that i did not see this before: why, as i now see, _everything_ depends upon that. and i see things clearly now; this interview has worked a miracle in me, george--it has rent the veil before my eyes, it has dispelled the mist in my brain. i know i can see victorine but seldom. on the other hand brigitta will be with her daily: for she is a member of the 'women's society,' and it will strike nobody if she specially devotes herself to my poor child." "it will not strike others, but will she not herself guess the truth?" "why, she shall know all! i will tell her this very day. she is entirely devoted to me, brave and sterling, the best of women. besides i have no choice. intercourse with a good, sensible woman is of the most urgent necessity to my poor dear. but i have not resolved on this step simply for that reason. i shall need this faithful soul later on as well." "i understand--after the term of imprisonment is at an end." sendlingen stood still and looked at his friend; it was the old look full of wretchedness and despair. "yes!" he said unsteadily. "certainly, i had hardly thought of that. i do not indulge any extravagant hopes: i am prepared for anything, even for the worst. and just in this event brigitta's help would be more than ever indispensable to me." "if the worst were to happen?" asked bergen "how am i to understand that?" sendlingen made no reply. not until berger repeated the question did he say, slowly and feebly: "such things should not be talked about, not with anyone, not even with a best friend, not even with one's self. such a thing is not even dwelt upon in thought; it is done when it has to be done." his look was fixed as he spoke, like a man gazing into a far distance or down into a deep abyss. then his face became calm and resolved again. "one thing more," he said. "you have finished drawing up the appeal? may i read it? forgive me, of course i have every confidence in you. but see! so much depends upon it for me, perhaps something might occur to me that would be of importance!" "what need of asking?" interrupted berger. "it would be doing me a service. we will go through the document together this very day." when he called on his friend in the evening with this object, fräulein brigitta came out to see him. the old lady's eyes were red with crying, but her face was, as it were, lit up with a strong and noble emotion. "i have already visited her," she whispered to berger. "oh believe me, she is an angel, a thousand times purer than are many who plume themselves or their virtue. i bade her be of good cheer, and then i told her much about his lordship--who knows better how, who knows him better? she listened to me peacefully, crying quietly all the time and i had to cry too--. but all will come right; i am quite sure of it. if the god above us were to let these two creatures perish, _these_ two----" her voice broke with deep emotion. berger silently pressed her hand and entered the study. he found his friend calm and collected. sendlingen no longer complained; no word, no look, betrayed the burden that oppressed his soul. he dispatched his business with berger conscientiously and thoroughly, and as dispassionately as if it were a law examination paper. more than that--when he came to a place where berger, in the exaltation of the moment, had chosen too strong an expression, he always stopped him: "that won't do: we must find calmer and more temperate words!" and usually it was he too who found these calmer and more temperate words. down to the last word he maintained this clearness, this almost unnatural calm. not until berger had folded his paper and was putting it in his pocket did the consciousness of his misery seem to return. involuntarily he stretched forth his hand towards the paper. "you want to refer to something again?" asked berger. "no!" his hand dropped listlessly. "besides it is all labour in vain. my lot is cast." "your lot?" cried berger. "however much you may be bound up with the fate of your child, you must not say that!" "_my_ lot, _only_ my lot!" berger observed the same peculiar look and tone he had before noticed when sendlingen said that such things should not be spoken of even to one's self.... but this time berger wanted to force him to an explanation. "you talk in riddles," he began; but he got no further, for, with a decision that made any further questions impossible, sendlingen interrupted him: "may i be spared the hour when you learn to know this riddle! even you can have no better wish than this for me! why vainly sound the lowest depths? good night, george, and thanks a thousand, thousand times!" chapter ix. six weeks had elapsed since the dispatch of the appeal: christmas was at the door. the days had come and gone quickly without bringing any fresh storm, any fresh danger, but certainly without dispelling even one of the clouds that hung threateningly over the heads of these two much-to-be-commiserated beings. berger was with sendlingen daily, and daily his questioning look received the same answer; a mute shake of the head--the decision had not yet arrived. the supreme court had had the papers connected with the trial brought under its notice; beyond the announcement of this self-evident fact, not a line had come from vienna. this silence was certainly no good sign, but it did not necessarily follow that it was a bad one. to be sure the lawyer examining the case, unless, from the first, he attributed no importance whatever to berger's statements, should have demanded more detailed information from the court at bolosch, and all the more because baron dernegg's dissentient vote was recorded in the papers. still, perhaps this silence was simply to be explained by the fact that he had not had an opportunity of going into the case. berger held fast to this consoling explanation, or at least pretended to do so, when the subject came up in conversation, which was seldom enough; he did not like to begin it, and sendlingen equally avoided it. it almost seemed to berger as if his unhappy friend welcomed the delay in the decision, as if he gladly dragged on in a torture of uncertainty from day to day--anything so as not to look the dread horror in the face. and indeed sendlingen every morning sighed with relief, when the moment of horrid suspense had gone by, when he had looked through the vienna mail and found nothing. but this did not arise from the motive which berger supposed, but from a better feeling. sendlingen rejoiced in every hour of respite that gave his poor child more time to gather strength of soul and body. the shattered health of victorine mended visibly, day by day. the deathly pallor disappeared, her weakness lessened, the look of her eyes was clearer and steadier. the doctor observed it with glad astonishment and no little pride; he ascribed the improvement to his remedies, to the better nourishment and care which on his representations had been allotted her. when he boasted of it to his friend, father rohn, the good priest met him with as bantering a smile as his kind heart would allow; he knew better. if this poor child was blossoming again, the merit was entirely his. had not the doctor himself said that she could only be saved by a change in her frame of mind? and had not this change really set in even more visibly than her physical improvement? a new spirit had entered into victorine. she no longer sat gazing in melancholy brooding, she no longer yearned for death, and when the priest sought to nourish in her the hope of pardon--in the sincerest conviction, for he looked upon the confirmation of the death-sentence as an impossibility--she nodded to him, touched and grateful. she seemed, now, to understand him when he told her that the repentance of a sinner and his after life of good works, were more pleasing to the good god above than his death. and when he once more led the conversation to the man who, in spite of everything, was her father and perhaps at this moment was suffering the bitterest anguish on her account, when he begged her not to harden her heart against the unknown, he had the happiness of hearing her say with fervour in her looks and voice: "i have forgiven him from the bottom of my heart. the thought of him has completely restored me! perhaps god will grant me to be a good daughter to him some day!" so the words of comfort and the exhortations of the good priest had really not been in vain. the true state of the case nobody even suspected; the secret was stringently kept. no doubt it struck many people and gave occasion to a variety of gossip, that fräulein brigitta visited the condemned prisoner almost daily, and the chief justice almost weekly, but a sufficient explanation was sought and found. good-natured and inoffensive people thought that victorine lippert was a creature so much to be pitied, that these two noble characters were only following their natural instincts in according her a special pity; the malevolent adopted the crafty höbinger's view, and talked of "favouritism"; the aristocratic betrayer and his mother the countess, they said, had after all an uneasy conscience as to whether they had not behaved too harshly to the poor creature, and the representations they had made to their fellow-aristocrat, baron von sendlingen, had not been in vain. certainly this report could only be maintained in uninitiated circles; anyone who was intimately acquainted with the aristocratic society of the province knew well enough, that the countess riesner-graskowitz was assuredly the last person in the world to experience a single movement of pity for the condemned girl. be that as it might, sendlingen behaved in this case as he had all his life behaved in any professional matter: humanely and kindly, but strictly according to the law and without over-stepping his duty by a hair's breadth. the better attention, the separate cell in the infirmary, would certainly have been allotted to any one else about whom the doctor had made the same representations. when father rohn, moved by his sense of compassion, sought to obtain some insignificant favour that went beyond these lines--it had reference to some absolutely trifling regulation of the house--the governor of the gaol was ready to grant it, but the chief justice rigidly set his face against the demand. when berger heard of this trivial incident, a heavy burden which he had been silently carrying for weeks, without daring to seek for certainty in a conversation on the subject, was rolled from his heart. he had put an interpretation on the mysterious words that sendlingen had uttered the day after the trial, which had filled him with the profoundest sorrow,--more than that with terror. now he saw his mistake: a man who so strictly obeyed his conscience in small matters where there was no fear of discovery, would assuredly in any greater conflict between inclination and duty, hold fast unrelentingly to justice and honour. he was soon to be strengthened in this view. it was three days before christmas-day when he once more entered his friend's chambers. he found him buried in the perusal of letters which, however, he now pushed from him. "the mail from vienna is not in yet," he said, "the train must have got blocked in the snow. but i have letters from pfalicz. the chief justice of the higher court there, to whose position i am to succeed, asks whether it would not be possible for me to release him soon after the new year, instead of at the end of february, as the minister of justice arranged. he is unwell, and ought to go south as soon as possible." "great heavens!" cried berger. "why, we have forgotten all about that." and indeed those stormy days and the succeeding weeks of silent, anxious suffering had hardly allowed him to think of sendlingen's impending promotion and departure. "i have not," replied sendlingen, gloomily. "the thought that i had to go, has often enough weighed me down more heavily than all my other burdens. how gladly i would stay here now, even if they degraded me to--to the post of governor of the prison! but i have now no option. i have definitely accepted the position at pfalicz and i must enter upon it." "and do you really think of departing at the new year?" "no, that would be beyond my duty. i should be glad to oblige the invalid, but as you know, i cannot. i shall stay till the end of february; the decision must have come by that time." he again bent over a document that lay before him. berger too, was silent, he went to the window and stared out into the grey dusk; it seemed as if the snow-storm would never cease. there was a knock at the door; a clerk of the court of record entered. "from the supreme court," he announced, laying a packet with a large seal on the table. "it has just arrived. personally addressed to your lordship." the clerk departed; berger approached the table. when he saw how excited sendlingen was, how long he remained gazing at the letter, he shook his head. "that cannot be the decision," he said. "it would not be addressed to you. it is some indifferent matter, a question of discipline, a pension." sendlingen nodded and broke the seal. but at the first glance a deathly pallor overspread his face, and the paper in his hands trembled so violently that he had to lay it on the table in order to read it to the end. "read for yourself," he then muttered. berger glanced through the paper; he too felt his heart beat impetuously as he did so. it was certainly not the decision, only a brief charge, but its contents were almost equivalent to it. the lawyers examining the appeal had, as berger hoped, been struck by baron dernegg's dissentient vote and the motives for this. dernegg was not of the opinion of his brother judges that this was a case of premeditated murder, maliciously planned months beforehand, but a deed done suddenly, in a paroxysm of despair, nay, most probably in a moment when the girl was not accountable for her actions. against this more clement view, there certainly were the depositions of the countess, and victorine's attempts to conceal her condition. but on the other hand, her only _confidante_, the servant-girl, had deposed at the preliminary inquiry that victorine had only made these attempts by her advice and with her help, and, moreover, with the sole object of staying in the house until the young count should come to her aid. this testimony, however, she had withdrawn at the trial. berger had chiefly based his appeal to nullify the trial, on the fact that the witness, in spite of this contradiction, had been put on her oath, and to the examining lawyer, also, this seemed a point of decisive importance. the chief justice was, therefore, commissioned to completely elucidate it by a fresh examination of the witness. probably the charge had been directed to him personally because, as it stated, neither herr von werner nor any of the other judges who had been in favour of putting her on oath, could very well be entrusted with the inquiry. but if sendlingen were actually too busy with other matters to conduct the examination, he might hand it over to the third judge, herr von hoche. "what will you do?" asked berger. "the matter is of the gravest importance. that the girl gave false evidence at the trial, that this was her return for being taken back into the countess' service, we know for a certainty. the only question is whether we can convict her of it. an energetic judge could without doubt do so, but will old hoche, now over seventy, succeed? he is a good man, but his years weigh heavily upon him, he is dragging himself through his duties till the date of his retirement--four weeks hence--i fancy as best he can. and therefore once again--what will you do, victor?" "i don't know," he murmured. "leave me alone. i must think it out by myself. forgive me! my conscience alone can decide in such a matter. good-bye till this evening, george." berger departed; his heart was as heavy as ever it had been. in the first ebullition of feeling, moved by his pity for these two beings, he had wished to compel his friend to undertake the inquiry, but now he had scruples. was not the position the same as on the day of the trial? and if he then approved of his friend's resolution not to preside, could he now urge him to undertake a similar task? certainly the conflict was now more acute, more painfully accentuated, but was sendlingen's duty as a judge any the less on that account? again the thought rose in berger's mind which a few weeks ago had comforted him and lifted him above the misery of the moment: that there was a solution of these complications, a great, a liberating solution--there must be, just because this man was what he was! but even now he did not know how to find this solution; one thing only was clear to him: if sendlingen undertook the inquiry and thus saved his child, it would be an act for which there would be all manner of excuses but it would assuredly not be that great, saving act of which he dreamt! and yet if hoche in his weakness ruined the case and did not bring the truth to light, if she perhaps had to die now that she had begun to hope again, now that she had waked to a new life ... berger closed his eyes as if to shut out the terrible picture that obtruded itself upon him, and yet it rose again and again. at dusk, just as he was starting to his friend's, fräulein brigitta called to see him. "i am to tell you," she began, "that his lordship wants you to postpone your visit until to-morrow. but it is not on that account that i have come, but because i am oppressed with anxiety. has the decision arrived? he is as much upset again as he was on the day of the trial." berger comforted her as well as he could. "it is only a momentary excitement," he assured her, "and will soon pass." "i only thought so because he is behaving just as he did then. it is a singular thing; he has been rummaging for those keys again. you know,--the one that opens the little door in the court-yard wall. i came in just in the nick of time to see him take it out of his writing-table drawer. and just as before, it seemed to annoy him to be surprised in the act.--isn't that strange?" "very strange!" he replied. but he added hastily: "it must have been a mere chance." "certainly, it can only have been a coincidence," he thought after brigitta had gone, "it would be madness to impute such a thing to him, to him who was horrified at the idea of conducting the trial and equally at the thought of conducting this examination. and yet when he first seized upon that key, the idea must certainly have taken a momentary possession of him, and that it should have returned to him to-day, to-day of all days." as he was the next day walking along the corridor that led to sendlingen's chambers, he met mr. justice hoche. the hoary old man, supporting himself with difficulty by the aid of a stick, was looking very testy. "only think," he grumbled, "what an odious task the chief justice has just laid upon me. it will interest you, you were counsel for the defence in the case." and he told him of the charge at great length. "well, what do you say to that? isn't it odious?" "it is a very serious undertaking!" said berger. "the matter is one of the greatest importance." "yes, and just for that reason," grumbled the old man, almost whimpering. "i do not want to undertake any such responsibility, now, when merely thinking gives me a head-ache. i suffer a great deal from head-aches, dr. berger. and it is such a ticklish undertaking! for you see either the maid-servant told the truth at the trial, in which case this fresh examination is superfluous, or she lied and _ergo_ was guilty of perjury and _ergo_ is a very tricky female! and how am i ever to get to the bottom of a tricky female, dr. berger?" "did you tell the chief justice this?" asked berger. "oh, of course! for half an hour i was telling him about my condition and how i always get a head-ache now if i have to think. but he stuck to his point, 'you will have to undertake the matter: you must exert yourself!' good heavens! what power of exertion has one left at seventy years of age! well, good morning, dear dr. berger! but it's odious--most odious!" berger looked after the old man as he painfully hobbled along: "and in such hands," he thought, "rests the fate of my two friends." under the weight of this thought, he had not the courage to face sendlingen. he turned and went home in a melancholy mood. when the next day towards noon, he was turning homewards after a trial at which he had been the defending barrister, he again met mr. justice hoche, who was just leaving the building, in the portico of the courts. the old gentleman was manifestly in a high state of contentment. "well," asked berger, "is the witness here already? have you begun the examination?" "begun? i have ended it!" chuckled the old man. "and _re bene gesta_ one is entitled to rest. i shall let the law take care of itself to-day and go home. i haven't even got a head-ache over it; certainly it didn't require any great effort of thought--i soon got at the truth." "indeed?--and what is the truth?" "h'm! i don't suppose it will be particularly agreeable to you," laughed the old judge, leaning confidentially on berger's arm. "though for the matter of that you may be quite indifferent about it: you have done your duty, your appeal was certainly splendidly drawn up, but what further interest can you have in this person? for she is a thoroughly good-for-nothing person, and that's why she is dying so young! what stories that servant-girl has told me about her, stories, my dear doctor, that an old barrack-wall would have blushed to hear. she was hardly seventeen years old when she came to the countess', but already had a dozen intrigues on her record, and what things she told her _confidante_ about them, and which were repeated to me to-day--why, it is a regular decameron, my dear doctor, or more properly speaking: boccaccio in comparison is a chaste carthusian." berger violently drew his arm out of the old man's. "that's a lie!" he said between his teeth. "a scandalous calumny!" the old judge looked at him, quite put out of countenance. "why, what an idea," he cried. "if it were not so, this servant-girl would be a tricky female." "so she is." "she is not! oh, i know human nature. on the contrary, she is good-natured and stupid. no one could tell lies with such assurance, after having just been solemnly admonished to speak the truth. it is all incontestably true; all her adventures: and how from the first she had hatched a regular plot to corrupt the young count. the crafty young person calculated in this way: if our _liaison_ has consequences, i shall perhaps inveigle the young man into a marriage, and if i don't succeed i shall kill the child and look out for another place!" "but just consider this one fact," cried berger. "if this had actually been victorine lippert's plan she would certainly have reflected: if i can't force a marriage, i shall at least get a handsome maintenance! and in that case she would not have killed her child, but carefully have preserved its life." the old judge meditatively laid his finger on his nose. "look here, dr. berger," he said importantly, "that is a very reasonable objection. but it has been adduced already, not by me, to tell the truth, but by my assistant, a very wise young man. but the witness was able to give a perfectly satisfactory explanation on the subject. to be sure, she only did so after repeated questions and in a hesitating and uncertain manner--the good, kind-hearted girl could with difficulty bring herself to add still more to the criminal's load, but at length she had to speak out. thus we almost accidentally extracted a very important detail that proved to be of great importance in determining the case. it is a truly frightful story. only fancy, this mere girl, this victorine lippert, has always had a sort of thirst for the murder of little children. she repeatedly said to the girl long before the deed, before the young count came to the castle at all: 'strange! but whenever i see a little child, i always feel my hands twitching to strangle it.' frightful--isn't it. dr. berger?" "frightful indeed!" cried berger, "if you have believed this poorly-contrived story of the wretched, perjured woman--poorly-contrived, and invented in the necessity of the moment so as to meet the objection of your assistant, so as not to be caught in her net of lies, so as to render the countess another considerable service." "really, you will not listen to reason," said the old man, now seriously annoyed. "i feel my head-ache coming on again. do you mean to say that you accuse the countess of conniving at perjury! a lady of the highest aristocracy! excuse me, dr. berger--that is going too far! you are a liberal, a radical, i know, but that doesn't make every countess a criminal. but if this is really your opinion of the witness, take out a summons for perjury at once!" "it may come to that," replied berger. the old man shook his head. "spare yourself the trouble," he said good-naturedly, "it will prove ineffectual, but you may certainly get yourself into great difficulties. why expose yourself, for the sake of such an abandoned creature, to an action for libel on the part of the countess and her servant? how abandoned she is, you have no suspicion! i have, thank heaven, concealed the worst of all from you, and you shall not learn it at my hands. you may read for yourself in the minutes. i do not wish to make a scene in the street. i was so enjoying this fine afternoon, and you have quite spoilt my good humour. well, good-bye. dr. berger, i will forgive you. you have allowed yourself to be carried away by your pity, but you are bestowing it upon an unworthy creature! the witness gave me the impression of being absolutely trustworthy, and i have stated so in the minutes! i considered myself bound in conscience to do so." "then you have a human life on your conscience!" berger blurted out. he had not meant to say anything so harsh, but the words escaped him involuntarily. the old man started and clasped his hands. his face twitched, and bright tears stood in his eyes. "what have i done to you?" he moaned. "why do you say such a horrible thing? why do you upset me? i have always considered you a good man, and now you behave like this to me!" berger stepped up to him and offered his hand. "forgive me," he said, "your intention is good and pure, i know. and just for that reason i implore you to reflect well before you let the minutes go out of your hands." "that is already done. i have just handed them to the chief justice." "and what did he say?" "nothing, what should he say? certainly he too seemed to be put out about something, for when i was about to enter on a brief discourse, he dismissed me a little abruptly." "but it is open to you to demand the minutes back, and examine the witness again. keep a sterner eye upon her, and the contradictions in which she gets involved will certainly become evident to you. at her first examination she could only say the best things of victorine lippert, at the trial she had lost her memory, and now of a sudden nothing is too bad." "oh, you barristers!" cried the judge. "how you twist everything! the kind-hearted creature wanted to save victorine lippert and pity moved her to lie at first: she has just openly and repentantly confessed that she did. but at the trial, before the crucifix, before the judges, her courage left her. she was silent, because like a good and chaste girl, she could not bring herself to speak before a crowd of people of all those repulsive details. you see, everything is explained. you are talking in vain." "in vain!" berger sighed profoundly. "good-bye," he said turning to go. but after he had gone a few steps, hoche called after him. the old man's eyes were full of tears. "you are angry with me?" he said. "no." "well, you have no reason to be angry, though i have--but i forgive you. by what you said you might easily have made me unhappy if the case had not been so clear. certainly i am upset now. to-morrow is christmas eve; my children and grand-children will come and bring me presents, and i shall give them presents, and i shall think all the time: hoche, what a frightful thing if you were a murderer! you will take back your words, won't you? i am no murderer, am i?" berger looked at the childish old man. "o tragicomedy of life!" he thought, but added aloud: "no, herr hoche, you are no murderer." in the evening he went to see sendlingen and look over the minutes which he too had the right of disputing. he would have been disconsolate enough if he had not already known their contents; as it was the extraordinary tone of the document cheered him a little. the 'wise young man' was perhaps himself an author, or at least had certainly read a great many cheap novels; the style in which he had reproduced the servant girl's imaginations was, in the worst sense of the word "fine!" how this lessened the danger of the contents was shown especially, by that worst fact of all which hoche could not bring himself to pronounce, and which was of such monstrous baseness that the faith of even the most vapid of judges must have been shaken in all the rest. "that is quite harmless," said berger. "more than that, these monstrous lies are just the one bit of luck in all our misfortunes." "certainly!" sendlingen agreed. "but we must not count too much upon them. the examining judge may not believe everything, but he will certainly not discredit everything. it could not be expected after hoche's enthusiastic advocacy of the witness' credibility." "and yet these minutes must be sent off. would it not be possible to hand over the inquiry to some one else?" "impossible, or i would have done so yesterday. either i or hoche--the charge of the supreme court is clear enough! and _i_ could not do it! it seemed to me mean and cowardly, treacherous and paltry, to break my judge's oath, trusting to the silence of the three people who beside me know the secret, trusting moreover never to have to undergo punishment for my offence. to this consideration it seemed to me that every other must give way." berger was silent. "would it not be possible to take out a summons for perjury?" he resumed. "no," cried sendlingen, "it would be an utterly useless delay! success in the present position of things is not to be hoped for." berger bowed his head. "then justice will suffer once again," he said in deep distress. "i will not reproach you. when i put myself in your place--i cannot trust myself to say that i should have done the same. i only presume i should, but this one thing i do know, that in accordance with your whole nature you have acted rightly. still, ever since the moment that i spoke to hoche, i cannot silence a tormenting question. ought fidelity to the law be stronger than fidelity to justice? you would not undertake the inquiry because a father may not take part in an examination conducted against his child, but were you justified in handing it over to a man who was no longer in a condition to find out the truth, to fulfil his duty? has not justice suffered at your hands by your respect for the law, that justice, i mean, which speaks aloud in the heart of every man?" sendlingen was staring gloomily at the floor. then he raised his eyes and looked his friend full in the face. the expression of his countenance, the tone of his voice became almost solemn. "i have fought out for myself an answer to this question. i may not tell you what it is; but one thing i can solemnly swear: this outraged justice to which you refer will receive the expiation which is its due." chapter x. christmas was past, new year had come, the year , one of the most melancholy that the austrian empire had ever known. the atmosphere was more charged than ever, coercion more and more severe, the confederacy between the authorities of church and state closer and closer. melancholy reports alarmed the minds of peaceful citizens: the italian provinces were in a state of ferment, a conspiracy was discovered in hungary, and a secret league of the slavs at prague. how strong or how weak these occult endeavours against the authority and peace of the state might be, no one knew. one thing only was manifest: the severity with which they were treated; and perhaps in this severity lay the greatest danger of all. it was the old sad story that so often repeats itself in the life of nations, and was then appearing in a new shape; tyranny had called forth a counter-tyranny and this, in its turn, a fresh tyranny. the police had much to do everywhere, and in some districts the courts of justice too. one of the greatest of the political investigations had, since christmas , devolved upon the court at bolosch. the middle classes of this manufacturing town were exclusively germans, the working-classes principally slavs. it was among these latter that the police believed they had discovered the traces of a highly treasonable movement. about thirty workmen were arrested and handed over to justice. sendlingen, assisted by dernegg, personally conducted the investigation. he had made the same selection in all the political arrangements of the last few years, although he knew that any other would have been more acceptable to the authorities. certainly neither he nor dernegg were liberals--much less radicals--who sympathised with revolution and revolutionaries. on the contrary both these aristocrats had thoroughly conservative inclinations, at all events in that good sense of the word which was then and is now so little understood in austria, and is so seldom given practical effect. they were, moreover, entirely honourable and independent judges. but there was a prejudice in those days against men of unyielding character, especially in the case of political trials. there was an opinion that "pedantry" was out of place where the interests of the state were at stake. sendlingen, on the other hand, was convinced that a political investigation should not be conducted differently from any other, and it was precisely in this inquisition into the conduct of the workmen that he manifested the greatest zeal, but at the same time the most complete impartiality. divers reasons had determined him to devote all his energy to the case. the diversion of his thoughts from his own misery did him good: the ceaseless work deadened the painful suspense in which he was awaiting the decision from vienna. moreover his knowledge of men and things had predisposed him to believe that these poor rough fellows had not so much deserved punishment as pity, and after a few days he was convinced of the justice of this supposition. these raftsmen and weavers and smiths who were all utterly ignorant, who had never been inside a school, who scarcely knew a prayer save the lord's prayer, who dragged on existence in cheerless wretchedness, were perhaps more justified in their mute impeachment of the body politic, than deserving of the accusations brought against them. they did not go to confession, they often sang songs that had stuck in their minds since , and some of them had, in public houses and factories, delivered speeches on the injustice of the economy of the world and state as it was reflected in their unhappy brains. this was all; and this did not make them enemies of the state or of the emperor. on the contrary, the record of their examination nearly always testified the opinion: "the only misfortune was that the young emperor knew nothing of their condition, otherwise he would help them." sendlingen's noble heart was contracted with pity, whenever he heard such utterances. and these men he was to convict of high treason! no! not an instant longer than was absolutely necessary should they remain away from their families and trades. on the feast of the epiphany sendlingen was sitting in his chambers examining a raftsman, an elderly man of herculean build with a heavy, sullen face, covered with long straggling, iron-grey hair; johannes novyrok was his name. the police had indicated him as particularly dangerous, but he did not prove to be worse than the rest. "why don't you go to confession?" asked sendlingen finally when all the other grounds of suspicion had been discussed. "excuse me, my lord," respectfully answered the man in czech. "but do you go?" sendlingen looked embarrassed and was about to sharply reprove him for his impertinent question, but a look at the man's face disarmed him. there was neither impertinence nor insolence written there, but rather a painful look of anxiety and yearning that strangely affected sendlingen. "why?" he asked. "because i might be able to regulate my conduct by yours," replied the raftsman. "you see, my lord, i differ from my brethren. people such as we, they think, have no time to sin, much less to confess. the god there used to be, must surely be dead, they say, otherwise there would be more justice in the world; and if he is still alive, he knows well enough that anyhow we have got hell on this earth and will not suffer us to be racked and roasted by devils in the next world. but i have never agreed with such sentiments; they strike me as being silly and when my mates say: rich people have a good time of it, let them go to confession,--why, its arrant nonsense. for i don't believe that any one on earth has a good time of it, not even the rich, but that everybody has their trouble and torment. and therefore i should very much like to hear what a wise and good man, who must understand these things much better than i do, has to say to it all. it might meet my case. and i happen to have particular confidence in you. in the first place because you're better and wiser than most men, so at least says every one in the town, and this can't be either hypocrisy or flattery, because they say so behind your back. but i further want to hear your opinion, because i know for certain that you have an aching heart and plenty of trouble." "how do you know that?" novyrok glanced at the short-hand clerk sitting near sendlingen and who was manifestly highly tickled at the simplicity of this ignorant workman. "i could only tell you," he said shyly, "if you were to send that young man out of the room. it is no secret, but such fledglings don't understand life yet." the young clerk was much astonished when sendlingen actually made a sign to him to withdraw. "thank you," said the raftsman after the door was shut "well, how i know of your trouble? in the first place one can read it in your face, and secondly i saw you one stormy night--it may be eight weeks ago--wandering about the streets by yourself. you went down to the river; i was watchman on a raft at the time and i saw you plainly. there were tears running down your cheeks, but even if your eyes had been dry--well no one goes roaming alone and at random on such a night, unless he is in great trouble." sendlingen bowed his head lower over the papers before him. novyrok continued: "an hour later, your friend brought you into our inn whither i had come in the meanwhile after my mate had relieved me of the watch. you were unconscious. i helped to carry you and take you home.... i don't tell you this in the hope that you may punish me less than i deserve, but just that i may say to you: you too, my lord, know what suffering is--do you find the thought of god comforting, and what do you think of confession?" sendlingen made no reply; the recollection of that most fatal night of his existence and the solemn question of the poor fellow, had deeply moved him. "you must have experienced something, novyrok," he said at length, "that has shaken your faith." "something, my lord? alas, everything!--alas, my whole life! i don't believe there are many people to whom the world is a happy place, but such men as i should never have been born at all. i have never known father or mother, i came into the world in a foundling hospital on a sylvester's eve some fifty years ago--the exact date i don't know--and that's why they called me 'novyrok' (new-year). i had to suffer a great deal because of my birth; it is beyond all belief how i was knocked about as a boy and youth among strangers--even a dog knows its mother but i did not. and therefore one thing very soon became clear to me: many disgraceful things happen on this earth, but the most disgraceful thing of all is to bring children into the world in this way. don't you think so, my lord?" sendlingen did not answer. "and i acted accordingly," continued novyrok, "and had no love-affair, though i had to put great restraint upon myself. i don't know whether virtue is easy to rich people; to the poor it is very bitter. it was not until i became steersman of a raft and was earning four gulden a week that i married an honest girl, a laundress, and she bore me a daughter. that was a bright time, my lord, but it didn't last long. my wife began to get sickly and couldn't any longer earn any thing; we got into want, although i honestly did my utmost and often, after the raft was brought to, i chopped wood or stacked coal all night through when i got the chance. well, however poorly we had to live, we did manage to live; things didn't get really bad till she died. my mates advised me then to give the care of my child to other people--and go as a raftsman to foreign parts, on a big river, the elbe or the danube: 'wages,' they said, 'are twice as much there and you, as an able raftsman, can't help getting on.' but i hadn't got it in my heart to leave my little daughter. besides i was anxious about her; to be sure she was only just thirteen, and a good, honest child, but she promised to be very nice-looking. if you go away, i said to myself, you may perhaps stay away for many years, and there are plenty of men in this world without a conscience, and temptation is great! so i stayed, and so as not to be separated from her even for a week, i gave up being a raftsman and became a workman at a foundry. but i was awkward at the work, the wages were pitiful, and though my daughter, poor darling, stitched her eyes out of her head, we were more often hungry than full. i frequently complained, not to her, but to others, and cursed my wretched existence--i was a fool! for i was happy in those days; i did my duty to my child." novyrok paused. sendlingen sighed deeply. "and then?" he asked. "then, my lord," continued the raftsman, "then came the dark hour, when i yielded to my folly and selfishness. maybe i am too hard on myself in saying this, for i thought more of my child's welfare than my own, and many people thought what i did reasonable. but otherwise i must accuse him above, and before i do that i would rather accuse myself. but i will tell you what happened in a few words. a former mate of mine who was working at the salt shipping trade on the traun, persuaded me to go with him, just for one summer, and the high wages tempted me. my girl was sixteen at that time; she was like a rose, my lord, to look at. but before i went i told her my story, where i was born and who my mother very likely was, and i said to her: 'live honestly, my girl, or when i come back in the autumn i will strike you dead, and then jump into the deepest part of the river.' she cried and swore to me she'd be good. but when i came back in the autumn----" he sobbed. it was some time before he added in a hollow voice: "hanka was my daughter's name. perhaps you remember the case, my lord. it took place in this house. certainly it's a long while ago; it will be seven years next spring." "hanka novyrok," sendlingen laid his hand on his forehead. "i remember!" he then said. "that was the name of the girl who--who died in her cell during her imprisonment upon trial." "she hanged herself," said novyrok, sepulchrally. "it happened in the night; the next morning she was to have come before the judges. she had murdered her child." there was a very long silence after this. novyrok then resumed: "you didn't examine me about the case, you would have understood me. the other judge before whom i was taken didn't understand me when i said: 'this is a controversy between me and him up above, for either he is at fault or i am.' the judge at first thought that grief had turned my head, but when he understood what i said, he abused me roundly and called me a blasphemer. but i am not that. i believe in him. i do not blaspheme him, only i want to know how i stand with him. it would be the greatest kindness to me, my lord, if you could decide for me." "poor fellow," said sendlingen, "don't torment yourself any more about it; such things nobody can decide." novyrok shook his head with a sigh. "a man like you ought to be able to make it out," he said, "although i can see that it is not easy. for look here--how does the case stand? a wretched blackguard, a linendraper for whom she used to sew, seduced her in my absence. if i had stayed here, it would not have happened. when i came back i learnt nothing about it, she hid it from me out of fear of what i had said to her at parting, and that was the reason why she killed her child, yes, and herself too in the end. for i am convinced that it was not the fear of punishment that drove her to death, but the fear of seeing me again, and no doubt, she also wished to spare me the disgrace of that hour. now, my lord, all this----" they were interrupted. a messenger brought in a letter which had just arrived. sendlingen recognised the writing of the count, his brother-in-law, who was a judge of the supreme court. he laid the letter unopened on the table; very likely belated new-year's wishes, he thought. "go on!" he said to the accused. "well, my lord, all this seems to tell against me, but it might be turned against him too. i might say to him: 'wasn't i obliged to try and keep her from sin by using the strongest words? and why didst thou not watch over her when i was far away; hanka was thy child too, and not only mine! and if thou wouldst not do this, why didst thou suffer us two to be born? thou wilt make reparation, sayst thou, in thy heaven? well, no doubt it is very beautiful, but perhaps it is not so beautiful that we shall think ourselves sufficiently compensated.' you see, my lord, i might talk like this--but if i were to begin. he too would not be silent, and with a single question he could crush me. 'why did you go away?' he might ask me. 'why did you not do your duty to your child? i, o fool, have untold children; you had only this one to whom you were nearest. you say in your defence that you did not act altogether selfishly, that you wanted to better her condition as well. may be, but you did think of _your own_ condition, _of yourself_ as well, and that a father may not do! i warned you by your own life, and by causing your conscience and presentiments to speak to you--why did you not obey me? besides you would not have starved here?' you see, my lord, he might talk to me in this way and he would be right, for a father may not think of himself for one instant where his child's welfare is concerned. isn't that so? "yes, that is so!" answered sendlingen solemnly. "well, that is why i sometimes think: you should certainly go to confession! what do you advise, my lord?" this time, too, sendlingen could find no relevant answer, much as he tried to seek the right words of consolation for this troubled heart. he strove to lessen his sense of guilt, that sensitive feeling which had so deeply moved him, and finally assured him also of a speedy release. but novyrok's face remained clouded; the one thing which he had wished to hear, a decision of his singular "controversy" with "him," he had to do without, and when sendlingen rang for the turnkey to remove the prisoner, the latter expressed his gratitude for "his lordship's friendliness" but not for any comfort received. not until he had departed did sendlingen take up his brother-in-law's letter, which he meant hastily to run through. but after a few lines he grew more attentive and his looks became overcast. "and this too," he muttered, after he had read to the end, and his head sank heavily on his breast. the count informed him, after a few introductory lines, of the purport of a conversation he had just had with the minister of justice. "you know his opinion," said the letter, "he honestly desires your welfare, and a better proof of this than your appointment to pfalicz he could not have given you. all the more pained, nay angered, is he at your obstinate disregard of his wishes. he told you in plain language that he did not desire you and dernegg to take part in any political investigations. you have none the less observed the same arrangement in the present investigation against the workmen. i warn you, victor, not for the first time, but for the last. you are trifling with your future; far more important people than chief judges, however able, are now being sent to the right-about in austria. the anger of the minister is all the greater, because your defiance this time is notorious. scarcely a fortnight ago, the supreme court instructed you to undertake the brief examination of a witness; you handed the matter over to hoche and excused yourself on the plea of the pressure of your regular work; and yet this work now suddenly allows you personally to conduct a complicated inquiry against some three dozen workmen." the letter continued in this strain at great length and concluded thus: "i implore you to assign the inquiry to werner and to telegraph me to this effect to-day. if this is not done, you will tomorrow receive a telegram from the minister commanding you to do so. and if you don't obey then, the consequences will be at once fatal to you. you know that i am no lover of the melodramatic, and you will therefore weigh well what i have said." his brother-in-law--and sendlingen knew it--certainly never affected a melodramatic tone, and often as he had warned him, he had never before written in such a key. what should he do? it was against his conscience to submit and leave these poor fellows to their fate; but might he concern himself more about men who were strangers to him, than about the wellbeing of his own child? if he did not yield, would he not perhaps be suddenly removed from his office, and just at the moment when his unhappy daughter most of all required his help? he went to his residence in a state of grievous interior conflict, impotently drawn from one resolve to another. he sighed with relief when berger entered; his shrewd, discreet friend could not have come at a more opportune moment. but he, too, found it difficult to hit upon the right counsel, or at least, to put it into words. "don't let us confuse ourselves, victor," he said at length. "first of all, you know as well as i do, that the minister has no right to put such a command upon you. you are responsible to him that every trial in your court shall be conducted with the proper formalities; the power to arrange for this is in your hands. and therefore they dare not seriously punish your insistence on your manifest right. dismissal on such a pretext is improbable and almost inconceivable, especially when it is a question of a man of your name and services." "but it is possible." "anything is possible in these days," berger was obliged to admit. "but ought this remote possibility to mislead you? you would certainly not hesitate a moment, if consideration for your child did not fetter you. should this consideration be more authoritative than every other? in my opinion, no!" "because you cannot understand my feelings!" sendlingen vehemently interposed. "a father may not think of himself when his child's welfare is concerned. the voice of nature speaks thus in the breast of every man, even the roughest, and should it be silent in me?" "my poor friend," said berger, "in your heart, too, it has surely spoken loud enough. and yet, so far, you have not hesitated for a moment to fulfil your duty as a judge when it came into conflict with your inclination. you would not preside at the trial, you would not conduct the examination. the struggle is entering on a new phase, you cannot act differently now." "i must! i cannot help these poor people--besides werner himself will hardly be able to find them guilty. and the cases are not parallel; i should have broken my oath if i had presided at the trial: i do not break it if i obey the minister's command." "that is true," retorted berger. "but i can only say: seek some other consolation, victor,--this is unworthy of you! for you have always been, like me, of the opinion that it is every man's duty to protect the right, and prevent wrong, so long as there is breath in his body! if i admonish you, it is not from any fanatical love of justice, but from friendship for you, and because i know you as well as one man can ever know another. your mind could endure anything, even the most grievous suffering, anything save one thing: the consciousness of having done an injustice however slight. if you submit, and if these men are condemned even to a few years' imprisonment, their fate would prey upon your mind as murder would on any one else. this i know, and i would warn you against it as strongly as i can.... let us look at the worst that could happen, the scarcely conceivable prospect of your dismissal. what serious effect could this have upon the fate of your child? you perhaps cling to the hope of yourself imparting to her the result of the appeal; that is no light matter, but it is not so grave as the quiet of your conscience. it can have no other effect. if the purport of the decision is a brief imprisonment, you could have no further influence upon her destiny, whether you were in office or not; she would be taken to some criminal prison, and you would have to wait till her term of imprisonment was over before you could care for her. if the terms of the decision are imprisonment for life, or death (you see, i will not be so cowardly as not to face the worst), the only course left open to you is, to discover all to the emperor and implore his pardon for your child. is there anything else to be done?" sendlingen was silent. "there is no other means of escape. and if it comes to this, if you have to sue for her pardon, it will assuredly be granted you, whether you are in office or not. it will be granted you on the score of humanity, of your services and of your family. it is inconceivable that this act of grace should be affected by the fact that you had just previously had a dispute with the minister of justice. it is against reason, still more against sentiment. the young prince is of a chivalrous disposition." "that he is!" replied sendlingen. "and it is not this consideration that makes me hesitate, i had hardly thought of it. it was quite another idea.... thank you, george," he added. "let us decide tomorrow, let us sleep upon it." he said this with such a bitter, despairing smile, that his friend was cut to the heart. the next morning when berger was sitting in his chambers engaged upon some pressing work, the door was suddenly flung open and sendlingen's servant franz entered. berger started to his feet and could scarcely bring himself to ask whether any calamity had occurred. "very likely it is a calamity," replied the old man, continuing in his peculiar fashion of speech which had become so much a habit with him, that he could never get out of it. "we were taken ill again in chambers, very likely we fell down several times as before, we came home deadly pale but did not send in for the doctor, but for you, sir." berger started at once, franz following behind him. as they went along, berger fancied he heard a sob. he looked round: there were tears in the old servant's eyes. when they got into the residence, berger turned to him and said: "be a man, franz." then the old fellow could contain himself no longer; bright tears coursed down his cheeks. "dr. berger," he stammered. he had bent over his hand and kissed it before berger could prevent him. "have pity on me! tell me what has been going on the last two months! we often speak to brigitta about it--i am told nothing! why? we know that this silence is killing me. i could long ago have learned it by listening and spying, but franz doesn't do that sort of thing. if you cannot tell me, at least put in a word for me. surely we do not want to kill me!" berger laid his hand on his shoulder. "be calm, franz, we have all heavy burdens to bear." he then went into sendlingen's room. "the minister's telegram?" he asked. "worse!" "the decision? what is the result?" the question was superfluous; the result was plainly enough written in sendlingen's livid, distorted features. berger, trembling in every limb, seized the fatal paper that lay on the table. "horrible!" he groaned--it was a sentence of death. he forced himself to read the motives given; they were briefly enough put. the supreme court had rejected the appeal to nullify the trial, although the credibility of the servant-girl had appeared doubtful enough to it, too. at the same time, the decision continued, there was no reason for ordering a new trial, as the guilt of the accused was manifest without any of the evidence of this witness. the supreme court had gone through this without noticing either her recent statement incriminating the accused, nor her first favorable evidence. the countess' depositions alone, therefore, must determine victorine's conduct before the deed, and her motives for the deed. these seemed sufficient to the supreme court, not to alter the sentence of death. for a long time berger held the paper in his hands as if stunned; at length he went over to his unhappy friend, laid his arms around his neck and gently lifted his face up towards him. but when he looked into that face, the courage to say a word of consolation left him. he stepped to the window and stood there for, perhaps, half an hour. then he said softly, "i will come back this evening," and left the room. towards evening he received a few lines from his friend. sendlingen asked him not to come till to-morrow; by that time he hoped to have recovered sufficient composure to discuss quietly the next steps to be taken. he was of opinion that berger should address a petition for pardon to the emperor, and asked him to draw up a sketch of it. berger read of this request with astonishment. he would certainly have lodged a petition for pardon, even if victorine lippert had been simply his client and not sendlingen's daughter. but he would have done it more from a sense of duty than in the hope of success. that this hope was slight, he well knew. the petition would have to take its course through the supreme court, and it was in the nature of the case that the recommendation of the highest tribunal would be authoritative with the emperor; exceptions had occurred, but their number was assuredly not sufficient to justify any confident hopes. all this sendlingen must know as well as himself. why, therefore, did he wish that the attempt should be made? in this desperate state of things, there was but one course that promised salvation; a personal audience with the emperor. why did sendlingen hesitate to choose this course? berger made up his mind to lay all this strongly before him, and when on the next day he rang the bell of the residence, he was determined not to leave him until he had induced him to take this step. "we are still in chambers," announced franz. "we want you to wait here a little. we have been examining workmen again since this morning early, and have hardly allowed ourselves ten minutes for food." "so he has none the less resolved to go on with that?" said berger. perhaps, he thought to himself, the telegram has not arrived yet. "none the less resolved?" cried franz. "we have perhaps seldom worked away with such resolution and baron dernegg, too, was dictating to-day--i say it with all respect--like one possessed." berger turned to go. it occurred to him that he had not seen victorine for a week, and he thought he would use the interval by visiting her. "i shall be back in an hour," he said to franz. "in the meanwhile i have something to do in the prison." "in the prison?" the old man's face twitched, he seized berger's arm and drew him back into the lobby, shutting the door. "forgive me, dr. berger. my heart is so full.... you are going to her--are you not? to our poor young lady, to victorine?" "what? since when?" ... "do i know it?" interrupted franz. "since yesterday evening!" and with a strange mixture of pride and despair he went on: "we told me everything!... oh, it is terrible. but we know what i am worth! my poor master! ah! i couldn't sleep all night for sorrow.... but we shall see that we are not deceived in me.... i have a favour to ask, dr. berger. brigitta has the privilege naturally, because she is a woman and a member of the 'women's society.' but i, what can i appeal to? certainly i have in a way, been in the law for twenty-five years, and understand more of these things than many a young fledgling who struts about in legal toggery, but--a lawyer i certainly am not--so, i suppose, dr. berger, it is unfortunately impossible?" "what? that you should pay her a visit? certainly it is impossible, and if you play any pranks of that kind----" "oh! dr. berger," said the old man imploringly. "i did but ask your advice because my heart is literally bursting. well, if this is impossible, i have another favour, and this you will do me! greet our poor young lady from me! thus, with these words: 'old franz sends fräulein victorine his best wishes from all his heart--and begs her not to despair.... and--and wants to remind her that the god above is still living.'" berger could scarcely understand his last words for the tears that choked, the old man's voice. he himself was moved; as yesterday, so to-day, franz's tears strongly affected him, for the old servant was not particularly soft by nature. "yes, yes, franz," he promised, and then betook himself to the prison. he resolved to continue to be quite candid with victorine, but not to mention the result of the appeal by a single word. but when he entered her cell, she came joyfully to meet him, her eyes glistening with tears. "how shall i thank you?" she cried much moved trying to take his hand. he fell back a step. "thank me?--what for?" "oh, i know," she said softly with a look at the door as if an eavesdropper might have been there. "my father told me that it was not official yet. he hurried to me this morning as soon as he had received the news, but it is still only private information, and for the present i must tell nobody! whom else have i to thank but you?" "what?" he asked. and he added with an unsteady voice: "i have not seen him for the last few days. has he had news from vienna?" "to be sure! the supreme court has pardoned me. my imprisonment during trial is to be considered as punishment. in a few weeks i shall be quite free." berger felt all the blood rush to his heart. "quite free!" he repeated faintly. "in a few weeks!" and at the same time he was tortured by the importunate question: "great god! he has surely gone mad? how could he do this? what is his object?" "merciful heaven!" she cried. "how pale you have turned. how sombre you look! merciful heaven! you have not received other news? he has surely not been deceived? oh, if i had to die after all!--now--now----" she staggered. berger took her hand and made her sink down on to the nearest chair. "i have no other news," he said as firmly as possible. "it came upon me with such a shock! i am surprised that he has not yet told me anything. but then, of course, he did not hear of it till to-day. if he has told you, you can, of course, look upon it as certain." "may i not?" she sighed with relief. "i need not tremble any more? oh, how you frightened me!" "forgive me--calm yourself!" he took up his hat again. "are you going already? and i have not yet half thanked you!" "don't mention it!" he said curtly, parrying her remark. "au revoir," he added with more friendliness, and leaving the cell, hurried to sendlingen's residence. he had just come in; berger approached him in great excitement. "i have just been to see victorine," he began. "how could you tell this untruth? how _could_ you?" sendlingen cast down his eyes. "i had to do it. i was afraid that otherwise the news of her condemnation might reach her." "no," cried berger. "forgive my vehemence," he then continued. "i have reason for it. such empty pretexts are unworthy of you and me. you yourself see to the regulation of the courts and the prison. the accused never hear their sentence until they are officially informed." "you do me an injustice," replied sendlingen, his voice still trembling, and it was not till he went on that he recovered himself: "i have no particular reasons that i ought or want to hide from you. i told her in an ebullition of feeling that i can hardly account for to myself. when i saw her to-day she was much sadder, much more hopeless, than has been usual with her lately. she certainly had a presentiment--and i, in my flurry at this, feared that some report might already have reached her. such a thing, in spite of all regulations, is not inconceivable; chance often plays strange pranks. in my eager desire to comfort her, those words escaped me. the exultation with which she received them, robbed me of the courage to lessen their favourable import afterwards! that is all!" berger looked down silently for a while. "i will not reproach you," he then resumed. "how fatal this imprudence may prove, you can see as well as i. she was prepared for the worst and therefore anything not so bad, might perhaps have seemed like a favour of heaven. now she is expecting the best, and whatever may be obtained for her by way of grace, it will certainly dishearten and dispirit her. but there is no help for it now! let us talk of what we can help! you want me to lodge a petition for pardon? it would be labour in vain!" "well," said sendlingen hesitatingly, "in some cases the emperor has revoked the sentence of death in spite of the decision of the supreme court." "yes, but we dared not build on this hope if we had no other. fortunately this is the case. you must go to vienna; only on your personal intercession is the pardon a _certainty_. and my petition could at best only get the sentence commuted to imprisonment for life, whereas your prayer would obtain a shorter imprisonment and, after a few years, remission of the remainder. you must go to-morrow, victor--there is no time to lose." sendlingen turned away without a word. "how am i to understand this?" cried berger, anxiously approaching him. "you _will_ not?" the poor wretch groaned aloud, "i will----" he exclaimed. "but later on--later on----. as soon as your petition has been dispatched." "but why?" cried berger. "i have hitherto appreciated and sympathised with your every sentiment and act, but this delay strikes me as being unreasonable, unpardonable. i would spare you if less depended on the cast, but as it is, i will speak out. it is unmanly, it is----" he paused. "spare me having to say this to you, to you who were always so brave and resolute. there is no time to lose, i repeat. who will vouch that it may not then be too late? if my petition is rejected, the court will at the same time order the sentence to be carried out. do you know so certainly that you will still be here then, that you will still have time then to hurry to vienna? think! think!" berger had been talking excitedly and paused out of breath. but he was resolved not to yield and was about to begin again when sendlingen said: "you have convinced me; i will go to vienna sooner, even before the dispatch of your petition." "then you still insist that i shall proceed with it?" "please; it can do no harm; it may do good. and at least we shall gain time by it. i cannot undertake the journey to vienna until the inquiry against the working men is ended. in this, too, there is not a day to be lost; neither dernegg nor i know whether there is not an order on the road that may in some way make us harmless. i trust we shall by that time have succeeded in proving that no punishable offence has been committed. i have received the minister's telegram to-day, and at once replied that the inquiry was so complicated, and had already proceeded so far, that a change in the examining judges would be impracticable." "i am glad that you have followed my advice," said berger. "and in spite of these aggravated conditions! you hesitated as long as the decision was not known to you, as long as you simply feared it, and when your fears were confirmed, you were brave again and did not hesitate for an instant in doing your duty as an honourable man! victor, few people would have done the like!" he reached out his hand to say good-bye. "you have now taken old franz into your confidence?" he asked, "another participator in the secret--it would have been well to consider it first! but i will not begin to scold again. adieu!" chapter xi. more than two weeks had passed since this last interview. january of was drawing to a close and still there seemed no likelihood of an end to the investigations against the workmen. berger observed this with great anxiety. he had long since presented the petition for pardon: the time was drawing near when it would be laid before the emperor, and yet, whenever the subject of the journey to vienna arose, sendlingen had some reason or motive for urging that he could not leave and that there was still time. when he made such a remark berger looked at him searchingly, as if he were trying to read his inmost soul and then departed sadly, shaking his head. every day sendlingen's conduct seemed to him more enigmatical and unnatural. for this was the one means of saving victorine's life! if he still hesitated it could only proceed from fear of the agony of the moment, from cowardice! but as often as berger might and did say this to himself, he did not succeed in convincing himself. for did not sendlingen at the same time evince in another matter and where the welfare and sufferings of strangers to him were concerned, a moral courage rarely found in this country and under this government. the conflict between sendlingen and the minister of justice had gradually assumed a very singular character; it had become a "thoroughly austrian business," as berger sometimes thought with the bitter smile of a patriot. to sendlingen's respectful but decided answer, the minister had replied as rudely and laconically as possible, commanding him to hand over the investigation forthwith to werner. no one could now doubt any longer that a further refusal would prove dangerous, and sendlingen sent his rejoinder,--a brief dignified protest against this unjustifiable encroachment--with the feeling that he had at the same time undersigned his own dismissal. and indeed in any other country a violent solution would have been the only one conceivable; but here it was different. certainly a severe censure from the minister followed and he talked of "further steps" to be taken, but the lightning that one might have expected after this thunder, did not follow. the same result, was, however, sought by circuitous means, attempts were made to weary the two judges and to put them out of conceit with the case. when they proposed to the court that the case against one of the accused might be discontinued, the crown-advocate promptly opposed it and called the supreme court to his assistance. with all that, the police were feverishly busy and overwhelmed the two judges by repeatedly bringing forward new grounds of suspicion against the prisoners, and these had to be gone through however evidently worthless they might be at the first glance. there was not a single person attached to the law-courts with all their diversity of character, who did not follow the struggle of sendlingen for the independence of the judge's position, with sympathy, and the townspeople were unanimous in their enthusiastic admiration. this courageous steadfastness was all the more highly reckoned as it was visibly undermining his strength. his hair grew gray, his bearing less erect, and his face now almost always bore an expression of melancholy disquiet. people were not surprised at this; it must naturally deeply afflict this man who was so manifestly designed to attain the highest places in his profession, perhaps even to become the chief judge of the empire--to be daily and hourly threatened with dismissal. only the three participators in the secret, and berger in particular, knew that the unhappy man could scarcely endure any longer the torture of uncertainty about his child's fate. all the more energetic, therefore, were berger's attempts to put an end at least to this unnecessary torment but again and again he spoke in vain. this occurred too on the last day in january. sendlingen stood by his answer: "there is still time, the petition has not yet come into the emperor's hands," and berger was sorrowfully about to leave his chambers, when the door was suddenly flung open and herr von werner rushed in. "my lord," cried the old gentleman almost beside himself with joy and waving a large open letter in his hand like a flag, "i have just received this; this has just been handed to me. it means that i am appointed your successor, it is the decree." sendlingen turned pale. "i congratulate you," he said with difficulty. "when are you to take over the conduct of the courts?" "on the nd february," was the answer. "oh, how happy i am! and you i am sure will excuse me! why should the news distress you? you will in any case be leaving here at the end of february to----" he, stopped in embarrassment. "to go to pfalicz as chief justice of the higher court there," he continued hastily. "we will continue to believe so, to suppose the contrary would be nonsensical. you have annoyed the minister and he is taking a slight revenge--that is all! good-bye, gentlemen, i must hurry to my wife!" the old gentleman tripped away smiling contentedly. "that is plain enough," said sendlingen, after a pause, turning to his friend. "my successor is appointed without my being consulted: the decree is sent direct to him and not through me; more than that, i am not even informed at the same time, when i am to hand over the conduct of the courts to him. to the minister i am already a dead man! but what can it matter to me in my position? werner's communication only frightened me for a moment, while i feared that i had to surrender to him forthwith. but the nd february--that is three weeks hence. by that time _everything_ will be decided." two days later, on candlemas day, on which in some parts of catholic austria people still observe the custom of paying one another little attentions, sendlingen also received a present from the minister. the letter read thus: "you are to surrender the conduct of the courts on the nd february to the newly appointed chief justice, herr von werner. further instructions regarding yourself will be forwarded you in due course." the tone of this letter spoke plainly enough. for "further instructions" were unnecessary if the previous arrangement--his appointment to pfalicz--was adhered to. his dismissal was manifestly decreed. all the functionaries of the courts fell into the greatest state of excitement: who was safe if sendlingen fell? and wherever the news penetrated, it aroused sorrow and indignation. on the evening of the same day the most prominent men of the town met so as to arrange a fête to their chief justice before his departure. it was determined to present him with an address and to have a farewell banquet. berger, who had been at the meeting, left as soon as the resolution was arrived at, and hurried to sendlingen for he knew that his friend would need his consolation to-day most of all. but sendlingen was so calm that it struck berger as almost peculiar. "i have had time to get accustomed to these thoughts," he said. "how do you think of living now?" asked berger. "i shall move to gratz," replied sendlingen quickly; he had manifestly given utterance to a long-cherished resolve. "won't you be too lonely there?" objected berger. "why won't you go to vienna? by the inheritance from your wife, you are a rich man who does not require to select the pensionopolis on the mur on account of its cheapness. in vienna you have many friends, there you will have the greatest incitement to literary work, besides you may not altogether disappear from the surface. your career is only forcibly interrupted but not nearly ended. a change of system, or even a change in the members of the ministry, would bring you back into the service of the state, and, perhaps, to a higher position than the one you are now losing." "my mind is made up. brigitta is going to gratz in a few days to take a house and make all arrangements." they talked about other things, about the fête that had been arranged to-day. "i will accept the address," sendlingen explained, "but not the banquet. i have not the heart for it." berger vehemently opposed this resolution; he must force himself to put in an appearance at least for an hour; the fête had reference not only to himself personally, but to a sacred cause, the independence of judges. all this he unfolded with such warmth, that sendlingen at length promised that he would consider it. the next morning the vienna papers published the news of the measures taken with regard to sendlingen, which they had learnt by private telegrams. a severe censorship hampered the austrian press in those days; the papers had been obliged to accustom the public to read more between the lines than the lines themselves: and this time, too, they hit upon a safe method of criticism. as if by a preconcerted agreement, all the papers pronounced the news highly incredible; and that it was, moreover, wicked to attribute such conduct to the strict but just government which austria enjoyed. a severer condemnation than this defence of the government against "manifestly malicious reports" could not easily be imagined, and the public understood it as it was intended. in a moment, sendlingen's name was in every mouth, and the investigation against the workmen the talk of the day, first in the capital, soon throughout the whole country. a flood of telegrams and letters, inquiries and enthusiastic commendations, suddenly burst upon sendlingen. had there been room in his poor heart, in his weary tormented brain, for any lucid thought or feeling, he would now have been able, in the days of his disgrace, to have held up his head more proudly than ever. it was not saying too much when berger told him that a whole nation was now showing how highly it valued him. but he scarcely noticed it and continued, dark and hopeless, to do his duty and to drag on the sisyphus-task of his investigation in combat with both the police and the crown lawyers. suddenly those hindrances ceased. when sendlingen one morning entered his chambers soon after the news of his deposal had appeared in the papers, he for the first time, for weeks, found no information of the police on the table. that might be an accident, but when there was none the second day, he breathed again. the superintendent of police at bolosch was, the zealous servant of his masters; if he in twice twenty-four hours did not discover the slightest trace of high treason, there must be good reason for it. in the same way nothing more was heard from the crown-advocate. "they have almost lost courage in the face of the general indignation!" cried berger triumphantly. "franz has just told me that brigitta is to start the day after to-morrow for gratz. let her wait a few days, and so spare the old lady having to make the journey to pfalicz by the very round about way of gratz." "you cannot seriously hope that," said sendlingen turning away, and so berger went into brigitta's room later on to bid her good-bye. the old lady was eagerly reading a book which she hastily put on one side as he entered. "i am disturbing you," he said. "what are you studying so diligently?" "oh, a novel," she replied quickly. her eyes were red and she must have been crying a great deal lately. "i thought perhaps it was a description of gratz," said he jokingly. "it seems to me that you have a genuine fear of this weird city where life surges and swells so mightily!" and he attempted to remove her fears by telling her much of the quiet, narrow life of the town on the mur. while he was speaking, the book, which she had laid on her workbox, slid to the ground and he picked it up before she had time to bend down for it. it was a french grammar. "great heavens!" he cried in astonishment. "you are taking up the studies of your youth again, fräulein brigitta?" the old lady stood there speechless, her face crimson, as if she had been caught in a crime. "i have been told," she stammered, "that--that one can hardly get along there with only german." "in gratz?" berger could not help laughing heartily. "who has been playing this joke upon you? reassure yourself. you will get along with the french in gratz without any grammar." still laughing, he said good-bye and promised to visit her in gratz. meanwhile the excitement into which the press and the public were thrown by the "sendlingen incident" grew daily. in bolosch new proposals were constantly being made, to have the fête on a magnificent and uncommon scale. it did not satisfy the popular enthusiasm that the address to be presented was covered with thousands of signatures. a proposal was made in the town-council to call the principal street after sendlingen: some of the prominent men of the town wanted to collect subscriptions for a "sendlingen fund" whose revenue should be devoted to such officers of the state as, like sendlingen, had become the victims of their faithfulness to conviction; the gymnastic societies resolved upon a torch-light procession. the chairman of the committee arranging the festivities--he was the head of the first banking house of the town--was in genuine perplexity; he still did not know which acts of homage sendlingen would accept and he sought berger's interposition. "save me," implored the active banker. "people are pressing me and the chief justice is dumb. yesterday i hoped to get a definite answer from him but he broke off and talked of our business." "business? what business?" asked berger. "i am just doing a rather complicated piece of business for him," answered the banker. "i thought that you, his best friend, would have known about it. he is converting the austrian stock in which his property was hitherto invested, into french, english and dutch stock, and a small portion of it into ready money." "why?" asked berger in surprise. "he is going to stay in austria?" "so i asked," replied the banker, "and received an answer which i had, willy nilly, to take as pertinent. for he is hardly to be blamed, if after his experiences, his belief in the credit of the state has become a little shaky." berger could not help agreeing with this, and therefore did not refer to it in his talk with sendlingen. with regard to the fête he received a satisfactory answer. sendlingen without any further hesitation, accepted the banquet and even the torch-light procession. both were to take place on the st february, the last day of his term of office. all this was telegraphed to vienna and was bravely used by the papers. even in bolosch, they said, these melancholy reports, so humiliating to every austrian, were not seriously believed; how long would the government hesitate to contradict them? the demand was so universal, the excitement so great, that an official notice of a reassuring character was actually issued. the government, announced an official organ, had in no way interfered with the investigation; that this was evident, the present position of the inquiry, now without doubt near a close, sufficiently proved. with regard, however, to sendlingen's dismissal there was some "misunderstanding" in question. as so often before, in the case of the like oracular utterances from a similar source, everybody was now asking what this really meant. berger thought he had hit the mark and exultingly said to his friend: "hurrah! they have now entirely lost their courage! they are only temporising so as not to have to admit that public opinion has made an impression upon them." sendlingen shrugged his shoulders. "it is all one to me, george," he said. "now--that i can understand," replied berger warmly. "in a few months you will speak differently! when do you go to vienna?" sendlingen reflected. "on the seventeenth i should say," he at length replied hesitatingly. "that is to say if dernegg and i can really dismiss the workmen on the sixteenth as we hope to do." this hope was realised; on the th february , the workmen were released from prison. their first step related to sendlingen: in the name of all, johannes novyrok made a speech of thanks of which this was the peroration: "we know well what we ought to wish you in return for all you have done for us: good-luck and happiness for you and for all whom you love! but mere good wishes won't help you, and we can do nothing for you, although every man of us would willingly shed his blood for your sake, and as to praying, my lord, it is much the same thing--you may remember, perhaps, what i have already said to you on the subject. and so we can only say: think of us when you are in affliction of mind and you will certainly be cheered! you can say to yourself: 'i have lifted these people out of their misfortune and lessened their burden as much as i could,'--and you will breathe again. for i believe this is the best consolation that any man can have on this poor earth. god bless you! for you are noble and good, and what you do is well done, and sin and evil are far from you. a thousand thanks, my lord. farewell!" "farewell!" murmured sendlingen, his voice choking as he turned away. ... on the next day, the th february, sendlingen should have started by the morning train to vienna; he had solemnly promised berger to do so the evening before. the latter, therefore, was much alarmed when he accidentally heard, in the course of the afternoon, that sendlingen was still in chambers. he hastened to him. "why have you again put off going?" he asked impetuously. sendlingen had turned pale. "i have not been able to bring myself to it," he answered softly. "and you know what is at stake!" cried berger in great excitement, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead. "victor, this is cowardice!" "it is not," he replied as gently as before, but with the greatest determination. "if i had been a coward, i would long since have had the audience." berger looked at him in astonishment. "i do not understand you," he said. "it may be a sophism by which you are trying to lull your conscience, but it is my duty to rouse you. o victor!" he continued with passionate grief, "you can yourself imagine what it costs me to speak to you in this way. but i have no option." sendlingen was silent. "i will talk about it later," he said. "let me first tell you a piece of news that will interest you. i have received a letter from the minister this morning.... you were right about their 'courage.'" he handed the letter to his friend. "the minister reminds me that it is my duty, in consequence of the appointment made last november, to be in pfalicz on the morning of the st march to take over the conduct of the higher court there." "after all!" cried berger. "and how polite! do you see now that we liberals and our newspapers are some good? the minister has no other motive for beating a retreat." "perhaps this letter, which came at the same time, may throw some light on it," observed sendlingen taking up a letter as yet unopened. "it is from my brother-in-law. count karolberg!" he opened it and glanced at the first few lines. "true!" he exclaimed. "just listen." "you do not deserve your good fortune," he read, "and i myself was fully persuaded that you were lost. but it seems that the minister talked to us more sharply than he thought, and that from the first he meant nothing serious. that he kept you rather long in suspense, proved to be only a slight revenge which was perhaps permissible. he meant no harm; i feel myself in duty bound to say this to his credit." "and your brother-in-law is a clever man," cried berger, "and himself a judge! does he not understand that this very explanation tells most of all against the minister? oh, i always said that it was another thoroughly austrian----" a cry of pain interrupted him. "what is this?" cried sendlingen horror-struck and gazing in deadly pallor at the letter. berger took the letter out of his trembling hands, in the next instant he too changed colour. his eyes had lit upon the following passage. "when do you leave bolosch? i hope that the last duty that you have to do in your office, will not affect your soft heart too much. certainly it is always painful to order the execution of a woman, and especially such a young one, and perhaps you can leave the arrangements for the execution to your successor who fortunately is made of sterner stuff." the letter fell from berger's hands. "o victor----" he murmured. "don't say a word," sendlingen groaned; his voice sounded like a drowning man's. "no reproaches!--do you want to drive me mad." then he made a great effort over himself. "the warrant must have come already," he said, and he rang for the clerk and told him to bring all the papers that had arrived that day. the fatal document was really among them; it was a brief information to the court at bolosch stating that the emperor had rejected the petition for pardon lodged by counsel for the defence, and that he had confirmed the sentence of death. the execution, according to the custom then prevailing, was to be carried out in eight days. "i will not reproach you," said berger after he had glanced through the few lines. "but now you must act. you must telegraph at once to the imperial chancellery and ask for an audience for the day after tomorrow, the nineteenth, and to-morrow you must start for vienna!" "i will do so," said sendlingen softly. "you _must_ do it!" cried berger, "and i will see that you do. i will be back in the evening." when berger returned at nightfall, franz said to him in the lobby: "thank god, we are going to vienna after all!" and sendlingen himself corroborated this. "i have already received an answer; the audience is granted for the nineteenth. i have struggled severely with myself," he then added, and continued half aloud, in an unsteady voice, as if he were talking to himself; "i am a greater coward than i thought. however fixed my resolve was, my courage failed me--and so i must go to vienna." berger asked no further questions, he was content with the promise. chapter xii. the th february , was a clear, sunny day. at midday the snow melted, the air was mild; there seemed a breath of spring on the country through which the train sped along, bearing the unhappy man to vienna. but there was night in his heart, night before his eyes; he sat in the corner of his carriage with closed lids, and only when the train stopped, did he start up as from sleep, look out at the name of the station, and deeply sighing, fall back again into his melancholy brooding. was the train too slow for him? there were moments when he wished for the wings of a storm to carry him to his destination, and that the time which separated him from the decisive moment might have the speed of a storm. and in the next breath, he again dreaded this moment, so that every second of the day which separated him from it, seemed like a refreshing gift of grace. alas! he hardly knew himself what he should desire, what he should entreat, and one feeling only remained in his change of mood, despair remained and spread her dark shadow over his heart and brain. the train stopped again, this time at a larger station. there were many people on the platform, something extraordinary must have happened; they were crowding round the station-master who held a paper in his hand and appeared to be talking in the greatest excitement. the crowd only dispersed slowly as the train came in; lingeringly and in eager talk, the travellers approached the carriages. sendlingen looked out; the guard went up to the station-master who offered him the paper; it must have been a telegram. the man read it, fell back a step turning pale and cried out: "impossible!" upon which those standing around shrugged their shoulders. sendlingen saw and heard all this; but it did not penetrate his consciousness. "heldenberg," he said, murmuring the name of the station. "two hours more." the train steamed off, up a hilly country and therefore with diminished speed. but to the unhappy man it was again going too swiftly--for each turn of the wheels was dragging him further away from his child, for a sight of whose white face of suffering, he was suddenly seized with a feverish longing, his poor child, that now needed him most of all. "frightful!" he groaned aloud. his over-wrought imagination pictured how she had perhaps just received the news that she was to fall into the hangman's hands! it was possible that the sentence had passed through the court of records and been added to the rolls; some of the lawyers attached to the courts might have read it, or some of the clerks--if one of them should tell the governor, or the warders, if victorine should accidentally hear or it! "back!" he hissed, springing up. "i must go back." fortunately he was alone, otherwise his fellow travellers would have thought him mad. and there was something of madness in his eyes as he seized his portmanteau from the rack, and grasped the handle of the door as if to open it and spring from the train. the guard was just going along the foot-board of the carriages, the engine whistled, the train slackened, and in the distance the roofs of a station were visible. the guard looked in astonishment at the livid, distorted features of the traveller; this look restored sendlingen to his senses, and he sank back into his seat. "it is useless," he reflected. "i must go on to vienna." the train pulled up, "reichendorf! one minute's wait!" cried the guard. it was a small station, no one either got in or out; only an official in his red cap stood before the building. nevertheless, the wait extended somewhat beyond the allotted time. the guards were engaged in eager conversation with the official. sendlingen could at first hear every word. "there is no doubt about it!" said the official. "i arranged my apparatus so that i could hear it being telegraphed to pfalicz and bolosch. what a catastrophe." "and is the wound serious?" asked one of the guards. he was evidently a retired soldier, the old man's voice trembled as he put the question. "the accounts differ about that," was the answer. "great heavens! who would have thought such a thing possible in austria!" "oh! it can only have been an italian!" cried the old soldier. "i was ten years there and know the treacherous brood!" thus much sendlingen heard, but without rightly understanding, without asking himself what it might mean. more than that, the sound of the voices was painful to him as it disturbed his train of thought; he drew up the window so as to hear no more. and now another picture presented itself to him as the train sped on, but it was no brighter or more consoling. he was standing before his prince who had said to him: "it is frightful, i pity you, poor father, but i cannot help you! it is my duty to protect justice without respect of persons; i confirmed the sentence of death not because i knew nothing of her father, and supposed him a man of poor origin, but because she was guilty, by her own confession and the judges' verdict. shall i pardon her now because she is the daughter of an influential man of rank, because she is your daughter? is her guilt any the less for this, will this bring her child to life again? can you expect this of me, you, who are yourself a judge, bound by oath to judge both high and low with the same measure?" thus had the emperor spoken, and he had found no word to say against it--alas! no syllable of a word--and had gone home again. and it was a dark night--dark enough to conceal thieving and robbery or the blackest crime ever done by man--and he was creeping across the court-yard at home; creeping towards the little door that opened into the prison. "oh!" he groaned stretching out his hands as if to repel this vision, "not that!--not that!--and i am too cowardly to do it. i know--too cowardly! too cowardly!" once more the train stopped, this time at a larger station. sendlingen did not look out, otherwise he must have noticed that this was some extraordinary news that was flying through the land and filling all who heard it with horror. pale and excited the crowd was thronging in the greatest confusion; all seemed to look upon what had happened as a common misfortune. some were shouting, others staring as if paralyzed by fear, others again, the majority, were impatiently asking one another for fresh details. "it was a shot!" screamed an old gray-headed man in a trembling voice, above the rest, before he got into the train. "so the telegram to the prefect says." "a shot!" the word passed from mouth to mouth and some wept aloud.' "no!" cried another, "it was a stab from a dagger, the general himself told me so." confused and unintelligible, the cries reached sendlingen's ears till they were drowned by the rush of the wheels, and again nothing was to be heard save the noise of the rolling train. and again his over-wrought imagination presented another picture. the emperor had heard his prayer and said: "i grant her her life, i will commute the punishment to imprisonment for life, for twenty years. more than this i dare not do; she would have died had she not been your daughter, but i dare not remit the punishment altogether, nor so far lessen it that she, a murderess, should suffer the same punishment as the daughter of a common man had she committed a serious theft." and to this too he had known of no answer, and had come home and had to tell his poor daughter that he had deceived her by lies. she had broken down under the blow, and had been taken with death in her heart to a criminal prison, and a few months later as he sat in his office and dignity at pfalicz, the news was brought him that she had died. "would this be justice?" cried a voice in his tortured breast. "can i suffer this? no, no! it would be my most grievous crime, more grievous than any other." the train had reached the last station before vienna, a suburb of the capital. here the throng was so dense, the turmoil so great, that sendlingen, in spite of his depression, started up and looked out. "some great misfortune or other must have happened," he thought, as he saw the pale faces and excited gestures around him. but so great was the constraining force of the spell in which his own misery held his thoughts, that it never penetrated his consciousness so as to ask what had happened. he leant back in his corner, and of the babel of voices outside only isolated, unintelligible sounds reached his ears. here the people were no longer disputing with what weapon that deed had been done which filled them with such deep horror. "it was a stab from a dagger," they all said, "driven with full force into the neck." their only dispute was as to the nationality of the malefactor. "it was a hungarian!" cried some. "a count. he did it out of revenge because his cousin was hanged." "that is a lie!" cried a man in hungarian costume. "a hungarian wouldn't do it--the hungarians are brave--the austrians are cowards--the blackguard was an austrian, a viennese!" "oho!" cried the excited crowd, and in the same instant twenty fists were clenched at the speaker so that he began to retire. "a lie! it was no viennese! on the contrary, a viennese came to the rescue!" "yes, a vienna citizen!" shouted others, "a butcher!" "was not the assassin an italian?" asked the guard of the train, and this was enough for ten others to yell: "it was a milanese--naturally!--they are the worst of the lot!" while from another corner of the platform there was a general cry: "it was a pole! a student! he belonged to a secret society and was chosen by lot!" two poles protested, the hungarian and an italian joined them; bad language flew all over the place; fists and sticks were raised; the police in vain tried to keep the peace. then a smart little shoemaker's apprentice hit upon the magic word that quieted all. "it was a bohemian!" he screeched, "a journeyman tailor from pardubitz!" in a moment a hundred voices were re-echoing this. this cry alone penetrated the gloomy reflections in which sendlingen was enshrouded, but he only thought for an instant: "probably some particularly atrocious murder," and then continued the dark train of his thoughts.--now he tried to rouse himself, to cheer himself by new hopes, and he strove hard to think the solution of which berger had spoken, credible. he clung to it, he pictured the whole scene--it was the one comfort left to his unhappy mind. he chose the words by which he would move his prince's heart, and as the unutterable misery of the last few months, the immeasurable torment of his present position once more rose before him, he was seized with pity for himself and his eyes moistened--assuredly! the emperor, too, could not fail to be touched, he would hear him and grant him the life of his child. not altogether, he could not possibly do that, but perhaps he would believe living words rather than dead documentary evidence and would see that the poor creature was deserving of a milder punishment. and when her term of punishment was over--oh! how gladly he would cast from him all the pomp and dignity of the world and journey with her into a foreign land where her past was not known--how he would sacrifice everything to establish her in a new life, in new happiness.... a consoling picture rose before him: a quiet, country seat, apart from the stream of the world, far, far away, in france or in holland. shady trees clustered around a small house and on the veranda there sat a young woman, still pale and with an expression of deep seriousness in her face, but her eyes were brighter already, and there was a look about her mouth as if it could learn to smile again. "vienna." the train stopped; on the platform there was the same swaying, surging crowd as at the suburb, but it was much quieter for the police prevented all shouting and forming into groups. sendlingen did not notice how very strongly the station was guarded. the consoling picture he had conjured up was still before his mind; like a somnambulist he pushed through the crowd and got into a cab. "to the savage," he called to the driver; he gave the order mechanically, from force of habit, for he always stayed at this hotel. the shadows of the dusk had fallen upon the streets as the cab drove out of the station, the lamps' red glimmer was visible through the damp evening mist that had followed upon the sunny day. sendlingen leant back in the cushions and closed his eyes to continue his dream; he did not notice what an unusual stir there was in the streets. it was as if the whole population was making its way to the heart of the city; the vehicles moved in long rows, the pedestrians streamed along in dense masses. there was no shouting, no loud word, but the murmur of the thousands, excitedly tramping along, was joined to a strange hollow buzz that floated unceasingly in the air, and grew stronger and stronger as the carriage neared the centre of the town. more and more police were visible, and at the glacis there was even a battalion at attention, ready for attack at a moment's notice. even this sendlingen did not notice, it hardly entered his mind that the cab was driving much more slowly than usual. that picture of his brain was still before him and hope had visited his heart again. "courage!" he whispered to himself. "one night more of this torment--and then she is saved! he is the only human being who can help us, and he will help us." his cab had at length made way through the crowd that poured in an ever denser throng across the stefansplatz and up the graben towards the imperial palace--and it was able to turn into the kärtnerstrasse. it drew up before the hotel. the hall-porters darted out and helped sendlingen to alight, the proprietor himself hurried forward and bowed low when he recognised him. "his lordship, the chief justice!" he cried. "rooms and . what does your lordship say to this calamity? it has quite dazed me!" "what has happened?" asked sendlingen. "your lordship does not know?" cried the landlord in amazement. "that is almost impossible! a journey-man tailor from hungary, johann libényi, attempted his majesty's life to-day at the glacis. the dagger of the miscreant struck the emperor in the neck. his majesty is severely wounded, if it had not been for the presence of mind of the butcher, ettenreich----" he stopped abruptly, "what is the matter?" he cried darting towards sendlingen. sendlingen tottered, and but for his help would have fallen to the ground. chapter xiii. on the evening of the next day count karolberg, sendlingen's brother-in-law, entered his room at the hotel. "well, here you are at last!" he cried, still in the door-way. "is this the way to go on after a bad attack of the heart on the evening before? three times to-day have i tried to get hold of you, the first time at nine in the morning and you had already gone out." "thank you very much!" replied sendlingen. "my anxiety for authentic news about the emperor's condition, drove me out of doors betimes, and so i went to the imperial chancellery as early as was seemly. but i only learnt what is in all the papers: that there was no danger of his life, but that he would need quite three weeks of absolute rest to bring about his complete recovery. meanwhile the cabinet is to see to all current affairs: the sovereign authority of the emperor is suspended, and none of the princes of the blood are to act as regent during the illness." "but you surely did not inquire about that?" cried count karolberg in astonishment. "that goes without saying." "goes without saying!" muttered sendlingen, and for a moment his self-command left him and his features became so listless and gloomy that his brother-in-law looked at him much concerned. "victor!" he said, "you are really ill! you must see oppolzer to-morrow." "i cannot. i must go back to bolosch to-night. i require two days at least, to arrange the surrender of matters to my successor. but then i shall come back here at once." "good! you are going to spend the week before entering on your new position here; the minister of justice has just told me. it was very prudent of you to visit him at once." "it was only fitting that i should," said sendlingen. alas! not from any motives of fitness or prudence had he gone to the minister of justice; it was despair that drove him there after the information he got at the chancellery, a remnant of a hope that by his help, he might at least attain the postponement of the execution till the emperor was better again. not until he was in the minister's ante-room, and had already been announced, did he recover his senses and recognise that the minister could as little command a postponement as he himself, and so he kept silence. "he was very friendly to me!" he added aloud. "he is completely reconciled to you," count karolberg eagerly corroborated. "he spoke to me of your ill-health with the sincerest sympathy, and told me that you had hinted at not accepting the post at pfalicz but contemplated retiring. i hope that is far from being your resolve! if you require a lengthy cure somewhere in the south, leave of absence would be sufficient. how could you have the heart to renounce a career that smiles upon you as yours does?" "of, course," replied sendlingen, "i shall consider the subject thoroughly." he then asked to be excused for a minute in order to write a telegram to bolosch. he sat down at the writing-table. he found the few words needed hard to choose. he crossed them out and altered them again and again--it was the first lie that that hand had ever set down. at length he had finished. the telegram read as follows: "george berger, bolosch. end desired as good as attained. have procured postponement till recovery of decisive arbiter. return to-morrow comforted. victor." he then drove with count karolberg to his house and spent the evening there in the circle of his relations. he was quiet and cheerful at he used to be, and when he took his leave of the lady of the house to go to the station, he jokingly invited himself to dinner on the d of february. the weather had completely changed, since the morning heavy snow had fallen: the bolosch train had to wait a long time at the next station till the snow-ploughs had cleared the line, and it was not till late next morning that it reached its destination. sendlingen was deeply moved that, notwithstanding, the first face he saw on getting out of the train, was that of his faithful friend. and at the same time it frightened him: for how could he look him in the face? but in his impetuous joy, berger did not observe how sendlingen shrank at his gaze. "at last!" he cried, embracing him, and with moistened eyes, he pressed his hand, incapable of uttering a word. "thank you!" said sendlingen in an uncertain voice. "it--it came upon you as a surprise?" "you may imagine that!" cried berger. "soon after your departure, i heard the news of the attempt on the emperor's life. i thought all was lost and was about to hurry to you when your telegram came. and then, picture my delight! i sent for franz--the old man was mad with joy!" they had come out to the front of the station and had got into berger's sleigh. "to my house!" he called to the driver! "what are you thinking of?" asked sendlingen. "you forget that you have no longer a habitable home!" cried berger. "there is such a veritable hurly-burly at the residence, that even franz hardly knows his way about--where do you mean to stay?" "at the hofmann hotel," replied sendlingen. "i have already commissioned franz to take rooms there. it is impossible for me to stay with you, george. please do not press me. i cannot do it." berger looked at him astonished. "but why not? and how tragically it affects you? to the hofmann hotel!" he now ordered the driver. "but now tell me everything," he begged, when the sleigh had altered its direction. "who granted you the postponement?" "the archduke ferdinand maximilian," replied sendlingen quickly, "the emperor's eldest brother. i had an interview with him yesterday. the order to werner to postpone the execution, should be here by the day after to-morrow. for my own part, i shall stay in vienna until the emperor has recovered. the archduke himself could not give a final decision." "once more my heartiest congratulations!" cried berger. "i will faithfully watch over victorine till you return. and now as to other things. do you know whom this concerns?" he pointed to some bundles of fir-branches that were being unloaded at several houses. here and there, too, some black and yellow, or black, red and yellow flags were being hung out. "you, victor. the whole of bolosch is preparing itself for to-morrow, it will be such a fête as the town has not seen for a long time. the committee has done nothing either about the decorations or the illuminations. both are spontaneous, and done without any preconcerted arrangement." "this must not take place!" cried sendlingen impatiently. "i cannot allow it! it would rend my heart!" "i understand you," said berger. "but in for a penny etc. besides your heart may be easier now, than at the time you agreed to accept the torch-light procession and the banquet. do not spoil these good people's pleasure, they have honorably earned your countenance. every third man in bolosch is inconsolable to-day because there are no more tickets left for the banquet, although we have hired the biggest room in the place, the one in the town-hall. the only compensation that we could offer them, was the modest pleasure of carrying a torch in your honour and at the same time burning a few holes in their sunday clothes. notwithstanding, torches have since yesterday become the subject of some very swindling jobbery." in this manner he gossiped away cheerfully until the sleigh drew up at the hotel. herr hofmann, the landlord, was almost speechless with pleasure. "what an honour," stammered the fat man, his broad features colouring a sort of purple-red. "your lordship is going to receive the procession on my balcony?" "yes indeed," sighed berger, "and it is i who got you this honour!" he drove away, promising to send franz who was waiting at his house. after a short interval franz appeared at the hotel; his face beamed as he entered his master's room, and a few minutes later, when he came out again, it was pale and distorted and his eyes seemed blinded; the old man was reeling like a drunkard as he went back to berger's house to fetch the trunks to the hotel. without making good his lost night's rest, sendlingen betook himself to his chambers. herr von werner was already waiting for him; they at once went to their task and began with the business of the civil court. it was not difficult work, but it consumed much time, especially as werner in accordance with his usual custom would not dispatch the most insignificant thing by word of mouth. seldom can any mortal have written his signature with the same pleasure as he to-day signed: "von werner, chief justice." sendlingen held out patiently, without a sign of discomposure, "like a lamb for the sacrifice" thought baron dernegg who was assisting with the transfer. they only interrupted their work to take a scanty meal in chambers; twice, moreover, franz sent for his master to make a brief communication. at length, about ten at night, the work was done. for the next day, when the affairs of the criminal court were to be disposed of, werner promised to be more brief. "you had better, if you value your life," cried dernegg laughing. "the citizens of bolosch won't be made fools of. woe to you if you don't release the hero of to-morrow's fête in good time!" sendlingen went to berger who had now been waiting for him several hours with increasing impatience. "i shall never forgive herr von werner this!" he swore as they sat down to their belated meal. "and it is the last evening in which i shall have you to myself! franz told me that you were going to vienna by the express at four in the morning, why will you not take a proper rest after the excitement of the fête? you had better go the day after to-morrow by the midday train." "i cannot," replied sendlingen. "the minister of justice has asked me to attend an important conference the day after to-morrow, and therefore i am even thinking of going by the mail-train to-morrow. it starts shortly after midnight and----" "that is quite impossible!" interrupted berger. "just consider, the procession takes place between eight and nine, the banquet begins at ten, it will be eleven before the first speeches are made--then you are to reply in all speed, rush out, hurry to the hotel, change your clothes, fly to the station----why, it is quite impossible, and the people would be justly offended if you fled from the feast in an hour's time as if it were a torment!" "and so it is!" cried sendlingen. "when you consider what my feelings are likely to be at leaving bolosch, then you will certainly not try to stop me, but will rather help me, so that the torment be not too long drawn out." berger shrugged his shoulders. "you always get your own way!" he said. "but it is not right to offend the people and then victimise yourself all night in a train that stops at even the smallest stations." then they talked of the political bearings, of the consequences, which the crime of the th february, the act of a half-witted creature, might have on the freedom of austria. victorine's name was not mentioned by either of them this time. sendlingen never closed his eyes all that night, although herr hofmann had personally selected for him the best pillows in the hotel. it was a dark, wild night; the snow alone gave a faint glimmer. an icy northeast wind whistled its wild song through the streets, fit accompaniment to the thoughts of the sleepless man. towards eight in the morning--it had just become daylight--he heard the sound of military music; the band was playing a buoyant march. at the same time there was a knock at his door and franz entered. the old man was completely broken down. "we must dress," he said. "the band of the jägers and the choral society are about to serenade. besides i suppose we have not slept!" "nor you either, franz?" "what does that matter! but we will not survive it!" he groaned. "oh! that this day, that this night, were already past." "it must be, franz." "yes, it must be!" the band came nearer and nearer. at the same time the footsteps, the laughter and shouts of a large crowd were audible. the old man listened. "that's the radetzky march!" he said. "ah! how merrily they are piping to our sorrow." the procession had reached the hotel. "three cheers for sendlingen!" cried a stentorian voice. the band struck up a flourish and from hundreds and hundreds of throats came the resounding shout: "hip, hip, hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" then the band played a short overture and the fingers followed with a chorus. meanwhile sendlingen had finished dressing; he went into the adjoining room, and, after the song was finished and the cheering had begun again, he opened a window and bowed his thanks. at his appearance the shouts were louder and louder; like the voice of a storm they rose again and again: "hurrah for sendlingen! hurrah! hurrah!" and mingling with them was the cry of the czech workmen: "slava--na zdar!" all the windows in the street were open; the women waved their handkerchiefs, the men their hats; as far as the eye could see, bright flags were floating before the snow-covered houses, and decorations of fir were conspicuous in all the windows and balconies. the unhappy man stared in stupefaction at the scene beneath him, then a burning crimson flushed his pale face and he raised his hand as if to expostulate. the crowd put another interpretation on the sign and thought that he wanted to make a speech. "silence," shouted a hundred voices together and there was a general hush. but sendlingen quickly withdrew, while the cheering broke forth afresh. "my hat!" he cried to franz. he wanted to escape to the courts by the back door of the hotel. but it was too late; the door of the room opened, and the committee entered and presented the address of the inhabitants of bolosch. then the mayor and town-council appeared bringing the greatest distinction that had ever been conferred on a citizen of bolosch--not only the freedom of the city, but the resolution of the town-council to change the name of cross street forthwith into sendlingen street. various other deputations followed: the last was that of the workmen. their leader was johannes novyrok; he presented as a gift, according to a slavonic custom, a loaf of bread and a plated salt-cellar, adding: "look at that salt-cellar, my lord! if you imagine that it is silver you will be much mistaken, it is only very thinly plated and cost no more than four gulden, forty kreutzer, and i must candidly say that the dealer has very likely swindled us out of a few groschen in the transaction; for what do we understand of such baubles? well, four gulden and forty kreutzer, besides fifteen kreutzer for the bread and five kreutzer for the salt, make altogether five gulden of the realm. now you will perhaps think to yourself, my lord: are these men mad that they dare offer _me_ such a trifling gift--but to that i answer: five gulden are three hundred kreutzer of the realm, and these three hundred kreutzer were collected in this way: three hundred workmen of this town after receiving their wages last saturday, each subscribed one kreutzer to give you a bit of pleasure. and now that you know this, you will certainly honour their trifling gift. we beg you to keep this salt-cellar on your table, so that your heart may be always rejoiced by the gift of poor men whose benefactor you have been." in the law courts, too, a solemn ovation was awaiting him. two judges received him at the entrance and conducted him to the hall of the senate, where all the members of the court were gathered. werner handed him their parting-gift: a water-colour painting of the courts of justice, and an album with the photographs of all connected with them. "to the model of every judicial virtue," was stamped on it in gold letters. then dernegg stepped forward. a number of the court officials had clubbed together to adorn the walls with sendlingen's portrait. dernegg made a sign and the curtain was withdrawn from the picture. "not only to honour you," he continued turning to sendlingen, "have we placed this picture here, but because we desire that your portrait should look down upon us to admonish and encourage us, whenever we are assembled here in solemn deliberation. it was here that four months ago you gave utterance to a sentiment that, to me, will always be more significant of your character than anything i ever heard you say. we were discussing the condemnation of an unfortunate government clerk. 'i have never been,' you said on that occasion, 'a blind adherent of the maxim fiat justitia et pereat mundum--but at least it must so far be considered sacred, as binding each of us judges to act according to law and duty, even if our hearts should break in doing so.' such things are easily said, but hard to do. fate, however, had decreed that you were, since then, to give a proof that this conviction had indeed been the loadstar of your life. who should know that better than i, your colleague in those sorrowful days. you never hesitated, even when all that the heart of man may cling to, was at stake in your life." he had intended to go into this at greater length, but he came to a speedy conclusion when he saw how pale sendlingen had turned. "very likely his heart is troubling him again," he thought. but the attack seemed to pass quickly. certainly sendlingen only replied in a very few words, but he went to work again with werner zealously. the three men--dernegg was assisting to-day as well--betook themselves to the prison. in the governor's office, the register of prisoners was gone through. werner started when he saw the list of the sick. "so many?" he cried. "our doctor would be more suited to a philanthropic institute than here. here, for instance, i read: 'victorine lippert. since the th november, .' why that must be the child-murderess, that impertinent person who made such a scene at the trial. and here it says further: 'convalescent since the middle of december, but must remain in the infirmary till her complete recovery on account of grave general debility.' this person has been well for two months, and is still treated as if she were ill! isn't that unjustifiable?" sendlingen made no reply; he was holding one of the lists close to his eyes, so that his face was not visible. dernegg, however, answered: "perhaps the contrary would be unjustifiable. the doctor knows the case, we don't. he is a conscientious man." "certainly," agreed werner, "of course he is--but much too soft-hearted. let us keep to this particular case. well, this person has been tended as an invalid for more than two months. that adds an increase of more than twenty kreutzer daily to the public expenditure, altogether, since the middle of december, fourteen gulden of the realm. we should calculate, gentlemen, calculate. and is such a person worth so much money? well, we can soon see for ourselves whether she is ill!" they began to go the rounds of the prison. that was soon done with, but in the first room of the infirmary, werner began a formal examination of the patients. sendlingen went up to him. "finish that tomorrow," he said sharply, in an undertone. "you are my successor, not my supervisor." werner almost doubled up. "excuse me--" he muttered in the greatest embarrassment. "you are right,--but i did not dream of offending you--you whom i honour so highly. let us go." they went through the remainder of the rooms without stopping, until they came to the separate cells for female patients. here, only two female warders kept guard. werner looked through the list of the patients' names. "why, victorine lippert is here," he said. "actually in a separate cell. my lord chief justice," he continued in an almost beseeching tone of voice, turning to sendlingen, "this one case i should like at once to--i beg--it really consumes me with indignation--otherwise i must come over this afternoon." sendlingen had turned away. "as you wish," he then muttered, and they entered her cell. victorine had just sat down at her table and was reading the bible. she looked up, a crimson flush overspread her face, trembling with a glad excitement she rose--the pardon must at length have arrived from vienna, and the judges were coming to announce it. the danger increased sendlingen's strength. he had not been able to endure dernegg's words of praise, but now that the questioning look of his child rested on him, now that his heart threatened to stand still from compassion and from terror of what the next moment might bring forth, not a muscle of his face moved. perhaps it decisively affected his and victorine's fate, that this unspeakable torture only lasted a few moments. "there we are!" werner broke forth. "rosy and healthy and out of bed. a nice sort of illness. but this shall be put a stop to to-day." with a low cry, her face turning white, victorine staggered back. werner did not hear her, he had already left the cell, the other two followed him. "it was on account of your request that i was so brief," said werner in the corridor turning to sendlingen. "besides one glance is sufficient! tell me yourself, my lord, does she look as if she were ill?" "you must take the doctor's opinion about that," said dernegg. "that would be superfluous," said sendlingen, his voice scarcely trembling. "the sentence of death is confirmed; she must be executed in a few days; the th february at the latest, as the sentence reached here on the seventeenth. i can only share your view," he continued turning to werner, "she really looks healthy enough to be removed into the common prison. but what would be the good? we have not got any special 'black hole' in which condemned criminals spend the day before their execution, and one of these cells in the infirmary is always used for the purpose." "you are right as usual," werner warmly agreed. "she can remain in the cell for the two days: that will be the most practical thing to do. on the twenty-third, i will announce the sentence, on the twenty-fourth, the execution can take place." sendlingen gave a deep sigh. "we have finished with the prisons now," he said, "let us go back to chambers. allow me to show you the nearest way." he beckoned to the governor of the prison to follow them. the cells of the infirmary were in a short corridor that opened into the prison-yard. the governor opened the door and they stepped out into the yard. "i have a key to this door," said sendlingen to werner, "as well as to that over there." he pointed to the little door in the wall which separated the prison-yard from the front part of the building. "i will hand both these keys over to you presently. my predecessor had this door made, so as to convince himself, from time to time, that the prison officials were doing their duty. but he forgot to tell me about this, and so the keys have been rusting unused in my official writing-table. i first heard of this accidentally a few months ago." "certainly this means of access requires some consideration," observed dernegg. "an attempt at escape would meet with very slight obstacles here. anyone once in the infirmary corridor, would only need to break through two weak doors, the one in the yard and this one in the wall, and then get away scot free by the principal entrance which leads to the offices and private residence of the chief justice!" "what an idea!" laughed werner. "in the first place: how would the fellow get out of the sick-room or out of his cell into the corridor of the female patients? he would first have to break through two or three doors. and if he should succeed in getting out into the yard, he would perhaps never notice the door, it is so hidden away; and if, groping about in the dark, he were to find it, he would not know where it led to, or whether there might not be a sentry on the other side with a loaded rifle. no, no, i think this arrangement is very ingenious, very ingenious, gentlemen, and i purpose often to make use of it." sendlingen took no part in this talk; he had altogether become very taciturn and remained so, as they set to work again in chambers. but the evening had long set in, the illumination of the town had begun, and the lights were burning in the windows of the room where they were working, before they had completed all the formalities. when all was finished, sendlingen handed his successor the keys of which he had spoken. franz was waiting outside with a carriage from the hotel. it was a nasty night; an icy wind was driving the snow-flakes before it. notwithstanding sendlingen wanted to proceed on foot. "my forehead burns," he complained. but franz urged: "i have brought it on account of the crowds of people about. if we are recognised, we should never get along or escape from the cheering." so sendlingen got in. this precaution proved to be well-founded. in spite of the stormy weather, the streets were densely packed with people slowly streaming hither and thither, and admiring the unwonted spectacle of the illuminations. the carriage could only proceed at a walking pace: sendlingen buried himself deeper in its cushions so as not to be recognised. "the good people!" said old franz who was sitting opposite him. "i have always known who it was i was serving, but how much we are loved and honoured in this town, was not manifest till to-night. but we are not looking at the illuminations, they are very beautiful." "and who is it they are there for!" cried sendlingen burying his face in his hands. the carriage which had been going slower and slower, was now obliged to stop; it had come to the beginning of cross street which since the morning bore the superscription: "sendlingen street!" the inhabitants of this street in order to show themselves worthy of the honour, had illuminated more lavishly than anyone else, and as the hofmann hotel was situated here, the crowd had formed into such a dense mass at this point, that a passage through it was not to be thought of. sendlingen had to quit the carriage and, half deafened with the cheers, he hurried through the ranks and breathed again when he reached the shelter of the hotel. there berger, who had been impatiently awaiting him, met him. "now quick into your dress clothes," he cried, "in ten minutes the procession will be here." sendlingen had hardly finished dressing, when the sound of music and the shouts of the crowd, announced the approach of the procession. he was obliged to yield to his friend's pressure and go out on the balcony. there was a red glimmer from the direction of the river, and like a giant fire-serpent, the procession wound its way through the crowd. it stopped before the hotel, the torch-bearers formed themselves in line in the broad street. unceasingly, endlessly, like the roar of wild waves, resounded the cheers. berger's eyes sparkled. "this is a moment which few men live to see," he said. "know this, and be glad of it! he who has won such love is, in spite of anything that could happen, one of the favoured of this earth!" then they drove to the banquet at the town-hall. the large room was full to overflowing, and all agreed that this was the most brilliant assembly that had ever been gathered together within its walls, "but he deserves it," all said. "what has this man not suffered in the last few weeks through his fidelity to conviction! one can see it in his face--this agitation has broken his strength for years!" people therefore did not take it ill that his replies to the two toasts, "our last honorary citizen" proposed by the mayor, and the "rock of justice" proposed by the chairman of the committee, were very briefly put. he thanked them for the unmerited honour that had been done him, assured them that he would never forget their kindness, and, to be brief, made only the most commonplace remarks, without fulfilling either by his style or his thoughts, the expectation with which this speech had been looked forward to. nevertheless, after he had finished, he was greeted with wild cheering, and the same thundering applause followed him as he left the hall towards eleven o'clock. berger and dernegg accompanied him to the hotel, then to the station. the first bell had already rung when they got there; so their farewell had to be brief. silently, with moistened eyes, sendlingen embraced his friend before he got into the train; franz took his place in a second-class compartment of the same carriage. both waved from the windows after the train had moved off and was gliding away, swifter and swifter, into the stormy night. * * * * * next morning about nine o'clock, when berger had just sat down at his writing-table, there was a violent knock at his door and a clerk of the law courts rushed in. "dr. berger!" he cried, breathlessly, "herr von werner urgently begs you to go to him at once. victorine lippert has escaped from the prison in the night." berger turned deadly pale. "escaped?" "or been taken out!" continued the clerk. "herr von werner hopes you may be able to give some hint as to who could have interested themselves in the person." "very well," muttered berger. "i know little enough about the matter, but i will come at once." the clerk departed; berger sat at his table a long time, staring before him, his head heavily sunk on his breast. "unhappy wretch!" he thought. "now i understand all!" now he understood all: why sendlingen had hesitated so long in taking the journey to vienna, why he had taken franz and brigitta into his confidence, why he had spent the last two days at the hotel where he and his servant could make all preparations undisturbed, and why he had chosen the mail train which stopped at every station. the next station to bolosch was not distant more than half an hour's drive by sleigh. "they must both have left the train there," he thought, "and hurried back in a sleigh that was waiting for them, then released victorine and hastened away with her, perhaps to the first station where the express stops, perhaps in the opposite direction towards pfalicz. at this moment, very likely, she is journeying under franz's protection to some foreign country where brigitta awaits her, somewhere in france, or england, or italy, while he is hurrying to vienna, so as not to miss his appointment with the minister of justice!" "monstrous!" he groaned. and surely, the world had never before seen such a thing: such a crime committed by such a man, and on the very day when his fellow-citizens had done honour to him as the "rock of justice!" and such he would be for all time, in the eyes of all the world; it was not to be supposed that the very faintest suspicion would turn against him: he would go to pfalicz and there continue to judge the crimes of others. the honest lawyer boiled over, he could no longer sit still but began to pace up and down excitedly. bitter, grievous indignation filled his heart; the most sacred thing on earth had been sullied, justice, and by a man whom of all men he had loved and honoured. and then this same love stirred in his heart again. he thought of last night, of the moment when he had stood by his friend, while the thousands surged below making the air ring with their cheers. pity incontinently possessed his soul again. "what the poor wretch must have suffered at this moment!" he thought. "it is a marvel that he did not go mad. and what he must have suffered on his journey to vienna, and long weeks before, when the resolve first took shape in him!" he bowed his head. "judge not, that ye be not judged," cried a voice of admonition within him. his bitterness disappeared, and deep sorrow alone filled his heart: sin had bred other sins, crime, another crime and fresh remorse and despair. how to judge this deed, what was there to be said in condemnation, what in vindication of it: that deed of which he had once dreamed, it certainly was not; it was no great, liberating solution of these complications, but only an end of them, a hideous end! certainly victorine might have now suffered enough to have been granted freedom, and the opportunity of new life, and no less certainly would sendlingen, honourable and loving justice in the extreme, carry in his conscience through life, the punishment for his crime--but justice had been outraged, and this sacred thing would never receive the expiation that was its due. "a wrong should not be expiated by a crime!" sendlingen had once said to him--but now he had done it himself. "re-assure yourself," he had once exclaimed at a later date, "outraged justice shall receive the expiation that is its due!" this would not, could not be--never--never! berger roused himself and went forth on his bitter errand. when he reached the courts of justice, old hoche, who had entered on his retirement some weeks ago, was just coming out. berger was going to pass him with a brief salutation, but the old gentleman button-holed him. "what do you say to this?" he cried. "monstrous, isn't it? i am heartily glad that the misfortune has not befallen sendlingen! but do not imagine that i wish it to herr von werner. on the contrary, i have just given him a piece of advice--ha! ha! ha!--that should relieve him of his perplexity. you cross-examine dr. berger sharply, i said to him; that is the safest way of getting to know the secret of who took her out. for the way dr. berger interested himself in this person, is not to be described. me, a judge, he called a murderer for her sake, upon my word, a murderer. ha! ha! ha! there you have it." berger had turned pale. "this is not a subject of jest," he said, angrily. "oh, my dear dr. berger!" replied the old man soothingly, "i have only advised herr von werner--and naturally without the slightest suspicion against you--to formally examine you on oath as a witness. for anyone connected with the prisoner is likely to know best. and besides: a record of evidence can never do any harm--_ut aliquid fecisse videatur_, you know. they will see in vienna that werner has taken a lot of trouble. well, good-bye, my dear doctor, good-bye." he went. berger strode up the steps. his face was troubled and a sudden terror shook his limbs. he had never thought of that. supposing he should now be examined on oath? could he then say: 'i have no suspicion who could have helped her?' could he be guilty of perjury to save them both? "may god help them then," he hissed, "for i cannot." he entered the corridor that led to the chief justice's chambers. the examination of the prison officials had just been concluded, but a few warders were standing about and attentively listening to the crafty höbinger's explanation of this extraordinary case. "favouritism!" berger heard him say as he went by, "her lover, the young count, has got her out." the two female warders of the infirmary cells were there too, sobbing. berger entered the chief justice's chambers. baron dernegg and the governor of the prison were with werner. at a side-table sat a clerk; a crucifix and two unlighted candles were beside him. "at last!" cried werner. "i begged you so particularly to come at once. there is not a moment to be lost. light the candles!" he called to the clerk. "but that may be quite useless," cried dernegg. "do you know anything about the matter?" he then asked berger. "no!" the sound came hoarsely, almost unintelligibly, from his stifled breast. werner stood irresolute. "but dr. berger was her counsel," he said, "and the authorities in vienna----" "must see that you have taken trouble," supplemented dernegg. "they will hardly see this from documents with nothing in them. we have more important things to do now: the escape was discovered three hours ago, and the description of her appearance has not yet been drawn up and telegraphed to vienna and the frontier stations." werner still looked irresolutely at the lighted candles for a few seconds: to berger they seemed an eternity of bitter anguish such as his conscience had never endured before. "put out the candles! come, the description of her appearance!" he seized the papers relating to the trial. "please help me!" he said turning to dernegg. "my head is swimming! o god! that i should have lived to see this day!" while the clerks were writing at the dictation of the two judges, berger turned to the governor and asked him how the escape had been effected. "it is like magic!" he replied. "when one of the female warders was taking her breakfast to her this morning, she found the door merely latched and the cell empty. the lock must have been opened from the inside. her course can be plainly traced: she escaped through the yard; the locks of all the doors have been forced from inside by a file used by someone with great strength. this is the first riddle. such a thing could hardly be done by the hand of the strongest man; it is quite impossible that victorine lippert had sufficient strength! the doctor vouches for it, and for the matter of that you knew her yourself, dr. berger." berger shrugged his shoulders and the governor continued: "you see the theory of external assistance forces itself imperatively upon us, and yet it is not tenable. the help cannot have come from outside, as all the locks were forced on the inside. and in the prison she can likewise have received no assistance. there is not one of the warders capable of such a crime, besides there is only one door between the general prison and the corridor of the female patients, and that was locked and remained locked. since any external help is not to be thought of, we are obliged, difficult as it is, to credit victorine lippert with sufficient strength. but there we are confronted with the second riddle: how did she come by the file? and in the face of such incomprehensibilities, it is a small thing that she should also have been aware of an exit that is known to few!" "mysterious in every way!" said berger. "most extraordinary!" to him the rationale of the thing was plain enough: master and servant had by means of the official keys or of duplicates which they had had made, penetrated the prison, and on their return had filed the locks. by this ruse, all suspicion of external help would be removed, and at the same time, as far as sendlingen could do so, it would be averted from the prison officials. meanwhile the two judges had drawn up the description of the fugitive's appearance, and dernegg renewed his advice to telegraph it abroad at once. werner objected that this was "a new method" that he would not agree to. "everything according to rule!" he said. "we will publish the description in the official paper, distribute it among the police, and send a copy to vienna. it is inconceivable that the person has got out of the country; where would she get the money from? we will therefore not telegraph, and that is enough!" but after the old man had roused himself to this judgment of solomon, his self-control deserted him altogether. "what a calamity!" he moaned. "what a beginning to my life as chief justice! but i am innocent! alas! i shall, none the less, receive a reprimand from the minister which i shall carry about me all my life, unless sendlingen saves me. but my friend sendlingen, that best of colleagues, will speak for me and save me. excuse me, gentlemen--but i shall have no peace, until i have written and asked for his help!" he sat down to his writing-table, the others took their leave. the next morning berger received a letter from vienna, the handwriting of the address was known to him and, with trembling hands, he opened the envelope. this was the letter. "i know that you cannot forgive me and i do not ask you to do so. one favour only do i implore: do not give up hope that the time will one day come when i shall again be worthy of your regard. the first step to this i took yesterday: i have left the service of the state for ever, and i do not doubt that i shall have courage to take the second step, the step that will resolve all; when god will grant me the grace to do this, i know not. pray with me that i may not have too long to wait. "farewell, george, farewell for ever! "victor." berger stared for a long while at these lines, his lips trembled--he was very sore at heart. then he drew a candle towards him, lit it, and held the letter in its flame until it had turned to ashes. "farewell, thou best and purest of men," he whispered to himself, and a sudden tear ran down his cheek. chapter xiv. three years had passed, it was the summer of . bright and hot, the june sun shone upon the valley of the rhine ripening the vineyards that hung upon its rocky declivities. the boat steaming down the valley from mayence to the holy city of cologne, had its sheltering awning carefully stretched over the deck, and all went merrily on board, merrily as ever. more beautiful landscapes there may be in the world, but none that make the heart more glad. and so thought two grave-looking men who had come aboard at mayence that morning. they had come from austria, and were going to london; they did not want to miss the opportunity of seeing the beautiful river, but at the beginning of the journey they made but a poor use of the favourable day. they sat there oppressed and scarcely looking up, consulting together about the weighty business that lay on their shoulders. but an hour later, when they got into nassau, they yielded to the charm of the scenery, and as they glided by rüdesheim, they began to consider whether, after all, the rhine was not the proper place to drink rhine-wine, and when they passed the castle called the pfalz at caub, they first saw this venerable building through their spectacles, and then through the green-gold light of the brimming glasses they were holding to their eyes. these two men were dr. george berger of bolosch and a fellow barrister from vienna. they had a difficult task to perform in london. one of the largest iron-foundries in austria, that at bolosch, had got into difficulties, and an attempt to stave off bankruptcy had failed, less from the action of the creditors, than from the miserable red-tapism of the chief justice of bolosch, herr von werner. the foundry, which employed thousands of men, would be utterly ruined if it did not succeed in obtaining foreign capital. with this object, these two representatives of the firm were making their way to england. on the rhine, everybody forgets their cares and this was their good-fortune too. and so greatly had the lovely river, which both now saw for the first time, taken possession of their hearts, that they could not part company with it even at cologne, where most people went ashore. they resolved to continue the journey by the river as far as arnhem, and they paced up and down the now empty deck cheerfully talking in the cool of the evening. no mountains, no castles, were any longer reflected in the stream, but the look of its shores was still pleasant, and when they saw the light of dying day spread its rosy net over the broad and swiftly flowing waters, they did not repent their resolve, and extolled the day that had ended as beautiful as it had begun. the shades of evening fell, the banks of the river grew more and more flat and bare, factories became more and more plentiful, and behind dusseldorf, they saw the red glare of countless blast-furnaces, brightly glowing in the dark. this sight reminded them of their task. "who knows," sighed berger's friend dr. moldenhauer, "how soon these fires at home may not be extinguished! and why? because of the narrow-mindedness of one single man. nothing in my life ever roused my indignation more than our dealings with your chief justice! what pedantry! what shortsightedness! now his predecessor, baron sendlingen, was a different sort of man!" berger sighed deeply. "that he was!" he replied. "the werners stay, the sendlingens go," continued dr. moldenhauer. "and they are allowed to go cheerfully, nay, even forced to go! at least it was generally said that, when baron sendlingen suddenly retired a few years ago, it was not on account of heart-disease, as officially reported, but because he had had a difference with the minister of justice. the regret at this was so great that his excellency had to hear many a reproach." "perhaps unjustly for once," said berger, heavy at heart. "i don't think so," cried moldenhauer. "sendlingen certainly went away in deep dudgeon, otherwise he would not have renounced his pension and then left austria for ever. even his brother-in-law, count karolberg, does not know where he has gone. you were very intimate with him, do you know?" "no!" "count karolberg thinks he may have died suddenly in some of his travels abroad." "that too is possible," answered berger shortly; he was anxious to drop the subject. but moldenhauer stuck to his theme. "what a thousand pities it is!" he continued. "how great a lawyer he was, his last work, 'on responsibility and punishment in child-murder,' which appeared anonymously some three years ago, most clearly shows--you know the book of course." "yes," said berger, "but i doubt whether it is by sendlingen." this was an untruth, he had never doubted it. "it is attributed to other writers as well," replied dr. moldenhauer, "but his brother-in-law is convinced that it is by him. he says he recognised the style and also some of the thoughts, which sendlingen explained to him in conversation. whoever the author may be, he need not have concealed his identity. the work is the finest ever written on this subject and has made a great sensation. it is chiefly owing to its influence, that our new penal code so definitely emphasizes the question of unsoundness of mind in such crimes, and has so materially lessened the punishment for them." he talked for a long time of the excellencies of the work, but berger hardly heard him, and was silent and absent-minded for the rest of the evening. when moldenhauer retired to his cabin for the night, berger still remained on deck; he was fascinated, he said, by this wondrous spectacle of the night. and indeed the aspect of the scene was strange enough and not without its charm. the moon-light lay in a faint glimmer on the stream that here, having almost poured forth its endless waters, was slowly flowing with a gentle murmur towards its grave, the vast sandy plain of the sea. on the level shores, the dim light showed the distant, dusky outlines of solitary high houses and windmills, and then again came blast-furnaces, smoking and flaming, denser and denser was the forest of them the further the boat glided on, and, here and there, where one stood close to the shore, it threw its blood-red reflex far on to the waters reaching almost to the boat, so that its lurid light and the faint lustre of the celestial luminary, seemed to be struggling for the mastery of it. the lonely passenger on the deck kept his eyes riveted on the scene, but his thoughts were far away. his recent conversation had powerfully stirred up the memory of his unhappy friend. since that last letter he had received no line, no sign or token of any sort from him. why? he asked himself. from mistrust? impossible. from caution? that would be exaggerated; the writing on the envelope would not betray to any meddlesome person in what corner of the earth he had buried himself with his child. besides he had no need to be apprehensive of any inquiry; no one knew of his child, victorine lippert's escape from prison had never been cleared up, the investigation had soon after been discontinued without result. the governor of the prison had been reprimanded for want of care in searching the cell, the little door in the wall had been bricked up, so that herr von werner had never been able to make use of the arrangement which he had thought so "ingenious"--those were the only consequences. among the prison officials as among the lower classes, the opinion was sometimes expressed that it was count riesner-graskowitz who had liberated his sweetheart, but this was not believed in higher circles; against sendlingen, however, there was never the slightest breath of suspicion. sendlingen himself must know this well enough, otherwise he would not have dared to let his book appear, that curious work in which every reader might perceive beneath the stiff, solid legal terminology, the beatings of a deeply-moved heart. he had not put his name to it, but he must have known that his name would rise to the lips of anyone who had carefully read his earlier writings. if he had not feared this, he might well have ventured upon a letter. if he was none the less silent, it must be because he preferred to be silent. had he, perhaps, thought berger, not had the courage to take that second step, had he perhaps renounced the intention and was now ashamed to confess it? that would be superfluous anxiety indeed. is there a man in the wide world, who would have the heart to blame him for this? or was he silent because he could speak no more? the thought had never entered his head before; now in this lonely hour of night it overmastered him. of course, his brother-in-law was right, he had died a sudden death and now slept his last sleep somewhere in a strange land and under a strange name. and if that were so, would it be cause for complaint? would not death have been a deliverer here? softly murmuring, the waters of the river glided on, not a sound came from its banks; in deep and solemn stillness, night lay upon the land and waters. the solitary figure on deck alone could find no rest, and the early dawn was trembling in the east over the distant hills of guelderland, ere he at length went in search of sleep. he had scarcely rested a couple of hours when the steward knocked at his cabin-door--the passengers were to come on deck, the boat was approaching lobith, on the dutch frontier, where the luggage had to be examined. the two travellers answered to the call. the steamer was already nearing the shore by the landing stage of the village of which the custom-house seemed the only inhabitable building. the dutch customs officers in their curious uniforms came on deck. the were speedily finished with the luggage of the two lawyers, as also with that of the few other passengers. on the other hand four mighty trunks, which the captain had with him, gave them much trouble. they were full throughout of things liable to duty: new clothes, linen, lace and articles of luxury. they required troublesome measuring, weighing and calculation. half an hour had passed, and scarcely the half had been gone through. "we shall miss the train at arnhem," said berger turning impatiently to the captain. "we must be in london to-morrow, you are responsible for the delay." "i shall make up the time by putting on steam," he reassuringly said in his broad cologne dialect. "excuse me, sir, but i did not imagine that women's finery would take up so much time." "you are getting a trousseau for a daughter, i suppose." "god forbid! thank heaven, i am unmarried. i have, out of pure goodnature, brought these things for someone else from cologne and undertaken to pay the duty for him. it is the most convenient thing to him, though certainly not to me. but what would one not do for a compatriot. he is a herr von tessenau." "tessenau?" the name seemed familiar to berger, but he could not remember where he had heard or read it. "yes, that is his name," said the captain. "he comes from bavaria, and is said to have been in the diplomatic service. he is now living with his daughter at oosterdaal house near huissen, the station before arnhem. i know both of them well, they sometimes use my boat for the journey to arnhem, and as they are such nice people, i could not refuse them this service. the wedding, which is to take place the day after to-morrow, would otherwise have had to be postponed--ask women and lovers." "so fräulein von tessenau is the happy bride?" "the daughter of the old gentleman, yes--but she is a 'frau,' a young widow. her name is von tessenau, because she was married to a cousin. it seems that she lost her husband after a brief married life, for she is still very young, scarcely twenty-two. a beautiful, gentle lady and still looks quite girlish. but i must hurry up these easy-going mynheers." he turned to the customs officers and paid them the required duty. they left the steamer which now began to proceed at a much greater speed. notwithstanding this, moldenhauer was pacing up and down excitedly, now and then consulting timetables and pulling out his watch every five minutes. it was another cause that robbed berger of calm. "if it should be they?" the thought returned to him however often he might say: "nonsense! an old father and a young daughter--the conjunction is common enough--and i know nothing else about them. that i must often have heard the name tessenau tells rather against the supposition--for sendlingen would hardly have chosen the name of some austrian family for his pseudonym!" still his indefinite presentiment gave him no rest, and he at length went up to the captain! "i once," he began, "knew a family of von tessenau, and would be very pleased if i were perhaps unexpectedly to come across them here. the old gentleman, you say, comes from bavaria?" "yes, you must certainly be a countryman of his?" "no. i am an austrian." "then the two dialects must be very much alike for you speak just like him. that he comes from bavaria i know for certain. herr willem van der weyden told me so quite recently, and he must surely know, as he is to become his son-in-law." "who is the bridegroom?" "a capital fellow," replied the captain. "a man of magnificent build--no longer young, somewhere in the forties i should say, but stately, brave and capable--all who know him, praise him. he holds a high position in batavia, he is manager of the java mines. some ten months ago he came back to europe, after a long absence, on a year's furlough: to find a wife, people say. none seemed to please him however. then he came to arnhem where his brother is settled, and in an excursion in the country about, he accidentally got to know the young frau von tessenau at oosterdaal house, and fell in love with her. there seemed at first to be great obstacles in the way; at all events he was always very melancholy when he rode on my boat from arnhem to huissen. well one day he was very happy, the betrothal was solemnized, and now the wedding is to come off. yes," added the captain pleasantly, "when one is everlastingly taking the same journey, one gets to know people by degrees and kills time by sharing their joys and sorrows." "and is herr van der weyden going back to java again?" "yes, in a month from now, when his furlough will be up. he is naturally going to take his young wife with him, and the old gentleman is going to join them too. he has no other relations. the father and daughter lived hitherto in great retirement with an old house-keeper and an equally old man-servant. but if you are interested in the family, come and look over when we get to huissen. the old man-servant at least, will be at the landing-stage to receive the trunks, and perhaps herr von tessenau himself." "do you know what the man-servant is called?" berger's voice trembled at this question. "franz is his name." the captain did not notice how pale berger had become, how hastily he turned away. "no more room for doubt," he thought. but the doubt did rise again. that some details agreed, might only be a coincidence, and the name of the man-servant--such a common name--was not sufficient proof. besides how much was against the supposition! it was inconceivable that sendlingen should have deceived his future son-in-law and passed off victorine as a widow! "it would be outrageous to impute such a thing to him!" he thought. with growing impatience, he looked out for the landing-stage, the steamboat had long since left the river and was steaming along the narrow pannerden canal. the monotonous, fruitful, thoroughly dutch landscape extended far and wide; rich meadows on which cattle were pasturing; narrow canals, on which heavily laden boats drawn by horses on the banks, slowly made their way; on the horizon a few windmills lazily turned by their large sails. at length a few large, villa-like buildings came in sight. "that is huissen," said the captain. "we will see who is at the landing-stage." he produced a telescope. "right, there is the man-servant," he said, handing berger the telescope. "see if you know the man." berger only held the glass to his eye for a second and then handed it back to the captain. "no," he said, "i don't know him, it must be another family of von tessenau." he went down to the cabin and stayed there, till the boat had got well beyond the landing-stage. it had been franz. berger had to stay in london a week before his task was done. he left the completion of the agreement to his colleague, and began his journey home. at first he intended to go by dover and calais. but at the station in london he was overcome by his feelings; he could not let his friend depart forever without seeing him again. he went back by holland, and the next day was in arnhem. not until he was in the carriage which he had hired to take him to oosterdaal, was he visited by scruples, the same sort of feeling which a week before had kept him from remaining on the deck of the steamer. was it not indelicate and selfish to gratify his own longing at the price of deeply and painfully stirring up his friend's heart? sendlingen did not wish to see him again, otherwise he would have written and told him of his whereabouts. and what would he not feel if he was so suddenly reminded of the fatality of his life, if his wounds were suddenly torn open again just as they were beginning to heal? and when berger thought of victorine, he altogether lost courage to continue the journey. unfriendly,--nay it would be cruel, inhuman, to remind the newly-married girl of the misery of the past, and to plunge her in fatal embarrassment. the roof of the house was already visible in the distance above the tops of the trees, when these reflections overmastered berger. "stop, back to arnhem!" he ordered the driver. but that could not be done at once; the horses would have to be fed first, explained the driver. the carriage proceeded still nearer the house, and stopped at a little friendly-looking inn opposite the entrance to the avenue of poplars which led up to the door. while the driver drove into the yard, the landlady suggested to berger to take the refreshment he had ordered in front of the house. this, however, he declined and entered the inn-parlour. his remorse increased every minute, and he feared to be seen, if by chance one of the occupants of the house went by. sighing deeply, he looked out of the window at the driver leisurely unharnessing his horses. the landlady, a young, plump, little woman, tried to console him by telling him he would not have to wait more than an hour. she spoke in broken german; she had been maid to the young german lady up at the house, she said, and had learnt the language there. they were kind, good people at oosterdaal, the driver had told her that the gentleman was going to have driven there, why had he given up the idea? they would certainly be very glad to see a countryman again, even if he were only a slight acquaintance. no german had ever come to see them, not even at the wedding. the festivities had altogether been very quiet, but very nice. had the gentry no relations in germany then? "how can i tell you," replied berger impatiently. "i don't know them." "indeed?" she asked astonished. "then i suppose you have come to buy the house?" several people had been with that intention, she added, but herr von tessenau had already made it over to his son-in-law, and he to his brother, herr jan van der weyden. in a fortnight they were all going to batavia. the housekeeper, fräulein brigitta, too, and the old german man-servant. "but won't you go up to the house after all?" she asked again. before he could answer, however, she cried out: "there they come!" and flew to the window. a carriage went by at a leisurely trot. "do come here," cried the landlady. berger had retired deeper into the room, but he could still plainly see his friend. sendlingen was looking fresher and stronger than when he saw him last; but his hair had the silver-white hue of old age, although he could hardly have reached the middle of the fifties. but in the young, blooming, happy woman at his side, berger would scarcely have recognized his once unfortunate client, if he had met her under other circumstances. she was just laughingly bending forward and straightening the tie of her husband opposite her. the stately, fair-haired man smilingly submitted to the operation. "how happy they are!" cried the landlady. "but they deserve it. why the carriage is stopping," she cried, bending out of the window. "what an honour, they are going to come in." berger turned pale. but in the next instant he breathed again: the carriage drove on. "oh, no!" cried the landlady, "only franz has got down! good day!" she cried to the old man as he went by. "a glass of wine!" "no," answered franz. "i am only to tell you to come up to the house. but for the matter of that as i _am_ here----" then berger heard his footsteps approaching on the floor outside; the door was opened. "well, a glass of----" he began, but the words died on his lips. pale as death, he started back and stared at berger as if he had seen a ghost. "it is i, franz," said berger, himself very pale. "don't be afraid--i only want----" "you have come to warn us?" he exclaimed, trembling all over as he approached berger. "it is all discovered, is it not?" "no!" replied berger. "why, what is there to discover?" he made a sign to draw franz's attention to the landlady, who was inquisitively drinking in the scene. "i am glad to see you," he said meaningly. "i am going to continue my journey at once." "excuse me, marie," said franz, turning to her, "but i have something to say to this gentleman. he is an old acquaintance." "after all!" she cried, and left the room shaking her head. "she will listen," whispered berger. "come here, franz, and sit beside me." "oh, how terrified i am," he replied in the same whisper. "so people suspect nothing? it would have been frightful if misfortune had come now, now, when everything is going so well. certainly my fears were foolish; how should it be found out? we had arranged everything with such care: even the duplicate keys were not made at bolosch, but at dresden, where brigitta was waiting for us." "enough!" said berger, checking him. "i don't wish to know anything about it. how has baron sendlingen been since?" "bad enough at first!" replied franz. "we did not eat, nor sleep, and we fell into a worse decline than at bolosch--but it was perhaps less from the fear of discovery than from remorse. and yet we had only done, what had to be done--isn't that so, dr. berger?" berger looked on the ground and was silent. old franz sighed deeply. "if even you--" he began, but he interrupted himself and continued his story. "gradually we became calmer again. fear vanished though remorse remained, but for this too there was a salve in seeing how the poor child blossomed again. then we began to write a book. it deals with the punishment of--h'm. dr. berger----" "i know the work," said berger. "indeed? we did not put our name to it. well, while we were working at the book, we forgot our own sorrow, and later on, after the work had appeared and all the newspapers were saying that it would have great influence, there were moments when we seemed happy again. then came this business with the dutchman, and we got as sad and despairing as ever. but we took courage and told the man everything; our real name, and that we were only called von tessenau here----" "how did he come by this name?" asked berger. "it sounds so familiar to me." "probably because it is one of the many titles of the family. tessenau was the name of an estate in carinthia, which once belonged to the family. we were obliged to choose this name, because on settling here it was necessary to prove our identity to the police. well, we confessed this to herr willem and also what the young lady's plight was----" berger gave a sigh of relief. "we said to him: she is not called von tessenau because she was married to a cousin, but because we adopted the name here with the proper formalities. she was never married, she was betrayed by a scoundrel. that we said no more, nothing of the deed that brought her to prison, nothing of the way she was released--that, dr. berger, is surely excusable." "of course!" assented berger. "and herr van der weyden?" "acted bravely and magnanimously, because he is a brave and magnanimous man, god bless him! he made her happy, her and himself. and now at length we got peace of heart once more. we are going to batavia. may it continue as heretofore!" "amen!" said berger deeply moved. "farewell, franz." "you are not going up to the house?" "no. don't tell him of my visit till you are on the sea. and say to him that i will always think of him with love and respect. with _respect_, franz, do not forget that!" he shook hands with the old servant, got into his carriage, and drove back to arnhem. chapter xv. three weeks later, on a glowing hot august day, the austrian minister of justice sat in his office, conferring with one of his subordinates, when an attendant brought him a card; the gentleman, he said, was waiting in the ante-room and would not be denied admittance. "sendlingen!" read the minister. "this is a surprise; it has not been known for years whether he was alive or dead. excuse me," he said to his companion, "but i cannot very well keep him waiting." the official departed, sendlingen was shown in. he was very pale; the expression of his features was gloomy, but resolved. the minister rose and offered his hand with the friendliest smile. "welcome to vienna," he cried. "i hope that you are completely recovered, and are coming to me to offer your services to the state once more." "no, your excellency," replied sendlingen. "forgive me, if i cannot take your hand. i will spare you having to regret it in the next instant. for i do not come to offer you my services as judge, but to deliver myself into the hands of justice. i am a criminal and desire to undergo the punishment due to me." the minister turned pale and drew back: "the man is mad," he thought. the thought must have been legible in his face, for sendlingen continued: "do not be afraid, i am in my senses. i have indeed abused my office in a fashion so monstrous, that perhaps nothing like it has ever happened before. i released from prison, by means of official keys, a condemned woman, who was to have been executed the next day, and suggested, furthered, and carried out her flight to a foreign country. her name was victorine lippert: the crime was done on the night of - february, ." "i remember the case," muttered the minister. "she escaped in the most mysterious way. but you! why should you have done this?" "a father saved his child: victorine is my natural daughter." the minister wiped the sweat from his forehead. "this is a frightful business." he once more searchingly looked at his uncomfortable visitor. "he certainly seems to be in his senses," he thought. "allow me to tell you how every thing came about?" the minister nodded and pointed to a chair. sendlingen remained standing. he began to narrate. clearly and quietly, in a hollow, monotonous voice, he told of his relations with herminie lippert, then how he had made the discovery in the lists of the criminal court, and of his struggles whether he should preside at the trial or not. "i had the strength to refuse," he continued. "my sense of duty conquered. sentence of death was pronounced. it was--and perhaps you will believe me although you hear it at such a moment, from such a man--it was a judicial murder, such as could have been decreed by a court of justice alone. and therefore my first thought was: against this wrong, wrong alone can help. i sought out the prison keys, and for some hours was firmly resolved to release my daughter. but then my sense of duty--perhaps more strictly speaking my egoism--conquered. for i said to myself that i, constituted as i was, could not commit this crime without some day making atonement for it. i knew quite well even then, that an hour would come in my life, like the present, and i could not find it in my heart to end as a criminal. but my conscience cried: 'then your child will die!' and so suicide seemed to me the only thing left. i was resolved to kill myself; whether i could not bring myself to it at the last moment, whether a chance saved me--i do not know: there is a veil cast over that hour that i have never since been able to pierce. i survived, i saw my daughter, and recovered my clearness of mind; the voice of nature had conquered. i now knew that it was highly probable that there was no means that could save us both, that the question was whether i should perish, or she, and i no longer doubted that it must be i. i was resolved to liberate her, and then to expiate my crime; but until extreme necessity compelled, i wanted to act according to law and justice. that i did so, my conduct proves when the supreme court ordered a fresh examination of the chief witness. everything depended upon that; i made over this inquiry also to another--who assuredly did not bring the truth to light. the supreme court confirmed the sentence of death; it was pronounced upon me, not upon my child; that extreme necessity had now arrived, i now knew that i must become a criminal, and only waited for the result of the counsel's petition for pardon, because the preparations for the act required time, and because i first wanted to save some men unjustly accused of political offences." "i remember, the workmen," said the minister. he still seemed dazed, it cost him an effort to follow the unhappy man's train of thought. "one thing only i do not understand," he slowly said, passing his hand over his forehead. "why did you not discover yourself to me, or why did you not appeal to the emperor for pardon?" "for two reasons," replied sendlingen. "i have all my life striven to execute justice without respect of persons. it was ever a tormenting thought to me that the aristocrat, the plutocrat, often receives where the law alone should decide, favours that would never fall to the lot of the poor and humble. and therefore it was painful to me to lay claim to such a favour for myself." "you are indeed a man of rare sense of justice," cried the minister. "and that such a fate should have, befallen you....." he paused. "is tragic indeed," supplemented sendlingen, his lips trembling. "certainly it is---- but i will not make, myself out better than i am; there was another reason why i hesitated to appeal to the emperor. what would have been the result, your excellency? commutation to penal servitude for life, or for twenty years. the mere announcement of this punishment would have so profoundly affected this weakly, broken-down girl, that she would scarcely have survived it, and if she had--a complete pardon could not have been attained for ten, for eight, in the most favourable case for five years, and she would not have lived to see it. i was persuaded of that, quite firmly persuaded, still," his voice became lower, "i too was only a human being. when i received the confirmation of the death-sentence by the emperor, cowardice and selfishness got the better of me, i journeyed to vienna--it was the th february." "the date of the attempt!" cried the minister. "what a frightful coincidence! thus does fate sport with the children of men." "so i thought at first!" replied sendlingen. "but then i saw that that coincidence had not decided my fate: it was sealed from the first. by my whole character and by all that had happened. in this sense there is a fate, in this sense what happens in the world _must_ happen, and my fate is only a proof of what takes place in millions of cases. i returned to bolosch and liberated my daughter. how i succeeded, i am prepared to tell my judges so far as my own share in the act is concerned. i had no accomplice among the prison officials. your excellency will believe me, although i can only call to witness my own word, the word of honour of a criminal!" "i believe you," said the minister. "you took the girl abroad?" "yes, and sought to make good my neglect. fate was gracious to me, my daughter is cared for. and i may now do that which i was from the first resolved to do, although i did not know when the day would be vouchsafed me to dare it--i may present myself to you, the supreme guardian of justice in this land, and say: 'deliver me to my judges!'" sendlingen was silent; the minister, too, at first could find no words. white as a ghost, he paced up and down the room. "but there can be no question of such a thing!" he cried at length. "for thousands of reasons! we are not barbarians!" "it can be and must be! i claim my right!" "but just consider!" cried the minister, wringing his hands. "it would be the most fearful blow that the dignity of justice could receive. a former chief-justice as a criminal in the dock! a man like you! besides you deserve no punishment! when i consider what you have suffered, how all this has come about--good god, i should be a monster if i were not moved, if i did not say: if this man were perhaps really a criminal, he has already atoned for it a thousand times over." "then you refuse me justice?" "it would be injustice! go in peace, my lord, and return to your daughter." "i cannot. i could not endure the pangs of my conscience! if you refuse to punish me, i shall openly accuse myself!" "great heavens! this only was wanting!" the minister drew nearer to him. "i beseech you, let these things rest in peace! do not bring upon that office of which you were so long an ornament, the worst blemish that could befal it. and your act would have still worse consequences: it would undermine the authority of the state. consider the times in which we live--the revolution is smouldering under its ashes." "i cannot help it, your excellency. do your duty voluntarily, and do not oblige me to compel you to it." the minister looked at him: in his face there was the quiet of immovable resolve. "a fanatic," he thought, "what shall i do with him?" he walked about the room in a state of irresolution. "my lord," he then began, "you would oblige the state to take defensive measures. accuse yourself openly by a pamphlet published abroad, and i would give out that you were mad. i should be believed, you need not doubt." "i do doubt it," replied sendlingen. "i should take care that there was no room left for any question as to my sanity. once more, and for the last time, i ask your excellency, to what court am i to surrender myself?" again the minister for a long while paced helplessly up and down. at length a saving thought seemed to occur to him. "be it so," he said. "do what you cannot help doing; we, on the other hand, will do what our duty commands. you naturally want to conceal where your daughter is now living?" sendlingen turned still paler and made no reply. "but we shall endeavor to find out, even if it should cost thousands, and if we should have to employ all the police in the world. we shall find your daughter and demand her extradition. there is no state that would refuse to deliver a legally condemned murderess! you must decide, my lord, whether this is to happen." sendlingen's face had grown deadly pale--a fit of shuddering shook his limbs. there was a long silence in the room, it endured perhaps five minutes. at length sendlingen muttered: "i submit to your excellency's will. may god forgive you what you have just done to me." the minister gave a sigh of relief. "i will take that on my conscience," he said. "i restore the father to his child. farewell, my lord." sendlingen did not take the proffered hand, he bowed silently and departed. * * * * * two days later dr. george berger received a letter of sendlingen's, dated from trieste. it briefly informed his friend of the purport of his interview with the minister of justice, and concluded as follows: "it is denied me to expiate my crime: it is impossible to me, a criminal, to go unpunished through life; so i am going to meet death. when you read this, all will be over. break the news to my daughter, who has already set out on her journey, as gently as possible; hide the truth from her, i shall help you by the manner in which i am doing the deed. and do not forget franz, he is waiting for me at cologne; i was only able to get quit of him under a pretext. "farewell, thou good and faithful friend, and do not condemn me. you once said to me: there must be a solution of these complications, a liberating solution. i do not know if there was any other, any better than that which has come to pass. for see, my child has received her just due, and so too has justice: with a higher price than that of his life, nobody can atone for a crime. and i--i have seen my child's happiness, i have honourably paid all my debts, and now i shall find peace forever--i too have received my due!... and now i may hope for your respect again! "farewell! and thanks a thousand times! "victor." berger, deeply moved, had just finished reading this letter, when his clerk entered with the morning paper in his hand. "have you read this, sir?" he asked. "baron sendlingen----" he laid the paper before his chief and this was what was in it: "a telegram from vienna brings us the sad news that baron von sendlingen, the retired chief justice and one of the most highly esteemed men in austria, fell overboard while proceeding by the lloyd steamer last night from trieste to venice. he was on deck late in the evening and has not been seen since; very likely, while leaning too far over the bulwarks, a sudden giddiness may have seized him so that he fell into the sea and disappeared. the idea of suicide cannot for personal reasons be entertained for a moment; the last person he spoke to, the captain of the steamer, testifies to the cheerful demeanour of the deceased. he leaves no family, but everyone who knew him will mourn him. "all honour to his memory!" "all honour to his memory!" muttered berger, burying his face in his hands. the end. none transcriber's note: inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. obvious typographical errors have been corrected. italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal signs=. on page , a reference to "uncle john" has been changed to "uncle joseph." [illustration: "i sit down unasked, and i announce my own name--andrew treverton."--[see page .]] the dead secret; a novel. by wilkie collins, author of "the woman in white," "poor miss finch," "no name," "man and wife," "the moonstone," &c. _with illustrations._ _new york:_ harper & brothers, publishers, franklin square. . wilkie collins's novels. harper's illustrated library edition. _ mo, cloth, $ per volume._ _armadale._ _basil._ _hide-and-seek._ _the new magdalen._ _no name._ _man and wife._ _poor miss finch._ _the moonstone._ _the woman in white._ _the dead secret._ _queen of hearts._ published by harper & brothers, new york. entered according to act of congress, in the year , by harper & brothers, in the office of the librarian of congress, at washington. the dead secret. book i. chapter i. the twenty-third of august, . "will she last out the night, i wonder?" "look at the clock, mathew." "ten minutes past twelve! she has lasted the night out. she has lived, robert, to see ten minutes of the new day." these words were spoken in the kitchen of a large country-house situated on the west coast of cornwall. the speakers were two of the men-servants composing the establishment of captain treverton, an officer in the navy, and the eldest male representative of an old cornish family. both the servants communicated with each other restrainedly, in whispers--sitting close together, and looking round expectantly toward the door whenever the talk flagged between them. "it's an awful thing," said the elder of the men, "for us two to be alone here, at this dark time, counting out the minutes that our mistress has left to live!" "robert," said the other, "you have been in the service here since you were a boy--did you ever hear that our mistress was a play-actress when our master married her?" "how came you to know that?" inquired the elder servant, sharply. "hush!" cried the other, rising quickly from his chair. a bell rang in the passage outside. "is that for one of us?" asked mathew. "can't you tell, by the sound, which is which of those bells yet?" exclaimed robert, contemptuously. "that bell is for sarah leeson. go out into the passage and look." the younger servant took a candle and obeyed. when he opened the kitchen-door, a long row of bells met his eye on the wall opposite. above each of them was painted, in neat black letters, the distinguishing title of the servant whom it was specially intended to summon. the row of letters began with housekeeper and butler, and ended with kitchen-maid and footman's boy. looking along the bells, mathew easily discovered that one of them was still in motion. above it were the words lady's-maid. observing this, he passed quickly along the passage, and knocked at an old-fashioned oak door at the end of it. no answer being given, he opened the door and looked into the room. it was dark and empty. "sarah is not in the housekeeper's room," said mathew, returning to his fellow-servant in the kitchen. "she is gone to her own room, then," rejoined the other. "go up and tell her that she is wanted by her mistress." the bell rang again as mathew went out. "quick!--quick!" cried robert. "tell her she is wanted directly. wanted," he continued to himself in lower tones, "perhaps for the last time!" mathew ascended three flights of stairs--passed half-way down a long arched gallery--and knocked at another old-fashioned oak door. this time the signal was answered. a low, clear, sweet voice, inside the room, inquired who was waiting without? in a few hasty words mathew told his errand. before he had done speaking the door was quietly and quickly opened, and sarah leeson confronted him on the threshold, with her candle in her hand. not tall, not handsome, not in her first youth--shy and irresolute in manner--simple in dress to the utmost limits of plainness--the lady's-maid, in spite of all these disadvantages, was a woman whom it was impossible to look at without a feeling of curiosity, if not of interest. few men, at first sight of her, could have resisted the desire to find out who she was; few would have been satisfied with receiving for answer, she is mrs. treverton's maid; few would have refrained from the attempt to extract some secret information for themselves from her face and manner; and none, not even the most patient and practiced of observers, could have succeeded in discovering more than that she must have passed through the ordeal of some great suffering at some former period of her life. much in her manner, and more in her face, said plainly and sadly: i am the wreck of something that you might once have liked to see; a wreck that can never be repaired--that must drift on through life unnoticed, unguided, unpitied--drift till the fatal shore is touched, and the waves of time have swallowed up these broken relics of me forever. this was the story that was told in sarah leeson's face--this, and no more. no two men interpreting that story for themselves, would probably have agreed on the nature of the suffering which this woman had undergone. it was hard to say, at the outset, whether the past pain that had set its ineffaceable mark on her had been pain of the body or pain of the mind. but whatever the nature of the affliction she had suffered, the traces it had left were deeply and strikingly visible in every part of her face. her cheeks had lost their roundness and their natural color; her lips, singularly flexible in movement and delicate in form, had faded to an unhealthy paleness; her eyes, large and black and overshadowed by unusually thick lashes, had contracted an anxious startled look, which never left them, and which piteously expressed the painful acuteness of her sensibility, the inherent timidity of her disposition. so far, the marks which sorrow or sickness had set on her were the marks common to most victims of mental or physical suffering. the one extraordinary personal deterioration which she had undergone consisted in the unnatural change that had passed over the color of her hair. it was as thick and soft, it grew as gracefully, as the hair of a young girl; but it was as gray as the hair of an old woman. it seemed to contradict, in the most startling manner, every personal assertion of youth that still existed in her face. with all its haggardness and paleness, no one could have looked at it and supposed for a moment that it was the face of an elderly woman. wan as they might be, there was not a wrinkle in her cheeks. her eyes, viewed apart from their prevailing expression of uneasiness and timidity, still preserved that bright, clear moisture which is never seen in the eyes of the old. the skin about her temples was as delicately smooth as the skin of a child. these and other physical signs which never mislead, showed that she was still, as to years, in the very prime of her life. sickly and sorrow-stricken as she was, she looked, from the eyes downward, a woman who had barely reached thirty years of age. from the eyes upward, the effect of her abundant gray hair, seen in connection with her face, was not simply incongruous--it was absolutely startling; so startling as to make it no paradox to say that she would have looked most natural, most like herself, if her hair had been dyed. in her case, art would have seemed to be the truth, because nature looked like falsehood. what shock had stricken her hair, in the very maturity of its luxuriance, with the hue of an unnatural old age? was it a serious illness, or a dreadful grief, that had turned her gray in the prime of her womanhood? that question had often been agitated among her fellow-servants, who were all struck by the peculiarities of her personal appearance, and rendered a little suspicious of her, as well, by an inveterate habit that she had of talking to herself. inquire as they might, however, their curiosity was always baffled. nothing more could be discovered than that sarah leeson was, in the common phrase, touchy on the subject of her gray hair and her habit of talking to herself, and that sarah leeson's mistress had long since forbidden every one, from her husband downward, to ruffle her maid's tranquillity by inquisitive questions. she stood for an instant speechless, on that momentous morning of the twenty-third of august, before the servant who summoned her to her mistress's death-bed--the light of the candle flaring brightly over her large, startled, black eyes, and the luxuriant, unnatural gray hair above them. she stood a moment silent--her hand trembling while she held the candlestick, so that the extinguisher lying loose in it rattled incessantly--then thanked the servant for calling her. the trouble and fear in her voice, as she spoke, seemed to add to its sweetness; the agitation of her manner took nothing away from its habitual gentleness, its delicate, winning, feminine restraint. mathew, who, like the other servants, secretly distrusted and disliked her for differing from the ordinary pattern of professed lady's-maids, was, on this particular occasion, so subdued by her manner and her tone as she thanked him, that he offered to carry her candle for her to the door of her mistress's bed-chamber. she shook her head, and thanked him again, then passed before him quickly on her way out of the gallery. the room in which mrs. treverton lay dying was on the floor beneath. sarah hesitated twice before she knocked at the door. it was opened by captain treverton. the instant she saw her master she started back from him. if she had dreaded a blow she could hardly have drawn away more suddenly, or with an expression of greater alarm. there was nothing in captain treverton's face to warrant the suspicion of ill-treatment, or even of harsh words. his countenance was kind, hearty, and open; and the tears were still trickling down it which he had shed by his wife's bedside. "go in," he said, turning away his face. "she does not wish the nurse to attend; she only wishes for you. call me if the doctor--" his voice faltered, and he hurried away without attempting to finish the sentence. sarah leeson, instead of entering her mistress's room, stood looking after her master attentively, with her pale cheeks turned to a deathly whiteness--with an eager, doubting, questioning terror in her eyes. when he had disappeared round the corner of the gallery, she listened for a moment outside the door of the sick-room--whispered affrightedly to herself, "can she have told him?"--then opened the door, with a visible effort to recover her self-control; and, after lingering suspiciously on the threshold for a moment, went in. mrs. treverton's bed-chamber was a large, lofty room, situated in the western front of the house, and consequently overlooking the sea-view. the night-light burning by the bedside displayed rather than dispelled the darkness in the corners of the room. the bed was of the old-fashioned pattern, with heavy hangings and thick curtains drawn all round it. of the other objects in the chamber, only those of the largest and most solid kind were prominent enough to be tolerably visible in the dim light. the cabinets, the wardrobe, the full-length looking-glass, the high-backed arm-chair, these, with the great shapeless bulk of the bed itself, towered up heavily and gloomily into view. other objects were all merged together in the general obscurity. through the open window, opened to admit the fresh air of the new morning after the sultriness of the august night, there poured monotonously into the room the dull, still, distant roaring of the surf on the sandy coast. all outer noises were hushed at that first dark hour of the new day. inside the room the one audible sound was the slow, toilsome breathing of the dying woman, raising itself in its mortal frailness, awfully and distinctly, even through the far thunder-breathing from the bosom of the everlasting sea. "mistress," said sarah leeson, standing close to the curtains, but not withdrawing them, "my master has left the room, and has sent me here in his place." "light!--give me more light." the feebleness of mortal sickness was in the voice; but the accent of the speaker sounded resolute even yet--doubly resolute by contrast with the hesitation of the tones in which sarah had spoken. the strong nature of the mistress and the weak nature of the maid came out, even in that short interchange of words spoken through the curtain of a death-bed. sarah lit two candles with a wavering hand--placed them hesitatingly on a table by the bedside--waited for a moment, looking all round her with suspicious timidity--then undrew the curtains. the disease of which mrs. treverton was dying was one of the most terrible of all the maladies that afflict humanity, one to which women are especially subject, and one which undermines life without, in most cases, showing any remarkable traces of its corroding progress in the face. no uninstructed person, looking at mrs. treverton when her attendant undrew the bed-curtain, could possibly have imagined that she was past all help that mortal skill could offer to her. the slight marks of illness in her face, the inevitable changes in the grace and roundness of its outline, were rendered hardly noticeable by the marvelous preservation of her complexion in all the light and delicacy of its first girlish beauty. there lay her face on the pillow--tenderly framed in by the rich lace of her cap, softly crowned by her shining brown hair--to all outward appearance, the face of a beautiful woman recovering from a slight illness, or reposing after unusual fatigue. even sarah leeson, who had watched her all through her malady, could hardly believe, as she looked at her mistress, that the gates of life had closed behind her, and that the beckoning hand of death was signing to her already from the gates of the grave. some dog's-eared books in paper covers lay on the counterpane of the bed. as soon as the curtain was drawn aside mrs. treverton ordered her attendant by a gesture to remove them. they were plays, underscored in certain places by ink lines, and marked with marginal annotations referring to entrances, exits, and places on the stage. the servants, talking down stairs of their mistress's occupation before her marriage, had not been misled by false reports. their master, after he had passed the prime of life, had, in very truth, taken his wife from the obscure stage of a country theatre, when little more than two years had elapsed since her first appearance in public. the dog's-eared old plays had been once her treasured dramatic library; she had always retained a fondness for them from old associations; and, during the latter part of her illness, they had remained on her bed for days and days together. having put away the plays, sarah went back to her mistress; and, with more of dread and bewilderment in her face than grief, opened her lips to speak. mrs. treverton held up her hand, as a sign that she had another order to give. "bolt the door," she said, in the same enfeebled voice, but with the same accent of resolution which had so strikingly marked her first request to have more light in the room. "bolt the door. let no one in, till i give you leave." "no one?" repeated sarah, faintly. "not the doctor? not even my master?" "not the doctor--not even your master," said mrs. treverton, and pointed to the door. the hand was weak; but even in that momentary action of it there was no mistaking the gesture of command. sarah bolted the door, returned irresolutely to the bedside, fixed her large, eager, startled eyes inquiringly on her mistress's face, and, suddenly bending over her, said in a whisper: "have you told my master?" "no," was the answer. "i sent for him, to tell him--i tried hard to speak the words--it shook me to my very soul, only to think how i should best break it to him--i am so fond of him! i love him so dearly! but i should have spoken in spite of that, if he had not talked of the child. sarah! he did nothing but talk of the child--and that silenced me." sarah, with a forgetfulness of her station which might have appeared extraordinary even in the eyes of the most lenient of mistresses, flung herself back in a chair when the first word of mrs. treverton's reply was uttered, clasped her trembling hands over her face, and groaned to herself, "oh, what will happen! what will happen now!" mrs. treverton's eyes had softened and moistened when she spoke of her love for her husband. she lay silent for a few minutes; the working of some strong emotion in her being expressed by her quick, hard, labored breathing, and by the painful contraction of her eyebrows. ere long, she turned her head uneasily toward the chair in which her attendant was sitting, and spoke again--this time in a voice which had sunk to a whisper. "look for my medicine," said she; "i want it." sarah started up, and with the quick instinct of obedience brushed away the tears that were rolling fast over her cheeks. "the doctor," she said. "let me call the doctor." "no! the medicine--look for the medicine." "which bottle? the opiate--" "no. not the opiate. the other." sarah took a bottle from the table, and looking attentively at the written direction on the label, said that it was not yet time to take that medicine again. "give me the bottle." "oh, pray don't ask me. pray wait. the doctor said it was as bad as dram-drinking, if you took too much." mrs. treverton's clear gray eyes began to flash; the rosy flush deepened on her cheeks; the commanding hand was raised again, by an effort, from the counterpane on which it lay. "take the cork out of the bottle," she said, "and give it to me. i want strength. no matter whether i die in an hour's time or a week's. give me the bottle." "no, no--not the bottle!" said sarah, giving it up, nevertheless, under the influence of her mistress's look. "there are two doses left. wait, pray wait till i get a glass." she turned again toward the table. at the same instant mrs. treverton raised the bottle to her lips, drained it of its contents, and flung it from her on the bed. "she has killed herself!" cried sarah, running in terror to the door. "stop!" said the voice from the bed, more resolute than ever, already. "stop! come back and prop me up higher on the pillows." sarah put her hand on the bolt. "come back!" reiterated mrs. treverton. "while there is life in me, i will be obeyed. come back!" the color began to deepen perceptibly all over her face, and the light to grow brighter in her widely opened eyes. sarah came back; and with shaking hands added one more to the many pillows which supported the dying woman's head and shoulders. while this was being done the bed-clothes became a little discomposed. mrs. treverton shuddered, and drew them up to their former position, close round her neck. "did you unbolt the door?" she asked. "no." "i forbid you to go near it again. get my writing-case, and the pen and ink, from the cabinet near the window." sarah went to the cabinet and opened it; then stopped, as if some sudden suspicion had crossed her mind, and asked what the writing materials were wanted for. "bring them, and you will see." the writing-case, with a sheet of note-paper on it, was placed upon mrs. treverton's knees; the pen was dipped into the ink, and given to her; she paused, closed her eyes for a minute, and sighed heavily; then began to write, saying to her waiting-maid, as the pen touched the paper--"look." sarah peered anxiously over her shoulder, and saw the pen slowly and feebly form these three words: _to my husband_. "oh, no! no! for god's sake, don't write it!" she cried, catching at her mistress's hand--but suddenly letting it go again the moment mrs. treverton looked at her. the pen went on; and more slowly, more feebly, formed words enough to fill a line--then stopped. the letters of the last syllable were all blotted together. "don't!" reiterated sarah, dropping on her knees at the bedside. "don't write it to him if you can't tell it to him. let me go on bearing what i have borne so long already. let the secret die with you and die with me, and be never known in this world--never, never, never!" "the secret must be told," answered mrs. treverton. "my husband ought to know it, and must know it. i tried to tell him, and my courage failed me. i can not trust you to tell him, after i am gone. it must be written. take you the pen; my sight is failing, my touch is dull. take the pen, and write what i tell you." sarah, instead of obeying, hid her face in the bed-cover, and wept bitterly. "you have been with me ever since my marriage," mrs. treverton went on. "you have been my friend more than my servant. do you refuse my last request? you do! fool! look up and listen to me. on your peril, refuse to take the pen. write, or i shall not rest in my grave. _write, or as true as there is a heaven above us, i will come to you from the other world!_" sarah started to her feet with a faint scream. "you make my flesh creep!" she whispered, fixing her eyes on her mistress's face with a stare of superstitious horror. at the same instant, the overdose of the stimulating medicine began to affect mrs. treverton's brain. she rolled her head restlessly from side to side of the pillow--repeated vacantly a few lines from one of the old play-books which had been removed from her bed--and suddenly held out the pen to the servant, with a theatrical wave of the hand, and a glance upward at an imaginary gallery of spectators. "write!" she cried, with an awful mimicry of her old stage voice. "write!" and the weak hand was waved again with a forlorn, feeble imitation of the old stage gesture. closing her fingers mechanically on the pen that was thrust between them, sarah, with her eyes still expressing the superstitious terror which her mistress's words had aroused, waited for the next command. some minutes elapsed before mrs. treverton spoke again. she still retained her senses sufficiently to be vaguely conscious of the effect which the medicine was producing on her, and to be desirous of combating its further progress before it succeeded in utterly confusing her ideas. she asked first for the smelling-bottle, next for some eau de cologne. this last, poured onto her handkerchief and applied to her forehead, seemed to prove successful in partially clearing her faculties. her eyes recovered their steady look of intelligence; and, when she again addressed her maid, reiterating the word "write," she was able to enforce the direction by beginning immediately to dictate in quiet, deliberate, determined tones. sarah's tears fell fast; her lips murmured fragments of sentences in which entreaties, expressions of penitence, and exclamations of fear were all strangely mingled together; but she wrote on submissively, in wavering lines, until she had nearly filled the first two sides of the note-paper. then mrs. treverton paused, looked the writing over, and, taking the pen, signed her name at the end of it. with this effort, her powers of resistance to the exciting effect of the medicine seemed to fail her again. the deep flush began to tinge her cheeks once more, and she spoke hurriedly and unsteadily when she handed the pen back to her maid. "sign!" she cried, beating her hand feebly on the bed-clothes. "sign 'sarah leeson, witness.' no!--write 'accomplice.' take your share of it; i won't have it shifted on me. sign, i insist on it! sign as i tell you." sarah obeyed; and mrs. treverton taking the paper from her, pointed to it solemnly, with a return of the stage gesture which had escaped her a little while back. "you will give this to your master," she said, "when i am dead; and you will answer any questions he puts to you as truly as if you were before the judgment-seat." clasping her hands fast together, sarah regarded her mistress, for the first time, with steady eyes, and spoke to her for the first time in steady tones. "if i only knew that i was fit to die," she said, "oh, how gladly i would change places with you!" "promise me that you will give the paper to your master," repeated mrs. treverton. "promise--no! i won't trust your promise--i'll have your oath. get the bible--the bible the clergyman used when he was here this morning. get it, or i shall not rest in my grave. get it, _or i will come to you from the other world_." the mistress laughed as she reiterated that threat. the maid shuddered, as she obeyed the command which it was designed to impress on her. "yes, yes--the bible the clergyman used," continued mrs. treverton, vacantly, after the book had been produced. "the clergyman--a poor weak man--i frightened him, sarah. he said, 'are you at peace with all the world?' and i said, 'all but one.' you know who." "the captain's brother? oh, don't die at enmity with any body. don't die at enmity even with _him_," pleaded sarah. "the clergyman said so too," murmured mrs. treverton, her eyes beginning to wander childishly round the room, her tones growing suddenly lower and more confused. "'you must forgive him,' the clergyman said. and i said, 'no, i forgive all the world, but not my husband's brother.' the clergyman got up from the bedside, frightened, sarah. he talked about praying for me, and coming back. will he come back?" "yes, yes," answered sarah. "he is a good man--he will come back--and oh! tell him that you forgive the captain's brother! those vile words he spoke of you when you were married will come home to him some day. forgive him--forgive him before you die!" saying those words, she attempted to remove the bible softly out of her mistress's sight. the action attracted mrs. treverton's attention, and roused her sinking faculties into observation of present things. "stop!" she cried, with a gleam of the old resolution flashing once more over the dying dimness of her eyes. she caught at sarah's hand with a great effort, placed it on the bible, and held it there. her other hand wandered a little over the bed-clothes, until it encountered the written paper addressed to her husband. her fingers closed on it, and a sigh of relief escaped her lips. "ah!" she said, "i know what i wanted the bible for. i'm dying with all my senses about me, sarah; you can't deceive me even yet." she stopped again, smiled a little, whispered to herself rapidly, "wait, wait, wait!" then added aloud, with the old stage voice and the old stage gesture: "no! i won't trust you on your promise. i'll have your oath. kneel down. these are my last words in this world--disobey them if you dare!" sarah dropped on her knees by the bed. the breeze outside, strengthening just then with the slow advance of the morning, parted the window-curtains a little, and wafted a breath of its sweet fragrance joyously into the sick-room. the heavy beating hum of the distant surf came in at the same time, and poured out its unresting music in louder strains. then the window-curtains fell to again heavily, the wavering flame of the candle grew steady once more, and the awful silence in the room sank deeper than ever. "swear!" said mrs. treverton. her voice failed her when she had pronounced that one word. she struggled a little, recovered the power of utterance, and went on: "swear that you will not destroy this paper after i am dead." even while she pronounced these solemn words, even at that last struggle for life and strength, the ineradicable theatrical instinct showed, with a fearful inappropriateness, how firmly it kept its place in her mind. sarah felt the cold hand that was still laid on hers lifted for a moment--saw it waving gracefully toward her--felt it descend again, and clasp her own hand with a trembling, impatient pressure. at that final appeal, she answered faintly, "i swear it." "swear that you will not take this paper away with you, if you leave the house, after i am dead." again sarah paused before she answered--again the trembling pressure made itself felt on her hand, but more weakly this time--again the words dropped affrightedly from her lips-- "i swear it." "swear!" mrs. treverton began for the third time. her voice failed her once more; and she struggled vainly to regain the command over it. sarah looked up, and saw signs of convulsion beginning to disfigure the white face--saw the fingers of the white, delicate hand getting crooked as they reached over toward the table on which the medicine-bottles were placed. "you drank it all," she cried, starting to her feet, as she comprehended the meaning of that gesture. "mistress, dear mistress, you drank it all--there is nothing but the opiate left. let me go--let me go and call--" a look from mrs. treverton stopped her before she could utter another word. the lips of the dying woman were moving rapidly. sarah put her ear close to them. at first she heard nothing but panting, quick-drawn breaths--then a few broken words mingled confusedly with them: "i hav'n't done--you must swear--close, close, come close--a third thing--your master--swear to give it--" the last words died away very softly. the lips that had been forming them so laboriously parted on a sudden and closed again no more. sarah sprang to the door, opened it, and called into the passage for help; then ran back to the bedside, caught up the sheet of note-paper on which she had written from her mistress's dictation, and hid it in her bosom. the last look of mrs. treverton's eyes fastened sternly and reproachfully on her as she did this, and kept their expression unchanged, through the momentary distortion of the rest of the features, for one breathless moment. that moment passed, and, with the next, the shadow which goes before the presence of death stole up and shut out the light of life in one quiet instant from all the face. the doctor, followed by the nurse and by one of the servants, entered the room; and, hurrying to the bedside, saw at a glance that the time for his attendance there had passed away forever. he spoke first to the servant who had followed him. "go to your master," he said, "and beg him to wait in his own room until i can come and speak to him." sarah still stood--without moving or speaking, or noticing any one--by the bedside. the nurse, approaching to draw the curtains together, started at the sight of her face, and turned to the doctor. "i think this person had better leave the room, sir?" said the nurse, with some appearance of contempt in her tones and looks. "she seems unreasonably shocked and terrified by what has happened." "quite right," said the doctor. "it is best that she should withdraw.--let me recommend you to leave us for a little while," he added, touching sarah on the arm. she shrank back suspiciously, raised one of her hands to the place where the letter lay hidden in her bosom, and pressed it there firmly, while she held out the other hand for a candle. "you had better rest for a little in your own room," said the doctor, giving her a candle. "stop, though," he continued, after a moment's reflection. "i am going to break the sad news to your master, and i may find that he is anxious to hear any last words that mrs. treverton may have spoken in your presence. perhaps you had better come with me, and wait while i go into captain treverton's room." "no! no!--oh, not now--not now, for god's sake!" speaking those words in low, quick, pleading tones, and drawing back affrightedly to the door, sarah disappeared without waiting a moment to be spoken to again. "a strange woman!" said the doctor, addressing the nurse. "follow her, and see where she goes to, in case she is wanted and we are obliged to send for her. i will wait here until you come back." when the nurse returned she had nothing to report but that she had followed sarah leeson to her own bedroom, had seen her enter it, had listened outside, and had heard her lock the door. "a strange woman!" repeated the doctor. "one of the silent, secret sort." "one of the wrong sort," said the nurse. "she is always talking to herself, and that is a bad sign, in my opinion. i distrusted her, sir, the very first day i entered the house." chapter ii. the child. the instant sarah leeson had turned the key of her bedroom door, she took the sheet of note-paper from its place of concealment in her bosom--shuddering, when she drew it out, as if the mere contact of it hurt her--placed it open on her little dressing-table, and fixed her eyes eagerly on the lines which the note contained. at first they swam and mingled together before her. she pressed her hands over her eyes, for a few minutes, and then looked at the writing again. the characters were clear now--vividly clear, and, as she fancied, unnaturally large and near to view. there was the address: "to my husband;" there the first blotted line beneath, in her dead mistress's handwriting; there the lines that followed, traced by her own pen, with the signature at the end--mrs. treverton's first, and then her own. the whole amounted to but very few sentences, written on one perishable fragment of paper, which the flame of a candle would have consumed in a moment. yet there she sat, reading, reading, reading, over and over again; never touching the note, except when it was absolutely necessary to turn over the first page; never moving, never speaking, never raising her eyes from the paper. as a condemned prisoner might read his death-warrant, so did sarah leeson now read the few lines which she and her mistress had written together not half an hour since. the secret of the paralyzing effect of that writing on her mind lay, not only in itself, but in the circumstances which had attended the act of its production. the oath which had been proposed by mrs. treverton under no more serious influence than the last caprice of her disordered faculties, stimulated by confused remembrances of stage words and stage situations, had been accepted by sarah leeson as the most sacred and inviolable engagement to which she could bind herself. the threat of enforcing obedience to her last commands from beyond the grave, which the mistress had uttered in mocking experiment on the superstitious fears of the maid, now hung darkly over the weak mind of sarah, as a judgment which might descend on her, visibly and inexorably, at any moment of her future life. when she roused herself at last, and pushed away the paper and rose to her feet, she stood quite still for an instant, before she ventured to look behind her. when she did look, it was with an effort and a start, with a searching distrust of the empty dimness in the remoter corners of the room. her old habit of talking to herself began to resume its influence, as she now walked rapidly backward and forward, sometimes along the room and sometimes across it. she repeated incessantly such broken phrases as these: "how can i give him the letter?--such a good master; so kind to us all.--why did she die, and leave it all to _me_?--i can't bear it alone; it's too much for me." while reiterating these sentences, she vacantly occupied herself in putting things about the room in order, which were set in perfect order already. all her looks, all her actions, betrayed the vain struggle of a weak mind to sustain itself under the weight of a heavy responsibility. she arranged and re-arranged the cheap china ornaments on her chimney-piece a dozen times over--put her pin-cushion first on the looking-glass, then on the table in front of it--changed the position of the little porcelain dish and tray on her wash-hand-stand, now to one side of the basin, and now to the other. throughout all these trifling actions the natural grace, delicacy, and prim neat-handedness of the woman still waited mechanically on the most useless and aimless of her occupations of the moment. she knocked nothing down, she put nothing awry; her footsteps at the fastest made no sound--the very skirts of her dress were kept as properly and prudishly composed as if it was broad daylight and the eyes of all her neighbors were looking at her. from time to time the sense of the words she was murmuring confusedly to herself changed. sometimes they disjointedly expressed bolder and more self-reliant thoughts. once they seemed to urge her again to the dressing-table and the open letter on it, against her own will. she read aloud the address, "to my husband," and caught the letter up sharply, and spoke in firmer tones. "why give it to him at all? why not let the secret die with her and die with me, as it ought? why should he know it? he shall _not_ know it!" saying those last words, she desperately held the letter within an inch of the flame of the candle. at the same moment the white curtain over the window before her stirred a little, as the freshening air found its way through the old-fashioned, ill-fitting sashes. her eye caught sight of it, as it waved gently backward and forward. she clasped the letter suddenly to her breast with both hands, and shrank back against the wall of the room, her eyes still fastened on the curtain with the same blank look of horror which they had exhibited when mrs. treverton had threatened to claim her servant's obedience from the other world. "something moves," she gasped to herself, in a breathless whisper. "something moves in the room." the curtain waved slowly to and fro for the second time. still fixedly looking at it over her shoulder, she crept along the wall to the door. "do you come to me already?" she said, her eyes riveted on the curtain while her hand groped over the lock for the key. "before your grave is dug? before your coffin is made? before your body is cold?" she opened the door and glided into the passage; stopped there for a moment, and looked back into the room. "rest!" she said. "rest, mistress--he shall have the letter." the staircase-lamp guided her out of the passage. descending hurriedly, as if she feared to give herself time to think, she reached captain treverton's study, on the ground-floor, in a minute or two. the door was wide open, and the room was empty. after reflecting a little, she lighted one of the chamber-candles standing on the hall-table, at the lamp in the study, and ascended the stairs again to her master's bedroom. after repeatedly knocking at the door and obtaining no answer, she ventured to go in. the bed had not been disturbed, the candles had not been lit--to all appearance the room had not even been entered during the night. there was but one other place to seek him--the chamber in which his wife lay dead. could she summon the courage to give him the letter there? she hesitated a little--then whispered, "i must! i must!" the direction she now compelled herself to take led her a little way down the stairs again. she descended very slowly this time, holding cautiously by the banisters, and pausing to take breath almost at every step. the door of what had been mrs. treverton's bedroom was opened, when she ventured to knock at it, by the nurse, who inquired, roughly and suspiciously, what she wanted there. "i want to speak to my master." "look for him somewhere else. he was here half an hour ago. he is gone now." "do you know where he has gone?" "no. i don't pry into other people's goings and comings. i mind my own business." with that discourteous answer, the nurse closed the door again. just as sarah turned away from it she looked toward the inner end of the passage. the door of the nursery was situated there. it was ajar, and a dim gleam of candle-light was flickering through it. [illustration: "and toward the opening thus made sarah now advanced."] she went in immediately, and saw that the candle-light came from an inner room, usually occupied, as she well knew, by the nursery-maid and by the only child of the house of treverton--a little girl named rosamond, aged, at that time, nearly five years. "can he be there?--in that room, of all the rooms in the house!" quickly as the thought arose in her mind, sarah raised the letter (which she had hitherto carried in her hand) to the bosom of her dress, and hid it for the second time, exactly as she had hidden it on leaving her mistress's bedside. she then stole across the nursery on tiptoe toward the inner room. the entrance to it, to please some caprice of the child's, had been arched, and framed with trellis-work, gayly colored, so as to resemble the entrance to a summer-house. two pretty chintz curtains, hanging inside the trellis-work, formed the only barrier between the day-room and the bedroom. one of these was looped up, and toward the opening thus made sarah now advanced, after cautiously leaving her candle in the passage outside. the first object that attracted her attention in the child's bedroom was the figure of the nurse-maid, leaning back, fast asleep, in an easy-chair by the window. venturing, after this discovery, to look more boldly into the room, she next saw her master sitting with his back toward her, by the side of the child's crib. little rosamond was awake, and was standing up in bed with her arms round her father's neck. one of her hands held over his shoulder the doll that she had taken to bed with her, the other was twined gently in his hair. the child had been crying bitterly, and had now exhausted herself, so that she was only moaning a little from time to time, with her head laid wearily on her father's bosom. the tears stood thick in sarah's eyes as they looked on her master and on the little hands that lay round his neck. she lingered by the raised curtain, heedless of the risk she ran, from moment to moment, of being discovered and questioned--lingered until she heard captain treverton say soothingly to the child: "hush, rosie, dear! hush, my own love! don't cry any more for poor mamma. think of poor papa, and try to comfort him." simple as the words were, quietly and tenderly as they were spoken, they seemed instantly to deprive sarah leeson of all power of self-control. reckless whether she was heard or not, she turned and ran into the passage as if she had been flying for her life. passing the candle she had left there, without so much as a look at it, she made for the stairs, and descended them with headlong rapidity to the kitchen-floor. there one of the servants who had been sitting up met her, and, with a face of astonishment and alarm, asked what was the matter. "i'm ill--i'm faint--i want air," she answered, speaking thickly and confusedly. "open the garden door, and let me out." the man obeyed, but doubtfully, as if he thought her unfit to be trusted by herself. "she gets stranger than ever in her ways," he said, when he rejoined his fellow-servant, after sarah had hurried past him into the open air. "now our mistress is dead, she will have to find another place, i suppose. i, for one, sha'n't break my heart when she's gone. shall you?" chapter iii. the hiding of the secret. the cool, sweet air in the garden, blowing freshly over sarah's face, seemed to calm the violence of her agitation. she turned down a side walk, which led to a terrace and overlooked the church of the neighboring village. the daylight out of doors was clear already. the misty auburn light that goes before sunrise was flowing up, peaceful and lovely, behind a line of black-brown moorland, over all the eastern sky. the old church, with the hedge of myrtle and fuchsia growing round the little cemetery in all the luxuriance which is only seen in cornwall, was clearing and brightening to view, almost as fast as the morning firmament itself. sarah leaned her arms heavily on the back of a garden-seat, and turned her face toward the church. her eyes wandered from the building itself to the cemetery by its side, rested there, and watched the light growing warmer and warmer over the lonesome refuge where the dead lay at rest. "oh, my heart! my heart!" she said. "what must it be made of not to break?" she remained for some time leaning on the seat, looking sadly toward the church-yard, and pondering over the words which she had heard captain treverton say to the child. they seemed to connect themselves, as every thing else now appeared to connect itself in her mind, with the letter that had been written on mrs. treverton's death-bed. she drew it from her bosom once more, and crushed it up angrily in her fingers. "still in my hands! still not seen by any eyes but mine!" she said, looking down at the crumpled pages. "is it all my fault? if she was alive now--if she had seen what i saw, if she had heard what i heard in the nursery--could she expect me to give him the letter?" her mind was apparently steadied by the reflection which her last words expressed. she moved away thoughtfully from the garden-seat, crossed the terrace, descended some wooden steps, and followed a shrubbery path which led round by a winding track from the east to the north side of the house. this part of the building had been uninhabited and neglected for more than half a century past. in the time of captain treverton's father the whole range of the north rooms had been stripped of their finest pictures and their most valuable furniture, to assist in redecorating the west rooms, which now formed the only inhabited part of the house, and which were amply sufficient for the accommodation of the family and of any visitors who came to stay with them. the mansion had been originally built in the form of a square, and had been strongly fortified. of the many defenses of the place, but one now remained--a heavy, low tower (from which and from the village near, the house derived its name of porthgenna tower), standing at the southern extremity of the west front. the south side itself consisted of stables and out-houses, with a ruinous wall in front of them, which, running back eastward at right angles, joined the north side, and so completed the square which the whole outline of the building represented. the outside view of the range of north rooms, from the weedy, deserted garden below, showed plainly enough that many years had passed since any human creature had inhabited them. the window-panes were broken in some places, and covered thickly with dirt and dust in others. here, the shutters were closed--there, they were only half opened. the untrained ivy, the rank vegetation growing in fissures of the stone-work, the festoons of spiders' webs, the rubbish of wood, bricks, plaster, broken glass, rags, and strips of soiled cloth, which lay beneath the windows, all told the same tale of neglect. shadowed by its position, this ruinous side of the house had a dark, cold, wintry aspect, even on the sunny august morning when sarah leeson strayed into the deserted northern garden. lost in the labyrinth of her own thoughts, she moved slowly past flower-beds, long since rooted up, and along gravel walks overgrown by weeds; her eyes wandering mechanically over the prospect, her feet mechanically carrying her on wherever there was a trace of a footpath, lead where it might. the shock which the words spoken by her master in the nursery had communicated to her mind, had set her whole nature, so to speak, at bay, and had roused in her, at last, the moral courage to arm herself with a final and desperate resolution. wandering more and more slowly along the pathways of the forsaken garden, as the course of her ideas withdrew her more and more completely from all outward things, she stopped insensibly on an open patch of ground, which had once been a well-kept lawn, and which still commanded a full view of the long range of uninhabited north rooms. "what binds me to give the letter to my master at all?" she thought to herself, smoothing out the crumpled paper dreamily in the palm of her hand. "my mistress died without making me swear to do that. can she visit it on me from the other world, if i keep the promises i swore to observe, and do no more? may i not risk the worst that can happen, so long as i hold religiously to all that i undertook to do on my oath?" she paused here in reasoning with herself--her superstitious fears still influencing her out of doors, in the daylight, as they had influenced her in her own room, in the time of darkness. she paused--then fell to smoothing the letter again, and began to recall the terms of the solemn engagement which mrs. treverton had forced her to contract. what had she actually bound herself to do? not to destroy the letter, and not to take it away with her if she left the house. beyond that, mrs. treverton's desire had been that the letter should be given to her husband. was that last wish binding on the person to whom it had been confided? yes. as binding as an oath? no. as she arrived at that conclusion, she looked up. at first her eyes rested vacantly on the lonely, deserted north front of the house; gradually they became attracted by one particular window exactly in the middle, on the floor above the ground--the largest and the gloomiest of all the row; suddenly they brightened with an expression of intelligence. she started; a faint flush of color flew into her cheeks, and she hastily advanced closer to the wall of the house. the panes of the large window were yellow with dust and dirt, and festooned about fantastically with cobwebs. below it was a heap of rubbish, scattered over the dry mould of what might once have been a bed of flowers or shrubs. the form of the bed was still marked out by an oblong boundary of weeds and rank grass. she followed it irresolutely all round, looking up at the window at every step--then stopped close under it, glanced at the letter in her hand, and said to herself abruptly-- "i'll risk it!" as the words fell from her lips, she hastened back to the inhabited part of the house, followed the passage on the kitchen-floor which led to the housekeeper's room, entered it, and took down from a nail in the wall a bunch of keys, having a large ivory label attached to the ring that connected them, on which was inscribed, "keys of the north rooms." she placed the keys on a writing-table near her, took up a pen, and rapidly added these lines on the blank side of the letter which she had written under her mistress's dictation-- "if this paper should ever be found (which i pray with my whole heart it never may be), i wish to say that i have come to the resolution of hiding it, because i dare not show the writing that it contains to my master, to whom it is addressed. in doing what i now propose to do, though i am acting against my mistress's last wishes, i am not breaking the solemn engagement which she obliged me to make before her on her death-bed. that engagement forbids me to destroy this letter, or to take it away with me if i leave the house. i shall do neither--my purpose is to conceal it in the place, of all others, where i think there is least chance of its ever being found again. any hardship or misfortune which may follow as a consequence of this deceitful proceeding on my part, will fall on myself. others, i believe in my conscience, will be the happier for the hiding of the dreadful secret which this letter contains." she signed those lines with her name--pressed them hurriedly over the blotting-pad that lay with the rest of the writing materials on the table--took the note in her hand, after first folding it up--and then, snatching at the bunch of keys, with a look all round her as if she dreaded being secretly observed, left the room. all her actions since she had entered it had been hasty and sudden; she was evidently afraid of allowing herself one leisure moment to reflect. on quitting the housekeeper's room, she turned to the left, ascended a back staircase, and unlocked a door at the top of it. a cloud of dust flew all about her as she softly opened the door; a mouldy coolness made her shiver as she crossed a large stone hall, with some black old family portraits hanging on the walls, the canvases of which were bulging out of the frames. ascending more stairs, she came upon a row of doors, all leading into rooms on the first floor of the north side of the house. she knelt down, putting the letter on the boards beside her, opposite the key-hole of the fourth door she came to after reaching the top of the stairs, peered in distrustfully for an instant, then began to try the different keys till she found one that fitted the lock. she had great difficulty in accomplishing this, from the violence of her agitation, which made her hands tremble to such a degree that she was hardly able to keep the keys separate one from the other. at length she succeeded in opening the door. thicker clouds of dust than she had yet met with flew out the moment the interior of the room was visible; a dry, airless, suffocating atmosphere almost choked her as she stooped to pick up the letter from the floor. she recoiled from it at first, and took a few steps back toward the staircase. but she recovered her resolution immediately. "i can't go back now!" she said, desperately, and entered the room. she did not remain in it more than two or three minutes. when she came out again her face was white with fear, and the hand which had held the letter when she went into the room held nothing now but a small rusty key. after locking the door again, she examined the large bunch of keys which she had taken from the housekeeper's room, with closer attention than she had yet bestowed on them. besides the ivory label attached to the ring that connected them, there were smaller labels, of parchment, tied to the handles of some of the keys, to indicate the rooms to which they gave admission. the particular key which she had used had one of these labels hanging to it. she held the little strip of parchment close to the light, and read on it, in written characters faded by time-- "_the myrtle room._" the room in which the letter was hidden had a name, then! a prettily sounding name that would attract most people, and keep pleasantly in their memories. a name to be distrusted by her, after what she had done, on that very account. she took her housewife from its usual place in the pocket of her apron, and, with the scissors which it contained, cut the label from the key. was it enough to destroy that one only? she lost herself in a maze of useless conjecture; and ended by cutting off the other labels, from no other motive than instinctive suspicion of them. carefully gathering up the strips of parchment from the floor, she put them, along with the little rusty key which she had brought out of the myrtle room, in the empty pocket of her apron. then, carrying the large bunch of keys in her hand, and carefully locking the doors that she had opened on her way to the north side of porthgenna tower, she retraced her steps to the housekeeper's room, entered it without seeing any body, and hung up the bunch of keys again on the nail in the wall. fearful, as the morning hours wore on, of meeting with some of the female servants, she next hastened back to her bedroom. the candle she had left there was still burning feebly in the fresh daylight. when she drew aside the window-curtain, after extinguishing the candle, a shadow of her former fear passed over her face, even in the broad daylight that now flowed in upon it. she opened the window, and leaned out eagerly into the cool air. whether for good or for evil, the fatal secret was hidden now--the act was done. there was something calming in the first consciousness of that one fact. she could think more composedly, after that, of herself, and of the uncertain future that lay before her. under no circumstances could she have expected to remain in her situation, now that the connection between herself and her mistress had been severed by death. she knew that mrs. treverton, in the last days of her illness, had earnestly recommended her maid to captain treverton's kindness and protection, and she felt assured that the wife's last entreaties, in this as in all other instances, would be viewed as the most sacred of obligations by the husband. but could she accept protection and kindness at the hand of the master whom she had been accessory to deceiving, and whom she had now committed herself to deceiving still? the bare idea of such baseness was so revolting, that she accepted, almost with a sense of relief, the one sad alternative that remained--the alternative of leaving the house immediately. and how was she to leave it? by giving formal warning, and so exposing herself to questions which would be sure to confuse and terrify her? could she venture to face her master again, after what she had done--to face him, when his first inquiries would refer to her mistress, when he would be certain to ask her for the last mournful details, for the slightest word that had been spoken during the death-scene that she alone had witnessed? she started to her feet, as the certain consequences of submitting herself to that unendurable trial all crowded together warningly on her mind, took her cloak from its place on the wall, and listened at her door in sudden suspicion and fear. had she heard footsteps? was her master sending for her already? no; all was silent outside. a few tears rolled over her cheeks as she put on her bonnet, and felt that she was facing, by the performance of that simple action, the last, and perhaps the hardest to meet, of the cruel necessities in which the hiding of the secret had involved her. there was no help for it. she must run the risk of betraying every thing, or brave the double trial of leaving porthgenna tower, and leaving it secretly. secretly--as a thief might go? without a word to her master? without so much as one line of writing to thank him for his kindness and to ask his pardon? she had unlocked her desk, and had taken from it her purse, one or two letters, and a little book of wesley's hymns, before these considerations occurred to her. they made her pause in the act of shutting up the desk. "shall i write?" she asked herself, "and leave the letter here, to be found when i am gone?" a little more reflection decided her in the affirmative. as rapidly as her pen could form the letters, she wrote a few lines addressed to captain treverton, in which she confessed to having kept a secret from his knowledge which had been left in her charge to divulge; adding, that she honestly believed no harm could come to him, or to any one in whom he was interested, by her failing to perform the duty intrusted to her; and ended by asking his pardon for leaving the house secretly, and by begging, as a last favor, that no search might ever be made for her. having sealed this short note, and left it on her table, with her master's name written outside, she listened again at the door; and, after satisfying herself that no one was yet stirring, began to descend the stairs at porthgenna tower for the last time. at the entrance of the passage leading to the nursery she stopped. the tears which she had restrained since leaving her room began to flow again. urgent as her reasons now were for effecting her departure without a moment's loss of time, she advanced, with the strangest inconsistency, a few steps toward the nursery door. before she had gone far, a slight noise in the lower part of the house caught her ear and instantly checked her further progress. while she stood doubtful, the grief at her heart--a greater grief than any she had yet betrayed--rose irresistibly to her lips, and burst from them in one deep gasping sob. the sound of it seemed to terrify her into a sense of the danger of her position, if she delayed a moment longer. she ran out again to the stairs, reached the kitchen-floor in safety, and made her escape by the garden door which the servant had opened for her at the dawn of the morning. on getting clear of the premises at porthgenna tower, instead of taking the nearest path over the moor that led to the high-road, she diverged to the church; but stopped before she came to it, at the public well of the neighborhood, which had been sunk near the cottages of the porthgenna fishermen. cautiously looking round her, she dropped into the well the little rusty key which she had brought out of the myrtle room; then hurried on, and entered the church-yard. she directed her course straight to one of the graves, situated a little apart from the rest. on the head-stone were inscribed these words: sacred to the memory of hugh polwheal, aged years. he met with his death through the fall of a rock in porthgenna mine, december th, . gathering a few leaves of grass from the grave, sarah opened the little book of wesley's hymns which she had brought with her from the bedroom of porthgenna tower, and placed the leaves delicately and carefully between the pages. as she did this, the wind blew open the title-page of the hymns, and displayed this inscription on it, written in large, clumsy characters--"sarah leeson, her book. the gift of hugh polwheal." having secured the blades of grass between the pages of the book, she retraced her way toward the path leading to the high-road. arrived on the moor, she took out of her apron pocket the parchment labels that had been cut from the keys, and scattered them under the furze-bushes. "gone," she said, "as i am gone! god help and forgive me--it is all done and over now!" with those words she turned her back on the old house and the sea-view below it, and followed the moorland path on her way to the high-road. * * * * * four hours afterward captain treverton desired one of the servants at porthgenna tower to inform sarah leeson that he wished to hear all she had to tell him of the dying moments of her mistress. the messenger returned with looks and words of amazement, and with the letter that sarah had addressed to her master in his hand. the moment captain treverton had read the letter, he ordered an immediate search to be made after the missing woman. she was so easy to describe and to recognize, by the premature grayness of her hair, by the odd, scared look in her eyes, and by her habit of constantly talking to herself, that she was traced with certainty as far as truro. in that large town the track of her was lost, and never recovered again. rewards were offered; the magistrates of the district were interested in the case; all that wealth and power could do to discover her was done--and done in vain. no clew was found to suggest a suspicion of her whereabouts, or to help in the slightest degree toward explaining the nature of the secret at which she had hinted in her letter. her master never saw her again, never heard of her again, after the morning of the twenty-third of august, eighteen hundred and twenty-nine. book ii. chapter i. fifteen years after. the church of long beckley (a large agricultural village in one of the midland counties of england), although a building in no way remarkable either for its size, its architecture, or its antiquity, possesses, nevertheless, one advantage which mercantile london has barbarously denied to the noble cathedral church of st. paul. it has plenty of room to stand in, and it can consequently be seen with perfect convenience from every point of view, all around the compass. the large open space around the church can be approached in three different directions. there is a road from the village, leading straight to the principal door. there is a broad gravel walk, which begins at the vicarage gates, crosses the church-yard, and stops, as in duty bound, at the vestry entrance. there is a footpath over the fields, by which the lord of the manor, and the gentry in general who live in his august neighborhood, can reach the side door of the building, whenever their natural humility may incline them to encourage sabbath observance in the stables by going to church, like the lower sort of worshipers, on their own legs. at half-past seven o'clock, on a certain fine summer morning, in the year eighteen hundred and forty-four, if any observant stranger had happened to be standing in some unnoticed corner of the church-yard, and to be looking about him with sharp eyes, he would probably have been the witness of proceedings which might have led him to believe that there was a conspiracy going on in long beckley, of which the church was the rallying-point, and some of the most respectable inhabitants the principal leaders. supposing him to have been looking toward the vicarage as the clock chimed the half-hour, he would have seen the vicar of long beckley, the reverend doctor chennery, leaving his house suspiciously, by the back way, glancing behind him guiltily as he approached the gravel walk that led to the vestry, stopping mysteriously just outside the door, and gazing anxiously down the road that led from the village. assuming that our observant stranger would, upon this, keep out of sight, and look down the road, like the vicar, he would next have seen the clerk of the church--an austere, yellow-faced man--a protestant loyola in appearance, and a working shoemaker by trade--approaching with a look of unutterable mystery in his face, and a bunch of big keys in his hands. he would have seen the vicar nod in an abstracted manner to the clerk, and say, "fine morning, thomas. have you had your breakfast yet?" he would have heard thomas reply, with a suspicious regard for minute particulars: "i have had a cup of tea and a crust, sir." and he would then have seen these two local conspirators, after looking up with one accord at the church clock, draw off together to the side door which commanded a view of the footpath across the fields. following them--as our inquisitive stranger could not fail to do--he would have detected three more conspirators advancing along the footpath. the leader of this treasonable party was an elderly gentleman, with a weather-beaten face and a bluff, hearty manner. his two followers were a young gentleman and a young lady, walking arm-in-arm, and talking together in whispers. they were dressed in the plainest morning costume. the faces of both were rather pale, and the manner of the lady was a little flurried. otherwise there was nothing remarkable to observe in them, until they came to the wicket-gate leading into the church-yard; and there the conduct of the young gentleman seemed, at first sight, rather inexplicable. instead of holding the gate open for the lady to pass through, he hung back, allowed her to open it for herself, waited till she had got to the church-yard side, and then, stretching out his hand over the gate, allowed her to lead him through the entrance, as if he had suddenly changed from a grown man to a helpless little child. noting this, and remarking also that, when the party from the fields had arrived within greeting distance of the vicar, and when the clerk had used his bunch of keys to open the church-door, the young lady's companion was led into the building (this time by doctor chennery's hand), as he had been previously led through the wicket-gate, our observant stranger must have arrived at one inevitable conclusion--that the person requiring such assistance as this was suffering under the affliction of blindness. startled a little by that discovery, he would have been still further amazed, if he had looked into the church, by seeing the blind man and the young lady standing together before the altar rails, with the elderly gentleman in parental attendance. any suspicions he might now entertain that the bond which united the conspirators at that early hour of the morning was of the hymeneal sort, and that the object of their plot was to celebrate a wedding with the strictest secrecy, would have been confirmed in five minutes by the appearance of doctor chennery from the vestry in full canonicals, and by the reading of the marriage service in the reverend gentleman's most harmonious officiating tones. the ceremony concluded, the attendant stranger must have been more perplexed than ever by observing that the persons concerned in it all separated, the moment the signing, the kissing, and congratulating duties proper to the occasion had been performed, and quickly retired in the various directions by which they had approached the church. leaving the clerk to return by the village road, the bride, bridegroom, and elderly gentleman to turn back by the footpath over the fields, and the visionary stranger of these pages to vanish out of them in any direction that he pleases--let us follow doctor chennery to the vicarage breakfast-table, and hear what he has to say about his professional exertions of the morning in the familiar atmosphere of his own family circle. the persons assembled at the breakfast were, first, mr. phippen, a guest; secondly, miss sturch, a governess; thirdly, fourthly, and fifthly, miss louisa chennery (aged eleven years), miss amelia chennery (aged nine years), and master robert chennery (aged eight years). there was no mother's face present, to make the household picture complete. doctor chennery had been a widower since the birth of his youngest child. the guest was an old college acquaintance of the vicar's, and he was supposed to be now staying at long beckley for the benefit of his health. most men of any character at all contrive to get a reputation of some sort which individualizes them in the social circle amid which they move. mr. phippen was a man of some little character, and he lived with great distinction in the estimation of his friends on the reputation of being a martyr to dyspepsia. wherever mr. phippen went, the woes of mr. phippen's stomach went with him. he dieted himself publicly, and physicked himself publicly. he was so intensely occupied with himself and his maladies, that he would let a chance acquaintance into the secret of the condition of his tongue at five minutes' notice; being just as perpetually ready to discuss the state of his digestion as people in general are to discuss the state of the weather. on this favorite subject, as on all others, he spoke with a wheedling gentleness of manner, sometimes in softly mournful, sometimes in languidly sentimental tones. his politeness was of the oppressively affectionate sort, and he used the word "dear" continually in addressing himself to others. personally, he could not be called a handsome man. his eyes were watery, large, and light gray; they were always rolling from side to side in a state of moist admiration of something or somebody. his nose was long, drooping, profoundly melancholy--if such an expression may be permitted, in reference to that particular feature. for the rest, his lips had a lachrymose twist; his stature was small; his head large, bald, and loosely set on his shoulders; his manner of dressing himself eccentric, on the side of smartness; his age about five-and-forty; his condition that of a single man. such was mr. phippen, the martyr to dyspepsia, and the guest of the vicar of long beckley. miss sturch, the governess, may be briefly and accurately described as a young lady who had never been troubled with an idea or a sensation since the day when she was born. she was a little, plump, quiet, white-skinned, smiling, neatly dressed girl, wound up accurately to the performance of certain duties at certain times; and possessed of an inexhaustible vocabulary of commonplace talk, which dribbled placidly out of her lips whenever it was called for, always in the same quantity, and always of the same quality, at every hour in the day, and through every change in the seasons. miss sturch never laughed, and never cried, but took the safe middle course of smiling perpetually. she smiled when she came down on a morning in january, and said it was very cold. she smiled when she came down on a morning in july, and said it was very hot. she smiled when the bishop came once a year to see the vicar; she smiled when the butcher's boy came every morning for orders. let what might happen at the vicarage, nothing ever jerked miss sturch out of the one smooth groove in which she ran perpetually, always at the same pace. if she had lived in a royalist family, during the civil wars in england, she would have rung for the cook, to order dinner, on the morning of the execution of charles the first. if shakspeare had come back to life again, and had called at the vicarage at six o'clock on saturday evening, to explain to miss sturch exactly what his views were in composing the tragedy of hamlet, she would have smiled and said it was extremely interesting, until the striking of seven o'clock; at which time she would have left him in the middle of a sentence, to superintend the housemaid in the verification of the washing-book. a very estimable young person, miss sturch (as the ladies of long beckley were accustomed to say); so judicious with the children, and so attached to her household duties; such a well-regulated mind, and such a crisp touch on the piano; just nice-looking enough, just well-dressed enough, just talkative enough; not quite old enough, perhaps, and a little too much inclined to be embraceably plump about the region of the waist--but, on the whole, a most estimable young person--very much so, indeed. on the characteristic peculiarities of miss sturch's pupils, it is not necessary to dwell at very great length. miss louisa's habitual weakness was an inveterate tendency to catch cold. miss amelia's principal defect was a disposition to gratify her palate by eating supplementary dinners and breakfasts at unauthorized times and seasons. master robert's most noticeable failings were caused by alacrity in tearing his clothes, and obtuseness in learning the multiplication table. the virtues of all three were of much the same nature--they were well grown, they were genuine children, and they were boisterously fond of miss sturch. to complete the gallery of family portraits, an outline, at the least, must be attempted of the vicar himself. doctor chennery was, in a physical point of view, a credit to the establishment to which he was attached. he stood six feet two in his shooting-shoes; he weighed fifteen stone; he was the best bowler in the long beckley cricket-club; he was a strictly orthodox man in the matter of wine and mutton; he never started disagreeable theories about people's future destinies in the pulpit, never quarreled with any body out of the pulpit, never buttoned up his pockets when the necessities of his poor brethren (dissenters included) pleaded with him to open them. his course through the world was a steady march along the high and dry middle of a safe turnpike-road. the serpentine side-paths of controversy might open as alluringly as they pleased on his right hand and on his left, but he kept on his way sturdily, and never regarded them. innovating young recruits in the church army might entrappingly open the thirty-nine articles under his very nose, but the veteran's wary eye never looked a hair's-breadth further than his own signature at the bottom of them. he knew as little as possible of theology, he had never given the privy council a minute's trouble in the whole course of his life, he was innocent of all meddling with the reading or writing of pamphlets, and he was quite incapable of finding his way to the platform of exeter hall. in short, he was the most unclerical of clergymen--but, for all that, he had such a figure for a surplice as is seldom seen. fifteen stone weight of upright muscular flesh, without an angry spot or sore place in any part of it, has the merit of suggesting stability, at any rate--an excellent virtue in pillars of all kinds, but an especially precious quality, at the present time, in a pillar of the church. as soon as the vicar entered the breakfast-parlor, the children assailed him with a chorus of shouts. he was a severe disciplinarian in the observance of punctuality at meal-times; and he now stood convicted by the clock of being too late for breakfast by a quarter of an hour. "sorry to have kept you waiting, miss sturch," said the vicar; "but i have a good excuse for being late this morning." "pray don't mention it, sir," said miss sturch, blandly rubbing her plump little hands one over the other. "a beautiful morning. i fear we shall have another warm day.--robert, my love, your elbow is on the table.--a beautiful morning, indeed!" "stomach still out of order--eh, phippen?" asked the vicar, beginning to carve the ham. mr. phippen shook his large head dolefully, placed his yellow forefinger, ornamented with a large turquoise ring, on the centre check of his light-green summer waistcoat--looked piteously at doctor chennery, and sighed--removed the finger, and produced from the breast pocket of his wrapper a little mahogany case--took out of it a neat pair of apothecary's scales, with the accompanying weights, a morsel of ginger, and a highly polished silver nutmeg-grater. "dear miss sturch will pardon an invalid?" said mr. phippen, beginning to grate the ginger feebly into the nearest tea-cup. "guess what has made me a quarter of an hour late this morning," said the vicar, looking mysteriously all round the table. "lying in bed, papa," cried the three children, clapping their hands in triumph. "what do _you_ say, miss sturch?" asked doctor chennery. miss sturch smiled as usual, rubbed her hands as usual, cleared her throat softly as usual, looked at the tea-urn, and begged, with the most graceful politeness, to be excused if she said nothing. "your turn now, phippen," said the vicar. "come, guess what has kept me late this morning." "my dear friend," said mr. phippen, giving the doctor a brotherly squeeze of the hand, "don't ask me to guess--i know! i saw what you eat at dinner yesterday--i saw what you drank after dinner. no digestion could stand it--not even yours. guess what has made you late this morning? pooh! pooh! i know. you dear, good soul, you have been taking physic!" "hav'n't touched a drop, thank god, for the last ten years!" said doctor chennery, with a look of devout gratitude. "no, no; you're all wrong. the fact is, i have been to church; and what do you think i have been doing there? listen, miss sturch--listen, girls, with all your ears. poor blind young frankland is a happy man at last--i have married him to our dear rosamond treverton this very morning!" "without telling us, papa!" cried the two girls together in their shrillest tones of vexation and surprise. "without telling us, when you know how we should have liked to see it!" "that was the very reason why i did not tell you, my dears," answered the vicar. "young frankland has not got so used to his affliction yet, poor fellow, as to bear being publicly pitied and stared at in the character of a blind bridegroom. he had such a nervous horror of being an object of curiosity on his wedding-day, and rosamond, like a kind-hearted girl as she is, was so anxious that his slightest caprices should be humored, that we settled to have the wedding at an hour in the morning when no idlers were likely to be lounging about the neighborhood of the church. i was bound over to the strictest secrecy about the day, and so was my clerk thomas. excepting us two, and the bride and bridegroom, and the bride's father, captain treverton, nobody knew--" "treverton!" exclaimed mr. phippen, holding his tea-cup, with the grated ginger in the bottom of it, to be filled by miss sturch. "treverton! (no more tea, dear miss sturch.) how very remarkable! i know the name. (fill up with water, if you please.) tell me, my dear doctor (many, many thanks; no sugar--it turns acid on the stomach), is this miss treverton whom you have been marrying (many thanks again; no milk, either) one of the cornish trevertons?" "to be sure she is!" rejoined the vicar. "her father, captain treverton, is the head of the family. not that there's much family to speak of now. the captain, and rosamond, and that whimsical old brute of an uncle of hers, andrew treverton, are the last left now of the old stock--a rich family, and a fine family, in former times--good friends to church and state, you know, and all that--" "do you approve, sir, of amelia having a second helping of bread and marmalade?" asked miss sturch, appealing to doctor chennery, with the most perfect unconsciousness of interrupting him. having no spare room in her mind for putting things away in until the appropriate time came for bringing them out, miss sturch always asked questions and made remarks the moment they occurred to her, without waiting for the beginning, middle, or end of any conversations that might be proceeding in her presence. she invariably looked the part of a listener to perfection, but she never acted it except in the case of talk that was aimed point-blank at her own ears. "oh, give her a second helping, by all means!" said the vicar, carelessly; "if she must over-eat herself, she may as well do it on bread and marmalade as on any thing else." "my dear, good soul," exclaimed mr. phippen, "look what a wreck i am, and don't talk in that shockingly thoughtless way of letting our sweet amelia over-eat herself. load the stomach in youth, and what becomes of the digestion in age? the thing which vulgar people call the inside--i appeal to miss sturch's interest in her charming pupil as an excuse for going into physiological particulars--is, in point of fact, an apparatus. digestively considered, miss sturch, even the fairest and youngest of us is an apparatus. oil our wheels, if you like; but clog them at your peril. farinaceous puddings and mutton-chops; mutton-chops and farinaceous puddings--those should be the parents' watch-words, if i had my way, from one end of england to the other. look here, my sweet child--look at me. there is no fun, dear, about these little scales, but dreadful earnest. see! i put in the balance on one side dry bread (stale, dry bread, amelia!), and on the other some ounce weights. 'mr. phippen, eat by weight. mr. phippen! eat the same quantity, day by day, to a hair's-breadth. mr. phippen! exceed your allowance (though it is only stale, dry bread) if you dare!' amelia, love, this is not fun--this is what the doctors tell me--the doctors, my child, who have been searching my apparatus through and through for thirty years past with little pills, and have not found out where my wheels are clogged yet. think of that, amelia--think of mr. phippen's clogged apparatus--and say 'no, thank you,' next time. miss sturch, i beg a thousand pardons for intruding on your province; but my interest in that sweet child--chennery, you dear, good soul, what were we talking about? ah! the bride--the interesting bride! and so she is one of the cornish trevertons? i knew something of andrew years ago. he was a bachelor, like myself, miss sturch. his apparatus was out of order, like mine, dear amelia. not at all like his brother, the captain, i should suppose? and so she is married? a charming girl, i have no doubt. a charming girl!" "no better, truer, prettier girl in the world," said the vicar. "a very lively, energetic person," remarked miss sturch. "how i shall miss her!" cried miss louisa. "nobody else amused me as rosamond did, when i was laid up with that last bad cold of mine." "she used to give us such nice little early supper-parties," said miss amelia. "she was the only girl i ever saw who was fit to play with boys," said master robert. "she could catch a ball, mr. phippen, sir, with one hand, and go down a slide with both her legs together." "bless me!" said mr. phippen. "what an extraordinary wife for a blind man! you said he was blind from his birth, my dear doctor, did you not? let me see, what was his name? you will not bear too hardly on my loss of memory, miss sturch? when indigestion has done with the body, it begins to prey on the mind. mr. frank something, was it not?" "no, no--frankland," answered the vicar, "leonard frankland. and not blind from his birth by any means. it is not much more than a year ago since he could see almost as well as any of us." "an accident, i suppose!" said mr. phippen. "you will excuse me if i take the arm-chair?--a partially reclining posture is of great assistance to me after meals. so an accident happened to his eyes? ah, what a delightfully easy chair to sit in!" "scarcely an accident," said doctor chennery. "leonard frankland was a difficult child to bring up: great constitutional weakness, you know, at first. he seemed to get over that with time, and grew into a quiet, sedate, orderly sort of boy--as unlike my son there as possible--very amiable, and what you call easy to deal with. well, he had a turn for mechanics (i am telling you all this to make you understand about his blindness), and, after veering from one occupation of that sort to another, he took at last to watch-making. curious amusement for a boy; but any thing that required delicacy of touch, and plenty of patience and perseverance, was just the thing to amuse and occupy leonard. i always said to his father and mother, 'get him off that stool, break his magnifying-glasses, send him to me, and i'll give him a back at leap-frog, and teach him the use of a bat.' but it was no use. his parents knew best, i suppose, and they said he must be humored. well, things went on smoothly enough for some time, till he got another long illness--as i believe, from not taking exercise enough. as soon as he began to get round, back he went to his old watch-making occupations again. but the bad end of it all was coming. about the last work he did, poor fellow, was the repairing of my watch--here it is; goes as regular as a steam-engine. i hadn't got it back into my fob very long before i heard that he was getting a bad pain at the back of his head, and that he saw all sorts of moving spots before his eyes. 'string him up with lots of port wine, and give him three hours a day on the back of a quiet pony'--that was my advice. instead of taking it, they sent for doctors from london, and blistered him behind the ears and between the shoulders, and drenched the lad with mercury, and moped him up in a dark room. no use. the sight got worse and worse, flickered and flickered, and went out at last like the flame of a candle. his mother died--luckily for her, poor soul--before that happened. his father was half out of his mind: took him to oculists in london and oculists in paris. all they did was to call the blindness by a long latin name, and to say that it was hopeless and useless to try an operation. some of them said it was the result of the long weaknesses from which he had twice suffered after illness. some said it was an apoplectic effusion in his brain. all of them shook their heads when they heard of the watch-making. so they brought him back home, blind; blind he is now; and blind he will remain, poor dear fellow, for the rest of his life." "you shock me; my dear chennery, you shock me dreadfully," said mr. phippen. "especially when you state that theory about long weakness after illness. good heavens! why, _i_ have had long weaknesses--i have got them now. spots did he see before his eyes? i see spots, black spots, dancing black spots, dancing black bilious spots. upon my word of honor, chennery, this comes home to me--my sympathies are painfully acute--i feel this blind story in every nerve of my body; i do, indeed!" "you would hardly know that leonard was blind, to look at him," said miss louisa, striking into the conversation with a view to restoring mr. phippen's equanimity. "except that his eyes look quieter than other people's, there seems no difference in them now. who was that famous character you told us about, miss sturch, who was blind, and didn't show it any more than leonard frankland?" "milton, my love. i begged you to remember that he was the most famous of british epic poets," answered miss sturch with suavity. "he poetically describes his blindness as being caused by 'so thick a drop serene.' you shall read about it, louisa. after we have had a little french, we will have a little milton, this morning. hush, love, your papa is speaking." "poor young frankland!" said the vicar, warmly. "that good, tender, noble creature i married him to this morning seems sent as a consolation to him in his affliction. if any human being can make him happy for the rest of his life, rosamond treverton is the girl to do it." "she has made a sacrifice," said mr. phippen; "but i like her for that, having made a sacrifice myself in remaining single. it seems indispensable, indeed, on the score of humanity, that i should do so. how could i conscientiously inflict such a digestion as mine on a member of the fairer portion of creation? no; i am a sacrifice in my own proper person, and i have a fellow-feeling for others who are like me. did she cry much, chennery, when you were marrying her?" "cry!" exclaimed the vicar, contemptuously. "rosamond treverton is not one of the puling, sentimental sort, i can tell you. a fine, buxom, warm-hearted, quick-tempered girl, who looks what she means when she tells a man she is going to marry him. and, mind you, she has been tried. if she hadn't loved him with all her heart and soul, she might have been free months ago to marry any body she pleased. they were engaged long before this cruel affliction befell young frankland--the fathers, on both sides, having lived as near neighbors in these parts for years. well, when the blindness came, leonard at once offered to release rosamond from her engagement. you should have read the letter she wrote to him, phippen, upon that. i don't mind confessing that i blubbered like a baby over it when they showed it to me. i should have married them at once the instant i read it, but old frankland was a fidgety, punctilious kind of man, and he insisted on a six months' probation, so that she might be certain of knowing her own mind. he died before the term was out, and that caused the marriage to be put off again. but no delays could alter rosamond--six years, instead of six months, would not have changed her. there she was this morning as fond of that poor, patient blind fellow as she was the first day they were engaged. 'you shall never know a sad moment, lenny, if i can help it, as long as you live'--these were the first words she said to him when we all came out of church. 'i hear you, rosamond,' said i. 'and you shall judge me, too, doctor,' says she, quick as lightning. 'we will come back to long beckley, and you shall ask lenny if i have not kept my word.' with that she gave me a kiss that you might have heard down here at the vicarage, bless her heart! we'll drink her health after dinner, miss sturch--we'll drink both their healths, phippen, in a bottle of the best wine i have in my cellar." "in a glass of toast-and-water, so far as i am concerned, if you will allow me," said mr. phippen, mournfully. "but, my dear chennery, when you were talking of the fathers of these two interesting young people, you spoke of their living as near neighbors here, at long beckley. my memory is impaired, as i am painfully aware; but i thought captain treverton was the eldest of the two brothers, and that he always lived, when he was on shore, at the family place in cornwall?" "so he did," returned the vicar, "in his wife's lifetime. but since her death, which happened as long ago as the year 'twenty-nine--let me see, we are now in the year 'forty-four--and that makes--" the vicar stopped for an instant to calculate, and looked at miss sturch. "fifteen years ago, sir," said miss sturch, offering the accommodation of a little simple subtraction to the vicar, with her blandest smile. "of course," continued doctor chennery. "well, since mrs. treverton died, fifteen years ago, captain treverton has never been near porthgenna tower. and, what is more, phippen, at the first opportunity he could get, he sold the place--sold it, out and out, mine, fisheries, and all--for forty thousand pounds." "you don't say so!" exclaimed mr. phippen. "did he find the air unhealthy? i should think the local produce, in the way of food, must be coarse now, in those barbarous regions? who bought the place?" "leonard frankland's father," said the vicar. "it is rather a long story, that sale of porthgenna tower, with some curious circumstances involved in it. suppose we take a turn in the garden, phippen? i'll tell you all about it over my morning cigar. miss sturch, if you want me, i shall be on the lawn somewhere. girls! mind you know your lessons. bob! remember that i've got a cane in the hall, and a birch-rod in my dressing-room. come, phippen, rouse up out of that arm-chair. you won't say no to a turn in the garden?" "my dear fellow, i will say yes--if you will kindly lend me an umbrella, and allow me to carry my camp-stool in my hand," said mr. phippen. "i am too weak to encounter the sun, and i can't go far without sitting down.--the moment i feel fatigued, miss sturch, i open my camp-stool, and sit down any where, without the slightest regard for appearances.--i am ready, chennery, whenever you are--equally ready, my good friend, for the garden and the story about the sale of porthgenna tower. you said it was a curious story, did you not?" "i said there was some curious circumstances connected with it," replied the vicar. "and when you hear about them, i think you will say so too. come along! you will find your camp-stool, and a choice of all the umbrellas in the house, in the hall." with those words, doctor chennery opened his cigar-case, and led the way out of the breakfast-parlor. chapter ii. the sale of porthgenna tower. "how charming! how pastoral! how exquisitely soothing!" said mr. phippen, sentimentally surveying the lawn at the back of the vicarage-house, under the shadow of the lightest umbrella he could pick out of the hall. "three years have passed, chennery, since i last stood on this lawn. there is the window of your old study, where i had my attack of heart-burn last time--in the strawberry season; don't you remember? ah! and there is the school-room! shall i ever forget dear miss sturch coming to me out of that room--a ministering angel with soda and ginger--so comforting, so sweetly anxious about stirring it up, so unaffectedly grieved that there was no sal-volatile in the house! i do so enjoy these pleasant recollections, chennery; they are as great a luxury to me as your cigar is to you. could you walk on the other side, my dear fellow? i like the smell, but the smoke is a little too much for me. thank you. and now about the story? what was the name of the old place--i am so interested in it--it began with a p, surely?" "porthgenna tower," said the vicar. "exactly," rejoined mr. phippen, shifting the umbrella tenderly from one shoulder to the other. "and what in the world made captain treverton sell porthgenna tower?" "i believe the reason was that he could not endure the place after the death of his wife," answered doctor chennery. "the estate, you know, has never been entailed; so the captain had no difficulty in parting with it, except, of course, the difficulty of finding a purchaser." "why not his brother?" asked mr. phippen. "why not our eccentric friend, andrew treverton?" "don't call him my friend," said the vicar. "a mean, groveling, cynical, selfish old wretch! it's no use shaking your head, phippen, and trying to look shocked. i know andrew treverton's early history as well as you do. i know that he was treated with the basest ingratitude by a college friend, who took all he had to give, and swindled him at last in the grossest manner. i know all about that. but one instance of ingratitude does not justify a man in shutting himself up from society, and railing against all mankind as a disgrace to the earth they walk on. i myself have heard the old brute say that the greatest benefactor to our generation would be a second herod, who could prevent another generation from succeeding it. ought a man who can talk in that way to be the friend of any human being with the slightest respect for his species or himself?" "my friend!" said mr. phippen, catching the vicar by the arm, and mysteriously lowering his voice--"my dear and reverend friend! i admire your honest indignation against the utterer of that exceedingly misanthropical sentiment; but--i confide this to you, chennery, in the strictest secrecy--there are moments--morning moments generally--when my digestion is in such a state that i have actually agreed with that annihilating person, andrew treverton! i have woke up with my tongue like a cinder--i have crawled to the glass and looked at it--and i have said to myself, 'let there be an end of the human race rather than a continuance of this!'" "pooh! pooh!" cried the vicar, receiving mr. phippen's confession with a burst of irreverent laughter. "take a glass of cool small beer next time your tongue is in that state, and you will pray for a continuance of the brewing part of the human race, at any rate. but let us go back to porthgenna tower, or i shall never get on with my story. when captain treverton had once made up his mind to sell the place, i have no doubt that, under ordinary circumstances, he would have thought of offering it to his brother, with a view, of course, to keeping the estate in the family. andrew was rich enough to have bought it; for, though he got nothing at his father's death but the old gentleman's rare collection of books, he inherited his mother's fortune, as the second son. however, as things were at that time (and are still, i am sorry to say), the captain could make no personal offers of any kind to andrew; for the two were not then, and are not now, on speaking, or even on writing terms. it is a shocking thing to say, but the worst quarrel of the kind i ever heard of is the quarrel between those two brothers." "pardon me, my dear friend," said mr. phippen, opening his camp-stool, which had hitherto dangled by its silken tassel from the hooked handle of the umbrella. "may i sit down before you go any further? i am getting a little excited about this part of the story, and i dare not fatigue myself. pray go on. i don't think the legs of my camp-stool will make holes in the lawn. i am so light--a mere skeleton, in fact. do go on!" "you must have heard," pursued the vicar, "that captain treverton, when he was advanced in life, married an actress--rather a violent temper, i believe; but a person of spotless character, and as fond of her husband as a woman could be; therefore, according to my view of it, a very good wife for him to marry. however, the captain's friends, of course, made the usual senseless outcry, and the captain's brother, as the only near relation, took it on himself to attempt breaking off the marriage in the most offensively indelicate way. failing in that, and hating the poor woman like poison, he left his brother's house, saying, among many other savage speeches, one infamous thing about the bride, which--which, upon my honor, phippen, i am ashamed to repeat. whatever the words were, they were unluckily carried to mrs. treverton's ears, and they were of the kind that no woman--let alone a quick-tempered woman like the captain's wife--ever forgives. an interview followed between the two brothers--and it led, as you may easily imagine, to very unhappy results. they parted in the most deplorable manner. the captain declared, in the heat of his passion, that andrew had never had one generous impulse in his heart since he was born, and that he would die without one kind feeling toward any living soul in the world. andrew replied that, if he had no heart, he had a memory, and that he should remember those farewell words as long as he lived. so they separated. twice afterward the captain made overtures of reconciliation. the first time when his daughter rosamond was born; the second time when mrs. treverton died. on each occasion the elder brother wrote to say that, if the younger would retract the atrocious words he had spoken against his sister-in-law, every atonement should be offered to him for the harsh language which the captain had used, in the hastiness of anger, when they last met. no answer was received from andrew to either letter; and the estrangement between the two brothers has continued to the present time. you understand now why captain treverton could not privately consult andrew's inclinations before he publicly announced his intention of parting with porthgenna tower." although mr. phippen declared, in answer to this appeal, that he understood perfectly, and although he begged with the utmost politeness that the vicar would go on, his attention seemed, for the moment, to be entirely absorbed in inspecting the legs of his camp-stool, and in ascertaining what impression they made on the vicarage lawn. doctor chennery's own interest, however, in the circumstances that he was relating, seemed sufficiently strong to make up for any transient lapse of attention on the part of his guest. after a few vigorous puffs at his cigar (which had been several times in imminent danger of going out while he was speaking), he went on with his narrative in these words: "well, the house, the estate, the mine, and the fisheries of porthgenna were all publicly put up for sale a few months after mrs. treverton's death; but no offers were made for the property which it was possible to accept. the ruinous state of the house, the bad cultivation of the land, legal difficulties in connection with the mine, and quarter-day difficulties in the collection of the rents, all contributed to make porthgenna what the auctioneers would call a bad lot to dispose of. failing to sell the place, captain treverton could not be prevailed on to change his mind and live there again. the death of his wife almost broke his heart--for he was, by all accounts, just as fond of her as she had been of him--and the very sight of the place that was associated with the greatest affliction of his life became hateful to him. he removed, with his little girl and a relative of mrs. treverton, who was her governess, to our neighborhood, and rented a pretty little cottage across the church fields. the house nearest to it was inhabited at that time by leonard frankland's father and mother. the new neighbors soon became intimate; and thus it happened that the couple whom i have been marrying this morning were brought up together as children, and fell in love with each other almost before they were out of their pinafores." "chennery, my dear fellow, i don't look as if i was sitting all on one side, do i?" cried mr. phippen, suddenly breaking into the vicar's narrative, with a look of alarm. "i am shocked to interrupt you; but surely your grass is amazingly soft in this part of the country. one of my camp-stool legs is getting shorter and shorter every moment. i'm drilling a hole! i'm toppling over! gracious heavens! i feel myself going--i shall be down, chennery; upon my life, i shall be down!" "stuff!" cried the vicar, pulling up first mr. phippen, and then mr. phippen's camp-stool, which had rooted itself in the grass, all on one side. "here, come on to the gravel walk; you can't drill holes in that. what's the matter now?" "palpitations," said mr. phippen, dropping his umbrella, and placing his hand over his heart, "and bile. i see those black spots again--those infernal, lively black spots dancing before my eyes. chennery, suppose you consult some agricultural friend about the quality of your grass. take my word for it, your lawn is softer than it ought to be.--lawn!" repeated mr. phippen to himself, contemptuously, as he turned round to pick up his umbrella. "it isn't a lawn--it is a bog!" "there, sit down," said the vicar, "and don't pay the palpitations and the black spots the compliment of bestowing the smallest attention on them. do you want any thing to drink? shall it be physic, or beer, or what?" "no, no! i am so unwilling to give trouble," answered mr. phippen. "i would rather suffer--rather, a great deal. i think if you would go on with your story, chennery, it would compose me. i have not the faintest idea of what led to it, but i think you were saying something interesting on the subject of pinafores!" "nonsense!" said doctor chennery. "i was only telling you of the fondness between the two children who have now grown up to be man and wife. and i was going on to tell you that captain treverton, shortly after he settled in our neighborhood, took to the active practice of his profession again. nothing else seemed to fill up the gap that the loss of mrs. treverton had made in his life. having good interest with the admiralty, he can always get a ship when he applies for one; and up to the present time, with intervals on shore, he has resolutely stuck to the sea--though he is getting, as his daughter and his friends think, rather too old for it now. don't look puzzled, phippen; i am not going so wide of the mark as you think. these are some of the necessary particulars that must be stated first. and now they are comfortably disposed of, i can get round at last to the main part of my story--the sale of porthgenna tower.--what is it now? do you want to get up again?" yes, mr. phippen did want to get up again, for the purpose of composing the palpitations and dispersing the black spots, by trying the experiment of a little gentle exercise. he was most unwilling to occasion any trouble, but would his worthy friend chennery give him an arm, and carry the camp-stool, and walk slowly in the direction of the school-room window, so as to keep miss sturch within easy hailing distance, in case it became necessary to try the last resource of taking a composing draught? the vicar, whose inexhaustible good nature was proof against every trial that mr. phippen's dyspeptic infirmities could inflict on it, complied with all these requests, and went on with his story, unconsciously adopting the tone and manner of a good-humored parent who was doing his best to soothe the temper of a fretful child. "i told you," he said, "that the elder mr. frankland and captain treverton were near neighbors here. they had not been long acquainted before the one found out from the other that porthgenna tower was for sale. on first hearing this, old frankland asked a few questions about the place, but said not a word on the subject of purchasing it. soon after that the captain got a ship and went to sea. during his absence old frankland privately set off for cornwall to look at the estate, and to find out all he could about its advantages and defects from the persons left in charge of the house and lands. he said nothing when he came back, until captain treverton returned from his first cruise; and then the old gentleman spoke out one morning, in his quiet, decided way. "'treverton,' said he, 'if you will sell porthgenna tower at the price at which you bought it in, when you tried to dispose of it by auction, write to your lawyer, and tell him to take the title-deeds to mine, and ask for the purchase-money.' "captain treverton was naturally a little astonished at the readiness of this offer; but people like myself, who knew old frankland's history, were not so surprised. his fortune had been made by trade, and he was foolish enough to be always a little ashamed of acknowledging that one simple and creditable fact. the truth was, that his ancestors had been landed gentry of importance before the time of the civil war, and the old gentleman's great ambition was to sink the merchant in the landed grandee, and to leave his son to succeed him in the character of a squire of large estate and great county influence. he was willing to devote half his fortune to accomplish this scheme; but half his fortune would not buy him such an estate as he wanted, in an important agricultural county like ours. rents are high, and land is made the most of with us. an estate as extensive as the estate at porthgenna would fetch more than double the money which captain treverton could venture to ask for it, if it was situated in these parts. old frankland was well aware of that fact, and attached all possible importance to it. besides, there was something in the feudal look of porthgenna tower, and in the right over the mine and fisheries, which the purchase of the estate included, that flattered his notions of restoring the family greatness. here he and his son after him could lord it, as he thought, on a large scale, and direct at their sovereign will and pleasure the industry of hundreds of poor people, scattered along the coast, or huddled together in the little villages inland. this was a tempting prospect, and it could be secured for forty thousand pounds--which was just ten thousand pounds less than he had made up his mind to give, when he first determined to metamorphose himself from a plain merchant into a magnificent landed gentleman. people who knew these facts were, as i have said, not much surprised at mr. frankland's readiness to purchase porthgenna tower; and captain treverton, it is hardly necessary to say, was not long in clinching the bargain on his side. the estate changed hands; and away went old frankland, with a tail of wiseacres from london at his heels, to work the mine and the fisheries on new scientific principles, and to beautify the old house from top to bottom with bran-new mediæval decorations under the direction of a gentleman who was said to be an architect, but who looked, to my mind, the very image of a popish priest in disguise. wonderful plans and projects were they not? and how do you think they succeeded?" "do tell me, my dear fellow!" was the answer that fell from mr. phippen's lips.--"i wonder whether miss sturch keeps a bottle of camphor julep in the family medicine-chest?" was the thought that passed through mr. phippen's mind. "tell you!" exclaimed the vicar. "why, of course, every one of his plans turned out a complete failure. his cornish tenantry received him as an interloper. the antiquity of his family made no impression upon them. it might be an old family, but it was not a cornish family, and, therefore, it was of no importance in their eyes. they would have gone to the world's end for the trevertons; but not a man would move a step out of his way for the franklands. as for the mine, it seemed to be inspired with the same mutinous spirit that possessed the tenantry. the wiseacres from london blasted in all directions on the profoundest scientific principles, and brought about sixpennyworth of ore to the surface for every five pounds spent in getting it up. the fisheries turned out little better. a new plan for curing pilchards, which was a marvel of economy in theory, proved to be a perfect phenomenon of extravagance in practice. the only item of luck in old frankland's large sum of misfortunes was produced by his quarreling in good time with the mediæval architect, who was like a popish priest in disguise. this fortunate event saved the new owner of porthgenna all the money he might otherwise have spent in restoring and redecorating the whole suite of rooms on the north side of the house, which had been left to go to rack and ruin for more than fifty years past, and which remain in their old neglected condition to this day. to make a long story short, after uselessly spending more thousands of pounds at porthgenna than i should like to reckon up, old frankland gave in at last, left the place in disgust to the care of his steward, who was charged never to lay out another farthing on it, and returned to this neighborhood. being in high dudgeon, and happening to catch captain treverton on shore when he got back, the first thing he did was to abuse porthgenna and all the people about it a little too vehemently in the captain's presence. this led to a coolness between the two neighbors, which might have ended in the breaking off of all intercourse, but for the children on either side, who would see each other just as often as ever, and who ended, by dint of willful persistency, in putting an end to the estrangement between the fathers by making it look simply ridiculous. here, in my opinion, lies the most curious part of the story. important family interests depended on those two young people falling in love with each other; and, wonderful to relate, that (as you know, after my confession at breakfast-time) was exactly what they did. here is a case of the most romantic love-match, which is also the marriage, of all others, that the parents on both sides had the strongest worldly interest in promoting. shakspeare may say what he pleases, the course of true love does run smooth sometimes. never was the marriage service performed to better purpose than when i read it this morning. the estate being entailed on leonard, captain treverton's daughter now goes back, in the capacity of mistress, to the house and lands which her father sold. rosamond being an only child, the purchase-money of porthgenna, which old frankland once lamented as money thrown away, will now, when the captain dies, be the marriage-portion of young frankland's wife. i don't know what you think of the beginning and middle of my story, phippen, but the end ought to satisfy you, at any rate. did you ever hear of a bride and bridegroom who started with fairer prospects in life than our bride and bridegroom of to-day?" before mr. phippen could make any reply, miss sturch put her head out of the school-room window; and seeing the two gentlemen approaching, beamed on them with her invariable smile. then addressing the vicar, said in her softest tones: "i regret extremely to trouble you, sir, but i find robert very intractable this morning with his multiplication table." "where does he stick now?" asked doctor chennery. "at seven times eight, sir," replied miss sturch. "bob!" shouted the vicar through the window. "seven times eight?" "forty-three," answered the whimpering voice of the invisible bob. "you shall have one more chance before i get my cane," said doctor chennery. "now, then, look out! seven times--" "my dear, good friend," interposed mr. phippen, "if you cane that very unhappy boy he will scream. my nerves have been tried once this morning by the camp-stool. i shall be totally shattered if i hear screams. give me time to get out of the way, and allow me also to spare dear miss sturch the sad spectacle of correction (so shocking to sensibilities like hers) by asking her for a little camphor julep, and so giving her an excuse for getting out of the way like me. i think i could have done without the camphor julep under any other circumstances; but i ask for it unhesitatingly now, as much for miss sturch's sake as for the sake of my own poor nerves.--have you got camphor julep, miss sturch? say yes, i beg and entreat, and give me an opportunity of escorting you out of the way of the screams." while miss sturch--whose well-trained sensibilities were proof against the longest paternal caning and the loudest filial acknowledgment of it in the way of screams--tripped up stairs to fetch the camphor julep, as smiling and self-possessed as ever, master bob, finding himself left alone with his sisters in the school-room, sidled up to the youngest of the two, produced from the pocket of his trowsers three frowsy acidulated drops looking very much the worse for wear, and, attacking miss amelia on the weak, or greedy side of her character, artfully offered the drops in exchange for information on the subject of seven times eight. "you like 'em?" whispered bob. "oh, don't i!" answered amelia. "seven times eight?" asked bob. "fifty-six," answered amelia. "sure?" said bob. "certain," said amelia. the drops changed hands, and the catastrophe of the domestic drama changed with them. just as miss sturch appeared with the camphor julep at the garden door, in the character of medical hebe to mr. phippen, her intractable pupil showed himself to his father at the school-room window, in the character, arithmetically speaking, of a reformed son. the cane reposed for the day; and mr. phippen drank his glass of camphor julep with a mind at ease on the twin subjects of miss sturch's sensibilities and master bob's screams. "most gratifying in every way," said the martyr to dyspepsia, smacking his lips with great relish, as he drained the last drops out of the glass. "my nerves are spared, miss sturch's feelings are spared, and the dear boy's back is spared. you have no idea how relieved i feel, chennery. whereabouts were we in that delightful story of yours when this little domestic interruption occurred?" "at the end of it, to be sure," said the vicar. "the bride and bridegroom are some miles on their way by this time to spend the honey-moon at st. swithin's-on-sea. captain treverton is only left behind for a day. he received his sailing orders on monday, and he will be off to portsmouth to-morrow morning to take command of his ship. though he won't admit it in plain words, i happen to know that rosamond has persuaded him to make this his last cruise. she has a plan for getting him back to porthgenna, to live there with her husband, which i hope and believe will succeed. the west rooms at the old house, in one of which mrs. treverton died, are not to be used at all by the young married couple. they have engaged a builder--a sensible, practical man, this time--to survey the neglected north rooms, with a view to their redecoration and thorough repair in every way. this part of the house can not possibly be associated with any melancholy recollections in captain treverton's mind, for neither he nor any one else ever entered it during the period of his residence at porthgenna. considering the change in the look of the place which this project of repairing the north rooms is sure to produce, and taking into account also the softening effect of time on all painful recollections, i should say there was a fair prospect of captain treverton's returning to pass the end of his days among his old tenantry. it will be a great chance for leonard frankland if he does, for he would be sure to dispose the people at porthgenna kindly toward their new master. introduced among his cornish tenants under captain treverton's wing, leonard is sure to get on well with them, provided he abstains from showing too much of the family pride which he has inherited from his father. he is a little given to overrate the advantages of birth and the importance of rank--but that is really the only noticeable defect in his character. in all other respects i can honestly say of him that he deserves what he has got--the best wife in the world. what a life of happiness, phippen, seems to be awaiting these lucky young people! it is a bold thing to say of any mortal creatures, but, look as far as i may, not a cloud can i see any where on their future prospects." "you excellent creature!" exclaimed mr. phippen, affectionately squeezing the vicar's hand. "how i enjoy hearing you! how i luxuriate in your bright view of life!" "and is it not the true view--especially in the case of young frankland and his wife?" inquired the vicar. "if you ask me," said mr. phippen, with a mournful smile, and a philosophic calmness of manner, "i can only answer that the direction of a man's speculative views depends--not to mince the matter--on the state of his secretions. your biliary secretions, dear friend, are all right, and you take bright views. my biliary secretions are all wrong, and i take dark views. you look at the future prospects of this young married couple, and say there is no cloud over them. i don't dispute the assertion, not having the pleasure of knowing either bride or bridegroom. but i look up at the sky over our heads--i remember that there was not a cloud on it when we first entered the garden--i now see, just over those two trees growing so close together, a cloud that has appeared unexpectedly from nobody knows where--and i draw my own conclusions. such," said mr. phippen, ascending the garden steps on his way into the house, "is my philosophy. it may be tinged with bile, but it is philosophy for all that." "all the philosophy in the world," said the vicar, following his guest up the steps, "will not shake my conviction that leonard frankland and his wife have a happy future before them." mr. phippen laughed, and, waiting on the steps till his host joined him, took doctor chennery's arm in the friendliest manner. "you have told a charming story, chennery," he said, "and you have ended it with a charming sentiment. but, my dear friend, though your healthy mind (influenced by an enviably easy digestion) despises my bilious philosophy, don't quite forget the cloud over the two trees. look up at it now--it is getting darker and bigger already." chapter iii. the bride and bridegroom. under the roof of a widowed mother, miss mowlem lived humbly at st. swithin's-on-sea. in the spring of the year eighteen hundred and forty-four, the heart of miss mowlem's widowed mother was gladdened by a small legacy. turning over in her mind the various uses to which the money might be put, the discreet old lady finally decided on investing it in furniture, on fitting up the first floor and the second floor of her house in the best taste, and on hanging a card in the parlor window to inform the public that she had furnished apartments to let. by the summer the apartments were ready, and the card was put up. it had hardly been exhibited a week before a dignified personage in black applied to look at the rooms, expressed himself as satisfied with their appearance, and engaged them for a month certain, for a newly married lady and gentleman, who might be expected to take possession in a few days. the dignified personage in black was captain treverton's servant, and the lady and gentleman, who arrived in due time to take possession, were mr. and mrs. frankland. the natural interest which mrs. mowlem felt in her youthful first lodgers was necessarily vivid in its nature; but it was apathy itself compared to the sentimental interest which her daughter took in observing the manners and customs of the lady and gentleman in their capacity of bride and bridegroom. from the moment when mr. and mrs. frankland entered the house, miss mowlem began to study them with all the ardor of an industrious scholar who attacks a new branch of knowledge. at every spare moment of the day, this industrious young lady occupied herself in stealing up stairs to collect observations, and in running down stairs to communicate them to her mother. by the time the married couple had been in the house a week, miss mowlem had made such good use of her eyes, ears, and opportunities that she could have written a seven days' diary of the lives of mr. and mrs. frankland with the truth and minuteness of mr. samuel pepys himself. but, learn as much as we may, the longer we live the more information there is to acquire. seven days' patient accumulation of facts in connection with the honey-moon had not placed miss mowlem beyond the reach of further discoveries. on the morning of the eighth day, after bringing down the breakfast tray, this observant spinster stole up stairs again, according to custom, to drink at the spring of knowledge through the key-hole channel of the drawing-room door. after an absence of five minutes she descended to the kitchen, breathless with excitement, to announce a fresh discovery in connection with mr. and mrs. frankland to her venerable mother. "whatever do you think she's doing now?" cried miss mowlem, with widely opened eyes and highly elevated hands. "nothing that's useful," answered mrs. mowlem, with sarcastic readiness. "she's actually sitting on his knee! mother, did you ever sit on father's knee when you were married?" "certainly not, my dear. when me and your poor father married, we were neither of us flighty young people, and we knew better." "she's got her head on his shoulder," proceeded miss mowlem, more and more agitatedly, "and her arms round his neck--both her arms, mother, as tight as can be." "i won't believe it," exclaimed mrs. mowlem, indignantly. "a lady like her, with riches, and accomplishments, and all that, demean herself like a housemaid with a sweetheart. don't tell me, i won't believe it!" it was true though, for all that. there were plenty of chairs in mrs. mowlem's drawing-room; there were three beautifully bound books on mrs. mowlem's pembroke table (the antiquities of st. swithin's, smallridge's sermons, and klopstock's messiah in english prose)--mrs. frankland might have sat on purple morocco leather, stuffed with the best horse-hair, might have informed and soothed her mind with archæological diversions, with orthodox native theology, and with devotional poetry of foreign origin--and yet, so frivolous is the nature of woman, she was perverse enough to prefer doing nothing, and perching herself uncomfortably on her husband's knee! she sat for some time in the undignified position which miss mowlem had described with such graphic correctness to her mother--then drew back a little, raised her head, and looked earnestly into the quiet, meditative face of the blind man. "lenny, you are very silent this morning," she said. "what are you thinking about? if you will tell me all your thoughts, i will tell you all mine." "would you really care to hear all my thoughts?" asked leonard. "yes; all. i shall be jealous of any thoughts that you keep to yourself. tell me what you were thinking of just now! me?" "not exactly of you." "more shame for you. are you tired of me in eight days? i have not thought of any body but you ever since we have been here. ah! you laugh. oh, lenny, i do love you so; how can i think of any body but you? no! i sha'n't kiss you. i want to know what you were thinking about first." "of a dream, rosamond, that i had last night. ever since the first days of my blindness--why, i thought you were not going to kiss me again till i had told you what i was thinking about!" "i can't help kissing you, lenny, when you talk of the loss of your sight. tell me, my poor love, do i help to make up for that loss? are you happier than you used to be? and have i some share in making that happiness, though it is ever so little?" she turned her head away as she spoke, but leonard was too quick for her. his inquiring fingers touched her cheek. "rosamond, you are crying," he said. "i crying!" she answered, with a sudden assumption of gayety. "no," she continued, after a moment's pause. "i will never deceive you, love, even in the veriest trifle. my eyes serve for both of us now, don't they? you depend on me for all that your touch fails to tell you, and i must never be unworthy of my trust--must i? i did cry, lenny--but only a very little. i don't know how it was, but i never, in all my life, seemed to pity you and feel for you as i did just at that moment. never mind, i've done now. go on--do go on with what you were going to say." "i was going to say, rosamond, that i have observed one curious thing about myself since i lost my sight. i dream a great deal, but i never dream of myself as a blind man. i often visit in my dreams places that i saw and people whom i knew when i had my sight, and though i feel as much myself, at those visionary times, as i am now when i am wide-awake, i never by any chance feel blind. i wander about all sorts of old walks in my sleep, and never grope my way. i talk to all sorts of old friends in my sleep, and see the expression in their faces which, waking, i shall never see again. i have lost my sight more than a year now, and yet it was like the shock of a new discovery to me to wake up last night from my dream, and remember suddenly that i was blind." "what dream was it, lenny?" "only a dream of the place where i first met you when we were both children. i saw the glen, as it was years ago, with the great twisted roots of the trees, and the blackberry bushes twining about them in a still shadowed light that came through thick leaves from the rainy sky. i saw the mud on the walk in the middle of the glen, with the marks of the cows' hoofs in some places, and the sharp circles in others where some countrywomen had been lately trudging by on pattens. i saw the muddy water running down on either side of the path after the shower; and i saw you, rosamond, a naughty girl, all covered with clay and wet--just as you were in the reality--soiling your bright blue pelisse and your pretty little chubby hands by making a dam to stop the running water, and laughing at the indignation of your nurse-maid when she tried to pull you away and take you home. i saw all that exactly as it really was in the by-gone time; but, strangely enough, i did not see myself as the boy i then was. you were a little girl, and the glen was in its old neglected state, and yet, though i was all in the past so far, i was in the present as regarded myself. throughout the whole dream i was uneasily conscious of being a grown man--of being, in short, exactly what i am now, excepting always that i was not blind." "what a memory you must have, love, to be able to recall all those little circumstances after the years that have passed since that wet day in the glen! how well you recollect what i was as a child! do you remember in the same vivid way what i looked like a year ago when you saw me--oh, lenny, it almost breaks my heart to think of it!--when you saw me for the last time?" "do i remember, rosamond! my last look at your face has painted your portrait in my memory in colors that can never change. i have many pictures in my mind, but your picture is the clearest and brightest of all." "and it is the picture of me at my best--painted in my youth, dear, when my face was always confessing how i loved you, though my lips said nothing. there is some consolation in that thought. when years have passed over us both, lenny, and when time begins to set his mark on me, you will not say to yourself, 'my rosamond is beginning to fade; she grows less and less like what she was when i married her.' i shall never grow old, love, for you! the bright young picture in your mind will still be my picture when my cheeks are wrinkled and my hair is gray." "still your picture--always the same, grow as old as i may." "but are you sure it is clear in every part? are there no doubtful lines, no unfinished corners any where? i have not altered yet since you saw me--i am just what i was a year ago. suppose i ask you what i am like now, could you tell me without making a mistake?" "try me." "may i? you shall be put through a complete catechism! i don't tire you sitting on your knee, do i? well, in the first place, how tall am i when we both stand up side by side?" "you just reach to my ear." "quite right, to begin with. now for the next question. what does my hair look like in your portrait?" "it is dark brown--there is a great deal of it--and it grows rather too low on your forehead for the taste of some people--" "never mind about 'some people;' does it grow too low for your taste?" "certainly not. i like it to grow low; i like all those little natural waves that it makes against your forehead; i like it taken back, as you wear it, in plain bands, which leave your ears and your cheeks visible; and above all things, i like that big glossy knot that it makes where it is all gathered up together at the back of your head." "oh, lenny, how well you remember me, so far! now go a little lower." "a little lower is down to your eyebrows. they are very nicely shaped eyebrows in my picture--" "yes, but they have a fault. come! tell me what the fault is." "they are not quite so strongly marked as they might be." "right again! and my eyes?" "brown eyes, large eyes, wakeful eyes, that are always looking about them. eyes that can be very soft at one time, and very bright at another. eyes tender and clear, just at the present moment, but capable, on very slight provocation, of opening rather too widely, and looking rather too brilliantly resolute." "mind you don't make them look so now! what is there below the eyes?" "a nose that is not quite big enough to be in proper proportion with them. a nose that has a slight tendency to be--" "don't say the horrid english word! spare my feelings by putting it in french. say _retroussé_, and skip over my nose as fast as possible." "i must stop at the mouth, then, and own that it is as near perfection as possible. the lips are lovely in shape, fresh in color, and irresistible in expression. they smile in my portrait, and i am sure they are smiling at me now." "how could they do otherwise when they are getting so much praise? my vanity whispers to me that i had better stop the catechism here. if i talk about my complexion, i shall only hear that it is of the dusky sort; and that there is never red enough in it except when i am walking, or confused, or angry. if i ask a question about my figure, i shall receive the dreadful answer, 'you are dangerously inclined to be fat.' if i say, how do i dress? i shall be told, not soberly enough; you are as fond as a child of gay colors--no! i will venture no more questions. but, vanity apart, lenny, i am so glad, so proud, so happy to find that you can keep the image of me clearly in your mind. i shall do my best now to look and dress like your last remembrance of me. my love of loves! i will do you credit--i will try if i can't make you envied for your wife. you deserve a hundred thousand kisses for saying your catechism so well--and there they are!" while mrs. frankland was conferring the reward of merit on her husband, the sound of a faint, small, courteously significant cough made itself timidly audible in a corner of the room. turning round instantly, with the quickness that characterized all her actions, mrs. frankland, to her horror and indignation, confronted miss mowlem standing just inside the door, with a letter in her hand and a blush of sentimental agitation on her simpering face. "you wretch! how dare you come in without knocking at the door?" cried rosamond, starting to her feet with a stamp, and passing in an instant from the height of fondness to the height of indignation. miss mowlem shook guiltily before the bright, angry eyes that looked through and through her, turned very pale, held out the letter apologetically, and said in her meekest tones that she was very sorry. "sorry!" exclaimed rosamond, getting even more irritated by the apology than she had been by the intrusion, and showing it by another stamp of the foot; "who cares whether you are sorry? i don't want your sorrow--i won't have it. i never was so insulted in my life--never, you mean, prying, inquisitive creature!" "rosamond! rosamond! pray don't forget yourself!" interposed the quiet voice of mr. frankland. "lenny, dear, i can't help it! that creature would drive a saint mad. she has been prying after us ever since we have been here--you have, you ill-bred, indelicate woman!--i suspected it before--i am certain of it now! must we lock our doors to keep you out?--we won't lock our doors! fetch the bill! we give you warning. mr. frankland gives you warning--don't you, lenny? i'll pack up all your things, dear: she sha'n't touch one of them. go down stairs and make out your bill, and give your mother warning. mr. frankland says he won't have his rooms burst into, and his doors listened at by inquisitive women--and i say so too. put that letter down on the table--unless you want to open it and read it--put it down, you audacious woman, and fetch the bill, and tell your mother we are going to leave the house directly!" at this dreadful threat, miss mowlem, who was soft and timid, as well as curious, by nature, wrung her hands in despair, and overflowed meekly in a shower of tears. "oh! good gracious heavens above!" cried miss mowlem, addressing herself distractedly to the ceiling, "what will mother say! whatever will become of me now! oh, ma'am! i thought i knocked--i did, indeed! oh, ma'am! i humbly beg pardon, and i'll never intrude again. oh, ma'am! mother's a widow, and this is the first time we have let the lodgings, and the furniture's swallowed up all our money, and oh, ma'am! ma'am! how i shall catch it if you go!" here words failed miss mowlem, and hysterical sobs pathetically supplied their place. "rosamond!" said mr. frankland. there was an accent of sorrow in his voice this time, as well as an accent of remonstrance. rosamond's quick ear caught the alteration in his tone. as she looked round at him her color changed, her head drooped a little, and her whole expression altered on the instant. she stole gently to her husband's side with softened, saddened eyes, and put her lips caressingly close to his ear. "lenny," she whispered, "have i made you angry with me?" "i can't be angry with you, rosamond," was the quiet answer. "i only wish, love, that you could have controlled yourself a little sooner." "i am so sorry--so very, very sorry!" the fresh, soft lips came closer still to his ear as they whispered these penitent words; and the cunning little hand crept up tremblingly round his neck and began to play with his hair. "so sorry, and so ashamed of myself! but it was enough to make almost any body angry, just at first--wasn't it, dear? and you will forgive me--won't you, lenny?--if i promise never to behave so badly again? never mind that wretched whimpering fool at the door," said rosamond, undergoing a slight relapse as she looked round at miss mowlem, standing immovably repentant against the wall, with her face buried in a dingy-white pocket-handkerchief. "i'll make it up with her; i'll stop her crying; i'll take her out of the room; i'll do any thing in the world that's kind to her, if you will only forgive me." "a polite word or two is all that is wanted--nothing more than a polite word or two," said mr. frankland, rather coldly and constrainedly. "don't cry any more, for goodness sake!" said rosamond, walking straight up to miss mowlem, and pulling the dingy-white pocket-handkerchief away from her face without the least ceremony. "there! leave off, will you? i am very sorry i was in a passion--though you had no business to come in without knocking--i never meant to distress you, and i'll never say a hard word to you again, if you will only knock at the door for the future, and leave off crying now. _do_ leave off crying, you tiresome creature! we are not going away. we don't want your mother, or the bill, or any thing. here! here's a present for you, if you'll leave off crying. here's my neck-ribbon--i saw you trying it on yesterday afternoon, when i was lying down on the bedroom sofa, and you thought i was asleep. never mind; i'm not angry about that. take the ribbon--take it as a peace-offering, if you won't as a present. you _shall_ take it!--no, i don't mean that--i mean, please take it! there, i've pinned it on. and now, shake hands and be friends, and go up stairs and see how it looks in the glass." with these words, mrs. frankland opened the door, administered, under the pretense of a pat on the shoulder, a good-humored shove to the amazed and embarrassed miss mowlem, closed the door again, and resumed her place in a moment on her husband's knee. "i've made it up with her, dear. i've sent her away with my bright green ribbon, and it makes her look as yellow as a guinea, and as ugly as--" rosamond stopped, and looked anxiously into mr. frankland's face. "lenny!" she said, sadly, putting her cheek against his, "are you angry with me still?" "my love, i was never angry with you. i never can be." "i will always keep my temper down for the future, lenny!" "i am sure you will, rosamond. but never mind that. i am not thinking of your temper now." "of what, then?" "of the apology you made to miss mowlem." "did i not say enough? i'll call her back if you like--i'll make another penitent speech--i'll do any thing but kiss her. i really can't do that--i can't kiss any body now but you." "my dear, dear love, how very much like a child you are still in some of your ways! you said more than enough to miss mowlem--far more. and if you will pardon me for making the remark, i think in your generosity and good-nature you a little forgot yourself with the young woman. i don't so much allude to your giving her the ribbon--though, perhaps, that might have been done a little less familiarly--but, from what i heard you say, i infer that you actually went the length of shaking hands with her." "was that wrong? i thought it was the kindest way of making it up." "my dear, it is an excellent way of making it up between equals. but consider the difference between your station in society and miss mowlem's." "i will try and consider it, if you wish me, love. but i think i take after my father, who never troubles his head (dear old man!) about differences of station. i can't help liking people who are kind to me, without thinking whether they are above my rank or below it; and when i got cool, i must confess i felt just as vexed with myself for frightening and distressing that unlucky miss mowlem as if her station had been equal to mine. i will try to think as you do, lenny; but i am very much afraid that i have got, without knowing exactly how, to be what the newspapers call a radical." "my dear rosamond! don't talk of yourself in that way, even in joke. you ought to be the last person in the world to confuse those distinctions in rank on which the whole well-being of society depends." "does it really? and yet, dear, we don't seem to have been created with such very wide distinctions between us. we have all got the same number of arms and legs; we are all hungry and thirsty, and hot in the summer and cold in the winter; we all laugh when we are pleased, and cry when we are distressed; and, surely, we have all got very much the same feelings, whether we are high or whether we are low. i could not have loved you better, lenny, than i do now if i had been a duchess, or less than i do now if i had been a servant-girl." "my love, you are not a servant-girl. and, as to what you say about being a duchess, let me remind you that you are not so much below a duchess as you seem to think. many a lady of high title can not look back on such a line of ancestors as yours. your father's family, rosamond, is one of the oldest in england: even _my_ father's family hardly dates back so far; and we were landed gentry when many a name in the peerage was not heard of. it is really almost laughably absurd to hear you talking of yourself as a radical." "i won't talk of myself so again, lenny--only don't look so serious. i will be a tory, dear, if you will give me a kiss, and let me sit on your knee a little longer." mr. frankland's gravity was not proof against his wife's change of political principles, and the conditions which she annexed to it. his face cleared up, and he laughed almost as gayly as rosamond herself. "by the bye," he said, after an interval of silence had given him time to collect his thoughts, "did i not hear you tell miss mowlem to put a letter down on the table? is it a letter for you or for me?" "ah! i forgot all about the letter," said rosamond, running to the table. "it is for you, lenny--and, goodness me! here's the porthgenna postmark on it." "it must be from the builder whom i sent down to the old house about the repairs. lend me your eyes, love, and let us hear what he says." rosamond opened the letter, drew a stool to her husband's feet, and, sitting down with her arms on his knees, read as follows: "to leonard frankland, esq.: "sir,--agreeably to the instructions with which you favored me, i have proceeded to survey porthgenna tower, with a view to ascertaining what repairs the house in general, and the north side of it in particular, may stand in need of. "as regards the outside, a little cleaning and new pointing is all that the building wants. the walls and foundations seem made to last forever. such strong, solid work i never set eyes on before. "inside the house, i can not report so favorably. the rooms in the west front, having been inhabited during the period of captain treverton's occupation, and having been well looked after since, are in tolerably sound condition. i should say two hundred pounds would cover the expense of all repairs in my line which these rooms need. this sum would not include the restoration of the western staircase, which has given a little in some places, and the banisters of which are decidedly insecure from the first to the second landing. from twenty-five to thirty pounds would suffice to set this all right. "in the rooms on the north front, the state of dilapidation, from top to bottom, is as bad as can be. from all that i could ascertain, nobody ever went near these rooms in captain treverton's time, or has ever entered them since. the people who now keep the house have a superstitious dread of opening any of the north doors, in consequence of the time that has elapsed since any living being has passed through them. nobody would volunteer to accompany me in my survey, and nobody could tell me which keys fitted which room doors in any part of the north side. i could find no plan containing the names or numbers of the rooms; nor, to my surprise, were there any labels attached separately to the keys. they were given to me, all hanging together on a large ring, with an ivory label on it, which was only marked--keys of the north rooms. i take the liberty of mentioning these particulars in order to account for my having, as you might think, delayed my stay at porthgenna tower longer than is needful. i lost nearly a whole day in taking the keys off the ring, and fitting them at hazard to the right doors. and i occupied some hours of another day in marking each door with a number on the outside, and putting a corresponding label to each key, before i replaced it on the ring, in order to prevent the possibility of future errors and delays. "as i hope to furnish you, in a few days, with a detailed estimate of the repairs needed in the north part of the house, from basement to roof, i need only say here that they will occupy some time, and will be of the most extensive nature. the beams of the staircase and the flooring of the first story have got the dry rot. the damp in some rooms, and the rats in others, have almost destroyed the wainscotings. four of the mantel-pieces have given out from the walls, and all the ceilings are either stained, cracked, or peeled away in large patches. the flooring is, in general, in a better condition than i had anticipated; but the shutters and window-sashes are so warped as to be useless. it is only fair to acknowledge that the expense of setting all these things to rights--that is to say, of making the rooms safe and habitable, and of putting them in proper condition for the upholsterer--will be considerable. i would respectfully suggest, in the event of your feeling any surprise or dissatisfaction at the amount of my estimate, that you should name a friend in whom you place confidence, to go over the north rooms with me, keeping my estimate in his hand. i will undertake to prove, if needful, the necessity of each separate repair, and the justice of each separate charge for the same, to the satisfaction of any competent and impartial person whom you may please to select. "trusting to send you the estimate in a few days, "i remain, sir, "your humble servant, "thomas horlock." "a very honest, straightforward letter," said mr. frankland. "i wish he had sent the estimate with it," said rosamond. "why could not the provoking man tell us at once in round numbers what the repairs will really cost?" "i suspect, my dear, he was afraid of shocking us, if he mentioned the amount in round numbers." "that horrid money! it is always getting in one's way, and upsetting one's plans. if we haven't got enough, let us go and borrow of somebody who has. do you mean to dispatch a friend to porthgenna to go over the house with mr. horlock? if you do, i know who i wish you would send." "who?" "me, if you please--under your escort, of course. don't laugh, lenny; i would be very sharp with mr. horlock; i would object to every one of his charges, and beat him down without mercy. i once saw a surveyor go over a house, and i know exactly what to do. you stamp on the floor, and knock at the walls, and scrape at the brick-work, and look up all the chimneys, and out of all the windows--sometimes you make notes in a little book, sometimes you measure with a foot-rule, sometimes you sit down all of a sudden, and think profoundly--and the end of it is that you say the house will do very well indeed, if the tenant will pull out his purse, and put it in proper repair." "well done, rosamond! you have one more accomplishment than i knew of; and i suppose i have no choice now but to give you an opportunity of displaying it. if you don't object, my dear, to being associated with a professional assistant in the important business of checking mr. horlock's estimate, i don't object to paying a short visit to porthgenna whenever you please--especially now i know that the west rooms are still habitable." "oh, how kind of you! how pleased i shall be! how i shall enjoy seeing the old place again before it is altered! i was only five years old, lenny, when we left porthgenna, and i am so anxious to see what i can remember of it, after such a long, long absence as mine. do you know, i never saw any thing of that ruinous north side of the house?--and i do so dote on old rooms! we will go all through them, lenny. you shall have hold of my hand, and look with my eyes, and make as many discoveries as i do. i prophesy that we shall see ghosts, and find treasures, and hear mysterious noises--and, oh heavens! what clouds of dust we shall have to go through. pouf! the very anticipation of them chokes me already." "now we are on the subject of porthgenna, rosamond, let us be serious for one moment. it is clear to me that these repairs of the north rooms will cost a large sum of money. now, my love, i consider no sum of money misspent, however large it may be, if it procures you pleasure. i am with you heart and soul--" he paused. his wife's caressing arms were twining round his neck again, and her cheek was laid gently against his. "go on, lenny," she said, with such an accent of tenderness in the utterance of those three simple words that his speech failed him for the moment, and all his sensations seemed absorbed in the one luxury of listening. "rosamond," he whispered, "there is no music in the world that touches me as your voice touches me now! i feel it all through me, as i used sometimes to feel the sky at night, in the time when i could see." as he spoke, the caressing arms tightened round his neck, and the fervent lips softly took the place which the cheek had occupied. "go on, lenny," they repeated, happily as well as tenderly now, "you said you were with me, heart and soul. with me in what?" "in your project, love, for inducing your father to retire from his profession after this last cruise, and in your hope of prevailing on him to pass the evening of his days happily with us at porthgenna. if the money spent in restoring the north rooms, so that we may all live in them for the future, does indeed so alter the look of the place to his eyes as to dissipate his old sorrowful associations with it, and to make his living there again a pleasure instead of a pain to him, i shall regard it as money well laid out. but, rosamond, are you sure of the success of your plan before we undertake it? have you dropped any hint of the porthgenna project to your father?" "i told him, lenny, that i should never be quite comfortable unless he left the sea and came to live with us--and he said that he would. i did not mention a word about porthgenna--nor did he--but he knows that we shall live there when we are settled, and he made no conditions when he promised that our home should be his home." "is the loss of your mother the only sad association he has with the place?" "not quite. there is another association, which has never been mentioned, but which i may tell you, because there are no secrets between us. my mother had a favorite maid who lived with her from the time of her marriage, and who was, accidentally, the only person present in her room when she died. i remember hearing of this woman as being odd in her look and manner, and no great favorite with any body but her mistress. well, on the morning of my mother's death, she disappeared from the house in the strangest way, leaving behind her a most singular and mysterious letter to my father, asserting that in my mother's dying moments a secret had been confided to her which she was charged to divulge to her master when her mistress was no more; and adding that she was afraid to mention this secret, and that, to avoid being questioned about it, she had resolved on leaving the house forever. she had been gone some hours when the letter was opened--and she has never been seen or heard of since that time. this circumstance seemed to make almost as strong an impression on my father's mind as the shock of my mother's death. our neighbors and servants all thought (as i think) that the woman was mad; but he never agreed with them, and i know that he has neither destroyed nor forgotten the letter from that time to this." "a strange event, rosamond--a very strange event. i don't wonder that it has made a lasting impression on him." "depend upon it, lenny, the servants and the neighbors were right--the woman was mad. any way, however, it was certainly a singular event in our family. all old houses have their romance--and that is the romance of our house. but years and years have passed since then; and, what with time, and what with the changes we are going to make, i have no fear that my dear, good father will spoil our plans. give him a new north garden at porthgenna, where he can walk the decks, as i call it--give him new north rooms to live in--and i will answer for the result. but all this is in the future; let us get back to the present time. when shall we pay our flying visit to porthgenna, lenny, and plunge into the important business of checking mr. horlock's estimate for the repairs?" "we have three weeks more to stay here, rosamond." "yes; and then we must go back to long beckley. i promised that best and biggest of men, the vicar, that we would pay our first visit to him. he is sure not to let us off under three weeks or a month." "in that case, then, we had better say two months hence for the visit to porthgenna. is your writing-case in the room, rosamond?" "yes; close by us, on the table." "write to mr. horlock then, love--and appoint a meeting in two months' time at the old house. tell him also, as we must not trust ourselves on unsafe stairs--especially considering how dependent i am on banisters--to have the west staircase repaired immediately. and, while you have the pen in your hand, perhaps it may save trouble if you write a second note to the housekeeper at porthgenna, to tell her when she may expect us." rosamond sat down gayly at the table, and dipped her pen in the ink with a little flourish of triumph. "in two months," she exclaimed joyfully, "i shall see the dear old place again! in two months, lenny, our profane feet will be raising the dust in the solitudes of the north rooms." book iii. chapter i. timon of london. timon of athens retreated from an ungrateful world to a cavern by the sea-shore, vented his misanthropy in magnificent poetry, and enjoyed the honor of being called "my lord." timon of london took refuge from his species in a detached house at bayswater--expressed his sentiments in shabby prose--and was only addressed as "mr. treverton." the one point of resemblance which it is possible to set against these points of contrast between the two timons consisted in this: that their misanthropy was, at least, genuine. both were incorrigible haters of mankind. there is probably no better proof of the accuracy of that definition of man which describes him as an imitative animal, than is to be found in the fact that the verdict of humanity is always against any individual member of the species who presumes to differ from the rest. a man is one of a flock, and his wool must be of the general color. he must drink when the rest drink, and graze where the rest graze. let him walk at noonday with perfect composure of countenance and decency of gait, with not the slightest appearance of vacancy in his eyes or wildness in his manner, from one end of oxford street to the other without his hat, and let every one of the thousands of hat-wearing people whom he passes be asked separately what they think of him, how many will abstain from deciding instantly that he is mad, on no other evidence than the evidence of his bare head? nay, more; let him politely stop each one of those passengers, and let him explain in the plainest form of words, and in the most intelligible manner, that his head feels more easy and comfortable without a hat than with one, how many of his fellow mortals who decided that he was mad on first meeting him, will change their opinion when they part from him after hearing his explanation? in the vast majority of cases, the very explanation itself would be accepted as an excellent additional proof that the intellect of the hatless man was indisputably deranged. starting at the beginning of the march of life out of step with the rest of the mortal regiment, andrew treverton paid the penalty of his irregularity from his earliest days. he was a phenomenon in the nursery, a butt at school, and a victim at college. the ignorant nurse-maid reported him as a queer child; the learned school-master genteelly varied the phrase, and described him as an eccentric boy; the college tutor, harping on the same string, facetiously likened his head to a roof, and said there was a slate loose in it. when a slate is loose, if nobody fixes it in time, it ends by falling off. in the roof of a house we view that consequence as a necessary result of neglect; in the roof of a man's head we are generally very much shocked and surprised by it. overlooked in some directions and misdirected in others, andrew's uncouth capacities for good tried helplessly to shape themselves. the better side of his eccentricity took the form of friendship. he became violently and unintelligibly fond of one among his school-fellows--a boy who treated him with no especial consideration in the play-ground, and who gave him no particular help in the class. nobody could discover the smallest reason for it, but it was nevertheless a notorious fact that andrew's pocket-money was always at this boy's service, that andrew ran about after him like a dog, and that andrew over and over again took the blame and punishment on his own shoulders which ought to have fallen on the shoulders of his friend. when, a few years afterward, that friend went to college, the lad petitioned to be sent to college too, and attached himself there more closely than ever to the strangely chosen comrade of his school-boy days. such devotion as this must have touched any man possessed of ordinary generosity of disposition. it made no impression whatever on the inherently base nature of andrew's friend. after three years of intercourse at college--intercourse which was all selfishness on one side and all self-sacrifice on the other--the end came, and the light was let in cruelly on andrew's eyes. when his purse grew light in his friend's hand, and when his acceptances were most numerous on his friend's bills, the brother of his honest affection, the hero of his simple admiration, abandoned him to embarrassment, to ridicule, and to solitude, without the faintest affectation of penitence--without so much even as a word of farewell. he returned to his father's house, a soured man at the outset of life--returned to be upbraided for the debts that he had contracted to serve the man who had heartlessly outraged and shamelessly cheated him. he left home in disgrace to travel on a small allowance. the travels were protracted, and they ended, as such travels often do, in settled expatriation. the life he led, the company he kept, during his long residence abroad, did him permanent and fatal harm. when he at last returned to england, he presented himself in the most hopeless of all characters--the character of a man who believes in nothing. at this period of his life, his one chance for the future lay in the good results which his brother's influence over him might have produced. the two had hardly resumed their intercourse of early days, when the quarrel occasioned by captain treverton's marriage broke it off forever. from that time, for all social interests and purposes, andrew was a lost man. from that time he met the last remonstrances that were made to him by the last friends who took any interest in his fortunes always with the same bitter and hopeless form of reply: "my dearest friend forsook and cheated me," he would say. "my only brother has quarreled with me for the sake of a play-actress. what am i to expect of the rest of mankind after that? i have suffered twice for my belief in others--i will never suffer a third time. the wise man is the man who does not disturb his heart at its natural occupation of pumping blood through his body. i have gathered my experience abroad and at home, and have learned enough to see through the delusions of life which look like realities to other men's eyes. my business in this world is to eat, drink, sleep, and die. every thing else is superfluity--and i have done with it." the few people who ever cared to inquire about him again, after being repulsed by such an avowal as this, heard of him three or four years after his brother's marriage in the neighborhood of bayswater. local report described him as having bought the first cottage he could find which was cut off from other houses by a wall all round it. it was further rumored that he was living like a miser; that he had got an old man-servant, named shrowl, who was even a greater enemy to mankind than himself; that he allowed no living soul, not even an occasional char-woman, to enter the house; that he was letting his beard grow, and that he had ordered his servant shrowl to follow his example. in the year eighteen hundred and forty-four, the fact of a man's not shaving was regarded by the enlightened majority of the english nation as a proof of unsoundness of intellect. at the present time mr. treverton's beard would only have interfered with his reputation for respectability. seventeen years ago it was accepted as so much additional evidence in support of the old theory that his intellects were deranged. he was at that very time, as his stock-broker could have testified, one of the sharpest men of business in london; he could argue on the wrong side of any question with an acuteness of sophistry and sarcasm that dr. johnson himself might have envied; he kept his household accounts right to a farthing--but what did these advantages avail him, in the estimation of his neighbors, when he presumed to live on another plan than theirs, and when he wore a hairy certificate of lunacy on the lower part of his face? we have advanced a little in the matter of partial toleration of beards since that time; but we have still a good deal of ground to get over. in the present year of progress, eighteen hundred and sixty-one, would the most trustworthy banker's clerk in the whole metropolis have the slightest chance of keeping his situation if he left off shaving his chin? common report, which calumniated mr. treverton as mad, had another error to answer for in describing him as a miser. he saved more than two thirds of the income derived from his comfortable fortune, not because he liked hoarding up money, but because he had no enjoyment of the comforts and luxuries which money is spent in procuring. to do him justice, his contempt for his own wealth was quite as hearty as his contempt for the wealth of his neighbors. thus characteristically wrong in endeavoring to delineate his character, report was, nevertheless, for once in a way, inconsistently right in describing his manner of life. it was true that he had bought the first cottage he could find that was secluded within its own walls--true that nobody was allowed, on any pretense whatever, to enter his doors--and true that he had met with a servant, who was even bitterer against all mankind than himself, in the person of mr. shrowl. the life these two led approached as nearly to the existence of the primitive man (or savage) as the surrounding conditions of civilization would allow. admitting the necessity of eating and drinking, the first object of mr. treverton's ambition was to sustain life with the least possible dependence on the race of men who professed to supply their neighbors' bodily wants, and who, as he conceived, cheated them infamously on the strength of their profession. having a garden at the back of the house, timon of london dispensed with the green-grocer altogether by cultivating his own vegetables. there was no room for growing wheat, or he would have turned farmer also on his own account; but he could outwit the miller and the baker, at any rate, by buying a sack of corn, grinding it in his own hand-mill, and giving the flour to shrowl to make into bread. on the same principle, the meat for the house was bought wholesale of the city salesmen--the master and servant eating as much of it in the fresh state as they could, salting the rest, and setting butchers at defiance. as for drink, neither brewer nor publican ever had the chance of extorting a farthing from mr. treverton's pocket. he and shrowl were satisfied with beer--and they brewed for themselves. with bread, vegetables, meat, and malt liquor, these two hermits of modern days achieved the great double purpose of keeping life in and keeping the tradesmen out. eating like primitive men, they lived in all other respects like primitive men also. they had pots, pans, and pipkins, two deal tables, two chairs, two old sofas, two short pipes, and two long cloaks. they had no stated meal-times, no carpets and bedsteads, no cabinets, book-cases, or ornamental knickknacks of any kind, no laundress, and no char-woman. when either of the two wanted to eat and drink, he cut off his crust of bread, cooked his bit of meat, drew his drop of beer, without the slightest reference to the other. when either of the two thought he wanted a clean shirt, which was very seldom, he went and washed one for himself. when either of the two discovered that any part of the house was getting very dirty indeed, he took a bucket of water and a birch-broom, and washed the place out like a dog-kennel. and, lastly, when either of the two wanted to go to sleep, he wrapped himself up in his cloak, lay down on one of the sofas, and took what repose he required, early in the evening or late in the morning, just as he pleased. when there was no baking, brewing, gardening, or cleaning to be done, the two sat down opposite each other, and smoked for hours, generally without uttering a word. whenever they did speak, they quarreled. their ordinary dialogue was a species of conversational prize-fight, beginning with a sarcastic affectation of good-will on either side, and ending in hearty exchanges of violent abuse--just as the boxers go through the feeble formality of shaking hands before they enter on the serious practical business of beating each other's faces out of all likeness to the image of man. not having so many disadvantages of early refinement and education to contend against as his master, shrowl generally won the victory in these engagements of the tongue. indeed, though nominally the servant, he was really the ruling spirit in the house--acquiring unbounded influence over his master by dint of outmarching mr. treverton in every direction on his own ground. shrowl's was the harshest voice; shrowl's were the bitterest sayings; and shrowl's was the longest beard. the surest of all retributions is the retribution that lies in wait for a man who boasts. mr. treverton was rashly given to boasting of his independence, and when retribution overtook him it assumed a personal form, and bore the name of shrowl. * * * * * on a certain morning, about three weeks after mrs. frankland had written to the housekeeper at porthgenna tower to mention the period at which her husband and herself might be expected there, mr. treverton descended, with his sourest face and his surliest manner, from the upper regions of the cottage to one of the rooms on the ground-floor, which civilized tenants would probably have called the parlor. like his elder brother, he was a tall, well-built man; but his bony, haggard, sallow face bore not the slightest resemblance to the handsome, open, sunburnt face of the captain. no one seeing them together could possibly have guessed that they were brothers--so completely did they differ in expression as well as in feature. the heart-aches that he had suffered in youth; the reckless, wandering, dissipated life that he had led in manhood; the petulance, the disappointment, and the physical exhaustion of his latter days, had so wasted and worn him away that he looked his brother's elder by almost twenty years. with unbrushed hair and unwashed face, with a tangled gray beard, and an old, patched, dirty flannel dressing-gown that hung about him like a sack, this descendant of a wealthy and ancient family looked as if his birthplace had been the work-house, and his vocation in life the selling of cast-off clothes. it was breakfast-time with mr. treverton--that is to say, it was the time at which he felt hungry enough to think about eating something. in the same position over the mantel-piece in which a looking-glass would have been placed in a household of ordinary refinement, there hung in the cottage of timon of london a side of bacon. on the deal table by the fire stood half a loaf of heavy-looking brown-bread; in a corner of the room was a barrel of beer, with two battered pewter pots hitched onto nails in the wall above it; and under the grate lay a smoky old gridiron, left just as it had been thrown down when last used and done with. mr. treverton took a greasy clasp-knife out of the pocket of his dressing-gown, cut off a rasher of bacon, jerked the gridiron onto the fire, and began to cook his breakfast. he had just turned the rasher, when the door opened, and shrowl entered the room, with his pipe in his mouth, bent on the same eating errand as his master. in personal appearance, shrowl was short, fat, flabby, and perfectly bald, except at the back of his head, where a ring of bristly iron-gray hair projected like a collar that had got hitched out of its place. to make amends for the scantiness of his hair, the beard which he had cultivated by his master's desire grew far over his cheeks, and drooped down on his chest in two thick jagged peaks. he wore a very old long-tailed dress-coat, which he had picked up a bargain in petticoat lane--a faded yellow shirt, with a large torn frill--velveteen trowsers, turned up at the ankles--and blucher boots that had never been blacked since the day when they last left the cobbler's stall. his color was unhealthily florid, his thick lips curled upward with a malicious grin, and his eyes were the nearest approach, in form and expression, to the eyes of a bull terrier which those features are capable of achieving when they are placed in the countenance of a man. any painter wanting to express strength, insolence, ugliness, coarseness, and cunning in the face and figure of one and the same individual, could have discovered no better model for the purpose, all the world over, than he might have found in the person of mr. shrowl. [illustration: "he had just turned the rasher, when the door opened, and shrowl entered the room."] neither master nor servant exchanged a word or took the smallest notice of each other on first meeting. shrowl stood stolidly contemplative, with his hands in his pockets, waiting for his turn at the gridiron. mr. treverton finished his cooking, took his bacon to the table, and, cutting a crust of bread, began to eat his breakfast. when he had disposed of the first mouthful, he condescended to look up at shrowl, who was at that moment opening his clasp-knife and approaching the side of bacon with slouching steps and sleepily greedy eyes. "what do you mean by that?" asked mr. treverton, pointing with indignant surprise at shrowl's breast. "you ugly brute, you've got a clean shirt on!" "thankee, sir, for noticing it," said shrowl, with a sarcastic affectation of humility. "this is a joyful occasion, this is. i couldn't do no less than put a clean shirt on, when it's my master's birthday. many happy returns, sir. perhaps you thought i should forget that to-day was your birthday? lord bless your sweet face, i wouldn't have forgot it on any account. how old are you to-day? it's a long time ago, sir, since you was a plump smiling little boy, with a frill round your neck, and marbles in your pocket, and trowsers and waistcoat all in one, and kisses and presents from pa and ma and uncle and aunt, on your birthday. don't you be afraid of me wearing out this shirt by too much washing. i mean to put it away in lavender against your next birthday; or against your funeral, which is just as likely at your time of life--isn't it, sir?" "don't waste a clean shirt on my funeral," retorted mr. treverton. "i hav'n't left you any money in my will, shrowl. you'll be on your way to the work-house when i'm on my way to the grave." "have you really made your will at last, sir?" inquired shrowl, pausing, with an appearance of the greatest interest, in the act of cutting off his slice of bacon. "i humbly beg pardon, but i always thought you was afraid to do it." the servant had evidently touched intentionally on one of the master's sore points. mr. treverton thumped his crust of bread on the table, and looked up angrily at shrowl. "afraid of making my will, you fool!" said he. "i don't make it, and i won't make it, on principle." shrowl slowly sawed off his slice of bacon, and began to whistle a tune. "on principle," repeated mr. treverton. "rich men who leave money behind them are the farmers who raise the crop of human wickedness. when a man has any spark of generosity in his nature, if you want to put it out, leave him a legacy. when a man is bad, if you want to make him worse, leave him a legacy. if you want to collect a number of men together for the purpose of perpetuating corruption and oppression on a large scale, leave them a legacy under the form of endowing a public charity. if you want to give a woman the best chance in the world of getting a bad husband, leave her a legacy. _make my will!_ i have a pretty strong dislike of my species, shrowl, but i don't quite hate mankind enough yet to do such mischief among them as that!" ending his diatribe in those words, mr. treverton took down one of the battered pewter pots, and refreshed himself with a pint of beer. shrowl shifted the gridiron to a clear place in the fire, and chuckled sarcastically. "who the devil would you have me leave my money to?" cried mr. treverton, overhearing him. "to my brother, who thinks me a brute now; who would think me a fool then; and who would encourage swindling, anyhow, by spending all my money among doxies and strolling players? to the child of that player-woman, whom i have never set eyes on, who has been brought up to hate me, and who would turn hypocrite directly by pretending, for decency's sake, to be sorry for my death? to _you_, you human baboon!--you, who would set up a usury office directly, and prey upon the widow, the fatherless, and the unfortunate generally, all over the world? your good health, mr. shrowl! i can laugh as well as you--especially when i know i'm not going to leave you sixpence." shrowl, in his turn, began to get a little irritated now. the jeering civility which he had chosen to assume on first entering the room gave place to his habitual surliness of manner and his natural growling intonation of voice. "you just let me alone--will you?" he said, sitting down sulkily to his breakfast. "i've done joking for to-day; suppose you finish too. what's the use of talking nonsense about your money? you must leave it to somebody." "yes, i will," said mr. treverton. "i will leave it, as i have told you over and over again, to the first somebody i can find who honestly despises money, and who can't be made the worse, therefore, by having it." "that means nobody," grunted shrowl. "i know it does!" retorted his master. before shrowl could utter a word of rejoinder, there was a ring at the gate-bell of the cottage. "go out," said mr. treverton, "and see what that is. if it's a woman visitor, show her what a scarecrow you are, and frighten her away. if it's a man visitor--" "if it's a man visitor," interposed shrowl, "i'll punch his head for interrupting me at my breakfast." mr. treverton filled and lit his pipe during his servant's absence. before the tobacco was well alight, shrowl returned, and reported a man visitor. "did you punch his head?" asked mr. treverton. "no," said shrowl. "i picked up his letter. he poked it under the gate and went away. here it is." the letter was written on foolscap paper, superscribed in a round legal hand. as mr. treverton opened it, two slips cut from newspapers dropped out. one fell on the table before which he was sitting; the other fluttered to the floor. this last slip shrowl picked up and looked over its contents, without troubling himself to go through the ceremony of first asking leave. after slowly drawing in and slowly puffing out again one mouthful of tobacco-smoke, mr. treverton began to read the letter. as his eye fell on the first lines, his lips began to work round the mouth-piece of the pipe in a manner that was very unusual with him. the letter was not long enough to require him to turn over the first leaf of it--it ended at the bottom of the opening sheet. he read it down to the signature--then looked up to the address, and went through it again from the beginning. his lips still continued to work round the mouth-piece of the pipe, but he smoked no more. when he had finished the second reading, he set the letter down very gently on the table, looked at his servant with an unaccustomed vacancy in the expression of his eyes, and took the pipe out of his mouth with a hand that trembled a little. "shrowl," he said, very quietly, "my brother, the captain, is drowned." "i know he is," answered shrowl, without looking up from the newspaper-slip. "i'm reading about it here." "the last words my brother said to me when we quarreled about the player-woman," continued mr. treverton, speaking as much to himself as to his servant, "were that i should die without one kind feeling in my heart toward any living creature." "so you will," muttered shrowl, turning the slip over to see if there was any thing worth reading at the back of it. "i wonder what he thought about me when he was dying?" said mr. treverton, abstractedly, taking up the letter again from the table. "he didn't waste a thought on you or any body else," remarked shrowl. "if he thought at all, he thought about how he could save his life. when he had done thinking about that, he had done living too." with this expression of opinion mr. shrowl went to the beer-barrel, and drew his morning draught. "damn that player-woman!" muttered mr. treverton. as he said the words his face darkened and his lips closed firmly. he smoothed the letter out on the table. there seemed to be some doubt in his mind whether he had mastered all its contents yet--some idea that there ought to be more in it than he had yet discovered. in going over it for the third time, he read it to himself aloud and very slowly, as if he was determined to fix every separate word firmly in his memory. this was the letter: "sir,--as the old legal adviser and faithful friend of your family, i am desired by mrs. frankland, formerly miss treverton, to acquaint you with the sad news of your brother's death. this deplorable event occurred on board the ship of which he was captain, during a gale of wind in which the vessel was lost on a reef of rocks off the island of antigua. i inclose a detailed account of the shipwreck, extracted from _the times_, by which you will see that your brother died nobly in the performance of his duty toward the officers and men whom he commanded. i also send a slip from the local cornish paper, containing a memoir of the deceased gentleman. "before closing this communication, i must add that no will has been found, after the most rigorous search, among the papers of the late captain treverton. having disposed, as you know, of porthgenna, the only property of which he was possessed at the time of his death was personal property, derived from the sale of his estate; and this, in consequence of his dying intestate, will go in due course of law to his daughter, as his nearest of kin. "i am, sir, your obedient servant, "alexander nixon." the newspaper-slip, which had fallen on the table, contained the paragraph from _the times_. the slip from the cornish paper, which had dropped to the floor, shrowl poked under his master's eyes, in a fit of temporary civility, as soon as he had done reading it. mr. treverton took not the slightest notice either of the one paragraph or the other. he still sat looking at the letter, even after he had read it for the third time. "why don't you give the strip of print a turn, as well as the sheet of writing?" asked shrowl. "why don't you read about what a great man your brother was, and what a good life he led, and what a wonderful handsome daughter he's left behind him, and what a capital marriage she's made along with the man that's owner of your old family estate? _she_ don't want your money now, at any rate! the ill wind that blowed her father's ship on the rocks has blowed forty thousand pounds of good into her lap. why don't you read about it? she and her husband have got a better house in cornwall than you have got here. ain't you glad of that? they were going to have repaired the place from top to bottom for your brother to go and live along with 'em in clover when he came back from sea. who will ever repair a place for you? i wonder whether your niece would knock the old house about for your sake, now, if you was to clean yourself up and go and ask her?" at the last question, shrowl paused in the work of aggravation--not for want of more words, but for want of encouragement to utter them. for the first time since they had kept house together, he had tried to provoke his master and had failed. mr. treverton listened, or appeared to listen, without moving a muscle--without the faintest change to anger in his face. the only words he said when shrowl had done were these two-- "go out!" shrowl was not an easy man to move, but he absolutely changed color when he heard himself suddenly ordered to leave the room. "go out!" reiterated mr. treverton. "and hold your tongue henceforth and forever about my brother and my brother's daughter. i never _have_ set eyes upon the player-woman's child, and i never will. hold your tongue--leave me alone--go out!" "i'll be even with him for this," thought shrowl as he slowly withdrew from the room. when he had closed the door, he listened outside of it, and heard mr. treverton push aside his chair, and walk up and down, talking to himself. judging by the confused words that escaped him, shrowl concluded that his thoughts were still running on the "player-woman" who had set his brother and himself at variance. he seemed to feel a barbarous sense of relief in venting his dissatisfaction with himself, after the news of captain treverton's death, on the memory of the woman whom he hated so bitterly, and on the child whom she had left behind her. after a while the low rumbling tones of his voice ceased altogether. shrowl peeped through the key-hole, and saw that he was reading the newspaper-slips which contained the account of the shipwreck and the memoir of his brother. the latter adverted to some of those family particulars which the vicar of long beckley had mentioned to his guest; and the writer of the memoir concluded by expressing a hope that the bereavement which mr. and mrs. frankland had suffered would not interfere with their project for repairing porthgenna tower, after they had gone the length already of sending a builder to survey the place. something in the wording of that paragraph seemed to take mr. treverton's memory back to his youth-time when the old family house had been his home. he whispered a few words to himself which gloomily referred to the days that were gone, rose from his chair impatiently, threw both the newspaper-slips into the fire, watched them while they were burning, and sighed when the black gossamer ashes floated upward on the draught, and were lost in the chimney. the sound of that sigh startled shrowl as the sound of a pistol-shot might have startled another man. his bull-terrier eyes opened wide in astonishment, and he shook his head ominously as he walked away from the door. chapter ii. will they come? the housekeeper at porthgenna tower had just completed the necessary preparations for the reception of her master and mistress, at the time mentioned in mrs. frankland's letter from st. swithin's-on-sea, when she was startled by receiving a note sealed with black wax, and surrounded by a thick mourning border. the note briefly communicated the news of captain treverton's death, and informed her that the visit of mr. and mrs. frankland to porthgenna was deferred for an indefinite period. by the same post the builder, who was superintending the renovation of the west staircase, also received a letter, requesting him to send in his account as soon as the repairs on which he was then engaged were completed; and telling him that mr. frankland was unable, for the present, to give any further attention to the project for making the north rooms habitable. on the receipt of this communication, the builder withdrew himself and his men as soon as the west stairs and banisters had been made secure; and porthgenna tower was again left to the care of the housekeeper and her servant, without master or mistress, friends or strangers, to thread its solitary passages or enliven its empty rooms. from this time eight months passed away, and the housekeeper heard nothing of her master and mistress, except through the medium of paragraphs in the local newspaper, which dubiously referred to the probability of their occupying the old house, and interesting themselves in the affairs of their tenantry, at no very distant period. occasionally, too, when business took him to the post-town, the steward collected reports about his employers among the old friends and dependents of the treverton family. from these sources of information, the housekeeper was led to conclude that mr. and mrs. frankland had returned to long beckley, after receiving the news of captain treverton's death, and had lived there for some months in strict retirement. when they left that place, they moved (if the newspaper report was to be credited) to the neighborhood of london, and occupied the house of some friends who were traveling on the continent. here they must have remained for some time, for the new year came and brought no rumors of any change in their place of abode. january and february passed without any news of them. early in march the steward had occasion to go to the post-town. when he returned to porthgenna, he came back with a new report relating to mr. and mrs. frankland, which excited the housekeeper's interest in an extraordinary degree. in two different quarters, each highly respectable, the steward had heard it facetiously announced that the domestic responsibilities of his master and mistress were likely to be increased by their having a nurse to engage and a crib to buy at the end of the spring or the beginning of the summer. in plain english, among the many babies who might be expected to make their appearance in the world in the course of the next three months, there was one who would inherit the name of frankland, and who (if the infant luckily turned out to be a boy) would cause a sensation throughout west cornwall as heir to the porthgenna estate. in the next month, the month of april, before the housekeeper and the steward had done discussing their last and most important fragment of news, the postman made his welcome appearance at porthgenna tower, and brought another note from mrs. frankland. the housekeeper's face brightened with unaccustomed pleasure and surprise as she read the first line. the letter announced that the long-deferred visit of her master and mistress to the old house would take place early in may, and that they might be expected to arrive any day from the first to the tenth of the month. the reasons which had led the owners of porthgenna to fix a period, at last, for visiting their country seat, were connected with certain particulars into which mrs. frankland had not thought it advisable to enter in her letter. the plain facts of the case were, that a little discussion had arisen between the husband and wife in relation to the next place of residence which they should select, after the return from the continent of the friends whose house they were occupying. mr. frankland had very reasonably suggested returning again to long beckley--not only because all their oldest friends lived in the neighborhood, but also (and circumstances made this an important consideration) because the place had the advantage of possessing an excellent resident medical man. unfortunately this latter advantage, so far from carrying any weight with it in mrs. frankland's estimation, actually prejudiced her mind against the project of going to long beckley. she had always, she acknowledged, felt an unreasonable antipathy to the doctor there. he might be a very skillful, an extremely polite, and an undeniably respectable man; but she never had liked him, and never should, and she was resolved to oppose the plan for living at long beckley, because the execution of it would oblige her to commit herself to his care. two other places of residence were next suggested; but mrs. frankland had the same objection to oppose to both--in each case the resident doctor would be a stranger to her, and she did not like the notion of being attended by a stranger. finally, as she had all along anticipated, the choice of the future abode was left entirely to her own inclinations; and then, to the amazement of her husband and her friends, she immediately decided on going to porthgenna. she had formed this strange project, and was now resolved on executing it, partly because she was more curious than ever to see the place again; partly because the doctor who had been with her mother in mrs. treverton's last illness, and who had attended her through all her own little maladies when she was a child, was still living and practicing in the porthgenna neighborhood. her father and the doctor had been old cronies, and had met for years at the same chess-board every saturday night. they had kept up their friendship, when circumstances separated them, by exchanges of christmas presents every year; and when the sad news of the captain's death had reached cornwall, the doctor had written a letter of sympathy and condolence to rosamond, speaking in such terms of his former friend and patron as she could never forget. he must be a nice, fatherly old man now, the man of all others who was fittest, on every account, to attend her. in short, mrs. frankland was just as strongly prejudiced in favor of employing the porthgenna doctor as she was prejudiced against employing the long beckley doctor; and she ended, as all young married women with affectionate husbands may, and do end, whenever they please--by carrying her own point, and having her own way. on the first of may the west rooms were all ready for the reception of the master and mistress of the house. the beds were aired, the carpets cleaned, the sofas and chairs uncovered. the housekeeper put on her satin gown and her garnet brooch; the maid followed suit, at a respectful distance, in brown merino and a pink ribbon; and the steward, determining not to be outdone by the women, arrayed himself in a black brocaded waistcoat, which almost rivaled the gloom and grandeur of the housekeeper's satin gown. the day wore on, evening closed in, bed-time came, and there were no signs yet of mr. and mrs. frankland. but the first was an early day on which to expect them. the steward thought so, and the housekeeper added that it would be foolish to feel disappointed, even if they did not arrive until the fifth. the fifth came, and still nothing happened. the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth followed, and no sound of the expected carriage-wheels came near the lonely house. on the tenth, and last day, the housekeeper, the steward, and the maid, all three rose earlier than usual; all three opened and shut doors, and went up and down stairs oftener than was needful; all three looked out perpetually toward the moor and the high road, and thought the view flatter and duller and emptier than ever it had appeared to them before. the day waned, the sunset came; darkness changed the perpetual looking-out of the housekeeper, the steward, and the maid into perpetual listening; ten o'clock struck, and still there was nothing to be heard when they went to the open window but the wearisome beating of the surf on the sandy shore. the housekeeper began to calculate the time that would be consumed on the railway journey from london to exeter, and on the posting journey afterward through cornwall to porthgenna. when had mr. and mrs. frankland left exeter?--that was the first question. and what delays might they have encountered afterward in getting horses?--that was the second. the housekeeper and the steward differed in debating these points; but both agreed that it was necessary to sit up until midnight, on the chance of the master and mistress arriving late. the maid, hearing her sentence of banishment from bed for the next two hours pronounced by the superior authorities, yawned and sighed mournfully--was reproved by the steward--and was furnished by the housekeeper with a book of hymns to read to keep up her spirits. twelve o'clock struck, and still the monotonous beating of the surf, varied occasionally by those loud, mysterious, cracking noises which make themselves heard at night in an old house, were the only audible sounds. the steward was dozing; the maid was fast asleep under the soothing influence of the hymns; the housekeeper was wide awake, with her eyes fixed on the window, and her head shaking forebodingly from time to time. at the last stroke of the clock she left her chair, listened attentively, and still hearing nothing, shook the maid irritably by the shoulder, and stamped on the floor to arouse the steward. "we may go to bed," she said. "they are not coming. this is the second time they have disappointed us. the first time the captain's death stood in the way. what stops them now? another death? i shouldn't wonder if it was." "now i think of it, no more should i," said the steward, ominously knitting his brows. "another death!" repeated the housekeeper, superstitiously. "if it _is_ another death, i should take it, in their place, as a warning to keep away from the house." chapter iii. mrs. jazeph. if, instead of hazarding the guess that a second death stood in the way of mr. and mrs. frankland's arrival at porthgenna, the housekeeper had, by way of variety, surmised this time that a birth was the obstacle which delayed them, she might have established her character as a wise woman, by hitting at random on the actual truth. her master and mistress had started from london on the ninth of may, and had got through the greater part of their railway journey, when they were suddenly obliged to stop, on mrs. frankland's account, at the station of a small town in somersetshire. the little visitor, who was destined to increase the domestic responsibilities of the young married couple, had chosen to enter on the scene, in the character of a robust boy-baby, a month earlier than he had been expected, and had modestly preferred to make his first appearance in a small somersetshire inn, rather than wait to be ceremoniously welcomed to life in the great house of porthgenna, which he was one day to inherit. very few events had ever produced a greater sensation in the town of west winston than the one small event of the unexpected stoppage of mr. and mrs. frankland's journey at that place. never since the last election had the landlord and landlady of the tiger's head hotel bustled about their house in such a fever of excitement as possessed them when mr. frankland's servant and mrs. frankland's maid drew up at the door in a fly from the station, to announce that their master and mistress were behind, and that the largest and quietest rooms in the hotel were wanted immediately, under the most unexpected circumstances. never since he had triumphantly passed his examination had young mr. orridge, the new doctor, who had started in life by purchasing the west winston practice, felt such a thrill of pleasurable agitation pervade him from top to toe as when he heard that the wife of a blind gentleman of great fortune had been taken ill on the railway journey from london to devonshire, and required all that his skill and attention could do for her without a moment's delay. never since the last archery meeting and fancy fair had the ladies of the town been favored with such an all-absorbing subject for conversation as was now afforded to them by mrs. frankland's mishap. fabulous accounts of the wife's beauty and the husband's fortune poured from the original source of the tiger's head, and trickled through the highways and byways of the little town. there were a dozen different reports, one more elaborately false than the other, about mr. frankland's blindness, and the cause of it; about the lamentable condition in which his wife had arrived at the hotel; and about the painful sense of responsibility which had unnerved the inexperienced mr. orridge from the first moment when he set eyes on his patient. it was not till eight o'clock in the evening that the public mind was relieved at last from all suspense by an announcement that the child was born, and screaming lustily; that the mother was wonderfully well, considering all things; and that mr. orridge had covered himself with distinction by the skill, tenderness, and attention with which he had performed his duties. on the next day, and the next, and for a week after that, the accounts were still favorable. but on the tenth day a catastrophe was reported. the nurse who was in attendance on mrs. frankland had been suddenly taken ill, and was rendered quite incapable of performing any further service for at least a week to come, and perhaps for a much longer period. in a large town this misfortune might have been readily remedied, but in a place like west winston it was not so easy to supply the loss of an experienced nurse at a few hours' notice. when mr. orridge was consulted in the new emergency, he candidly acknowledged that he required a little time for consideration before he could undertake to find another professed nurse of sufficient character and experience to wait on a lady like mrs. frankland. mr. frankland suggested telegraphing to a medical friend in london for a nurse, but the doctor was unwilling for many reasons to adopt that plan, except as a last resource. it would take some time to find the right person, and to send her to west winston and, moreover, he would infinitely prefer employing a woman with whose character and capacity he was himself acquainted. he therefore proposed that mrs. frankland should be trusted for a few hours to the care of her maid, under supervision of the landlady of the tiger's head, while he made inquiries in the neighborhood. if the inquiries produced no satisfactory result, he should be ready, when he called in the evening, to adopt mr. frankland's idea of telegraphing to london for a nurse. on proceeding to make the investigation that he had proposed, mr. orridge, although he spared no trouble, met with no success. he found plenty of volunteers for the office of nurse, but they were all loud-voiced, clumsy-handed, heavy-footed countrywomen, kind and willing enough, but sadly awkward, blundering attendants to place at the bedside of such a lady as mrs. frankland. the morning hours passed away, and the afternoon came, and still mr. orridge had found no substitute for the invalided nurse whom he could venture to engage. at two o'clock he had half an hour's drive before him to a country-house where he had a child-patient to see. "perhaps i may remember somebody who may do, on the way out or on the way back again," thought mr. orridge, as he got into his gig. "i have some hours at my disposal still, before the time comes for my evening visit at the inn." puzzling his brains, with the best intention in the world, all along the road to the country-house, mr. orridge reached his destination without having arrived at any other conclusion than that he might just as well state his difficulty to mrs. norbury, the lady whose child he was about to prescribe for. he had called on her when he bought the west winston practice, and had found her one of those frank, good-humored, middle-aged women who are generally designated by the epithet "motherly." her husband was a country squire, famous for his old politics, his old stories, and his old wine. he had seconded his wife's hearty reception of the new doctor, with all the usual jokes about never giving him any employment, and never letting any bottles into the house except the bottles that went down into the cellar. mr. orridge had been amused by the husband and pleased with the wife; and he thought it might be at least worth while, before he gave up all hope of finding a fit nurse, to ask mrs. norbury, as an old resident in the west winston neighborhood, for a word of advice. accordingly, after seeing the child, and pronouncing that there were no symptoms about the little patient which need cause the slightest alarm to any body, mr. orridge paved the way for a statement of the difficulty that beset him by asking mrs. norbury if she had heard of the "interesting event" that had happened at the tiger's head. "you mean," answered mrs. norbury, who was a downright woman, and a resolute speaker of the plainest possible english--"you mean, have i heard about that poor unfortunate lady who was taken ill on her journey, and who had a child born at the inn? we have heard so much, and no more--living as we do (thank heaven!) out of reach of the west winston gossip. how is the lady? who is she? is the child well? is she tolerably comfortable? poor thing! can i send her any thing, or do any thing for her?" "you would do a great thing for her, and render a great assistance to me," said mr. orridge, "if you could tell me of any respectable woman in this neighborhood who would be a proper nurse for her." "you don't mean to say that the poor creature has not got a nurse!" exclaimed mrs. norbury. "she has had the best nurse in west winston," replied mr. orridge. "but, most unfortunately, the woman was taken ill this morning, and was obliged to go home. i am now at my wit's end for somebody to supply her place. mrs. frankland has been used to the luxury of being well waited on; and where i am to find an attendant, who is likely to satisfy her, is more than i can tell." "frankland, did you say her name was?" inquired mrs. norbury. "yes. she is, i understand, a daughter of that captain treverton who was lost with his ship a year ago in the west indies. perhaps you may remember the account of the disaster in the newspapers?" "of course i do! and i remember the captain too. i was acquainted with him when he was a young man, at portsmouth. his daughter and i ought not to be strangers, especially under such circumstances as the poor thing is placed in now. i will call at the inn, mr. orridge, as soon as you will allow me to introduce myself to her. but, in the mean time, what is to be done in this difficulty about the nurse? who is with mrs. frankland now?" "her maid; but she is a very young woman, and doesn't understand nursing duties. the landlady of the inn is ready to help when she can; but then she has constant demands on her time and attention. i suppose we shall have to telegraph to london and get somebody sent here by railway." "and that will take time, of course. and the new nurse may turn out to be a drunkard or a thief, or both--when you have got her here," said the outspoken mrs. norbury. "dear, dear me! can't we do something better than that? i am ready, i am sure, to take any trouble, or make any sacrifice, if i can be of use to mrs. frankland. do you know, mr. orridge, i think it would be a good plan if we consulted my housekeeper, mrs. jazeph. she is an odd woman, with an odd name, you will say; but she has lived with me in this house more than five years, and she may know of somebody in our neighborhood who might suit you, though i don't." with those words, mrs. norbury rang the bell, and ordered the servant who answered it to tell mrs. jazeph that she was wanted up stairs immediately. after the lapse of a minute or so a soft knock was heard at the door, and the housekeeper entered the room. mr. orridge looked at her, the moment she appeared, with an interest and curiosity for which he was hardly able to account. he judged her, at a rough guess, to be a woman of about fifty years of age. at the first glance, his medical eye detected that some of the intricate machinery of the nervous system had gone wrong with mrs. jazeph. he noted the painful working of the muscles of her face, and the hectic flush that flew into her cheeks when she entered the room and found a visitor there. he observed a strangely scared look in her eyes, and remarked that it did not leave them when the rest of her face became gradually composed. "that woman has had some dreadful fright, some great grief, or some wasting complaint," he thought to himself. "i wonder which it is?" "this is mr. orridge, the medical gentleman who has lately settled at west winston," said mrs. norbury, addressing the housekeeper. "he is in attendance on a lady who was obliged to stop, on her journey westward, at our station, and who is now staying at the tiger's head. you have heard something about it, have you not, mrs. jazeph?" mrs. jazeph, standing just inside the door, looked respectfully toward the doctor, and answered in the affirmative. although she only said the two common words, "yes, ma'am," in a quiet, uninterested way, mr. orridge was struck by the sweetness and tenderness of her voice. if he had not been looking at her, he would have supposed it to be the voice of a young woman. his eyes remained fixed on her after she had spoken, though he felt that they ought to have been looking toward her mistress. he, the most unobservant of men in such things, found himself noticing her dress, so that he remembered, long afterward, the form of the spotless muslin cap that primly covered her smooth gray hair, and the quiet brown color of the silk dress that fitted so neatly and hung around her in such spare and disciplined folds. the little confusion which she evidently felt at finding herself the object of the doctor's attention did not betray her into the slightest awkwardness of gesture or manner. if there can be such a thing, physically speaking, as the grace of restraint, that was the grace which seemed to govern mrs. jazeph's slightest movements; which led her feet smoothly over the carpet, as she advanced when her mistress next spoke to her; which governed the action of her wan right hand as it rested lightly on a table by her side, while she stopped to hear the next question that was addressed to her. "well," continued mrs. norbury, "this poor lady was just getting on comfortably, when the nurse who was looking after her fell ill this morning; and there she is now, in a strange place, with a first child, and no proper attendance--no woman of age and experience to help her as she ought to be helped. we want somebody fit to wait on a delicate woman who has seen nothing of the rough side of humanity. mr. orridge can find nobody at a day's notice, and i can tell him of nobody. can you help us, mrs. jazeph? are there any women down in the village, or among mr. norbury's tenants, who understand nursing, and have some tact and tenderness to recommend them into the bargain?" mrs. jazeph reflected for a little while, and then said, very respectfully, but very briefly also, and still without any appearance of interest in her manner, that she knew of no one whom she could recommend. "don't make too sure of that till you have thought a little longer," said mrs. norbury. "i have a particular interest in serving this lady, for mr. orridge told me just before you came in that she is the daughter of captain treverton, whose shipwreck--" the instant those words were spoken, mrs. jazeph turned round with a start, and looked at the doctor. apparently forgetting that her right hand was on the table, she moved it so suddenly that it struck against a bronze statuette of a dog placed on some writing materials. the statuette fell to the ground, and mrs. jazeph stooped to pick it up with a cry of alarm which seemed strangely exaggerated by comparison with the trifling nature of the accident. "bless the woman! what is she frightened about?" exclaimed mrs. norbury. "the dog is not hurt--put it back again! this is the first time, mrs. jazeph, that i ever knew you do an awkward thing. you may take that as a compliment, i think. well, as i was saying, this lady is the daughter of captain treverton, whose dreadful shipwreck we all read about in the papers. i knew her father in my early days, and on that account i am doubly anxious to be of service to her now. do think again. is there nobody within reach who can be trusted to nurse her?" the doctor, still watching mrs. jazeph with that secret medical interest of his in her case, had seen her turn so deadly pale when she started and looked toward him that he would not have been surprised if she had fainted on the spot. he now observed that she changed color again when her mistress left off speaking. the hectic red tinged her cheeks once more with two bright spots. her timid eyes wandered uneasily about the room; and her fingers, as she clasped her hands together, interlaced themselves mechanically. "that would be an interesting case to treat," thought the doctor, following every nervous movement of the housekeeper's hands with watchful eyes. "do think again," repeated mrs. norbury. "i am so anxious to help this poor lady through her difficulty, if i can." "i am very sorry," said mrs. jazeph, in faint, trembling tones, but still always with the same sweetness in her voice--"very sorry that i can think of no one who is fit; but--" she stopped. no shy child on its first introduction to the society of strangers could have looked more disconcerted than she looked now. her eyes were on the ground; her color was deepening; the fingers of her clasped hands were working together faster and faster every moment. "but what?" asked mrs. norbury. "i was about to say, ma'am," answered mrs. jazeph, speaking with the greatest difficulty and uneasiness, and never raising her eyes to her mistress's face, "that, rather than this lady should want for a nurse, i would--considering the interest, ma'am, which you take in her--i would, if you thought you could spare me--" "what, nurse her yourself!" exclaimed mrs. norbury. "upon my word, although you have got to it in rather a roundabout way, you have come to the point at last, in a manner which does infinite credit to your kindness of heart and your readiness to make yourself useful. as to sparing you, of course i am not so selfish, under the circumstances, as to think twice of the inconvenience of losing my housekeeper. but the question is, are you competent as well as willing? have you ever had any practice in nursing?" "yes, ma'am," answered mrs. jazeph, still without raising her eyes from the ground. "shortly after my marriage" (the flush disappeared, and her face turned pale again as she said those words), "i had some practice in nursing, and continued it at intervals until the time of my husband's death. i only presume to offer myself, sir," she went on, turning toward the doctor, and becoming more earnest and self-possessed in her manner as she did so--"i only presume to offer myself, with my mistress's permission, as a substitute for a nurse until some better qualified person can be found." "what do you say, mr. orridge?" asked mrs. norbury. it had been the doctor's turn to start when he first heard mrs. jazeph propose herself for the office of nurse. he hesitated before he answered mrs. norbury's question, then said: "i can have but one doubt about the propriety of thankfully accepting mrs. jazeph's offer." mrs. jazeph's timid eyes looked anxiously and perplexedly at him as he spoke. mrs. norbury, in her downright, abrupt way, asked immediately what the doubt was. "i feel some uncertainty," replied mr. orridge, "as to whether mrs. jazeph--she will pardon me, as a medical man, for mentioning it--as to whether mrs. jazeph is strong enough, and has her nerves sufficiently under control to perform the duties which she is so kindly ready to undertake." in spite of the politeness of the explanation, mrs. jazeph was evidently disconcerted and distressed by it. a certain quiet, uncomplaining sadness, which it was very touching to see, overspread her face as she turned away, without another word, and walked slowly to the door. "don't go yet!" cried mrs. norbury, kindly, "or, at least, if you do go, come back again in five minutes. i am quite certain we shall have something more to say to you then." mrs. jazeph's eyes expressed her thanks in one grateful glance. they looked so much brighter than usual while they rested on her mistress's face, that mrs. norbury half doubted whether the tears were not just rising in them at that moment. before she could look again, mrs. jazeph had courtesied to the doctor, and had noiselessly left the room. "now we are alone, mr. orridge," said mrs. norbury, "i may tell you, with all submission to your medical judgment, that you are a little exaggerating mrs. jazeph's nervous infirmities. she looks poorly enough, i own; but, after five years' experience of her, i can tell you that she is stronger than she looks, and i honestly think you will be doing good service to mrs. frankland if you try our volunteer nurse, at least for a day or two. she is the gentlest, tenderest creature i ever met with, and conscientious to a fault in the performance of any duty that she undertakes. don't be under any delicacy about taking her away. i gave a dinner-party last week, and shall not give another for some time to come. i never could have spared my housekeeper more easily than i can spare her now." "i am sure i may offer mrs. frankland's thanks to you as well as my own," said mr. orridge. "after what you have said, it would be ungracious and ungrateful in me not to follow your advice. but will you excuse me if i ask one question? did you ever hear that mrs. jazeph was subject to fits of any kind?" "never." "not even to hysterical affections, now and then?" "never, since she has been in this house." "you surprise me, there is something in her look and manner--" "yes, yes; every body remarks that at first; but it simply means that she is in delicate health, and that she has not led a very happy life (as i suspect) in her younger days. the lady from whom i had her (with an excellent character) told me that she had married unhappily, when she was in a sadly poor, unprotected state. she never says any thing about her married troubles herself; but i believe her husband ill-used her. however, it does not seem to me that this is our business. i can only tell you again that she has been an excellent servant here for the last five years, and that, in your place, poorly as she may look, i should consider her as the best nurse that mrs. frankland could possibly wish for, under the circumstances. there is no need for me to say any more. take mrs. jazeph, or telegraph to london for a stranger--the decision of course rests with you." mr. orridge thought he detected a slight tone of irritability in mrs. norbury's last sentence. he was a prudent man; and he suppressed any doubts he might still feel in reference to mrs. jazeph's physical capacities for nursing, rather than risk offending the most important lady in the neighborhood at the outset of his practice in west winston as a medical man. "i can not hesitate a moment after what you have been good enough to tell me," he said. "pray believe that i gratefully accept your kindness and your housekeeper's offer." mrs. norbury rang the bell. it was answered on the instant by the housekeeper herself. the doctor wondered whether she had been listening outside the door, and thought it rather strange, if she had, that she should be so anxious to learn his decision. "mr. orridge accepts your offer with thanks," said mrs. norbury, beckoning to mrs. jazeph to advance into the room. "i have persuaded him that you are not quite so weak and ill as you look." a gleam of joyful surprise broke over the housekeeper's face. it looked suddenly younger by years and years, as she smiled and expressed her grateful sense of the trust that was about to be reposed in her. for the first time, also, since the doctor had seen her, she ventured on speaking before she was spoken to. "when will my attendance be required, sir?" she asked. "as soon as possible," replied mr. orridge. how quickly and brightly her dim eyes seemed to clear as she heard that answer! how much more hasty than her usual movements was the movement with which she now turned round and looked appealingly at her mistress! "go whenever mr. orridge wants you," said mrs. norbury. "i know your accounts are always in order, and your keys always in their proper places. you never make confusion and you never leave confusion. go, by all means, as soon as the doctor wants you." "i suppose you have some preparations to make?" said mr. orridge. "none, sir, that need delay me more than half an hour," answered mrs. jazeph. "this evening will be early enough," said the doctor, taking his hat, and bowing to mrs. norbury. "come to the tiger's head, and ask for me. i shall be there between seven and eight. many thanks again, mrs. norbury." "my best wishes and compliments to your patient, doctor." "at the tiger's head, between seven and eight this evening," reiterated mr. orridge, as the housekeeper opened the door for him. "between seven and eight, sir," repeated the soft, sweet voice, sounding younger than ever, now that there was an under-note of pleasure running through its tones. chapter iv. the new nurse. as the clock struck seven, mr. orridge put on his hat to go to the tiger's head. he had just opened his own door, when he was met on the step by a messenger, who summoned him immediately to a case of sudden illness in the poor quarter of the town. the inquiries he made satisfied him that the appeal was really of an urgent nature, and that there was no help for it but to delay his attendance for a little while at the inn. on reaching the bedside of the patient, he discovered symptoms in the case which rendered an immediate operation necessary. the performance of this professional duty occupied some time. it was a quarter to eight before he left his house, for the second time, on his way to the tiger's head. on entering the inn door, he was informed that the new nurse had arrived as early as seven o'clock, and had been waiting for him in a room by herself ever since. having received no orders from mr. orridge, the landlady had thought it safest not to introduce the stranger to mrs. frankland before the doctor came. "did she ask to go up into mrs. frankland's room?" inquired mr. orridge. "yes, sir," replied the landlady. "and i thought she seemed rather put out when i said that i must beg her to wait till you got here. will you step this way, and see her at once, sir? she is in my parlor." mr. orridge followed the landlady into a little room at the back of the house, and found mrs. jazeph sitting alone in the corner farthest from the window. he was rather surprised to see that she drew her veil down the moment the door was opened. "i am sorry you should have been kept waiting," he said; "but i was called away to a patient. besides, i told you between seven and eight, if you remember; and it is not eight o'clock yet." "i was very anxious to be in good time, sir," said mrs. jazeph. there was an accent of restraint in the quiet tones in which she spoke which struck mr. orridge's ear, and a little perplexed him. she was, apparently, not only afraid that her face might betray something, but apprehensive also that her voice might tell him more than her words expressed. what feeling was she anxious to conceal? was it irritation at having been kept waiting so long by herself in the landlady's room? "if you will follow me," said mr. orridge, "i will take you to mrs. frankland immediately." mrs. jazeph rose slowly, and, when she was on her feet, rested her hand for an instant on a table near her. that action, momentary as it was, helped to confirm the doctor in his conviction of her physical unfitness for the position which she had volunteered to occupy. "you seem tired," he said, as he led the way out of the door. "surely, you did not walk all the way here?" "no, sir. my mistress was so kind as to let one of the servants drive me in the pony-chaise." there was the same restraint in her voice as she made that answer; and still she never attempted to lift her veil. while ascending the inn stairs mr. orridge mentally resolved to watch her first proceedings in mrs. frankland's room closely, and to send, after all, for the london nurse, unless mrs. jazeph showed remarkable aptitude in the performance of her new duties. the room which mrs. frankland occupied was situated at the back of the house, having been chosen in that position with the object of removing her as much as possible from the bustle and noise about the inn door. it was lighted by one window overlooking a few cottages, beyond which spread the rich grazing grounds of west somersetshire, bounded by a long monotonous line of thickly wooded hills. the bed was of the old-fashioned kind, with the customary four posts and the inevitable damask curtains. it projected from the wall into the middle of the room, in such a situation as to keep the door on the right hand of the person occupying it, the window on the left, and the fire-place opposite the foot of the bed. on the side of the bed nearest the window the curtains were open, while at the foot, and on the side near the door, they were closely drawn. by this arrangement the interior of the bed was necessarily concealed from the view of any person on first entering the room. "how do you find yourself to-night, mrs. frankland?" asked mr. orridge, reaching out his hand to undraw the curtains. "do you think you will be any the worse for a little freer circulation of air?" "on the contrary, doctor, i shall be all the better," was the answer. "but i am afraid--in case you have ever been disposed to consider me a sensible woman--that my character will suffer a little in your estimation when you see how i have been occupying myself for the last hour." mr. orridge smiled as he undrew the curtains, and laughed outright when he looked at the mother and child. mrs. frankland had been amusing herself, and gratifying her taste for bright colors, by dressing out her baby with blue ribbons as he lay asleep. he had a necklace, shoulder-knots, and bracelets, all of blue ribbon; and, to complete the quaint finery of his costume, his mother's smart little lace cap had been hitched comically on one side of his head. rosamond herself, as if determined to vie with the baby in gayety of dress, wore a light pink jacket, ornamented down the bosom and over the sleeves with bows of white satin ribbon. laburnum blossoms, gathered that morning, lay scattered about over the white counterpane, intermixed with some flowers of the lily of the valley, tied up into two nosegays with strips of cherry-colored ribbon. over this varied assemblage of colors, over the baby's smoothly rounded cheeks and arms, over his mother's happy, youthful face, the tender light of the may evening poured tranquil and warm. thoroughly appreciating the charm of the picture which he had disclosed on undrawing the curtains, the doctor stood looking at it for a few moments, quite forgetful of the errand that had brought him into the room. he was only recalled to a remembrance of the new nurse by a chance question which mrs. frankland addressed to him. "i can't help it, doctor," said rosamond, with a look of apology. "i really can't help treating my baby, now i am a grown woman, just as i used to treat my doll when i was a little girl. did any body come into the room with you? lenny, are you there? have you done dinner, darling, and did you drink my health when you were left at dessert all by yourself?" "mr. frankland is still at dinner," said the doctor. "but i certainly brought some one into the room with me. where, in the name of wonder, has she gone to?--mrs. jazeph!" the housekeeper had slipped round to the part of the room between the foot of the bed and the fire-place, where she was hidden by the curtains that still remained drawn. when mr. orridge called to her, instead of joining him where he stood, opposite the window, she appeared at the other side of the bed, where the window was behind her. her shadow stole darkly over the bright picture which the doctor had been admiring. it stretched obliquely across the counterpane, and its dusky edges touched the figures of the mother and child. "gracious goodness! who are you?" exclaimed rosamond. "a woman or a ghost?" mrs. jazeph's veil was up at last. although her face was necessarily in shadow in the position which she had chosen to occupy, the doctor saw a change pass over it when mrs. frankland spoke. the lips dropped and quivered a little; the marks of care and age about the mouth deepened; and the eyebrows contracted suddenly. the eyes mr. orridge could not see; they were cast down on the counterpane at the first word that rosamond uttered. judging by the light of his medical experience, the doctor concluded that she was suffering pain, and trying to suppress any outward manifestation of it. "an affection of the heart, most likely," he thought to himself. "she has concealed it from her mistress, but she can't hide it from me." "who are you?" repeated rosamond. "and what in the world do you stand there for--between us and the sunlight?" mrs. jazeph neither answered nor raised her eyes. she only moved back timidly to the farthest corner of the window. "did you not get a message from me this afternoon?" asked the doctor, appealing to mrs. frankland. "to be sure i did," replied rosamond. "a very kind, flattering message about a new nurse." "there she is," said mr. orridge, pointing across the bed to mrs. jazeph. "you don't say so!" exclaimed rosamond. "but of course it must be. who else could have come in with you? i ought to have known that. pray come here--(what is her name, doctor? joseph, did you say?--no?--jazeph?) --pray come nearer, mrs. jazeph, and let me apologize for speaking so abruptly to you. i am more obliged than i can say for your kindness in coming here, and for your mistress's good-nature in resigning you to me. i hope i shall not give you much trouble, and i am sure you will find the baby easy to manage. he is a perfect angel, and sleeps like a dormouse. dear me! now i look at you a little closer, i am afraid you are in very delicate health yourself. doctor, if mrs. jazeph would not be offended with me, i should almost feel inclined to say that she looks in want of nursing herself." mrs. jazeph bent down over the laburnum blossoms on the bed, and began hurriedly and confusedly to gather them together. "i thought as you do, mrs. frankland," said mr. orridge. "but i have been assured that mrs. jazeph's looks belie her, and that her capabilities as a nurse quite equal her zeal." "are you going to make all that laburnum into a nosegay?" asked mrs. frankland, noticing how the new nurse was occupying herself. "how thoughtful of you! and how magnificent it will be! i am afraid you will find the room very untidy. i will ring for my maid to set it to rights." "if you will allow me to put it in order, ma'am, i shall be very glad to begin being of use to you in that way," said mrs. jazeph. when she made the offer she looked up; and her eyes and mrs. frankland's met. rosamond instantly drew back on the pillow, and her color altered a little. "how strangely you look at me!" she said. mrs. jazeph started at the words, as if something had struck her, and moved away suddenly to the window. "you are not offended with me, i hope?" said rosamond, noticing the action. "i have a sad habit of saying any thing that comes uppermost. and i really thought you looked just now as if you saw something about me that frightened or grieved you. pray put the room in order, if you are kindly willing to undertake the trouble. and never mind what i say; you will soon get used to my ways--and we shall be as comfortable and friendly--" just as mrs. frankland said the words "comfortable and friendly," the new nurse left the window, and went back to the part of the room where she was hidden from view, between the fire-place and the closed curtains at the foot of the bed. rosamond looked round to express her surprise to the doctor, but he turned away at the same moment so as to occupy a position which might enable him to observe what mrs. jazeph was doing on the other side of the bed-curtains. when he first caught sight of her, her hands were both raised to her face. before he could decide whether he had surprised her in the act of clasping them over her eyes or not, they changed their position, and were occupied in removing her bonnet. after she had placed this part of her wearing apparel, and her shawl and gloves, on a chair in a corner of the room, she went to the dressing-table, and began to arrange the various useful and ornamental objects scattered about it. she set them in order with remarkable dexterity and neatness, showing a taste for arrangement, and a capacity for discriminating between things that were likely to be wanted and things that were not, which impressed mr. orridge very favorably. he particularly noticed the carefulness with which she handled some bottles of physic, reading the labels on each, and arranging the medicine that might be required at night on one side of the table, and the medicine that might be required in the day-time on the other. when she left the dressing-table, and occupied herself in setting the furniture straight, and in folding up articles of clothing that had been thrown on one side, not the slightest movement of her thin, wasted hands seemed ever to be made at hazard or in vain. noiselessly, modestly, observantly, she moved from side to side of the room, and neatness and order followed her steps wherever she went. when mr. orridge resumed his place at mrs. frankland's bedside, his mind was at ease on one point at least--it was perfectly evident that the new nurse could be depended on to make no mistakes. "what an odd woman she is," whispered rosamond. "odd, indeed," returned mr. orridge, "and desperately broken in health, though she may not confess to it. however, she is wonderfully neat-handed and careful, and there can be no harm in trying her for one night--that is to say, unless you feel any objection." "on the contrary," said rosamond, "she rather interests me. there is something in her face and manner--i can't say what--that makes me feel curious to know more of her. i must get her to talk, and try if i can't bring out all her peculiarities. don't be afraid of my exciting myself, and don't stop here in this dull room on my account. i would much rather you went down stairs, and kept my husband company over his wine. do go and talk to him, and amuse him a little--he must be so dull, poor fellow, while i am up here; and he likes you, mr. orridge--he does, very much. stop one moment, and just look at the baby again. he doesn't take a dangerous quantity of sleep, does he? and, mr. orridge, one word more: when you have done your wine, you will promise to lend my husband the use of your eyes, and bring him up stairs to wish me good-night, won't you?" willingly engaging to pay attention to mrs. frankland's request, mr. orridge left the bedside. as he opened the room door, he stopped to tell mrs. jazeph that he should be down stairs if she wanted him, and that he would give her any instructions of which she might stand in need later in the evening, before he left the inn for the night. the new nurse, when he passed by her, was kneeling over one of mrs. frankland's open trunks, arranging some articles of clothing which had been rather carelessly folded up. just before he spoke to her, he observed that she had a chemisette in her hand, the frill of which was laced through with ribbon. one end of this ribbon she appeared to him to be on the point of drawing out, when the sound of his footsteps disturbed her. the moment she became aware of his approach she dropped the chemisette suddenly in the trunk, and covered it over with some handkerchiefs. although this proceeding on mrs. jazeph's part rather surprised the doctor, he abstained from showing that he had noticed it. her mistress had vouched for her character, after five years' experience of it, and the bit of ribbon was intrinsically worthless. on both accounts, it was impossible to suspect her of attempting to steal it; and yet, as mr. orridge could not help feeling when he had left the room, her conduct, when he surprised her over the trunk, was exactly the conduct of a person who is about to commit a theft. "pray don't trouble yourself about my luggage," said rosamond, remarking mrs. jazeph's occupation as soon as the doctor had gone. "that is my idle maid's business, and you will only make her more careless than ever if you do it for her. i am sure the room is beautifully set in order. come here and sit down and rest yourself. you must be a very unselfish, kind-hearted woman to give yourself all this trouble to serve a stranger. the doctor's message this afternoon told me that your mistress was a friend of my poor, dear father's. i suppose she must have known him before my time. any way, i feel doubly grateful to her for taking an interest in me for my father's sake. but you can have no such feeling; you must have come here from pure good-nature and anxiety to help others. don't go away, there, to the window. come and sit down by me." mrs. jazeph had risen from the trunk, and was approaching the bedside--when she suddenly turned away in the direction of the fire-place, just as mrs. frankland began to speak of her father. "come and sit here," reiterated rosamond, getting impatient at receiving no answer. "what in the world are you doing there at the foot of the bed?" the figure of the new nurse again interposed between the bed and the fading evening light that glimmered through the window before there was any reply. "the evening is closing in," said mrs. jazeph, "and the window is not quite shut. i was thinking of making it fast, and of drawing down the blind--if you had no objection, ma'am?" "oh, not yet! not yet! shut the window, if you please, in case the baby should catch cold, but don't draw down the blind. let me get my peep at the view as long as there is any light left to see it by. that long flat stretch of grazing-ground out there is just beginning, at this dim time, to look a little like my childish recollections of a cornish moor. do you know any thing about cornwall, mrs. jazeph?" "i have heard--" at those first three words of reply the nurse stopped. she was just then engaged in shutting the window, and she seemed to find some difficulty in closing the lock. "what have you heard?" asked rosamond. "i have heard that cornwall is a wild, dreary country," said mrs. jazeph, still busying herself with the lock of the window, and, by consequence, still keeping her back turned to mrs. frankland. "can't you shut the window, yet?" said rosamond. "my maid always does it quite easily. leave it till she comes up--i am going to ring for her directly. i want her to brush my hair and cool my face with a little eau de cologne and water." "i have shut it, ma'am," said mrs. jazeph, suddenly succeeding in closing the lock. "and if you will allow me, i should be very glad to make you comfortable for the night, and save you the trouble of ringing for the maid." thinking the new nurse the oddest woman she had ever met with, mrs. frankland accepted the offer. by the time mrs. jazeph had prepared the eau de cologne and water, the twilight was falling softly over the landscape outside, and the room was beginning to grow dark. "had you not better light a candle?" suggested rosamond. "i think not, ma'am," said mrs. jazeph, rather hastily. "i can see quite well without." she began to brush mrs. frankland's hair as she spoke; and, at the same time, asked a question which referred to the few words that had passed between them on the subject of cornwall. pleased to find that the new nurse had grown familiar enough at last to speak before she was spoken to, rosamond desired nothing better than to talk about her recollections of her native country. but, from some inexplicable reason, mrs. jazeph's touch, light and tender as it was, had such a strangely disconcerting effect on her, that she could not succeed, for the moment, in collecting her thoughts so as to reply, except in the briefest manner. the careful hands of the nurse lingered with a stealthy gentleness among the locks of her hair; the pale, wasted face of the new nurse approached, every now and then, more closely to her own than appeared at all needful. a vague sensation of uneasiness, which she could not trace to any particular part of her--which she could hardly say that she really felt, in a bodily sense, at all--seemed to be floating about her, to be hanging around and over her, like the air she breathed. she could not move, though she wanted to move in the bed; she could not turn her head so as to humor the action of the brush; she could not look round; she could not break the embarrassing silence which had been caused by her own short, discouraging answer. at last the sense of oppression--whether fancied or real--irritated her into snatching the brush out of mrs. jazeph's hand. the instant she had done so, she felt ashamed of the discourteous abruptness of the action, and confused at the alarm and surprise which the manner of the nurse exhibited. with the strongest sense of the absurdity of her own conduct, and yet without the least power of controlling herself, she burst out laughing, and tossed the brush away to the foot of the bed. "pray don't look surprised, mrs. jazeph," she said, still laughing without knowing why, and without feeling in the slightest degree amused. "i'm very rude and odd, i know. you have brushed my hair delightfully; but--i can't tell how--it seemed, all the time, as if you were brushing the strangest fancies into my head. i can't help laughing at them--i can't indeed! do you know, once or twice, i absolutely fancied, when your face was closest to mine, that you wanted to kiss me! did you ever hear of any thing so ridiculous? i declare i am more of a baby, in some things, than the little darling here by my side!" mrs. jazeph made no answer. she left the bed while rosamond was speaking, and came back, after an unaccountably long delay, with the eau de cologne and water. as she held the basin while mrs. frankland bathed her face, she kept away at arm's length, and came no nearer when it was time to offer the towel. rosamond began to be afraid that she had seriously offended mrs. jazeph, and tried to soothe and propitiate her by asking questions about the management of the baby. there was a slight trembling in the sweet voice of the new nurse, but not the faintest tone of sullenness or anger, as she simply and quietly answered the inquiries addressed to her. by dint of keeping the conversation still on the subject of the child, mrs. frankland succeeded, little by little, in luring her back to the bedside--in tempting her to bend down admiringly over the infant--in emboldening her, at last, to kiss him tenderly on the cheek. one kiss was all that she gave; and she turned away from the bed, after it, and sighed heavily. the sound of that sigh fell very sadly on rosamond's heart. up to this time the baby's little span of life had always been associated with smiling faces and pleasant words. it made her uneasy to think that any one could caress him and sigh after it. "i am sure you must be fond of children," she said, hesitating a little from natural delicacy of feeling. "but will you excuse me for noticing that it seems rather a mournful fondness? pray--pray don't answer my question if it gives you any pain--if you have any loss to deplore; but--but i do so want to ask if you have ever had a child of your own?" mrs. jazeph was standing near a chair when that question was put. she caught fast hold of the back of it, grasping it so firmly, or perhaps leaning on it so heavily, that the woodwork cracked. her head dropped low on her bosom. she did not utter, or even attempt to utter, a single word. fearing that she must have lost a child of her own, and dreading to distress her unnecessarily by venturing to ask any more questions, rosamond said nothing, as she stooped over the baby to kiss him in her turn. her lips rested on his cheek a little above where mrs. jazeph's lips had rested the moment before, and they touched a spot of wet on his smooth warm skin. fearing that some of the water in which she had been bathing her face might have dropped on him, she passed her fingers lightly over his head, neck, and bosom, and felt no other spots of wet any where. the one drop that had fallen on him was the drop that wetted the cheek which the new nurse had kissed. the twilight faded over the landscape, the room grew darker and darker; and still, though she was now sitting close to the table on which the candles and matches were placed, mrs. jazeph made no attempt to strike a light. rosamond did not feel quite comfortable at the idea of lying awake in the darkness, with nobody in the room but a person who was as yet almost a total stranger; and she resolved to have the candles lighted immediately. "mrs. jazeph," she said, looking toward the gathering obscurity outside the window, "i shall be much obliged to you, if you will light the candles and pull down the blind. i can trace no more resemblances out there, now, to a cornish prospect; the view has gone altogether." "are you very fond of cornwall, ma'am?" asked mrs. jazeph, rising, in rather a dilatory manner, to light the candles. "indeed i am," said rosamond. "i was born there; and my husband and i were on our way to cornwall when we were obliged to stop, on my account, at this place. you are a long time getting the candles lit. can't you find the match-box?" mrs. jazeph, with an awkwardness which was rather surprising in a person who had shown so much neat-handedness in setting the room to rights, broke the first match in attempting to light it, and let the second go out the instant after the flame was kindled. at the third attempt she was more successful; but she only lit one candle, and that one she carried away from the table which mrs. frankland could see, to the dressing-table, which was hidden from her by the curtains at the foot of the bed. "why do you move the candle?" asked rosamond. "i thought it was best for your eyes, ma'am, not to have the light too near them," replied mrs. jazeph; and then added hastily, as if she was unwilling to give mrs. frankland time to make any objections--"and so you were going to cornwall, ma'am, when you stopped at this place? to travel about there a little, i suppose?" after saying these words, she took up the second candle, and passed out of sight as she carried it to the dressing-table. rosamond thought that the nurse, in spite of her gentle looks and manners, was a remarkably obstinate woman. but she was too good-natured to care about asserting her right to have the candles placed where she pleased; and when she answered mrs. jazeph's question, she still spoke to her as cheerfully and familiarly as ever. "oh, dear no! not to travel about," she said, "but to go straight to the old country-house where i was born. it belongs to my husband now, mrs. jazeph. i have not been near it since i was a little girl of five years of age. such a ruinous, rambling old place! you, who talk of the dreariness and wildness of cornwall, would be quite horrified at the very idea of living in porthgenna tower." the faintly rustling sound of mrs. jazeph's silk dress, as she moved about the dressing-table, had been audible all the while rosamond was speaking. it ceased instantaneously when she said the words "porthgenna tower;" and for one moment there was a dead silence in the room. "you, who have been living all your life, i suppose, in nicely repaired houses, can not imagine what a place it is that we are going to, when i am well enough to travel again," pursued rosamond. "what do you think, mrs. jazeph, of a house with one whole side of it that has never been inhabited for sixty or seventy years past? you may get some notion of the size of porthgenna tower from that. there is a west side that we are to live in when we get there, and a north side, where the empty old rooms are, which i hope we shall be able to repair. only think of the hosts of odd, old-fashioned things that we may find in those uninhabited rooms! i mean to put on the cook's apron and the gardener's gloves, and rummage all over them from top to bottom. how i shall astonish the housekeeper, when i get to porthgenna, and ask her for the keys of the ghostly north rooms!" a low cry, and a sound as if something had struck against the dressing-table, followed mrs. frankland's last words. she started in the bed, and asked eagerly what was the matter. "nothing," answered mrs. jazeph, speaking so constrainedly that her voice dropped to a whisper. "nothing, ma'am--nothing, i assure you. i struck my side, by accident, against the table--pray don't be alarmed!--it's not worth noticing." "but you speak as if you were in pain," said rosamond. "no, no--not in pain. not hurt--not hurt, indeed." while mrs. jazeph was declaring that she was not hurt, the door of the room was opened, and the doctor entered, leading in mr. frankland. "we come early, mrs. frankland, but we are going to give you plenty of time to compose yourself for the night," said mr. orridge. he paused, and noticed that rosamond's color was heightened. "i am afraid you have been talking and exciting yourself a little too much," he went on. "if you will excuse me for venturing on the suggestion, mr. frankland, i think the sooner good-night is said the better. where is the nurse?" mrs. jazeph sat down with her back to the lighted candle when she heard herself asked for. just before that, she had been looking at mr. frankland with an eager, undisguised curiosity, which, if any one had noticed it, must have appeared surprisingly out of character with her usual modesty and refinement of manner. "i am afraid the nurse has accidentally hurt her side more than she is willing to confess," said rosamond to the doctor, pointing with one hand to the place in which mrs. jazeph was sitting, and raising the other to her husband's neck as he stooped over her pillow. mr. orridge, on inquiring what had happened, could not prevail on the new nurse to acknowledge that the accident was of the slightest consequence. he suspected, nevertheless, that she was suffering, or, at least, that something had happened to discompose her; for he found the greatest difficulty in fixing her attention, while he gave her a few needful directions in case her services were required during the night. all the time he was speaking, her eyes wandered away from him to the part of the room where mr. and mrs. frankland were talking together. mrs. jazeph looked like the last person in the world who would be guilty of an act of impertinent curiosity; and yet she openly betrayed all the characteristics of an inquisitive woman while mr. frankland was standing by his wife's pillow. the doctor was obliged to assume his most peremptory manner before he could get her to attend to him at all. "and now, mrs. frankland," said mr. orridge, turning away from the nurse, "as i have given mrs. jazeph all the directions she wants, i shall set the example of leaving you in quiet by saying good-night." understanding the hint conveyed in these words, mr. frankland attempted to say good-night too, but his wife kept tight hold of both his hands, and declared that it was unreasonable to expect her to let him go for another half-hour at least. mr. orridge shook his head, and began to expatiate on the evils of over-excitement, and the blessings of composure and sleep. his remonstrances, however, would have produced very little effect, even if rosamond had allowed him to continue them, but for the interposition of the baby, who happened to wake up at that moment, and who proved himself a powerful auxiliary on the doctor's side, by absorbing all his mother's attention immediately. seizing his opportunity at the right moment, mr. orridge quietly led mr. frankland out of the room, just as rosamond was taking the child up in her arms. he stopped before closing the door to whisper one last word to mrs. jazeph. "if mrs. frankland wants to talk, you must not encourage her," he said. "as soon as she has quieted the baby, she ought to go to sleep. there is a chair-bedstead in that corner, which you can open for yourself when you want to lie down. keep the candle where it is now, behind the curtain. the less light mrs. frankland sees, the sooner she will compose herself to sleep." mrs. jazeph made no answer; she only looked at the doctor and courtesied. that strangely scared expression in her eyes, which he had noticed on first seeing her, was more painfully apparent than ever when he left her alone for the night with the mother and child. "she will never do," thought mr. orridge, as he led mr. frankland down the inn stairs. "we shall have to send to london for a nurse, after all." feeling a little irritated by the summary manner in which her husband had been taken away from her, rosamond fretfully rejected the offers of assistance which were made to her by mrs. jazeph as soon as the doctor had left the room. the nurse said nothing when her services were declined; and yet, judging by her conduct, she seemed anxious to speak. twice she advanced toward the bedside--opened her lips--stopped--and retired confusedly, before she settled herself finally in her former place by the dressing-table. here she remained, silent and out of sight, until the child had been quieted, and had fallen asleep in his mother's arms, with one little pink, half-closed hand resting on her bosom. rosamond could not resist raising the hand to her lips, though she risked waking him again by doing so. as she kissed it, the sound of the kiss was followed by a faint, suppressed sob, proceeding from the other side of the curtains at the lower end of the bed. "what is that?" she exclaimed. "nothing, ma'am," said mrs. jazeph, in the same constrained, whispering tones in which she had answered mrs. frankland's former question. "i think i was just falling asleep in the arm-chair here; and i ought to have told you perhaps that, having had my troubles, and being afflicted with a heart complaint, i have a habit of sighing in my sleep. it means nothing, ma'am, and i hope you will be good enough to excuse it." rosamond's generous instincts were aroused in a moment. "excuse it!" she said. "i hope i may do better than that, mrs. jazeph, and be the means of relieving it. when mr. orridge comes to-morrow you shall consult him, and i will take care that you want for nothing that he may order. no! no! don't thank me until i have been the means of making you well--and keep where you are, if the arm-chair is comfortable. the baby is asleep again; and i should like to have half an hour's quiet before i change to the night side of the bed. stop where you are for the present: i will call as soon as i want you." so far from exercising a soothing effect on mrs. jazeph, these kindly meant words produced the precisely opposite result of making her restless. she began to walk about the room, and confusedly attempted to account for the change in her conduct by saying that she wished to satisfy herself that all her arrangements were properly made for the night. in a few minutes more she began, in defiance of the doctor's prohibition, to tempt mrs. frankland into talking again, by asking questions about porthgenna tower, and by referring to the chances for and against its being chosen as a permanent residence by the young married couple. "perhaps, ma'am," she said, speaking on a sudden, with an eagerness in her voice which was curiously at variance with the apparent indifference of her manner--"perhaps when you see porthgenna tower you may not like it so well as you think you will now. who can tell that you may not get tired and leave the place again after a few days--especially if you go into the empty rooms? i should have thought--if you will excuse my saying so, ma'am--i should have thought that a lady like you would have liked to get as far away as possible from dirt and dust, and disagreeable smells." "i can face worse inconveniences than those, where my curiosity is concerned," said rosamond. "and i am more curious to see the uninhabited rooms at porthgenna than to see the seven wonders of the world. even if we don't settle altogether at the old house, i feel certain that we shall stay there for some time." at that answer, mrs. jazeph abruptly turned away, and asked no more questions. she retired to a corner of the room near the door, where the chair-bedstead stood which the doctor had pointed out to her--occupied herself for a few minutes in making it ready for the night--then left it as suddenly as she had approached it, and began to walk up and down once more. this unaccountable restlessness, which had already surprised rosamond, now made her feel rather uneasy--especially when she once or twice overheard mrs. jazeph talking to herself. judging by words and fragments of sentences that were audible now and then, her mind was still running, with the most inexplicable persistency, on the subject of porthgenna tower. as the minutes wore on, and she continued to walk up and down, and still went on talking, rosamond's uneasiness began to strengthen into something like alarm. she resolved to awaken mrs. jazeph, in the least offensive manner, to a sense of the strangeness of her own conduct, by noticing that she was talking, but by not appearing to understand that she was talking to herself. "what did you say?" asked rosamond, putting the question at a moment when the nurse's voice was most distinctly betraying her in the act of thinking aloud. mrs. jazeph stopped, and raised her head vacantly, as if she had been awakened out of a heavy sleep. "i thought you were saying something more about our old house," continued rosamond. "i thought i heard you say that i ought not to go to porthgenna, or that you would not go there in my place, or something of that sort." mrs. jazeph blushed like a young girl. "i think you must have been mistaken, ma'am," she said, and stooped over the chair-bedstead again. watching her anxiously, rosamond saw that, while she was affecting to arrange the bedstead, she was doing nothing whatever to prepare it for being slept in. what did that mean? what did her whole conduct mean for the last half-hour? as mrs. frankland asked herself those questions, the thrill of a terrible suspicion turned her cold to the very roots of her hair. it had never occurred to her before, but it suddenly struck her now, with the force of positive conviction, that the new nurse was not in her right senses. all that was unaccountable in her behavior--her odd disappearances behind the curtains at the foot of the bed; her lingering, stealthy, over-familiar way of using the hair-brush; her silence at one time, her talkativeness at another; her restlessness, her whispering to herself, her affectation of being deeply engaged in doing something which she was not doing at all--every one of her strange actions (otherwise incomprehensible) became intelligible in a moment on that one dreadful supposition that she was mad. terrified as she was, rosamond kept her presence of mind. one of her arms stole instinctively round the child; and she had half raised the other to catch at the bell-rope hanging above her pillow, when she saw mrs. jazeph turn and look at her. a woman possessed only of ordinary nerve would, probably, at that instant have pulled at the bell-rope in the unreasoning desperation of sheer fright. rosamond had courage enough to calculate consequences, and to remember that mrs. jazeph would have time to lock the door, before assistance could arrive, if she betrayed her suspicions by ringing without first assigning some plausible reason for doing so. she slowly closed her eyes as the nurse looked at her, partly to convey the notion that she was composing herself to sleep--partly to gain time to think of some safe excuse for summoning her maid. the flurry of her spirits, however, interfered with the exercise of her ingenuity. minute after minute dragged on heavily, and still she could think of no assignable reason for ringing the bell. she was just doubting whether it would not be safest to send mrs. jazeph out of the room, on some message to her husband, to lock the door the moment she was alone, and then to ring--she was just doubting whether she would boldly adopt this course of proceeding or not, when she heard the rustle of the nurse's silk dress approaching the bedside. her first impulse was to snatch at the bell-rope; but fear had paralyzed her hand; she could not raise it from the pillow. the rustling of the silk dress ceased. she half unclosed her eyes, and saw that the nurse was stopping midway between the part of the room from which she had advanced and the bedside. there was nothing wild or angry in her look. the agitation which her face expressed was the agitation of perplexity and alarm. she stood rapidly clasping and unclasping her hands, the image of bewilderment and distress--stood so for nearly a minute--then came forward a few steps more, and said inquiringly, in a whisper: "not asleep? not quite asleep, yet?" rosamond tried to speak in answer, but the quick beating of her heart seemed to rise up to her very lips, and to stifle the words on them. the nurse came on, still with the same perplexity and distress in her face, to within a foot of the bedside--knelt down by the pillow, and looked earnestly at rosamond--shuddered a little, and glanced all round her, as if to make sure that the room was empty--bent forward--hesitated--bent nearer, and whispered into her ear these words: "when you go to porthgenna, _keep out of the myrtle room_!" the hot breath of the woman, as she spoke, beat on rosamond's cheek, and seemed to fly in one fever-throb through every vein of her body. the nervous shock of that unutterable sensation burst the bonds of the terror that had hitherto held her motionless and speechless. she started up in bed with a scream, caught hold of the bell-rope, and pulled it violently. "oh, hush! hush!" cried mrs. jazeph, sinking back on her knees, and beating her hands together despairingly with the helpless gesticulation of a child. rosamond rang again and again. hurrying footsteps and eager voices were heard outside on the stairs. it was not ten o'clock yet--nobody had retired for the night--and the violent ringing had already alarmed the house. the nurse rose to her feet, staggered back from the bedside, and supported herself against the wall of the room, as the footsteps and the voices reached the door. she said not another word. the hands that she had been beating together so violently but an instant before hung down nerveless at her side. the blank of a great agony spread over all her face, and stilled it awfully. the first person who entered the room was mrs. frankland's maid, and the landlady followed her. "fetch mr. frankland," said rosamond, faintly, addressing the landlady. "i want to speak to him directly.--you," she continued, beckoning to the maid, "sit by me here till your master comes. i have been dreadfully frightened. don't ask me questions; but stop here." the maid stared at her mistress in amazement; then looked round with a disparaging frown at the nurse. when the landlady left the room to fetch mr. frankland, she had moved a little away from the wall, so as to command a full view of the bed. her eyes were fixed with a look of breathless suspense, of devouring anxiety, on rosamond's face. from all her other features the expression seemed to be gone. she said nothing, she noticed nothing. she did not start, she did not move aside an inch, when the landlady returned, and led mr. frankland to his wife. "lenny! don't let the new nurse stop here to-night--pray, pray don't!" whispered rosamond, eagerly catching her husband by the arm. warned by the trembling of her hand, mr. frankland laid his fingers lightly on her temples and on her heart. "good heavens, rosamond! what has happened? i left you quiet and comfortable, and now--" "i've been frightened, dear--dreadfully frightened, by the new nurse. don't be hard on her, poor creature; she is not in her right senses--i am certain she is not. only get her away quietly--only send her back at once to where she came from. i shall die of the fright, if she stops here. she has been behaving so strangely--she has spoken such words to me--lenny! lenny! don't let go of my hand. she came stealing up to me so horribly, just where you are now; she knelt down at my ear, and whispered--oh, such words!" "hush, hush, love!" said mr. frankland, getting seriously alarmed by the violence of rosamond's agitation. "never mind repeating the words now; wait till you are calmer--i beg and entreat of you, wait till you are calmer. i will do every thing you wish, if you will only lie down and be quiet, and try to compose yourself before you say another word. it is quite enough for me to know that this woman has frightened you, and that you wish her to be sent away with as little harshness as possible. we will put off all further explanations till to-morrow morning. i deeply regret now that i did not persist in carrying out my own idea of sending for a proper nurse from london. where is the landlady?" the landlady placed herself by mr. frankland's side. "is it late?" asked leonard. "oh no, sir; not ten o'clock yet." "order a fly to be brought to the door, then, as soon as possible, if you please. where is the nurse?" "standing behind you, sir, near the wall," said the maid. as mr. frankland turned in that direction, rosamond whispered to him: "don't be hard on her, lenny." the maid, looking with contemptuous curiosity at mrs. jazeph, saw the whole expression of her countenance alter, as those words were spoken. the tears rose thick in her eyes, and flowed down her cheeks. the deathly spell of stillness that had lain on her face was broken in an instant. she drew back again, close to the wall, and leaned against it as before. "don't be hard on her!" the maid heard her repeat to herself, in a low sobbing voice. "don't be hard on her! oh, my god! she said that kindly--she said that kindly, at least!" "i have no desire to speak to you, or to use you unkindly," said mr. frankland, imperfectly hearing what she said. "i know nothing of what has happened, and i make no accusations. i find mrs. frankland violently agitated and frightened; i hear her connect that agitation with you--not angrily, but compassionately--and, instead of speaking harshly, i prefer leaving it to your own sense of what is right, to decide whether your attendance here ought not to cease at once. i have provided the proper means for your conveyance from this place; and i would suggest that you should make our apologies to your mistress, and say nothing more than that circumstances have happened which oblige us to dispense with your services." "you have been considerate toward me, sir," said mrs. jazeph, speaking quietly, and with a certain gentle dignity in her manner, "and i will not prove myself unworthy of your forbearance by saying what i might say in my own defense." she advanced into the middle of the room, and stopped where she could see rosamond plainly. twice she attempted to speak, and twice her voice failed her. at the third effort she succeeded in controlling herself. "before i go, ma'am," she said, "i hope you will believe that i have no bitter feeling against you for sending me away. i am not angry--pray remember always that i was not angry, and that i never complained." there was such a forlornness in her face, such a sweet, sorrowful resignation in every tone of her voice during the utterance of these few words, that rosamond's heart smote her. "why did you frighten me?" she asked, half relenting. "frighten you? how could i frighten you? oh me! of all the people in the world, how could _i_ frighten you?" mournfully saying those words, the nurse went to the chair on which she had placed her bonnet and shawl, and put them on. the landlady and the maid, watching her with curious eyes, detected that she was again weeping bitterly, and noticed with astonishment, at the same time, how neatly she put on her bonnet and shawl. the wasted hands were moving mechanically, and were trembling while they moved,--and yet, slight thing though it was, the inexorable instinct of propriety guided their most trifling actions still. on her way to the door, she stopped again at passing the bedside, looked through her tears at rosamond and the child, struggled a little with herself, and then spoke her farewell words-- "god bless you, and keep you and your child happy and prosperous," she said. "i am not angry at being sent away. if you ever think of me again, after to-night, please to remember that i was not angry, and that i never complained." she stood for a moment longer, still weeping, and still looking through her tears at the mother and child--then turned away and walked to the door. something in the last tones of her voice caused a silence in the room. of the four persons in it not one could utter a word, as the nurse closed the door gently, and went out from them alone. chapter v. a council of three. on the morning after the departure of mrs. jazeph, the news that she had been sent away from the tiger's head by mr. frankland's directions, reached the doctor's residence from the inn just as he was sitting down to breakfast. finding that the report of the nurse's dismissal was not accompanied by any satisfactory explanation of the cause of it, mr. orridge refused to believe that her attendance on mrs. frankland had really ceased. however, although he declined to credit the news, he was so far disturbed by it that he finished his breakfast in a hurry, and went to pay his morning visit at the tiger's head nearly two hours before the time at which he usually attended on his patient. on his way to the inn, he was met and stopped by the one waiter attached to the establishment. "i was just bringing you a message from mr. frankland, sir," said the man. "he wants to see you as soon as possible." "is it true that mrs. frankland's nurse was sent away last night by mr. frankland's order?" asked mr. orridge. "quite true, sir," answered the waiter. the doctor colored, and looked seriously discomposed. one of the most precious things we have about us--especially if we happen to belong to the medical profession--is our dignity. it struck mr. orridge that he ought to have been consulted before a nurse of his recommending was dismissed from her situation at a moment's notice. was mr. frankland presuming upon his position as a gentleman of fortune? the power of wealth may do much with impunity, but it is not privileged to offer any practical contradictions to a man's good opinion of himself. never had the doctor thought more disrespectfully of rank and riches; never had he been conscious of reflecting on republican principles with such absolute impartiality, as when he now followed the waiter in sullen silence to mr. frankland's room. "who is that?" asked leonard, when he heard the door open. "mr. orridge, sir," said the waiter. "good-morning," said mr. orridge, with self-asserting abruptness and familiarity. mr. frankland was sitting in an arm-chair, with his legs crossed. mr. orridge carefully selected another arm-chair, and crossed his legs on the model of mr. frankland's the moment he sat down. mr. frankland's hands were in the pockets of his dressing-gown. mr. orridge had no pockets, except in his coat-tails, which he could not conveniently get at; but he put his thumbs into the arm-holes of his waistcoat, and asserted himself against the easy insolence of wealth in that way. it made no difference to him--so curiously narrow is the range of a man's perceptions when he is insisting on his own importance--that mr. frankland was blind, and consequently incapable of being impressed by the independence of his bearing. mr. orridge's own dignity was vindicated in mr. orridge's own presence, and that was enough. "i am glad you have come so early, doctor," said mr. frankland. "a very unpleasant thing happened here last night. i was obliged to send the new nurse away at a moment's notice." "were you, indeed!" said mr. orridge, defensively matching mr. frankland's composure by an assumption of the completest indifference. "aha! were you indeed?" "if there had been time to send and consult you, of course i should have been only too glad to have done so," continued leonard; "but it was impossible to hesitate. we were all alarmed by a loud ringing of my wife's bell; i was taken up to her room, and found her in a condition of the most violent agitation and alarm. she told me she had been dreadfully frightened by the new nurse; declared her conviction that the woman was not in her right senses; and entreated that i would get her out of the house with as little delay and as little harshness as possible. under these circumstances, what could i do? i may seem to have been wanting in consideration toward you, in proceeding on my own sole responsibility; but mrs. frankland was in such a state of excitement that i could not tell what might be the consequence of opposing her, or of venturing on any delays; and after the difficulty had been got over, she would not hear of your being disturbed by a summons to the inn. i am sure you will understand this explanation, doctor, in the spirit in which i offer it." mr. orridge began to look a little confused. his solid substructure of independence was softening and sinking from under him. he suddenly found himself thinking of the cultivated manners of the wealthy classes; his thumbs slipped mechanically out of the arm-holes of his waistcoat; and, before he well knew what he was about, he was stammering his way through all the choicest intricacies of a complimentary and respectful reply. "you will naturally be anxious to know what the new nurse said or did to frighten my wife so," pursued mr. frankland. "i can tell you nothing in detail; for mrs. frankland was in such a state of nervous dread last night that i was really afraid of asking for any explanations; and i have purposely waited to make inquiries this morning until you could come here and accompany me up stairs. you kindly took so much trouble to secure this unlucky woman's attendance, that you have a right to hear all that can be alleged against her, now she has been sent away. considering all things, mrs. frankland is not so ill this morning as i was afraid she would be. she expects to see you with me; and, if you will kindly give me your arm, we will go up to her immediately." on entering mrs. frankland's room, the doctor saw at a glance that she had been altered for the worse by the events of the past evening. he remarked that the smile with which she greeted her husband was the faintest and saddest he had seen on her face. her eyes looked dim and weary, her skin was dry, her pulse was irregular. it was plain that she had passed a wakeful night, and that her mind was not at ease. she dismissed the inquiries of her medical attendant as briefly as possible, and led the conversation immediately, of her own accord, to the subject of mrs. jazeph. "i suppose you have heard what has happened," she said, addressing mr. orridge. "i can't tell you how grieved i am about it. my conduct must look in your eyes, as well as in the eyes of the poor unfortunate nurse, the conduct of a capricious, unfeeling woman. i am ready to cry with sorrow and vexation when i remember how thoughtless i was, and how little courage i showed. oh, lenny, it is dreadful to hurt the feelings of any body, but to have pained that unhappy, helpless woman as we pained her, to have made her cry so bitterly, to have caused her such humiliation and wretchedness--" "my dear rosamond," interposed mr. frankland, "you are lamenting effects, and forgetting causes altogether. remember what a state of terror i found you in--there must have been some reason for that. remember, too, how strong your conviction was that the nurse was out of her senses. surely you have not altered your opinion on that point already?" "it is that very opinion, love, that has been perplexing and worrying me all night. i can't alter it; i feel more certain than ever that there must be something wrong with the poor creature's intellect--and yet, when i remember how good-naturedly she came here to help me, and how anxious she seemed to make herself useful, i can't help feeling ashamed of my suspicions; i can't help reproaching myself for having been the cause of her dismissal last night. mr. orridge, did you notice any thing in mrs. jazeph's face or manner which might lead you to doubt whether her intellects were quite as sound as they ought to be?" "certainly not, mrs. frankland, or i should never have brought her here. i should not have been astonished to hear that she was suddenly taken ill, or that she had been seized with a fit, or that some slight accident, which would have frightened nobody else, had seriously frightened her; but to be told that there is any thing approaching to derangement in her faculties, does, i own, fairly surprise me." "can i have been mistaken!" exclaimed rosamond, looking confusedly and self-distrustfully from mr. orridge to her husband. "lenny! lenny! if i have been mistaken, i shall never forgive myself." "suppose you tell us, my dear, what led you to suspect that she was mad?" suggested mr. frankland. rosamond hesitated. "things that are great in one's own mind," she said, "seem to get so little when they are put into words. i almost despair of making you understand what good reason i had to be frightened--and then, i am afraid, in trying to do justice to myself, that i may not do justice to the nurse." "tell your own story, my love, in your own way, and you will be sure to tell it properly," said mr. frankland. "and pray remember," added mr. orridge, "that i attach no real importance to my opinion of mrs. jazeph. i have not had time enough to form it. your opportunities of observing her have been far more numerous than mine." thus encouraged, rosamond plainly and simply related all that had happened in her room on the previous evening, up to the time when she had closed her eyes and had heard the nurse approaching her bedside. before repeating the extraordinary words that mrs. jazeph had whispered in her ear, she made a pause, and looked earnestly in her husband's face. "why do you stop?" asked mr. frankland. "i feel nervous and flurried still, lenny, when i think of the words the nurse said to me, just before i rang the bell." "what did she say? was it something you would rather not repeat?" "no! no! i am most anxious to repeat it, and to hear what you think it means. as i have just told you, lenny, we had been talking of porthgenna, and of my project of exploring the north rooms as soon as i got there; and she had been asking many questions about the old house; appearing, i must say, to be unaccountably interested in it, considering she was a stranger." "yes?" "well, when she came to the bedside, she knelt down close at my ear, and whispered all on a sudden--'when you go to porthgenna, keep out of the myrtle room!'" mr. frankland started. "is there such a room at porthgenna?" he asked, eagerly. "i never heard of it," said rosamond. "are you sure of that?" inquired mr. orridge. up to this moment the doctor had privately suspected that mrs. frankland must have fallen asleep soon after he left her the evening before; and that the narrative which she was now relating, with the sincerest conviction of its reality, was actually derived from nothing but a series of vivid impressions produced by a dream. "i am certain i never heard of such a room," said rosamond. "i left porthgenna at five years old; and i had never heard of it then. my father often talked of the house in after-years; but i am certain that he never spoke of any of the rooms by any particular names; and i can say the same of your father, lenny, whenever i was in his company after he had bought the place. besides, don't you remember, when the builder we sent down to survey the house wrote you that letter, he complained that there were no names of the rooms on the different keys to guide him in opening the doors, and that he could get no information from any body at porthgenna on the subject? how could i ever have heard of the myrtle room? who was there to tell me?" mr. orridge began to look perplexed; it seemed by no means so certain that mrs. frankland had been dreaming, after all. "i have thought of nothing else," said rosamond to her husband, in low, whispering tones. "i can't get those mysterious words off my mind. feel my heart, lenny--it is beating quicker than usual only with saying them over to you. they are such very strange, startling words. what do you think they mean?" "who is the woman who spoke them?--that is the most important question," said mr. frankland. "but why did she say the words to _me_? that is what i want to know--that is what i must know, if i am ever to feel easy in my mind again!" "gently, mrs. frankland, gently!" said mr. orridge. "for your child's sake, as well as for your own, pray try to be calm, and to look at this very mysterious event as composedly as you can. if any exertions of mine can throw light upon this strange woman and her still stranger conduct, i will not spare them. i am going to-day to her mistress's house to see one of the children; and, depend upon it, i will manage in some way to make mrs. jazeph explain herself. her mistress shall hear every word that you have told me; and i can assure you she is just the sort of downright, resolute woman who will insist on having the whole mystery instantly cleared up." rosamond's weary eyes brightened at the doctor's proposal. "oh, go at once, mr. orridge!" she exclaimed--"go at once!" "i have a great deal of medical work to do in the town first," said the doctor, smiling at mrs. frankland's impatience. "begin it, then, without losing another instant," said rosamond. "the baby is quite well, and i am quite well--we need not detain you a moment. and, mr. orridge, pray be as gentle and considerate as possible with the poor woman; and tell her that i never should have thought of sending her away if i had not been too frightened to know what i was about. and say how sorry i am this morning, and say--" "my dear, if mrs. jazeph is really not in her right senses, what would be the use of overwhelming her with all these excuses?" interposed mr. frankland. "it will be more to the purpose if mr. orridge will kindly explain and apologize for us to her mistress." "go! don't stop to talk--pray go at once!" cried rosamond, as the doctor attempted to reply to mr. frankland. "don't be afraid; no time shall be lost," said mr. orridge, opening the door. "but remember, mrs. frankland, i shall expect you to reward your embassador, when he returns from his mission, by showing him that you are a little more quiet and composed than i find you this morning." with that parting hint, the doctor took his leave. "'when you go to porthgenna, keep out of the myrtle room,'" repeated mr. frankland, thoughtfully. "those are very strange words, rosamond. who can this woman really be? she is a perfect stranger to both of us; we are brought into contact with her by the merest accident; and we find that she knows something about our own house of which we were both perfectly ignorant until she chose to speak!" "but the warning, lenny--the warning, so pointedly and mysteriously addressed to me? oh, if i could only go to sleep at once, and not wake again till the doctor comes back!" "my love, try not to count too certainly on our being enlightened, even then. the woman may refuse to explain herself to any body." "don't even hint at such a disappointment as that, lenny--or i shall be wanting to get up, and go and question her myself!" "even if you could get up and question her, rosamond, you might find it impossible to make her answer. she may be afraid of certain consequences which we can not foresee; and, in that case, i can only repeat that it is more than probable she will explain nothing--or, perhaps, still more likely that she will coolly deny her own words altogether." "then, lenny, we will put them to the proof for ourselves." "and how can we do that?" "by continuing our journey to porthgenna the moment i am allowed to travel, and by leaving no stone unturned when we get there until we have discovered whether there is or is not any room in the old house that ever was known, at any time of its existence, by the name of the myrtle room." "and suppose it should turn out that there is such a room?" asked mr. frankland, beginning to feel the influence of his wife's enthusiasm. "if it does turn out so," said rosamond, her voice rising, and her face lighting up with its accustomed vivacity, "how can you doubt what will happen next? am i not a woman? and have i not been forbidden to enter the myrtle room? lenny! lenny! do you know so little of my half of humanity as to doubt what i should do the moment the room was discovered? my darling, as a matter of course, i should walk into it immediately." chapter vi. another surprise. with all the haste he could make, it was one o'clock in the afternoon before mr. orridge's professional avocations allowed him to set forth in his gig for mrs. norbury's house. he drove there with such good-will that he accomplished the half-hour's journey in twenty minutes. the footman having heard the rapid approach of the gig, opened the hall door the instant the horse was pulled up before it, and confronted the doctor with a smile of malicious satisfaction. "well," said mr. orridge, bustling into the hall, "you were all rather surprised last night when the housekeeper came back, i suppose?" "yes, sir, we certainly were surprised when she came back last night," answered the footman; "but we were still more surprised when she went away again this morning." "went away! you don't mean to say she is gone?" "yes, i do, sir--she has lost her place, and gone for good." the footman smiled again, as he made that reply; and the housemaid, who happened to be on her way down stairs while he was speaking, and to hear what he said, smiled too. mrs. jazeph had evidently been no favorite in the servants' hall. amazement prevented mr. orridge from uttering another word. hearing no more questions asked, the footman threw open the door of the breakfast-parlor, and the doctor followed him into the room. mrs. norbury was sitting near the window in a rigidly upright attitude, inflexibly watching the proceedings of her invalid child over a basin of beef-tea. "i know what you are going to talk about before you open your lips," said the outspoken lady. "but just look to the child first, and say what you have to say on that subject, if you please, before you enter on any other." the child was examined, was pronounced to be improving rapidly, and was carried away by the nurse to lie down and rest a little. as soon as the door of the room had closed, mrs. norbury abruptly addressed the doctor, interrupting him, for the second time, just as he was about to speak. "now, mr. orridge," she said, "i want to tell you something at the outset. i am a remarkably just woman, and i have no quarrel with _you_. you are the cause of my having been treated with the most audacious insolence by three people--but you are the innocent cause, and, therefore, i don't blame you." "i am really at a loss," mr. orridge began--"quite at a loss, i assure you--" "to know what i mean?" said mrs. norbury. "i will soon tell you. were you not the original cause of my sending my housekeeper to nurse mrs. frankland?" "yes." mr. orridge could not hesitate to acknowledge that. "well," pursued mrs. norbury, "and the consequence of my sending her is, as i said before, that i am treated with unparalleled insolence by no less than three people. mrs. frankland takes an insolent whim into her head, and affects to be frightened by my housekeeper. mr. frankland shows an insolent readiness to humor that whim, and hands me back my housekeeper as if she was a bad shilling; and last, and worst of all, my housekeeper herself insults me to my face as soon as she comes back--insults me, mr. orridge, to that degree that i give her twelve hours' notice to leave the place. don't begin to defend yourself! i know all about it; i know you had nothing to do with sending her back; i never said you had. all the mischief you have done is innocent mischief. i don't blame you, remember that--whatever you do, mr. orridge, remember that!" "i had no idea of defending myself," said the doctor, "for i have no reason to do so. but you surprise me beyond all power of expression when you tell me that mrs. jazeph treated you with incivility." "incivility!" exclaimed mrs. norbury. "don't talk about incivility--it's not the word. impudence is the word--brazen impudence. the only charitable thing to say of mrs. jazeph is that she is not right in her head. i never noticed any thing odd about her myself; but the servants used to laugh at her for being as timid in the dark as a child, and for often running away to her candle in her own room when they declined to light the lamps before the night had fairly set in. i never troubled my head about this before; but i thought of it last night, i can tell you, when i found her looking me fiercely in the face, and contradicting me flatly the moment i spoke to her." "i should have thought she was the very last woman in the world to misbehave herself in that way," answered the doctor. "very well. now hear what happened when she came back last night," said mrs. norbury. "she got here just as we were going up stairs to bed. of course, i was astonished; and, of course, i called her into the drawing-room for an explanation. there was nothing very unnatural in that course of proceeding, i suppose? well, i noticed that her eyes were swollen and red, and that her looks were remarkably wild and queer; but i said nothing, and waited for the explanation. all that she had to tell me was that something she had unintentionally said or done had frightened mrs. frankland, and that mrs. frankland's husband had sent her away on the spot. i disbelieved this at first--and very naturally, i think--but she persisted in the story, and answered all my questions by declaring that she could tell me nothing more. 'so then,' i said, 'i am to believe that, after i have inconvenienced myself by sparing you, and after you have inconvenienced yourself by undertaking the business of nurse, i am to be insulted, and you are to be insulted, by your being sent away from mrs. frankland on the very day when you get to her, because she chooses to take a whim into her head?' 'i never accused mrs. frankland of taking a whim into her head,' said mrs. jazeph, and stares me straight in the face, with such a look as i never saw in her eyes before, after all my five years' experience of her. 'what do you mean?' i asked, giving her back her look, i can promise you. 'are you base enough to take the treatment you have received in the light of a favor?' 'i am just enough,' said mrs. jazeph, as sharp as lightning, and still with that same stare straight at me--'i am just enough not to blame mrs. frankland.' 'oh, you are, are you?' i said. 'then all i can tell you is, that i feel this insult, if you don't; and that i consider mrs. frankland's conduct to be the conduct of an ill-bred, impudent, capricious, unfeeling woman.' mrs. jazeph takes a step up to me--takes a step, i give you my word of honor--and says distinctly, in so many words, 'mrs. frankland is neither ill-bred, impudent, capricious, nor unfeeling.' 'do you mean to contradict me, mrs. jazeph?' i asked. 'i mean to defend mrs. frankland from unjust imputations,' says she. those were her words, mr. orridge--on my honor, as a gentlewoman, those were exactly her words." the doctor's face expressed the blankest astonishment. mrs. norbury went on-- "i was in a towering passion--i don't mind confessing that, mr. orridge--but i kept it down. 'mrs. jazeph,' i said, 'this is language that i am not accustomed to, and that i certainly never expected to hear from your lips. why you should take it on yourself to defend mrs. frankland for treating us both with contempt, and to contradict me for resenting it, i neither know nor care to know. but i must tell you, in plain words, that i will be spoken to by every person in my employment, from my housekeeper to my scullery-maid, with respect. i would have given warning on the spot to any other servant in this house who had behaved to me as you have behaved.' she tried to interrupt me there, but i would not allow her. 'no,' i said, 'you are not to speak to me just yet; you are to hear me out. any other servant, i tell you again, should have left this place to-morrow morning; but i will be more than just to _you_. i will give you the benefit of your five years' good conduct in my service. i will leave you the rest of the night to get cool, and to reflect on what has passed between us; and i will not expect you to make the proper apologies to me until the morning.' you see, mr. orridge, i was determined to act justly and kindly; i was ready to make allowances--and what do you think she said in return? 'i am willing to make any apologies, ma'am, for offending you,' she said, 'without the delay of a single minute; but, whether it is to-night, or whether it is to-morrow morning, i can not stand by silent when i hear mrs. frankland charged with acting unkindly, uncivilly, or improperly toward me or toward any one.' 'do you tell me that deliberately, mrs. jazeph?' i asked. 'i tell it you sincerely, ma'am,' she answered; 'and i am very sorry to be obliged to do so.' 'pray don't trouble yourself to be sorry,' i said, 'for you may consider yourself no longer in my service. i will order the steward to pay you the usual month's wages instead of the month's warning the first thing to-morrow; and i beg that you will leave the house as soon as you conveniently can afterward.' 'i will leave to-morrow, ma'am,' says she, 'but without troubling the steward. i beg respectfully, and with many thanks for your past kindness, to decline taking a month's money which i have not earned by a month's service.' and thereupon she courtesies and goes out. that is, word for word, what passed between us, mr. orridge. explain the woman's conduct in your own way, if you can. i say that it is utterly incomprehensible, unless you agree with me that she was not in her right senses when she came back to this house last night." the doctor began to think, after what he had just heard, that mrs. frankland's suspicions in relation to the new nurse were not quite so unfounded as he had been at first disposed to consider them. he wisely refrained, however, from complicating matters by giving utterance to what he thought; and, after answering mrs. norbury in a few vaguely polite words, endeavored to soothe her irritation against mr. and mrs. frankland by assuring her that he came as the bearer of apologies from both husband and wife, for the apparent want of courtesy and consideration in their conduct which circumstances had made inevitable. the offended lady, however, absolutely refused to be propitiated. she rose up, and waved her hand with an air of great dignity. "i can not hear a word more from you, mr. orridge," she said; "i can not receive any apologies which are made indirectly. if mr. frankland chooses to call, and if mrs. frankland condescends to write to me, i am willing to think no more of the matter. under any other circumstances, i must be allowed to keep my present opinions both of the lady and the gentleman. don't say another word, and be so kind as to excuse me if i leave you, and go up to the nursery to see how the child is getting on. i am delighted to hear that you think her so much better. pray call again to-morrow or next day, if you conveniently can. good-morning!" half amused at mrs. norbury, half displeased at the curt tone she adopted toward him, mr. orridge remained for a minute or two alone in the breakfast-parlor, feeling rather undecided about what he should do next. he was, by this time, almost as much interested in solving the mystery of mrs. jazeph's extraordinary conduct as mrs. frankland herself; and he felt unwilling, on all accounts, to go back to the tiger's head, and merely repeat what mrs. norbury had told him, without being able to complete the narrative by informing mr. and mrs. frankland of the direction that the housekeeper had taken on leaving her situation. after some pondering, he determined to question the footman, under the pretense of desiring to know if his gig was at the door. the man having answered the bell, and having reported the gig to be ready, mr. orridge, while crossing the hall, asked him carelessly if he knew at what time in the morning mrs. jazeph had left her place. "about ten o'clock, sir," answered the footman. "when the carrier came by from the village, on his way to the station for the eleven o'clock train." "oh! i suppose he took her boxes?" said mr. orridge. "and he took her, too, sir," said the man, with a grin. "she had to ride, for once in her life, at any rate, in a carrier's cart." on getting back to west winston, the doctor stopped at the station to collect further particulars, before he returned to the tiger's head. no trains, either up or down, happened to be due just at that time. the station-master was reading the newspaper, and the porter was gardening on the slope of the embankment. "is the train at eleven in the morning an up-train or a down-train?" asked mr. orridge, addressing the porter. "a down-train." "did many people go by it?" the porter repeated the names of some of the inhabitants of west winston. "were there no passengers but passengers from the town?" inquired the doctor. "yes, sir. i think there was one stranger--a lady." "did the station-master issue the tickets for that train?" "yes, sir." mr. orridge went on to the station-master. "do you remember giving a ticket this morning, by the eleven o'clock down-train, to a lady traveling alone?" the station-master pondered. "i have issued tickets, up and down, to half-a-dozen ladies to-day," he answered, doubtfully. "yes, but i am speaking only of the eleven o'clock train," said mr. orridge. "try if you can't remember?" "remember? stop! i do remember; i know who you mean. a lady who seemed rather flurried, and who put a question to me that i am not often asked at this station. she had her veil down, i recollect, and she got here for the eleven o'clock train. crouch, the carrier, brought her trunk into the office." "that is the woman. where did she take her ticket for?" "for exeter." "you said she asked you a question?" "yes: a question about what coaches met the rail at exeter to take travelers into cornwall. i told her we were rather too far off here to have the correct time-table, and recommended her to apply for information to the devonshire people when she got to the end of her journey. she seemed a timid, helpless kind of woman to travel alone. any thing wrong in connection with her, sir?" "oh, no! nothing," said mr. orridge, leaving the station-master and hastening back to his gig again. when he drew up, a few minutes afterward, at the door of the tiger's head, he jumped out of his vehicle with the confident air of a man who has done all that could be expected of him. it was easy to face mrs. frankland with the unsatisfactory news of mrs. jazeph's departure, now that he could add, on the best authority, the important supplementary information that she had gone to cornwall. book iv. chapter i. a plot against the secret. toward the close of the evening, on the day after mr. orridge's interview with mrs. norbury, the druid fast coach, running through cornwall as far as truro, set down three inside passengers at the door of the booking-office on arriving at its destination. two of these passengers were an old gentleman and his daughter; the third was mrs. jazeph. the father and daughter collected their luggage and entered the hotel; the outside passengers branched off in different directions with as little delay as possible; mrs. jazeph alone stood irresolute on the pavement, and seemed uncertain what she should do next. when the coachman good-naturedly endeavored to assist her in arriving at a decision of some kind, by asking whether he could do any thing to help her, she started, and looked at him suspiciously; then, appearing to recollect herself, thanked him for his kindness, and inquired, with a confusion of words and a hesitation of manner which appeared very extraordinary in the coachman's eyes, whether she might be allowed to leave her trunk at the booking-office for a little while, until she could return and call for it again. receiving permission to leave her trunk as long as she pleased, she crossed over the principal street of the town, ascended the pavement on the opposite side, and walked down the first turning she came to. on entering the by-street to which the turning led, she glanced back, satisfied herself that nobody was following or watching her, hastened on a few yards, and stopped again at a small shop devoted to the sale of book-cases, cabinets, work-boxes, and writing-desks. after first looking up at the letters painted over the door--buschmann, cabinet-maker, &c.--she peered in at the shop window. a middle-aged man, with a cheerful face, sat behind the counter, polishing a rosewood bracket, and nodding briskly at regular intervals, as if he were humming a tune and keeping time to it with his head. seeing no customers in the shop, mrs. jazeph opened the door and walked in. as soon as she was inside, she became aware that the cheerful man behind the counter was keeping time, not to a tune of his own humming, but to a tune played by a musical box. the clear ringing notes came from a parlor behind the shop, and the air the box was playing was the lovely "batti, batti," of mozart. "is mr. buschmann at home?" asked mrs. jazeph. "yes, ma'am," said the cheerful man, pointing with a smile toward the door that led into the parlor. "the music answers for him. whenever mr. buschmann's box is playing, mr. buschmann himself is not far off from it. did you wish to see him, ma'am?" "if there is nobody with him." "oh, no, he is quite alone. shall i give any name?" mrs. jazeph opened her lips to answer, hesitated, and said nothing. the shopman, with a quicker delicacy of perception than might have been expected from him, judging by outward appearances, did not repeat the question, but opened the door at once, and admitted the visitor to the presence of mr. buschmann. the shop parlor was a very small room, with an old three-cornered look about it, with a bright green paper on the walls, with a large dried fish in a glass case over the fire-place, with two meerschaum pipes hanging together on the wall opposite, and a neat round table placed as accurately as possible in the middle of the floor. on the table were tea-things, bread, butter, a pot of jam, and a musical box in a quaint, old-fashioned case; and by the side of the table sat a little, rosy-faced, white-haired, simple-looking old man, who started up, when the door was opened, with an appearance of extreme confusion, and touched the top of the musical box so that it might cease playing when it came to the end of the air. "a lady to speak with you, sir," said the cheerful shopman. "that is mr. buschmann, ma'am," he added in a lower tone, seeing mrs. jazeph stop in apparent uncertainty on entering the parlor. "will you please to take a seat, ma'am?" said mr. buschmann, when the shopman had closed the door and gone back to his counter. "excuse the music; it will stop directly." he spoke these words in a foreign accent, but with perfect fluency. mrs. jazeph looked at him earnestly while he was addressing her, and advanced a step or two before she said any thing. "am i so changed?" she asked softly. "so sadly, sadly changed, uncle joseph?" "gott im himmel! it's her voice--it's sarah leeson!" cried the old man, running up to his visitor as nimbly as if he was a boy again, taking both her hands, and kissing her with an odd, brisk tenderness on the cheek. although his niece was not at all above the average height of women, uncle joseph was so short that he had to raise himself on tiptoe to perform the ceremony of embracing her. "to think of sarah coming at last!" he said, pressing her into a chair. "after all these years and years, to think of sarah leeson coming to see uncle joseph again!" "sarah still, but not sarah leeson," said mrs. jazeph, pressing her thin, trembling hands firmly together, and looking down on the floor while she spoke. "ah! married?" said mr. buschmann, gayly. "married, of course. tell me all about your husband, sarah." "he is dead. dead and forgiven." she murmured the last three words in a whisper to herself. "ah! i am so sorry for you! i spoke too suddenly, did i not, my child?" said the old man. "never mind! no, no; i don't mean that--i mean let us talk of something else. you will have a bit of bread and jam, won't you, sarah?--ravishing raspberry jam that melts in your mouth. some tea, then? so, so, she will have some tea, to be sure. and we won't talk of our troubles--at least, not just yet. you look very pale, sarah--very much older than you ought to look--no, i don't mean that either; i don't mean to be rude. it was your voice i knew you by, my child--your voice that your poor uncle max always said would have made your fortune if you would only have learned to sing. here's his pretty music box going still. don't look so downhearted--don't, pray. do listen a little to the music: you remember the box?--my brother max's box? why, how you look! have you forgotten the box that the divine mozart gave to my brother with his own hand, when max was a boy in the music school at vienna? listen! i have set it going again. it's a song they call 'batti, batti;' it's a song in an opera of mozart's. ah! beautiful! beautiful! your uncle max said that all music was comprehended in that one song. i know nothing about music, but i have my heart and my ears, and they tell me that max was right." speaking these words with abundant gesticulation and amazing volubility, mr. buschmann poured out a cup of tea for his niece, stirred it carefully, and, patting her on the shoulder, begged that she would make him happy by drinking it all up directly. as he came close to her to press this request, he discovered that the tears were in her eyes, and that she was trying to take her handkerchief from her pocket without being observed. "don't mind me," she said, seeing the old man's face sadden as he looked at her; "and don't think me forgetful or ungrateful, uncle joseph. i remember the box--i remember every thing that you used to take an interest in, when i was younger and happier than i am now. when i last saw you, i came to you in trouble; and i come to you in trouble once more. it seems neglectful in me never to have written to you for so many years past; but my life has been a very sad one, and i thought i had no right to lay the burden of my sorrow on other shoulders than my own." uncle joseph shook his head at these last words, and touched the stop of the musical box. "mozart shall wait a little," he said, gravely, "till i have told you something. sarah, hear what i say, and drink your tea, and own to me whether i speak the truth or not. what did i, joseph buschmann, tell you, when you first came to me in trouble, fourteen, fifteen, ah more! sixteen years ago, in this town, and in this same house? i said then, what i say again now: 'sarah's sorrow is my sorrow, and sarah's joy is my joy;' and if any man asks me reasons for that, i have three to give him." he stopped to stir up his niece's tea for the second time, and to draw her attention to it by tapping with the spoon on the edge of the cup. "three reasons," he resumed. "first, you are my sister's child--some of her flesh and blood, and some of mine, therefore, also. second, my sister, my brother, and lastly me myself, we owe to your good english father--all. a little word that means much, and may be said again and again--all. your father's friends cry, fie! agatha buschmann is poor! agatha buschmann is foreign! but your father loves the poor german girl, and he marries her in spite of their fie, fie. your father's friends cry fie! again; agatha buschmann has a musician brother, who gabbles to us about mozart, and who can not make to his porridge salt. your father says, good! i like his gabble; i like his playing; i shall get him people to teach; and while i have pinches of salt in my kitchen, he to his porridge shall have pinches of salt too. your father's friends cry fie! for the third time. agatha buschmann has another brother, a little stupid-head, who to the other's gabble can only listen and say amen. send him trotting; for the love of heaven, shut up all the doors and send stupid-head trotting, at least. your father says, no! stupid-head has his wits in his hands; he can cut and carve and polish; help him a little at the starting, and after he shall help himself. they are all gone now but me! your father, your mother, and uncle max--they are all gone. stupid-head alone remains to remember and to be grateful--to take sarah's sorrow for his sorrow, and sarah's joy for his joy." he stopped again to blow a speck of dust off the musical box. his niece endeavored to speak, but he held up his hand, and shook his forefinger at her warningly. "no," he said. "it is yet my business to talk, and your business to drink tea. have i not my third reason still? ah! you look away from me; you know my third reason before i say a word. when i, in my turn, marry, and my wife dies, and leaves me alone with little joseph, and when the boy falls sick, who comes then, so quiet, so pretty, so neat, with the bright young eyes, and the hands so tender and light? who helps me with little joseph by night and by day? who makes a pillow for him on her arm when his head is weary? who holds this box patiently at his ear?--yes! this box, that the hand of mozart has touched--who holds it closer, closer always, when little joseph's sense grows dull, and he moans for the friendly music that he has known from a baby, the friendly music that he can now so hardly, hardly hear? who kneels down by uncle joseph when his heart is breaking, and says, 'oh, hush! hush! the boy is gone where the better music plays, where the sickness shall never waste or the sorrow touch him more?' who? ah, sarah! you can not forget those days; you can not forget the long ago! when the trouble is bitter, and the burden is heavy, it is cruelty to uncle joseph to keep away; it is kindness to him to come here." the recollections that the old man had called up found their way tenderly to sarah's heart. she could not answer him; she could only hold out her hand. uncle joseph bent down, with a quaint, affectionate gallantry, and kissed it; then stepped back again to his place by the musical box. "come!" he said, patting it cheerfully, "we will say no more for a while. mozart's box, max's box, little joseph's box, you shall talk to us again!" having put the tiny machinery in motion, he sat down by the table, and remained silent until the air had been played over twice. then observing that his niece seemed calmer, he spoke to her once more. "you are in trouble, sarah," he said, quietly. "you tell me that, and i see it is true in your face. are you grieving for your husband?" "i grieve that i ever met him," she answered. "i grieve that i ever married him. now that he is dead, i can not grieve--i can only forgive him." "forgive him? how you look, sarah, when you say that! tell me--" "uncle joseph! i have told you that my husband is dead, and that i have forgiven him." "you have forgiven him? he was hard and cruel with you, then? i see; i see. that is the end, sarah--but the beginning? is the beginning that you loved him?" her pale cheeks flushed; and she turned her head aside. "it is hard and humbling to confess it," she murmured, without raising her eyes; "but you force the truth from me, uncle. i had no love to give to my husband--no love to give to any man." "and yet you married him! wait! it is not for me to blame. it is for me to find out, not the bad, but the good. yes, yes; i shall say to myself, she married him when she was poor and helpless; she married him when she should have come to uncle joseph instead. i shall say that to myself, and i shall pity, but i shall ask no more." sarah half reached her hand out to the old man again--then suddenly pushed her chair back, and changed the position in which she was sitting. "it is true that i was poor," she said, looking about her in confusion, and speaking with difficulty. "but you are so kind and so good, i can not accept the excuse that your forbearance makes for me. i did not marry him because i was poor, but--" she stopped, clasped her hands together, and pushed her chair back still farther from the table. "so! so!" said the old man, noticing her confusion. "we will talk about it no more." "i had no excuse of love; i had no excuse of poverty," she said, with a sudden burst of bitterness and despair. "uncle joseph, i married him because i was too weak to persist in saying no! the curse of weakness and fear has followed me all the days of my life! i said no to him once. i said no to him twice. oh, uncle, if i could only have said it for the third time! but he followed me, he frightened me, he took away from me all the little will of my own that i had. he made me speak as he wished me to speak, and go where he wished me to go. no, no, no--don't come to me, uncle; don't say any thing. he is gone; he is dead--i have got my release; i have given my pardon! oh, if i could only go away and hide somewhere! all people's eyes seem to look through me; all people's words seem to threaten me. my heart has been weary ever since i was a young woman; and all these long, long years it has never got any rest. hush! the man in the shop--i forgot the man in the shop. he will hear us; let us talk in a whisper. what made me break out so? i'm always wrong. oh me! i'm wrong when i speak; i'm wrong when i say nothing; wherever i go and whatever i do, i'm not like other people. i seem never to have grown up in my mind since i was a little child. hark! the man in the shop is moving--has he heard me? oh, uncle joseph! do you think he has heard me?" looking hardly less startled than his niece, uncle joseph assured her that the door was solid, that the man's place in the shop was at some distance from it, and that it was impossible, even if he heard voices in the parlor, that he could also distinguish any words that were spoken in it. "you are sure of that?" she whispered, hurriedly. "yes, yes, you are sure of that, or you would not have told me so, would you? we may go on talking now. not about my married life: that is buried and past. say that i had some years of sorrow and suffering, which i deserved--say that i had other years of quiet, when i was living in service with masters and mistresses who were often kind to me when my fellow-servants were not--say just that much about my life, and it is saying enough. the trouble that i am in now, the trouble that brings me to you, goes back further than the years we have been talking about--goes back, back, back, uncle joseph, to the distant day when we last met." "goes back all through the sixteen years!" exclaimed the old man, incredulously. "goes back, sarah, even to the long ago!" "even to that time. uncle, you remember where i was living, and what had happened to me, when--" "when you came here in secret? when you asked me to hide you? that was the same week, sarah, when your mistress died; your mistress who lived away west in the old house. you were frightened, then--pale and frightened as i see you now." "as every one sees me! people are always staring at me; always thinking that i am nervous, always pitying me for being ill." saying these words with a sudden fretfulness, she lifted the tea-cup by her side to her lips, drained it of its contents at a draught, and pushed it across the table to be filled again. "i have come all over thirsty and hot," she whispered. "more tea, uncle joseph--more tea." "it is cold," said the old man. "wait till i ask for hot water." "no!" she exclaimed, stopping him as he was about to rise. "give it me cold; i like it cold. let nobody else come in--i can't speak if any body else comes in." she drew her chair close to her uncle's, and went on: "you have not forgotten how frightened i was in that by-gone time--do you remember why i was frightened?" "you were afraid of being followed--that was it, sarah. i grow old, but my memory keeps young. you were afraid of your master, afraid of his sending servants after you. you had run away; you had spoken no word to any body; and you spoke little--ah, very, very little--even to uncle joseph--even to me." "i told you," said sarah, dropping her voice to so faint a whisper that the old man could barely hear her--"i told you that my mistress had left me a secret on her death-bed--a secret in a letter, which i was to give to my master. i told you i had hidden the letter, because i could not bring myself to deliver it, because i would rather die a thousand times over than be questioned about what i knew of it. i told you so much, i know. did i tell you no more? did i not say that my mistress made me take an oath on the bible?--uncle! are there candles in the room? are there candles we can light without disturbing any body, without calling any body in here?" "there are candles and a match-box in my cupboard," answered uncle joseph. "but look out of window, sarah. it is only twilight--it is not dark yet." "not outside; but it is dark here." "where?" "in that corner. let us have candles. i don't like the darkness when it gathers in corners and creeps along walls." uncle joseph looked all round the room inquiringly; and smiled to himself as he took two candles from the cupboard and lighted them. "you are like the children," he said, playfully, while he pulled down the window-blind. "you are afraid of the dark." sarah did not appear to hear him. her eyes were fixed on the corner of the room which she had pointed out the moment before. when he resumed his place by her side, she never looked round, but laid her hand on his arm, and said to him suddenly-- "uncle! do you believe that the dead can come back to this world, and follow the living every where, and see what they do in it?" the old man started. "sarah!" he said, "why do you talk so? why do you ask me such a question?" "are there lonely hours," she went on, still never looking away from the corner, still not seeming to hear him, "when you are sometimes frightened without knowing why--frightened all over in an instant, from head to foot? tell me, uncle, have you ever felt the cold steal round and round the roots of your hair, and crawl bit by bit down your back? i have felt that even in the summer. i have been out of doors, alone on a wide heath, in the heat and brightness of noon, and have felt as if chilly fingers were touching me--chilly, damp, softly creeping fingers. it says in the new testament that the dead came once out of their graves, and went into the holy city. the dead! have they rested, rested always, rested forever, since that time?" uncle joseph's simple nature recoiled in bewilderment from the dark and daring speculations to which his niece's questions led. without saying a word, he tried to draw away the arm which she still held; but the only result of the effort was to make her tighten her grasp, and bend forward in her chair so as to look closer still into the corner of the room. "my mistress was dying," she said--"my mistress was very near her grave, when she made me take my oath on the bible. she made me swear never to destroy the letter; and i did not destroy it. she made me swear not to take it away with me, if i left the house; and i did not take it away. she would have made me swear, for the third time, to give it to my master, but death was too quick for her--death stopped her from fastening that third oath on my conscience. but she threatened me, uncle, with the dead dampness on her forehead, and the dead whiteness on her cheeks--she threatened to come to me from the other world if i thwarted her--and i _have_ thwarted her!" she stopped, suddenly removed her hand from the old man's arm, and made a strange gesture with it toward the part of the room on which her eyes remained fixed. "rest, mistress, rest," she whispered under her breath. "is my master alive now? rest, till the drowned rise. tell him the secret when the sea gives up her dead." "sarah! sarah! you are changed--you are ill--you frighten me!" cried uncle joseph, starting to his feet. [illustration: "without saying a word, he tried to draw away the arm she still held."] she turned round slowly, and looked at him with eyes void of all expression, with eyes that seemed to be staring through him vacantly at something beyond. "gott im himmel! what does she see?" he looked round as the exclamation escaped him. "sarah! what is it! are you faint? are you ill? are you dreaming with your eyes open?" he took her by both arms and shook her. at the instant when she felt the touch of his hands, she started violently and trembled all over. their natural expression flew back into her eyes with the rapidity of a flash of light. without saying a word, she hastily resumed her seat and began stirring the cold tea round and round in her cup, round and round so fast that the liquid overflowed into the saucer. "come! she gets more like herself," said uncle joseph, watching her. "more like myself?" she repeated, vacantly. "so! so!" said the old man, trying to soothe her. "you are ill--what the english call out of sort. they are good doctors here. wait till to-morrow, you shall have the best." "i want no doctors. don't speak of doctors. i can't bear them; they look at me with such curious eyes; they are always prying into me, as if they wanted to find out something. what have we been stopping for? i had so much to say; and we seem to have been stopping just when we ought to have been going on. i am in grief and terror, uncle joseph; in grief and terror again about the secret--" "no more of that!" pleaded the old man. "no more to-night at least!" "why not?" "because you will be ill again with talking about it. you will be looking into that corner, and dreaming with your eyes open. you are too ill--yes, yes, sarah; you are too ill." "i'm not ill! oh, why does every body keep telling me that i am ill? let me talk about it, uncle. i have come to talk about it; i can't rest till i have told you." she spoke with a changing color and an embarrassed manner, now apparently conscious for the first time that she had allowed words and actions to escape her which it would have been more prudent to have restrained. "don't notice me again," she said, with her soft voice, and her gentle, pleading manner. "don't notice me if i talk or look as i ought not. i lose myself sometimes, without knowing it; and i suppose i lost myself just now. it means nothing, uncle joseph--nothing, indeed." endeavoring thus to re-assure the old man, she again altered the position of her chair, so as to place her back toward the part of the room to which her face had been hitherto turned. "well, well, it is good to hear that," said uncle joseph; "but speak no more about the past time, for fear you should lose yourself again. let us hear about what is now. yes, yes, give me my way. leave the long ago to me, and take you the present time. i can go back through the sixteen years as well as you. ah! you doubt it? hear me tell you what happened when we last met--hear me prove myself in three words: you leave your place at the old house--you run away here--you stop in hiding with me, while your master and his servants are hunting after you--you start off, when your road is clear, to work for your living, as far away from cornwall as you can get--i beg and pray you to stop with me, but you are afraid of your master, and away you go. there! that is the whole story of your trouble the last time you came to this house. leave it so; and tell me what is the cause of your trouble now." "the past cause of my trouble, uncle joseph, and the present cause of my trouble are the same. the secret--" "what! you will go back to that!" "i must go back to it." "and why?" "because the secret is written in a letter--" "yes; and what of that?" "and the letter is in danger of being discovered. it is, uncle--it is! sixteen years it has lain hidden--and now, after all that long time, the dreadful chance of its being dragged to light has come like a judgment. the one person in all the world who ought never to set eyes on that letter is the very person who is most likely to find it!" "so! so! are you very certain, sarah? how do you know it?" "i know it from her own lips. chance brought us together--" "us? us? what do you mean by us?" "i mean--uncle, you remember that captain treverton was my master when i lived at porthgenna tower?" "i had forgotten his name. but no matter--go on." "when i left my place, miss treverton was a little girl of five years old. she is a married woman now--so beautiful, so clever, such a sweet, youthful, happy face! and she has a child as lovely as herself. oh, uncle, if you could see her! i would give so much if you could only see her!" uncle joseph kissed his hand and shrugged his shoulders; expressing by the first action homage to the lady's beauty, and by the second resignation under the misfortune of not being able to see her. "well, well," he said, philosophically, "put this shining woman by, and let us go on." "her name is frankland now," said sarah. "a prettier name than treverton--a much prettier name, i think. her husband is fond of her--i am sure he is. how can he have any heart at all, and not be fond of her?" "so! so!" exclaimed uncle joseph, looking very much perplexed. "good, if he is fond of her--very good. but what labyrinth are we getting into now? wherefore all this about a husband and a wife? my word of honor, sarah, but your explanation explains nothing--it only softens my brains." "i must speak of her and of mr. frankland, uncle. porthgenna tower belongs to her husband now, and they are both going to live there." "ah! we are getting back into the straight road at last." "they are going to live in the very house that holds the secret; they are going to repair that very part of it where the letter is hidden. she will go into the old rooms--i heard her say so; she will search about in them to amuse her curiosity; workmen will clear them out, and she will stand by in her idle hours, looking on." "but she suspects nothing of the secret?" "god forbid she ever should!" "and there are many rooms in the house? and the letter in which the secret is written is hidden in one of the many? why should she hit on that one?" "because i always say the wrong thing! because i always get frightened and lose myself at the wrong time! the letter is hidden in a room called the myrtle room, and i was foolish enough, weak enough, crazed enough, to warn her against going into it." "ah, sarah! sarah! that was a mistake, indeed." "i can't tell what possessed me--i seemed to lose my senses when i heard her talking so innocently of amusing herself by searching through the old rooms, and when i thought of what she might find there. it was getting on toward night, too; the horrible twilight was gathering in the corners and creeping along the walls. i longed to light the candles, and yet i did not dare, for fear she should see the truth in my face. and when i did light them it was worse. oh, i don't know how i did it! i don't know why i did it! i could have torn my tongue out for saying the words, and still i said them. other people can think for the best; other people can act for the best; other people have had a heavy weight laid on their minds, and have not dropped under it as i have. help me, uncle, for the sake of old times when we were happy--help me with a word of advice." "i will help you; i live to help you, sarah! no, no, no--you must not look so forlorn; you must not look at me with those crying eyes. come! i will advise this minute--but say in what; only say in what." "have i not told you?" "no; you have not told me a word yet." "i will tell you now." she paused, looked away distrustfully toward the door leading into the shop, listened a little, and resumed: "i am not at the end of my journey yet, uncle joseph--i am here on my way to porthgenna tower--on my way to the myrtle room--on my way, step by step, to the place where the letter lies hid. i dare not destroy it; i dare not remove it; but run what risk i may, i must take it out of the myrtle room." uncle joseph said nothing, but he shook his head despondingly. "i must," she repeated; "before mrs. frankland gets to porthgenna, i must take that letter out of the myrtle room. there are places in the old house where i may hide it again--places that she would never think of--places that she would never notice. only let me get it out of the one room that she is sure to search in, and i know where to hide it from her and from every one forever." uncle joseph reflected, and shook his head again--then said: "one word, sarah; does mrs. frankland know which is the myrtle room?" "i did my best to destroy all trace of that name when i hid the letter; i hope and believe she does not. but she may find out--remember the words i was crazed enough to speak; they will set her seeking for the myrtle room; they are sure to do that." "and if she finds it? and if she finds the letter?" "it will cause misery to innocent people; it will bring death to _me_. don't push your chair from me, uncle! it is not shameful death i speak of. the worst injury i have done is injury to myself; the worst death i have to fear is the death that releases a worn-out spirit and cures a broken heart." "enough--enough so," said the old man. "i ask for no secret, sarah, that is not yours to give. it is all dark to me--very dark, very confused. i look away from it; i look only toward you. not with doubt, my child, but with pity, and with sorrow, too--sorrow that ever you went near that house of porthgenna--sorrow that you are now going to it again." "i have no choice, uncle, but to go. if every step on the road to porthgenna took me nearer and nearer to my death, i must still tread it. knowing what i know, i can't rest, i can't sleep--my very breath won't come freely--till i have got that letter out of the myrtle room. how to do it--oh, uncle joseph, how to do it, without being suspected, without being discovered by any body--that is what i would almost give my life to know! you are a man; you are older and wiser than i am; no living creature ever asked you for help in vain--help _me_ now! my only friend in all the world, help me a little with a word of advice!" uncle joseph rose from his chair, and folded his arms resolutely, and looked his niece full in the face. "you will go?" he said. "cost what it may, you will go? say, for the last time, sarah, is it yes or no?" "yes! for the last time, i say yes." "good. and you will go soon?" "i must go to-morrow. i dare not waste a single day; hours even may be precious for any thing i can tell." "you promise me, my child, that the hiding of this secret does good, and that the finding of it will do harm?" "if it was the last word i had to speak in this world, i would say yes!" "you promise me, also, that you want nothing but to take the letter out of the myrtle room, and put it away somewhere else?" "nothing but that." "and it is yours to take and yours to put? no person has a better right to touch it than you?" "now that my master is dead, no person." "good. you have given me my resolution. i have done. sit you there, sarah; and wonder, if you like, but say nothing." with these words, uncle joseph stepped lightly to the door leading into the shop, opened it, and called to the man behind the counter. "samuel, my friend," he said. "to-morrow i go a little ways into the country with my niece, who is this lady here. you keep shop and take orders, and be just as careful as you always are, till i get back. if any body comes and asks for mr. buschmann, say he has gone a little ways into the country, and will be back in a few days. that is all. shut up the shop, samuel, my friend, for the night; and go to your supper. i wish you good appetite, nice victuals, and sound sleep." before samuel could thank his master, the door was shut again. before sarah could say a word, uncle joseph's hand was on her lips, and uncle joseph's handkerchief was wiping away the tears that were now falling fast from her eyes. "i will have no more talking, and no more crying," said the old man. "i am a german, and i glory in the obstinacy of six englishmen, all rolled into one. to-night you sleep here, to-morrow we talk again of all this. you want me to help you with a word of advice. i will help you with myself, which is better than advice, and i say no more till i fetch my pipe down from the wall there, and ask him to make me think. i smoke and think to-night--i talk and do to-morrow. and you, you go up to bed; you take uncle max's music box in your hand, and you let mozart sing the cradle song before you go to sleep. yes, yes, my child, there is always comfort in mozart--better comfort than in crying. what is there to cry about, or to thank about? is it so great a wonder that i will not let my sister's child go alone to make a venture in the dark? i said sarah's sorrow was my sorrow, and sarah's joy my joy; and now, if there is no way of escape--if it must indeed be done--i also say: sarah's risk to-morrow is uncle joseph's risk to-morrow, too! good-night, my child--good-night." chapter ii. outside the house. the next morning wrought no change in the resolution at which uncle joseph had arrived overnight. out of the amazement and confusion produced in his mind by his niece's avowal of the object that had brought her to cornwall, he had contrived to extract one clear and definite conclusion--that she was obstinately bent on placing herself in a situation of uncertainty, if not of absolute peril. once persuaded of this, his kindly instincts all sprang into action, his natural firmness on the side of self sacrifice asserted itself, and his determination not to let sarah proceed on her journey alone, followed as a matter of course. strong in the self-denying generosity of his purpose--though strong in nothing else--when he and his niece met in the morning, and when sarah spoke self-reproachfully of the sacrifice that he was making, of the serious hazards to which he was exposing himself for her sake, he refused to listen to her just as obstinately as he had refused the previous night. there was no need, he said, to speak another word on that subject. if she had abandoned her intention of going to porthgenna, she had only to say so. if she had not, it was mere waste of breath to talk any more, for he was deaf in both ears to every thing in the shape of a remonstrance that she could possibly address to him. having expressed himself in these uncompromising terms, uncle joseph abruptly dismissed the subject, and tried to turn the conversation to a cheerful every-day topic by asking his niece how she had passed the night. "i was too anxious to sleep," she answered. "i can't fight with my fears and misgivings as some people can. all night long they keep me waking and thinking as if it was day." "thinking about what?" asked uncle joseph. "about the letter that is hidden? about the house of porthgenna? about the myrtle room?" "about how to get into the myrtle room," she said. "the more i try to plan and ponder, and settle beforehand what i shall do, the more confused and helpless i seem to be. all last night, uncle, i was trying to think of some excuse for getting inside the doors of porthgenna tower--and yet, if i was standing on the house-step at this moment, i should not know what to say when the servant and i first came face to face. how are we to persuade them to let us in? how am i to slip out of sight, even if we do get in? can't you tell me?--you will try, uncle joseph--i am sure you will try. only help me so far, and i think i can answer for the rest. if they keep the keys where they used to keep them in my time, ten minutes to myself is all i should want--ten minutes, only ten short minutes, to make the end of my life easier to me than the beginning has been; to help me to grow old quietly and resignedly, if it is god's will that i should live out my years. oh, how happy people must be who have all the courage they want; who are quick and clever, and have their wits about them! you are readier than i am, uncle; you said last night that you would think about how to advise me for the best--what did your thoughts end in? you will make me so much easier if you will only tell me that." uncle joseph nodded assentingly, assumed a look of the profoundest gravity, and slowly laid his forefinger along the side of his nose. "what did i promise you last night?" he said. "was it not to take my pipe, and ask him to make me think? good, i smoke three pipes, and think three thoughts. my first thought is--wait! my second thought is again--wait! my third thought is yet once more--wait! you say you will be easy, sarah, if i tell you the end of all my thoughts. good, i have told you. there is the end--you are easy--it is all light." "wait?" repeated sarah, with a look of bewilderment which suggested any thing rather than a mind at ease. "i am afraid, uncle, i don't quite understand. wait for what? wait till when?" "wait till we arrive at the house, to be sure! wait till we are got outside the door; then is time enough to think how we are to get in," said uncle joseph, with an air of conviction. "you understand now?" "yes--at least i understand better than i did. but there is still another difficulty left. uncle! i must tell you more than i intended ever to tell any body--i must tell you that the letter is locked up." "locked up in a room?" "worse than that--locked up in something inside the room. the key that opens the door--even if i get it--the key that opens the door of the room is not all i want. there is another key besides that, a little key--" she stopped, with a confused, startled look. "a little key that you have lost?" asked uncle joseph. "i threw it down the well in the village on the morning when i made my escape from porthgenna. oh, if i had only kept it about me! if it had only crossed my mind that i might want it again!" "well, well; there is no help for that now. tell me, sarah, what the something is which the letter is hidden in." "i am afraid of the very walls hearing me." "what nonsense! come! whisper it to me." she looked all round her distrustfully, and then whispered into the old man's ear. he listened eagerly, and laughed when she was silent again. "bah!" he cried. "if that is all, make yourself happy. as you wicked english people say, it is as easy as lying. why, my child, you can burst him open for yourself." "burst it open? how?" uncle joseph went to the window-seat, which was made on the old-fashioned plan, to serve the purpose of a chest as well as a seat. he opened the lid, searched among some tools which lay in the receptacle beneath, and took out a chisel. "see," he said, demonstrating on the top of the window-seat the use to which the tool was to be put. "you push him in so--crick! then you pull him up so--crack! it is the business of one little moment--crick! crack!--and the lock is done for. take the chisel yourself, wrap him up in a bit of that stout paper there, and put him in your pocket. what are you waiting for? do you want me to show you again, or do you think you can do it now for yourself?" "i should like you to show me again, uncle joseph, but not now--not till we have got to the end of our journey." "good. then i may finish my packing up, and go ask about the coach. first and foremost, mozart must put on his great coat, and travel with us." he took up the musical box, and placed it carefully in a leather case, which he slung by a strap over one shoulder. "next, there is my pipe, the tobacco to feed him with, and the matches to set him alight. last, here is my old german knapsack, which i pack last night. see! here is shirt, night-cap, comb, pocket-handkerchief, sock. say i am an emperor, and what do i want more than that? good. i have mozart, i have the pipe, i have the knapsack. i have--stop! stop; there is the old leather purse; he must not be forgotten. look! here he is. listen! ting, ting, ting! he jingles; he has in his inside money. aha, my friend, my good leather, you shall be lighter and leaner before you come home again. so, so--it is all complete; we are ready for the march now, from our tops to our toes. good-by, sarah, my child, for a little half-hour; you shall wait here and amuse yourself while i go ask for the coach." when uncle joseph came back, he brought his niece information that a coach would pass through truro in an hour's time, which would set them down at a stage not more than five or six miles distant from the regular post-town of porthgenna. the only direct conveyance to the post-town was a night-coach which carried the letter-bags, and which stopped to change horses at truro at the very inconvenient hour of two o'clock in the morning. being of opinion that to travel at bed-time was to make a toil of a pleasure, uncle joseph recommended taking places in the day-coach, and hiring any conveyance that could be afterward obtained to carry his niece and himself on to the post-town. by this arrangement they would not only secure their own comfort, but gain the additional advantage of losing as little time as possible at truro before proceeding on their journey to porthgenna. the plan thus proposed was the plan followed. when the coach stopped to change horses, uncle joseph and his niece were waiting to take their places by it. they found all the inside seats but one disengaged, were set down two hours afterward at the stage that was nearest to the destination for which they were bound, hired a pony-chaise there, and reached the post-town between one and two o'clock in the afternoon. dismissing their conveyance at the inn, from motives of caution which were urged by sarah, they set forth to walk across the moor to porthgenna. on their way out of the town they met the postman returning from his morning's delivery of letters in the surrounding district. his bag had been much heavier and his walk much longer that morning than usual. among the extra letters that had taken him out of his ordinary course was one addressed to the housekeeper at porthgenna tower, which he had delivered early in the morning, when he first started on his rounds. throughout the whole journey, uncle joseph had not made a single reference to the object for which it had been undertaken. possessing a child's simplicity of nature, he was also endowed with a child's elasticity of disposition. the doubts and forebodings which troubled his niece's spirit, and kept her silent and thoughtful and sad, cast no darkening shadow over the natural sunshine of his mind. if he had really been traveling for pleasure alone, he could not have enjoyed more thoroughly than he did the different sights and events of the journey. all the happiness which the passing minute had to give him he took as readily and gratefully as if there was no uncertainty in the future, no doubt, difficulty, or danger lying in wait for him at the journey's end. before he had been half an hour in the coach he had begun to tell the third inside passenger--a rigid old lady, who stared at him in speechless amazement--the whole history of the musical box, ending the narrative by setting it playing, in defiance of all the noise that the rolling wheels could make. when they left the coach, he was just as sociable afterward with the driver of the chaise, vaunting the superiority of german beer over cornish cider, and making his remarks upon the objects which they passed on the road with the pleasantest familiarity, and the heartiest enjoyment of his own jokes. it was not till he and sarah were well out of the little town, and away by themselves on the great moor which stretched beyond it, that his manner altered, and his talk ceased altogether. after walking on in silence for some little time, with his niece's arm in his, he suddenly stopped, looked her earnestly and kindly in the face, and laid his hand on hers. "there is yet one thing more i want to ask you, my child," he said. "the journey has put it out of my head, but it has been in my heart all the time. when we leave this place of porthgenna, and get back to my house, you will not go away? you will not leave uncle joseph again? are you in service still, sarah? are you not your own master yet?" "i was in service a few days since," she answered; "but i am free now. i have lost my place." "aha! you have lost your place; and why?" "because i would not hear an innocent person unjustly blamed. because--" she checked herself. but the few words she had said were spoken with such a suddenly heightened color, and with such an extraordinary emphasis and resolution of tone, that the old man opened his eyes as widely as possible, and looked at his niece in undisguised astonishment. "so! so! so!" he exclaimed. "what! you have had a quarrel, sarah!" "hush! don't ask me any more questions now!" she pleaded earnestly. "i am too anxious and too frightened to answer. uncle! this is porthgenna moor--this is the road i passed over, sixteen years ago, when i ran away to you. oh! let us get on, pray let us get on! i can't think of any thing now but the house we are so near, and the risk we are going to run." they went on quickly, in silence. half an hour's rapid walking brought them to the highest elevation on the moor, and gave the whole western prospect grandly to their view. there, below them, was the dark, lonesome, spacious structure of porthgenna tower, with the sunlight already stealing round toward the windows of the west front! there was the path winding away to it gracefully over the brown moor, in curves of dazzling white! there, lower down, was the solitary old church, with the peaceful burial-ground nestling by its side! there, lower still, were the little scattered roofs of the fishermen's cottages! and there, beyond all, was the changeless glory of the sea, with its old seething lines of white foam, with the old winding margin of its yellow shores! sixteen long years--such years of sorrow, such years of suffering, such years of change, counted by the pulses of the living heart!--had passed over the dead tranquillity of porthgenna, and had altered it as little as if they had all been contained within the lapse of a single day! the moments when the spirit within us is most deeply stirred are almost invariably the moments also when its outward manifestations are hardest to detect. our own thoughts rise above us; our own feelings lie deeper than we can reach. how seldom words can help us, when their help is most wanted! how often our tears are dried up when we most long for them to relieve us! was there ever a strong emotion in this world that could adequately express its own strength? what third person, brought face to face with the old man and his niece, as they now stood together on the moor, would have suspected, to look at them, that the one was contemplating the landscape with nothing more than a stranger's curiosity, and that the other was viewing it through the recollections of half a lifetime? the eyes of both were dry, the tongues of both were silent, the faces of both were set with equal attention toward the prospect. even between themselves there was no real sympathy, no intelligible appeal from one spirit to the other. the old man's quiet admiration of the view was not more briefly and readily expressed, when they moved forward and spoke to each other, than the customary phrases of assent by which his niece replied to the little that he said. how many moments there are in this mortal life, when, with all our boasted powers of speech, the words of our vocabulary treacherously fade out, and the page presents nothing to us but the sight of a perfect blank! slowly descending the slope of the moor, the uncle and niece drew nearer and nearer to porthgenna tower. they were within a quarter of an hour's walk of the house when sarah stopped at a place where a second path intersected the main foot-track which they had hitherto been following. on the left hand, as they now stood, the cross-path ran on until it was lost to the eye in the expanse of the moor. on the right hand it led straight to the church. "what do we stop for now?" asked uncle joseph, looking first in one direction and then in the other. "would you mind waiting for me here a little while, uncle? i can't pass the church path--" (she paused, in some trouble how to express herself)--"without wishing (as i don't know what may happen after we get to the house), without wishing to see--to look at something--" she stopped again, and turned her face wistfully toward the church. the tears, which had never wetted her eyes at the first view of porthgenna, were beginning to rise in them now. uncle joseph's natural delicacy warned him that it would be best to abstain from asking her for any explanations. "go you where you like, to see what you like," he said, patting her on the shoulder. "i shall stop here to make myself happy with my pipe; and mozart shall come out of his cage, and sing a little in this fine fresh air." he unslung the leather case from his shoulder while he spoke, took out the musical box, and set it ringing its tiny peal to the second of the two airs which it was constructed to play--the minuet in don giovanni. sarah left him looking about carefully, not for a seat for himself, but for a smooth bit of rock to place the box upon. when he had found this, he lit his pipe, and sat down to his music and his smoking, like an epicure to a good dinner. "aha!" he exclaimed to himself, looking round as composedly at the wild prospect on all sides of him as if he was still in his own little parlor at truro--"aha! here is a fine big music-room, my friend mozart, for you to sing in! ouf! there is wind enough in this place to blow your pretty dance-tune out to sea, and give the sailor-people a taste of it as they roll about in their ships." [illustration: "she sighed heavily as she followed the letters of the inscription mechanically, one by one, with her finger."] meanwhile sarah walked on rapidly toward the church, and entered the inclosure of the little burial-ground. toward that same part of it to which she had directed her steps on the morning of her mistress's death, she now turned her face again, after a lapse of sixteen years. here, at least, the march of time had left its palpable track--its foot-prints whose marks were graves. how many a little spot of ground, empty when she last saw it, had its mound and its head-stone now! the one grave that she had come to see--the grave which had stood apart in the by-gone days, had companion graves on the right hand and on the left. she could not have singled it out but for the weather stains on the head-stone, which told of storm and rain over it, that had not passed over the rest. the mound was still kept in shape; but the grass grew long, and waved a dreary welcome to her as the wind swept through it. she knelt down by the stone, and tried to read the inscription. the black paint which had once made the carved words distinct was all flayed off from them now. to any other eyes but hers the very name of the dead man would have been hard to trace. she sighed heavily as she followed the letters of the inscription mechanically, one by one, with her finger: sacred to the memory of hugh polwheal, aged years. he met with his death through the fall of a rock in porthgenna mine, december th, . her hand lingered over the letters after it had followed them to the last line, and she bent forward and pressed her lips on the stone. "better so!" she said to herself, as she rose from her knees, and looked down at the inscription for the last time. "better it should fade out so! fewer strangers' eyes will see it; fewer strangers' feet will follow where mine have been--he will lie all the quieter in the place of his rest!" she brushed the tears from her eyes, and gathered a few blades of grass from the grave--then left the church-yard. outside the hedge that surrounded the inclosure she stopped for a moment, and drew from the bosom of her dress the little book of wesley's hymns which she had taken with her from the desk in her bedroom on the morning of her flight from porthgenna. the withered remains of the grass that she had plucked from the grave sixteen years ago lay between the pages still. she added to them the fresh fragments that she had just gathered, replaced the book in the bosom of her dress, and hastened back over the moor to the spot where the old man was waiting for her. she found him packing up the musical box again in its leather case. "a good wind," he said, holding up the palm of his hand to the fresh breeze that was sweeping over the moor--"a very good wind, indeed, if you take him by himself--but a bitter bad wind if you take him with mozart. he blows off the tune as if it was the hat on my head. you come back, my child, just at the nick of time--just when my pipe is done, and mozart is ready to travel along the road once more. ah, have you got the crying look in your eyes again, sarah? what have you met with to make you cry? so! so! i see--the fewer questions i ask just now, the better you will like me. good. i have done. no! i have a last question yet. what are we standing here for? why do we not go on?" "yes, yes; you are right, uncle joseph; let us go on at once. i shall lose all the little courage i have if we stay here much longer looking at the house." they proceeded down the path without another moment of delay. when they had reached the end of it, they stood opposite the eastern boundary wall of porthgenna tower. the principal entrance to the house, which had been very rarely used of late years, was in the west front, and was approached by a terrace road that overlooked the sea. the smaller entrance, which was generally used, was situated on the south side of the building, and led through the servants' offices to the great hall and the west staircase. sarah's old experience of porthgenna guided her instinctively toward this part of the house. she led her companion on until they gained the southern angle of the east wall--then stopped and looked about her. since they had passed the postman and had entered on the moor, they had not set eyes on a living creature; and still, though they were now under the very walls of porthgenna, neither man, woman, nor child--not even a domestic animal--appeared in view. "it is very lonely here," said sarah, looking round her distrustfully; "much lonelier than it used to be." "is it only to tell me what i can see for myself that you are stopping now?" asked uncle joseph, whose inveterate cheerfulness would have been proof against the solitude of sahara itself. "no, no!" she answered, in a quick, anxious whisper. "but the bell we must ring at is so close--only round there--i should like to know what we are to say when we come face to face with the servant. you told me it was time enough to think about that when we were at the door. uncle! we are all but at the door now. what shall we do?" "the first thing to do," said uncle joseph, shrugging his shoulders, "is surely to ring." "yes--but when the servant comes, what are we to say?" "say?" repeated uncle joseph, knitting his eyebrows quite fiercely with the effort of thinking, and rapping his forehead with his forefinger just under his hat--"say? stop, stop, stop, stop! ah, i have got it! i know! make yourself quite easy, sarah. the moment the door is opened, all the speaking to the servant shall be done by me." "oh, how you relieve me! what shall you say?" "say? this--'how do you do? we have come to see the house.'" when he had disclosed that remarkable expedient for effecting an entrance into porthgenna tower, he spread out both his hands interrogatively, drew back several paces from his niece, and looked at her with the serenely self-satisfied air of a man who has leaped, at one mental bound, from a doubt to a discovery. sarah gazed at him in astonishment. the expression of absolute conviction on his face staggered her. the poorest of all the poor excuses for gaining admission into the house which she herself had thought of, and had rejected, during the previous night, seemed like the very perfection of artifice by comparison with such a childishly simple expedient as that suggested by uncle joseph. and yet there he stood, apparently quite convinced that he had hit on the means of smoothing away all obstacles at once. not knowing what to say, not believing sufficiently in the validity of her own doubts to venture on openly expressing an opinion either one way or the other, she took the last refuge that was now left open to her--she endeavored to gain time. "it is very, very good of you, uncle, to take all the difficulty of speaking to the servant on your own shoulders," she said; the hidden despondency at her heart expressing itself, in spite of her, in the faintness of her voice and the forlorn perplexity of her eyes. "but would you mind waiting a little before we ring at the door, and walking up and down for a few minutes by the side of this wall, where nobody is likely to see us? i want to get a little more time to prepare myself for the trial that i have to go through; and--and in case the servant makes any difficulties about letting us in--i mean difficulties that we can not just now anticipate--would it not be as well to think of something else to say at the door? perhaps, if you were to consider again--" "there is not the least need," interposed uncle joseph. "i have only to speak to the servant, and--crick! crack!--you will see that we shall get in. but i will walk up and down as long as you please. there is no reason, because i have done all my thinking in one moment, that you should have done all your thinking in one moment too. no, no, no--no reason at all." saying those words with a patronizing air and a self-satisfied smile, which would have been irresistibly comical under any less critical circumstances, the old man again offered his arm to his niece, and led her back over the broken ground that lay under the eastern wall of porthgenna tower. * * * * * while sarah was waiting in doubt outside the walls, it happened, by a curious coincidence, that another person, vested with the highest domestic authority, was also waiting in doubt inside the walls. this person was no other than the housekeeper of porthgenna tower; and the cause of her perplexity was nothing less than the letter which had been delivered by the postman that very morning. it was a letter from mrs. frankland, which had been written after she had held a long conversation with her husband and mr. orridge, on receiving the last fragments of information which the doctor was able to communicate in reference to mrs. jazeph. the housekeeper had read the letter through over and over again, and was more puzzled and astonished by it at every fresh reading. she was now waiting for the return of the steward, mr. munder, from his occupations out of doors, with the intention of taking his opinion on the singular communication which she had received from her mistress. while sarah and her uncle were still walking up and down outside the eastern wall, mr. munder entered the housekeeper's room. he was one of those tall, grave, benevolent-looking men, with a conical head, a deep voice, a slow step, and a heavy manner, who passively contrive to get a great reputation for wisdom without the trouble of saying or doing any thing to deserve it. all round the porthgenna neighborhood the steward was popularly spoken of as a remarkably sound, sensible man; and the housekeeper, although a sharp woman in other matters, in this one respect shared to a large extent in the general delusion. "good-morning, mrs. pentreath," said mr. munder. "any news to-day?" what a weight and importance his deep voice and his impressively slow method of using it, gave to those two insignificant sentences! "news, mr. munder, that will astonish you," replied the housekeeper. "i have received a letter this morning from mrs. frankland, which is, without any exception, the most mystifying thing of the sort i ever met with. i am told to communicate the letter to you; and i have been waiting the whole morning to hear your opinion of it. pray sit down, and give me all your attention--for i do positively assure you that the letter requires it." mr. munder sat down, and became the picture of attention immediately--not of ordinary attention, which can be wearied, but of judicial attention, which knows no fatigue, and is superior alike to the power of dullness and the power of time. the housekeeper, without wasting the precious minutes--mr. munder's minutes, which ranked next on the scale of importance to a prime minister's!--opened her mistress's letter, and, resisting the natural temptation to make a few more prefatory remarks on it, immediately favored the steward with the first paragraph, in the following terms: "mrs. pentreath,--you must be tired of receiving letters from me, fixing a day for the arrival of mr. frankland and myself. on this, the third occasion of my writing to you about our plans, it will be best, i think, to make no third appointment, but merely to say that we shall leave west winston for porthgenna the moment i can get the doctor's permission to travel." "so far," remarked mrs. pentreath, placing the letter on her lap, and smoothing it out rather irritably while she spoke--"so far, there is nothing of much consequence. the letter certainly seems to me (between ourselves) to be written in rather poor language--too much like common talking to come up to my idea of what a lady's style of composition ought to be--but that is a matter of opinion. i can't say, and i should be the last person to wish to say, that the beginning of mrs. frankland's letter is not, upon the whole, perfectly clear. it is the middle and the end that i wish to consult you about, mr. munder." "just so," said mr. munder. only two words, but more meaning in them than two hundred in the mouth of an ordinary man! the housekeeper cleared her throat with extraordinary loudness and elaboration, and read on thus: "my principal object in writing these lines is to request, by mr. frankland's desire, that you and mr. munder will endeavor to ascertain, as privately as possible, whether a person now traveling in cornwall--in whom we happen to be much interested--has been yet seen in the neighborhood of porthgenna. the person in question is known to us by the name of mrs. jazeph. she is an elderly woman, of quiet, lady-like manners, looking nervous and in delicate health. she dresses, according to our experience of her, with extreme propriety and neatness, and in dark colors. her eyes have a singular expression of timidity, her voice is particularly soft and low, and her manner is frequently marked by extreme hesitation. i am thus particular in describing her, in case she should not be traveling under the name by which we know her. "for reasons which it is not necessary to state, both my husband and myself think it probable that, at some former period of her life, mrs. jazeph may have been connected with the porthgenna neighborhood. whether this be the fact or no, it is indisputably certain that she is familiar with the interior of porthgenna tower, and that she has an interest of some kind, quite incomprehensible to us, in the house. coupling these facts with the knowledge we have of her being now in cornwall, we think it just within the range of possibility that you or mr. munder, or some other person in our employment, may meet with her; and we are particularly anxious, if she should by any chance ask to see the house, not only that you should show her over it with perfect readiness and civility, but also that you should take private and particular notice of her conduct from the time when she enters the building to the time when she leaves it. do not let her out of your sight for a moment; and, if possible, pray get some trustworthy person to follow her unperceived, and ascertain where she goes to after she has quitted the house. it is of the most vital importance that these instructions (strange as they may seem to you) should be implicitly obeyed to the very letter. "i have only room and time to add that we know nothing to the discredit of this person, and that we particularly desire you will manage matters with sufficient discretion (in case you meet with her) to prevent her from having any suspicion that you are acting under orders, or that you have any especial interest in watching her movements. you will be good enough to communicate this letter to the steward, and you are at liberty to repeat the instructions in it to any other trustworthy person, if necessary. "yours truly, "rosamond frankland. "p.s.--i have left my room, and the baby is getting on charmingly." "there!" said the housekeeper. "who is to make head or tail of that, i should like to know! did you ever, in all your experience, mr. munder, meet with such a letter before? here is a very heavy responsibility laid on our shoulders, without one word of explanation. i have been puzzling my brains about what their interest in this mysterious woman can be the whole morning; and the more i think, the less comes of it. what is your opinion, mr. munder? we ought to do something immediately. is there any course in particular which you feel disposed to point out?" mr. munder coughed dubiously, crossed his right leg over his left, put his head critically on one side, coughed for the second time, and looked at the housekeeper. if it had belonged to any other man in the world, mrs. pentreath would have considered that the face which now confronted hers expressed nothing but the most profound and vacant bewilderment. but it was mr. munder's face, and it was only to be looked at with sentiments of respectful expectation. "i rather think--" began mr. munder. "yes?" said the housekeeper, eagerly. before another word could be spoken, the maid-servant entered the room to lay the cloth for mrs. pentreath's dinner. "there, there! never mind now, betsey," said the housekeeper, impatiently. "don't lay the cloth till i ring for you. mr. munder and i have something very important to talk about, and we can't be interrupted just yet." she had hardly said the word, before an interruption of the most unexpected kind happened. the door-bell rang. this was a very unusual occurrence at porthgenna tower. the few persons who had any occasion to come to the house on domestic business always entered by a small side gate, which was left on the latch in the day-time. "who in the world can that be!" exclaimed mrs. pentreath, hastening to the window, which commanded a side view of the lower door steps. the first object that met her eye when she looked out was a lady standing on the lowest step--a lady dressed very neatly in quiet, dark colors. "good heavens, mr. munder!" cried the housekeeper, hurrying back to the table, and snatching up mrs. frankland's letter, which she had left on it. "there is a stranger waiting at the door at this very moment! a lady! or, at least, a woman--and dressed neatly, dressed in dark colors! you might knock me down, mr. munder, with a feather! stop, betsey--stop where you are!" "i was only going, ma'am, to answer the door," said betsey, in amazement. "stop where you are," reiterated mrs. pentreath, composing herself by a great effort. "i happen to have certain reasons, on this particular occasion, for descending out of my own place and putting myself into yours. stand out of the way, you staring fool! i am going up stairs to answer that ring at the door myself." chapter iii. inside the house. mrs. pentreath's surprise at seeing a lady through the window, was doubled by her amazement at seeing a gentleman when she opened the door. waiting close to the bell-handle, after he had rung, instead of rejoining his niece on the step, uncle joseph stood near enough to the house to be out of the range of view from mrs. pentreath's window. to the housekeeper's excited imagination, he appeared on the threshold with the suddenness of an apparition--the apparition of a little rosy-faced old gentleman, smiling, bowing, and taking off his hat with a superb flourish of politeness, which had something quite superhuman in the sweep and the dexterity of it. "how do you do? we have come to see the house," said uncle joseph, trying his infallible expedient for gaining admission the instant the door was open. mrs. pentreath was struck speechless. who was this familiar old gentleman with the foreign accent and the fantastic bow? and what did he mean by talking to her as if she was his intimate friend? mrs. frankland's letter said not so much, from beginning to end, as one word about him. "how do you do? we have come to see the house," repeated uncle joseph, giving his irresistible form of salutation the benefit of a second trial. "so you said just now, sir," remarked mrs. pentreath, recovering self-possession enough to use her tongue in her own defense. "does the lady," she continued, looking down over the old man's shoulder at the step on which his niece was standing--"does the lady wish to see the house too?" sarah's gently spoken reply in the affirmative, short as it was, convinced the housekeeper that the woman described in mrs. frankland's letter really and truly stood before her. besides the neat, quiet dress, there was now the softly toned voice, and, when she looked up for a moment, there were the timid eyes also to identify her by! in relation to this one of the two strangers, mrs. pentreath, however agitated and surprised she might be, could no longer feel any uncertainty about the course she ought to adopt. but in relation to the other visitor, the incomprehensible old foreigner, she was beset by the most bewildering doubts. would it be safest to hold to the letter of mrs. frankland's instructions, and ask him to wait outside while the lady was being shown over the house? or would it be best to act on her own responsibility, and to risk giving him admission as well as his companion? this was a difficult point to decide, and therefore one which it was necessary to submit to the superior sagacity of mr. munder. "will you step in for a moment, and wait here while i speak to the steward?" said mrs. pentreath, pointedly neglecting to notice the familiar old foreigner, and addressing herself straight through him to the lady on the steps below. "thank you very much," said uncle joseph, smiling and bowing, impervious to rebuke. "what did i tell you?" he whispered triumphantly to his niece, as she passed him on her way into the house. mrs. pentreath's first impulse was to go down stairs at once, and speak to mr. munder. but a timely recollection of that part of mrs. frankland's letter which enjoined her not to lose sight of the lady in the quiet dress, brought her to a stand-still the next moment. she was the more easily recalled to a remembrance of this particular injunction by a curious alteration in the conduct of the lady herself, who seemed to lose all her diffidence, and to become surprisingly impatient to lead the way into the interior of the house, the moment she had stepped across the threshold. "betsey!" cried mrs. pentreath, cautiously calling to the servant after she had only retired a few paces from the visitors--"betsey! ask mr. munder to be so kind as to step this way." mr. munder presented himself with great deliberation, and with a certain lowering dignity in his face. he had been accustomed to be treated with deference, and he was not pleased with the housekeeper for unceremoniously leaving him the moment she heard the ring at the bell, without giving him time to pronounce an opinion on mrs. frankland's letter. accordingly, when mrs. pentreath, in a high state of excitement, drew him aside out of hearing, and confided to him, in a whisper, the astounding intelligence that the lady in whom mr. and mrs. frankland were so mysteriously interested was, at that moment, actually standing before him in the house, he received her communication with an air of the most provoking indifference. it was worse still when she proceeded to state her difficulties--warily keeping her eye on the two strangers all the while. appeal as respectfully as she might to mr. munder's superior wisdom for guidance, he persisted in listening with a disparaging frown, and ended by irritably contradicting her when she ventured to add, in conclusion, that her own ideas inclined her to assume no responsibility, and to beg the foreign gentleman to wait outside while the lady, in conformity with mrs. frankland's instructions, was being shown over the house. "such may be your opinion, ma'am," said mr. munder, severely. "it is not mine." the housekeeper looked aghast. "perhaps," she suggested, deferentially, "you think that the foreign old gentleman would be likely to insist on going over the house with the lady?" "of course i think so," said mr. munder. (he had thought nothing of the sort; his only idea just then being the idea of asserting his own supremacy by setting himself steadily in opposition to any preconceived arrangements of mrs. pentreath.) "then you would take the responsibility of showing them both over the house, seeing that they have both come to the door together?" asked the housekeeper. "of course i would," answered the steward, with the promptitude of resolution which distinguishes all superior men. "well, mr. munder, i am always glad to be guided by your opinion, and i will be guided by it now," said mrs. pentreath. "but, as there will be two people to look after--for i would not trust the foreigner out of sight on any consideration whatever--i must really beg you to share the trouble of showing them over the house along with me. i am so excited and nervous that i don't feel as if i had all my wits about me--i never was placed in such a position as this before--i am in the midst of mysteries that i don't understand--and, in short, if i can't count on your assistance, i won't answer for it that i shall not make some mistake. i should be very sorry to make a mistake, not only on my own account, but--" here the housekeeper stopped, and looked hard at mr. munder. "go on, ma'am," said mr. munder, with cruel composure. "not only on my own account," resumed mrs. pentreath, demurely, "but on yours; for mrs. frankland's letter certainly casts the responsibility of conducting this delicate business on your shoulders as well as on mine." mr. munder recoiled a few steps, turned red, opened his lips indignantly, hesitated, and closed them again. he was fairly caught in a trap of his own setting. he could not retreat from the responsibility of directing the housekeeper's conduct, the moment after he had voluntarily assumed it; and he could not deny that mrs. frankland's letter positively and repeatedly referred to him by name. there was only one way of getting out of the difficulty with dignity, and mr. munder unblushingly took that way the moment he had recovered self-possession enough to collect himself for the effort. "i am perfectly amazed, mrs. pentreath," he began, with the gravest dignity. "yes, i repeat, i am perfectly amazed that you should think me capable of leaving you to go over the house alone, under such remarkable circumstances as those we are now placed in. no, ma'am! whatever my other faults may be, shrinking from my share of responsibility is not one of them. i don't require to be reminded of mrs. frankland's letter; and--no!--i don't require any apologies. i am quite ready, ma'am--quite ready to show the way up stairs whenever you are." "the sooner the better, mr. munder--for there is that audacious old foreigner actually chattering to betsey now, as if he had known her all his life!" the assertion was quite true. uncle joseph was exercising his gift of familiarity on the maid-servant (who had lingered to stare at the strangers, instead of going back to the kitchen), just as he had already exercised it on the old lady passenger in the stage-coach, and on the driver of the pony-chaise which took his niece and himself to the post-town of porthgenna. while the housekeeper and the steward were holding their private conference, he was keeping betsey in ecstasies of suppressed giggling by the odd questions that he asked about the house, and about how she got on with her work in it. his inquiries had naturally led from the south side of the building, by which he and his companion had entered, to the west side, which they were shortly to explore; and thence round to the north side, which was forbidden ground to every body in the house. when mrs. pentreath came forward with the steward, she overheard this exchange of question and answer passing between the foreigner and the maid: "but tell me, betzee, my dear," said uncle joseph. "why does nobody ever go into these mouldy old rooms?" "because there's a ghost in them," answered betsey, with a burst of laughter, as if a series of haunted rooms and a series of excellent jokes meant precisely the same thing. "hold your tongue directly, and go back to the kitchen," cried mrs. pentreath, indignantly. "the ignorant people about here," she continued, still pointedly overlooking uncle joseph, and addressing herself only to sarah, "tell absurd stories about some old rooms on the unrepaired side of the house, which have not been inhabited for more than half a century past--absurd stories about a ghost; and my servant is foolish enough to believe them." "no, i'm not," said betsey, retiring, under protest, to the lower regions. "i don't believe a word about the ghost--at least not in the day-time." adding that important saving clause in a whisper, betsey unwillingly withdrew from the scene. mrs. pentreath observed, with some surprise, that the mysterious lady in the quiet dress turned very pale at the mention of the ghost story, and made no remark on it whatever. while she was still wondering what this meant, mr. munder emerged into dignified prominence, and loftily addressed himself, not to uncle joseph, and not to sarah, but to the empty air between them. "if you wish to see the house," he said, "you will have the goodness to follow me." with those words, mr. munder turned solemnly into the passage that led to the foot of the west staircase, walking with that peculiar, slow strut in which all serious-minded english people indulge when they go out to take a little exercise on sunday. the housekeeper, adapting her pace with feminine pliancy to the pace of the steward, walked the national sabbatarian polonaise by his side, as if she was out with him for a mouthful of fresh air between the services. "as i am a living sinner, this going over the house is like going to a funeral!" whispered uncle joseph to his niece. he drew her arm into his, and felt, as he did so, that she was trembling. "what is the matter?" he asked, under his breath. "uncle! there is something unnatural about the readiness of these people to show us over the house," was the faintly whispered answer. "what were they talking about just now, out of our hearing? why did that woman keep her eyes fixed so constantly on me?" before the old man could answer, the housekeeper looked round, and begged, with the severest emphasis, that they would be good enough to follow. in less than another minute they were all standing at the foot of the west staircase. "aha!" cried uncle joseph, as easy and talkative as ever, even in the presence of mr. munder himself. "a fine big house, and a very good staircase." "we are not accustomed to hear either the house or the staircase spoken of in these terms, sir," said mr. munder, resolving to nip the foreigner's familiarity in the bud. "the guide to west cornwall, which you would have done well to make yourself acquainted with before you came here, describes porthgenna tower as a mansion, and uses the word spacious in speaking of the west staircase. i regret to find, sir, that you have not consulted the guide-book to west cornwall." "and why?" rejoined the unabashed german. "what do i want with a book, when i have got you for my guide? ah, dear sir, but you are not just to yourself! is not a living guide like you, who talks and walks about, better for me than dead leaves of print and paper? ah, no, no! i shall not hear another word--i shall not hear you do any more injustice to yourself." here uncle joseph made another fantastic bow, looked up smiling into the steward's face, and shook his head several times with an air of friendly reproach. mr. munder felt paralyzed. he could not have been treated with more ease and indifferent familiarity if this obscure foreign stranger had been an english duke. he had often heard of the climax of audacity; and here it was visibly embodied in one small, elderly individual, who did not rise quite five feet from the ground he stood on! while the steward was swelling with a sense of injury too large for utterance, the housekeeper, followed by sarah, was slowly ascending the stairs. uncle joseph, seeing them go up, hastened to join his niece, and mr. munder, after waiting a little while on the mat to recover himself, followed the audacious foreigner with the intention of watching his conduct narrowly, and chastising his insolence at the first opportunity with stinging words of rebuke. the procession up the stairs thus formed was not, however, closed by the steward; it was further adorned and completed by betsey, the servant-maid, who stole out of the kitchen to follow the strange visitors over the house, as closely as she could without attracting the notice of mrs. pentreath. betsey had her share of natural human curiosity and love of change. no such event as the arrival of strangers had ever before enlivened the dreary monotony of porthgenna tower within her experience; and she was resolved not to stay alone in the kitchen while there was a chance of hearing a stray word of the conversation, or catching a chance glimpse of the proceedings among the company up stairs. in the mean time the housekeeper had led the way as far as the first-floor landing, on either side of which the principal rooms in the west front were situated. sharpened by fear and suspicion, sarah's eyes immediately detected the repairs which had been effected in the banisters and stairs of the second flight. "you have had workmen in the house?" she said quickly to mrs. pentreath. "you mean on the stairs?" returned the housekeeper. "yes, we have had workmen there." "and nowhere else?" "no. but they are wanted in other places badly enough. even here, on the best side of the house, half the bedrooms up stairs are hardly fit to sleep in. they were any thing but comfortable, as i have heard, even in the late mrs. treverton's time; and since she died--" the housekeeper stopped with a frown and a look of surprise. the lady in the quiet dress, instead of sustaining the reputation for good manners which had been conferred on her in mrs. frankland's letter, was guilty of the unpardonable discourtesy of turning away from mrs. pentreath before she had done speaking. determined not to allow herself to be impertinently silenced in that way, she coldly and distinctly repeated her last words-- "and since mrs. treverton died--" she was interrupted for the second time. the strange lady, turning quickly round again, confronted her with a very pale face and a very eager look, and asked, in the most abrupt manner, an utterly irrelevant question: "tell me about that ghost story," she said. "do they say it is the ghost of a man or of a woman?" "i was speaking of the late mrs. treverton," said the housekeeper, in her severest tones of reproof, "and not of the ghost story about the north rooms. you would have known that, if you had done me the favor to listen to what _i_ said." "i beg your pardon; i beg your pardon a thousand times for seeming inattentive! it struck me just then--or, at least, i wanted to know--" "if you care to know about any thing so absurd," said mrs. pentreath, mollified by the evident sincerity of the apology that had been offered to her, "the ghost, according to the story, is the ghost of a woman." the strange lady's face grew whiter than ever; and she turned away once more to the open window on the landing. "how hot it is!" she said, putting her head out into the air. "hot, with a northeast wind!" exclaimed mrs. pentreath, in amazement. here uncle joseph came forward with a polite request to know when they were going to look over the rooms. for the last few minutes he had been asking all sorts of questions of mr. munder; and, having received no answers which were not of the shortest and most ungracious kind, had given up talking to the steward in despair. mrs. pentreath prepared to lead the way into the breakfast-room, library, and drawing-room. all three communicated with each other, and each room had a second door opening on a long passage, the entrance to which was on the right-hand side of the first-floor landing. before leading the way into these rooms, the housekeeper touched sarah on the shoulder to intimate that it was time to be moving on. "as for the ghost story," resumed mrs. pentreath, while she opened the breakfast-room door, "you must apply to the ignorant people who believe in it, if you want to hear it all told. whether the ghost is an old ghost or a new ghost, and why she is supposed to walk, is more than i can tell you." in spite of the housekeeper's affectation of indifference toward the popular superstition, she had heard enough of the ghost-story to frighten her, though she would not confess it. inside the house, or outside the house, nobody much less willing to venture into the north rooms alone could in real truth have been found than mrs. pentreath herself. while the housekeeper was drawing up the blinds in the breakfast-parlor, and while mr. munder was opening the door that led out of it into the library, uncle joseph stole to his niece's side, and spoke a few words of encouragement to her in his quaint, kindly way. "courage!" he whispered. "keep your wits about you, sarah, and catch your little opportunity whenever you can." "my thoughts! my thoughts!" she answered in the same low key. "this house rouses them all against me. oh, why did i ever venture into it again!" "you had better look at the view from the window now," said mrs. pentreath, after she had drawn up the blind. "it is very much admired." while affairs were in this stage of progress on the first floor of the house, betsey, who had been hitherto stealing up by a stair at a time from the hall, and listening with all her ears in the intervals of the ascent, finding that no sound of voices now reached her, bethought herself of returning to the kitchen again, and of looking after the housekeeper's dinner, which was being kept warm by the fire. she descended to the lower regions, wondering what part of the house the strangers would want to see next, and puzzling her brains to find out some excuse for attaching herself to the exploring party. after the view from the breakfast-room window had been duly contemplated, the library was next entered. in this room, mrs. pentreath, having some leisure to look about her, and employing that leisure in observing the conduct of the steward, arrived at the unpleasant conviction that mr. munder was by no means to be depended on to assist her in the important business of watching the proceedings of the two strangers. doubly stimulated to assert his own dignity by the disrespectfully easy manner in which he had been treated by uncle joseph, the sole object of mr. munder's ambition seemed to be to divest himself as completely as possible of the character of guide, which the unscrupulous foreigner sought to confer on him. he sauntered heavily about the rooms, with the air of a casual visitor, staring out of window, peeping into books on tables, frowning at himself in the chimney-glasses--looking, in short, any where but where he ought to look. the housekeeper, exasperated by this affectation of indifference, whispered to him irritably to keep his eye on the foreigner, as it was quite as much as she could do to look after the lady in the quiet dress. "very good; very good," said mr. munder, with sulky carelessness. "and where are you going to next, ma'am, after we have been into the drawing-room? back again, through the library, into the breakfast-room? or out at once into the passage? be good enough to settle which, as you seem to be in the way of settling every thing." "into the passage, to be sure," answered mrs. pentreath, "to show the next three rooms beyond these." mr. munder sauntered out of the library, through the door-way of communication, into the drawing-room, unlocked the door leading into the passage--then, to the great disgust of the housekeeper, strolled to the fire-place, and looked at himself in the glass over it, just as attentively as he had looked at himself in the library mirror hardly a minute before. "this is the west drawing-room," said mrs. pentreath, calling to the visitors. "the carving of the stone chimney-piece," she added, with the mischievous intention of bringing them into the closest proximity to the steward, "is considered the finest thing in the whole apartment." driven from the looking-glass by this manoeuvre, mr. munder provokingly sauntered to the window and looked out. sarah, still pale and silent--but with a certain unwonted resolution just gathering, as it were, in the lines about her lips--stopped thoughtfully by the chimney-piece when the housekeeper pointed it out to her. uncle joseph, looking all round the room in his discursive manner, spied, in the farthest corner of it from the door that led into the passage, a beautiful maple-wood table and cabinet, of a very peculiar pattern. his workmanlike enthusiasm was instantly aroused, and he darted across the room to examine the make of the cabinet closely. the table beneath projected a little way in front of it, and, of all the objects in the world, what should he see reposing on the flat space of the projection but a magnificent musical box at least three times the size of his own! "aïe! aïe!! aïe!!!" cried uncle joseph, in an ascending scale of admiration, which ended at the very top of his voice. "open him! set him going! let me hear what he plays!" he stopped for want of words to express his impatience, and drummed with both hands on the lid of the musical box in a burst of uncontrollable enthusiasm. "mr. munder!" exclaimed the housekeeper, hurrying across the room in great indignation. "why don't you look? why don't you stop him? he's breaking open the musical box. be quiet, sir! how dare you touch me?" "set him going! set him going!" reiterated uncle joseph, dropping mrs. pentreath's arm, which he had seized in his agitation. "look here! this by my side is a music box too! set him going! does he play mozart? he is three times bigger than ever i saw! see! see! this box of mine--this tiny bit of box that looks nothing by the side of yours--it was given to my own brother by the king of all music-composers that ever lived, by the divine mozart himself. set the big box going, and you shall hear the little baby-box pipe after! ah, dear and good madam, if you love me--" "sir!!!" exclaimed the housekeeper, reddening with virtuous indignation to the very roots of her hair. "what do you mean, sir, by addressing such outrageous language as that to a respectable female?" inquired mr. munder, approaching to the rescue. "do you think we want your foreign noises, and your foreign morals, and your foreign profanity here? yes, sir! profanity. any man who calls any human individual, whether musical or otherwise, 'divine,' is a profane man. who are you, you extremely audacious person? are you an infidel?" before uncle joseph could say a word in vindication of his principles, before mr. munder could relieve himself of any more indignation, they were both startled into momentary silence by an exclamation of alarm from the housekeeper. "where is she?" cried mrs. pentreath, standing in the middle of the drawing-room, and looking with bewildered eyes all around her. the lady in the quiet dress had vanished. she was not in the library, not in the breakfast-room, not in the passage outside. after searching in those three places, the housekeeper came back to mr. munder with a look of downright terror in her face, and stood staring at him for a moment perfectly helpless and perfectly silent. as soon as she recovered herself she turned fiercely on uncle joseph. "where is she? i insist on knowing what has become of her! you cunning, wicked, impudent old man! where is she?" cried mrs. pentreath, with no color in her cheeks and no mercy in her eyes. "i suppose she is looking about the house by herself," said uncle joseph. "we shall find her surely as we take our walks through the other rooms." simple as he was, the old man had, nevertheless, acuteness enough to perceive that he had accidentally rendered the very service to his niece of which she stood in need. if he had been the most artful of mankind, he could have devised no better means of diverting mrs. pentreath's attention from sarah to himself than the very means which he had just used in perfect innocence, at the very moment when his thoughts were farthest away from the real object with which he and his niece had entered the house. "so! so!" thought uncle joseph to himself, "while these two angry people were scolding me for nothing, sarah has slipped away to the room where the letter is. good! i have only to wait till she comes back, and to let the two angry people go on scolding me as long as they please." "what are we to do? mr. munder! what on earth are we to do?" asked the housekeeper. "we can't waste the precious minutes staring at each other here. this woman must be found. stop! she asked questions about the stairs--she looked up at the second floor the moment we got on the landing. mr. munder! wait here, and don't let that foreigner out of your sight for a moment. wait here while i run up and look into the second-floor passage. all the bedroom doors are locked--i defy her to hide herself if she has gone up there." with those words, the housekeeper ran out of the drawing-room, and breathlessly ascended the second flight of stairs. while mrs. pentreath was searching on the west side of the house, sarah was hurrying, at the top of her speed, along the lonely passages that led to the north rooms. terrified into decisive action by the desperate nature of the situation, she had slipped out of the drawing-room into the passage the instant she saw mrs. pentreath's back turned on her. without stopping to think, without attempting to compose herself, she ran down the stairs of the first floor, and made straight for the housekeeper's room. she had no excuses ready, if she had found any body there, or if she had met any body on the way. she had formed no plan where to seek for them next, if the keys of the north rooms were not hanging in the place where she still expected to find them. her mind was lost in confusion, her temples throbbed as if they would burst with the heat at her brain. the one blind, wild, headlong purpose of getting into the myrtle room drove her on, gave unnatural swiftness to her trembling feet, unnatural strength to her shaking hands, unnatural courage to her sinking heart. she ran into the housekeeper's room, without even the ordinary caution of waiting for a moment to listen outside the door. no one was there. one glance at the well-remembered nail in the wall showed her the keys still hanging to it in a bunch, as they had hung in the long-past time. she had them in her possession in a moment; and was away again, along the solitary passages that led to the north rooms, threading their turnings and windings as if she had left them but the day before; never pausing to listen or to look behind her, never slackening her speed till she was at the top of the back staircase, and had her hand on the locked door that led into the north hall. as she turned over the bunch to find the first key that was required, she discovered--what her hurry had hitherto prevented her from noticing--the numbered labels which the builder had methodically attached to all the keys when he had been sent to porthgenna by mr. frankland to survey the house. at the first sight of them, her searching hands paused in their work instantaneously, and she shivered all over, as if a sudden chill had struck her. if she had been less violently agitated, the discovery of the new labels and the suspicions to which the sight of them instantly gave rise would, in all probability, have checked her further progress. but the confusion of her mind was now too great to allow her to piece together even the veriest fragments of thoughts. vaguely conscious of a new terror, of a sharpened distrust that doubled and trebled the headlong impatience which had driven her on thus far, she desperately resumed her search through the bunch of keys. one of them had no label; it was larger than the rest--it was the key that fitted the door of communication before which she stood. she turned it in the rusty lock with a strength which, at any other time, she would have been utterly incapable of exerting; she opened the door with a blow of her hand, which burst it away at one stroke from the jambs to which it stuck. panting for breath, she flew across the forsaken north hall, without stopping for one second to push the door to behind her. the creeping creatures, the noisome house-reptiles that possessed the place, crawled away, shadow-like, on either side of her toward the walls. she never noticed them, never turned away for them. across the hall, and up the stairs at the end of it, she ran, till she gained the open landing at the top--and there she suddenly checked herself in front of the first door. the first door of the long range of rooms that opened on the landing; the door that fronted the topmost of the flight of stairs. she stopped; she looked at it--it was not the door she had come to open; and yet she could not tear herself away from it. scrawled on the panel in white chalk was the figure--"i." and when she looked down at the bunch of keys in her hands, there was the figure "i." on a label, answering to it. she tried to think, to follow out any one of all the thronging suspicions that beset her to the conclusion at which it might point. the effort was useless; her mind was gone; her bodily senses of seeing and hearing--senses which had now become painfully and incomprehensibly sharpened--seemed to be the sole relics of intelligence that she had left to guide her. she put her hand over her eyes, and waited a little so, and then went on slowly along the landing, looking at the doors. no. "ii.," no. "iii.," no. "iv.," traced on the panels in the same white chalk, and answering to the numbered labels on the keys, the figures on which were written in ink. no. "iv." the middle room of the first floor range of eight. she stopped there again, trembling from head to foot. it was the door of the myrtle room. did the chalked numbers stop there? she looked on down the landing. no. the four doors remaining were regularly numbered on to "viii." she came back again to the door of the myrtle room, sought out the key labeled with the figure "iv."--hesitated--and looked back distrustfully over the deserted hall. the canvases of the old family pictures, which she had seen bulging out of their frames in the past time when she hid the letter, had, for the most part, rotted away from them now, and lay in great black ragged strips on the floor of the hall. islands and continents of damp spread like the map of some strange region over the lofty vaulted ceiling. cobwebs, heavy with dust, hung down in festoons from broken cornices. dirt stains lay on the stone pavement, like gross reflections of the damp stains on the ceiling. the broad flight of stairs leading up to the open landing before the rooms of the first floor had sunk down bodily toward one side. the banisters which protected the outer edge of the landing were broken away into ragged gaps. the light of day was stained, the air of heaven was stilled, the sounds of earth were silenced in the north hall. silenced? were _all_ sounds silenced? or was there something stirring that just touched the sense of hearing, that just deepened the dismal stillness, and no more? sarah listened, keeping her face still set toward the hall--listened, and heard a faint sound behind her. was it outside the door on which her back was turned? or was it inside--in the myrtle room? inside. with the first conviction of that, all thought, all sensation left her. she forgot the suspicious numbering of the doors; she became insensible to the lapse of time, unconscious of the risk of discovery. all exercise of her other faculties was now merged in the exercise of the one faculty of listening. it was a still, faint, stealthily rustling sound; and it moved to and fro at intervals, to and fro softly, now at one end, now at the other of the myrtle room. there were moments when it grew suddenly distinct--other moments when it died away in gradations too light to follow. sometimes it seemed to sweep over the floor at a bound--sometimes it crept with slow, continuous rustlings that just wavered on the verge of absolute silence. her feet still rooted to the spot on which she stood, sarah turned her head slowly, inch by inch, toward the door of the myrtle room. a moment before, while she was as yet unconscious of the faint sound moving to and fro within it, she had been drawing her breath heavily and quickly. she might have been dead now, her bosom was so still, her breathing so noiseless. the same mysterious change came over her face which had altered it when the darkness began to gather in the little parlor at truro. the same fearful look of inquiry which she had then fixed on the vacant corner of the room was in her eyes now, as they slowly turned on the door. "mistress!" she whispered. "am i too late? _are you there before me?_" the stealthily rustling sound inside paused--renewed itself--died away again faintly; away at the lower end of the room. her eyes still remained fixed on the myrtle room, strained, and opened wider and wider--opened as if they would look through the very door itself--opened as if they were watching for the opaque wood to turn transparent, and show what was behind it. "over the lonesome floor, over the lonesome floor--how light it moves!" she whispered again. "mistress! does the black dress i made for you rustle no louder than that?" the sound stopped again--then suddenly advanced at one stealthy sweep close to the inside of the door. if she could have moved at that moment; if she could have looked down to the line of open space between the bottom of the door and the flooring below, when the faintly rustling sound came nearest to her, she might have seen the insignificant cause that produced it lying self-betrayed under the door, partly outside, partly inside, in the shape of a fragment of faded red paper from the wall of the myrtle room. time and damp had loosened the paper all round the apartment. two or three yards of it had been torn off by the builder while he was examining the walls--sometimes in large pieces, sometimes in small pieces, just as it happened to come away--and had been thrown down by him on the bare, boarded floor, to become the sport of the wind, whenever it happened to blow through the broken panes of glass in the window. if she had only moved! if she had only looked down for one little second of time! she was past moving and past looking: the paroxysm of superstitious horror that possessed her held her still in every limb and every feature. she never started, she uttered no cry, when the rustling noise came nearest. the one outward sign which showed how the terror of its approach shook her to the very soul expressed itself only in the changed action of her right hand, in which she still held the keys. at the instant when the wind wafted the fragment of paper closest to the door, her fingers lost their power of contraction, and became as nerveless and helpless as if she had fainted. the heavy bunch of keys slipped from her suddenly loosened grasp, dropped at her side on the outer edge of the landing, rolled off through a gap in the broken banister, and fell on the stone pavement below, with a crash which made the sleeping echoes shriek again, as if they were sentient beings writhing under the torture of sound! the crash of the falling keys, ringing and ringing again through the stillness, woke her, as it were, to instant consciousness of present events and present perils. she started, staggered backward, and raised both her hands wildly to her head--paused so for a few seconds--then made for the top of the stairs with the purpose of descending into the hall to recover the keys. before she had advanced three paces the shrill sound of a woman's scream came from the door of communication at the opposite end of the hall. the scream was twice repeated at a greater distance off, and was followed by a confused noise of rapidly advancing voices and footsteps. she staggered desperately a few paces farther, and reached the first of the row of doors that opened on the landing. there nature sank exhausted: her knees gave way under her--her breath, her sight, her hearing all seemed to fail her together at the same instant--and she dropped down senseless on the floor at the head of the stairs. chapter iv. mr. munder on the seat of judgment. the murmuring voices and the hurrying footsteps came nearer and nearer, then stopped altogether. after an interval of silence, one voice called out loudly, "sarah! sarah! where are you?" and the next instant uncle joseph appeared alone in the door-way that led into the north hall, looking eagerly all round him. at first the prostrate figure on the landing at the head of the stairs escaped his view. but the second time he looked in that direction the dark dress, and the arm that lay just over the edge of the top stair, caught his eye. with a loud cry of terror and recognition, he flew across the hall and ascended the stairs. just as he was kneeling by sarah's side, and raising her head on his arm, the steward, the housekeeper, and the maid, all three crowded together after him into the door-way. "water!" shouted the old man, gesticulating at them wildly with his disengaged hand. "she is here--she has fallen down--she is in a faint! water! water!" mr. munder looked at mrs. pentreath, mrs. pentreath looked at betsey, betsey looked at the ground. all three stood stock-still; all three seemed equally incapable of walking across the hall. if the science of physiognomy be not an entire delusion, the cause of this amazing unanimity was legibly written in their faces; in other words, they all three looked equally afraid of the ghost. "water, i say! water!" reiterated uncle joseph, shaking his fist at them. "she is in a faint! are you three at the door there, and not one heart of mercy among you? water! water! water! must i scream myself into fits before i can make you hear?" "i'll get the water, ma'am," said betsey, "if you or mr. munder will please to take it from here to the top of the stairs." she ran to the kitchen, and came back with a glass of water, which she offered, with a respectful courtesy, first to the housekeeper, and then to the steward. "how dare you ask us to carry things for you?" said mrs. pentreath, backing out of the door-way. "yes! how dare you ask us?" added mr. munder, backing after mrs. pentreath. "water!" shouted the old man for the third time. he drew his niece backward a little, so that she could be supported against the wall behind her. "water! or i trample down this dungeon of a place about your ears!" he shouted, stamping with impatience and rage. "if you please, sir, are you sure it's really the lady who is up there?" asked betsey, advancing a few paces tremulously with the glass of water. "am i sure?" exclaimed uncle joseph, descending the stairs to meet her. "what fool's question is this? who should it be?" "the ghost, sir," said betsey, advancing more and more slowly. "the ghost of the north rooms." uncle joseph met her a few yards in advance of the foot of the stairs, took the glass of water from her with a gesture of contempt, and hastened back to his niece. as betsey turned to effect her retreat, the bunch of keys lying on the pavement below the landing caught her eye. after a little hesitation she mustered courage enough to pick them up, and then ran with them out of the hall as fast as her feet could carry her. meanwhile uncle joseph was moistening his niece's lips with the water, and sprinkling it over her forehead. after a while her breath began to come and go slowly, in faint sighs, the muscles of her face moved a little, and she feebly opened her eyes. they fixed affrightedly on the old man, without any expression of recognition. he made her drink a little water, and spoke to her gently, and so brought her back at last to herself. her first words were, "don't leave me." her first action, when she was able to move, was the action of crouching closer to him. "no fear, my child," he said, soothingly; "i will keep by you. tell me, sarah, what has made you faint? what has frightened you so?" "oh, don't ask me! for god's sake, don't ask me!" "there, there! i shall say nothing, then. another mouthful of water? a little mouthful more?" "help me up, uncle; help me to try if i can stand." "not yet--not quite yet; patience for a little longer." "oh, help me! help me! i want to get away from the sight of those doors. if i can only go as far as the bottom of the stairs i shall be better." "so, so," said uncle joseph, assisting her to rise. "wait now, and feel your feet on the ground. lean on me, lean hard, lean heavy. though i am only a light and a little man, i am solid as a rock. have you been into the room?" he added, in a whisper. "have you got the letter?" she sighed bitterly, and laid her head on his shoulder with a weary despair. "why, sarah! sarah!" he exclaimed. "have you been all this time away, and not got into the room yet?" she raised her head as suddenly as she had laid it down, shuddered, and tried feebly to draw him toward the stairs. "i shall never see the myrtle room again--never, never, never more!" she said. "let us go; i can walk; i am strong now. uncle joseph, if you love me, take me away from this house; away any where, so long as we are in the free air and the daylight again; any where, so long as we are out of sight of porthgenna tower." elevating his eyebrows in astonishment, but considerately refraining from asking any more questions, uncle joseph assisted his niece to descend the stairs. she was still so weak that she was obliged to pause on gaining the bottom of them to recover her strength. seeing this, and feeling, as he led her afterward across the hall, that she leaned more and more heavily on his arm at every fresh step, the old man, on arriving within speaking distance of mr. munder and mrs. pentreath, asked the housekeeper if she possessed any restorative drops which she would allow him to administer to his niece. mrs. pentreath's reply in the affirmative, though not very graciously spoken, was accompanied by an alacrity of action which showed that she was heartily rejoiced to take the first fair excuse for returning to the inhabited quarter of the house. muttering something about showing the way to the place where the medicine-chest was kept, she immediately retraced her steps along the passage to her own room; while uncle joseph, disregarding all sarah's whispered assurances that she was well enough to depart without another moment of delay, followed her silently, leading his niece. mr. munder, shaking his head, and looking woefully disconcerted, waited behind to lock the door of communication. when he had done this, and had given the keys to betsey to carry back to their appointed place, he, in his turn, retired from the scene at a pace indecorously approaching to something like a run. on getting well away from the north hall, however, he regained his self-possession wonderfully. he abruptly slackened his pace, collected his scattered wits, and reflected a little, apparently with perfect satisfaction to himself; for when he entered the housekeeper's room he had quite recovered his usual complacent solemnity of look and manner. like the vast majority of densely stupid men, he felt intense pleasure in hearing himself talk, and he now discerned such an opportunity of indulging in that luxury, after the events that had just happened in the house, as he seldom enjoyed. there is only one kind of speaker who is quite certain never to break down under any stress of circumstances--the man whose capability of talking does not include any dangerous underlying capacity for knowing what he means. among this favored order of natural orators, mr. munder occupied a prominent rank--and he was now vindictively resolved to exercise his abilities on the two strangers, under pretense of asking for an explanation of their conduct, before he could suffer them to quit the house. on entering the room, he found uncle joseph seated with his niece at the lower end of it, engaged in dropping some sal volatile into a glass of water. at the upper end stood the housekeeper with an open medicine-chest on the table before her. to this part of the room mr. munder slowly advanced, with a portentous countenance; drew an arm-chair up to the table; sat himself down in it, with extreme deliberation and care in the matter of settling his coat-tails; and immediately became, to all outward appearance, the model of a lord chief justice in plain clothes. mrs. pentreath, conscious from these preparations that something extraordinary was about to happen, seated herself a little behind the steward. betsey restored the keys to their place on the nail in the wall, and was about to retire modestly to her proper kitchen sphere, when she was stopped by mr. munder. "wait, if you please," said the steward; "i shall have occasion to call on you presently, young woman, to make a plain statement." obedient betsey waited near the door, terrified by the idea that she must have done something wrong, and that the steward was armed with inscrutable legal power to try, sentence, and punish her for the offense on the spot. "now, sir," said mr. munder, addressing uncle joseph as if he was the speaker of the house of commons, "if you have done with that sal volatile, and if the person by your side has sufficiently recovered her senses to listen, i should wish to say a word or two to both of you." at this exordium, sarah tried affrightedly to rise from her chair; but her uncle caught her by the hand, and pressed her back in it. "wait and rest," he whispered. "i shall take all the scolding on my own shoulder, and do all the talking with my own tongue. as soon as you are fit to walk again, i promise you this: whether the big man has said his word or two, or has not said it, we will quietly get up and go our ways out of the house." "up to the present moment," said mr. munder, "i have refrained from expressing an opinion. the time has now come when, holding a position of trust as i do in this establishment, and being accountable, and indeed responsible, as i am, for what takes place in it, and feeling, as i must, that things can not be allowed or even permitted to rest as they are--it is my duty to say that i think your conduct is very extraordinary." directing this forcible conclusion to his sentence straight at sarah, mr. munder leaned back in his chair, quite full of words, and quite empty of meaning, to collect himself comfortably for his next effort. "my only desire," he resumed, with a plaintive impartiality, "is to act fairly by all parties. i don't wish to frighten any body, or to startle any body, or even to terrify any body. i wish to unravel, or, if you please, to make out, what i may term, with perfect propriety--events. and when i have done that, i should wish to put it to you, ma'am, and to you, sir, whether--i say, i should wish to put it to you both, calmly, and impartially, and politely, and plainly, and smoothly--and when i say smoothly, i mean quietly--whether you are not both of you bound to explain yourselves." mr. munder paused, to let that last irresistible appeal work its way to the consciences of the persons whom he addressed. the housekeeper took advantage of the silence to cough, as congregations cough just before the sermon, apparently on the principle of getting rid of bodily infirmities beforehand, in order to give the mind free play for undisturbed intellectual enjoyment. betsey, following mrs. pentreath's lead, indulged in a cough on her own account--of the faint, distrustful sort. uncle joseph sat perfectly easy and undismayed, still holding his niece's hand in his, and giving it a little squeeze, from time to time, when the steward's oratory became particularly involved and impressive. sarah never moved, never looked up, never lost the expression of terrified restraint which had taken possession of her face from the first moment when she entered the housekeeper's room. "now what are the facts, and circumstances, and events?" proceeded mr. munder, leaning back in his chair, in calm enjoyment of the sound of his own voice. "you, ma'am, and you, sir, ring at the bell of the door of this mansion" (here he looked hard at uncle joseph, as much as to say, "i don't give up that point about the house being a mansion, you see, even on the judgment-seat")--"you are let in, or, rather, admitted. you, sir, assert that you wish to inspect the mansion (you say 'see the house,' but, being a foreigner, we are not surprised at your making a little mistake of that sort); you, ma'am, coincide, and even agree, in that request. what follows? you are shown over the mansion. it is not usual to show strangers over it, but we happen to have certain reasons--" sarah started. "what reasons?" she asked, looking up quickly. uncle joseph felt her hand turn cold, and tremble in his. "hush! hush!" he said, "leave the talking to me." at the same moment mrs. pentreath pulled mr. munder warily by the coat-tail, and whispered to him to be careful. "mrs. frankland's letter," she said in his ear, "tells us particularly not to let it be suspected that we are acting under orders." "don't you fancy, mrs. pentreath, that i forget what i ought to remember," rejoined mr. munder--who had forgotten, nevertheless. "and don't you imagine that i was going to commit myself" (the very thing which he had just been on the point of doing). "leave this business in my hands, if you will be so good.--what reasons did you say, ma'am?" he added aloud, addressing himself to sarah. "never you mind about reasons; we have not got to do with them now; we have got to do with facts, and circumstances, and events. i was observing, or remarking, that you, sir, and you, ma'am, were shown over this mansion. you were conducted, and indeed led, up the west staircase--the spacious west staircase, sir! you were shown with politeness, and even with courtesy, through the breakfast-room, the library, and the drawing-room. in that drawing-room, you, sir, indulge in outrageous, and, i will add, in violent language. in that drawing-room, you, ma'am, disappear, or, rather, go altogether out of sight. such conduct as this, so highly unparalleled, so entirely unprecedented, and so very unusual, causes mrs. pentreath and myself to feel--" here mr. munder stopped, at a loss for a word for the first time. "astonished," suggested mrs. pentreath after a long interval of silence. "no, ma'am!" retorted mr. munder. "nothing of the sort. we were not at all astonished; we were--surprised. and what followed and succeeded that? what did you and i hear, sir, on the first floor?" (looking sternly at uncle joseph). "and what did you hear, mrs. pentreath, while you were searching for the missing and absent party on the second floor? what?" thus personally appealed to, the housekeeper answered briefly--"a scream." "no! no! no!" said mr. munder, fretfully tapping his hand on the table. "a screech, mrs. pentreath--a screech. and what is the meaning, purport, and upshot of that screech?--young woman!" (here mr. munder turned suddenly on betsey) "we have now traced these extraordinary facts and circumstances as far as you. have the goodness to step forward, and tell us, in the presence of these two parties, how you came to utter, or give, what mrs. pentreath calls a scream, but what i call a screech. a plain statement will do, my good girl--quite a plain statement, if you please. and, young woman, one word more--speak up. you understand me? speak up!" covered with confusion by the public and solemn nature of this appeal, betsey, on starting with her statement, unconsciously followed the oratorical example of no less a person than mr. munder himself; that is to say, she spoke on the principle of drowning the smallest possible infusion of ideas in the largest possible dilution of words. extricated from the mesh of verbal entanglement in which she contrived to involve it, her statement may be not unfairly represented as simply consisting of the following facts: first, betsey had to relate that she happened to be just taking the lid off a saucepan, on the kitchen fire, when she heard, in the neighborhood of the housekeeper's room, a sound of hurried footsteps (vernacularly termed by the witness a "scurrying of somebody's feet"). secondly, betsey, on leaving the kitchen to ascertain what the sound meant, heard the footsteps retreating rapidly along the passage which led to the north side of the house, and, stimulated by curiosity, followed the sound of them for a certain distance. thirdly, at a sharp turn in the passage, betsey stopped short, despairing of overtaking the person whose footsteps she heard, and feeling also a sense of dread (termed by the witness, "creeping of the flesh") at the idea of venturing alone, even in broad daylight, into the ghostly quarter of the house. fourthly, while still hesitating at the turn in the passage, betsey heard "the lock of a door go," and, stimulated afresh by curiosity, advanced a few steps farther--then stopped again, debating within herself the difficult and dreadful question, whether it is the usual custom of ghosts, when passing from one place to another, to unlock any closed door which may happen to be in their way, or to save trouble by simply passing through it. fifthly, after long deliberation, and many false starts--forward toward the north hall and backward toward the kitchen--betsey decided that it was the immemorial custom of all ghosts to pass through doors, and not unlock them. sixthly, fortified by this conviction, betsey went on boldly close to the door, when she suddenly heard a loud report, as of some heavy body falling (graphically termed by the witness a "banging scrash"). seventhly, the noise frightened betsey out of her wits, brought her heart up into her mouth, and took away her breath. eighthly, and lastly, on recovering breath enough to scream (or screech), betsey did, with might and main, scream (or screech), running back toward the kitchen as fast as her legs would carry her, with all her hair "standing up on end," and all her flesh "in a crawl" from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet. "just so! just so!" said mr. munder, when the statement came to a close--as if the sight of a young woman with all her hair standing on end and all her flesh in a crawl were an ordinary result of his experience of female humanity--"just so! you may stand back, my good girl--you may stand back.--there is nothing to smile at, sir," he continued, sternly addressing uncle joseph, who had been excessively amused by betsey's manner of delivering her evidence. "you would be doing better to carry, or rather transport, your mind back to what followed and succeeded the young woman's screech. what did we all do, sir? we rushed to the spot, and we ran to the place. and what did we all see, sir?--we saw _you_, ma'am, lying horizontally prostrate, on the top of the landing of the first of the flight of the north stairs; and we saw those keys, now hanging up yonder, abstracted and purloined, and, as it were, snatched from their place in this room, and lying horizontally prostrate likewise on the floor of the hall.--there are the facts, the circumstances, and the events, laid, or rather placed, before you. what have you got to say to them? i call upon you both solemnly, and, i will add, seriously! in my own name, in the name of mrs. pentreath, in the name of our employers, in the name of decency, in the name of wonder--what do you mean by it?" with that conclusion, mr. munder struck his fist on the table, and waited, with a glare of merciless expectation, for any thing in the shape of an answer, an explanation, or a defense which the culprits at the bottom of the room might be disposed to offer. "tell him any thing," whispered sarah to the old man. "any thing to keep him quiet; any thing to make him let us go! after what i have suffered, these people will drive me mad!" never very quick at inventing an excuse, and perfectly ignorant besides of what had really happened to his niece while she was alone in the north hall, uncle joseph, with the best will in the world to prove himself equal to the emergency, felt considerable difficulty in deciding what he should say or do. determined, however, at all hazards, to spare sarah any useless suffering, and to remove her from the house as speedily as possible, he rose to take the responsibility of speaking on himself, looking hard, before he opened his lips, at mr. munder, who immediately leaned forward on the table with his hand to his ear. uncle joseph acknowledged this polite act of attention with one of his fantastic bows; and then replied to the whole of the steward's long harangue in these six unanswerable words: "i wish you good-day, sir!" "how dare you wish me any thing of the sort!" cried mr. munder, jumping out of his chair in violent indignation. "how dare you trifle with a serious subject and a serious question in that way? wish me good-day, indeed! do you suppose i am going to let you out of this house without hearing some explanation of the abstracting and purloining and snatching of the keys of the north rooms?" "ah! it is that you want to know?" said uncle joseph, stimulated to plunge headlong into an excuse by the increasing agitation and terror of his niece. "see, now! i shall explain. what was it, dear and good sir, that we said when we were first let in? this--'we have come to see the house.' now there is a north side to the house, and a west side to the house. good! that is two sides; and i and my niece are two people; and we divide ourselves in two, to see the two sides. i am the half that goes west, with you and the dear and good lady behind there. my niece here is the other half that goes north, all by herself, and drops the keys, and falls into a faint, because in that old part of the house it is what you call musty-fusty, and there is smells of tombs and spiders, and that is all the explanation, and quite enough, too. i wish you good-day, sir." "damme! if ever i met with the like of you before!" roared mr. munder, entirely forgetting his dignity, his respectability, and his long words in the exasperation of the moment. "you are going to have it all your own way, are you, mr. foreigner? you will walk out of this place when you please, will you, mr. foreigner? we will see what the justice of the peace for this district has to say to that," cried mr. munder, recovering his solemn manner and his lofty phraseology. "property in this house is confided to my care; and unless i hear some satisfactory explanation of the purloining of those keys hanging up there, sir, on that wall, sir, before your eyes, sir--i shall consider it my duty to detain you, and the person with you, until i can get legal advice, and lawful advice, and magisterial advice. do you hear that, sir?" uncle joseph's ruddy cheeks suddenly deepened in color, and his face assumed an expression which made the housekeeper rather uneasy, and which had an irresistibly cooling effect on the heat of mr. munder's anger. "you will keep us here? _you?_" said the old man, speaking very quietly, and looking very steadily at the steward. "now, see. i take this lady (courage, my child, courage! there is nothing to tremble for)--i take this lady with me; i throw that door open, so! i stand and wait before it; and i say to you, 'shut that door against us, if you dare.'" at this defiance, mr. munder advanced a few steps, and then stopped. if uncle joseph's steady look at him had wavered for an instant, he would have closed the door. "i say again," repeated the old man, "shut it against us, if you dare. the laws and customs of your country, sir, have made me an englishman. if you can talk into one ear of a magistrate, i can talk into the other. if he must listen to you, a citizen of this country, he must listen to me, a citizen of this country also. say the word, if you please. do you accuse? or do you threaten? or do you shut the door?" before mr. munder could reply to any one of these three direct questions, the housekeeper begged him to return to his chair and to speak to her. as he resumed his place, she whispered to him, in warning tones, "remember mrs. frankland's letter!" at the same moment, uncle joseph, considering that he had waited long enough, took a step forward to the door. he was prevented from advancing any farther by his niece, who caught him suddenly by the arm, and said in his ear, "look! they are whispering about us again!" "well!" said mr. munder, replying to the housekeeper. "i do remember mrs. frankland's letter, ma'am; and what then?" "hush! not so loud," whispered mrs. pentreath. "i don't presume, mr. munder, to differ in opinion with you; but i want to ask one or two questions. do you think we have any charge that a magistrate would listen to, to bring against these people?" mr. munder looked puzzled, and seemed, for once in a way, to be at a loss for an answer. "does what you remember of mrs. frankland's letter," pursued the housekeeper, "incline you to think that she would be pleased at a public exposure of what has happened in the house? she tells us to take _private_ notice of that woman's conduct, and to follow her _unperceived_ when she goes away. i don't venture on the liberty of advising you, mr. munder, but, as far as regards myself, i wash my hands of all responsibility, if we do any thing but follow mrs. frankland's instructions (as she herself tells us) to the letter." mr. munder hesitated. uncle joseph, who had paused for a minute when sarah directed his attention to the whispering at the upper end of the room, now drew her on slowly with him to the door. "betzee, my dear," he said, addressing the maid, with perfect coolness and composure, "we are strangers here; will you be so kind to us as to show the way out?" betsey looked at the housekeeper, who motioned to her to appeal for orders to the steward. mr. munder was sorely tempted, for the sake of his own importance, to insist on instantly carrying out the violent measures to which he had threatened to have recourse; but mrs. pentreath's objections made him pause in spite of himself. "betzee, my dear," repeated uncle joseph, "has all this talking been too much for your ears? has it made you deaf?" "wait!" cried mr. munder, impatiently. "i insist on your waiting, sir!" "you insist? well, well, because you are an uncivil man is no reason why i should be an uncivil man too. we will wait a little, sir, if you have any thing more to say." making that concession to the claims of politeness, uncle joseph walked gently backward and forward with his niece in the passage outside the door. "sarah, my child, i have frightened the man of the big words," he whispered. "try not to tremble so much; we shall soon be out in the fresh air again." in the mean time, mr. munder continued his whispered conversation with the housekeeper, making a desperate effort, in the midst of his perplexities, to maintain his customary air of patronage and his customary assumption of superiority. "there is a great deal of truth, ma'am," he softly began--"a great deal of truth, certainly, in what you say. but you are talking of the woman, while i am talking of the man. do you mean to tell me that i am to let him go, after what has happened, without at least insisting on his giving me his name and address?" "do you put trust enough in the foreigner to believe that he would give you his right name and address if you asked him?" inquired mrs. pentreath. "with submission to your better judgment, i must confess that i don't. but supposing you were to detain him and charge him before the magistrate--and how you are to do that, the magistrate's house being, i suppose, about a couple of hours' walk from here, is more than i can tell--you must surely risk offending mrs. frankland by detaining the woman and charging the woman as well; for after all, mr. munder, though i believe the foreigner to be capable of any thing, it was the woman that took the keys, was it not?" "quite so! quite so!" said mr. munder, whose sleepy eyes were now opened to this plain and straightforward view of the case for the first time. "i was, oddly enough, putting that point to myself, mrs. pentreath, just before you happened to speak of it. just so! just so!" "i can't help thinking," continued the housekeeper, in a mysterious whisper, "that the best plan, and the plan most in accordance with our instructions, is to let them both go, as if we did not care to demean ourselves by any more quarreling or arguing with them, and to have them followed to the next place they stop at. the gardener's boy, jacob, is weeding the broad walk in the west garden this afternoon. these people have not seen him about the premises, and need not see him, if they are let out again by the south door. jacob is a sharp lad, as you know; and, if he was properly instructed, i really don't see--" "it is a most singular circumstance, mrs. pentreath," interposed mr. munder, with the gravity of consummate assurance; "but when i first sat down to this table, that idea about jacob occurred to me. what with the effort of speaking, and the heat of argument, i got led away from it in the most unaccountable manner--" here uncle joseph, whose stock of patience and politeness was getting exhausted, put his head into the room again. "i shall have one last word to address to you, sir, in a moment," said mr. munder, before the old man could speak. "don't you suppose that your blustering and your bullying has had any effect on me. it may do with foreigners, sir; but it won't do with englishmen, i can tell you." uncle joseph shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and rejoined his niece in the passage outside. while the housekeeper and the steward had been conferring together, sarah had been trying hard to persuade her uncle to profit by her knowledge of the passages that led to the south door, and to slip away unperceived. but the old man steadily refused to be guided by her advice. "i will not go out of a place guiltily," he said, "when i have done no harm. nothing shall persuade me to put myself, or to put you, in the wrong. i am not a man of much wits; but let my conscience guide me, and so long i shall go right. they let us in here, sarah, of their own accord; and they shall let us out of their own accord also." "mr. munder! mr. munder!" whispered the housekeeper, interfering to stop a fresh explosion of the steward's indignation, which threatened to break out at the contempt implied by the shrugging of uncle joseph's shoulders, "while you are speaking to that audacious man, shall i slip into the garden and give jacob his instructions?" mr. munder paused before answering--tried hard to see a more dignified way out of the dilemma in which he had placed himself than the way suggested by the housekeeper--failed entirely to discern any thing of the sort--swallowed his indignation at one heroic gulp--and replied emphatically in two words: "go, ma'am." "what does that mean? what has she gone that way for?" said sarah to her uncle, in a quick, suspicious whisper, as the housekeeper brushed hastily by them on her way to the west garden. before there was time to answer the question, it was followed by another, put by mr. munder. "now, sir!" said the steward, standing in the door-way, with his hands under his coat-tails and his head very high in the air. "now, sir, and now, ma'am, for my last words. am i to have a proper explanation of the abstracting and purloining of those keys, or am i not?" "certainly, sir, you are to have the explanation," replied uncle joseph. "it is, if you please, the same explanation that i had the honor of giving to you a little while ago. do you wish to hear it again? it is all the explanation we have got about us." "oh! it is, is it?" said mr. munder. "then all i have to say to both of you is--leave the house directly! directly!" he added, in his most coarsely offensive tones, taking refuge in the insolence of authority, from the dim consciousness of the absurdity of his own position, which would force itself on him even while he spoke. "yes, sir!" he continued, growing more and more angry at the composure with which uncle joseph listened to him--"yes, sir! you may bow and scrape, and jabber your broken english somewhere else. i won't put up with you here. i have reflected with myself, and reasoned with myself, and asked myself calmly--as englishmen always do--if it is any use making you of importance, and i have come to a conclusion, and that conclusion is--no, it isn't! don't you go away with a notion that your blusterings and bullyings have had any effect on me. (show them out, betsey!) i consider you beneath--aye, and below!--my notice. language fails, sir, to express my contempt. leave the house!" "and i, sir," returned the object of all this withering derision, with the most exasperating politeness, "i shall say, for having your contempt, what i could by no means have said for having your respect, which is, briefly--thank you. i, the small foreigner, take the contempt of you, the big englishman, as the greatest compliment that can be paid from a man of your composition to a man of mine." with that, uncle joseph made a last fantastic bow, took his niece's arm, and followed betsey along the passages that led to the south door, leaving mr. munder to compose a fit retort at his leisure. ten minutes later the housekeeper returned breathless to her room, and found the steward walking backward and forward in a high state of irritation. "pray make your mind easy, mr. munder," she said. "they are both clear of the house at last, and jacob has got them well in view on the path over the moor." chapter v. mozart plays farewell. excepting that he took leave of betsey, the servant-maid, with great cordiality, uncle joseph spoke not another word, after his parting reply to mr. munder, until he and his niece were alone again under the east wall of porthgenna tower. there he paused, looked up at the house, then at his companion, then back at the house once more, and at last opened his lips to speak. "i am sorry, my child," he said--"i am sorry from my heart. this has been what you call in england a bad job." thinking that he referred to the scene which had just passed in the housekeeper's room, sarah asked his pardon for having been the innocent means of bringing him into angry collision with such a person as mr. munder. "no! no! no!" he cried. "i was not thinking of the man of the big body and the big words. he made me angry, it is not to be denied; but that is all over and gone now. i put him and his big words away from me, as i kick this stone, here, from the pathway into the road. it is not of your munders, or your housekeepers, or your betzees, that i now speak--it is of something that is nearer to you and nearer to me also, because i make of your interest my own interest too. i shall tell you what it is while we walk on--for i see in your face, sarah, that you are restless and in fear so long as we stop in the neighborhood of this dungeon-house. come! i am ready for the march. there is the path. let us go back by it, and pick up our little baggages at the inn where we left them, on the other side of this windy wilderness of a place." "yes, yes, uncle! let us lose no time; let us walk fast. don't be afraid of tiring me; i am much stronger now." they turned into the same path by which they had approached porthgenna tower in the afternoon. by the time they had walked over a little more than the first hundred yards of their journey, jacob, the gardener's boy, stole out from behind the ruinous inclosure at the north side of the house with his hoe in his hand. the sun had just set, but there was a fine light still over the wide, open surface of the moor; and jacob paused to let the old man and his niece get farther away from the building before he followed them. the housekeeper's instructions had directed him just to keep them in sight, and no more; and, if he happened to observe that they stopped and turned round to look behind them, he was to stop, too, and pretend to be digging with his hoe, as if he was at work on the moorland. stimulated by the promise of a sixpence, if he was careful to do exactly as he had been told, jacob kept his instructions in his memory, and kept his eye on the two strangers, and promised as fairly to earn the reward in prospect for him as a boy could. "and now, my child, i shall tell you what it is i am sorry for," resumed uncle joseph, as they proceeded along the path. "i am sorry that we have come out upon this journey, and run our little risk, and had our little scolding, and gained nothing. the word you said in my ear, sarah, when i was getting you out of the faint (and you should have come out of it sooner, if the muddle-headed people of the dungeon-house had been quicker with the water)--the word you said in my ear was not much, but it was enough to tell me that we have taken this journey in vain. i may hold my tongue, i may make my best face at it, i may be content to walk blindfolded with a mystery that lets no peep of daylight into my eyes--but it is not the less true that the one thing your heart was most set on doing, when we started on this journey, is the one thing also that you have not done. i know that, if i know nothing else; and i say again, it is a bad job--yes, yes, upon my life and faith, there is no disguise to put upon it; it is, in your plainest english, a very bad job." as he concluded the expression of his sympathy in these quaint terms, the dread and distrust, the watchful terror, that marred the natural softness of sarah's eyes, disappeared in an expression of sorrowful tenderness, which seemed to give back to them all their beauty. "don't be sorry for me, uncle," she said, stopping, and gently brushing away with her hand some specks of dust that lay on the collar of his coat. "i have suffered so much and suffered so long, that the heaviest disappointments pass lightly over me now." "i won't hear you say it!" cried uncle joseph. "you give me shocks i can't bear when you talk to me in this way. you shall have no more disappointments--no, you shall not! i, joseph buschmann, the obstinate, the pig-headed, i say it!" "the day when i shall have no more disappointments, uncle, is not far off now. let me wait a little longer, and endure a little longer: i have learned to be patient, and to hope for nothing. fearing and failing, fearing and failing--that has been my life ever since i was a young woman--the life i have become used to by this time. if you are surprised, as i know you must be, at my not possessing myself of the letter, when i had the keys of the myrtle room in my hand, and when no one was near to stop me, remember the history of my life, and take that as an explanation. fearing and failing, fearing and failing--if i told you all the truth, i could tell no more than that. let us walk on, uncle." the resignation in her voice and manner while she spoke was the resignation of despair. it gave her an unnatural self-possession, which altered her, in the eyes of uncle joseph, almost past recognition. he looked at her in undisguised alarm. "no!" he said, "we will not walk on; we will walk back to the dungeon-house; we will make another plan; we will try to get at this devil's imp of a letter in some other way. i care for no munders, no housekeepers, no betzees--i! i care for nothing but the getting you the one thing you want, and the taking you home again as easy in your mind as i am myself. come! let us go back." "it is too late to go back." "how too late? ah, dismal, dingy, dungeon-house of the devil, how i hate you!" cried uncle joseph, looking back over the prospect, and shaking both his fists at porthgenna tower. "it is too late, uncle," she repeated. "too late, because the opportunity is lost; too late, because if i could bring it back, i dare not go near the myrtle room again. my last hope was to change the hiding-place of the letter--and that last hope i have given up. i have only one object in life left now; you may help me in it; but i can not tell you how unless you come on with me at once--unless you say nothing more about going back to porthgenna tower." uncle joseph began to expostulate. his niece stopped him in the middle of a sentence, by touching him on the shoulder and pointing to a particular spot on the darkening slope of the moor below them. "look!" she said, "there is somebody on the path behind us. is it a boy or a man?" uncle joseph looked through the fading light, and saw a figure at some little distance. it seemed like the figure of a boy, and he was apparently engaged in digging on the moor. "let us turn round, and go on at once," pleaded sarah, before the old man could answer her. "i can't say what i want to say to you, uncle, until we are safe under shelter at the inn." they went on until they reached the highest ground on the moor. there they stopped, and looked back again. the rest of their way lay down hill; and the spot on which they stood was the last point from which a view could be obtained of porthgenna tower. "we have lost sight of the boy," said uncle joseph, looking over the ground below them. sarah's younger and sharper eyes bore witness to the truth of her uncle's words--the view over the moor was lonely now, in every direction, as far as she could see. before going on again, she moved a little away from the old man, and looked at the tower of the ancient house, rising heavy and black in the dim light, with the dark sea background stretching behind it like a wall. "never again!" she whispered to herself. "never, never, never again!" her eyes wandered away to the church, and to the cemetery inclosure by its side, barely distinguishable now in the shadows of the coming night. "wait for me a little longer," she said, looking toward the burial-ground with straining eyes, and pressing her hand on her bosom over the place where the book of hymns lay hid. "my wanderings are nearly at an end; the day for my coming home again is not far off!" the tears filled her eyes and shut out the view. she rejoined her uncle, and, taking his arm again, drew him rapidly a few steps along the downward path--then checked herself, as if struck by a sudden suspicion, and walked back a few paces to the highest ridge of the ground. "i am not sure," she said, replying to her companion's look of surprise--"i am not sure whether we have seen the last yet of that boy who was differing on the moor." as the words passed her lips, a figure stole out from behind one of the large fragments of granite rock which were scattered over the waste on all sides of them. it was once more the figure of the boy, and again he began to dig, without the slightest apparent reason, on the barren ground at his feet. "yes, yes, i see," said uncle joseph, as his niece eagerly directed his attention to the suspicious figure. "it is the same boy, and he is digging still--and, if you please, what of that?" sarah did not attempt to answer. "let us get on," she said, hurriedly. "let us get on as fast as we can to the inn." they turned again, and took the downward path before them. in less than a minute they had lost sight of porthgenna tower, of the old church, and of the whole of the western view. still, though there was now nothing but the blank darkening moorland to look back at, sarah persisted in stopping at frequent intervals, as long as there was any light left, to glance behind her. she made no remark, she offered no excuse for thus delaying the journey back to the inn. it was only when they arrived within sight of the lights of the post-town that she ceased looking back, and that she spoke to her companion. the few words she addressed to him amounted to nothing more than a request that he would ask for a private sitting-room as soon as they reached their place of sojourn for the night. they ordered beds at the inn, and were shown into the best parlor to wait for supper. the moment they were alone, sarah drew a chair close to the old man's side, and whispered these words in his ear-- "uncle! we have been followed every step of the way from porthgenna tower to this place." "so! so! and how do you know that?" inquired uncle joseph. "hush! somebody may be listening at the door, somebody may be creeping under the window. you noticed that boy who was digging on the moor?--" "bah! why, sarah! do you frighten yourself, do you try to frighten me about a boy?" "oh, not so loud! not so loud! they have laid a trap for us. uncle! i suspected it when we first entered the doors of porthgenna tower; i am sure of it now. what did all that whispering mean between the housekeeper and the steward when we first got into the hall? i watched their faces, and i know they were talking about us. they were not half surprised enough at seeing us, not half surprised enough at hearing what we wanted. don't laugh at me, uncle! there is real danger: it is no fancy of mine. the keys--come closer--the keys of the north rooms have got new labels on them; the doors have all been numbered. think of that! think of the whispering when we came in, and the whispering afterward, in the housekeeper's room, when you got up to go away. you noticed the sudden change in that man's behavior after the housekeeper spoke to him--you must have noticed it? they let us in too easily, and they let us out too easily. no, no! i am not deluding myself. there was some secret motive for letting us into the house, and some secret motive for letting us out again. that boy on the moor betrays it, if nothing else does. i saw him following us all the way here, as plainly as i see you. i am not frightened without reason, this time. as surely as we two are together in this room, there is a trap laid for us by the people at porthgenna tower!" "a trap? what trap? and how? and why? and wherefore?" inquired uncle joseph, expressing bewilderment by waving both his hands rapidly to and fro close before his eyes. "they want to make me speak, they want to follow me, they want to find out where i go, they want to ask me questions," she answered, trembling violently. "uncle! you remember what i told you of those crazed words i said to mrs. frankland--i ought to have cut my tongue out rather than have spoken them! they have done dreadful mischief--i am certain of it--dreadful mischief already. i have made myself suspected! i shall be questioned, if mrs. frankland finds me out again. she will try to find me out--we shall be inquired after here--we must destroy all trace of where we go to next--we must make sure that the people at this inn can answer no questions--oh, uncle joseph! whatever we do, let us make sure of that!" "good," said the old man, nodding his head with a perfectly self-satisfied air. "be quite easy, my child, and leave it to me to make sure. when you are gone to bed, i shall send for the landlord, and i shall say, 'get us a little carriage, if you please, sir, to take us back again to-morrow to the coach for truro.'" "no, no, no! we must not hire a carriage here." "and i say, yes, yes, yes! we will hire a carriage here, because i will, first of all, make sure with the landlord. listen. i shall say to him, 'if there come after us people with inquisitive looks in their eyes and uncomfortable questions in their mouths--if you please, sir, hold your tongue.' then i shall wink my eye, i shall lay my finger, so, to the side of my nose, i shall give one little laugh that means much--and, crick! crack! i have made sure of the landlord! and there is an end of it!" "we must not trust the landlord, uncle--we must not trust any body. when we leave this place to-morrow, we must leave it on foot, and take care no living soul follows us. look! here is a map of west cornwall hanging up on the wall, with roads and cross-roads all marked on it. we may find out beforehand what direction we ought to walk in. a night's rest will give me all the strength i want; and we have no luggage that we can not carry. you have nothing but your knapsack, and i have nothing but the little carpet-bag you lent me. we can walk six, seven, even ten miles, with resting by the way. come here and look at the map--pray, pray come and look at the map!" protesting against the abandonment of his own project, which he declared, and sincerely believed, to be perfectly adapted to meet the emergency in which they were placed, uncle joseph joined his niece in examining the map. a little beyond the post-town, a cross-road was marked, running northward at right angles with the highway that led to truro, and conducting to another road, which looked large enough to be a coach-road, and which led through a town of sufficient importance to have its name printed in capital letters. on discovering this, sarah proposed that they should follow the cross-road (which did not appear on the map to be more than five or six miles long) on foot, abstaining from taking any conveyance until they had arrived at the town marked in capital letters. by pursuing this course, they would destroy all trace of their progress after leaving the post-town--unless, indeed, they were followed on foot from this place, as they had been followed over the moor. in the event of any fresh difficulty of that sort occurring, sarah had no better remedy to propose than lingering on the road till after nightfall, and leaving it to the darkness to baffle the vigilance of any person who might be watching in the distance to see where they went. uncle joseph shrugged his shoulders resignedly when his niece gave her reasons for wishing to continue the journey on foot. "there is much tramping through dust, and much looking behind us, and much spying and peeping and suspecting and roundabout walking in all this," he said. "it is by no means so easy, my child, as making sure of the landlord, and sitting at our ease on the cushions of the stage-coach. but if you will have it so, so shall it be. what you please, sarah; what you please--that is all the opinion of my own that i allow myself to have till we are back again at truro, and are rested for good and all at the end of our journey." "at the end of _your_ journey, uncle: i dare not say at the end of _mine_." those few words changed the old man's face in an instant. his eyes fixed reproachfully on his niece, his ruddy cheeks lost their color, his restless hands dropped suddenly to his sides. "sarah!" he said, in a low, quiet tone, which seemed to have no relation to the voice in which he spoke on ordinary occasions--"sarah! have you the heart to leave me again?" "have i the courage to stay in cornwall? that is the question to ask me, uncle. if i had only my own heart to consult, oh! how gladly i should live under your roof--live under it, if you would let me, to my dying day! but my lot is not cast for such rest and such happiness as that. the fear that i have of being questioned by mrs. frankland drives me away from porthgenna, away from cornwall, away from you. even my dread of the letter being found is hardly so great now as my dread of being traced and questioned. i have said what i ought not to have said already. if i find myself in mrs. frankland's presence again, there is nothing that she might not draw out of me. oh, my god! to think of that kind-hearted, lovely young woman, who brings happiness with her wherever she goes, bringing terror to _me_! terror when her pitying eyes look at me; terror when her kind voice speaks to me; terror when her tender hand touches mine! uncle! when mrs. frankland comes to porthgenna, the very children will crowd about her--every creature in that poor village will be drawn toward the light of her beauty and her goodness, as if it was the sunshine of heaven itself; and i--i, of all living beings--must shun her as if she was a pestilence! the day when she comes into cornwall is the day when i must go out of it--the day when we two must say farewell. don't, don't add to my wretchedness by asking me if i have the heart to leave you! for my dead mother's sake, uncle joseph, believe that i am grateful, believe that it is not my own will that takes me away when i leave you again." she sank down on a sofa near her, laid her head, with one long, deep sigh, wearily on the pillow, and spoke no more. the tears gathered thick in uncle joseph's eyes as he sat down by her side. he took one of her hands, and patted and stroked it as though he were soothing a little child. "i will bear it as well as i can, sarah," he whispered, faintly, "and i will say no more. you will write to me sometimes, when i am left all alone? you will give a little time to uncle joseph, for the poor dead mother's sake?" she turned toward him suddenly, and threw both her arms round his neck with a passionate energy that was strangely at variance with her naturally quiet self-repressed character. "i will write often, dear; i will write always," she whispered, with her head on his bosom. "if i am ever in any trouble or danger, you shall know it." she stopped confusedly, as if the freedom of her own words and actions terrified her, unclasped her arms, and, turning away abruptly from the old man, hid her face in her hands. the tyranny of the restraint that governed her whole life was all expressed--how sadly, how eloquently!--in that one little action. uncle joseph rose from the sofa, and walked gently backward and forward in the room, looking anxiously at his niece, but not speaking to her. after a while the servant came in to prepare the table for supper. it was a welcome interruption, for it obliged sarah to make an effort to recover her self-possession. after the meal was over, the uncle and niece separated at once for the night, without venturing to exchange another word on the subject of their approaching separation. when they met the next morning, the old man had not recovered his spirits. although he tried to speak as cheerfully as usual, there was something strangely subdued and quiet about him in voice, look, and manner. sarah's heart smote her as she saw how sadly he was altered by the prospect of their parting. she said a few words of consolation and hope; but he only waved his hand negatively, in his quaint foreign manner, and hastened out of the room to find the landlord and ask for the bill. soon after breakfast, to the surprise of the people at the inn, they set forth to continue their journey on foot, uncle joseph carrying his knapsack on his back, and his niece's carpet-bag in his hand. when they arrived at the turning that led into the cross-road, they both stopped and looked back. this time they saw nothing to alarm them. there was no living creature visible on the broad highway over which they had been walking for the last quarter of an hour after leaving the inn. "the way is clear," said uncle joseph, as they turned into the cross-road. "whatever might have happened yesterday, there is nobody following us now." "nobody that we can see," answered sarah. "but i distrust the very stones by the road-side. let us look back often, uncle, before we allow ourselves to feel secure. the more i think of it, the more i dread the snare that is laid for us by those people at porthgenna tower." "you say _us_, sarah. why should they lay a snare for _me_?" "because they have seen you in my company. you will be safer from them when we are parted; and that is another reason, uncle joseph, why we should bear the misfortune of our separation as patiently as we can." "are you going far, very far away, sarah, when you leave me?" "i dare not stop on my journey till i can feel that i am lost in the great world of london. don't look at me so sadly! i shall never forget my promise; i shall never forget to write. i have friends--not friends like you, but still friends--to whom i can go. i can feel safe from discovery nowhere but in london. my danger is great--it is, it is, indeed! i know, from what i have seen at porthgenna, that mrs. frankland has an interest already in finding me out; and i am certain that this interest will be increased tenfold when she hears (as she is sure to hear) of what happened yesterday in the house. if they _should_ trace you to truro, oh, be careful, uncle! be careful how you deal with them; be careful how you answer their questions!" "i will answer nothing, my child. but tell me--for i want to know all the little chances that there are of your coming back--tell me, if mrs. frankland finds the letter, what shall you do then?" at that question, sarah's hand, which had been resting languidly on her uncle's arm while they walked together, closed on it suddenly. "even if mrs. frankland gets into the myrtle room," she said, stopping and looking affrightedly about her while she replied, "she may not find the letter. it is folded up so small; it is hidden in such an unlikely place." "but if she does find it?" "if she does, there will be more reason than ever for my being miles and miles away." as she gave that answer, she raised both her hands to her heart, and pressed them firmly over it. a slight distortion passed rapidly across her features; her eyes closed; her face flushed all over--then turned paler again than ever. she drew out her pocket-handkerchief, and passed it several times over her face, on which the perspiration had gathered thickly. the old man, who had looked behind him when his niece stopped, under the impression that she had just seen somebody following them, observed this latter action, and asked if she felt too hot. she shook her head, and took his arm again to go on, breathing, as he fancied, with some difficulty. he proposed that they should sit down by the road-side and rest a little; but she only answered, "not yet." so they went on for another half-hour; then turned to look behind them again, and, still seeing nobody, sat down for a little while to rest on a bank by the way-side. after stopping twice more at convenient resting-places, they reached the end of the cross-road. on the highway to which it led them they were overtaken by a man driving an empty cart, who offered to give them a lift as far as the next town. they accepted the proposal gratefully; and, arriving at the town, after a drive of half an hour, were set down at the door of the principal inn. finding on inquiry at this place that they were too late for the coach, they took a private conveyance, which brought them to truro late in the afternoon. throughout the whole of the journey, from the time when they left the post-town of porthgenna to the time when they stopped, by sarah's desire, at the coach-office in truro, they had seen nothing to excite the smallest suspicion that their movements were being observed. none of the people whom they saw in the inhabited places, or whom they passed on the road, appeared to take more than the most casual notice of them. it was five o'clock when they entered the office at truro to ask about conveyances running in the direction of exeter. they were informed that a coach would start in an hour's time, and that another coach would pass through truro at eight o'clock the next morning. "you will not go to-night?" pleaded uncle joseph. "you will wait, my child, and rest with me till to-morrow?" "i had better go, uncle, while i have some little resolution left," was the sad answer. "but you are so pale, so tired, so weak." "i shall never be stronger than i am now. don't set my own heart against me! it is hard enough to go without that." uncle joseph sighed, and said no more. he led the way across the road and down the by-street to his house. the cheerful man in the shop was polishing a piece of wood behind the counter, sitting in the same position in which sarah had seen him when she first looked through the window on her arrival at truro. he had good news for his master of orders received, but uncle joseph listened absently to all that his shopman said, and hastened into the little back parlor without the faintest reflection of its customary smile on his face. "if i had no shop and no orders, i might go away with you, sarah," he said when he and his niece were alone. "aïe! aïe! the setting out on this journey has been the only happy part of it. sit down and rest, my child. i must put my best face upon it, and get you some tea." when the tea-tray had been placed on the table, he left the room, and returned, after an absence of some little time, with a basket in his hand. when the porter came to carry the luggage to the coach-office, he would not allow the basket to be taken away at the same time, but sat down and placed it between his feet while he occupied himself in pouring out a cup of tea for his niece. the musical box still hung at his side in its traveling-case of leather. as soon as he had poured out the cup of tea, he unbuckled the strap, removed the covering from the box, and placed it on the table near him. his eyes wandered hesitatingly toward sarah, as he did this; he leaned forward, his lips trembling a little, his hand trifling uneasily with the empty leather case that now lay on his knees, and said to her in low, unsteady tones-- "you will hear a little farewell song of mozart? it may be a long time, sarah, before he can play to you again. a little farewell song, my child, before you go?" his hand stole up gently from the leather case to the table, and set the box playing the same air that sarah had heard on the evening when she entered the parlor, after her journey from somersetshire, and found him sitting alone listening to the music. what depths of sorrow there were now in those few simple notes! what mournful memories of past times gathered and swelled in the heart at the bidding of that one little plaintive melody! sarah could not summon the courage to lift her eyes to the old man's face--they might have betrayed to him that she was thinking of the days when the box that he treasured so dearly played the air they were listening to now by the bedside of his dying child. the stop had not been set, and the melody, after it had come to an end, began again. but now, after the first few bars, the notes succeeded one another more and more slowly--the air grew less and less recognizable--dropped at last to three notes, following each other at long intervals--then ceased altogether. the chain that governed the action of the machinery had all run out; mozart's farewell song was silenced on a sudden, like a voice that had broken down. the old man started, looked earnestly at his niece, and threw the leather case over the box as if he desired to shut out the sight of it. "the music stopped so," he whispered to himself, in his own language, "when little joseph died! don't go!" he added quickly, in english, almost before sarah had time to feel surprised at the singular change that had taken place in his voice and manner. "don't go! think better of it, and stop with me." "i have no choice, uncle, but to leave you--indeed, indeed i have not! you don't think me ungrateful? comfort me at the last moment by telling me that!" he pressed her hand in silence, and kissed her on both cheeks. "my heart is very heavy for you, sarah," he said. "the fear has come to me that it is not for your own good that you are going away from uncle joseph now!" "i have no choice," she sadly repeated--"no choice but to leave you." "it is time, then, to get the parting over." the cloud of doubt and fear that had altered his face, from the moment when the music came to its untimely end, seemed to darken, when he had said those words. he took up the basket which he had kept so carefully at his feet, and led the way out in silence. they were barely in time; the driver was mounting to his seat when they got to the coach-office. "god preserve you, my child, and send you back to me soon, safe and well. take the basket on your lap; there are some little things in it for your journey." his voice faltered at the last word, and sarah felt his lips pressed on her hand. the next instant the door was closed, and she saw him dimly through her tears standing among the idlers on the pavement, who were waiting to see the coach drive off. by the time they were a little way out of the town she was able to dry her eyes and look into the basket. it contained a pot of jam and a horn spoon, a small inlaid work-box from the stock in the shop, a piece of foreign-looking cheese, a french roll, and a little paper packet of money, with the words "don't be angry" written on it, in uncle joseph's hand. sarah closed the cover of the basket again, and drew down her veil. she had not felt the sorrow of the parting in all its bitterness until that moment. oh, how hard it was to be banished from the sheltering home which was offered to her by the one friend she had left in the world! while that thought was in her mind, the old man was just closing the door of his lonely parlor. his eyes wandered to the tea-tray on the table and to sarah's empty cup, and he whispered to himself in his own language again-- "the music stopped so when little joseph died!" book v. chapter i. an old friend and a new scheme. in declaring, positively, that the boy whom she had seen digging on the moor had followed her uncle and herself to the post-town of porthgenna, sarah had asserted the literal truth. jacob had tracked them to the inn, had waited a little while about the door, to ascertain if there was any likelihood of their continuing their journey that evening, and had then returned to porthgenna tower to make his report, and to claim his promised reward. the same night, the housekeeper and the steward devoted themselves to the joint production of a letter to mrs. frankland, informing her of all that had taken place, from the time when the visitors first made their appearance, to the time when the gardener's boy had followed them to the door of the inn. the composition was plentifully garnished throughout with the flowers of mr. munder's rhetoric, and was, by a necessary consequence, inordinately long as a narrative, and hopelessly confused as a statement of facts. it is unnecessary to say that the letter, with all its faults and absurdities, was read by mrs. frankland with the deepest interest. her husband and mr. orridge, to both of whom she communicated its contents, were as much amazed and perplexed by it as she was herself. although the discovery of mrs. jazeph's departure for cornwall had led them to consider it within the range of possibility that she might appear at porthgenna, and although the housekeeper had been written to by rosamond under the influence of that idea, neither she nor her husband were quite prepared for such a speedy confirmation of their suspicions as they had now received. their astonishment, however, on first ascertaining the general purport of the letter, was as nothing compared with their astonishment when they came to those particular passages in it which referred to uncle joseph. the fresh element of complication imparted to the thickening mystery of mrs. jazeph and the myrtle room, by the entrance of the foreign stranger on the scene, and by his intimate connection with the extraordinary proceedings that had taken place in the house, fairly baffled them all. the letter was read again and again; was critically dissected paragraph by paragraph; was carefully annotated by the doctor, for the purpose of extricating all the facts that it contained from the mass of unmeaning words in which mr. munder had artfully and lengthily involved them; and was finally pronounced, after all the pains that had been taken to render it intelligible, to be the most mysterious and bewildering document that mortal pen had ever produced. the first practical suggestion, after the letter had been laid aside in despair, emanated from rosamond. she proposed that her husband and herself (the baby included, as a matter of course) should start at once for porthgenna, to question the servants minutely about the proceedings of mrs. jazeph and the foreign stranger who had accompanied her, and to examine the premises on the north side of the house, with a view to discovering a clew to the locality of the myrtle room, while events were still fresh in the memories of witnesses. the plan thus advocated, however excellent in itself, was opposed by mr. orridge on medical grounds. mrs. frankland had caught cold by exposing herself too carelessly to the air, on first leaving her room, and the doctor refused to grant her permission to travel for at least a week to come, if not for a longer period. the next proposal came from mr. frankland. he declared it to be perfectly clear to his mind that the only chance of penetrating the mystery of the myrtle room rested entirely on the discovery of some means of communicating with mrs. jazeph. he suggested that they should not trouble themselves to think of any thing unconnected with the accomplishment of this purpose; and he proposed that the servant then in attendance on him at west winston--a man who had been in his employment for many years, and whose zeal, activity, and intelligence could be thoroughly depended on--should be sent to porthgenna forthwith, to start the necessary inquiries, and to examine the premises carefully on the north side of the house. this advice was immediately acted on. at an hour's notice the servant started for cornwall, thoroughly instructed as to what he was to do, and well supplied with money, in case he found it necessary to employ many persons in making the proposed inquiries. in due course of time he sent a report of his proceedings to his master. it proved to be of a most discouraging nature. all trace of mrs. jazeph and her companion had been lost at the post-town of porthgenna. investigations had been made in every direction, but no reliable information had been obtained. people in totally different parts of the country declared readily enough that they had seen two persons answering to the description of the lady in the dark dress and the old foreigner; but when they were called upon to state the direction in which the two strangers were traveling, the answers received turned out to be of the most puzzling and contradictory kind. no pains had been spared, no necessary expenditure of money had been grudged; but, so far, no results of the slightest value had been obtained. whether the lady and the foreigner had gone east, west, north, or south, was more than mr. frankland's servant, at the present stage of the proceedings, could take it on himself to say. the report of the examination of the north rooms was not more satisfactory. here, again, nothing of any importance could be discovered. the servant had ascertained that there were twenty-two rooms on the uninhabited side of the house--six on the ground-floor opening into the deserted garden, eight on the first floor, and eight above that, on the second story. he had examined all the doors carefully from top to bottom, and had come to the conclusion that none of them had been opened. the evidence afforded by the lady's own actions led to nothing. she had, if the testimony of the servant could be trusted, dropped the keys on the floor of the hall. she was found, as the housekeeper and the steward asserted, lying, in a fainting condition, at the top of the landing of the first flight of stairs. the door opposite to her, in this position, showed no more traces of having been recently opened than any of the other doors of the other twenty-one rooms. whether the room to which she wished to gain access was one of the eight on the first floor, or whether she had fainted on her way up to the higher range of eight rooms on the second floor, it was impossible to determine. the only conclusions that could be fairly drawn from the events that had taken place in the house were two in number. first, it might be taken for granted that the lady had been disturbed before she had been able to use the keys to gain admission to the myrtle room. secondly, it might be assumed, from the position in which she was found on the stairs, and from the evidence relating to the dropping of the keys, that the myrtle room was not on the ground-floor, but was one of the sixteen rooms situated on the first and second stories. beyond this the writer of the report had nothing further to mention, except that he had ventured to decide on waiting at porthgenna, in the event of his master having any further instructions to communicate. what was to be done next? that was necessarily the first question suggested by the servant's announcement of the unsuccessful result of his inquiries at porthgenna. how it was to be answered was not very easy to discover. mrs. frankland had nothing to suggest, mr. frankland had nothing to suggest, the doctor had nothing to suggest. the more industriously they all three hunted through their minds for a new idea, the less chance there seemed to be of their succeeding in finding one. at last, rosamond proposed, in despair, that they should seek the advice of some fourth person who could be depended on; and asked her husband's permission to write a confidential statement of their difficulties to the vicar of long beckley. doctor chennery was their oldest friend and adviser; he had known them both as children; he was well acquainted with the history of their families; he felt a fatherly interest in their fortunes; and he possessed that invaluable quality of plain, clear-headed common-sense which marked him out as the very man who would be most likely, as well as most willing, to help them. mr. frankland readily agreed to his wife's suggestion; and rosamond wrote immediately to doctor chennery, informing him of every thing that had happened since mrs. jazeph's first introduction to her, and asking him for his opinion on the course of proceeding which it would be best for her husband and herself to adopt in the difficulty in which they were now placed. by return of post an answer was received, which amply justified rosamond's reliance on her old friend. doctor chennery not only sympathized heartily with the eager curiosity which mrs. jazeph's language and conduct had excited in the mind of his correspondent, but he had also a plan of his own to propose for ascertaining the position of the myrtle room. the vicar prefaced his suggestion by expressing a strong opinion against instituting any further search after mrs. jazeph. judging by the circumstances, as they were related to him, he considered that it would be the merest waste of time to attempt to find her out. accordingly he passed from that part of the subject at once, and devoted himself to the consideration of the more important question--how mr. and mrs. frankland were to proceed in the endeavor to discover for themselves the mystery of the myrtle room? on this point doctor chennery entertained a conviction of the strongest kind, and he warned rosamond beforehand that she must expect to be very much surprised when he came to the statement of it. taking it for granted that she and her husband could not hope to find out where the room was, unless they were assisted by some one better acquainted than themselves with the old local arrangements of the interior of porthgenna tower, the vicar declared it to be his opinion that there was only one individual living who could afford them the information they wanted, and that this person was no other than rosamond's own cross-grained relative, andrew treverton. this startling opinion doctor chennery supported by two reasons. in the first place, andrew was the only surviving member of the elder generation who had lived at porthgenna tower in the by-gone days when all traditions connected with the north rooms were still fresh in the memories of the inhabitants of the house. the people who lived in it now were strangers, who had been placed in their situations by mr. frankland's father; and the servants employed in former days by captain treverton were dead or dispersed. the one available person, therefore, whose recollections were likely to be of any service to mr. and mrs. frankland, was indisputably the brother of the old owner of porthgenna tower. in the second place, there was the chance, even if andrew treverton's memory was not to be trusted, that he might possess written or printed information relating to the locality of the myrtle room. by his father's will--which had been made when andrew was a young man just going to college, and which had not been altered at the period of his departure from england, or at any after-time--he had inherited the choice old collection of books in the library at porthgenna. supposing that he still preserved these heir-looms, it was highly probable that there might exist among them some plan, or some description of the house as it was in the olden time, which would supply all the information that was wanted. here, then, was another valid reason for believing that if a clew to the position of the myrtle room existed any where, andrew treverton was the man to lay his hand on it. assuming it, therefore, to be proved that the surly old misanthrope was the only person who could be profitably applied to for the requisite information, the next question was, how to communicate with him? the vicar understood perfectly that after andrew's inexcusably heartless conduct toward her father and mother, it was quite impossible for rosamond to address any direct application to him. the obstacle, however, might be surmounted by making the necessary communication proceed from doctor chennery. heartily as the vicar disliked andrew treverton personally, and strongly as he disapproved of the old misanthrope's principles, he was willing to set aside his own antipathies and objections to serve the interests of his young friends; and he expressed his perfect readiness to write and recall himself to andrew's recollection, and to ask, as if it was a matter of antiquarian curiosity, for information on the subject of the north side of porthgenna tower--including, of course, a special request to be made acquainted with the names by which the rooms had been individually known in former days. in making this offer, the vicar frankly acknowledged that he thought the chances were very much against his receiving any answer at all to his application, no matter how carefully he might word it, with a view to humoring andrew's churlish peculiarities. however, considering that, in the present posture of affairs, a forlorn hope was better than no hope at all, he thought it was at least worth while to make the attempt on the plan which he had just suggested. if mr. and mrs. frankland could devise any better means of opening communications with andrew treverton, or if they had discovered any new method of their own for obtaining the information of which they stood in need, doctor chennery was perfectly ready to set aside his own opinions and to defer to theirs. a very brief consideration of the vicar's friendly letter convinced rosamond and her husband that they had no choice but gratefully to accept the offer which it contained. the chances were certainly against the success of the proposed application; but were they more unfavorable than the chances against the success of any unaided investigations at porthgenna? there was, at least, a faint hope of doctor chennery's request for information producing some results; but there seemed no hope at all of penetrating a mystery connected with one room only, by dint of wandering, in perfect ignorance of what to search for, through two ranges of rooms which reached the number of sixteen. influenced by these considerations, rosamond wrote back to the vicar to thank him for his kindness, and to beg that he would communicate with andrew treverton, as he had proposed, without a moment's delay. doctor chennery immediately occupied himself in the composition of the important letter, taking care to make the application on purely antiquarian grounds, and accounting for his assumed curiosity on the subject of the interior of porthgenna tower by referring to his former knowledge of the treverton family, and to his natural interest in the old house with which their name and fortunes had been so closely connected. after appealing to andrew's early recollections for the information that he wanted, he ventured a step farther, and alluded to the library of old books, mentioning his own idea that there might be found among them some plan or verbal description of the house, which might prove to be of the greatest service, in the event of mr. treverton's memory not having preserved all particulars in connection with the names and positions of the north rooms. in conclusion, he took the liberty of mentioning that the loan of any document of the kind to which he had alluded, or the permission to have extracts made from it, would be thankfully acknowledged as a great favor conferred; and he added, in a postscript, that, in order to save mr. treverton all trouble, a messenger would call for any answer he might be disposed to give the day after the delivery of the letter. having completed the application in these terms, the vicar inclosed it under cover to his man of business in london, with directions that it was to be delivered by a trustworthy person, and that the messenger was to call again the next morning to know if there was any answer. three days after this letter had been dispatched to its destination--at which time no tidings of any sort had been received from doctor chennery--rosamond at last obtained her medical attendant's permission to travel. taking leave of mr. orridge, with many promises to let him know what progress they made toward discovering the myrtle room, mr. and mrs. frankland turned their backs on west winston, and for the third time started on the journey to porthgenna tower. chapter ii. the beginning of the end. it was baking-day in the establishment of mr. andrew treverton when the messenger intrusted with doctor chennery's letter found his way to the garden door of the cottage at bayswater. after he had rung three times, he heard a gruff voice, on the other side of the wall, roaring at him to let the bell alone, and asking who he was, and what the devil he wanted. "a letter for mr. treverton," said the messenger, nervously backing away from the door while he spoke. "chuck it over the wall, then, and be off with you!" answered the gruff voice. the messenger obeyed both injunctions. he was a meek, modest, elderly man; and when nature mixed up the ingredients of his disposition, the capability of resenting injuries was not among them. the man with the gruff voice--or, to put it in plainer terms, the man shrowl--picked up the letter, weighed it in his hand, looked at the address on it with an expression of contemptuous curiosity in his bull-terrier eyes, put it in his waistcoat pocket, and walked around lazily to the kitchen entrance of the cottage. in the apartment which would probably have been called the pantry, if the house had belonged to civilized tenants, a hand-mill had been set up; and, at the moment when shrowl made his way to this room, mr. treverton was engaged in asserting his independence of all the millers in england by grinding his own corn. he paused irritably in turning the handle of the mill when his servant appeared at the door. "what do you come here for?" he asked. "when the flour's ready, i'll call for you. don't let's look at each other oftener than we can help! i never set eyes on you, shrowl, but i ask myself whether, in the whole range of creation, there is any animal as ugly as man? i saw a cat this morning on the garden wall, and there wasn't a single point in which you would bear comparison with him. the cat's eyes were clear--yours are muddy. the cat's nose was straight--yours is crooked. the cat's whiskers were clean--yours are dirty. the cat's coat fitted him--yours hangs about you like a sack. i tell you again, shrowl, the species to which you (and i) belong is the ugliest on the whole face of creation. don't let us revolt each other by keeping in company any longer. go away, you last, worst, infirmest freak of nature--go away!" shrowl listened to this complimentary address with an aspect of surly serenity. when it had come to an end, he took the letter from his waistcoat pocket, without condescending to make any reply. he was, by this time, too thoroughly conscious of his own power over his master to attach the smallest importance to any thing mr. treverton might say to him. "now you've done your talking, suppose you take a look at that," said shrowl, dropping the letter carelessly on a deal table by his master's side. "it isn't often that people trouble themselves to send letters to you--is it? i wonder whether your niece has took a fancy to write to you? it was put in the papers the other day that she'd got a son and heir. open the letter, and see if it's an invitation to the christening. the company would be sure to want your smiling face at the table to make 'em jolly. just let me take a grind at the mill, while you go out and get a silver mug. the son and heir expects a mug you know, and his nurse expects half a guinea, and his mamma expects all your fortune. what a pleasure to make the three innocent creeturs happy! it's shocking to see you pulling wry faces, like that, over the letter. lord! lord! where can all your natural affection have gone to?--" "if i only knew where to lay my hand on a gag, i'd cram it into your infernal mouth!" cried mr. treverton. "how dare you talk to me about my niece? you wretch! you know i hate her for her mother's sake. what do you mean by harping perpetually on my fortune? sooner than leave it to the play-actress's child, i'd even leave it to you; and sooner than leave it to you, i would take every farthing of it out in a boat, and bury it forever at the bottom of the sea!" venting his dissatisfaction in these strong terms, mr. treverton snatched up doctor chennery's letter, and tore it open in a humor which by no means promised favorably for the success of the vicar's application. he read the letter with an ominous scowl on his face, which grew darker and darker as he got nearer and nearer to the end. when he came to the signature his humor changed, and he laughed sardonically. "faithfully yours, robert chennery," he repeated to himself. "yes! faithfully mine, if i humor your whim. and what if i don't, parson?" he paused, and looked at the letter again, the scowl re-appearing on his face as he did so. "there's a lie of some kind lurking about under these lines of fair writing," he muttered suspiciously. "_i_ am not one of his congregation: the law gives him no privilege of imposing on _me_. what does he mean by making the attempt?" he stopped again, reflected a little, looked up suddenly at shrowl, and said to him, "have you lit the oven fire yet?" "no, i hav'n't," answered shrowl. mr. treverton examined the letter for the third time--hesitated--then slowly tore it in half, and tossed the two pieces over contemptuously to his servant. "light the fire at once," he said. "and, if you want paper, there it is for you. stop!" he added, after shrowl had picked up the torn letter. "if any body comes here to-morrow morning to ask for an answer, tell them i gave you the letter to light the fire with, and say that's the answer." with those words mr. treverton returned to the mill, and began to grind at it again, with a grin of malicious satisfaction on his haggard face. shrowl withdrew into the kitchen, closed the door, and, placing the torn pieces of the letter together on the dresser, applied himself, with the coolest deliberation, to the business of reading it. when he had gone slowly and carefully through it, from the address at the beginning to the name at the end, he scratched reflectively for a little while at his ragged beard, then folded the letter up carefully and put it in his pocket. "i'll have another look at it later in the day," he thought to himself, tearing off a piece of an old newspaper to light the fire with. "it strikes me, just at present, that there may be better things done with this letter than burning it." resolutely abstaining from taking the letter out of his pocket again until all the duties of the household for that day had been duly performed, shrowl lit the fire, occupied the morning in making and baking the bread, and patiently took his turn afterward at digging in the kitchen garden. it was four o'clock in the afternoon before he felt himself at liberty to think of his private affairs, and to venture on retiring into solitude with the object of secretly looking over the letter once more. a second perusal of doctor chennery's unlucky application to mr. treverton helped to confirm shrowl in his resolution not to destroy the letter. with great pains and perseverance, and much incidental scratching at his beard, he contrived to make himself master of three distinct points in it, which stood out, in his estimation, as possessing prominent and serious importance. the first point which he contrived to establish clearly in his mind was that the person who signed the name of robert chennery was desirous of examining a plan, or printed account, of the north side of the interior of a certain old house in cornwall, called porthgenna tower. the second point appeared to resolve itself into this, that robert chennery believed some such plan or printed account might be found among the collection of books belonging to mr. treverton. the third point was that this same robert chennery would receive the loan of the plan or printed account as one of the greatest favors that could be conferred on him. meditating on the latter fact, with an eye exclusively fixed on the contemplation of his own interests, shrowl arrived at the conclusion that it might be well worth his while, in a pecuniary point of view, to try if he could not privately place himself in a position to oblige robert chennery by searching in secret among his master's books. "it might be worth a five-pound note to me, if i managed it well," thought shrowl, putting the letter back in his pocket again, and ascending the stairs thoughtfully to the lumber-rooms at the top of the house. these rooms were two in number, were entirely unfurnished, and were littered all over with the rare collection of books which had once adorned the library at porthgenna tower. covered with dust, and scattered in all directions and positions over the floor, lay hundreds and hundreds of volumes, cast out of their packing-cases as coals are cast out of their sacks into a cellar. ancient books, which students would have treasured as priceless, lay in chaotic equality of neglect side by side with modern publications whose chief merit was the beauty of the binding by which they were inclosed. into this wilderness of scattered volumes shrowl now wandered, fortified by the supreme self-possession of ignorance, to search resolutely for one particular book, with no other light to direct him than the faint glimmer of the two guiding words--porthgenna tower. having got them firmly fixed in his mind, his next object was to search until he found them printed on the first page of any one of the hundreds of volumes that lay around him. this was, for the time being, emphatically his business in life, and there he now stood, in the largest of the two attics, doggedly prepared to do it. he cleared away space enough with his feet to enable him to sit down comfortably on the floor, and then began to look over all the books that lay within arm's-length of him. odd volumes of rare editions of the classics, odd volumes of the english historians, odd volumes of plays by the elizabethan dramatists, books of travel, books of sermons, books of jests, books of natural history, books of sport, turned up in quaint and rapid succession; but no book containing on the title-page the words "porthgenna tower" rewarded the searching industry of shrowl for the first ten minutes after he had sat himself down on the floor. before removing to another position, and contending with a fresh accumulation of literary lumber, he paused and considered a little with himself, whether there might not be some easier and more orderly method than any he had yet devised of working his way through the scattered mass of volumes which yet remained to be examined. the result of his reflections was that it would be less confusing to him if he searched through the books in all parts of the room indifferently, regulating his selection of them solely by their various sizes; disposing of all the largest to begin with; then, after stowing them away together, proceeding to the next largest, and so going on until he came down at last to the pocket volumes. accordingly, he cleared away another morsel of vacant space near the wall, and then, trampling over the books as coolly as if they were so many clods of earth on a ploughed field, picked out the largest of all the volumes that lay on the floor. it was an atlas; shrowl turned over the maps, reflected, shook his head, and removed the volume to the vacant space which he had cleared close to the wall. the next largest book was a magnificently bound collection of engraved portraits of distinguished characters. shrowl saluted the distinguished characters with a grunt of gothic disapprobation, and carried them off to keep the atlas company against the wall. the third largest book lay under several others. it projected a little at one end, and it was bound in scarlet morocco. in another position, or bound in a quieter color, it would probably have escaped notice. shrowl drew it out with some difficulty, opened it with a portentous frown of distrust, looked at the title-page--and suddenly slapped his thigh with a great oath of exultation. there were the very two words of which he was in search, staring him in the face, as it were, with all the emphasis of the largest capital letters. he took a step toward the door to make sure that his master was not moving in the house; then checked himself and turned back. "what do i care," thought shrowl, "whether he sees me or not? if it comes to a tustle betwixt us which is to have his own way, i know who's master and who's servant in the house by this time." composing himself with that reflection, he turned to the first leaf of the book, with the intention of looking it over carefully, page by page, from beginning to end. the first leaf was a blank. the second leaf had an inscription written at the top of it, in faded ink, which contained these words and initials: "rare. only six copies printed. j. a. t." below, on the middle of the leaf, was the printed dedication: "to john arthur treverton, esquire, lord of the manor of porthgenna, one of his majesty's justices of the peace, f.r.s., etc., etc., etc., this work, in which an attempt is made to describe the ancient and honored mansion of his ancestors--" there were many more lines, filled to bursting with all the largest and most obsequious words to be found in the dictionary; but shrowl wisely abstained from giving himself the trouble of reading them, and turned over at once to the title-page. there were the all-important words: "the history and antiquities of porthgenna tower. from the period of its first erection to the present time; comprising interesting genealogical particulars relating to the treverton family; with an inquiry into the origin of gothic architecture, and a few thoughts on the theory of fortification after the period of the norman conquest. by the reverend job dark, d.d., rector of porthgenna. the whole adorned with portraits, views, and plans, executed in the highest style of art. not published. printed by spaldock and grimes, truro, ." that was the title-page. the next leaf contained an engraved view of porthgenna tower from the west. then came several pages devoted to the origin of gothic architecture. then more pages, explaining the norman theory of fortification. these were succeeded by another engraving--porthgenna tower from the east. after that followed more reading, under the title of the treverton family; and then came the third engraving--porthgenna tower from the north. shrowl paused there, and looked with interest at the leaf opposite the print. it only announced more reading still, about the erection of the mansion; and this was succeeded by engravings from family portraits in the gallery at porthgenna. placing his left thumb between the leaves to mark the place, shrowl impatiently turned to the end of the book, to see what he could find there. the last leaf contained a plan of the stables; the leaf before that presented a plan of the north garden; and on the next leaf, turning backward, was the very thing described in robert chennery's letter--a plan of the interior arrangement of the north side of the house! shrowl's first impulse on making this discovery was to carry the book away to the safest hiding-place he could find for it, preparatory to secretly offering it for sale when the messenger called the next morning for an answer to the letter. a little reflection, however, convinced him that a proceeding of this sort bore a dangerously close resemblance to the act of thieving, and might get him into trouble if the person with whom he desired to deal asked him any preliminary questions touching his right to the volume which he wanted to dispose of. the only alternative that remained was to make the best copy he could of the plan, and to traffic with that, as a document which the most scrupulous person in the world need not hesitate to purchase. resolving, after some consideration, to undergo the trouble of making the copy rather than run the risk of purloining the book, shrowl descended to the kitchen, took from one of the drawers of the dresser an old stump of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a crumpled half-sheet of dirty letter-paper, and returned to the garret to copy the plan as he best might. it was of the simplest kind, and it occupied but a small portion of the page; yet it presented to his eyes a hopelessly involved and intricate appearance when he now examined it for the second time. the rooms were represented by rows of small squares, with names neatly printed inside them; and the positions of doors, staircases, and passages were indicated by parallel lines of various lengths and breadths. after much cogitation, frowning, and pulling at his beard, it occurred to shrowl that the easiest method of copying the plan would be to cover it with the letter-paper--which, though hardly half the size of the page, was large enough to spread over the engraving on it--and then to trace the lines which he saw through the paper as carefully as he could with his pen and ink. he puffed and snorted and grumbled, and got red in the face over his task; but he accomplished it at last--bating certain drawbacks in the shape of blots and smears--in a sufficiently creditable manner; then stopped to let the ink dry and to draw his breath freely, before he attempted to do any thing more. the next obstacle to be overcome consisted in the difficulty of copying the names of the rooms, which were printed inside the squares. fortunately for shrowl, who was one of the clumsiest of mankind in the use of the pen, none of the names were very long. as it was, he found the greatest difficulty in writing them in sufficiently small characters to fit into the squares. one name in particular--that of the myrtle room--presented combinations of letters, in the word "myrtle," which tried his patience and his fingers sorely when he attempted to reproduce them. indeed, the result, in this case, when he had done his best, was so illegible, even to his eyes, that he wrote the word over again in larger characters at the top of the page, and connected it by a wavering line with the square which represented the myrtle room. the same accident happened to him in two other instances, and was remedied in the same way. with the rest of the names, however, he succeeded better; and, when he had finally completed the business of transcription by writing the title, "plan of the north side," his copy presented, on the whole, a more respectable appearance than might have been anticipated. after satisfying himself of its accuracy by a careful comparison of it with the original, he folded it up along with doctor chennery's letter, and deposited it in his pocket with a hoarse gasp of relief and a grim smile of satisfaction. the next morning the garden door of the cottage presented itself to the public eye in the totally new aspect of standing hospitably ajar; and one of the bare posts had the advantage of being embellished by the figure of shrowl, who leaned against it easily, with his legs crossed, his hands in his pockets, and his pipe in his mouth, looking out for the return of the messenger who had delivered doctor chennery's letter the day before. chapter iii. approaching the precipice. traveling from london to porthgenna, mr. and mrs. frankland had stopped, on the ninth of may, at the west winston station. on the eleventh of june they left it again to continue their journey to cornwall. on the thirteenth, after resting two nights upon the road, they arrived toward the evening at porthgenna tower. there had been storm and rain all the morning; it had lulled toward the afternoon, and at the hour when they reached the house the wind had dropped, a thick white fog hid the sea from view, and sudden showers fell drearily from time to time over the sodden land. not even a solitary idler from the village was hanging about the west terrace as the carriage containing mr. and mrs. frankland, the baby, and the two servants drove up to the house. no one was waiting with the door open to receive the travelers; for all hope of their arriving on that day had been given up, and the ceaseless thundering of the surf, as the stormy sea surged in on the beach beneath, drowned the roll of the carriage-wheels over the terrace road. the driver was obliged to leave his seat and ring at the bell for admittance. a minute or more elapsed before the door was opened. with the rain falling sullen and steady on the roof of the carriage, with the raw dampness of the atmosphere penetrating through all coverings and defenses, with the booming of the surf sounding threateningly near in the dense obscurity of the fog, the young couple waited for admission to their own home, as strangers might have waited who had called at an ill-chosen time. when the door was opened at last, the master and mistress, whom the servants would have welcomed with the proper congratulations on any other occasion, were now received with the proper apologies instead. mr. munder, mrs. pentreath, betsey, and mr. frankland's man all crowded together in the hall, and all begged pardon confusedly for not having been ready at the door when the carriage drove up. the appearance of the baby changed the conventional excuses of the housekeeper and the maid into conventional expressions of admiration; but the men remained grave and gloomy, and spoke of the miserable weather apologetically, as if the rain and the fog had been of their own making. the reason for their persistency in dwelling on this one dreary topic came out while mr. and mrs. frankland were being conducted up the west staircase. the storm of the morning had been fatal to three of the porthgenna fishermen, who had been lost with their boat at sea, and whose deaths had thrown the whole village into mourning. the servants had done nothing but talk of the catastrophe ever since the intelligence of it had reached them early in the afternoon; and mr. munder now thought it his duty to explain that the absence of the villagers, on the occasion of the arrival of his master and mistress, was entirely attributable to the effect produced among the little community by the wreck of the fishing-boat. under any less lamentable circumstances the west terrace would have been crowded, and the appearance of the carriage would have been welcomed with cheers. "lenny, i almost wish we had waited a little longer before we came here," whispered rosamond, nervously pressing her husband's arm. "it is very dreary and disheartening to return to my first home on such a day as this. that story of the poor fishermen is a sad story, love, to welcome me back to the place of my birth. let us send the first thing to-morrow morning, and see what we can do for the poor helpless women and children. i shall not feel easy in my mind, after hearing that story, till we have done something to comfort them." "i trust you will approve of the repairs, ma'am," said the housekeeper, pointing to the staircase which led to the second story. "the repairs?" said rosamond, absently. "repairs! i never hear the word now, without thinking of the north rooms, and of the plans we devised for getting my poor dear father to live in them. mrs. pentreath, i have a host of questions to ask you and mr. munder about all the extraordinary things that happened when the mysterious lady and the incomprehensible foreigner came here. but tell me first--this is the west front, i suppose?--how far are we from the north rooms? i mean, how long would it take us to get to them, if we wanted to go now to that part of the house?" "oh, dear me, ma'am, not five minutes!" answered mrs. pentreath. "not five minutes!" repeated rosamond, whispering to her husband again. "do you hear that, lenny? in five minutes we might be in the myrtle room!" "yet," said mr. frankland, smiling, "in our present state of ignorance, we are just as far from it as if we were at west winston still." "i can't think that, lenny. it may be only my fancy, but now we are on the spot i feel as if we had driven the mystery into its last hiding-place. we are actually in the house that holds the secret; and nothing will persuade me that we are not half-way already toward finding it out. but don't let us stop on this cold landing. which way are we to go next?" "this way, ma'am," said mr. munder, seizing the first opportunity of placing himself in a prominent position. "there is a fire in the drawing-room. will you allow me the honor of leading and conducting you, sir, to the apartment in question?" he added, officiously stretching out his hand to mr. frankland. "certainly not!" interposed rosamond sharply. she had noticed with her usual quickness of observation that mr. munder wanted the delicacy of feeling which ought to have restrained him from staring curiously at his blind master in her presence, and she was unfavorably disposed toward him in consequence. "wherever the apartment in question may happen to be," she continued with satirical emphasis, "i will lead mr. frankland to it, if you please. if you want to make yourself useful, you had better go on before us, and open the door." outwardly crest-fallen, but inwardly indignant, mr. munder led the way to the drawing-room. the fire burned brightly, the old-fashioned furniture displayed itself to the most picturesque advantage, the paper on the walls looked comfortably mellow, the carpet, faded as it was, felt soft and warm underfoot. rosamond led her husband to an easy chair by the fireside, and began to feel at home for the first time. "this looks really comfortable," she said. "when we have shut out that dreary white fog, and the candles are lit, and the tea is on the table, we shall have nothing in the world to complain of. you enjoy this nice warm atmosphere, don't you, lenny? there is a piano in the room, my dear; i can play to you in the evening at porthgenna just as i used in london. nurse, sit down and make yourself and the baby as comfortable as you can. before we take our bonnets off, i must go away with mrs. pentreath and see about the bedrooms. what is your name, you very rosy, good-natured looking girl? betsey, is it? well, then, betsey, suppose you go down and get the tea; and we shall like you all the better if you can contrive to bring us some cold meat with it." giving her orders in those good-humored terms, and not noticing that her husband looked a little uneasy while she was talking so familiarly to a servant, rosamond left the room in company with mrs. pentreath. when she returned, her face and manner were altered: she looked and spoke seriously and quietly. "i hope i have arranged every thing for the best, lenny," she said. "the airiest and largest room, mrs. pentreath tells me, is the room in which my mother died. but i thought we had better not make use of that: i felt as if it chilled and saddened me only to look at it. farther on, along the passage, there is a room that was my nursery. i almost fancied, when mrs. pentreath told me she had heard i used to sleep there, that i remembered the pretty little arched door-way leading into the second room--the night-nursery it used to be called in former days. i have ordered the fire to be lit there, and the beds to be made. there is a third room on the right hand, which communicates with the day-nursery. i think we might manage to establish ourselves very comfortably in the three rooms--if you felt no objection--though they are not so large or so grandly furnished as the company bedrooms. i will change the arrangement, if you like--but the house looks rather lonesome and dreary, just at first--and my heart warms to the old nursery--and i think we might at least try it, to begin with, don't you, lenny?" mr. frankland was quite of his wife's opinion, and was ready to accede to any domestic arrangements that she might think fit to make. while he was assuring her of this the tea came up, and the sight of it helped to restore rosamond to her usual spirits. when the meal was over, she occupied herself in seeing the baby comfortably established for the night, in the room on the right hand which communicated with the day-nursery. that maternal duty performed, she came back to her husband in the drawing-room; and the conversation between them turned--as it almost always turned now when they were alone--on the two perplexing subjects of mrs. jazeph and the myrtle room. "i wish it was not night," said rosamond. "i should like to begin exploring at once. mind, lenny, you must be with me in all my investigations. i lend you my eyes, and you give me your advice. you must never lose patience, and never tell me that you can be of no use. how i do wish we were starting on our voyage of discovery at this very moment! but we may make inquiries, at any rate," she continued, ringing the bell. "let us have the housekeeper and the steward up, and try if we can't make them tell us something more than they told us in their letter." the bell was answered by betsey. rosamond desired that mr. munder and mrs. pentreath might be sent up stairs. betsey having heard mrs. frankland express her intention of questioning the housekeeper and the steward, guessed why they were wanted, and smiled mysteriously. "did _you_ see any thing of those strange visitors who behaved so oddly?" asked rosamond, detecting the smile. "yes, i am sure you did. tell us what you saw. we want to hear every thing that happened--every thing, down to the smallest trifle." appealed to in these direct terms, betsey contrived, with much circumlocution and confusion, to relate what her own personal experience had been of the proceedings of mrs. jazeph and her foreign companion. when she had done, rosamond stopped her on her way to the door by asking this question-- "you say the lady was found lying in a fainting-fit at the top of the stairs. have you any notion, betsey, why she fainted?" the servant hesitated. "come! come!" said rosamond. "you have some notion, i can see. tell us what it is." "i'm afraid you will be angry with me, ma'am," said betsey, expressing embarrassment by drawing lines slowly with her forefinger on a table at her side. "nonsense! i shall only be angry with you if you won't speak. why do you think the lady fainted?" betsey drew a very long line with her embarrassed forefinger, wiped it afterward on her apron, and answered-- "i think she fainted, if you please, ma'am, because she see the ghost." "the ghost! what! is there a ghost in the house? lenny, here is a romance that we never expected. what sort of ghost is it? let us have the whole story." the whole story, as betsey told it, was not of a nature to afford her hearers any extraordinary information, or to keep them very long in suspense. the ghost was a lady who had been at a remote period the wife of one of the owners of porthgenna tower, and who had been guilty of deceiving her husband in some way unknown. she had been condemned in consequence to walk about the north rooms as long as ever the walls of them held together. she had long, curling, light-brown hair, and very white teeth, and a dimple in each cheek, and was altogether "awful beautiful" to look at. her approach was heralded to any mortal creature who was unfortunate enough to fall in her way by the blowing of a cold wind, and nobody who had once felt that wind had the slightest chance of ever feeling warm again. that was all betsey knew about the ghost; and it was in her opinion enough to freeze a person's blood only to think of it. rosamond smiled, then looked grave again. "i wish you could have told us a little more," she said. "but, as you can not, we must try mrs. pentreath and mr. munder next. send them up here, if you please, betsey, as soon as you get down stairs." the examination of the housekeeper and the steward led to no result whatever. nothing more than they had already communicated in their letter to mrs. frankland could be extracted from either of them. mr. munder's dominant idea was that the foreigner had entered the doors of porthgenna tower with felonious ideas on the subject of the family plate. mrs. pentreath concurred in that opinion, and mentioned, in connection with it, her own private impression that the lady in the quiet dress was an unfortunate person who had escaped from a mad-house. as to giving a word of advice, or suggesting a plan for solving the mystery, neither the housekeeper nor the steward appeared to think that the rendering of any assistance of that sort lay at all within their province. they took their own practical view of the suspicious conduct of the two strangers, and no mortal power could persuade them to look an inch beyond it. "oh, the stupidity, the provoking, impenetrable, pretentious stupidity of respectable english servants!" exclaimed rosamond, when she and her husband were alone again. "no help, lenny, to be hoped for from either of those two people. we have nothing to trust to now but the examination of the house to-morrow; and that resource may fail us, like all the rest. what can doctor chennery be about? why did we not hear from him before we left west winston?" "patience, rosamond, patience. we shall see what the post brings to-morrow." "pray don't talk about patience, dear! my stock of that virtue was never a very large one, and it was all exhausted ten days ago, at least. oh, the weeks and weeks i have been vainly asking myself--why should mrs. jazeph warn me against going into the myrtle room? is she afraid of my discovering a crime? or afraid of my tumbling through the floor? what did she want to do in the room, when she made that attempt to get into it? why, in the name of wonder, should she know something about this house that i never knew, that my father never knew, that nobody else--" "rosamond!" cried mr. frankland, suddenly changing color, and starting in his chair--"i think i can guess who mrs. jazeph is!" "good gracious, lenny! what do you mean?" "something in those last words of yours started the idea in my mind the instant you spoke. do you remember, when we were staying at st. swithin's-on-sea, and talking about the chances for and against our prevailing on your father to live with us here--do you remember, rosamond, telling me at that time of certain unpleasant associations which he had with the house, and mentioning among them the mysterious disappearance of a servant on the morning of your mother's death?" rosamond turned pale at the question. "how came we never to think of that before?" she said. "you told me," pursued mr. frankland, "that this servant left a strange letter behind her, in which she confessed that your mother had charged her with the duty of telling a secret to your father--a secret that she was afraid to divulge, and that she was afraid of being questioned about. i am right, am i not, in stating those two reasons as the reasons she gave for her disappearance?" "quite right." "and your father never heard of her again?" "never!" "it is a bold guess to make, rosamond, but the impression is strong on my mind that, on the day when mrs. jazeph came into your room at west winston, you and that servant met, and _she_ knew it!" "and the secret, dear--the secret she was afraid to tell my father?" "must be in some way connected with the myrtle room." rosamond said nothing in answer. she rose from her chair, and began to walk agitatedly up and down the room. hearing the rustle of her dress, leonard called her to him, and, taking her hand, laid his fingers on her pulse, and then lifted them for a moment to her cheek. "i wish i had waited until to-morrow morning before i told you my idea about mrs. jazeph," he said. "i have agitated you to no purpose whatever, and have spoiled your chance of a good night's rest." "no, no! nothing of the kind. oh, lenny, how this guess of yours adds to the interest--the fearful, breathless interest--we have in tracing that woman, and in finding out the myrtle room. do you think--?" "i have done with thinking for the night, my dear; and you must have done with it too. we have said more than enough about mrs. jazeph already. change the subject, and i will talk of any thing else you please." "it is not so easy to change the subject," said rosamond, pouting, and moving away to walk up and down the room again. "then let us change the place, and make it easier that way. i know you think me the most provokingly obstinate man in the world, but there is reason in my obstinacy, and you will acknowledge as much when you awake to-morrow morning refreshed by a good night's rest. come, let us give our anxieties a holiday. take me into one of the other rooms, and let me try if i can guess what it is like by touching the furniture." the reference to his blindness which the last words contained brought rosamond to his side in a moment. "you always know best," she said, putting her arm round his neck and kissing him. "i was looking cross, love, a minute ago, but the clouds are all gone now. we will change the scene, and explore some other room, as you propose." she paused, her eyes suddenly sparkled, her color rose, and she smiled to herself as if some new fancy had that instant crossed her mind. "lenny, i will take you where you shall touch a very remarkable piece of furniture indeed," she resumed, leading him to the door while she spoke. "we will see if you can tell me at once what it is like. you must not be impatient, mind; and you must promise to touch nothing till you feel me guiding your hand." she drew him after her along the passage, opened the door of the room in which the baby had been put to bed, made a sign to the nurse to be silent, and, leading leonard up to the cot, guided his hand down gently, so as to let the tips of his fingers touch the child's cheek. "there, sir!" she cried, her face beaming with happiness as she saw the sudden flush of surprise and pleasure which changed her husband's natural quiet, subdued expression in an instant. "what do you say to that piece of furniture? is it a chair, or a table? or is it the most precious thing in all the house, in all cornwall, in all england, in all the world? kiss it, and see what it is--a bust of a baby by a sculptor, or a living cherub by your wife!" she turned, laughing, to the nurse--"hannah, you look so serious that i am sure you must be hungry. have you had your supper yet?" the woman smiled, and answered that she had arranged to go down stairs, as soon as one of the servants could relieve her in taking care of the child. "go at once," said rosamond. "i will stop here and look after the baby. get your supper, and come back again in half an hour." when the nurse had left the room, rosamond placed a chair for leonard by the side of the cot, and seated herself on a low stool at his knees. her variable disposition seemed to change again when she did this; her face grew thoughtful, her eyes softened, as they turned, now on her husband, now on the bed in which the child was sleeping by his side. after a minute or two of silence, she took one of his hands, placed it on his knee, and laid her cheek gently down on it. "lenny," she said, rather sadly, "i wonder whether we are any of us capable of feeling perfect happiness in this world?" "what makes you ask that question, my dear?" "i fancy that i could feel perfect happiness, and yet--" "and yet what?" "and yet it seems as if, with all my blessings, that blessing was never likely to be granted to me. i should be perfectly happy now but for one little thing. i suppose you can't guess what that thing is?" "i would rather you told me, rosamond." "ever since our child was born, love, i have had a little aching at the heart--especially when we are all three together, as we are now--a little sorrow that i can't quite put away from me on your account." "on my account! lift up your head, rosamond, and come nearer to me. i feel something on my hand which tells me that you are crying." she rose directly, and laid her face close to his. "my own love," she said, clasping her arms fast round him. "my own heart's darling, you have never seen our child." "yes, rosamond, i see him with your eyes." "oh, lenny! i tell you every thing i can--i do my best to lighten the cruel, cruel darkness which shuts you out from that lovely little face lying so close to you! but can i tell you how he looks when he first begins to take notice? can i tell you all the thousand pretty things he will do when he first tries to talk? god has been very merciful to us--but, oh, how much more heavily the sense of your affliction weighs on me now when i am more to you than your wife--now when i am the mother of your child!" "and yet that affliction ought to weigh lightly on your spirits, rosamond, for you have made it weigh lightly on mine." "have i? really and truly, have i? it is something noble to live for, lenny, if i can live for that! it is some comfort to hear you say, as you said just now, that you see with my eyes. they shall always serve you--oh, always! always!--as faithfully as if they were your own. the veriest trifle of a visible thing that i look at with any interest, you shall as good as look at too. i might have had my own little harmless secrets, dear, with another husband; but with you to have even so much as a thought in secret seems like taking the basest, the cruelest advantage of your blindness. i do love you so, lenny! i am so much fonder of you now than i was when we were first married--i never thought i should be, but i am. you are so much handsomer to me, so much cleverer to me, so much more precious to me in every way. but i am always telling you that, am i not? do you get tired of hearing me? no? are you sure of that? very, very, very sure?" she stopped, and looked at him earnestly, with a smile on her lips, and the tears still glistening in her eyes. just then the child stirred a little in his cot, and drew her attention away. she arranged the bed-clothes over him, watched him in silence for a little while, then sat down again on the stool at leonard's feet. "baby has turned his face quite round toward you now," she said. "shall i tell you exactly how he looks, and what his bed is like, and how the room is furnished?" without waiting for an answer, she began to describe the child's appearance and position with the marvelous minuteness of a woman's observation. while she proceeded, her elastic spirits recovered themselves, and its naturally bright happy expression re-appeared on her face. by the time the nurse returned to her post, rosamond was talking with all her accustomed vivacity, and amusing her husband with all her accustomed success. when they went back to the drawing-room, she opened the piano and sat down to play. "i must give you your usual evening concert, lenny," she said, "or i shall be talking again on the forbidden subject of the myrtle room." she played some of mr. frankland's favorite airs, with a certain union of feeling and fancifulness in her execution of the music, which seemed to blend the charm of her own disposition with the charm of the melodies which sprang into life under her touch. after playing through the airs she could remember most easily, she ended with the last waltz of weber. it was leonard's favorite, and it was always reserved on that account to grace the close of the evening's performance. she lingered longer than usual over the last plaintive notes of the waltz; then suddenly left the piano, and hastened across the room to the fire-place. "surely it has turned much colder within the last minute or two," she said, kneeling down on the rug, and holding her face and hands over the fire. "has it?" returned leonard. "i don't feel any change." "perhaps i have caught cold," said rosamond. "or perhaps," she added, laughing rather uneasily, "the wind that goes before the ghostly lady of the north rooms has been blowing over me. i certainly felt something like a sudden chill, lenny, while i was playing the last notes of weber." "nonsense, rosamond. you are overfatigued and overexcited. tell your maid to make you some hot wine and water, and lose no time in getting to bed." rosamond cowered closer over the fire. "it's lucky i am not superstitious," she said, "or i might fancy that i was predestined to see the ghost." chapter iv. standing on the brink. the first night at porthgenna passed without the slightest noise or interruption of any kind. no ghost, or dream of a ghost, disturbed the soundness of rosamond's slumbers. she awoke in her usual spirits and her usual health, and was out in the west garden before breakfast. the sky was cloudy, and the wind veered about capriciously to all the points of the compass. in the course of her walk rosamond met with the gardener, and asked him what he thought about the weather. the man replied that it might rain again before noon, but that, unless he was very much mistaken, it was going to turn to heat in the course of the next four-and-twenty hours. "pray, did you ever hear of a room on the north side of our old house called the myrtle room?" inquired rosamond. she had resolved, on rising that morning, not to lose a chance of making the all-important discovery for want of asking questions of every body in the neighborhood; and she began with the gardener accordingly. "i never heard tell of it, ma'am," said the man. "but it's a likely name enough, considering how the myrtles do grow in these parts." "are there any myrtles growing at the north side of the house?" asked rosamond, struck with the idea of tracing the mysterious room by searching for it outside the building instead of inside. "i mean close to the walls," she added, seeing the man look puzzled; "under the windows, you know?" "i never see any thing under the windows in my time but weeds and rubbish," replied the gardener. just then the breakfast-bell rang. rosamond returned to the house, determined to explore the north garden, and if she found any relic of a bed of myrtles to mark the window above it, and to have the room which that window lighted opened immediately. she confided this new scheme to her husband. he complimented her on her ingenuity, but confessed that he had no great hope of any discoveries being made out of doors, after what the gardener had said about the weeds and rubbish. as soon as breakfast was over, rosamond rang the bell to order the gardener to be in attendance, and to say that the keys of the north rooms would be wanted. the summons was answered by mr. frankland's servant, who brought up with him the morning's supply of letters, which the postman had just delivered. rosamond turned them over eagerly, pounced on one with an exclamation of delight, and said to her husband--"the long beckley postmark! news from the vicar, at last!" she opened the letter and ran her eye over it--then suddenly dropped it in her lap with her face all in a glow. "lenny!" she exclaimed, "there is news here that is positively enough to turn one's head. i declare the vicar's letter has quite taken away my breath!" "read it," said mr. frankland; "pray read it at once." rosamond complied with the request in a very faltering, unsteady voice. doctor chennery began his letter by announcing that his application to andrew treverton had remained unanswered; but he added that it had, nevertheless, produced results which no one could possibly have anticipated. for information on the subject of those results, he referred mr. and mrs. frankland to a copy subjoined of a communication marked private, which he had received from his man of business in london. the communication contained a detailed report of an interview which had taken place between mr. treverton's servant and the messenger who had called for an answer to doctor chennery's letter. shrowl, it appeared, had opened the interview by delivering his master's message, had then produced the vicar's torn letter and the copy of the plan, and had announced his readiness to part with the latter for the consideration of a five-pound note. the messenger had explained that he had no power to treat for the document, and had advised mr. treverton's servant to wait on doctor chennery's agent. after some hesitation, shrowl had decided to do this, on pretense of going out on an errand--had seen the agent--had been questioned about how he became possessed of the copy--and, finding that there would be no chance of disposing of it unless he answered all inquiries, had related the circumstances under which the copy had been made. after hearing his statement, the agent had engaged to apply immediately for instructions to doctor chennery; and had written accordingly, mentioning in a postscript that he had seen the transcribed plan, and had ascertained that it really exhibited the positions of doors, staircases, and rooms, with the names attached to them. resuming his own letter, doctor chennery proceeded to say that he must now leave it entirely to mr. and mrs. frankland to decide what course they ought to adopt. he had already compromised himself a little in his own estimation, by assuming a character which really did not belong to him, when he made his application to andrew treverton; and he felt he could personally venture no further in the affair, either by expressing an opinion or giving any advice, now that it had assumed such a totally new aspect. he felt quite sure that his young friends would arrive at the wise and the right decision, after they had maturely considered the matter in all its bearings. in that conviction, he had instructed his man of business not to stir in the affair until he had heard from mr. frankland, and to be guided entirely by any directions which that gentleman might give. "directions!" exclaimed rosamond, crumpling up the letter in a high state of excitement as soon as she had read to the end of it. "all the directions we have to give may be written in a minute and read in a second! what in the world does the vicar mean by talking about mature consideration? of course," cried rosamond, looking, womanlike, straight on to the purpose she had in view, without wasting a thought on the means by which it was to be achieved--"of course we give the man his five-pound note, and get the plan by return of post!" mr. frankland shook his head gravely. "quite impossible," he said. "if you think for a moment, my dear, you will surely see that it is out of the question to traffic with a servant for information that has been surreptitiously obtained from his master's library." "oh, dear! dear! don't say that!" pleaded rosamond, looking quite aghast at the view her husband took of the matter. "what harm are we doing, if we give the man his five pounds? he has only made a copy of the plan: he has not stolen any thing." "he has stolen information, according to my idea of it," said leonard. "well, but if he has," persisted rosamond, "what harm does it do to his master? in my opinion his master deserves to have the information stolen, for not having had the common politeness to send it to the vicar. we _must_ have the plan--oh, lenny, don't shake your head, please!--we must have it, you know we must! what is the use of being scrupulous with an old wretch (i must call him so, though he _is_ my uncle) who won't conform to the commonest usages of society? you can't deal with him--and i am sure the vicar would say so, if he was here--as you would with civilized people, or people in their senses, which every body says he is not. what use is the plan of the north rooms to him? and, besides, if it is of any use, he has got the original; so his information is not stolen, after all, because he has got it the whole time--has he not, dear?" "rosamond! rosamond!" said leonard, smiling at his wife's transparent sophistries, "you are trying to reason like a jesuit." "i don't care who i reason like, love, as long as i get the plan." mr. frankland still shook his head. finding her arguments of no avail, rosamond wisely resorted to the immemorial weapon of her sex--persuasion; using it at such close quarters and to such good purposes that she finally won her husband's reluctant consent to a species of compromise, which granted her leave to give directions for purchasing the copied plan on one condition. this condition was that they should send back the plan to mr. treverton as soon as it had served their purpose; making a full acknowledgment to him of the manner in which it had been obtained, and pleading in justification of the proceeding his own want of courtesy in withholding information, of no consequence in itself, which any one else in his place would have communicated as a matter of course. rosamond tried hard to obtain the withdrawal or modification of this condition; but her husband's sensitive pride was not to be touched, on that point, with impunity, even by her light hand. "i have done too much violence already to my own convictions," he said, "and i will now do no more. if we are to degrade ourselves by dealing with this servant, let us at least prevent him from claiming us as his accomplices. write in my name, rosamond, to doctor chennery's man of business, and say that we are willing to purchase the transcribed plan on the condition that i have stated--which condition he will of course place before the servant in the plainest possible terms." "and suppose the servant refuses to risk losing his place, which he must do if he accepts your condition?" said rosamond, going rather reluctantly to the writing-table. "let us not worry ourselves, my dear, by supposing any thing. let us wait and hear what happens, and act accordingly. when you are ready to write, tell me, and i will dictate your letter on this occasion. i wish to make the vicar's man of business understand that we act as we do, knowing, in the first place, that mr. andrew treverton can not be dealt with according to the established usages of society; and knowing, in the second place, that the information which his servant offers to us is contained in an extract from a printed book, and is in no way, directly or indirectly, connected with mr. treverton's private affairs. now that you have made me consent to this compromise, rosamond, i must justify it as completely as possible to others as well as to myself." seeing that his resolution was firmly settled, rosamond had tact enough to abstain from saying any thing more. the letter was written exactly as leonard dictated it. when it had been placed in the post-bag, and when the other letters of the morning had been read and answered, mr. frankland reminded his wife of the intention she had expressed at breakfast-time of visiting the north garden, and requested that she would take him there with her. he candidly acknowledged that, since he had been made acquainted with doctor chennery's letter, he would give five times the sum demanded by shrowl for the copy of the plan if the myrtle room could be discovered, without assistance from any one, before the letter to the vicar's man of business was put into the post. nothing would give him so much pleasure, he said, as to be able to throw it into the fire, and to send a plain refusal to treat for the plan in its place. they went into the north garden, and there rosamond's own eyes convinced her that she had not the slightest chance of discovering any vestige of a myrtle-bed near any one of the windows. from the garden they returned to the house, and had the door opened that led into the north hall. they were shown the place on the pavement where the keys had been found, and the place at the top of the first flight of stairs where mrs. jazeph had been discovered when the alarm was given. at mr. frankland's suggestion, the door of the room which immediately fronted this spot was opened. it presented a dreary spectacle of dust and dirt and dimness. some old pictures were piled against one of the walls, some tattered chairs were heaped together in the middle of the floor, some broken china lay on the mantel-piece, and a rotten cabinet, cracked through from top to bottom, stood in one corner. these few relics of the furnishing and fitting-up of the room were all carefully examined, but nothing of the smallest importance--nothing tending in the most remote degree to clear up the mystery of the myrtle room--was discovered. "shall we have the other doors opened?" inquired rosamond when they came out on the landing again. "i think it will be useless," replied her husband. "our only hope of finding out the mystery of the myrtle room--if it is as deeply hidden from us as i believe it to be--is by searching for it in that room, and no other. the search, to be effectual, must extend, if we find it necessary, to the pulling up of the floor and wainscots--perhaps even to the dismantling of the walls. we may do that with one room when we know where it is, but we can not, by any process short of pulling the whole side of the house down, do it with the sixteen rooms, through which our present ignorance condemns us to wander without guide or clew. it is hopeless enough to be looking for we know not what; but let us discover, if we can, where the four walls are within which that unpromising search must begin and end. surely the floor of the landing must be dusty? are there no foot-marks on it, after mrs. jazeph's visit, that might lead us to the right door?" this suggestion led to a search for footsteps on the dusty floor of the landing, but nothing of the sort could be found. matting had been laid down over the floor at some former period, and the surface, torn, ragged, and rotten with age, was too uneven in every part to allow the dust to lie smoothly on it. here and there, where there was a hole through to the boards of the landing, mr. frankland's servant thought he detected marks in the dust which might have been produced by the toe or the heel of a shoe; but these faint and doubtful indications lay yards and yards apart from each other, and to draw any conclusion of the slightest importance from them was simply and plainly impossible. after spending more than an hour in examining the north side of the house, rosamond was obliged to confess that the servants were right when they predicted, on first opening the door in the hall, that she would discover nothing. "the letter must go, lenny," she said, when they returned to the breakfast-room. "there is no help for it," answered her husband. "send away the post-bag, and let us say no more about it." the letter was dispatched by that day's post. in the remote position of porthgenna, and in the unfinished state of the railroad at that time, two days would elapse before an answer from london could be reasonably hoped for. feeling that it would be better for rosamond if this period of suspense was passed out of the house, mr. frankland proposed to fill up the time by a little excursion along the coast to some places famous for their scenery, which would be likely to interest his wife, and which she might occupy herself pleasantly in describing on the spot for the benefit of her husband. this suggestion was immediately acted on. the young couple left porthgenna, and only returned on the evening of the second day. on the morning of the third day the longed-for letter from the vicar's man of business lay on the table when leonard and rosamond entered the breakfast-room. shrowl had decided to accept mr. frankland's condition--first, because he held that any man must be out of his senses who refused a five-pound note when it was offered to him; secondly, because he believed that his master was too absolutely dependent on him to turn him away for any cause whatever; thirdly, because, if mr. treverton did part with him, he was not sufficiently attached to his place to care at all about losing it. accordingly the bargain had been struck in five minutes--and there was the copy of the plan, inclosed with the letter of explanation to attest the fact! rosamond spread the all-important document out on the table with trembling hands, looked it over eagerly for a few moments, and laid her finger on the square that represented the position of the myrtle room. "here it is!" she cried. "oh, lenny, how my heart beats! one, two, three, four--the fourth door on the first-floor landing is the door of the myrtle room!" she would have called at once for the keys of the north rooms; but her husband insisted on her waiting until she had composed herself a little, and until she had taken some breakfast. in spite of all he could say, the meal was hurried over so rapidly that in ten minutes more his wife's arm was in his, and she was leading him to the staircase. the gardener's prognostication about the weather had been verified: it had turned to heat--heavy, misty, vaporous, dull heat. one white quivering fog-cloud spread thinly over all the heaven, rolled down seaward on the horizon line, and dulled the sharp edges of the distant moorland view. the sunlight shone pale and trembling; the lightest, highest leaves of flowers at open windows were still; the domestic animals lay about sleepily in dark corners. chance household noises sounded heavy and loud in the languid, airless stillness which the heat seemed to hold over the earth. down in the servants' hall, the usual bustle of morning work was suspended. when rosamond looked in, on her way to the housekeeper's room to get the keys, the women were fanning themselves, and the men were sitting with their coats off. they were all talking peevishly about the heat, and all agreeing that such a day as that, in the month of june, they had never known and never heard of before. rosamond took the keys, declined the housekeeper's offer to accompany her, and leading her husband along the passages, unlocked the door of the north hall. "how unnaturally cool it is here!" she said, as they entered the deserted place. at the foot of the stairs she stopped, and took a firmer hold of her husband's arm. "is any thing the matter?" asked leonard. "is the change to the damp coolness of this place affecting you in any way?" "no, no," she answered hastily. "i am far too excited to feel either heat or damp, as i might feel them at other times. but, lenny, supposing your guess about mrs. jazeph is right?--" "yes?" "and, supposing we discover the secret of the myrtle room, might it not turn out to be something concerning my father or my mother which we ought not to know? i thought of that when mrs. pentreath offered to accompany us, and it determined me to come here alone with you." "it is just as likely that the secret might be something we ought to know," replied mr. frankland, after a moment's thought. "in any case, my idea about mrs. jazeph is, after all, only a guess in the dark. however, rosamond, if you feel any hesitation--" "no! come what may of it, lenny, we can't go back now. give me your hand again. we have traced the mystery thus far together, and together we will find it out." she ascended the staircase, leading him after her, as she spoke. on the landing she looked again at the plan, and satisfied herself that the first impression she had derived from it, of the position of the myrtle room, was correct. she counted the doors on to the fourth, and looked out from the bunch the key numbered "iv.," and put it in the lock. before she turned it she paused, and looked round at her husband. he was standing by her side, with his patient face turned expectantly toward the door. she put her right hand on the key, turned it slowly in the lock, drew him closer to her with her left hand, and paused again. "i don't know what has come to me," she whispered faintly. "i feel as if i was afraid to push open the door." "your hand is cold, rosamond. wait a little--lock the door again--put it off till another day." he felt his wife's fingers close tighter and tighter on his hand while he said those words. then there was an instant--one memorable, breathless instant, never to be forgotten afterward--of utter silence. then he heard the sharp, cracking sound of the opening door, and felt himself drawn forward suddenly into a changed atmosphere, and knew that rosamond and he were in the myrtle room. chapter v. the myrtle room. [illustration: "before she turned it she paused, and looked round at her husband."] a broad, square window, with small panes and dark sashes; dreary yellow light, glimmering through the dirt of half a century crusted on the glass; purer rays striking across the dimness through the fissures of three broken panes; dust floating upward, pouring downward, rolling smoothly round and round in the still atmosphere; lofty, bare, faded red walls; chairs in confusion, tables placed awry; a tall black book-case, with an open door half dropping from its hinges; a pedestal, with a broken bust lying in fragments at its feet; a ceiling darkened by stains, a floor whitened by dust--such was the aspect of the myrtle room when rosamond first entered it, leading her husband by the hand. after passing the door-way, she slowly advanced a few steps, and then stopped, waiting with every sense on the watch, with every faculty strung up to the highest pitch of expectation--waiting in the ominous stillness, in the forlorn solitude, for the vague something which the room might contain, which might rise visibly before her, which might sound audibly behind her, which might touch her on a sudden from above, from below, from either side. a minute or more she breathlessly waited; and nothing appeared, nothing sounded, nothing touched her. the silence and the solitude had their secret to keep, and kept it. she looked round at her husband. his face, so quiet and composed at other times, expressed doubt and uneasiness now. his disengaged hand was outstretched, and moving backward and forward and up and down, in the vain attempt to touch something which might enable him to guess at the position in which he was placed. his look and action, as he stood in that new and strange sphere, the mute appeal which he made so sadly and so unconsciously to his wife's loving help, restored rosamond's self-possession by recalling her heart to the dearest of all its interests, to the holiest of all its cares. her eyes, fixed so distrustfully but the moment before on the dreary spectacle of neglect and ruin which spread around them, turned fondly to her husband's face, radiant with the unfathomable brightness of pity and love. she bent quickly across him, caught his outstretched arm, and pressed it to his side. "don't do that, darling," she said, gently; "i don't like to see it. it looks as if you had forgotten that i was with you--as if you were left alone and helpless. what need have you of your sense of touch, when you have got _me_? did you hear me open the door, lenny? do you know that we are in the myrtle room?" "what did you see, rosamond, when you opened the door? what do you see now?" he asked those questions rapidly and eagerly, in a whisper. "nothing but dust and dirt and desolation. the loneliest moor in cornwall is not so lonely looking as this room; but there is nothing to alarm us, nothing (except one's own fancy) that suggests an idea of danger of any kind." "what made you so long before you spoke to me, rosamond?" "i was frightened, love, on first entering the room--not at what i saw, but at my own fanciful ideas of what i might see. i was child enough to be afraid of something starting out of the walls, or of something rising through the floor; in short, of i hardly know what. i have got over those fears, lenny, but a certain distrust of the room still clings to me. do you feel it?" "i feel something like it," he replied, uneasily. "i feel as if the night that is always before my eyes was darker to me in this place than in any other. where are we standing now?" "just inside the door." "does the floor look safe to walk on?" he tried it suspiciously with his foot as he put the question. "quite safe," replied rosamond. "it would never support the furniture that is on it if it was so rotten as to be dangerous. come across the room with me, and try it." with these words she led him slowly to the window. "the air seems as if it was nearer to me," he said, bending his face forward toward the lowest of the broken panes. "what is before us now?" she told him, describing minutely the size and appearance of the window. he turned from it carelessly, as if that part of the room had no interest for him. rosamond still lingered near the window, to try if she could feel a breath of the outer atmosphere. there was a momentary silence, which was broken by her husband. "what are you doing now?" he asked anxiously. "i am looking out at one of the broken panes of glass, and trying to get some air," answered rosamond. "the shadow of the house is below me, resting on the lonely garden; but there is no coolness breathing up from it. i see the tall weeds rising straight and still, and the tangled wild-flowers interlacing themselves heavily. there is a tree near me, and the leaves look as if they were all struck motionless. away to the left, there is a peep of white sea and tawny sand quivering in the yellow heat. there are no clouds; there is no blue sky. the mist quenches the brightness of the sunlight, and lets nothing but the fire of it through. there is something threatening in the sky, and the earth seems to know it!" "but the room! the room!" said leonard, drawing her aside from the window. "never mind the view; tell me what the room is like--exactly what it is like. i shall not feel easy about you, rosamond, if you don't describe every thing to me just as it is." "my darling! you know you can depend on my describing every thing. i am only doubting where to begin, and how to make sure of seeing for you what you are likely to think most worth looking at. here is an old ottoman against the wall--the wall where the window is. i will take off my apron and dust the seat for you; and then you can sit down and listen comfortably while i tell you, before we think of any thing else, what the room is like, to begin with. first of all, i suppose, i must make you understand how large it is?" "yes, that is the first thing. try if you can compare it with any room that i was familiar with before i lost my sight." rosamond looked backward and forward, from wall to wall--then went to the fire-place, and walked slowly down the length of the room, counting her steps. pacing over the dusty floor with a dainty regularity and a childish satisfaction in looking down at the gay pink rosettes on her morning shoes; holding up her crisp, bright muslin dress out of the dirt, and showing the fanciful embroidery of her petticoat, and the glossy stockings that fitted her little feet and ankles like a second skin, she moved through the dreariness, the desolation, the dingy ruin of the scene around her, the most charming living contrast to its dead gloom that youth, health, and beauty could present. arrived at the bottom of the room, she reflected a little, and said to her husband-- "do you remember the blue drawing-room, lenny, in your father's house at long beckley? i think this room is quite as large, if not larger." "what are the walls like?" asked leonard, placing his hand on the wall behind him while he spoke. "they are covered with paper, are they not?" "yes; with faded red paper, except on one side, where strips have been torn off and thrown on the floor. there is wainscoting round the walls. it is cracked in many places, and has ragged holes in it, which seem to have been made by the rats and mice." "are there any pictures on the walls?" "no. there is an empty frame over the fire-place. and opposite--i mean just above where i am standing now--there is a small mirror, cracked in the centre, with broken branches for candlesticks projecting on either side of it. above that, again, there is a stag's head and antlers; some of the face has dropped away, and a perfect maze of cobwebs is stretched between the horns. on the other walls there are large nails, with more cobwebs hanging down from them heavy with dirt--but no pictures any where. now you know every thing about the walls. what is the next thing? the floor?" "i think, rosamond, my feet have told me already what the floor is like?" "they may have told you that it is bare, dear; but i can tell you more than that. it slopes down from every side toward the middle of the room. it is covered thick with dust, which is swept about--i suppose by the wind blowing through the broken panes--into strange, wavy, feathery shapes that quite hide the floor beneath. lenny! suppose these boards should be made to take up any where! if we discover nothing to-day, we will have them swept to-morrow. in the mean time, i must go on telling you about the room, must i not? you know already what the size of it is, what the window is like, what the walls are like, what the floor is like. is there any thing else before we come to the furniture? oh, yes! the ceiling--for that completes the shell of the room. i can't see much of it, it is so high. there are great cracks and stains from one end to the other, and the plaster has come away in patches in some places. the centre ornament seems to be made of alternate rows of small plaster cabbages and large plaster lozenges. two bits of chain hang down from the middle, which, i suppose, once held a chandelier. the cornice is so dingy that i can hardly tell what pattern it represents. it is very broad and heavy, and it looks in some places as if it had once been colored, and that is all i can say about it. do you feel as if you thoroughly understood the whole room now, lenny?" "thoroughly, my love; i have the same clear picture of it in my mind which you always give me of every thing you see. you need waste no more time on me. we may now devote ourselves to the purpose for which we came here." at those last words, the smile which had been dawning on rosamond's face when her husband addressed her, vanished from it in a moment. she stole close to his side, and, bending down over him, with her arm on his shoulder, said, in low, whispering tones-- "when we had the other room opened, opposite the landing, we began by examining the furniture. we thought--if you remember--that the mystery of the myrtle room might be connected with hidden valuables that had been stolen, or hidden papers that ought to have been destroyed, or hidden stains and traces of some crime, which even a chair or a table might betray. shall we examine the furniture here?" "is there much of it, rosamond?" "more than there was in the other room," she answered. "more than you can examine in one morning?" "no; i think not." "then begin with the furniture, if you have no better plan to propose. i am but a helpless adviser at such a crisis as this. i must leave the responsibilities of decision, after all, to rest on your shoulders. yours are the eyes that look and the hands that search; and if the secret of mrs. jazeph's reason for warning you against entering this room is to be found by seeking in the room, _you_ will find it--" "and you will know it, lenny, as soon as it is found. i won't hear you talk, love, as if there was any difference between us, or any superiority in my position over yours. now, let me see. what shall i begin with? the tall book-case opposite the window? or the dingy old writing-table, in the recess behind the fire-place? those are the two largest pieces of furniture that i can see in the room." "begin with the book-case, my dear, as you seem to have noticed that first." rosamond advanced a few steps toward the book-case--then stopped, and looked aside suddenly to the lower end of the room. "lenny! i forgot one thing, when i was telling you about the walls," she said. "there are two doors in the room besides the door we came in at. they are both in the wall to the right, as i stand now with my back to the window. each is at the same distance from the corner, and each is of the same size and appearance. don't you think we ought to open them and see where they lead to?" "certainly. but are the keys in the locks?" rosamond approached more closely to the doors, and answered in the affirmative. "open them, then," said leonard. "stop! not by yourself. take me with you. i don't like the idea of sitting here, and leaving you to open those doors by yourself." rosamond retraced her steps to the place where he was sitting, and then led him with her to the door that was farthest from the window. "suppose there should be some dreadful sight behind it!" she said, trembling a little, as she stretched out her hand toward the key. "try to suppose (what is much more probable) that it only leads into another room," suggested leonard. rosamond threw the door wide open, suddenly. her husband was right. it merely led into the next room. they passed on to the second door. "can this one serve the same purpose as the other?" said rosamond, slowly and distrustfully turning the key. she opened it as she had opened the first door, put her head inside it for an instant, drew back, shuddering, and closed it again violently, with a faint exclamation of disgust. "don't be alarmed, lenny," she said, leading him away abruptly. "the door only opens on a large, empty cupboard. but there are quantities of horrible, crawling brown creatures about the wall inside. i have shut them in again in their darkness and their secrecy; and now i am going to take you back to your seat, before we find out, next, what the book-case contains." the door of the upper part of the book-case, hanging open and half dropping from its hinges, showed the emptiness of the shelves on one side at a glance. the corresponding door, when rosamond pulled it open, disclosed exactly the same spectacle of barrenness on the other side. over every shelf there spread the same dreary accumulation of dust and dirt, without a vestige of a book, without even a stray scrap of paper lying any where in a corner to attract the eye, from top to bottom. the lower portion of the book-case was divided into three cupboards. in the door of one of the three, the rusty key remained in the lock. rosamond turned it with some difficulty, and looked into the cupboard. at the back of it were scattered a pack of playing-cards, brown with dirt. a morsel of torn, tangled muslin lay among them, which, when rosamond spread it out, proved to be the remains of a clergyman's band. in one corner she found a broken corkscrew and the winch of a fishing-rod; in another, some stumps of tobacco-pipes, a few old medicine bottles, and a dog's-eared peddler's song-book. these were all the objects that the cupboard contained. after rosamond had scrupulously described each one of them to her husband, just as she found it, she went on to the second cupboard. on trying the door, it turned out not to be locked. on looking inside, she discovered nothing but some pieces of blackened cotton wool, and the remains of a jeweler's packing-case. the third door was locked, but the rusty key from the first cupboard opened it. inside, there was but one object--a small wooden box, banded round with a piece of tape, the two edges of which were fastened together by a seal. rosamond's flagging interest rallied instantly at this discovery. she described the box to her husband, and asked if he thought she was justified in breaking the seal. "can you see any thing written on the cover?" he inquired. rosamond carried the box to the window, blew the dust off the top of it, and read, on a parchment label nailed to the cover: "papers. john arthur treverton. ." "i think you may take the responsibility of breaking the seal," said leonard. "if those papers had been of any family importance, they could scarcely have been left forgotten in an old book-case by your father and his executors." rosamond broke the seal, then looked up doubtfully at her husband before she opened the box. "it seems a mere waste of time to look into this," she said. "how can a box that has not been opened since seventeen hundred and sixty help us to discover the mystery of mrs. jazeph and the myrtle room?" "but do we know that it has not been opened since then?" said leonard. "might not the tape and seal have been put round it by any body at some more recent period of time? you can judge best, because you can see if there is any inscription on the tape, or any signs to form an opinion by upon the seal." "the seal is a blank, lenny, except that it has a flower like a forget-me-not in the middle. i can see no mark of a pen on either side of the tape. any body in the world might have opened the box before me," she continued, forcing up the lid easily with her hands, "for the lock is no protection to it. the wood of the cover is so rotten that i have pulled the staple out, and left it sticking by itself in the lock below." on examination the box proved to be full of papers. at the top of the uppermost packet were written these words: "election expenses. i won by four votes. price fifty pounds each. j. a. treverton." the next layer of papers had no inscription. rosamond opened them, and read on the first leaf--"birthday ode. respectfully addressed to the mæcenas of modern times in his poetic retirement at porthgenna." below this production appeared a collection of old bills, old notes of invitation, old doctor's prescriptions, and old leaves of betting-books, tied together with a piece of whip-cord. last of all, there lay on the bottom of the box one thin leaf of paper, the visible side of which presented a perfect blank. rosamond took it up, turned it to look at the other side, and saw some faint ink-lines crossing each other in various directions, and having letters of the alphabet attached to them in certain places. she had made her husband acquainted with the contents of all the other papers, as a matter of course; and when she had described this last paper to him, he explained to her that the lines and letters represented a mathematical problem. "the book-case tells us nothing," said rosamond, slowly putting the papers back in the box. "shall we try the writing-table by the fire-place, next?" "what does it look like, rosamond?" "it has two rows of drawers down each side; and the whole top is made in an odd, old-fashioned way to slope upward, like a very large writing-desk." "does the top open?" rosamond went to the table, examined it narrowly, and then tried to raise the top. "it is made to open, for i see the key-hole," she said. "but it is locked. and all the drawers," she continued, trying them one after another, "are locked too." "is there no key in any of them?" asked leonard. "not a sign of one. but the top feels so loose that i really think it might be forced open--as i forced the little box open just now--by a pair of stronger hands than i can boast of. let me take you to the table, dear; it may give way to your strength, though it will not to mine." she placed her husband's hands carefully under the ledge formed by the overhanging top of the table. he exerted his whole strength to force it up; but in this case the wood was sound, the lock held, and all his efforts were in vain. "must we send for a locksmith?" asked rosamond, with a look of disappointment. "if the table is of any value, we must," returned her husband. "if not, a screw-driver and a hammer will open both the top and the drawers in any body's hands." "in that case, lenny, i wish we had brought them with us when we came into the room, for the only value of the table lies in the secrets that it may be hiding from us. i shall not feel satisfied until you and i know what there is inside of it." while saying these words, she took her husband's hand to lead him back to his seat. as they passed before the fire-place, he stepped upon the bare stone hearth; and, feeling some new substance under his feet, instinctively stretched out the hand that was free. it touched a marble tablet, with figures on it in bass-relief, which had been let into the middle of the chimney-piece. he stopped immediately, and asked what the object was that his fingers had accidentally touched. "a piece of sculpture," said rosamond. "i did not notice it before. it is not very large, and not particularly attractive, according to my taste. so far as i can tell, it seems to be intended to represent--" leonard stopped her before she could say any more. "let me try, for once, if i can't make a discovery for myself," he said, a little impatiently. "let me try if my fingers won't tell me what this sculpture is meant to represent." he passed his hands carefully over the bass-relief (rosamond watching their slightest movement with silent interest, the while), considered a little, and said-- "is there not a figure of a man sitting down, in the right-hand corner? and are there not rocks and trees, very stiffly done, high up, at the left-hand side?" rosamond looked at him tenderly, and smiled. "my poor dear!" she said. "your man sitting down is, in reality, a miniature copy of the famous ancient statue of niobe and her child; your rocks are marble imitations of clouds, and your stiffly done trees are arrows darting out from some invisible jupiter or apollo, or other heathen god. ah, lenny, lenny! you can't trust your touch, love, as you can trust me!" a momentary shade of vexation passed across his face; but it vanished the instant she took his hand again to lead him back to his seat. he drew her to him gently, and kissed her cheek. "you are right, rosamond," he said. "the one faithful friend to me in my blindness, who never fails, is my wife." seeing him look a little saddened, and feeling, with the quick intuition of a woman's affection, that he was thinking of the days when he had enjoyed the blessing of sight, rosamond returned abruptly, as soon as she saw him seated once more on the ottoman, to the subject of the myrtle room. "where shall i look next, dear?" she said. "the book-case we have examined. the writing-table we must wait to examine. what else is there that has a cupboard or a drawer in it?" she looked round her in perplexity; then walked away toward the part of the room to which her attention had been last drawn--the part where the fire-place was situated. "i thought i noticed something here, lenny, when i passed just now with you," she said, approaching the second recess behind the mantel-piece, corresponding with the recess in which the writing-table stood. she looked into the place closely, and detected in a corner, darkened by the shadow of the heavy projecting mantel-piece, a narrow, rickety little table, made of the commonest mahogany--the frailest, poorest, least conspicuous piece of furniture in the whole room. she pushed it out contemptuously into the light with her foot. it ran on clumsy old-fashioned casters, and creaked wearily as it moved. "lenny, i have found another table," said rosamond. "a miserable, forlorn-looking little thing, lost in a corner. i have just pushed it into the light, and i have discovered one drawer in it." she paused, and tried to open the drawer; but it resisted her. "another lock!" she exclaimed, impatiently. "even this wretched thing is closed against us!" she pushed the table sharply away with her hand. it swayed on its frail legs, tottered, and fell over on the floor--fell as heavily as a table of twice its size--fell with a shock that rang through the room, and repeated itself again and again in the echoes of the lonesome north hall. rosamond ran to her husband, seeing him start from his seat in alarm, and told him what had happened. "you call it a little table," he replied, in astonishment. "it fell like one of the largest pieces of furniture in the room!" "surely there must have been something heavy in the drawer!" said rosamond, approaching the table with her spirits still fluttered by the shock of its unnaturally heavy fall. after waiting for a few moments to give the dust which it had raised, and which still hung over it in thick lazy clouds, time to disperse, she stooped down and examined it. it was cracked across the top from end to end, and the lock had been broken away from its fastenings by the fall. she set the table up again carefully, drew out the drawer, and, after a glance at its contents, turned to her husband. "i knew it," she said, "i knew there must be something heavy in the drawer. it is full of pieces of copper-ore, like those specimens of my father's, lenny, from porthgenna mine. wait! i think i feel something else, as far away at the back here as my hand can reach." she extricated from the lumps of ore at the back of the drawer a small circular picture-frame of black wood, about the size of an ordinary hand-glass. it came out with the front part downward, and with the area which its circle inclosed filled up by a thin piece of wood, of the sort which is used at the backs of small frames to keep drawings and engravings steady in them. this piece of wood (only secured to the back of the frame by one nail) had been forced out of its place, probably by the overthrow of the table; and when rosamond took the frame out of the drawer, she observed between it and the dislodged piece of wood the end of a morsel of paper, apparently folded many times over, so as to occupy the smallest possible space. she drew out the piece of paper, laid it aside on the table without unfolding it, replaced the piece of wood in its proper position, and then turned the frame round, to see if there was a picture in front. there was a picture--a picture painted in oils, darkened, but not much faded, by age. it represented the head of a woman, and the figure as far as the bosom. the instant rosamond's eyes fell on it she shuddered, and hurriedly advanced toward her husband with the picture in her hand. "well, what have you found now?" he inquired, hearing her approach. "a picture," she answered, faintly, stopping to look at it again. leonard's sensitive ear detected a change in her voice. "is there any thing that alarms you in the picture?" he asked, half in jest, half in earnest. "there is something that startles me--something that seems to have turned me cold for the moment, hot as the day is," said rosamond. "do you remember the description the servant-girl gave us, on the night we arrived here, of the ghost of the north rooms?" "yes, i remember it perfectly." "lenny! that description and this picture are exactly alike! here is the curling, light-brown hair. here is the dimple on each cheek. here are the bright regular teeth. here is that leering, wicked, fatal beauty which the girl tried to describe, and did describe, when she said it was awful!" leonard smiled. "that vivid fancy of yours, my dear, takes strange flights sometimes," he said, quietly. "fancy!" repeated rosamond to herself. "how can it be fancy when i see the face? how can it be fancy when i feel--" she stopped, shuddered again, and, returning hastily to the table, placed the picture on it, face downward. as she did so, the morsel of folded paper which she had removed from the back of the frame caught her eye. "there may be some account of the picture in this," she said, and stretched out her hand to it. it was getting on toward noon. the heat weighed heavier on the air, and the stillness of all things was more intense than ever, as she took up the paper from the table. fold by fold she opened it, and saw that there were written characters inside, traced in ink that had faded to a light, yellow hue. she smoothed it out carefully on the table--then took it up again and looked at the first line of the writing. the first line contained only three words--words which told her that the paper with the writing on it was not a description of the picture, but a letter--words which made her start and change color the moment her eye fell upon them. without attempting to read any further, she hastily turned over the leaf to find out the place where the writing ended. it ended at the bottom of the third page; but there was a break in the lines, near the foot of the second page, and in that break there were two names signed. she looked at the uppermost of the two--started again--and turned back instantly to the first page. line by line, and word by word, she read through the writing; her natural complexion fading out gradually the while, and a dull, equal whiteness overspreading all her face in its stead. when she had come to the end of the third page, the hand in which she held the letter dropped to her side, and she turned her head slowly toward leonard. in that position she stood--no tears moistening her eyes, no change passing over her features, no word escaping her lips, no movement varying the position of her limbs--in that position she stood, with the fatal letter crumpled up in her cold fingers, looking steadfastly, speechlessly, breathlessly at her blind husband. he was still sitting as she had seen him a few minutes before, with his legs crossed, his hands clasped together in front of them, and his head turned expectantly in the direction in which he had last heard the sound of his wife's voice. but in a few moments the intense stillness in the room forced itself upon his attention. he changed his position--listened for a little, turning his head uneasily from side to side, and then called to his wife. "rosamond!" at the sound of his voice her lips moved, and her fingers closed faster on the paper that they held; but she neither stepped forward nor spoke. "rosamond!" her lips moved again--faint traces of expression began to pass shadow-like over the blank whiteness of her face--she advanced one step, hesitated, looked at the letter, and stopped. hearing no answer, he rose surprised and uneasy. moving his poor, helpless, wandering hands to and fro before him in the air, he walked forward a few paces, straight out from the wall against which he had been sitting. a chair, which his hands were not held low enough to touch, stood in his way; and, as he still advanced, he struck his knee sharply against it. a cry burst from rosamond's lips, as if the pain of the blow had passed, at the instant of its infliction, from her husband to herself. she was by his side in a moment. "you are not hurt, lenny," she said, faintly. "no, no." he tried to press his hand on the place where he had struck himself, but she knelt down quickly, and put her own hand there instead, nestling her head against him, while she was on her knees, in a strangely hesitating timid way. he lightly laid the hand which she had intercepted on her shoulder. the moment it touched her, her eyes began to soften; the tears rose in them, and fell slowly one by one down her cheeks. "i thought you had left me," he said. "there was such a silence that i fancied you had gone out of the room." "will you come out of it with me now?" her strength seemed to fail her while she asked the question; her head drooped on her breast, and she let the letter fall on the floor at her side. "are you tired already, rosamond? your voice sounds as if you were." "i want to leave the room," she said, still in the same low, faint, constrained tone. "is your knee easier, dear? can you walk now?" "certainly. there is nothing in the world the matter with my knee. if you are tired, rosamond--as i know you are, though you may not confess it--the sooner we leave the room the better." she appeared not to hear the last words he said. her fingers were working feverishly about her neck and bosom; two bright red spots were beginning to burn in her pale cheeks; her eyes were fixed vacantly on the letter at her side; her hands wavered about it before she picked it up. for a few seconds she waited on her knees, looking at it intently, with her head turned away from her husband--then rose and walked to the fire-place. among the dust, ashes, and other rubbish at the back of the grate, were scattered some old torn pieces of paper. they caught her eye, and held it fixed on them. she looked and looked, slowly bending down nearer and nearer to the grate. for one moment she held the letter out over the rubbish in both hands--the next she drew back shuddering violently, and turned round so as to face her husband again. at the sight of him a faint inarticulate exclamation, half sigh, half sob, burst from her. "oh, no, no!" she whispered to herself, clasping her hands together fervently, and looking at him with fond, mournful eyes. "never, never, lenny--come of it what may!" "were you speaking to me, rosamond?" "yes, love. i was saying--" she paused, and, with trembling fingers, folded up the paper again, exactly in the form in which she had found it. "where are you?" he asked. "your voice sounds away from me at the other end of the room again. where are you?" she ran to him, flushed and trembling and tearful, took him by the arm, and, without an instant of hesitation, without the faintest sign of irresolution in her face, placed the folded paper boldly in his hand. "keep that, lenny," she said, turning deadly pale, but still not losing her firmness. "keep that, and ask me to read it to you as soon as we are out of the myrtle room." "what is it?" he asked. "the last thing i have found, love," she replied, looking at him earnestly, with a deep sigh of relief. "is it of any importance?" instead of answering, she suddenly caught him to her bosom, clung to him with all the fervor of her impulsive nature, and breathlessly and passionately covered his face with kisses. "gently! gently!" said leonard, laughing. "you take away my breath." she drew back, and stood looking at him in silence, with a hand laid on each of his shoulders. "oh, my angel!" she murmured tenderly. "i would give all i have in the world, if i could only know how much you love me!" "surely," he returned, still laughing--"surely, rosamond, you ought to know by this time!" "i shall know soon." she spoke those words in tones so quiet and low that they were barely audible. interpreting the change in her voice as a fresh indication of fatigue, leonard invited her to lead him away by holding out his hand. she took it in silence, and guided him slowly to the door. chapter vi. the telling of the secret. on their way back to the inhabited side of the house, rosamond made no further reference to the subject of the folded paper which she had placed in her husband's hands. all her attention, while they were returning to the west front, seemed to be absorbed in the one act of jealously watching every inch of ground that leonard walked over, to make sure that it was safe and smooth before she suffered him to set his foot on it. careful and considerate as she had always been, from the first day of their married life, whenever she led him from one place to another, she was now unduly, almost absurdly anxious to preserve him from the remotest possibility of an accident. finding that he was the nearest to the outside of the open landing when they left the myrtle room, she insisted on changing places, so that he might be nearest to the wall. while they were descending the stairs, she stopped him in the middle, to inquire if he felt any pain in the knee which he had struck against the chair. at the last step she brought him to a stand-still again, while she moved away the torn and tangled remains of an old mat, for fear one of his feet should catch in it. walking across the north hall, she intreated that he would take her arm and lean heavily upon her, because she felt sure that his knee was not quite free from stiffness yet. even at the short flight of stairs which connected the entrance to the hall with the passages leading to the west side of the house, she twice stopped him on the way down, to place his foot on the sound parts of the steps, which she represented as dangerously worn away in more places than one. he laughed good-humoredly at her excessive anxiety to save him from all danger of stumbling, and asked if there was any likelihood, with their numerous stoppages, of getting back to the west side of the house in time for lunch. she was not ready, as usual, with her retort; his laugh found no pleasant echo in hers; she only answered that it was impossible to be too anxious about him; and then went on in silence till they reached the door of the housekeeper's room. leaving him for a moment outside, she went in to give the keys back again to mrs. pentreath. "dear me, ma'am!" exclaimed the housekeeper, "you look quite overcome by the heat of the day and the close air of those old rooms. can i get you a glass of water, or may i give you my bottle of salts?" rosamond declined both offers. "may i be allowed to ask, ma'am, if any thing has been found this time in the north rooms?" inquired mrs. pentreath, hanging up the bunch of keys. "only some old papers," replied rosamond, turning away. "i beg pardon again, ma'am," pursued the housekeeper; "but, in case any of the gentry of the neighborhood should call to-day?" "we are engaged. no matter who it may be, we are both engaged." answering briefly in these terms, rosamond left mrs. pentreath, and rejoined her husband. with the same excess of attention and care which she had shown on the way to the housekeeper's room, she now led him up the west staircase. the library door happening to stand open, they passed through it on their way to the drawing-room, which was the larger and cooler apartment of the two. having guided leonard to a seat, rosamond returned to the library, and took from the table a tray containing a bottle of water and a tumbler, which she had noticed when she passed through. "i may feel faint as well as frightened," she said quickly to herself, turning round with the tray in her hand to return to the drawing-room. after she had put the water down on a table in a corner, she noiselessly locked the door leading into the library, then the door leading into the passage. leonard, hearing her moving about, advised her to keep quiet on the sofa. she patted him gently on the cheek, and was about to make some suitable answer, when she accidentally beheld her face reflected in the looking-glass under which he was sitting. the sight of her own white cheeks and startled eyes suspended the words on her lips. she hastened away to the window, to catch any breath of air that might be wafted toward her from the sea. the heat-mist still hid the horizon. nearer, the oily, colorless surface of the water was just visible, heaving slowly, from time to time, in one vast monotonous wave that rolled itself out smoothly and endlessly till it was lost in the white obscurity of the mist. close on the shore the noisy surf was hushed. no sound came from the beach except at long, wearily long intervals, when a quick thump, and a still splash, just audible and no more, announced the fall of one tiny, mimic wave upon the parching sand. on the terrace in front of the house, the changeless hum of summer insects was all that told of life and movement. not a human figure was to be seen any where on the shore; no sign of a sail loomed shadowy through the heat at sea; no breath of air waved the light tendrils of the creepers that twined up the house-wall, or refreshed the drooping flowers ranged in the windows. rosamond turned away from the outer prospect, after a moment's weary contemplation of it. as she looked into the room again, her husband spoke to her. "what precious thing lies hidden in this paper?" he asked, producing the letter, and smiling as he opened it. "surely there must be something besides writing--some inestimable powder, or some bank-note of fabulous value--wrapped up in all these folds?" rosamond's heart sank within her as he opened the letter and passed his finger over the writing inside, with a mock expression of anxiety, and a light jest about sharing all treasures discovered at porthgenna with his wife. "i will read it to you directly, lenny," she said, dropping into the nearest seat, and languidly pushing her hair back from her temples. "but put it away for a few minutes now, and let us talk of any thing else you like that does not remind us of the myrtle room. i am very capricious, am i not, to be so suddenly weary of the very subject that i have been fondest of talking about for so many weeks past? tell me, love," she added, rising abruptly and going to the back of his chair; "do i get worse with my whims and fancies and faults?--or am i improved, since the time when we were first married?" he tossed the letter aside carelessly on a table which was always placed by the arm of his chair, and shook his forefinger at her with a frown of comic reproof. "oh, fie, rosamond! are you trying to entrap me into paying you compliments?" the light tone that he persisted in adopting seemed absolutely to terrify her. she shrank away from his chair, and sat down again at a little distance from him. "i remember i used to offend you," she continued, quickly and confusedly. "no, no, not to offend--only to vex you a little--by talking too familiarly to the servants. you might almost have fancied, at first, if you had not known me so well, that it was a habit with me because i had once been a servant myself. suppose i had been a servant--the servant who had helped to nurse you in your illnesses, the servant who led you about in your blindness more carefully than any one else--would you have thought much, then, of the difference between us? would you--" she stopped. the smile had vanished from leonard's face, and he had turned a little away from her. "what is the use, rosamond, of supposing events that never could have happened?" he asked rather impatiently. she went to the side-table, poured out some of the water she had brought from the library, and drank it eagerly; then walked to the window and plucked a few of the flowers that were placed there. she threw some of them away again the next moment; but kept the rest in her hand, thoughtfully arranging them so as to contrast their colors with the best effect. when this was done, she put them into her bosom, looked down absently at them, took them out again, and, returning to her husband, placed the little nosegay in the button-hole of his coat. "something to make you look gay and bright, love--as i always wish to see you," she said, seating herself in her favorite attitude at his feet, and looking up at him sadly, with her arms resting on his knees. "what are you thinking about, rosamond?" he asked, after an interval of silence. "i was wondering, lenny, whether any woman in the world could be as fond of you as i am. i feel almost afraid that there are others who would ask nothing better than to live and die for you, as well as me. there is something in your face, in your voice, in all your ways--something besides the interest of your sad, sad affliction--that would draw any woman's heart to you, i think. if i were to die--" "if you were to die!" he started as he repeated the words after her, and, leaning forward, anxiously laid his hand upon her forehead. "you are thinking and talking very strangely this morning, rosamond! are you not well?" she rose on her knees and looked closer at him, her face brightening a little, and a faint smile just playing round her lips. "i wonder if you will always be as anxious about me, and as fond of me, as you are now?" she whispered, kissing his hand as she removed it from her forehead. he leaned back again in the chair, and told her jestingly not to look too far into the future. the words, lightly as they were spoken, struck deep into her heart. "there are times, lenny," she said, "when all one's happiness in the present depends upon one's certainty of the future." she looked at the letter, which her husband had left open on a table near him, as she spoke; and, after a momentary struggle with herself, took it in her hand to read it. at the first word her voice failed her; the deadly paleness overspread her face again; she threw the letter back on the table, and walked away to the other end of the room. "the future?" asked leonard. "what future, rosamond, can you possibly mean?" "suppose i meant our future at porthgenna?" she said, moistening her dry lips with a few drops of water. "shall we stay here as long as we thought we should, and be as happy as we have been every where else? you told me on the journey that i should find it dull, and that i should be driven to try all sorts of extraordinary occupations to amuse myself. you said you expected that i should begin with gardening and end by writing a novel. a novel!" she approached her husband again, and watched his face eagerly while she went on. "why not? more women write novels now than men. what is to prevent me from trying? the first great requisite, i suppose, is to have an idea of a story; and that i have got." she advanced a few steps farther, reached the table on which the letter lay, and placed her hand on it, keeping her eyes still fixed intently on leonard's face. "and what is your idea, rosamond?" he asked. "this," she replied. "i mean to make the main interest of the story centre in two young married people. they shall be very fond of each other--as fond as we are, lenny--and they shall be in our rank of life. after they have been happily married some time, and when they have got one child to make them love each other more dearly than ever, a terrible discovery shall fall upon them like a thunderbolt. the husband shall have chosen for his wife a young lady bearing as ancient a family name as--" "as your name?" suggested leonard. "as the name of the treverton family," she continued, after a pause, during which her hand had been restlessly moving the letter to and fro on the table. "the husband shall be well-born--as well-born as you, lenny--and the terrible discovery shall be, that his wife has no right to the ancient name that she bore when he married her." "i can't say, my love, that i approve of your idea. your story will decoy the reader into feeling an interest in a woman who turns out to be an impostor." "no!" cried rosamond, warmly. "a true woman--a woman who never stooped to a deception--a woman full of faults and failings, but a teller of the truth at all hazards and all sacrifices. hear me out, lenny, before you judge." hot tears rushed into her eyes; but she dashed them away passionately, and went on. "the wife shall grow up to womanhood, and shall marry, in total ignorance--mind that!--in total ignorance of her real history. the sudden disclosure of the truth shall overwhelm her--she shall find herself struck by a calamity which she had no hand in bringing about. she shall be staggered in her very reason by the discovery; it shall burst upon her when she has no one but herself to depend on; she shall have the power of keeping it a secret from her husband with perfect impunity; she shall be tried, she shall be shaken in her mortal frailness, by one moment of fearful temptation; she shall conquer it, and, of her own free will, she shall tell her husband all that she knows herself. now, lenny, what do you call that woman? an impostor?" "no: a victim." "who goes of her own accord to the sacrifice? and who is to be sacrificed?" "i never said that." "what would you do with her, lenny, if you were writing the story? i mean, how would you make her husband behave to her? it is a question in which a man's nature is concerned, and a woman is not competent to decide it. i am perplexed about how to end the story. how would you end it, love?" as she ceased, her voice sank sadly to its gentlest pleading tones. she came close to him, and twined her fingers in his hair fondly. "how would you end it, love?" she repeated, stooping down till her trembling lips just touched his forehead. he moved uneasily in his chair, and replied--"i am not a writer of novels, rosamond." "but how would you act, lenny, if you were that husband?" "it is hard for me to say," he answered. "i have not your vivid imagination, my dear. i have no power of putting myself, at a moment's notice, into a position that is not my own, and of knowing how i should act in it." "but suppose your wife was close to you--as close as i am now? suppose she had just told you the dreadful secret, and was standing before you--as i am standing now--with the happiness of her whole life to come depending on one kind word from your lips? oh, lenny, you would not let her drop broken-hearted at your feet? you would know, let her birth be what it might, that she was still the same faithful creature who had cherished and served and trusted and worshiped you since her marriage-day, and who asked nothing in return but to lay her head on your bosom, and to hear you say that you loved her? you would know that she had nerved herself to tell the fatal secret, because, in her loyalty and love to her husband, she would rather die forsaken and despised, than live, deceiving him? you would know all this, and you would open your arms to the mother of your child, to the wife of your first love, though she was the lowliest of all lowly born women in the estimation of the world? oh, you would, lenny, i know you would!" "rosamond! how your hands tremble; how your voice alters! you are agitating yourself about this supposed story of yours, as if you were talking of real events." "you would take her to your heart, lenny? you would open your arms to her without an instant of unworthy doubt?" "hush! hush! i hope i should." "hope? only hope? oh, think again, love, think again; and say you _know_ you should!" "must i, rosamond? then i do say it." she drew back as the words passed his lips, and took the letter from the table. "you have not yet asked me, lenny, to read the letter that i found in the myrtle room. i offer to read it now of my own accord." she trembled a little as she spoke those few decisive words, but her utterance of them was clear and steady, as if her consciousness of being now irrevocably pledged to make the disclosure had strengthened her at last to dare all hazards and end all suspense. her husband turned toward the place from which the sound of her voice had reached him, with a mixed expression of perplexity and surprise in his face. "you pass so suddenly from one subject to another," he said, "that i hardly know how to follow you. what in the world, rosamond, takes you, at one jump, from a romantic argument about a situation in a novel, to the plain, practical business of reading an old letter?" "perhaps there is a closer connection between the two than you suspect," she answered. "a closer connection? what connection? i don't understand." "the letter will explain." "why the letter? why should _you_ not explain?" she stole one anxious look at his face, and saw that a sense of something serious to come was now overshadowing his mind for the first time. "rosamond!" he exclaimed, "there is some mystery--" "there are no mysteries between us two," she interposed quickly. "there never have been any, love; there never shall be." she moved a little nearer to him to take her old favorite place on his knee, then checked herself, and drew back again to the table. warning tears in her eyes bade her distrust her own firmness, and read the letter where she could not feel the beating of his heart. "did i tell you," she resumed, after waiting an instant to compose herself, "where i found the folded piece of paper which i put into your hand in the myrtle room?" "no," he replied, "i think not." "i found it at the back of the frame of that picture--the picture of the ghostly woman with the wicked face. i opened it immediately, and saw that it was a letter. the address inside, the first line under it, and one of the two signatures which it contained, were in a handwriting that i knew." "whose!" "the handwriting of the late mrs. treverton." "of your mother?" "of the late mrs. treverton." "gracious god, rosamond! why do you speak of her in that way?" "let me read, and you will know. you have seen, with my eyes, what the myrtle room is like; you have seen, with my eyes, every object which the search through it brought to light; you must now see, with my eyes, what this letter contains. it is the secret of the myrtle room." she bent close over the faint, faded writing, and read these words: "to my husband-- "we have parted, arthur, forever, and i have not had the courage to embitter our farewell by confessing that i have deceived you--cruelly and basely deceived you. but a few minutes since, you were weeping by my bedside and speaking of our child. my wronged, my beloved husband, the little daughter of your heart is not yours, is not mine. she is a love-child, whom i have imposed on you for mine. her father was a miner at porthgenna; her mother is my maid, sarah leeson." rosamond paused, but never raised her head from the letter. she heard her husband lay his hand suddenly on the table; she heard him start to his feet; she heard him draw his breath heavily in one quick gasp; she heard him whisper to himself the instant after--"a love-child!" with a fearful, painful distinctness she heard those three words. the tone in which he whispered them turned her cold. but she never moved, for there was more to read; and while more remained, if her life had depended on it, she could not have looked up. in a moment more she went on, and read these lines next: "i have many heavy sins to answer for, but this one sin you must pardon, arthur, for i committed it through fondness for you. that fondness told me a secret which you sought to hide from me. that fondness told me that your barren wife would never make your heart all her own until she had borne you a child; and your lips proved it true. your first words, when you came back from sea, and when the infant was placed in your arms, were--'i have never loved you, rosamond, as i love you now.' if you had not said that, i should never have kept my guilty secret. "i can add no more, for death is very near me. how the fraud was committed, and what my other motives were, i must leave you to discover from the mother of the child, who writes this under my dictation, and who is charged to give it to you when i am no more. you will be merciful to the poor little creature who bears my name. be merciful also to her unhappy parent: she is only guilty of too blindly obeying me. if there is any thing that mitigates the bitterness of my remorse, it is the remembrance that my act of deceit saved the most faithful and the most affectionate of women from shame that she had not deserved. remember me forgivingly, arthur--words may tell how i have sinned against you; no words can tell how i have loved you!" she had struggled on thus far, and had reached the last line on the second page of the letter, when she paused again, and then tried to read the first of the two signatures--"rosamond treverton." she faintly repeated two syllables of that familiar christian name--the name that was on her husband's lips every hour of the day!--and strove to articulate the third, but her voice failed her. all the sacred household memories which that ruthless letter had profaned forever seemed to tear themselves away from her heart at the same moment. with a low, moaning cry she dropped her arms on the table, and laid her head down on them, and hid her face. she heard nothing, she was conscious of nothing, until she felt a touch on her shoulder--a light touch from a hand that trembled. every pulse in her body bounded in answer to it, and she looked up. her husband had guided himself near to her by the table. the tears were glistening in his dim, sightless eyes. as she rose and touched him, his arms opened, and closed fast around her. "my own rosamond!" he said, "come to me and be comforted!" book vi. chapter i. uncle joseph. the day and the night had passed, and the new morning had come, before the husband and wife could trust themselves to speak calmly of the secret, and to face resignedly the duties and the sacrifices which the discovery of it imposed on them. leonard's first question referred to those lines in the letter which rosamond had informed him were in a handwriting that she knew. finding that he was at a loss to understand what means she could have of forming an opinion on this point, she explained that, after captain treverton's death, many letters had naturally fallen into her possession which had been written by mrs. treverton to her husband. they treated of ordinary domestic subjects, and she had read them often enough to become thoroughly acquainted with the peculiarities of mrs. treverton's handwriting. it was remarkably large, firm, and masculine in character; and the address, the line under it, and the uppermost of the two signatures in the letter which had been found in the myrtle room, exactly resembled it in every particular. the next question related to the body of the letter. the writing of this, of the second signature ("sarah leeson"), and of the additional lines on the third page, also signed by sarah leeson, proclaimed itself in each case to be the production of the same person. while stating that fact to her husband, rosamond did not forget to explain to him that, while reading the letter on the previous day, her strength and courage had failed her before she got to the end of it. she added that the postscript which she had thus omitted to read was of importance, because it mentioned the circumstances under which the secret had been hidden; and begged that he would listen while she made him acquainted with its contents without any further delay. sitting as close to his side, now, as if they were enjoying their first honey-moon days over again, she read these last lines--the lines which her mother had written sixteen years before, on the morning when she fled from porthgenna tower: "if this paper should ever be found (which i pray with my whole heart it never may be), i wish to say that i have come to the resolution of hiding it, because i dare not show the writing that it contains to my master, to whom it is addressed. in doing what i now propose to do, though i am acting against my mistress's last wishes, i am not breaking the solemn engagement which she obliged me to make before her on her death-bed. that engagement forbids me to destroy this letter, or to take it away with me if i leave the house. i shall do neither--my purpose is to conceal it in the place, of all others, where i think there is least chance of its ever being found again. any hardship or misfortune which may follow as a consequence of this deceitful proceeding on my part, will fall on myself. others, i believe, in my conscience, will be the happier for the hiding of the dreadful secret which this letter contains." "there can be no doubt, now," said leonard, when his wife had read to the end; "mrs. jazeph, sarah leeson, and the servant who disappeared from porthgenna tower, are one and the same person." "poor creature!" said rosamond, sighing as she put down the letter. "we know now why she warned me so anxiously not to go into the myrtle room. who can say what she must have suffered when she came as a stranger to my bedside? oh, what would i not give if i had been less hasty with her! it is dreadful to remember that i spoke to her as a servant whom i expected to obey me; it is worse still to feel that i can not, even now, think of her as a child should think of a mother. how can i ever tell her that i know the secret? how--" she paused, with a heart-sick consciousness of the slur that was cast on her birth; she paused, shrinking as she thought of the name that her husband had given to her, and of her own parentage, which the laws of society disdained to recognize. "why do you stop?" asked leonard. "i was afraid--" she began, and paused again. "afraid," he said, finishing the sentence for her, "that words of pity for that unhappy woman might wound my sensitive pride by reminding me of the circumstances of your birth? rosamond! i should be unworthy of your matchless truthfulness toward me, if i, on my side, did not acknowledge that this discovery _has_ wounded me as only a proud man can be wounded. my pride has been born and bred in me. my pride, even while i am now speaking to you, takes advantage of my first moments of composure, and deludes me into doubting, in face of all probability, whether the words you have read to me can, after all, be words of truth. but, strong as that inborn and inbred feeling is--hard as it may be for me to discipline and master it as i ought, and must and will--there is another feeling in my heart that is stronger yet." he felt for her hand, and took it in his; then added--"from the hour when you first devoted your life to your blind husband--from the hour when you won all his gratitude, as you had already won all his love, you took a place in his heart, rosamond, from which nothing, not even such a shock as has now assailed us, can move you! high as i have always held the worth of rank in my estimation, i have learned, even before the event of yesterday, to hold the worth of my wife, let her parentage be what it may, higher still." "oh, lenny, lenny, i can't hear you praise me, if you talk in the same breath as if i had made a sacrifice in marrying you! but for my blind husband i might never have deserved what you have just said of me. when i first read that fearful letter, i had one moment of vile, ungrateful doubt if your love for me would hold out against the discovery of the secret. i had one moment of horrible temptation, that drew me away from you when i ought to have put the letter into your hand. it was the sight of you, waiting for me to speak again, so innocent of all knowledge of what happened close by you, that brought me back to my senses, and told me what i ought to do. it was the sight of my blind husband that made me conquer the temptation to destroy that letter in the first hour of discovering it. oh, if i had been the hardest-hearted of women, could i have ever taken your hand again--could i kiss you, could i lie down by your side, and hear you fall asleep, night after night, feeling that i had abused your blind dependence on me to serve my own selfish interests? knowing that i had only succeeded in my deceit because your affliction made you incapable of suspecting deception? no, no; i can hardly believe that the basest of women could be guilty of such baseness as that; and i can claim nothing more for myself than the credit of having been true to my trust. you said yesterday, love, in the myrtle room, that the one faithful friend to you in your blindness, who never failed, was your wife. it is reward enough and consolation enough for me, now that the worst is over, to know that you can say so still." "yes, rosamond, the worst is over; but we must not forget that there may be hard trials still to meet." "hard trials, love? to what trials do you refer?" "perhaps, rosamond, i overrate the courage that the sacrifice demands; but, to _me_ at least, it will be a hard sacrifice of my own feelings to make strangers partakers in the knowledge that we now possess." rosamond looked at her husband in astonishment. "why need we tell the secret to any one?" she asked. "assuming that we can satisfy ourselves of the genuineness of that letter," he answered, "we shall have no choice but to tell it to strangers. you can not forget the circumstances under which your father--under which captain treverton--" "call him my father," said rosamond, sadly. "remember how he loved me, and how i loved him, and say 'my father' still." "i am afraid i must say 'captain treverton' now," returned leonard, "or i shall hardly be able to explain simply and plainly what it is very necessary that you should know. captain treverton died without leaving a will. his only property was the purchase-money of this house and estate; and you inherited it, as his next of kin--" rosamond started back in her chair and clasped her hands in dismay. "oh, lenny," she said simply, "i have thought so much of you, since i found the letter, that i never remembered this!" "it is time to remember it, my love. if you are not captain treverton's daughter, you have no right to one farthing of the fortune that you possess; and it must be restored at once to the person who _is_ captain treverton's next of kin--or, in other words, to his brother." "to that man!" exclaimed rosamond. "to that man who is a stranger to us, who holds our very name in contempt! are we to be made poor that he may be made rich?--" "we are to do what is honorable and just, at any sacrifice of our own interests and ourselves," said leonard, firmly. "i believe, rosamond, that my consent, as your husband, is necessary, according to the law, to effect this restitution. if mr. andrew treverton was the bitterest enemy i had on earth, and if the restoring of this money utterly ruined us both in our worldly circumstances, i would give it back of my own accord to the last farthing--and so would you!" the blood mantled in his cheeks as he spoke. rosamond looked at him admiringly in silence. "who would have him less proud," she thought, fondly, "when his pride speaks in such words as those!" "you understand now," continued leonard, "that we have duties to perform which will oblige us to seek help from others, and which will therefore render it impossible to keep the secret to ourselves? if we search all england for her, sarah leeson must be found. our future actions depend upon her answers to our inquiries, upon her testimony to the genuineness of that letter. although i am resolved beforehand to shield myself behind no technical quibbles and delays--although i want nothing but evidence that is morally conclusive, however legally imperfect it may be--it is still impossible to proceed without seeking advice immediately. the lawyer who always managed captain treverton's affairs, and who now manages ours, is the proper person to direct us in instituting a search, and to assist us, if necessary, in making the restitution." "how quietly and firmly you speak of it, lenny! will not the abandoning of my fortune be a dreadful loss to us?" "we must think of it as a gain to our consciences, rosamond, and must alter our way of life resignedly to suit our altered means. but we need speak no more of that until we are assured of the necessity of restoring the money. my immediate anxiety, and your immediate anxiety, must turn now on the discovery of sarah leeson--no! on the discovery of your mother; i must learn to call her by that name, or i shall not learn to pity and forgive her." rosamond nestled closer to her husband's side. "every word you say, love, does my heart good," she whispered, laying her head on his shoulder. "you will help me and strengthen me, when the time comes, to meet my mother as i ought? oh, how pale and worn and weary she was when she stood by my bedside, and looked at me and my child! will it be long before we find her? is she far away from us, i wonder? or nearer, much nearer than we think?" before leonard could answer, he was interrupted by a knock at the door, and rosamond was surprised by the appearance of the maid-servant. betsey was flushed, excited, and out of breath; but she contrived to deliver intelligibly a brief message from mr. munder, the steward, requesting permission to speak to mr. frankland, or to mrs. frankland, on business of importance. "what is it? what does he want?" asked rosamond. "i think, ma'am, he wants to know whether he had better send for the constable or not," answered betsey. "send for the constable!" repeated rosamond. "are there thieves in the house in broad daylight?" "mr. munder says he don't know but what it may be worse than thieves," replied betsey. "it's the foreigner again, if you please, ma'am. he come up and rung at the door as bold as brass, and asked if he could see mrs. frankland." "the foreigner!" exclaimed rosamond, laying her hand eagerly on her husband's arm. "yes, ma'am," said betsey. "him as come here to go over the house along with the lady--" rosamond, with characteristic impulsiveness, started to her feet. "let me go down!" she began. "wait," interposed leonard, catching her by the hand. "there is not the least need for you to go down stairs.--show the foreigner up here," he continued, addressing himself to betsey, "and tell mr. munder that we will take the management of this business into our own hands." rosamond sat down again by her husband's side. "this is a very strange accident," she said, in a low, serious tone. "it must be something more than mere chance that puts the clew into our hands, at the moment when we least expected to find it." the door opened for the second time, and there appeared, modestly, on the threshold, a little old man, with rosy cheeks and long white hair. a small leather case was slung by a strap at his side, and the stem of a pipe peeped out of the breast pocket of his coat. he advanced one step into the room, stopped, raised both his hands, with his felt hat crumpled up in them, to his heart, and made five fantastic bows in quick succession--two to mrs. frankland, two to her husband, and one to mrs. frankland again, as an act of separate and special homage to the lady. never had rosamond seen a more complete embodiment in human form of perfect innocence and perfect harmlessness than the foreigner who was described in the housekeeper's letter as an audacious vagabond, and who was dreaded by mr. munder as something worse than a thief! "madam and good sir," said the old man, advancing a little nearer at mrs. frankland's invitation, "i ask your pardon for intruding myself. my name is joseph buschmann. i live in the town of truro, where i work in cabinets and tea-caddies, and other shining woods. i am also, if you please, the same little foreign man who was scolded by the big major-domo when i came to see the house. all that i ask of your kindness is, that you will let me say for my errand here and for myself, and for another person who is very near to my love--one little word. i will be but few minutes, madam and good sir, and then i will go my ways again, with my best wishes and my best thanks." "pray consider, mr. buschmann, that our time is your time," said leonard. "we have no engagement whatever which need oblige you to shorten your visit. i must tell you beforehand, in order to prevent any embarrassment on either side, that i have the misfortune to be blind. i can promise you, however, my best attention as far as listening goes. rosamond, is mr. buschmann seated?" mr. buschmann was still standing near the door, and was expressing sympathy by bowing to mr. frankland again, and crumpling his felt hat once more over his heart. "pray come nearer, and sit down," said rosamond. "and don't imagine for one moment that any opinion of the steward's has the least influence on us, or that we feel it at all necessary for you to apologize for what took place the last time you came to this house. we have an interest--a very great interest," she added, with her usual hearty frankness, "in hearing any thing that you have to tell us. you are the person of all others whom we are, just at this time--" she stopped, feeling her foot touched by her husband's, and rightly interpreting the action as a warning not to speak too unrestrainedly to the visitor before he had explained his object in coming to the house. looking very much pleased, and a little surprised also, when he heard rosamond's last words, uncle joseph drew a chair near to the table by which mr. and mrs. frankland were sitting, crumpled his felt hat up smaller than ever, and put it in one of his side pockets, drew from the other a little packet of letters, placed them on his knees as he sat down, patted them gently with both hands, and entered on his explanation in these terms: "madam and good sir," he began, "before i can say comfortably my little word, i must, with your leave, travel backward to the last time when i came to this house in company with my niece." "your niece!" exclaimed rosamond and leonard, both speaking together. "my niece, sarah," said uncle joseph, "the only child of my sister agatha. it is for the love of sarah, if you please, that i am here now. she is the one last morsel of my flesh and blood that is left to me in the world. the rest, they are all gone! my wife, my little joseph, my brother max, my sister agatha and the husband she married, the good and noble englishman, leeson--they are all, all gone!" "leeson," said rosamond, pressing her husband's hand significantly under the table. "your niece's name is sarah leeson?" uncle joseph sighed and shook his head. "one day," he said, "of all the days in the year the evilmost for sarah, she changed that name. of the man she married--who is dead now, madam--it is little or nothing that i know but this: his name was jazeph, and he used her ill, for which i think him the first scoundrel! yes," exclaimed uncle joseph, with the nearest approach to anger and bitterness which his nature was capable of making, and with an idea that he was using one of the strongest superlatives in the language--"yes! if he was to come to life again at this very moment of time, i would say it of him to his face--englishman jazeph, you are the first scoundrel!" rosamond pressed her husband's hand for the second time. if their own convictions had not already identified mrs. jazeph with sarah leeson, the old man's last words must have amply sufficed to assure them that both names had been borne by the same person. "well, then, i shall now travel backward to the time when i was here with sarah, my niece," resumed uncle joseph. "i must, if you please, speak the truth in this business, or, now that i am already backward where i want to be, i shall stick fast in my place, and get on no more for the rest of my life. sir and good madam, will you have the great kindness to forgive me and sarah, my niece, if i confess that it was not to see the house that we came here and rang at the bell, and gave deal of trouble, and wasted much breath of the big major-domo's with the scolding that we got. it was only to do one curious little thing that we came together to this place--or, no, it was all about a secret of sarah's, which is still as black and dark to me as the middle of the blackest and darkest night that ever was in the world--and as i nothing knew about it, except that there was no harm in it to any body or any thing, and that sarah was determined to go, and that i could not let her go by herself; as also for the good reason that she told me she had the best right of any body to take the letter and to hide it again, seeing that she was afraid of its being found if longer in that room she left it, which was the room where she had hidden it before--why, so it happened that i--no, that she--no, no, that i--ach gott!" cried uncle joseph, striking his forehead in despair, and relieving himself by an invocation in his own language. "i am lost in my own muddlement; and whereabouts the right place is, and how i am to get myself back into it, as i am a living sinner, is more than i know!" "there is not the least need to go back on our account," said rosamond, forgetting all caution and self-restraint in her anxiety to restore the old man's confidence and composure. "pray don't try to repeat your explanations. we know already--" "we will suppose," said leonard, interposing abruptly before his wife could add another word, "that we know already every thing you can desire to tell us in relation to your niece's secret, and to your motives for desiring to see the house." "you will suppose that!" exclaimed uncle joseph, looking greatly relieved. "ah! thank you, sir, and you, good madam, a thousand times for helping me out of my own muddlement with a 'suppose.' i am all over confusion from my tops to my toes; but i can go on now, i think, and lose myself no more. so! let us say it in this way: i and sarah, my niece, are _in_ the house--that is the first 'suppose.' i and sarah, my niece, are _out_ of the house--that is the second 'suppose.' good! now we go on once more. on my way back to my own home at truro, i am frightened for sarah, because of the faint she fell into on your stairs here, and because of a look in her face that it makes me heavy at my heart to see. also, i am sorry for her sake, because she has not done that one curious little thing which she came into the house to do. i fret about these same matters, but i console myself too; and my comfort is that sarah will stop with me in my house at truro, and that i shall make her happy and well again, as soon as we are settled in our life together. judge, then, sir, what a blow falls on me when i hear that she will not make her home where i make mine. judge you, also, good madam, what my surprise must be, when i ask for her reason, and she tells me she must leave uncle joseph, because she is afraid of being found out by _you_." he stopped, and looking anxiously at rosamond's face, saw it sadden and turn away from him after he had spoken his last words. "are you sorry, madam, for sarah, my niece? do you pity her?" he asked, with a little hesitation and trembling in his voice. "i pity her with my whole heart," said rosamond, warmly. "and with my whole heart, for that pity i thank you!" rejoined uncle joseph. "ah, madam, your kindness gives me the courage to go on, and to tell you that we parted from each other on the day of our getting back to truro! when she came to see me this time, it was years and years, long and lonely and very many, since we two had met. i was afraid that many more would pass again, and i tried to make her stop with me to the very last. but she had still the same fear to drive her away--the fear of being found and put to the question by you. so, with the tears in her eyes (and in mine), and the grief at her heart (and at mine), she went away to hide herself in the empty bigness of the great city, london, which swallows up all people and all things that pour into it, and which has now swallowed up sarah, my niece, with the rest. 'my child, you will write sometimes to uncle joseph,' i said, and she answered me,'i will write often.' it is three weeks now since that time, and here, on my knee, are four letters she has written to me. i shall ask your leave to put them down open before you, because they will help me to get on further yet with what i must say, and because i see in your face, madam, that you are indeed sorry for sarah, my niece, from your heart." he untied the packet of letters, opened them, kissed them one by one, and put them down in a row on the table, smoothing them out carefully with his hand, and taking great pains to arrange them all in a perfectly straight line. a glance at the first of the little series showed rosamond that the handwriting in it was the same as the handwriting in the body of the letter which had been found in the myrtle room. "there is not much to read," said uncle joseph. "but if you will look through them first, madam, i can tell you after all the reason for showing them that i have." the old man was right. there was very little to read in the letters, and they grew progressively shorter as they became more recent in date. all four were written in the formal, conventionally correct style of a person taking up the pen with a fear of making mistakes in spelling and grammar, and were equally destitute of any personal particulars relative to the writer; all four anxiously entreated that uncle joseph would not be uneasy, inquired after his health, and expressed gratitude and love for him as warmly as their timid restraints of style would permit; all four contained these two questions relating to rosamond--first, had mrs. frankland arrived yet at porthgenna tower? second, if she had arrived, what had uncle joseph heard about her? and, finally, all four gave the same instructions for addressing an answer--"please direct to me, 's. j., post-office, smith street, london'"--followed by the same apology, "excuse my not giving my address, in case of accidents; for even in london i am still afraid of being followed and found out. i send every morning for letters; so i am sure to get your answer." "i told you, madam," said the old man, when rosamond raised her head from the letters, "that i was frightened and sorry for sarah when she left me. now see, if you please, why i got more frightened and more sorry yet, when i have all the four letters that she writes to me. they begin here, with the first, at my left hand; and they grow shorter, and shorter, and shorter, as they get nearer to my right, till the last is but eight little lines. again, see, if you please. the writing of the first letter, here, at my left hand, is very fine--i mean it is very fine to me, because i love sarah, and because i write very badly myself; but it is not so good in the second letter--it shakes a little, it blots a little, it crooks itself a little in the last lines. in the third it is worse--more shake, more blot, more crook. in the fourth, where there is least to do, there is still more shake, still more blot, still more crook, than in all the other three put together. i see this; i remember that she was weak and worn and weary when she left me, and i say to myself, 'she is ill, though she will not tell it, for the writing betrays her!'" rosamond looked down again at the letters, and followed the significant changes for the worse in the handwriting, line by line, as the old man pointed them out. "i say to myself that," he continued; "i wait, and think a little; and i hear my own heart whisper to me, 'go you, uncle joseph, to london, and, while there is yet time, bring her back to be cured and comforted and made happy in your own home!' after that i wait, and think a little again--not about leaving my business; i would leave it forever sooner than sarah should come to harm--but about what i am to do to get her to come back. that thought makes me look at the letters again; the letters show me always the same questions about mistress frankland; i see it plainly as my own hand before me that i shall never get sarah, my niece, back, unless i can make easy her mind about those questions of mistress frankland's that she dreads as if there was death to her in every one of them. i see it! it makes my pipe go out; it drives me up from my chair; it puts my hat on my head; it brings me here, where i have once intruded myself already, and where i have no right, i know, to intrude myself again; it makes me beg and pray now, of your compassion for my niece and of your goodness for me, that you will not deny me the means of bringing sarah back. if i may only say to her, i have seen mistress frankland, and she has told me with her own lips that she will ask none of those questions that you fear so much--if i may only say that, sarah will come back with me, and i shall thank you every day of my life for making me a happy man!" the simple eloquence of his words, the innocent earnestness of his manner, touched rosamond to the heart. "i will do any thing, i will promise any thing," she answered eagerly, "to help you to bring her back! if she will only let me see her, i promise not to say one word that she would not wish me to say; i promise not to ask one question--no, not one--that it will pain her to answer. oh, what comforting message can i send besides? what can i say--?" she stopped confusedly, feeling her husband's foot touching hers again. "ah, say no more! say no more!" cried uncle joseph, tying up his little packet of letters, with his eyes sparkling and his ruddy face all in a glow. "enough said to bring sarah back! enough said to make me grateful for all my life! oh, i am so happy, so happy, so happy--my skin is too small to hold me!" he tossed up the packet of letters into the air, caught it, kissed it, and put it back again in his pocket, all in an instant. "you are not going?" said rosamond. "surely you are not going yet?" "it is my loss to go away from here, which i must put up with, because it is also my gain to get sooner to sarah," replied uncle joseph. "for that reason only, i shall ask your pardon if i take my leave with my heart full of thanks, and go my ways home again." "when do you propose to start for london, mr. buschmann?" inquired leonard. "to-morrow, in the morning early, sir," replied uncle joseph. "i shall finish the work that i must do to-night, and shall leave the rest to samuel (who is my very good friend, and my shopman too), and shall then go to sarah by the first coach." "may i ask for your niece's address in london, in case we wish to write to you?" "she gives me no address, sir, but the post-office; for even at the great distance of london, the same fear that she had all the way from this house still sticks to her. but here is the place where i shall get my own bed," continued the old man, producing a small shop card. "it is the house of a countryman of my own, a fine baker of buns, sir, and a very good man indeed." "have you thought of any plan for finding out your niece's address?" inquired rosamond, copying the direction on the card while she spoke. "ah, yes--for i am always quick at making my plans," said uncle joseph. "i shall present myself to the master of the post, and to him i shall say just this and no more--'good-morning, sir. i am the man who writes the letters to s. j. she is my niece, if you please; and all that i want to know is--where does she live?' there is something like a plan, i think? aha!" he spread out both his hands interrogatively, and looked at mrs. frankland with a self-satisfied smile. "i am afraid," said rosamond, partly amused, partly touched by his simplicity, "that the people at the post-office are not at all likely to be trusted with the address. i think you would do better to take a letter with you, directed to 's. j.;' to deliver it in the morning when letters are received from the country; to wait near the door, and then to follow the person who is sent by your niece (as she tells you herself) to ask for letters for s. j." "you think that is better?" said uncle joseph, secretly convinced that his own idea was unquestionably the most ingenious of the two. "good! the least little word that you say to me, madam, is a command that i follow with all my heart." he took the crumpled felt hat out of his pocket, and advanced to say farewell, when mr. frankland spoke to him again. "if you find your niece well, and willing to travel," said leonard, "you will bring her back to truro at once? and you will let us know when you are both at home again?" "at once, sir," said uncle joseph. "to both these questions, i say, at once." "if a week from this time passes," continued leonard, "and we hear nothing from you, we must conclude, then, either that some unforeseen obstacle stands in the way of your return, or that your fears on your niece's account have been but too well-founded, and that she is not able to travel?" "yes, sir; so let it be. but i hope you will hear from me before the week is out." "oh, so do i! most earnestly, most anxiously!" said rosamond. "you remember my message?" "i have got it here, every word of it," said uncle joseph, touching his heart. he raised the hand which rosamond held out to him to his lips. "i shall try to thank you better when i have come back," he said. "for all your kindness to me and to my niece, god bless you both, and keep you happy, till we meet again." with these words, he hastened to the door, waved his hand gayly, with the old crumpled hat in it, and went out. "dear, simple, warm-hearted old man!" said rosamond, as the door closed. "i wanted to tell him every thing, lenny. why did you stop me?" "my love, it is that very simplicity which you admire, and which i admire, too, that makes me cautious. at the first sound of his voice i felt as warmly toward him as you do; but the more i heard him talk the more convinced i became that it would be rash to trust him, at first, for fear of his disclosing too abruptly to your mother that we know her secret. our chance of winning her confidence and obtaining an interview with her depends, i can see, upon our own tact in dealing with her exaggerated suspicions and her nervous fears. that good old man, with the best and kindest intentions in the world, might ruin every thing. he will have done all that we can hope for, and all that we can wish, if he only succeeds in bringing her back to truro." "but if he fails?--if any thing happens?--if she is really ill?" "let us wait till the week is over, rosamond. it will be time enough then to decide what we shall do next." chapter ii. waiting and hoping. the week of expectation passed, and no tidings from uncle joseph reached porthgenna tower. on the eighth day mr. frankland sent a messenger to truro, with orders to find out the cabinet-maker's shop kept by mr. buschmann, and to inquire of the person left in charge there whether he had received any news from his master. the messenger returned in the afternoon, and brought word that mr. buschmann had written one short note to his shopman since his departure, announcing that he had arrived safely toward nightfall in london; that he had met with a hospitable welcome from his countryman, the german baker; and that he had discovered his niece's address, but had been prevented from seeing her by an obstacle which he hoped would be removed at his next visit. since the delivery of that note, no further communication had been received from him, and nothing therefore was known of the period at which he might be expected to return. the one fragment of intelligence thus obtained was not of a nature to relieve the depression of spirits which the doubt and suspense of the past week had produced in mrs. frankland. her husband endeavored to combat the oppression of mind from which she was suffering, by reminding her that the ominous silence of uncle joseph might be just as probably occasioned by his niece's unwillingness as by her inability to return with him to truro. remembering the obstacle at which the old man's letter hinted, and taking also into consideration her excessive sensitiveness and her unreasoning timidity, he declared it to be quite possible that mrs. frankland's message, instead of re-assuring her, might only inspire her with fresh apprehensions, and might consequently strengthen her resolution to keep herself out of reach of all communications from porthgenna tower. rosamond listened patiently while this view of the case was placed before her, and acknowledged that the reasonableness of it was beyond dispute; but her readiness in admitting that her husband might be right and that she might be wrong was accompanied by no change for the better in the condition of her spirits. the interpretation which, the old man had placed upon the alteration for the worse in mrs. jazeph's handwriting had produced a vivid impression on her mind, which had been strengthened by her own recollection of her mother's pale, worn face when they met as strangers at west winston. reason, therefore, as convincingly as he might, mr. frankland was unable to shake his wife's conviction that the obstacle mentioned in uncle joseph's letter, and the silence which he had maintained since, were referable alike to the illness of his niece. the return of the messenger from truro suggested, besides this topic of discussion, another question of much greater importance. after having waited one day beyond the week that had been appointed, what was the proper course of action for mr. and mrs. frankland now to adopt, in the absence of any information from london or from truro to decide their future proceedings? leonard's first idea was to write immediately to uncle joseph, at the address which he had given on the occasion of his visit to porthgenna tower. when this project was communicated to rosamond, she opposed it, on the ground that the necessary delay before the answer to the letter could arrive would involve a serious waste of time, when it might, for aught they knew to the contrary, be of the last importance to them not to risk the loss of a single day. if illness prevented mrs. jazeph from traveling, it would be necessary to see her at once, because that illness might increase. if she were only suspicious of their motives, it was equally important to open personal communications with her before she could find an opportunity of raising some fresh obstacle, and of concealing herself again in some place of refuge which uncle joseph himself might not be able to trace. the truth of these conclusions was obvious, but leonard hesitated to adopt them, because they involved the necessity of a journey to london. if he went there without his wife, his blindness placed him at the mercy of strangers and servants, in conducting investigations of the most delicate and most private nature. if rosamond accompanied him, it would be necessary to risk all kinds of delays and inconveniences by taking the child with them on a long and wearisome journey of more than two hundred and fifty miles. rosamond met both these difficulties with her usual directness and decision. the idea of her husband traveling any where, under any circumstances, in his helpless, dependent state, without having her to attend on him, she dismissed at once as too preposterous for consideration. the second objection, of subjecting the child to the chances and fatigues of a long journey, she met by proposing that they should travel to exeter at their own time and in their own conveyance, and that they should afterward insure plenty of comfort and plenty of room by taking a carriage to themselves when they reached the railroad at exeter. after thus smoothing away the difficulties which seemed to set themselves in opposition to the journey, she again reverted to the absolute necessity of undertaking it. she reminded leonard of the serious interest that they both had in immediately obtaining mrs. jazeph's testimony to the genuineness of the letter which had been found in the myrtle room, as well as in ascertaining all the details of the extraordinary fraud which had been practiced by mrs. treverton on her husband. she pleaded also her own natural anxiety to make all the atonement in her power for the pain she must have unconsciously inflicted, in the bedroom at west winston, on the person of all others whose failings and sorrows she was most bound to respect; and having thus stated the motives which urged her husband and herself to lose no time in communicating personally with mrs. jazeph, she again drew the inevitable conclusion that there was no alternative, in the position in which they were now placed, but to start forthwith on the journey to london. a little further consideration satisfied leonard that the emergency was of such a nature as to render all attempts to meet it by half-measures impossible. he felt that his own convictions agreed with his wife's; and he resolved accordingly to act at once, without further indecision or further delay. before the evening was over, the servants at porthgenna were amazed by receiving directions to pack the trunks for traveling, and to order horses at the post-town for an early hour the next morning. on the first day of the journey, the travelers started as soon as the carriage was ready, rested on the road toward noon, and remained for the night at liskeard. on the second day they arrived at exeter, and slept there. on the third day they reached london by the railway, between six and seven o'clock in the evening. when they were comfortably settled for the night at their hotel, and when an hour's rest and quiet had enabled them to recover a little after the fatigues of the journey, rosamond wrote two notes under her husband's direction. the first was addressed to mr. buschmann: it simply informed him of their arrival, and of their earnest desire to see him at the hotel as early as possible the next morning, and it concluded by cautioning him to wait until he had seen them before he announced their presence in london to his niece. the second note was addressed to the family solicitor, mr. nixon--the same gentleman who, more than a year since, had written, at mrs. frankland's request, the letter which informed andrew treverton of his brother's decease, and of the circumstances under which the captain had died. all that rosamond now wrote, in her husband's name and her own, to ask of mr. nixon, was that he would endeavor to call at their hotel on his way to business the next morning, to give his opinion on a private matter of great importance, which had obliged them to undertake the journey from porthgenna to london. this note, and the note to uncle joseph, were sent to their respective addresses by a messenger on the evening when they were written. the first visitor who arrived the next morning was the solicitor--a clear-headed, fluent, polite old gentleman, who had known captain treverton and his father before him. he came to the hotel fully expecting to be consulted on some difficulties connected with the porthgenna estate, which the local agent was perhaps unable to settle, and which might be of too confused and intricate a nature to be easily expressed in writing. when he heard what the emergency really was, and when the letter that had been found in the myrtle room was placed in his hands, it is not too much to say that, for the first time in the course of a long life and a varied practice among all sorts and conditions of clients, sheer astonishment utterly paralyzed mr. nixon's faculties, and bereft him for some moments of the power of uttering a single word. when, however, mr. frankland proceeded from making the disclosure to announcing his resolution to give up the purchase-money of porthgenna tower, if the genuineness of the letter could be proved to his own satisfaction, the old lawyer recovered the use of his tongue immediately, and protested against his client's intention with the sincere warmth of a man who thoroughly understood the advantage of being rich, and who knew what it was to gain and to lose a fortune of forty thousand pounds. leonard listened with patient attention while mr. nixon argued from his professional point of view against regarding the letter, taken by itself, as a genuine document, and against accepting mrs. jazeph's evidence, taken with it, as decisive on the subject of mrs. frankland's real parentage. he expatiated on the improbability of mrs. treverton's alleged fraud upon her husband having been committed without other persons besides her maid and herself being in the secret. he declared it to be in accordance with all received experience of human nature that one or more of those other persons must have spoken of the secret either from malice or from want of caution, and that the consequent exposure of the truth must, in the course of so long a period as twenty-two years, have come to the knowledge of some among the many people in the west of england, as well as in london, who knew the treverton family personally or by reputation. from this objection he passed to another, which admitted the possible genuineness of the letter as a written document; but which pleaded the probability of its having been produced under the influence of some mental delusion on mrs. treverton's part, which her maid might have had an interest in humoring at the time, though she might have hesitated, after her mistress's death, at risking the possible consequences of attempting to profit by the imposture. having stated this theory, as one which not only explained the writing of the letter, but the hiding of it also, mr. nixon further observed, in reference to mrs. jazeph, that any evidence she might give was of little or no value in a legal point of view, from the difficulty--or, he might say, the impossibility--of satisfactorily identifying the infant mentioned in the letter with the lady whom he had now the honor of addressing as mrs. frankland, and whom no unsubstantiated document in existence should induce him to believe to be any other than the daughter of his old friend and client, captain treverton. having heard the lawyer's objections to the end, leonard admitted their ingenuity, but acknowledged at the same time that they had produced no alteration in his impression on the subject of the letter, or in his convictions as to the course of duty which he felt bound to follow. he would wait, he said, for mrs. jazeph's testimony before he acted decisively; but if that testimony were of such a nature, and were given in such a manner, as to satisfy him that his wife had no moral right to the fortune that she possessed, he would restore it at once to the person who had--mr. andrew treverton. finding that no fresh arguments or suggestions could shake mr. frankland's resolution, and that no separate appeal to rosamond had the slightest effect in stimulating her to use her influence for the purpose of inducing her husband to alter his determination; and feeling convinced, moreover, from all that he heard, that mr. frankland would, if he was opposed by many more objections, either employ another professional adviser, or risk committing some fatal legal error by acting for himself in the matter of restoring the money, mr. nixon at last consented, under protest, to give his client what help he needed in case it became necessary to hold communication with andrew treverton. he listened with polite resignation to leonard's brief statement of the questions that he intended to put to mrs. jazeph; and said, with the slightest possible dash of sarcasm, when it came to his turn to speak, that they were excellent questions in a moral point of view, and would doubtless produce answers which would be full of interest of the most romantic kind. "but," he added, "as you have one child already, mr. frankland, and as you may, perhaps, if i may venture on suggesting such a thing, have more in the course of years; and as those children, when they grow up, may hear of the loss of their mother's fortune, and may wish to know why it was sacrificed, i should recommend--resting the matter on family grounds alone, and not going further to make a legal point of it also--that you procure from mrs. jazeph, besides the vivâ voce evidence you propose to extract (against the admissibility of which, in this case, i again protest), a written declaration, which you may leave behind you at your death, and which may justify you in the eyes of your children, in case the necessity for such justification should arise at some future period." this advice was too plainly valuable to be neglected. at leonard's request, mr. nixon drew out at once a form of declaration, affirming the genuineness of the letter addressed by the late mrs. treverton on her death-bed to her husband, since also deceased, and bearing witness to the truth of the statements therein contained, both as regarded the fraud practiced on captain treverton and the asserted parentage of the child. telling mr. frankland that he would do well to have mrs. jazeph's signature to this document attested by the names of two competent witnesses, mr. nixon handed the declaration to rosamond to read aloud to her husband, and, finding that no objection was made to any part of it, and that he could be of no further use in the present early stage of the proceedings, rose to take his leave. leonard engaged to communicate with him again in the course of the day, if necessary; and he retired, reiterating his protest to the last, and declaring that he had never met with such an extraordinary case and such a self-willed client before in the whole course of his practice. nearly an hour elapsed after the departure of the lawyer before any second visitor was announced. at the expiration of that time, the welcome sound of footsteps was heard approaching the door, and uncle joseph entered the room. rosamond's observation, stimulated by anxiety, detected a change in his look and manner the moment he appeared. his face was harassed and fatigued, and his gait, as he advanced into the room, had lost the briskness and activity which so quaintly distinguished it when she saw him, for the first time, at porthgenna tower. he tried to add to his first words of greeting an apology for being late; but rosamond interrupted him, in her eagerness to ask the first important question. "we know that you have discovered her address," she said, anxiously, "but we know nothing more. is she as you feared to find her? is she ill?" the old man shook his head sadly. "when i showed you her letter," he said, "what did i tell you? she is so ill, madam, that not even the message your kindness gave to me will do her any good." those few simple words struck rosamond's heart with a strange fear, which silenced her against her own will when she tried to speak again. uncle joseph understood the anxious look she fixed on him, and the quick sign she made toward the chair standing nearest to the sofa on which she and her husband were sitting. there he took his place, and there he confided to them all that he had to tell. he had followed, he said, the advice which rosamond had given to him at porthgenna, by taking a letter addressed to "s. j." to the post-office the morning after his arrival in london. the messenger--a maid-servant--had called to inquire, as was anticipated, and had left the post-office with his letter in her hand. he had followed her to a lodging-house in a street near, had seen her let herself in at the door, and had then knocked and inquired for mrs. jazeph. the door was answered by an old woman, who looked like the landlady; and the reply was that no one of that name lived there. he had then explained that he wished to see the person for whom letters were sent to the neighboring post-office, addressed to "s. j.;" but the old woman had answered, in the surliest way, that they had nothing to do with anonymous people or their friends in that house, and had closed the door in his face. upon this he had gone back to his friend, the german baker, to get advice; and had been recommended to return, after allowing some little time to elapse, to ask if he could see the servant who waited on the lodgers, to describe his niece's appearance, and to put half a crown into the girl's hand to help her to understand what he wanted. he had followed these directions, and had discovered that his niece was lying ill in the house, under the assumed name of "mrs. james." a little persuasion (after the present of the half-crown) had induced the girl to go up stairs and announce his name. after that there were no more obstacles to be overcome, and he was conducted immediately to the room occupied by his niece. he was inexpressibly shocked and startled when he saw her by the violent nervous agitation which she manifested as he approached her bedside. but he did not lose heart and hope until he had communicated mrs. frankland's message, and had found that it failed altogether in producing the re-assuring effect on her spirits which he had trusted and believed that it would exercise. instead of soothing, it seemed to excite and alarm her afresh. among a host of minute inquiries about mrs. frankland's looks, about her manner toward him, about the exact words she had spoken, all of which he was able to answer more or less to her satisfaction, she had addressed two questions to him, to which he was utterly unable to reply. the first of the questions was, whether mrs. frankland had said any thing about the secret? the second was, whether she had spoken any chance word to lead to the suspicion that she had found out the situation of the myrtle room? the doctor in attendance had come in, the old man added, while he was still sitting by his niece's bedside, and still trying ineffectually to induce her to accept the friendly and re-assuring language of mrs. frankland's message. after making some inquiries and talking a little while on indifferent matters, the doctor had privately taken him aside; had informed him that the pain over the region of the heart and the difficulty in breathing, which were the symptoms of which his niece complained, were more serious in their nature than persons uninstructed in medical matters might be disposed to think; and had begged him to give her no more messages from any one, unless he felt perfectly sure beforehand that they would have the effect of clearing her mind, at once and forever, from the secret anxieties that now harassed it--anxieties which he might rest assured were aggravating her malady day by day, and rendering all the medical help that could be given of little or no avail. upon this, after sitting longer with his niece, and after holding counsel with himself, he had resolved to write privately to mrs. frankland that evening, after getting back to his friend's house. the letter had taken him longer to compose than any one accustomed to writing would believe. at last, after delays in making a fair copy from many rough drafts, and delays in leaving his task to attend to his niece, he had completed a letter narrating what had happened since his arrival in london, in language which he hoped might be understood. judging by comparison of dates, this letter must have crossed mr. and mrs. frankland on the road. it contained nothing more than he had just been relating with his own lips--except that it also communicated, as a proof that distance had not diminished the fear which tormented his niece's mind, the explanation she had given to him of her concealment of her name, and of her choice of an abode among strangers, when she had friends in london to whom she might have gone. that explanation it was perhaps needless to have lengthened the letter by repeating, for it only involved his saying over again, in substance, what he had already said in speaking of the motive which had forced sarah to part from him at truro. with last words such as those, the sad and simple story of the old man came to an end. after waiting a little to recover her self-possession and to steady her voice, rosamond touched her husband to draw his attention to herself, and whispered to him-- "i may say all, now, that i wished to say at porthgenna?" "all," he answered. "if you can trust yourself, rosamond, it is fittest that he should hear it from your lips." after the first natural burst of astonishment was over, the effect of the disclosure of the secret on uncle joseph exhibited the most striking contrast that can be imagined to the effect of it on mr. nixon. no shadow of doubt darkened the old man's face, not a word of objection dropped from his lips. the one emotion excited in him was simple, unreflecting, unalloyed delight. he sprang to his feet with all his natural activity, his eyes sparkled again with all their natural brightness; one moment he clapped his hands like a child; the next he caught up his hat, and entreated rosamond to let him lead her at once to his niece's bedside. "if you will only tell sarah what you have just told me," he cried, hurrying across the room to open the door, "you will give her back her courage, you will raise her up from her bed, you will cure her before the day is out!" a warning word from mr. frankland stopped him on a sudden, and brought him back, silent and attentive, to the chair that he had left the moment before. "think a little of what the doctor told you," said leonard. "the sudden surprise which has made you so happy might do fatal mischief to your niece. before we take the responsibility of speaking to her on a subject which is sure to agitate her violently, however careful we may be in introducing it, we ought first, i think, for safety's sake, to apply to the doctor for advice." rosamond warmly seconded her husband's suggestion, and, with her characteristic impatience of delay, proposed that they should find out the medical man immediately. uncle joseph announced--a little unwillingly, as it seemed--in answer to her inquiries, that he knew the place of the doctor's residence, and that he was generally to be found at home before one o'clock in the afternoon. it was then just half-past twelve; and rosamond, with her husband's approval, rang the bell at once to send for a cab. she was about to leave the room to put on her bonnet, after giving the necessary order, when the old man stopped her by asking, with some appearance of hesitation and confusion, if it was considered necessary that he should go to the doctor with mr. and mrs. frankland; adding, before the question could be answered, that he would greatly prefer, if there was no objection to it on their parts, being left to wait at the hotel to receive any instructions they might wish to give him on their return. leonard immediately complied with his request, without inquiring into his reasons for making it; but rosamond's curiosity was aroused, and she asked why he preferred remaining by himself at the hotel to going with them to the doctor. "i like him not," said the old man. "when he speaks about sarah, he looks and talks as if he thought she would never get up from her bed again." answering in those brief words, he walked away uneasily to the window, as if he desired to say no more. the residence of the doctor was at some little distance, but mr. and mrs. frankland arrived there before one o'clock, and found him at home. he was a young man, with a mild, grave face, and a quiet, subdued manner. daily contact with suffering and sorrow had perhaps prematurely steadied and saddened his character. merely introducing her husband and herself to him, as persons who were deeply interested in his patient at the lodging-house, rosamond left it to leonard to ask the first questions relating to the condition of her mother's health. the doctor's answer was ominously prefaced by a few polite words, which were evidently intended to prepare his hearers for a less hopeful report than they might have come there expecting to receive. carefully divesting the subject of all professional technicalities, he told them that his patient was undoubtedly affected with serious disease of the heart. the exact nature of this disease he candidly acknowledged to be a matter of doubt, which various medical men might decide in various ways. according to the opinion which he had himself formed from the symptoms, he believed that the patient's malady was connected with the artery which conveys blood directly from the heart through the system. having found her singularly unwilling to answer questions relating to the nature of her past life, he could only guess that the disease was of long standing; that it was originally produced by some great mental shock, followed by long-wearing anxiety (of which her face showed palpable traces); and that it had been seriously aggravated by the fatigue of a journey to london, which she acknowledged she had undertaken at a time when great nervous exhaustion rendered her totally unfit to travel. speaking according to this view of the case, it was his painful duty to tell her friends that any violent emotion would unquestionably put her life in danger. at the same time, if the mental uneasiness from which she was now suffering could be removed, and if she could be placed in a quiet, comfortable country home, among people who would be unremittingly careful in keeping her composed, and in suffering her to want for nothing, there was reason to hope that the progress of the disease might be arrested, and that her life might be spared for some years to come. rosamond's heart bounded at the picture of the future which her fancy drew from the suggestions that lay hidden in the doctor's last words. "she can command every advantage you have mentioned, and more, if more is required!" she interposed eagerly, before her husband could speak again. "oh, sir, if rest among kind friends is all that her poor weary heart wants, thank god we can give it!" "we can give it," said leonard, continuing the sentence for his wife, "if the doctor will sanction our making a communication to his patient, which is of a nature to relieve her of all anxiety, but which, it is necessary to add, she is at present quite unprepared to receive." "may i ask," said the doctor, "who is to be intrusted with the responsibility of making the communication you mention?" "there are two persons who could be intrusted with it," answered leonard. "one is the old man whom you have seen by your patient's bedside. the other is my wife." "in that case," rejoined the doctor, looking at rosamond, "there can be no doubt that this lady is the fittest person to undertake the duty." he paused, and reflected for a moment; then added--"may i inquire, however, before i venture on guiding your decision one way or the other, whether the lady is as familiarly known to my patient, and is on the same intimate terms with her, as the old man?" "i am afraid i must answer no to both those questions," replied leonard. "and i ought, perhaps, to tell you, at the same time, that your patient believes my wife to be now in cornwall. her first appearance in the sick-room would, i fear, cause great surprise to the sufferer, and possibly some little alarm as well." "under those circumstances," said the doctor, "the risk of trusting the old man, simple as he is, seems to be infinitely the least risk of the two--for the plain reason that his presence can cause her no surprise. however unskillfully he may break the news, he will have the great advantage over this lady of not appearing unexpectedly at the bedside. if the hazardous experiment must be tried--and i assume that it must, from what you have said--you have no choice, i think, but to trust it, with proper cautions and instructions, to the old man to carry out." after arriving at that conclusion, there was no more to be said on either side. the interview terminated, and rosamond and her husband hastened back to give uncle joseph his instructions at the hotel. as they approached the door of their sitting-room they were surprised by hearing the sound of music inside. on entering, they found the old man crouched upon a stool, listening to a shabby little musical box which was placed on a table close by him, and which was playing an air that rosamond recognized immediately as the "batti, batti" of mozart. "i hope you will pardon me for making music to keep myself company while you were away," said uncle joseph, starting up in some little confusion, and touching the stop of the box. "this is, if you please, of all my friends and companions, the oldest that is left. the divine mozart, the king of all the composers that ever lived, gave it with his own hand, madam, to my brother, when max was a boy in the music school at vienna. since my niece left me in cornwall, i have not had the heart to make mozart sing to me out of this little bit of box until to-day. now that you have made me happy about sarah again, my ears ache once more for the tiny _ting-ting_ that has always the same friendly sound to my heart, travel where i may. but enough so!" said the old man, placing the box in the leather case by his side, which rosamond had noticed there when she first saw him at porthgenna. "i shall put back my singing-bird into his cage, and shall ask, when that is done, if you will be pleased to tell me what it is that the doctor has said?" rosamond answered his request by relating the substance of the conversation which had passed between her husband and the doctor. she then, with many preparatory cautions, proceeded to instruct the old man how to disclose the discovery of the secret to his niece. she told him that the circumstances in connection with it must be first stated, not as events that had really happened, but as events that might be supposed to have happened. she put the words that he would have to speak into his mouth, choosing the fewest and the plainest that would answer the purpose; she showed him how he might glide almost imperceptibly from referring to the discovery as a thing that might be supposed, to referring to it as a thing that had really happened; and she impressed upon him, as most important of all, to keep perpetually before his niece's mind the fact that the discovery of the secret had not awakened one bitter feeling or one resentful thought toward her, in the minds of either of the persons who had been so deeply interested in finding it out. uncle joseph listened with unwavering attention until rosamond had done; then rose from his seat, fixed his eyes intently on her face, and detected an expression of anxiety and doubt in it which he rightly interpreted as referring to himself. "may i make you sure, before i go away, that i shall forget nothing?" he asked, very earnestly. "i have no head to invent, it is true; but i have something in me that can remember, and the more especially when it is for sarah's sake. if you please, listen now, and hear if i can say to you over again all that you have said to me?" standing before rosamond, with something in his look and manner strangely and touchingly suggestive of the long-past days of his childhood, and of the time when he had said his earliest lessons at his mother's knee, he now repeated, from first to last, the instructions that had been given to him, with a verbal exactness, with an easy readiness of memory, which, in a man of his age, was nothing less than astonishing. "have i kept it all as i should?" he asked, simply, when he had come to an end. "and may i go my ways now, and take my good news to sarah's bedside?" it was still necessary to detain him, while rosamond and her husband consulted together on the best and safest means of following up the avowal that the secret was discovered by the announcement of their own presence in london. after some consideration, leonard asked his wife to produce the document which the lawyer had drawn out that morning, and to write a few lines, from his dictation, on the blank side of the paper, requesting mrs. jazeph to read the form of declaration, and to affix her signature to it, if she felt that it required her, in every particular, to affirm nothing that was not the exact truth. when this had been done, and when the leaf on which mrs. frankland had written had been folded outward, so that it might be the first page to catch the eye, leonard directed that the paper should be given to the old man, and explained to him what he was to do with it, in these words: "when you have broken the news about the secret to your niece," he said, "and when you have allowed her full time to compose herself, if she asks questions about my wife and myself (as i believe she will), hand that paper to her for answer, and beg her to read it. whether she is willing to sign it or not, she is sure to inquire how you came by it. tell her in return that you have received it from mrs. frankland--using the word 'received,' so that she may believe at first that it was sent to you from porthgenna by post. if you find that she signs the declaration, and that she is not much agitated after doing so, then tell her in the same gradual way in which you tell the truth about the discovery of the secret, that my wife gave the paper to you with her own hands, and that she is now in london--" "waiting and longing to see her," added rosamond. "you, who forget nothing, will not, i am sure, forget to say that." the little compliment to his powers of memory made uncle joseph color with pleasure, as if he was a boy again. promising to prove worthy of the trust reposed in him, and engaging to come back and relieve mrs. frankland of all suspense before the day was out, he took his leave, and went forth hopefully on his momentous errand. rosamond watched him from the window, threading his way in and out among the throng of passengers on the pavement, until he was lost to view. how nimbly the light little figure sped away out of sight! how gayly the unclouded sunlight poured down on the cheerful bustle in the street! the whole being of the great city basked in the summer glory of the day; all its mighty pulses beat high, and all its myriad voices whispered of hope! chapter iii. the story of the past. the afternoon wore away and the evening came, and still there were no signs of uncle joseph's return. toward seven o'clock, rosamond was summoned by the nurse, who reported that the child was awake and fretful. after soothing and quieting him, she took him back with her to the sitting-room, having first, with her usual consideration for the comfort of any servant whom she employed, sent the nurse down stairs, with a leisure hour at her own disposal, after the duties of the day. "i don't like to be away from you, lenny, at this anxious time," she said, when she rejoined her husband; "so i have brought the child in here. he is not likely to be troublesome again, and the having him to take care of is really a relief to me in our present state of suspense." the clock on the mantel-piece chimed the half-hour past seven. the carriages in the street were following one another more and more rapidly, filled with people in full dress, on their way to dinner, or on their way to the opera. the hawkers were shouting proclamations of news in the neighboring square, with the second editions of the evening papers under their arms. people who had been serving behind the counter all day were standing at the shop door to get a breath of fresh air. working men were trooping homeward, now singly, now together, in weary, shambling gangs. idlers, who had come out after dinner, were lighting cigars at corners of streets, and looking about them, uncertain which way they should turn their steps next. it was just that transitional period of the evening at which the street-life of the day is almost over, and the street-life of the night has not quite begun--just the time, also, at which rosamond, after vainly trying to find relief from the weariness of waiting by looking out of window, was becoming more and more deeply absorbed in her own anxious thoughts--when her attention was abruptly recalled to events in the little world about her by the opening of the room door. she looked up immediately from the child lying asleep on her lap, and saw that uncle joseph had returned at last. the old man came in silently, with the form of declaration which he had taken away with him, by mr. frankland's desire, open in his hand. as he approached nearer to the window, rosamond noticed that his face looked as if it had grown strangely older during the few hours of his absence. he came close up to her, and still not saying a word, laid his trembling forefinger low down on the open paper, and held it before her so that she could look at the place thus indicated without rising from her chair. his silence and the change in his face struck her with a sudden dread which made her hesitate before she spoke to him. "have you told her all?" she asked, after a moment's delay, putting the question in low, whispering tones, and not heeding the paper. "this answers that i have," he said, still pointing to the declaration. "see! here is the name, signed in the place that was left for it--signed by her own hand." rosamond glanced at the paper. there indeed was the signature, "s. jazeph;" and underneath it were added, in faintly traced lines of parenthesis, these explanatory words--"formerly, sarah leeson." "why don't you speak?" exclaimed rosamond, looking at him in growing alarm. "why don't you tell us how she bore it?" "ah! don't ask me, don't ask me!" he answered, shrinking back from her hand, as she tried in her eagerness to lay it on his arm. "i forgot nothing. i said the words as you taught me to say them--i went the roundabout way to the truth with my tongue; but my face took the short cut, and got to the end first. pray, of your goodness to me, ask nothing about it! be satisfied, if you please, with knowing that she is better and quieter and happier now. the bad is over and past, and the good is all to come. if i tell you how she looked, if i tell you what she said, if i tell you all that happened when first she knew the truth, the fright will catch me round the heart again, and all the sobbing and crying that i have swallowed down will rise once more and choke me. i must keep my head clear and my eyes dry--or how shall i say to you all the things that i have promised sarah, as i love my own soul and hers, to tell, before i lay myself down to rest to-night?" he stopped, took out a coarse little cotton pocket-handkerchief, with a flaring white pattern on a dull blue ground, and dried a few tears that had risen in his eyes while he was speaking. "my life has had so much happiness in it," he said, self-reproachfully, looking at rosamond, "that my courage, when it is wanted for the time of trouble, is not easy to find. and yet, i am german! all my nation are philosophers!--why is it that i alone am as soft in my brains, and as weak in my heart, as the pretty little baby there, that is lying asleep in your lap?" "don't speak again; don't tell us any thing till you feel more composed," said rosamond. "we are relieved from our worst suspense now that we know you have left her quieter and better. i will ask no more questions; at least," she added, after a pause, "i will only ask one." she stopped; and her eyes wandered inquiringly toward leonard. he had hitherto been listening with silent interest to all that had passed; but he now interposed gently, and advised his wife to wait a little before she ventured on saying any thing more. "it is such an easy question to answer," pleaded rosamond. "i only wanted to hear whether she has got my message--whether she knows that i am waiting and longing to see her, if she will but let me come?" "yes, yes," said the old man, nodding to rosamond with an air of relief. "that question is easy; easier even than you think, for it brings me straight to the beginning of all that i have got to say." he had been hitherto walking restlessly about the room; sitting down one moment, and getting up the next. he now placed a chair for himself midway between rosamond--who was sitting, with the child, near the window--and her husband, who occupied the sofa at the lower end of the room. in this position, which enabled him to address himself alternately to mr. and mrs. frankland without difficulty, he soon recovered composure enough to open his heart unreservedly to the interest of his subject. "when the worst was over and past," he said, addressing rosamond--"when she could listen and when i could speak, the first words of comfort that i said to her were the words of your message. straight she looked at me, with doubting, fearing eyes. 'was her husband there to hear her?' she says. 'did he look angry? did he look sorry? did he change ever so little, when you got that message from her?' and i said, 'no; no change, no anger, no sorrow--nothing like it.' and she said again: 'has it made between them no misery? has it nothing wrenched away of all the love and all the happiness that binds them the one to the other?' and once more i answer to that, 'no! no misery, no wrench. see now! i shall go my ways at once to the good wife, and fetch her here to answer for the good husband with her own tongue.' while i speak those words there flies out over all her face a look--no, not a look--a light, like a sun-flash. while i can count one, it lasts; before i can count two, it is gone; the face is all dark again; it is turned away from me on the pillow, and i see the hand that is outside the bed begin to crumple up the sheet. 'i shall go my ways, then, and fetch the good wife,' i say again. and she says, 'no, not yet. i must not see her, i dare not see her till she knows--;' and there she stops, and the hand crumples up the sheet again, and softly, softly, i say to her, 'knows what?' and she answers me, 'what i, her mother, can not tell her to her face, for shame.' and i say, 'so, so, my child! tell it not, then--tell it not at all.' she shakes her head at me, and wrings her two hands together, like this, on the bed-cover. 'i _must_ tell it,' she says. 'i must rid my heart of all that has been gnawing, gnawing, gnawing at it, or how shall i feel the blessing that the seeing her will bring to me, if my conscience is only clear?' then she stops a little, and lifts up her two hands, so, and cries out loud, 'oh, will god's mercy show me no way of telling it that will spare me before my child!' and i say, 'hush, then! there is a way. tell it to uncle joseph, who is the same as father to you! tell it to uncle joseph, whose little son died in your arms; whose tears your hand wiped away, in the grief time long ago. tell it, my child, to _me_; and _i_ shall take the risk, and the shame (if there is shame), of telling it again. i, with nothing to speak for me but my white hair; i, with nothing to help me but my heart that means no harm--i shall go to that good and true woman, with the burden of her mother's grief to lay before her; and, in my soul of souls i believe it, she will not turn away!'" he paused, and looked at rosamond. her head was bent down over her child; her tears were dropping slowly, one by one, on the bosom of his little white dress. waiting a moment to collect herself before she spoke, she held out her hand to the old man, and firmly and gratefully met the look he fixed on her. "oh, go on, go on!" she said. "let me prove to you that your generous confidence in me is not misplaced." "i knew it was not, from the first, as surely as i know it now!" said uncle joseph. "and sarah, when i had spoken to her, she knew it too. she was silent for a little; she cried for a little; she leaned over from the pillow and kissed me here, on my cheek, as i sat by the bedside; and then she looked back, back, back, in her mind, to the long ago, and very quietly, very slowly, with her eyes looking into my eyes, and her hand resting so in mine, she spoke the words to me that i must now speak again to you, who sit here to-day as her judge, before you go to her to-morrow as her child." "not as her judge!" said rosamond. "i can not, i must not hear you say that." "i speak her words, not mine," rejoined the old man, gravely. "wait before you bid me change them for others--wait till you know the end." he drew his chair a little nearer to rosamond, paused for a minute or two to arrange his recollections, and to separate them one from the other; then resumed. "as sarah began with me," he said, "so i, for my part, must begin also--which means to say, that i go down now through the years that are past, to the time when my niece went out to her first service. you know that the sea-captain, the brave and good man treverton, took for his wife an artist on the stage--what they call play-actress here? a grand, big woman, and a handsome; with a life and a spirit and a will in her that is not often seen; a woman of the sort who can say, we will do this thing, or that thing--and do it in the spite and face of all the scruples, all the obstacles, all the oppositions in the world. to this lady there comes for maid to wait upon her, sarah, my niece--a young girl then, pretty and kind and gentle, and very, very shy. out of many others who want the place, and who are bolder and bigger and quicker girls, mistress treverton, nevertheless, picks sarah. this is strange, but it is stranger yet that sarah, on her part, when she comes out of her first fears and doubts, and pains of shyness about herself, gets to be fond with all her heart of that grand and handsome mistress, who has a life and a spirit and a will of the sort that is not often seen. this is strange to say, but it is also, as i know from sarah's own lips, every word of it true." "true beyond a doubt," said leonard. "most strong attachments are formed between people who are unlike each other." "so the life they led in that ancient house of porthgenna began happily for them all," continued the old man. "the love that the mistress had for her husband was so full in her heart that it overflowed in kindness to every body who was about her, and to sarah, her maid, before all the rest. she would have nobody but sarah to read to her, to work for her, to dress her in the morning and the evening, and to undress her at night. she was as familiar as a sister might have been with sarah, when they two were alone, in the long days of rain. it was the game of her idle time--the laugh that she liked most--to astonish the poor country maid, who had never so much as seen what a theatre's inside was like, by dressing in fine clothes, and painting her face, and speaking and doing all that she had done on the theatre-scene in the days that were before her marriage. the more she puzzled sarah with these jokes and pranks of masquerade, the better she was always pleased. for a year this easy, happy life went on in the ancient house--happy for all the servants--happier still for the master and mistress, but for the want of one thing to make the whole complete, one little blessing that was always hoped for, and that never came--the same, if you please, as the blessing in the long white frock, with the plump, delicate face and the tiny arms, that i see before me now." he paused, to point the allusion by nodding and smiling at the child in rosamond's lap; then resumed. "as the new year gets on," he said, "sarah sees in the mistress a change. the good sea-captain is a man who loves children, and is fond of getting to the house all the little boys and girls of his friends round about. he plays with them, he kisses them, he makes them presents--he is the best friend the little boys and girls have ever had. the mistress, who should be their best friend too, looks on and says nothing--looks on, red sometimes, and sometimes pale; goes away into her room where sarah is at work for her, and walks about and finds fault; and one day lets the evil temper fly out of her at her tongue, and says, 'why have i got no child for my husband to be fond of? why must he kiss and play always with the children of other women? they take his love away for something that is not mine. i hate those children and their mothers too!' it is her passion that speaks then, but it speaks what is near the truth for all that. she will not make friends with any of those mothers; the ladies she is familiar-fond with are the ladies who have no children, or the ladies whose families are all upgrown. you think that was wrong of the mistress?" he put the question to rosamond, who was toying thoughtfully with one of the baby's hands which was resting in hers. "i think mrs. treverton was very much to be pitied," she answered, gently lifting the child's hand to her lips. "then i, for my part, think so too," said uncle joseph. "to be pitied?--yes! to be more pitied some months after, when there is still no child and no hope of a child, and the good sea-captain says, one day, 'i rust here, i get old with much idleness; i want to be on the sea again. i shall ask for a ship.' and he asks for a ship, and they give it him; and he goes away on his cruises--with much kissing and fondness at parting from his wife--but still he goes away. and when he is gone, the mistress comes in again where sarah is at work for her on a fine new gown, and snatches it away, and casts it down on the floor, and throws after it all the fine jewels she has got on her table, and stamps and cries with the misery and the passion that is in her. 'i would give all those fine things, and go in rags for the rest of my life, to have a child!' she says. 'i am losing my husband's love: he would never have gone away from me if i had brought him a child!' then she looks in the glass, and says between her teeth, 'yes! yes! i am a fine woman, with a fine figure, and i would change places with the ugliest, crookedest wretch in all creation, if i could only have a child!' and then she tells sarah that the captain's brother spoke the vilest of all vile words of her, when she was married, because she was an artist on the stage; and she says, 'if i have no child, who but he--the rascal-monster that i wish i could kill!--who but he will come to possess all that the captain has got?' and then she cries again, and says, 'i am losing his love--ah, i know it, i know it!--i am losing his love!' nothing that sarah can say will alter her thoughts about that. and the months go on, and the sea-captain comes back, and still there is always the same secret grief growing and growing in the mistress's heart--growing and growing till it is now the third year since the marriage, and there is no hope yet of a child; and once more the sea-captain gets tired on the land, and goes off again for his cruises--long cruises, this time; away, away, away, at the other end of the world." here uncle joseph paused once more, apparently hesitating a little about how he should go on with the narrative. his mind seemed to be soon relieved of its doubts, but his face saddened, and his tones sank lower, when he addressed rosamond again. "i must, if you please, go away from the mistress now," he said, "and get back to sarah, my niece, and say one word also of a mining man, with the cornish name of polwheal. this was a young man that worked well and got good wage, and kept a good character. he lived with his mother in the little village that is near the ancient house; and, seeing sarah from time to time, took much fancy to her, and she to him. so the end came that the marriage-promise was between them given and taken; as it happened, about the time when the sea-captain was back after his first cruises, and just when he was thinking of going away in a ship again. against the marriage-promise nor he nor the lady his wife had a word to object, for the miner, polwheal, had good wage and kept a good character. only the mistress said that the loss of sarah would be sad to her--very sad; and sarah answered that there was yet no hurry to part. so the weeks go on, and the sea-captain sails away again for his long cruises; and about the same time also the mistress finds out that sarah frets, and looks not like herself, and that the miner, polwheal, he lurks here and lurks there, round about the house; and she says to herself, 'so! so! am i standing too much in the way of this marriage? for sarah's sake, that shall not be!' and she calls for them both one evening, and talks to them kindly, and sends away to put up the banns next morning the young man polwheal. that night, it is his turn to go down into the porthgenna mine, and work after the hours of the day. with his heart all light, down into that dark he goes. when he rises to the world again, it is the dead body of him that is drawn up--the dead body, with all the young life, by the fall of a rock, crushed out in a moment. the news flies here; the news flies there. with no break, with no warning, with no comfort near, it comes on a sudden to sarah, my niece. when to her sweet-heart that evening she had said good-by, she was a young, pretty girl; when, six little weeks after, she, from the sick-bed where the shock threw her, got up, all her youth was gone, all her hair was gray, and in her eyes the fright-look was fixed that has never left them since." the simple words drew the picture of the miner's death, and of all that followed it, with a startling distinctness--with a fearful reality. rosamond shuddered, and looked at her husband. "oh, lenny!" she murmured, "the first news of your blindness was a sore trial to me--but what was it to this!" "pity her!" said the old man. "pity her for what she suffered then! pity her for what came after, that was worse! yet five, six, seven weeks pass, after the death of the mining man, and sarah in the body suffers less, but in the mind suffers more. the mistress, who is kind and good to her as any sister could be, finds out, little by little, something in her face which is not the pain-look, nor the fright-look, nor the grief-look; something which the eyes can see, but which the tongue can not put into words. she looks and thinks, looks and thinks, till there steals into her mind a doubt which makes her tremble at herself, which drives her straight forward into sarah's room, which sets her eyes searching through and through sarah to her inmost heart. 'there is something on your mind besides your grief for the dead and gone,' she says, and catches sarah by both the arms before she can turn way, and looks her in the face, front to front, with curious eyes that search and suspect steadily. 'the miner man, polwheal,' she says; 'my mind misgives me about the miner man, polwheal. sarah! i have been more friend to you than mistress. as your friend i ask you now--tell me all the truth?' the question waits; but no word of answer! only sarah struggles to get away, and the mistress holds her tighter yet, and goes on and says, 'i know that the marriage-promise passed between you and miner polwheal; i know that if ever there was truth in man, there was truth in him; i know that he went out from this place to put the banns up, for you and for him, in the church. have secrets from all the world besides, sarah, but have none from _me_. tell me, this minute--tell me the truth! of all the lost creatures in this big, wide world, are you--?' before she can say the words that are next to come, sarah falls on her knees, and cries out suddenly to be let go away to hide and die, and be heard of no more. that was all the answer she gave. it was enough for the truth then; it is enough for the truth now." he sighed bitterly, and ceased speaking for a little while. no voice broke the reverent silence that followed his last words. the one living sound that stirred in the stillness of the room was the light breathing of the child as he lay asleep in his mother's arms. "that was all the answer," repeated the old man, "and the mistress who heard it says nothing for some time after, but still looks straight forward into sarah's face, and grows paler and paler the longer she looks--paler and paler, till on a sudden she starts, and at one flash the red flies back into her face. 'no,' she says, whispering and looking at the door, 'once your friend, sarah, always your friend. stay in this house, keep your own counsel, do as i bid you, and leave the rest to me.' and with that she turns round quick on her heel, and falls to walking up and down the room--faster, faster, faster, till she is out of breath. then she pulls the bell with an angry jerk, and calls out loud at the door--'the horses! i want to ride;' then turns upon sarah--'my gown for riding in! pluck up your heart, poor creature! on my life and honor, i will save you. my gown, my gown, then; i am mad for a gallop in the open air!' and she goes out, in a fever of the blood, and gallops, gallops, till the horse reeks again, and the groom-man who rides after her wonders if she is mad. when she comes back, for all that ride in the air, she is not tired. the whole evening after, she is now walking about the room, and now striking loud tunes all mixed up together on the piano. at the bed-time, she can not rest. twice, three times in the night she frightens sarah by coming in to see how she does, and by saying always those same words over again: 'keep your own counsel, do as i bid you, and leave the rest to me.' in the morning she lies late, sleeps, gets up very pale and quiet, and says to sarah, 'no word more between us two of what happened yesterday--no word till the time comes when you fear the eyes of every stranger who looks at you. then i shall speak again. till that time let us be as we were before i put the question yesterday, and before you told the truth!'" at this point he broke the thread of the narrative again, explaining as he did so that his memory was growing confused about a question of time, which he wished to state correctly in introducing the series of events that were next to be described. "ah, well! well!" he said, shaking his head, after vainly endeavoring to pursue the lost recollection. "for once, i must acknowledge that i forget. whether it was two months, or whether it was three, after the mistress said those last words to sarah, i know not--but at the end of the one time or of the other she one morning orders her carriage and goes away alone to truro. in the evening she comes back with two large flat baskets. on the cover of the one there is a card, and written on it are the letters 's. l.' on the cover of the other there is a card, and written on it are the letters 'r. t.' the baskets are taken into the mistress's room, and sarah is called, and the mistress says to her, 'open the basket with s. l. on it; for those are the letters of your name, and the things in it are yours.' inside there is first a box, which holds a grand bonnet of black lace; then a fine dark shawl; then black silk of the best kind, enough to make a gown; then linen and stuff for the under garments, all of the finest sort. 'make up those things to fit yourself,' says the mistress. 'you are so much littler than i, that to make the things up new is less trouble than, from my fit to yours, to alter old gowns.' sarah, to all this, says in astonishment, 'why?' and the mistress answers, 'i will have no questions. remember what i said--keep your own counsel, and leave the rest to me!' so she goes out; and the next thing she does is to send for the doctor to see her. he asks what is the matter; gets for answer that mistress treverton feels strangely, and not like herself; also that she thinks the soft air of cornwall makes her weak. the days pass, and the doctor comes and goes, and, say what he may, those two answers are always the only two that he can get. all this time sarah is at work; and when she has done, the mistress says, 'now for the other basket, with r. t. on it; for those are the letters of my name, and the things in it are mine.' inside this, there is first a box which holds a common bonnet of black straw; then a coarse dark shawl; then a gown of good common black stuff; then linen, and other things for the under garments, that are only of the sort called second best. 'make up all that rubbish,' says the mistress, 'to fit me. no questions! you have always done as i told you; do as i tell you now, or you are a lost woman.' when the rubbish is made up, she tries it on, and looks in the glass, and laughs in a way that is wild and desperate to hear. 'do i make a fine, buxom, comely servant-woman?' she says. 'ha! but i have acted that part times enough in my past days on the theatre-scene.' and then she takes off the clothes again, and bids sarah pack them up at once in one trunk, and pack the things she has made for herself in another. 'the doctor orders me to go away out of this damp, soft cornwall climate, to where the air is fresh and dry and cheerful-keen,' she says, and laughs again, till the room rings with it. at the same time sarah begins to pack, and takes some knickknack things off the table, and among them a brooch which has on it a likeness of the sea-captain's face. the mistress sees her, turns white in the cheeks, trembles all over, snatches the brooch away, and locks it up in the cabinet in a great hurry, as if the look of it frightened her. 'i shall leave that behind me,' she says, and turns round on her heel, and goes quickly out of the room. you guess now what the thing was that mistress treverton had it in her mind to do?" he addressed the question to rosamond first, and then repeated it to leonard. they both answered in the affirmative, and entreated him to go on. "you guess?" he said. "it is more than sarah, at that time, could do. what with the misery in her own mind, and the strange ways and strange words of her mistress, the wits that were in her were all confused. nevertheless, what her mistress has said to her, that she has always done; and together alone those two from the house of porthgenna drive away. not a word says the mistress till they have got to the journey's end for the first day, and are stopping at their inn among strangers for the night. then at last she speaks out. 'put you on, sarah, the good linen and the good gown to-morrow,' she says, 'but keep the common bonnet and the common shawl till we get into the carriage again. i shall put on the coarse linen and the coarse gown, and keep the good bonnet and shawl. we shall pass so the people at the inn, on our way to the carriage, without very much risk of surprising them by our change of gowns. when we are out on the road again, we can change bonnets and shawls in the carriage--and then, it is all done. you are the married lady, mrs. treverton, and i am your maid who waits on you, sarah leeson.' at that, the glimmering on sarah's mind breaks in at last: she shakes with the fright it gives her, and all she can say is, 'oh, mistress! for the love of heaven, what is it you mean to do?' 'i mean,' the mistress answers, 'to save you, my faithful servant, from disgrace and ruin; to prevent every penny that the captain has got from going to that rascal-monster, his brother, who slandered me; and, last and most, i mean to keep my husband from going away to sea again, by making him love me as he has never loved me yet. must i say more, you poor, afflicted, frightened creature--or is it enough so?' and all that sarah can answer, is to cry bitter tears, and to say faintly, 'no.' 'do you doubt,' says the mistress, and grips her by the arm, and looks her close in the face with fierce eyes--'do you doubt which is best, to cast yourself into the world forsaken and disgraced and ruined, or to save yourself from shame, and make a friend of me for the rest of your life? you weak, wavering, baby woman, if you can not decide for yourself, i shall for you. as i will, so it shall be! to-morrow, and the day after that, we go on and on, up to the north, where my good fool of a doctor says the air is cheerful-keen--up to the north, where nobody knows me or has heard my name. i, the maid, shall spread the report that you, the lady, are weak in your health. no strangers shall you see, but the doctor and the nurse, when the time to call them comes. who they may be, i know not; but this i do know, that the one and the other will serve our purpose without the least suspicion of what it is; and that when we get back to cornwall again, the secret between us two will to no third person have been trusted, and will remain a dead secret to the end of the world!' with all the strength of the strong will that is in her, at the hush of night and in a house of strangers, she speaks those words to the woman of all women the most frightened, the most afflicted, the most helpless, the most ashamed. what need to say the end? on that night sarah first stooped her shoulders to the burden that has weighed heavier and heavier on them with every year, for all her after-life." "how many days did they travel toward the north?" asked rosamond, eagerly. "where did the journey end? in england or in scotland?" "in england," answered uncle joseph. "but the name of the place escapes my foreign tongue. it was a little town by the side of the sea--the great sea that washes between my country and yours. there they stopped, and there they waited till the time came to send for the doctor and the nurse. and as mistress treverton had said it should be, so, from the first to the last, it was. the doctor and the nurse, and the people of the house were all strangers; and to this day, if they still live, they believe that sarah was the sea-captain's wife, and that mistress treverton was the maid who waited on her. not till they were far back on their way home with the child did the two change gowns again, and return each to her proper place. the first friend at porthgenna that the mistress sends for to show the child to, when she gets back, is the doctor who lives there. 'did you think what was the matter with me, when you sent me away to change the air?' she says, and laughs. and the doctor, he laughs too, and says, 'yes, surely! but i was too cunning to say what i thought in those early days, because, at such times, there is always fear of a mistake. and you found the fine dry air so good for you that you stopped?' he says. 'well, that was right! right for yourself and right also for the child.' and the doctor laughs again and the mistress with him, and sarah, who stands by and hears them, feels as if her heart would burst within her, with the horror, and the misery, and the shame of that deceit. when the doctor's back is turned, she goes down on her knees, and begs and prays with all her soul that the mistress will repent, and send her away with her child, to be heard of at porthgenna no more. the mistress, with that tyrant-will of hers, has but four words of answer to give--'it is too late!' five weeks after, the sea-captain comes back, and the 'too late' is a truth that no repentance can ever alter more. the mistress's cunning hand that has guided the deceit from the first, guides it always to the last--guides it so that the captain, for the love of her and of the child, goes back to the sea no more--guides it till the time when she lays her down on the bed to die, and leaves all the burden of the secret, and all the guilt of the confession, to sarah--to sarah, who, under the tyranny of that tyrant-will, has lived in the house, for five long years, a stranger to her own child!" "five years!" murmured rosamond, raising the baby gently in her arms, till his face touched hers. "oh me! five long years a stranger to the blood of her blood, to the heart of her heart!" "and all the years after!" said the old man. "the lonesome years and years among strangers, with no sight of the child that was growing up, with no heart to pour the story of her sorrow into the ear of any living creature, not even into mine! 'better,' i said to her, when she could speak to me no more, and when her face was turned away again on the pillow--'a thousand times better, my child, if you had told the secret!' 'could i tell it,' she said, 'to the master who trusted me? could i tell it afterward to the child, whose birth was a reproach to me? could she listen to the story of her mother's shame, told by her mother's lips? how will she listen to it now, uncle joseph, when she hears it from _you_? remember the life she has led, and the high place she has held in the world. how can she forgive me? how can she ever look at me in kindness again?'" "you never left her," cried rosamond, interposing before he could say more--"surely, surely, you never left her with that thought in her heart!" uncle joseph's head drooped on his breast. "what words of mine could change it?" he asked, sadly. "oh, lenny, do you hear that? i must leave you, and leave the baby. i must go to her, or those last words about me will break my heart." the passionate tears burst from her eyes as she spoke; and she rose hastily from her seat, with the child in her arms. "not to-night," said uncle joseph. "she said to me at parting, 'i can bear no more to-night; give me till the morning to get as strong as i can.'" "oh, go back, then, yourself!" cried rosamond. "go, for god's sake, without wasting another moment, and make her think of me as she ought! tell her how i listened to you, with my own child sleeping on my bosom all the time--tell her--oh, no, no! words are too cold for it!--come here, come close, uncle joseph (i shall always call you so now); come close to me and kiss my child--_her_ grandchild!--kiss him on this cheek, because it has lain nearest to my heart. and now, go back, kind and dear old man--go back to her bedside, and say nothing but that _i_ sent that kiss to _her_!" chapter iv. the close of day. the night, with its wakeful anxieties, wore away at last; and the morning light dawned hopefully, for it brought with it the promise of an end to rosamond's suspense. the first event of the day was the arrival of mr. nixon, who had received a note on the previous evening, written by leonard's desire, to invite him to breakfast. before the lawyer withdrew, he had settled with mr. and mrs. frankland all the preliminary arrangements that were necessary to effect the restoration of the purchase-money of porthgenna tower, and had dispatched a messenger with a letter to bayswater, announcing his intention of calling upon andrew treverton that afternoon, on private business of importance relating to the personal estate of his late brother. toward noon, uncle joseph arrived at the hotel to take rosamond with him to the house where her mother lay ill. he came in, talking, in the highest spirits, of the wonderful change for the better that had been wrought in his niece by the affectionate message which he had taken to her on the previous evening. he declared that it had made her look happier, stronger, younger, all in a moment; that it had given her the longest, quietest, sweetest night's sleep she had enjoyed for years and years past; and, last, best triumph of all, that its good influence had been acknowledged, not an hour since, by the doctor himself. rosamond listened thankfully, but it was with a wandering attention, with a mind ill at ease. when she had taken leave of her husband, and when she and uncle joseph were out in the street together, there was something in the prospect of the approaching interview between her mother and herself which, in spite of her efforts to resist the sensation, almost daunted her. if they could have come together, and have recognized each other without time to think what should be first said or done on either side, the meeting would have been nothing more than the natural result of the discovery of the secret. but, as it was, the waiting, the doubting, the mournful story of the past, which had filled up the emptiness of the last day of suspense, all had their depressing effect on rosamond's impulsive disposition. without a thought in her heart which was not tender, compassionate, and true toward her mother, she now felt, nevertheless, a vague sense of embarrassment, which increased to positive uneasiness the nearer she and the old man drew to their short journey's end. as they stopped at last at the house door, she was shocked to find herself thinking beforehand of what first words it would be best to say, of what first things it would be best to do, as if she had been about to visit a total stranger, whose favorable opinion she wished to secure, and whose readiness to receive her cordially was a matter of doubt. the first person whom they saw after the door was opened was the doctor. he advanced toward them from a little empty room at the end of the hall, and asked permission to speak with mrs. frankland for a few minutes. leaving rosamond to her interview with the doctor, uncle joseph gayly ascended the stairs to tell his niece of her arrival, with an activity which might well have been envied by many a man of half his years. "is she worse? is there any danger in my seeing her?" asked rosamond, as the doctor led her into the empty room. "quite the contrary," he replied. "she is much better this morning; and the improvement, i find, is mainly due to the composing and cheering influence on her mind of a message which she received from you last night. it is the discovery of this which makes me anxious to speak to you now on the subject of one particular symptom of her mental condition which surprised and alarmed me when i first discovered it, and which has perplexed me very much ever since. she is suffering--not to detain you, and to put the matter at once in the plainest terms--under a mental hallucination of a very extraordinary kind, which, so far as i have observed it, affects her, generally, toward the close of the day, when the light gets obscure. at such times, there is an expression in her eyes as if she fancied some person had walked suddenly into the room. she looks and talks at perfect vacancy, as you or i might look or talk at some one who was really standing and listening to us. the old man, her uncle, tells me that he first observed this when she came to see him (in cornwall, i think he said) a short time since. she was speaking to him then on private affairs of her own, when she suddenly stopped, just as the evening was closing in, startled him by a question on the old superstitious subject of the re-appearance of the dead, and then, looking away at a shadowed corner of the room, began to talk at it--exactly as i have seen her look and heard her talk up stairs. whether she fancies that she is pursued by an apparition, or whether she imagines that some living person enters her room at certain times, is more than i can say; and the old man gives me no help in guessing at the truth. can you throw any light on the matter?" "i hear of it now for the first time," answered rosamond, looking at the doctor in amazement and alarm. "perhaps," he rejoined, "she may be more communicative with you than she is with me. if you could manage to be by her bedside at dusk to-day or to-morrow, and if you think you are not likely to be frightened by it, i should very much wish you to see and hear her, when she is under the influence of her delusion. i have tried in vain to draw her attention away from it, at the time, or to get her to speak of it afterward. you have evidently considerable influence over her, and you might therefore succeed where i have failed. in her state of health, i attach great importance to clearing her mind of every thing that clouds and oppresses it, and especially of such a serious hallucination as that which i have been describing. if you could succeed in combating it, you would be doing her the greatest service, and would be materially helping my efforts to improve her health. do you mind trying the experiment?" rosamond promised to devote herself unreservedly to this service, or to any other which was for the patient's good. the doctor thanked her, and led the way back into the hall again.--uncle joseph was descending the stairs as they came out of the room. "she is ready and longing to see you," he whispered in rosamond's ear. "i am sure i need not impress on you again the very serious necessity of keeping her composed," said the doctor, taking his leave. "it is, i assure you, no exaggeration to say that her life depends on it." rosamond bowed to him in silence, and in silence followed the old man up the stairs. at the door of a back room on the second floor uncle joseph stopped. "she is there," he whispered eagerly. "i leave you to go in by yourself, for it is best that you should be alone with her at first. i shall walk about the streets in the fine warm sunshine, and think of you both, and come back after a little. go in; and the blessing and the mercy of god go with you!" he lifted her hand to his lips, and softly and quickly descended the stairs again. rosamond stood alone before the door. a momentary tremor shook her from head to foot as she stretched out her hand to knock at it. the same sweet voice that she had last heard in her bedroom at west winston answered her now. as its tones fell on her ear, a thought of her child stole quietly into her heart, and stilled its quick throbbing. she opened the door at once and went in. neither the look of the room inside, nor the view from the window; neither its characteristic ornaments, nor its prominent pieces of furniture; none of the objects in it or about it, which would have caught her quick observation at other times, struck it now. from the moment when she opened the door, she saw nothing but the pillows of the bed, the head resting on them, and the face turned toward hers. as she stepped across the threshold, that face changed; the eyelids drooped a little, and the pale cheeks were tinged suddenly with burning red. was her mother ashamed to look at her? the bare doubt freed rosamond in an instant from all the self-distrust, all the embarrassment, all the hesitation about choosing her words and directing her actions which had fettered her generous impulses up to this time. she ran to the bed, raised the worn, shrinking figure in her arms, and laid the poor weary head gently on her warm, young bosom. "i have come at last, mother, to take my turn at nursing you," she said. her heart swelled as those simple words came from it--her eyes overflowed--she could say no more. "don't cry!" murmured the faint, sweet voice timidly. "i have no right to bring you here and make you sorry. don't, don't cry!" "oh, hush! hush! i shall do nothing but cry if you talk to me like that!" said rosamond. "let us forget that we have ever been parted--call me by my name--speak to me as i shall speak to my own child, if god spares me to see him grow up. say 'rosamond,' and--oh, pray, pray--tell me to do something for you!" she tore asunder passionately the strings of her bonnet, and threw it from her on the nearest chair. "look! here is your glass of lemonade on the table. say 'rosamond, bring me my lemonade!' say it familiarly, mother! say it as if you knew that i was bound to obey you!" she repeated the words after her daughter, but still not in steady tones--repeated them with a sad, wondering smile, and with a lingering of the voice on the name of rosamond, as if it was a luxury to her to utter it. "you made me so happy with that message and with the kiss you sent me from your child," she said, when rosamond had given her the lemonade, and was seated quietly by the bedside again. "it was such a kind way of saying that you pardoned me! it gave me all the courage i wanted to speak to you as i am speaking now. perhaps my illness has changed me--but i don't feel frightened and strange with you, as i thought i should, at our first meeting after you knew the secret. i think i shall soon get well enough to see your child. is he like what you were at his age? if he is, he must be very, very--" she stopped. "i may think of that," she added, after waiting a little, "but i had better not talk of it, or i shall cry too; and i want to have done with sorrow now." while she spoke those words, while her eyes were fixed with wistful eagerness on her daughter's face, the whole instinct of neatness was still mechanically at work in her weak, wasted fingers. rosamond had tossed her gloves from her on the bed but the minute before; and already her mother had taken them up, and was smoothing them out carefully and folding them neatly together, all the while she spoke. "call me 'mother' again," she said, as rosamond took the gloves from her and thanked her with a kiss for folding them up. "i have never heard you call me 'mother' till now--never, never till now, from the day when you were born!" rosamond checked the tears that were rising in her eyes again, and repeated the word. "it is all the happiness i want, to lie here and look at you, and hear you say that! is there any other woman in the world, my love, who has a face so beautiful and so kind as yours?" she paused and smiled faintly. "i can't look at those sweet rosy lips now," she said, "without thinking how many kisses they owe me!" "if you had only let me pay the debt before!" said rosamond, taking her mother's hand, as she was accustomed to take her child's, and placing it on her neck. "if you had only spoken the first time we met, when you came to nurse me! how sorrowfully i have thought of that since! oh, mother, did i distress you much in my ignorance? did it make you cry when you thought of me after that?" "distress me! all my distress, rosamond, has been of my own making, not of yours. my kind, thoughtful love! you said, 'don't be hard on her'--do you remember? when i was being sent away, deservedly sent away, dear, for frightening you, you said to your husband, 'don't be hard on her!' only five words--but, oh, what a comfort it was to me afterward to think that you had said them! i did want to kiss you so, rosamond, when i was brushing your hair. i had such a hard fight of it to keep from crying out loud when i heard you, behind the bed-curtains, wishing your little child good-night. my heart was in my mouth, choking me all that time. i took your part afterward, when i went back to my mistress--i wouldn't hear her say a harsh word of you. i could have looked a hundred mistresses in the face then, and contradicted them all. oh, no, no, no! you never distressed me. my worst grief at going away was years and years before i came to nurse you at west winston. it was when i left my place at porthgenna; when i stole into your nursery on that dreadful morning, and when i saw you with both your little arms round my master's neck. the doll you had taken to bed with you was in one of your hands, and your head was resting on the captain's bosom, just as mine rests now--oh, so happily, rosamond!--on yours. i heard the last words he was speaking to you--words you were too young to remember. 'hush! rosie, dear,' he said, 'don't cry any more for poor mamma. think of poor papa, and try to comfort him!' there, my love--there was the bitterest distress and the hardest to bear! i, your own mother, standing like a spy, and hearing him say that to the child i dared not own! 'think of poor papa!' my own rosamond! you know, now, what father _i_ thought of when he said those words! how could i tell him the secret? how could i give him the letter, with his wife dead that morning--with nobody but you to comfort him--with the awful truth crushing down upon my heart, at every word he spoke, as heavily as ever the rock crushed down upon the father you never saw!" "don't speak of it now!" said rosamond. "don't let us refer again to the past: i know all i ought to know, all i wish to know of it. we will talk of the future, mother, and of happier times to come. let me tell you about my husband. if any words can praise him as he ought to be praised, and thank him as he ought to be thanked, i am sure mine ought--i am sure yours will! let me tell you what he said and what he did when i read to him the letter that i found in the myrtle room. yes, yes, do let me!" warned by a remembrance of the doctor's last injunctions; trembling in secret, as she felt under her hand the heavy, toilsome, irregular heaving of her mother's heart, as she saw the rapid changes of color, from pale to red, and from red to pale again, that fluttered across her mother's face, she resolved to let no more words pass between them which were of a nature to recall painfully the sorrows and the suffering of the years that were gone. after describing the interview between her husband and herself which ended in the disclosure of the secret, she led her mother, with compassionate abruptness, to speak of the future, of the time when she would be able to travel again, of the happiness of returning together to cornwall, of the little festival they might hold on arriving at uncle joseph's house in truro, and of the time after that, when they might go on still farther to porthgenna, or perhaps to some other place where new scenes and new faces might help them to forget all sad associations which it was best to think of no more. rosamond was still speaking on these topics, her mother was still listening to her with growing interest in every word that she said, when uncle joseph returned. he brought in with him a basket of flowers and a basket of fruit, which he held up in triumph at the foot of his niece's bed. "i have been walking about, my child, in the fine bright sunshine," he said, "and waiting to give your face plenty of time to look happy, so that i might see it again as i want to see it always, for the rest of my life. aha, sarah! it is i who have brought the right doctor to cure you!" he added gayly, looking at rosamond. "she has made you better already. wait but a little while longer, and she shall get you up from your bed again, with your two cheeks as red, and your heart as light, and your tongue as fast to chatter as mine. see the fine flowers and the fruit i have bought that is nice to your eyes, and nice to your nose, and nicest of all to put into your mouth! it is festival-time with us to-day, and we must make the room bright, bright, bright, all over. and then, there is your dinner to come soon; i have seen it on the dish--a cherub among chicken-fowls! and, after that, there is your fine sound sleep, with mozart to sing the cradle song, and with me to sit for watch, and to go down stairs when you wake up again, and fetch your cup of tea. ah, my child, my child, what a fine thing it is to have come at last to this festival-day!" with a bright look at rosamond, and with both his hands full of flowers, he turned away from his niece to begin decorating the room. except when she thanked the old man for the presents he had brought, her attention had never wandered, all the while he had been speaking, from her daughter's face; and her first words, when he was silent again, were addressed to rosamond alone. "while i am happy with _my_ child," she said, "i am keeping you from _yours_. i, of all persons, ought to be the last to part you from each other too long. go back now, my love, to your husband and your child; and leave me to my grateful thoughts and my dreams of better times." "if you please, answer yes to that, for your mother's sake," said uncle joseph, before rosamond could reply. "the doctor says she must take her repose in the day as well as her repose in the night. and how shall i get her to close her eyes, so long as she has the temptation to keep them open upon _you_?" rosamond felt the truth of those last words, and consented to go back for a few hours to the hotel, on the understanding that she was to resume her place at the bedside in the evening. after making this arrangement, she waited long enough in the room to see the meal brought up which uncle joseph had announced, and to aid the old man in encouraging her mother to partake of it. when the tray had been removed, and when the pillows of the bed had been comfortably arranged by her own hands, she at last prevailed on herself to take leave. her mother's arms lingered round her neck; her mother's cheek nestled fondly against hers. "go, my dear, go now, or i shall get too selfish to part with you even for a few hours," murmured the sweet voice, in the lowest, softest tones. "my own rosamond! i have no words to bless you that are good enough; no words to thank you that will speak as gratefully for me as they ought! happiness has been long in reaching me--but, oh, how mercifully it has come at last!" before she passed the door, rosamond stopped and looked back into the room. the table, the mantel-piece, the little framed prints on the wall were bright with flowers; the musical box was just playing the first sweet notes of the air from mozart; uncle joseph was seated already in his accustomed place by the bed, with the basket of fruit on his knees; the pale, worn face on the pillow was tenderly lighted up by a smile; peace and comfort and repose, all mingled together happily in the picture of the sick-room, all joined in leading rosamond's thoughts to dwell quietly on the hope of a happier time. * * * * * three hours passed. the last glory of the sun was lighting the long summer day to its rest in the western heaven, when rosamond returned to her mother's bedside. she entered the room softly. the one window in it looked toward the west, and on that side of the bed the chair was placed which uncle joseph had occupied when she left him, and in which she now found him still seated on her return. he raised his fingers to his lips, and looked toward the bed, as she opened the door. her mother was asleep, with her hand resting in the hand of the old man. as rosamond noiselessly advanced, she saw that uncle joseph's eyes looked dim and weary. the constraint of the position that he occupied, which made it impossible for him to move without the risk of awakening his niece, seemed to be beginning to fatigue him. rosamond removed her bonnet and shawl, and made a sign to him to rise and let her take his place. "yes, yes!" she whispered, seeing him reply by a shake of the head. "let me take my turn, while you go out a little and enjoy the cool evening air. there is no fear of waking her; her hand is not clasping yours, but only resting in it--let me steal mine into its place gently, and we shall not disturb her." she slipped her hand under her mother's while she spoke. uncle joseph smiled as he rose from his chair, and resigned his place to her. "you will have your way," he said; "you are too quick and sharp for an old man like me." "has she been long asleep?" asked rosamond. "nearly two hours," answered uncle joseph. "but it has not been the good sleep i wanted for her--a dreaming, talking, restless sleep. it is only ten little minutes since she has been so quiet as you see her now." "surely you let in too much light?" whispered rosamond, looking round at the window, through which the glow of the evening sky poured warmly into the room. "no, no!" he hastily rejoined. "asleep or awake, she always wants the light. if i go away for a little while, as you tell me, and if it gets on to be dusk before i come back, light both those candles on the chimney-piece. i shall try to be here again before that; but if the time slips by too fast for me, and if it so happens that she wakes and talks strangely, and looks much away from you into that far corner of the room there, remember that the matches and the candles are together on the chimney-piece, and that the sooner you light them after the dim twilight-time, the better it will be." with those words he stole on tiptoe to the door and went out. his parting directions recalled rosamond to a remembrance of what had passed between the doctor and herself that morning. she looked round again anxiously to the window. the sun was just sinking beyond the distant house-tops; the close of day was not far off. as she turned her head once more toward the bed, a momentary chill crept over her. she trembled a little, partly at the sensation itself, partly at the recollection it aroused of that other chill which had struck her in the solitude of the myrtle room. stirred by the mysterious sympathies of touch, her mother's hand at the same instant moved in hers, and over the sad peacefulness of the weary face there fluttered a momentary trouble--the flying shadow of a dream. the pale, parted lips opened, closed, quivered, opened again; the toiling breath came and went quickly and more quickly; the head moved uneasily on the pillow; the eyelids half unclosed themselves; low, faint, moaning sounds poured rapidly from the lips--changed ere long to half-articulated sentences--then merged softly into intelligible speech, and uttered these words: "swear that you will not destroy this paper! swear that you will not take this paper away with you if you leave the house!" the words that followed these were whispered so rapidly and so low that rosamond's ear failed to catch them. they were followed by a short silence. then the dreaming voice spoke again suddenly, and spoke louder. "where? where? where?" it said. "in the book-case? in the table-drawer?--stop! stop! in the picture of the ghost--" the last words struck cold on rosamond's heart. she drew back suddenly with a movement of alarm--checked herself the instant after, and bent down over the pillow again. but it was too late. her hand had moved abruptly when she drew back, and her mother awoke with a start and a faint cry--with vacant, terror-stricken eyes, and with the perspiration standing thick on her forehead. "mother!" cried rosamond, raising her on the pillow. "i have come back. don't you know me?" "mother?" she repeated, in mournful, questioning tones--"mother?" at the second repetition of the word a bright flush of delight and surprise broke out on her face, and she clasped both arms suddenly round her daughter's neck. "oh, my own rosamond!" she said. "if i had ever been used to waking up and seeing your dear face look at me, i should have known you sooner, in spite of my dream! did you wake me, my love? or did i wake myself?" "i am afraid i awoke you, mother." "don't say 'afraid.' i would wake from the sweetest sleep that ever woman had to see your face and to hear you say 'mother' to me. you have delivered me, my love, from the terror of one of my dreadful dreams. oh, rosamond! i think i should live to be happy in your love, if i could only get porthgenna tower out of my mind--if i could only never remember again the bed-chamber where my mistress died, and the room where i hid the letter--" "we will try and forget porthgenna tower now," said rosamond. "shall we talk about other places where i have lived, which you have never seen? or shall i read to you, mother? have you got any book here that you are fond of?" she looked across the bed at the table on the other side. there was nothing on it but some bottles of medicine, a few of uncle joseph's flowers in a glass of water, and a little oblong work-box. she looked round at the chest of drawers behind her--there were no books placed on the top of it. before she turned toward the bed again, her eyes wandered aside to the window. the sun was lost beyond the distant house-tops; the close of day was near at hand. "if i could forget! oh, me, if i could only forget!" said her mother, sighing wearily, and beating her hand on the coverlid of the bed. "are you well enough, dear, to amuse yourself with work?" asked rosamond, pointing to the little oblong box on the table, and trying to lead the conversation to a harmless, every-day topic, by asking questions about it. "what work do you do? may i look at it?" her face lost its weary, suffering look, and brightened once more into a smile. "there is no work there," she said. "all the treasures i had in the world, till you came to see me, are shut up in that one little box. open it, my love, and look inside." rosamond obeyed, placing the box on the bed where her mother could see it easily. the first object that she discovered inside was a little book, in dark, worn binding. it was an old copy of wesley's hymns. some withered blades of grass lay between its pages; and on one of its blank leaves was this inscription--"sarah leeson, her book. the gift of hugh polwheal." "look at it, my dear," said her mother. "i want you to know it again. when my time comes to leave you, rosamond, lay it on my bosom with your own dear hands, and put a little morsel of your hair with it, and bury me in the grave in porthgenna church-yard, where _he_ has been waiting for me to come to him so many weary years. the other things in the box, rosamond, belong to you; they are little stolen keepsakes that used to remind me of my child, when i was alone in the world. perhaps, years and years hence, when your brown hair begins to grow gray like mine, you may like to show these poor trifles to your children when you talk about me. don't mind telling them, rosamond, how your mother sinned and how she suffered--you can always let these little trifles speak for her at the end. the least of them will show that she always loved you." she took out of the box a morsel of neatly folded white paper, which had been placed under the book of wesley's hymns, opened it, and showed her daughter a few faded laburnum leaves that lay inside. "i took these from your bed, rosamond, when i came, as a stranger, to nurse you at west winston. i tried to take a ribbon out of your trunk, love, after i had taken the flowers--a ribbon that i knew had been round your neck. but the doctor came near at the time, and frightened me." she folded the paper up again, laid it aside on the table, and drew from the box next a small print which had been taken from the illustrations to a pocket-book. it represented a little girl, in gypsy-hat, sitting by the water-side, and weaving a daisy chain. as a design, it was worthless; as a print, it had not even the mechanical merit of being a good impression. underneath it a line was written in faintly pencilled letters--"rosamond when i last saw her." "it was never pretty enough for you," she said. "but still there was something in it that helped me to remember what my own love was like when she was a little girl." she put the engraving aside with the laburnum leaves, and took from the box a leaf of a copy-book, folded in two, out of which there dropped a tiny strip of paper, covered with small printed letters. she looked at the strip of paper first. "the advertisement of your marriage, rosamond," she said. "i used to be fond of reading it over and over again to myself when i was alone, and trying to fancy how you looked and what dress you wore. if i had only known when you were going to be married, i would have ventured into the church, my love, to look at you and at your husband. but that was not to be--and perhaps it was best so, for the seeing you in that stolen way might only have made my trials harder to bear afterward. i have had no other keepsake to remind me of you, rosamond, except this leaf out of your first copy-book. the nurse-maid at porthgenna tore up the rest one day to light the fire, and i took this leaf when she was not looking. see! you had not got as far as words then--you could only do up-strokes and down-strokes. oh me! how many times i have sat looking at this one leaf of paper, and trying to fancy that i saw your small child's hand traveling over it, with the pen held tight in the rosy little fingers. i think i have cried oftener, my darling, over that first copy of yours than over all my other keepsakes put together." rosamond turned aside her face toward the window to hide the tears which she could restrain no longer. as she wiped them away, the first sight of the darkening sky warned her that the twilight dimness was coming soon. how dull and faint the glow in the west looked now! how near it was to the close of day! when she turned toward the bed again, her mother was still looking at the leaf of the copy-book. "that nurse-maid who tore up all the rest of it to light the fire," she said, "was a kind friend to me in those early days at porthgenna. she used sometimes to let me put you to bed, rosamond; and never asked questions, or teased me, as the rest of them did. she risked the loss of her place by being so good to me. my mistress was afraid of my betraying myself and betraying her if i was much in the nursery, and she gave orders that i was not to go there, because it was not my place. none of the other women-servants were so often stopped from playing with you and kissing you, rosamond, as i was. but the nurse-maid--god bless and prosper her for it!--stood my friend. i often lifted you into your little cot, my love, and wished you good-night, when my mistress thought i was at work in her room. you used to say you liked your nurse better than you liked me, but you never told me so fretfully; and you always put your laughing lips up to mine whenever i asked you for a kiss!" rosamond laid her head gently on the pillow by the side of her mother's. "try to think less of the past, dear, and more of the future," she whispered pleadingly; "try to think of the time when my child will help you to recall those old days without their sorrow--the time when you will teach him to put his lips up to yours, as i used to put mine." "i will try, rosamond--but my only thoughts of the future, for years and years past, have been thoughts of meeting you in heaven. if my sins are forgiven, how shall we meet there? shall you be like my little child to me--the child i never saw again after she was five years old? i wonder if the mercy of god will recompense me for our long separation on earth? i wonder if you will first appear to me in the happy world with your child's face, and be what you should have been to me on earth, my little angel that i can carry in my arms? if we pray in heaven, shall i teach you your prayers there, as some comfort to me for never having taught them to you here?" she paused, smiled sadly, and, closing her eyes, gave herself in silence to the dream-thoughts that were still floating in her mind. thinking that she might sink to rest again if she was left undisturbed, rosamond neither moved nor spoke. after watching the peaceful face for some time, she became conscious that the light was fading on it slowly. as that conviction impressed itself on her, she looked round at the window once more. the western clouds wore their quiet twilight colors already: the close of day had come. the moment she moved the chair, she felt her mother's hand on her shoulder. when she turned again toward the bed, she saw her mother's eyes open and looking at her--looking at her, as she thought, with a change in their expression, a change to vacancy. "why do i talk of heaven?" she said, turning her face suddenly toward the darkening sky, and speaking in low, muttering tones. "how do i know i am fit to go there? and yet, rosamond, i am not guilty of breaking my oath to my mistress. you can say for me that i never destroyed the letter, and that i never took it away with me when i left the house. i tried to get it out of the myrtle room; but i only wanted to hide it somewhere else. i never thought to take it away from the house: i never meant to break my oath." "it will be dark soon, mother. let me get up for one moment to light the candles." her hand crept softly upward, and clung fast round rosamond's neck. "i never swore to give him the letter," she said. "there was no crime in the hiding of it. you found it in a picture, rosamond? they used to call it a picture of the porthgenna ghost. nobody knew how old it was, or when it came into the house. my mistress hated it, because the painted face had a strange likeness to hers. she told me, when first i lived at porthgenna, to take it down from the wall and destroy it. i was afraid to do that; so i hid it away, before ever you were born, in the myrtle room. you found the letter at the back of the picture, rosamond? and yet that was a likely place to hide it in. nobody had ever found the picture. why should any body find the letter that was hid in it?" "let me get a light, mother! i am sure you would like to have a light!" "no! no light now. give the darkness time to gather down there in the corner of the room. lift me up close to you, and let me whisper." the clinging arm tightened its grasp as rosamond raised her in the bed. the fading light from the window fell full on her face, and was reflected dimly in her vacant eyes. "i am waiting for something that comes at dusk, before the candles are lit," she whispered in low, breathless tones. "my mistress!--down there!" and she pointed away to the farthest corner of the room near the door. "mother! for god's sake, what is it! what has changed you so?" "that's right! say 'mother.' _if she does come_, she can't stop when she hears you call me 'mother,' when she sees us together at last, loving and knowing each other in spite of her. oh, my kind, tender, pitying child! if you can only deliver me from her, how long may i live yet!--how happy we may both be!" "don't talk so! don't look so! tell me quietly--dear, dear mother, tell me quietly--" "hush! hush! i am going to tell you. she threatened me on her death-bed, if i thwarted her--she said she would come to me from the other world. rosamond! i _have_ thwarted her and she has kept her promise--all my life since, she has kept her promise! look! down there!" her left arm was still clasped round rosamond's neck. she stretched her right arm out toward the far corner of the room, and shook her hand slowly at the empty air. "look!" she said. "there she is as she always comes to me at the close of day--with the coarse, black dress on, that my guilty hands made for her--with the smile that there was on her face when she asked me if she looked like a servant. mistress! mistress! oh, rest at last! the secret is ours no longer! rest at last! my child is my own again! rest, at last; and come between us no more!" she ceased, panting for breath; and laid her hot, throbbing cheek against the cheek of her daughter. "call me 'mother' again!" she whispered. "say it loud; and send her away from me forever!" rosamond mastered the terror that shook her in every limb, and pronounced the word. her mother leaned forward a little, still gasping heavily for breath, and looked with straining eyes into the quiet twilight dimness at the lower end of the room. "_gone!!!_" she cried suddenly, with a scream of exultation. "oh, merciful, merciful god! gone at last!" the next instant she sprang up on her knees in the bed. for one awful moment her eyes shone in the gray twilight with a radiant, unearthly beauty, as they fastened their last look of fondness on her daughter's face. "oh, my love! my angel!" she murmured, "how happy we shall be together now!" as she said the words, she twined her arms round rosamond's neck, and pressed her lips rapturously on the lips of her child. the kiss lingered till her head sank forward gently on rosamond's bosom--lingered, till the time of god's mercy came, and the weary heart rested at last. chapter v. forty thousand pounds. no popular saying is more commonly accepted than the maxim which asserts that time is the great consoler; and, probably, no popular saying more imperfectly expresses the truth. the work that we must do, the responsibilities that we must undertake, the example that we must set to others--these are the great consolers, for these apply the first remedies to the malady of grief. time possesses nothing but the negative virtue of helping it to wear itself out. who that has observed at all, has not perceived that those among us who soonest recover from the shock of a great grief for the dead are those who have the most duties to perform toward the living? when the shadow of calamity rests on our houses, the question with us is not how much time will suffice to bring back the sunshine to us again, but how much occupation have we got to force us forward into the place where the sunshine is waiting for us to come? time may claim many victories, but not the victory over grief. the great consolation for the loss of the dead who are gone is to be found in the great necessity of thinking of the living who remain. the history of rosamond's daily life, now that the darkness of a heavy affliction had fallen on it, was in itself the sufficient illustration of this truth. it was not the slow lapse of time that helped to raise her up again, but the necessity which would not wait for time--the necessity which made her remember what was due to the husband who sorrowed with her, to the child whose young life was linked to hers, and to the old man whose helpless grief found no support but in the comfort she could give, learned no lesson of resignation but from the example she could set. from the first the responsibility of sustaining him had rested on her shoulders alone. before the close of day had been counted out by the first hour of the night, she had been torn from the bedside by the necessity of meeting him at the door, and preparing him to know that he was entering the chamber of death. to guide the dreadful truth gradually and gently, till it stood face to face with him, to support him under the shock of recognizing it, to help his mind to recover after the inevitable blow had struck it at last--these were the sacred duties which claimed all the devotion that rosamond had to give, and which forbade her heart, for his sake, to dwell selfishly on its own grief. he looked like a man whose faculties had been stunned past recovery. he would sit for hours with the musical box by his side, patting it absently from time to time, and whispering to himself as he looked at it, but never attempting to set it playing. it was the one memorial left that reminded him of all the joys and sorrows, the simple family interests and affections of his past life. when rosamond first sat by his side and took his hand to comfort him, he looked backward and forward with forlorn eyes from her compassionate face to the musical box, and vacantly repeated to himself the same words over and over again: "they are all gone--my brother max, my wife, my little joseph, my sister agatha, and sarah, my niece! i and my little bit of box are left alone together in the world. mozart can sing no more. he has sung to the last of them now!" the second day there was no change in him. on the third, rosamond placed the book of hymns reverently on her mother's bosom, laid a lock of her own hair round it, and kissed the sad, peaceful face for the last time. the old man was with her at that silent leave-taking, and followed her away when it was over. by the side of the coffin, and afterward, when she took him back with her to her husband, he was still sunk in the same apathy of grief which had overwhelmed him from the first. but when they began to speak of the removal of the remains the next day to porthgenna church-yard, they noticed that his dim eyes brightened suddenly, and that his wandering attention followed every word they said. after a while he rose from his chair, approached rosamond, and looked anxiously in her face. "i think i could bear it better if you would let me go with her," he said. "we two should have gone back to cornwall together, if she had lived. will you let us still go back together now that she has died?" rosamond gently remonstrated, and tried to make him see that it was best to leave the remains to be removed under the charge of her husband's servant, whose fidelity could be depended on, and whose position made him the fittest person to be charged with cares and responsibilities which near relations were not capable of undertaking with sufficient composure. she told him that her husband intended to stop in london, to give her one day of rest and quiet, which she absolutely needed, and that they then proposed to return to cornwall in time to be at porthgenna before the funeral took place; and she begged earnestly that he would not think of separating his lot from theirs at a time of trouble and trial, when they ought to be all three most closely united by the ties of mutual sympathy and mutual sorrow. he listened silently and submissively while rosamond was speaking, but he only repeated his simple petition when she had done. the one idea in his mind now was the idea of going back to cornwall with all that was left on earth of his sister's child. leonard and rosamond both saw that it would be useless to oppose it, both felt that it would be cruelty to keep him with them, and kindness to let him go away. after privately charging the servant to spare him all trouble and difficulty, to humor him by acceding to any wishes that he might express, and to give him all possible protection and help without obtruding either officiously on his attention, they left him free to follow the one purpose of his heart which still connected him with the interests and events of the passing day. "i shall thank you better soon," he said at leave-taking, "for letting me go away out of this din of london with all that is left to me of sarah, my niece. i will dry up my tears as well as i can, and try to have more courage when we meet again." on the next day, when they were alone, rosamond and her husband sought refuge from the oppression of the present in speaking together of the future, and of the influence which the change in their fortunes ought to be allowed to exercise on their plans and projects for the time to come. after exhausting this topic, the conversation turned next on the subject of their friends, and on the necessity of communicating to some of the oldest of their associates the events which had followed the discovery in the myrtle room. the first name on their lips while they were considering this question was the name of doctor chennery; and rosamond, dreading the effect on her spirits of allowing her mind to remain unoccupied, volunteered to write to the vicar at once, referring briefly to what had happened since they had last communicated with him, and asking him to fulfill that year an engagement of long standing, which he had made with her husband and herself, to spend his autumn holiday with them at porthgenna tower. rosamond's heart yearned for a sight of her old friend; and she knew him well enough to be assured that a hint at the affliction which had befallen her, and at the hard trial which she had undergone, would be more than enough to bring them together the moment doctor chennery could make his arrangements for leaving home. the writing of this letter suggested recollections which called to mind another friend, whose intimacy with leonard and rosamond was of recent date, but whose connection with the earlier among the train of circumstances which had led to the discovery of the secret entitled him to a certain share in their confidence. this friend was mr. orridge, the doctor at west winston, who had accidentally been the means of bringing rosamond's mother to her bedside. to him she now wrote, acknowledging the promise which she had made on leaving west winston to communicate the result of their search for the myrtle room; and informing him that it had terminated in the discovery of some very sad events, of a family nature, which were now numbered with the events of the past. more than this it was not necessary to say to a friend who occupied such a position toward them as that held by mr. orridge. rosamond had written the address of this second letter, and was absently drawing lines on the blotting-paper with her pen, when she was startled by hearing a contention of angry voices in the passage outside. almost before she had time to wonder what the noise meant, the door was violently pushed open, and a tall, shabbily dressed, elderly man, with a peevish, haggard face, and a ragged gray beard, stalked in, followed indignantly by the head waiter of the hotel. "i have three times told this person," began the waiter, with a strong emphasis on the word "person," "that mr. and mrs. frankland--" "were not at home," broke in the shabbily dressed man, finishing the sentence for the waiter. "yes, you told me that; and i told you that the gift of speech was only used by mankind for the purpose of telling lies, and that consequently i didn't believe you. you _have_ told a lie. here are mr. and mrs. frankland both at home. i come on business, and i mean to have five minutes' talk with them. i sit down unasked, and i announce my own name--andrew treverton." with those words, he took his seat coolly on the nearest chair. leonard's cheeks reddened with anger while he was speaking, but rosamond interposed before her husband could say a word. "it is useless, love, to be angry with him," she whispered. "the quiet way is the best way with a man like that." she made a sign to the waiter, which gave him permission to leave the room--then turned to mr. treverton. "you have forced your presence on us, sir," she said quietly, "at a time when a very sad affliction makes us quite unfit for contentions of any kind. we are willing to show more consideration for your age than you have shown for our grief. if you have any thing to say to my husband, he is ready to control himself and to hear you quietly, for my sake." "and i shall be short with him and with you, for my own sake," rejoined mr. treverton. "no woman has ever yet had the chance of sharpening her tongue long on me, or ever shall. i have come here to say three things. first, your lawyer has told me all about the discovery in the myrtle room, and how you made it. secondly, i have got your money. thirdly, i mean to keep it. what do you think of that?" "i think you need not give yourself the trouble of remaining in the room any longer, if your only object in coming here is to tell us what we know already," replied leonard. "we know you have got the money; and we never doubted that you meant to keep it." "you are quite sure of that, i suppose?" said mr. treverton. "quite sure you have no lingering hope that any future twists and turns of the law will take the money out of my pocket again and put it back into yours? it is only fair to tell you that there is not the shadow of a chance of any such thing ever happening, or of my ever turning generous and rewarding you of my own accord for the sacrifice you have made. i have been to doctors' commons, i have taken out a grant of administration, i have got the money legally, i have lodged it safe at my banker's, and i have never had one kind feeling in my heart since i was born. that was my brother's character of me, and he knew more of my disposition, of course, than any one else. once again, i tell you both, not a farthing of all that large fortune will ever return to either of you." "and once again i tell _you_," said leonard, "that we have no desire to hear what we know already. it is a relief to my conscience and to my wife's to have resigned a fortune which we had no right to possess; and i speak for her as well as for myself when i tell you that your attempt to attach an interested motive to our renunciation of that money is an insult to us both which you ought to have been ashamed to offer." "that is your opinion, is it?" said mr. treverton. "you, who have lost the money, speak to me, who have got it, in that manner, do you?--pray, do you approve of your husband's treating a rich man who might make both your fortunes in that way?" he inquired, addressing himself sharply to rosamond. "most assuredly i approve of it," she answered. "i never agreed with him more heartily in my life than i agree with him now." "oh!" said mr. treverton. "then it seems you care no more for the loss of the money than he does?" "he has told you already," said rosamond, "that it is as great a relief to my conscience as to his, to have given it up." mr. treverton carefully placed a thick stick which he carried with him upright between his knees, crossed his hands on the top of it, rested his chin on them, and, in that investigating position, stared steadily in rosamond's face. "i rather wish i had brought shrowl here with me," he said to himself. "i should like him to have seen this. it staggers _me_, and i rather think it would have staggered _him_. both these people," continued mr. treverton, looking perplexedly from rosamond to leonard, and from leonard back again to rosamond, "are, to all outward appearance, human beings. they walk on their hind legs, they express ideas readily by uttering articulate sounds, they have the usual allowance of features, and in respect of weight, height, and size, they appear to me to be mere average human creatures of the regular civilized sort. and yet, there they sit, taking the loss of a fortune of forty thousand pounds as easily as croesus, king of lydia, might have taken the loss of a half-penny!" he rose, put on his hat, tucked the thick stick under his arm, and advanced a few steps toward rosamond. "i am going now," he said. "would you like to shake hands?" rosamond turned her back on him contemptuously. mr. treverton chuckled with an air of supreme satisfaction. meanwhile leonard, who sat near the fire-place, and whose color was rising angrily once more, had been feeling for the bell-rope, and had just succeeded in getting it into his hand as mr. treverton approached the door. "don't ring, lenny," said rosamond. "he is going of his own accord." mr. treverton stepped out into the passage--then glanced back into the room with an expression of puzzled curiosity on his face, as if he was looking into a cage which contained two animals of a species that he had never heard of before. "i have seen some strange sights in my time," he said to himself. "i have had some queer experience of this trumpery little planet, and of the creatures who inhabit it--but i never was staggered yet by any human phenomenon as i am staggered now by those two." he shut the door without saying another word, and rosamond heard him chuckle to himself again as he walked away along the passage. ten minutes afterward the waiter brought up a sealed letter addressed to mrs. frankland. it had been written, he said, in the coffee-room of the hotel by the "person" who had intruded himself into mr. and mrs. frankland's presence. after giving it to the waiter to deliver, he had gone away in a hurry, swinging his thick stick complacently, and laughing to himself. rosamond opened the letter. on one side of it was a crossed check, drawn in her name, for forty thousand pounds. on the other side were these lines of explanation: "take your money back again. first, because you and your husband are the only two people i have ever met with who are not likely to be made rascals by being made rich. secondly, because you have told the truth, when letting it out meant losing money, and keeping it in, saving a fortune. thirdly, because you are _not_ the child of the player-woman. fourthly, because you can't help yourself--for i shall leave it to you at my death, if you won't have it now. good-by. don't come and see me, don't write grateful letters to me, don't invite me into the country, don't praise my generosity, and, above all things, don't have any thing more to do with shrowl. andrew treverton." the first thing rosamond did, when she and her husband had a little recovered from their astonishment, was to disobey the injunction which forbade her to address any grateful letters to mr. treverton. the messenger, who was sent with her note to bayswater, returned without an answer, and reported that he had received directions from an invisible man, with a gruff voice, to throw it over the garden wall, and to go away immediately after, unless he wanted to have his head broken. mr. nixon, to whom leonard immediately sent word of what had happened, volunteered to go to bayswater the same evening, and make an attempt to see mr. treverton on mr. and mrs. frankland's behalf. he found timon of london more approachable than he had anticipated. the misanthrope was, for once in his life, in a good humor. this extraordinary change in him had been produced by the sense of satisfaction which he experienced in having just turned shrowl out of his situation, on the ground that his master was not fit company for him after having committed such an act of folly as giving mrs. frankland back her forty thousand pounds. "i told him," said mr. treverton, chuckling over his recollection of the parting scene between his servant and himself--"i told him that i could not possibly expect to merit his continued approval after what i had done, and that i could not think of detaining him in his place under the circumstances. i begged him to view my conduct as leniently as he could, because the first cause that led to it was, after all, his copying the plan of porthgenna, which guided mrs. frankland to the discovery in the myrtle room. i congratulated him on having got a reward of five pounds for being the means of restoring a fortune of forty thousand; and i bowed him out with a polite humility that half drove him mad. shrowl and i have had a good many tussles in our time; he was always even with me till to-day, and now i've thrown him on his back at last!" although mr. treverton was willing to talk of the defeat and dismissal of shrowl as long as the lawyer would listen to him, he was perfectly unmanageable on the subject of mrs. frankland, when mr. nixon tried to turn the conversation to that topic. he would hear no messages--he would give no promise of any sort for the future. all that he could be prevailed on to say about himself and his own projects was that he intended to give up the house at bayswater, and to travel again for the purpose of studying human nature, in different countries, on a plan that he had not tried yet--the plan of endeavoring to find out the good that there might be in people as well as the bad. he said the idea had been suggested to his mind by his anxiety to ascertain whether mr. and mrs. frankland were perfectly exceptional human beings or not. at present, he was disposed to think that they were, and that his travels were not likely to lead to any thing at all remarkable in the shape of a satisfactory result. mr. nixon pleaded hard for something in the shape of a friendly message to take back, along with the news of his intended departure. the request produced nothing but a sardonic chuckle, followed by this parting speech, delivered to the lawyer at the garden gate. "tell those two superhuman people," said timon of london, "that i may give up my travels in disgust when they least expect it; and that i may possibly come back to look at them again--i don't personally care about either of them--but i should like to get one satisfactory sensation more out of the lamentable spectacle of humanity before i die." chapter vi. the dawn of a new life. four days afterward, rosamond and leonard and uncle joseph met together in the cemetery of the church of porthgenna. the earth to which we all return had closed over her: the weary pilgrimage of sarah leeson had come to its quiet end at last. the miner's grave from which she had twice plucked in secret her few memorial fragments of grass had given her the home, in death, which, in life, she had never known. the roar of the surf was stilled to a low murmur before it reached the place of her rest; and the wind that swept joyously over the open moor paused a little when it met the old trees that watched over the graves, and wound onward softly through the myrtle hedge which held them all embraced alike in its circle of lustrous green. some hours had passed since the last words of the burial service had been read. the fresh turf was heaped already over the mound, and the old head-stone with the miner's epitaph on it had been raised once more in its former place at the head of the grave. rosamond was reading the inscription softly to her husband. uncle joseph had walked a little apart from them while she was thus engaged, and had knelt down by himself at the foot of the mound. he was fondly smoothing and patting the newly laid turf--as he had often smoothed sarah's hair in the long-past days of her youth--as he had often patted her hand in the after-time, when her heart was weary and her hair was gray. "shall we add any new words to the old, worn letters as they stand now?" said rosamond, when she had read the inscription to the end. "there is a blank space left on the stone. shall we fill it, love, with the initials of my mother's name, and the date of her death? i feel something in my heart which seems to tell me to do that, and to do no more." "so let it be, rosamond," said her husband. "that short and simple inscription is the fittest and the best." she looked away, as he gave that answer, to the foot of the grave, and left him for a moment to approach the old man. "take my hand, uncle joseph," she said, and touched him gently on the shoulder. "take my hand, and let us go back together to the house." he rose as she spoke, and looked at her doubtfully. the musical box, inclosed in its well-worn leather case, lay on the grave near the place where he had been kneeling. rosamond took it up from the grass, and slung it in the old place at his side, which it had always occupied when he was away from home. he sighed a little as he thanked her. "mozart can sing no more," he said. "he has sung to the last of them now!" "don't say 'to the last,' yet," said rosamond--"don't say 'to the last,' uncle joseph, while i am alive. surely mozart will sing to _me_, for my mother's sake?" a smile--the first she had seen since the time of their grief--trembled faintly round his lips. "there is comfort in that," he said; "there is comfort for uncle joseph still, in hearing that." "take my hand," she repeated softly. "come home with us now." he looked down wistfully at the grave. "i will follow you," he said, "if you will go on before me to the gate." rosamond took her husband's arm, and guided him to the path that led out of the church-yard. as they passed from sight, uncle joseph knelt down once more at the foot of the grave, and pressed his lips on the fresh turf. "good-by, my child," he whispered, and laid his cheek for a moment against the grass before he rose again. at the gate, rosamond was waiting for him. her right hand was resting on her husband's arm; her left hand was held out for uncle joseph to take. "how cool the breeze is!" said leonard. "how pleasantly the sea sounds! surely this is a fine summer day?" "the calmest and loveliest of the year," said rosamond. "the only clouds on the sky are clouds of shining white; the only shadows over the moor lie light as down on the heather. oh, lenny, it is such a different day from that day of dull oppression and misty heat when we found the letter in the myrtle room! even the dark tower of our old house, yonder, looks its brightest and best, as if it waited to welcome us to the beginning of a new life. i will make it a happy life to you, and to uncle joseph, if i can--happy as the sunshine we are walking in now. you shall never repent, love, if _i_ can help it, that you have married a wife who has no claim of her own to the honors of a family name." "i can never repent my marriage, rosamond, because i can never forget the lesson that my wife has taught me." "what lesson, lenny?" "an old one, my dear, which some of us can never learn too often. the highest honors, rosamond, are those which no accident can take away--the honors that are conferred by love and truth." the end. wilkie collins's novels. harper's illustrated library edition. _ mo, cloth, $ per volume._ with steel portrait of the author by halpin. in view of the visit of mr. wilkie collins to this country, messrs. harper & brothers have the pleasure of announcing a new library edition of the works of this popular novelist, embellished with many illustrations by english and american artists--some of which have been drawn expressly for this edition--and with a new portrait of the author, engraved on steel by halpin. one volume will be issued each month until the completion of the series. the convenient size of the volumes will commend this tasteful edition to the favor of american readers, among whom the author of "no name," "the woman in white," "man and wife," and "the new magdalen," is no less widely known than among his own countrymen. wilkie collins has no living superior in the art of constructing a story. others may equal if not surpass him in the delineation of character, or in the use of a story for the development of social theories, or for the redress of a wrong against humanity and civilization; but in his own domain he stands alone, without a rival. * * * he holds that "the main element in the attraction of all stories is the interest of curiosity and the excitement of surprise." other writers had discovered this before collins; but, recognizing the clumsiness of the contrivances in use by inferior authors, he essays, by artistic and conscientious use of the same materials and similar devices, to captivate his readers.--_n. y. evening post._ we can not call to mind any novelist or romancer of past times whose constructive powers fairly can be placed above his. he is a literary artist, and a great one too, and he always takes his readers with him.--_boston traveller._ of all the living writers of english fiction, no one better understands the art of story-telling than wilkie collins. he has a faculty of coloring the mystery of a plot, exciting terror, pity, curiosity, and other passions, such as belongs to few if any of his _confrères_, however much they may excel him in other respects. his style, too, is singularly appropriate--less forced and artificial than the average modern novelist.--_boston transcript._ the new magdalen. basil. hide-and-seek. no name. the dead secret. poor miss finch. armadale. man and wife. the moonstone. the woman in white. queen of hearts. harper & brothers also publish a cheap edition of wilkie collins's novels: armadale illustrated vo, paper, $ . antonina vo, paper, c. man and wife illustrated vo, paper, $ . the moonstone illustrated vo, paper, $ . no name illustrated vo, paper, $ . poor miss finch illustrated vo, paper, $ . the woman in white illustrated vo, paper, $ . the new magdalen vo, paper, c. published by harper & brothers, new york. _sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the united states, on receipt of the price. lord lytton's works. published by harper & brothers, new york. who is there uniting in one person the imagination, the passion, the humor, the energy, the knowledge of the heart, the artist-like eye, the originality, the fancy, and the learning of edward lytton bulwer? in a vivid wit--in profundity and a gothic massiveness of thought--in style--in a calm certainty and definitiveness of purpose--in industry--and, above all, in the power of controlling and regulating, by volition, his illimitable faculties of mind, he is unequaled--he is unapproached.--edgar a. poe. =kenelm chillingly.= vo, paper, cents; 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v�mb�ry's central asia. travels in central asia. being the account of a journey from teheren across the turkoman desert, on the eastern shore of the caspian, to khiva, bokhara, and samarcand, performed in the year . by arminius v�mb�ry, member of the hungarian academy of pesth, by whom he was sent on this scientific mission. with map and woodcuts. vo, cloth, $ . wood's homes without hands. homes without hands: being a description of the habitations of animals, classed according to their principle of construction. by j. g. wood, m.a., f.l.s. with about illustrations. vo, cloth, beveled edges, $ . clotelle: a tale of the southern states by william wells brown contents i the slave's social circle. ii the negro sale. iii the slave speculator. iv the boat-race. v the young mother. vi the slave-market. vii the slave-holding parson. viii a night in the parson's kitchen. ix the man of honor. x the quadroon's home xi to-day a mistress, to-morrow a slave xii the mother-in-law. xiii a hard-hearted woman. xiv the prison. xv the arrest. xvi death is freedom. xvii clotelle. xviii a slave-hunting parson. xix the true heroine. xx the hero of many adventures. xxi self-sacrifice. xxii love at first sight and what followed. xxiii meeting of the cousins. xxiv the law and its victim. xxv the flight. xxvi the hero of a night. xxvii true freedom. xxviii farewell to america. xxix a stranger in a strange land. xxx new friends. xxxi the mysterious meeting. xxxii the happy meeting. xxxiii the happy day. xxxiv clotelle meets her father. xxxv the father's resolve. chapter i the slave's social circle. with the growing population in the southern states, the increase of mulattoes has been very great. society does not frown upon the man who sits with his half-white child upon his knee whilst the mother stands, a slave, behind his chair. in nearly all the cities and towns of the slave states, the real negro, or clear black, does not amount to more than one in four of the slave population. this fact is of itself the best evidence of the degraded and immoral condition of the relation of master and slave. throughout the southern states, there is a class of slaves who, in most of the towns, are permitted to hire their time from their owners, and who are always expected to pay a high price. this class is the mulatto women, distinguished for their fascinating beauty. the handsomest of these usually pay the greatest amount for their time. many of these women are the favorites of men of property and standing, who furnish them with the means of compensating their owners, and not a few are dressed in the most extravagant manner. when we take into consideration the fact that no safeguard is thrown around virtue, and no inducement held out to slave-women to be pure and chaste, we will not be surprised when told that immorality and vice pervade the cities and towns of the south to an extent unknown in the northern states. indeed, many of the slave-women have no higher aspiration than that of becoming the finely-dressed mistress of some white man. at negro balls and parties, this class of women usually make the most splendid appearance, and are eagerly sought after in the dance, or to entertain in the drawing-room or at the table. a few years ago, among the many slave-women in richmond, virginia, who hired their time of their masters, was agnes, a mulatto owned by john graves, esq., and who might be heard boasting that she was the daughter of an american senator. although nearly forty years of age at the time of which we write, agnes was still exceedingly handsome. more than half white, with long black hair and deep blue eyes, no one felt like disputing with her when she urged her claim to her relationship with the anglo-saxon. in her younger days, agnes had been a housekeeper for a young slaveholder, and in sustaining this relation had become the mother of two daughters. after being cast aside by this young man, the slave-woman betook herself to the business of a laundress, and was considered to be the most tasteful woman in richmond at her vocation. isabella and marion, the two daughters of agnes, resided with their mother, and gave her what aid they could in her business. the mother, however, was very choice of her daughters, and would allow them to perform no labor that would militate against their lady-like appearance. agnes early resolved to bring up her daughters as ladies, as she termed it. as the girls grew older, the mother had to pay a stipulated price for them per month. her notoriety as a laundress of the first class enabled her to put an extra charge upon the linen that passed through her hands; and although she imposed little or no work upon her daughters, she was enabled to live in comparative luxury and have her daughters dressed to attract attention, especially at the negro balls and parties. although the term "negro ball" is applied to these gatherings, yet a large portion of the men who attend them are whites. negro balls and parties in the southern states, especially in the cities and towns, are usually made up of quadroon women, a few negro men, and any number of white gentlemen. these are gatherings of the most democratic character. bankers, merchants, lawyers, doctors, and their clerks and students, all take part in these social assemblies upon terms of perfect equality. the father and son not unfrequently meet and dance alike at a negro ball. it was at one of these parties that henry linwood, the son of a wealthy and retired gentleman of richmond, was first introduced to isabella, the oldest daughter of agnes. the young man had just returned from harvard college, where he had spent the previous five years. isabella was in her eighteenth year, and was admitted by all who knew her to be the handsomest girl, colored or white, in the city. on this occasion, she was attired in a sky-blue silk dress, with deep black lace flounces, and bertha of the same. on her well-moulded arms she wore massive gold bracelets, while her rich black hair was arranged at the back in broad basket plaits, ornamented with pearls, and the front in the french style (a la imperatrice), which suited her classic face to perfection. marion was scarcely less richly dressed than her sister. henry linwood paid great attention to isabella which was looked upon with gratification by her mother, and became a matter of general conversation with all present. of course, the young man escorted the beautiful quadroon home that evening, and became the favorite visitor at the house of agnes. it was on a beautiful moonlight night in the month of august when all who reside in tropical climates are eagerly grasping for a breath of fresh air, that henry linwood was in the garden which surrounded agnes' cottage, with the young quadroon by his side. he drew from his pocket a newspaper wet from the press, and read the following advertisement:-- notice.--seventy-nine negroes will be offered for sale on monday, september , at o'clock, being the entire stock of the late john graves in an excellent condition, and all warranted against the common vices. among them are several mechanics, able-bodied field-hands, plough-boys, and women with children, some of them very prolific, affording a rare opportunity for any one who wishes to raise a strong and healthy lot of servants for their own use. also several mulatto girls of rare personal qualities,--two of these very superior. among the above slaves advertised for sale were agnes and her two daughters. ere young linwood left the quadroon that evening, he promised her that he would become her purchaser, and make her free and her own mistress. mr. graves had long been considered not only an excellent and upright citizen of the first standing among the whites, but even the slaves regarded him as one of the kindest of masters. having inherited his slaves with the rest of his property, he became possessed of them without any consultation or wish of his own. he would neither buy nor sell slaves, and was exceedingly careful, in letting them out, that they did not find oppressive and tyrannical masters. no slave speculator ever dared to cross the threshold of this planter of the old dominion. he was a constant attendant upon religious worship, and was noted for his general benevolence. the american bible society, the american tract society, and the cause of foreign missions, found in him a liberal friend. he was always anxious that his slaves should appear well on the sabbath, and have an opportunity of hearing the word of god. chapter ii the negro sale. as might have been expected, the day of sale brought an usually large number together to compete for the property to be sold. farmers, who make a business of raising slaves for the market, were there, and slave-traders, who make a business of buying human beings in the slave-raising states and taking them to the far south, were also in attendance. men and women, too, who wished to purchase for their own use, had found their way to the slave sale. in the midst of the throne was one who felt a deeper interest in the result of the sale than any other of the bystanders. this was young linwood. true to his promise, he was there with a blank bank-check in his pocket, awaiting with impatience to enter the list as a bidder for the beautiful slave. it was indeed a heart-rending scene to witness the lamentations of these slaves, all of whom had grown up together on the old homestead of mr. graves, and who had been treated with great kindness by that gentleman, during his life. now they were to be separated, and form new relations and companions. such is the precarious condition of the slave. even when with a good master, there is no certainty of his happiness in the future. the less valuable slaves were first placed upon the auction-block, one after another, and sold to the highest bidder. husbands and wives were separated with a degree of indifference that is unknown in any other relation in life. brothers and sisters were tom from each other, and mothers saw their children for the last time on earth. it was late in the day, and when the greatest number of persons were thought to be present, when agnes and her daughters were brought out to the place of sale. the mother was first put upon the auction-block, and sold to a noted negro trader named jennings. marion was next ordered to ascend the stand, which she did with a trembling step, and was sold for $ . all eyes were now turned on isabella, as she was led forward by the auctioneer. the appearance of the handsome quadroon caused a deep sensation among the crowd. there she stood, with a skin as fair as most white women, her features as beautifully regular as any of her sex of pure anglo-saxon blood, her long black hair done up in the neatest manner, her form tall and graceful, and her whole appearance indicating one superior to her condition. the auctioneer commenced by saying that miss isabella was fit to deck the drawing-room of the finest mansion in virginia. "how much, gentlemen, for this real albino!--fit fancy-girl for any one! she enjoys good health, and has a sweet temper. how much do you say?" "five hundred dollars." "only five hundred for such a girl as this? gentlemen, she is worth a deal more than that sum. you certainly do not know the value of the article you are bidding on. here, gentlemen, i hold in my hand a paper certifying that she has a good moral character." "seven hundred." "ah, gentlemen, that is something like. this paper also states that she is very intelligent." "eight hundred." "she was first sprinkled, then immersed, and is now warranted to be a devoted christian, and perfectly trustworthy." "nine hundred dollars." "nine hundred and fifty." "one thousand." "eleven hundred." here the bidding came to a dead stand. the auctioneer stopped, looked around, and began in a rough manner to relate some anecdote connected with the sale of slaves, which he said had come under his own observation. at this juncture the scene was indeed a most striking one. the laughing, joking, swearing, smoking, spitting, and talking, kept up a continual hum and confusion among the crowd, while the slave-girl stood with tearful eyes, looking alternately at her mother and sister and toward the young man whom she hoped would become her purchaser. "the chastity of this girl," now continued the auctioneer, "is pure. she has never been from under her mother's care. she is virtuous, and as gentle as a dove." the bids here took a fresh start, and went on until $ was reached. the auctioneer once more resorted to his jokes, and concluded by assuring the company that isabella was not only pious, but that she could make an excellent prayer. "nineteen hundred dollars." "two thousand." this was the last bid, and the quadroon girl was struck off, and became the property of henry linwood. this was a virginia slave-auction, at which the bones, sinews, blood, and nerves of a young girl of eighteen were sold for $ ; her moral character for $ ; her superior intellect for $ ; the benefits supposed to accrue from her having been sprinkled and immersed, together with a warranty of her devoted christianity, for $ ; her ability to make a good prayer for $ ; and her chastity for $ more. this, too, in a city thronged with churches, whose tall spires look like so many signals pointing to heaven, but whose ministers preach that slavery a god-ordained institution! the slaves were speedily separated, and taken along by their respective masters. jennings, the slave-speculator, who had purchased agnes and her daughter marion, with several of the other slaves, took them to the county prison, where he usually kept his human cattle after purchasing them, previous to starting for the new orleans market. linwood had already provided a place for isabella, to which she was taken. the most trying moment for her was when she took leave of her mother and sister. the "good-by" of the slave is unlike that of any other class in the community. it is indeed a farewell forever. with tears streaming down their cheeks, they embraced and commanded each other to god, who is no respecter of persons, and before whom master and slave must one day appear. chapter iii the slave speculator. dick jennings the slave-speculator, was one of the few northern men, who go to the south and throw aside their honest mode of obtaining a living and resort to trading in human beings. a more repulsive looking person could scarcely be found in any community of bad looking men. tall, lean and lank, with high cheek-bones, face much pitted with the small-pox, gray eyes with red eyebrows, and sandy whiskers, he indeed stood alone without mate or fellow in looks. jennings prided himself upon what he called his goodness of heart and was always speaking of his humanity. as many of the slaves whom he intended taking to the new orleans market had been raised in richmond, and had relations there, he determined to leave the city early in the morning, so as not to witness any of the scenes so common the departure of a slave-gang to the far south. in this, he was most successful; for not even isabella, who had called at the prison several times to see her mother and sister, was aware of the time that they were to leave. the slave-trader started at early dawn, and was beyond the confines of the city long before the citizens were out of their beds. as a slave regards a life on the sugar, cotton, or rice plantation as even worse than death, they are ever on the watch for an opportunity to escape. the trader, aware of this, secures his victims in chains before he sets out on his journey. on this occasion, jennings had the men chained in pairs, while the women were allowed to go unfastened, but were closely watched. after a march of eight days, the company arrived on the banks of the ohio river, where they took a steamer for the place of their destination. jennings had already advertised in the new orleans papers, that he would be there with a prime lot of able-bodied slaves, men and women, fit for field-service, with a few extra ones calculated for house servants,--all between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five years; but like most men who make a business of speculating in human beings, he often bought many who were far advanced in years, and would try to pass them off for five or six years younger than they were. few persons can arrive at anything approaching the real age of the negro, by mere observation, unless they are well acquainted with the race. therefore, the slave-trader frequently carried out the deception with perfect impunity. after the steamer had left the wharf and was fairly out on the bosom of the broad mississippi, the speculator called his servant pompey to him; and instructed him as to getting the negroes ready for market. among the forty slaves that the trader had on this occasion, were some whose appearance indicated that they had seen some years and had gone through considerable service. their gray hair and whiskers at once pronounced them to be above the ages set down in the trader's advertisement. pompey had long been with jennings, and understood his business well, and if he did not take delight in the discharge of his duty, he did it at least with a degree of alacrity, so that he might receive the approbation of his master. pomp, as he was usually called by the trader, was of real negro blood, and would often say, when alluding to himself, "dis nigger am no counterfeit, he is de ginuine artikle. dis chile is none of your haf-and-haf, dere is no bogus about him." pompey was of low stature, round face, and, like most of his race, had a set of teeth, which, for whiteness and beauty, could not be surpassed; his eyes were large, lips thick, and hair short and woolly. pompey had been with jennings so long, and had seen so much of buying and selling of his fellow-creatures, that he appeared perfectly indifferent to the heart-rending scenes which daily occurred in his presence. such is the force of habit:-- "vice is a monster of such frightful mien, that to be hated, needs but to be seen; but seen too oft, familiar with its face, we first endure, then pity, then embrace." it was on the second day of the steamer's voyage, that pompey selected five of the oldest slaves, took them into a room by themselves, and commenced preparing them for the market. "now," said he, addressing himself to the company, "i is de chap dat is to get you ready for de orleans market, so dat you will bring marser a good price. how old is you?" addressing himself to a man not less than forty. "if i live to see next sweet-potato-digging time, i shall be either forty or forty-five, i don't know which." "dat may be," replied pompey; "but now you is only thirty years old,--dat's what marser says you is to be." "i know i is more den dat," responded the man. "i can't help nuffin' about dat," returned pompey; "but when you get into de market and any one ax you how old you is, and you tell um you is forty or forty-five, marser will tie you up and cut you all to pieces. but if you tell urn dat you is only thirty, den he won't. now remember dat you is thirty years old and no more." "well den, i guess i will only be thirty when dey ax me." "what's your name?" said pompey, addressing himself to another. "jeems." "oh! uncle jim, is it?" "yes." "den you must have all them gray whiskers shaved off, and all dem gray hairs plucked out of your head." this was all said by pompey in a manner which showed that he know what he was about. "how old is you?" asked pompey of a tall, strong-looking man. "what's your name?" "i am twenty-nine years old, and my name is tobias, but they calls me toby." "well, toby, or mr. tobias, if dat will suit you better, you are now twenty-three years old; dat's all,--do you understand dat?" "yes," replied toby. pompey now gave them all to understand how old they were to be when asked by persons who were likely to purchase, and then went and reported to his master that the old boys were all right. "be sure," said jennings, "that the niggers don't forget what you have taught them, for our luck this time in the market depends upon their appearance. if any of them have so many gray hairs that you cannot pluck them out, take the blacking and brush, and go at them." chapter iv the boat-race. at eight o'clock, on the evening of the third day of the passage, the lights of another steamer were soon in the distance, and apparently coming up very fast. this was the signal for a general commotion on board the patriot, and everything indicated that a steamboat-race was at hand. nothing can exceed the excitement attendant upon the racing of steamers on the mississippi. by the time the boats had reached memphis they were side by side, and each exerting itself to get in advance of the other. the night was clear, the moon shining brightly, and the boats so near to each other that the passengers were within speaking distance. on board the patriot the firemen were using oil, lard, butter, and even bacon, with woody for the purpose of raising the steam to its highest pitch. the blaze mingled with the black smoke that issued from the pipes of the other boat, which showed that she also was burning something more combustible than wood. the firemen of both boats, who were slaves, were singing songs such as can only be heard on board a southern steamer. the boats now came abreast of each other, and nearer and nearer, until they were locked so that men could pass from one to the other. the wildest excitement prevailed among the men employed on the steamers, in which the passengers freely participated. the patriot now stopped to take in passengers, but still no steam was permitted to escape. on the starting of the boat again, cold water was forced into the boilers by the feed-pumps, and, as might have been expected, one of the boilers exploded with terrific force, carrying away the boiler-deck and tearing to pieces much of the machinery. one dense fog of steam filled every part of the vessel, while shrieks, groans, and cries were heard on every side. men were running hither and thither looking for their wives, and women wore flying about in the wildest confusion seeking for their husbands. dismay appeared on every countenance. the saloons and cabins soon looked more like hospitals than anything else; but by this time the patriot had drifted to the shore, and the other steamer had come alongside to render assistance to the disabled boat. the killed and wounded (nineteen in number) were put on shore, and the patriot, taken in tow by the washington, was once more on her journey. it was half-past twelve, and the passengers, instead of retiring to their berths, once more assembled at the gambling-tables. the practice of gambling on the western waters has long been a source of annoyance to the more moral persons who travel on our great rivers. thousands of dollars often change owners during a passage from st. louis or louisville to new orleans, on a mississippi steamer. many men are completely ruined on such occasions, and duels are often the consequence. "go call my boy, steward," said mr. jones, as he took his cards one by one from the table. in a few minutes a fine-looking, bright-eyed mulatto boy, apparently about sixteen years of age, was standing by his master's side at the table. "i am broke, all but my boy," said jones, as he ran his fingers through his cards; "but he is worth a thousand dollars, and i will bet the half of him." "i will call you," said thompson, as he laid five hundred dollars at the feet of the boy, who was standing, on the table, and at the same time throwing down his cards before his adversary. "you have beaten me," said jones; and a roar of laughter followed from the other gentleman as poor joe stepped down from the table. "well, i suppose i owe you half the nigger," said thompson, as he took hold of joe and began examining his limbs. "yes," replied jones, "he is half yours. let me have five hundred dollars, and i will give you a bill of sale of the boy." "go back to your bed," said thompson to his chattel, "and remember that you now belong to me." the poor slave wiped the tears from his eyes, as, in obedience, he turned to leave the table. "my father gave me that boy," said jones, as he took the money, "and i hope, mr. thompson, that you will allow me to redeem him." "most certainly, sir," replied thompson. "whenever you hand over the cool thousand the negro is yours." next morning, as the passengers were assembling in the cabin and on deck and while the slaves were running about waiting on or looking for their masters, poor joe was seen entering his new master's stateroom, boots in hand. "who do you belong to?" inquired a gentleman of an old negro, who passed along leading a fine newfoundland dog which he had been feeding. "when i went to sleep las' night," replied the slave, "i 'longed to massa carr; but he bin gamblin' all night an' i don't know who i 'longs to dis mornin'." such is the uncertainty of a slave's life. he goes to bed at night the pampered servant of his young master, with whom he has played in childhood, and who would not see his slave abused under any consideration, and gets up in the morning the property of a man whom he has never before seen. to behold five or six tables in the saloon of a steamer, with half a dozen men playing cards at each, with money, pistols, and bowie-knives spread in splendid confusion before them, is an ordinary thing on the mississippi river. chapter v the young mother. on the fourth morning, the patriot landed at grand gulf, a beautiful town on the left bank of the mississippi. among the numerous passengers who came on board at rodney was another slave-trader, with nine human chattels which he was conveying to the southern market. the passengers, both ladies and gentlemen, were startled at seeing among the new lot of slaves a woman so white as not to be distinguishable from the other white women on board. she had in her arms a child so white that no one would suppose a drop of african blood flowed through its blue veins. no one could behold that mother with her helpless babe, without feeling that god would punish the oppressor. there she sat, with an expressive and intellectual forehead, and a countenance full of dignity and heroism, her dark golden locks rolled back from her almost snow-white forehead and floating over her swelling bosom. the tears that stood in her mild blue eyes showed that she was brooding over sorrows and wrongs that filled her bleeding heart. the hearts of the passers-by grew softer, while gazing upon that young mother as she pressed sweet kisses on the sad, smiling lips of the infant that lay in her lap. the small, dimpled hands of the innocent creature were slyly hid in the warm bosom on which the little one nestled. the blood of some proud southerner, no doubt, flowed through the veins of that child. when the boat arrived at natches, a rather good-looking, genteel-appearing man came on board to purchase a servant. this individual introduced himself to jennings as the rev. james wilson. the slave-trader conducted the preacher to the deck-cabin, where he kept his slaves, and the man of god, after having some questions answered, selected agnes as the one best suited to his service. it seemed as if poor marion's heart would break when she found that she was to be separated from her mother. the preacher, however, appeared to be but little moved by their sorrow, and took his newly-purchased victim on shore. agnes begged him to buy her daughter, but he refused, on the ground that he had no use for her. during the remainder of the passage, marion wept bitterly. after a ran of a few hours, the boat stopped at baton rouge, where an additional number of passengers were taken on board, among whom were a number of persons who had been attending the races at that place. gambling and drinking were now the order of the day. the next morning, at ten o'clock, the boat arrived at new orleans where the passengers went to their hotels and homes, and the negroes to the slave-pens. lizzie, the white slave-mother, of whom we have already spoken, created as much of a sensation by the fairness of her complexion and the alabaster whiteness of her child, when being conveyed on shore at new orleans, as she had done when brought on board at grand gulf. every one that saw her felt that slavery in the southern states was not confined to the negro. many had been taught to think that slavery was a benefit rather than an injury, and those who were not opposed to the institution before, now felt that if whites were to become its victims, it was time at least that some security should be thrown around the anglo-saxon to gave him from this servile and degraded position. chapter vi the slave-market. not far from canal street, in the city of new orleans, stands a large two-story, flat building, surrounded by a stone wall some twelve feet high, the top of which is covered with bits of glass, and so constructed as to prevent even the possibility of any one's passing over it without sustaining great injury. many of the rooms in this building resemble the cells of a prison, and in a small apartment near the "office" are to be seen any number of iron collars, hobbles, handcuffs, thumbscrews, cowhides, chains, gags, and yokes. a back-yard, enclosed by a high wall, looks something like the playground attached to one of our large new england schools, in which are rows of benches and swings. attached to the back premises is a good-sized kitchen, where, at the time of which we write, two old negresses were at work, stewing, boiling, and baking, and occasionally wiping the perspiration from their furrowed and swarthy brows. the slave-trader, jennings, on his arrival at new orleans, took up his quarters here with his gang of human cattle, and the morning after, at o'clock, they were exhibited for sale. first of all came the beautiful marion, whose pale countenance and dejected look told how many sad hours she had passed since parting with her mother at natchez. there, too, was a poor woman who had been separated from her husband; and another woman, whose looks and manners were expressive of deep anguish, sat by her side. there was "uncle jeems," with his whiskers off, his face shaven clean, and the gray hairs plucked out ready to be sold for ten years younger than he was. toby was also there, with his face shaven and greased, ready for inspection. the examination commenced, and was carried on in such a manner as to shock the feelings of anyone not entirely devoid of the milk of human kindness. "what are you wiping your eyes for?" inquired a fat, red-faced man, with a white hat set on one side of his head and a cigar in his mouth, of a woman who sat on one of the benches. "because i left my man behind." "oh, if i buy you, i will furnish you with a better man than you left. i've got lots of young bucks on my farm." "i don't want and never will have another man," replied the woman. "what's your name?" asked a man in a straw hat of a tall negro who stood with his arms folded across his breast, leaning against the wall. "my name is aaron, sar." "how old are you?" "twenty-five." "where were you raised?" "in ole virginny, sar." "how many men have owned you?" "four." "do you enjoy good health?" "yes, sar." "how long did you live with your first owner?" "twenty years." "did you ever run away?" "no, sar." "did you ever strike your master?" "no, sar." "were you ever whipped much?" "no, sar; i s'pose i didn't deserve it, sar." "how long did you live with your second master?" "ten years, sar." "have you a good appetite?" "yes, sar." "can you eat your allowance?" "yes, sar,--when i can get it." "where were you employed in virginia?" "i worked de tobacker fiel'." "in the tobacco field, eh?" "yes, sar." "how old did you say you was?" "twenty-five, sar, nex' sweet-'tater-diggin' time." "i am a cotton-planter, and if i buy you, you will have to work in the cotton-field. my men pick one hundred and fifty pounds a day, and the women one hundred and forty pounds; and those who fail to perform their task receive five stripes for each pound that is wanting. now, do you think you could keep up with the rest of the hands?" "i' don't know sar but i 'specs i'd have to." "how long did you live with your third master?" "three years, sar." "why, that makes you thirty-three. i thought you told me you were only twenty-five?" aaron now looked first at the planter, then at the trader, and seemed perfectly bewildered. he had forgotten the lesson given him by pompey relative to his age; and the planter's circuitous questions--doubtless to find out the slave's real age--had thrown the negro off his guard. "i must see your back, so as to know how much you have been whipped, before i think of buying." pompey, who had been standing by during the examination, thought that his services were now required, and, stepping forth with a degree of officiousness, said to aaron,-- "don't you hear de gemman tell you he wants to 'zamin you. cum, unharness yo'seff, ole boy, and don't be standin' dar." aaron was soon examined, and pronounced "sound;" yet the conflicting statement about his age was not satisfactory. fortunately for marion, she was spared the pain of undergoing such an examination. mr. cardney, a teller in one of the banks, had just been married, and wanted a maid-servant for his wife, and, passing through the market in the early part of the day, was pleased with the young slave's appearance, and his dwelling the quadroon found a much better home than often falls to the lot of a slave sold in the new orleans market. chapter vii the slave-holding parson. the rev. james wilson was a native of the state of connecticut where he was educated for the ministry in the methodist persuasion. his father was a strict follower of john wesley, and spared no pains in his son's education, with the hope that he would one day be as renowned as the leader of his sect. james had scarcely finished his education at new haven, when he was invited by an uncle, then on a visit to his father, to spend a few months at natchez in mississippi. young wilson accepted his uncle's invitation, and accompanied him to the south. few young men, and especially clergymen, going fresh from college to the south, but are looked upon as geniuses in a small way, and who are not invited to all the parties in the neighborhood. mr. wilson was not an exception to this rule. the society into which he was thrown, on his arrival at natchez, was too brilliant for him not to be captivated by it, and, as might have been expected, he succeeded in captivating a plantation with seventy slaves if not the heart of the lady to whom it belonged. added to this, he became a popular preacher, and had a large congregation with a snug salary. like other planters, mr. wilson confided the care of his farm to ned huckelby, an overseer of high reputation in his way. the poplar farm, as it was called, was situated in a beautiful valley, nine miles from natchez, and near the mississippi river. the once unshorn face of nature had given way, and the farm now blossomed with a splendid harvest. the neat cottage stood in a grove, where lombardy poplars lift their tops almost to prop the skies, where the willow, locust and horse-chestnut trees spread forth their branches, and flowers never ceased to blossom. this was the parson's country residence, where the family spent only two months during the year. his town residence was a fine villa, seated on the brow of a hill at the edge of the city. it was in the kitchen of this house that agnes found her new home. mr. wilson was every inch a democrat, and early resolved that "his people," as he called his slaves should be well-fed and not over-worked, and therefore laid down the law and gospel to the overseer as well as to the slaves. "it is my wish," said he to mr. carlingham, an old school-fellow who was spending a few days with him,--"it is my wish that a new system be adopted on the plantations in this state. i believe that the sons of ham should have the gospel, and i intend that mine shall have it. the gospel is calculated to make mankind better and none should be without it." "what say you," said carlingham, "about the right of man to his liberty?" "now, carlingham, you have begun to harp again about men's rights. i really wish that you could see this matter as i do."' "i regret that i cannot see eye to eye with you," said carlingham. "i am a disciple of rousseau, and have for years made the rights of man my study, and i must confess to you that i see no difference between white and black, as it regards liberty." "now, my dear carlingham, would you really have the negroes enjoy the same rights as ourselves?" "i would most certainly. look at our great declaration of independence! look even at the constitution of our own connecticut and see what is said in these about liberty." "i regard all this talk about rights as mere humbug. the bible is older than the declaration of independence, and there i take my stand." a long discussion followed, in which both gentlemen put forth their peculiar ideas with much warmth of feeling. during this conversation, there was another person in the room, seated by the window, who, although at work, embroidering a fine collar, paid minute attention to what was said. this was georgiana, the only daughter of the parson, who had but just returned from connecticut, where she had finished her education. she had had the opportunity of contrasting the spirit of christianity and liberty in new england with that of slavery in her native state, and had learned to feel deeply for the injured negro. georgiana was in her nineteenth year, and had been much benefited by her residence of five years at the north. her form was tall and graceful, her features regular and well-defined, and her complexion was illuminated by the freshness of youth, beauty, and health. the daughter differed from both the father and visitor upon the subject which they had been discussing; and as soon as an opportunity offered, she gave it as her opinion that the bible was both the bulwark of christianity and of liberty. with a smile she said,-- "of course, papa will overlook my difference with him, for although i am a native of the south, i am by education and sympathy a northerner." mr. wilson laughed, appearing rather pleased than otherwise at the manner in which his daughter had expressed herself. from this georgiana took courage and continued,-- '"thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' this single passage of scripture should cause us to have respect for the rights of the slave. true christian love is of an enlarged and disinterested nature. it loves all who love the lord jesus christ in sincerity, without regard to color or condition." "georgiana, my dear, you are an abolitionist,--your talk is fanaticism!" said mr. wilson, in rather a sharp tone; but the subdued look of the girl and the presence of carlingham caused him to soften his language. mr. wilson having lost his wife by consumption, and georgiana being his only child, he loved her too dearly to say more, even if he felt disposed. a silence followed this exhortation from the young christian, but her remarks had done a noble work. the father's heart was touched, and the sceptic, for the first time, was viewing christianity in its true light. chapter viii a night in the parson's kitchen. besides agnes, whom mr. wilson had purchased from the slave-trader, jennings, he kept a number of house-servants. the chief one of these was sam, who must be regarded as second only to the parson himself. if a dinner-party was in contemplation, or any company was to be invited, after all the arrangements had been talked over by the minister and his daughter. sam was sure to be consulted on, the subject by "miss georgy," as miss wilson was called by all the servants. if furniture, crockery, or anything was to be purchased, sam felt that he had been slighted if his opinion was not asked. as to the marketing, he did it all. he sat at the head of the servants' table in the kitchen, and was master of the ceremonies. a single look from him was enough to silence any conversation or noise among the servants in the kitchen or in any other part of the premises. there is in the southern states a great amount of prejudice in regard to color, even among the negroes themselves. the nearer the negro or mulatto approaches to the white, the more he seems to feel his superiority over those of a darker hue. this is no doubt the result of the prejudice that exists on the part of the whites against both the mulattoes and the blacks. sam was originally from kentucky, and through the instrumentality of one of his young masters, whom he had to take to school, he had learned to read so as to be well understood, and, owing to that fact, was considered a prodigy, not only among his own master's slaves, but also among those of the town who knew him. sam had a great wish to follow in the footsteps of his master and be a poet, and was therefore often heard singing doggerels of his own composition. but there was one drawback to sam, and that was his color. he was one of the blackest of his race. this he evidently regarded as a great misfortune; but he endeavored to make up for it in dress. mr. wilson kept his house servants well dressed, and as for sam, he was seldom seen except in a ruffled shirt. indeed, the washerwoman feared him more than any one else in the house. agnes had been inaugurated chief of the kitchen department, and had a general supervision of the household affairs. alfred, the coachman, peter, and hetty made up the remainder of the house-servants. besides these, mr. wilson owned eight slaves who were masons. these worked in the city. being mechanics, they were let out to greater advantage than to keep them on the farm. every sunday evening, mr. wilson's servants, including the bricklayers, assembled in the kitchen, where the events of the week were fully discussed and commented upon. it was on a sunday evening, in the month of june, that there was a party at mr. wilson's house, and, according to custom in the southern states, the ladies had their maidservants with them. tea had been served in "the house," and the servants, including the strangers, had taken their seats at the table in the kitchen. sam, being a "single gentleman," was unusually attentive to the ladies on this occasion. he seldom let a day pass without spending an hour or two in combing and brushing his "har." he had an idea that fresh butter was better for his hair than any other kind of grease, and therefore on churning days half a pound of butter had always to be taken out before it was salted. when he wished to appear to great advantage, he would grease his face to make it "shiny." therefore, on the evening of the party, when all the servants were at the table, sam cut a big figure. there he sat, with his wool well combed and buttered, face nicely greased, and his ruffles extending five or six inches from his bosom. the parson in his drawing-room did not make a more imposing appearance than did his servant on this occasion. "i is bin had my fortune tole last sunday night," said sam, while helping one of the girls. "indeed!" cried half a dozen voices. "yes," continued he; "aunt winny tole me i's to hab de prettiest yallah gal in de town, and dat i's to be free!" all eyes were immediately turned toward sally johnson, who was seated near sam. "i 'specs i see somebody blush at dat remark," said alfred. "pass dem pancakes an' 'lasses up dis way, mr. alf, and none ob your sinuwashuns here," rejoined sam. "dat reminds me," said-agnes, "dat dorcas simpson is gwine to git married." "who to, i want to know?" inquired peter. "to one of mr. darby's field-hands," answered agnes. "i should tink dat gal wouldn't frow herseff away in dat ar way," said sally; "she's good lookin' 'nough to git a house-servant, and not hab to put up wid a field-nigger." "yes," said sam, "dat's a werry unsensible remark ob yourn, miss sally. i admires your judgment werry much, i 'sures you. dar's plenty ob susceptible an' well-dressed house-serbants dat a gal ob her looks can git widout takin' up wid dem common darkies." the evening's entertainment concluded by sam relating a little of his own experience while with his first master, in old kentucky. this master was a doctor, and had a large practice among his neighbors, doctoring both masters and slaves. when sam was about fifteen years old, his master set him to grinding up ointment and making pills. as the young student grew older and became more practised in his profession, his services were of more importance to the doctor. the physician having a good business, and a large number of his patients being slaves,--the most of whom had to call on the doctor when ill,--he put sam to bleeding, pulling teeth, and administering medicine to the slaves. sam soon acquired the name among the slaves of the "black doctor." with this appellation he was delighted; and no regular physician could have put on more airs than did the black doctor when his services were required. in bleeding, he must have more bandages, and would rub and smack the arm more than the doctor would have thought of. sam was once seen taking out a tooth for one of his patients, and nothing appeared more amusing. he got the poor fellow down on his back, and then getting astride of his chest, he applied the turnkeys and pulled away for dear life. unfortunately, he had got hold of the wrong tooth, and the poor man screamed as loud as he could; but it was to no purpose, for sam had him fast, and after a pretty severe tussle out came the sound grinder. the young doctor now saw his mistake, but consoled himself with the thought that as the wrong tooth was out of the way, there was more room to get at the right one. bleeding and a dose of calomel were always considered indispensable by the "old boss," and as a matter of course, sam followed in his footsteps. on one occasion the old doctor was ill himself, so as to be unable to attend to his patients. a slave, with pass in hand, called to receive medical advice, and the master told sam to examine him and see what he wanted. this delighted him beyond measure, for although he had been acting his part in the way of giving out medicine as the master ordered it, he had never been called upon by the latter to examine a patient, and this seemed to convince him after all that he was no sham doctor. as might have been expected, he cut a rare figure in his first examination. placing himself directly opposite his patient, and folding his arms across his breast, looking very knowingly, he began,-- "what's de matter wid you?" "i is sick." "where is you sick?" "here," replied the man, putting his hand upon his stomach. "put out your tongue," continued the doctor. the man ran out his tongue at full length. "let me feel your pulse;" at the same time taking his patient's hand in his, and placing his fingers upon his pulse, he said,-- "ah! your case is a bad one; ef i don't do something for you, and dat pretty quick, you'll be a gone coons and dat's sartin." at this the man appeared frightened, and inquired what was the matter with him, in answer to which sam said, "i done told dat your case is a bad one, and dat's enuff." on sam's returning to his master's bedside, the latter said, "well, sam, what do you think is the matter with him?" "his stomach is out ob order, sar," he replied. "what do you think had better be done for him?" "i tink i'd better bleed him and gib him a dose ob calomel," returned sam. so, to the latter's gratification, the master let him have his own way. on one occasion, when making pills and ointment, sam made a great mistake. he got the preparations for both mixed together, so that he could not legitimately make either. but fearing that if he threw the stuff away, his master would flog him, and being afraid to inform his superior of the mistake, he resolved to make the whole batch of pill and ointment stuff into pills. he well knew that the powder over the pills would hide the inside, and the fact that most persons shut their eyes when taking such medicine led the young doctor to feel that all would be right in the end. therefore sam made his pills, boxed them up, put on the labels, and placed them in a conspicuous position on one of the shelves. sam felt a degree of anxiety about his pills, however. it was a strange mixture, and he was not certain whether it would kill or cure; but he was willing that it should be tried. at last the young doctor had his vanity gratified. col. tallen, one of dr. saxondale's patients, drove up one morning, and sam as usual ran out to the gate to hold the colonel's horse. "call your master," said the colonel; "i will not get out." the doctor was soon beside the carriage, and inquired about the health of his patient. after a little consultation, the doctor returned to his office, took down a box of sam's new pills, and returned to the carriage. "take two of these every morning and night," said the doctor, "and if you don't feel relieved, double the dose." "good gracious," exclaimed sam in an undertone, when he heard his master tell the colonel how to take the pills. it was several days before sam could learn the result of his new medicine. one afternoon, about a fortnight after the colonel's visit sam saw his master's patient riding up to the gate on horseback. the doctor happened to be in the yard, and met the colonel and said,-- "how are you now?" "i am entirely recovered," replied the patient. "those pills of yours put me on my feet the next day." "i knew they would," rejoined the doctor. sam was near enough to hear the conversation, and was delighted beyond description. the negro immediately ran into the kitchen, amongst his companions, and commenced dancing. "what de matter wid you?" inquired the cook. "i is de greatest doctor in dis country," replied sam. "ef you ever get sick, call on me. no matter what ails you, i is de man dat can cure you in no time. if you do hab de backache, de rheumaties, de headache, de coller morbus, fits, er any ting else, sam is de gentleman dat can put you on your feet wid his pills." for a long time after, sam did little else than boast of his skill as a doctor. we have said that the black doctor was full of wit and good sense. indeed, in that respect, he had scarcely an equal in the neighborhood. although his master resided some little distance out of the city, sam was always the first man in all the negro balls and parties in town. when his master could give him a pass, he went, and when he did not give him one, he would steal away after his master had retired, and run the risk of being taken up by the night-watch. of course, the master never knew anything of the absence of the servant at night without permission. as the negroes at these parties tried to excel each other in the way of dress, sam was often at a loss to make that appearance that his heart desired, but his ready wit ever helped him in this. when his master had retired to bed at night, it was the duty of sam to put out the lights, and take out with him his master's clothes and boots, and leave them in the office until morning, and then black the boots, brush the clothes, and return them to his master's room. having resolved to attend a dress-ball one night, without his master's permission, and being perplexed for suitable garments, sam determined to take his master's. so, dressing himself in the doctor's clothes even to his boots and hat, off the negro started for the city. being well acquainted with the usual walk of the patrols he found no difficulty in keeping out of their way. as might have been expected, sam was the great gun with the ladies that night. the next morning, sam was back home long before his master's time for rising, and the clothes were put in their accustomed place. for a long time sam had no difficulty in attiring himself for parties; but the old proverb that "it is a long lane that has no turning," was verified in the negro's case. one stormy night, when the rain was descending in torrents, the doctor heard a rap at his door. it was customary with him, when called up at night to visit a patient, to ring for sam. but this time, the servant was nowhere to be found. the doctor struck a light and looked for clothes; they too, were gone.--it was twelve o'clock, and the doctor's clothes, hat, boots, and even his watch, were nowhere to be found. here was a pretty dilemma for a doctor to be in. it was some time before the physician could fit himself out so as to mike the visit. at last, however, he started with one of the farm-horses, for sam had taken the doctor's best saddle-horse. the doctor felt sure that the negro had robbed him, and was on his way to canada; but in this he was mistaken. sam had gone to the city to attend a ball, and had decked himself out in his master's best suit. the physician returned before morning, and again retired to bed but with little hope of sleep, for his thoughts were with his servant and horse. at six o'clock, in walked sam with his master's clothes, and the boots neatly blacked. the watch was placed on the shelf, and the hat in its place. sam had not met any of the servants, and was therefore entirely ignorant of what had occurred during his absence. "what have you been about, sir, and where was you last night when i was called?" said the doctor. "i don't know, sir. i 'spose i was asleep," replied sam. but the doctor was not to be so easily satisfied, after having been put to so much trouble in hunting up another suit without the aid of sam. after breakfast, sam was taken into the barn, tied up, and severely flogged with the cat, which brought from him the truth concerning his absence the previous night. this forever put an end to his fine appearance at the negro parties. had not the doctor been one of the most indulgent of masters, he would not have escaped with merely a severe whipping. as a matter of course, sam had to relate to his companions that evening in mr. wilson's kitchen all his adventures as a physician while with his old master. chapter ix the man of honor. augustine cardinay, the purchaser of marion, was from the green mountains of vermont, and his feelings were opposed to the holding of slaves; but his young wife persuaded him in into the idea that it was no worse to own a slave than to hire one and pay the money to another. hence it was that he had been induced to purchase marion. adolphus morton, a young physician from the same state, and who had just commenced the practice of his profession in new orleans, was boarding with cardinay when marion was brought home. the young physician had been in new orleans but a very few weeks, and had seen but little of slavery. in his own mountain-home, he had been taught that the slaves of the southern states were negroes, and if not from the coast of africa, the descendants of those who had been imported. he was unprepared to behold with composure a beautiful white girl of sixteen in the degraded position of a chattel slave. the blood chilled in his young heart as he heard cardinay tell how, by bantering with the trader, he had bought her two hundred dollars less than he first asked. his very looks showed that she had the deepest sympathies of his heart. marion had been brought up by her mother to look after the domestic concerns of her cottage in virginia, and well knew how to perform the duties imposed upon her. mrs. cardinay was much pleased with her new servant, and often mentioned her good qualities in the presence of mr. morton. after eight months acquaintance with marion, morton's sympathies ripened into love, which was most cordially reciprocated by the friendless and injured child of sorrow. there was but one course which the young man could honorably pursue, and that was to purchase marion and make her his lawful wife; and this he did immediately, for he found mr. and mrs. cardinay willing to second his liberal intentions. the young man, after purchasing marion from cardinay, and marrying her, took lodgings in another part of the city. a private teacher was called in, and the young wife was taught some of those accomplishments so necessary for one taking a high position in good society. dr. morton soon obtained a large and influential practice in his profession, and with it increased in wealth; but with all his wealth he never owned a slave. probably the fact that he had raised his wife from that condition kept the hydra-headed system continually before him. to the credit of marion be it said, she used every means to obtain the freedom of her mother, who had been sold to parson wilson, at natchez. her efforts, however, had come too late; for agnes had died of a fever before the arrival of dr. morton's agent. marion found in adolphus morton a kind and affectionate husband; and his wish to purchase her mother, although unsuccessful, had doubly endeared him to her. ere a year had elapsed from the time of their marriage, mrs. morton presented her husband with a lovely daughter, who seemed to knit their hearts still closer together. this child they named jane; and before the expiration of the second year, they were blessed with another daughter, whom they named adrika. these children grew up to the ages of ten and eleven, and were then sent to the north to finish their education, and receive that refinement which young ladies cannot obtain in the slave states. chapter x the quadroon's home a few miles out of richmond is a pleasant place, with here and there a beautiful cottage surrounded by trees so as scarcely to be seen. among these was one far retired from the public roads, and almost hidden among the trees. this was the spot that henry linwood had selected for isabella, the eldest daughter of agnes. the young man hired the house, furnished it, and placed his mistress there, and for many months no one in his father's family knew where he spent his leisure hours. when henry was not with her, isabella employed herself in looking after her little garden and the flowers that grew in front of her cottage. the passion-flower peony, dahlia, laburnum, and other plant, so abundant in warm climates, under the tasteful hand of isabella, lavished their beauty upon this retired spot, and miniature paradise. although isabella had been assured by henry that she should be free and that he would always consider her as his wife, she nevertheless felt that she ought to be married and acknowledged by him. but this was an impossibility under the state laws, even had the young man been disposed to do what was right in the matter. related as he was, however, to one of the first families in virginia, he would not have dared to marry a woman of so low an origin, even had the laws been favorable. here, in this secluded grove, unvisited by any other except her lover, isabella lived for years. she had become the mother of a lovely daughter, which its father named clotelle. the complexion of the child was still fairer than that of its mother. indeed, she was not darker than other white children, and as she grew older she more and more resembled her father. as time passed away, henry became negligent of isabella and his child, so much so, that days and even weeks passed without their seeing him, or knowing where he was. becoming more acquainted with the world, and moving continually in the society of young women of his own station, the young man felt that isabella was a burden to him, and having as some would say, "outgrown his love," he longed to free himself of the responsibility; yet every time he saw the child, he felt that he owed it his fatherly care. henry had now entered into political life, and been elected to a seat in the legislature of his native state; and in his intercourse with his friends had become acquainted with gertrude miller, the daughter of a wealthy gentleman living near richmond. both henry and gertrude were very good-looking, and a mutual attachment sprang up between them. instead of finding fault with the unfrequent visits of henry, isabella always met him with a smile, and tried to make both him and herself believe that business was the cause of his negligence. when he was with her, she devoted every moment of her time to him, and never failed to speak of the growth and increasing intelligence of clotelle. the child had grown so large as to be able to follow its father on his departure out to the road. but the impression made on henry's feelings by the devoted woman and her child was momentary. his heart had grown hard, and his acts were guided by no fixed principle. henry and gertrude had been married nearly two years before isabella knew anything of the event, and it was merely by accident that she became acquainted with the facts. one beautiful afternoon, when isabella and clotelle were picking wild strawberries some two miles from their home, and near the road-side, they observed a one-horse chaise driving past. the mother turned her face from the carriage not wishing to be seen by strangers, little dreaming that the chaise contained henry and his wife. the child, however, watched the chaise, and startled her mother by screaming out at the top of her voice, "papa! papa!" and clapped her little hands for joy. the mother turned in haste to look at the strangers, and her eyes encountered those of henry's pale and dejected countenance. gertrude's eyes were on the child. the swiftness with which henry drove by could not hide from his wife the striking resemblance of the child to himself. the young wife had heard the child exclaim "papa! papa!" and she immediately saw by the quivering of his lips and the agitation depicted in his countenance, that all was not right. "who is that woman? and why did that child call you papa?" she inquired, with a trembling voice. henry was silent; he knew not what to say, and without another word passing between them, they drove home. on reaching her room, gertrude buried her face in her handkerchief and wept. she loved henry, and when she had heard from the lips of her companions how their husbands had proved false, she felt that he was an exception, and fervently thanked god that she had been so blessed. when gertrude retired to her bed that night, the sad scene of the day followed her. the beauty of isabella, with her flowing curls, and the look of the child, so much resembling the man whom she so dearly loved, could not be forgotten; and little clotelle's exclamation of "papa! papa" rang in her ears during the whole night. the return of henry at twelve o'clock did not increase her happiness. feeling his guilt, he had absented himself from the house since his return from the ride. chapter xi to-day a mistress, to-morrow a slave the night was dark, the rain, descended in torrents from the black and overhanging clouds, and the thunder, accompanied with vivid flashes of lightning, resounded fearfully, as henry linwood stepped from his chaise and entered isabella's cottage. more than a fortnight had elapsed since the accidental meeting, and isabella was in doubt as to who the lady was that henry was with in the carriage. little, however, did she think that it was his wife. with a smile, isabella met the young man as he entered her little dwelling. clotelle had already gone to bed, but her father's voice roused her from her sleep, and she was soon sitting on his knee. the pale and agitated countenance of henry betrayed his uneasiness, but isabella's mild and laughing allusion to the incident of their meeting him on the day of his pleasure-drive, and her saying, "i presume, dear henry, that the lady was one of your relatives," led him to believe that she was still in ignorance of his marriage. she was, in fact, ignorant who the lady was who accompanied the man she loved on that eventful day. he, aware of this, now acted more like himself, and passed the thing off as a joke. at heart, however, isabella felt uneasy, and this uneasiness would at times show itself to the young man. at last, and with a great effort, she said,-- "now, dear henry, if i am in the way of your future happiness, say so, and i will release you from any promises that you have made me. i know there is no law by which i can hold you, and if there was, i would not resort to it. you are as dear to me as ever, and my thoughts shall always be devoted to you. it would be a great sacrifice for me to give you up to another, but if it be your desire, as great as the sacrifice is, i will make it. send me and your child into a free state if we are in your way." again and again linwood assured her that no woman possessed his love but her. oh, what falsehood and deceit man can put on when dealing with woman's love! the unabated storm kept henry from returning home until after the clock had struck two, and as he drew near his residence he saw his wife standing at the window. giving his horse in charge of the servant who was waiting, he entered the house, and found his wife in tears. although he had never satisfied gertrude as to who the quadroon woman and child were, he had kept her comparatively easy by his close attention to her, and by telling her that she was mistaken in regard to the child's calling him "papa." his absence that night, however, without any apparent cause, had again aroused the jealousy of gertrude; but henry told her that he had been caught in the rain while out, which prevented his sooner returning, and she, anxious to believe him, received the story as satisfactory. somewhat heated with brandy, and wearied with much loss of sleep, linwood fell into a sound slumber as soon as he retired. not so with gertrude. that faithfulness which has ever distinguished her sex, and the anxiety with which she watched all his movements, kept the wife awake while the husband slept. his sleep, though apparently sound, was nevertheless uneasy. again and again she heard him pronounce the name of isabella, and more than once she heard him say, "i am not married; i will never marry while you live." then he would speak the name of clotelle and say, "my dear child, how i love you!" after a sleepless night, gertrude arose from her couch, resolved that she would reveal the whole matter to her mother. mrs. miller was a woman of little or no feeling, proud, peevish, and passionate, thus making everybody miserable that came near her; and when she disliked any one, her hatred knew no bounds. this gertrude knew; and had she not considered it her duty, she would have kept the secret locked in her own heart. during the day, mrs. linwood visited her mother and told her all that had happened. the mother scolded the daughter for not having informed her sooner, and immediately determined to find out who the woman and child were that gertrude had met on the day of her ride. three days were spent by mrs. miller in this endeavor, but without success. four weeks had elapsed, and the storm of the old lady's temper had somewhat subsided, when, one evening, as she was approaching her daughter's residence, she saw henry walking, in the direction of where the quadroon was supposed to reside. feeling satisfied that the young man had not seen her, the old women at once resolved to follow him. linwood's boots squeaked so loudly that mrs. miller had no difficulty in following him without being herself observed. after a walk of about two miles, the young man turned into a narrow and unfrequented road, and soon entered the cottage occupied by isabella. it was a fine starlight night, and the moon was just rising when they got to their journey's end. as usual, isabella met henry with a smile, and expressed her fears regarding his health. hours passed, and still old mrs. miller remained near the house, determined to know who lived there. when she undertook to ferret out anything, she bent her whole energies to it. as michael angelo, who subjected all things to his pursuit and the idea he had formed of it, painted the crucifixion by the side of a writhing slave and would have broken up the true cross for pencils, so mrs. miller would have entered the sepulchre, if she could have done it, in search of an object she wished to find. the full moon had risen, and was pouring its beams upon surrounding objects as henry stepped from isabella's door, and looking at his watch, said,-- "i must go, dear; it is now half-past ten." had little clotelle been awake, she too would have been at the door. as henry walked to the gate, isabella followed with her left hand locked in his. again he looked at his watch, and said, "i must go." "it is more than a year since you staid all night," murmured isabella, as he folded her convulsively in his arms, and pressed upon her beautiful lips a parting kiss. he was nearly out of sight when, with bitter sobs, the quadroon retraced her steps to the door of the cottage. clotelle had in the mean time awoke, and now inquired of her mother how long her father had been gone. at that instant, a knock was heard at the door, and supposing that it was henry returning for something he had forgotten, as he frequently did, isabella flew to let him in. to her amazement, however, a strange woman stood in the door. "who are you that comes here at this late hour?" demanded the half-frightened isabella. without making any reply, mrs. miller pushed the quadroon aside, and entered the house. "what do you want here?" again demanded isabella. "i am in search of you," thundered the maddened mrs. miller; but thinking that her object would be better served by seeming to be kind, she assumed a different tone of voice, and began talking in a pleasing manner. in this way, she succeeded in finding out the connection existing between linwood and isabella, and after getting all she could out of the unsuspecting woman, she informed her that the man she so fondly loved had been married for more than two years. seized with dizziness, the poor, heart-broken woman fainted and fell upon the floor. how long she remained there she could not tell; but when she returned to consciousness, the strange woman was gone, and her child was standing by her side. when she was so far recovered as to regain her feet, isabella went to the door, and even into the yard, to see if the old woman was not somewhere about. as she stood there, the full moon cast its bright rays over her whole person, giving her an angelic appearance and imparting to her flowing hair a still more golden hue. suddenly another change came over her features, and her full red lips trembled as with suppressed emotion. the muscles around her faultless mouth became convulsed, she gasped for breath, and exclaiming, "is it possible that man can be so false!" again fainted. clotelle stood and bathed her mother's temples with cold water until she once more revived. although the laws of virginia forbid the education of slaves, agnes had nevertheless employed an old free negro to teach her two daughters to read and write. after being separated from her mother and sister, isabella turned her attention to the subject of christianity, and received that consolation from the bible which is never denied to the children of god. this was now her last hope, for her heart was torn with grief and filled with all the bitterness of disappointment. the night passed away, but without sleep to poor isabella. at the dawn of day, she tried to make herself believe that the whole of the past night was a dream, and determined to be satisfied with the explanation which henry should give on his next visit. chapter xii the mother-in-law. when henry returned home, he found his wife seated at the window, awaiting his approach. secret grief was gnawing at her heart. her sad, pale cheeks and swollen eyes showed too well that agony, far deeper than her speech portrayed, filled her heart. a dull and death-like silence prevailed on his entrance. his pale face and brow, dishevelled hair, and the feeling that he manifested on finding gertrude still up, told henry in plainer words than she could have used that his wife, was aware that her love had never been held sacred by him. the window-blinds were still unclosed, and the full-orbed moon shed her soft refulgence over the unrivalled scene, and gave it a silvery lustre which sweetly harmonized with the silence of the night. the clock's iron tongue, in a neighboring belfry, proclaimed the hour of twelve, as the truant and unfaithful husband seated himself by the side of his devoted and loving wife, and inquired if she was not well. "i am, dear henry," replied gertrude; "but i fear you are not. if well in body, i fear you are not at peace in mind." "why?" inquired he. "because," she replied, "you are so pale and have such a wild look in your eyes." again he protested his innocence, and vowed she was the only woman who had any claim upon his heart. to behold one thus playing upon the feelings of two lovely women is enough to make us feel that evil must at last bring its own punishment. henry and gertrude had scarcely risen from the breakfast-table next morning ere old mrs. miller made her appearance. she immediately took her daughter aside, and informed her of her previous night's experience, telling her how she had followed henry to isabella's cottage, detailing the interview with the quadroon, and her late return home alone. the old woman urged her daughter to demand that the quadroon and her child be at once sold to the negro speculators and taken out of the state, or that gertrude herself should separate from henry. "assert your rights, my dear. let no one share a heart that justly belongs to you," said mrs. miller, with her eyes flashing fire. "don't sleep this night, my child, until that wench has been removed from that cottage; and as for the child, hand that over to me,--i saw at once that it was henry's." during these remarks, the old lady was walking up and down the room like a caged lioness. she had learned from isabella that she had been purchased by henry, and the innocence of the injured quadroon caused her to acknowledge that he was the father of her child. few women could have taken such a matter in hand and carried it through with more determination and success than old mrs. miller. completely inured in all the crimes and atrocities connected with the institution of slavery, she was also aware that, to a greater or less extent, the slave women shared with their mistress the affections of their master. this caused her to look with a suspicious eye on every good-looking negro woman that she saw. while the old woman was thus lecturing her daughter upon her rights and duties, henry, unaware of what was transpiring, had left the house and gone to his office. as soon as the old woman found that he was gone, she said,-- "i will venture anything that he is on his way to see that wench again. i'll lay my life on it." the entrance, however, of little marcus, or mark, as he was familiarly called, asking for massa linwood's blue bag, satisfied her that her son-in-law was at his office. before the old lady returned home, it was agreed that gertrude should come to her mother's to tea that evening, and henry with her, and that mrs. miller should there charge the young husband with inconstancy to her daughter, and demand the removal of isabella. with this understanding, the old woman retraced her steps to her own dwelling. had mrs. miller been of a different character and not surrounded by slavery, she could scarcely have been unhappy in such a home as hers. just at the edge of the city, and sheltered by large poplar-trees was the old homestead in which she resided. there was a splendid orchard in the rear of the house, and the old weather-beaten sweep, with "the moss-covered bucket" at its end, swung majestically over the deep well. the garden was scarcely to be equalled. its grounds were laid out in excellent taste, and rare exotics in the greenhouse made it still more lovely. it was a sweet autumn evening, when the air breathed through the fragrant sheaves of grain, and the setting sun, with his golden kisses, burnished the rich clusters of purple grapes, that henry and gertrude were seen approaching the house on foot; it was nothing more than a pleasant walk. oh, how gertrude's heart beat as she seated herself, on their arrival! the beautiful parlor, surrounded on all sides with luxury and taste, with the sun creeping through the damask curtains, added a charm to the scene. it was in this room that gertrude had been introduced to henry, and the pleasant hours that she had spent there with him rushed unbidden on her memory. it was here that, in former days, her beautiful countenance had made her appearance as fascinating and as lovely as that of cleopatra's. her sweet, musical voice might have been heard in every part of the house, occasionally thrilling you with an unexpected touch. how changed the scene! her pale and wasted features could not be lighted up by any thoughts of the past, and she was sorrowful at heart. as usual, the servants in the kitchen were in ecstasies at the announcement that "miss gerty," as they called their young mistress, was in the house, for they loved her sincerely. gertrude had saved them from many a flogging, by interceding for them, when her mother was in one of her uncontrollable passions. dinah, the cook, always expected miss gerty to visit the kitchen as soon as she came, and was not a little displeased, on this occasion, at what she considered her young mistress's neglect. uncle tony, too, looked regularly for miss gerty to visit the green house, and congratulate him on his superiority as a gardener. when tea was over, mrs. miller dismissed the servants from the room, then told her son-in-law what she had witnessed the previous night, and demanded for her daughter that isabella should be immediately sent out of the state, and to be sure that the thing would be done, she wanted him to give her the power to make such disposition of the woman and child as she should think best. gertrude was mrs. miller's only child, and henry felt little like displeasing a family upon whose friendship he so much depended, and, no doubt, long wishing to free himself from isabella, he at once yielded to the demands of his mother-in-law. mr. miller was a mere cipher about his premises. if any one came on business connected with the farm, he would invariably say, "wait tin i see my wife," and the wife's opinion was sure to be law in every case. bankrupt in character, and debauched in body and mind, with seven mulatto children who claimed him as their father, he was badly prepared to find fault with his son-in-law. it was settled that mrs. miller should use her own discretion in removing isabella from her little cottage, and her future disposition. with this understanding henry and gertrude returned home. in the deep recesses of his heart the young man felt that he would like to see his child and its mother once more; but fearing the wrath of his mother-in-law, he did not dare to gratify his inclination. he had not the slightest idea of what would become of them; but he well knew that the old woman would have no mercy on them. chapter xiii a hard-hearted woman. with no one but her dear little clotelle, isabella passed her weary hours without partaking of either food or drink, hoping that henry would soon return, and that the strange meeting with the old woman would be cleared up. while seated in her neat little bedroom with her fevered face buried in her handkerchief, the child ran in and told its mother that a carriage had stopped in front of the house. with a palpitating heart she arose from her seat and went to the door, hoping that it was henry; but, to her great consternation, the old lady who had paid her such an unceremonious visit on the evening that she had last seen henry, stepped out of the carriage, accompanied by the slave-trader, jennings. isabella had seen the trader when he purchased her mother and sister, and immediately recognized him. what could these persons want there? thought she. without any parleying or word of explanation, the two entered the house, leaving the carriage in charge of a servant. clotelle ran to her mother, and clung to her dress as if frightened by the strangers. "she's a fine-looking wench," said the speculator, as he seated himself, unasked, in the rocking-chair; "yet i don't think she is worth the money you ask for her." "what do you want here?" inquired isabella, with a quivering voice. "none of your insolence to me," bawled out the old woman, at the top of her voice; "if you do, i will give you what you deserve so much, my lady,--a good whipping." in an agony of grief, pale, trembling, and ready to sink to the floor, isabella was only sustained by the hope that she would be able to save her child. at last, regaining her self-possession, she ordered them both to leave the house. feeling herself insulted, the old woman seized the tongs that stood by the fire-place, and raised them to strike the quadroon down; but the slave-trader immediately jumped between the women, exclaiming,-- "i won't buy her, mrs. miller, if you injure her." poor little clotelle screamed as she saw the strange woman raise the tongs at her mother. with the exception of old aunt nancy, a free colored woman, whom isabella sometimes employed to work for her, the child had never before seen a strange face in her mother's dwelling. fearing that isabella would offer some resistance, mrs. miller had ordered the overseer of her own farm to follow her; and, just as jennings had stepped between the two women, mull, the negro-driver, walked into the room. "seize that impudent hussy," said mrs. miller to the overseer, "and tie her up this minute, that i may teach her a lesson she won't forget in a hurry." as she spoke, the old woman's eyes rolled, her lips quivered, and she looked like a very fury. "i will have nothing to do with her, if you whip her, mrs. miller," said the slave-trader. "niggers ain't worth half so much in the market with their backs newly scarred," continued he, as the overseer commenced his preparations for executing mrs. miller's orders. clotelle here took her father's walking-stick, which was lying on the back of the sofa where he had left it, and, raising it, said,-- "if you bad people touch my mother, i will strike you." they looked at the child with astonishment; and her extreme youth, wonderful beauty, and uncommon courage, seemed for a moment to shake their purpose. the manner and language of this child were alike beyond her years, and under other circumstances would have gained for her the approbation of those present. "oh, henry, henry!" exclaimed isabella, wringing her hands. "you need not call on him, hussy; you will never see him again," said mrs. miller. "what! is he dead?" inquired the heart-stricken woman. it was then that she forgot her own situation, thinking only of the man she loved. never having been called to endure any kind of abusive treatment, isabella was not fitted to sustain herself against the brutality of mrs. miller, much less the combined ferociousness of the old woman and the overseer too. suffice it to say, that instead of whipping isabella, mrs. miller transferred her to the negro-speculator, who took her immediately to his slave-pen. the unfeeling old woman would not permit isabella to take more than a single change of her clothing, remarking to jennings,-- "i sold you the wench, you know,--not her clothes." the injured, friendless, and unprotected isabella fainted as she saw her child struggling to release herself from the arms of old mrs. miller, and as the wretch boxed the poor child's ears. after leaving directions as to how isabella's furniture and other effects should be disposed of, mrs. miller took clotelle into her carriage and drove home. there was not even color enough about the child to make it appear that a single drop of african blood flowed through its blue veins. considerable sensation was created in the kitchen among the servants when the carriage drove up, and clotelle entered the house. "jes' like massa henry fur all de worl," said dinah, as she caught a glimpse of the child through the window. "wondah whose brat dat ar' dat missis bringin' home wid her?" said jane, as she put the ice in the pitchers for dinner. "i warrant it's some poor white nigger somebody bin givin' her." the child was white. what should be done to make it look like other negroes, was the question which mrs. miller asked herself. the callous-hearted old woman bit her nether lip, as she viewed that child, standing before her, with her long, dark ringlets clustering over her alabaster brow and neck. "take this little nigger and cut her hair close to her head," said the mistress to jane, as the latter answered the bell. clotelle screamed, as she felt the scissors going over her head, and saw those curls that her mother thought so much of falling upon the floor. a roar of laughter burst from the servants, as jane led the child through the kitchen, with the hair cut so short that the naked scalp could be plainly seen. "gins to look like nigger, now," said dinah, with her mouth upon a grin. the mistress smiled, as the shorn child reentered the room; but there was something more needed. the child was white, and that was a great objection. however, she hit upon a plan to remedy this which seemed feasible. the day was excessively warm. not a single cloud floated over the blue vault of heaven; not a breath of wind seemed moving, and the earth was parched by the broiling sun. even the bees had stopped humming, and the butterflies had hid themselves under the broad leaves of the burdock. without a morsel of dinner, the poor child was put in the garden, and set to weeding it, her arms, neck and head completely bare. unaccustomed to toil, clotelle wept as she exerted herself in pulling up the weeds. old dinah, the cook, was as unfeeling as her mistress, and she was pleased to see the child made to work in the hot sun. "dat white nigger 'll soon be black enuff if missis keeps her workin' out dar," she said, as she wiped the perspiration from her sooty brow. dinah was the mother of thirteen children, all of whom had been taken from her when young; and this, no doubt, did much to harden her feelings, and make her hate all white persons. the burning sun poured its rays on the face of the friendless child until she sank down in the corner of the garden, and was actually broiled to sleep. "dat little nigger ain't workin' a bit, missus," said dinah to mrs. miller, as the latter entered the kitchen. "she's lying in the sun seasoning; she will work the better by and by," replied the mistress. "dese white niggers always tink dey seff good as white folks," said the cook. "yes; but we will teach them better, won't we, dinah?" rejoined mrs. miller. "yes, missus," replied dinah; "i don't like dese merlatter niggers, no how. dey always want to set dey seff up for sumfin' big." with this remark the old cook gave one of her coarse laughs, and continued: "missis understands human nature, don't she? ah! ef she ain't a whole team and de ole gray mare to boot, den dinah don't know nuffin'." of course, the mistress was out of the kitchen before these last marks were made. it was with the deepest humiliation that henry learned from one of his own slaves the treatment which his child was receiving at the hands of his relentless mother-in-law. the scorching sun had the desired effect; for in less than a fortnight, clotelle could scarcely have been recognized as the same child. often was she seen to weep, and heard to call on her mother. mrs. miller, when at church on sabbath, usually, on warm days, took nancy, one of her servants, in her pew, and this girl had to fan her mistress during service. unaccustomed to such a soft and pleasant seat, the servant would very soon become sleepy and begin to nod. sometimes she would go fast asleep, which annoyed the mistress exceedingly. but mrs. miller had nimble fingers, and on them sharp nails, and, with an energetic pinch upon the bare arms of the poor girl, she would arouse the daughter of africa from her pleasant dreams. but there was no one of mrs. miller's servants who received as much punishment as old uncle tony. fond of her greenhouse, and often in the garden, she was ever at the gardener's heels. uncle tony was very religious, and, whenever his mistress flogged him, he invariably gave her a religious exhortation. although unable to read, he, nevertheless, had on his tongue's end portions of scripture which he could use at any moment. in one end of the greenhouse was uncle tony's sleeping room, and those who happened in that vicinity, between nine and ten at night, could hear the old man offering up his thanksgiving to god for his protection during the day. uncle tony, however, took great pride, when he thought that any of the whites were within hearing, to dwell, in his prayer, on his own goodness and the unfitness of others to die. often was he heard to say, "o lord, thou knowest that the white folks are not christians, but the black people are god's own children." but if tony thought that his old mistress was within the sound of his voice, he launched out into deeper waters. it was, therefore, on a sweet night, when the bright stars were looking out with a joyous sheen, that mark and two of the other boys passed the greenhouse, and heard uncle tony in his devotions. "let's have a little fun," said the mischievous marcus to his young companions. "i will make uncle tony believe that i am old mistress, and he'll give us an extra touch in his prayer." mark immediately commenced talking in a strain of voice resembling, as well as he could, mrs. miller, and at once tony was heard to say in a loud voice, "o lord, thou knowest that the white people are not fit to die; but, as for old tony, whenever the angel of the lord comes, he's ready." at that moment, mark tapped lightly on the door. "who's dar?" thundered old tony. mark made no reply. the old man commenced and went through with the same remarks addressed to the lord, when mark again knocked at the door. "who dat dar?" asked uncle tony, with a somewhat agitated countenance and trembling voice. still mark would not reply. again tony took up the thread of his discourse, and said, "o lord, thou knowest as well as i do that dese white folks are not prepared to die, but here is old tony, when de angel of de lord comes, he's ready to go to heaven." mark once more knocked at the door. "who dat dar?" thundered tony at the top of his voice. "de angel of de lord," replied mark, in a somewhat suppressed and sepulchral voice. "what de angel of de lord want here?" inquired tony, as if much frightened. "he's come for poor old tony, to take him out of the world" replied mark, in the same strange voice. "dat nigger ain't here; he die tree weeks ago," responded tony, in a still more agitated and frightened tone. mark and his companions made the welkin ring with their shouts at the old man's answer. uncle tony hearing them, and finding that he had been imposed upon, opened his door, came out with stick in hand, and said, "is dat you, mr. mark? you imp, if i can get to you i'll larn you how to come here wid your nonsense." mark and his companions left the garden, feeling satisfied that uncle tony was not as ready to go with "de angel of de lord" as he would have others believe. chapter xiv the prison. while poor little clotelle was being kicked about by mrs. miller, on account of her relationship to her son-in-law, isabella was passing lonely hours in the county jail, the place to which jennings had removed her for safe-keeping, after purchasing her from mrs. miller. incarcerated in one of the iron-barred rooms of that dismal place, those dark, glowing eyes, lofty brow, and graceful form wilted down like a plucked rose under a noonday sun, while deep in her heart's ambrosial cells was the most anguishing distress. vulgar curiosity is always in search of its victims, and jennings' boast that he had such a ladylike and beautiful woman in his possession brought numbers to the prison who begged of the jailer the privilege of seeing the slave-trader's prize. many who saw her were melted to tears at the pitiful sight, and were struck with admiration at her intelligence; and, when she spoke of her child, they must have been convinced that a mother's sorrow can be conceived by none but a mother's heart. the warbling of birds in the green bowers of bliss, which she occasionally heard, brought no tidings of gladness to her. their joy fell cold upon her heart, and seemed like bitter mockery. they reminded her of her own cottage, where, with her beloved child, she had spent so many happy days. the speculator had kept close watch over his valuable piece of property, for fear that it might damage itself. this, however, there was no danger of, for isabella still hoped and believed that henry would come to her rescue. she could not bring herself to believe that he would allow her to be sent away without at least seeing her, and the trader did all he could to keep this idea alive in her. while isabella, with a weary heart, was passing sleepless nights thinking only of her daughter and henry, the latter was seeking relief in that insidious enemy of the human race, the intoxicating cup. his wife did all in her power to make his life a pleasant and a happy one, for gertrude was devotedly attached to him; but a weary heart gets no gladness out of sunshine. the secret remorse that rankled in his bosom caused him to see all the world blood-shot. he had not visited his mother-in-law since the evening he had given her liberty to use her own discretion as to how isabella and her child should be disposed of. he feared even to go near the house, for he did not wish to see his child. gertrude felt this every time he declined accompanying her to her mother's. possessed of a tender and confiding heart, entirely unlike her mother, she sympathized deeply with her husband. she well knew that all young men in the south, to a greater or less extent, became enamored of the slave-women, and she fancied that his case was only one of the many, and if he had now forsaken all others for her she did not wish for him to be punished; but she dared not let her mother know that such were her feelings. again and again had she noticed the great resemblance between clotelle and henry, and she wished the child in better hands than those of her cruel mother. at last gertrude determined to mention the matter to her husband. consequently, the next morning, when they were seated on the back piazza, and the sun was pouring its splendid rays upon everything around, changing the red tints on the lofty hills in the distance into streaks of purest gold, and nature seeming by her smiles to favor the object, she said,-- "what, dear henry, do you intend to do with clotelle?" a paleness that overspread his countenance, the tears that trickled down his cheeks, the deep emotion that was visible in his face, and the trembling of his voice, showed at once that she had touched a tender chord. without a single word, he buried his face in his handkerchief, and burst into tears. this made gertrude still more unhappy, for she feared that he had misunderstood her; and she immediately expressed her regret that she had mentioned the subject. becoming satisfied from this that his wife sympathized with him in his unhappy situation, henry told her of the agony that filled his soul, and gertrude agreed to intercede for him with her mother for the removal of the child to a boarding-school in one of the free states. in the afternoon, when henry returned from his office, his wife met him with tearful eyes, and informed him that her mother was filled with rage at the mere mention of the removal of clotelle from her premises. in the mean time, the slave-trader, jennings, had started for the south with his gang of human cattle, of whom isabella was one. most quadroon women who are taken to the south are either sold to gentlemen for their own use or disposed of as house-servants or waiting-maids. fortunately for isabella, she was sold, for the latter purpose. jennings found a purchaser for her in the person of mr. james french. mrs. french was a severe mistress. all who lived with her, though well-dressed, were scantily fed and over-worked. isabella found her new situation far different from her virginia cottage-life. she had frequently heard vicksburg spoken of as a cruel place for slaves, and now she was in a position to test the truthfulness of the assertion. a few weeks after her arrival, mrs. french began to show to isabella that she was anything but a pleasant and agreeable mistress. what social virtues are possible in a society of which injustice is a primary characteristic,--in a society which is divided into two classes, masters and slaves? every married woman at the south looks upon her husband as unfaithful, and regards every negro woman as a rival. isabella had been with her new mistress but a short time when she was ordered to cut off her long and beautiful hair. the negro is naturally fond of dress and outward display. he who has short woolly hair combs and oils it to death; he who has long hair would sooner have his teeth drawn than to part with it. but, however painful it was to isabella, she was soon seen with her hair cut short, and the sleeves of her dress altered to fit tight to her arms. even with her hair short and with her ill-looking dress, isabella was still handsome. her life had been a secluded one, and though now twenty-eight years of age, her beauty had only assumed a quieter tone. the other servants only laughed at isabella's misfortune in losing her beautiful hair. "miss 'bell needn't strut so big; she got short nappy har's well's i," said nell, with a broad grin that showed her teeth. "she tink she white when she cum here, wid dat long har ob hers," replied mill. "yes," continued nell, "missus make her take down her wool, so she no put it up to-day." the fairness of isabella's complexion was regarded with envy by the servants as well as by the mistress herself. this is one of the hard features of slavery. to-day a woman is mistress of her own cottage; to-morrow she is sold to one who aims to make her life as intolerable as possible. and let it be remembered that the house-servant has the best situation a slave can occupy. but the degradation and harsh treatment isabella experienced in her new home was nothing compared to the grief she underwent at being separated from her dear child. taken from her with scarcely a moment's warning, she knew not what had become of her. this deep and heartfelt grief of isabella was soon perceived by her owners, and fearing that her refusal to take proper food would cause her death, they resolved to sell her. mr. french found no difficulty in securing a purchaser for the quadroon woman, for such are usually the most marketable kind of property. isabella was sold at private sale to a young man for a housekeeper; but even he had missed his aim. mr. gordon, the new master, was a man of pleasure. he was the owner of a large sugar plantation, which he had left under the charge of an overseer, and was now giving himself up to the pleasures of a city life. at first mr. gordon sought to win isabella's favor by flattery and presents, knowing that whatever he gave her he could take from her again. the poor innocent creature dreaded every moment lest the scene should change. at every interview with gordon she stoutly maintained that she had left a husband in virginia, and could never think of taking another. in this she considered that she was truthful, for she had ever regarded henry as her husband. the gold watch and chain and other glittering presents which gordon gave to her were all kept unused. in the same house with isabella was a man-servant who had from time to time hired himself from his master. his name was william. he could feel for isabella, for he, like her, had been separated from near and dear relatives, and he often tried to console the poor woman. one day isabella observed to him that her hair was growing out again. "yes," replied william; "you look a good deal like a man with your short hair." "oh," rejoined she, "i have often been told that i would make a better looking man than woman, and if i had the money i might avail myself of it to bid farewell to this place." in a moment afterwards, isabella feared that she had said too much, and laughingly observed, "i am always talking some nonsense; you must not heed me." william was a tall, full-blooded african, whose countenance beamed with intelligence. being a mechanic, he had by industry earned more money than he had paid to his owner for his time, and this he had laid aside, with the hope that he might some day get enough to purchase his freedom. he had in his chest about a hundred and fifty dollars. his was a heart that felt for others, and he had again and again wiped the tears from his eyes while listening to isabella's story. "if she can get free with a little money, why not give her what i have?" thought he, and then resolved to do it. an hour after, he entered the quadroon's room, and, laying the money in her lap, said,-- "there, miss isabella, you said just now that if you had the means you would leave this place. there is money enough to take you to england, where you will be free. you are much fairer than many of the white women of the south, and can easily pass for a free white woman." at first isabella thought it was a plan by which the negro wished to try her fidelity to her owner; but she was soon convinced, by his earnest manner and the deep feeling he manifested, that he was entirely sincere. "i will take the money," said she, "only on one condition, and that is that i effect your escape, as well as my own." "how can that be done?" he inquired, eagerly. "i will assume the disguise of a gentleman, and you that of a servant, and we will thus take passage in a steamer to cincinnati, and from thence to canada." with full confidence in isabella's judgment, william consented at once to the proposition. the clothes were purchased; everything was arranged, and the next night, while mr. gordon was on one of his sprees, isabella, under the assumed name of mr. smith, with william in attendance as a servant, took passage for cincinnati in the steamer heroine. with a pair of green glasses over her eyes, in addition to her other disguise, isabella made quite a gentlemanly appearance. to avoid conversation, however, she kept closely to her state-room, under the plea of illness. meanwhile, william was playing his part well with the servants. he was loudly talking of his master's wealth, and nothing on the boat appeared so good as in his master's fine mansion. "i don't like dese steamboats, no how," said he; "i hope when massa goes on anoder journey, he take de carriage and de hosses." after a nine-days' passage, the heroine landed at cincinnati, and mr. smith and his servant walked on shore. "william, you are now a free man, and can go on to canada," said isabella; "i shall go to virginia, in search of my daughter." this sudden announcement fell heavily upon william's ears, and with tears he besought her not to jeopardize her liberty in such a manner; but isabella had made up her mind to rescue her child if possible. taking a boat for wheeling, isabella was soon on her way to her native state. several months had elapsed since she left richmond, and all her thoughts were centred on the fate of her dear clotelle. it was with a palpitating heart that this injured woman entered the stage-coach at wheeling and set out for richmond. chapter xv the arrest. it was late in the evening when the coach arrived at richmond, and isabella once more alighted in her native city. she had intended to seek lodgings somewhere in the outskirts of the town, but the lateness of the hour compelled her to stop at one of the principal hotels for the night. she had scarcely entered the inn before she recognized among the numerous black servants one to whom she was well known, and her only hope was that her disguise would keep her from being discovered. the imperturbable calm and entire forgetfulness of self which induced isabella to visit a place from which she could scarcely hope to escape, to attempt the rescue of a beloved child, demonstrate that over-willingness of woman to carry out the promptings of the finer feelings of the heart. true to woman's nature, she had risked her own liberty for another's. she remained in the hotel during the night, and the next morning, under the plea of illness, took her breakfast alone. that day the fugitive slave paid a visit to the suburbs of the town, and once more beheld the cottage in which she had spent so many happy hours. it was winter, and the clematis and passion-flower were not there; but there were the same walks her feet had so often pressed, and the same trees which had so often shaded her as she passed through the garden at the back of the house. old remembrances rushed upon her memory and caused her to shed tears freely. isabella was now in her native town, and near her daughter; but how could she communicate with her? how could she see her? to have made herself known would have been a suicidal act; betrayal would have followed, and she arrested. three days passed away, and still she remained in the hotel at which she had first put up, and yet she got no tidings of her child. unfortunately for isabella, a disturbance had just broken out among the slave population in the state of virginia, and all strangers were treated with suspicion. the insurrection to which we now refer was headed by a full-blooded negro, who had been born and brought up a slave. he had heard the crack of the driver's whip, and seen the warm blood streaming from the negro's body. he had witnessed the separation of parents from children, and was made aware, by too many proofs, that the slave could expect no justice from the hands of the slave-owner. the name of this man was nat turner. he was a preacher amongst the negroes, distinguished for his eloquence, respected by the whites, loved and venerated by the negroes. on the discovery of the plan for the outbreak, turner fled to the swamps, followed by those who had joined in the insurrection. here the revolted negroes numbered some hundreds, and for a time bade defiance to their oppressors. the dismal swamps cover many thousand acres of wild land, and a dense forest, with wild animals and insects such as are unknown in any other part of virginia. here runaway negroes usually seek a hiding-place, and some have been known to reside here for years. the revolters were joined by one of these. he was a large, tall, full-blooded negro, with a stern and savage countenance; the marks on his face showed that he was from one of the barbarous tribes in africa, and claimed that country as his native land. his only covering was a girdle around his loins, made of skins of wild beasts which he had killed. his only token of authority among those that he led was a pair of epaulettes, made of the tail of a fox, and tied to his shoulder by a cord. brought from the coast of africa, when only fifteen years of age, to the island of cuba, he was smuggled from thence into virginia. he had been two years in the swamps, and considered it his future home. he had met a negro woman, who was also a runaway, and, after the fashion of his native land, had gone through the process of oiling her, as the marriage ceremony. they had built a cave on a rising mound in the swamp, and this was their home. this man's name was picquilo. his only weapon was a sword made from a scythe which he had stolen from a neighboring plantation. his dress, his character, his manners, and his mode of fighting were all in keeping with the early training he had received in the land of his birth. he moved about with the activity of a cat, and neither the thickness of the trees nor the depth of the water could stop him. his was a bold, turbulent spirit; and, from motives of revenge, he imbrued his hands in the blood of all the whites he could meet. hunger, thirst, and loss of sleep, he seemed made to endure, as if by peculiarity of constitution. his air was fierce, his step oblique, his look sanguinary. such was the character of one of the negroes in the southampton insurrection. all negroes were arrested who were found beyond their master's threshold, and all white strangers were looked upon with suspicion. such was the position in which isabella found affairs when she returned to virginia in search of her child. had not the slave-owners been watchful of strangers, owing to the outbreak, the fugitive could not have escaped the vigilance of the police; for advertisements announcing her escape, and offering a large reward for her arrest, had been received in the city previous to her arrival, and officers were therefore on the lookout for her. it was on the third day after her arrival in richmond, as the quadroon was seated in her room at the hotel, still in the disguise of a gentleman, that two of the city officers entered the apartment and informed her that they were authorized to examine all strangers, to assure the authorities that they were not in league with the revolted negroes. with trembling heart the fugitive handed the key of her trunk to the officers. to their surprise they found nothing but female apparel in the trunk, which raised their curiosity, and caused a further investigation that resulted in the arrest of isabella as a fugitive slave. she was immediately conveyed to prison, there to await the orders of her master. for many days, uncheered by the voice of kindness, alone, hopeless, desolate, she waited for the time to arrive when the chains should be placed on her limbs, and she returned to her inhuman and unfeeling owner. the arrest of the fugitive was announced in all the newspapers, but created little or no sensation. the inhabitants were too much engaged in putting down the revolt among the slaves; and, although all the odds were against the insurgents, the whites found it no easy matter, with all their caution. every day brought news of fresh outbreaks. without scruple and without pity, the whites massacred all blacks found beyond the limits of their owners' plantations. the negroes, in return, set fire to houses, and put to death those who attempted to escape from the flames. thus carnage was added to carnage, and the blood of the whites flowed to avenge the blood of the blacks. these were the ravages of slavery. no graves were dug for the negroes, but their bodies became food for dogs and vultures; and their bones, partly calcined by the sun, remained scattered about, as if to mark the mournful fury of servitude and lust of power. when the slaves were subdued, except a few in the swamps, bloodhounds were employed to hunt out the remaining revolters. chapter xvi death is freedom. on receiving intelligence of the arrest of isabella, mr. gordon authorized the sheriff to sell her to the highest bidder. she was, therefore, sold; the purchaser being the noted negro-trader, hope h. slater, who at once placed her in prison. here the fugitive saw none but slaves like herself, brought in and taken out to be placed in ships, and sent away to some part of the country to which she herself would soon be compelled to go. she had seen or heard nothing of her daughter while in richmond, and all hopes of seeing her had now fled. at the dusk of the evening previous to the day when she was to be sent off, as the old prison was being closed for the night, isabella suddenly darted past the keeper, and ran for her life. it was not a great distance from the prison to the long bridge which passes from the lower part of the city across the potomac to the extensive forests and woodlands of the celebrated arlington heights, then occupied by that distinguished relative and descendant of the immortal washington, mr. geo. w. custis. thither the poor fugitive directed her flight. so unexpected was her escape that she had gained several rods the start before the keeper had secured the other prisoners, and rallied his assistants to aid in the pursuit. it was at an hour, and in a part of the city where horses could not easily be obtained for the chase; no bloodhounds were at hand to run down the flying woman, and for once it seemed as if there was to be a fair trial of speed and endurance between the slave and the slave-catchers. the keeper and his force raised the hue-and-cry on her path as they followed close behind; but so rapid was the flight along the wide avenue that the astonished citizens, as they poured forth from their dwellings to learn the cause of alarm, were only able to comprehend the nature of the case in time to fall in with the motley throng in pursuit, or raise an anxious prayer to heaven as they refused to join in the chase (as many a one did that night) that the panting fugitive might escape, and the merciless soul-dealer for once be disappointed of his prey. and now, with the speed of an arrow, having passed the avenue, with the distance between her and her pursuers constantly increasing, this poor, hunted female gained the "long bridge," as it is called, where interruption seemed improbable. already her heart began to beat high with the hope of success. she had only to pass three-quarters of a mile across the bridge, when she could bury herself in a vast forest, just at the time when the curtain of night would close around her, and protect her from the pursuit of her enemies. but god, by his providence, had otherwise determined. he had ordained that an appalling tragedy should be enacted that night within plain sight of the president's house, and the capitol of the union, which would be an evidence wherever it should be known of the unconquerable love of liberty which the human heart may inherit, as well as a fresh admonition to the slave-dealer of the cruelty and enormity of his crimes. just as the pursuers passed the high draw, soon after entering upon the bridge, they beheld three men slowly approaching from the virginia side. they immediately called to them to arrest the fugitive, proclaiming her a runaway slave. true to their virginia instincts, as she came near, they formed a line across the narrow bridge to intercept her. seeing that escape was impossible in that quarter, she stopped suddenly, and turned upon her pursuers. on came the profane and ribald crew faster than ever, already exulting in her capture, and threatening punishment for her flight. for a moment she looked wildly and anxiously around to see if there was no hope of escape. on either hand, far down below, rolled the deep, foaming waters of the potomac, and before and behind were the rapidly approaching steps and noisy voices of her pursuers. seeing how vain would be any further effort to escape, her resolution was instantly taken. she clasped her hands convulsively together, raised her tearful and imploring eyes toward heaven, and begged for the mercy and compassion there which was unjustly denied her on earth; then, exclaiming, "henry, clotelle, i die for thee!" with a single bound, vaulted over, the railing of the bridge, and sank forever beneath the angry and foaming waters of the river! such was the life, and such the death, of a woman whose virtues and goodness of heart would have done honor to one in a higher station of life, and who, had she been born in any other land but that of slavery, would have been respected and beloved. what would have been her feelings if she could have known that the child for whose rescue she had sacrificed herself would one day be free, honored, and loved in another land? chapter xvii clotelle. the curtain rises seven years after the death of isabella. during that interval, henry, finding that nothing could induce his mother-in-law to relinquish her hold on poor little clotelle, and not liking to contend with one on whom a future fortune depended, gradually lost all interest in the child, and left her to her fate. although mrs. miller treated clotelle with a degree of harshness scarcely equalled, when applied to one so tender in years, still the child grew every day more beautiful, and her hair, though kept closely cut, seemed to have improved in its soft, silk-like appearance. now twelve years of age, and more than usually well-developed, her harsh old mistress began to view her with a jealous eye. henry and gertrude had just returned from washington, where the husband had been on his duties as a member of congress, and where he had remained during the preceding three years without returning home. it was on a beautiful evening, just at twilight, while seated at his parlor window, that henry saw a young woman pass by and go into the kitchen. not aware of ever having seen the person before, he made an errand into the cook's department to see who the girl was. he, however, met her in the hall, as she was about going out. "whom did you wish to see?" he inquired. "miss gertrude," was the reply. "what did you want to see her for?" he again asked. "my mistress told me to give her and master henry her compliments, and ask them to come over and spend the evening." "who is your mistress?" he eagerly inquired. "mrs. miller, sir," responded the girl. "and what's your name?" asked henry, with a trembling voice. "clotelle, sir," was the reply. the astonished father stood completely amazed, looking at the now womanly form of her who, in his happier days, he had taken on his knee with so much fondness and alacrity. it was then that he saw his own and isabella's features combined in the beautiful face that he was then beholding. it was then that he was carried back to the days when with a woman's devotion, poor isabella hung about his neck and told him how lonely were the hours in his absence. he could stand it no longer. tears rushed to his eyes, and turning upon his heel, he went back to his own room. it was then that isabella was revenged; and she no doubt looked smilingly down from her home in the spirit-land on the scene below. on gertrude's return from her shopping tour, she found henry in a melancholy mood, and soon learned its cause. as gertrude had borne him no children, it was but natural, that he should now feel his love centering in clotelle, and he now intimated to his wife his determination to remove his daughter from the hands of his mother-in-law. when this news reached mrs. miller, through her daughter, she became furious with rage, and calling clotelle into her room, stripped her shoulders bare and flogged her in the presence of gertrude. it was nearly a week after the poor girl had been so severely whipped and for no cause whatever, that her father learned of the circumstance through one of the servants. with a degree of boldness unusual for him, he immediately went to his mother-in-law and demanded his child. but it was too late,--she was gone. to what place she had been sent no one could tell, and mrs. miller refused to give any information whatever relative to the girl. it was then that linwood felt deepest the evil of the institution under which he was living; for he knew that his daughter would be exposed to all the vices prevalent in that part of the country where marriage is not recognized in connection with that class. chapter xviii a slave-hunting parson. it was a delightful evening after a cloudless day, with the setting sun reflecting his golden rays on the surrounding hills which were covered with a beautiful greensward, and the luxuriant verdure that forms the constant garb of the tropics, that the steamer columbia ran into the dock at natchez, and began unloading the cargo, taking in passengers and making ready to proceed on her voyage to new orleans. the plank connecting the boat with the shore had scarcely been secured in its place, when a good-looking man about fifty years of age, with a white neck-tie, and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses on, was seen hurrying on board the vessel. just at that moment could be seen a stout man with his face pitted with the small-pox, making his way up to the above-mentioned gentleman. "how do you do, my dear sir? this is mr. wilson, i believe," said the short man, at the same time taking from his mouth a large chew of tobacco, and throwing it down on the ship's deck. "you have the advantage of me, sir," replied the tall man. "why, don't you know me? my name is jennings; i sold you a splendid negro woman some years ago." "yes, yes," answered the natchez man. "i remember you now, for the woman died in a few months, and i never got the worth of my money out of her." "i could not help that," returned the slave-trader; "she was as sound as a roach when i sold her to you." "oh, yes," replied the parson, "i know she was; but now i want a young girl, fit for house use,--one that will do to wait on a lady." "i am your man," said jennings, "just follow me," continued he, "and i will show you the fairest little critter you ever saw." and the two passed to the stern of the boat to where the trader had between fifty and sixty slaves, the greater portion being women. "there," said jennings, as a beautiful young woman shrunk back with modesty. "there, sir, is the very gal that was made for you. if she had been made to your order, she could not have suited you better." "indeed, sir, is not that young woman white?" inquired the parson. "oh, no, sir; she is no whiter than you see!" "but is she a slave?" asked the preacher. "yes," said the trader, "i bought her in richmond, and she comes from an excellent family. she was raised by squire miller, and her mistress was one of the most pious ladies in that city, i may say; she was the salt of the earth, as the ministers say." "but she resembles in some respect agnes, the woman i bought from you," said mr. wilson. as he said the name of agnes, the young woman started as if she had been struck. her pulse seemed to quicken, but her face alternately flushed and turned pale, and tears trembled upon her eyelids. it was a name she had heard her mother mention, and it brought to her memory those days,--those happy days, when she was so loved and caressed. this young woman was clotelle, the granddaughter of agnes. the preacher, on learning the fact, purchased her, and took her home, feeling that his daughter georgiana would prize her very highly. clotelle found in georgiana more a sister than a mistress, who, unknown to her father, taught the slave-girl how to read, and did much toward improving and refining clotelle's manners, for her own sake. like her mother fond of flowers, the "virginia maid," as she was sometimes called, spent many of her leisure hours in the garden. beside the flowers which sprang up from the fertility of soil unplanted and unattended, there was the heliotrope, sweet-pea, and cup-rose, transplanted from the island of cuba. in her new home clotelle found herself saluted on all sides by the fragrance of the magnolia. when she went with her young mistress to the poplar farm, as she sometimes did, nature's wild luxuriance greeted her, wherever she cast her eyes. the rustling citron, lime, and orange, shady mango with its fruits of gold, and the palmetto's umbrageous beauty, all welcomed the child of sorrow. when at the farm, huckelby, the overseer, kept his eye on clotelle if within sight of her, for he knew she was a slave, and no doubt hoped that she might some day fall into his hands. but she shrank from his looks as she would have done from the charm of the rattlesnake. the negro-driver always tried to insinuate himself into the good opinion of georgiana and the company that she brought. knowing that miss wilson at heart hated slavery, he was ever trying to show that the slaves under his charge were happy and contented. one day, when georgiana and some of her connecticut friends were there, the overseer called all the slaves up to the "great house," and set some of the young ones to dancing. after awhile whiskey was brought in and a dram given to each slave, in return for which they were expected to give a toast, or sing a short piece of his own composition; when it came to jack's turn he said,-- "the big bee flies high, the little bee makes the honey: the black folks make the cotton, and the white folks gets the money." of course, the overseer was not at all elated with the sentiment contained in jack's toast. mr. wilson had lately purchased a young man to assist about the house and to act as coachman. this slave, whose name was jerome, was of pure african origin, was perfectly black, very fine-looking, tall, slim, and erect as any one could possibly be. his features were not bad, lips thin, nose prominent, hands and feet small. his brilliant black eyes lighted up his whole countenance. his hair which was nearly straight, hung in curls upon his lofty brow. george combe or fowler would have selected his head for a model. he was brave and daring, strong in person, fiery in spirit, yet kind and true in his affections, earnest in his doctrines. clotelle had been at the parson's but a few weeks when it was observed that a mutual feeling had grown up between her and jerome. as time rolled on, they became more and more attached to each other. after satisfying herself that these two really loved, georgiana advised their marriage. but jerome contemplated his escape at some future day, and therefore feared that if married it might militate against it. he hoped, also, to be able to get clotelle away too, and it was this hope that kept him from trying to escape by himself. dante did not more love his beatrice, swift his stella, waller his saccharissa, goldsmith his jessamy bride, or bums his mary, than did jerome his clotelle. unknown to her father, miss wilson could permit these two slaves to enjoy more privileges than any of the other servants. the young mistress taught clotelle, and the latter imparted her instructions to her lover, until both could read so as to be well understood. jerome felt his superiority, and always declared that no master should ever flog him. aware of his high spirit and determination, clotelle was in constant fear lest some difficulty might arise between her lover and his master. one day mr. wilson, being somewhat out of temper and irritated at what he was pleased to call jerome's insolence, ordered him to follow him to the barn to be flogged. the young slave obeyed his master, but those who saw him at the moment felt that he would not submit to be whipped. "no, sir," replied jerome, as his master told him to take off his coat: "i will serve you, master wilson, i will labor for you day and night, if you demand it, but i will not be whipped." this was too much for a white man to stand from a negro, and the preacher seized his slave by the throat, intending to choke him. but for once he found his match. jerome knocked him down, and then escaped through the back-yard to the street, and from thence to the woods. recovering somewhat from the effect of his fall, the parson regained his feet and started in pursuit of the fugitive. finding, however, that the slave was beyond his reach, he at once resolved to put the dogs on his track. tabor, the negro-catcher, was sent for, and in less than an hour, eight or ten men, including the parson, were in the woods with hounds, trying the trails. these dogs will attack a negro at their master's bidding; and cling to him as the bull-dog will cling to a beast. many are the speculations as to whether the negro will be secured alive or dead, when these dogs once get on his track. whenever there is to be a negro hunt, there is no lack of participants. many go to enjoy the fun which it is said they derive from these scenes. the company had been in the woods but a short time ere they got on the track of two fugitives, one of whom was jerome. the slaves immediately bent their steps toward the swamp, with the hope that the dogs, when put upon their scent would be unable to follow them through the water. the slaves then took a straight course for the baton rouge and bayou sara road, about four miles distant. nearer and nearer the whimpering pack pressed on; their delusion begins to dispel. all at once the truth flashes upon the minds of the fugitives like a glare of light,--'tis tabor with his dogs! the scent becomes warmer and warmer, and what was at first an irregular cry now deepens into one ceaseless roar, as the relentless pack presses on after its human prey. they at last reach the river, and in the negroes plunge, followed by the catch-dog. jerome is caught and is once more in the hands of his master, while the other poor fellow finds a watery grave. they return, and the preacher sends his slave to jail. chapter xix the true heroine. in vain did georgiana try to console clotelle, when the latter heard, through one of the other slaves, that mr. wilson had started with the dogs in pursuit of jerome. the poor girl well knew that he would be caught, and that severe punishment, if not death, would be the result of his capture. it was therefore with a heart filled with the deepest grief that the slave-girl heard the footsteps of her master on his return from the chase. the dogged and stern manner of the preacher forbade even his daughter inquiring as to the success of his pursuit. georgiana secretly hoped that the fugitive had not been caught; she wished it for the sake of the slave, and more especially for her maid-servant, whom she regarded more as a companion than a menial. but the news of the capture of jerome soon spread through the parson's household, and found its way to the ears of the weeping and heart-stricken clotelle. the reverend gentleman had not been home more than an hour ere come of his parishioners called to know if they should not take the negro from the prison and execute lynch law upon him. "no negro should be permitted to live after striking a white man; let us take him and hang him at once," remarked an elderly-looking man, whose gray hairs thinly covered the crown of his head. "i think the deacon is right," said another of the company; "if our slaves are allowed to set the will of their masters at defiance, there will be no getting along with them,--an insurrection will be the next thing we hear of." "no, no," said the preacher; "i am willing to let the law take its course, as it provides for the punishment of a slave with death if he strikes his master. we had better let the court decide the question. moreover, as a christian and god-fearing people, we ought to submit to the dictates of justice. should we take this man's life by force, an all-wise providence would hold us responsible for the act." the company then quietly withdrew, showing that the preacher had some influence with his people. "this" said mr. wilson, when left alone with his daughter,--"this, my dear georgiana, is the result of your kindness to the negroes. you have spoiled every one about the house. i can't whip one of them, without being in danger of having my life taken." "i am sure, papa," replied the young lady,--"i am sure i never did any thing intentionally to induce any of the servants to disobey your orders." "no, my dear," said mr. wilson, "but you are too kind to them. now, there is clotelle,--that girl is completely spoiled. she walks about the house with as dignified an air as if she was mistress of the premises. by and by you will be sorry for this foolishness of yours." "but," answered georgiana, "clotelle has a superior mind, and god intended her to hold a higher position in life than that of a servant." "yes, my dear, and it was your letting her know that she was intended for a better station in society that is spoiling her. always keep a negro in ignorance of what you conceive to be his abilities," returned the parson. it was late on the saturday afternoon, following the capture of jerome that, while mr. wilson was seated in his study preparing his sermon for the next day, georgiana entered the room and asked in an excited tone if it were true that jerome was to be hanged on the following thursday. the minister informed her that such was the decision of the court. "then," said she, "clotelle will die of grief." "what business has she to die of grief?" returned the father, his eyes at the moment flashing fire. "she has neither eaten nor slept since he was captured," replied georgians; "and i am certain that she will not live through this." "i cannot be disturbed now," said the parson; "i must get my sermon ready for to-morrow. i expect to have some strangers to preach to, and must, therefore, prepare a sermon that will do me credit." while the man of god spoke, he seemed to say to himself,-- "with devotion's visage, and pious actions, we do sugar over the devil himself." georgiana did all in her power to soothe the feelings of clotelle, and to induce her to put her trust in god. unknown to her father, she allowed the poor girl to go every evening to the jail to see jerome, and during these visits, despite her own grief, clotelle would try to comfort her lover with the hope that justice would be meted out to him in the spirit-land. thus the time passed on, and the day was fast approaching when the slave was to die. having heard that some secret meeting had been held by the negroes, previous to the attempt of mr. wilson to flog his slave, it occurred to a magistrate that jerome might know something of the intended revolt. he accordingly visited the prison to see if he could learn anything from him, but all to no purpose. having given up all hopes of escape, jerome had resolved to die like a brave man. when questioned as to whether he knew anything of a conspiracy among the slaves against their masters, he replied,-- "do you suppose that i would tell you if i did?" "but if you know anything," remarked the magistrate, "and will tell us, you may possibly have your life spared." "life," answered the doomed man, "is worth nought to a slave. what right has a slave to himself, his wife, or his children? we are kept in heathenish darkness, by laws especially enacted to make our instruction a criminal offence; and our bones, sinews, blood, and nerves are exposed in the market for sale. "my liberty is of as much consequence to me as mr. wilson's is to him. i am as sensitive to feeling as he. if i mistake not, the day will come when the negro will learn that he can get his freedom by fighting for it; and should that time arrive, the whites will be sorry that they have hated us so shamefully. i am free to say that, could i live my life over again, i would use all the energies which god has given me to get up an insurrection." every one present seemed startled and amazed at the intelligence with which this descendant of africa spoke. "he's a very dangerous man," remarked one. "yes," said another, "he got some book-learning somewhere, and that has spoiled him." an effort was then made to learn from jerome where he had learned to read, but the black refused to give any information on the subject. the sun was just going down behind the trees as clotelle entered the prison to see jerome for the last time. he was to die on the next day her face was bent upon her hands, and the gushing tears were forcing their way through her fingers. with beating heart and trembling hands, evincing the deepest emotion, she threw her arms around her lover's neck and embraced him. but, prompted by her heart's unchanging love, she had in her own mind a plan by which she hoped to effect the escape of him to whom she had pledged her heart and hand. while the overcharged clouds which had hung over the city during the day broke, and the rain fell in torrents, amid the most terrific thunder and lightning, clotelle revealed to jerome her plan for his escape. "dress yourself in my clothes," said she, "and you can easily pass the jailer." this jerome at first declined doing. he did not wish to place a confiding girl in a position where, in all probability, she would have to suffer; but being assured by the young girl that her life would not be in danger, he resolved to make the attempt. clotelle being very tall, it was not probable that the jailer would discover any difference in them. at this moment, she took from her pocket a bunch of keys and unfastened the padlock, and freed him from the floor. "come, girl, it is time for you to go," said the jailer, as jerome was holding the almost fainting girl by the hand. being already attired in clotelle's clothes, the disguised man embraced the weeping girl, put his handkerchief to his face, and passed out of the jail, without the keeper's knowing that his prisoner was escaping in a disguise and under cover of the night. chapter xx the hero of many adventures. jerome had scarcely passed the prison-gates, ere he reproached himself for having taken such a step. there seemed to him no hope of escape out of the state, and what was a few hours or days at most, of life to him, when, by obtaining it, another had been sacrificed. he was on the eve of returning, when he thought of the last words uttered by clotelle. "be brave and determined, and you will still be free." the words sounded like a charm in his ears and he went boldly forward. clotelle had provided a suit of men's clothes and had placed them where her lover could get them, if he should succeed in getting out. returning to mr. wilson's barn, the fugitive changed his apparel, and again retraced his steps into the street. to reach the free states by travelling by night and lying by during the day, from a state so far south as mississippi, no one would think for a moment of attempting to escape. to remain in the city would be a suicidal step. the deep sound of the escape of steam from a boat, which was at that moment ascending the river, broke upon the ears of the slave. "if that boat is going up the river," said he, "why not i conceal myself on board, and try to escape?" he went at once to the steamboat landing, where the boat was just coming in. "bound for louisville," said the captain, to one who was making inquiries. as the passengers were rushing on board, jerome followed them, and proceeding to where some of the hands were stowing away bales of goods, he took hold and aided them. "jump down into the hold, there, and help the men," said the mate to the fugitive, supposing that, like many persons, he was working his way up the river. once in the hull among the boxes, the slave concealed himself. weary hours, and at last days, passed without either water or food with the hidden slave. more than once did he resolve to let his case be known; but the knowledge that he would be sent back to natchez kept him from doing so. at last, with lips parched and fevered to a crisp, the poor man crawled out into the freight-room, and began wandering about. the hatches were on, and the room dark. there happened to be on board a wedding party, and, a box, containing some of the bridal cake, with several bottles of port wine, was near jerome. he found the box, opened it, and helped himself. in eight days, the boat tied up at the wharf at the place of her destination. it was late at night; the boat's crew, with the single exception of the man on watch, were on shore. the hatches were off, and the fugitive quietly made his way on deck and jumped on shore. the man saw the fugitive, but too late to seize him. still in a slave state, jerome was at a loss to know how he should proceed. he had with him a few dollars, enough to pay his way to canada, if he could find a conveyance. the fugitive procured such food as he wanted from one of the many eating-houses, and then, following the direction of the north star, he passed out of the city, and took the road leading to covington. keeping near the ohio river, jerome soon found an opportunity to cross over into the state of indiana. but liberty was a mere name in the latter state, and the fugitive learned, from some colored persons that he met, that it was not safe to travel by daylight. while making his way one night, with nothing to cheer him but the prospect of freedom in the future, he was pounced upon by three men who were lying in wait for another fugitive, an advertisement of whom they had received through the mail. in vain did jerome tell them that he was not a slave. true, they had not caught the man they expected; but, if they could make this slave tell from what place he had escaped, they knew that a good price would be paid them for the negro's arrest. tortured by the slave-catchers, to make him reveal the name of his master and the place from whence he had escaped, jerome gave them a fictitious name in virginia, and said that his master would give a large reward, and manifested a willingness to return to his "old boss." by this misrepresentation, the fugitive, hoped to have another chance of getting away. allured with the prospect of a large sum of the needful, the slave-catchers started back with their victim. stopping on the second night at an inn, on the banks of the ohio river, the kidnappers, in lieu of a suitable place in which to confine their prize during the night, chained him to the bed-post of their sleeping-chamber. the white men were late in retiring to rest, after an evening spent in drinking. at dead of night, when all was still, the slave arose from the floor, upon which he had been lying, looked around and saw that morpheus had possession of his captors. for once, thought he, the brandy bottle has done a noble work. with palpitating heart and trembling limbs, he viewed his position. the door was fast, but the warm weather had compelled them to leave the window open. if he could but get his chains off, he might escape through the window to the piazza. the sleepers' clothes hung upon chairs by the bedside. the slave thought of the padlock-key, examined the pockets, and found it. the chains were soon off, and the negro stealthily making his way to the window. he stopped, and said to himself, "these men are villains; they are enemies to all who, like me, are trying to be free. then why not i teach them a lesson?" he then dressed himself in the best suit, hung his own worn-out and tattered garments on the same chair, and silently passed through the window to the piazza, and let himself down by one of the pillars, and started once more for the north. daylight came upon the fugitive before he had selected a hiding-place for the day, and he was walking at a rapid rate, in hopes of soon reaching some woodland or forest. the sun had just begun to show itself, when the fugitive was astounded at seeing behind him, in the distance, two men upon horseback. taking a road to the right, the slave saw before him a farmhouse, and so near was he to it that he observed two men in front of it looking at him. it was too late to turn back. the kidnappers were behind him--strange men before him. those in the rear he knew to be enemies, while he had no idea of what principles were the farmers. the latter also saw the white men coming, and called to the fugitive to come that way. the broad-brimmed hats that the farmers wore told the slave that they were quakers. jerome had seen some of these people passing up and down the river, when employed on a steamer between natchez and new orleans, and had heard that they disliked slavery. he, therefore, hastened toward the drab-coated men, who, on his approach, opened the barn-door, and told him to "run in." when jerome entered the barn, the two farmers closed the door, remaining outside themselves, to confront the slave-catchers, who now came up and demanded admission, feeling that they had their prey secure. "thee can't enter my premises," said one of the friends, in rather a musical voice. the negro-catchers urged their claim to the slave, and intimated that, unless they were allowed to secure him, they would force their way in. by this time, several other quakers had gathered around the barn-door. unfortunately for the kidnappers, and most fortunately for the fugitive, the friends had just been holding a quarterly meeting in the neighborhood, and a number of them had not yet returned to their homes. after some talk, the men in drab promised to admit the hunters, provided they procured an officer and a search-warrant from a justice of the peace. one of the slave-catchers was left to see that the fugitive did not get away, while the others went in pursuit of an officer. in the mean time, the owner of the barn sent for a hammer and nails, and began nailing up the barn-door. after an hour in search of the man of the law, they returned with an officer and a warrant. the quaker demanded to see the paper, and, after looking at it for some time, called to his son to go into the house for his glasses. it was a long time before aunt ruth found the leather case, and when she did, the glasses wanted wiping before they could be used. after comfortably adjusting them on his nose, he read the warrant over leisurely. "come, mr. dugdale, we can't wait all day,"' said the officer. "well, will thee read it for me?" returned the quaker. the officer complied, and the man in drab said,-- "yes, thee may go in, now. i am inclined to throw no obstacles in the way of the execution of the law of the land." on approaching the door, the men found some forty or fifty nails in it, in the way of their progress. "lend me your hammer and a chisel, if you please, mr. dugdale," said the officer. "please read that paper over again, will thee?" asked the quaker. the officer once more read the warrant. "i see nothing there which says i must furnish thee with tools to open my door. if thee wants a hammer, thee must go elsewhere for it; i tell thee plainly, thee can't have mine." the implements for opening the door are at length obtained and after another half-hour, the slave-catchers are in the barn. three hours is a long time for a slave to be in the hands of quakers. the hay is turned over, and the barn is visited in every part; but still the runaway is not found. uncle joseph has a glow upon his countenance; ephraim shakes his head knowingly; little elijah is a perfect know-nothing, and, if you look toward the house, you will see aunt ruth's smiling face, ready to announce that breakfast is ready. "the nigger is not in this barn," said the officer. "i know he is not," quietly answered the quaker. "what were you nailing up your door for, then, as if you were afraid we would enter?" inquired one of the kidnappers. "i can do what i please with my own door, can't i," said the quaker. the secret was out; the fugitive had gone in at the front door and out at the back; and the reading of the warrant, nailing up of the door, and other preliminaries of the quaker, was to give the fugitive time and opportunity to escape. it was now late in the morning, and the slave-catchers were a long way from home, and the horses were jaded by the rapid manner in which they had travelled. the friends, in high glee, returned to the house for breakfast; the man of the law, after taking his fee, went home, and the kidnappers turned back, muttering, "better luck next time." chapter xxi self-sacrifice. now in her seventeenth year, clotelle's personal appearance presented a great contrast to the time when she lived with old mrs. miller. her tall and well-developed figure; her long, silky black hair, falling in curls down her swan-like neck; her bright, black eyes lighting up her olive-tinted face, and a set of teeth that a tuscarora might envy, she was a picture of tropical-ripened beauty. at times, there was a heavenly smile upon her countenance, which would have warmed the heart of an anchorite. such was the personal appearance of the girl who was now in prison by her own act to save the life of another. would she be hanged in his stead, or would she receive a different kind of punishment? these questions clotelle did not ask herself. open, frank, free, and generous to a fault, she always thought of others, never of her own welfare. the long stay of clotelle caused some uneasiness to miss wilson; yet she dared not tell her father, for he had forbidden the slave-girl's going to the prison to see her lover. while the clock on the church near by was striking eleven, georgiana called sam, and sent him to the prison in search of clotelle. "the girl went away from here at eight o'clock," was the jailer's answer to the servant's inquiries. the return of sam without having found the girl saddened the heart of the young mistress. "sure, then," said she, "the poor heart-broken thing has made way with herself." still, she waited till morning before breaking the news of clotelle's absence to her father. the jailer discovered, the next morning, to his utter astonishment, that his prisoner was white instead of black, and his first impression was that the change of complexion had taken place during the night, through fear of death. but this conjecture was soon dissipated; for the dark, glowing eyes, the sable curls upon the lofty brow, and the mild, sweet voice that answered his questions, informed him that the prisoner before him was another being. on learning, in the morning, that clotelle was in jail dressed in male attire, miss wilson immediately sent clothes to her to make a change in her attire. news of the heroic and daring act of the slave-girl spread through the city with electric speed. "i will sell every nigger on the place," said the parson, at the break-fast-table,--"i will sell them all, and get a new lot, and whip them every day." poor georgiana wept for the safety of clotelle, while she felt glad that jerome had escaped. in vain did they try to extort from the girl the whereabouts of the man whose escape she had effected. she was not aware that he had fled on a steamer, and when questioned, she replied,-- "i don't know; and if i did i would not tell you. i care not what you do with me, if jerome but escapes." the smile with which she uttered these words finely illustrated the poet's meaning, when he says,-- "a fearful gift upon thy heart is laid, woman--the power to suffer and to love." her sweet simplicity seemed to dare them to lay their rough hands amid her trembling curls. three days did the heroic young woman remain in prison, to be gazed at by an unfeeling crowd, drawn there out of curiosity. the intelligence came to her at last that the court had decided to spare her life, on condition that she should be whipped, sold, and sent out of the state within twenty-four hours. this order of the court she would have cared but little for, had she not been sincerely attached to her young mistress. "do try and sell her to some one who will use her well," said georgiana to her father, as he was about taking his hat to leave the house. "i shall not trouble myself to do any such thing," replied the hard-hearted parson. "i leave the finding of a master for her with the slave-dealer." bathed in tears, miss. wilson paced her room in the absence of her father. for many months georgiana had been in a decline, and any little trouble would lay her on a sick bed for days. she was, therefore, poorly able to bear the loss of this companion, whom she so dearly loved. mr. wilson had informed his daughter that clotelle was to be flogged; and when felice came in and informed her mistress that the poor girl had just received fifty lashes on her bare person, the young lady fainted and fell on the floor. the servants placed their mistress on the sofa, and went in pursuit of their master. little did the preacher think, on returning to his daughter, that he should soon be bereft of her; yet such was to be his lot. a blood-vessel had been ruptured, and the three physicians who were called in told the father that he must prepare to lose his child. that moral courage and calmness, which was her great characteristic, did not forsake georgiana in her hour of death. she had ever been kind to the slaves under her charge, and they loved and respected her. at her request, the servants were all brought into her room, and took a last farewell of their mistress. seldom, if ever, was there witnessed a more touching scene than this. there lay the young woman, pale and feeble, with death stamped upon her countenance, surrounded by the sons and daughters of africa, some of whom had been separated from every earthly tie, and the most of whose persons had been torn and gashed by the negro-whip. some were upon their knees at the bedside, others standing around, and all weeping. death is a leveler; and neither age, sex, wealth, nor condition, can avert when he is permitted to strike. the most beautiful flowers must soon fade and droop and die. so, also, with man; his days are as uncertain as the passing breeze. this hour he glows in the blush of health and vigor, but the next, he may be counted with the number no more known on earth. oh, what a silence pervaded the house when this young flower was gone! in the midst of the buoyancy of youth, this cherished one had drooped and died. deep were the sounds of grief and mourning heard in that stately dwelling when the stricken friends, whose office it had been to nurse and soothe the weary sufferer, beheld her pale and motionless in the sleep of death. who can imagine the feeling with which poor clotelle received the intelligence of her kind friend's death? the deep gashes of the cruel whip had prostrated the lovely form of the quadroon, and she lay upon her bed of straw in the dark cell. the speculator had bought her, but had postponed her removal till she should recover. her benefactress was dead, and-- "hope withering fled, and mercy sighed farewell." "is jerome safe?" she would ask herself continually. if her lover could have but known of the sufferings of that sweet flower,--that polyanthus over which he had so often been in his dreams,--he would then have learned that she was worthy of his love. it was more than a fortnight before the slave-trader could take his prize to more comfortable quarters. like alcibiades, who defaced the images of the gods and expected to be pardoned on the ground of eccentricity, so men who abuse god's image hope to escape the vengeance of his wrath under the plea that the law sanctions their atrocious deeds. chapter xxii love at first sight and what followed. it was a beautiful sunday in september, with a cloudless sky, and the rays of the sun parching the already thirsty earth, that clotelle stood at an upper window in slater's slave-pen in new orleans, gasping for a breath of fresh air. the bells of thirty churches were calling the people to the different places of worship. crowds were seen wending their way to the houses of god; one followed by a negro boy carrying his master's bible; another followed by her maid-servant holding the mistress' fan; a third supporting an umbrella over his master's head to shield him from the burning sun. baptists immersed, presbyterians sprinkled, methodists shouted, and episcopalians read their prayers, while ministers of the various sects preached that christ died for all. the chiming of the bells seemed to mock the sighs and deep groans of the forty human beings then incarcerated in the slave-pen. these imprisoned children of god were many of them methodists, some baptists, and others claiming to believe in the faith of the presbyterians and episcopalians. oh, with what anxiety did these creatures await the close of that sabbath, and the dawn of another day, that should deliver them from those dismal and close cells. slowly the day passed away, and once more the evening breeze found its way through the barred windows of the prison that contained these injured sons and daughters of america. the clock on the calaboose had just struck nine on monday morning, when hundreds of persons were seen threading the gates and doors of the negro-pen. it was the same gang that had the day previous been stepping to the tune and keeping time with the musical church bells. their bibles were not with them, their prayer-books were left at home, and even their long and solemn faces had been laid aside for the week. they had come to the man-market to make their purchases. methodists were in search of their brethren. baptists were looking for those that had been immersed, while presbyterians were willing to buy fellow christians, whether sprinkled or not. the crowd was soon gazing at and feasting their eyes upon the lovely features of clotelle. "she is handsomer," muttered one to himself, "than the lady that sat in the pew next to me yesterday." "i would that my daughter was half so pretty," thinks a second. groups are seen talking in every part of the vast building, and the topic on 'change, is the "beautiful quadroon." by and by, a tall young man with a foreign face, the curling mustache protruding from under a finely-chiseled nose, and having the air of a gentleman, passes by. his dark hazel eye is fastened on the maid, and he stops for a moment; the stranger walks away, but soon returns--he looks, he sees the young woman wipe away the silent tear that steals down her alabaster cheek; he feels ashamed that he should gaze so unmanly on the blushing face of the woman. as he turns upon his heel he takes out his white hankerchief and wipes his eyes. it may be that he has lost a sister, a mother, or some dear one to whom he was betrothed. again he comes, and the quadroon hides her face. she has heard that foreigners make bad masters, and she shuns his piercing gaze. again he goes away and then returns. he takes a last look and then walks hurriedly off. the day wears away, but long before the time of closing the sale the tall young man once more enters the slave-pen. he looks in every direction for the beautiful slave, but she is not there--she has been sold! he goes to the trader and inquires, but he is too late, and he therefore returns to his hotel. having entered a military school in paris when quite young, and soon after been sent with the french army to india, antoine devenant had never dabbled in matters of love. he viewed all women from the same stand-point--respected them for their virtues, and often spoke of the goodness of heart of the sex, but never dreamed of taking to himself a wife. the unequalled beauty of clotelle had dazzled his eyes, and every look that she gave was a dagger that went to his heart. he felt a shortness of breath, his heart palpitated, his head grew dizzy, and his limbs trembled; but he knew not its cause. this was the first stage of "love at first sight." he who bows to the shrine of beauty when beckoned by this mysterious agent seldom regrets it. devenant reproached himself for not having made inquiries concerning the girl before he left the market in the morning. his stay in the city was to be short, and the yellow fever was raging, which caused him to feel like making a still earlier departure. the disease appeared in a form unusually severe and repulsive. it seized its victims from amongst the most healthy of the citizens. the disorder began in the brain by oppressive pain accompanied or followed by fever. fiery veins streaked the eye, the face was inflamed and dyed of a dark dull red color; the ears from time to time rang painfully. now mucous secretions surcharged the tongue and took away the power of speech; now the sick one spoke, but in speaking had foresight of death. when the violence of the disease approached the heart, the gums were blackened. the sleep broken, troubled by convulsions, or by frightful visions, was worse than the waking hours; and when the reason sank under a delirium which had its seat in the brain, repose utterly forsook the patient's couch. the progress of the fever within was marked by yellowish spots, which spread over the surface of the body. if then, a happy crisis came not, all hope was gone. soon the breath infected the air with a fetid odor, the lips were glazed, despair painted itself in the eyes, and sobs, with long intervals of silence, formed the only language. from each side of the mouth, spread foam tinged with black and burnt blood. blue streaks mingled with the yellow all over the frame. all remedies were useless. this was the yellow fever. the disorder spread alarm and confusion throughout the city. on an average more than four hundred died daily. in the midst of disorder and confusion, death heaped victims on victims. friend followed friend in quick succession. the sick were avoided from the fear of contagion, and for the same reason the dead were left unburied. nearly two thousand dead bodies lay uncovered in the burial-ground, with only here and there a little lime thrown over them, to prevent the air becoming infected. the negro, whose home is in a hot climate, was not proof against the disease. many plantations had to suspend their work for want of slaves to take the places of those who had been taken off by the fever. chapter xxiii meeting of the cousins. the clock in the hall had scarcely finished striking three when mr. taylor entered his own dwelling, a fine residence in camp street, new orleans, followed by the slave-girl whom he had just purchased at the negro-pen. clotelle looked around wildly as she passed through the hall into the presence of her new mistress. mrs. taylor was much pleased with her servant's appearance, and congratulated her husband on his judicious choice. "but," said mrs. taylor, after clotelle had gone into the kitchen, "how much she looks like miss jane morton." "indeed," replied the husband, "i thought, the moment i saw her that she looked like the mortons." "i am sure i never saw two faces more alike in my life, than that girl's and jane morton's," continued mrs. taylor. dr. morton, the purchaser of maron, the youngest daughter of agnes, and sister to isabella, had resided in camp street, near the taylors, for more than eight years, and the families were on very intimate terms, and visited each other frequently. every one spoke of clotelle's close resemblance to the mortons, and especially to the eldest daughter. indeed, two sisters could hardly have been more alike. the large, dark eyes, black, silk-like hair, tall, graceful figure, and mould of the face, were the same. the morning following clotelle's arrival in her new home, mrs. taylor was conversing in a low tone with her husband, and both with their eyes following clotelle as she passed through the room. "she is far above the station of a slave," remarked the lady. "i saw her, last night, when removing some books, open one and stand over it a moment as if she was reading; and she is as white as i am. i almost sorry you bought her." at this juncture the front door-bell rang, and clotelle hurried through the room to answer it. "miss morton," said the servant as she returned to the mistress' room. "ask her to walk in," responded the mistress. "now, my dear," said mrs. taylor to her husband, "just look and see if you do not notice a marked resemblance between the countenances of jane and clotelle." miss morton entered the room just as mrs. taylor ceased speaking. "have you heard that the jamisons are down with the fever?" inquired the young lady, after asking about the health of the taylors. "no, i had not; i was in hopes it would not get into our street;" replied mrs. taylor. all this while mr. and mrs. taylor were keenly scrutinizing their visitor and clotelle and even the two young women seemed to be conscious that they were in some way the objects of more than usual attention. miss morton had scarcely departed before mrs. taylor began questioning clotelle concerning her early childhood, and became more than ever satisfied that the slave-girl was in some way connected with the mortons. every hour brought fresh news of the ravages of the fever, and the taylors commenced preparing to leave town. as mr. taylor could not go at once, it was determined that his wife should leave without him, accompanied by her new maid servant. just as mrs. taylor and clotelle were stepping into the carriage, they were informed that dr. morton was down with the epidemic. it was a beautiful day, with a fine breeze for the time of year, that mrs. taylor and her servant found themselves in the cabin of the splendid new steamer "walk-in-the-water," bound from new orleans to mobile. every berth in the boat wad occupied by persons fleeing from the fearful contagion that was carrying off its hundreds daily. late in the day, as clotelle was standing at one of the windows of the ladies' saloon, she was astonished to see near her, and with eyes fixed intently upon her, the tall young stranger whom she had observed in the slave-market a few days before. she turned hastily away, but the heated cabin and the want of fresh air soon drove her again to the window. the young gentleman again appeared, and coming to the end of the saloon, spoke to the slave-girl in broken english. this confirmed her in her previous opinion that he was a foreigner, and she rejoiced that she had not fallen into his hands. "i want to talk with you," said the stranger. "what do you want with me?" she inquired. "i am your friend," he answered. "i saw you in the slave-market last week, and regretted that i did not speak to you then. i returned in the evening, but you was gone." clotelle looked indignantly at the stranger, and was about leaving the window again when the quivering of his lips and the trembling of his voice struck her attention and caused her to remain. "i intended to buy you and make you free and happy, but i was too late," continued he. "why do you wish to make me free?" inquired the girl. "because i once had an only and lovely sister, who died three years ago in france, and you are so much like her that had i not known of her death i should certainly have taken you for her." "however much i may resemble your sister, you are aware that i am not she; why, then, take so much interest in one whom you have never seen before and may never see again?" "the love," said he, "which i had for my sister is transferred to you." clotelle had all along suspected that the man was a knave, and this profession of love at once confirmed her in that belief. she therefore immediately turned away and left him. hours elapsed. twilight was just "letting down her curtain and pinning it with a star," as the slave-girl seated herself on a sofa by the window, and began meditating upon her eventful history, meanwhile watching the white waves as they seemed to sport with each other in the wake of the noble vessel, with the rising moon reflecting its silver rays upon the splendid scene, when the foreigner once more appeared near the window. although agitated for fear her mistress would see her talking to a stranger, and be angry, clotelle still thought she saw something in the countenance of the young man that told her he was sincere, and she did not wish to hurt his feelings. "why persist in your wish to talk with me?" she said, as he again advanced and spoke to her. "i wish to purchase you and make you happy," returned he. "but i am not for sale now," she replied. "my present mistress will not sell me, and if you wished to do so ever so much you could not." "then," said he, "if i cannot buy you, when the steamer reaches mobile, fly with me, and you shall be free." "i cannot do it," said clotelle; and she was just leaving the stranger when he took from his pocket a piece of paper and thrust it into her hand. after returning to her room, she unfolded the paper, and found, to her utter astonishment that it contained a one hundred dollar note on the bank of the united states. the first impulse of the girl was to return the paper and its contents immediately to the giver, but examining the paper more closely, she saw in faint pencil-marks, "remember this is from one who loves you." another thought was to give it to her mistress, and she returned to the saloon for that purpose; but on finding mrs. taylor engaged in conversation with some ladies, she did not deem it proper to interrupt her. again, therefore, clotelle seated herself by the window, and again the stranger presented himself. she immediately took the paper from her pocket, and handed it to him; but he declined taking it, saying,-- "no, keep it; it may be of some service to you when i am far away." "would that i could understand you," said the slave. "believe that i am sincere, and then you will understand me," returned the young man. "would you rather be a slave than be free?" inquired he, with tears that glistened in the rays of the moon. "no," said she, "i want my freedom, but i must live a virtuous life." "then, if you would be free and happy, go with me. we shall be in mobile in two hours, and when the passengers are going on shore, you take my arm. have your face covered with a veil, and you will not be observed. we will take passage immediately for france; you can pass as my sister, and i pledge you my honor that i will marry you as soon as we arrive in france." this solemn promise, coupled with what had previously been said, gave clotelle confidence in the man, and she instantly determined to go with him. "but then," thought she, "what if i should be detected? i would be forever ruined, for i would be sold, and in all probability have to end my days on a cotton, rice, or sugar plantation." however, the thought of freedom in the future outweighed this danger, and her resolve was taken. dressing herself in some of her best clothes, and placing her veiled bonnet where she could get it without the knowledge of her mistress, clotelle awaited with a heart filled with the deepest emotions and anxiety the moment when she was to take a step which seemed so rash, and which would either make or ruin her forever. the ships which leave mobile for europe lie about thirty miles down the bay, and passengers are taken down from the city in small vessels. the "walk-in-the-water" had just made her lines fast, and the passengers were hurrying on shore, when a tall gentleman with a lady at his side descended the stage-plank, and stepped on the wharf. this was antoine devenant and clotelle. chapter xxiv the law and its victim. the death of dr. morton, on the third day of his illness, came like a shock upon his wife and daughters. the corpse had scarcely been committed to its mother earth before new and unforeseen difficulties appeared to them. by the laws of the slave states, the children follow the condition of their mother. if the mother is free, the children are free; if a slave, the children are slaves. being unacquainted with the southern code, and no one presuming that marion had any negro blood in her veins, dr. morton had not given the subject a single thought. the woman whom he loved and regarded as his wife was, after all, nothing more than a slave by the laws of the state. what would have been his feelings had he known that at his death his wife and children would be considered as his property? yet such was the case. like most men of means at that time, dr. morton was deeply engaged in speculation, and though generally considered wealthy, was very much involved in his business affairs. after the disease with which dr. morton had so suddenly died had to some extent subsided, mr. james morton, a brother of the deceased, went to new orleans to settle up the estate. on his arrival there, he was pleased with and felt proud of his nieces, and invited them to return with him to vermont, little dreaming that his brother had married a slave, and that his widow and daughters would be claimed as such. the girls themselves had never heard that their mother had been a slave, and therefore knew nothing of the danger hanging over their heads. an inventory of the property of the deceased was made out by mr. morton, and placed in the hands of the creditors. these preliminaries being arranged, the ladies, with their relative, concluded to leave the city and reside for a few days on the banks of lake ponchartrain, where they could enjoy a fresh air that the city did not afford. as they were about taking the cars, however, an officer arrested the whole party--the ladies as slaves, and the gentleman upon the charge of attempting to conceal the property of his deceased brother. mr. morton was overwhelmed with horror at the idea of his nieces being claimed as slaves, and asked for time, that he might save them from such a fate. he even offered to mortgage his little farm in vermont for the amount which young slave-women of their ages would fetch. but the creditors pleaded that they were an "extra article," and would sell for more than common slaves, and must therefore be sold at auction. the uncle was therefore compelled to give them up to the officers of the law, and they were separated from him. jane, the oldest of the girls, as we have before mentioned, was very handsome, bearing a close resemblance to her cousin clotelle. alreka, though not as handsome as her sister, was nevertheless a beautiful girl, and both had all the accomplishments that wealth and station could procure. though only in her fifteenth year, alreka had become strongly attached to volney lapie, a young frenchman, a student in her father's office. this attachment was reciprocated, although the poverty of the young man and the extreme youth of the girl had caused their feelings to be kept from the young lady's parents. the day of sale came, and mr. morton attended, with the hope that either the magnanimity of the creditors or his own little farm in vermont might save his nieces from the fate that awaited them. his hope, however, was in vain. the feelings of all present seemed to be lost in the general wish to become the possessor of the young ladies, who stood trembling, blushing, and weeping as the numerous throng gazed at them, or as the intended purchaser examined the graceful proportions of their fair and beautiful frames. neither the presence of the uncle nor young lapie could at all lessen the gross language of the officers, or stay the rude hands of those who wished to examine the property thus offered for sale. after a fierce contest between the bidders, the girls were sold, one for two thousand three hundred, and the other for two thousand three hundred and fifty dollars. had these girls been bought for servants only, they would in all probability have brought not more than nine hundred or a thousand dollars each. here were two beautiful young girls, accustomed to the fondest indulgence, surrounded by all the refinements of life, and with the timidity and gentleness which such a life would naturally produce, bartered away like cattle in the markets of smithfield or new york. the mother, who was also to have been sold, happily followed her husband to the grave, and was spared the pangs of a broken heart. the purchaser of the young ladies left the market in triumph, and the uncle, with a heavy heart, started for his new england home, with no earthly prospect of ever beholding his nieces again. the seizure of the young ladies as slaves was the result of the administrator's having found among dr. morton's papers the bill-of-sale of marion which he had taken when he purchased her. he had doubtless intended to liberate her when he married her, but had neglected from time to time to have the proper papers made out. sad was the result of this negligence. chapter xxv the flight. on once gaining the wharf, devenant and clotelle found no difficulty in securing an immediate passage to france. the fine packet-ship utica lay down the bay, and only awaited the return of the lighter that night to complete her cargo and list of passengers, ere she departed. the young frenchman therefore took his prize on board, and started for the ship. daylight was just making its appearance the next morning when the utica weighed anchor and turned her prow toward the sea. in the course of three hours, the vessel, with outspread sails, was rapidly flying from land. everything appeared to be auspicious. the skies were beautifully clear, and the sea calm, with a sun that dazzled the whole scene. but clouds soon began to chase each other through the heavens and the sea became rough. it was then that clotelle felt that there was hope of escaping. she had hitherto kept in the cabin, but now she expressed a wish to come on deck. the hanging clouds were narrowing the horizon to a span, and gloomily mingling with the rising surges. the old and grave-looking seamen shook their weather-wise heads as if foretelling a storm. as clotelle came on deck, she strained her eyes in vain to catch a farewell view of her native land. with a smile on her countenance, but with her eyes filled with tears, she said,-- "farewell, farewell to the land of my birth, and welcome, welcome, ye dark blue waves. i care not where i go, so it is 'where a tyrant never trod, where a slave was never known, but where nature worships god, if in the wilderness alone.'" devenant stood by her side, seeming proud of his future wife, with his face in a glow at his success, while over his noble brow clustering locks of glossy black hair were hanging in careless ringlets. his finely-cut, classic features wore the aspect of one possessed with a large and noble heart. once more the beautiful clotelle whispered in the ear of her lover,-- "away, away, o'er land and sea, america is now no home for me." the winds increased with nightfall, and impenetrable gloom surrounded the ship. the prospect was too uncheering, even to persons in love. the attention which devenant paid to clotelle, although she had been registered on the ship's passenger list as his sister, caused more than one to look upon his as an agreeable travelling companion. his tall, slender figure and fine countenance bespoke for him at first sight one's confidence. that he was sincerely and deeply enamored of clotelle all could see. the weather became still more squally. the wind rushed through the white, foaming waves, and the ship groaned with its own wild and ungovernable labors, while nothing could be seen but the wild waste of waters. the scene was indeed one of fearful sublimity. day came and went without any abatement of the storm. despair was now on every countenance. occasionally a vivid flash of lightning would break forth and illuminate the black and boiling surges that surrounded the vessel, which was now scudding before the blast under bare poles. after five days of most intensely stormy weather, the sea settled down into a dead calm, and the passengers flocked on deck. during the last three days of the storm, clotelle had been so unwell as to be unable to raise her head. her pale face and quivering lips and languid appearance made her look as if every pulsation had ceased. her magnificent large and soft eyes, fringed with lashes as dark as night, gave her an angelic appearance. the unreserved attention of devenant, even when sea-sick himself, did much to increase the little love that the at first distrustful girl had placed in him. the heart must always have some object on which to centre its affections, and clotelle having lost all hope of ever again seeing jerome, it was but natural that she should now transfer her love to one who was so greatly befriending her. at first she respected devenant for the love he manifested for her, and for his apparent willingness to make any sacrifice for her welfare. true, this was an adventure upon which she had risked her all, and should her heart be foiled in this search for hidden treasures, her affections would be shipwrecked forever. she felt under great obligations to the man who had thus effected her escape, and that noble act alone would entitle him to her love. each day became more pleasant as the noble ship sped onward amid the rippled spray. the whistling of the breeze through the rigging was music to the ear, and brought gladness to the heart of every one on board. at last, the long suspense was broken by the appearance of land, at which all hearts leaped for joy. it was a beautiful morning in october. the sun had just risen, and sky and earth were still bathed in his soft, rosy glow, when the utica hauled into the dock at bordeaux. the splendid streets, beautiful bridges, glittering equipages, and smiling countenances of the people, gave everything a happy appearance, after a voyage of twenty-nine days on the deep, deep sea. after getting their baggage cleared from the custom-house and going to a hotel, devenant made immediate arrangements for the marriage. clotelle, on arriving at the church where the ceremony was to take place, was completely overwhelmed at the spectacle. she had never beheld a scene so gorgeous as this. the magnificent dresses of the priests and choristers, the deep and solemn voices, the elevated crucifix, the burning tapers, the splendidly decorated altar, the sweet-smelling incense, made the occasion truly an imposing one. at the conclusion of the ceremony, the loud and solemn peals of the organ's swelling anthem were lost to all in the contemplation of the interesting scene. the happy couple set out at once for dunkirk, the residence of the bridegroom's parents. but their stay there was short, for they had scarcely commenced visiting the numerous friends of the husband ere orders came for him to proceed to india to join that portion of the french army then stationed there. in due course of time they left for india, passing through paris and lyons, taking ship at marseilles. in the metropolis of france, they spent a week, where the husband took delight in introducing his wife to his brother officers in the french army, and where the newly-married couple were introduced to louis phillippe, then king of france. in all of these positions, clotelle sustained herself in a most ladylike manner. at lyons, they visited the vast factories and other public works, and all was pleasure with them. the voyage from marseilles to calcutta was very pleasant, as the weather was exceedingly fine. on arriving in india, captain devenant and lady were received with honors--the former for his heroic bravery in more than one battle, and the latter for her fascinating beauty and pleasing manners, and the fact that she was connected with one who was a general favorite with all who had his acquaintance. this was indeed a great change for clotelle. six months had not elapsed since her exposure in the slave-market of new orleans. this life is a stage, and we are indeed all actors. chapter xxvi the hero of a night. mounted on a fast horse, with the quaker's son for a guide, jerome pressed forward while uncle joseph was detaining the slave-catchers at the barn-door, through which the fugitive had just escaped. when out of present danger, fearing that suspicion might be aroused if he continued on the road in open day, jerome buried himself in a thick, dark forest until nightfall. with a yearning heart, he saw the splendor of the setting sun lingering on the hills, as if loath to fade away and be lost in the more sombre hues of twilight, which, rising from the east, was slowly stealing over the expanse of heaven, bearing silence and repose, which should cover his flight from a neighborhood to him so full of dangers. wearily and alone, with nothing but the hope of safety before him to cheer him on his way, the poor fugitive urged his tired and trembling limbs forward for several nights. the new suit of clothes with which he had provided himself when he made his escape from his captors, and the twenty dollars which the young quaker had slipped into his hand, when bidding him "fare thee well," would enable him to appear genteelly as soon as he dared to travel by daylight, and would thus facilitate his progress toward freedom. it was late in the evening when the fugitive slave arrived at a small town on the banks of lake erie, where he was to remain over night. how strange were his feelings! while his heart throbbed for that freedom and safety which canada alone could furnish to the whip-scarred slave, on the american continent, his thoughts were with clotelle. was she still in prison, and if so, what would be her punishment for aiding him to escape from prison? would he ever behold her again? these were the thoughts that followed him to his pillow, haunted him in is dreams, and awakened him from his slumbers. the alarm of fire aroused the inmates of the hotel in which jerome had sought shelter for the night from the deep sleep into which they had fallen. the whole village was buried in slumber, and the building was half consumed before the frightened inhabitants had reached the scene of the conflagration. the wind was high, and the burning embers were wafted like so many rockets through the sky. the whole town was lighted up, and the cries of women and children in the streets made the scene a terrific one. jerome heard the alarm, and hastily dressing himself, he went forth and hastened toward the burning building. "there,--there in that room in the second story, is my child!" exclaimed a woman, wringing her hands, and imploring some one to go to the rescue of her little one. the broad sheets of fire were flying in the direction of the chamber in which the child was sleeping, and all hope of its being saved seemed gone. occasionally the wind would lift the pall of smoke, and show that the work of destruction was not yet complete. at last a long ladder was brought, and one end placed under the window of the room. a moment more and a bystander mounted the ladder and ascended in haste to the window. the smoke met him as he raised the sash, and he cried out, "all is lost!" and returned to the ground without entering the room. another sweep of the wind showed that the destroying element had not yet made its final visit to that part of the doomed building. the mother, seeing that all hope of again meeting her child in this world was gone, wrung her hands and seemed inconsolable with grief. at this juncture, a man was seen to mount the ladder, and ascend with great rapidity. all eyes were instantly turned to the figure of this unknown individual as it disappeared in the cloud of smoke escaping from the window. those who a moment before had been removing furniture, as well as the idlers who had congregated at the ringing of the bells, assembled at the foot of the ladder, and awaited with breathless silence the reappearance of the stranger, who, regardless of his own safety, had thus risked his life to save another's. three cheers broke the stillness that had fallen on the company, as the brave man was seen coming through the window and slowly descending to the ground, holding under one arm the inanimate form of the child. another cheer, and then another, made the welkin ring, as the stranger, with hair burned and eyebrows closely singed, fainted at the foot of the ladder. but the child was saved. the stranger was jerome. as soon as he revived, he shrunk from every eye, as if he feared they would take from him the freedom which he had gone through so much to obtain. the next day, the fugitive took a vessel, and the following morning found himself standing on the free soil of canada. as his foot pressed the shore, he threw himself upon his face, kissed the earth, and exclaimed, "o god! i thank thee that i am a free man." chapter xxvii true freedom. the history of the african race is god's illuminated clock, set in the dark steeple of time. the negro has been made the hewer of wood and the drawer of water for nearly all other nations. the people of the united states, however, will have an account to settle with god, owing to their treatment of the negro, which will far surpass the rest of mankind. jerome, on reaching canada, felt for the first time that personal freedom which god intended that all who bore his image should enjoy. that same forgetfulness of self which had always characterized him now caused him to think of others. the thoughts of dear ones in slavery were continually in his mind, and above all others, clotelle occupied his thoughts. now that he was free, he could better appreciate her condition as a slave. although jerome met, on his arrival in canada, numbers who had escaped from the southern states, he nevertheless shrank from all society, particularly that of females. the soft, silver-gray tints on the leaves of the trees, with their snow-spotted trunks, and a biting air, warned the new-born freeman that he was in another climate. jerome sought work, and soon found it; and arranged with his employer that the latter should go to natchez in search of clotelle. the good scotchman, for whom the fugitive was laboring, freely offered to go down and purchase the girl, if she could be bought, and let jerome pay him in work. with such a prospect of future happiness in view, this injured descendant of outraged and bleeding africa went daily to his toil with an energy hitherto unknown to him. but oh, how vain are the hopes of man! chapter xxviii farewell to america. three months had elapsed, from the time the fugitive commenced work for mr. streeter, when that gentleman returned from his southern research, and informed jerome that parson wilson had sold clotelle, and that she had been sent to the new orleans slave-market. this intelligence fell with crushing weight upon the heart of jerome, and he now felt that the last chain which bound him to his native land was severed. he therefore determined to leave america forever. his nearest and dearest friends had often been flogged in his very presence, and he had seen his mother sold to the negro-trader. an only sister had been torn from him by the soul-driver; he had himself been sold and resold, and been compelled to submit to the most degrading and humiliating insults; and now that the woman upon whom his heart doted, and without whom life was a burden, had been taken away forever, he felt it a duty to hate all mankind. if there is one thing more than another calculated to make one hate and detest american slavery, it is to witness the meetings between fugitives and their friends in canada. jerome had beheld some of these scenes. the wife who, after years of separation, had escaped from her prison-house and followed her husband had told her story to him. he had seen the newly-arrived wife rush into the arms of the husband, whose dark face she had not looked upon for long, weary years. some told of how a sister had been ill-used by the overseer; others of a husband's being whipped to death for having attempted to protect his wife. he had sat in the little log-hut, by the fireside, and heard tales that caused his heart to bleed; and his bosom swelled with just indignation when he thought that there was no remedy for such atrocious acts. it was with such feelings that he informed his employer that he should leave him at the expiration of a month. in vain did mr. streeter try to persuade jerome to remain with him; and late, in the month of february, the latter found himself on board a small vessel loaded with pine-lumber, descending the st. lawrence, bound for liverpool. the bark, though an old one, was, nevertheless, considered seaworthy, and the fugitive was working his way out. as the vessel left the river and gained the open sea, the black man appeared to rejoice at the prospect of leaving a country in which his right to manhood had been denied him, and his happiness destroyed. the wind was proudly swelling the white sails, and the little craft plunging into the foaming waves, with the land fast receding in the distance, when jerome mounted a pile of lumber to take a last farewell of his native land. with tears glistening in his eyes, and with quivering lips, he turned his gaze toward the shores that were fast fading in the dim distance, and said,-- "though forced from my native land by the tyrants of the south, i hope i shall some day be able to return. with all her faults, i love my country still." chapter xxix a stranger in a strange land. the rain was falling on the dirty pavements of liverpool as jerome left the vessel after her arrival. passing the custom-house, he took a cab, and proceeded to brown's hotel, clayton square. finding no employment in liverpool, jerome determined to go into the interior and seek for work. he, therefore, called for his bill, and made ready for his departure. although but four days at the albion, he found the hotel charges larger than he expected; but a stranger generally counts on being "fleeced" in travelling through the old world, and especially in great britain. after paying his bill, he was about leaving the room, when one of the servants presented himself with a low bow, and said,-- "something for the waiter, sir?" "i thought i had paid my bill," replied the man, somewhat surprised at this polite dun. "i am the waiter, sir, and gets only what strangers see fit to give me." taking from his pocket his nearly empty purse, jerome handed the man a half-crown; but he had hardly restored it to his pocket, before his eye fell on another man in the waiting costume. "what do you want?" he asked. "whatever your honor sees fit to give me, sir. i am the tother waiter." the purse was again taken from the pocket, and another half-crown handed out. stepping out into the hall, he saw standing there a good-looking woman, in a white apron, who made a very pretty courtesy. "what's your business?" he inquired. "i am the chambermaid, sir, and looks after the gentlemen's beds." out came the purse again, and was relieved of another half-crown; whereupon another girl, with a fascinating smile, took the place of the one who had just received her fee. "what do you want?" demanded the now half-angry jerome. "please, sir, i am the tother chambermaid." finding it easier to give shillings than half-crowns, jerome handed the woman a shilling, and again restored his purse to his pocket, glad that another woman was not to be seen. scarcely had he commenced congratulating himself, however, before three men made their appearance, one after another. "what have you done for me?" he asked of the first. "i am the boots, sir." the purse came out once more, and a shilling was deposited in the servant's hand. "what do i owe you?" he inquired of the second. "i took your honor's letter to the post, yesterday, sir." another shilling left the purse. "in the name of the lord, what am i indebted to you for?" demanded jerome, now entirely out of patience, turning to the last of the trio. "i told yer vership vot time it vas, this morning." "well!" exclaimed the indignant man, "ask here what o'clock it is, and you have got to pay for it." he paid this last demand with a sixpence, regretting that he had not commenced with sixpences instead of half-crowns. having cleared off all demands in the house, he started for the railway station; but had scarcely reached the street, before he was accosted by an old man with a broom in his hand, who, with an exceedingly low bow, said,-- "i is here, yer lordship." "i did not send for you; what is your business?" demanded jerome. "i is the man what opened your lordship's cab-door, when your lordship came to the house on monday last, and i know your honor won't allow a poor man to starve." putting a sixpence in the old man's hand, jerome once more started for the depot. having obtained letters of introduction to persons in manchester, he found no difficulty in getting a situation in a large manufacturing house there. although the salary was small, yet the situation was a much better one than he had hoped to obtain. his compensation as out-door clerk enabled him to employ a man to teach him at night, and, by continued study and attention to business, he was soon promoted. after three years in his new home, jerome was placed in a still higher position, where his salary amounted to fifteen hundred dollars a year. the drinking, smoking, and other expensive habits, which the clerks usually indulged in, he carefully avoided. being fond of poetry, he turned his attention to literature. johnson's "lives of the poets," the writings of dryden, addison, pope, clarendon, and other authors of celebrity, he read with attention. the knowledge which he thus picked up during his leisure hours gave him a great advantage over the other clerks, and caused his employers to respect him far more than any other in their establishment. so eager was he to improve the time that he determined to see how much he could read during the unemployed time of night and morning, and his success was beyond his expectations. chapter xxx new friends. broken down in health, after ten years of close confinement in his situation, jerome resolved to give it up, and thereby release himself from an employment which seemed calculated to send him to a premature grave. it was on a beautiful morning in summer that he started for scotland, having made up his mind to travel for his health. after visiting edinburgh and glasgow, he concluded to spend a few days in the old town of perth, with a friend whose acquaintance he had made in manchester. during the second day of his stay in perth, while crossing the main street, jerome saw a pony-chaise coming toward him with great speed. a lady, who appeared to be the only occupant of the vehicle, was using her utmost strength to stop the frightened horses. the footman, in his fright, had leaped from behind the carriage, and was following with the crowd. with that self-forgetfulness which was one of his chief characteristics, jerome threw himself before the horses to stop them; and, seizing the high-spirited animals by the bit, as they dashed by him, he was dragged several rods before their speed was checked, which was not accomplished until one of the horses had fallen to the ground, with the heroic man struggling beneath him. all present were satisfied that this daring act alone had saved the lady's life, for the chaise must inevitably have been dashed in pieces, had the horses not been thus suddenly checked in their mad career. on the morning following this perilous adventure, col. g----called at jerome's temporary residence, and, after expressing his admiration for his noble daring, and thanking him for having saved his daughter's life, invited him to visit him at his country residence. this invitation was promptly accepted in the spirit in which it was given; and three days after, jerome found himself at the princely residence of the father of the lady for whose safety he had risked his own life. the house was surrounded by fine trees, and a sweet little stream ran murmuring at the foot, while beds of flowers on every hand shed their odors on the summer air. it was, indeed, a pleasant place to spend the warm weather, and the colonel and his family gave jerome a most cordial welcome. miss g. showed especial attention to the stranger. he had not intended remaining longer than the following day: but the family insisted on his taking part in a fox-hunt that was to come off on the morning of the third day. wishing to witness a scene as interesting as the chase usually proves to be, he decided to remain. fifteen persons, five of whom were ladies, were on the ground at the appointed hour. miss g. was, of course, one of the party. in vain jerome endeavored to excuse himself from joining in the chase. his plea of ill-health was only met by smiles from the young ladies, and the reply that a ride would effect a cure. dressed in a scarlet coat and high boots, with the low, round cap worn in the chase, jerome mounted a high-spirited horse, whip in hand, and made himself one of the party. in america, riding is a necessity; in england, it is a pleasure. young men and women attend riding-school in our fatherland, and consider that they are studying a science. jerome was no rider. he had not been on horseback for more than ten years, and as soon as he mounted, every one saw that he was a novice, and a smile was on the countenance of each member of the company. the blowing of the horn, and assembling of the hounds, and finally the release of the fox from his close prison, were the signals for the chase to commence. the first half-mile the little animal took his course over a beautiful field where there was neither hedge nor ditch. thus far the chase was enjoyed by all, even by the american rider, who was better fitted to witness the scene than to take part in it. we left jerome in our last reluctantly engaged in the chase; and though the first mile or so of the pursuit, which was over smooth meadow-land, had had an exhilarating effect upon his mind, and tended somewhat to relieve him of the embarrassment consequent upon his position, he nevertheless still felt that he was far from being in his proper element. besides, the fox had now made for a dense forest which lay before, and he saw difficulties in that direction which to him appeared insurmountable. away went the huntsmen, over stone walls, high fences, and deep ditches. jerome saw the ladies even leading the gentlemen, but this could not inspire him. they cleared the fences, four and five feet high with perfect ease, showing they were quite at home in the saddle. but alas for the poor american! as his fine steed came up to the first fence, and was about to make the leap, jerome pulled at the bridle, and cried at the top of his voice, "whoa! whoa! whoa!" the horse at the same time capering about, and appearing determined to keep up with the other animals. away dashed the huntsmen, following the hounds, and all were soon lost to the view of their colored companion. jerome rode up and down the field looking for a gate or bars, that he might get through without risking his neck. finding, however, that all hope of again catching up with the party was out of the question, he determined to return to the house, under a plea of sudden illness, and back he accordingly went. "i hope no accident has happened to your honor," said the groom, as he met our hero at the gate. "a slight dizziness," was the answer. one of the servants, without being ordered, went at once for the family physician. ashamed to own that his return was owing to his inability to ride, jerome resolved to feign sickness. the doctor came, felt his pulse, examined his tongue, and pronounced him a sick man. he immediately ordered a tepid bath, and sent for a couple of leeches. seeing things taking such a serious turn, the american began to regret the part he was playing; for there was no fun in being rubbed and leeched when one was in perfect health. he had gone too far to recede, however, and so submitted quietly to the directions of the doctor; and, after following the injunctions given by that learned esculapius, was put to bed. shortly after, the sound of the horns and the yelp of the hounds announced that the poor fox had taken the back track, and was repassing near the house. even the pleasure of witnessing the beautiful sight from the window was denied to our hero; for the physician had ordered that he must be kept in perfect quiet. the chase was at last over, and the huntsmen all in, sympathizing with their lost companion. after nine days of sweating, blistering and leeching, jerome left his bed convalescent, but much reduced in flesh and strength. this was his first and last attempt to follow the fox and hounds. during his fortnight's stay at colonel g.'s, jerome spent most of his time in the magnificent library. claude did not watch with more interest every color of the skies, the trees, the grass, and the water, to learn from nature, than did this son of a despised race search books to obtain that knowledge which his early life as a slave had denied him. chapter xxxi the mysterious meeting. after more than a fortnight spent in the highlands of scotland, jerome passed hastily through london on his way to the continent. it was toward sunset, on a warm day in october, shortly after his arrival in france, that, after strolling some distance from the hotel de leon, in the old and picturesque town of dunkirk, he entered a burial ground--such places being always favorite walks with him--and wandered around among the silent dead. all nature around was hushed in silence, and seemed to partake of the general melancholy that hung over the quiet resting-place of the departed. even the birds seemed imbued with the spirit of the place, for they were silent, either flying noiselessly over the graves, or jumping about in the tall grass. after tracing the various inscriptions that told the characters and conditions of the deceased, and viewing the mounds beneath which the dust of mortality slumbered, he arrived at a secluded spot near where an aged weeping willow bowed its thick foliage to the ground, as though anxious to hide from the scrutinizing gaze of curiosity the grave beneath it. jerome seated himself on a marble tombstone, and commenced reading from a book which he had carried under his arm. it was now twilight, and he had read but a few minutes when he observed a lady, attired in deep black, and leading a boy, apparently some five or six years old, coming up one of the beautiful, winding paths. as the lady's veil was drawn closely over her face, he felt somewhat at liberty to eye her more closely. while thus engaged, the lady gave a slight scream, and seemed suddenly to have fallen into a fainting condition. jerome sprang from his seat, and caught her in time to save her from falling to the ground. at this moment an elderly gentleman, also dressed in black, was seen approaching with a hurried step, which seemed to indicate that he was in some way connected with the lady. the old man came up, and in rather a confused manner inquired what had happened, and jerome explained matters as well as he was able to do so. after taking up the vinaigrette, which had fallen from her hand, and holding the bottle a short time to her face, the lady began to revive. during all this time, the veil had still partly covered the face of the fair one, so that jerome had scarcely seen it. when she had so far recovered as to be able to look around her, she raised herself slightly, and again screamed and swooned. the old man now feeling satisfied that jerome's dark complexion was the immediate cause of the catastrophe, said in a somewhat petulant tone,-- "i will be glad, sir, if you will leave us alone." the little boy at this juncture set up a loud cry, and amid the general confusion, jerome left the ground and returned to his hotel. while seated at the window of his room looking out upon the crowded street, with every now and then the strange scene in the graveyard vividly before him, jerome suddenly thought of the book he had been reading, and, remembering that he had left it on the tombstone, where he dropped it when called to the lady's assistance, he determined to return for it at once. after a walk of some twenty minutes, he found himself again in the burial-ground and on the spot where he had been an hour before. the pensive moon was already up, and its soft light was sleeping on the little pond at the back of the grounds, while the stars seemed smiling at their own sparkling rays gleaming up from the beautiful sheet of water. jerome searched in vain for his book; it was nowhere to be found. nothing, save the bouquet that the lady had dropped and which lay half-buried in the grass, from having been trodden upon, indicated that any one had been there that evening. the stillness of death reigned over the place; even the little birds, that had before been twittering and flying about, had retired for the night. taking up the bunch of flowers, jerome returned to his hotel. "what can this mean?" he would ask himself; "and why should they take my book?" these questions he put to himself again and again during his walk. his sleep was broken more than once that night, and he welcomed the early dawn as it made its appearance. chapter xxxii the happy meeting. after passing a sleepless night, and hearing the clock strike six, jerome took from his table a book, and thus endeavored to pass away the hours before breakfast-time. while thus engaged, a servant entered and handed him a note. hastily tearing it open, jerome read as follows:-- "sir,--i owe you an apology for the abrupt manner in which i addressed you last evening, and the inconvenience to which you were subjected by some of my household. if you will honor us with your presence to-day at four o'clock, i shall be most happy to give you due satisfaction. my servant will be waiting with the carriage at half-past three. i am, sir, yours, &c, j. devenant. jerome fletcher, esq." who this gentleman was, and how he had found out his name and the hotel at which he was stopping, were alike mysteries to jerome. and this note seemed to his puzzled brain like a challenge. "satisfaction?" he had not asked for satisfaction. however, he resolved to accept the invitation, and, if need be, meet the worst. at any rate, this most mysterious and complicated affair would be explained. the clock on a neighboring church had scarcely finished striking three when a servant announced to jerome that a carriage had called for him. in a few minutes, he was seated in a sumptuous barouche, drawn by a pair of beautiful iron-grays, and rolling over a splendid gravel road entirely shaded by trees, which appeared to have been the accumulated growth of many centuries. the carriage soon stopped at a low villa, which was completely embowered in trees. jerome alighted, and was shown into a superb room, with the walls finely decorated with splendid tapestry, and the ceilings exquisitely frescoed. the walls were hung with fine specimens from the hands of the great italian masters, and one by a german artist, representing a beautiful monkish legend connected with the "holy catharine," an illustrious lady of alexandria. high-backed chairs stood around the room, rich curtains of crimson damask hung in folds on either side of the window, and a beautiful, rich, turkey carpet covered the floor. in the centre of the room stood a table covered with books, in the midst of which was a vase of fresh flowers, loading the atmosphere with their odors. a faint light, together with the quiet of the hour, gave beauty beyond description to the whole scene. a half-open door showed a fine marble floor to an adjoining room, with pictures, statues, and antiquated sofas, and flower-pots filled with rare plants of every kind and description. jerome had scarcely run his eyes over the beauties of the room when the elderly gentleman whom he had met on the previous evening made his appearance, followed by the little boy, and introduced himself as mr. devenant. a moment more and a lady, a beautiful brunette, dressed in black, with long black curls hanging over her shoulders, entered the room. her dark, bright eyes flashed as she caught the first sight of jerome. the gentleman immediately arose on the entrance of the lady, and mr. devenant was in the act of introducing the stranger when he observed that jerome had sunk back upon the sofa, in a faint voice exclaiming,-- "it is she!" after this, all was dark and dreary. how long he remained in this condition, it was for others to tell. the lady knelt by his side and wept; and when he came to, he found himself stretched upon the sofa with his boots off and his head resting upon a pillow. by his side sat the old man, with the smelling-bottle in one hand and a glass of water in the other, while the little boy stood at the foot of the sofa. as soon as jerome had so far recovered as to be able to speak, he said,-- "where am i, and what does all this mean?" "wait awhile," replied the old man, "and i will tell you all." after the lapse of some ten minutes, jerome arose from the sofa, adjusted his apparel, and said,-- "i am now ready to hear anything you have to say." "you were born in america?" said the old man. "i was," he replied. "and you knew a girl named clotelle," continued the old man. "yes, and i loved her as i can love none other." "the lady whom you met so mysteriously last evening was she," said mr. devenant. jerome was silent, but the fountain of mingled grief and joy stole out from beneath his eyelashes, and glistened like pearls upon his ebony cheeks. at this juncture, the lady again entered the room. with an enthusiasm that can be better imagined than described, jerome sprang from the sofa, and they rushed into each other's arms, to the great surprise of the old gentleman and little autoine, and to the amusement of the servants who had crept up, one by one and were hid behind the doors or loitering in the hall. when they had given vent to their feelings and sufficiently recovered their presence of mind, they resumed their seats. "how did you find out my name and address?" inquired jerome. "after you had left the grave-yard," replied clotelle, "our little boy said, 'oh, mamma! if there ain't a book!' i opened the book, and saw your name written in it, and also found a card of the hotel de leon. papa wished to leave the book, and said it was only a fancy of mine that i had ever seen you before; but i was perfectly convinced that you were my own dear jerome." as she uttered the last words, tears--the sweet bright tears that love alone can bring forth--bedewed her cheeks. "are you married?" now inquired clotelle, with a palpitating heart and trembling voice. "no, i am not, and never have been," was jerome's reply. "then, thank god!" she exclaimed, in broken accents. it was then that hope gleamed up amid the crushed and broken flowers of her heart, and a bright flash darted forth like a sunbeam. "are you single now?" asked jerome. "yes, i am," was the answer. "then you will be mine after all?" said he with a smile. her dark, rich hair had partly come down, and hung still more loosely over her shoulders than when she first appeared; and her eyes, now full of animation and vivacity, and her sweet, harmonious, and well-modulated voice, together with her modesty, self-possession, and engaging manners, made clotelle appear lovely beyond description. although past the age when men ought to think of matrimony, yet the scene before mr. devenant brought vividly to his mind the time when he was young and had a loving bosom companion living, and tears were wiped from the old man's eyes. a new world seemed to unfold itself before the eyes of the happy lovers, and they were completely absorbed in contemplating the future. furnished by nature with a disposition to study, and a memory so retentive that all who knew her were surprised at the ease with which she acquired her education and general information, clotelle might now be termed a most accomplished lady. after her marriage with young devenant, they proceeded to india, where the husband's regiment was stationed. soon after their arrival, however, a battle was fought with the natives, in which several officers fell, among whom was captain devenant. the father of the young captain being there at the time, took his daughter-in-law and brought her back to france, where they took up their abode at the old homestead. old mr. devenant was possessed of a large fortune, all of which he intended for his daughter-in-law and her only child. although clotelle had married young devenant, she had not forgotten her first love, and her father-in-law now willingly gave his consent to her marriage with jerome. jerome felt that to possess the woman of his love, even at that late hour, was compensation enough for the years that he had been separated from her, and clotelle wanted no better evidence of his love for her than the fact of his having remained so long unmarried. it was indeed a rare instance of devotion and constancy in a man, and the young widow gratefully appreciated it. it was late in the evening when jerome led his intended bride to the window, and the magnificent moonlight illuminated the countenance of the lovely clotelle, while inward sunshine, emanating from a mind at ease, and her own virtuous thoughts, gave brightness to her eyes and made her appear a very angel. this was the first evening that jerome had been in her company since the night when, to effect his escape from prison, she disguised herself in male attire. how different the scene now. free instead of slaves, wealthy instead of poor, and on the eve of an event that seemed likely to result in a life of happiness to both. chapter xxxiii the happy day. it was a bright day in the latter part of october that jerome and clotelle set out for the church, where the marriage ceremony was to be performed. the clear, bracing air added buoyancy to every movement, and the sun poured its brilliant rays through the deeply-stained windows, as the happy couple entered the sanctuary, followed by old mr. devenant, whose form, bowed down with age, attracted almost as much attention from the assembly as did the couple more particularly interested. as the ceremonies were finished and the priest pronounced the benediction on the newly-married pair, clotelle whispered in the ear of jerome,-- "'no power in death shall tear our names apart, as none in life could rend thee from my heart.'" a smile beamed on every face as the wedding-party left the church and entered their carriage. what a happy day, after ten years' separation, when, both hearts having been blighted for a time, they are brought together by the hand of a beneficent and kind providence, and united in holy wedlock. everything being arranged for a wedding tour extending up the rhine, the party set out the same day for antwerp. there are many rivers of greater length and width than the rhine. our mississippi would swallow up half a dozen rhines. the hudson is grander, the tiber, the po, and the minclo more classic; the thames and seine bear upon their waters greater amounts of wealth and commerce; the nile and the euphrates have a greater antiquity; but for a combination of interesting historical incidents and natural scenery, the rhine surpasses them all. nature has so ordained it that those who travel in the valley of the rhine shall see the river, for there never will be a railroad upon its banks. so mountainous is the land that it would have to be one series of tunnels. every three or four miles from the time you enter this glorious river, hills, dales, castles, and crags present themselves as the steamer glides onward. their first resting-place for any length of time was at coblentz, at the mouth of the "blue moselle," the most interesting place on the river. from coblentz they went to brussels, where they had the greatest attention paid them. besides being provided with letters of introduction, jerome's complexion secured for him more deference than is usually awarded to travellers. having letters of introduction to m. deceptiax, the great lace manufacturer, that gentleman received them with distinguished honors, and gave them a splendid soiree, at which the elite of the city were assembled. the sumptuously-furnished mansion was lavishly decorated for the occasion, and every preparation made that could add to the novelty or interest of the event. jerome, with his beautiful bride, next visited cologne, the largest and wealthiest city on the banks of the rhine. the cathedral of cologne is the most splendid structure of the kind in europe, and jerome and clotelle viewed with interest the beautiful arches and columns of this stupendous building, which strikes with awe the beholder, as he gazes at its unequalled splendor, surrounded, as it is, by villas, cottages, and palace-like mansions, with the enchanting rhine winding through the vine-covered hills. after strolling over miles and miles of classic ground, and visiting castles, whose legends and traditions have given them an enduring fame, our delighted travellers started for geneva, bidding the picturesque banks of the rhine a regretful farewell. being much interested in literature, and aware that geneva was noted for having been the city of refuge to the victims of religious and political persecution, jerome arranged to stay here for some days. he was provided with a letter of introduction to m. de stee, who had been a fellow-soldier of mr. devenant in the east india wars, and they were invited to make his house their home during their sojourn. on the side of a noble mountain, whose base is kissed by the waves of lake geneva, and whose slopes are decked with verdure to the utmost peak of its rocky crown, is situated the delightful country residence of this wealthy, retired french officer. a winding road, with frequent climbs and brakes, leads from the valley to this enchanting spot, the air and scenery of which cannot be surpassed in the world. chapter xxxiv clotelle meets her father. the clouds that had skirted the sky during the day broke at last, and the rain fell in torrents, as jerome and clotelle retired for the night, in the little town of ferney, on the borders of lake leman. the peals of thunder, and flashes of vivid lightening, which seemed to leap from mountain to mountain and from crag to crag, reverberating among the surrounding hills, foretold a heavy storm. "i would we were back at geneva," said clotelle, as she heard groans issuing from an adjoining room. the sounds, at first faint, grew louder and louder, plainly indicating that some person was suffering extreme pain. "i did not like this hotel, much, when we came in," i said jerome, relighting the lamp, which had been accidentally extinguished. "nor i," returned clotelle. the shrieks increased, and an occasional "she's dead!" "i killed her!" "no, she is not dead!" and such-like expressions, would be heard from the person, who seemed to be deranged. the thunder grew louder, and the flashes of lightning more vivid, while the noise from the sick-room seemed to increase. as jerome opened the door, to learn, if possible, the cause of the cries and groans, he could distinguish the words, "she's dead! yes, she's dead! but i did not kill her. she was my child! my own daughter. i loved her, and yet i did not protect her." "whoever he is," said jerome, "he's crack-brained; some robber, probably, from the mountains." the storm continued to rage, and the loud peals of thunder and sharp flashes of lightening, together with the shrieks and moans of the maniac in the adjoining room, made the night a fearful one. the long hours wore slowly away, but neither jerome nor his wife could sleep, and they arose at an early hour in the morning, ordered breakfast, and resolved to return to geneva. "i am sorry, sir, that you were so much disturbed by the sick man last night," said the landlord, as he handed jerome his bill. "i should be glad if he would get able to go away, or die, for he's a deal of trouble to me. several persons have left my house on his account." "where is he from?" inquired jerome. "he's from the united states, and has been here a week to-day, and has been crazy ever since." "has he no friends with him?" asked the guest. "no, he is alone," was the reply. jerome related to his wife what he had learned from the landlord, respecting the sick man, and the intelligence impressed her so strongly, that she requested him to make further inquiries concerning the stranger. he therefore consulted the book in which guests usually register their names, and, to his great surprise, found that the american's name was henry linwood, and that he was from richmond, va. it was with feelings of trepidation that clotelle heard these particulars from the lips of her husband. "we must see this poor man, whoever he is," said she, as jerome finished the sentence. the landlord was glad to hear that his guests felt some interest in the sick man, and promised that the invalid's room should be got ready for their reception. the clock in the hall was just striking ten, as jerome passed through and entered the sick man's chamber. stretched upon a mattress, with both hands tightly bound to the bedstead, the friendless stranger was indeed a pitiful sight. his dark, dishevelled hair prematurely gray, his long, unshaven beard, and the wildness of the eyes which glanced upon them as they opened the door and entered, caused the faint hope which had so suddenly risen in clotelle's heart, to sink, and she felt that this man could claim no kindred with her. certainly, he bore no resemblance to the man whom she had called her father, and who had fondly dandled her on his knee in those happy days of childhood. "help!" cried the poor man, as jerome and his wife walked into the room. his eyes glared, and shriek after shriek broke forth from his parched and fevered lips. "no, i did not kill my daughter!--i did not! she is not dead! yes, she is dead! but i did not kill her--poor girl look! that is she! no, it cannot be! she cannot come here! it cannot be my poor clotelle." at the sound of her own name, coming from the maniac's lips, clotelle gasped for breath, and her husband saw that she had grown deadly pale. it seemed evident to him that the man was either guilty of some terrible act, or imagined himself to be. his eyeballs rolled in their sockets, and his features showed that he was undergoing "the tortures of that inward hell," which seemed to set his whole brain on fire. after recovering her self-possession and strength, clotelle approached the bedside, and laid her soft hand upon the stranger's hot and fevered brow. one long, loud shriek rang out on the air, and a piercing cry, "it is she!---yes, it is she! i see, i see! ah! no, it is not my daughter! she would not come to me if she could!" broke forth from him. "i am your daughter," said clotelle, as she pressed her handkerchief to her face, and sobbed aloud. like balls of fire, the poor man's eyes rolled and glared upon the company, while large drops of perspiration ran down his pale and emaciated face. strange as the scene appeared, all present saw that it was indeed a meeting between a father and his long-lost daughter. jerome now ordered all present to leave the room, except the nurse, and every effort was at once made to quiet the sufferer. when calm, a joyous smile would illuminate the sick man's face, and a strange light beam in his eyes, as he seemed to realize that she who stood before him was indeed his child. for two long days and nights did clotelle watch at the bedside of her father before he could speak to her intelligently. sometimes, in his insane fits, he would rave in the most frightful manner, and then, in a few moments, would be as easily governed as a child. at last, however, after a long and apparently refreshing sleep, he awoke suddenly to a full consciousness that it was indeed his daughter who was watching so patiently by his side. the presence of his long absent child had a soothing effect upon mr. linwood, and he now recovered rapidly from the sad and almost hopeless condition in which she had found him. when able to converse, without danger of a relapse, he told clotelle of his fruitless efforts to obtain a clew to her whereabouts after old mrs. miller had sold her to the slave-trader. in answer to his daughter's inquiries about his family affairs up to the time that he left america, he said,-- "i blamed my wife for your being sold and sent away, for i thought she and her mother were acting in collusion; but i afterwards found that i had blamed her wrongfully. poor woman! she knew that i loved your mother, and feeling herself forsaken, she grew melancholy and died in a decline three years ago." here both father and daughter wept at the thought of other days. when they had recovered their composure, mr. linwood went on again: "old mrs. miller," said he, "after the death of gertrude, aware that she had contributed much toward her unhappiness, took to the free use of intoxicating drinks, and became the most brutal creature that ever lived. she whipped her slaves without the slightest provocation, and seemed to take delight in inventing new tortures with which to punish them. one night last winter, after having flogged one of her slaves nearly to death, she returned to her room, and by some means the bedding took fire, and the house was in flames before any one was awakened. there was no one in the building at the time but the old woman and the slaves, and although the latter might have saved their mistress, they made no attempt to do so. thus, after a frightful career of many years, this hard-hearted woman died a most miserable death, unlamented by a single person." clotelle wiped the tears from her eyes, as her father finished this story, for, although mrs. miller had been her greatest enemy, she regretted to learn that her end had been such a sad one. "my peace of mind destroyed," resumed the father, "and broke down in health, my physician advised me to travel, with the hope o recruiting myself, and i sailed from new york two months ago." being brought up in america, and having all the prejudice against color which characterizes his white fellow-countrymen, mr. linwood very much regretted that his daughter, although herself tinctured with african blood, should have married a black man, and he did not fail to express to her his dislike of her husband's complexion. "i married him," said clotelle, "because i loved him. why should the white man be esteemed as better than the black? i find no difference in men on account of their complexion. one of the cardinal principles of christianity and freedom is the equality and brotherhood of man." every day mr. linwood became more and more familiar with jerome, and eventually they were on the most intimate terms. fifteen days from the time that clotelle was introduced into her father's room, they left ferney for geneva. many were the excursions clotelle made under the shadows of mont blanc, and with her husband and father for companions; she was now in the enjoyment of pleasures hitherto unknown. chapter xxxv the father's resolve. aware that her father was still a slave-owner, clotelle determined to use all her persuasive power to induce him to set them free, and in this effort she found a substantial supporter in her husband. "i have always treated my slaves well," said mr. linwood to jerome, as the latter expressed his abhorrence of the system; "and my neighbors, too, are generally good men; for slavery in. virginia is not like slavery in the other states," continued the proud son of the old dominion. "their right to be free, mr. linwood," said jerome, "is taken from them, and they have no security for their comfort, but the humanity and generosity of men, who have been trained to regard them not as brethren, but as mere property. humanity and generosity are, at best, but poor guaranties for the protection of those who cannot assert their rights, and over whom law throws no protection." it was with pleasure that clotelle obtained from her father a promise that he would liberate all his slaves on his return to richmond. in a beautiful little villa, situated in a pleasant spot, fringed with hoary rocks and thick dark woods, within sight of the deep blue waters of lake leman, mr. linwood, his daughter, and her husband, took up their residence for a short time. for more than three weeks, this little party spent their time in visiting the birth-place of rousseau, and the former abodes of byron, gibbon, voltaire, de stael, shelley, and other literary characters. we can scarcely contemplate a visit to a more historic and interesting place than geneva and its vicinity. here, calvin, that great luminary in the church, lived and ruled for years; here, voltaire, the mighty genius, who laid the foundation of the french revolution, and who boasted, "when i shake my wig, i powder the whole republic," governed in the higher walks of life. fame is generally the recompense, not of the living, but of the dead,--not always do they reap and gather in the harvest who sow the seed; the flame of its altar is too often kindled from the ashes of the great. a distinguished critic has beautifully said, "the sound which the stream of high thought, carried down to future ages, makes, as it flows--deep, distant, murmuring ever more, like the waters of the mighty ocean." no reputation can be called great that will not endure this test. the distinguished men who had lived in geneva transfused their spirit, by their writings, into the spirit of other lovers of literature and everything that treated of great authors. jerome and clotelle lingered long in and about the haunts of geneva and lake leman. an autumn sun sent down her bright rays, and bathed every object in her glorious light, as clotelle, accompanied by her husband and father set out one fine morning on her return home to france. throughout the whole route, mr. linwood saw by the deference paid to jerome, whose black complexion excited astonishment in those who met him, that there was no hatred to the man in europe, on account of his color; that what is called prejudice against color is the offspring of the institution of slavery; and he felt ashamed of his own countrymen, when he thought of the complexion as distinctions, made in the united states, and resolved to dedicate the remainder of his life to the eradication of this unrepublican and unchristian feeling from the land of his birth, on his return home. after a stay of four weeks at dunkirk, the home of the fletchers, mr. linwood set out for america, with the full determination of freeing his slaves, and settling them in one of the northern states, and then to return to france to end his days in the society of his beloved daughter. the end. note.--the author of the foregoing tale was formerly a kentucky slave. if it serves to relieve the monotony of camp-life to the soldiers of the union, and therefore of liberty, and at the same time kindles their zeal in the cause of universal emancipation, the object both of its author and publisher will be gained. j. r. produced from scanned images of public domain material from the google print project.) bookcover sinister street by compton mackenzie author of �carnival,� �youth�s encounter,� etc. new york d. appleton and company copyright, , by d. appleton and company contents book one dreaming spires chapter page i. the first day ii. the first week iii. the first term iv. cheyne walk v. youth�s domination vi. gray and blue vii. venner�s viii. the oxford looking-glass ix. the lesson of spain x. stella in oxford xi. sympathy xii. high xiii. plashers mead xiv. st. giles xv. the last term xvi. the last week xvii. the last day book two romantic education chapter page i. ostia ditis ii. neptune crescent iii. the caf� d�orange iv. leppard street v. the innermost circle vi. tinderbox lane vii. the gate of ivory viii. seeds of pomegranate ix. the gate of horn x. the old world epilogical letter to john nicolas mavrogoradato book one dreaming spires bright memories of young poetic pleasure in free companionship, the loving stress of all life-beauty, lull�d in studious leisure, when every muse was jocund with excess of fine delight and tremulous happiness; the breath of an indolent unbridled june, when delicate thought fell from the dreamy moon: but now strange care, sorrow, and grief oppress. robert bridges. chapter i the first day michael felt glad to think he would start the adventure of oxford from paddington. the simplicity of that railway station might faintly mitigate alarms which no amount of previous deliberation could entirely disperse. he remembered how once he had lightly seen off a cambridge friend from liverpool street and, looking back at the suburban tumult of the great eastern railway, he was grateful for the simplicity of paddington. michael had been careful that all his heavy luggage should be sent in advance; and he had shown himself gravely exacting toward alan in this matter of luggage, writing several times to remind him of his promise not to appear on the platform with more than a portmanteau of moderate size and a normal kit-bag. michael hoped this precaution would prevent at any rate the porters from commenting upon the freshness of him and his friend. �oxford train?� inquired a porter, as the hansom pulled up. michael nodded, and made up his mind to show his esteem when he tipped this promethean. �third class?� the porter went on. michael mentally doubled the tip, for he had neglected to assure himself beforehand about the etiquette of class, and nothing could have suited so well his self-consciousness as this information casually yielded. �let me see, you didn�t have any golf-clubs, did you, sir?� asked the porter. michael shook his head regretfully, for as he looked hurriedly up and down the platform in search of alan, he perceived golf-clubs everywhere, and when at last he saw him, actually even he had a golf-bag slung over his shoulder. �i never knew you played golf,� said michael indignantly. �i don�t. these are the governor�s. he�s given up playing,� alan explained. �are you going to play?� michael pursued. he was feeling rather envious of the appearance of these veteran implements. �i may have a shot,� alan admitted. �you might have told me you were going to bring them,� michael grumbled. �my dear old ass, i never knew i was, until the governor wanged them into my lap just as i was starting.� michael turned aside and bought a number of papers, far too many for the short journey. indeed, all the way they lay on the rack unregarded, while the train crossed and recrossed the silver thames. at first he was often conscious of the other undergraduates in the compartment, who seemed to be eying him with a puzzled contempt; but very soon, when he perceived that this manner of looking at one�s neighbor was general, he became reconciled to the attitude and ascribed it to a habit of mind rather than to the expression of any individual distaste. then suddenly, as michael was gazing out of the window, the pearly sky broke into spires and pinnacles and domes and towers. he caught his breath for one bewitched moment, before he busied himself with the luggage on the rack. on the platform michael and alan decided to part company, as neither of them felt sure enough whether st. mary�s or christ church were nearer to the station to risk a joint hansom. �shall i come and see you this afternoon?� michael rashly offered. �oh, rather,� alan agreed, and they turned away from one another to secure their cabs. all the time that michael was driving to st. mary�s, he was regretting he had not urged alan to visit him first. a growing sensation of shy dread was making him vow that once safe in his own rooms at st. mary�s nothing should drag him forth again that day. what on earth would he say when he arrived at the college? would he have to announce himself? how would he find his rooms? on these points he had pestered several old jacobeans now at oxford, but none of them could remember the precise ceremonies of arrival. michael leaned back in the hansom and cursed their inefficient memories. then the cab pulled up by the st. mary�s lodge, and events proceeded with unexpected rapidity. a cheerful man with red hair and a round face welcomed his luggage. the cabman was paid the double of his correct fare, and to michael�s relief drove off instantly. from a sort of glass case that filled half the interior of the lodge somebody very much like a family butler inquired richly who michael was. �mr. c. m. s. fane?� rolled out the unctuous man. michael nodded. �is there another fane?� he asked curiously. �no, sir,� said the head porter, and the negative came out with the sound of a drawn cork. �no, sir, but i wished to hessateen if i had your initials down correct in my list. mr. c. m. s. fane,� he went on, looking at a piece of paper. �st. cuthbert�s. four. two pair right. your servant is porcher. your luggage has arrived, and perhaps you�ll settle with me presently. henry will show you to your rooms. henry! st. cuthbert�s. four. two pair right.� the red-headed under-porter picked up michael�s bag, and michael was preparing to follow him at once, when the unctuous man held up a warning hand. then he turned to look into a large square pigeon-hole labeled porcher. �these letters are for you, sir,� he explained pompously. michael took them, and in a dream followed henry under a great gothic gateway, and along a gravel path. in a doorway numbered iv, henry stopped and shouted �porcher!� from an echoing vault came a cry in answer, and the scout appeared. �one of your gentlemen arrived,� said henry. �mr. fane.� then he touched his cap and retired. �any more luggage in the lodge, sir?� porcher asked. �not much,� said michael apologetically. �there�s a nice lot of stuff in your rooms,� porcher informed him. �come in yesterday morning, it did.� they were mounting the stone stairway, and on each of the floors michael was made mechanically aware by a printed notice above a water-tap that no slops must be emptied there. this prohibition stuck in his mind somehow as the first ascetic demand of the university. �these are your rooms, sir, and when you want me, you�ll shout, of course. i�m just unpacking mr. lonsdale�s wine.� michael was conscious of pale october sunlight upon the heaped-up packing-cases; he was conscious of the unnatural brilliancy of the fire in the sunlight; he was conscious that life at oxford was conducted with much finer amenities than life at school. simultaneously he was aware of a loneliness; yet as he once more turned to survey his room, it was a fleeting loneliness which quickly perished in the satisfaction of a privacy that hitherto he had never possessed. he turned into the bedroom, and looked out across the quad, across the rectangle of vivid green grass, across the warden�s garden with its faint gaiety of autumnal flowers and tufted gray walls, and beyond to where the elms of the deer-park were massed against the thin sky and the deer moved in leisurely files about the spare sunlight. it did not take michael long to arrange his clothes; and then the problem of undoing the packing-cases presented itself. a hammer would be necessary, and a chisel. he must shout for porcher. shouting in the tremulous peace of this october morning would inevitably attract more attention to himself than would be pleasant, and he postponed the summons in favor of an examination of his letters. one after another he opened them, and every one was the advertisement of a tailor or hairdresser or tobacconist. the tailors were the most insistent; they even went so far as to announce that representatives would call upon him at his pleasure. michael made up his mind to order his cap and gown after lunch. lunch! how should he obtain lunch? where should he obtain lunch? when should he obtain lunch? obviously there must be some precise manner of obtaining lunch, some ritual consecrated by generations of st. mary�s men. the loneliness came back triumphant, and plunged him dejectedly down into a surprisingly deep wicker-chair. the fire crackled in the silence, and the problem of lunch remained insoluble. the need for porcher�s advice became more desperate. other freshmen before him must have depended upon their scout�s experience. he began to practice calling porcher in accents so low that they acquired a tender and reproachful significance. michael braced himself for the performance after these choked and muffled rehearsals, and went boldly out on to the stone landing. an almost entranced silence held the staircase, a silence that he could not bring himself to violate. on the door of the rooms opposite he read his neighbor�s name�_mackintosh_. he wished he knew whether mackintosh were a freshman. it would be delightful to make him share the responsibility of summoning porcher from his task of arranging lonsdale�s wine. and who was lonsdale? _no slops must be emptied here! mackintosh! fane!_ here were three announcements hinting at humanity in a desolation of stillness. michael reading his own name gathered confidence and a volume of breath, leaned over the stone parapet of the landing and, losing all his courage in a sigh, decided to walk downstairs and take his chance of meeting porcher on the way. on the floor beneath michael read _bannerman_ over the left-hand door and _templeton-collins_ over the right-hand door. while he was pondering the personality and status of templeton-collins, presumably the gentleman himself appeared, stared at michael very deliberately, came forward and, leaning over the parapet, yelled in a voice that combined rage, protest, disappointment and appeal with the maximum of sound: �porcher!� after which, templeton-collins again stared very deliberately at michael and retired into his room, while michael hurried down to intercept the scout, hoping his dismay at templeton-collins� impatience would not be too great to allow him to pay a moment�s attention to himself. however, on the ground floor the silence was still unbroken, and hopelessly michael read over the right-hand door _amherst_, over the left-hand door _lonsdale_. what critical moment had arrived in the unpacking of lonsdale�s wine to make the scout so heedless of templeton-collins� call? again it resounded from above, and michael looking up involuntarily, caught the downward glance of templeton-collins himself. �i say, is porcher down there?� the latter asked fretfully. �i think he�s unpacking lonsdale�s wine.� �who�s lonsdale?� demanded templeton-collins. �you might sing out and tell him i want him.� with this request templeton-collins vanished, leaving michael in a quandary. there was only one hope of relieving the intolerable situation, he thought, which was to shout �porcher� from where he was standing. this he did at the very moment the scout emerged from lonsdale�s rooms. �coming, sir,� said porcher in an aggrieved voice. �i think mr. templeton-collins is calling you,� michael explained, rather lamely he felt, since it must have been obvious to the scout that michael himself had been calling him. �and i say,� he added hurriedly, �you might bring me up a hammer or something to open my boxes, when you�ve done.� leaving porcher to appease the outraged templeton-collins, michael retreated to the security of his own rooms, where in a few minutes the scout appeared to raise the question of lunch. �will you take commons, sir?� michael looked perplexed. �commons is bread and cheese. most of my gentlemen takes commons. if you want anything extra, you go to the kitchen and write your name down for what you want.� this sounded too difficult, and michael gratefully chose commons. �ale, sir?� michael nodded. if the scout had suggested champagne, he would have assented immediately. porcher set to work and undid the cases; he also explained where the china was kept and the wood and the coal. he expounded the theory of roll-calls and chapels, and was indeed so generous with information on every point of college existence that michael would have been glad to retain his services for the afternoon. �and the other men on this staircase?� michael asked, �are any of them freshers?� �mr. mackintosh, mr. amherst, and the honorable lonsdale is all freshmen. mr. templeton-collins and mr. bannerman is second year. mr. templeton-collins had the rooms on the ground floor last term. very noisy gentleman. very fond of practicing with a coach-horn. and he don�t improve,� said porcher meditatively. �do you mean on the coach-horn?� michael asked. �don�t improve in the way of noise. noise seems to regular delight him. he�d shout the head off of a deaf man. did you bring any wine, sir?� michael shook his head. �mr. lonsdale brought too much. too much. it�s easier to order it as you want it from the junior common room. anything else, sir?� michael tried to think of something to detain for a while the voluble service of porcher, but as he seemed anxious to be gone, he confessed there was nothing. left alone again, michael began to unpack his pictures. somehow those black and red scenes of montmartre and the landscapes of the sussex downs with a slight atmosphere of japan seemed to him unsatisfactory in this new room, and he hung them forthwith in his bedroom. for his sitting-room he resolved to buy certain pictures that for a long time he had coveted�mona lisa and primavera and rembrandt�s knight in armor and montegna�s st. george. those other relics of faded and jejune aspirations would label him too definitely. people would see them hanging on his walls and consider him a decadent. michael did not wish to be labeled in his first term. oxford promised too much of intellectual romance and adventure for him to set out upon his odyssey with the stepping-stones of dead tastes hung round his neck. oxford should be approached with a stainless curiosity. already he felt that she would only yield her secret in return for absolute surrender. this the grave city demanded. after his pictures michael unpacked his books. the deep shelves set in the wall beside the fireplace looked alluring in their emptiness, but when he had set out in line all the books he possessed, they seemed a scanty and undistinguished crowd. the pirated american edition of swinburne alone carried itself with an air: the shelley and the keats were really editions better suited to the glass and gloom of a seaside lodging: the school-books looked like trippers usurping the gothic grandeur of these shelves. moreover, the space was eked out with tattered paper editions that with too much room at their disposal collapsed with an appearance of ill-favored intoxication. michael examined his possessions in critical discontent. they seemed to symbolize the unpleasant crudity of youth. in the familiar surroundings of childhood they had seemed on the contrary to testify to his maturity. now at oxford he felt most abominably young again, yet he was able to console himself with the thought that youth would be no handicap among his peers. he took down the scenes of montmartre even from the walls of his bedroom and pushed them ignominiously out of sight under the bed. michael abandoned the contemplation of his possessions, and looked out of his sitting-room window at the high. there was something salutary in the jangle of the trams, in the vision of ordinary people moving unconsciously about the academic magnificence of oxford. an undergraduate with gown wrapped carelessly round his neck flashed past on a bicycle, and michael was discouraged by the sense of his diabolic ease. the luxury of his own rooms, the conviction of his new independence, the excitement of an undiscovered life all departed from him, and he was left with nothing but a loneliness more bitter even than when at randell house he had first encountered school. porcher came in presently with lunch, and the commons of bread and cheese with the ale foaming in a silver tankard added the final touch to michael�s depression. he thought that nothing in the world, could express the spirit of loneliness so perfectly as a sparse lunch laid for one on a large table. he wandered away from its melancholy invitation into the bedroom and looked sadly down into the quad. in every doorway stood knots of senior men talking: continually came new arrivals to hail familiarly their friends after the vacation: scouts hurried to and fro with trays of food: from window to window gossip, greetings, appointments were merrily shouted. michael watched this scene of intimate movement played against the background of elms and gray walls. the golden fume of the october weather transcended somehow all impermanence, and he felt with a sudden springing of imagination that so had this scene been played before, that so forever would it be played for generations to come. yet for him as yet outside the picture remained, fortunately less eternal, that solitary lunch. he ate it hurriedly and as soon as he had finished set out to find alan at christ church. freedom came back with the elation of walking up the high; and in the christ church lodge michael was able to ask without a blush for alan�s rooms. the great space of tom quad by absorbing his self-consciousness allowed him to feel himself an unit of the small and decorative population that enhanced the architecture there. the scattered, groups of friends whose voices became part of the very air itself like the wings of the pigeons and the perpetual tapping of footsteps, the two dons treading in slow confabulation that wide flagged terrace, even himself were here forever. michael captured again in that moment the crystallized vision of oxford which had first been vouchsafed to him long ago by that old print of st. mary�s tower. he turned reluctantly away from tom quad, and going on to seek alan in meadows, by mistake found himself in peckwater. a tall fair undergraduate was standing alone in the center of the quad, cracking a whip. suddenly michael realized that his father had been at christ church; and this tall fair whip-cracker served for him as the symbol of his father. he must have often stood here so, cracking a whip; and michael never came into peckwater without recreating him so occupied on a fine autumn afternoon, whip in hand, very tall and very fair in the glinting sunlight. dreams faded out, when michael ran up the staircase to alan�s rooms; but he was full-charged again with all that suppressed intellectual excitement which he had counted upon finding in oxford, but which he had failed to find until the wide tranquillity of tom quad had given him, as it were, the benediction of the university. �hullo, alan!� he cried. �how are you getting on? i say, why do they stick �mr.� in front of your name over the door? at st. mary�s we drop the �mr.� or any other sort of title. aren�t you unpacked _yet?_ you are a slacker. look here, i want you to come out with me at once. i�ve got to get some more picture-wire and a gown and a picture of mona lisa.� �mona how much?� said alan. �la gioconda, you ass.� �sorry, my mistake,� said alan. �and i saw some rattling book-shops as i came up the high,� michael went on. �what did you have for lunch? i had bread and cheese�commons we call it at st. mary�s. i say, i think i�m glad i don�t have to wear a scholar�s gown.� �i�m an exhibitioner,� said alan. �well, it�s the same thing. i like a commoner�s gown best. where did you get that tea-caddy? i don�t believe i�ve got one. pretty good view from your window. mine looks out on the high.� �look here,� asked alan very solemnly, �where shall i hang this picture my mater gave me?� he displayed in a green frame the soul�s awakening. �do you like it?� michael asked gloomily. �i prefer these grouse by thorburn that the governor gave me, but i like them both in a way,� alan admitted. �i don�t think it much matters where you hang it,� michael said. then, thinking alan looked rather hurt, he added hastily: �you see it�s such a very square room that practically it might go anywhere.� �will you have a meringue?� alan asked, proffering a crowded plate. �a meringue?� michael repeated. �we�re rather famous for our meringues here,� said alan gravely. �we make them in the kitchen. i ordered a double lot in case you came in.� �you seem to have found out a good deal about christ church already,� michael observed. �the house,� alan corrected. �we call it�in fact everybody calls it the house.� michael was inclined to resent this arrogation by a college not his own of a distinct and slightly affected piece of nomenclature, and he wished he possessed enough knowledge of his own peculiar college customs to counter alan�s display. �well, hurry up and come out of the house,� he urged. �you can�t stay here unpacking all the afternoon.� �why do you want to start buying things straight away?� alan argued. �because i know what i want,� michael insisted. �since when?� alan demanded. �i�m not going to buy anything for a bit.� �come on, come on,� michael urged. he was in a hurry to enjoy the luxury of traversing the quads of christ church in company, of strolling down the high in company, of looking into shop windows in company, of finally defeating that first dismal loneliness with alan and his company. it certainly proved to be a lavish afternoon. michael bought three straight-grained pipes so substantially silvered that they made his own old pipes take on an attenuated vulgarity. he bought an obese tobacco jar blazoned with the arms of his college and, similarly blazoned, a protuberant utensil for matches. he bought numerous ounces of those prodigally displayed mixtures of tobacco, every one of which was vouched for by the vendor as in its own way the perfect blend. he bought his cap and his gown and was measured by the tailor for a coat of harris tweed such as everybody seemed to wear. he found the very autotype of mona lisa he coveted, and farther he was persuaded by the picture-dealer to buy for two guineas a signed proof of a small copperplate engraving of the primavera. this expenditure frightened him from buying any more pictures that afternoon and seemed a violent and sudden extravagance. however, he paid a visit to the bank where, after signing his name several times, he was presented with a check book. in order to be perfectly sure he knew how to draw a check, he wrote one then and there, and the five sovereigns the clerk shoveled out as irreverently as if they were chocolate creams, made him feel that his new check-book was the purse of fortunatus. michael quickly recovered from the slight feeling of guilt that the purchase of the botticelli print had laid upon his conscience, and in order to assert his independence in the face of alan�s continuous dissuasion, he bought a hookah, a miniature five-barred gate for a pipe-rack, a mother-of-pearl cigarette-holder which he dropped on the pavement outside the shop and broke in pieces, and finally seven ties of knitted silk. by this time michael and alan had reached the oriental café in cornmarket street; and since it was now five o�clock and neither of them felt inclined to accept the responsibility of inviting the other back to tea, they went into the café and ate a quantity of hot buttered toast and parti-colored cakes. the only thing that marred their enjoyment and faintly disturbed their equanimity was the entrance of three exquisitely untidy undergraduates who stood for a moment in the doorway and surveyed first the crowded café in general, and then more particularly michael and alan with an expression of outraged contempt. after a prolonged stare one of them exclaimed in throaty scorn: �oh, god, the place is chock full of damned freshers!� whereupon he and his companions strode out again. michael and alan looked at each other abashed. the flavor had departed from the tea: the brilliant hues of the cakes had paled: the waitress seemed to have become suddenly critical and haughty. michael and alan paid their bill and went out. �are you coming back to my rooms?� michael asked. yet secretly he half hoped that alan would refuse. dusk was falling, and he was anxious to be alone while the twilight wound itself about this gray city. alan said he wanted to finish unpacking, and michael left him quickly, promising to meet him again to-morrow. michael did not wander far in that dusk of fading spires and towers, for a bookshop glowing like a jewel in the gloom of an ancient street lured him within. it was empty save for the owner, a low-voiced man with a thin pointed beard who as he stood there among his books seemed to michael strangely in tune with his romantic surroundings, as much in tune as some old painting by vandyck would have seemed leaning against the shelves of books. a little wearily, almost cynically, mr. lampard bade michael good evening. �may i look round?� michael asked. the bookseller nodded. �just come up?� he inquired. �to-day,� michael confessed. �and what sort of books are you interested in?� �all books,� said michael. �this set of pater for instance,� the bookseller suggested, handing michael a volume bound in thick sea-green cloth and richly stamped with a golden monogram. �nine volumes. seven pounds ten, or six pounds fifteen cash.� this information he added in a note of disdainful tolerance. michael shook his head and looked amused by the offer. �of course, nobody really cares for books nowadays,� mr. lampard went on. �in the early �nineties it was different. then everybody cared for books.� michael resented this slur upon the generation to which he belonged. �seven pounds ten,� he repeated doubtfully. how well those solid sea-green volumes would become the stately bookshelves of his room. �what college?� asked mr. lampard. �st. mary�s? ah, there used to be some great buyers there. let me see, lord william vaughan, the marquis of montgomery�s son, was at st. mary�s, and mr. richard meysey. i published his first volume of poems�of course, you�ve read his books. he was at st. mary�s. then there was mr. chalfont and mr. weymouth. you�ve heard of the patchbox? i still have some copies of the first number, but they�re getting very scarce. all st. mary�s men and all great book buyers. but oxford has changed in the last few years. i really don�t know why i go on selling books, or rather why i go on not selling them.� mr. lampard laughed and twisted his beard with fingers that were very thin and white. outside in the darkness a footfall echoed along some entry. the sound gave to michael a sense of communion with the past, and the ghosts of bygone loiterers were at his elbow. �perhaps after all i will take the pater,� he said. �only i may not be able to pay you this term.� the bookseller smiled. �i don�t think i shall worry you. do you know this set�boccaccio, rabelais, straparola, masuccio, etc. eleven guineas bound in watered silk. they�ll always keep their price, and of course all the photogravures are included.� �all right. you might send them too.� michael could not resist the swish of the watered silk as volume one of the decameron was put back into its vacancy. and as he hurried down to college the thought that he had spent nineteen pounds one shilling scarcely weighed against the imagination of lamplight making luminous those silken backs of faded blue and green and red and gold, against those silk markers and the consciousness that now at last he was a buyer of books, a buyer whose spirit would haunt that bookshop. he had certainly never regretted the seventeen-and-sixpence he had spent on the pirated works of swinburne, and then he was a wretched schoolboy balanced on the top of a ladder covetous of unattainable splendors, a pitiable cipher in the accounts of elson�s bookshop. at lampard�s he was already a personality. all that so far happened to michael not merely in one day at oxford, but really during his whole life was for its embarrassment nothing in comparison with the first dinner in hall. as he walked through the cloisters and heard all about him the burble of jolly and familiar conversation, he shuddered to think what in a minute he must face. the list of freshmen, pinned up on the board in the lodge, was a discouraging document to those isolated members of public schools other, than eton, winchester, harrow or charterhouse. these four seemed to have produced all but six or seven of the freshmen. eton alone was responsible for half the list. what chance, thought michael, could he stand against such an impenetrable phalanx of conversation as was bound to ensue from such a preponderance? however, he was by now at the top of the steps that led up to hall, and a mild old butler was asking his name. �you�ll be at the second freshmen�s table. on the right, sir. mr. wedderburn is at the head of your table, sir.� michael was glad to find his table at the near end of hall, and hurriedly taking his seat, almost dived into the soup that was quickly placed before him. he did not venture to open a conversation with either of his neighbors, but stared instead at the freshman occupying the armchair at the head of the table, greatly impressed by his judicial gravity of demeanor, his neat bulk and the profundity of his voice. �how do you become head of a table?� michael�s left-hand neighbor suddenly asked. michael said he really did not know. �because what i�m wondering,� the left-hand neighbor continued, �is why they�ve made that ass wedderburn head of our table.� �why, is he an ass?� michael inquired. �frightful ass,� continued the left-hand neighbor, whom michael perceived to be a small round-faced youth, very fair and very pink. �perfectly harmless, of course. are you an harrovian?� michael shook his head. �i thought you were a cousin of my mother,� said the left-hand neighbor. michael looked astonished. �his name�s mackintosh. what�s your name?� michael told him. �my name�s lonsdale. i think we�re on the same staircase�so�s mackintosh. it�s a pity he�s an harrovian, but i promised my mother i�d look him up.� then, after surveying the table, lonsdale went on in a confidential undertone: �i don�t mind telling you that the etonians up here are a pretty poor lot. there are two chaps from my house who are not so bad�in fact rather good eggs�but the rest! well, look at that ass wedderburn. he�s typical.� �i think he looks rather a good sort,� said michael. �my dear chap, he was absolutely barred. m� tutor used to like him, but really�well�i don�t mind telling you, he�s really an æsthete.� with this shocked condemnation, lonsdale turned to his other neighbor and said in his jerky and somewhat mincing voice that was perfectly audible to michael: �i say, tommy, this man on my right isn�t half bad. i don�t know where he comes from, his name�s fane.� �he�s from st. james�.� �where on earth�s that?� �london.� �why, i thought it was a kind of charity school,� said lonsdale. then he turned to michael again: �i say, are you really from st. james�?� michael replied coldly that he was. �i say, come and have coffee with me after hall. one or two o. e.�s are coming in, but you won�t mind?� �why, do you want to find out something about st. james�?� demanded michael, frowning. �oh, i say, don�t be ratty. it�s that ass tommy. he always talks at the top of his voice.� lonsdale, as he spoke, looked so charmingly apologetic and displayed such accomplished sang-froid that michael forgave him immediately and promised to come to coffee. �good egg!� lonsdale exclaimed with the satisfaction of having smoothed over an awkward place. �i say,� he offered, �if you�d like to meet wedderburn, i�ll ask him, too. he seems to have improved since he�s been up at the varsity. don�t you think that fat man wedderburn has improved, tommy?� tommy nodded. �one day�s done him no end of good.� �i say,� lonsdale offered, �you haven�t met fane. mr. fane�mr. grainger. i was just saying to fane that the etonians are a rotten lot this term.� �one or two are all right,� grainger admitted with evident reluctance. �well, perhaps two,� lonsdale agreed. �this dinner isn�t bad, what?� by this time the conversation at the table had become more general, and michael gradually realized that some of the alarm he had felt himself had certainly been felt by his companions. now at any rate there was a perceptible relaxation of tension. still the conversation was only general in so much as that whenever anybody spoke, the rest of the table listened. the moment the flow of his information dried up, somebody else began pumping forth instruction. these slightly nervous little lectures were delivered without any claim to authority and they came up prefaced by the third person of legendary narrative. �they say we shall all have to interview the warden to-morrow.� �they say on sunday afternoon the wagger makes the same speech to the freshers that he�s made for twenty years.� �they say we ought to go head of the river this year.� �they say the freshers are expected to make a bonner on sunday night.� �they say any one can have commons of bread and cheese by sending out word to the buttery. it�s really included in the two-and-fourpence for dinner.� �they say they charge a penny for the napkin every night.� so the information proceeded, and michael had just thought to himself that going up to oxford was very much like going to school again, when from the second-year tables crashed the sound of a concerted sneeze. the dons from high table looked coldly down the hall, expressing a vague, but seemingly impotent disapproval, for immediately afterward that sternutation shook the air a second time. michael thought the difference between school and oxford might be greater than he had supposed. the slowest eater at the second freshmen�s table had nervously left half his savory; wedderburn without apparent embarrassment had received the sub-warden�s permission to rise from dinner; lonsdale hurriedly marshaled as many of his acquaintances as he could, and in a large and noisy group they swarmed through the moonlight toward his rooms. michael was interested by lonsdale�s sitting-room, for he divined at once that it was typical, just a transplanted eton study with the addition of smoking paraphernalia. the overmantel was plumed with small photographs of pleasant young creatures in the gay nautical costumes of the fourth of june and festooned hats of alexandra or monarch, of the same pleasant young creatures at an earlier and chubbier age, of the same pleasant young creatures with penciled mustaches and the white waistcoat of pop. in addition to their individual commemorations the pleasant young creatures would appear again in house groups, in winning house elevens, and most exquisitely of all in eton society. michael always admired the photographs of pop, for they seemed to him to epitomize all the traditions of all the public-schools of england, to epitomize them moreover with something of that immortality of captured action expressed by great athenian sculpture. in comparison with pop the harrow philathletic society was a barbarous group, with all the self-consciousness of a deliberate archaism. besides the personal photographs in lonsdale�s room there were studies of grouse by thorburn; and michael, remembering alan�s grouse, felt in accord with lonsdale and with all that lonsdale stood for. knowing alan, he felt that he knew lonsdale, and at once he became more at ease with all his contemporaries in lonsdale�s room. michael looked at the colored prints of cecil aldin�s pictures and made up his mind he would buy a set for alan: also possibly he would buy for alan the sir galahad of watts which was rather better than the soul�s awakening. after lonsdale�s pictures michael surveyed lonsdale�s books, the brilliantly red volumes of jorrocks, the two or three odd volumes of the badminton library, and the school books tattered and ink-splashed. more interesting than such a library were the glossy new briars, the virgin meerschaum, the patent smoking-tables and another table evidently designed to make drinking easy, but by reason of the complexity of its machinery actually more likely to discourage one forever from refreshment. the rest of the space, apart from the furniture bequeathed by the noisy templeton-collins when he moved to larger rooms above, was crowded with the freshmen whom after hall lonsdale had so hastily gathered together unassorted. �i ordered coffee for sixteen,� announced the host. �i thought it would be quicker than making it in a new machine that my sister gave me. it just makes enough for three, and the only time i tried, it took about an hour to do that ... who�ll drink port?� michael thought the scout�s prophecies about the superfluity of lonsdale�s wine were rather premature, for it seemed that everybody intended to drink port. �i believe this is supposed to be rather good port,� said lonsdale. �it is jolly good,� several connoisseurs echoed. �i don�t know much about it myself. but my governor�s supposed to be rather a judge. he said �this is wasted on you and your friends, but i haven�t got any bad wine to give you.�� here everybody held up their glasses against the light, took another sip and murmured their approval. �do you think this is a good wine, fane?� demanded lonsdale, thereby drawing so much attention to michael that he blushed to nearly as deep a color as the port itself. �i like it very much,� michael said. �do you like it, wedderburn?� asked lonsdale, turning to the freshman who had sat in the armchair at the head of the second table. �damned good wine,� pronounced wedderburn in a voice so rich with appreciation and so deep with judgment that he immediately established a reputation for worldly knowledge, and from having been slightly derided at eton for his artistic ambitions was ever afterward respected and consulted. michael envied his air of authority, but trembled for wedderburn�s position when he heard him reproach lonsdale for his lack of any good pictures. �you might stick up one that can be looked at for more than two seconds,� wedderburn said severely. �what sort of picture?� asked lonsdale. �primavera, for instance,� wedderburn suggested, and michael�s heart beat in sympathy. �never heard of the horse,� lonsdale answered. �who owned her?� �my god,� wedderburn rumbled, �i�ll take you to buy one to-morrow, lonny. you deserve it after that.� �right-o!� lonsdale cheerfully agreed. �only i don�t want my room to look like the academy, you know.� wedderburn shook his head in benevolent contempt, and the conversation was deflected from lonsdale�s artistic education by a long-legged wykehamist with crisp chestnut hair and a thin florid face of dimpling smiles. �has anybody been into venner�s yet?� he asked. �i have,� proclaimed a dumpy etonian whose down-curving nose hung over a perpetually open mouth. �marjoribanks took me in just before hall. but he advised me not to go in by myself yet awhile.� �the second-year men don�t like it,� agreed the long-legged wykehamist with a wise air. �they say one can begin to go in occasionally in one�s third term.� �what is venner�s?� michael asked. �don�t you know?� sniffed the dumpy etonian who had already managed to proclaim his friendship with marjoribanks, the president of the junior common room, and therefore presumably had the right to open his mouth a little wider than usual at michael. �i�m not quite sure myself,� said lonsdale quickly. �i vote that cuffe explains.� �i�m not going to explain,� cuffe protested, and for some minutes his mouth was tightly closed. �isn�t it just a sort of special part of the j. c. r.?� suggested the smiling wykehamist, who seemed to wish to make it pleasant for everybody, so long as he himself would not have to admit ignorance. �old venables himself is a ripper. they say he�s been steward of the j. c. r. for fifty years.� �thirty-two years,� corrected wedderburn in his voice of most reverberant certitude. �venner�s is practically a club. you aren�t elected, but somehow you know just when you can go in without being stared at. there�s nothing in oxford like that little office of venner�s. it�s practically made st. mary�s what it is.� all the freshmen, sipping their port and lolling back in their new gowns, looked very reverent and very conscious of the honor and glory of st. mary�s which they themselves hoped soon to affirm more publicly than they could at present. upon their meditations sounded very loud the blast of a coach-horn from above. �that�s templeton-collins,� said michael. �who�s he?� several demanded. �he�s the man who used to live in these rooms last year,� said lonsdale lightly, as if that were the most satisfactory description for these freshmen, as indeed for all its youthful heartlessness it was. �let�s all yell and tell him to shut up that infernal row,� suggested wedderburn sternly. already from sitting in an armchair at the head of a table of freshmen he was acquiring an austere seniority of his own. �to a second-year blood?� whispered somebody in dread surprise. �why not take away the coach-horn?� lonsdale added. however, this the freshmen were not prepared to do, although with unanimity they invited templeton-collins to refrain from blowing it. �keep quiet, little boys,� shouted templeton-collins down the stairs. the sixteen freshmen retreated well pleased with their audacity, and the long-legged wykehamist proclaimed delightedly that this was going to be a hot year. �i vote we have a bonner.� �will you light it, sinclair?� asked another wykehamist in a cynical drawl. �why not?� sinclair retorted. �oh, i don�t know. but you always used to be better at theory than practice.� �how these wykehamists love one another,� laughed an etonian. this implied criticism welded the four winchester men present in defiance of all england, and michael was impressed by their haughty and bigoted confidence. �sunday night is the proper time for a bonner,� said wedderburn. �after the first �after.�� ��after�?� queried another. �oh, don�t you know? haven�t you heard?� several well-informed freshmen began, but wedderburn with his accustomed gravity assumed the burden of instruction, and the others gave way. �every sunday after hall,� he explained, �people go up to the j. c. r. and take wine and dessert. healths are drunk, and of course the second-year men try to make the freshers blind. then everybody goes round to one of the large rooms in cloisters for the �after common room.� people sing and do various parlor tricks. the president of the j. c. r. gives the first �after� of the term. the others are usually given by three or four men together. whisky and cigars and lemon-squash. they usually last till nearly twelve. great sport. they�re much better than private wines, better for everybody. that�s why we have them on sunday night,� he concluded rather vaguely. the unwieldy bulk of sixteen freshmen was beginning to break up into bridge fours. friendships were already in visible elaboration. the first evening had wonderfully brought them together. something deeper than the superficial amity of chance juxtaposition at the same table was now begetting tentative confidences that would ultimately ripen to intimacies. etonians were discovering that all harrovians were not the dark-blue bedecked ruffians of lords nor the aggressive boors of etonian tradition. harrovians were beginning to suspect that some etonians might exist less flaccid, less deliberately lackadaisical, less odiously serene than the majority of those they had so far only encountered in summer holidays. carthusians found that athletic prowess was going to count pleasantly in their favor. even the wykehamists extended a cordiality that was not positively chilling, and though they never lost an opportunity to criticize implicity all other schools, and though their manners were so perfect that they abashed all but the more debonair etonians, still it was evident they were sincerely trying to acknowledge a little merit, a little good-fellowship among these strange new contemporaries, however exuberantly uneducated they might appear to wykeham�s adamantine mold. michael did not thrust himself upon any of these miniature societies in the making, because the rather conscious efforts of diverse groups to put themselves into accord with one another made him shy and restless. nobody yet among these freshmen seemed able to take his neighbor for granted, and michael fancied that himself as the product of a day-school appeared to these cloistered catechumens as surprising and disconcerting and vaguely improper as a ballet-girl or a french count. at the same time he sympathized with their bewilderment and gave them credit for their attempt not to let him think he confused their social outlook. but the obviously sustained attempt depressed him with a sense of fatigue. after all, his trousers were turned up at the bottom and the last button of his waistcoat was undone. failure to comply with the draconic code of dress could not be attributed to him, as mercilessly it had served to banish into despised darkness a few scholars whose trousers frayed themselves upon their insteps and whose waistcoats were ignobly buttoned to the very end. �an old giggleswickian,� commented some one in reference to one of these disgraced scholars, with such fanatic modishness that michael was surprised to see he wore the crude tie of the old carthusians; such inexorable scorn consorted better with the rich sobriety of the old wykehamist colors. �why, were you at school with him?� asked michael quickly. �me? at giggleswick?� stammered the carthusian. �why not?� said michael. �you seem to know all about him.� �isn�t your name fane?� demanded the carthusian abruptly, and when michael nodded, he said he remembered him at his private school. �that�ll help me along a bit, i expect,� michael prophesied. �we were in the same form at randell�s. my name�s avery.� �i remember you,� said michael coldly. and he thought to himself how little avery�s once stinging wit seemed to matter now. really he thought avery was almost attractive with his fresh complexion and deep blue eyes and girlish sensitive mouth, and when he rose to go out of lonsdale�s room, he was not sorry that avery rose too and walked out with him into the quad. �i say,� avery began impulsively. �did i make an ass of myself just now? i mean, do you think people were sick with me?� �what for?� �i mean did i sound snobbish?� avery pursued. �not more than anybody else,� michael assured him, and as he watched avery�s expression of petulant self-reproach he wondered how it was possible that once it mattered whether avery knew he had a governess and wore combinations instead of pants and vest. �i say, aren�t you rather keen on pictures? i heard you talking to wedderburn. do come up to my room some time. i�m in cloisters. are you going out? you�ll have to buck up. it�s after nine.� they had reached the lodge, and michael, nodding good-night, was ushered out by the porter. as he reached the corner of longwall, tom boomed his final warning, and over the last echoing reverberation sounded here and there the lisp of footsteps in the moonlight. michael wandered on in meditation. from lighted windows in the high came a noise of laughter and voices that seemed to make more grave and more perdurable the spires and towers of oxford, deepening somehow the solemnity of the black entries and the empty silver spaces before them. michael pondered the freshmen�s chatter and apprehended dimly how this magical sublunary city would convert all that effusion of naïve intolerance to her own renown. he stood still for a moment rapt in an ecstasy of submission to this austere beneficence of stone that sheltered even him, the worshiper of one day, with the power of an immortal pride. he wandered on and on through the liquid moonshine, gratefully conscious of his shadow that showed him in his cap and gown not so conspicuous an intruder as he had seemed to himself that morning. so for an hour he wandered in a tranced revelry of aspirations, until at last breathlessly he turned into the tall glooms of new college street and queen�s lane, where as he walked he touched the cold stones, forgetting the world. in the high he saw his own college washed with silver, and the tower tremulous in the moonlight, fine-spun and frail as a lily. it was pleasant to nod to one or two people standing in the lodge. it was pleasant to turn confidently under the gateway of st. cuthbert�s quad. it was pleasant to be greeted by his own name at the entrance of his staircase. it was the greatest contentment he had ever known to see the glowing of his fire, and slowly to untie under the red-shaded light the fat parcels of his newly-bought books. outside in the high a tram rumbled slowly past. the clock struck ten from st. mary�s tower. the wicker chair creaked comfortably. the watered silk of the rich bindings swished luxuriously. this was how boccaccio should be read. michael�s mind was filled with the imagination of that gay company, secluded from the fever, telling their gay stories in the sunlight of their garden. this was how rabelais should be read: the very pages seemed to glitter like wine. midnight chimed from st. mary�s tower. one by one the new books went gloriously to their gothic shelves. the red lamp was extinguished. michael�s bedroom was scented with the breath of the october night. it was too cold to read more than a few sentences of pater about some splendid bygone florentine. out snapped the electric light: the room was full of moonshine, so full that the water in the bath tub was gleaming. chapter ii the first week the first two or three days were busy with interviews, initiations, addresses, and all the academic panoply which oxford brings into action against her neophytes. first of all, the senior tutor, mr. ardle, had to be visited. he was a deaf and hostile little man whose side-whiskers and twitching eyelid and manner of exaggerated respect toward undergraduates combined to give the impression that he regarded them as objectionable discords in an otherwise justly modulated existence. michael in his turn went up the stairs to mr. ardle�s room, knocked at the door and passed in at the don�s bidding to where he sat sighing amid heaps of papers and statistical sheets. the glacial air of the room was somehow increased by the photographs of swiss mountains that crowded the walls. �mr.?� queried the senior tutor. �oh, yes, mr. fane. st. james�. your tutor will be the dean�please sit down�the dean, mr. ambrose. what school are you proposing to read?� �history, i imagine,� said michael. �history!� he repeated, as mr. ardle blinked at him. �yes,� said the senior tutor in accents of patient boredom. �but we have to consider the immediate future. i suggest honor moderations and literæ humaniores.� �i explained to you that i wanted to read history,� said michael, echoing himself involuntarily the don�s tone of patient boredom. �i have you down as coming from st. james�,� snapped the senior tutor. �a school reputed to send out good classical scholars, i believe.� �i�m not a scholar,� michael interrupted. �and i don�t intend to take honor mods.� �that will be for the college to decide.� �supposing the college decided i was to read chinese?� michael inquired. �there is no need for impertinence. well, well, for the present i have put you down for the lectures on pass moderations. you will attend my lectures on cicero, mr. churton on the apologia, mr. carder on logic, and mr. vereker for latin prose. the weekly essay set by the warden for freshmen you will read to your tutor mr. ambrose.� then he went on to give instructions about chapels and roll-calls and dining in hall and the various regulations of the college, while the swiss mountains stared bleakly down at the chilly interview. �now you�d better go and see mr. ambrose,� said the senior tutor, and michael left him. on the staircase he passed lonsdale going up. �what�s he like?� asked lonsdale. �pretty dull,� said michael. �does he keep you long?� michael shook his head. �good work,� said lonsdale cheerfully. �because i�ve just bought a dog.� and he whistled his way upstairs. michael wondered what the purchase of a dog had got to do with the senior tutor, but relinquished the problem on perceiving mr. ambrose�s name on the floor below. the dean�s room was very much like the senior tutor�s, and the interview, save that it was made slightly more tolerable by the help of a cigarette, was of much the same chilliness owing to michael�s reiterated refusal to read honor moderations. �i expected a little keenness,� said mr. ambrose. �i shall be keen enough when i�ve finished with pass mods,� said michael. �though what good it will be for me to read the pro milone and the apology all over again, when i read them at fifteen, i don�t know.� �then take honor moderations?� the dean advised. �i�ve given up classics,� michael argued, and as the cigarette was beginning to burn his fingers and the problem of disposing of it in the dean�s room seemed insoluble, he hurried out. lonsdale was whistling his way downstairs from his interview with mr. ardle. �hallo, fane, what did he say to you?� �i think all these dons are very much like schoolmasters,� growled michael resentfully. �they can�t help it,� said lonsdale. �i asked old ardle if i could keep a dog in college, and he turned as blue as an owl. any one would think i�d asked him if i could breed crocodiles.� in addition to these personal interviews the freshmen had certain communal experiences to undergo. among these was their formal reception into the university, when they trooped after the senior tutor through gothic mazes and in some beautiful and remote room received from the vice-chancellor a bound volume of statuta et decreta universitatis. this book they carried back with them to college, where in many rooms it shared with ruff�s guide and soapy sponge�s sporting tour an intellectual oligarchy. saturday morning was spent in meeting the warden at the warden�s lodgings, where they shook hands with him in nervous quartets. michael when he discussed this experience with his fellows fancied that the warden�s butler had left a deeper impression than the warden himself. on sunday afternoon, however, when they gathered in the hall to hear the annual address of welcome and exhortation, the great moon-faced warden shone undimmed. �you have come to oxford,� he concluded, �some of you to hunt foxes, some of you to wear very large and very unusual overcoats, some of you to row for your college and a few of you to work. but all of you have come to oxford to remain english gentlemen. in after life when you are ambassadors and proconsuls and members of parliament you will never remember this little address which i have the honor now of delivering to you. that will not matter, so long as you always remember that you are st. mary�s men and the heirs of an honorable and ancient foundation.� the great moon-faced warden beamed at them for one moment, and after thanking them for their polite attention floated out of the hall. the pictures of cardinals and princes and poets in their high golden frames seemed in the dusk faintly to nod approval. the bell was ringing for evening chapel, and the freshmen went murmurously along the cloisters to take their places, feeling rather proud that the famous quire was their quire and looking with inquisitive condescension at the visitors who sat out of sight of those candle-starred singers. in hall that night the chief topic of conversation was the etiquette and ritual of the first j. c. r. wine. michael to his chagrin found himself seated next to mackintosh, for mackintosh, cousin though he was of the sparkish lonsdale, was a gloomy fellow scornful of the general merriment. as somebody had quickly said, sharpening his young wit, he was more of a wet-blanket than a mackintosh. �i suppose you�re coming to the j. c. r.?� michael asked. �why should i? why should i waste my time trying to keep sober for the amusement of all these fools?� �i expect it will be rather a rag,� said michael hopefully, but he found it tantalizing to hear farther down the table snatches of conversation that heard more completely would have enlightened him on several points he had not yet mastered in the ceremony of wine in the j. c. r. however, it was useless to speculate on such subjects in the company of the lugubrious mackintosh. so they talked instead of sandow exercises and mountain-climbing in cumberland, neither of which topics interested michael very greatly. hall was rowdy that evening, and the dons looked petulantly down from high table, annoyed to think that their distinguished visitors of sunday evening should see so many pieces of bread flung by the second-year men. the moon-faced warden was deflected from his intellectual revolutions round a swedish man of science, and sent the butler down to whisper a remonstrance to the head of one of the second-year tables. but no sooner had the butler again taken his place behind the warden�s chair than a number of third-year men whose table had been littered by the ammunition of their juniors retaliated without apparent loss of dignity, and presently both years combined to bombard under the scholars. meanwhile the freshmen applauded with laughter, and thought their seniors were wonderful exemplars for the future. after hall everybody went crowding up the narrow stairs to the j. c. r., and now most emphatically the j. c. r. presented a cheerful sight, with the red-shaded lamps casting such a glow that the decanters of wine stationed before the president�s place looked like a treasure of rubies. the two long tables were set at right angles to one another, and the president sat near their apex. all along their shining length at regular intervals stood great dishes of grapes richly bloomed, of apples and walnuts and salted almonds and deviled biscuits. the freshmen by instinct rushed to sit altogether at the end of the table more remote from the door. as michael looked at his contemporaries, he perceived that of the forty odd freshmen scarcely five-and-twenty had come to this, the first j. c. r. vaguely he realized that already two sets were manifest in the college, and he felt depressed by the dullness of those who had not come and some satisfaction with himself for coming. the freshmen stared with awe at marjoribanks, the president of the j. c. r., and told one another with reverence that the two men on either side of him were those famous rowing blues from new college, permain and strutt; while some of them who had known these heroes at school sat anxiously unaware of their presence and spoke of them familiarly as jack permain and bingey. there were several other cynosures from new college and university near the president�s chair, a vivid bunch of leander ties. there were also one or two old st. mary�s men who had descended to haunt for a swift week-end the place of their renown, and these were pointed out by knowing freshmen as unconcernedly as possible. one by one the president released the decanters, and round and round they came. sometimes they would be held up by an interesting conversation; and when the sherry and the port and the burgundy were all standing idle, a shout of �pass along the wine� would go up, after which for a time the decanters would swing vigorously from hand to hand. then suddenly marjoribanks was seen to be bowing to permain, and permain was bowing solemnly back to his host. this was a plain token to everybody that the moment for drinking healths had arrived. a great babel of shouted names broke out at the end of the common room remote from the freshmen, so tremendous a din that the freshmen felt the drinking of their own healths at their end would pass unnoticed. so they drank to one another, bowing gravely after the manner of their seniors. michael had determined to take nothing but burgundy, and when he had exchanged sentiments with the most of his year, he congratulated himself upon the comparative steadiness of his head. already in the case of one or two reckless mixers he noticed a difficulty in deciding how many times it was necessary to clip a cigar, an inclination to strike the wrong end of a match and a confusion between right and left when the decanters in their circulation paused before them. after the first tumult of good wishes had died down, marjoribanks lifted his glass, looked along to where the freshmen were sitting and shouted �cuffe!� cuffe hastily lifted his glass and answering �marjorie!� drained his salute of acknowledgment. then he sat back in his chair with an expression, michael thought, very like that of an actress who has been handed a bouquet by the conductor. but cuffe was not to be the only recipient of honor, for immediately afterward marjoribanks sang out �lonsdale!� lonsdale was at the moment trying to explain to tommy grainger some trick with the skin of a banana which ought to have been an orange and a wooden match which ought to have been a wax vesta. michael, who was sitting next to him, prodded anxiously his ribs. �what�s the matter?� demanded lonsdale indignantly. �can�t you see i�m doing a trick?� �marjoribanks is drinking your health,� whispered michael in an agony that lonsdale would be passed over. �hurrah!� shouted lonsdale, rising to his feet and scandalizing his fellows by his intoxicated audacity. �where is the old ripper!� then �mark over!� he shouted and collapsed into tommy grainger�s lap. everybody laughed, and everybody, even the cynosures from new college and university, began to drink lonsdale�s health without heel-taps. �no heelers, young lonsdale,� they called mirthfully. lonsdale pulled himself together, stood up, and, balancing himself with one hand on michael�s shoulder, replied: �no heelers, you devils? no legs, you mean!� then he collapsed again. soon all the freshmen found that their healths were now being drunk, all the freshmen, that is, from eton or winchester or harrow. michael and one or two others without old schoolfellows among the seniors remained more sober. but then suddenly a gravely indolent man with a quizzical face, who the day before in the lodge had had occasion to ask michael some trifling piece of information, cried �fane!� raising his glass. michael blushed, blessed his unknown acquaintance inwardly and drank what was possibly the sincerest sentiment of the evening. other senior men hearing his name, followed suit, even the great marjoribanks himself; and soon michael was very nearly as full as lonsdale. an immense elation caressed his soul, a boundless sense of communal life, a conception of sublime freedom that seemed to be illimitable forever. the wine was over. down the narrow stone stairs everybody poured. at the foot on the right was a little office�the office of venables, the steward of the j. c. r., the eleusinian and impenetrable sanctum of seniority called venner�s. wine-chartered though they were, the freshmen did not venture even to peep round the corner of the door, but hurried out into the cloisters, where they walked arm-in-arm shouting. michael could have fancied himself at a gathering of mediæval witches. the moon temporarily clouded over by the autumnal fog made the corbels and gargoyles and sculptured figures above the cloisters take on a grotesque vivacity, as the vapors curled around them. the wine humming in his head: the echoing shouts of his companions: the decorative effect of the gowns: the chiming high above of the bells in the tower: all combined to create for michael a nightmare of exultation. he was aware of a tremendous zest in doing nothing, and there flowed over him a consciousness that this existence of shout and dance along these cloisters was really existence lived in a perpetual expression of the finest energy. the world seemed to be going round so much faster than usual that in order to keep up with this new pace, it was necessary for the individual like himself to walk faster, to talk faster, to think faster, and finally to raise to incoherent speed every coherent faculty. another curious effect of the wine, for after all michael admitted to himself that his mental exhilaration must be due to burgundy, was the way in which he found himself at every moment walking beside a different person. he would scarcely have finished an excited acceptance of wedderburn�s offer to go to-morrow and look at some dürer woodcuts, when he would suddenly find himself discussing sympathetically with lonsdale the iniquity of the dons in refusing to let him keep his new dog in one of the scouts� pigeon-holes in the lodge. �after all,� lonsdale pointed out earnestly, �they�re never really full, and the dog isn�t large�of course i don�t expect to keep him in a pigeon-hole when he�s full grown, but he�s a puppy.� �it�s absurd,� michael agreed. �that�s the word i�ve been looking for,� lonsdale exclaimed. �what was it again? absurd! you see what i say is, when one scout�s box is full, move the poor little beast into another. it isn�t likely they�d all be full at the same time. what was that word you found just now? absurd! that�s it. it is absurd. it�s absurd!� �and anyway,� michael pointed out, �if they were all full they could chain him to the leg of the porter�s desk.� �of course they could. i say, fane, you�re a damned good sort,� said lonsdale. �i wish you�d come and have lunch with me to-morrow. i don�t think i�ve asked very many chaps: i want to show you that dog. he�s in a stable off holywell at present. beastly shame! i�m not complaining, of course, but what i want to ask our dons is how would they like to be bought by me and shut up in holywell?� and just when michael had a very good answer ready, he found himself arm-in-arm with wedderburn again, who was saying in his gravest voice that over a genuine woodcut by dürer it was well worth taking trouble. but before michael could disengage wedderburn�s dürer from lonsdale�s dog, he found himself running very fast beside tommy grainger who was shouting: �five�s late again! six, you�re bucketing! bow, you�re late! two, _will_ you get your belly down!� then grainger stopped suddenly and asked michael in a very solemn tone whether he knew what was the matter with the crew. michael shook his head and watched the others steer their devious course toward him and grainger. �they�re too drunk to row,� said grainger. �much too drunk,� michael agreed. when he had pondered for a moment or two his last remark, he discovered it was extraordinarily funny. so he was seized with a paroxysm of laughter, and the more he laughed, the more he wanted to laugh. when somebody asked him what he was laughing at, he replied it was because he had left the electric light burning in his room. several people seemed to think this just as funny as michael thought it, and they joined him in his mirth, laughing unquenchably until wedderburn observed severely in his deepest voice: �buck up, you�re all drunk, and they�re coming out of venner�s.� then like some patient profound countryman he shepherded them all up to the large room on a corner staircase of cloisters, where the �after� was going to be held. the freshmen squeezed themselves together in a corner and were immensely entertained by the various performers, applauding with equal rapture a light comedian from pembroke, a tenor from corpus, a comic singer from oriel and a mimic from professional london. they drank lemon squashes to steady themselves: they joined in choruses: they cheered and smoked cigars and grew more and more conscious as the evening progressed that they belonged to a great college called st. mary�s. their enthusiasm reached its zenith, when the captain of the varsity eleven (a st. mary�s man even as they were st. mary�s men) sang the st. mary�s song in a voice whose gentleness of utterance and sighing modesty in no way abashed the noisy appreciation of the audience. it was a wonderful song, all about the triumphs of the college on river and cricket-field, in the schools, in parliament and indeed everywhere else. it had a fine rollicking chorus which was repeated twice after each verse. and as there were about seventeen verses, by the time the song was half over the freshmen had learned the words and were able to sing the final chorus with a vigor which positively detonated against the windows and contrasted divertingly with the almost inaudible soloist. last of all came auld lang syne, when everybody stood up on chairs and joined hands, seniors, second-year men and freshmen. auld lang syne ended with perhaps the noisiest moment of all because although lonsdale had taken several lemon squashes to steady himself, he had not taken enough to keep his balance through the ultimate energetic repetition, when he collapsed headlong into a tray of syphons and glasses, dragging with him two other freshmen. but nobody seemed to have hurt himself, and downstairs they all rushed, shouting and hulloaing, into the cool moonlight. the guests from new college and university and the �out-of-college� men hurried home, for it was close upon midnight. in the lodge the freshmen foregathered for a few minutes with the second-year men, and as they talked they knew that the moment was come when they must proclaim themselves free from the restrictions of school, and by the kindling of a bonfire prove that they were now truly grown up. bundles of faggots were seized from the scouts� holes: in the angle of st. cuthbert�s quad where the complexion of the gravel was tanned by the numberless bonfires of past generations the pile of wood grew taller and taller: two or three douches of paraffin made the mass readily inflammable: a match was set, and with a roar the bonfire began. from their windows second-year men, their faces lighted by the ascending blaze, looked down with pleasant patronage upon the traditional pastime of their juniors. the freshmen danced gleefully round the pyre of their boyhood, feeding it with faggots and sometimes daringly and ostentatiously with chairs: the heat became intense: the smoke surged upward, obscuring the bland aspectful moon. slowly upon the group of law-breakers fell a silence, as they stood bewitched by the beauty of their own handiwork. the riotous preparations and annunciatory yells had died away to an intimate murmur of conversation. from the lodge came shadbolt the unctuous head-porter to survey for a moment this mighty bonfire: conscious of their undergraduate dignity the freshmen chaffed him, until he retired with muttered protests to summon the dean. �what will the dean do?� asked one or two less audacious ones as they faded into various doorways, ready to obliterate their presence as soon as authority should arrive upon the scene. �what does the dean matter?� cried others, flinging more faggots on to the fire until it crackled and spat and bellowed more fiercely than ever, lighting up with its wavy radiance the great elms beyond the warden�s garden and the palladian fragment of new quad whence the dons like georgian squires pondered their prosperity. presently against the silvery space framed by the gateway of st. cuthbert�s tower appeared the silhouette of the dean, lank and tall with college cap tip-tilted down on to his nose and round his neck a gown wrapped like a shawl. nearer he came, and involuntarily the freshmen so lately schoolboys took on in their attitude a certain anxiety. somehow the group round the bonfire had become much smaller. somehow more windows looking upon the quad were populated with flickering watchful faces. �great scott! what can ambrose do?� demanded lonsdale despairingly, but when at last the dean reached the zone of the fire, there only remained about eight freshmen to ascertain his views and test his power. the dean stood for a minute or two, silently warming his hands. in a ring the presumed leaders eyed him, talking to each other the while with slightly exaggerated carelessness. �well, mr. fane?� asked the dean. �well, sir,� michael replied. �damned good,� whispered lonsdale ecstatically in michael�s ear. �you couldn�t have said anything better. that�s damned good.� michael under the enthusiastic congratulations of lonsdale began to feel he had indeed said something very good, but he hoped he would soon have an opportunity to say something even better. �enjoying yourself, mr. lonsdale?� inquired the dean. �yes, sir. are you?� answered lonsdale. �splendid,� murmured michael. a silence followed this exchange of courtesies. the bonfire was beginning to die down, but nobody ventured under the dean�s eye to put on more faggots. under-porters were seen drawing near with pails of water, and though a cushion aimed from a window upset one pail, very soon the bonfire was a miserable mess of smoking ashes and the moon resumed her glory. from an upper window some second-year men chanted in a ridiculous monotone: �the dean�he was the dean�he was the dean�he was the dean! the dean�he was the dean he was�the dean he was�the dean!!� mr. ambrose did not bother to look up in the direction of the glee, but took another glance at michael, lonsdale, grainger and the other stalwarts. then he turned away. �good night,� lonsdale called after the retreating figure of the tall hunched don, and not being successful in luring him back, he poured his scorn upon the defaulters safe in their rooms above. �you are a lot of rotters. come down and make another.� but the freshmen were not yet sufficiently hardy to do this. one by one they melted away, and lonsdale marked his contempt for their pusillanimity by throwing two syphons and his gown into the warden�s garden. after which he invited michael and his fellow die-hards to drink a glass of port in his rooms. here for an hour they sat, discussing their contemporaries. in the morning shadbolt was asked if anybody had been hauled for last night�s bonner. �mr. fane, mr. grainger and the honorable lonsdale,� he informed the inquirer. together those three interviewed the dean. �two guineas each,� he announced after a brief homily on the foolishness and inconvenience of keeping everybody up on the first sunday of term. �and if you feel aggrieved, you can get up a subscription among your co-lunatics to defray your expenses.� michael, grainger and lonsdale sighed very movingly, and tried to look like martyrs, but they greatly enjoyed telling what had happened to the other freshmen and several second-year men. it was told, too, in a manner of elaborate nonchalance with many vows to do the same to-morrow. chapter iii the first term his first term at oxford was for michael less obviously a period of discovery than from his pre-figurative dreams he had expected. he had certainly pictured himself in the midst of a society more intellectually varied than that in which he found himself; and all that first term became in retrospect merely a barren noisy time from which somehow after numberless tentative adjustments and developments emerged a clear view of his own relation to the college, and more particularly to his own �year.� these trials of personality were conducted with all the help that sensitiveness could render him. but this sensitiveness when it had registered finely and accurately a few hazardous impressions was often sharp as a nettle in its action, so sharp indeed sometimes that he felt inclined to withdraw from social encounters into a solitude of books. probably michael would have become a recluse, if he had not decided on the impulse of the moment to put down his name for rugby football. he was fairly successful in the first match, and afterward carben, the secretary of the college club, invited him to tea. this insignificant courtesy gave michael a considerable amount of pleasure, inasmuch as it was the first occasion on which he had been invited to his rooms by a second-year man. with carben he found about half a dozen other seniors and a couple of freshmen whom he did not remember to have noticed before; and the warm room, whose murmurous tinkle was suddenly hushed as he entered, affected him with a glowing hospitality. michael had found it so immediately easy to talk that when carben made a general observation on the row of sunday night�s celebration, michael proclaimed enthusiastically the excellence of the bonfire. �were you in that gang?� carben asked in a tone of contemptuous surprise. �i was fined,� michael announced, trying to quench the note of exultation in deference to the hostility he instinctively felt he was creating. �i say,� carben sneered, �so at last one of the �bloods� is going to condescend to play rugger. jonah,� he called to the captain of the fifteen who was lolling in muscular grandeur at the other end of the room, �we�ve got a college blood playing three-quarter for us.� �good work,� said jones, with a toast-encumbered laugh. �where is he?� carben pointed to michael who blushed rather angrily. �no end of a blood,� carben went on. �lights bonfires and gets fined all in his first week.� the two freshmen sniggered, and michael made up his mind to consult lonsdale about their doom. he was pensively damned if these two asses should laugh at him. there had already been talk of ragging one or two freshmen whose raw and mediocre bearing had offended the modish perceptions of the majority. when the proscription was on foot, michael promised his injured pride that he would denounce them with their red wrists and their smug insignificance. �you were at st. james�, weren�t you?� asked jones. �did you know mansfield?� �i didn�t know him�exactly,� said michael, �but�in fact�we thought him rather a tick.� �thanks very much and all that,� said jones. �he was a friend of mine, but don�t apologize.� there was a general laugh at michael�s expense from which carben�s guffaw survived. �jonah was never one for moving in the best society,� he said with an implication in his tone that the best society was something positively contemptible. michael retired from the conversation and sat silent, counting with cold dislike the constellated pimples on carben�s face. meanwhile the others exercised their scornful wit upon the �bloods� of the college. �did you hear about fitzroy and gingold?� carben indignantly demanded. �gingold was tubbing yesterday and fitzroy was coaching. �can�t you keep your fat little paunch down? i don�t want to look at it,� said fitzroy. that�s pretty thick from a second-year man to a third-year man in front of a lot of freshers. gingold�s going to jack rowing, and he�s quite right.� �quite right,� a chorus echoed. michael remembered fitzroy very blithely intoxicated at the j. c. r.; he remembered, too, that fitzroy had drunk his health. this explosion of wrath at the insult offered to gingold�s dignity irritated michael. he felt sure that gingold had a fat little paunch and that he thoroughly deserved to be told to keep it out of sight. gingold was probably as offensive as jones and carben. �these rowing bloods think they�ve bought the college,� somebody was wisely propounding. �we ought to go head of the river this year, oughtn�t we?� michael inquired with as much innocence as he could muster to veil the armed rebuke. �well, i think it would be a d�d good thing, if we dropped six places,� carben affirmed. how many pimples there were, thought michael, looking at the secretary, and he felt he must make some excuse to escape from this room whose atmosphere of envy and whose castrated damns were shrouding oxford with a dismal genteelness. �oh, by the way, before you go,� said carben, �you�d better let me put your name down for the ugger.� �the what?� michael asked, with a faint insolence. �the union.� michael, occupied with the problem of adjustment, had no intention of committing himself so early to the union and certainly not under the sponsorship of carben. �i don�t think i�ll join this term.� he ran down the stairs from carben�s rooms and stood for a moment apprehensively upon the lawn. then sublime in the dusk he saw st. mary�s tower and, refreshed by that image of an aspiration, he shook off the memory of carben�s tea-party as if he had alighted from a crowded sunday train and plunged immediately into deep country. in hall that night lonsdale asked michael what he had been doing, and was greatly amused by his information, so much amused that he called along the table to grainger: �i say, tommy, do you know we�ve got a rugger rough with us?� several people murmured in surprise. �i say, have you really been playing rugger?� �well, great scott!� exclaimed michael, �there�s nothing very odd in that.� �but the rugger roughs are all very bad men,� lonsdale protested. �some are,� michael admitted. �still, it�s a better game than socker.� �but everybody at st. mary�s plays socker,� lonsdale went on. michael felt for a while enraged against the pettiness of outlook that even the admired lonsdale displayed. how ridiculous it was to despise rugby football because the college was so largely composed of etonians and harrovians and wykehamists and carthusians. it was like schoolboys. and michael abruptly realized that all of them sitting at this freshmen�s table were really schoolboys. it was natural after all that with the patriotism of youth they should disdain games foreign to their traditions. this, however, was no reason for allowing rugby to be snuffed out ignominiously. �anyway i shall go on playing rugger,� michael asserted. �shall i have a shot?� suggested lonsdale. �it�s a most devilish good game,� michael earnestly avowed. �tommy,� lonsdale shouted, �i�m going to be a rugger rough myself.� �i shall sconce you, young lonsdale, if you make such a row,� said wedderburn severely. �my god, wedders, you are a prize ass,� chuckled the offender. wedderburn whispered to the scout near him. �have you sconced me?� lonsdale demanded. the head of the table nodded. lonsdale was put to much trouble and expense to avenge his half-crown. finally with great care he took down all the pictures in wedderburn�s room and hung in their places gaudy texts. also for the plaster venus of milo he caused to be made a miniature chest-protector. it was all very foolish, but it afforded exquisite entertainment to lonsdale and his auxiliaries, especially when in the lodge they beheld wedderburn�s return from a dinner out of college, and when presently they visited him in his room to enjoy his displeasure. michael�s consciousness of the sharp division in the college between two broad sections prevented him from retiring into seclusion. he continued to play rugby football almost entirely in order to hear with a delighted irony the comments of the �bad men� on the �bloods.� yet many of these �bad men� he rather liked, and he would often defend them to his critical young contemporaries, although on the �bad men� of his own year he was as hard as the rest of the social leaders. he was content in this first term to follow loyally, with other heedless ones, the trend of the moment. he made few attempts to enlarge the field of his outlook by cultivating acquaintanceship outside his own college. even alan he seldom visited, since in these early days of oxford it seemed to him essential to move cautiously and always under the protection of numbers. these freshmen in their first term found a curious satisfaction in numbers. when they lunched together, they lunched in eights and twelves; when they dined out of college, as they sometimes did, at the clarendon or the mitre or the queen�s, they gathered in the lodge almost in the dimensions of a school-treat. �why do we always go about in such quantity?� michael once asked wedderburn. �what else can we do?� answered wedderburn. �we must subject each other to�i mean�we haven�t got any clubs yet. we�re bound to stick together.� �well, i�m getting rather fed up with it,� said michael. �i feel more like a tourist than a varsity man. every day we lunch and dine and take coffee and tea in great masses of people. i�m bored to tears by half the men i go about with, and i�m sure they�re bored to tears with me. we don�t talk about anything but each other�s schools and whether a is a better chap than b, or whether c is a gentleman and if it�s true that d isn�t really. i bought for my own pleasure some rather decent books; and every other evening about twelve people come and read them over each other�s shoulders, while i spend my whole time blowing cigarette ash off the pictures. and when they�ve all read the story of the nightingale in the decameron, they sit up till one o�clock discussing who of our year is most likely to be elected president of the j. c. r. four years from now.� but for all michael�s grumbling through that first term he was beginning to perceive the blurred outlines of an intimate society at oxford which in the years to come he would remember. there was wedderburn himself whose square-headed solidity of demeanor and episcopal voice masked a butterfly of a temperament that flitted from flower to flower of artistic experiment or danced attendance upon freshmen, the honey of whose future fame he seemed always able to probe. �i wonder if you really are the old snob you try to make yourself,� said michael. �and yet i don�t think it is snobbishness. i believe it�s a form of collecting. it�s a throw back to primitive life in a private school. one day in your fourth year you�ll give a dinner party for about twelve bloods and i shall come too and remind you just when and how and where you picked them all up before their value was perfectly obvious. partly of course it�s due to being at eton where you had nothing to do but observe social distinction in the making and talk about burne-jones to your tutor.� �my dear fellow,� said wedderburn deeply, �i have these people up to my rooms because i like them.� �but it is convenient always to like the right people,� michael argued. �there are lots of others just as pleasant whom you don�t like. for instance, avery��� �avery!� wedderburn snorted. �he�s not likely ever to be captain of the �varsity eleven,� said michael. �but he�s amusing, and he can talk about books.� �patronizing ass,� wedderburn growled. �that�s exactly what he isn�t,� michael contradicted. �damnable poseur,� wedderburn rumbled. �oh, well, so are you,� said michael. he thought how willfully wedderburn would persist in misjudging avery. yet himself had spent most delightful hours with him. to be sure, his sensitiveness made him sharp-tongued, and he dressed rather too well. but all the carthusians at st. mary�s dressed rather too well and carried about with them the atmosphere of a week-end in a sporting country-house owned by very rich people. this burbling prosperity would gradually trickle away, michael thought, and he began to follow the course of avery four years hence directed by oxford to�to what? to some distinguished goal of art, but whether as writer or painter or sculptor he did not know, avery was so very versatile. michael mentally put him on one side to decorate a conspicuous portion of the ideal edifice he dreamed of creating from his oxford society. there was lonsdale. lonsdale really possessed the serene perfection of a great work of art. michael thought to himself that almost he could bear to attend for ever ardle�s dusty lectures on cicero in order that for ever he might hear lonsdale admit with earnest politeness that he had not found time to glance at the text the day before, that he was indeed sorry to cause mr. ardle such a mortification, but that unfortunately he had left his plato in a sadler�s shop, where he had found it necessary to complain of a saddle newly made for him. �but i am lecturing on cicero, mr. lonsdale. the pro milone was not delivered by plato, mr. lonsdale.� �what�s he talking about?� lonsdale whispered to michael. �nor was it delivered by mr. fane,� added the senior tutor dryly. lonsdale looked at first very much alarmed by this suggestion, then seeing by the lecturer�s face that something was still wrong, he assumed a puzzled expression, and finally in an attempt to relieve the situation he laughed very heartily and said: �oh, well, after all, it�s very much the same.� then, as everybody else laughed very loudly, lonsdale sat down and leaned back, pulling up his trousers in gentle self-congratulation. �rum old buffer,� he whispered presently to michael. �his eye gets very glassy when he looks at me. do you think i ought to ask him to lunch?� michael thought that avery, wedderburn and lonsdale might be considered to form the nucleus of the intimate ideal society which his imagination was leading him on to shape. and if that trio seemed not completely to represent the forty freshmen of st. mary�s, there might be added to the list certain others for qualities of athletic renown that combined with charm of personality gave them the right to be set up in michael�s collection as types. there was grainger, last year�s captain of the boats at eton, who would certainly row for the �varsity in the spring. michael liked to sit in his rooms and watch his sprawling bulk and listen for an hour at a time to his naïve theories of life. grainger seemed to shed rays of positive goodness, and michael found that he exercised over this splendid piece of youth a fascination which to himself was surprising. �great scott, you are an odd chap,� grainger once ejaculated. �why?� �why, you�re a clever devil, aren�t you, and you don�t seem to do anything. have i talked a lot of rot?� �a good deal,� michael admitted. �at least, it would be rot if i talked it, but it would be ridiculous if you talked in any other way.� �you _are_ a curious chap. i can�t make you out.� �why should you?� asked michael. �you were never sent into this world to puzzle out things. you were sent here to sprawl across it just as you�re sprawling across that sofa. when you go down, you�ll go into the egyptian civil service and you�ll sprawl across the sahara in exactly the same way. i rather wish i were like you. it must be quite comfortable to sit down heavily and unconcernedly on a lot of people. i can�t imagine a more delightful mattress; only i should feel them wriggling under me.� �i suppose you�re a radical. they say you are,� grainger lazily announced through puffed-out fumes of tobacco. �i suppose i might be,� said michael, �if i wanted to proclaim myself anything at all, but i�d much rather watch you sprawling effectively and proclaiming yourself a supporter of conservatism. i�ve really very little inclination to criticize people like you. it�s only in books i think you�re a little boring.� term wore on, and a pleasurable anticipation was lent to the coming vacation by a letter which michael received from his mother. carlington road, _november th._ _dearest michael,_ _i�m so glad you�re still enjoying oxford. i quite agree with you it would be better for me to wait a little while before i visit you, though i expect i should behave myself perfectly well. you�ll be glad to hear that i�ve got rid of this tiresome house. i�ve sold it to a retired colonel�such an objectionable old man, and i�m really so pleased he�s bought it. it has been a most worrying autumn because the people next door were continually complaining of stella�s piano, and really carlington road has become impossible. such an air of living next door, and whenever i look out of the window the maid is shaking a mat and looking up to see if i�m interested. we must try to settle on a new house when you�re back in town. we�ll stay in a hotel for a while. stella has had to take a studio, which i do not approve of her doing, and i cannot bear to see the piano going continually in and out of the house. there are so many things i want to talk to you about�money, and whether you would like to go to paris during the holidays. i daresay we could find a house at some other time._ _your loving_ _mother._ from stella about the same time, michael also received a letter. _my dear old michael_, _i seem to have made really a personal success at my concert, and i�ve taken a studio here because the man next door�a most_ frightful _bounder�said the noise i made went through and through his wife. as she�s nearly as big round as the world, i wasn�t flattered. mother is getting very fussy, and all sorts of strange women come to the house and talk about some society for dealing with life with a capital letter. i think we�re going to be rather well off, and mother wants to live in a house she�s seen in park street, but i want to take a house in cheyne walk. i hope you like cheyne walk, because this house has got a splendid studio in the garden and i thought with some mauve brocades it would look perfectly lovely. there�s a very good_ paneled _room that you could have, and of course the studio would be half yours. i am working at a franck concerto. i�m being painted by rather a nice youth, at least he would be nice, if he weren�t so much like a corpse. i suppose you�ll condescend to ask me down to oxford next term._ _yours ever,_ _stella._ _p.s.�i�ve come to the conclusion that mere brilliancy of execution isn�t enough. academic perfection is all very well, but i don�t think i shall appear in public again until i�ve lived a little. i really think life is rather exciting�unless it�s spelt with a capital letter._ michael was glad that there seemed a prospect of employing his vacation in abolishing the thin red house in carlington road. he felt he would have found it queerly shriveled after the spaciousness of oxford. he was sufficiently far along in his first term to be able to feel the privilege of possessing the high, and he could think of no other word to describe the sensation of walking down that street in company with lonsdale and grainger and others of his friends. term drew to a close, and michael determined to mark the occasion by giving a dinner in which he thought he would try the effect of his friends all together. hitherto the celebrations of the freshmen had been casual entertainments arranged haphazard out of the idle chattering groups in the lodge. this dinner was to be carefully thought out and balanced to the extreme of nice adjustment. this terminal dinner might, michael thought, almost become with him a regular function, so that people would learn to speak with interest and respect of fane�s terminal dinners. in a way, it would be tantamount to forming a club, a club strictly subjective, indeed so personal in character as really to preclude the employment of the sociable world. at any rate, putting aside all dreams of the future, michael made up his mind to try the effect of the first. it should be held in the mitre, he decided, since that would give the company an opportunity of sailing homeward arm-in-arm along the whole length of the high. the guests should be avery, lonsdale, wedderburn, grainger, and alan. yet when michael came to think about it, six all told seemed a beggarly number for his first terminal dinner. already michael began to think of his dinner as an established ceremony of undergraduate society. he would like to choose a number that should never vary every term. he knew that the guests would change, that the place of its celebration would alter, but he felt that some permanency must be kept, and michael fixed upon eleven as the number, ten guests and himself. for this first dinner five more must be invited, and michael without much further consideration selected five freshmen whose athletic prowess and social amiableness drew them into prominence. but when he had given all the invitations michael was a little depressed by the conventional appearance of his list. with the exception of alan as a friend from another college, and avery, his list was exactly the same as any that might have been drawn up by grainger. as michael pondered it, he scented an effluence of correctness that overpowered his individuality. however, when he sat at the head of the table in the private room at the mitre, and surveyed round the table his terminal dinner party, he was after all glad that on this occasion he had deferred to the prejudices of what in a severe moment of self-examination he characterized as �snobbishness.� in this room at the mitre with its faded red paper and pictures of rod and gun and steeplechase, with its two waiters whiskered and in their garrulous subservience eloquent of thackerayan scenes, with its stuffed ptarmigan and snipe and glass-enshrined giant perch, michael felt that a more eclectic society would have been out of place. only avery�s loose-fronted shirt marred the rigid convention of the group. �_who�s_ that man wearing a pie-frill?� whispered alan sternly from michael�s right. michael looked up at him with an expression of amused apprehension. �avery allows himself a little license,� said michael. �but, alan, he�s really all right. he always wears his trousers turned up, and if you saw him on sunday you�d think he was perfectly dressed. all old carthusians are.� but alan still looked disapprovingly at avery, until lonsdale, who had met alan several times at the house, began to talk of friends they had in common. michael was not altogether pleased with himself. he wished he had put avery on his left instead of wedderburn. he disliked owning to himself that he had put avery at the other end of the table to avoid the responsibility of listening to the loudly voiced opinions which he felt grated upon the others. he looked anxiously along toward avery, who waved a cheery hand. michael perceived with pleasure and faint relief that he seemed to be amusing his neighbor, a wykehamist called castleton. michael was glad of this, for castleton in some respects was the strongest influence in michael�s year, and his friendship would be good for avery. wedderburn had implied to michael that he considered castleton rather over-rated, but there was a superficial similarity between the two in the sort of influence they both possessed, and jealousy, if jealousy could lurk in the deep-toned and immaculate wedderburn, might be responsible for that opinion. michael sometimes wondered what made castleton so redoubtable, since he was no more apparently than an athlete of ordinary ability, but wykehamist opinion in the college was emphatic in proclaiming his solid merit, and as he seemed utterly unaware of possessing any quality at all, and as he seemed to add to every room in which he sat a serenity and security, he became each day more and more a personality impossible to neglect. opposite to avery was cuffe, and as michael looked at cuffe he was more than ever displeased with himself. the invitation to cuffe was a detestable tribute to public opinion. cuffe was a prominent freshman, and michael had asked him for no other reason than because cuffe would certainly have been asked to any other so representative a gathering of st. mary�s freshmen as this one might be considered. but a representative gathering of this kind was not exactly what michael had intended to achieve with his terminal dinner. he looked at cuffe with distaste. then, too, in the middle of the table were cranborne, sterne, and sinclair, not one of whom was there from michael�s desire to have him, but from some ridiculous tradition of his suitableness. however, it was useless to resent their presence now and, as the champagne went round, gradually michael forgot his predilections and was content to see his first terminal dinner a success of wine and good-fellowship. soon lonsdale was on his feet making a speech, and michael sat back and smiled benignly on the company he had collected, while lonsdale discussed their individual excellencies. �first of all,� said lonsdale, �i want to propose the health of our distinguished friend, mr. merivale of christ church. for he�s a jolly good fellow and all that. my friend mr. wedderburn�s a jolly good fellow, too, and my friend mr. sterne on my center is a jolly good fellow and a jolly good bowler and so say all of us. as for my friend tommy grainger�whom i will not call mister, having known him since we were boys together�i will here say that i confidently anticipate he will get his blue next term and show the tabs that he�s a jolly good fellow. i will not mention the rest of us by name�all jolly good fellows�except our host. he�s given us a good dinner and good wine and good company, which nobody can deny. so here�s his health.� then, in a phantasmagoria in which brilliant liqueurs and a meandering procession of linked arms and the bells of oxford and a wet night were all indistinguishably confused in one strong impression, michael passed through his first terminal dinner. chapter iv cheyne walk the christmas vacation was spent in searching london for a new house. mrs. fane, when carlington road was with a sigh of relief at last abandoned, would obviously have preferred to go abroad at once and postpone the consideration of a future residence; but michael with stella�s support prevailed upon her to take more seriously the problem of their new home. ultimately they fixed upon chelsea, indeed upon that very house stella had chosen for its large studio separated by the length of a queer little walled garden from the rest of the house. certainly cheyne walk was better than carlington road, thought michael as, leaning back against the parapet of the embankment, he surveyed the mellow exterior in the unreal sunlight of the january noon. empty as it was, it diffused an atmosphere of beauty and comfort, of ripe dignity and peaceful solidity. the bow windows with their half-opaque glass seemed to repulse the noise and movement of the world from the tranquil interior they so sleekly guarded. the front door with its shimmering indigo surface and fanlight and dolphin-headed knocker and on either side of the steps the flambeaux-stands of wrought iron, the three-plaster medallions and the five tall windows of the first story all gave him much contemplative pleasure. he and his mother and stella had in three weeks visited every feasible quarter of london and as michael thought of hampstead�s leaf-haunted by-streets, of the still squares of kensington, even of camden hill�s sky-crowned freedom, he was sure he regretted none of them in the presence of this sedate house looking over the sun-flamed river and the crenated line of the long battersea shore. michael was waiting for mrs. fane, who as usual was late. mr. prescott was to be there to give his approval and advice, and michael was anxious to meet this man who had evidently been a very intimate friend of his father. he saw prescott in his mind as he had seen him years ago, an intruder upon the time-shrouded woes of childhood, and as he was trying to reconstruct the image of a florid jovial man, whose only definite impression had been made by the gold piece he had pressed into michael�s palm, a hansom pulled up at the house and someone, fair and angular with a military awkwardness, alighting from it, knocked at the door. michael crossed the road quickly and asked if he were mr. prescott. himself explained who he was and, opening the front door, led the way into the empty house. he was conscious, as he showed room after room to prescott, that the visitor was somehow occupied less with the observation of the house than with a desire to achieve in regard to michael himself a tentative advance toward intimacy. the january sun that sloped thin golden ladders across the echoing spaces of the bare rooms expressed for michael something of the sensation which prescott�s attitude conveyed to him, the sensation of a benign and delicate warmth that could most easily melt away, stretching out toward certain unused depths of his heart. �i suppose you knew my father very well,� said michael at last, blushing as he spoke at the uninspired obviousness of the remark. �about as well as anybody,� said prescott nervously. �like to talk to you about him some time. better come to dinner. live in albany. have a soldier-servant and all that, you know. must talk sometimes. important you should know just how your affairs stand. suppose i�m almost what you might call your guardian. of course your mother�s a dear woman. known her for years. always splendid to me. but she mustn�t get too charitable.� �do you mean to people�s failings?� michael asked. michael did not ask this so much because he believed that was what prescott really meant as because he wished to encourage him to speak out clearly at once so that, when later they met again, the hard shyness of preliminary encounters would have been softened. moreover, this empty house glinting with golden motes seemed to encourage a frankness and directness of intercourse that made absurd these roundabout postponements of actual problems. �charitable to societies,� prescott explained. �i don�t want her to think she�s got to endow half a dozen committees with money and occupation.� �stella�s a little worried about mother�s charities,� michael admitted. �awful good sort, stella,� prescott jerked out. �frightens me devilishly. never could stand very clever people. oh, i like them very much, but i always feel like a piece of furniture they want to move out of their way. used to be in the welsh guards with your father,� he added vaguely. �did you know my father when he first met my mother?� michael asked directly, and by his directness tripped up prescott into a headlong account. �oh, yes, rather. i sent in my papers when he did. chartered a yacht and sailed all over the mediterranean. good gracious, twenty years ago! how old we�re all getting. poor old saxby was always anxious that no kind of��prescott gibbed at the word for a moment or two��no kind of slur should be attached.... i mean, for instance, mrs. fane might have had to meet the sort of women, you know, well, what i mean is ... there was nothing of the sort. saxby was a puritan, and yet he was always a rattling good sort. only of course your mother was always cut off from women�s society. couldn�t be helped, but i don�t want her now to overdo it. glad she�s taken this house, though. what are you going to be?� michael was saved from any declaration of his intentions by a ring at the front door, which shrilled like an alarm through the empty house. soon all embarrassments were lost in his mother�s graceful and elusive presence that seemed to furnish every room in turn with rich associations of leisure and tranquillity, and with its fine assurance to muffle all the echoes and the emptiness. stella, who had arrived with mrs. fane, was rushing from window to window, trying patterns of chintz and damask and roman satin; and all her notions of decoration that she flung up like released birds seemed to flutter for a while in a confusion of winged argument between her and michael, while mr. prescott listened with an expression on his wrinkling forehead of admiring perplexity. but every idea would quickly be gathered in by mrs. fane, and when she had smoothed its ruffled doubts and fears, it would fly with greater certainty, until room by room and window by window and corner by corner the house was beautifully and sedately and appropriately arranged. �i give full marks to prescott,� said stella later in the afternoon to michael. �he�s like a nice horse.� �i think we ought to have had green curtains in the spare room,� said michael. �why?� demanded stella. and when michael tried to discover a reason, it was difficult to find one. �well, why not?� he at last very lamely replied. there followed upon that curiously staccato conversation between michael and prescott in the empty house a crowded time of furnishing, while mrs. fane with michael and stella stayed at the sloane street hotel, chosen by them as a convenient center from which to direct the multitudinous activities set up by the adventure of moving. michael, however, after the first thrills of selection had died down, must be thinking about going up again and be content to look forward on the strength of stella�s energetic promises to coming down for the easter vacation and entering cheyne walk as his home. michael excused himself to himself for not having visited any old friends during this vacation by the business of house-hunting. alan had been away in switzerland with his father, but michael felt rather guilty because he had never been near his old school nor even walked over to notting hill to give viner an account of his first term. it seemed to him more important that he had corresponded with lonsdale and wedderburn and avery than that he should have sought out old friends. all that christmas vacation he was acutely conscious of the flowing past of old associations and of a sense of transition into a new life that though as yet barren of experience contained the promise of larger and worthier experiences than it now seemed possible to him could have happened in carlington road. on the night before he went up michael dined with prescott at his rooms in the albany. he enjoyed the evening very much. he enjoyed the darkness of the room whose life seemed to radiate from the gleaming table in its center. he enjoyed the ghostly motions of the soldier-servant and the half-obscured vision of stern old prints on the walls of the great square room, and he enjoyed the intense silence that brooded outside the heavily curtained windows. here in the albany michael was immeasurably aware of the life of london that was surging such a little distance away; but in this modish cloister he felt that the life he was aware of could never be dated, as if indeed were he to emerge into piccadilly and behold suddenly crinolines or even powdered wigs they would not greatly surprise him. the albany seemed to have wrung the spirit from the noisy years that swept on their course outside, to have snatched from each its heart and in the museum of this decorous glass arcade to have preserved it immortally, exhibiting the frozen palpitations to a sensitive observer. �you�re not talking much,� said prescott. �i was thinking of old plays,� said michael. really he was thinking of one old play to which his mother had been called away by prescott on a jolly evening forgotten, whose value to himself had been calculated at half-a-sovereign pressed into his hand. michael wished that the play could be going to be acted to-night and that for half-a-sovereign he could restore to his mother that jolly evening and that old play and his father. it seemed to him incommunicably sad, so heavily did the albany with its dead joys rest upon his imagination, that people could not like years be frozen into a perpetual present. �don�t often go to the theater nowadays,� said prescott. �when saxby was alive��michael fancied that �alive� was substituted for something that might have hurt his feelings��we used to go a lot, but it�s dull going alone.� �must you go alone?� asked michael. �oh, no, of course i needn�t. but i seem to be feeling oldish. oldish,� repeated the host. michael felt the usurpation of his own youth, but he could not resist asking whether prescott thought he was at all like his father, however sharply this might accentuate the usurpation. �oh, yes, i think you are very like,� said prescott. �good lord, what a pity, what a pity! saxby was always a great stickler for law and order, you know. he hated anything that seemed irregular or interfered with things. he hated radicals, for instance, and motor cars. he had much more brain than many people thought, but of course,� prescott hurriedly added, as if he wished to banish the slightest hint of professional equipment, �of course he always preferred to be perfectly ordinary.� �i like to be ordinary,� michael said; �but i�m not.� �never knew anybody at your age who was. i remember i tried to write some poetry about a man who got killed saving a child from being run over by a train,� said prescott in a tone of wise reminiscence. �you know, i think you�re a very lucky chap,� he added. �here you are all provided for. in your first term at oxford. no responsibilities except the ordinary responsibilities of an ordinary gentleman. got a charming sister. why, you might do anything.� �what, for example?� queried michael. �oh, i don�t know. there�s the diplomatic service. but don�t be in a hurry. wait a bit. have a good time. your allowance is to be four hundred a year at st. mary�s. and when you�re twenty-one you come into roughly seven hundred a year of your own, and ultimately you�ll have at least two thousand a year. but don�t be a young ass. you�ve been brought up quietly. you haven�t _got_ to cut a dash. don�t get in a mess with women, and, if you do, come and tell me before you try to get out of it.� �i don�t care much about women,� said michael. �they�re disappointing.� �what, already?� exclaimed prescott, putting up his eyeglass. michael murmured a dark assent. the glass of champagne that owing to the attention of the soldier-servant was always brimming, the dark discreet room, and the albany�s atmosphere of passion squeezed into the mold of contemporary decorum or bound up to stand in a row of thackeray�s books, all combined to affect michael with the idea that his life had been lived. he felt himself to belong to the period of his host, and as the rubied table glowed upon his vision more intensely, he beheld the old impressionable michael, the nervous, the self-conscious, the sensitive slim ghost of himself receding out of sight into the gloom. left behind was the new michael going up to the varsity to-morrow morning for his second term, going up with the assurance of finding delightful friends who would confirm his distaste for the circumscribed past. only a recurrent apprehension that under the table he seemed called upon to manage a number of extra legs, or perhaps it was only a slight uncertainty as to which leg was crossed over the other at the moment, made him wonder very gently whether after all some of this easy remoteness were not due to the champagne. the figure of his host was receding farther and farther every moment, and his conversation reached michael across a shimmering inestimable space of light, while finally he was aware of his own voice talking very rapidly and with a half-defiant independence of precisely what he wished to say. the evening swam past comfortably, and gradually from the fumes of the cigar smoke the figure of prescott leaning back in his shadowy armchair took on once again a definite corporeal existence. a clock on the mantelpiece chimed the twelve strokes of midnight in a sort of silvery apology for obtruding the hour. michael came back into himself with a start of confusion. �i say, i must go.� prescott and he walked along the arcade toward albany courtyard. �i say,� said michael, with his foot on the step of the hansom, �i think i must have talked an awful lot of rot to-night.� �no, no, no, my dear boy; i�ve been very much interested,� insisted prescott. and all the jingling way home michael tried to rescue from the labyrinth of his memory some definite conversational thread that would lead him to discover what he could have said that might conceivably have mildly entertained his host. �nothing,� he finally decided. next morning michael met alan at paddington, and they went up to oxford with all the rich confidence of a term�s maturity. even in the drizzle of a late january afternoon the city assumed in place of her eternal and waylaying beauty a familiarity that for michael made her henceforth more beautiful. after hall avery came up to michael�s room, and while the rain dripped endlessly outside, they talked lazily of life with a more clearly assured intimacy than either of them could have contemplated the term before. michael spoke of the new house, of his sister stella, of his dinner with prescott at the albany, almost indeed of the circumstances of his birth, so easy did it seem to talk to avery deep in the deep chair before the blazing fire. he stopped short, however, at his account of the dinner. �you know, i think i should like to turn ultimately into a prescott,� he affirmed. �i think i should be happy living in rooms at the albany without ever having done a very great deal. i should like to feel i was perfectly in keeping with my rooms and my friends and my servant.� �but you wouldn�t be,� avery objected, �if you thought about it.� �no, but i shouldn�t think about it,� michael pointed out. �i should have steeled myself all my life not to think about it, and when your eldest son comes to see me, maurice, and drinks a little too much champagne and talks as fast as his father used to talk, i shall know just exactly how to make him feel that after all he isn�t quite the silly ass he will be inclined to think himself about the middle of his third cigar.� michael sank farther back into the haze of his pipe and, contemplating dreamily the mona lisa, made up his mind that she would not become his outlook thirty years hence. some stern old admiral with his hand on the terrestrial globe and a naval engagement in the background would better suit his mantelpiece. �i wonder what i shall be like at fifty,� he sighed. �it depends what you do in between nineteen and fifty,� said avery. �you can�t possibly settle down at the albany as soon as you leave the varsity. you�ll have to do something.� �what, for example?� michael asked. �oh, write perhaps.� �write!� michael scoffed. �why, when i can read all these��he pointed to his bookshelves��and all the dozens and dozens more i intend to buy, what a fool i should be to waste my time in writing.� �well, i intend to write,� said avery. �in fact, i don�t mind telling you i intend to start a paper as soon as i can.� michael laughed. �and you�ll contribute,� avery went on eagerly. �how much?� �i�m talking about articles. i shall call my paper�well, i haven�t thought about the title�but i shall get a good one. it won�t be like the papers of the nineties. it will be more serious. it will deal with art, of course, and literature, and politics, but it won�t be decadent. it will try to reflect contemporary undergraduate thought. i think it might be called the oxford looking-glass.� �yes, i expect it will be a looking-glass production,� said michael. �i should call it the world turned upside down.� �i�m perfectly serious about this paper,� said avery reproachfully. �and i�m taking you very seriously,� said michael. �that�s why i won�t write a line. are you going to have illustrations?� �we might have one drawing. i�m not quite sure how much it costs to reproduce a drawing. but it would be fun to publish some rather advanced stuff.� �well, as long as you don�t publish drawings that look as if the compositor had suddenly got angry with the page and thrown asterisks at it, and as long as��� �oh, shut up,� interrupted the dreaming editor, �and don�t fall into that tiresome undergraduate cynicism. it�s so young.� �but i am young,� michael pointed out with careful gravity. �so are you. and, maurice, really you know for me my own ambitions are best. i�ve got a great sense of responsibility, and if i were to start going through life trying to do things, i should worry myself all the time. the only chance for me is to find a sort of negative attitude to life like prescott. you�ll do lots of things. i think you�re capable of them. but i�d rather watch. at least in my present mood i would. i�d give anything to feel i was a leader of men or whatever it is you are. but i�m not. i�ve got a sister whom you ought to meet. she�s got all the positive energy in our family. i can�t explain, maurice, just exactly what i�m feeling about existence at this moment, unless i tell you more about myself than i possibly can�anyway yet a while. i don�t want to do any harm, and i don�t think i could ever feel i was in a position to do any good. look here, don�t let�s talk any more. i meant to dream myself into an attitude to-night, and you�ve made me talk like an earnest young convert.� �i think i�ll go round and consult wedderburn about this paper,� said avery excitedly. �he thinks you�re patronizing,� michael warned him. avery pulled up, suddenly hurt: �does he? i wonder why.� �but he won�t, if you ask his advice about reproducing advanced drawings.� �doesn�t he like me?� persisted avery. �i�d better not go round to his rooms.� �don�t be foolish, maurice. your sensitiveness is really all spoiled vanity.� when avery had hesitatingly embarked upon his expedition to wedderburn, michael thought rather regretfully of his presence and wished he had been more sympathetic in his reception of the great scheme. yet perhaps that was the best way to have begun his own scheme for not being disturbed by life. michael thought how easily he might have had to reproach himself over lily haden. he had escaped once. there should be no more active exposure to frets and fevers. looking back on his life, michael came to the conclusion that henceforth books should give him his adventures. actually he almost made up his mind to retire even from the observation of reality, so much had he felt, all this christmas vacation, the dominance of stella and so deeply had he been impressed by prescott�s attitude of inscrutable commentary. michael was greatly amused when two or three evenings later he strolled round to wedderburn�s rooms to find him and maurice avery sitting in contemplation of about twenty specimen covers of the oxford looking-glass that were pinned against the wall on a piece of old lemon-colored silk. he was greatly amused to find that the reconciling touch of the muses had united avery and wedderburn in a firm friendship�so much amused indeed that he allowed himself to be nominated to serve on the obstetrical committee that was to effect the birth of this undergraduate bantling. �though what exactly you want me to do,� protested michael, �i don�t quite know.� �we want money, anyway,� avery frankly admitted. �oh, and by the way, michael, i�ve asked goldney, the treasurer of the o.u.d.s. to put you up.� �what on earth for?� gasped michael. �oh, they�ll want supers. they�re doing the merchant of venice. great sport. wedders is going to join. i want him to play the prince of morocco.� �but are you running the ouds as well as the oxford looking-glass?� michael inquired gently. in the end, however, he was persuaded by avery to become a member, and not only to join himself but to persuade other st. mary�s freshmen, including lonsdale, to join. the preliminary readings and the rehearsals certainly passed away the lent term very well, for though michael was not cast for a speaking part, he had the satisfaction of seeing wedderburn and avery play respectively the princes of morocco and arragon, and of helping lonsdale to entertain the professional actresses who came up from london to take part in the production. �i think i ought to have played lorenzo,� said lonsdale seriously to michael, just before the first night. �i think miss delacourt would have preferred to play jessica to my lorenzo. as it is i�m only a gondolier, an attendant, and a soldier.� michael was quite relieved when this final lament burst forth. it seemed to set lonsdale once more securely in the ranks of the amateurs. there had been a dangerous fluency of professional terminology in �my lorenzo.� �i�m only a gondolier, an attendant, and a mute judge,� michael observed. �and i don�t think that ass from oriel knows how to play lorenzo,� lonsdale went on. �he doesn�t appreciate acting with miss delacourt. i wonder if my governor would be very sick if i chucked the foreign office and went on the stage. do you think i could act, if i had a chance? i�m perfectly sure i could act with miss delacourt. don�t forget you�re lunching with me to-morrow. i don�t mind telling you she threw over a lunch with that ass from oriel who�s playing lorenzo. i never heard such an idiotic voice in my life.� such conversations coupled with requests from wedderburn and maurice avery to hear them their two long speeches seemed to michael to occupy all his leisure that term. at the same time he enjoyed the rehearsals in the lecture rooms at christ church, and he enjoyed escaping sometimes to alan�s rooms and ultimately persuading alan to become a gondolier, an attendant and a soldier. moreover, he met various men from other colleges, and he began to realize faintly thereby the individuality of each college, but most of all perhaps the individuality of his own college, as when lonsdale came up to him one day with an expression of alarm to say that he had been invited to lunch by the man who played launcelot gobbo. �well, what of it?� said michael. �he probably wants to borrow your dog.� �he says he�s at lincoln,� lonsdale stammered. �so he is.� �well, i don�t know where lincoln is. have you got a map or something of oxford?� the performance of the merchant of venice took place and was a great success. the annual supper of the club took place, when various old members of theatrical appearance came down and made speeches and told long stories about their triumphs in earlier days. next morning the auxiliary ladies returned to london, and in the afternoon the disconsolate actors went down to the barges and encouraged their various toggers to victory. lonsdale forgot all about miss delacourt when he saw tommy grainger almost swinging the st. mary�s boat into the apprehensive stern of the only boat which stood between them and the headship, and that evening his only lament was that the enemy had on this occasion escaped. the merchant of venice with its tights and tinsel and ruffs faded out in that lenten week of drizzling rain, when every afternoon michael and lonsdale and many others ran wildly along the drenched towing-path beside their togger. and when in the end st. mary�s failed to catch the boat in front, michael and lonsdale and many others felt each in his own way that after all it had been greatly worth while to try. michael came down for the easter vacation with the pleasant excitement of seeing cheyne walk furnished and habitable. in deference to his mother�s particular wish he had not invited anybody to stay with him, but he regretted he had not been more insistent when he saw each room in turn nearly twice as delightful as he had pictured it. there was his mother�s own sitting-room whose rose du barri cushions and curtains conformed exactly to his own preconceptions, and there was stella�s bedroom very white and severe, and his own bedroom pleasantly mediæval, and the dining-room very cool and green, and the drawing-room with wallpaper of brilliant chinese birds and in a brass cage a blue and crimson macaw blinking at the somber thames. finally there was the studio to which he was eagerly escorted by stella. �i haven�t done anything but just have it whitewashed,� she said. �i wanted you to choose the scheme, as i�m going to make all the noise.� the windy march sunlight seemed to fill the great room when michael and his sister entered it. �but it�s absolutely empty,� he exclaimed, and indeed there was nothing in all that space except stella�s piano, looking now almost as small and graceful as in carlington road it had seemed ponderous. �you shall decorate the room,� she said. �what will you choose?� michael visualized rapidly for a moment, first a baronial hall with gothic chairs and skins and wrought-iron everywhere, with tapestries and blazonries and heavy gold embroideries. then he thought of crude and amazing contrasts of barbarous reds and vivid greens and purples, with persian rugs and a smell of joss-sticks and long low divans. yet, even as michael�s fancy decked itself with kaleidoscopic intentions, his mind swiftly returned to the keyboard�s alternations of white and black, so that in a moment exotic splendors were merged in esoteric significance. �i don�t think we want anything,� he finally proclaimed. �just two or three tall chairs and a mask of somebody�beethoven perhaps�and black silk curtains. you see the piano wouldn�t go with elaborate decorations.� so every opportunity of prodigal display was neglected, and the studio remained empty. to michael, all that windy eastertide, it was an infallible thrill to leave behind him the sedate georgian house and, crossing the little walled rectangle of pallid grass, to pause and listen to the muffled sound of stella�s notes. never had any entrance seemed to him so perfect a revelation of joy within as now when he was able to fling wide open the door of the studio and feel, while the power and glory of the sonata assailed him, that this great white room was larger even than the earth itself. sitting upon a high-backed chair, michael would watch the white walls melting like clouds in the sun, would see their surface turn to liquid light, and fancy in these clear melodies of stella that he and she and the piano and the high-backed chair were in this room not more trammeled than by space itself. alan sometimes came shyly to listen, and while stella played and played, michael would wonder if ever these two would make for him the union that already he was aware of coveting. alan was rosy with the joy of life on the slopes of the world, and stella must surely have always someone fresh and clean and straight like alan to marvel at her. �by jove, she must have frightfully strong wrists and fingers,� said alan. just so, thought michael, might a shepherd marvel at a lark�s powerful wings. april went her course that year with less of sweet uncertainty than usual, and michael walked very often along the embankment dreaming in the sunshine as day by day, almost hour by hour, the trees were greening. chelsea appealed to his sense of past greatness. it pleased him to feel that carlyle and rossetti might have walked as he was walking now during some dead april of time. moreover, such heroes were not too far away. their landscape was conceivable. people who had known them well were still alive. swinburne and meredith, too, had walked here, and themselves were still alive. in carlington road there had been none of this communion with the past. nobody outside the contemporary residents could ever have walked along its moderately cheerful uniformity. michael, as he pondered the satisfaction which had come from the change of residence, began to feel a sentimental curiosity about carlington road and its surrounding streets. it was not yet a year since he had existed there familiarly, almost indigenously; but the combination of oxford and cheyne walk made him feel a lifetime had passed since he had been so willingly transplanted. one morning late in april and just before he was going up for the summer term, he determined to pay a visit to the scenes of his childhood. it was an experience more depressing than he had imagined it would be. he was shocked by the sensation of constraint and of slightly contemptible limitation that was imposed upon his fancy by the pilgrimage. he thought to himself, as he wandered between the rows of thin red houses, that after the freedom of the river carlington road was purely intolerable. it did not possess the narrowness that lent a mysterious intimacy. the two rows of houses did not lean over and meet one another as houses lean over, almost seeming to gossip with one another, in ancient towns. they gave rather the impression of two mutually unattractive entities propelled into contiguity by the inexorable economy of the life around. the two rows came together solely for the purpose of crowding together a number of insignificant little families whose almost humiliating submission to the tyranny of city life was expressed pathetically by the humble flaunting of their window-boxes and in their front gardens symbolically by the dingy parterres of london pride. michael wondered whether a spirit haunting the earth feels in the perception of its former territory so much shame as he felt now in approaching carlington road. when he reached the house itself, he was able to expel his sentiment for the past by the trivial fact that the curtains of the new owner had dispossessed the house of its personality. only above the door, the number in all its squat assurance was able to convince him that this was indeed the house where he had wrestled so long and so hardly with the problems of childhood. there, too, was the plane-tree that, once an object of reproach, now certainly gave some distinction to the threshold of this house when every area down the road owned a lime-tree identical in age and growth. yet with all his distaste for carlington road michael could scarcely check the impulse he had to mount the steps and, knocking at the door, inform whomsoever should open it that he had once lived in this very house. he passed on, however, remembering at every corner of every new street some bygone unimportant event which had once occupied his whole horizon. involuntarily he walked on and on in a confusion of recollections, until he came to the corner of the road where lily haden lived. it was with a start of self-rebuke that he confessed to himself that here was the ultimate object of his revisitation. he had scarcely thought of lily since the betrayal of his illusions on that brazen july day when last he had seen her in the garden behind her house. if he had thought of her at all, she had passed through his mind like the memory, or less even than the definite memory, like the consciousness that never is absent of beautiful days spent splendidly in the past. sometimes during long railway journeys michael had played with himself the game of vowing to remember an exact moment, some field or effect of clouds which the train was rapidly passing. yet though he knew that he had done this a hundred times, it was always as impossible to conjure again the vision he had vowed to remember as it had been impossible ever to remember the exact moment of falling asleep. after all, however, lily could not have taken her place with these moments so impossible to recapture, or he would not have come to himself with so acute a consciousness of her former actuality here at the corner of trelawney road. it was almost as uncanny as the poem of ulalume, and michael found himself murmuring, �of my most immemorial year,� half expectant of lily�s slim form swaying toward him, half blushful already in breathless anticipation of the meeting. down the road a door opened. michael�s heart jumped annoyingly out of control. it was indeed her door, and whoever was coming out hesitated in the hall. michael went forward impulsively, but the door slammed, and a man with a pencil behind his ear ran hurriedly down the steps. michael saw that the windows of the house were covered with the names of house-agents, that several �to let� boards leaned confidentially over the railings to accost passers-by. michael caught up the man, who was whistling off in the opposite direction, and asked him if he knew where mrs. haden had gone. �i wish i did,� said the man, sucking his teeth importantly. �no, sir, i�m afraid i don�t. nor anybody else.� �you mean they went away in a hurry,� said michael shamefaced. �yes, sir.� �and left no address?� �left nothing but a heap of tradesmen�s bills in the hall.� michael turned aside, sorry for the ignominious end of the hadens, but glad somehow that the momentary temptation to renew his friendship with the family, perhaps even his love for lily, was so irremediably defeated. in the sunset that night, as he and stella sat in the drawing-room staring over the incarnadined river, michael told his sister of his discovery. �i�m glad you�re not going to start that business again,� she said. �and, michael, do try not to fall in love for a bit, because i shall soon have such a terrible heap of difficulties that you must solve for me disinterestedly and without prejudice.� �what sort of difficulties?� michael demanded, with eyes fixed upon her cheeks warm with the evening light. �oh, i don�t know,� she half whispered. �but let�s go away together in the summer and not even take a piano.� chapter v youth�s domination on may morning, when the choir boys of st. mary�s hymned the rising sun, michael was able for the first time to behold the visible expression of his own mental image of oxford�s completeness, to pierce in one dazzling moment of realization the cloudy and elusive concepts which had restlessly gathered and resolved themselves in beautiful obscurity about his mind. he was granted on that occasion to hold the city, as it were, imprisoned in a crystal globe, and by the intensity of his evocation to recognize perfectly that uncapturable quintessence of human desire and human vision so supremely displayed through the merely outward glory of its repository. all night michael and a large party of freshmen, now scarcely to be called freshmen so much did they feel they possessed of the right to live, had sustained themselves with dressed crab and sleepy bridge-fours. during the gray hour of hinted dawn they wandered round the college, rousing from sleep such lazy contemporaries as had vowed that not all the joys and triumph of may morning on the tower should make them keep awake, during the vigil. even so with what it contained of ability to vex other people that last hour hung a little heavily upon the enthusiasts. slowly, however, the sky lightened: slowly the cold hues and blushes of the sun�s youth, that stood as symbol for so much here in st. mary�s, made of the east one great shell of lucent color. the gray stones of the college lost the mysterious outlines of dawn and sharpened slowly to a rose-warmed vitality. the choir boys gathered like twittering birds at the base of the tower: energetic visitors came half shyly through the portal that was to give such a sense of time�s rejuvenation as never before had they deemed possible: dons came hurrying like great black birds in the gathering light: and at last the tired revelers, michael and wedderburn, maurice avery and lonsdale and grainger and cuffe and castleton and a score besides equipped in cap and gown went scrambling and laughing up the winding stairs to the top. for michael the moment of waiting for the first shaft of the sun was scarcely to be endured: the vision of the city below was almost too poignant during the hush of expectancy that preceded the declaration of worship. then flashed a silver beam in the east: the massed choir boys with one accord opened their mouths and sang just exactly, michael said to himself, like the morning stars. the rising sun sent ray upon ray lancing over the roofs of the outspread city until with all its spires and towers, with all its domes and houses and still, unpopulous streets it sparkled like the sea. the hymn was sung: the choir boys twittered again like sparrows, and, bowing their greetings to one another, the dons cawed gravely like rooks. the bells incredibly loud here on the tower�s top crashed out so ardently that every stone seemed to nod in time as the tower trembled and swayed backward and forward while the sun mounted into the day. michael leaned over the parapet and saw the little people busy as emmets at the base of the tower on whose summit he had the right to stand. intoxicated with repressed adoration, the undergraduates sent hurtling outward into the air their caps, and down below the boys of the town scrambled and fought for these trophies of may morning. michael through all the length of that may day dreamed himself into the heart of england. he had refused maurice�s invitation to a somewhat mannered breakfast-party at sandford lasher, though when he saw the almost defiantly jolly party ride off on bicycles from the lodge, he was inclined to regret his refusal. he wished he had persuaded alan, now sleeping in the stillness of the house unmoved by may morning celebrations, to rise early and come with him on some daylong jaunt far afield. it was a little dull to sit down to breakfast in the college shorn of revelers, and for another two hours unlikely to show any sign of life on the part of those who had declined for sleep the excitement of eating dressed crab and playing bridge through the vigil. after breakfast it would still be only about seven o�clock with a hot-eyed languor to anticipate during the rest of the morning. michael almost decided to go to bed. he turned disconsolately out of the lodge and walked round cloisters, out through one of the dark entries on to the lawns of new quad gold-washed in the morning stillness. it seemed incredible that no sign should remain here of that festal life which had so lately thronged the scene. michael went up to the j.c.r. and ate a much larger breakfast than usual, after which, feeling refreshed, he extracted his bicycle from the shed and at the bidding of a momentary impulse rode out of oxford toward lechlade. it had been an early spring that year, and the country was far more typical than usual of old may morning. michael nowadays disliked the sensation of riding a bicycle, and though gradually the double irritation of no sleep and a long ride unaccompanied wore off, he was glad to see lechlade spire and most glad of all to find himself deep in the grass by the edge of the river. lying on his back and staring up at the slow clouds, he was glad he had refused to attend maurice�s mannered breakfast. soon he fell asleep, and when he woke the morning had gone and it was time for lunch. michael felt magnificently at ease with the country after his rest, and when he had eaten at the inn, he went back to the river�s bank and slept away two hours more. then for a while in the afternoon, so richly endowed with warmth and shadows that it seemed to have stolen a summer disguise, he walked about level water-meadows very lush and vivid, painted with gay and simple flowers and holding in their green embroidered lap all england. riding back to oxford, michael thought he would have tea at an inn that stood beside a dreaming ferry. he was not sure of the inn�s name, and deliberately he did not ask what sweet confluence of streams here happened, whether it were windrush or evenlode or some other nameless tributary that was flowing into the ancestral thames. michael thought he would like to stay on to dinner and ride back to oxford by moonlight. so with dusk falling he sat in the inn garden that was faintly melodious with the plash of the river and perfumed with white stocks. a distant clock chimed the hour, and michael, turning for one moment to salute the sunset, went into the somber inn parlor. at the table another undergraduate was sitting, and michael hoped a conversation might ensue since he was attracted to this solitary inmate. his companion, however, scarcely looked up as he took his seat, but continued to stare very hard at a small piece of writing-paper on the table before him. he scarcely seemed to notice what was put on the table by the serving-maid, and he ate absently with his eyes still fixed upon his paper. michael wondered if he were trying to solve a cipher and regretted his preoccupation, since the longer he spent in his silent company the more keenly he felt the attraction of this strange youth with the tumbled hair and drooping lids and delicately carved countenance. at last he put away the pencil he had been chewing instead of his food, and slipped the paper into the pocket of his waistcoat. then with an expression of curiosity so intense as to pucker up his pale forehead into numberless wrinkles the pensive undergraduate examined the food on the plate before him. �i think it�s rather cold by now,� said michael, unable to keep silence any longer in the presence of this interesting stranger. �i was trying to alter the last line of a sonnet. if i knew you better, i�d read you the six alternative versions. but if i read them to you now, you�d think i was an affected ass,� he drawled. michael protested he would like to hear them very much. �they�re all equally bad,� the poet proclaimed gloomily. �what made you come to this inn? i didn�t know that anybody else except me had ever been here. you�re at the varsity, i suppose?� michael with a nod announced his college. �i�m at balliol. at balliol you find the youngest dons and the oldest undergraduates in oxford.� �i think just the reverse is true of st. mary�s,� michael suggested. �well, certainly the youngest thing i ever met is a st. mary�s man. i refer to the ebullient avery whom i expect you know.� �oh, rather. in fact, he�s rather a friend of mine. he�s keen on starting a paper just at present.� �i know. i know,� said the poet. �he�s asked me to be one of the forty-nine sub-editors. are you another?� �i was invited to be,� michael admitted. �but instead i�m going to subscribe some of the capital required. my name�s fane.� �mine�s hazlewood. it�s rather jolly to meet a person in this inn. usually i only meet fishermen more flagrantly mendacious than anywhere else. but they�ve got bored with me because i always unhesitatingly go two pounds better than the biggest juggler of avoirdupois present. have you ever thought of the romance in troy measure? i can imagine paris weighing the charms of helen�no�on second thoughts i�m being forced. don�t encourage me to talk for effect. how did you come to this inn?� �i don�t know,� said michael, wrestling as he spoke with the largest roast chicken he had ever seen. �i think i missed a turning. i�ve been at lechlade all day.� �we may as well ride back together,� hazlewood proposed. after dinner they talked and smoked for a while in the inn parlor, and then with half-a-moon high in the heavens they scudded back to oxford. hazlewood invited michael to come up to his rooms for a drink. �do you know many balliol people?� he asked. michael named a few acquaintances who had been the fruit of his acting in the merchant of venice. �i daresay some of that push will be in my rooms. other people use my rooms almost more than i do myself. i think they have a vague idea they�re keeping a chapel, or else it�s a relief from the unparagoned brutality of the college architecture.� hazlewood was right in his surmise, for when he and michael reached his rooms, they seemed full of men. it was impossible to say at once how many were present because the only light was given by two gigantic wax candles that stood on either side of the fireplace in massive candlesticks of wrought iron. �mr. fane of st. mary�s,� said hazlewood casually, and michael was dimly aware of multitudinous nods of greeting and an unanimous murmur of expostulation with hazlewood for his lateness. �i suppose you know that this is a meeting of the chandos, guy?� the chorus sighed, in a climax of exasperated patience. �forgot all about it,� said hazlewood. �but i suppose i can bring a visitor.� michael made a move to depart, feeling embarrassed by the implied criticism of the expostulation. �sit down,� said hazlewood peremptorily. �if i can�t bring a visitor i resign from the society, and the five hundred and fiftieth meeting will have to be held somewhere else. i call upon lord comeragh to read us his carefully prepared paper on the catapult in mediæval warfare.� �don�t be an affected ass, guy,� said comeragh. �you know you yourself are reading a paper on the sonnet.� �rise from the noble lord,� said hazlewood. �the first i�ve had in a day�s fishing. i say, fane, don�t listen to this rot.� the company settled back in anticipation of the paper, while the host and reader searched desperately in the dim light for his manuscript. michael found the evening a delightful end to his day. he was sufficiently tired by his nocturnal vigil to be able to accept the experience without any prickings of self-consciousness and doubt as to whether this balliol club resented his intrusion. hazlewood�s room was the most personal that so far he had seen in oxford. it shadowed forth for michael possibilities that in the sporting atmosphere of st. mary�s he had begun to forget. he would not have liked tommy grainger or lonsdale to have rooms like this one of hazlewood�s, nor would he have exchanged the society of grainger and lonsdale for any other society in oxford; but he was glad to think that hazlewood and his rooms existed. he lay back in a deep armchair watching the candlelight flicker over the tapestries, and the shadows of the listeners in giant size upon their martial and courtly populations. he heard in half-a-dream the level voice of hazlewood enunciating his theories in graceful singing sentences, and the occasional fizz of a replenished glass. the tobacco smoke grew thicker and thicker, curling in spirals about the emaciated loveliness of an ivory saint. the paper was over: and before the discussion was started somebody rose and drew back the dull green curtains sown with golden fleur-de-lys. moonbeams came slanting in and with them the freshness of the may night: more richly blue gathered the tobacco smoke: more magical became the room, and more perfectly the decorative expression of all oxford stood for. one by one the members of the chandos society rose up to comment on the paper, mocking and earnest, affected and sincere, always clever, sometimes humorous, sometimes truly wise with an apologetic wisdom that was the more delightful. michael came to the conclusion that he liked balliol, that most unjustly had he heard its atmosphere stigmatized as priggish. he made up his mind to examine more closely at leisure this atmosphere, so that from it he might extract the quintessential spirit. walking with hazlewood to the lodge, he asked him if the men he had met in his room would stand as representatives of the college. �yes, i should think so,� said hazlewood. �why, are you making exhaustive researches into the social aspects of oxford life? it takes an american to do that really well, you know.� �but what is the essential balliol?� michael demanded. �who could say so easily? perhaps it�s the same sort of spirit, slightly filtered down through modern conditions, as you found in elizabethan england.� michael asked for a little more elaboration. �well, take a man connected with the legislative class, directly by birth and indirectly by opportunities, give him at least enough taste not to be ashamed of poetry, give him also enough energy not to be ashamed of football or cricket, and add a profound satisfaction with oxford in general and balliol in particular, and there you are.� �will that description serve for yourself?� michael asked. �for me? oh, great scott, no! i�m utterly deficient in proconsular ambitions.� they had reached the lodge by now, and michael left his new friend after promising very soon to come to lunch and pursue further his acquaintance with balliol. when michael got back to college, avery was hard at work with wedderburn drawing up the preliminary circular of the oxford looking-glass. both the promoters insisted that michael should listen to their announcement before he told them anything about himself or his day. �_the oxford looking-glass,_� avery began, �_is intended to reflect contemporary undergraduate thought._� �i prefer �will reflect,�� wedderburn interrupted, in bass accents of positive opinion. �i don�t think it very much matters,� said michael, �as long as you don�t think that �contemporary undergraduate thought� is too pretentious. the question is whether you can see a ghost in a mirror, for a spectral appearance is just about as near as undergraduate thought ever reaches toward reality.� neither avery nor wedderburn condescended to reply to his criticism, and the chief promoter went on: _�some of the subjects which the oxford looking-glass will reflect will be literature, politics, painting, music, and the drama.�_ �i think that�s a rotten sentence,� michael interrupted. �well, of course, it will be polished,� avery irritably explained. �what wedders and i have been trying to do all the evening is to say as simply and directly as possible what we are aiming at.� �ah!� michael agreed, smiling. �now i�m beginning to understand.� �_it may be assumed_,� avery went on, �_that the opinion of those who are �knocking at the door_� (in inverted commas)��� �i shouldn�t think anybody would ever open to people standing outside a door in inverted commas,� michael observed. �look here, michael,� avery and wedderburn protested simultaneously, �will you shut up, or you won�t be allowed to contribute.� �haven�t you ever heard of the younger generation knocking at the door in ibsen?� fretfully demanded maurice. �_that the opinion of those who are knocking at the door,_� he continued defiantly, �_is not unworthy of an audience._� �but if they�re knocking at a door,� michael objected, �they can�t be reflected in a mirror; unless it�s a glass door, and if it�s a glass door, they oughtn�t to be knocking on it very hard. and if they don�t knock hard, there isn�t much point��� �_the editor in chief_,� pursued maurice, undaunted by michael�s attempt to reduce to absurdity the claims of the oxford looking-glass, �_will be m. avery (st. mary�s), with whom will be associated c. st. c. wedderburn (st. mary�s), c. m. s. fane (st. mary�s), v. l. a. townsend (b.n.c.)_. i haven�t asked him yet, as a matter of fact, but he�s sure to join because he�s very keen on ibsen. _w. mowbray (univ.)._ bill mowbray�s very bucked at the scheme. he�s just resigned from the russell and joined the canning. they say at the union that a lot of the principal speakers are going to follow chamberlain�s lead for protection. _n. r. stewart (trinity)._ nigel stewart is most tremendously keen, and rather a good man to have, as he�s had two poems taken by the saturday review already. _g. hazlewood (balliol)_��� �that�s the man i�ve come to talk about,� said michael. �i met him to-day.� avery asked if michael liked old guy and was obviously pleased to hear he had been considered interesting. �for in his own way,� said avery solemnly, �he�s about the most brilliant man in the varsity. i�d sooner have him under me than all the rest put together, except of course you and wedders,� he added quickly. �i�m going to take this prospectus round to show him to-morrow. he may have some suggestions to make.� michael joined with the editor in supposing that hazlewood might have a large number of suggestions. �and he�s got a sense of humor,� he added consolingly. for a week or two michael found himself deeply involved in the preliminaries of the oxford looking-glass, and the necessary discussions gave many pleasant excuses for dinner parties at the o.u.d.s. or the grid to which townsend and stewart (both second-year men) belonged. vernon townsend wished to make the oxford looking-glass the organ of advanced drama; but avery, though he was willing for townsend to be as advanced as he chose within the limits of the space allotted to his progressive pen, was unwilling to surrender the whole of the magazine to drama, especially since under the expanding ambitions of editorship he had come to the conclusion he was a critic himself, and so was the more firmly disinclined to let slip the trenchant opportunity of pulverizing the four or five musical comedies that would pass through the oxford theater every term. however, townsend�s demand for the drama and nothing but the drama was mitigated by his determination as a liberal that the oxford looking-glass should not be made the mouthpiece of the new toryism represented by mowbray; and maurice was able to recover the control of the dramatic criticism by representing to townsend the necessity for such unflinching exposition of free trade and palmerston club principles as would balance mowbray�s torrential leadership of the tory democrats. �so called,� townsend bitterly observed, �because as he supposed they were neither tories nor democrats.� mowbray at the end of his second year was certainly one of the personalities of undergraduate oxford. for a year and a term he had astonished the russell club by the vigor of his radicalism; and then just when they began to talk of electing him president and were looking forward to this presidency of the russell as an omen of his future presidency of the union itself, he resigned from the russell, and figuratively marched across the road to the canning, taking with him half a dozen earnest young converts and galvanizing with new hopes and new ambitions the oxford tories now wilting under the strain of the boer war. mowbray managed to impart to any enterprise the air of a conspiracy, and michael never saw him arrive at a meeting of the oxford looking-glass without feeling they should all assume cloaks and masks and mutter with heads close together. mowbray did indeed exist in an atmosphere of cabals, and his consent to sit upon the committee of the oxford looking-glass was only a small item in his plot to overthrow young liberalism in oxford. his rooms at university were always thronged with satellites, who at a word from him changed to meteors and whizzed about oxford feverishly to outshine the equally portentous but less dazzling exhalations of liberal opinion. stewart of trinity represented an undergraduate type that perhaps had endured and would endure longer than any of the others. he would have been most in his element if he had come up in the early nineties, but yet with all his intellectual survivals he did not seem an anachronism. perhaps it was as well that he had not come up in the nineties, since much of his obvious and youthful charm might have been buried beneath absurdities which in those reckless decadent days were carried sometimes to moral extremes that destroyed a little of the absurdity. as it was, stewart was perhaps the most beloved member of trinity, whether he were feeding rugger blues on plovers� eggs or keeping an early chapel with the expression of an earthbound seraph or playing tennis in the varsity doubles or whether, surrounded by baudelaire and rollinat and rops and huysmans, he were composing an ode to satan, with two candles burning before his shrine of king charles the martyr and a ramshorn of snuff and glasses of mead waiting for casual callers. with townsend, mowbray, and stewart, thought michael, added to wedderburn�s pre-raphaelitism and staid victorian romance, to hazlewood�s genuine inspiration, and with maurice avery to whip the result into a soufflée of exquisite superficiality, it certainly seemed as if the oxford looking-glass might run for at least a year. but what exactly was himself doing on the committee? he could contribute, outside money, nothing of force to help in driving the new magazine along to success. still, somehow he had allowed his name to appear in the preliminary circular, and next october when the first number was published somehow he would share however indirectly in the credit or reproach accruing. meanwhile, there were the mere externals of this first summer term to be enjoyed, this summer term whose beginning he had hailed from st. mary�s tower, this dream of youth�s domination set against the gray background of time�s endurance that was itself spun of the fabric of dreams. divinity and pass moderations would occur some time at the term�s end, inexplicable as such a dreary interruption seemed in these gliding river-days which only rain had power for a brief noontide or evening to destroy. yet, as an admission that time flies, the candidates for pass mods and divvers attended a few sun-drowsed lectures and never omitted to lay most tenderly underneath the cushions of punt or canoe the text-books of their impertinent examinations. seldom, however, did cicero or the logical jevons emerge in that pool muffled from sight by trellised boughs of white and crimson hawthorn. seldom did socrates have better than a most listless audience or st. paul the most inaccurate geographers, when on the upper river the punt was held against the bank by paddles fast in the mud; for there, as one lay at ease, the world became a world of tall-growing grasses, and the noise of life no more than the monotony of a river�s lapping, or along the level water meadows a faint sibilance of wind. this was the season when supper was eaten by figures in silhouette against the sunset, figures that afterward drifted slowly down to college under the tree-entangled stars and flitting assiduous bats, with no sound all the way but the rustle of a bird�s wing in the bushes and the fizz of a lighted match dropped idly over the side of the canoe. this was the season when for a long while people sat talking at open windows, and from the warden�s garden came sweetly up the scent of may flowers. sometimes michael went to the parks to watch alan play in one or two of the early trial matches, and sometimes they sat in the window of alan�s room looking out into christ church meadows. nothing that was important was ever spoken during these dreaming nights, and if michael tried to bring the conversation round to stella, alan would always talk of leg-drives and the problems that perpetually presented themselves to cover-point. yet the evenings were always to michael in retrospect valuable, betokening a period of perfect happiness from the lighting of the first pipe to the eating of the last meringue. eights week drew near, and michael decided after much deliberation that he would not ask either his mother or stella to take part in the festival. one of his reasons, only very grudgingly admitted, for not inviting stella was his fear lest alan might be put into the shade by certain more brilliant friends whom he would feel bound to introduce to her. having made up his own mind that alan represented the perfection of normal youth, he was unwilling to admit dangerous competitors. besides, though by now he had managed to rid himself of most of his self-consciousness, he was not sure he felt equal to charging the battery of eyes that mounted guard in the lodge. the almost savage criticism of friends and relatives indulged in by the freshmen�s table was more than he could equably contemplate for his own mother and sister. so eights week arrived with michael unencumbered and delightfully free to stand in the lodge and watch the embarrassed youth, usually so debonair and self-possessed, herding a long trail of gay sisters and cousins toward his room where even now waited the inevitable salmon mayonnaise. lonsdale in a moment of filial enthusiasm had invited his father and mother and only sister to come up, and afterward had spent two days of lavish regret for the rashness of the undertaking. �after all, they can only spend the day,� he sighed hopefully to michael, �you�ll come and help me through lunch, won�t you, and we�ll rush them off by the first train possible after the first division is rowed. i was an ass to ask them. you won�t mind being bored a bit by my governor? i believe he�s considered quite a clever man.� michael, remembering that lord cleveden had been a distinguished diplomatist, was prepared to accept his son�s estimate. �they�re arriving devilish early,� said lonsdale, coming up to michael�s room with an anxious face on the night before. ever since his fatal display of affection, he had taken to posting, as it were, bulletins of the sad event on michael�s door. �would you be frightfully bored if i asked you to come down to the station and meet them? it will be impossible for me to talk to the three of them at once. i think you�d better talk about wine to the governor. it�ll buck him rather to think his port has been appreciated. tell him how screwed we made the bobby that night when we were climbing in late from that binge on the cher, and let down glass after glass of the governor�s port from tommy�s rooms in parsons� quad.� michael promised to do his best to entertain the father, and without fail to support the son at the ceremony of meeting his people next morning. �i say, you�ve come frightfully early,� lonsdale exclaimed, as lord and lady cleveden with his sister sylvia alighted from the train. �well, we can walk round my old college,� suggested lord cleveden cheerfully. �i scarcely ever have an opportunity to get up to oxford nowadays.� �i say, i�m awfully sorry to let you in for this,� lonsdale whispered to michael. �don�t encourage the governor to do too much buzzing around at the house. tell him the mayonnaise is getting cold or something.� soon they arrived at christ church, and michael rather enjoyed walking round with lord cleveden and listening to his stately anecdotes of bygone adventure in these majestic quadrangles. �i wonder if lord saxby was up in your time?� asked michael as they stood in peckwater. �yes, knew him well. in fact, he was a connection of mine. poor chap, he died in south africa. where did you meet him? he never went about much.� �oh, i met him with a chap called prescott,� said michael hurriedly. �dick prescott? good gracious!� lord cleveden exclaimed, �i haven�t seen him for years. what an extraordinary mess poor saxby made of his life, to be sure.� �did he?� asked michael, well aware of the question�s folly, but incapable of not asking it. �terrible! terrible! but it was never a public scandal.� �oh,� gulped michael humbly, wishful he had never asked lord cleveden about his father. �i can�t remember whether my old rooms were on that staircase or this one. saxby�s i think were on this, but mine surely were on that one. let�s go up and ask the present owner to let us look in,� lord cleveden proposed, peering the while in amiable doubt at the two staircases. �oh, no, i say, father, really, no, no,� protested his son. �no, no; he may have people with him. really.� �ah, to be sure,� lord cleveden agreed. �what a pity!� �and i think we ought to buzz round st. mary�s before lunch,� lonsdale announced. �do they make meringues here nowadays?� inquired lord cleveden meditatively. �no, no,� lonsdale assured him. �they�ve given up since the famous cook died. look here, we absolutely must buzz round st. mary�s. and our crême caramel is a much showier sweet than anything they�ve got at the house.� the tour of st. mary�s was conducted with almost incredible rapidity, because lonsdale knew so little about his own college that he omitted everything except the j.c.r., the hall, the chapel, the buttery and the kitchen. �why didn�t you ask duncan mackintosh to lunch, arthur dear?� lady cleveden inquired. �my dear mother,� said arthur, �he�s quite impossible.� �but sir hugh mackintosh is such a charming man,� said lady cleveden, �and always asks us to stay with him when we�re in scotland.� �yes, but we never are,� lonsdale pointed out. �and i�m sorry to hurt your feelings, mother, about a relation of yours, but mackintosh is really absolutely impossible. he�s the very worst type of harrovian.� michael felt bound to support his friend by pointing out that mackintosh was so eccentric as to dislike entertainment of any kind, and urged a theory that even if he had been asked, he would certainly have declined rather offensively. �he�s not a very bonhomous lad,� said lonsdale, and with that sentence banished mackintosh for ever from human society. after lunch the host supposed in a whisper to michael that they ought to take his people out in a punt. michael nodded agreement, and weighed down by cushions the party walked through the college to where the pleasure craft of st. mary�s bobbed at their moorings. lonsdale on the river possessed essentially the grand manner, and his sister who had been ready to laugh at him gently was awed into respectful admiration. even lord cleveden seemed inclined to excuse himself, if ever in one of the comprehensive and majestic indications of his opinion he disturbed however slightly the equilibrium of the punt. lonsdale stood up in the stern and handled the ungainly pole with the air of a surbiton expert. his tendency toward an early rotundity was no longer noticeable. his pink and cheerful face assumed a grave superciliousness of expression that struck with apologetic dismay the navigators who impeded his progress. round his waist the rich hues of the eton ramblers glowed superbly. �thank you, sir. do you mind letting me through, sir? some of these toshers ought not to be trusted with a punt of their own.� this comment was for michael and uttered in a voice of most laryngeal scorn so audible that the party of new college men involved reddened with dull fury. �try and get along, please, sir. you�re holding up the whole river, sir. i say, michael, this is an absolute novices� competition.� after an hour of this slow progress lonsdale decided they must go back to college for tea, an operation which required every resource of sangfroid to execute successfully. when he had landed his father and mother and sister, he announced that they must all be quick over tea and then buzz off at once to see the first division row. �i think we shall go head to-night,� lonsdale predicted very confidentially. �i told tommy grainger he rowed like a caterpillar yesterday.� but after all it was not to be the joyful privilege of lonsdale�s people to see st. mary�s bump new college in front of their own barge, and afterward to behold the victorious boat row past in triumph with the westering sun making glow more richly scarlet the cox�s blazer and shine more strangely beautiful the three white lilies in his buttonhole. �now you�ve just got time to catch your train,� said lonsdale, when the sound of the last pistol-shots and plaudits had died away. and �phew!� he sighed, as he and michael walked slowly down the station-hall, �how frightfully tiring one�s people are when imported in bulk!� eights week came to an end with the scarlet and lilies still second; and without the heartening effect of a bump-supper the candidates for pass mods applied themselves violently to the matter in hand. at the end of the examination, which was characterized by lonsdale as one of the most low-down exhibitions of in-fighting he had ever witnessed, the candidates had still a week of idleness to recover from the dastardly blows they had received below their intellectual belts. it was the time of the midsummer moon; and the freshmen in this the last week of their state celebrated the beauty of the season with a good deal of midsummer madness. bonfires were lit for the slightest justification, and rowdy suppers were eaten in college after they had stayed on the river until midnight, rowdy suppers that demanded a great expense of energy before going to bed, in order perhaps to stave off indigestion. on one of these merry nights toward one o�clock somebody suggested that the hour was a suitable one for the ragging of a certain smithers who had made himself obnoxious to the modish majority not from any overt act of contumely, but for his general bearing and plebeian origin. this derided smithers lived on the ground floor of the palladian fragment known as new quad. the back of new quad looked out on the deer-park, and it was unanimously resolved to invade his rooms from the window, so that surprise and alarm would strike at the heart of smithers. half a dozen freshmen�avery, lonsdale, grainger, cuffe, sinclair, and michael�all rendered insensitive to the emotions of other people by the amount of champagne they had drunk, set out to harry smithers. michael alone possibly had a personal slight to repay, since smithers had been one of the freshmen who had sniggered at his momentary mortification in the rooms of carben, the rugby secretary, during his first week. the others were more vaguely injured by smithers� hitherto undisturbed existence. avery disliked his face: lonsdale took exception to his accent: grainger wanted to see what he looked like: cuffe was determined to be offensive to somebody: and sinclair was anxious to follow the fashion. not even the magic of the moonlit park deterred these social avengers from their vendetta. they moved silently indeed over the filmy grass and paused to hearken when in the distance the deer stampeded in alarm before their progress, but the fixed idea of smithers� reformation kept them to their project, and perhaps only michael felt a slight sense of guilt in profaning this fairy calm with what he admitted to himself might very easily be regarded as a piece of stupid cruelty. outside smithers� open window they all stopped; then after hoisting the first man onto the dewy sill, one by one they climbed noiselessly into the sitting-room of the offensive smithers. somebody turned on the electric light, and they all stood half-abashed, surveying one another in the crude glare that in contrast with the velvet depths and silver shadows of the woodland they had traversed seemed to illuminate for one moment an unworthy impulse in every heart. the invaders looked round in surprise at the photographs of what were evidently smithers� people, photographs like the groups in the parlors of country inns or the tender decorations of a housemaid�s mantelpiece. �i say, look at that fringe,� gurgled avery, and forthwith he and lonsdale collapsed on the sofa in a paroxysm of strangled mirth. michael, as he gradually took in the features of smithers� room, began to feel very much ashamed of himself. he recognized the poverty that stood in the background of this splendid �college career� of percy or clarence or whatever other name of feudal magnificence had been awarded to counterbalance �smithers.� no doubt the champagne in gradual reaction was over-charging him with sentiment, but observing in turn each tribute from home that adorned with a pathetic utility this bleak room dedicated for generations to poor scholars, michael felt very much inclined to detach himself from the personal ragging of smithers and go to bed. what seemed to him in this changed mood so particularly sad was that on the evidence of his books smithers was not sustained by the ascetic glories of learning for the sake of learning. he was evidently no classical scholar with a future of such dignity as would compensate for the scraping and paring of the past. to judge by his books, he was at st. mary�s to ward off the criticism of outraged radicals by competing on behalf of the college and the university in scientific knowledge with newer foundations like manchester or birmingham. smithers was merely an advertisement of oxford�s democratic philanthropy, and would only gain from his university a rather inferior training in chemistry at a considerably greater personal cost but with nothing else that oxford could and did give so prodigally to others more fortunately born. at this point in michael�s meditations smithers woke up, and from the bedroom came a demand in startled cockney to know who was there. the reformers were just thinking about their reply, when smithers, in a long nightgown and heavy-eyed with sleep, appeared in the doorway between his two rooms. �well, i�m jiggered!� he gasped. �what are you fellers doing in my sitting-room?� it happened that cuffe at this moment chose to take down from the wall what was probably an enlarged portrait of smithers� mother in order to examine it more closely. the son, supposing he meant to play some trick with it, sprang across the room, snatched it from cuffe�s grasp, and shouting an objurgation of his native hackney or bermondsey, fled through the open window into the deer-park. cuffe�s expression of dismay was so absurd that everybody laughed very heartily; and the outburst of laughter turned away their thoughts from damaging smithers� humble property and even from annoying any more smithers himself with proposals for his reformation. �i say, we can�t let that poor devil run about all night in the park with that picture,� said grainger. �let�s catch him and explain we got into his rooms by mistake.� �i hope he won�t throw himself into the river or anything,� murmured sinclair anxious not to be involved in any affair that might spoil his reputation for enjoying every rag without the least reproach ever lighting upon him personally. �i say, for goodness� sake, let�s catch him,� begged michael, who had visions of being sent to explain to a weeping mother in a mean street that her son had died in defending her enlargement. out into the moon-washed park the pursuers tumbled, and through its verdurous deeps of giant elms they hurried in search of the outlaw. �it�s like a scene in the merry wives of windsor,� michael said to avery, and as he spoke he caught a glimpse of the white-robed smithers, running like a young druid across a glade where the moonlight was undimmed by boughs. he called to smithers to go back to his rooms, but whether he went at once or huddled in some hollow tree half the night michael never knew, for by this time the unwonted stampeding of the deer and the sound of voices in the fellows� sacred pleasure-ground had roused the dean, who supported by the nocturnal force of the college servants was advancing against the six disturbers of the summer night. the next hour was an entrancing time of hot pursuit and swift evasion, of crackling dead branches and sudden falls in lush grass, of stealthy procedure round tree-trunks, and finally of scaling a high wall, dropping heavily down into the rose-beds of the warden�s garden and by one supreme effort of endurance going to ground in st. cuthbert�s quad. �by jove, that was a topping rag,� puffed lonsdale, as he filled six glasses with welcome drink. �i think old shadbolt recognized me. he said: �it�s no use you putting your coat over your �ead, sir, because i knows you by your gait.�� �i wonder what happened to smithers,� said michael. �damned good thing if he fell into the cher,� avery asserted. �i don�t know why on earth they want to have a bounder like that at st. mary�s.� �a bounder like what?� asked castleton, who had sloped into the room during avery�s expression of opinion. castleton was greeted with much fervor, and a disjointed account of the evening�s rag was provided for his entertainment. �but why don�t you let that poor devil alone?� demanded the listener. at this time of night nobody was able to adduce any very conclusive reason against letting smithers alone, although maurice avery insisted that men like him were very bad for the college. dawn was breaking when michael strolled round cloisters with castleton, determined to probe through the medium of castleton�s common sense and wykehamist notions the ethical and æsthetic rights of people like smithers to obtain the education oxford was held to bestow impartially. �after all, oxford wasn�t founded to provide an expensive three years of idleness for the purpose of giving a social cachet to people like cuffe,� castleton pointed out. �no, no,� michael agreed, �but no institution has ever yet remained true to the principles of its founder. the franciscans, for instance, or christianity itself. the point surely is not whether it has evolved into something inherently worthless, but whether, however much it may have departed from original intentions, it still serves a useful purpose in the scheme of social order.� �oh, i�m not grumbling at what oxford is,� castleton went on. �i simply suggest that the smitherses have the right, being in a small minority, to demand courtesy from the majority, and, after all, oxford is serving no purpose at all, if she cannot foster good manners in people who are supposed to be born with a natural tendency toward good manners. i should be the first to regret an oxford with the smitherses in the majority, but i think that those smitherses who have fought their way in with considerable difficulty should not go down with the sense of hatred which that poor solitary creature must surely feel against all of us.� michael asked castleton if he had ever talked to him. �no, i�m afraid i haven�t. i�m afraid i�m too lazy to do much more than deplore theoretically these outbursts of rowdy superiority. now, as i�m beginning to talk almost as priggishly as a new sub-editor of the spectator might talk, to bed.� the birds were singing, as michael walked back from escorting castleton to his rooms. st. mary�s tower against the sky opening like a flower seemed to express for him a sudden aspiration of all life toward immortal beauty. in this delicate hour of daybreak all social distinctions, all prejudices and vulgarities became the base and clogging memories of the night before. he felt a sudden guilt in beholding this tranquil college under this tranquil dawn. it seemed, spread out for his solitary vision, too incommunicable a delight. and suddenly it struck him that perhaps smithers might be standing outside the gate of this dream city, that he, too, might wish to salute the sunrise. he blushed with shame at the thought that he had been of those who rushed to drive him away from his contemplation. straightway when michael reached his own door, he sat down and wrote to invite smithers to his third terminal dinner, never pausing to reflect that so overwhelming an hospitality after such discourtesy might embarrass smithers more than ever. yet, after he had worried himself with this reflection when the invitation had been accepted, he fancied that smithers sitting on his right hand next to guy hazlewood more charming than michael had ever known him, seemed to enjoy the experience, and triumphantly he told himself that contrary to the doctrine of cynics quixotry was a very effective device. chapter vi gray and blue when michael, equipped with the prospect of reading at least fifty historical works in preparation for the more serious scholastic enterprise of his second year, came down for the long vacation, he found that somehow his mother had changed. in old days she had never lost for an instant that air of romantic mystery with which michael as a very little boy for his own satisfaction had endowed her, and with which, as he grew older, he fancied she armed herself against the world of ordinary life. now after a month or two of chelsea�s easy stability mrs. fane had put behind her the least hint of the unusual and seemed exceptionally well suited by her surroundings. michael at first thought that perhaps in carlington road, to which she always came from the great world, however much apart from the great world her existence had been when she was in it, his mother had only evoked a thought of romance because the average inhabitant was lower down the ladder of the more subtly differentiated social grades than herself, and that now in cheyne walk against an appropriate background her personality was less conspicuous. yet when he had been at home for a week or two he realized that indeed his mother had changed profoundly. michael put together the few bits of outside opinion he could muster and concluded that an almost lifelong withdrawal from the society of other women had now been replaced by an exaggerated pleasure in their company. what puzzled him most was how to account for the speed with which she had gathered round her so many acquaintances. it was almost as if his father in addition to bequeathing her money enough to be independent of the world had bequeathed also enough women friends to make her forget that she had ever stood in any other relation to society. �where does mother get hold of all these women?� michael asked stella irritably, when he had been trapped into a rustling drawing-room for the whole of a hot summer afternoon. �oh, they�re all interested in something or other,� stella explained. �and mother�s interested in them. i expect, you know, she had rather a rotten time really when she was traveling round.� �but she used always to be so vague and amusing,� said michael, �and now she�s as fussy and practical as a vicar�s wife.� �i think i know why that is,� stella theorized meditatively. �i think if i ever gave up everything for one man i should get to rely on him so utterly that when he wasn�t with me any sort of contact with other people would make me vague.� �yes, but then she would be more vague than ever now,� michael argued. �no; the reaction against dependence on one person would be bound to make her change tremendously, if, as i think, a good deal of the vagueness came after she ran away with father.� michael looked rather offended by stella�s blunt reference. �i rather wish you wouldn�t talk quite so easily about all of that,� he said. �i think the best thing for you to do is to forget it.� �like mother, in fact,� stella pointed out. �do you know, michael, i believe by this time she is entirely oblivious of the fact that in her past there has been anything which was not perfectly ordinary, almost dull. really by the way she worries me about the simplest little things, you�d think�however, as i know you have rather a dread of perfect frankness in your only sister, i�ll shut up and say no more.� �what things?� asked michael sharply. stella�s theories about the freedom of the artist had already worried him a good deal, and though he had laughed them aside as the extravagant affectations of a gifted child, now that, however grudgingly he must admit the fact, she was really grown up, it would never do for her without a protest from him to turn theories into practice. �oh, michael!� stella laughed reprovingly. �don�t put on that professorial or priestly air or whatever you call it, because if you ever want confidences from me you�ll have just to be humbly sympathetic.� michael sternly demanded if she had been keeping up her music, which made stella dance about the studio in tempestuous mirth. �i don�t see anything to giggle at in such a question,� michael grumbled, and simultaneously reproached himself for a method of obloquy so cheap. �anyway, you never talk about your music now, and whatever you may say, you don�t practice as much as you used. why?� for answer stella sat down at the piano, and played over and over again the latest popular song until michael walked out of the studio in a rage. a few days later at breakfast he broached the subject of going away into the country. �my dear boy, i�m much too busy with the bazaar,� said mrs. fane. michael sighed. �i don�t think i can possibly get away until august, and then i�ve half promised to go to dinard with mrs. carruthers. she has just taken up mental science�so interesting and quite different from christian science.� �i hate these mock-turtle religions,� said michael savagely. mrs. fane replied that michael must learn a little toleration in very much the same tone as she might have suggested a little italian. �but why don�t you and stella go away somewhere together? stella has been quite long enough in london for the present.� �i�ve got to practice hard for my next concert,� said stella, looking coldly at her brother. �you and michael are so funny, mother. you grumble at me when i don�t practice all day, and yet when it�s really necessary for me to work, you always suggest going away.� �i never suggested your coming away,� michael contradicted. �as a matter of fact, i�ve been asked to join a reading-party in cornwall, and i think i�ll go.� the reading-party in question consisted besides michael of maurice avery, guy hazlewood, castleton, and stewart. bill mowbray also joined them for the first two days, but after receiving four wires in reference to the political candidature of a friend in the north of england, he decided that his presence was necessary to the triumph of tory democracy and left abruptly in the middle of the night with a request to forward his luggage when it arrived. when it did arrive, the reading-party sent it to await at univ mowbray�s arrival in october, arguing that such an arrangement would save bill and his friends much money, as he would indubitably spend during the rest of the vacation not more than forty-eight hours on the same spot. the reading-party had rooms in a large farmhouse near the lizard; and they spent a very delightful month bathing, golfing, cliff-climbing, cream-eating, fishing, sailing, and talking. avery and stewart also did a certain amount of work on the first number of the oxford looking-glass, work which hazlewood amused himself by pulling to pieces. �i�m doing an article for the o.l.g. on cornwall,� avery announced one evening. �what, a sort of potted guide?� hazlewood asked. maurice made haste to repudiate the suggestion. �no, no; it�s an article on the uncanny place influence of cornwall.� �i think half of that uncanniness is due to the odd names hereabouts,� castleton observed. �the sign-posts are like incantations.� �much more than that,� avery earnestly assured him. �it really affects me profoundly sometimes.� hazlewood laughed. �oh, maurice, not profoundly. you�ll never be affected profoundly by anything,� he prophesied. maurice clicked his thumbs impatiently. �you always know all about everybody and me in particular, guy, but though, as you�re aware, i�m a profound materialist��� �maurice is plumbing the lead to-night,� hazlewood interrupted, with a laugh. �he�ll soon transcend all human thought.� �here in cornwall,� maurice pursued, undaunted, �i really am affected sometimes with a sort of horror of the unknown. you�ll all rag me, and you can, but though i�ve enjoyed myself frightfully, i don�t think i shall ever come to cornwall again.� with this announcement he puffed defiance from his pipe. �shut up, maurice!� hazlewood chaffed. �you�ve been reading cornish novelists�the sort of people who write about over-emotionalized young men and women acting to the moon in hut-circles or dancing with their own melodramatic psyches on the top of a cromlech.� �do you believe in presentiments, guy?� michael broke in suddenly. �of course i do,� said hazlewood. �and i�d believe in the inherent weirdness of cornwall, if people in books didn�t always go there to solve their problems and if maurice weren�t always so facile with the right emotion at the right moment.� �i�ve got a presentiment to-night,� said michael, and not wishing to say more just then, though he had been compelled against his will to admit as much, he left the rest of the party, and went up to his room. outside the tamarisks lisped at intervals in a faint wind that rose in small puffs and died away in long sighs. was it a presentiment he felt, or was it merely thunder in the air? next morning came a telegram from stella in paris: _join me here rather quickly._ michael left cornwall that afternoon, and all the length of the harassing journey to london he thought of his friends bathing all day and talking half through the intimate night, until gradually, as the train grew hotter, they stood out in his memory like cool people eternally splashed by grateful fountains. yet at the back of all his regrets for cornwall, michael was thinking of stella and wondering whether the telegram was merely due to her impetuous way or whether indeed she wanted him more than rather quickly. it was dark when he reached london, and in the close august night the street-lamps seemed to have lost all their sparkle, seemed to glow luridly like the sinister lamps of a dream. �i�m really awfully worried,� he said aloud to himself, as through the stale city air the hansom jogged heavily along from paddington to charing cross. michael arrived at paris in the pale burning blue of an august morning, and arriving as he did in company with numerous cockney holiday-makers, something of the spirit of paris was absent. the city did not express herself immediately as paris unmistakable, but more impersonally as the great railway-station of europe, a center of convenience rather than the pulsing heart of pleasure. however, as soon as michael had taken his seat in the bony fiacre and had ricocheted from corner to corner of half a dozen streets, paris was herself again, with her green jalousies and gilded letterings, her prodigality of almost unvarying feminine types, those who so neatly and so gayly hurried along the pavements and those who in soiled dressing-jackets hung listlessly from upper windows. stella�s address was near the quai d�orsay; and when michael arrived he found she was living in rooms over a bookseller�s shop with a view of the seine and beyond of multitudinous roofs that in the foreground glistened to the sun like a pattern of enamel, until with distance they gradually lost all definition and became scarcely more than a woven damascene upon the irresolute horizon of city and sky. michael never surrendered to disillusion the first impression of his entrance that august morning. in one moment of that large untidy room looking over the city that most consciously of all cities has taken account of artists he seemed to capture the symbol of the artist�s justification. stella�s chestnut hair streamed down her straight back like a warm drift of autumn leaves. she had not finished dressing yet, and the bareness of her arms seemed appropriate to that hungarian dance she played. all the room was permeated with the smell of paint, and before an easel stood a girl in long unsmocked gown of green linen. this girl michael had never seen, but he realized her personality as somehow inseparably associated with that hot-blooded bacchante on whose dewy crimson mouth at the moment her brush rested. geranium flowers, pierced by the slanting rays of the sun, stood on the window-sill of an inner room whose door was open. stella did not stop to finish the dance she was playing, but jumped up to greet michael, and in the fugitive silence that followed his introduction to her friend clarissa vine, he heard the murmur of ordinary life without which drowned by the lightest laugh nevertheless persisted unobtrusive and imperturbable. yet, for all michael�s relief at finding stella at least superficially all right, he could not help disapproving a little of that swift change of plan which, without a word of warning to himself before the arrival of the telegram in cornwall, had brought her from london to paris. nor could he repress a slight feeling of hostility toward miss clarissa vine whose exuberant air did not consort well with his idea of a friend for stella. he was certainly glad, whether he were needed or not, that he had come rather quickly. clarie was going to paint all that morning, and michael, who was restless after his journey, persuaded stella to abandon music for that day and through the dancing streets of paris come walking. the brother and sister went silently for a while along the river�s bank. �well,� said michael at last, �why did you wire for me?� �i wanted you.� stella spoke so simply and so naturally that he was inclined to ask no more questions and to accept the situation as one created merely by stella�s impetuousness. but he could not resist a little pressure, and begged to know whether there were no other reason for wanting him but a fancy for his company. stella agreed there might be, and then suddenly she plunged into her reasons. first, she took michael back to last autumn and a postscript she had written to a letter. �do you remember how i said that academic perfection was not enough for an artist, that there was also life to be lived?� michael said he remembered the letter very well indeed, and asked just how she proposed to put her theory to the test. �i told you that a youth was painting me.� �but you also said he looked like a corpse,� michael quickly interjected. �you surely haven�t fallen in love with somebody who looks like a corpse?� �i�m not in love with his outside, but i am fascinated by his inside,� stella admitted. michael looked darkly for a moment, overshadowed by the thought of the fellow�s presumption. �i never yet met a painter who had very much inside,� he commented. �but then, my dearest michael, i suppose you�ll confess that your acquaintanceship with the arts as practiced not talked about is rather small.� michael looked round him and eyed all paris with comprehensive hostility. �and i suppose this chap is in paris now,� he said. �well, i can�t do anything. i suppose for a long time now you�ve been making a fool of yourself over him. what have you fetched me to paris for?� he felt resentful to think that his hope of stella and alan falling in love with one another was to be broken up by this upstart painter whom he had never seen. �i�ve certainly not been making a fool of myself,� stella flamed. �but i thought i would rather you were close at hand.� �and who�s this clarissa vine?� michael indignantly demanded. �she�s the girl i traveled with to paris.� �but i never heard of her before. all this comes of your taking that studio before we moved to cheyne walk.� by the token that stella did not contradict him, michael knew that all this had indeed come from that studio, and to show his disapproval of the studio, he began to rail at clarissa. �i can�t bear that overblown type of girl. i suppose every night she�ll sit and talk hot air till three o�clock in the morning. i shall go mad,� michael exclaimed, aghast at the prospective futility of the immediate future. stella insisted that clarissa was a good sort, that she had had an unhappy love-affair, that she thought nothing of men but only of her art, that she made one want to work and was therefore a valuable companion, and, finally, to appease if possible michael�s mistrust of clarie by advertising her last advantage, stella said that she could not stand george ayliffe. michael announced that, as miss vine had scarcely condescended to address a single word to him in the quarter of an hour he was waiting for stella to dress, it was impossible for him to say whether he could stand her or not, but that he was still inclined to think she was thoroughly objectionable. �well, to-night at our party, you shall sit next to her,� stella promised. �party?� interrogated michael, in dismay. �we�re having a party in our rooms to-night.� �and this fellow ayliffe is coming, i suppose?� she nodded. �and i shall have to meet him?� she nodded again very cheerfully. they went back to fetch clarie out to lunch, but rather decently, michael was bound to admit, she made some excuse for not coming, so that he and stella were able to spend the afternoon together. it was a jolly afternoon, for though stella had closed her lips tightly to any more confidences, she and michael enjoyed themselves wandering in a light-hearted dream, grasping continually at those airy bubbles of vitality that floated upward sparkling from the debonair streets. the party at the girls� rooms that evening seemed to michael, almost more than he cared to admit to the side of him conscious of being stella�s brother, a recreation of ideal bohemia. he knew the influence of the rich august moon was responsible for most of the enchantment and that the same people encountered earlier in the day in the full glare of the sunlight would have seemed to him too keenly aware of the effect at which they were aiming. but to resist their appeal, coming as they did from the heart of paris to this long riverside room with its lamps and shadows, was impossible. each couple that entered seemed to relinquish slowly on the threshold a mysterious intimacy which set michael�s heart beating in the imagination of what altitudes it might not have reached along the path of romantic passions. every young woman or young man who entered solitary and paused in the doorway, blinking in search of familiar faces, moved him with the respect owed by lay worldlings to great artists. masterpieces brooded over the apartment, and michael tolerated in his present mood of unqualified admiration personalities so pretentious, so vain, so egotistical, as would in his ordinary temper have plunged him into speechless gloom. oxford after this assembly of frank opinions and incarnate enthusiasms seemed a colorless shelter for unfledged reactionaries, a nursery of callow men in the street. through the open windows the ponderous and wise moon commented upon the scintillations of the outspread city whose life reached this room in sound as emotionally melodious, as romantically real as the sea-sound conjured by a shell. here were gathered people who worked always in that circumfluent inspiration, that murmur of liberty, that whisper of humanity. what could oxford give but the bells of out-worn beliefs, and the patter of aimless footsteps? how right stella had been to say that academic perfection was vain without the breath of life. how right she was to find in george ayliffe someone whose artistic sympathy would urge her on to achievements impossible to attain under alan�s admiration for mere fingers and wrists. michael watched this favorite of his sister all through the evening. he tried to think that ayliffe�s cigarette-stained fingers were not so very unpleasant, that ayliffe�s cadaverous exterior was just a noble melancholy, that ayliffe�s high pointed head did not betray an almost insufferable self-esteem, and, what was the hardest task of all, he tried to persuade himself that ayliffe�s last portrait of stella had not transformed his splendidly unconcerned sister into a self-conscious degenerate. �how do you like george�s picture of stella?� the direct inquiry close to his ear startled michael. he had been leaning back in his chair, listening vaguely to the hum of the guests� conversation and getting from it nothing more definite than a sense of the extraordinary ease of social intercourse under these conditions. looking round, he saw that clarissa vine had come to sit next to him and he felt half nervous of this concentrated gaze that so evidently betokened a determination to probe life and art and incidentally himself to the very roots. �i think it�s a little thin, don�t you?� said clarie. michael hated to have his opinion of a painting invited, and he resented the painter�s jargon that always seemed to apply equally to the subject and the medium. it was impossible to tell from miss vine�s question whether she referred to stella�s figure or to ayliffe�s expenditure upon paint. �i don�t think it�s very like stella,� michael replied, and consoled himself for the absence of subtlety or cleverness in such an answer by the fact that at least it was a direct statement of what he thought. �i know what you mean,� said clarissa, nodding seriously. michael hoped that she did. he could not conceive an affirmation of personal opinion delivered more plainly. �you mean he�s missed the other stella,� said clarissa. michael bowed remotely. he told himself that contradiction or even qualified agreement would be too dangerous a proceeding with a person of clarissa�s unhumorous earnestness. �i said so when i first saw it,� cried clarissa triumphantly. �i said, �my god, george, you�ve only given us half of her!�� michael took a furtive glance at the portrait to see whether his initial impression of a full-length study had been correct, and, finding that it was, concluded clarissa referred to some metaphysical conception of her own. from the amplification of this he edged away by drawing attention to the splendor of the moon. �i know what you mean,� said clarissa. �but i like sunshine effects best.� �i wasn�t really thinking about painting at that moment,� michael observed, without remembering that all his mind was supposed to be occupied with it. �you know _you�re_ very paintable,� clarissa went on. �i suppose you�ve sat to heaps of people. all the same, i wish you�d let _me_ paint you. i should like to bring out an aspect i daresay lots of people have never noticed.� michael was not proof against this attack, and, despising the while his weak vanity, asked clarissa what was the aspect. �you�re very passionate, aren�t you?� she said, shaking michael�s temperament in the thermometer of her thought. �no; rather the reverse,� said michael, as he irritably visualized himself in a tiger-skin careering across one of clarissa�s florid canvases. �all the same, i wish you _would_ sit for me,� persisted clarissa. michael made up his mind he must speak seriously to stella about this friend of hers. it was really very unfair to involve him in this way with a provocative young paintress who, however clever she might be, was most obviously unsympathetic to him. what a pity maurice avery was not here! he would so enjoy skating on the thin ice of her thought. yet ice was scarcely an appropriate metaphor to use in connection with her. there should be some parallel with strawberries to illustrate his notion of clarissa, who was after all with her precious aspirations and constructive fingers a creature of the sun. yet it was strange and rather depressing to think that english girls could never get any nearer to the mænad than the evocation of the image of a farouche dairymaid. all the time that michael had been postulating these conclusions to himself, he had been mechanically shaking his head to clarissa�s request. �what can you be thinking about?� she asked, and at the moment mere inquisitiveness unbalanced the solemnity of her search for truth. stella had gone to the piano, and someone with clumsy hair was testing the pitch of his violin. so michael assumed the portentous reverence of a listening amateur and tried to suggest by his attitude that he was beyond the range of clarissa�s conversation. he did not know who had made the duet that was being played, nor did he greatly care, since, aside from his own participation in what it gave of unified emotion to the room, on its melodies he, as it were, voyaged from heart to heart of everyone present. there had been several moments during his talk with clarissa when he had feared to see vanish that aureole with which he had encircled this gathering, that halo woven by the mist of his imagination and illuminated by the essential joy of the company. but now, when all were fused by the power of the music in a brilliance that actually pierced his apprehension with the sense of its positive being, michael�s aureole gleamed with the same comparative reality. traveling from heart to heart, he drew from each the deepdown sweetness which justified all that was extravagant in demeanor and dress, all that was flaunting in voice and gesture, all that was weak in achievement and ambition. even clarissa�s prematurity seemed transferred from the cause to the effect of her art, so that here and there some strain of music was strong enough to sustain her personality up to the very point of abandon at which her pictures aimed. as for george ayliffe, michael watching him was bound to acknowledge that, seen thus in repose with all the wandering weaknesses of his countenance temporarily held in check by the music, stella�s affection for him was just intelligible. he might be said to possess now at least some of the graceful melancholy of a pierrot, and suddenly michael divined that ayliffe was much more in love with stella than she was or ever could be in love with him. he realized that ayliffe, with fixed eyes sitting back and absorbing her music, was aware of the hopelessness of his desire, aware it must be for ever impossible for stella to love him, as impossible as it was for him to paint a great portrait of her. michael was sorry for ayliffe because he knew that those anxious and hungry eyes of his were losing her continually even now in complexities that could never by him be unraveled, in depths that could never be plumbed. more suggestive, however, than the individual listeners were the players themselves, so essentially typical were they of their respective instruments; and they were even something more than typical, for they did ultimately resemble them. the violinist must himself have answered in these harmonious wails to the lightest question addressed to him. his whole figure had surely that very look of obstinate surprise which belongs to a violin. the bones in that lean body of his might have been of catgut, so much did he play with his whole frame, so little observably with his hands merely. as for stella, apart from the simplicity of her coloring, it was less easy to find physically a resemblance to the piano, and yet how well her personality consorted with one. were she ignorant of the instrument, it would still be possible to compare her to a piano with her character so self-contained and cool and ordered that yet, played upon by people or circumstances, could reveal with such decorous poignancy the emotion beneath, emotion, however, that was always kept under control, as in a piano the pressure or release of a pedal can swell or quell the most expressive chord. there was something consolatory to michael in the way stella�s piano part corrected the extreme yearning of the violin. on ascending notes of the most plangent desire the souls of the listeners were drawn far beyond the capacity of their own artistic revelation. it became almost tragical to watch their undisciplined soaring regardless of the height from which they must so swiftly fall. yet when the violin had thoughtlessly lured them to such a zenith that had the music stopped altogether on that pole a reaction into disappointed sobs might not have been surprising, stella with her piano brought them back to the normal course of their hopes, seemed to bear tenderly each thwarted spirit down to earth and to set it back in the lamps and shadows of this long riverside room, while with the wistfulness of that cool accompaniment she mitigated all the harshness of disillusion. michael looked sharply across at ayliffe during this rescue and wondered how often by stella herself had he been just as gently treated. the duet came to an end, and was followed by absurd games and absurdly inadequate refreshments, until almost all together the guests departed. from the street below fainter and fainter sounded their murmurous talk, until it died away, swallowed up in the nightly whisper of the city. ayliffe stayed behind for a time, but he could not survive michael�s too polite �mr. ayliffe,� although he did not perhaps realize all the deadliness of this undergraduate insult. clarissa went off to bed after expressing once more her wish that michael would sit for her. �oh, what for? of course he will, clarie,� cried stella. �of course i won�t,� said michael, ruffling. �what do you want him to sit for?� stella persisted, paying not the least regard to michael�s objection. �oh, something ascetic,� said clarie, staring earnestly into space as if the pictorial idea was being dangled from the ceiling. �just now it was to be something passionate,� michael pointed out scornfully. he suspected clarissa�s courage in the presence of stella�s disdainful frankness. �ah, perhaps it will be both!� clarie promised, and �good night, most darling stella,� she murmured intensely. then with one backward look of reproach for michael she walked with rather self-conscious sinuousness out of the room and up to bed. �my hat, stella, where did you pick up that girl? she�s like a performing leopard!� michael burst out. �she�s utterly stupid and utterly second-rate and she closes her eyes for effect and breathes into your face and doesn�t wear stays.� �i get something out of all these queer people,� stella explained. �new-art flower-vases, i should think,� scoffed michael. �why on earth you wanted to fetch me from cornwall to look after you in this crowd of idiots i can�t imagine. i may not be a great pianist in the making, and i�m jolly glad i�m not, if it�s to make one depend on the flattery of these fools.� �you know perfectly well that most of the evening you enjoyed yourself very much. and you oughtn�t to be horrid about my friends. i think they�re all so dreadfully touching.� �yes, and touched,� michael grumbled. �you�re simply playing at being in bohemia. you�d be the first to laugh at me, if i dressed up alan and maurice avery and half a dozen of my friends in velvet jackets and walked about paris with them, smelling of onions.� �my dear michael,� stella argued, �do get out of your head the notion that i dressed these people up. i found them like that. they�re not imported dolls.� �well, you�re not bound to know them. i tell you they all hang on to you because you have money. that compensates for any jealousy they might feel because you are better at your business than any of them are at theirs.� �rot!� stella ejaculated. however, the argument that might have gone on endlessly was quenched suddenly by the vision of the night seen by stella and michael simultaneously. they hung over the sill entranced, and michael was so closely held by the sorcery of the still air that he was ready to surrender instantly his provocative standpoint of intolerance. the contest between prejudice and sentiment was unequal in such conditions. no one could fail to forgive the most outrageous pretender on such a night; no one could wish for stella better associates than the moonstruck company which had entered so intangibly, had existed in reality for a while so blatantly, but was now again dissolved into elusive specters of a legendary paradise. �i suppose what�s really been the matter with me all the evening,� confessed michael, on the verge of going to bed, �is that i�ve felt out of it all, not so much out of sympathy with them as acutely aware that for them i simply didn�t exist. that�s rather galling. now at oxford, supposing your friend ayliffe were suddenly shot down among a lot of men in my year, he would be out of sympathy with us, and we should be out of sympathy with him, even up to the point of debagging him, but we should all be uncomfortably aware of his existence. seriously, stella, why did you send for me? not surely just to show me off to these unappreciative enthusiasts?� �perhaps i wanted a standard measure,� stella whispered, with a gesture of disarming confidingness. �something heavy and reliable.� �my dear girl, i�m much too much of a weathercock, or if you insist on me being heavy, let�s say a pendulum. and there�s nothing quite so confoundedly unreliable as either. enough of gas. good night.� there followed a jolly time in paris, but for michael it would have been a jollier time if he could have let himself go with half the ridiculous pleasure he had derived from lighting bonfires in st. cuthbert�s quad or erecting a cocoanut shy in the warden�s garden. he was constantly aware of a loss of dignity which worried him considerably and for which he took himself to task very sternly. finally he attributed it to one of two reasons, either that he felt a sense of constraint in stella�s presence on her account, or that his continued holding back was due to his difficulty in feeling any justification for extravagant behavior, when he had not the slightest intention of presenting the world with the usufruct of his emotions in terms of letters or color or sound. �i really think i�m rather jealous of all these people,� he told stella. �they always seem to be able to go on being excited, and everything that happens to them they seem able to turn to account. now, i can do nothing with my experience. i seize it, i enjoy it for a very short time. i begin to observe it with a warm interest, then to criticize, then to be bored by it, and finally i forget it altogether and remain just as i was before it occurred except that i never can seize the same sort of experience again. perhaps it�s being with you. perhaps you absorb all the vitality.� stella looked depressed by this suggestion. �let�s go away and leave all these people,� she proposed. �let�s go to compiègne together, and we�ll see if you�re depressed by me then. but if you are, oh, michael, i shan�t know what to do! only you won�t be, if we�re in compiègne. it was such a success last time. in a way, you know, we really met each other there for the first time.� it was a relief to say farewell to clarissa and her determination to produce moderately good pictures, to ayliffe and his morbid hopes, to all that motley crowd, so pathetic and yet so completely self-satisfied. it was pleasant to arrive in compiègne and find that madame regnier�s house had not changed in three years, that the three old widows had not suffered from time�s now slow and kindly progress, that m. regnier still ate his food with the same noisy recklessness, that the front garden blazed with just the same vermilion of the geranium flowers. for a week they spent industrious days of music and reading, and long mellow afternoons of provincial drowsiness that culminated in the simple pleasures of cassis and billiards at night. michael wrote a sheaf of long letters to all his friends, among others to lonsdale, who on hearing that he was at compiègne wrote immediately to prince raoul de castéra-verduzan, an eton contemporary, and asked him to call upon michael. the young prince arrived one morning in a h.p. car and by his visit made m. regnier the proudest bourgeois in france. prince raoul, who was dressed, so stella said, as brightly as it was possible even for a prince to dress nowadays, insisted that michael and his sister must become temporary members of the société du sport de compiègne. this proposal at first they were inclined to refuse, but m. regnier and madame regnier and the three old widows were all so highly elated at the prospect of knowing anybody belonging to this club, and were so obviously cast down when their guests seemed to hesitate, that michael and stella, more to please the pension regnier than themselves, accepted prince raoul�s offer. it was amusing, too, this so excessively aristocratic club where every afternoon princesses and duchesses and the wives of greek financiers sat at tea or watched the tennis and polo of their husbands and brothers and sons. stella and michael played sets of tennis with castéra-verduzan and the vicomte de miramont, luxurious sets in which there were always four little boys to pick up the balls and at least three dozen balls to be picked up. stella was a great success as a tennis-player, and their sponsor introduced the brother and sister to all the languidly beautiful women sitting at tea, and also to the over-tailored sportsmen who were cultivating a supposedly britannic seriousness of attitude toward their games. soon michael and stella found themselves going out to dinner and playing bridge and listening to much admiration of england in a franco-cockney accent that was the result of a foreign language mostly acquired from grooms. with all its veneer of english freedom, it was still a very ceremonious society, and though money had tempered the rigidity of its forms and opinions, there was always visible in the background of the noisiest party black papalism, a dominant army and the hope of the orleanist succession. verduzan also took them for long drives in the forest, and altogether time went by very gayly and very swiftly, until stella woke up to the fact that her piano had been silent for nearly a fortnight. verduzan was waiting with his impatient car in the prim road outside the pension regnier when she made this discovery, and he looked very much mortified when she told him that to-day she really ought to practice. �but you must come because i have to go away to-morrow,� he declared. �ah, but i�ve been making such wonderful resolutions ever since the sun rose,� stella said, shaking her head. �i must work, mustn�t i, michael?� �oh, rot, she must come for this last time, mustn�t she, fane?� michael thought that once more might not spoil her execution irreparably. �hurrah, you can�t get out of it, miss fane!� the car�s horn tooted in grotesque exultation. stella put on her dust-cloak of silver-gray, and in a few minutes they were racing through the forest so fast that the trees on either side winked in a continuous blur or where the forest was thinner seemed like knitting-needles to gather up folds of landscape. after they had traversed all the wider roads at this speed, somewhere in the very heart of the forest raoul turned sharply off along a wagoner�s track over whose green ruts the car jolted abominably, but just when it would have been impossible to go on, he stopped and they all got out. �you don�t know why i�ve brought you here,� he laughed. michael and stella looked their perplexity to the great delight of the young man. �wait a minute and you�ll see,� he chuckled. he was leading the way along a narrow grass-grown lane whose hedges on either side were gleaming with big blackberries. �we shall soon be right out of the world,� said stella. �won�t that worry you, monsieur?� �well, yes, it would for a very long time,� replied the prince, in a tone of such wistfulness as for the moment made him seem middle-aged. �but, look,� he cried, and triumphant youth returned to him once more. the lane had ended in a forest clearing whose vivid turf was looped with a chain of small ponds blue as steel. on the farther side stood a cottage with diamonded lattices and a gabled roof and a garden full of deep crimson phlox glowing against a background of gnarled and somber hawthorns. cottage and clearing were set in a sweeping amphitheater of beechwoods. �it reminds me of gawaine and the green knight,� said michael. �i�ll take you inside,� raoul offered. they walked across the small common silently, so deeply did they feel they were trespassing on some enchantment. from the cottage chimney curled a film of smoke that gave a voiceless voice to the silence, and when as they paused in the lych-gate, castéra-verduzan clanged the bell, it seemed indeed the summons to waken from a spell sleepers long ago bewitched. �surely nobody is going to answer that bell,� said stella. �why, yes, of course, ursule will open it. ursule! ursule!� he cried. �c�est moi, monsieur raoul.� the cottage door opened and, evidently much delighted, ursule came stumping down the path. she was an old woman whose rosy face was pectinated with fine wrinkles as delicate as the pluming of a moth�s wing, while everything about her dress gave the same impression of extreme fineness, though the stuff was only a black bombazine and the tippet round her shoulders was of coarse lace. when she and raoul had talked together in rapidest french, ursule like an old queen waved them graciously within. they sat in the white parlor on tall chairs of black oak among the sounds of ticking clocks and distant bees and a smell of sweet herbs and dryness. �and there�s a piano!� cried stella, running to it. she played the cat�s fugue of domenico scarlatti. �you could practice on that piano?� raoul anxiously inquired. �it belonged to my sister who often came here. more than any of us do. she�s married now.� the sadness in raoul�s voice had made michael suppose he was going to say his sister was dead. �then this divine place belongs to you?� stella asked. �to my sister and me. ursule was once my nurse. would you be my guests here, although i shall be away? for as long as you like. ursule will look after you. do say �yes.�� �why, what else could we say?� michael and stella demanded simultaneously. it was a disappointment to the regniers when michael and stella came back to announce their retreat into the fast woodland, but perhaps m. regnier found compensation in going down to his favorite café that afternoon and speaking of his guests, monsieur and mademoiselle fêne, now staying with m. le prince de castéra-verduzan at his hunting-lodge in the forest. later that afternoon with their luggage and music raoul brought michael and stella back to the cottage in his car, after which he said good-bye. ursule was happy to have somebody to look after, and the cottage that had seemed so very small against the high beeches of the steep country behind was much larger when it was explored. it stretched out a rectangular wing of cool and shadowed rooms toward the forest. in this portion ursule lived, and there was the pantry, and the kitchen embossed with copper pans, and the still-room which had garnered each flowery year in its course. coterminous with ursule�s wing was a flagged court where a stone well-head stained with gray and orange lichen mirrored a circumscribed world. beyond into an ancient orchard whose last red apples ripened under the first outstretched boughs of the forest tossed an acre of garden with runner-beans still in bloom. in the part of the cottage where stella and michael lived, besides the white parlor with the piano, there was the hall with a great hooded fireplace and long polished dining-table lined and botched by the homely meals of numberless dead banqueters; and at either end of the cottage there were two small bedrooms with frequent changing patterns in dimity and chintz, with many tinted china ornaments and holy pictures that all combined to present the likeness of two glass cases enshrining an immoderately gay confusion of flowers and fruit and birds. here in these ultimate september days of summer�s reluctant farewell life had all the rich placidity of an apricot upon a sun-steeped wall. michael, while stella practiced really hard, read gregorovius� history of the papacy; and when she stopped suddenly he would wake half-startled from the bloody horrors of the tenth century narrated laboriously with such cold pedantry, and hear above the first elusive silence swallows gathering on the green common, robins in their autumnal song, and down a corridor the footfalls and tinkling keys of ursule. it was natural that such surroundings should beget many intimate conversations between michael and stella, and if anything were wanting to give them a sense of perfect ease the thought that here at compiègne three years ago they had realized one another for the first time always smoothed away the trace of shyness. �whether i had come out to paris or not,� asked michael earnestly, �there never would have been anything approaching a love-affair between you and that fellow ayliffe?� he had to recur to this uneasy theme. �there might have been, michael. i think that people who like me grow to rely tremendously on themselves require rather potty little people to play about with. it�s the same sort of pleasure one gets from eating cheap sweets between meals. with somebody like george, one feels no need to bother to sustain one�s personality at highest pitch. george used to be grateful for so little. he really wasn�t bad.� �but didn�t you feel it was undignified to let him even think you might fall in love with him? i don�t want to be too objectionably fraternal, but if ayliffe was as cheap as you admit, you ran the risk of cheapening yourself.� �only to other people,� stella argued, �not to myself. my dear michael, you�ve no idea what a relief it is sometimes to play on the piano a composition that is really easy�ridiculously, fatuously easy.� �but you wouldn�t choose that piece for public performance,� michael pointed out. he was beginning to feel the grave necessity of checking stella�s extravagance. �surely the public you saw gathered round me in paris wasn�t very important?� she laughed in almost contemptuous remembrance. �then why did you wire for me if the whole affair was so trivial as you make out now?� �i wanted a corrective,� stella explained. �but how am i a corrective outside the fact that i�m your brother? and, you know, i don�t believe you would consider that relationship had much to do with my importance one way or the other.� �in fact,� said stella, laughing, �what you�re really trying to do is to work the conversation round to yourself. one reason why you�re a corrective to george is that you�re a gentleman.� �there you are!� cried michael excitedly, and as if with that word she had released a spring that was holding back all the pent-up conclusions of some time past, he launched forth upon the display of his latest excavation of life. �we all half apologize for using the word �gentleman,� but we can�t get on without it. people say it means nothing nowadays. although if it ever meant anything, it should mean more nowadays than it did in the past, since every generation should add something to its value. i haven�t been able to talk this out before, because you�re the only person who knows what i was born and at the same time is able to understand that for me to think about my circumstances rather a lot doesn�t imply any very morbid self-consciousness. _you�re_ all right. you have this astonishing gift which would have guaranteed you self-expression whatever you had been born. when one sees an artist up to your level, one doesn�t give a damn for his ancestors or his family or his personal features apart from the security of the art�s consummation. perhaps i have a vague inclination toward art myself, but inclinations are no good without something to lean up against at the end. these people who came to your party that night in paris are in a way much happier, or rather much more secure than me. however far they incline without support, they�re most of them inclining away from a top-heavy suburban life. so if they become failures, they�ll always have the consolation of knowing they had either got to incline outward or be suffocated.� michael stopped for a while and stared out through the cottage lattices at the stretch of common, at the steel-blue chain of ponds and the narrow portal that led to this secluded forest-world, and away down the lane to where on either side of the spraying brambles a plantation of delicate birch-trees was tinted with the diaphanous brown and gold and pale fawn of their last attiring. �if i could only find in life itself,� said michael, sighing, �a path leading to something like this cottage.� �but, meanwhile, go on,� stella urged. �do go on with your self-revelation. it�s so fascinating to me. it�s like a chord that never resolves itself, or a melody flitting in and out of a symphony.� �something rather pathetic in fact,� michael suggested. �oh, no, much too elusive and independent to be pathetic,� she assured him. �my difficulty is that by natural inheritance i�m the possessor of so much i can never make use of,� michael began again. �i�m not merely discontented from a sense of envy. that trivial sort of envy doesn�t enter my head. indeed, i don�t think i�m ever discontented or even resentful for one moment, but if i _were_ the head of a great family i should have my duties set out in a long line before me, and all my theories of what a gentleman owes to the state would be weighted down with importance, or at any rate with potential significance, whereas now��� he shrugged his shoulders. �i don�t see much difference really,� stella said. �you�re not prevented from being a gentleman and proving it on a smaller scale perhaps.� �yes, yes,� michael plunged on excitedly. �but crowds of people are doing that, and every day more and more loudly the opinion goes up that these gentlemen are accidental ornaments, rather useless, rather irritating ornaments of contemporary society. every day brings another sneer at public schools and universities. every new writer who commands any attention drags out the old idol of the noble savage and invites us to worship him. only now the noble savage has been put into corduroy trousers. my theory is that a gentleman leavens the great popular mass of humanity, and however superficially useless he may seem, his existence is a pledge of the immanence of the idea. popular education has fired thousands to prove themselves not gentlemen in the present meaning of the term, but something much finer than any gentleman we know anything about. and they are _not_, they simply and solidly are _not_. the first instinct of the gentleman is respect for the past with all it connotes of art and religion and thought. the first instinct of the educated unfit is to hate and destroy the past. now i maintain that the average gentleman, whatever situation he is called upon to face, will deal with it more effectively than these noble savages who have been armed with weapons they don�t know how to use and are therefore so much the more dangerous, since every weapon to the primitive mind is a weapon of offense. had i been lord saxby instead of michael fane, i could have proved my theory on the grand scale, and obviously the grand scale even for a gentleman is the only scale that is any good nowadays.� �i wonder if you could,� murmured stella. �anyway, i don�t see why you shouldn�t ultimately attain to the grand scale, if you begin with the small scale.� �but the small scale means just a passive existence that hurts nobody and fades out of memory at the moment of death,� michael grumbled. �well, if your theory of necessary ornaments is valid,� stella pointed out, �you�ll find your niche.� �i shall be a sort of prescott. that�s the most i can hope for,� michael gloomily announced. �yet after all that�s pretty good.� stella looked at him in surprise, and said that though she had known michael liked prescott, she had no idea he had created such an atmosphere of admiration. she was eager to find out what michael most esteemed in him, and she plied him indeed with so many questions that he finally asked her if she did not approve of prescott. �of course i approve of him. no one could accept a refusal so wonderfully without being approved. but naturally i wanted to find out your opinion of him. what could be more interesting to a girl than to know the judgment of others on a person she might have married?� michael gazed at her in astonishment and demanded her reason for keeping such an extraordinary event so secret. �because i didn�t want to introduce an atmosphere of curiosity into your relationship with him. you know, michael, that if i had told you, you would always have been examining him when you thought he wasn�t looking. and of course i never told mother, who would have examined him through her lorgnettes whether he were looking or not.� it seemed strange to michael, as he and stella sat here with the woodland enclosing them, that she could so fearlessly accept or refuse what life offered. and yet he supposed the ability to do so made of her the artist she was. thinking of her that night, as he sat up reading in the clock-charmed room where lately she had played him through the dawn of the english constitution, he told himself that even this cottage which so essentially became them both, was the result of stella�s appeal to raoul de castéra-verduzan, an appeal in which his own personality had scarcely entered. castéra-verduzan! prescott! ayliffe! what folly it had been for him to make his own plans for her and alan. yet it had seemed so obvious and so easy that these two should fall in love with each other. michael wondered whether he were specially privileged in being able to see through to a sister�s heart, whether other brothers went blindly on without an inkling that their sisters were loved. it was astonishing to think that the grave prescott had stepped so far and so rashly from his polite seclusion as to accept the risk of ridicule for proposing to a girl whose mother�s love for a friend of his own he had spent his life in guarding. michael put out the lamp and, lighting a candle, went along the corridor to bed. from the far end he heard stella�s voice calling to him and turned back to ask her what she wanted. she was sitting up in bed very wide-eyed, and, in that dainty room of diminutive buds and nosegays all winking in the soft candlelight, she seemed with her brown hair tied up with a scarlet bow someone disproportionately large and wild, yet someone whom for all her largeness and wildness it would still be a joy devotedly to cherish and protect. �michael, i�ve been thinking about what you said,� she began, �and you mustn�t get cranky. i wish you wouldn�t bother so much about what you�re going to be. it will end in your simply being unhappy.� �i don�t really bother a great deal,� michael assured her. �but i do feel a sort of responsibility for being a nobody, so very definitely a nobody.� �the people who ought to have felt that responsibility were mother and father,� said stella. �yes, logically,� michael agreed. �but i think father did feel the responsibility rather heavily, and it�s a sort of loyalty i have for him which makes me so determined to justify myself.� that night the equinoctial gales began. stella and michael had only two or three walks more down the wide glades where the fallen leaves trundled and swirled, and then it would be time to leave this forest house. raoul did not manage to come back to compiègne in time to say good-bye, and so at the moment of departure they took leave of old ursule and the cottage very sadly, for it seemed, so desolate and gusty was the october morning, that never again would they possess for their own that magical corner of the world. the equinoctial gales died away in a flood of rain, and the fine weather came back. london welcomed their return with a gracious calm. the thames was a sheet of trembling silver, and the distant roofs and spires and trees of the surrey shore no more than breath upon a glass. in this luminous and immaterial city the house in cheyne walk stood out with the pleasant aspect of its demure reality, and mrs. fane like one of those clouded rose pastels on the walls of her room was to both of them after their absence from london herself for a while as they had known her in childhood. �dear children, how charming to see you looking so well. i�m not quite sure i like that very scotch-looking skirt, darling stella. i�m so glad you�ve enjoyed yourselves together. is it a heather mixture? and i was in france, too. but the trains are so oddly inconvenient. mrs. carruthers� most interesting! i wish, darling stella, you would take up mental science. ah, but i forgot, you have your practicing.� it was time to go up to oxford after the few days that stella and michael spent in making arrangements for a series of brahms recitals in one of the smaller concert halls. alan met michael on the platform at paddington. this custom they had loyally kept up each term, although otherwise their paths seemed to be diverging. �good vac?� michael asked. �oh, rather! i�ve been working at rather a tricky slow leg-break. fifty-five wickets for . during the vac. not bad for a dry summer. i was playing for the tics most of the time. what did you do?� michael during the journey up talked mostly about stella. chapter vii venner�s the most of michael�s friends had availed themselves of the right of seniority to move into more dignified rooms for their second year. these �extensions of premises,� as castleton called them, reached the limit of expansion in the case of lonsdale who, after a year�s residence in two small ground-floor rooms of st. cuthbert�s populous quad, had acquired the largest suite of three in cloisters. exalted by palatial ambitions, he spent the first week of term in buttonholing people in the lodge, so that after whatever irrelevant piece of chatter he had seized upon as excuse he might wind up the conversation by observing nonchalantly: �oh, i say, have you chaps toddled round to my new rooms yet? rather decent. i�m quite keen on them. i�ve got a dining-room now. devilish convenient. thought of asking old wedders to lay in a stock of pictures. it would buck him up rather.� �but why do you want these barracks?� michael asked. �oh, binges,� said lonsdale. �we ought to be able to run some pretty useful binges here. besides, i�m thinking of learning the bagpipes.� wedderburn had moved into the tudor richness of the large gateway room in st. cuthbert�s tower. avery had succeeded the canorous templeton-collins on michael�s staircase, and had brought back with him from flanders an alleged rubens to which the rest of the furniture and the honest opinions of his friends were ruthlessly sacrified. michael alone had preferred to remain in the rooms originally awarded to him. he had a sentimental objection to denying them the full period of their participation in his own advance along the lines he had marked out for himself. as he entered them now to resume the tenure interrupted by the long vacation he compared their present state with the negative effect they had produced a year ago. being anxious to arrange some decorative purchases he had made in france, michael had ordered commons for himself alone. how intimate and personal that sparse lunch laid for one on a large table now seemed! how trimly crowded was now that inset bookcase and what imprisoned hours it could release to serve his pleasure! there was not now indeed a single book that did not recall the charmed idleness of the afternoon it commemorated. nor was there one volume that could not conjure for him at midnight with enchantments eagerly expected all the day long. it was a varied library this that in three terms he had managed to gather together. when he began, ornate sets like great gaudy heralds had proclaimed those later arrivals which were after all so much the more worshipful. the editions of luxury had been succeeded by the miscellanies of mere information, works that fired the loiterer to acquire them for the sake of the knowledge of human by-ways they generally so jejunely proffered. and yet perhaps it was less for their material contents that they were purchased than for the fact that in some dead publishing season more extravagant buyers had spent four or five times as much to partake of their accumulated facts and fortuitous illustrations. with michael the passion for remainders was short-lived, and he soon pushed them ignobly out of the way for the sake of those stately rarities that combined a decorous exterior with the finest flavor of words and a permanent value that was yet subject to mercantile elation and depression. if among these ambassadors of learning and literature was to be distinguished any predominant tone, perhaps the kindliest favor had been extended toward the more unfamiliar and fantastic quartos of the seventeenth century, those speculative compendiums of lore that though enriched by the classic renaissance were nevertheless more truly the eclectic consummation of the middle ages. the base of their thought may have been unsubstantial, a mirage of philosophy, offering but a neo-platonic or gnostic kaleidoscope through which to survey the universe; but so rich were their tinctures and apparels, so diverse was the pattern of their ceremonious commentary, and so sonorous was their euphony that michael made of their reading a sanctuary where every night for a while he dreamed upon their cadences resounding through a world of polychromatic images and recondite jewels, of spiritual maladies and minatory comets, of potions for revenge and love, of talismans, to fortune, touchstones of treasure and eternal life, and strange influential herbs. mere words came to possess michael so perilously that under the spell of these jacobeans he grew half contemptuous of thought less prodigally ornate. the vital ideas of the present danced by in thin-winged progress unperceived, or rather perceived as bloodless and irresolute ephemerides. when people reproached him for his willful prejudice, he pointed out how easy it would always be to overtake the ideas of the present and how much waste of intellectual breath would be avoided by letting his three or four oxford years account for the most immediately evanescent. oxford seemed to him to provide an opportunity, and more than an opportunity�an inexpugnable command to wave with most reluctant hands farewell to the backward of time, around whose brink rose up more truthful dreams than those that floated indeterminate, beckoning through the mist across the wan mountains of the future. on the walls michael�s pictures had been collected to achieve through another medium the effect of his books. mona lisa was there not for her lips or eyes, but rather for that labyrinth of rocks and streams behind; and since pictures seldom could be found to provide what he sought in a picture, there were very few of them in his sitting-room. one hour of the anatomy of melancholy or of urn burial could always transform the pattern of the terra-cotta wall paper to some diagrammatic significance. apart from the accumulation of books and pictures, he had changed the room scarcely at all. curtains and covers, chairs and tables, all preserved the character of the room itself as something that existed outside the idiosyncrasies of the transient inhabitants who read and laughed and ate and talked for so comparatively fleeting a space of time between its four walls. with all that he had imposed of what in the opinion of his contemporaries were eccentricities of adornment, the rooms remained, as he would observe to any critic, essentially the same as his own. instead of college groups which marked merely by the height of the individual�s waistcoat-opening the almost intolerable fugacity of their record, there were leonardo and blake and frederick walker to preserve the illusion of permanence, or at least of continuity. instead of the bleached and desiccated ribs of momentarily current magazines cast away in sepulchral indignity, there were a hundred quartos whose calf bindings had the durableness and sober depth of walnut furniture, furniture, moreover, that was still in use. yet it was in venner�s office where michael found the perfect fruit of time�s infinitely fastidious preservation, the survival not so much of the fittest as of the most expressive. here, indeed, whatever in his own rooms might affect him with the imagination of the eternal present of finite conceptions, was the embodiment of the possible truth of those moments in which at intervals he had apprehended, whether through situations or persons or places, the assurance of immortality. great pictures, great music and most of all great literature would always remain as the most obvious pledge of man�s spiritual potentiality, but these subtler intimations of momentary vision had such power to impress themselves that michael could believe in the child blake when he spoke of seeing god�s forehead pressed against the window panes, could believe that the soul liberated from the prison of the flesh had struggled in the very instant of her recapture to state the ineffable. to him blake seemed the only poet who had in all his work disdained to attempt the recreation of anything but these moments of positive faith. every other writer seemed clogged by human conceptions of grandeur. most people, seeking the imaginative reward of their sensibility, would obtain the finest thrill that oxford could offer from the sudden sight of st. mary�s tower against a green april afterglow, or of the moon-parched high street in frost. michael, however, found in venner�s office, just as he had found in that old print of st. mary�s tower rather than in the tower itself, the innermost shrine of oxford, the profoundest revelation of the shining truth round which the mysterious material of oxford had grown through the middle ages. michael with others of his year had during the summer term ventured several times into venner�s, but the entrance of even a comparatively obscure senior had always driven them out. they had not yet enjoyed the atmosphere of security without which a club unlike an orchard never tastes sweet. now, with the presence of a new year�s freshmen and with the lordship of the college in their own hands, since to the out-of-college men age with merciless finger seemed already to be beckoning, michael and his contemporaries in their pride of prime marched into venner�s after hall and drank their coffee. venner�s office was one of the small ground-floor rooms in cloisters, but it had long ago been converted to the present use. an inner storeroom, to which venner always retired to make a cup of squash or to open a bottle of whisky, had once been the bedroom. the office itself was not luxuriously furnished, and the accommodation was small. a window-seat with a view of the college kitchens, a square table, and a couple of windsor chairs were considered enough for the men who frequented venner�s every night after hall, and who on sunday nights after wine in j.c.r. clustered there like a swarm of bees. venner�s own high chair stood far back in the corner behind his high sloping desk on which, always spread open, lay the great ledger of j.c.r. accounts. on the shelves above were the account books of bygone years in which were indelibly recorded the extravagances of more than thirty years of st. mary�s men. over the fireplace was a gilt mirror of victorian design stuck round with the fixture cards of the university and the college, with notices of grinds and musical clubs and debating societies; in fact, with all the printed petty news of oxford. a few photographs of winning crews, a book-case with stores of college stationery, a chippendale sideboard with a glass case of priced cigars on top, and an interesting drawerful of venner�s relics above the varnished wainscot completed the furniture. the wall-paper was of that indefinite brownish yellow which one finds in the rooms of old-fashioned solicitors, and of that curious oily texture which seems to produce an impression of great age and at the same time of perfect modernity. yet the office itself, haunted though it was by the accumulated personalities of every generation at st. mary�s, would scarcely have possessed the magical effect of fusion which it did possess, had not all these personalities endured in a perpetual present through the conservative force of venner himself. john venables had been steward of the junior common room for thirty-three years, but he seemed to all these young men that came within the fragrancy of his charm to be as much an intrinsic part of the college as the tower itself. the moon-faced warden, the dry-voiced dons, the deer park, the elms, the ancient doors and traceries, the lawns and narrow entries, the groinings and the lattices, were all subordinate in the estimation of the undergraduates to venner. he knew the inner history of every rag; he realized why each man was popular or unpopular or merely ignored; he was a treasure-house of wise counsel and kindly advice; he held the keys of every heart. he was an old man with florid, clean-shaven face, a pair of benignant eyes intensely blue, a rounded nose, a gentle voice and most inimitable laugh. something there was in him of the old family butler, a little more of the yeoman-farmer, a trace of the head game-keeper, a suspicion of the trainer of horses, but all these elements were blended to produce the effect of someone wise and saintly and simple who could trouble himself to heal the lightest wounds and could rouse with a look or a gesture undying affection. with such a tutelary spirit, it was not surprising the freedom of venner�s should have been esteemed a privilege that could only be conferred by the user�s consciousness of his own right. there was no formal election to venner�s: there simply happened a moment when the st. mary�s man entered unembarrassed that mellow office and basked in that sunny effluence. in this ripe old room, generous and dry as sherry wine, how pleasant it was to sit and listen to venner�s ripe old stories: how amazingly important seemed the trivial gossip of the college in this historic atmosphere: how much time was apparently wasted here between eight and ten at night, and what a thrill it always was to come into college about half-past nine of a murky evening and stroll round cloisters to see if there was anybody in venner�s. it could after all scarcely be accounted a waste of time to sit and slowly mature in venner�s, and sometimes about half-past nine the old man would be alone, the fire would be dying down and during the half-hour that remained of his duty, it would be possible to peel a large apple very slowly and extract from him more of the essence of social history than could be gained from a term�s reading of great historians even with all the extra lucidity imparted by a course of mr. so-and-so�s lectures. michael found that venner summed up clearly for him all his own tentative essays to grasp the meaning of life. he perceived in him the finest reaction to the prejudice and nobility, the efficiency and folly of aristocratic thought. he found in him the ideal realization of his own most cherished opinions. england, and all that was most inexplicable in the spirit of england, was expressed by venner. he was a landscape, a piece of architecture, a simple poem of england. one of venner�s applauded tricks was to attach a piece of string to the tongs for a listener to hold to his ears, while venner struck the tongs with the poker and evoked the sound of st. mary�s chimes. but the poker and tongs were unnecessary, for in venner�s own voice was the sound of all the bells in england. communion with this gracious, this tranquil, this mellow presence affected michael with a sense of the calm certainty of his own life. it lulled all the discontent and all the unrest. it indicated for the remainder of his oxford time a path which, if it did not lead to any outburst of existence, was at least a straight path, green bordered and gay with birdsong, with here and there a sight of ancient towers and faiths, and here and there an arbor in which he and his friends could sit and talk of their hopes. �venner,� said lonsdale one evening, �do you remember the bishop of cirencester when he was up? stebbing his name was. my mother roped him in for a teetotal riot she was inciting this vac.� �oh, yes, i think he was rather a wild fellow,� venner began, full of reminiscence. �but we�ll look him up.� down came some account-book of the later seventies, and all the festive evenings of the bishop, spent in the period when undergraduates were photographed with mutton-chop whiskers and bowler hats, lay revealed for the criticism of his irreverent successors. �there you are,� chuckled venner triumphantly. �what did i say? one dozen champagne. three bottles of brandy. all drunk in one night, for there�s another half dozen put down for the next day. ah, but the men are much quieter nowadays. not nearly so much drinking done in college as there used to be. oh, i remember the bishop�stebbing he was then. he put a cod-fish in the dean�s bed. oh, there was a dreadful row about it! the old warden kicked up such a fuss.� and, as easily as one arabian night glides into another, venner glided from anecdote to anecdote of episcopal youth. �i thought the old boy liked the governor�s port,� laughed lonsdale. ��what a pity everybody can�t drink in moderation,� said gaiters. next time he cocks his wicked old eye at me, i shall ask him about that cod-fish.� �what�s this they tell me about your bringing out a magazine?� venner inquired, turning to maurice avery. �out next week, venner,� maurice announced importantly. �why, whatever do you find to write about?� asked venner. �but i suppose it�s amusing. i�ve often been asked to write my own life. what an idea! as if i had any time. i�m glad enough to go to bed when i get home, though i always smoke a pipe first. we had two men here once who brought out a paper. chalfont and weymouth. i used to have some copies of it somewhere. they put in a lot of skits of the college dons. the warden was quite annoyed. �most scurrilous, venables,� he said to me, i remember. �most scurrilous.�� venner chuckled at the remembrance of the warden�s indignation. �this is going to be a very serious affair, venner,� explained somebody. �it�s going to put the world quite straight again.� �ho-ho, i suppose you�re one of these radicals,� said venner to the editor. �dear me, how anyone can be a radical i can�t understand. i�ve always been a conservative. we had a socialist come up here to lecture once in a man�s rooms�a great radical this man was�sir hugh gaston�a baronet�there�s a funny thing, fancy a radical baronet. well, the men got to hear of this socialist coming up and what do you think they did?� venner chuckled in anticipatory relish. �why, they cropped his hair down to nothing. sir hugh gaston was quite upset about it, and when he made a fuss, they cut his hair too, though it was quite short already. there was a terrible rowdy set up then. the men are very much quieter nowadays.� the door opened as venables finished his story, and smithers came in to order rather nervously a tin of biscuits. the familiar frequenters of venner�s eyed in cold silence his entrance, his blushful wait and his hurried exit. �that�s a scholar called smithers,� venner explained. �he�s a very quiet man. i don�t suppose any of you know him even by sight.� �we ragged him last term,� said michael, smiling at his friends. �he�s a bounder,� declared avery obstinately. �he hasn�t much money,� said venner. �but he�s a very nice fellow. you oughtn�t to rag him. he�s very harmless. never speaks to anybody. he�ll get a first, i expect, but there, you don�t think anything of that, i know. but the dons do. the warden often has him to dinner. i shouldn�t rag him any more. he�s a very sensitive fellow. his father�s a carpenter. what a wonderful thing he should have a son come up to st. mary�s.� the rebuke was so gently administered that only the momentary silence betrayed its efficacy. one day michael brought alan to be introduced to venables, and it was a pleasure to see how immediately the old man appreciated alan. �why ever didn�t you come to st. mary�s?� asked venner. �just the place for you. don�t you find christ church a bit large? but they�ve got some very good land. i�ve often done a bit of shooting over the christ church farms. the bursar knows me well. �pleased to see you, mr. venables, and i hope you�ll have good sport.� that�s what he said to me last time i saw him. oh, he�s a very nice man! do they still make meringues at your place? i don�t suppose you ever heard the story of the st. mary�s men who broke into christ church. it caused quite a stir at the time. well, some of our men were very tipsy one night at the bullingdon wine, and one of them left his handkerchief in the rooms of a christ church man, and what do you think they did? why, when they got back to college, this man said he wasn�t going to bed without his handkerchief. did you ever hear of such a thing? so they all climbed out of st. mary�s at about two in the morning and actually climbed into christ church. at least they thought it was christ church, but it was really pembroke. do you know pembroke? i don�t suppose you�ve even been there. our men always cheer pembroke in the eights�pemmy, as they call it�because their barge is next to us. but fancy breaking in there at night to look for a handkerchief. they woke up every man in the college, and there was a regular set-to in the quad, and the night porter at pembroke got a most terrible black eye. the president of the j.c.r. had to send an apology, and it was all put right, but this man who lost his handkerchief, wilberforce his name was, became a regular nuisance, because for ever afterward, whenever he got drunk, he used to go looking for this old handkerchief. there you see, that�s what comes of going to the bullingdon wine. are you a member of the bullingdon?� �he�s a cricketer, venner,� michael explained. �so was this fellow wilberforce who lost his handkerchief, and what do you think? one day when we were playing winchester�you�re not a wykehamist, are you?�he came out to bat so drunk that the first ball he hit, he went and ran after it himself. it caused quite a scandal. but you don�t look one of that sort. will you have a squash and a biscuit? the men like these biscuits very much. there�s been quite a run on them.� michael was anxious to know how deep an impression venner had made on alan. �you�ve got nobody like him at the house?� he asked. alan was bound to admit there was indeed nobody. �he�s an extraordinary chap,� said michael. �he�s always different, and yet he�s always absolutely the same. for me he represents oxford. when one�s in his company, one feels one�s with him for ever, and yet one knows that people who have gone down can feel just the same, and that people who haven�t yet come up will feel just the same. you know, i do really think that what it sets out to do st. mary�s does better than any other college. and the reason of that is venner�s. it�s the only successful democracy in the world.� �i shouldn�t have called it a democracy,� said alan. �everybody doesn�t go there.� �but everybody can go there. it depends entirely on themselves.� �what about that fellow smithers you were talking about?� alan asked. �he seems barred.� �but he won�t be,� michael urged hopefully. �he�d be happier at the house all the same,� alan said. �he�d find his own set there.� �but so he can at st. mary�s.� �then it isn�t a democracy,� alan stoutly maintained. �i say, alan,� exclaimed michael, in surprise. �you�re getting quite a logician.� �well, you always persist in treating me like an idiot,� said alan. �but i _am_ reading honor mods. it�s a swat, but i�ve got to get some sort of a class.� �you�ll probably get a first,� said michael. yet how curious it was to think of alan, whom he still regarded as chiefly a good-looking and capable athlete, taking a first class in a school he himself had indolently passed over. of course he would never take a first. he was too much occupied with the perfection of new leg-breaks. and what would he do after his degree, his third in greats? a third was the utmost michael mentally allowed him in the final schools. �i suppose you�ll ultimately try for the indian civil?� michael asked. �do you remember when we used to lie awake talking in bed at carlington road? it was always going to be me who did everything intellectual; you were always the sportsman.� �i am still. michael, i think i�ve got a chance of my blue this year. if i can keep that leg-break,� he added fervidly. �there�s no slow right-hander of much class in the varsity. i worked like a navvy at that leg-break last vac.� �i thought you were grinding for mods,� michael reminded him, with a smile. �i worked like a navvy at mods,� said alan. �you�ll be a proconsul, i really believe.� michael looked admiringly at his friend. �and do you know, alan, in appearance you�re turning into a regular viking.� �i meant to have my hair cut yesterday,� said alan, in grave and reflective self-reproof. �it�s not your hair,� cried michael. �it�s your whole personality. i never appreciated you until this moment.� �i think you talk more rot nowadays than you used to talk even,� said alan. �so long, i must go back and work.� the tall figure with the dull gold hair curling out from the green cap of harris tweed faded away in the november fog that was traveling in swift and smoky undulations through the oxford streets. what a strangely attractive walk alan had always had, and now it had gained something of determination, whether from leg-breaks or logic michael did not know. but the result was a truer grace in the poise of his neck; a longer and more supple swing from his tapering flanks. michael went on up the high and stood for a moment, watching the confusion caused by the fog at carfax, listening to the fretful tinkles of the numerous bicycles and the jangling of the trams and the shouts of the paper-boys. then he walked down cornmarket street past the shops splashing through the humid coils of vapor their lights upon the townspeople, loiterers and purchasers who thronged the pavements. undergraduates strolled along, linked arm in arm and perpetually staring. how faithfully each group resembled its forerunners and successors. all had the same fresh complexions, the same ample green coats of harris tweed, the same gray flannel trousers. only in the casual acknowledgments of his greeting when he recognized acquaintances was there the least variation, since some would nod or toss their heads, others would shudder with their chins, and a few would raise their arms in a fanlike gesture of social benediction. michael turned round into the broad where the fog made mysterious even the tea-tray gothic of balliol, and trinity with its municipal ampelopsis. a spectral cabman saluted him interrogatively from the murk. a fox-terrier went yapping down the street at the heels of a don�s wife hurrying back to banbury road. a belated paper-boy yelled, �varsity and blackheath result,� hastening toward a more profitable traffic. the fog grew denser every minute, and michael turned round into turl street past many-windowed exeter and the monastic silence of lincoln. there was time to turn aside and visit lampard�s bookshop. there was time to buy that glossary of ducange which he must have, and perhaps that red and golden dictionary of welby pugin which he ought to have, and ultimately, as it turned out, there was time to buy half a dozen more great volumes whose connection with mediæval history was not too remote to give an excuse to michael, if excuse were needed, for their purchase. seven o�clock chimed suddenly, and michael hurried to college, snatched a black coat and a gown out of venner�s and just avoided the sconce for being more than a quarter of an hour late for hall. michael was glad he had not missed hall that night. in lampard�s alluring case of treasures he had been tempted to linger on until too late, and then to take with him two or three new books and in their entertainment to eat a solitary and meditative dinner at buol�s. but it would have been a pity to have missed hall when the electric light failed abruptly and when everybody had just helped themselves to baked potatoes. it would have been sad not to have seen the scholars� table so splendidly wrecked or heard the volleys of laughter resounding through the darkness. �by gad,� said lonsdale, when the light was restored and the second year leaned over their table in triumphant exhaustion. �did you see that bad man carben combing the potatoes out of his hair with a fork? i say, porcher,� he said to his old scout who was waiting at the table, �do bring us some baked potatoes.� �isn�t there none left?� inquired porcher. �mr. lonsdale, sir, you�d better keep a bit quiet. the sub-warden�s looking very savage�very savage indeed.� at this moment maurice avery came hurrying in to dinner. �oh, sconce him!� shouted everybody. �it�s nearly five-and-twenty past.� �couldn�t help it,� said maurice very importantly. �just been seeing the first number of the o.l.g. through the press.� �by gad,� said lonsdale. �it�s a way we have in the buffs and the forty two�th. look here, have we all got to buy this rotten paper of yours? what�s it going to cost?� �a shilling,� said maurice modestly. �a bob!� cried lonsdale. �but, my dear old ink-slinger, i can buy the five-o�clock star for a half-penny.� maurice had to put up with a good deal of chaff from everybody that night. �let�s have the program,� sinclair suggested. the editor was so much elated at the prospect of to-morrow�s great event that he rashly produced from his pocket the contents bill, which lonsdale seized and immediately began to read out: �the oxford looking-glass. no. i. _�some reflections. by maurice avery._ �what are you reflecting on, mossy?� �oh, politics,� said maurice lightly, �and other things.� �my god, he�ll be prime minister next week,� said cuffe. _�socrates at balliol. by guy hazlewood._ �and just about where he ought to have been,� commented lonsdale. �oh, listen to this! whoo-oop! _�the failure of the modern illustrator._ �but wait a minute, who do you think it�s by? c. st. c. wedderburn! jolly old wedders! the failure of the modern illustrator. wedders! my god, i shall cat with laughing. wedders! a bee-luddy author.� �sconce mr. lonsdale, please,� said wedderburn, turning gravely to the recorder by his chair. �what, half a crown for not really saying bloody?� lonsdale protested. that night after hall there was much to tell venner of the successful bombardment with potatoes, and there was some chaff for avery and wedderburn in regard to their forthcoming magazine. parties of out-of-college men came in after their dinner, and at half-past eight o�clock the little office was fuller than usual, with the college gossip being carried on in a helter-skelter of unceasing babble. just when fitzroy the varsity bow was enunciating the glories of wet bobbery and the comparative obscurities of dry bobbery and just when all the dry bobs present were bowling the contrary arguments at him from every corner at once, the door opened and a freshman, as fair and floridly handsome as a young bacchus, walked with curious tiptoe steps into the very heart of the assembly. fitzroy stopped short in his discourse and thrummed impatiently with clenched fists upon his inflated chest, as gorillas do. the rest of the company eyed the entrance of the newcomer in puzzled, faintly hostile silence. �oh, venner,� said the intruder, in loftiest self-confidence and unabashed clarity of accent. �i haven�t had those cigars yet.� he hadn�t had his cigars yet! confound his impudence, and what right had he to buy cigars, and what infernal assurance had led him to suppose he might stroll into venner�s in the third raw week of his uncuffed fresherdom? who was he? what was he? unvoiced, these questions quivered in the wrathful silence. �the boy was told to take them up, sir,� said venner. something in venner�s manner toward this newcomer indicated to the familiars that he might have deprecated this deliberate entrance armored in self-satisfaction. something there was in venner�s assumption of impersonal civility which told the familiars that venner himself recognized and sympathized with their as yet unspoken horror of tradition�s breach. �i rather want them to-night,� said the newcomer, and then he surveyed slowly his seniors and even nodded to one or two of them whom presumably he had known at school. �so if the boy hasn�t taken them up,� he continued, �you might send up another box. thanks very much.� he seemed to debate for a moment with himself whether he should stay, but finally decided to go. as he reached the door, he said that, by jove, his cigarette had gone out, and �you�ve got a light,� he added to lonsdale, who was standing nearest to him. �thanks very much.� the door of venner�s slammed behind his imperturbableness, and a sigh of pent-up stupefaction was let loose. �who�s your young friend, lonny?� cried one. �he thought lonny was the common room boy,� cried another. �venner, give the cigars to mr. lonsdale to take up,� shouted a third. �he�s very daring for a freshman,� said venner. �very daring. i thought he was a fourth year scholar whom i�d never seen, when he first came in the other day. most of the freshmen are very timid at first. they think the senior men don�t like their coming in too soon. and perhaps it�s better for them to order what they want when i�m by myself. i can talk to them more easily that way. with all the men wanting their coffee and whiskies, i really can�t attend to orders so well just after hall.� �who is he, venner?� demanded half a dozen indignant voices. �mr. appleby. the honorable george appleby. but you ought to know him. he�s an etonian.� several etonians admitted they knew him, and the wykehamists present seized the occasion to point out the impossibility of such manners belonging to any other school. �he�s a friend of yours, then?� said venner to lonsdale. �good lord, no, venner!� declared lonsdale. �he seemed on very familiar terms with you,� venner chuckled wickedly. lonsdale thought very hard for two long exasperated moments and then announced with conviction that appleby must be ragged, severely ragged this very night. �now don�t go making a great noise,� venner advised. �the dons don�t like it, and the dean won�t be in a very good temper after that potato-throwing in hall.� �he must be ragged, venner,� persisted lonsdale inexorably. �there need be no noise, but i�m hanged if i�m going to have my cigarette taken out of my hand and used by a damned fresher. who�s coming with me to rag this man appleby?� the third-year men seemed to think the correction beneath their dignity, and the duty devolved naturally upon the second-year men. �i can�t come,� said avery. �the o.l.g.�s coming out to-morrow.� �look here, mossy, if you say another word about your rotten paper, i won�t buy a copy,� lonsdale vowed. michael offered to go with lonsdale and at any rate assist as a spectator. he was anxious to compare the behavior of smithers with the behavior of appleby in like circumstances. grainger offered to come if lonny would promise to fight sixteen rounds without gloves, and in the end he, with lonsdale, michael, cuffe, sinclair, and three or four others, marched up to appleby�s rooms. lonsdale knocked upon the door, and as he opened it assumed what he probably supposed to be an expression of ferocity, though he was told afterward he had merely looked rather more funny than usual. �oh, hullo, lonsdale,� said appleby, as the party entered. �come in and have a smoke. how�s your governor?� lonsdale seemed to choke for breath a moment, and then sat down in a chair so deep that for the person once plunged into its recesses an offensive movement must have been extremely difficult. �come in, you chaps,� appleby pursued in hospitable serenity. �i don�t know any of your names, but take pews, take pews. venner hasn�t sent up the cigars i ordered.� �we know,� interrupted lonsdale severely. �but i�ve some pretty decent weeds here,� continued appleby, without a tremor of embarrassment. �who�s for whisky?� �look here, young apple-pip, or whatever your name is, what you�ve got to understand is that....� appleby again interrupted lonsdale. �can we make up a bridge four? or are you chaps not keen on cards?� �what you require, young appleby,� began lonsdale. �you�ve got it right this time,� said appleby encouragingly. �what you require is to have your room bally well turned upside down.� �oh, really?� said appleby, with a suave assumption of interest. �yes,� answered lonsdale gloomily, and somehow the little affirmative that was meant to convey so much of fearful intent was so palpably unimpressive that lonsdale turned to his companions and appealed for their more eloquent support. �tell him he mustn�t come into venner�s and put on all that side. it�s not done. he�s a fresher,� gasped lonsdale, obviously helpless in that absorbing chair. �all right,� agreed appleby cheerfully. �i�ll send the order up to you next time.� immediately afterward, though exactly how it happened lonsdale could never probably explain, he found himself drinking appleby�s whisky and smoking one of appleby�s cigars. this seemed to kindle the spark of his resentment to flame, and he sprang up. �we ought to debag him!� he cried. appleby was thereupon debagged; but as he made no resistance to the divestiture and as he continued to walk about trouserless and dispense hospitality without any apparent loss of dignity, the debagging had to be written down a failure. finally he folded up his trousers and put on a dressing-gown of purple velvet, and when they left him, he was watching them descend his staircase and actually was calling after them to remind venner about the cigars, if the office were still open. �hopeless,� sighed lonsdale. �the man�s a hopeless ass.� �i think he had the laugh, though,� said michael. chapter viii the oxford looking-glass roll-calls were not kept at st. mary�s with that scrupulousness of outward exterior which, in conjunction with early rising, such a discipline may have been designed primarily to secure. on the morning after the attempted adjustment of appleby�s behavior, a raw and vaporous november morning, michael at one minute to eight o�clock ran collarless, unbrushed, unshaven, toward the steps leading up to hall at whose head stood the dean beside the clerkly recorder of these sorry matutinal appearances. michael waited long enough to see his name fairly entered in the book, yawned resentfully at the dean, and started back on the taciturn journey that must culminate in the completion of his toilet. crossing the gravel space between cloisters and cuther�s worldly quad, he met maurice avery dressed finally for the day at one minute past eight o�clock. such a phenomenon provoked him into speech. �what on earth.... are you going to london?� he gasped. �rather not. i�m going out to buy a copy of the o.l.g.� michael shook his head, sighed compassionately, and passed on. twenty minutes later in common room he was contemplating distastefully the kedgeree which with a more hopeful appetite he had ordered on the evening before, when maurice planked down beside his place the first number of the oxford looking-glass. �there�s a misprint on page thirty-seven, line six. it ought to be �yet� not �but.� otherwise i think it�s a success. do you mind reading my slashing attack on the policy of the oxford theater? or perhaps you�d better begin at the beginning and go right through the whole paper and give me your absolutely frank opinion of it as a whole. just tell me candidly if you think my reflections are too individual. i want the effect to be more��� �maurice,� michael interrupted, �do you like kedgeree?� �yes, very much,� maurice answered absently. then he plunged on again. �also don�t forget to tell me if you think that guy�s skit is too clever. and if you find any misprints i haven�t noticed, mark them down. we can�t alter them now, of course, but i�ll speak to the compositor myself. you like the color? i wonder whether it wouldn�t have been better to have had dark blue after all. still��� �well, if you like kedgeree,� michael interrupted again, �do you like it as much in the morning as you thought you were going to like it the night before?� �oh, how the dickens do i know?� exclaimed maurice fretfully. �well, will you just eat my breakfast and let me know if you think i ought to have ordered eggs and bacon last night?� �aren�t you keen on the success of this paper?� maurice demanded. �i�ll tell you later on,� michael offered. �we�ll lunch together quietly in my rooms, and the little mulled claret we shall drink to keep out this filthy fog will also enormously conduce to the amiableness of my judgment.� �and you won�t come out with me and nigel stewart to watch people buying copies on their way to leckers?� maurice suggested in a tone of disappointment. lonsdale arrived for breakfast at this moment, just in time to prevent michael�s heart from being softened. the newcomer was at once invited to remove the editor. �have you bought your copy of the o.l.g. yet, lonny?� maurice demanded, unabashed. �look here, moss avery,� said lonsdale seriously, �if you promise to spend the bob you screw out of me on buying yourself some soothing syrup, i�ll ...� but the editor rejected the frivolous attentions of his audience, and left the j.c.r. michael, not thinking it very prudent to remind lonsdale of last night�s encounter with appleby, examined the copy of the oxford looking-glass that lay beside his plate. it was a curious compound of priggishness and brilliance and perspicacity and wit, this olive-green bantling so meticulously hatched, and as michael turned the pages and roved idly here and there among the articles that by persevering exhortation had been driven into the fold by the editor, he was bound to admit the verisimilitude of the image of oxford presented. maurice might certainly be congratulated on the variety of the opinions set on record, but whether he or that academic muse whose biographies and sculptured portraits nowhere exist should be praised for the impression of corporate unanimity that without question was ultimately conveyed to the reader, michael was not sure. it was a promising fancy, this of the academic muse; and michael played with the idea of elaborating his conception in an article for this very looking-glass which she invisibly supported. the oxford looking-glass might serve her like the ægis of pallas athene, an ægis that would freeze to academic stone the self-confident chimeras of the twentieth century. michael began to feel that his classical analogies were enmeshing the original idea, involving it already in complexities too manifold for him to unravel. his ideas always fled like waking dreams at the touch of synthesis. perhaps pallas athene was herself the academic muse. well enough might the owl and the olive serve as symbols of oxford. the owl could stand for all the grotesque pedantry, all the dismal hootings of age, all the slow deliberate sweep of the don�s mind, the seclusions, the blinkings in the daylight and the unerring destruction of intellectual vermin; while the olive would speak of age and the grace and grayness of age, of age each year made young again by its harvest of youth, of sobriety sun-kindled to a radiancy of silver joy, of wisdom, peace, and shelter, and attic glories. michael became so nearly stifled by the net of his fancies that he almost rose from the table then and there, ambitious to take pen in hand and test the power of its sharpness to cut him free. he clearly saw the gray-eyed goddess as the personification of the spirit of the university: but suddenly all the impulse faded out in self-depreciation. guy hazlewood would solve the problem with his pranked-out allusiveness, would trace more featly the attributes of the academic muse and establish more convincingly her descent from apollo or her identity with athene. at least, however, he could offer the idea and if guy made anything of it, the second number of the oxford looking-glass would hold more of michael fane than the ten pounds he had laid on the table of its exchequer. inspired by the zest of his own fancy, he read on deliberately. _some reflections. by maurice avery._ the editor had really succeeded in reflecting accurately the passing glance of oxford, although perhaps the tortuous gilt of the frame with which he had tried to impart style to his mirror was more personal to maurice avery than general to the university. moreover, his glass would certainly never have stood a steady and protracted gaze. still with all their faults these paragraphic reflections did show forth admirably the wit and unmatured cynicism of the various junior common rooms, did signally flash with all the illusion of an important message, did suggest a potentiality for durable criticism. _socrates at balliol._ _by guy hazlewood._ there was enough of guy in his article to endear it to michael, and there was so much of oxford in guy that whatever he wrote spontaneously would always enrich the magazine with that adventurous gaiety and childlike intolerance of athene�s favorites. _the failure of the modern illustrator._ _by c. st. c. wedderburn._ here was wedders writing with more distinction than michael would have expected, but not with all the sartorial distinction of his attire. �let us turn now to the illustrators of the sixties and seventies, and we shall see....� wedderburn in the plural scarcely managed to convey himself into print. the neat bulk began to sprawl: the solidity became pompous: the profundity of his spoken voice was lacking to sustain so much sententiousness. _quo vadis?_ _by nigel stewart._ nigel�s plea for the inspiration of modernity to make more vital the decorative anglicanism whose cause he had pledged his youth to advance, was with all its predetermined logic and emphasis of rhetorical expression an appealing document. michael did not think it would greatly serve the purpose for which it had been written, but its presence in the oxford looking-glass was a guarantee that the youngest magazine was not going to ignore the force that perhaps more than any other had endowed oxford with something that cambridge for all her poets lacked. michael himself had since he came up let the practice of religion slide, but his first fervors had not burned themselves out so utterly as to make him despise the warmth they once had kindled. his inclination in any argument was always toward the catholic point of view, and though he himself allowed to himself the license of agnostic speech and agnostic thought, he was always a little impatient of a skeptical non-age and very contemptuous indeed of an unbelief which had never been tried by the fire of faith. he did not think stewart�s challenge with its plaintive under-current of well-bred pessimism would be effective save for the personality of the writer, who revealed his formal grace notwithstanding the trumpeting of his young epigrams and the tassels of his too conspicuous style. with all the irritation of its verbal cleverness, he rejoiced to read _quo vadis_? and he felt in reading it that oxford would still have silver plate to melt for a lost cause. under the stimulus of nigel stewart�s article, michael managed to finish his breakfast with an appetite. as he rose to leave the common room, lonsdale emerged from the zareba of illustrated papers with which he had fortified his place at table. �have you been reading that thing of mossy�s?� he asked incredulously. michael nodded. �isn�t it most awful rot?� �some of it,� michael assured him. �i suppose it would be only sporting to buy a copy,� sighed lonsdale. �i suppose i ought to buzz round and buck the college up into supporting it. by jove, i�ll write and tell the governor to buy a copy. i want him to raise my allowance this year, and he�ll think i�m beginning to take an interest in what he calls �affairs.�� michael turned into venner�s before going back to his own rooms. �hullo, is that the paper?� asked venner. �dear me, this looks very learned. you should tell him to put some more about sport into it�our fellows are all so dreadfully wild about sport. they�d be sure to buy it then. going to work this morning? that�s right. i�m always advising the men to work in the morning. but bless you, they don�t pay any attention to me. they only laugh and say, �what�s old venner know about it?�� michael, sitting snugly in the morning quiet of his room, leaned over to poke the fire into a blaze, eyed with satisfaction november�s sodden mists against his window, and settled himself back in the deep chair to the oxford looking-glass. _oxford liberalism. by vernon townsend._ _a restatement of tory ideals. by william mowbray._ these two articles michael decided to take on trust. from their perusal he would only work himself up into a condition of irritated neutrality. indeed, he felt inclined to take all the rest of the magazine on trust. the tranquillity of his own room was too seductive. dreaming became a duty here. it was so delightful to count from where he sat the books on the shelves and to arrive each time at a different estimate of their number. it was so restful to stare up at mona lisa and traverse without fatigue that labyrinth of rocks and streams. his desk not yet deranged by work or correspondence possessed a monumental stability of neatness that was most soothing to contemplate. it had the restfulness of a well-composed landscape where every contour took the eye easily onward and where every tree grew just where it was needed for a moment�s halt. the olive-green magazine dropped unregarded onto the floor, and there was no other book within reach. the dancing fire danced on. far away sounded the cries of daily life. the chimes in st. mary�s tower struck without proclaiming any suggestion of time. how long these roll-call mornings were and how rapidly dream on dream piled its drowsy outline. was there not somewhere at the other end of oxford a lecture at eleven o�clock? this raw morning was not suitable for lectures out of college. was not maurice coming to lunch? how deliciously far off was the time for ordering lunch. he really must get out of the habit of sitting in this deep wicker-chair, until evening licensed such repose. some people had foolishly attended a ten-o�clock lecture at st. john�s. what a ludicrous idea! they had ridden miserably through the cold on their bicycles and with numb fingers were now trying to record scraps of generalization in a notebook that would inevitably be lost long before the schools. at the same time it was rather lazy to lie back like this so early in the morning. why was it so difficult to abandon the sirenian creakings of this chair? he wanted another match for his second pipe, but even the need for that was not violent enough to break the luxurious catalepsy of his present condition. then suddenly maurice avery and nigel stewart burst into the room, and michael by a supreme effort plunged upward onto his legs to receive them. �my hat, what a frowst!� exclaimed maurice, rushing to the window and letting in the mist and the noise of the high. �we�re very hearty this morning,� murmured stewart. �i heard mass at barney�s for the success of the o.l.g.� �nigel and i have walked down the high, rounded the corn, and back along the broad and the turl,� announced maurice. �and how many copies do you think we saw bought by people we didn�t know?� �none,� guessed michael maliciously. �don�t be an ass. fifteen. well, i�ve calculated that at least four times as many were being sold, while we were making our round. that�s sixty, and it�s not half-past ten yet. we ought to do another three hundred easily before lunch. in fact, roughly i calculate we shall do five hundred and twenty before to-night. not bad. after two thousand we shall be making money.� �maurice bought twenty-two copies himself,� said stewart, laughing, and lest he should seem to be laughing at maurice thrust an affectionate arm through his to reassure him. �well, i wanted to encourage the boys who were selling them,� maurice explained. �they�ll probably emigrate with the money they�ve made out of you,� predicted michael. �and what on earth are you going to do with twenty-two copies? i find this one copy of mine extraordinarily in the way.� �oh, i shall send them to well-known literary people in town. in fact, i�m going to write round and get the best-known old oxford men to give us contributions from time to time, without payment, of course. i expect they�ll be rather pleased at being asked.� �don�t you think it may turn their heads?� michael anxiously suggested. �it would be dreadful to read of the sudden death of quiller-couch from apoplectic pride or to hear that hilaire belloc or max beerbohm had burst with exultation in his bath.� �it�s a pity you can�t be funny in print,� said maurice severely. �you�d really be some use on the paper then.� �but what we�ve really come round to say,� interposed stewart, �is that there�s an o.l.g. dinner to-night at the grid; and then afterward we�re all going across to my digs opposite.� �and what about lunch with me?� both maurice and nigel excused themselves. maurice intended to spend all day at the union. nigel had booked himself to play fug-socker with three hearty trindogs of trinity. �but when did you join the union?� michael asked the editor. �i thought it was policy,� he explained. �after all, though we laugh at it here, most of the varsity does belong. besides, townsend and bill mowbray were both keen. you see they think the o.l.g. is going to have an influence in varsity politics. and, after all, i am editor.� �you certainly are,� michael agreed. �nothing quite so editorial was ever conceived by the overwrought brain of a disappointed female contributor.� michael always enjoyed dining at the grid. of all the oxford clubs it seemed to him to display the most completely normal undergraduate existence. vincent�s, notwithstanding its acknowledged chieftaincy, depended ultimately too much on a mechanically apostolic succession. it was an institution to be admired without affection. it had every justification for calling itself the club without any qualifying prefix, but it produced a type too highly specialized, and was too definitely dark blue and leander pink. in a way, too, it belonged as much to cambridge, and although violently patriotic had merged its individuality in brawn. by its substitution of co-option for election, its olympic might was now scarcely much more than the self-deification of roman emperors. vincent�s was the last stronghold of muscular supremacy. yet it was dreadfully improbable, as michael admitted to himself, that he would have declined the offer of membership. the o.u.d.s. was at the opposite pole from vincent�s, and if it did not offend by its reactionary encouragement of a supreme but discredited spirit, it offended even more by fostering a premature worldliness. for an oxford club to take in the stage and the era was merely an exotic heresy. on the walls of its very ugly room the pictures of actors that in garrick street would have possessed a romantic dignity produced an effect of strain, a proclamation of mounte-bank-worship that differed only in degree from the photographs of actresses on the mantelpiece of a second-rate room in a second-rate college. the frequenters of the o.u.d.s. were always very definitely oxford undergraduates, but they lacked the serenity of oxford, and seemed already to have planted a foot in london. the big modern room over the big cheap shop was a restless place, and its pretentiousness and modernity were tinged with thespianism. scarcely ever did the academic muse enter the o.u.d.s., michael thought. she must greatly dislike thespianism with all that it connoted of mildewed statuary in an english garden. yet it would be possible to transmute the o.u.d.s., he dreamed. it had the advantage of a limited membership. it might easily become a grove where apollo and athene could converse without quarreling. therefore, he could continue to frequent its halls. the bullingdon was always delightful; the gray bowlers and the white trousers striped with vivid blue displayed its members, in their costume, at least, as unchanging types, but the archaism made it a club too conservative to register much more than an effect of peculiarity. the bullingdon had too much money, and not enough unhampered humanity to achieve the universal. the union, on the other hand, was too indiscriminate. personality was here submerged in organization. manchester or birmingham could have produced a result very similar. the grid, perhaps for the very fact that it was primarily a dining-club, was the abode of discreet good-fellowship. its membership was very strictly limited, and might seem to have been confined to the seven or eight colleges that considered themselves the best colleges, but any man who deserved to be a member could in the end be sure of his election. the atmosphere was neither political nor sporting nor literary, nor financial, but it was very peculiarly and very intimately the elusive atmosphere of oxford herself. the old rooms looking out on the converging high had recently been redecorated in a very crude shade of blue. members were grumbling at the taste of the executive, but michael thought the unabashed ugliness was in keeping with its character. it was as if unwillingly the club released its hold upon the externals of victorianism. such premises could afford to be anachronistic, since the frequenters were always so finely sensitive to fashion�s lightest breath. eccentricity was not tolerated at the grid except in the case of the half-dozen chartered personalities who were necessary to set off the correctness of the majority. the elective committee probably never made a mistake, and when somebody like nigel stewart was admitted, it was scrupulously ascertained beforehand that his presence would evoke affectionate amusement rather than the chill surprise with which the grid would have greeted the entrance of someone who, however superior to the dead level of undergraduate life, lacked yet the indefinable justification for his humors. michael on the evening of the looking-glass dinner went up the narrow stairs of the club in an aroma of pleasant anticipation, which was not even momentarily dispersed by the sudden occurrence of the fact that he had forgotten to take his name off hall, and must therefore pay two shillings and fourpence to the college for a dinner he would not eat. in the strangers� room were waiting the typical guests of the typical members. here and there nods were exchanged, but the general atmosphere was one of serious expectancy. in the distance the rattle of crockery told of dinners already in progress. vernon townsend came in soon after michael, and as townsend was a member, michael lost that trifling malaise of waiting in a club�s guest-room which the undergraduate might conceal more admirably than any other class of man, but nevertheless felt acutely. �not here yet, i suppose,� said townsend. it was unnecessary to mention a name. nigel stewart�s habits were proverbial. �read my article?� asked townsend. �splendid,� michael murmured. �it�s going to get me the librarianship of the union,� townsend earnestly assured michael. michael was about to congratulate the sanguine author without disclosing his ignorance of the article�s inside, when bill mowbray rushed breathlessly into the room. everybody observed his dramatic entrance, whereupon he turned round and rushed out again, pausing only for one moment to exclaim in the doorway: �good god, that fool will never remember!� �see that?� asked townsend darkly, as the tory democrat vanished. michael admitted that he undoubtedly had. �bill mowbray has become a poseur,� townsend declared. �or else he knows his ridiculous article on toryism was too badly stashed by mine,� he added. �we shan�t see him again to-night,� michael prophesied. townsend shrugged his shoulders. �we shall, if he can make another effective entrance,� he said a little bitterly. maurice avery and wedderburn arrived together. the combination of having just been elected to the grid and the birth of the new paper had given maurice such an effervescence of good spirits as even he seldom boasted. wedderburn in contrast seemed graver, supplying in company with maurice a solidity to the pair of them that was undeniably beneficial to their joint impression. they were followed almost immediately by guy hazlewood, who with his long legs came sloping in as self-possessed as he always was. perhaps his left eyelid drooped a little lower than it was accustomed, and perhaps the sidelong smile that gave him a superficial resemblance to michael was drawn down to a sharper point of mockery, but whatever stored-up flashes of mood and fancy guy had to deliver, he always drawled them out in the same half-tired voice emphasized by the same careless indolence of gesture. and so this evening he was the same guy hazlewood, sure of being with his clear-cut pallor and effortless distinction of bearing, the personality that everyone would first observe in whatever company he found himself. �nigel not here, of course,� he drawled. �let�s have a sweep on what he�s been doing. five bob all round. i say he�s just discovered milton to be a great poet and is now, reading lycidas to a spellbound group of the very heartiest trindogs in trinity.� �i think he saw the perfect flapper,� said maurice �and has been trying ever since to find out whether she were a don�s daughter or a theatrical bird of passage.� �i think he�s forgotten all about it,� pronounced wedderburn very deeply indeed. �i hope he saw that ass bill mowbray tearing off in the opposite direction and went to fetch him back,� said townsend. �i think he�s saying vespers for the week before last,� michael proposed as his solution. stewart himself came in at that moment, and in answer to an united demand to know the reason of his lateness embraced in that gentle and confiding air of his all the company, included them all as it were in an intimate aside, and with the voice and demeanor of a strayed archangel explained that the fearful velocity of a pill was responsible for his unpunctuality. �but you�re quite all right now, nigel?� inquired guy. �you could almost send a testimonial?� �oh, rather,� murmured nigel, with tender assurance lighting up his great, innocent eyes. �i expect, you know, dinner�s ready.� then he plunged his arm through guy�s, and led the way toward the private dining-room he had actually not forgotten to command. dinner, owing to avery�s determined steering of the conversation, was eaten to the accompaniment of undiluted shop. never for a moment was any topic allowed to oust the oxford looking-glass from discussion. even guy was powerless against the editor intoxicated by ambition�s fulfillment. maurice sat in triumphant headship with only mowbray�s vacant place to qualify very slightly the completeness of his satisfaction. he hoped they all liked his scheme of inviting well-known, even celebrated, old oxford men to contribute from time to time. he flattered himself they would esteem the honor vouchsafed to them. he disclaimed the wish to monopolize the paper�s criticism and nobly invited townsend to put in their places a series of contemporary dramatists. he congratulated guy upon his satiric article and assured him of his great gifts. he reproached michael for having written nothing, and vowed that many of the books for which he had already sent a printed demand to their publishers must in the december issue be reviewed by michael. he arranged with nigel stewart and wedderburn at least a dozen prospective campaigns to harry advertisers into unwilling publicity. at nine-o�clock, the staff of the oxford looking-glass, reflecting now a very roseate world, marched across the high to wind up the evening in stewart�s digs. on the threshold the host paused in sudden dismay. �good lord, i quite forgot. there�s a meeting of the de rebus ecclesiasticis in my digs to-night. they�ll all be there; what shall i do?� �you can�t possibly go,� declared everybody. �mrs. arbour,� nigel called out, hurriedly dipping into the landlady�s quarters. �mrs. arbour.� mrs. arbour assured him comfortably of her existence as she emerged to confer with him in the passage. �there may be one or two men waiting in my rooms. will you put out syphons and whisky and explain that i shan�t be coming.� �any reason to give, sir?� asked mrs. arbour. the recalcitrant shook his seraphic head. �no, sir,� said mrs. arbour cheerfully, �quite so. just say you�re not coming? yes, sir. oh, they�ll make themselves at home without you, i�ll be bound. it�s not likely to be a very noisy party, is it, sir?� �oh, no. it�s the de rebus ecclesiasticis, mrs. arbour.� �i see, sir. foreigners. i�ll look after them.� nigel having disposed of the pious debaters, joined his friends again, and it was decided to adjourn to guy�s digs in holywell. arm in arm the six journalists marched down the misted high. arm in arm they turned into catherine street, and arm in arm they walked into the proctor outside the ratcliffe camera. to him they admitted their membership of the university. to him they proffered very politely their names and the names of their colleges, and with the same politeness agreed to visit him next morning. the proctor raised his cap and with his escort faded into the fog. arm in arm the six journalists continued their progress into holywell. guy had digs in an old house whose gabled front leaned outward, whose oriel windows were supported by oaken beams worm-eaten and grotesquely carved. within, a wide balustraded staircase went billowing upward unevenly. guy�s room that he shared with two intellectual athletes from his own college was very large. it was paneled all round up to the ceiling, and it contained at least a dozen very comfortable armchairs. he had imposed upon his partners his own tastes and with that privilege had cut off electric light and gas, so that lit only by two pompeian lamps, the room was very shadowy when they all came in. �comeragh and anstruther are working downstairs, i expect,� guy explained, as one by one, while his guests waited in the dim light, he made a great illumination with wax candles. then he poked up the fire and set glasses ready for anyone�s need. great armchairs were pulled round in a semicircle: pipes were lit: the stillness and mystery of the oxford night crept along the ancient street, a stillness which at regular intervals was broken by multitudinous chimes, or faintly now and then by passing footfalls. unexcited by argument the talk rippled in murmurous contentment. michael was in no mood himself for talking, and he sat back listening now and then, but mostly dreaming. he thought of the conversation in that long riverside room in paris with its extravagance and pretentiousness. here in this time-haunted holywell street was neither. to be sure, christianity and the soul�s immortality and the future of england and contemporary art were running the gauntlet of youth�s examination, but the academic muse had shown the company her ægis, had turned everything to unpassionate stone, and softened all presumption with her guarded glances. it was extraordinary how under her guidance every subject was stripped of obtrusive reality, how even women, discussed never so grossly, remained untarnished; since they ceased to be real women, but mere abstractions wanton or chaste in accordance with the demands of wit. the ribaldry was aristophanic or rabelaisian with as little power to offend, so much was it consecrated and refined by immemorial usages. michael wished that all the world could be touched by the magical freedom and equally magical restraint of the academic muse, and as he sat here in this ancient room, hoped almost violently that never again would he be compelled to smirch the present clarity and steadiness of his vision. chapter ix the lesson of spain perhaps michael enjoyed more than anything else during his accumulation of books the collection of as many various editions of don quixote as possible. he had brought up from london the fat volume illustrated by doré over which he had fallen asleep long ago and of which owing to nurse�s disapproval he had in consequence been deprived. half the pages still showed where they had been bent under the weight of his small body: this honorable scar and the familiar musty smell and the book�s unquestionable if slightly vulgar dignity prevented michael from banishing it from the shelf that now held so many better editions. however much the zest in doré�s illustrations had died away in the flavor of skelton�s english, michael could not abandon the big volume with what it held of childhood�s first intellectual adventure. the shelf of don quixotes became in all his room one of the most cherished objects of contemplation. there was something in the �q� and the �x� repeated on the back of volume after volume that positively gave michael an impression in literal design of the knight�s fantastic personality. the very soul of spain seemed to be symbolized by those sere quartos of the seventeenth century, nor was it imperceptible even in smollett�s cockney rendering bound in marbled boards. staring at the row of don quixotes on a dull december afternoon, michael felt overwhelmingly a desire to go to spain himself, to drink at the source of cervantes� mighty stream of imagination which with every year�s new reading seemed to him to hold more and more certainly all that was most vital to life�s appreciation. he no longer failed to see the humor of don quixote, but even now tears came more easily than laughter, and he regretted as poignantly as the knight himself those times of chivalry which with all the extravagance of their decay were yet in essence superior to the mode that ousted them into ignominy. something akin to don quixote�s impulsive dismay michael experienced in his own view of the twentieth century. he felt he needed a constructive ideal of conduct to sustain him through the long pilgrimage that must ensue after these hushed oxford dreams. term was nearly over. michael had heard from stella that she was going to spend two or three months in germany. her brahms recitals, she wrote, had not been so successful as she ought to have made them. in london she was wasting time. mother was continually wanting her to come to the theater. it seemed almost as if mother were trying to throw her in the way of marrying prescott. he had certainly been very good, but she must retreat into germany, and there again work hard. would not michael come too? why was he so absurdly prejudiced against germany? it was the only country in which to spend christmas. the more stella praised germany, the more michael felt the need of going to a country as utterly different from it as possible. he did not want to spend the vacation in london. he did not want his mother to talk vaguely to him of the advantage for stella in marrying prescott. the idea was preposterous. he would be angry with his mother, and he would blurt out to prescott his dislike of such a notion. he would thereby wound a man whom he admired and display himself in the light of the objectionably fraternal youth. in the dreary and wet murk of december the sun-dried volumes of cervantes spoke to him of spain. maurice avery came up to his room, fatigued with fame and disappointed that castleton with whom he had arranged to go to rome had felt at the last moment he must take his mother to bath. to him michael proposed spain. �but why not rome?� maurice argued. �as i originally settled.� �not with me,� michael pointed out. �i don�t want to go to rome now. i always feel luxuriously that there will occur the moment in my life when i shall say, �i am ready to go to rome. i must go to rome.� it�s a fancy of mine and nothing will induce me to spoil it by going to rome at the wrong moment.� maurice grumbled at him, told him he was affected, unreasonable, and even hinted michael ought to come to rome simply for the fact that he himself had been balked of his intention by the absurdly filial castleton. �i do think mothers ought not to interfere,� maurice protested. �my mother never interferes. even my sisters are allowed to have their own way. why can�t mrs. castleton go to bath by herself? i�m sure castleton overdoes this �duty� pose. and now you won�t come to rome. well, will you come to florence?� �yes, and be worried by you to move on to rome the very minute we arrive there,� said michael. �no, thanks. if you don�t want to come to spain, i�ll try to get someone else. anyway, i don�t mind going by myself.� �but what shall we do in spain?� asked maurice fretfully. michael began to laugh. �we can dance the fandango,� he pointed out. �or if the fandango is too hard, there always remains the bolero.� �if we went to rome,� maurice was persisting, but michael cut him short. �it�s absolutely useless, mossy. i am not going to rome.� �then i suppose i shall have to go to spain,� said maurice, in a much injured tone. so in the end it was settled chiefly, michael always maintained, because maurice found out it was advisable to travel with a passport. as not by the greatest exaggeration of insecurity could a passport be deemed necessary for rome, maurice decided it was an overrated city and became at once fervidly spanish, even to the extent of saying �gracias� whenever the cruet was passed to him in hall. wedderburn at the last moment thought he would like to join the expedition: so maurice with the passport in his breast pocket preferred to call it. there were two or three days of packing in london, while maurice stayed at cheyne walk and was a great success with mrs. fane. the rugby match against cambridge was visited in a steady downpour. wedderburn fetched his luggage, and the last dinner was eaten together at cheyne walk. mrs. fane was tenderly, if rather vaguely, solicitous for their safety. �dearest michael,� she said, �do be careful not to be gored by a bull. i�ve never been to spain. one seems to know nothing about it. mr. avery, do have some more turkey. i hope you don�t dreadfully dislike garlic. such a pungent vegetable. michael darling, why are you laughing? isn�t it a vegetable? mr. wedderburn, do have some more turkey. a friend of mine, mrs. carruthers, who is a great believer in mental science ... michael always laughs at me when i try to explain.... hark, there is the cab, really. i hope it won�t be raining in spain. �rain, rain, go to spain.� so ominous, isn�t it? good-bye, dearest boy, and write to me at mrs. carruthers, high towers, godalming.� �i say, i know mrs. carruthers. she lives near us,� maurice exclaimed. �come on,� his friends insisted. �you haven�t time now to explain the complications of surrey society.� �i�m so glad,� said mrs. fane. �because you�ll be able to see that michael remembers the address.� �i never forget addresses, mother,� protested michael. �no, i know. i always think everyone is like me. merry christmas, and do send a post card to stella. she was so hurt you wouldn�t go to germany.� in the drench and soak of december weather they drove off in the four-wheeler. on such a night it seemed more than ever romantic to be setting out to spain, and all the way to victoria maurice tried to decide by the occasional gleam of a blurred lamp-light how many pesetas one received for an english sovereign. the crossing to dieppe was rough, but all memories of the discomfort were wiped out when next day they saw the sud express looking very long and swift and torpedo-like between the high platforms of that white drawing-room, the gare d�orleans. down they went all day through france with rain speckling the windows of their compartment, past the naked poplar trees and rolling fallows until dusk fell sadly on the flooded agriculture. dawn broke as they were leaving behind them the illimitable landes. westward the atlantic clouds swept in from the bay of biscay, parting momentarily to reveal rifts of milky turquoise sky. wider and wider grew the rifts, and when the train passed close to the green cliffs of st. jean de luz, the air was soft and fragrant: the sea was blue. at irun they were in spain, and michael, as he walked up and down the platform waiting for déjeuner, watched, with a thrill of conviction that this was indeed a frontier, the red and blue toy soldiers and the black and green toy soldiers dotted about the toy landscape. maurice was rather annoyed that nobody demanded their passports and that every official should seem so much more anxious to examine their railway tickets, but when they reached madrid and found that no bull-fights would be held before the spring, he began to mutter of rome and was inclined to obliterate the spaniards from the category of civilization, so earnestly had he applied himself by the jiggling light of the train to the mastery of all the grades from matador to banderillo. in seville, however, maurice admitted he could not imagine a city more perfectly adapted to express all that he desired from life. seville with her guitars and lemon-trees, her castanets and oranges and fans, her fountains and carnations and flashing andalusians, was for him the city to which one day he would return and dream. here one day he could come when seriously he began to write or paint or take up whatever destiny in art was in store for him. here he would forget whatever blow life might hold in the future. he would send everybody he knew to seville, notwithstanding michael�s objection that such generosity would recoil upon himself in his desire to possess somewhere on earth the opportunity of oblivion. maurice and wedderburn both bought spanish cloaks and hats and went with easels to sit beside the guadalquiver that sun-stained to the hue of its tawny banks was so contemptuous of their gentlemanly water-colors, as contemptuous as those cigarette-girls that came chattering from the tobacco-factory every noon. michael preferred to wander over the roofs of the cathedral, until drowsed by the scent of warm stone he would sit for an hour merely conscious that the city lay below and that the sky was blue above. after seville they traveled to granada, to cadiz and cordova and other famous cities; and in the train they went slowly through la mancha where any windmill might indeed be mistaken for pentapolin of the naked arm, and where at the stations the water-carriers even in january cried �agua, agua,� so that already the railway-carriages seemed parched by the fierce summer sun. they traveled to salamanca and toledo, and last of all they went to burgos where maurice and wedderburn strove in vain to draw corner after corner of the cathedral, in the dust and shadows of whose more remote chantries michael heard many masses. a realization of the power of faith was stirred in him by these masses that every day of every year were said without the recognition of humanity. these mumblings of ancient priests, these sanctus-bells that rattled like shaken ribs, these interminable and ceremonious shufflings were the outward expression of the force that sustained this fabric of burgos and had raised in seville a cathedral that seemed to crush like a stupendous monster the houses scattered about in its path, insignificant as a heap of white shells. half of these old priests, thought michael, were probably puppets who did not understand even their own cracked latinity, yet their ministrations were almost frightening in their efficacy: they were indeed the very stones of burgos made vocal. listening to these masses, michael began to regret he had allowed all his interest in religion to peter out in the irritation of compulsory chapel-keeping at oxford. here in burgos, he felt less the elevating power of faith than the unrelenting and disdainful inevitableness of its endurance. at bournemouth, when he experienced the first thrill of conversion, he had been exultingly aware of a personal friendliness between himself and god. here in burgos he was absorbed into the divine purpose neither against his will nor his desire, since he was positively aware of the impotency of his individuality to determine anything in the presence of omnipotence. he told himself this sense of inclusion was a sign of the outpouring once more of the grace of god, but he wished with a half whimsical amusement that the sensation were rather less like that of being contemptuously swept by a broom into the main dust-heap. yet as on the last morning of his stay in burgos michael came away from mass, he came away curiously fortified by his observation of the moldy confessionals worn down by the knees of so many penitents. that much power of impression at least had the individual on this cathedral. when michael lay awake in the train going northward he remembered very vividly the sense of subordination which in retrospect suddenly seemed to him to reveal the essential majesty of spain. the train stopped at some french station. their carriage was already full enough, but a bilious and fussy frenchman insisted there was still room, and on top of him broke in a loud-voiced and assertive englishman with a meek wife. it was intolerable. michael, wedderburn, and maurice displayed their most polite obstructiveness, but in the end each of them found himself upright, stiff-backed and exasperated. michael thought regretfully of spain, and remembered those peasants who shared their crusts, those peasants with rank skins of wine and flopping turkeys, those peasants who wrought so inimitably their cigarettes and would sit on the floor of the carriage rather than disarrange the comfort of the three english travelers. michael went off into an uneasy sleep trying to arrange synthetically his deductions, trying to put don quixote and burgos cathedral and the grace of god and subordination and feudalism and himself into a working theory of life. and just when the theory really seemed to be shaping itself, he was awakened by the englishman prodding his wife. �what is it, dear?� she murmured. �did you pack those collars that were in the other chest of drawers?� �i think so, dear.� �i wish you�d know something for a change,� the husband grumbled. the frenchman ground his teeth in swollen sleep, exhaling himself upon the stale air of the compartment. maurice was turning over the pages of a comic paper. wedderburn snored. it was difficult to achieve subordination of one�s personality in the presence of other personalities so insistently irritating. stella had not come back from germany when michael reached home, which was a disappointment as he had looked forward to planning with her a journey back to spain as soon as possible. his mother during this vacation had lapsed from mental science into an association to prevent premature burial. �my dearest boy, you have no idea of the numbers of people buried alive every year,� she said. �i have been talking to dick prescott about it. i cannot understand his indifference. i intend to devote all my time to it. we are going to organize a large bazaar next season. banging their foreheads against the coffins! it�s dreadful to think of. do be careful, michael. i have written a long letter to stella explaining all the precautions she ought to take. who knows what may happen in germany? such an impulsive nation. at least the kaiser is. don�t laugh, my dear boy, it�s so much more serious than you think. would you like to come with me to mrs. carruthers� and hear some of the statistics? gruesome, but most instructive. at three o�clock. you needn�t wait for tea, if you�re busy. the lecturer is an eurasian. where _is_ eurasia, by the by?� michael kissed his mother with affectionate amusement. �will you wear the mantilla i brought you from spain? look, it�s as light as burnt tissue paper.� �dearest michael,� she murmured reproachfully, �you ought not to laugh about sacred subjects.... i don�t really see why we shouldn�t have a car. we must have a consultation with dick prescott.� after dinner that night michael wrapped up some stained and faded vestments he had brought for viner and went off to see him at netting hill. he told himself guiltily in the hansom that it was more than a year since he had been to see old viner, but the priest was so heartily glad to welcome him and accepted so enthusiastically his propitiatory gifts, that he felt as much at ease as ever in the smoke-hung room. �well, how�s oxford? i was coming up last term, but i couldn�t get away. have you been to see sandifer yet? or pallant at cowley, or canon harrowell?� michael said he had not yet taken advantage of viner�s letters of introduction to these dignitaries. he had indeed heard pallant preach at the church of the cowley fathers, but he had thought him too much inclined to sacrifice on the altar of empirical science. �i hate compromise,� said michael. �i don�t think pallant compromises, but i think he does get hold of men by offering them catholic doctrine in terms of the present.� michael shrugged his shoulders. �this visit to spain seems to have made you very bigoted,� viner observed, smiling. �i haven�t made up my mind one way or the other about christianity,� michael said. �but when i do i won�t try to include everybody, to say to every talkative young pragmatist with schiller�s last book in his pocket, �come inside, you�re really one of us.� i shan�t invite every callow biologist to hear mass just because a cowley dad sees nothing in the last article on spontaneous generation that need dismay the faithful. i�m getting rather fed up with toleration, really; the only people with any fanaticism now are the rationalists. it�s quite exhilarating sometimes to see the fire of disbelief glowing in the eyes of a passionate agnostic.� �our lord himself was very tolerant,� said viner. �yes, tolerant to the weaknesses of the flesh, tolerant to the woman taken in adultery, tolerant to the people without wine at cana, but he hadn�t much use for people who didn�t believe just as he believed.� �isn�t it rather risky to slam the door in the face of the modern man?� �but, mr. viner,� michael protested, �you can�t betray the myriads of the past because the individual of to-day finds his faith too weak to sustain him in their company, because the modern man wants to reëdit spiritual truths just as he has been able to reëdit a few physical facts that apparently stand the test of practical experiment. while men have been rolling along intoxicated by the theory of physical evolution, they may have retrograded spiritually.� �of course, of course,� the priest agreed. �by the way, your faith seems to be resisting the batterings of external progress very stoutly. i�m glad, old chap.� �i�m not sure that i have much faith, but i certainly haven�t given up hope,� michael said gravely. �i think, you know, that hope, which is after all a theological virtue, has never had justice at the hands of the theologians. oh, lord, i wish earnest young believers weren�t so smug and timid. or else i wish that i didn�t feel the necessity of coordinating my opinions and accepting christianity as laid down by the church. i should love to be a sort of swedenborgian with all sorts of fanciful private beliefs. but i want to force everything within the convention. i hate free thought, free love, and free verse, and yet i hate almost equally the stuffy people who have never contemplated the possibility of their merit. do you ever read a paper called the spectator? now i believe in what the spectator stands for, and i admire its creed enormously, but the expression of its opinions makes me spue. if only earnest young believers wouldn�t treat almighty god with the same sort of proprietary air that schoolgirls use toward a favorite mistress.� �michael, michael!� cried viner, �where are you taking me with your coördinating impulses and your spectators and your earnest young believers? what undergraduate paradox are you trying to wield against me? remember, i�ve been down nearly twenty years. i can no longer turn mental somersaults. i thought you implied _you_ were a believer.� �oh, no, i�m watching and hoping. and just now i�m afraid the anchor is dragging. hope does have an anchor, doesn�t she? i�m not asking, you know, for the miracle of a direct revelation from god. the psychologists have made miracles of that sort hardly worth while. but i�m hoping with all my might to see bit by bit everything fall away except faith. perhaps when i behold god in one of his really cynical moods ... i�m groping in the dark after a hazy idea of subordination. that�s something, you know. but i haven�t found my own place in the scheme.� �you see you�re very modern, after all,� said viner, �with your coördinations and subordinations.� �but i don�t want to assert myself,� michael explained. �i want to surrender myself, and i�m not going to surrender anything until i am sure by faith that i�m not merely surrendering the wastage of myself.� michael left viner with a sense of the pathetic sameness of the mission-priest�s existence. he had known so well before he went that, because it was monday, he would find him sitting in that armchair, smoking that pipe, reading that novel. every other evening he would be either attending to parochial clubs in rooms of wood and corrugated iron, or his own room would be infested with boys who from year to year, from month to month, never changed in general character, but always gave the same impression of shrill cockney, of boisterous familiarity, of self-satisfied election. to-morrow morning he would say mass to the same sparse congregation of sacristan and sisters-of-mercy and devout old maids. the same red-wristed server would stump about his liturgical business in viner�s wake, and the same coffee pot put in the same place on the same table by the same landlady would await his return. there was a dreariness about the ministrations of this notting hill mission which had been absent from the atmosphere of burgos cathedral. no doubt superficially even at burgos there was a sameness, but it was a glorious sameness, a sameness that approximated to eternity. long ago had the priests learned subordination. they had been absorbed into the omnipotence of the church against which the gates of hell could not prevail. viner remained, however much as he might have surrendered of himself to his mission work, essentially an isolated, a pathetic individual. as usual, michael met alan at paddington, and he was concerned to see that alan looked rather pale and worried. �what problems have you been solving this vac?� michael asked. �oh, i�ve been swatting like a pig for mods,� said alan hopelessly. �you are a lucky lazy devil.� even during the short journey to oxford alan furtively fingered his text-books, while he talked to michael about a depressing january in london. �never mind. perhaps you�ll get your blue next term,� said michael. �and if you aren�t determined to play cricket all the long, we�ll go away and have a really sporting vac somewhere.� �if i�m plowed,� said alan gloomily, �i�ve settled to become a chartered accountant.� michael enjoyed his second lent term. with an easy conscience he relegated rugby football into the limbo of the past. he decided such violent exercise was no longer necessary, and he was getting to know so many people at other colleges that the cultivation of new personalities occupied all his leisure. after maurice and wedderburn came back from spain, they devoted much of their time to painting, and the oxford looking-glass became a very expensive business on account of the reproduction of their drawings. moreover, the circulation decreased in ratio with the increase of these drawings, and the five promoters who did not wish to practice art in the pages of their magazine convoked several meetings of protest. finally maurice was allowed to remain editor only on condition that he abstained from publishing any more drawings. nigel stewart�s meeting of the de rebus ecclesiasticis together with the visit to spain induced michael to turn his attention to that side of undergraduate life interested in religion. he went to see canon harrowell, and even accepted from him an invitation to a breakfast at which he met about half a dozen klebe men who talked about bishops. afterward canon harrowell seemed anxious to have a quiet talk with him in the library, but michael made an excuse, not feeling inclined for self-revelation so quickly on top of six klebe men and the eggs and bacon. he went to see father pallant at cowley, but father pallant appeared so disappointed that he had brought him no scientific problems to reconcile with catholic dogma, and was moreover so contemptuous of dom cuthbert manners, o.s.b. and clere abbey that michael never went to see him again. he preferred old sandifer, who with all the worldly benefits of good wine, good food, and pleasant company, offered in addition his own courtly caroline presence that added to wit and learning and trenchant theology made michael regret he had not called upon him sooner. nigel stewart took michael to a meeting of de rebus ecclesiasticis, at which he met not only the six keble men who had talked about bishops at canon harrowell�s breakfast, but about twenty more members of the same college, all equally fervid and in his opinion equally objectionable. michael also went with nigel stewart to mass at st. barnabas�, where he saw the same keble men all singing conspicuously and all conveying the impression that every sunday they occupied the same place. by the end of the term michael�s aroused interest in religion at oxford died out. he disliked the sensation of belonging to a particular school of thought within a university. the ecclesiastical people were like the ampelopsis at trinity: they were highly colored, but so inappropriate to oxford, that they seemed almost vulgar. it was ridiculous they should have to worship in oxford at a very ugly modern church in the middle of very ugly modern slums, as ridiculous as it was to call in the aid of american creepers to cover up the sins of modern architects. yet michael was at a loss to explain to himself why the ecclesiastical people were so obviously out of place in oxford. after all, they were the heirs of a force which had persisted there for many years almost in its present aspect: they were the heirs after a fashion of the force that kept the royal standard flying against the parliament. but they had not inherited the spirit of mediæval oxford. they were too self-conscious, too congregational. as individuals, perhaps they were in tone with oxford, but, eating bacon and eggs and talking about bishops, they belonged evidently to keble, and michael could not help feeling that keble like mansfield and ruskin hall was in oxford, but not in the least of oxford. the spirit of mediæval oxford was more typically preserved in the ordinary life of the ordinary graduate; and yet it was a mistake to think of the spirit of oxford at any date. that spirit was dateless and indefinable, and each new manifestation which michael was inclined to seize upon, even a manifestation so satisfying as venner�s, became with the very moment that he was aware of it as impossible to determine as a dream which leaves nothing behind but the almost violent knowledge that it was and exasperatingly still is. the revived interest lasted a very short time in its communal aspect, and michael retreated into his mediæval history, still solicitous of catholicism in so far as to support the papacy against the empire in the balance of his judgment, but no longer mingling with the anglican adherents of the theory, nor even indeed committing himself openly to christianity as a general creed. indeed, his whole attitude to religion was the result of a reactionary bias rather than of any impulse toward constructive progression. he would have liked to urge himself forward confidently to proclaim his belief in christianity, but he could acquire nothing more positive than a gentle skepticism of the value of every other form of thought, a gentleness that only became scornfully intolerant when provoked by ignorance or pretentious statement. meanwhile, the oxford looking-glass, though inclining officially to neither political party, was reflecting a widespread interest in social reform. michael woke up to this phenomenon as he read through the sixth number on a withering march day toward the end of term. knowing maurice to be a chameleon who unconsciously acquired the hue of his surroundings, michael was sure that the oxford looking-glass by this earnest tone indicated the probable tendency of undergraduate energy in the hear future. yet himself, as he surveyed his acquaintances, could not perceive in their attitude any hint of change. in st. mary�s the debating clubs were still debating the existence of ghosts: the essay clubs were still listening to papers that took them along the by-ways of archæology or sport. throughout the university the old habit of mind persisted apparently. the new college manner that london journalists miscalled the oxford manner still prevailed in the discussion of intellectual subjects. in balliol when any remark trembled on the edge of a generalization, somebody in a corner would protest, �oh, shut up, fish-face!� and the conversation at once veered sharply back to golf or scandal, while the intellectual kitten who had been playing with his mental tail would be suddenly conscious of himself or his dignity and sit still. in exeter the members of the literary society were still called the bloody lits. nothing anywhere seemed as yet to hint that the traditional flippancy of oxford which was merely an extension of the public-school spirit was in danger of dying out. oxford was still the apotheosis of the amateur. it was still surprising when the head of a house or a don or an undergraduate achieved anything in a manner that did not savor of happy chance. it was still natural to regard cambridge as a provincial university, and to take pleasure in shocking the earnest young cambridge man with the metropolitan humors and airy self-assurance of oxford. yet the oxford looking-glass reflected another spirit which michael could not account for and the presence of which he vaguely resented. �the o.l.g. is getting very priggish and serious and rather dull,� he complained to maurice. �not half so dull as it would be if i depended entirely on casual contributions,� replied the editor. �i don�t seem to get anything but earnestness.� �oxford is becoming the home of living causes,� sighed michael. �that�s a depressing thought. do you really think these rhodes scholars from america and australia and germany are going to affect us?� �i don�t know,� maurice said. �but everybody seems keen to speculate on the result.� �why don�t you take up a strong line of patronage? why don�t you threaten these pug-nosed invaders with the thunders of the past?� michael demanded fiercely. �would it be popular?� asked maurice. �personally of course i don�t care one way or the other, but i don�t want to let the o.l.g. in for a lot of criticism.� �you really ought to be a wonderful editor,� said michael. �you�re so essentially the servant of the public.� �well, with all your grumbles,� said maurice, �ours is the only serious paper that has had any sort of a run of late years.� �but it lacks individuality,� michael complained. �it�s so damned inclusive. it�s like the daily telegraph. it�s voluminous and undistinguished. it shows the same tepid cordiality toward everything, from a man who�s going to be hanged for murder to a new record at cricket. why can�t you infect it with some of the deplorable but rather delightfully juvenile indiscretion of the daily mail?� �the daily mail,� maurice scoffed. �that rag!� �a man once said to me,� michael meditatively continued, �that whenever he saw a man in an empty railway compartment reading the daily telegraph, he always avoided it. you see, he knew that man. he knew how terrible it would be to listen to him when he had finished his telegraph. i feel rather like that about the o.l.g. but after all,� he added cheerfully, �nobody does read the o.l.g. the circulation depends on the pledges of their pen sent round to their friends and relations by the casual contributors. and nobody ever meets a casual contributor. is it true, by the way, that the fossilized remains of one were found in-that great terra incognita�queen�s college?� but maurice had left him, and michael strolled down to the lodge to see if there were any letters. shadbolt handed him an invitation to dinner from the warden. as he opened it, lonsdale came up with a torn replica of his own. �i say, michael, this is a rum sort of binge for the wagger to give. i spotted all the notes laid out in a row by old pumpkin-head�s butler. you. me. tommy grainger. fitzroy. that ass appleby. that worm carben. and smithers. there may have been some others too. i hope i don�t get planted next the pumpkinette.� �miss wagger may not be there,� said michael hopefully. �but if she is, you�re bound to be next her.� �i say, shadbolt,� lonsdale demanded, �is this going to be a big squash at the wagger�s?� �the warden has given me no instruction, sir, about carriages. and so i think we may take it for granted as it will be mostly confined to members of the college, sir. his servant tells me as the dean is going and the senior tutor.� �and there won�t be any does?� �any what, sir?� �any ladies?� �i expect as miss crackanthorpe will be present. she very rarely absconds from such proceedings,� said shadbolt, drawing every word with the sound of popping corks from the depths of his pompousness. michael and lonsdale found out that to the list of guests they had established must be added the names of maurice, wedderburn and two freshmen who were already favorably reported through the college as good sportsmen. two evenings later, at seven o�clock, michael, maurice, lonsdale, wedderburn, and grainger, bowed and starched, stood in venner�s, drinking peach bitters sharpened by the addition of gin. �the men have gone in to hall,� said venner. �you ought to start round to the warden�s lodgings at ten past seven. now don�t be late. i expect you�ll have a capital dinner.� �champagne, venner?� asked lonsdale. �oh, bound to be! bound to be,� said venner. �the warden knows how to give a dinner. there�s no doubt of that.� �caviare, venner?� asked maurice. �i wouldn�t say for certain. but if you get an opportunity to drink any of that old hock, be sure you don�t forget. it�s a lovely wine. i wish we had a few dozen in the j.c.r. now don�t go and get tipsy like some of our fellows did once at a dinner given by the warden.� �did they, venner?� asked everybody, greatly interested. �it was just after the transvaal war broke out. only three or four years ago. there was a man called castleton, a cousin of our castleton, but a very different sort of man, such a rowdy fellow. he came out from the warden�s most dreadfully tipsy, and the men were taking him back to his rooms, when he saw little barnaby, a science don, going across new quad. he broke away from his friends and shouted out, �there�s a blasted boer,� and before they could stop him, he�d knocked poor little barnaby, a most nervous fellow, down in the wet grass and nearly throttled him. it was hushed up, but castleton was never asked again you may be sure, and then soon after he volunteered for the front and died of enteric. so you see what comes of getting tipsy. now you�d better start.� arm in arm the five of them strolled through cloisters until they came to the gothic door of the warden�s lodgings. up the warden�s majestic staircase they followed the butler into the warden�s gothic drawing-room where they shook hands with the great moon-faced warden himself, and with miss crackanthorpe, who was very much like her brother, and nearly as round on a much smaller scale. they nodded to the dean, mentally calculating how many roll-calls they were behind, for the dean notwithstanding the geniality of his greeting had one gray eye that seemed unable to forget it belonged to the dean. they nodded to mr. ardle, the senior tutor, who blinked and sniffed and bowed nervously in response. fitzroy beamed at them: smithers doubtfully eyed them. the two freshmen reputed to be good sportsmen smiled grateful acknowledgments of their condescension. appleby waved his hand in a gesture of such bland welcome that lonsdale seemed to gibber with suppressed mortification and rage. �will you lay five to one in bobs that i don�t sit next the pumpkinette?� whispered lonsdale to michael, as they went downstairs to dinner. �not a halfpenny,� laughed michael. �you will. and i shall get ardle.� upon the sage-green walls of the dining-room hung the portraits of three dead wardens, and though the usual effect of family pictures was to make the living appear insignificant beside them, michael felt that pumpkin-head even in the presence of his three ferocious and learned forerunners had nothing to fear for his own preëminence. modern life found in him a figure carved out of the persistent attributes of his office, and therefore already a symbol of the universal before his personality had been hallowed by death or had expressed itself in its ultimate form under the maturing touch of art and time. this quality in the host diffused itself through the room in such a way that the whole dinner party gained from it a dignity and a stability which made more than usually absurd the superficial actions of eating and drinking, and the general murmur of infinitely fugacious talk. michael taking his first glance round the table after the preliminary shynesses of settling down, was as much thrilled by his consciousness of the eternal reality of this dinner party as he would have been if by a magical transference he could have suddenly found himself pursuing some grave task in the picture of a dutch master. he had been to many dinners in oxford of which commemorative photographs had been made by flashlight, and afterward when he saw the print he could scarcely believe in his own reality, still less in that of the dinner, so ludicrously invented seemed every group. he wished now that a painter would set himself the problem of preserving by his art some of these transitory entertainments. he began to imagine himself with the commission to set on record the present occasion. he wished for the power to paint those deeper shadows in which the warden�s great round face inclined slowly now toward fitzroy with his fair complexion and military rigor of bearing, now toward wedderburn whose evening dress acquired from the dignity of its owner the richness of black velvet. more directly in the light of the first lamp sat maurice and appleby opposite to one another, both imparting to the assemblage a charming worldliness, maurice by his loose-fronted shirt, appleby by the self-esteem of his restless blue eyes. the two freshmen on either side of the dean wonderfully contrasted with his gauntness, and even more did the withered ardle, who looked like a specimen of humanity dried as plants are dried between heavy books, contrast with the sprawling bulk of grainger. on the other side, michael watched with amusement miss crackanthorpe with shining apple-face bobbing nervously between smithers pale and solid and domed like a great cheese, and lonsdale cool and pink as an ice. in the background from the shadows at either end of the room the sage-green walls materialized in the lamplight: the three dead wardens stared down at the table: and every fifteen minutes bells chimed in st. mary�s tower. �and how is the oxford looking-glass progressing, avery?� inquired the warden, shining full upon the editor in a steady gaze. �no doubt it takes up a great deal of your valuable time?� the dean winked his gray decanal eye at the champagne: the senior tutor coughed remotely like a grasshopper: lonsdale prodded michael with his elbow and murmured that �the wagger had laid mossy a stymie.� maurice admitted the responsibility of the paper for occupying a considerable amount of his _leisure_, but consoled himself for this by the fact that certainly, the oxford looking-glass was progressing very well indeed. �we don�t altogether know what attitude to take up over the rhodes bequest,� said maurice. then boldly he demanded from the warden what would be the effect of these imposed scholars from america and australia and africa. �the speculation is not without interest,� declared the warden. �what does fitzroy think?� fitzroy threw back his shoulders as if he were going to abuse the togger and said he thought the athletic qualifications were a mistake. �after all, sir, we don�t want the tabs�i mean to say we don�t want to beat cambridge with the help of a lot of foreigners.� �foreigners, fitzroy? come, come, we can scarcely stigmatize canadians as foreigners. what would become of the imperial idea?� �i think the imperial idea will take a lot of living up to,� said wedderburn, �when we come face to face with its practical expression. personally i loathe colonials except at the earl�s court exhibition.� �ah, wedderburn,� said the warden, �you are luckily young enough to be able to be particular. i with increasing age begin to suffer from that terrible disease of age�toleration.� �but the warden is not so very old,� whispered miss crackanthorpe to lonsdale and michael. �oh, rather not,� lonsdale murmured encouragingly. �i think they�ll wake up oxford,� announced smithers; then, as everyone turned to hear what more he would say, smithers seemed inclined to melt into silence, but with a sudden jerk of defiance, he hardened himself and became volubly opinionative. �there�s no doubt,� he continued, �that these fellows will make the average undergrad look round him a bit.� as smithers curtailed undergraduate to the convention of a lady-novelist, a shudder ran round the dinner party. almost the butler instead of putting ice into the champagne might have slipped it down the backs of the guests. �in fact, what ho, she bumps,� whispered lonsdale. �likewise pip-ip, and tootle-oo.� �anyway, he won�t be able to ignore them,� said smithers. �we hope not, indeed,� the warden gravely wished. �what does lonsdale think? lord cleveden wrote to me to say how deeply interested he was by the whole scheme�a most appreciative letter, and your father has had a great experience of colonial conditions.� �has he?� said lonsdale. �oh, yes, i see what you mean. you mean when he was governor. oh, rather. but i never knew him in those days.� then under his breath he muttered to michael: �dive in, dive in, you rotter, i�m getting out of my depth.� �i think oxford will change the rhodes scholars much more profoundly than the rhodes scholars will change oxford,� said michael. �at least they will if oxford hasn�t lost anything lately. sometimes i�m worried by that, and then i�m not, for i do really feel that they must be changed. civilization must have some power, or we should all revert.� �and are we to regard these finished oversea products as barbarians?� asked the warden. �oh, yes,� said michael earnestly. �just as much barbarians as any freshmen.� everybody looked at the two freshmen on either side of the dean and laughed, while they laughed too and tried to appear pleasantly flattered by the epithet. �and what will oxford give them?� asked the dean dryly. he spoke with that contempt of generalizations of which all dons made a habit. �oh, i don�t know,� said michael. �but vaguely i would say that oxford would cure them of being surprised by themselves or of showing surprise at anybody else. marcus aurelius said what i�m trying to say much better than i ever can. also they will gain a sense of humor, or rather they will ripen whatever sense they already possess. and they�ll have a sense of continuity, too, and perhaps�but of course this will depend very much on their dons�perhaps they�ll take as much interest in the world as in australia.� �why will that depend on their dons?� challenged mr. ambrose. �oh, well, you know,� explained michael apologetically, �dons very often haven�t much capacity for inquisitiveness. they get frightened very easily, don�t they?� �very true, very true,� said the warden. �but, my dear fane, your optimism and your pessimism are both quixotic, immensely quixotic.� later on in the quad when the undergraduate members of the dinner party discussed the evening, maurice rallied michael on his conversation. �if you can talk your theories, why can�t you write them?� he complained. �because they�d be almost indecently diaphanous,� said michael. �good old fane!� said grainger. �but, i say, you are an extraordinary chap, you know.� �he did it for me,� said lonsdale. �pumpkin-head would have burst, if i�d let out i didn�t know what part of the jolly old world my governor used to run.� chapter x stella in oxford alan, when he met michael at paddington, was a great deal more cheerful than when they had gone up together for the previous term. he had managed to achieve a second class in moderations, and he had now in view a term of cricket whose energy might fortunately be crowned with a blue. far enough away now seemed greats and not very alarming plato and aristotle at these first tentative encounters. michael dined with alan at christ church after the seniors� match, in which his host had secured in the second innings four wickets at a reasonable price. alan casually nodded to one or two fellow hosts at the guest table, but did not offer to introduce michael. all down the hall, men were coming in to dinner and going out of dinner as unconcernedly as if it had been the dining-saloon of a large hotel. �who is that man just sitting down?� michael would ask. �i don�t know,� alan would reply, and in his tone would somehow rest the implication that michael should know better than to expect him to be aware of each individual in this very much subdivided college. �did you hear the hockey push broke the windows of the socker push in peck?� asked one of the christ church hosts. �no, really?� answered alan indifferently. after hall as they walked back to meadows�, michael tried to point out to him that the st. mary�s method of dining in hall was superior to that of the house. �the dinner itself is better,� alan admitted. �but i hate your system of all getting up from table at the same time. it�s like school.� �but if a guest comes to st. mary�s he sits at his host�s regular table. he�s introduced to everybody. why, alan, i believe if you�d had another guest to-night, you wouldn�t even have introduced me to him. he and i would have had to drink coffee in your rooms like a couple of dummies.� �rot!� said alan. �and whom could you have wanted to meet this evening? all the men at the guests� table were absolute ticks.� �i�ve never met a house man who didn�t think every other house man impossible outside the four people in his own set,� retorted michael. �and yet, i suppose, you�ll say it�s the best college?� �of course,� alan agreed. up in his rooms they pondered the long may day�s reluctant death, while the coffee-machine bubbled and fizzed and the soul�s awakening faintly kindled by the twilight was appropriately sentimental. �will you have a meringue?� alan asked. �i expect there�s one in the cupboard.� �i�m sure there is,� said michael. �it�s very unlikely that there is a single cupboard in the house without a meringue. but no, thanks, all the same.� they forsook the window-seat and pulled wicker-chairs very near to the tobacco-jar squatting upon the floor between them: they lit their pipes and sipped their coffee. for alan the glories of the day floated before him in the smoke. �it�s a pity,� he said, �sterne missed that catch in the slips. though of course i wasn�t bowling for the slips. five for forty-eight would have looked pretty well. still four for forty-eight isn�t so bad in an innings of . the point is whether they can afford to give a place to another bowler who�s no earthly use as a bat. it seems a bit of a tail. i went in eighth wicket both innings. two�first knock. blob�second. still four for forty-eight was certainly the best. i ought to play in the first trial match.� so alan voiced his hopes. �of course you will,� said michael. �and at lord�s. i think i shall ask my mother and sister up for eights,� he added. alan looked rather disconcerted. �what�s the matter?� michael asked. �you won�t have to worry about them. i�ll explain you�re busy with cricket. stella inquired after you in a letter this week.� during the easter vacation alan had stayed once or twice in cheyne walk, and stella who had come back from an arduous time with music and musical people in germany had seemed to take a slightly sharper interest in his existence. �give her my�er�love, when you write,� said alan very nonchalantly. �and i don�t think i�d say anything about those four wickets for forty-eight. i don�t fancy she�s very keen on cricket. it might bore her.� no more was said about stella that evening, and nothing indeed was said about anything except the seven or eight men competing for the three vacancies in the varsity eleven. at about a quarter to ten alan announced as usual that �those men will be coming down soon for cocoa.� �alan, who are these mysterious creatures that come down for cocoa at ten?� asked michael. �and why am i never allowed to meet them?� �they�d bore you rather,� said alan. �they�re people who live on this staircase. i don�t see them any other time.� michael thought alan would be embarrassed if he insisted on staying, so to his friend�s evident relief he got up to go. �you house men are like a lot of old bachelors with your fads and regularities,� he grumbled. �stay, if you like,� said alan, not very heartily. �but i warn you they�re all awfully dull, and i�ve made a rule to go to bed at half-past ten this term.� �so long,� said michael hurriedly, and vanished. a few days later michael had an answer from his mother to his invitation for eights week: cheyne walk, s.w. _may ._ _my dearest michael,_ _i wish you�d asked me sooner. now i have made arrangements to help at the italian peasant jewelry stall in this big bazaar at westminster hall for the society for the improvement of the condition of agricultural laborers all over the world. i think you�d be interested. it�s all about handicrafts. weren�t you reading a book by william morris the other day? his name is mentioned a great deal always. i�ve been meeting so many interesting people. if stella comes, why not ask mrs. ross to chaperone her? such a capital idea. and do be nice about poor dick prescott. stella is so young and impulsive. i wish she could understand how_ much much _happier she would be married to a nice man, even though he may be a little older than herself. this tearing all over europe cannot be good for her. and now she talks of going to vienna and studying under somebody with a perfectly impossible name beginning with l. not only that, but she also talks of unlearning all she has learned and beginning all over again. this is most absurd, and i�ve tried to explain to her. she should have thought of this man beginning with l before. at her age to start scales and exercises again does seem ridiculous. i really dread stella�s coming of age. who knows what she may not take it into her head to do? i can�t think where she gets this curious vein of eccentricity. i�ll write to mrs. ross if you like. stella, of course, says she can go to oxford by herself, but that i will not hear of, and i beg you not to encourage the idea, if she suggests it to you._ _your loving_ _mother._ michael thought mrs. ross would solve the difficulty, and he was glad rather to relieve himself of the responsibility of his mother at oxford. he would have had to be so steadily informative, and she would never have listened to a word. stella�s view of the visit came soon after her mother�s. cheyne walk, s.w. _may ._ _dear m.,_ _what�s all this about mrs. ross chaperoning me at oxford? is it necessary? at a shot i said to mother, �no, quite unnecessary.� but of course, if i should disgrace you by coming alone, i won�t. isn�t mrs. ross a little on the heavy side? i mean, wouldn�t she rather object to me smoking cigars?_ �great scott!� interjaculated michael. _i�m going to vienna soon to begin music all over again, so be very charming to your only sister,_ _stella._ _p.s.�do crush mother over prescott._ michael agreed with his mother in thinking a chaperone was absolutely necessary for stella�s visit to oxford, and since the threat of cigars he cordially approved of the suggestion that mrs. ross should come. moreover, he felt his former governess would approve of his own attitude toward oxford, and he rather looked forward to demonstrating it to her. in the full-blooded asceticism of oxford michael censured his own behavior when he was seventeen and looked back with some dismay on the view of himself at that time as it appeared to him now. he was as much shocked by that period now as at school in his fifteenth year he had been shocked by the memory of the two horrid little girls at eastbourne. altogether this invitation seemed an admirable occasion to open the door once again to mrs. ross and to let her personality enter his mind as the sane adjudicator of whatever problems should soon present themselves. it would be jolly for alan, too, if his aunt came up and saw him playing for the varsity in whatever cricket match was provided to relieve the tedium of too much rowing. so finally, after one or two more protests from stella, it was arranged that she should come up for eights week under the guardianship of mrs. ross. michael took care some time beforehand to incorporate a body of assistant entertainers. lonsdale in consideration of michael having helped him with his people for one day last year was engaged for the whole visit. maurice was made to vow attendance for at least every other occasion. wedderburn volunteered his services. guy hazlewood, who was threatened with schools, was let off with a lunch. nigel stewart spoke mysteriously of a girl whose advent he expected on which account he could not pledge himself too straightly. rooms were taken in the high. trains were looked out. on saturday morning lonsdale and michael went down to the station to meet mrs. ross and stella. �i think it was a very bad move bringing me,� said lonsdale, as they waited on the platform. �your sister will probably think me an awful ass, and ...� but the train interrupted lonsdale�s self-depreciation, and he sustained himself well through the crisis of the introductions. michael thought mrs. ross had never so well been suited by her background as now when tall and straight and in close-fitting gray dress she stood in the oxford sunlight. stella, too, in that flowered muslin relieved michael instantly of the faint anxiety he had conceived lest she might appear in a munich garb unbecoming to a reserved landscape. it was a very peculiarly feminine dress, but somehow she had never looked more like a boy, and her gray eyes, as for one moment she let them rest wide open on the city�s towers and spires, were more than usually gray and pellucid. �i say, i ordered a car to meet us,� said lonsdale. �i thought we should buzz along quicker.� �what you really thought,� said michael, �was that you would have to drive my sister in a hansom.� �oh, no, i say, really,� protested lonsdale. �i�m much more frightened of you than you could ever be of me,� stella declared. �oh no, i say, really, are you? but i�m an awful ass, miss fane,� said lonsdale encouragingly. �hallo, here�s the jolly old car.� as they drove past the castle, lonsdale informed stella it was the county gaol, and when they reached the gaol he told her it was probably worcester college, or more familiarly wuggins. �you�ll only have to tell her that all souls is the county asylum and that queens is a marmalade factory, and she�ll have a pretty good notion of the main points of interest in the neighborhood,� said michael. �he always rags me,� explained lonsdale, smiling confidentially round at the visitors. �i say, isn�t alan merivale your nephew?� he asked mrs. ross. �he�s playing for the varsity against surrey. sent down some very hot stuff yesterday. we ought to buzz round to the parks after lunch and watch the game for a bit.� wedderburn, who had been superintending the preparations for lunch, met them in the lodge with a profound welcome, having managed to put at least twenty years on to his age. lunch had been laid in lonsdale�s rooms, since he was one of the few men in college who possessed a dining-room in addition to a sitting-room. yet, notwithstanding that michael had invited the guests and that they were lunching in lonsdale�s rooms, to wedderburn by all was the leadership immediately accorded. the changeless lunch of eights week with its salmon mayonnaise and cold chicken and glimpses through the windows of pink and blue dresses going to and fro across the green quadrangles, with its laughter and talk and speculations upon the weather, with its overheated scout and scent of lilac and hawthorn, went its course: as fugitive a piece of mirthfulness as the dance of the mayflies over the cher. after lunch they walked to the parks to watch alan playing for the varsity. wedderburn, who with people to entertain feared nothing and nobody, actually went coolly into the pavilion and fetched out alan who was already in pads, waiting to go in. michael watched very carefully alan�s meeting with stella, watched alan�s face fall when he saw her beside maurice and marked how nervously he fidgeted with his gloves. there was a broken click from the field of play. it was time for alan to go in. michael wished very earnestly he could score a brilliant century so that stella hearing the applause could realize how much there was in him to admire. yet ruefully he admitted to himself the improbability of stella realizing anything at all about the importance of cricket. however, he had scarcely done with his wishing, when he saw alan coming gloomily back from the wicket, clean bowled by the very first ball he had received. �of course, you know, he isn�t played for his batting,� he hastened to explain to stella. she, however, was too deeply engaged in discussing vienna with maurice to pay much attention, even when alan sat down despondently beside them, unbuckling his pads. it was just as michael had feared, fond though he was of maurice. the last varsity player was soon out, and wedderburn proposed an early tea in his rooms to be followed by the river. turning into holywell, they met guy hazlewood, who said without waiting to be introduced to mrs. ross and stella: �my dear people, i fall upon your necks. suggest something for me to do that for one day and one night will let me entirely forget schools. we can�t bear our digs any longer.� �why don�t you give a party there on monday night,� suggested wedderburn deeply. �let me introduce you to mrs�sss ... my sissss ... mr. h�wood,� mumbled michael in explanation of wedderburn�s proposal. �what a charming idea,� drawled guy. �but isn�t it rather a shame to ask miss fane to play? anyway, i daren�t.� �oh, no,� said stella. �i should rather like to play in oxford.� so after a kaleidoscope of racing and a sunday picnic on the upper river, when everybody ate as chickens drink with a pensive upward glance at the trend of the clouds, occurred guy hazlewood�s party in holywell, which might more truly have been called wedderburn�s party, since he at once assumed all responsibility for it. the digs were much more crowded than anybody had expected, chiefly on account of the balliol men invited. �half basutoland seems to be here,� lonsdale whispered to michael. �well, with hazlewood, comeragh and anstruther, all sons of belial, what else can you expect?� replied michael. stella had seemed likely at first to give the favor of her attention more to hazlewood than to anybody else, but maurice was in a dauntless mood and, with guy handicapped by having to pretend to assent to wedderburn�s suggestions for entertainment, he managed at last to monopolize stella almost entirely. alan had declined the invitation with the excuse of wanting a steady hand and eye for to-morrow. but michael fancied there was another reason. stella played three times and was much applauded. �very sporting effort, by jove,� said lonsdale, and this was probably the motive of most of the commendation, though there was a group of really musical people in the darkest corner who emerged between each occasion and condoled with michael on having to hear his sister play in such inadequate surroundings. michael himself was less moved by stella�s playing than he had ever been. nor was this coldness due to any anxiety for her success. he was sure enough of that in this uncritical audience. �do you think stella plays as well as she did?� he asked mrs. ross. �perhaps this evening she may be a little excited,� mrs. ross suggested. �perhaps,� said michael doubtfully. �but what i mean is that, if she isn�t going to advance quite definitely, there really isn�t any longer an excuse for her to arrogate to herself a special code of behavior.� �stella says a great deal more than she does,� mrs. ross reassured him. �you�d be surprised, as indeed i was surprised, to find how simple and childlike she really is. i think an audience is never good for her.� �but, after all, her life is going to be one audience after another in quick succession,� michael pointed out. �gradually an audience will cease to rouse her into any violence of thought or accentuation of superficial action�oh, michael,� mrs. ross exclaimed, breaking off, �what dreadfully long words you�re tempting me to use, and why do you make me talk about stella? i�d really rather talk about you.� �stella is becoming a problem to me,� said michael. �and you yourself are no longer a problem to yourself?� mrs. ross inquired. �not in the sense i was, when we last talked together.� michael was a little embarrassed by recalling that conversation. it seemed to link him too closely for his pleasure to the behavior which had led up to it, to be a part of himself at the time, farouche and uncontrolled. �and all worries have passed away?� persisted mrs. ross. �yes, yes,� said michael quickly. �for one thing,� he added as if he thought he had been too abrupt, �i�m too comfortably off to worry much about anything. boredom is the only problem i shall ever have to face. seriously though, mrs. ross, i really am rather shocked when i think of myself as sixteen and seventeen.� michael was building brick by brick a bridge for mrs. ross to step over the chasm of three years. �i seem to see myself,� he persevered, �with very untidy hair, with very loose joints, doing and saying and thinking the most impossible things. i blush now at the memory of myself, just as i should blush now with oxford snobbishness to introduce a younger brother like myself then, say to the second-year table in hall.� michael paused for a moment, half hoping mrs. ross would assure him he had caricatured his former self, but as she said nothing, he continued: �when i came up to oxford i found that the natural preparation for oxford was not a day-school like st. james�, but a boarding-school. therefore i had to acquire in a term what most of my contemporaries had been given several years to acquire. i remember quite distinctly my father saying to my mother, �by gad, valérie, he ought to go to eton, you know,� and my mother disagreeing, �no, no, i�m sure you were right when you said st. james�.� that�s so like mother. she probably had never thought the matter out at all. she was probably perfectly vague about the difference between st. james� and eton, but because it had been arranged so, she disliked the idea of any alteration. i�m telling you all this because, you know, you provided as it were the public-school influence for my early childhood. after you i ought to have passed on to a private school entirely different from randell house, and then to eton or winchester. i�m perfectly sure i could have avoided everything that happened when i was sixteen or seventeen, if i�d not been at a london day-school.� �but is it altogether fair to ascribe everything to your school?� asked mrs. ross. �alan for instance came very successfully, as far as normality is concerned, through st. james�.� �yes, but alan has the natural goodness of the average young englishman. possibly he benefited by st. james�. possibly at eton, and with a prospect of money, he would have narrowed down into a mere athlete, into one of the rather objectionable bigots of the public-school theory. now i was never perfectly normal. i might even have been called morbid and unhealthy. i should have been, if i hadn�t always possessed a sort of curious lonely humor which was about twice as severe as the conscience of tradition. at the same time, i had nothing to justify my abnormality. no astounding gift of genius, i mean.� �but, michael,� interrupted mrs. ross, �i don�t fancy the greatest geniuses in the world ever justified themselves at sixteen or seventeen.� �no, but they must have been upheld by the inner consciousness of greatness. you get that tremendously through all the despondencies of keats� letters for instance. i have never had that. stella absorbed all the creative and interpretative force that was going. i never have and never shall get beyond sympathy, and even the value that gives my criticism is to a certain extent destroyed by the fact that the moment i try to express myself more permanently than by mouth, i am done.� �but still, i don�t see why a day-school should have militated against the development of that sympathetic and critical faculty.� �it did in this way,� said michael. �it gave me too much with which to sympathize before i could attune my sympathy to criticism. in fact i was unbalanced. eton would have adjusted this balance. i�m sure of that, because since i�ve been at oxford i find my powers of criticism so very much saner, so very much more easily economized. i mean to say, there�s no wastage in futile emotions. of course, it�s partly due to being older.� �really, michael,� mrs. ross protested, �if you talk like this i shall begin to regret your earlier extravagance. this dried-up self-confidence seems to me not quite normal either.� �ah, that�s only because i�m criticizing my earlier self. i really am now in a delightful state of cool judgment. once i used to want passionately to be like everybody else. i thought that was the goal of social happiness. then i wanted to be violently and conspicuously different from everybody else. now i seem to be getting near the right mean between the two extremes. i�m enjoying oxford enormously. i can�t tell you how happy i am here, how many people i like. and i appreciate it so much the more because to a certain extent at first it was a struggle to find that wide normal road on which i�m strolling along now. i�m so positive that the best of oxford is the best of england, and that the best of england is the best of humanity that i long to apply to the world the same standards we tacitly respect�we undergraduates. i believe every problem of life can be solved by the transcendency of the spirit which has transcended us up here. you remember i used to say you were like pallas athene? well, just those qualities in you which made me think of that resemblance i find in oxford. don�t ask me to say what they are, because i couldn�t explain.� �i think you have a great capacity for idealization,� said mrs. ross gravely. �i wonder how you are going to express it practically. i wonder what profession you�ll choose.� �i don�t suppose i shall choose a profession at all,� said michael. �there�s no financial reason�at any rate�why i should.� �well, you won�t have to decide against a profession just yet,� said mrs. ross. �and now tell me, just to gratify my curiosity, why you think stella�s playing has deteriorated�if you really think it has.� �oh, i didn�t say it had,� michael contradicted in some dismay. �i merely said that to-night it did not seem up to her level. perhaps she was anxious. perhaps she felt among all these undergraduates, as i felt in my first week. perhaps she�s thinking what schoolboys they all are, and how infinitely youthful they appear beside those wild and worldly-wise bohemians to whose company she has been accustomed for so long. i long to tell her that these undergraduates are really so much wiser, even if literature means mr. soapy sponge�s sporting tour, and art the soul�s awakening, and religion putting on a bowler to go and have a hot breakfast at the o.u.d.s. after chapel, and politics the fag-ends of paternal or rather ancestral opinion, and life a hot bath and changing after a fox-hunt or a grouse-drive.� farther conversation was stopped by wedderburn driving everybody down to supper with pastoral exhortations in his deepest bass. michael, after his talk with mrs. ross, was relieved to find himself next to lonsdale and sheltered by a quivering rampart of jellies from more exacting company. �these basutos aren�t so bad when you talk to them,� said lonsdale. �comeragh was at m�tutor�s. i wonder if he still collects bugs. i rather like that man hazlewood. i thought him a bit sidy at first, but he�s rather keen on fishing. i don�t think much of the girl that trinity man�what�s his name�stewart has roped in. she looks like something left over from a needlework stall. i say, your sister jolly well knows how to punch a piano. topping, what? mossy�s been very much on the spot to-night. he and wedders are behaving like a couple of theatrical managers. why didn�t alan merivale turn up? i was talking to some of the cricket push at the club, and it doesn�t look a hundred quid to a tanner on his blue. bad luck. he�s a very good egg.� michael listened vaguely to lonsdale�s babble. he was watching the passage of the cigars and cigarettes down the table. thank heaven, stella had let the cigars go by. the party of holywell broke up. outside in the shadowy street of gables they stood laughing and talking for a moment. guy hazlewood, comeragh and anstruther looked down from the windows at their parting guests. �it�s been awfully ripping,� these murmured to their hosts. the hosts beamed down. �we�ve been awfully bucked up by everything. special vote of thanks to miss fane.� �you ought all to get firsts now,� said wedderburn. then he and lonsdale and michael and maurice set off with stella and mrs. ross to the high street rooms. in different directions the rest of the party vanished on echoing footsteps into the moon-bright spaces, into the dark and narrow entries. voices faint and silvery rippled along the spell-bound airs of the may night. the echoing footsteps died out to whispers. there was a whizzing of innumerable clocks, and midnight began to clang. �we must hurry,� said the escort, and they ran off down the high toward st. mary�s, reaching the lodge on the final stroke. �shall i come up to your rooms for a bit?� maurice suggested to michael. �i�m rather tired,� objected michael, who divined that maurice was going to talk at great length about stella. he was too jealous of alan�s absence that evening to want to hear maurice�s facile enthusiasm. chapter xi sympathy mrs. ross and stella left oxford two days after the party, and michael was really glad to be relieved of the dread that stella in order to assert her independence of personality would try to smash the glass of fashion and dint the mold of form. really he thought the two occasions during her visit on which he liked her best and admired her most were when she was standing on the station platform. here she was expressed by that city of spires confusing with added beauty that clear sky of summer. here, too, her personality seemed to add an appropriate foreground to the scene, to promise the interpretation that her music would give, a promise, however, that michael felt she had somehow belied. alan dropped out of the varsity eleven the following week, and he was in a very gloomy mood when michael paid him a visit of condolence. �these hard wickets have finished me off,� he sighed. �i shall take up golf, i think.� the bag of clubs he had brought up on his first day was lying covered with gray fluff under the bed. �oh, no, don�t play golf,� protested michael, �you�ve got two more years to get your blue and all your life to play golf, which is a rotten game and has ruined varsity cricket.� �but one can be alone at golf,� said alan. �alone?� repeated michael. �why on earth should you want to play an outdoor game alone?� �because i get depressed sometimes,� alan explained. �what good am i?� michael began to laugh. �it�s nothing to laugh at,� said alan sadly. �i�ve been thinking of my future. i shall never have enough money to marry. i shall never get my blue. i shall get a fourth in greats. perhaps i shan�t even get into the egyptian civil service. i expect i shall end as a bank clerk. playing cricket for a suburban club on saturday afternoons. that�s all i see before me. when is stella going to vienna?� �i don�t know that she is going,� said michael. �she always talks a great deal about things which don�t always come off.� �i was rather surprised she seemed to like that man avery so much,� alan said. �but i suppose he pretended to know an awful lot about music. i don�t think i care for him.� �some people don�t,� michael admitted. �i think women always like him, though.� �yes, i should think they did,� alan agreed bitterly. �sorry i�m so depressing. have a meringue or something.� �alan, why, are you in love with stella?� michael challenged. �what made you think i was?� countered alan, looking alarmed. �it�s pretty obvious,� michael said. �and curiously enough i can quite understand it. generally, of course, a brother finds it difficult to understand what other people can see in his sister, but i�m never surprised when they fall in love with stella.� �a good many have?� asked alan, and his blue eyes were sharpened by a pain deeper than that of seeing a catch in the slips missed off his bowling. michael nodded. �oh, i�ve realized for a long time how utterly hopeless it was for me,� alan sighed. �i�m evidently going to be a failure.� �would you care for some advice?� inquired michael very tentatively. �what sort of advice?� alan asked. michael took this for assent, and plunged in. �let her alone,� he adjured his friend. �let her absolutely alone. she�s very young, you know, and you�re not very old. let her alone for at least a year. i suggest two years. don�t see much of her, and don�t let her think you care. that would interest her for a week, and really, alan, it�s not good for stella to think that everybody falls in love with her. i don�t mind about maurice. it would do him good to be turned down.� �would he be?� demanded alan gloomily. �of course, of course ... it seems funny to be talking to you about love ... you used to be so very scornful about it.... i expect you know you�ll fall in love pretty deeply now.... alan, i�m frightfully keen you should marry stella. but let her alone. don�t let her interfere with your cricket. don�t take up golf on account of her.� michael was so much in earnest with his exhortation to alan that he picked up a meringue and was involved in the difficulties of eating it before he was aware he was doing so. alan began to laugh, and the heavy airs of disappointment and hopelessness were lightened. �it�s funny,� said michael, �that i should have an opportunity now of talking to you about love and cricket.� �funny?� alan repeated. �don�t you remember three years ago on the river one night how i wished you would fall in love, and you said something about it being bad for cricket?� �i believe i do remember vaguely,� said alan. michael saw that after the explanation of his depression he wanted to let the subject drop, and since that was the very advice he had conferred upon alan, he felt it would be unfair to tempt him to elaborate this depression merely to gratify his own pleasure in the retrospect of emotion. so stella was not discussed again for a long while, and as she did after all go to vienna to study a new technique, the abstention was not difficult. michael was glad, since he had foreseen the possibility of a complication raveled by maurice. her departure straightened this out, for maurice was not inclined to gather strength from absence. other problems more delicate of adjustment even than stella began to arise, problems connected with the social aspects of next term. alan would still be in college. scholars at christ church were allowed sometimes to spend even the whole of their four years in college. michael tried in vain to persuade him to ask leave to go into digs. alan offered his fourth year to companionship with michael, but nothing would induce him to emerge from college sooner. and why did michael so particularly want him? there were surely men in his own college with whom he was intimate enough to share digs. michael admitted there were many, but he did not tell alan that the real reason he had been so anxious for his partnership was to have an excuse to escape from an arrangement made lightly enough with maurice avery in his first or second term that in their third year they should dig together. maurice had supposed the other day that the arrangement stood, and michael, not wishing to hurt his feelings, had supposed so too. a few days later maurice had come along with news of rooms in longwall. should he engage them? michael said he hated longwall as a prospective dwelling-place, and maurice had immediately deferred to his prejudice. it was getting unpleasantly near a final arrangement, for the indefatigable maurice would produce address after address, until michael seemed bound ultimately to accept. lonsdale and grainger had invited him to dig with them at high. michael suggested maurice as well, but they shook their heads. wedderburn was already partially sharing, that is to say, though he had his own sitting-room he was in the same house and would no doubt join in the meals. maurice was not to be thought of. maurice was a very good fellow but�maurice was�but�and michael in asking lonsdale and grainger why they declined his company, asked himself at the same time what were his own objections to digging with maurice. he tried to state them in as kindly a spirit as he could, and for a while he told himself he wished to be in digs with people who represented the broad stream of normal undergraduate life; he accused himself in fact of snobbishness, and justified the snobbishness by applying it to undergraduate oxford as a persistent attribute. as time went by, however, and maurice produced rooms on rooms for michael�s choice, he began almost to dislike him, to resent the assumption of a desire to dig with him. where was maurice�s sensitiveness that it could not react to his unexpressed hatred of the idea of living with him? soon it would come to the point of declaring outright that he did not want to dig with him. such an announcement would really hurt his feelings, and michael did not want to do that. as soon as maurice had receded into the background of casual encountership, he would take pleasure in his company again. meanwhile, however, it really seemed as if maurice were losing all his superficial attractiveness. michael wondered why he had never before noticed how infallibly he ran after each new and petty phase of art, how vain he was too, and how untidy. it was intolerable to think of spending a year�s close association with all those paint-boxes and all that modeling wax and all those undestroyed proof-sheets of the oxford looking-glass. finally, he had never noticed before how many cigarettes maurice smoked and with what skill he concealed in every sort of receptacle the stained and twisted stumps that were left over. that habit would be disastrous to their friendship, and michael knew that each fresh cigarette lighted by him would consume a trace more of the friendship, until at last he would come to the state of observing him with a cold and mute resentment. he was in this attitude of mind toward his prospective companion, when maurice came to see him. he seemed nervous, lighting and concealing even more cigarettes than usual. �about digs in longwall,� he began. �i won�t live in longwall,� affirmed michael. �do you think you could find anybody else?� �why, have you got hold of some digs for three?� asked michael hopefully. this would be a partial solution of the difficulty, as long as the third person was a tolerably good egg. maurice seemed embarrassed. �no; well, as a matter of fact, castleton rather wants to dig with me. the new college man he was going to live with is going down, and he had fixed up some rather jolly digs in longwall. he offered me a share, but of course i said i was digging with you, and there�s no room for a third.� �i can go in with tommy grainger and lonny,� said michael quickly. maurice looked much relieved. �as long as you don�t feel i�ve treated you badly,� he began. �that�s all right,� said michael, resenting for the moment maurice�s obvious idea that he was losing something by the defection. but as soon as he could think of maurice unlinked to himself for a year, his fondness for him began to return and his habit of perpetually smoking cigarettes was less irritating. he accepted maurice�s invitation to stay at godalming in july with an inward amusement roused by the penitence which had prompted it. stella�s unexpectedly prompt departure to vienna had left michael free to make a good many visits during the long vacation. he enjoyed least the visit to high towers, because he found it hard not to be a little contemptuous of the adulation poured out upon maurice by his father and mother and sisters. mr. avery was a stockbroker with a passion for keeping as young as his son. mrs. avery was a woman who, when her son and her husband were not with her, spoiled the dogs, and sometimes even her daughters. she was just as willing to spoil michael, especially when his politeness led him into listening in shady corners of the tennis-lawn to mrs. avery�s adorations of maurice. he found godalming oppressive with the smart suburbanity of surrey. he disliked the facility of life there, the facile thought, the facile comfort, the facile conversation. everything went along with a smoothness that suited the civilized landscape, the conventional picturesqueness and the tar-smeared roads. after a week michael was summoned away by a telegram. without a ruse, he would never have escaped from this world of light-green lovat tweeds, of fashionable rusticity and carefully pressed trousers. �dear mrs. avery,� he wrote, preening himself upon the recuperative solitude of empty cheyne walk whence his mother had just departed to france. �i enjoyed my visit so much, and so much wish i had not been called away on tiresome business. i hope the garden-party at the nevilles was a great success, and that the high towers croquet pair distinguished themselves. please remember me to mr. avery.� �thank heaven that�s done!� he sighed, and lazily turned the pages of bradshaw to discover how to reach wedderburn in the depths of south wales. the vacation went by very quickly with quiet intervals in london between his visits, of which he enjoyed most the fortnight at cressingham hall�a great palladian house in the heart of the broad midlands. it was mid-august with neither shooting nor golf to disturb the pastoral calm. lonsdale was trying under lord cleveden�s remonstrances to obtain a grasp of rural administration. so he and his sister sylvia with michael drove every day in a high dogcart to various outlying farms of the estate. lonsdale managed to make himself very popular, and after all as he confided to michael that was the main thing. �and how�s his lordship, sir?� the tenant would inquire. �oh, very fit,� lonsdale would reply. �i say, mr. hoggins, have you got any of that home-brewed beer on draught? my friend mr. fane has heard a good deal about it.� in a cool farm-parlor lonsdale and michael would toast the health of agriculture and drink damnation to all radicals, while outside in the sun were sylvia with mrs. hoggins, looking at the housewife�s raspberries and gooseberries. �i envy your life,� said michael. �a bit on the slow side, don�t you think?� �plenty of time for thinking.� �ah,� said lonsdale. �but then i�ve got no brains. i really haven�t, you know. the poor old governor�s quite worried about it.� however, when after dinner lord cleveden bade his son and his guest draw up their chairs and when, as he ceremoniously circulated the port, he delivered majestic reminiscences of bygone celebrities and notorieties, michael scarcely thought that anything would ever worry him very much, not even a dearth of partridges, still less a dearth of brains in his only son. �dear lady cleveden,� he wrote, when once again he sat in the empty house in cheyne walk. �london is quite impossible after cressingham.� and so it was with the listless august people drooping on the embankment, the oily river and a lack-luster moon. michael was surprised at such a season to get a telegram from prescott, inviting him to dine at the albany. his host was jaded by the hot london weather, and the soldier-servant waited upon him with more solicitude than usual. prescott and michael talked of the commonplace for some time, or rather michael talked away rather anxiously while prescott lent him a grave attention. at last michael�s conversation exhausted itself, and for a few minutes there was silence, while prescott betrayed his nervousness by fidgeting with the ash on his cigar. at last he burnt himself and throwing away the cigar leaped forthwith into the tide of emotion that was deepening rapidly around his solitary figure. �daresay your mother told you i wanted to marry stella. daresay stella told you. of course, i realize it�s quite absurd. said so at once, and of course it�s all over now. phew! it�s fearfully hot to-night. always feel curiously stranded in london in august, but i suppose that�s the same with most people.� michael had an impulse to ask prescott to come away with him, but the moment for doing so vanished in the shyness it begot, and a moment later the impulse seemed awkwardly officious. yet by prescott�s confidence michael felt himself committed to a participation in his existence that called for some response. but he could not with any sincerity express a regret for stella�s point of view. �mother was very anxious she should accept you,� said michael, and immediately he had a vision of prescott like the puppet of an eighteenth-century novelist kneeling to receive stella�s stilted declaration of her refusal. �your mother was most extraordinarily gracious and sympathetic. but of course i�m a man of fifty. i suppose you thought the idea very ridiculous.� �i don�t think stella is old enough to marry,� said michael. �but don�t you think it�s better for girls to marry when they�re young?� asked prescott, and as he leaned forward, michael saw his eyes were very bright and his actions feverish. �i�ve noticed that tendencies recur in families. time after time. i don�t like this viennese business, yet if stella had married me i shouldn�t have interfered with her,� he added, with a wistfulness that was out of keeping with his severely conventional appearance. �still, i should have always been in the background.� �yes, i expect that was what she felt,� said michael. he did not mean to be brutal, but he saw at once how deeply he had wounded prescott, and suddenly in a panic of inability to listen any longer, he rose and said he must go. as he was driving to waterloo station on the following afternoon to go down to basingstead, he saw vaguely on the posters of the starved august journals �suicide of a man about town.� at cobble place newspapers were read as an afterthought, and it was not until late on the day after that above a short paragraph the headline �tragedy in the albany� led him on to learn that actually prescott was the man about town who had killed himself. michael�s first emotion was a feeling of self-interest in being linked so closely with an event deemed sufficiently important to occupy the posters of an evening paper. for the moment the fact that he had dined with prescott a few hours beforehand seemed a very remarkable coincidence. it was only after he had had to return to london and attend the inquest, to listen to the coroner�s summing up of the evidence of depression and the perspiring jury�s delivery of their verdict of temporary insanity he began to realize that in the crisis of a man�s life his own words or behavior might easily have altered the result. he was driving to waterloo station again in order to take up the thread of his broken visit. on the posters of the starved august journals he read now with a sharp interest �cat saves household in whitechapel fire.� this cat stood for him as the symbol of imaginative action. he bought the evening papers at waterloo, and during the journey down to hampshire read about this cat who had saved a family from an inquest�s futile epitaph, and who even if unsuccessful would have been awarded the commendatory platitudes of the coroner. michael had not said by what train he would arrive, and so after the journey he was able to walk to basingstead through lanes freshening for evening. by this time the irony of the cat�s fortuitous interference was blunted, and michael was able to see himself in clearer relation to the fact of prescott�s death. he was no longer occupied by the strange sensation of being implicated in one of the sufficiently conspicuous daily deaths exalted by the press to the height of a tragedy. yet for once the press had not been so exaggerative. prescott�s life was surely a tragedy, and his death was only not a tragedy because it had violated all the canons of good form and had falsified the stoicism of nearly fifty years. yet why should not the stoic ideal be applied to such a death? it was an insult to such perfect manners to suppose that a hopeless love for a girl had led him to take his life. surely it would be kinder to ascribe it to the accumulative boredom of august in london, or possibly to a sudden realization of vulgarity creeping up to the very portals of the albany. michael was rather anxious to believe in this theory, because he was beginning to reproach himself more seriously than when the cat had first obtruded a sardonic commentary on his own behavior in having given away to the panic of wishing to listen no longer to the dead man�s confidences. with all his personal regrets it was disconcerting to think of a man whose attitude to life had seemed so correct making this hurried exit, an exit too that left his reputation a prey to the public, so that his whole existence could be soiled after death by the inquisitive grubbing of a coroner. prescott had always seemed secure from an humiliation like this. the mezzotints of stern old admirals, the soldier-servant, the fashionable cloister in which he lived, the profound consciousness he always betrayed of the importance of restraint whether in morals or cravats had seemed to combine in unrelaxing guardianship of his good form. the harder michael thought about the business, the more incredible it appeared. himself in an earlier mood of self-distrust had accepted prescott as an example to whose almost contemptuous attitude of withdrawal he might ultimately aspire. he had often reproached himself for outlived divergencies of thought and action, and with the example of prescott he had hammered into himself the possibility of eternal freedom from their recurrence. and now he must admit that mere austerity unless supported by a spiritual encouragement to endure was liable at any moment to break up pitiably into suicide. the word itself began to strike him with all the force of its squalid associations. the fresh dust of the hampshire lanes became a gray miasma. loneliness looped itself slowly round his progress so that he hurried on with backward glances. the hazel-hedges were somber and monotonous and defiled here and there by the rejected rags of a tramp. the names of familiar villages upon the signposts lost their intimations of sane humanity, and turned to horrible abstractions of the dead life of the misshapen boot or empty matchbox at their foot. the comfortable assurance of a prosperous and unvexed country rolling away to right and left forsook him, and only the pallid road writhed along through the twilight. �my nerves are in a rotten state,� he told himself, and he was very glad to see basingstead manor twinkling in the night below, while himself was still walking shadowless in a sickly dusk. in the drawing-room of cobble place all was calm, as indeed, michael thought, why on earth should it not be? mrs. carthew�s serene old age drove out the last memory of the coroner�s court, and here was mrs. ross coming out of a circle of lamplight to greet him, and here in cobble place was her small son sleeping. �you look tired and pale, michael,� said mrs. ross. �why didn�t you wire which train you were coming by? i would have met you with the chaise.� �poor fellow, of course he�s tired!� said mrs. carthew. �a most disturbing experience. come along. dinner will do him good.� the notion of suicide began to grow more remote from reality in this room, which had always been to michael soft and fragrant like a great rose in whose heart, for very despair of being able ever to express in words the perfection of it, one swoons to be buried. the evening went the calm course of countless evenings at cobble place. michael played at backgammon with mrs. carthew: joan carthew worked at the accounts of a parochial charity: may carthew knitted: mrs. ross, reading in the lamplight, met from time to time michael�s glances with a concern that never displayed itself beyond the pitch of an unexacting sympathy. he was glad, as the others rustled to greet the ten strokes of the clock, to hear mrs. ross say she would stay up for a while and keep him company. �unless you want to work?� she added. michael shook his head. when the others had gone to bed, he turned to her: �do you know, mrs. ross, i believe i could have prevented prescott�s death. he began to talk about stella, and i felt embarrassed and came away.� �oh, my dear michael, i think you�re probably accusing yourself most unfairly. how could you have supposed the terrible sequel to your dinner?� �that�s just it. i believe i did know.� �you thought he was going to kill himself?� �no, i didn�t think anything so definite as that, but i had an intuition to ask him to come away with me, and i was afraid he�d think it rather cheek and, oh, mrs. ross, what on earth good am i? i believe i�ve got the gift of understanding people, and yet i�m afraid to use it. shall i ever learn?� michael looked at mrs. ross in despair. he was exasperated by his own futility. he went on to rail at himself. �the only gift i have got! and then my detestable self-consciousness wrecks the first decent chance i�ve had to turn it to account.� they talked for some time. at first mrs. ross consoled him, insisting that imagination affected by what had happened later was playing him false. then she seemed to be trying to state an opinion which she found it difficult to state. she spoke to michael of qualities which in the future with one quality added would show his way in the world clear and straight before him. he was puzzled to guess at what career she was hinting. �my dear michael, i would not tell you for anything,� she affirmed. �why not?� �why not? why, because with all the ingenuous proclamations of your willingness to do anything that you�re positive you can do better than anything else, i�m quite, quite sure you�re still the rather perverse michael of old, and as i sit here talking to you i remember the time when i told you as a little boy that you would have been a roundhead in the time of the great rebellion. how angry you were with me! so what i think you�re going to do�i almost said when you�re grown up�but i mean when you leave oxford, i shall have to tell you after you have made up your own mind. i shall have to give myself merely the pleasure of saying, �i knew it.�� �i suppose really i know what you think i shall do,� said michael slowly. �but you�re wrong�at least, i think you�re wrong. i lack the mainspring of the parson�s life. talk to me about kenneth instead of myself. how�s he getting on?� �oh, he�s splendid at five years old, but i want to give him something more than i ever managed to give you.� �naturally,� said michael, smiling. �he�s your son.� �michael, would you be surprised if i told you that i thought of....� mrs. ross broke off abruptly. �no, i won�t tell you yet.� �you�re full of unrevealed mysteries,� said michael. �yes, it�s bedtime for me. good night.� two mornings later michael had a letter from his mother in london. he wondered why he should be vaguely surprised by her hurried return. surely prescott�s death could not have been a reason to bring her home. cheyne walk, s.w. _my dearest michael,_ _i�m so dreadfully upset about poor dick prescott. i have so few old friends, so very few, that i can�t afford to lose him. his devotion to your father was perfectly wonderful. he gave up everything to us. he remained in society just enough to be of use to your father, but he was nearly always with us. i think he was fond of me, but he worshiped him. perhaps i was wrong in trying to encourage the idea of marrying stella. but i console myself by saying that that had nothing to do with this idea of his to take his own life. you see, when your father died, he found himself alone. i�ve been so selfishly interested in reëntering life. he had no wish to do so. michael, i can�t write anything more about it. perhaps, dearest boy, you wouldn�t mind giving up some of your time with the carthews, and will come back earlier to be with me in london for a little time._ _your loving_ _mother._ _p.s.�i hope the funeral was properly done._ michael realized with a start the loneliness of his mother, and in his mood of self-reproachfulness attacked himself for having neglected her ever since the interests of oxford had arisen to occupy his own life so satisfyingly. he told mrs. ross of the letter, and she agreed with him in thinking he ought to go back to london at once. michael had only time for a very short talk with old mrs. carthew before the chaise would arrive. �there has been a fate upon this visit,� said the old lady. �and i�m sorry for it. i�d promised myself a great many talks with you. besides, you�ll miss alan now, and he�ll be disappointed, and as for nancy, she�ll be miserable.� �but i must go,� michael said. �of course you must go,� said mrs. carthew, thumping with her stick on the gravel path. �you must always think first of your mother.� �you told me that before on this very path a long time ago,� said michael thoughtfully. �i didn�t understand so well why at the time. now, of course,� he added shyly, �i understand everything. i used to wonder what the mystery could be. i used to imagine all sorts of the most extraordinary things. prisons and lunatic asylums among others.� mrs. carthew chuckled to herself. �it�s surprising you didn�t imagine a great deal more than you did. how�s oxford?� �ripping,� said michael. �and so was your advice about oxford. i�ve never forgotten. it was absolutely right.� �i always am absolutely right,� said mrs. carthew. the wheels of the chaise were audible; and michael must go at once. �if i�m alive in two years, when you go down,� said mrs. carthew, �i�d like to give you some advice about the world. i�m even more infallible about the world. although i married a sailor, i�m a practical and worldly old woman.� michael said good-bye to all the family standing by the gate of cobble place, to mrs. ross with the young kenneth now in knickerbockers by her side and soon, thought michael, a subject fit for speculation; to delightful may and joan; to the smiling carthew cook; all waving to him in the sunlight with the trim cotoneaster behind them. it gave michael a consciousness of a new and most affectionate intimacy to find his mother alone in the house in cheyne walk. it was scarcely yet september, and the desolation of london all around seemed the more sharply to intagliate upon his senses the fineness of his mother�s figure set in the frame of that sedate house. they had tea together in her own room, and it struck him with a sudden surprise to see her once again in black. the room with its rose du barri and clouded pastels sustained her beauty and to her somber attire lent a deeper poignancy; or perhaps it was something apart from the influence of the room, this so incontestable pathos, and was rather the effect of the imprisonment of her elusiveness by a chain whose power michael had not suspected. always, for nearly as many years as he could remember, when he had kissed her she had seemed to evade the statement of any positive and ordinary affection. her personality had fluttered for a moment to his embrace and fled more than swiftly. in one moment as michael kissed her now, the years were swept away, and he was sitting up for an extra half hour at the seaside, while she with her face flushed by another august sunset was leaning over him. the river became the sea, and the noise of the people on the embankment were the people walking on the promenade below. in one moment as michael kissed her now, her embrace gave to him what it had not given during all the years between�a consciousness that he depended upon her life. �dearest boy,� she murmured, �how good of you to come back so quickly from the carthews!� �but i would much rather be with you,� said michael. indeed, as he sat beside her holding her hand, he wondered to himself how he had been able to afford to miss so many opportunities of sitting like this, and immediately afterward wondered at himself for being able to sit like this without any secret dread that he was making himself absurd by too much demonstrativeness. after all, it was very easy to show emotion even to one�s mother without being ridiculous. �poor dicky prescott,� she said, and tears quickly blurred her great gray eyes and hung quivering on the shadowy lashes beneath. michael held her hand closer when he saw she was beginning to cry. he felt no awe of her grief, as he had when she told him of his father�s death. this simpler sorrow brought her so much nearer to him. she was speaking of prescott�s death as she might have spoken of the loss of a cherished possession, a dog perhaps or some familiar piece of jewelry. �i shall never get used to not having him to advise me. besides, he was the only person to whom i could talk about charles�about your father. dicky was so bound up with all my life. so long as he was alive, i had some of the past with me.� michael nodded with comprehending gravity of assent. �darling boy, i don�t mean that you and darling stella are not of course much more deeply precious to me. you are. but i can�t help thinking of that poor dear man, and the way he and charles used to walk up and down the quarter-deck, and i remember once charles lent him a stud. it�s the silly little sentimental memories like that which are so terribly upsetting when they�re suddenly taken away.� now she broke down altogether, and michael with his arms about her, held her while she wept. �dearest mother, when you cry i seem to hold you very safely,� he whispered. �i don�t feel you�ll ever again be able to escape.� she had ceased from her sobbing with a sudden shiver and catch of the breath and looked at him with frightened eyes. �michael, he once said that to me ... before you were born. before ... on a hillside it was ... how terribly well i remember.� michael did not want her to speak of his father. he felt too helpless in the presence of that memory. the death of prescott was another matter, a trivial and pathetic thing. quickly he brought his mother back to that, until she was tired with the flowing of many tears. michael spent the rest of the long vacation with his mother in london, and gradually he made himself a companion to her. they went to theaters together, because it gave her a sentimental pleasure to think how much poor dicky prescott would have enjoyed this piece once upon a time. between them was the unspoken thought of how much somebody else would have enjoyed this piece also. michael teased his mother lightly about her bazaars, until she told him he was turning into a second prescott himself. he discussed seriously the problem of stella, but he did not say a word of his hope that she would fall in love with alan. alan, however, who was already back in town, came to spend week-ends that were very much like the week-ends spent at carlington road in the past. mrs. fane enjoyed dining with her son and his friend. she asked the same sort of delightfully foolish questions about oxford that she used to ask about school. in october mrs. carruthers arrived back in town, and by this time mrs. fane was ready to begin again to flit from charity to charity, and from fad to fad. yet, however much she seemed to become again her old elusive, exquisite self, michael never again let her escape entirely from the intimacy which had been created by the sentimental shock of prescott�s death, and he went up for his third year at oxford with a feeling that somehow during this vacation he had grown more sure of himself and to his mother more precious. �what have you done this vac?� they asked him in venner�s on the night of reunion. �nothing very much,� he said, and to himself he thought less than usual in fact, and yet really in one way such a very great deal. chapter xii high the large room at high street which michael shared with grainger and lonsdale was perhaps in the annals of university lodgings the most famous. according to tradition, the house was originally part of the palace of a cardinal. whether it had been the habitation of ecclesiastical greatness or not, it had certainly harbored grandeur of some kind; to this testified the two fireplaces surmounted by coats-of-arms in carved oak that enhanced this five-windowed room with a dignity which no other undergraduate lodging could claim. the house at this period was kept by a retired college cook, who produced for dinner parties wonderful old silver which all his tenants believed to have been stolen from the kitchen of his college. the large room of high gave the house its character, but there were many other rooms besides. wedderburn, for instance had on the third story a sitting-room whose white paneling and georgian grace had been occupied by generations of the transitory exquisites of art and fashion. downstairs in the aqueous twilight created by a back garden was the dining-room which the four of them possessed in common. as for the other lodgers, none were st. mary�s men, and their existence was only alluded to by michael and his friends when the ex-cook charged them for these strangers� entertainments. michael was the first to arrive at two hundred and two, and he immediately set to work to arrange in the way that pleased him best the decorative and personal adjuncts contributed by grainger, lonsdale, and himself. for his own library he found a fine set of cupboards which he completely filled. the books of grainger and lonsdale he banished to the dining-room, where their scant numbers competed for space on the shelves with jars of marmalade, egg-cups, and toast-racks. the inconvenience of the confusion was helpfully obviated first by the fact that their collection, or rather their accumulation, was nearly throughout in duplicate owing to the similar literary tastes and intellectual travaux forcés of grainger and lonsdale, and secondly by the fact that for a year to neither taste nor intellect was there frequent resort. with their pictures michael found the same difficulty of duplication, but as there were two fireplaces he took an ingenious delight in supporting each fireplace with similar pictures, so that thorburn�s grouse, cecil aldin�s brilliant billiard-rooms, sir galahad and eton society were to be found at either end. elsewhere on the spacious walls he hung his own blakes and frederick walkers, and the engraving of the morning stars singing together he feathered with the photographic souvenirs of lonsdale�s fagdom. as for the pictures that belonged to the ex-cook, mostly very large photogravures of marcus stone such as one sees in the corridors of theaters, these he took upstairs and with them covered wedderburn�s white-paneled walls after he had removed the carefully hung dürers to the bathroom. this transference wasted a good deal of time, but gave him enough amusement when wedderburn arrived to justify the operation. the pictures all disposed, he called for a carpenter to hang grainger�s triumphal oars and lonsdale�s hunting trophies of masks, pads and brushes, and surveyed with considerable satisfaction the accumulative effect of the great room now characterized by their joint possessions. michael was admiring his work when lonsdale arrived and greeted him boisterously. �hullo! i say, are we all straight? how topping! but wait a bit. i�ve got something that�s going to put the jolly old lid on this jolly old room. what�s the name of the joker who keeps these digs? macpherson?� he shouted from the landing to the ex-cook. �i say, send up the packing-case that�s waiting for me downstairs.� michael inquired what was inside. �wait a bit, my son,� said the beaming owner. �i�ve got something in there that�s going to make old wedders absolutely green. i�ve thought this out. i told my governor i was going into digs with some of the æsthetic push and didn�t want to be cut out, so he�s lent me this.� �what on earth is it?� michael asked on a note of ambiguous welcome. the packing-case shaped like a coffin had been set down on the floor by the ex-cook and his slave. lonsdale was wrenching off the top. �i had a choice between a mummy and a what d�ye call it, and i chose the what d�ye call it,� said lonsdale. he had torn the last piece of the cover away, and lying in straw was revealed the complete armor of a samurai. �rum-looking beggar. worth twenty of those rotten statues of wedderburn�s. it was a present to the governor from somebody in the east, but as i promised not to go to dances in it, he lent it to me. rather sporting of him, what? where shall we put him?� �i vote we hide it till this evening,� suggested michael, �and then put it in wedder�s bed. he�ll think he�s in the wrong room.� �ripping!� cried lonsdale. �in pyjamas, what?� that japanese warrior never occupied the æsthetic niche that lord cleveden from his son�s proposal may have thought he would occupy. otherwise he played an important part in the life of two hundred and two. never did any visitor come to stay for the week-end, but sammy, as he was soon called, was set to warm his bed. to lonsdale, returning home mildly drunk from trinity clareter or phoenix wine, he was always ready to serve as a courteous listener of his rambling account of an evening�s adventures. he was borrowed by other digs to annoy the landladies: he went for drives in motor cars to puzzle country inns. lonsdale tried to make him into a college mascot, and he drove in state to the st. mary�s grind on the box seat of the coach. he was put down on the pavement outside the lodge with a plate for pennies and a label �blind� round his neck. but sammy�s end was a sad one. he had been sent to call on the warden, and was last seen leaning in a despondent attitude against the warden�s gothic door. whether the butler broke him up when sammy fell forward onto his toes, or whether he was imprisoned eternally in a coal cellar, no one knew. lord cleveden was informed he had been stolen. if michael had tried hard to find two people in whose company it would be more difficult to work than with any other pair in the university, he could scarcely have chosen better than lonsdale and grainger. neither of them was reading an honor school, and the groups called h or c or x , that with each term�s climax they were compelled to pass in order to acquire the degree of bachelor of arts, produced about a week before their ordeal a state of irritable industry, but otherwise were unheeded. michael was not sorry to let his own reading beyond the irreducible minimum slide during this gay third year. he promised himself a fourth year, when he would withdraw from this side of oxford life and in some cloistered digs work really hard. meanwhile, he enjoyed high as the quintessence of youth�s amenity. some of the most enduring impressions of oxford were made now, though they were not perhaps impressions that marked any development in himself by intellectual achievements or spiritual crises. in fact, at the time the impressions seemed fleeting enough; and it was only when the third year was over, when two hundred and two was dismantled of every vestige of this transient occupation that michael in summoning these impressions from the past recaptured, often from merely pictorial recollections, as much of oxford as was necessary to tell him how much oxford had meant. there were misty twilights in november when lonsdale came back spattered with mud after a day with the bicester or the v.w.h. at such an hour michael, who had probably been sitting alone by the roaring fire, was always ready to fling away his book, and, while lonsdale grunted and labored to pull off his riding-boots to hear the tale of a great run across a great piece of country. there was the autumn afternoon when grainger stroked st. mary�s to victory in the coxwainless fours. another oar was hung in two hundred and two, and a bonfire was made in cuther�s quad to celebrate the occasion. afterward grainger himself triumphantly drunk between michael and lonsdale was slowly persuaded along the high and put to bed, while wedderburn prescribed in his deepest voice a dozen remedies. there were jovial dinner parties when rowing men from univ and new college sat gigantically round the table and ate gigantically and laughed gigantically, and were taken upstairs to wedderburn�s dim-lit room to admire his statues of apollo, his old embroideries and his dürer woodcuts. these giants in their baggy blanket trousers, their brass-buttoned coats and leander ties nearly as pink as their own faces, made wedderburn�s white apollos look almost mincing and the embroideries rather insipid. there were other dinner parties even more jovial when the palace of delights, otherwise high, entertained the hotel de luxe, otherwise high, the abode of cuffe, sterns, and sinclair, or the chamber of horrors, otherwise longwall, where maurice and castleton lived. after dinner the guests and the hosts would march arm in arm down to college and be just in time to make a tremendous noise in venner�s, after which they would visit some of the second-year men, and with bridge to wind up the evening would march arm in arm up the high and home again. in the lent term there were windy afternoons with the st. mary�s beagles, when after a long run lonsdale and michael would lose the college drag and hire a dogcart in which they would come spanking back to oxford with the march gale dying in their wake and the dusk gathering fast. in the same term there was a hockey cup-match, when st. mary�s was drawn to play an unfamiliar college on the enemy�s ground. high wondered how on earth such an out-of-the-way ground could possibly be reached, and the end of it was that a coach was ordered in which a dozen people drove the mile or so to the field of play, with lonsdale blowing the horn all the way down high street and cornmarket street and the woodstock road. michael during the year at two hundred and two scarcely saw anybody who was not in the heart of the main athletic vortex of the university. in one way, his third year was a retrogression, for he was nearer to the life of his first year than to his second. the oxford looking-glass had created for him a society representing various interests. this was now broken up, partly by the death of the paper, partly by the more highly intensified existence of the founders. maurice certainly remained the same and was already talking of starting another paper. but wedderburn was beginning to think of a degree and was looking forward to entering his father�s office and becoming in another year a prosperous partner in a prosperous firm. guy hazlewood had gone down and was away in macedonia, trying to fulfill a balliol precept to mix yourself up in the affairs of other nations or your own as much as possible. townsend and mowbray thought now of nothing but of being elected president of the union, and as michael was not a member and hated politics he scarcely saw them. nigel stewart had gone to ely theological college. the oxford looking-glass was shattered into many pieces. alan, however, michael saw more often than last year, because alan was very popular at two hundred and two. michael more and more began to assume the opinions and the attitude of his companions. he began more and more rigidly to apply their somewhat naïve standards in his judgment of the world. he was as intolerant and contemptuous as his friends of any breach of what he almost stated to himself as the public-school tradition. oxford was divided into bad men and good eggs. the bad men went up to london and womanized�some even of the worst womanized in oxford: they dressed in a style that either by its dowdiness or its smartness stamped them: they wore college colors round their straw hats and for their ties: they were quiet, surreptitious, diligent, or blatantly rowdy in small sections, and at least half the colleges in the varsity contained nothing but bad men. the good eggs went up to london and got drunk; and if they womanized no one must know anything about it. drink was the only vice that should be enjoyed communely; in fact, if it were enjoyed secretly, it transformed the victim into the very worst of bad men. the good eggs never made a mistake in dress: they only wore old school colors or varsity club colors: they were bonhomous, hearty, careless, and rowdy in large groups. only the men from about eight colleges were presumed to be good eggs: the rest of the varsity had to demonstrate its goodness. michael sometimes had misgivings about this narrowly selected paucity of good eggs. he never doubted that those chosen were deservedly chosen, but he did sometimes speculate whether in the masses of the bad men there might not be a few good eggs unrecognized as eggs, unhonored for their goodness. yet whenever he made an excursion into the midst of the bad men, he was always bound to admit the refreshment of his very firm prejudice in favor of the good eggs. what was so astonishing about good eggery was the members� obvious equipment for citizenship of the world as opposed to the provincialism of bad mannery. unquestionably it was possible to meet the most intelligent, the most widely read bad men; but intellect and culture were swamped by their barbarous self-proclamation. they suffered from an even bitterer snobbishness than the good eggs. in the latter case, the snobbishness was largely an inherited pride: with the bad men it was obviously an acquired vanity. where, however, michael found himself at odds with good eggery was in the admission to titular respect of the christ church blood. this growing toleration was being conspicuously exemplified in the attitude of st. mary�s, that most securely woven and most intimate nest of good eggery. when michael had first come up there had been an inclination at his college to regard with as much contemptuous indifference an election to the bullingdon as an election to the union. it was tacitly understood at st. mary�s that nothing was necessary to enhance the glory of being a st. mary�s man. gradually, however, the preponderance of etonian influence outweighed the conventional self-sufficiency of the wykehamists, and several men in michael�s year joined the bullingdon, one of the earliest of these destroyers of tradition being lonsdale. the result of this action was very definitely a disproportion in the individual expenditure of members of the college. st. mary�s had always been a college for relatively rich men, but in accordance with the spirit of the college to form itself into an aristocratic republic, it had for long been considered bad form to spend more than was enough to sustain each member of this republic on an equality with his fellows. now lonsdale was so obviously a good egg that it did not matter when he played with equal zest roulette and polo or hunted three times a week or wore clothes of the last extreme of fashion. but michael and grainger were not sure they cared very much for all of lonsdale�s friends from the house. certainly they were etonians and members of the bullingdon, but so many of their names were curiously familiar from the hoardings of advertisements that neither michael nor grainger could altogether believe in their assumption of the privilege of exclusion on the ground of inherited names. �i think these bullingdon bloods are rather rotters,� protested michael, after an irritating evening of vacuous wealth. �i _must_ ask them in sometimes,� apologized lonsdale. �why?� rumbled wedderburn, and on his note of interrogation the bullingdon bloods were impaled to swing unannaled. �i don�t think all this sort of thing is very good for the college,� debated grainger. �it�s all very well for you, lonny, but some of the second-year men behave rather stupidly. personally i hate roulette at st. mary�s. as for some of the would-be fresher bloods, they�re like a lot of damned cavalry subalterns.� �you can�t expect the college to be handed over entirely to the rowing push,� said lonsdale. �that�s better than turning venner�s into tattersall�s,� said wedderburn. the effect of enlarging the inclusiveness of good eggery was certainly to breed a suspicion that it was largely a matter of externals; and therefore among the st. mary�s men who disliked the application of money as a social standard an inclination grew up to suppose that good eggery might be enlarged on the other side. the feeling of the college, that elusive and indefinable aroma of opinion, declared itself unmistakably in this direction, and many bad men became good eggs. �we�re all growing older,� said michael to wedderburn in explanation of the subtle change manifesting itself. �and i suppose a little wiser. castleton will be elected president of the j.c.r. at the end of this year. not tommy grainger, although he�ll be president of the o.u.b.c., not sterne, although he�ll be in the varsity eleven. castleton will be elected because he never has believed and he never will believe in mere externals.� nevertheless for all of his third year, with whatever fleeting doubts he had about the progress of st. mary�s along the lines laid down by the good eggery of earlier generations, michael remained a very devoted adherent of the principle. he was able to perceive something more than mere externals in the best eggery. this was not merely created by money or correct habiliment or athletic virtuosity. this existed inherently in a large number of contemporary undergraduates. through this they achieved the right to call themselves the best. it was less an assertion of snobbishness than of faith. good eggery had really become a religion. it was not inconsistent with christianity: indeed, it probably derived itself from christianity through many mailclad and muscular intercedents. yet it shrank from anything definitely spiritual as it would have shrunk from the salvation army. men who intended to be parsons were of course exceptions, but parsons were regarded as a facet of the existing social order rather than as trustees for the heirs of universal truth. social service was encouraged by fashion, so long as it meant no more than the supporting of the college mission in the slums of bristol by occasional week-ends. members of the college would play billiards in the club for dockhands under or over seventeen, would subscribe a guinea a year, and as a great concession would attend the annual report in the j.c.r. there must, however, be no more extravagance in religion and social service than there should be in dress. the priestly caste of good eggery was represented not by the parsons, but by the schoolmasters and certain dons. the schoolmasters were the most powerful, and tried to sustain the legend common to all priestly castes that they themselves made the religion rather than that they were mere servants of an idea. mature good eggs affected to laugh at the schoolmasters whose leading-strings they had severed, but an instinctive fear endured, so that in time to come good egglets would be handed over for the craft to mold as they had molded their fathers. it could scarcely be denied that schoolmasters like priests were disinclined to face facts: it was indubitable that they lived an essentially artificial life: it was certain that they fostered a clod-headed bigotry, that they were tempted to regard themselves as philanthropists, that they feared dreadfully the intrusion of secular influence. it could scarcely be denied that the schoolmasterdom of england was a priestcraft as powerful and arrogant as any which had ever been. but they were gentlemen, that is to say they shaved oftener than neapolitan priests; they took a cold bath in the morning, which probably calvin�s ministers never did; they were far more politely restrained than the bacchantes and not less chaste than the vestal virgins. these clean and honest, if generally rather stupid gentlemen, were the wielders of that afflatus, the public-school spirit, and so far as michael could see at present, good eggs were more safe morally with that inspiration than they might have been with any other. and if a touch of mysticism were needed, it might be supplied by freemasonry at the apollo lodge; while the boy scouts were beginning to show how admirably this public-school spirit could blow through the most unpromising material of the middle classes. michael so much enjoyed the consciousness of merit which is the supreme inducement offered by all successful religions, and more than any by good eggery, that he made up his mind quite finally that good eggery would carry him through his existence, however much it were complicated by the problem of bad mannery. during that year at two hundred and two he grew more and more deeply convinced that to challenge any moral postulate of good eggery was merely contumacious self-esteem. one of the great principles of good eggery was that the good egg must only esteem himself as a valuable unit in good eggery. his self-esteem was entitled to rise in proportion with the distance he could run or kick or throw or hit. analyzed sharply, michael admitted that good eggery rested on very frail foundations, and it was really surprising with what enthusiasm it managed to sustain the good eggs themselves, so that apparently without either spiritual exaltation or despair, without disinterested politics or patriotism, without any deep humanity even, the good eggs were still so very obviously good. certainly the suicide of prescott made michael wonder how much that rather ignominious surrender by such a good egg might have been avoided with something profounder than good eggery at the back of life�s experience. but suicide was an accident, michael decided, and could not be used in the arguments against the fundamental soundness of good eggery as the finest social nourishment in these days of a bourgeoning century. meanwhile, at st. mary�s the good eggs flourished, and time went by with unexampled swiftness. in the last days of the lent term, after st. mary�s had been defeated by christ church in the final of the association cup, michael, grainger and lonsdale determined to drown woe by a triple twenty-firster. every contemporary good egg in st. mary�s and several from other colleges were invited. forty good eggs, groomed and polished and starched, sat down at the clarendon to celebrate this triple majority. upon that banquet age did not lay one hesitant touch. the attainment of discretion was celebrated in what might almost have been hailed as a debauch of youthfulness. forty good eggs drank forty-eight bottles of perrier jouet � . they drank indeed the last four dozen gages of that superb summer stored in the j.c.r., the last four dozen lachrymatories of the sun, nor could it be said that vintage of champagne had funeral games unworthy of its foam and fire. forty good eggs went swinging out of the clarendon about half-past nine o�clock, making almost more noise than even the corn had ever heard. forty good eggs went swinging along toward carfax, swinging and singing, temporarily deified by the last four dozen of perrier jouet � . riotous feats were performed all down the high. two trams were unhorsed. hansoms were raced. bells were rung. forty good eggs, gloriously, ravishingly drunk, surged into the lodge. there was just time to see old venner. in the quiet office was pandemonium. good eggs were dancing hornpipes; good eggs were steadying themselves with cognac; good eggs were gently herded out of the little office as ten o�clock chimed. �bonner! bonner!� the forty good eggs shouted, and off they went not to st. cuthbert�s, but actually to the great lawn in front of new quad. third-year men when they did come into college roaring drunk took no half-measures of celebration. excited freshmen and second-year men came swarming out of cloisters, out of parsons� quad, out of cuther�s to support these wild seniors. what a bonfire it was! thirty-one chairs, three tables, two doors, twelve lavatory seats, every bundle of faggots in college and george appleby�s bed. somebody had brought roman candles. o exquisite blue and emerald stars! somebody else had brought chinese crackers as big as red chimneys. o sublime din! lonsdale was on the roof of cloisters trying to kill a gargoyle with hurtling syphons. michael was tossing up all by himself to decide whether he should tell the senior tutor or the warden what he really thought of him. a fat welterweight, a straggler from new college, had been shorn of his coat-tails, and was plunging about like an overgrown eton boy. with crimson faces and ruffled hair and scorched shirt-fronts the guests of the twenty-firster acclaimed to-night as the finest tribute ever paid to years of discretion. next morning the three hosts paid ten guineas each to the dean. �i thought you people were supposed to have come of age,� he said sardonically. so incomparably slight was the hang-over from perrier jouet � that grainger, lonsdale, and michael smiled very cheerfully, produced their check books, and would, if mr. ambrose had not been so discouraging, have been really chatty. after collections of lent term, that opportunity accepted by the college authorities to be offensive in bulk, michael felt his historical studies were scarcely betraying such an impulse toward research as might have been expected of him at this stage. mr. harbottle, the history tutor, an abrupt and pleasant man with the appearance of a cat and the manners of a dog, yapped vituperations from where he sat with all the other dons in judgment along the high table in hall. the warden turned on his orbit and shone full-faced upon michael. �a little more work, mr. fane, will encourage us all. your collection papers have evidently planted a doubt in mr. harbottle�s mind.� �he never does a stroke of honest work, warden,� yapped the history tutor. �if he stays up ten years he�ll never get a fourth.� �in spite of mr. harbottle�s discouraging prophecy, we must continue to hope, mr. fane, that you will obtain at least a second next term.� �next term!� michael gasped. �but i was expecting to take schools next year.� �i�m afraid,� said the warden, �that according to mr. ambrose the fabric of the college will scarcely survive another year of your residence. i believe i echo your views, mr. ambrose?� the dean blinked his gray eye and finally said that possibly mr. fane would change next term, adding that a more immediately serious matter was a deficit of no less than seven chapels. michael pointed out that he designed in his fourth year to go as it were into industrious solitude far away from st. mary�s. �are you suggesting iffley?� inquired the warden. �oh, no, not so far as that; but right away,� said michael. �somewhere near keble. miles away.� �but we have to consider next term,� the warden urged. �next term, i take it, you will still be occupied with the fashionable distractions of high street?� �i�ll make an offer,� barked mr. harbottle. �if he likes to do another collection paper at the beginning of next term, and does it satisfactorily, i will withdraw my opposition, and as far as i�m concerned he can take his schools next year.� �what luck?� asked everybody in the lodge when michael had emerged from the ordeal. �i had rather a hot time,� said michael. �still harbottle behaved like a gentleman on the whole.� maurice arrived in the lodge soon after michael, and conveyed the impression that he had left the tutorial forces of the college reeling under the effect of his witty cannonade. then michael went off to interview the dean in order to adjust the difficulty which had been created by the arrears of his early rising. with much generosity he admitted the whole seven abstentions, and was willing not merely to stay up a week to correct the deficit, but suggested that he should spend all the easter vacation working in oxford. so it fell out that michael managed to secure his fourth year, and in the tranquillity of that easter vacation it seemed to him that he began to love oxford for the first time with a truly intense passion and that a little learning was the least tribute he could offer in esteem. it was strange how suddenly history became charged with magic. perhaps the academic muse sometimes offered this inspiration, if one spent hours alone with her. michael was sad when the summer term arrived in its course. so many good eggs would be going down for ever after this term, and upon two hundred and two high brooded the shadow of dissolution. alan again hovered on the edge of the varsity eleven, but a freshman who bowled rather better the same sort of ball came up, and it seemed improbable he would get his blue. however, the disappointment was evidently not so hard for alan to bear nowadays. he was indeed becoming gravely interested in philosophy, and michael was forced to admit that he seemed to be acquiring most unexpectedly a real intellectual grasp of life. so much the better for their companionship next year in those rooms in st. giles� which michael had already chosen. the summer term was going by fast. it was becoming an experience almost too fugitive to be borne, this last summer term at two hundred and two. michael, grainger, and lonsdale had scarcely known how to endure some offensive second-year men from oriel being shown their room for next year. they resented the thought of these oriel men leaning out of the window and throwing cushions at their friends and turning to the left to keep a chapel at oriel, instead of scudding down to st. mary�s on the right. wedderburn was always the one who voiced sentimentally the unexpressed regrets of the other three. he it was who spoke of the grime and labor of the paternal office, of life with a capital letter as large as any lady novelist�s, and of how one would remember these evenings and the leaning-out over a cushioned window-sill and the poring upon this majestic street. �we don�t realize our good luck until it�s too late really,� said wedderburn seriously. �we�ve wasted our time, and now we�ve got to go.� �well, dash it all, wedders,� said lonsdale, �don�t talk as if we were going to bolt for a train before hall. we aren�t going down for three weeks yet, and jolly old michael and jolly old tommy aren�t going down for another year.� �lucky devils!� sighed wedderburn. �by gad, if i only had my time at the varsity all over again.� but just when wedderburn had by his solemnity almost managed really to impress the company with a sense of fleeting time, and when even upon lonsdale was descending the melancholy of the deep-dyed afternoon, across the road they could see sauntering three men whom they all knew well. �tally-ho-ho-ho-whooop!� shouted lonsdale. the three men saluted thus came upstairs to the big room of two hundred and two, and a bout of amiable ragging and rotting passed away the hour before dinner and restored to the big room itself the wonted air of imperishable good-fellowship. �lucky you lads turned up,� said lonsdale. �old wedders has been moping in his window-seat like a half-plucked pigeon. we�re dining in hall to-night, are you?� the newcomers were dining in hall, and so in a wide line of brilliant ties and ribbons the seven of them strolled down to college. there were very few people in hall that night, and venner�s was pleasantly empty. venner himself was full of anecdotes, and as they sat on the table in the middle of the room, drinking their coffee, it seemed impossible enough to imagine that they would not be forever here drinking their coffee on a fine june evening. �going down soon, venner,� said wedderburn, who was determined to make somebody sad. �what a pity you�re not taking a fourth year!� said venner. �you ought to have read an honor school. i always advise the men to read for honors. the dons like it, you know.� �got to go and earn my living, venner,� said wedderburn. �that�s right,� said venner cheerfully. �then you�ll be married all the sooner, or perhaps you�re not a marrying man.� �haven�t found the right girl yet, venner,� said wedderburn. �oh, there�s plenty of time,� chuckled venner. �you don�t want to be thinking about girls up here. some of our men go getting engaged before they�ve gone down, and it always messes them up in the schools.� maurice avery came in while venner was speaking. he seemed restless and worried, and as venner went on his restlessness increased. �but very few of our men have got into trouble here with girls. we had one man once who married a widow. he was dreadfully chaffed about it, and couldn�t stand it any longer. the men never let him alone.� �married a widow, while he was still up?� people asked incredulously. �why, yes,� said venner. �and actually brought her down for eights and introduced her to the warden on the barge. she was a most severe-looking woman, and old enough to be his mother. there was some trouble once at high�that�s where you are, isn�t it?� he turned to lonsdale. �but there won�t be any more trouble because macpherson vowed he wouldn�t have a servant-girl in the house again.� �i suppose that�s why we have that perspiring boy,� grumbled wedderburn. �but what happened, venner?� �well, the usual thing, of course. there were five of our men living there that year, and she picked out the quietest one of the lot and said it was him. he had to pay fifty pounds, and when he�d paid it all, the other four came up to him one by one and offered to pay half.� everybody laughed, and maurice suddenly announced that he was in a devil of a fix with a girl. �a girl at a village near here,� he explained. �there�s no question of her having a baby or anything like that, you know; but her brother followed me home one night, and yesterday her father turned up. i got castleton to talk to him. but it was damned awkward. he and old castleton were arguing like hell in our digs.� maurice stopped and, lighting a cigarette, looked round him as if expectant of the laughter which had hailed venner�s story. nobody seemed to have any comment to make, and michael felt himself blushing violently for his friend. �bit chilly in here to-night, venner,� said lonsdale. �you are a confounded lot of prigs!� said maurice angrily, and he walked out of venner�s just as castleton came in. �my dear old frank castleton,� said lonsdale immediately, �i love you very much and i think your hair is beautifully brushed, but you really must talk to our mr. avery very, very seriously. he mustn�t be allowed to make such a bee-luddy fool of himself by talking like a third-rate actor.� �what do you mean?� asked castleton gruffly. lonsdale explained what maurice had done, and castleton looked surprised, but he would not take part in the condemnation. �you�re all friends of his in here,� he pointed out. �he probably thought it was a funny story.� there was just so much emphasis on the pronoun as made the critics realize that castleton himself was really more annoyed than he had superficially appeared. an awkwardness had arisen through the inculpation of maurice, and everybody found they had work to do that evening. quickly venner�s was emptied. michael, turning out of cloisters to stroll for a while on the lawns of new quad before he gave himself to the generalizations of whatever historian he had chosen to beguile this summer night, came up to maurice leaning over the parapet by the cher. �hullo, are you going to condescend to speak to me after the brick i dropped in venner�s?� asked maurice bitterly. �i wish you wouldn�t be so theatrically sarcastic,� complained michael, who was half-unconsciously pursuing the simile which lately lonsdale had found for maurice�s behavior. �well, why on earth,� maurice broke out, �it should be funny when venner tells a story about some old st. mary�s man and yet be��he paused, evidently too vain, thought michael a little cruelly, to stigmatize himself��and yet be considered contrary to what is _done_ when i tell a story about myself, i don�t quite know, i must admit.� �it was the introduction of the personal element which made everybody feel uncomfortable,� said michael. �venner�s tale had acquired the impersonality of a legend.� �oh, god, michael, you do talk rot sometimes!� said maurice fretfully. �it�s nothing on earth but offensive and very youthful priggishness.� �i wonder if i sounded like you,� said michael, �when i talked rather like you at about seventeen.� maurice spluttered with rage at this, and michael saw it would be useless to remonstrate with him reasonably. he blamed himself for being so intolerant and for not having with kindlier tact tried to point out why he had made a mistake; and yet with all his self-reproach he could not rid himself of what was something very near to active dislike of maurice at that moment. but maurice went on, unperceiving. �i hate this silly pretense up here�and particularly at st. mary�s�that nobody ever looks at a woman. it�s nothing but infernal hypocrisy. upon my soul, i�m glad i�m going down this term. i really couldn�t have stood another year, playing with the fringe of existence. it seems to me, michael, if you�re sincere in this attitude of yours, you�ll have a very dismal waking up from your dream. as for all the others, i don�t count them. i�m sick of this schoolboy cant. castleton�s worth everybody else in this college put together. he was wonderful with that hulking fellow who came banging at the door of our digs. i wonder what you�d have done, if you�d been digging with me.� �probably just what castleton did,� said michael coldly. �you evidently weren�t at home. now i must go and work. so long.� he left maurice abruptly, angry with him, angry with himself. what could have induced maurice to make such a fool of himself in venner�s? why hadn�t he been able to perceive the difference of his confession from venner�s legendary narration which, unfettered by the reality of present emotions, had been taken under the protection of the comic spirit? the scene in retrospect appeared improbable, just as improbable in one way, just as shockingly improbable as the arrival of an angry rustic father at some varsity digs in longwall. and why had he made the recollection worse for himself by letting maurice enlarge upon his indignation? it had been bad enough before, but that petulant outbreak had turned an accidental vulgarity into vulgarity itself most cruelly vocal. back in two hundred and two, michael heard the comments upon maurice, and as grainger and lonsdale delivered their judgment, he felt they had all this time tolerated the offender merely for a certain capacity he possessed for entertainment. they spoke of him now, as one might speak of a disgraced servant. �oh, let maurice drop,� said michael wearily. �it was one of those miserable aberrations from tact which can happen to anybody. i�ve done the same sort of thing myself. it�s an involuntary spasm of bad-manners, like sneezing over a crowded railway-carriage.� �well, i suppose one must make allowances,� said grainger. �these artistic devils are always liable to breaks.� �that�s right,� said michael. �hoist the union jack. it�s an extraordinary thing, the calm way in which an englishman is always ready to make art responsible for everything.� next day maurice overtook michael on the way to a lecture. �i say,� he began impetuously, �i made an awful fool of myself yesterday evening. what shall i do?� �nothing,� said michael. �i was really horribly worried, you know, and i think i rather jumped at the opportunity to get the beastly business off my chest, as a sort of joke.� �come and dine at the palace of delights this evening,� michael invited. �and tell frank castleton to come.� �we can�t afford to be critical during the last fortnight of jolly old two hundred and two,� said michael to lonsdale and grainger, when they received rather gloomily at first the news of the invitation. maurice in the course of the evening managed to reinstate himself. he so very divertingly drew old wedders on the subject of going down. the last week of the summer term arrived, and really it was very depressing that so many good eggs were irrevocably going to be lost to the st. mary�s j.c.r. �i think my terminal dinner this term will have to be the same as my first one,� said michael. �only twice as large.� so they all came, cuffe and sterne and sinclair and a dozen more. and just because so many of the guests were going down, not a word was said about it. the old amiable ragging and rotting went on as if the college jokes of to-night would serve for another lustrum yet, as if two hundred and two would merely be empty of these familiar faces for the short space of a vacation. not a pipe was gone from its rack; not a picture was as yet deposed; not a hint was given of change, either by the material objects of the big room or by the merry and intimate community that now thronged it. then the college tenor was called upon for a song, and perhaps without any intention of melancholy he sang o moon of my delight. scarcely was it possible even for these good eggs, so rigidly conscious of each other�s rigidity, not to think sentimentally for a moment how well the turning down of that empty glass applied to them. the new mood that descended upon the company expressed itself in reminiscence; and then, as if the sadness must for decency�s sake be driven out, the college jester was called upon for the comic song whose hebdomadal recurrence through nine terms had always provoked the same delirious encore. everything was going on as usual, and at a few minutes to midnight auld lang syne ought not to have been difficult. it had been sung nearly as often as the comic song, but it was shouted more fervently somehow, less in tune somehow, and the silence at its close was very acute. twelve o�clock was sounding; the guests went hurrying out; and, leaning from the windows of two hundred and two, grainger, lonsdale, wedderburn, and michael heard their footsteps clattering down the high. �i suppose we�d better begin sorting out our things to-morrow,� said michael. chapter xiii plashers mead stella came back from vienna for a month in the summer. indeed she was already arrived, when michael reached cheyne walk. he was rather anxious to insist directly to her that her disinclination to marry prescott had nothing to do with his death. michael did not feel it would be good for stella at nineteen to believe to that extent in her power. one or two of her letters had betrayed an amount of self-interest that michael considered unhealthy. with this idea in view, he was surprised when she made no allusion to the subject, and resented a little that he must be the one to lead up to it. �oh, don�t let�s talk of what happened nearly a year ago,� protested stella. �you were very much excited by it at the time,� michael pointed out. �ah, but lots of things have happened since then.� �what sort of things?� he disapproved of the suggestion that the suicide of a lifelong friend was a drop in the ocean of incident that swayed round stella. �oh, loves and deaths and jealousies and ambitions,� said she lightly. �things do happen in vienna. it�s much more eventful than paris. i don�t know what made me come back to london. i�m missing so much fun.� this implication that he and his mother were dull company for her was really rather irritating. �you�d better go and look up some of your bohemian friends,� he advised severely. �they�re probably all hanging about chelsea still. it�s not likely that any of them is farther on with his art than he was two years ago. who was that bounder you were so fond of, and that girl who painted? clarissa vine, wasn�t she called? what about her?� �poor old george,� said stella. �i really must try and get hold of him. i haven�t seen clarie for some time. she made a fool of herself over some man.� the result of michael�s sarcastic challenge was actually a tea-party in the big studio at cheyne walk, which stella herself described as being like turning out a lumber-room of untidy emotions. �they�re as queer as old-fashioned clothes,� she said. �but rather touching, don�t you think, michael? though after all,� she added pensively, �i haven�t gone marching at a very great pace along that triumphant career of mine. i don�t know that i�ve much reason to laugh at them. really in one way poor clarie is in a better position than me. at least she can afford to keep the man she�s living with. as for george ayliffe, since he gave up trying to paint the girls he was in love with, he has become �one of our most promising realists.�� �he looks it,� said michael sourly. what had happened to stella during this last year? she had lost nearly all her old air of detachment. formerly a radiance of gloriously unpassionate energy had shielded her from any close contact with the vulgar or hectic or merely ordinary life round her. michael had doubted once or twice the wisdom of smoking cigars and had feared that artistic license of speech and action might be carried too far, but, looking back on his earlier opinion of stella, he realized he had only been doubtful on his own account. he had never really thought she ran the least danger of doing anything more serious in its consequence than would have been enough to involve him or his mother in a brief embarrassment. now, though he was at a loss to explain how he was aware of the change, she had become vulnerable. with this new aspect of her suddenly presented, he began to watch stella with a trace of anxiety. he was worried that she seemed so restless, so steadily bored in london. he mistrusted the brightening of her eyes, when she spoke of soon going back to vienna. then came a week when stella was much occupied with speculations about the austrian post, and another week when she was perturbed by what she seemed anxious to suppose its vagaries. a hint from michael that there was something more attractive in vienna than a new technique of the piano made her very angry; and since she had always taken him into her confidence before, he tried to persuade himself that his suspicion was absurd and to feel tremendously at ease when stella packed up in a hurry and went back with scarcely two days� warning of her departure to vienna. it was a sign of the new intimacy of relation between himself and his mother that michael was able to approach naturally the subject of stella�s inquietude. �my dear boy, i�m just as much worried as you are,� mrs. fane assured him. �i suppose i ought to have been much more unpleasant than i can ever bear to make myself. no doubt i ought to have forbidden her quite definitely to go back�or perhaps i should have insisted on going back with her. though i don�t know what i would have done in vienna. they make pastry there, don�t they? i daresay there are very good tea-shops.� �i think it would have been better,� said michael firmly. mrs. fane turned to him with a shrug of helplessness. �my dear boy, you know how very unpleasant stella can be when she is crossed. really very unpleasant indeed. girls are so much more difficult to manage than boys. and they begin by being so easy. but after eighteen every month brings a new problem. their clothes, you know. and of course their behavior.� �it�s quite obvious what�s the matter,� said michael. �funny thing. i�ve never concerned myself very much with stella�s love-affairs before, but this time she seemed less capable of looking after herself.� �would you like to go out to vienna?� she suggested. �oh, no, really, i must go away and work. besides i shouldn�t do any good. nor would you,� michael added abruptly. �i wish dick prescott were alive,� his mother sighed. �really, you know, michael, i was shocked at stella�s callousness over that business.� �well, my dear mother, be fair. it wasn�t anything to do with stella, and she has no conventional affections. that�s one comfort�you do know where you are with her. now, let�s leave stella alone and talk about your plans. you�re sure you don�t mind my burying myself in the country? i must work. i�m going down into oxfordshire with guy hazlewood.� michael had met guy the other evening in the lobby of a theater. he had come back from macedonia with the intention of settling somewhere in the country. he was going to devote himself to poetry, although he exacted michael�s pledge not to say a word of this plan for fear that people would accuse him of an affected withdrawal. he was sensitive to the strenuous creed of his old college, to that atmosphere of faint contempt which surrounded a man who was not on the way toward administering mankind or acres. he had not yet chosen his retreat. that would be revealed in a flash, if his prayer were to be granted. meanwhile why should not michael accompany him to some cotswold village? they would ride out from oxford on bicycles and when they had found the ideal inn, they would stay there through august and september, prospecting the country round. michael was flattered by guy�s desire for his companionship. of all the men he had known, he used to admire guy the most. two months with him would be a pleasure he would not care to forego, and it was easy enough to convince himself that he would be powerless to influence stella in any direction and that anyway, whether he could or could not, it would be more serviceable for her character to win or lose her own battles. michael and guy left oxford in the mellow time of an afternoon in earliest august and rode lazily along the cheltenham road. at nightfall, just as the stripling moon sank behind a spinney of firs that crowned the farthest visible dip of that rolling way ahead across the wold, they turned down into wychford. the wide street of the town sloped very rapidly to a valley of intertwining streams whence the air met them still warm with the stored heat of the day, yet humid and languorous after the dry upland. on either side, as they dipped luxuriously down with their brakes gently whirring, mostly they were aware of many white hollyhocks against the gray houses that were already bloomed with dusk and often tremulous with the voyaging shadows of candle-light. at the stag inn they found a great vaulted parlor, a delicate roast of lamb, a salad very fragrant with mint and thyme, cream and gooseberries and ale. �this is particularly good ale,� said guy. �wonderful ale,� michael echoed. once again they filled their pewter mugs. �it seems to me exceptionally rich and tawny,� said guy. �and it has a very individual tang,� said michael. �another quart, i think, don�t you?� �two, almost,� guy suggested, and michael agreed at once. �i vote we stay here,� said guy. �i�ll wire them to send along my books to-morrow,� decided michael. after supper they went on down the street and came to the low parapet of a bridge in one of whose triangular bays they stood, leaning over to count in the stream below the blurred and jigging stars. behind them in the darkness was the melodious roar of falling water, and close at hand the dusty smell of ivy. farther exploration might have broken the spell of mystery; so in silence they pored upon the gloom, until the rhythmic calm and contemplation were destroyed by a belated wagon passing over the bridge behind them. they went back to the stag and that night in four-posters slept soundly. next morning michael and guy went after breakfast to visit the bridge on which they had stood in the starlight. it managed curiously to sustain the romantic associations with which they had endowed it on the night before. a mighty sycamore, whose roots in their contest with the floods had long grappled in desperate convolutions with the shelving bank of the stream below, overshadowed the farther end: here also at right angles was a line of gabled cottages crumbling into ruin and much overgrown with creepers. they may have been old almshouses, but there was no sign of habitation, and they seemed abandoned to chattering sparrows whose draggled nests were everywhere visible in the ivy. beyond on the other side of the bridge the stream gurgled toward a sluice that was now silent; and beyond this, gray buildings deep embowered in elms and sycamores surrounded what was evidently a mill pool. they walked on to where the bridge became a road that in contrast with the massed trees all round them shone dazzlingly in the sunshine. a high gray wall bounded the easterly side; on the west the road was bordered by a low quickset hedge that allowed a view of a wide valley through which the river, having gathered once more its vagrant streams and brooks, flowed in prodigal curves of silver as far as the eye could follow. the hills that rose to right and left of the valley in bald curves were at this season colorless beside the vivider green of the water-meadows at their base, which was generally indeterminate on account of plantations whence at long intervals the smoke of hidden mills and cottages ascended. when the road had traversed the width of the valley, it trifurcated. one branch followed westward the gentle undulations of the valley; a second ran straight up the hill, disappearing over a stark sky-line almost marine in its hint of space beyond. the main branch climbed the hill diagonally to the right and conveyed a sense of adventure with a milestone which said fifty miles to an undecipherable town. michael and guy took this widest road for a while, but they soon paused by a gate to look back at wychford. the sun shone high, and the beams slanting transversely through the smoke of the chimneys in tier upon tier gave the clustered gray roofs a superficial translucence like that of an uncut gem. the little town built against the hill nowhere straggled, and in its fortified economy and simplicity of line it might have been cut on wood by a mediæval engraver. higher up along the hill�s ridge went rocketing east and west the windswept highway from oxford over the wold to gloucestershire. they traced its course by the telegraph-poles whose inclinations had so long been governed by the wind that the mechanic trunks were as much a natural feature of the landscape as the trees, themselves not much less lean and sparse. it was a view of such extension that roads more remote were faint scars on the hills, and the streams of the valley narrowed ultimately to thin blades of steel. the traffic of generations might be thought to have converged upon this town, so much did it produce the effect of waiting upon that hillside, so little sense did it have of seeming to obtrude its presence upon the surroundings. gradually the glances of guy and michael came back from the fading horizons of this wide country to concentrate first upon the town and then upon the spire that with glittering weather-vane rose lightly as smoke from the gray fabric of its church, until finally they must have rested simultaneously upon a long low house washed by one stream and by another imprisoned within a small green island. �it�s to let,� said michael. �i know,� said guy. the unspoken thought that went sailing off upon the painted board was only expressed by the eagerness with which they stared at the proffered house. �i might be able to take it,� said guy at last. michael looked at him in admiration. such a project conceived in his company did very definitely mark an altogether new stage and, as it seemed to him, a somewhat advanced stage in his relationship with the world. they discovered the entrance immediately behind the almshouses in the smell of whose ivy they had lingered on the bridge last night. they passed through a wooden gateway in a high gray wall and, walking down a stained gravel path between a number of gnarled fruit trees trimmed as espaliers to conform with an antique mode of insuring fertility, they came at last round an overgrown corner close against the house. seen from the hillside, it had quickly refined itself to be for them at least the intention of that great view, of that wide country of etched-in detail. the just background had been given, the only background that would have enabled them to esteem all that was offered here in this form of stone well-ordered, gray, indigenous, the sober crown of the valley. guy from the moment he saw it had determined to take this house: his inquiries about the rent and the drains, his discussion of the terms of the agreement, of the dampness within, of the size of the garden were the merest conventions of the house-hunter, empty questions whose answers really had very slight bearing on the matter in hand. here he said to michael he would retire: here he would live and write poetry: here life would be escorted to the tread of great verse: here an eremite of art he would show forth the austerity of his vocation. meanwhile, michael�s books arrived, and at guy�s exhortation he worked in the orchard of plashers mead�so the small property of some twenty acres was called. guy was busy all day with decorators and carpenters and masons. the old landlord had immediately surrendered his house to so enterprising a tenant; an agreement for three years had been signed; and guy was going to make all ready in summer that this very autumn with what furniture he had he might inhabit his own house set among these singing streams. michael found it a little hard to pay the keenest attention to anson�s or to dicey�s entertainment of his curiosity about the constitution, too much did the idea of guy�s emancipation alluringly rustle as it were in the tree-tops, too much did the thought of guy�s unvexed life draw michael away from his books. and even if he could blot out guy�s prospect, it was impossible not to follow in fancy the goldfinches to their thistle-fields remote and sunny, the goldfinches with their flighted song. summer passed, and michael did not find that the amount of information he had absorbed quite outweighed a powerful impression, that was shaping in his mind, of having wasted a good deal of time in staring at trees and the funnels of light between them, in listening to the wind and the stream, to the reapers and the progress of time. one evening in mid-september he and guy went after supper to see how some newly painted room looked by candlelight. they sat on a couple of borrowed windsor chairs in the whitewashed room that guy had chosen for his own. two candles stuck on the mantelpiece burned with motionless spearheads of gold, and showed to their great satisfaction that by candlelight as well as by day the green shelves freshly painted were exactly the green they had expected. when they blew out the candles, they realized, such a plenitude of silver light was left behind, that the full moon of harvest was shining straight in through the easterly bow window which overhung the stream. �by gad, what a glorious night!� sighed guy, staring out at the orchard. �we�ll take a walk, shall we?� they went through the orchard where the pears and pippins were lustered by the sheen and glister of the moon. they walked on over grass that sobbed in the dewfall beneath their footsteps. they faded from the world into a web of mist when trees rose suddenly like giants before them and in the depths of whose white glooms on either side they could hear the ceaseless munching of bullocks at nocturnal pasturage. then in a moment they had left the mist behind them and stood in the heart of the valley, watching for a while the willows jet black against the moon, and the gleaming water at their base. �i wish you were going to be up next term,� said michael. �i really can hardly bear to think of you here. you are a lucky devil.� �why don�t you come and join me?� guy suggested, �i wish i could. perhaps i will after next year. and yet what should i do? i�ve dreamed enough. i must decide what i�m going to _try_ to do, at any rate. you see, i�m not a poet. guy, you ought to start a sort of lay monastery�a house for people to retreat into for the purpose of meditation upon their careers.� �as a matter of fact, it would be a jolly good thing if some people did do that.� �i don�t know,� said michael. �i should get caught in the web of the meditation. i should hear the world as just now we heard those bullocks. guy, wychford is a place of dreams. you�ll find that. you�ll live on and on at plashers mead until everything about you turns into the sort of radiant unreality we�ve seen to-night.� the church-clock with raucous whizz and clangor sounded ten strokes. �and time,� michael went on, �will come to mean no more than a brief disturbance of sound. really i�m under the enchantment already. i�m beginning to wonder if life really does hold a single problem that could not be dissolved at once by this powerful moonshine.� next day michael said he must go back to london to-morrow since he feared that if he dallied he would never go back. guy could not dissuade him from his resolve. �i don�t want to spoil my picture of you in this valley,� michael explained. �you know, i feel inclined to put plashers mead into the farthest recesses of my heart, so that whatever happens when i go down next year, it will be so securely hidden that i shall have the mere thought of it for a refuge.� �and more than the thought of it, you silly ass,� guy drawled. they drove together to the railway station five miles away. in the sleepy september heat the slow train puffed in. hot people with bunches of dahlias were bobbing to one another in nearly all the compartments. michael sighed. �don�t go,� said guy. �it�s much too hot.� michael shook his head. �i must.� just then a porter came up to tell guy there were three packing-cases awaiting his disposal in the luggage-office. �some of my books,� he shouted, as the train was puffing out. michael watched from the window guy and the porter, the only figures among the wine-dark dahlias of the platform. �what fun unpacking them,� he thought, and leaned back regretfully to survey the placid country gliding past. yet even after that secluded and sublunary town where guy in retrospect seemed to be moving as remotely as a knight in an old tale, london, or rather the london which shows itself in the neighborhood of great railway termini, impressed michael with nearly as sharp a romantic strangeness, so dreadfully immemorial appeared the pale children, leaning over scabrous walls to salute the passing train. always, as one entered london, one beheld these children haunting the backs of houses whose frontal existence as a mapped-out street was scarcely credible. to michael they were goblins that lived only in this gulley of fetid sunlight through which the trains endlessly clanged. riding through london in a hansom a few minutes later, the people of the city became unreal to him, and only those goblin-children remained in his mind as the natural inhabitants. he drove on through the quiet streets and emerged in that space of celestial silver which was called chelsea; but the savage roar of the train, as it had swept through those gibbering legions of children, was still in michael�s ears when the hansom pulled up before the sedate house in cheyne walk. the parlormaid showed no surprise at his unexpected arrival, and informed him casually with no more indication of human interest than would have been given by a clock striking its mechanical message of time that miss stella was in the studio. that he should have been unaware of his sister�s arrival seemed suddenly to michael a too intimate revelation of his personality to the parlormaid, and he actually found himself taking the trouble to deceive this machine by an affectation of prior knowledge. he was indeed caught up and imprisoned by the coils of infinitely small complications that are created by the social stirrings of city life. the pale children seen from the train sank below the level of ordinary existence, no longer conspicuous in his memory, no longer even faintly disturbing. as for plashers mead and the webs of the moon, they were become the adventure of a pleasant dream. he was in fact back in town. michael went quickly to the studio and found stella not playing as he hoped, but sitting listless. then he realized how much at the very moment the parlormaid told him of stella�s return he had feared such a return was the prelude to disaster. almost he had it on his lips to ask abruptly what was the matter. it cost him an effort to greet her with just that amount of fraternal cordiality which would not dishonor by its demonstrativeness this studio of theirs. he was so unreasonably glad to see her back from vienna that a gesture of weakness on her side would have made him kiss her. �hullo, i didn�t expect to see you,� was, however, all he said. �nor did i you,� was what she answered. presently she began to give him an elaborate account of the journey from austria, and michael knew that exactly in proportion to its true insignificance was the care she bestowed upon its dreariness and dust. michael began to wish it were not exactly a quarter-of-an-hour before lunch. such a period was too essentially consecrated to orderly ideas and london smoothness for it to admit the intrusion of anything more disturbing than the sound of a gong. what could have brought stella back from vienna? �did you come this morning?� he asked. �oh, no. last night. why?� she demanded. �do i look as crumpled as all that?� for stella to imply so directly that something had happened which she had expected to change materially even her outward appearance was perhaps a sign he would soon be granted her confidence. he rather wished she would be quick with it. if he were left too long to form his own explanations, he would be handicapped at the crucial moment. useless indeed he were imagining all this, he thought in supplement, as the lunch-gong restored by its clamor the atmosphere of measured life where nothing really happens. after lunch stella went up to her room: the effect of the journey, she turned round to say, still called for sleep. michael did not see her again before dinner. she came down then, looking very much older than he had ever seen her, whether because she was dressed in oyster-gray satin or was in fact much older, michael did not know. she grumbled at him for not putting on a dinner jacket. �don�t look so horrified at the notion,� she cried petulantly. �can�t you realize that after a year with long-haired students i want a change?� after dinner michael asked her to come and play in the studio. �play?� she echoed. �i�m never going to play again.� �what perfect rot you are talking,� said michael, in a damnatory generalization which was intended to cover not merely all she had been saying, but even all she had been doing almost since she first announced her intention of going to vienna. stella burst into tears. �come on, let�s go to the studio,� said michael. he felt that stella�s tears were inappropriate to the dining-room. indeed, only the fact that she was wearing this evening frock of oyster-gray satin, and was therefore not altogether the invulnerable and familiar and slightly boyish stella imprinted on his mind, prevented him from being shocked to the point of complete emotional incapacity. it seemed less of an outrage to fondle however clumsily this forlorn creature in gray satin, even though he did find himself automatically and grotesquely saying to himself �enter tilburina stark mad in white satin and the confidante stark mad in white muslin.� �come along, come along,� he begged her. �you must come to the studio.� michael went on presenting the studio with such earnestness that he himself began to endow it with a positively curative influence; but when at last stella had reached the studio, not even caring apparently whether on the way the parlormaid saw her tears, and when she had plunged disconsolately down upon the divan, still weeping, michael looked round at their haven with resentment. after all, it was merely an ungainly bleak whitewashed room, and stella was crying more bitterly than before. �look here, i say, why don�t you tell me what you�re crying about? you can�t go on crying forever, you know,� michael pointed out. �and when you�ve stopped crying, you�ll feel such an ass if you haven�t explained what it was all about.� �i couldn�t possibly tell anybody,� said stella, looking very fierce. then suddenly she got up, and so surprising had been her breakdown that michael scarcely stopped to think that her attitude was rather unusually dramatic. �but i�m damned if i _will_ give up playing,� she proclaimed; and, sitting down at the piano, forthwith she began to play into oblivion her weakness. it was a very exciting piece she played, and michael longed to ask her what it was called, but he was afraid to provoke in her any renewal of self-consciousness; so he enjoyed the fiery composition and stella�s calm with only a faint regret that he would never know its name and would never be able to ask her to play it again. when she had finished, she swung round on the stool and asked him what had happened to lily haden. �i don�t know�really�they�ve left trelawny road,� he said, feeling vaguely an unfair flank attack was being delivered. �and you never think of her, i suppose?� demanded stella. �well, no, i don�t very much.� �yet i can remember,� said stella, �when you were absolutely miserable because she had been flirting with somebody else.� �yes, i was very miserable,� michael admitted. �and you were rather contemptuous about it, i remember. you told me i ought to be more proud.� �and don�t you realize,� stella said, �that just because i did remember what i told you, i made my effort and began to play the piano again?� michael waited. he supposed that she would now take him into her confidence, but she swung round to the keyboard, and when she had finished playing she had become herself again, detached and cool and masterful. it was incredible that the wet ball of a handkerchief half hidden by a cushion could be her handkerchief. michael made up his mind that stella�s unhappiness was due to a love-affair which had been wrecked either by circumstance or temperament, and he tried to persuade himself of his indignation against the unknown man. he was sensible of a desire to punch the fellow�s head. with the easy exaggerations of the night-time he could picture himself fighting duels with punctilious austrian noblemen. he went so far as mentally to indite a letter to alan and lonsdale requesting their secondary assistance. then the memory of lily began to dance before him. he forgot about stella in speculations about lily. time had softened the trivial and shallow infidelity of which she had been guilty. time with night for ally gave her slim form an ethereal charm. he had been reading this week of the great imaginative loves of the middle ages, and of that supple and golden-haired girl he began to weave an abstraction of passion like the princess of trebizond. he slept upon the evocation of her beauty just as he was setting forth upon a delicate and intangible pursuit. next morning michael suggested to stella they should revisit carlington road. �my god, to think we once lived here!� exclaimed stella, as they stood outside number . �to me it seems absolutely impossible, but then of course i was much more away from it than you ever were.� stella was so ferocious in her mockery of their childish haunts and habitations that michael began to perceive her old serene contempt was become tinged with bitterness. this morning she was too straightly in possession of herself. it was illogical after last night. �well, thank heaven, everything does change,� she murmured. �and that ugly things become even more ugly.� �only for a time,� objected michael. �in twenty years if we visit carlington road we shall think how innocent and intimate and pretty it all is.� �i wasn�t thinking so much of carlington road,� said stella. �i was really thinking of people.� �even they become beautiful again after a time,� argued michael. �it would take a very long time for some,� said stella coldly. michael had rather dreaded his mother�s return, with stella in this mood, and he was pleased when he found that his fears had been unjustifiable. stella in fact was very gentle with her mother, as if she and not herself had suffered lately. �i�m so glad you�re back, darling stella, and so delighted to think you aren�t going to petersburg to-morrow, because the man at vienna whose name begins with that extraordinary letter....� �oh, mother,� stella laughed, �the letter was quite ordinary. it was only l.� �but the name was dreadful, dear child. it always reminded one of furs. a most oppressive name. so that really you�ll be in london all this winter?� �yes, only i shan�t play much,� said stella. �mrs. carruthers is so anxious to meet you properly,� mrs. fane said. �and mabel carruthers is really very nice. poor girl! i wish you could be friends with her. she�s interested in nothing her mother does.� michael was really amazed when stella, without a shrug, without even a wink at him, promised simply to let mrs. carruthers �meet her properly,� and actually betrayed as much interest in mabel carruthers as to inquire how old she was. maurice arrived at cheyne walk, just before michael went up for term, to say he had taken a most wonderful studio in grosvenor road. he was anxious that michael should bring his sister to see it, but stella would not go. �thanks very much, my dear,� she said to him, �but i�ve seen too much of the real thing. i�m in no mood just now for a sentimental imitation.� �i think you ought to come,� said michael. �it would be fun to see maurice living in grosvenor road with all the muses. castleton will have such a time tidying up after them when he joins him next year.� but stella would not go. chapter xiv st. giles it was strange to come up to oxford and to find so many of the chief figures in the college vanished. for a week michael felt that in a way he had no business still to be there, so unfamiliar was the college itself inhabited by none of his contemporaries save a few scholars. very soon, however, the intimacy of the rooms in st. giles which he shared with alan cured all regrets, and with a thrill he realized that this last year was going to be of all the years at oxford the best, indeed perhaps of all the years of his life the best. college itself gave michael a sharper sense of its entity than he had ever gathered before. he was still sufficiently a part of it not to feel the implicit criticism of his presence that in a year or two, revisiting oxford, he would feel; and he was also far enough away from the daily round to perceive and admire the yearly replenishment which preserved its vigor notwithstanding the superficially irreparable losses of each year. there were moments when he regretted high with what now seemed its amazingly irresponsible existence, but high had never given him quite the same zest in returning to it as now st. giles could give. nothing had ever quite equaled those damp november dusks, when after a long walk through silent country michael and alan came back to the din of carfax and splashed their way along the crowded and greasy cornmarket toward st. giles, those damp november dusks when they would find the tea-things glimmering in the firelight. buttered toast was eaten; tea was drunk; the second-best pipe of the day was smoked to idle cracklings of the oxford review and the star; a stout landlady cleared away, and during the temporary disturbance michael pulled back the blinds and watched the darkness and fog slowly blotting out st. john�s and the alley of elm-trees opposite, and giving to the martyrs� memorial and even to balliol a gothic and significant mystery. the room was quiet again; the lamps and the fire glowed; michael and alan, settled in deep chairs, read their history and philosophy; outside in the november night footsteps went by; carts and wagons occasionally rattled; bells chimed; outside in the november murk present life was manifesting its continuity; here within, the battles and the glories, the thoughts, the theories and the speculations of the past for michael and alan moved across printed pages under the rich lamplight. dinner dissolved the concentrated spell of two hours. but dinner at st. giles was very delightful in the sea-green dining-room whose decorations had survived the departing tenant who created them. michael and alan did not talk much; indeed, such conversation as took place during the meal came from the landlady. she possessed so deft a capacity for making apparently the most barren observations flower and fruit with intricate narrations, that merely an inquiry as to the merit of the lemon-sole would serve to link the occasion with an intimate revelation of her domestic past. after dinner michael and alan read on toward eleven o�clock, at which hour alan usually went to bed. it was after his departure that in a way michael enjoyed the night most. the mediæval chronicles were put back on their shelf; stubbs or lingard, froude, freeman, guizot, lavisse or gregorovius were put back; round the warm and silent room michael wandered uncertain for a while; and at the end of five minutes down came don quixote or adlington�s apuleius, or florio�s montaigne, or lucian�s true history. the fire crumbled away to ashes and powder; the fog stole into the room; outside was now nothing but the chimes at their measured intervals, nothing but the noise of them to say a city was there; at that hour oxford was truly austere, something more indeed than austere, for it was neither in time nor in space, but the abstraction of a city. only when the lamps began to reek did michael go up to bed by candlelight. in his vaporous room, through whose open window the sound of two o�clock striking came very coldly, he could scarcely fancy himself in the present. the effort of intense reading, whether of bygone institutions or of past adventure, had left him in the condition of physical freedom that saints achieve by prayer. he was aware of nothing but a desire to stay forever like this, half feverish with the triumph of tremendous concentration, to undress in this stinging acerbity of night air, and to lie wakeful for a long time in this world of dreaming spires. st. giles exercised just that industrious charm which michael had anticipated from the situation. the old house overlooked such a wide thoroughfare that the view, while it afforded the repose of movement, scarcely ever aroused a petty inquisitiveness into the actions of the passers-by. the traffic of the thoroughfare like the ships of the sea went by merely apprehended, but not observed. the big bay-window hung over the street like the stern-cabin of a frigate, and as michael sat there he had the impression of being cut off from communication, the sense of perpetually leaving life astern. the door of st. giles did not open directly on the street, but was reached by a tortuous passage that ran the whole depth of the house. this entrance helped very much the illusion of separation from the ebb and flow of ordinary existence, and was so suggestive of a refuge that involuntarily michael always hurried through it that the sooner he might set his foot on the steep and twisted staircase inside the house. there was always an excitement in reaching this staircase again, an impulse to run swiftly up, as if this return to the sitting-room was veritably an escape from the world. here the books sprawled everywhere. at high they had filled the cupboards in orderly fashion. here they overflowed in dusty cataracts, and tottered upward in crazy escalades and tremulous piles. all the shelves were gorged with books. moreover, michael every afternoon bought more books. the landlady held up her hands in dismay as, crunching up the paper in which they had been wrapped, he considered in perplexity their accommodation. more space was necessary, and the sea-green dining-room was awarded shelves. here every morning after breakfast came the exiles, the dull and the disappointing books which had been banished from the sitting-room. foot by foot the sea-green walls disappeared behind these shelves. in lampard�s bookshop michael was certainly a personality. lampard himself even came to tea, and sat nodding his approbation. as for alan, he used to stay unmoved by the invading volumes. he had stipulated at the beginning that one small bookcase should be reserved for him. here plato and aristotle, herodotus and thucydides always had room to breathe, without ever being called upon to endure the contamination of worm-eaten bibliophily. �where the deuce has my stubbs got to?� michael would grumble, delving into the musty cascade of old plays and chap books which had temporarily obliterated the current literature of the week�s work. alan would very serenely take down plato from his own trim and unimpeded shelves, and his brow would already be knitted with the effort of fixing half-a-dozen abstractions before michael had decided after a long excavation that stubbs had somehow vanished in the by-ways of curious reading. yet notwithstanding the amount of time occupied by arranging and buying and finding books, michael did manage to absorb a good deal of history, even of that history whose human nature has to be sought arduously in charters, exchequer-rolls and acts of parliament. schools were drawing near; the dates of kings and emperors and popes in their succession adorned the walls of his bedroom, so that even while he was cleaning his teeth one fact could be acquired. only on sunday evenings did michael allow himself really to reënter the life of st. mary�s. these sunday evenings had all the excitement of a long-interrupted reunion. to be sure, venner�s was thronged with people who seemed to be taking life much too lightly; but tommy grainger was there, still engaged with a pass-group. people spoke hopefully of going head this year. surely with tommy and three other blues in the boat, st. mary�s must go head. the conversation was so familiar that it was almost a shock to find so many of the faces altered. but cuffe was still there with his mouth perpetually open just as wide as ever. sterne was still there and likely, so one heard, to make no end of runs next summer. george appleby was very much in evidence since lonsdale�s departure. george appleby was certainly there, and michael rather liked him and accepted an invitation to lunch. in hall the second-year men were not quite as rowdy as they used to be, and when they were rowdy, somehow to michael and the rest of the fourth year they seemed to lack the imagination of themselves when they�but after all the only true judges of that were the princes and cardinals and poets staring down from their high golden frames. the dons, too, at high table might know, for there they sat, immemorial as ever. wine in common room was just the same, and it really was very jolly to be sitting between castleton�that very popular president of j.c.r.�and tommy grainger. there certainly was a great and grave satisfaction in leading off with a more ceremonious health drinking than had ever been achieved in the three years past. michael found it amusing to catch the name of some freshman and, shouting abruptly a salute, to behold him wriggle and blush and drink his answer and wonder who on earth was hailing _him_. michael often asked himself if it really were possible he could appear to that merry rout at the other end of j.c.r. in truly heroic mold. he supposed, with a smile at himself for so gross a fraud, that he really did for them pass mortal stature and that already he had a bunch of legends dangling from his halo. down in venner�s after wine, michael fancied the shouts of the freshmen wandering round cloisters were more raucous than once they had seemed. sometimes really they were almost irritating, but the after was capital, although the new comic song of the new college jester lacked perhaps a little the perfect lilt of �father says we�re going to beat them.� yet, after all, the boer war had been over three years now: no doubt �father says we�re going to beat them� would have sounded a little stale. last term, however, at two hundred and two it had rung as fresh as ever. but the singer was gone now. it was meet his song should perish with his withdrawal from the oxford scene. still the after was quite good sport, and michael was glad to think he and grainger and sterne were giving the last after but one of this term. he bicycled back to the digs with his head full of chatter, of clinking glasses and catchy tunes. nevertheless, all consciousness of the evening�s merriment faded out, as he hurried up the crooked staircase to the sitting-room where alan, upright at the table amid thucydidean commentaries, was reading under the lamp�s immotionable rays, his hair glinting with what was now rare gold. during this autumn term neither michael nor alan spoke of stella except as an essentially third person. she was in london, devoting so much of herself so charmingly to her mother that mrs. fane nearly abandoned every other interest in her favor. there were five schumann recitals, of which press notices were sent to st. giles. michael as he read them handed them on to alan. �jolly good,� said he, in a tone of such conventional praise that michael really began to wonder whether he had after all changed his mind instead of merely concealing his intention. however, since conversation between these two had been stripped to the bare bones of intercourse, michael could not bring himself to violate this habit of reserve for the sake of a curiosity the gratification of which in true friendship should never be demanded, nor even accepted with deeper attention than the trivial news of the day casually offered. nor would michael have felt it loyal to alan to try from stella to extract a point of view regarding him. anyway, he reassured himself, nothing could be done at present. toward the end of term mrs. ross wrote a letter to michael whose news was sufficiently unexpected to rouse the two of them to a conversation of greater length than any they had had since term began. cobble place, _november ._ _my dear michael,_ _you will be surprised to hear that i have become a catholic, or i suppose i should say to you, if you still adhere to your theories, a roman catholic. my reasons for this step, apart of course from the true reason�the grace of god�were, i think, connected a good deal with my boy. when your friend mr. prescott killed himself, i felt very much the real emptiness of such a life that on the surface was so admirable, in some ways so enviable. i am dreadfully anxious that kenneth�he is kenneth michael now�i hope you won�t be vexed i should have wished him to have michael also�well, as i was saying�that kenneth should grow up with all the help that the experience of the past can give him. it has become increasingly a matter of astonishment to me how so many english boys manage to muddle through the crises of their boyhood without the sacraments. i�m afraid you�ll be reading this letter in rather a critical spirit, and perhaps resenting my implication that you, for instance, have come through so many crises without the sacraments. but i�m not yet a good enough theologian to argue with you about the claims of your church. latterly i�ve felt positively alarmed by the prospect of grappling with kenneth�s future. i have seen you struggle through, and i know i can say win a glorious victory over one side of yourself. but i have seen other things happen, even from where i live my secluded life. if my husband had not been killed i might not perhaps have felt this dread on kenneth�s account. but i like to think that god in giving me that great sorrow has shown his purpose by offering me this new and unimagined peace and security and assurance. i need scarcely say i have had a rather worrying time lately. it is strange how when love and faith are the springs of action one must listen with greater patience than one could listen for any lesser motive to the opinions of other people._ _joan and mary whom i�ve always thought of as just wrapped up in the good works of their dear good selves, really rose in their wrath and scorched me with the fieriest opposition. i could not have believed they had in them to say as much in all their lives as they said to me when i announced my intention. nor had i any idea they knew so many english clergymen. i believe that to gratify them i have interviewed half the anglican ministry. even a bishop was invoked to demonstrate my apostacy. nancy, too, wrote furious letters. she was not outraged so much theologically, but her sense of social fitness was shattered._ _my darling old mother was the only person who took my resolve calmly. �as long as you don�t try to convert me,� she said, �and don�t leave incense burning about the house, well�you�re old enough to know your own mind.� she was so amusing while joan and mary were marshaling arguments against me. she used to sit playing �miss milligan� with a cynical smile, and said, when it was all over and in spite of everyone i had been received, that she had really enjoyed patience for the first time, as joan and mary were too busy to prevent her from cheating._ _how are you and dear old alan getting on? of course you can read him this letter. i�ve not written to him because i fancy he won�t be very much interested. forgive me that i did not take you into my confidence beforehand, but i feared a controversy with a real historian about the continuity of the anglican church._ _my love to you both at oxford._ _your affectionate_ _maud ross._ �great scott!� michael exclaimed, as he finished the letter. �alan! could you ever in your wildest dreams have imagined that mrs. ross, the most inveterate whig and roundhead and orange bigot, at least whenever she used to argue with me, would have gone over?� �what do you mean?� alan asked, sinking slowly to earth from his platonic _ovpavos_. �gone over where?� �to rome�become a roman catholic.� �who?� gasped alan, staggered now more than michael. �mrs. ross�aunt maud?� �it�s the most extraordinary thing i ever heard,� said michael. �she�and kenneth,� he added rather maliciously, seeing that alan�s britannic prejudice was violently aroused. �i�ll read you her letter.� plato was shut up for the evening before michael was halfway through, and almost before the last sentence had been read, alan�s wrath exploded. �it�s all very fine for her to laugh like that at joan and mary and nancy,� he said, coloring hotly. �but they were absolutely right, and mrs. ross�i mean aunt maud��� �i was afraid you were going to disown the relationship,� michael laughed. �aunt maud is absolutely wrong. why, my uncle would have been furious. even if _she_ became a catholic she had no business to take kenneth with her. the more i think of it�you know, it really is a bit thick.� �why do you object?� michael asked curiously. �i never knew you thought about religion at all, except so far as occasionally to escort your mother politely to matins, and that was after all to oblige her more than god. besides, you�re reading greats, and i always thought that the greats people in their fourth year abstained from anything like a definite opinion for fear of losing their first.� �i may not have a definite opinion about christianity,� said alan. �but catholicism is ridiculous, anyway�it doesn�t suit english people.� �there you�re treading on the heels of the school of modern history which you affect to despise. you really don�t know, if i may say so, what could or could not suit the english people unless you know what has or has not suited them.� �why don�t you become a catholic yourself,� challenged alan, �if you�re so keen on them?� �for a logician,� said michael, �your conclusion is bad, being entirely unrelated to any of our premises. secondly, were i inclined to label myself as anything, i should be disposed to label myself as a catholic already.� �oh, i know that affectation!� scoffed alan. �well, the net result of our commentary is that you, like everybody else, object to mrs. ross changing her opinions, because you don�t like it. her position is negligible, the springs of action being religious. now if my mother went over to rome i should be rather bucked on her account.� �my dear chap, if you don�t mind my saying so,� suggested alan as apologetically as his outraged conventionality would allow, �your mother has always been rather given to�er�all sorts of new cults, and it wouldn�t be so�er�noticeable in her case. but supposing stella��� michael looked at him sharply. �supposing stella did?� he asked. �oh, of course she�s artistic and she�s traveled and�oh, well, i don�t know�stella�s different.� at any rate, thought michael, he was still in love with stella. she was evidently beyond criticism. �you needn�t worry,� said michael. �i don�t think she ever will.� �you didn�t think aunt maud ever would,� alan pointed out. �and, great scott, it�s still absolutely incredible,� michael murmured. although in the face of alan�s prejudice michael had felt very strongly that mrs. ross had done well by her change of communion, or rather by her submission to a communion, for he never could remember her as perfervid in favor of any before, at the same time to himself he rather regretted the step, since it destroyed for him that idea he had kept of her as one who stood gravely holding the balance. he dreaded a little the effect upon her of a sudden plunge into catholicism, just as he had felt uneasy when eight or nine years ago alan had first propounded the theory of his uncle being in love with her. michael remembered how the suggestion had faintly shocked his conception of miss carthew. it was a little disconcerting to have to justify herself to nancy, or indeed to anyone. it seemed to weaken her status. moreover, his own deep-implanted notion of �going over to rome� as the act of a weakling and a weather-cock was hard to allay. his own gray image of pallas athene seemed now to be decked with meretricious roses. he was curious to know what his mother would think about the news. mrs. fane received it as calmly as if he had told her mrs. ross had taken up palmistry; to her catholicism was only one of the numberless fads that made life amusing. as for stella, she did not comment on the news at all. she was too much occupied with the diversions of the autumn season. yet stella was careful to impress on michael that her new mode of life had not been dictated by any experience in vienna. �don�t think i�m drowning care,� she wrote. �i made a damned fool of myself and luckily you�re almost the only person who knows anything about it. i�ve wiped it out as completely as a composition i�ve learned and played and done with. really i find this pottering life that mother and i lead very good for my music. i�m managing to store up a reserve of feeling. the schumann recitals were in some ways my best efforts so far. just now i�m absolutely mad about dancing and fencing; and as mother�s life is entirely devoted to the theory of physical culture at this exact moment, we�re both happy.� michael told alan what stella said about dancing and fencing, and he was therefore not surprised when alan informed him, with the air of one who really has discovered something truly worth while, that there was a sword club at oxford. �hadn�t you better join as well next term?� he suggested. �rather good ecker, i fancy.� �much better than golf,� said michael. �oh, rather,� alan agreed, in lofty innocence of any hidden allusion to his resolve of last summer. for the christmas vacation michael went to scotland, partly because he wanted to brace himself sharply for the last two terms of his oxford time, but more because he had the luxurious fancy to stay in some town very remote from oxford, there meditating on her spires like gray and graceful shapes of mist made perdurable forever. hitherto oxford had called him back, as to a refuge most severe, from places whose warmth or sensuousness or gaiety was making her cold beauty the more desirable. now michael wished to come back for so nearly his ultimate visit as to a tender city of melting outlines. therefore to fulfill this vision of return he refused guy hazlewood�s invitation to plashers mead. it seemed to him that no city nearer than aberdeen would give him the joy of charging southward in the train, back to the moist heart of england and that wan aggregation of immaterial domes and spires. aberdeen was spare and harsh enough even for michael�s mood, and there for nearly five weeks of northeasterly weather he worked at political economy. it was a very profitable vacation; and that superb and frozen city of granite indifferent to the howling north sent him back more ready to combat the perilous dreams which like the swathes of mist destroying with their transmutations the visible fabric of oxford menaced his action. certainly it needed the physical bracing of his sojourn at aberdeen to keep michael from dreaming away utterly his last lent term. february was that year a month of rains from silver skies, of rains that made oxford melodious with their perpetual trickling. they were rains that lured him forth to dabble in their gentle fountains, to listen at the window of ninety-nine to their rippling monody, and at night to lie awake infatuated. still, even with all the gutterspouts in oxford jugging like nightingales and with temptation from every book of poetry to abandon history, michael worked fairly steadily, and when the end of term surprised him in the middle of his industry, he looked back with astonishment at the amount of apposite reading accomplished in what seemed, now so cruelly swift were the hours, a mere week of rain. he obtained leave to stay up during the easter vacation, and time might have seemed to stand still, but that spring on these rathe mornings of wind and scudded blue sky was forward with her traceries, bringing with every morning green summer visibly nearer. the urgency of departure less than the need for redoubled diligence in acquiring knowledge obsessed michael all this april. sitting in the bay-window at ninety-nine on these luminous eves of spring, he vexed himself with the thought of disturbing so soon his books, of violating with change the peaceful confusion achieved in two terms. the fancy haunted him that for the length of the long vacation st. giles would drowse under the landlady�s nick-nacks brought out to replace his withdrawn treasures; that nothing would keep immortal the memory of him and alan save their photographs in frames of almost royal ostentation. vaguely through his mind ran the notion of becoming a don, that forever he might stay here in oxford, a contemplative intellectual cut-off from the great world. for a week the notion ripened swiftly, and michael worked very hard in his determination to proceed from a first to the competition for a fellowship. the notion ripened too swiftly, however, and fell with a plump, fit for nothing, when he suddenly realized he would have to stay on in oxford alone, since of all his friends he could see not one who would be likely in the academic cloister to accompany his meditations. with a gesture of weary contempt michael flung stubbs into the corner, and resolved that, come what might in the history schools, for what remained of his time at oxford he would enjoy the proffered anodyne. after he had disowned his work, he took to wandering rather aimlessly about the streets; but their aspect, still unfrequented as yet by the familiar figures of term-time, made him feel sad. guy hazlewood was summoned by telegram from where at plashers mead he was presumed to have found abiding peace. he came bicycling in from the witney road at noon of a blue april day so richly canopied with rolling clouds that the unmatured season took on some of june�s ampler dignity. after lunch they walked to witham woods, and guy tried to persuade michael to come to wychford when the summer term was over. he was full of the plan for founding that lay monastery, that cloister for artists who wished between oxford and the world a space unstressed by anything save ordered meditation. michael was captured anew by the idea he had first propounded, and they talked gayly of its advantages, foreseeing, if the right people could be induced to come, a period of intense stimulation against a background of serenity. then guy began to talk of how day by day he was subduing words to rhyme and meter. �and you, what would you do?� he asked. at once michael realized the futility of their scheme for him. �i should only dream away another year,� he said rather sadly, �and so if you don�t mind, old chap, i think i won�t join you.� �rot!� guy drawled. �i�ve got it all clear now in my mind. up at seven. at breakfast we should take it in turns to read aloud great poetry. from eight to ten retire to our cells, and work at a set piece�a sonnet or six lines of prose. ten to eleven a discussion on what we�d done. eleven to one work at our own stuff. one o�clock lunch with some reading aloud. all the afternoon to do what we like. dinner at seven with more reading aloud, and in the evening reading to ourselves. not a word to be spoken after nine o�clock, and bed at eleven. after tea twice a week we might have academic discussions.� �it sounds perfect,� said michael, �if you�re already equipped with the desire to be an artist, and what is more important if deep down in yourself you�re convinced you have the least justification for ambition. but, guy, what a curious chap you are. you seem to have grown so much younger since you went down.� guy laughed on a note of exultation that sounded strange indeed in one whom when still at balliol michael had esteemed as perhaps the most perfect contemporary example of the undergraduate tired by the consciousness of his own impeccable attitude. guy had always possessed so conspicuously that balliol affectation of despising accentuations of seriousness, of humor, of intention, of friendship, of everything indeed except parlor rowdiness with cushions and sofas, that michael was almost shocked to hear the elaborately wearied guy declare boisterously: �my dear chap, that is the great secret. the moment you go down, you do grow younger.� he must be in love, thought michael suddenly; and, so remote was love seeming to him just now, he blushed in the implication by his inner self of having penetrated uninvited the secret of a friend. guy talked all tea-time of the project, and when they had eaten enough bread and honey, they set out for oxford by way of godstow. the generous sun was blanched by watery clouds. a shrewd wind had risen while they sat in the inn, and the primroses looked very wan in the shriveled twilight. michael had guy�s company for a week of long walks and snug evenings, but the real intimacy which he had expected would be consummated by this visit never effected itself somehow. guy was more remote in his mood of communal ambitions than he was at oxford, living his life of whimsical detachment. after he went back to plashers mead, michael only missed the sound of his voice, and was not conscious of that more violent wrench when the intercourse of silence is broken. it happened that year st. mark�s eve fell upon a sunday, and michael, having been reading the poems of keats nearly all the afternoon, was struck by the coincidence. oxford on such an occasion was able to provide exactly the same sensation for him as winchester had given to the poet. michael sat in his window-seat looking out over the broad thoroughfare of st. giles, listening to the patter and lisp of sabbath footfalls, to the burden of the bells; and as he sat there with the city receding in the wake of his window, he was aware more poignantly than ever of how actually in a few weeks it would recede. the bells and the footsteps were quiet for a while: the sun had gone: it was the vesper stillness of evening prayer: slowly the printed page before him faded from recognition. already the farther corners of the room were black, revealing from time to time, as a tongue of flame leaped up in the grate, the golden blazonries of the books on the walls. it was everywhere dark when the people came out of church, and the footsteps were again audible. michael envied keats the power which he had known to preserve forever that st. mark�s eve of eighty years ago in winchester. it was exasperating that now already the footfalls were dying away, that already their sensation was evanescent, that he could not with the wand of poetry forbid time to disturb this quintessential hour of oxford. art alone could bewitch the present in the fashion of that enchantress in the old fairy tale who sent long ago a court to sleep. what was the use of reading history unless the alchemy of literature had transcended the facts by the immortal presentation of them? these charters and acts of parliament, these exchequer-rolls and raked-up records meant nothing. ivanhoe held more of the middle ages than all of maitland�s fitting and fussing, than all of stubbs� ponderous conclusions. the truth of ivanhoe, the truth of the ingoldsby legends, the truth of christabel was indeed revealed to the human soul through the power of art to unlock for one convincing moment truth with the same directness of divine exposition as faith itself. now here was oxford opening suddenly to him her heart, and he was incapable of preserving the vision. the truth would state itself to him, and as he tried to restate it, lo, it was gone. perhaps these moments that seemed to demand expression were indeed mystical assurances of human immortality. perhaps they were not revealed for explanation. after all, when keats had wrought forever in a beautiful statement the fact of a sabbath eve, the reader could not restate why he had wrought it forever. art could do no more than preserve the sense of the fact: it could not resolve it in such a way that life would cease to be the baffling attempt it was on the individual�s part to restate to himself his personal dreams. oh, this clutching at the soul by truth, how damnably instantaneous it was, how for one moment it could provoke the illusion of victory over all the muddled facts of existence: how a moment after it could leave the tantalized soul with a despairing sense of having missed by the breadth of a hair the entry into knowledge. by the way, was there not some well-reasoned psychological explanation of this physical condition? the sensation of st. mark�s eve was already fled. michael forsook the chilling window-seat and went with lighted candle to search for the psychological volume which contained a really rational explanation of what he had been trying to apprehend. he fumbled among his books for a while, but he could not find the one he wanted. then, going to pull down the blinds, he was aware of oxford beyond the lamplit thoroughfare, with all her spires and domes invisible in the darkness, the immutable city that neither mist nor modern architects could destroy, the immortal academy whose spirit would surely outdare the menace of these reforming huns armed with royal commissions, and wither the cowardly betrayers of her civilization who, even now before the barbarian was at her gates, were cringing to him with offers to sell the half of her heritage of learning. michael, aware of oxford all about him in the darkness, wished he could be a member of convocation and make a flaming speech in defense of compulsory greek. that happened to be the proposed surrender to modern conditions which at the moment was agitating his conservative passion. �thank heaven i live when i do,� he said to himself. �if it were a.d., how much more miserable i should be.� he went down to dinner and, propping the anatomy of melancholy against the cruet, deplored the twentieth century, but found the chicken rather particularly good. chapter xv the last term michael meant to attend the celebration of may morning on st. mary�s tower, but when the moment came it was so difficult to get out of bed that he was not seen in the sun�s eye. this lapse of enthusiasm saddened him rather. it seemed to conjure a little cruelly the vision of speeding youth. the last summer-term was a period of tension. michael found that notwithstanding his vow of idleness the sight of the diligence of the other men in view of schools impelled him also to labor feverishly. he was angry with himself for his weakness, and indeed tried once or twice to join on the river the careless parties of juniors, but it was no good. the insistent schools forbade all pleasure, and these leafy days were spent hour after hour of them at his table. eights week came round, and though the college went head of the river, for michael the achievement was merely a stroke of irony. for three years he and his friends, most of whom were now fled, had waited for this moment, had counted upon this bump-supper, had planned a hundred diversions for this happy date. michael now must attend without the majority of them, and he went in rather a critical frame of mind, for though to be sure tommy grainger was drunk in honor of his glorious captaincy, it was not the bump-supper of his dreams. victory had come too late. tired of the howling and the horse-play, tired of the fretful fireworks, he turned into venner�s just before ten o�clock. �why aren�t you with your friends, making a noise?� asked venner. �ought to go home and work,� michael explained. �but surely you can take one night off. you used always to be well to the fore on these occasions.� �don�t feel like it, venner.� �you mustn�t work too hard, you know,� said the old man, blinking kindly at him. �oh, it�s not work, venner. it�s age.� �why, what a thing to say. hark! they�re having a rare time to-night. i don�t expect the dons�ll say much. they expect a bit of noise after a bump-supper. why ever don�t you go out and do your share?� venner was ready to go home, and michael leaving the little office in his company paused irresolutely in cloisters for a moment. it was no good. he could not bring himself to be flung into that vortex of ululation. he turned away from its direction and walked with venner to the lodge. �don�t forget to mark me down as out of college, shadbolt,� he warned the porter. �i don�t want to be hauled to-morrow morning for damage done in my absence.� the porter held up his hand in unctuous deprecation. �there is no fear of my making a mistake, mr. fane. i was observing your egress, sir,� he said pompously, �and had it registered in my book before you spoke.� shadbolt unlocked the door for michael and venner to pass out into the high. michael walked with venner as far as st. mary�s bridge, and when the old man had said good night and departed on his way home, he stood for a while watching the tower in the may moonlight. he could hear the shouts of those doing honor to the prowess of the eight. from time to time the sky was stained with blue and green and red from the roman candles. to himself standing here now he seemed as remote from it all as the townsfolk loitering on the bridge in the balmy night air to listen to the fun. already, thought michael, he was one of the people, small as emmets, swarming at the base of this slim and lovely tower. he regretted sharply now that he had not once more, even from distant st. giles, roused himself to salute from the throbbing summit may morning. it was melancholy to stand here within the rumor of the communal joy, but outside its participation; and presently he started to walk quickly back to his digs, telling himself with dreadful warning as he went that before schools now remained scarcely more than a week. alan was in a condition of much greater anxiety even than michael. michael had nothing much beyond a moral pact with the college authorities to make him covet a good class: to alan it was more important, especially as he had given up the sudan and was intending to try for the home civil service. �however, i�ve given up thinking of a first, and if i can squeeze a second, i shall be jolly grateful,� he told michael. the day of schools arrived. the chief examiner had caused word to be sent round that he would insist on the rigor of the law about black clothes. so that year many people went back to the earlier mode of the university examination and appeared in evening-dress. the first four days went by with their monotony of scratching pens, their perspiring and bedraggled women-candidates, their tedious energy and denial of tobacco. alan grew gloomier and gloomier. he scarcely thought he had even escaped being plowed outright. for the fourth night preparatory to the two papers on his special subject, michael ordered iced asparagus and quails in aspic, a bottle of champagne and two quarts of cold black coffee. he sat up all night, and went down tight-eyed and pale-faced to the final encounter. in the afternoon he emerged, thanked heaven it was all over, and, instead of celebrating his release as he had intended with wine and song, slept in an armchair through the benign june evening. alan, who had gone to bed at his usual hour the night before, spent his time reading the credentials of various careers offered to enterprising young men by the colonies. the day after, however, nothing seemed to matter except that the purgatorial business was done forever, and that oxford offered nearly a fortnight of impregnable idleness. this fortnight, when she was so prodigal with her beauty and when her graciousness was a rich balm to the ordeal she had lately exacted, was not so poignant as michael had expected. indeed, it was scarcely poignant at all so far as human farewells went, though there was about it such an underlying sadness as deepens the mellow peace of a fine autumn day. it seemed to michael that in after years he would always think of oxford dowered so with summer, and brooding among her trees. matthew arnold had said she did not need june for beauty�s heightening. that was true. her beauty was not heightened now, but it was displayed with all the grave consciousness of an unassertive renown. michael dreaded more the loss of this infoliated calm than of any of the people who were enjoying its amenity. there were indeed groups upon the lawns that next year would not form themselves, that forever indeed would be irremediably dispersed; but the thought of himself and other members scattered did not move him with as much regret as the knowledge that next year himself would have lost the assurance that he was an organic part of this tutelary landscape. the society of his contemporaries was already broken up: the end of the third year had effected that. this farewell to oxford herself was harder, and michael wished that from the very first moment of his arrival he had concentrated upon the object of a fellowship. such a life would have suited him well. he would not have withered like so many dons: he would each year have renewed his youth in the stream of freshmen. he would have been sympathetic, receptive, and worldly enough not to be despised by each generation in its course. now, since he had not aimed at such a career, he must go. the weather opulently fine mocked his exit. michael and alan had decided to stay up for commemoration. stella and mrs. fane had been invited: lonsdale and wedderburn were coming up: maurice was bringing his mother and sisters. for a brief carnival they would all be reunited, and rooms would be echoing to the voices of their rightful owners. yet after all it would be but a pretense of reviving their merry society. it was not a genuine reunion this, that was requiring women to justify it. oxford, as michael esteemed her, was already out of his reach. she would be symbolized in the future by these rooms at st. giles, and michael made up his mind that no intrusion of women should spoil for him their monastic associations. he would stay here until the last day, and for commemoration he would try to borrow his old rooms in college, thus fading from this wide thoroughfare without a formal leave-taking. he would drop astern from the bay-window whence for a time he had watched the wrack and spume of the world drifting toward the horizon in its wake. himself would recede so with the world, and without him the bay-window would hold a tranquil course, unrocked by the loss or gain of him or the transient voyagers of each new generation. very few eves and sunsets were still his to enjoy from this window-seat. already the books were being stacked in preparation for their removal to the studio at cheyne walk. dusty and derelict belongings of him and alan were already strewn about the landings outside their bedrooms. even the golf-bag of alan�s first term, woolly now with the accumulated mildew of neglect, had been dragged from its obscurity. perhaps it would be impossible to drop astern as imperceptibly as he would have liked. too many reminders of departure littered the rooms with their foreboding of finality. �i�m shore i for one am quite sorry you�re going,� said the landlady. �i never wish to have a nicer norer quieter pair of gentlemen. it�s to be hoped, i�m shore, that next term�s comings-ins from st. john�s will be half as nice. yerse, i shall be very pleased to have these coverlets�i suppose you would call them coverlets�and you�re leaving the shelves in the dining-room? yerse, i�m shore they�ll be as handy as anything for the cruets and what not. and so you�re going to have a dinner here to eleven gentlemen�oh, eleven in all, yerse, i see.� it was going to be rather difficult, michael thought, to find exactly the ten people he wished to invite to this last terminal dinner. alan, grainger, and castleton, of course. bill mowbray and vernon townsend. and smithers. certainly, he would ask smithers. and why not george appleby, who was librarian of the union this term, and no longer conceivable as that lackadaisical red rag which had fluttered lonsdale to fury? what about the dean? and if the dean, why not harbottle, his history tutor? and for the tenth place? it was really impossible to choose from the dozen or so acquaintances who had an equal claim upon it. he would leave the tenth place vacant, and just to amuse his own fancy he would fill it with the ghost of himself in the december of his first term. michael, when he saw his guests gathered in the sea-green dining-room of st. giles, knew that this last terminal dinner was an anachronism. after all, the prime and bloom of these eclectic entertainments had been in the two previous years. this was not the intimate and unusual society he had designed to gather round him as representative of his four years at the varsity. this was merely representative of the tragical incompleteness of oxford. it was certainly a very urbane evening, but it was somehow not particularly distinctive of oxford, still less of michael�s existence there. perhaps it had been a mistake to invite the two dons. perhaps everyone was tired under the strain of schools. michael was glad when the guests went and he sat alone in the window-seat with alan. �to-morrow, my mother and stella are coming up,� he reminded alan. �it�s rather curious my mother shouldn�t have been up all the time, until i�m really down.� �is that man avery coming up?� alan asked. michael nodded. �i suppose your people see a good deal of him now he�s in town,� said alan, trying to look indifferent to the answer. �less than before he went,� said michael. �stella�s rather off studios and the vie de bohême.� �oh, he has a studio?� �didn�t you know?� �i don�t take very much interest in his movements,� alan loftily explained. they smoked on for a while without speaking. �i must go to bed,� announced alan at last. �not yet, not yet,� michael urged him. �i don�t think you�ve quite realized that this is our last night in ninety-nine.� �i�ve settled to stay on here during commem week,� said alan. �your people are staying at the randolph?� michael nodded, wondering to himself if it were possible that alan could really have been so far-sighted as to stay on in st. giles for the sake of having the most obvious right to escort his mother and stella home. �but why aren�t you going into college?� he asked. �oh, i thought it would be rather a fag moving in for so short a time. besides, it�s been rather ripping in these digs.� michael looked at him gratefully. he had himself feared to voice his appreciation of this last year with alan: he was feeling sentimental enough to dread on alan�s side a grudging assent to his enthusiasm. �yes, it has been awfully ripping,� he agreed. �i should like to have had another year,� sighed alan. �i think i was just beginning to get a dim sort of a notion of philosophy. i wonder how much of it is really applicable?� �to what? to god?� asked michael. �no, the world�the world we live in.� �i don�t fancy, you know,� said michael, �that the intellectual part of oxford is directly applicable to the world at all. what i mean to say is, that i think it can only be applied to the world through our behavior.� �well, of course,� said alan, �that�s a truism.� michael was rather disconcerted. the thought in his mind had seemed more worthy of expression. �but the point is,� alan went on, �whether our philosophic education, our mental training has any effect on our behavior. it seems to me that oxford is just as typically oxford whatever a man reads.� �that wasn�t the case at school,� said michael. �i�m positive for instance the modern side was definitely inferior to the classical side�in manners and everything else. and though at oxford other circumstances interfere to make the contrast less violent, it doesn�t seem to me one gains the quintessence of the university unless one reads greats. even history only supplies that in the case of men exceptionally sensitive to the spirit of place. i mean to say sensitive in such a way that oxford, quite apart from dons and undergraduates, can herself educate. i�m tremendously anxious now that oxford should become more democratic, but i�m equally anxious that, in proportion as she offers more willingly the shelter of her learning to the people, the learning she bestows shall be more than ever rigidly unpractical, as they say.� �so you really think philosophy is directly applicable?� said alan. �how socratic you are,� michael laughed. �perhaps the rhodes scholars will answer your question. i remember reading somewhere lately that it was confidently anticipated the advent of the rhodes scholars would transform a provincial university into an imperial one. that may have been written by a cambridge man bitterly aware of his own provincial university. yet a moment�s reflection should have taught him that provincialism in academic matters is possibly an advantage. florence and athens were provincial. rome and london and oxford are metropolitan�much more dangerously exposed to the metropolitan snares of superficiality and of submerged personality with the corollary of vulgar display. neither rome nor london nor oxford has produced her own poets. they have always been sung by the envious but happy provincials. rome and london would have treated shelley just as oxford did. cambridge would have disapproved of him, but a bourgeois dread of interference would have let him alone. as for an imperial university, the idea is ghastly. i figure something like the imperial institute filled with colonials eating pemmican. the eucalyptic vision, it might be called.� �and you�d make a distinction between imperial and metropolitan?� alan asked. �good gracious, yes. wouldn�t you distinguish between new york and london? imperialism is the worst qualities of the provinces gathered up and exhibited to the world in the worst way. a metropolis takes provincialism and skims the cream. it is a disintegrating, but for itself a civilizing, force. a metropolis doesn�t encourage creative art by metropolitans. it ought to be engaged all the time in trying to make the provincials appreciate what they themselves are doing.� �i think you�re probably talking a good deal of rot,� said alan severely. �and we seem to have gone a long way from my question.� �about the application of philosophy?� alan nodded. �dear man, as were i a cantabrian provincial, i should say. dear man! doesn�t it make you shiver? it�s like the �pleased to meet you,� of americans and tootingians. it�s so terribly and intrusively personal. so informative and unrestrained, so gushing and��� �i wish you�d answer my question,� alan grumbled, �and call me what you like without talking about it.� �now i�ve forgotten my answer,� said michael. �and it was a wonderful answer. oh, i remember now. of course, your philosophy is applicable to the world. you coming from a metropolitan university will try to infect the world with your syllogisms. you will meet cambridge men much better educated than yourself, but all of them incompetent to appreciate their own education. you will gently banter them, trying to allay their provincial suspicion of your easy manner. you will��� �_you_ will simply not be serious,� said alan. �and so i shall go to bed.� �my dear chap, i�m only talking like this because if i were serious, i couldn�t bear to think that to-night is almost the end of our fourth year. it is, in fact, the end of st. giles.� �well, it isn�t as if we were never going to see each other again,� said alan awkwardly. �but it is,� said michael. �don�t you realize, even with all your researches into philosophy, that after to-night we shall only see each other in dreams? after to-night we shall never again have identical interests and obligations.� �well, anyway, i�m going to bed,� said alan, and with a good-night very typical in its curtness of many earlier ones uttered in similar accents, he went upstairs. michael, when he found himself alone, thought it wiser to follow him. it was melancholy to watch the moon above the empty thoroughfare, and to hear the bells echoing through the spaces of the city. chapter xvi the last week michael�s old rooms in college were lent to him for three or four days as he had hoped they would be. the present occupant, a freshman, was not staying up for commemoration, and though next term he would move into larger rooms for his second year, his effects had not yet been transferred. michael found it interesting to deduce from the evidence of his books and pictures the character of the owner with whom he had merely a nodding acquaintance. on the whole, he seemed to be a dull young man. the photographs of his relatives were dull: his books were dull and unkempt: his pictures were dull, narrative rather than decorative. probably there was nothing in the room that was strictly individual, nothing that he had acquired to satisfy his own taste. every picture had probably been brought to oxford because its absence would not be noticed in whatever spare bedroom it had previously been hung. every book seemed either a survival of school or the inexpensive pastime of a railway journey. the very clock on the mantelpiece, which was still drearily ticking, looked like the first prize of a consolation race, rather than the gratification of a personal choice. michael reproached the young man for being able to spend three terms a year without an attempt to garnish decently the gothic bookshelves, without an effort to leave upon this temporary abode the impression of his lodging. he almost endowed the room itself with a capacity for criticism, feeling it must deplore three terms of such undistinguished company. yet, after all, he had left nothing to tell of his sojourn here. although he and the dull young freshman had both used this creaking wicker-chair, for their successors neither of them could preserve the indication of their precedence. one relic of his own occupation, however, he did find in the fragments of envelopes which he had stuck to the door on innumerable occasions to announce the time of his return. these bits of paper that straggled in a kite�s tail over the oak door had evidently resisted all attempts to scrub them off. there were usually a few on every door in college, but no one had ever so extensively advertised his movements as michael, and to see these obstinate bits of tabs gave him a real pleasure, as if they assured him of his former existence here. each one had marked an ubiquitous hour that was recorded more indelibly than many other occasions of higher importance. there was not, however, much time for sentimentalizing over the past, as somewhere before one o�clock his mother and stella would arrive, and they must be met. alan came with him to the railway station, and it was delightful to see wedderburn with them, and in another part of the train maurice with his mother and sisters. they must all have lunch at the randolph, said wedderburn immediately. mrs. fane was surprised to find the randolph such a large hotel, and told michael that if she had known it were possible to be at all comfortable in oxford, she would have come up to see him long before. in the middle of lunch lonsdale appeared, having according to his own account traced michael�s movements with tremendous determination. he was introduced to mrs. fane, who evidently took a fancy to him. she was looking, michael thought, most absurdly young as lonsdale rattled away to her, himself quite unchanged by a year at scoone�s and a recent failure to enter the foreign office. �i say, this is awfully sporting of you, mrs. fane. you know, one feels fearfully out of it, coming up like this. terribly old, and all that. i�ve been mugging away for the diplomatic and i�ve just made an awful ass of myself. so i thought i wouldn�t ask my governor to come up. he�s choking himself to pieces over my career at present, but i�ve had an awfully decent offer from a man i know who runs a motor business, and i don�t think i�ve got the ambassadorial manner, do you? i think i shall be much better at selling cars, don�t you? i say, which balls are you going to? because i must buzz round and see about tickets.� lonsdale�s last question seemed to demand an answer, and mrs. fane looked at michael rather anxiously. �michael, what balls are we going to?� she inquired. �trinity, the house, and the apollo,� he told her. �what house is that? and i don�t think i ever heard of apollo college. it sounds very attractive. have i said something foolish?� mrs. fane looked round her, for everyone was laughing. �the house is christ church, mother,� said michael, and then swiftly he remembered his father might have made that name familiar to her. if he had, she gave no sign; and michael blushing fiercely, went on quickly to explain that the apollo was the name of the masonic lodge of the university. stella and mrs. fane rested that afternoon, and michael with wedderburn, lonsdale, and several other contemporaries spent a jolly time in st. mary�s, walking round and reviving the memories of former rags. alan had suggested that, as he would be near the randolph, he might as well call in and escort mrs. fane and stella down to tea in michael�s rooms. mrs. avery with blanche and eileen avery had also been invited, and there was very little space left for teacups. wedderburn, however, assisted by porcher on whom alone of these familiar people time had not laid a visible finger, managed to make everybody think they had enjoyed their tea. afterward there was a general move to the river for a short time, but as lonsdale said, it must be for a very short time in order that everyone might be in good form for the trinity ball. mrs. fane thought she would like to stay with michael and talk to him for a while. it was strange to see her sitting here in his old room, and to be in a way more sharply aware of her than he had ever been, as he watched her fanning herself and looking round at the furniture, while the echoes of laughter and talk died away down the stone staircase without. �dear michael,� she said. �i wish i�d seen this room when you lived in it properly.� he laughed. �when i lived in it properly,� he answered, �i should have been made so shy by your visit that i think you�d have hated me and the room.� �you must have been so domestic,� said his mother. �such a curious thing has happened.� �apropos of what?� asked michael, smiling. �you know dick prescott left stella all his money, well��� �but, mother, i didn�t know anything about it.� �it was rather vague. he left it first to some old lady whom he intended to live four or five years, but she died this week, and so stella inherits it at once. about two thousand a year. it�s all in land, and will have to be managed. huntingdonshire, or some country nobody believes in. it�s all very difficult. she must marry at once.� �but, mother, why because she is to be better off and own land in huntingdonshire, is she to marry at once?� asked michael. �to avoid fortune-hunters, odd foreign counts, and people.� �but she�s not twenty-one yet,� he objected. �my dearest boy, i know, i know. that�s why she must marry. don�t you see, when she�s of age, she�ll be able to marry whom she likes, and you know how headstrong stella is.� �mother,� said michael suddenly, �supposing she married alan?� �delightful boy,� she commented. �you mean he�s too young?� �for the present, yes.� �but you wouldn�t try to stop an engagement, would you?� he asked very earnestly. �my dearest michael, if two young people i were fond of fell in love, i should be the last person to try to interfere,� mrs. fane promised. �well, don�t say anything to alan about stella having more money. i think he might be sensitive about it.� �darling stella!� she sighed. �so intoxicated with poverty�the notion of it, i mean.� �mother,� said michael suddenly and nervously, �you know, don�t you, that the day after to-morrow is the house ball�the christ church ball?� �where your father was?� she said gently, pondering the past. he nodded. �i�ll show you his old rooms,� michael promised. �darling boy,� she murmured, putting out her hand. he held it very tightly for a moment. next day after the trinity ball alan, who was very cheerful, told michael he thought it would be good sport to invite everybody to tea at st. giles. �oh, i particularly didn�t want that to happen,� said michael, taken aback. alan was puzzled to know his reason. �you�ll probably think me absurd,� said michael. �but i rather wanted to keep ninety-nine for a place that i could remember as more than all others the very heart of oxford, the most intimate expression of all i have cared for up here.� �well, so you can, still,� said alan severely. �my asking a few people there to tea won�t stop you.� �all the same, i wish you wouldn�t,� michael persisted. �i moved into college for commem just to avoid taking anybody to st. giles.� �not even stella?� demanded alan. michael shook his head. �well, of course, if you don�t want me to, i won�t,� said alan grudgingly. �but i think you�re rather ridiculous.� �i am, i know,� michael agreed. �but thanks for honoring me. do you think stella has altered much since she was in vienna, and during this year in town?� �not a bit,� alan declared enthusiastically. �and yet in one way she has,� he corrected himself. �she seems less out of one�s reach.� �or else you know better how to stretch,� michael laughed. �oh, i wasn�t thinking of her attitude to me,� said alan a little stiffly. �most generalizations come down to a particular fact,� michael answered. but he would not tease alan too much because he really wished him to have confidence. after the trinity ball it seemed to michael now not very rash to sound stella about her point of view with regard to alan. for this purpose he invited her to come in a canoe with him on the cher. yet when together they were gliding down the green tunnels of the stream, when all the warmth of june was at their service, when neither question nor answer could have cast on either more than a momentary shadow, michael could not bring himself to approach the subject even indirectly. they discussed lazily the success of the trinity ball, without reference to the fact that stella had danced three-quarters of her program with alan. she did not even bother to say he was a good dancer, so much was the convention of indifference demanded by the brother and sister in their progress along this fronded stream. that night in the town hall michael did not dance a great deal himself at the masonic ball. he sat with lonsdale in the gallery, and together they much diverted themselves with the costumes of the freemasons. it was really ridiculous to see wedderburn in a red cloak and inconvenient sword dancing the templars quadrille. �i think the english are curious people,� said michael. �how absurd that all these undergraduates should belong to an apollo lodge and wear these aprons and dress up like this! look at wedders!� �enter second ruffian, what?� lonsdale chuckled. �i suppose it does take the place of religion,� michael ejaculated, in a tone of bewilderment. �can you see my sister and alan merivale anywhere?� he added casually. �when�s that coming off?� asked lonsdale. he had taken to an eyeglass since he had been in london, and the enhanced eye glittered very wisely at michael. �you think?� �what? rather! my dear old bird, i�ll lay a hundred to thirty. look at them now.� �they�re only dancing,� said michael. �but what dancing! beautiful action. i never saw a pair go down so sweetly to the gate. by the way, what are you going to do now you�re down?� michael shrugged his shoulders. �i suppose you wouldn�t like to come into the motor business?� �no, thanks very much,� said michael. �well, you must do something, you know,� said lonsdale, letting fall his eyeglass in disapproval. �you�ll find that out in town.� michael was engaged for the next dance to one of maurice�s sisters. amid the whirl of frocks, as he swung round this pretty and insipid creature in pink crêpe-de-chine, he was dreadfully aware that neither his nor her conversation mattered at all, and that valuable time was being robbed from him to the strains of the choristers waltz. really he would have preferred to leave oxford in a manner more solemn than this, not tangled up with frills and misses and obvious music. looking down at blanche avery, he almost hated her. and to-morrow there would be another ball. he must dance with her again, with her and with her sister and with a dozen more dolls like her. next morning, or rather next noon, for it was noon before people woke after these balls that were not over until four o�clock, michael looked out of his bedroom window with a sudden dismay at the great elms of the deer park, deep-bosomed, verdurous, entranced beneath the june sky. �this is the last whole day,� he said, �the last day when i shall have a night at the end of it; and it�s going to be absolutely wasted at a picnic with all these women.� michael scarcely knew how to tolerate that picnic, and wondered resentfully why everybody else seemed to enjoy it so much. �delicious life,� said his mother, as he punted her away from the tinkling crowd on the bank. �i�m not surprised you like oxford, dear michael.� �i like it�i liked it, i mean, very much more when it was altogether different from this sort of thing. the great point of oxford�in fact, the whole point of oxford�is that there are no girls.� �how charmingly savage you are, dear boy,� said his mother. �and how absurd to pretend you don�t care for girls.� �but i don�t,� he asserted. �in oxford i actually dislike them very much. they�re out of place except in banbury road. dons should never have been allowed to marry. really, mother, women in oxford are wrong.� �of course, i can�t argue with you. but there seem to me to be a great many of them.� �great scott, you don�t think it�s like this in term-time, do you?� �isn�t it?� said mrs. fane, apparently very much surprised. �i thought undergraduates were so famously susceptible. i�m sure they are, too.� �do you mean to say you really thought this commem herd was always roaming about oxford?� �michael, your oxford expressions are utterly unintelligible to me.� �don�t you realize you are up here for commem�for commemoration?� he asked. �how wonderful!� she said. �don�t tell me any more. it�s so romantic, to be told one is �up� for something.� michael began to laugh, and the irritation of seeing the peaceful banks of the upper river dappled with feminine forms, so that everywhere the cattle had moved away to browse in the remote corners of the meadows, vanished. the ball at christ church seemed likely to be the most successful and to be the one that would remain longest in the memories of those who had taken part in this commemoration. nowhere could an arbiter of pleasure have found so perfect a site for his most elaborate entertainment. there was something very strangely romantic in this gay assembly dancing in the great hall of the house, so that along the cloisters sounded the unfamiliar noise of fiddles; but what gave principally the quality of romance and strangeness was that beyond the music, beyond the fantastically brilliant hall, stretched all around the dark quadrangles deserted now save where about their glooms dresses indeterminate as moths were here and there visible. the decrescent moon would scarcely survive the dawn, and meanwhile there would be darkness everywhere away from the golden heart of the dance in that great hall spinning with light and motion. alan was evidently pleased that he was being able to show stella his own college. he wore about him an air of confidence that michael did not remember to have seen so plainly marked before. he and stella were dancing together all the time here at christ church, and michael felt he, too, must dance vigorously, so that he should not find himself overlooking them. he was shy somehow of overlooking them, and when blanche avery and eileen avery and half a dozen more cousins and sisters of friends had been led back to their chaperones, michael went over to his mother and invited her to walk with him in the quadrangles of christ church. she knew why he wanted her to walk with him, and as she took his arm gently, she pressed it to her side. he thought again how ridiculously young she seemed and how the lightness of her touch was no less than that of the ethereal eileen or the filmy blanche. he wished he had asked her to dance with him, but yet on second thoughts was glad he had not, since to walk with her thus along these dark cloisters, down which traveled fainter and fainter the fiddles of the eton boating song, was even better than dancing. soon they were in peckwater, standing silent on the gravel, almost overweighted by that heavy georgian quadrangle. �he lived either on that staircase or that one,� said michael. �but all the staircases and all the rooms in peck are just the same, and all the men who have lived in them for the past fifty years are just the same. the house is a wonderful place, and the type it displays best changes less easily than any other.� �i didn�t know him when he lived here,� she murmured. with her hand still resting lightly upon his sleeve, michael felt the palpitation of long-stored-up memories and emotions. as she stood here pensive in the darkness, the years were rolling back. �i expect if he were alive,� she went on softly, �he would wonder how time could have gone by so quickly since he was here. people always do, don�t they, when they revisit places they�ve known in younger days? when he was here, i must have been about fifteen. funny, severe, narrow-minded old father!� michael waited rather anxiously. she had never yet spoken of her life before she met his father, and he had never brought himself to ask her. �funny old man! he was at cambridge�trinity college, i think it was called.� then she was silent for a while, and michael knew that she was linking her father and his father in past events; but still she did not voice her thoughts, and whatever joys or miseries of that bygone time were being recalled were still wrapped up in her reserve: nor did michael feel justified in trying to persuade her to unloose them, even here in this majestic enclosure that would have engulfed them all as soon as they were free. �you�re not cold?� he tenderly demanded. surely upon his arm she had shivered. �no, but i think we�ll go back to the ballroom,� she sighed. michael felt awed when their feet grated again in movement over the gravel. behind them in the quadrangle there were ghosts, and the noise of walking here seemed sacrilegious upon this moonless and heavy summer night. presently, however, two couples came laughing into the lamplight at the corner. the sense of decorous creeds outraged by his mother�s behavior of long ago vanished in the relief that present youth gave with its laughing company and fashionable frocks. beside such heedlessness it were vain to conjure too remorsefully the past. after all, peckwater was a place in which young men should crack whips and shout to one another across window-boxes; here there should be no tombs. michael and his mother went on their way to the hall, and soon the music of the waltzing filled magically the lamplit entries of the great college, luring them to come back with light hearts, so importunate was the gaiety. michael rather reproached himself afterward for not trying to take advantage of his mother�s inclination to yield him a more extensive confidence. he was sure stella would not have allowed the opportunity to slip by so in a craven embarrassment; or was it rather a fine sensitiveness, an imaginative desire to let the whole of that history lie buried in whatever poor shroud romance could lend it? as he was thinking of stella, herself came toward him over the shining floor of the ballroom emptied for the interval between two dances. how delicately flushed she was and how her gray eyes were lustered with joy of the evening, or perhaps with fortunate tidings. michael was struck by the direct way in which she was coming toward him without bothering through self-consciousness to seem to find him unexpectedly. �come for a walk with me in the moonlight,� she said, taking his arm. �there�s no moon yet, but i�ll take you for a walk.� the clock was striking two, as they reached tom quad, and the decrescent moon to contradict him was already above the roofs. they strolled over to the fountain and stood there captured by loveliness, silent themselves and listening to the talk and laughter of shimmering figures that reached them subdued and intermittent from the flagged terraces in the distance. �i suppose,� said stella suddenly, �you�re very fond of alan?� �rather, of course i am.� �so am i.� then she blushed, and her cheeks were very crimson in the moonlight. michael had never seen her blush like this, had never been aware before of her maidenhood that now flooded his consciousness like a bouquet of roses. hitherto she had always been for michael a figure untouched by human weakness. even when last summer he had seen her break down disconsolate, he had been less shocked by her grief than by its incongruity in her. this blush gave to him his only sister as a woman. �the trouble with alan is that he thinks he can�t marry me because i have money, whereas he will be dependent on what he earns. that�s rubbish, isn�t it?� �of course,� he agreed warmly. �i�ll tell him so, if you like.� �i don�t think he�d pay much attention,� she said. �but you know, poor old prescott left me a lot of land.� michael nodded. �well, it�s got to be managed, hasn�t it?� �of course,� said michael. �you�ll want a land agent.� �why not alan?� she asked. �i don�t want to marry somebody in the home civil service. i want him to be with me all day. wouldn�t you?� �you�ve not told mother?� michael suggested cautiously. �not yet. i shall be twenty-one almost at once, you know.� �what�s that got to do with it?� he was determined that in stella�s behavior there should be no reflection, however pale, of what long ago had come into the life of an undergraduate going down from christ church. he wished for stella and alan to have all the benisons of the world. �you�ve no right to assume that mother will object,� he told her. but stella did not begin to speak, as she was used, of her determination to have her own way in spite of everybody. she was a softer stella to-night; and that alone showed to michael how right he had been to wish with all his heart that she would fall in love with alan. �there he is!� she cried, clapping her hands. michael looked up, and saw him coming across the great moonlit space, tall and fair and flushed as he should be coming like this to claim stella. michael punched alan to express his pleasure, and then he quickly left them standing by the fountain close together. chapter xvii the last day at sunrise when the stones of oxford were the color of lavender, a photograph was taken of those who had been dancing at the christ church ball; after which, their gaiety recorded, the revelers went home. michael was relieved when alan offered to drive his mother and stella back to the randolph. he was not wishing for company that morning, but rather to walk slowly down to college alone. he waited, therefore, to see the dancers disappear group by group round various corners, until the high was desolate and he was the only human figure under this virginal sky. in his bedroom clear and still and sweet with morning light he did not want to go to bed. the birds fluttering on the lawns, the sun sparkling with undeterrent rays of gold not yet high and fierce, and all the buildings of the college dreaming upon the bosom of this temperate morn made him too vigilant for beauty. it would be wrong to sleep away this oxford morning. with deliberate enjoyment he changed from ruffled evening dress into flannels. in the sitting-room michael looked idly through the books, and glanced with dissatisfaction at the desquamating backs of the magazines. there was nothing here fit to occupy his attention at such a peerless hour. yet he still lingered by the books. habit was strong enough to make him feel it necessary at least to pretend to read during the hours before breakfast. finally in desperation he pulled out one of the magazines, and as he did so a small volume bound in paper fell onto the floor. it was manon lescaut, and michael was pleased that the opportunity was given to him of reading a book he had for a long time meant to read. moreover, if it were disappointing, this edition was so small that it would fit easily into his pocket and be no bother to carry. he wondered rather how manon lescaut had come into this bookshelf, and he opened it at an aquatint of ladies deject and lightly clothed�_c�est une douzaine de filles de joie_, said the inscription beneath. here, michael feared, was the explanation of how the abbé prévost found himself squeezed away between pearson�s and the strand. here at last was evidence in these rooms of a personal choice. here spoke, if somewhat ignobly, the character of the purchaser. michael slipped the small volume into his pocket and went out. the great lawns in front of new quad stretched for his solitary pleasure in the golden emptiness of morn. at such an hour it were vain to repine; so supreme was beauty like this that michael�s own departure from oxford appeared to him as unimportant as the fall of a petal unshaken by any breath of summer wind. with the air brimming to his draught and with early bees restless along the herbaceous border by the stream�s parapet, michael began to read manon lescaut. he would finish this small volume before breakfast, unless the fumes of the sun should drug him out of all power to award the abbé his fast attention. the great artist was stronger than the weather, and michael read on while the sun climbed the sky, while the noises of a new day began, while the footsteps of hurrying scouts went to and fro. it was half-past eight when he finished that tale of love. for a few moments he sat dazed, visualizing that dreadful waste near new orleans where in the sand it was so easy for the star-crossed chevalier to bury the idol of his heart. porcher was surprised to find michael up and wide awake. �you oughtn�t to have gone and tired yourself like that, sir,� he said reproachfully. michael rather resented putting back the little book among those magazines. he felt it would be almost justifiable to deprive the owner of what he so evidently did not esteem, and he wondered if, when he had cut the pages with his prurient paper-knife the purchaser had wished at the end of this most austere tale that he had not spent his money so barrenly. _c�est une douzaine de filles de joie._ it was a bitter commentary on human nature, that a mere aquatint of these poor naked creatures jolting to exile in their tumbril should extort half a crown from an english undergraduate to probe their history. �dirty-minded little beast,� said michael, as he confiscated the edition of manon lescaut, placing it in his suitcase. then he went out into st. mary�s walks, and at the end of the longest vista sat down on a garden-bench beside the cherwell. before him stretched the verdurous way down which he had come; beyond, taking shape among the elms, was the college; to right and left were vivid meadows where the cattle were scarcely moving, so lush was the pasturage here; and at his side ran the slow, the serpentine, the tree-green tranquil cher. as he sat here among the bowers of st. mary�s, the story he had just read came back to him with a double poignancy. he scarcely thought that any tale of love could purify so sharply every emotion but that of pity too profound for words. he wondered if his father had loved with such a devotion of self-destruction as had inspired des grieux. it was strange himself should have been so greatly moved by a story of love at the moment when he was making ready to enter the world. he had not thought of love during all the time he had been up at oxford. now he went back in memory to the days when lily had the power to shake his soul, even as the soul of des grieux had been shaken in that inn-yard of amiens, when coming by the coach from arras he first beheld manon. how trivial had been lily�s infidelity compared with manon�s: how shallow had been his own devotion beside the chevalier�s. but the love of des grieux for manon was beyond the love of ordinary youth. the abbé by his art had transmuted a wild infatuation, a foolish passion for a wanton into something above even the chivalry of the noblest lover of the middle ages. it was beyond all tears, this tale; and the dry grief it now exacted gave to michael in some inexplicable way a knowledge of life more truly than any book since don quixote. it was an academic tale, too: it was told within the narrowest confines of the most rigid form. there was not in this narrative one illegitimate device to excite an easy compassion in the reader: it was literature of a quality marmoreal, and it moved as only stone can move. the death of manon in the wilderness haunted him even as he sat here: almost he too could have prostrated himself in humiliation before this tragedy. �there is no story like it,� said michael to the sleek river. _n�exigez point de moi que je vous décrive mes sentiments, ni que je vous rapporte mes dernières expressions._ and it was bought by an undergraduate for half a crown because he wanted to stare like the peasant-folk. _c�est une douzaine de filles de joie._ how really promising that illustration must have looked: how the coin must have itched in his pocket: how carefully he must have weighed the slimness of the book against his modesty: how easy it had been to conceal behind those magazines. but he could not sit here any longer reconstructing the shamefaced curiosity of a dull young freshman, nor even, with so much to arrange this last morning, could he continue to brood upon the woes of the chevalier des grieux and manon lescaut. it was time to go and rouse lonsdale. lonsdale had slept long enough in those ground-floor rooms of his where on the first day of the first term the inextricable porcher had arranged his wine. it did not take long to drag lonsdale out of bed. �you slack devil, i�ve not been to bed at all,� said michael. �more silly ass you,� lonsdale yawned. �now don�t annoy me while i�m dressing with your impressions of the sunrise.� michael watched him eat his breakfast, while he slowly and with the troublesome aid of his eyeglass managed to focus once again the world. �i was going to tell you something deuced interesting about myself when you buzzed off this morning. you�ve heard of queenie molyneux�well, queenie ...� �wait a bit,� michael interrupted. �i haven�t heard of queenie molyneux.� �why, she�s in the pink quartette.� michael still looked blank, and lonsdale adjusting his eyeglass looked at him in amazement. �the pink quartette in my mistake.� �oh, that rotten musical comedy,� said michael. �i haven�t seen it.� lonsdale shook his head in despair, and the monocle tinkled down upon his plate. when he had wiped it clean of marmalade, he asked michael in a compassionate voice if he _never_ went to the theater, and with a sigh returned to the subject of queenie. �it�s the most extraordinary piece of luck. a girl that everyone in town has been running after falls in love with me. now the question is, what ought i to do? i can�t afford to keep her, and i�m not cad enough to let somebody else keep her, and use the third latchkey. my dear old chap, i don�t mind telling you i�m in the deuce of a fix.� �are you very much in love with her?� michael asked. �of course i am. you don�t get queenies chucked at your head like turnips. of course i�m frightfully keen.� �why don�t you marry her?� michael asked. �what? marry her? you don�t seem to understand who i�m talking about. queenie molyneux! she�s in the pink quartette in my mistake.� �well?� �well, i can�t marry a chorus-girl.� �other people have,� said michael. �well, yes, but�er�you know, queenie has rather a reputation. i shouldn�t be the first.� �the problem�s too hard for me,� said michael. in his heart he would have liked to push manon lescaut into lonsdale�s hands and bid him read that for counsel. but he could not help laughing to himself at the notion of lonsdale wrestling with the moral of manon lescaut, and if the impulse had ever reached his full consciousness, it died on the instant. �of course, if this motor-car business is any good,� lonsdale was saying, �i might be able in a year or two to compete with elderly financiers. but my advice to you ...� �you asked for my advice,� said michael, with a smile. �i know i did. i know i did. but as you haven�t ever been to see my mistake�the most absolutely successful musical comedy for years�why, my dear fellow, i�ve been thirty-eight times!... and my advice to you is �avoid actresses.� oh, yes, i know it�s difficult, i know, i know.� lonsdale shook his head so often that the monocle fell on the floor, and his wisdom was speechless until he could find it again. michael left him soon afterward, feeling rather sadly that the horizon before him was clouding over with feminine forms. alan would soon be engaged to his sister. it was delightful, of course, but in one way it already placed a barrier between their perfect intercourse. maurice would obviously soon be thinking of nothing but women. already even up at oxford a great deal of his attention had been turned in that direction: and now lonsdale had queenie. this swift severance from youth by all his friends, this preoccupation with womanhood was likely to be depressing, thought michael, unless himself also fell in love. that was very improbable, however. love filled him with fear. the abbé prévost that morning had expressed for him in art the quintessence of what he knew with sharp prevision love for him would mean. he felt a dread of leaving oxford that quite overshadowed his regret. here was shelter�why had he not shaped his career to stay forever in this cold peace? and, after all, why should he not? he was independent. why should he enter the world and call down upon himself such troubles and torments as had vexed his youth in london? from the standpoint of moral experience he had a right to stay here: and yet it would be desolate to stay here without a vital reason, merely to grow old on the fringe of the university. could he have been a fellow, it would have been different: but to vegetate, to dream, to linger without any power of art to put into form even what he had experienced already, that would inevitably breed a pernicious melancholy. on the other hand, he might go to plashers mead. he might almost make trial of art. guy would inspire him, guy living his secluded existence with books above a stream. whatever occurred to him in the way of personal failure, he could on his side encourage guy. his opinion might be valuable, for although he seemed to have no passion to create, he was sure his judgment was good. how guy would appreciate manon; and perhaps like so many classics he had taken it as read, nor knew yet what depths of pity, what profundities of beauty awaited his essay. michael made up his mind that instead of going to london this afternoon he would ride over to wychford and either stay with guy or in any case announce his speedy return to stay with him for at least the rest of the summer. alan would escort his mother and stella home. it would be easier for alan that way. his mother would be so charming to him, and everything would soon be arranged. with this plan to unfold, michael hurried across to ninety-nine. alan was already up. everything was packed. michael realized he could already regard the digs without a pang for the imminence of final departure. perhaps the abbé prévost had deprived him of the capacity for a merely sentimental emotion, at any rate for the present. alan looked rather doubtful over michael�s proposal. �i hate telling things in the train,� he objected. �you haven�t got to tell anything in the train,� michael contradicted. �my mother is sure to invite you to dinner to-night, and you can tell her at home. it�s much better for me to be out of it. i shall be back in a few days to pack up various things i shall want for plashers mead.� �it�s a most extraordinary thing,� said alan slowly, �that the moment you think there�s a chance of my marrying your sister, you drop me like a hot brick.� michael touched his shoulder affectionately. �i�m more pleased about you and her than about anything that has ever happened,� he said earnestly. �now are you content?� �of course, i oughtn�t to have spoken to her,� said alan. �i really don�t know, looking back at last night, how on earth i had the cheek. i expect i said a lot of rot. i ought certainly to have waited until i was in the home civil.� �you must chuck that idea,� said michael. �stella would loathe the civil service.� �i can�t marry ...� alan began. �you�ve got to manage her affairs. she has a temperament. she also has land.� then michael explained about prescott, and so eloquent was he upon the need for stella�s happiness that alan began to give way. �i always thought i should be too proud to live on a woman,� he said. �don�t make me bring forward all my arguments over again,� michael begged. �i�m already feeling very fagged. you�ll have all your work cut out. to manage stella herself, let alone her piano and let alone her land, is worth a very handsome salary. but that�s nothing to do with it. you�re in love with each other. are you going to be selfish enough to satisfy your own silly pride at the expense of her happiness? i could say lots more. i could sing your praises as ...� �thanks very much. you needn�t bother,� interrupted alan gruffly. �well, will you not be an ass?� �i�ll try.� �otherwise i shall tell you what a perfect person you are.� �get out,� said alan, flinging a cushion. michael left him and went down to the randolph. he found stella already dressed and waiting impatiently in the lobby for his arrival. his mother was not yet down. �it�s all right,� he began, �i�ve destroyed the last vestige of alan�s masculine vanity. mother will be all right�if,� said michael severely, pausing to relish the flavor of what might be the last occasion on which he would administer with authority a brotherly admonition. �_if_ you don�t put on a lot of side and talk about being twenty-one in a couple of months. do you understand?� stella for answer flung her arms round his neck, and michael grew purple under the conspicuous affront she had put upon his dignity. �you absurd piece of pomposity,� she said. �i really adore you.� �for god�s sake don�t talk in that exaggerated way,� michael muttered. �i hope you aren�t going to make a public ass of alan like that. he�d be rather sick.� �if you say another word,� stella threatened, �i�ll clap my hands and go dancing all round this hotel.� at lunch michael explained that he was not coming to town for a day or two, and his mother accepted his announcement with her usual gracious calm. just before they were getting ready to enter their cab to go to the station, michael took her aside. �mother, you�ll be very sympathetic, won�t you?� then he whispered to her, fondling her arm. �they really are so much in love, but alan will never be able to explain how much, and i swear to you he and stella were made for each other.� �but they don�t want to be married at once?� asked mrs. fane, in some alarm. �oh, not to-morrow,� michael admitted. �but don�t ask them to have a year�s engagement. will you promise me?� �why don�t you come back to-night and talk to me about it?� she asked. �because they�ll be so delightful talking to you without me. i should spoil it. and don�t forget�alan is a _slow_ bowler, but he gets wickets.� michael watched with a smile his mother waving to him from the cab while still she was vaguely trying to resolve the parting metaphor he had flung at her. as soon as the cab had turned the corner, he called for his bicycle and rode off to wychford. he went slowly with many roadside halts, nor was there the gentlest rise up which he did not walk. it was after five o�clock when he dipped from the rolling highway down into wychford. there were pink roses everywhere on the gray houses. as he went through the gate of plashers mead, he hugged himself with the thought of guy�s pleasure at seeing him so unexpectedly on this burnished afternoon of midsummer. the leaves of the old espalier rustled crisply: they were green and glossy, and the apples, still scarcely larger than nuts, promised in the autumn when he and guy would be together here a ruddy harvest. the house was unresponsive when he knocked at the door. he waited for a minute or two, and then he went into the stone-paved hall and up the steep stairs to the long corridor, at whose far end the framed view of the open doorway into guy�s green room glowed as vividly as if it gave upon a high-walled sunlit garden. the room itself was empty. there were only the books and a lingering smell of tobacco smoke, and through the bay-window the burble of the stream swiftly flowing. michael looked out over the orchard and away to the far-flung horizon of the wold beyond. here assuredly, he told himself, was the perfect refuge. here in this hollow waterway was peace. from here sometimes in the morning he and guy would ride into oxford, whence at twilight they would steal forth again and, dipping down from the bleak road, find plashers mead set safe in a land that was tributary only to the moon. guy�s diamond pencil, with which he was wont upon the window to inscribe mottoes, lay on the sill. michael picked it up and scratched upon the glass: _the fresh green lap of fair king richard�s land_, setting the date below. then suddenly coming down past the house with the stream he saw in a canoe guy with a girl. the canoe swept past the window and was lost round the bend, hidden immediately by reeds and overarching willows. yet michael had time to see the girl, to see her cheeks of frailest rose, to know she was a fairy�s child and that guy was deep in love. although the fleet vision thrilled him with a romantic beauty, michael was disheartened. even here at plashers mead, where he had counted upon finding a cloister, the disintegration of life�s progress had begun. it would be absurd for him to intrude now upon guy. he would scarcely be welcomed now in this june weather. after all, he must go to london; so he left behind him the long gray house and walked up the slanting hill that led to the nearest railway station. by the gate where he and guy had first seen plashers mead, he paused to throw one regret back into that hollow waterway, one regret for the long gray house on its green island circled by singing streams. there were two hours to wait at the station before the train would arrive. he would be in london about half-past nine. discovering a meadow pied with daisies, michael slept in the sun. when he woke, the grass was smelling fresh in the shadows, and the sun was westering. he went across to the station and, during the ten minutes left before his train came in, walked up and down the platform in the spangled airs of evening, past the tea-roses planted there, slim tawny buds and ivory cups dabbled with creamy flushes. it was dark when michael reached paddington, and he felt depressed, wishing he had come back with the others. no doubt they would all be at the theater. or should he drive home and perhaps find them there? �know anything about this golf-bag, bill?� one porter was shouting to another. michael went over to look at the label in case it might be alan�s bag. but it was an abandoned golf-bag belonging to no one: there were no initials even painted on the canvas. this forsaken golf-bag doubled michael�s depression, and though he had always praised paddington as the best of railway stations, he thought to-night it was the gloomiest in london. then he remembered in a listless way that he had forgotten to inquire about his suit-case, which had been sent after him from oxford to shipcott, the station for wychford. it must be lying there now with manon lescaut inside. he made arrangements to recapture it, which consummated his depression. then he called a hansom and drove to cheyne walk. they had all gone to the opera, the parlormaid told him. michael could not bear to stay at home to-night alone: so, getting back into the hansom, he told the man to drive to the oxford music-hall. it would be grimly amusing to see on the programs there the theatrical view of st. mary�s tower. the end of the first book book two romantic education sancta ad vos anima atque istius inscia culpae descendam, magnorum haud umquam indignus avorum. virgil. for fancy cannot live on real food: in youth she will despise familiar joy to dwell in mournful shades, as they grow real, then buildeth she of joy her fair ideal. robert bridges. chapter i ostia ditis when michael reached the oxford music-hall he wondered why he had overspurred his fatigue to such a point. there was no possibility of pleasure here, and he would have done better to stay at home and cure with sleep what was after all a natural depression. it had been foolish to expect a sedative from contact with this unquiet assemblage. in the mass they had nothing but a mechanical existence, subject as they were to the brightness or dimness of the electrolier that regulated their attention. michael did not bother to buy a program. from every podgy hand he could see dangling the lithograph of st. mary�s tower with its glazed moonlight; and he was not sufficiently aware of the glib atom who bounced about the golden dazzle of the stage to trouble about his name. he mingled with the slow pace of the men and women on the promenade. they were going backward and forward like flies, meeting for a moment in a quick buzz of colloquy and continuing after a momentary pause their impersonal and recurrent progress. michael was absorbed in this ceaseless ebb and flow of motion where the sidelong glances of the women, as they brushed his elbow in the passing crowd, gave him no conviction of an individual gaze. once or twice he diverted his steps from the stream and tried to watch in a half-hearted way the performance; but as he leaned over the plush-covered barrier a woman would sidle up to him, and he would move away in angry embarrassment from the questioning eyes under the big plumed hat. the noise of popping corks and the chink of glasses, the whirr of the ventilating fans, the stentorophonic orchestra, the red-faced raucous atom on the stage combined to irritate him beyond further endurance; and he had just resolved to walk seven times up and down the promenade before he went home, when somebody cried in heartiest greeting over his shoulder, �hullo, bangs!� michael turned and saw drake, and so miserable had been the effect of the music-hall that he welcomed him almost effusively, although he had not seen him during four years and would probably like him rather less now than he had liked him at school. �_my_ lord! fancy seeing you again!� drake effused. michael found himself shaken warmly by the hand in support of the enthusiastic recognition. after the less accentuated cordiality of oxford manners, it was strange to be standing like this with clasped hands in the middle of this undulatory crowd. �i _say_, bangs, old man, we must have a drink on this.� drake led the way to the bar and called authoritatively for two whiskies and a split polly. �quite a little-bit-of-fluffy-all-right,� he whispered to michael, seeming to calculate with geometrical eyes the arcs and semicircles of the barmaid�s form. she with her nose in the air poured out the liquid, and michael wondered how any of it went into the glass. as a matter of fact, most of it splashed onto the bar, whence drake presently took his change all bedewed with alcohol, and, lifting his glass, wished michael a jolly good chin-chin. ��d luck,� michael muttered in response. �_my_ lord!� drake began again. �fancy meeting you of all people. and not a bit different. i said to myself: �i�m jiggered if that isn�t old bangs,� and�well, _my_ lord! but i was surprised. do you often come out on the randan?� �not very often,� michael admitted. �i just happened to be alone to-night.� �good for you, old sport. what have you been doing since you left school?� �i�m just down from oxford,� michael informed him. �pretty good spree up there, eh?� �oh, yes, rather,� said michael. �well, i had the chance to go,� said drake. �but it wasn�t good enough. it�s against you in the city, you know. waste of time really, except of course for a parson or a schoolmaster.� �yes, i expect it would have been rather a waste of time for you,� michael agreed. �oh, rotten! so you moved from�where was it?�carlington road?� �yes, we moved to cheyne walk.� �let�s see. that�s in hampstead, isn�t it?� �well, it�s rather nearer the river,� suggested michael. �are you still in trelawny road?� �yes, still in the same old hovel. my hat! talking of trelawny road, it _is_ a small world. who do you think i saw last week?� �not lily haden?� michael asked, in spite of a wish not to rise so quickly to drake�s hook. �you�re right. i saw the fair lily. but where do you think i saw her? bangs, old boy, i tell you i�m not a fellow who�s easily surprised. but this knocked me. of course, you�ll understand the hadens flitted from trelawny road soon after you stopped calling. so who knows what�s happened since? i give you three guesses where i saw her.� �i hate riddles,� said michael fretfully. �at the orient,� said drake solemnly. �the orient promenade. you could have knocked me down with a feather.� michael stared at drake, scarcely realizing the full implication of what he just announced. then suddenly he grasped the horrible fact that revealed to him here in a music-hall carried a double force. his one instinct for the moment was to prevent drake from knowing into what depths his news had plunged him. �has she changed?� asked michael, and could have kicked himself for the question. �well, of course there was a good deal of powder,� said drake. �i�m not easily shocked, but this gave me a turn. she was with a man, but even if she hadn�t been, i doubt if i�d have had the nerve to talk to her. i wouldn�t have known what to say. but, of course, you know, her mother was a bit rapid. that�s where it is. have another drink. you�re looking quite upset.� michael shook his head. he must go home. �aren�t you coming down west a bit?� asked drake, in disappointment. �the night�s still young.� but michael was not to be persuaded. �well, don�t let�s lose sight of each other now we�ve met. what�s your club? i�ve just joined the primrose myself. not a bad little place. you get a rare good one-and-sixpenny lunch. you ought to join. or perhaps you�re already suited?� �i belong to the bath,� said michael. �oh, of course, if you�re suited, that�s all right. but any time you want to join the primrose just let me know and i�ll put you up. the sub isn�t really very much. guinea a year.� michael thanked him and escaped as quickly as he could. outside even in oxford street the air was full of summer, and the cool people sauntering under the sapphirine sky were as welcome to his vision as if he had waked from a fever. his head was throbbing with the heat of the music-hall, and the freshness of night-air was delicious. he called a hansom and told the driver to go to blackfriars bridge, and from there slowly along the embankment to cheyne walk. for a time he leaned back in the cab, thinking of nothing, barely conscious of golden thoroughfares, of figures in silhouette against the glitter, and of the london roar rising and falling. presently in the quiet of the shadowy cross-streets he began to appreciate what seemed the terrible importance to himself of drake�s news. �it concerns me,� he began to reiterate aloud. �it concerns me�me�me. it�s useless to think that it doesn�t. it concerns me.� then a more ghastly suggestion whispered itself. how should he ever know that he was not primarily responsible? the idea came over him with sickening intensity; and upright now he saw in the cracked mirrors of the cab a face blanched, a forehead clammy with sweat, and over his shoulder like a goblin the wraith of lily. it was horrible to see so distorted that beautiful memory which time had etherealized out of a reality, until of her being nothing had endured but a tenuous image of earliest love. now under the shock of her degradation he must be dragged back by this goblin to face his responsibility. he must behold again close at hand her shallow infidelity. he must assure himself of her worthlessness, hammer into his brain that from the beginning she had merely trifled with him. this must be established for the sake of his conscience. where the devil was this driver going? �i told you down the embankment,� michael shouted through the trap. �i can�t go down the embankment before i gets there, can i, sir?� the cabman asked reproachfully. michael closed the trap. he was abashed when he perceived they were still only in fleet street. why had he gone to the oxford to-night? why had he spoken to drake? why had he not stayed at wychford? why had he not returned to london with the others? such regrets were valueless. it was foredoomed that lily should come into his life again. yet there was no reason why she should. there was no reason at all. men could hardly be held responsible for the fall of women, unless themselves had upon their souls the guilt of betrayal or desertion. it was ridiculous to argue that he must bother because at eighteen he had loved her, because at eighteen he had thought she was worthy of being loved. no doubt the orient promenade was the sequel of kissing objectionable actors in the back gardens of west kensington. yet the orient promenade? that was a damnable place. the orient promenade? he remembered her kisses. sitting in this cab, he was kissing her now. she had ridden for hours deep in his arms. not oxford could cure this relapse into the past. every spire and every tower had crashed to ruins around his staid conceptions, so that they too presently fell away. four years of plastic calm were unfashioned, and she was again beside him. every passing lamp lit up her face, her smoldering eyes, her lips, her hair. the goblin took her place, the goblin with sidelong glances, tasting of scent, powdered, pranked, soulless, lost. what was she doing at this moment? what invitation glittered in her look? michael nearly told the driver to turn his horse. he must reach the orient before the show was done. he must remonstrate with her, urge her to go home, help her with money, plead with her, drag her by force away from that procession. but the hansom kept on its way. all down the embankment, all along grosvenor road the onrushing street-lamps flung their balls of light with monotonous jugglery into the cab. to-night, anyhow, it was too late to find her. he would sleep on whatever resolve he took, and in the morning perhaps the problem would present itself in less difficult array. michael reached home before the others had come back from the opera, and suddenly he knew how tired he was. to-day had been the longest day he could ever remember. quickly he made up his mind to go to bed so that he would not be drawn into the discussion of the delightful engagement of stella and alan. he felt he could hardly face the irony of their happiness when he thought of lily. for a while he sat at the window, staring at the water and bathing his fatigue in the balm of the generous night. even here in london peace was possible, here where the reflected lamps in golden pagodas sprawled across the width of the river and where the glutted tide lapped and sucked the piers of the bridge, nuzzled the shelving strand and swirled in sleepy greed around the patient barges at their moorings. a momentary breeze frilled the surface of the stream, blurring the golden pagodas of light so that they jigged and glittered until the motion died away. eastward in the sky over london hung a tawny stain that blotted out the stars. from his window michael grew more and more conscious of the city stirring in a malaise of inarticulate life beneath that sinister stain. he was aware of the stealthy soul of london transcending the false vision of peace before his eyes. there came creeping over him the dreadful knowledge that lily was at this moment living beneath that london sky, imprisoned, fettered, crushed beneath that grim suffusion, that fulvid vile suffusion of the nocturnal sky. he began to spur his memory for every beautiful record of her that was stamped upon it. she was walking toward him in kensington gardens: not a contour of her delicate progress had been blunted by the rasp of time. five years ago he had been the first to speak: now, must it be she who sometimes spoke first? seventeen she had told him had been her age, and they had kissed in the dark midway between two lamps. no doubt she had been kissed before. in that household of trelawny road anything else was inconceivable. the gray streets of west kensington in terrace upon terrace stretched before him, and now as he recalled their barren stones it seemed to him there was not one corner round which he might not expect to meet her face to face. �_michael, why do you make me love you so?_� that was her voice. it was she who had asked him that question. never before this moment had he realized the import of her demand. now, when it was years too late to remedy, it came out of the past like an accusation. he had answered it then with closer kisses. he had released her then like a ruffled bird, secure that to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow she would nestle to his arms for cherishing. and now if he thought more of her life beneath that lurid stain he would go mad; if he conjured to himself the vision of her now�had not drake said she was powdered and painted? to this had she come. and she was here in london. last week she had been seen. it was no nightmare. it was real, horrible and real. he must go out again at once and find her. he must not sit dreaming here, staring at the silly thames, the smooth and imperturbable thames. he must plunge into that phantasmagoric city; he must fly from haunt to haunt; he must drag the depths of every small hell; he must find her to-night. michael rose, but on the instant of his decision his mother and stella drove up. alan was no longer with them. he must have gone home to richmond. how normal sounded their voices from the pavement below. perhaps he would after all go down and greet them. they might wonder otherwise if something had happened. looking at himself as he passed the mirror on his way down, he saw that he really was haggard. if he pleaded a headache, his countenance would bear him out. in the end he shouted to them over the balusters, and both of them wanted to come up with remedies. he would not let them. the last thing his mood desired was the tending of cool hands. �i�m only fagged out,� he told them. �i want a night�s sleep.� yet he knew how hard it would be to fall asleep. his brain was on fire. morning, the liquid morning of london summer, was unimaginable. he shut the door of his room and flung himself down upon the bed. contact with the cool linen released the pent-up tears, and the fire within burnt less fiercely as he cried. his surrender to self-pity must have lasted half an hour. the pillow-case was drenched. his body felt battered. he seemed to have recovered from a great illness. the quiet of the room surprised him, as he looked round in a daze at the familiar objects. the cataclysm of emotion so violently expressed had left him with a sense that the force of his grief must have shaken the room as it had shaken him. but everything was quiet; everything was the same. now that he had wept away that rending sense of powerlessness to aid her, he could examine the future more calmly. already the numbness was going, and the need for action was beginning to make itself felt. yet still all his impulses were in confusion. he could not attain to any clear view of his attitude. he was not in love with her now. he was neither covetous of her kisses nor in any way of her bodily presence. to his imagination at present she appeared like one who has died. it seemed to him that he desired to bring back a corpse, that over a lifeless form he wished to lament the loss of beauty, of passion and of youth. but immediately afterward, so constant was the impression of her as he had last known her, so utterly incapable was drake�s account to change his outward picture of her, he could not conceive the moral disintegration wrought by her shame. it seemed to him that could he be driving with her in a hansom to-night, she would lie still and fluttered in his arms, the lily of five years ago whom now to cherish were an adorable duty. therefore, he was in love with her. otherwise to every prostitute in london he must be feeling the same tenderness. yet they were of no account. were they of no account? _c�est une douzaine de filles de joie._ when he read manon this morning�how strange! this morning he had been reading manon at oxford�he was moved with pity for all poor light women. and lily was one of them. they did not banish them to new orleans nowadays, but she was not less an outcast. it was not because he was still in love with her that he wished to find her. it was because he had known her in the old days. he bore upon his own soul the damning weight that in the past she had said, �_michael, why do you make me love you so?_� if there was guilt, he shared the guilt. if there was shame, he was shameful. others after him had sinned against her casually, counting their behavior no more than a speck of dust in the garbage of human emotion with which she was already smirched. he may not have seduced her, but he had sinned against her, because while loving her he had let her soul elude him. he had made her love him. he had trifled with her sensuousness, and to say that he was too young for blame was cowardly. it was that very youth which was the sin, because under society�s laws, whatever fine figure his love might seem to him to have cut, he should have known that it was a profitless love for a girl. he shared in the guilt. he partook of the shame. that was incontrovertible. suddenly a new aspect of the situation was painfully visible. had not his own mother been sinned against by his father? that seemed equally incontrovertible. prescott had known it in his heart. prescott had said to him in the albany on the night he killed himself that he wanted to marry stella in order to be given the right to protect her. prescott must always have deplored the position in which his friend�s mistress had been placed. that was a hard word to use for one�s mother. it seemed to hiss with scorn. no doubt his father would have married her, if lady saxby had divorced him. no doubt that was the salve with which he had soothed his conscience. something was miserably wrong with our rigid divorce law, he may have said. he must have cursed it innumerable times in order to console his conscience, just as himself at eighteen had cursed youth when he could not marry lily. his mother had been sinned against. nothing could really alter that. it was useless to say that the sinner had in the circumstances behaved very well, that so far as he was able he had treated her honorably. but nothing could excuse his father�s initial weakness. the devotion of a lifetime could not wash out his deliberate sin against�and who was she? who was his mother? valérie ... and her father was at trinity, cambridge ... a clergyman ... a gentleman. and his father had taken her away, had exposed her to the calumny of the world. he had afterward behaved chivalrously at any rate by the standards of romance. but by what small margin had his own mother escaped the doom of lily? all his conceptions of order and safety and custom tottered and reeled at such a thought. surely such a realization doubled his obligation to atone by rescuing lily, out of very thankfulness to god that his own mother had escaped the evil which had come to her. how wretchedly puny now seemed all his own repinings. all he had gained for his own character had been a vague dissatisfaction that he could not succeed to the earldom in order to prove the sanctity of good breeding. there had been no gratitude; there had been nothing but a hurt conceit. the horror of drake�s news would at least cure him forever of that pettiness. already he felt the strength that comes from the sight of a task that must be conquered. he had been moved that morning by the tale of manon lescaut. this tale of lily was in comparison with that as an earthquake to the tunneling of a mole beneath a croquet-lawn. and now must he regard his father�s memory with condemnation? must he hate him? he must hate him, indeed, unless by his own behavior he could feel he had accepted in substitution the burden of his father�s responsibility. and he had admired him so much dying out there in africa for his country. he had resented his death for the sake of thousands more unworthy living comfortably at home. �all my standards are falling to pieces,� thought michael. �heroes and heroines are all turning into cardboard. if i don�t make some effort to be true to conviction, i shall turn to cardboard with the rest.� he began to pace the room in a tumult of intentions, vows and resolutions. somehow before he slept he must shape his course. four years had dreamed themselves away at oxford. unless all that education was as immaterial as the fogs of the isis, it must provide him now with an indication of his duty. he had believed in oxford, believed in her infallibility and glory, he had worshiped all she stood for. he had surrendered himself to her to make of him a gentleman, and unless these four years had been a delusion, his education must bear fruit now. michael made up his mind suddenly, and as it seemed to him at the moment in possession of perfect calm and clarity of judgment, that he would marry lily. he had accepted marriage as a law of his society. well, then that law should be kept. he would test every article of the creed of an english gentleman. he would try in the fire of his purpose honor, pride, courtesy, and humility. all these must come to his aid, if he were going to marry a whore. let him stab himself with the word. let him not blind himself with euphemisms. his friends would have no euphemisms for lily. how lonsdale had laughed at the idea of marrying queenie molyneux, and she might have been called an actress. how everybody would despise his folly. there would not be one friend who would understand. least of all would his mother understand. it was a hard thing to do; and yet it would be comparatively easy, if he could be granted the grace of faith to sustain him. principles were rather barren things to support the soul in a fight with convention. principles of honor when so very personal were apt to crumple in the blast of society�s principles all fiercely kindled against him. just now he had thought of the thankfulness he owed to god. was it more than a figure of speech, an exaggerative personification under great emotion of what most people would call chance? at any rate, here was god in a cynical mood, and the divine justice of this retributive situation seemed to hint at something beyond mere luck. and if principles were strong enough to sustain him to the onset, faith might fire him to the coronation of his self-effacement. he made up his mind clearly and calmly to marry lily, and then he quickly fell into sleep, where as if to hearten him he saw her slim and lovely, herself again, treading for his dreams the ways of night like a gazelle. next morning when michael woke, his resolve purified by sleep of feverish and hysterical promptings was fresh upon his pillow. in the fatigue and strain of the preceding night the adventure had caught a hectic glow of exaltation. now, with the sparrows twittering and the milkman clanking and yodeling down cheyne walk and the young air puffing the curtains, his course acquired a simplicity in this lucid hour of deliberation, which made the future normal and even obvious. there was a great relief in this fresh following breeze after the becalmed inaction of oxford: it seemed an augury of life�s importance that so immediately on top of the oxford dream he should find such a complete dispersion of mist and so urgent a fairway before him. the task of finding lily might easily occupy him for some time, for a life like hers would be made up of mutable appearances and sudden strange eclipses. it might well be a year before she was seen again on the orient promenade. yet it was just as likely that he would find her at once. for a moment he caught his breath in thinking of the sudden plunge which that meeting would involve. he thought of all the arguments and all the dismay that the revelation of his purpose would set in motion. however, the marriage had to be. he had threshed it all out last night. but he might reasonably hope for a brief delay. such a hope was no disloyalty to his determination. stella was already at breakfast when he came downstairs. michael raised his eyebrows in demand for news of her and alan. �mother was the sweetest thing imaginable,� she said. �and so we�re engaged. i wanted to come and talk to you last night, but i thought you would rather be left alone.� �i�m glad you�re happy,� he said gravely. �and i�m glad you�re safe.� stella looked at him in surprise. �i�ve never been anything but safe,� she assured him. �haven�t you?� he asked, looking at her and reproving himself for the thought that this gray-eyed sister of his could ever have exposed herself to the least likelihood of falling into lily�s case. yet there had been times when he had felt alarmed for her security and happiness. there had been that fellow ayliffe, and more serious still there had been that unknown influence in vienna. invulnerable she might seem now in this cool dining-room on a summer morning, but there had been times when he had doubted. �what are you looking at?� she asked, flaunting her imperious boyishness in his solemn countenance. �you. thinking you ought to be damned grateful.� �what for?� �everything.� �you included, i suppose,� she laughed. still it had been rather absurd, michael thought, as he tapped his egg, to suppose there was anything in stella�s temperament which could ever link her to lily. should he announce his quest for her approbation and sympathy? it was difficult somehow to begin. already a subtle change had taken place in their relation to each other since she was engaged to alan. of course, his reserve was ridiculous, but he could not bring himself to break through now. besides, in any case it were better to wait until he had found lily again. it would all sound very pretentiously noble in anticipation, and though she would have every right to laugh, he did not want her to laugh. when he stood on the brink of marriage, they would none of them be able to laugh. there was a grim satisfaction in that. �when does mother suggest you should be married?� he asked. �we more or less settled november. alan has given up the civil service. that�s my first piece of self-assertion. he�s coming for me this morning, and we�re going to lunch at richmond.� �you�ve never met mr. and mrs. merivale?� stella shook her head. �old merivale�s a ripping old boy. always making bad puns. and mrs. merivale�s a dear.� �they must both be perfect to have been the father and mother of alan,� said stella. �i shouldn�t get too excited over him,� michael advised. �or over yourself, either. you might give me the credit of knowing all about it long before either of you.� �darling michael,� she cried, bounding at him like a puppy. �when you�ve done making an ass of yourself you might chuck me a roll.� alan arrived soon after breakfast, and he and michael had a few minutes together, while stella was getting ready to go out. �were your people pleased?� michael asked. �oh, of course. naturally the mater was a little nervous. she thought i seemed young. talked a good deal about being a little boy only yesterday and that sort of rot.� �and your governor?� �he supposed i was determined to steal her,� said alan, with a whimsical look of apology for the pun. �and having worked that off he spent the rest of the evening relishing his own joke.� stella came down ready to start for richmond. both she and alan were in white, and michael said they looked like a couple of cricketers. but he envied them as he waved them farewell from the front door through which the warm day was deliciously invading the house. their happiness sparkled on the air as visibly almost as the sunshine winking on the river. those richmond days belonged imperishably to him and alan, yet for alan this saturday would triumph over all the others before. michael turned back into the house rather sadly. the radiance of the morning had been dislustered by their departure, and michael against his will had to be aware of the sense of exclusion which lovers leave in their wake. he waited indoors until his mother came down. she was solicitous for the headache of last night, and while he was with her he was not troubled by regrets for the break-up of established intercourse. he asked himself whether he should take her into his confidence by announcing the tale of lily. yet he did not wish to give her an impression of being more straightly bound to follow his quest than by the broadest rules of conduct. he felt it would be easier to explain when the marriage had taken place. how lucky for him that he was not financially dependent! that he was not, however, laid upon him the greater obligation. he could find, even if he wished one, no excuse for unfulfillment. michael and his mother talked for a time of the engagement. she was still somewhat doubtful of alan�s youth, when called upon to adapt itself to stella�s temperament. �i think you�re wrong there,� said michael. �alan is rather a rigid person in fundamentals, you know, and his youth will give just that flexibility which stella would demand. in another five years he would have been ensconced behind an englishman�s strong but most unmanageable barrier of prejudice. i noticed so much his attitude toward mrs. ross when she was received into the roman church. i asked him what he would say if stella went over. he maintained that she was different. i think that�s a sign he�ll be ready to apply imagination to her behavior.� �yes, but i hope he won�t think that whatever she does is right,� mrs. fane objected. �oh, no,� laughed michael. �imagination will always be rather an effort for alan. mother, would you be worried if i told you i wanted to go away for a while�i mean to say, go away and perhaps more or less not be heard of for a while?� �abroad?� she asked. �not necessarily abroad. i�m not going to involve myself in a dangerous undertaking; but i�m just sufficiently tired of my very comfortable existence to wish to make an experiment. i may be away quite a short time, but i might want to be away a few months. will you promise me not to worry yourself over my movements? some of the success of this undertaking will probably depend on a certain amount of freedom. you can understand, can�t you, that the claims of home, however delightful, might in certain circumstances be a problem?� �i suppose you�re taking steps to prepare my mind for something very extremely unpleasant,� she said. �let�s ascribe it all to my incurably romantic temperament,� michael suggested. �and i�m not to worry?� �no, please don�t.� �but when are you going away?� �i�m not really going away at all,� michael explained. �but if i didn�t come back to dinner one night or even the next night, would you be content to know quite positively that i hadn�t been run over?� �you�re evidently going to be thoroughly eccentric. but i suppose,� she added wistfully, �that after your deserted childhood i can hardly expect you to be anything else. yet it seems so comfortable here.� she was looking round at the chairs. �i�m not proposing to go to the north pole, you know,� michael said, �but i don�t want to obey dinner-gongs.� �very noisy and abrupt,� she agreed. soon they were discussing all kinds of substitutions. �mother, what an extraordinary lot you know about noise,� michael exclaimed. �dearest boy, i�m on the committee of a society for the abatement of london street noises.� �so deeply occupied with reform,� he said, patting her hand. �one must do something,� she smiled. �i know,� he asserted. �and therefore you�ll let me ride this new hobby-horse i�m trying without thinking it bucks. will you?� �you know perfectly well that you will anyhow,� said mrs. fane, shaking her head. michael felt justified in letting the conversation end at this admission. maurice avery had invited him to come round to the studio in order to assist at castleton�s induction, and michael walked along the embankment to grosvenor road. the large attic which ran all the width of the georgian house was in a state of utter confusion, in the midst of which castleton was hard at work hammering, while maurice climbed over chairs in eager advice, and at the bechstein grand a tall dark young man was playing melodies from tchaikovsky�s symphonies. �just trying to make this place a bit comfortable,� said castleton. �do you know cunningham?� he indicated the player, and michael bowed. �making it comfortable,� michael repeated. �my first impression was just the reverse. i suppose it�s no good asking you people to give me lunch?� �rather, of course,� maurice declared. �castleton, it�s your turn to buy lunch.� �one extraordinary thing, michael,� said castleton, �is the way in which maurice can always produce a mathematical reason for my doing something. you�d think he kept a ledger of all our tasks.� �we can send old mother wadman if you�re tired,� maurice offered. castleton, however, seemed to think he wanted some fresh air; so he and cunningham went out to buy things to eat. �i was fairly settled before old castleton turned up,� maurice explained, �but we shall be three times as comfortable when he�s finished. he�s putting up divans.� maurice indicated with a gesture the raw material on which castleton was at work. they were standing by the window which looked out over multitudinous roofs. �what a great rolling sense of human life they do give,� said michael. �a sea really with telegraph poles and wires for masts and rigging, and all that washing like flotillas of small boats. and there�s the lighthouse,� he pointed to the campanile of westminster chapel. �the sun sets just behind your lighthouse, which is a very bad simile for anything so obscurantist as the roman church,� said maurice. �we�re having such wonderful green dusks now. this is really a room made for a secret love-affair, you know. such nights. such sunny summer days. what is it browning says? something about sparrows on a housetop lonely. we two were sparrows. you know the poem i mean. well, no doubt soon i shall meet the girl who�s meant to share this with me. then i really think i could work.� michael nodded absently. he was wondering if an attic like this were not the solution of what might happen to him and lily when they were married. whatever bitterness london had given her would surely be driven out by life in a room like this with a view like this. they would be suspended celestially above all that was worst in london, and yet they would be most essentially and intimately part of it. the windows of the city would come twinkling into life as incomprehensibly as the stars. whatever bitterness she had guarded would vanish, because to see her in a room like this would be to love her. how well he understood maurice�s desire for a secret love-affair here. nobody wanted a girl to perfect plashers mead. even guy�s fairy child at plashers mead had seemed an intrusion; but here, to protect one�s loneliness against the overpowering contemplation of the life around, love was a necessity. and perhaps maurice would begin to justify the ambition his friends had for his career. it might be so. perhaps himself might find an inspiration in an attic high up over roofs. it might be. it might be so. �what are you thinking about?� maurice asked. �i was thinking you were probably right,� said michael. maurice looked pleasantly surprised. he was rather accustomed to be snubbed when he told michael of his desire for feminine companionship. �i don�t want to get married, you know,� he hastily added. �that would depend,� said michael. �if one married what is called an impossible person and lived up here, it ought to be romantic enough to make marriage rather more exciting than any silvery invitation to st. thomas� church at half-past two.� �but why are you so keen about marriage?� maurice demanded. �well, it has certain advantages,� michael pointed out. �not among the sparrows,� said maurice. �most of all among the sparrows,� michael contradicted. he was becoming absorbed by his notion of lily in such surroundings. it seemed to remove the last doubt he had of the wisdom or necessity of the step he proposed to take. they would be able to reënter the world after a long retirement. for her it should be a convalescence, and for him the opportunity which oxford denied to test academic values on the touchstone of human emotions. it was obvious that his education lacked something, though his academic education was finished. he supposed he had apprehended dimly the risk of this incompletion in paris during that first long vacation. it was curious how already the quest of lily had assumed less the attributes of a rescue than of a personal desire for the happiness of her company. no doubt he must be ready for a shock of disillusion when they did meet, but for the moment drake�s account of her on the orient promenade lost all significance of evil. the news had merely fired him with the impulse to find her again. �it is really extraordinarily romantic up here,� maurice exclaimed, bursting in upon his reverie. �yes, i suppose that�s the reason,� michael admitted. �the reason of what?� maurice asked. �of what i was thinking,� michael said. maurice waited for him to explain further, but michael was silent; and almost immediately castleton came back with provision for lunch. soon after they had eaten michael said he would leave them to their hammering. then he went back to cheyne walk and, finding the house still and empty in the sunlight, he packed a kit-bag, called a hansom-cab, and told the driver to go to the seven sisters road. chapter ii neptune crescent the existence of the seven sisters road had probably not occurred to michael since in the hazel-coppices of clere abbey he had first made of it at brother aloysius� behest the archetype of avernus, and yet his choice of it now for entrance to the underworld was swift as instinct. the quest of lily was already beginning to assume the character of a deliberate withdrawal from the world in which he familiarly moved. with the instant of his resolve all that in childhood and in youth he had apprehended of the dim territory, which in london sometimes lay no farther away than the other side of the road, demanded the trial of his experience. that he had never yet been to the seven sisters road gave it a mystery; that it was not very far from kentish town gave it a gruesomeness, for ever since mrs. pearcey�s blood-soaked perambulator kentish town had held for him a macaber significance: of the hellish portals mystery and gruesomeness were essential attributes. the drive was for a long time tediously pleasant in the june sunshine; but when the cab had crossed the junction of the euston road with the tottenham court road, unknown london with all its sly and labyrinthine romance lured his fancy onward. maple�s and shoolbred�s, those outposts of shopping civilization, were left behind, and the hampstead road with a hint of roguery began. he was not sure what exactly made the hampstead road so disquieting. it was probably a mere trick of contrast between present squalor and the greenery of its end. the road itself was merely grim, but it had a nightmare capacity for suggesting that deviation by a foot from the thoroughfare itself would lead to obscure calamities. those bright yellow omnibuses in which he had never traveled, how he remembered them from the days of jack the ripper, and the horror of them skirting the strand by trafalgar square on winter dusks after the pantomime. even now their painted destinations affected him with a dismay that real people could be familiar with this sinister route. here was the britannia, a terminus which had stuck in his mind for years as situate in some gray limbo of farthest london. here it was, a tawdry and not very large public-house exactly like a hundred others. now the cab was bearing round to the right, and presently upon an iron railway bridge michael read in giant letters the direction kentish town behind a huge leprous hand pointing to the left. the hansom clattered through the murk beneath, past the dim people huddled upon the pavement, past a wheel-barrow and the obscene skeletons and outlines of humanity chalked upon the arches of sweating brick. here then was kentish town. it lay to the left of this bridge that was the color of stale blood. michael told the driver to stop for one moment, and he leaned forward over the apron of the cab to survey the cross-street of swarming feculent humanity that was presumably the entering highway. a train roared over the bridge; a piano organ gargled its tune; a wagon-load of iron girders drew near in a clanging tintamar of slow progress. michael�s brief pause was enough to make such an impression of pandemoniac din as almost to drive out his original conception of kentish town as a menacing and gruesome suburb. but just as the cab reached the beginning of the camden road, he caught sight of a slop-shop where old clothes smothered the entrance with their mucid heaps and, just beyond, of three houses from whose surface the stucco was peeling in great scabs and the damp was oozing in livid arabesques and scrawls of verdigris. this group restored to kentish town a putative disquiet, and the impression of mere dirt and noise and exhalations of fried fish were merged in the more definite character allotted by his prefiguration. the camden road was, in contrast with what had gone before, a wide and easy thoroughfare which let in the blue summer sky; and it was not for some minutes that michael began to notice what a queerness came from the terraces that branched off on either side. the suggestion these terraces could weave extended itself to the detached houses of the main road. in the gaps between them long parallelograms of gardens could be seen joining others even longer that led up to the backs of another road behind. sometimes it seemed that fifty gardens at once were visible, circumscribed secretive pleasure-grounds in the amount of life they could conceal, the life that could prosper and decay beneath their arbors merely for that conspiracy of gloating windows. it was impossible not to speculate upon the quality of existence in these precise enclosures; and to this the chapels of obscure sects that the cab occasionally passed afforded an indication. to these arid little tabernacles the population stole out on sunday mornings. there would be something devilish about these reunions. upon these pinchbeck creeds their souls must surely starve, must slowly shrink to desiccated imps. anything more spiritually malevolent than those announcements chalked upon the black notice-board of the advent of the hebdomadal messiah, the peregrine cleric, the sacred migrant was impossible to imagine. with what apostolic cleverness would he impose himself upon these people, and how after the gravid midday meal of the sabbath he would sit in those green arbors like a horrible chinese fum. the cabman broke in upon michael�s fantastic depression by calling down through the trap that they were arrived at the nag�s head and what part of seven sisters road did he want. michael was disappointed by the seven sisters road. it seemed to be merely the garish mart of a moderately poor suburban population. there was here nothing to support the diabolic legend with which under the suggestion of brother aloysius he had endowed it. certainly of all the streets he had passed this afternoon there had been none less inferential of romance than this long shopping street. �what number do you want, sir?� the driver repeated. �well, really i want rooms,� michael explained. �only this seems a bit noisy.� �yes, it is a bit boisterous,� the cabman agreed. michael told him to drive back along the camden road; but when he began to examine the camden road as a prospective place of residence, it became suddenly very dull and respectable. the locked-up chapels and the quiet houses declined from ominousness into respectability, and he wondered how he had managed only a quarter of an hour ago to speculate upon the inner life they adumbrated. nothing could be less surreptitious than those chatting nursemaids, and actually in one of the parallelograms of garden a child was throwing a scarlet ball high into the air. the cab was already nearing the iron railway bridge of kentish town, and michael had certainly no wish to lodge in a noisy slum. �try turning off to the left,� he called to the driver through the roof. the maneuver seemed likely to be successful, for they entered almost immediately a district of victorian terraces, where the name of each street was cut in stone upon the first house; and so fine and well-proportioned was each superscription that the houses� declension from gentility was the more evident and melancholy. michael was at last attracted to a crescent of villas terminating an unfrequented gray street and, for the sake of a pathetic privacy, guarded in front by a sickle-shaped inclosure of grimy portugal laurels. neptune crescent, partly on account of its name and partly on account of the peculiar vitreous tint which the stone had acquired with age, carried a marine suggestion. the date _ _ in spidery numerals and the iron verandas, which even on this june day were a mockery, helped the illusion that here was a forgotten by-way in an old sea-port. a card advertising apartments stood in the window of number fourteen. michael signaled the driver to stop: then he alighted and rang the bell. the crescent was strangely silent. very far away he could hear the whistle of a train. close at hand there was nothing but the jingle of the horse�s harness and the rusty mewing of a yellow cat which was wheedling its lean body in and out of the railings of the falciform garden. soon the landlady opened the door and stood inquisitively in the narrow passage. she was a woman of probably about thirty-five with stubby fingers; her skin was rather moist, but she had a good-natured expression, and perhaps when the curl-papers were taken out from her colorless hair, and when lace frills and common finery should soften her turgid outlines she would be handsome in a labored sort of way. the discussion with mrs. murdoch about her vacant rooms did not take long. michael had made up his mind to any horrors of dirt and discomfort, and he was really pleasantly surprised by their appearance. as for mrs. murdoch, she was evidently too much interested to know what had brought michael to her house to make any difficulties in the way of his accommodation. �will you want dinner to-night?� she asked doubtfully. �no, but i�d like some tea now, if you can manage it; and i suppose you can let me have a latchkey?� �i�ve got the kettle on the boil at this moment. i was going out myself for the evening. meeting my husband at the horseshoe. there�s only one other lodger�miss carlyle. and she�s in the profession.� as mrs. murdoch made this announcement, she looked up at the fly-frecked ceiling, and michael thought how extraordinarily light and meaningless her eyes were and how curiously dim and heavy this small sitting-room was against the brilliancy of the external summer. �well, then, tea when i can get it,� said mrs. murdoch cheerfully. �and the double-u is just next your bedroom on the top floor. that�s all, i think.� she left him with a backward smile over her shoulder, as if she were loath to relinquish the study of this unusual visitor to neptune crescent. michael when he was alone examined the chairs that were standing about the room as stiff as grenadiers in their red rep. he stripped them of their antimacassars and pulled the one that looked least uncomfortable close to the window. outside, the yellow cat was still mewing; but the cab was gone and down the gray street that led to neptune crescent here and there sad-gaited wayfarers were visible. two or three sparrows were cheeping in a battered laburnum, and all along the horizon the blue sky descending to the smoke of london had lost its color and had been turned to the similitude of tarnished metal. a luxurious mournfulness was in the view, and he leaned out over the sill scenting the reasty london air. it was with a sudden shock of conviction that michael realized he was in neptune crescent, camden town, and that yesterday he had actually been in oxford. and why was he here? the impulse which had brought him must have lain deeper in the recesses of his character than those quixotic resolutions roused by drake�s legend of lily. he would not otherwise have determined at once upon so complete a demigration. he would have waited to test the truth of drake�s story. his first emotional despair had vanished with almost unaccountable ease. certainly he wanted to be independent of the criticism of his friends until he had proved his purpose unwavering, and he might ascribe this withdrawal to a desire for a secluded and unflinching contemplation of a life that from cheyne walk he could never focus. but ultimately he must acknowledge that his sojourn here, following as it did straight upon his entrance into the underworld through the disappointing portals of the seven sisters road, was due to that ancient lure of the shades. this experience was foredoomed from very infancy. it was designated in childish dreams to this day indelible. he could not remember any period in his life when the speculum of hidden thought had not reflected for his fear that shadow of evil which could overcast the manifestations of most ordinary existence. those days of london fog when he had sat desolately in the pinched red house in carlington road; those days when on his lonely walks he had passed askance by padua terrace; the shouting of murders by newspaper-boys on drizzled december nights; all those dreadful intimations in childhood had procured his present idea of london. with the indestructible truth of earliest impressions they still persisted behind the outward presentation of a normal and comfortable procedure in the midst of money, friends, and well-bred conventions. nor had that speculum been merely the half-savage fancy of childhood, the endowment by the young of material things with immaterial potencies. phantoms which had slunk by as terrors invisible to the blind eyes of grown-ups had been abominably incarnate for him. brother aloysius had been something more than a mere personification, and that life which the ex-monk had indicated as scarcely even below the surface, so easy was it to enter, had he not entered it that one night very easily? destiny, thought michael, had stood with pointed finger beside the phantoms and the realities of the underworld. there for him lay very easily discernible the true corollary to the four years of oxford. they had been years of rest and refreshment, years of armament with wise and academic and well-observed theories of behavior that would defeat the victory of evil. it was very satisfactory to discover definitely that he was not a pragmatist. he had suspected all that crew of philosophers. he would bring back lily from evil, not from any illusion of evil. he would not allow himself to disparage the problem before him by any speciousness of worldly convenience. it was imperative to meet lily again as one who moving in the shadows meets another in the nether gloom. they had met first of all as boy and girl, as equals. now he must not come too obviously from the world she had left behind her. such an encounter would never give him more than at best a sentimental appeal; at worst it could have the air of a priggish reclamation, and she would forever elude him, she with secret years within her experience. his instinct first to sever himself from his own world must have been infallible, and it was on account of that instinct that now he found himself in neptune crescent leaning over the window-sill and scenting the reasty london air. and how well secluded was this room. if he met lonsdale or maurice or wedderburn, it would be most fantastically amusing to evade them at the evening�s end, to retreat from their company into camden town; into neptune crescent unimaginable to them; into this small room with its red rep chairs and horsehair sofa and blobbed valances and curtains; to this small room where the dark blue wall-paper inclosed him with a matted vegetation and the picture of belshazzar�s feast glowered above the heavy sideboard; to this small room made rich by the two thorny shells upon the mantelpiece, by the bowl of blond goldfish in ceaseless dim circumnatation, and by those colored pampas plumes and the bulrushes in their conch of nacreous glass. mrs. murdoch came in with tea which he drank while she stood over him admiringly. �do you think you�ll be staying long?� she inquired. michael asked if she wanted the rooms for anyone else. �no. no. i�m really very glad to let them. you�ll find it nice and quiet here. there�s only miss carlyle, who�s in the profession and comes in sometimes a little late. mr. murdoch is a chemist. but of course he hasn�t got his own shop now.� she paused, and seemed to expect michael would comment on mr. murdoch�s loss of independence; so he said, �of course not,� nodding wisely. �there was a bit of trouble through his being too kind-hearted to a servant-girl,� said mrs. murdoch, looking quickly at the door and shaking her curl-papers. �yes. though i don�t know why i�m telling you straight off as you might say. but there, i�m funny sometimes. if i take to anybody, there�s nothing i won�t do for them. alf�that _is_ my old man�he gets quite aggravated with me over it. so if you happen to get into conversation with him, you�d better not let on you know he used to have a shop of his own.� michael, wondering how far off were these foreshadowed intimacies with his landlord, promised he would be very discreet, and asked where mr. murdoch was working now. �in a chemist�s shop. just off of the euston road. you know,� she said, beaming archly. �it�s what you might call rather a funny place. only he gets good money, because the boss knows he can trust him.� michael nodded his head in solemn comprehension of mr. murdoch�s reputation, and asked his landlady if she had such a thing as a postcard. �well, there. i wonder if i have. if i have, it�s in the kitchen dresser, that�s a sure thing. perhaps you�d like to come down and see the kitchen?� michael followed her downstairs. there were no basements in neptune crescent, and he was glad to think his bedroom was above his sitting-room and on the top floor. it would have been hot just above the kitchen. �miss carlyle has her room here,� said mrs. murdoch, pointing next door to the kitchen. �nice and handy for her as she�s rather late sometimes. i hate to hear anybody go creaking upstairs, i do. it makes me nervous.� the kitchen was pleasant enough and looked out upon a narrow strip of garden full of coarse plants. �they�ll be very merry and bright, won�t they?� said mrs. murdoch, smiling encouragement at the greenery. �it�s wonderful what you can do nowadays for threepence.� michael asked what they were. �why, sunflowers, of course, only they want another month yet. i have them every year�yes. they�re less trouble than rabbits or chickens. now where did i see that postcard?� she searched the various utensils, and at last discovered the postcard stuck behind a mutilated clock. �what _will_ they bring out next?� demanded mrs. murdoch, surveying it with affectionate approbation. �pretty, i call it.� a pair of lovers in black plush were sitting enlaced beneath a pink frosted moon. �just the thing, if you�re writing to your young lady,� said mrs. murdoch, offering it to michael. he accepted it with many expressions of gratitude, but when he was in his own room he laughed very much at the idea of sending it to his mother in cheyne walk. however, as he must write and tell her he would not be home for some time, he decided to go out and buy both writing materials and unillustrated postcards. when he came back he found mrs. murdoch feathered for the evening�s entertainment. she gave him the latchkey, and from his window michael watched her progress down neptune crescent. just before her lavender dress disappeared behind the portugal laurels she turned round and waved to him. he wondered what his mother would say if she knew from what curious corner of london the news of his withdrawal would reach her to-night. the house was very still, and the refulgence of the afternoon light streaming into the small room fused the raw colors to a fiery concordancy. upon the silence sounded presently a birdlike fidgeting, and michael going out onto the landing to discover what it was, caught to his surprise the upward glance of a thin little woman in untidy pink. �hulloa!� she cried. �i never knew there was anybody in�you did give me a turn. i�ve only just woke up.� michael explained the situation, and she seemed relieved. �i�ve been asleep all the afternoon,� she went on. �but it�s only natural in this hot weather to go to sleep in the afternoon if you don�t go out for a walk. why don�t you come down and talk to me while i have some tea?� michael accepted the invitation with a courtesy which he half suspected this peaked pink little creature considered diverting. �you�ll excuse the general untidiness,� she said. �but really in this weather anyone can�t bother to put their things away properly.� michael assented, and looked round at the room. it certainly was untidy. the large bed was ruffled where she had been lying down, and the soiled copy of a novelette gave it a sort of stale slovenry. over the foot hung an accumulation of pink clothes. on the chairs, too, there were clothes pink and white, and the door bulged with numberless skirts. miss carlyle herself wore a pink blouse whose front had escaped the constriction of a belt. even her face was a flat unshaded pink, and her thin lips would scarcely have showed save that the powder round the edges was slightly caked. yet there was nothing of pink�s freshness and pleasant crudity in the general effect. it was a tired, a frowsy pink like a fondant that has lain a long while in a confectioner�s window. �take a chair and make yourself at home,� she invited him. �what�s your name?� he told her �fane.� �you silly thing, you don�t suppose i�m going to call you mr. fane, do you? what�s your other name? michael? that�s irish, isn�t it? i used to know a fellow once called micky sullivan. i suppose they call you micky at home.� he was afraid he was invariably known as michael, and miss carlyle sighed at the stiff sort of a name it was. �mine�s poppy,� she volunteered. �that�s much more free and easy. or i think so,� she added rather doubtfully, as michael did not immediately celebrate its license by throwing pillows at her. �are you really lodging here?� she went on. �you don�t look much like a pro.� michael said that was so much the better, as he wasn�t one. �i�ve got you at last,� cried poppy. �you�re a shop-walker at russell�s.� he could not help laughing very much at this, and the queer pink room seemed to become more faded at the sound of his merriment. poppy looked offended by the reception of her guess, and michael hastened to restore her good temper by asking questions of her. �you�re on the stage, aren�t you?� �i usually get into panto,� she admitted. �aren�t you acting now?� �yes, i don�t think. you needn�t be funny.� �i wasn�t trying to be funny.� �you mind your business,� she said bitterly. �and i�ll look after mine.� �there doesn�t seem to be anything very rude in asking if you�re acting now,� said michael. �oh, shut up! as if you didn�t know.� �know what?� he repeated. he looked so genuinely puzzled that poppy seemed to make an effort to overcome her suspicion of his mockery. �it�s five years since i went on the game,� she said. michael blushed violently, partly on her account, partly for his own stupidity, and explained that mrs. murdoch had told him she was in the profession. �well, you didn�t expect her to say �my ground-floor front�s a gay woman,� did you?� he agreed that such an abrupt characterization would have surprised him. �well, i�m going out to get dinner now,� she announced. �why don�t you dine with me?� michael suggested. she looked at him doubtfully. �can you afford it?� �i think i could manage it.� �because if we _are_ in the same house that doesn�t say you�ve got to pay my board, does it?� she demanded proudly. �once in a way won�t matter,� michael insisted. �and we might go on to a music hall afterward.� �yes, we might, if i hadn�t got to pay the woman who�s looking after my kid for some clothes she�s made for him,� said poppy. �and sitting with you at the holborn all night won�t do that. no, you can give me dinner and then i�ll p.o. i�m not going to put on a frock even for you, because i never get off only when i�m in a coat and skirt.� michael rose to leave the room while poppy got ready. �go on, sit down. as you�re going to take me out to dinner, you can talk to me while i dress as a reward.� in this faded pink room where the sun was by now shining with a splendor that made all the strewn clothes seem even more fusty and overblown, michael could not have borne to see a live thing take shape as it were from such corruption. he made an excuse therefore of letters to be written and left poppy to herself, asking to be called when she was ready. michael�s own room upstairs had a real solidity after the ground-floor front. he wondered if it were possible that lily was inhabiting at this moment such a room as poppy�s. it could not be. it could not be. and he realized that he had pictured lily like manon in the midst of luxury, craving for magnificence and moving disdainfully before gilded mirrors. this poppy carlyle of neptune crescent belonged to another circle of the underworld. lily would be tragical, but this little peaked creature downstairs was scarcely even pathetic. indeed, she was almost grotesque with the coat and skirt that was to insure her getting off. of course her only chance was to attract a jaded glance by her positive plainness, her schoolma�am air, her decent unobtrusiveness. yet she was plucky, and she had accepted the responsibility of supporting her child. there was, too, something admirable in the candor with which she had treated him. there was something friendly and birdlike about her, and he thought how when he had been first aware of her movements below he had compared them to a bird�s fidgeting. there was something really appealing about the gay woman of the ground-floor front. he laughed at her description; and then he remembered regretfully that he had allowed her to forego what might after all have been for her a pleasant evening because she must pay for some clothes the woman who was looking after her child. he could so easily have offered to give her the money. no matter, he could make amends at once and offer it to her now. it would be doubtless an unusual experience for her to come into contact with someone whose rule of life was not dictated by the brutal self-interest of those with whom her commerce must generally lie. she would serve to bring to the proof his theory that so much of the world�s beastliness could be cleansed by having recourse to the natural instincts of decent behavior without any grand effort of reformation. nevertheless, michael did feel very philanthropic when he went down to answer poppy�s summons. �i say,� he began at once. �it was stupid of me just now not to suggest that i should find the money for your kid�s clothes. look here, we�ll go to the holborn after dinner and��� he paused. he felt a delicacy in inquiring how much exactly she might expect to lose by giving him her company��and�er�i suppose a couple of pounds would buy something?� �i say, kiddie, you�re a sport,� she said. �only look here, don�t go and spend more than what you can afford. it isn�t as if we�d met by chance, as you might say.� �oh no, i can afford two pounds,� michael assured her. �where shall we go? i know a nice room which the woman lets me have for four shillings. that�s not too much, is it?� he was touched by her eager consideration for his purse, and he stammered, trying to explain as gently as he could that the two pounds was not offered for hire. �but, kiddie, i can�t bring you back here. not even if you do lodge here. these aren�t gay rooms.� �i don�t want to go anywhere with you,� said michael. �the money is a present.� �oh, is it?� she flamed out. �then you can keep your dirty money. thanks, i haven�t come down to charity. not yet. if i�m not good enough for you, you can keep your money. i believe you�re nothing more than a dirty ponce. i�ve gone five years without keeping a fellow yet. and i�m not going to begin now. that�s very certain. are you going out or am i going out? because i don�t want to be seen with you. you and your presents. gard! i should have to be drunk on claret and lemon before i went home with you.� michael had nothing to say to her and so he went out, closing the front door quickly upon her rage. his first impression when he gained the fresh air was of a fastidious disgust. here in the crescent the orange lucency of the evening shed such a glory that the discoloration of the houses no longer spoke of miserably drawn-out decay, but took on rather the warmth of live rock. the deepening shadows of that passage where the little peaked creature had spat forth her fury made him shudder with the mean and vicious passions they now veiled. very soon, however, his disgust died away. looking back at neptune crescent, he knew there was not one door in all that semicircle which did not putatively conceal secrets like those of number fourteen. like poisonous toadstools in rankness and gloom, the worst of human nature must flourish here. it was foolish to be disgusted; indeed, already a half-aroused curiosity had taken its place, and michael regretted that he had not stayed to hear what more she would have said. how far she had been from appreciating the motives that prompted his offer of money. poppy�s injustice began to depress him. he felt, walking southward to piccadilly, an acute sense of her failure to be grateful from his point of view. it hurt him to find sincerity so lightly regarded. then he realized that it was her vanity which had been touched. _hell knows no fury like a woman scorned._ the ability to apply such a famous generalization directly to himself gave michael a great satisfaction. it was strange to be so familiar with a statement, and then suddenly like this to be staggered by its truth. he experienced a sort of pride in linking himself on to one of the great commonplaces of rhetoric. he need no longer feel misjudged, since poppy had played a universal part. in revulsion he felt sorry for her. he hated to think how deeply her pride must have been wounded. he could not expect her to esteem the reason which had made him refuse her. she could have little comprehension of fastidiousness and still less could she grasp the existence of an abstract morality that in its practical expression must have seemed to her so insulting. that, however, did not impugn the morality, nor did it invalidate the desire to befriend her. impulse had not really betrayed him: the mistake had been in his tactlessness, in a lack of worldly knowledge. moreover, poppy was only an incident, and until lily was found he had no business to turn aside. nevertheless, he had learned something this evening; he had seen proved in action a famous postulate of feminine nature, and the truth struck him with a sharpness that no academic demonstration had ever had the power to effect. on the whole, michael was rather pleased with himself as he rode on the front seat of the omnibus down tottenham court road in the cool of the evening. at the horseshoe he alighted and went into the saloon bar on the chance of seeing what mr. murdoch looked like; but there was no sign of the landlady and her husband. the saloon bar smelt very strongly of spilt stout; and a number of men, who looked like draymen in tailcoats and top-hats, were arguing about money. he was glad to leave the tavern behind; and in a soho restaurant he ate a tranquil dinner, listening with much amusement to the people round him. he liked to hear each petty host assure his guests that he had brought them to a place of which very few but himself knew. all the diners under the influence of this assurance stared at one another like conspirators. just before nine o�clock. michael reached the orient palace of varieties, and with excitement bubbling up within him, notwithstanding all his efforts to stay unmoved, he joined the throng of the promenade. he looked about him at first in trepidation. although all the way from camden town he had practiced this meeting with lily, now at its approach his presence of mind vanished, and he felt that to meet her suddenly without a longer preparation would lead him to make a fool of himself. however, in the first quick glance he could not see anyone who resembled her, and he withdrew to the secluded apex of the curving promenade whence he could watch most easily the ebb and flow of the crowd. that on the stage a lady of the haute école was with a curious wooden rapidity putting a white horse through a number of tricks did not concern his attention beyond the moment. for him the promenade was the performance. certainly at the orient it was a better staged affair than that weary heterogeneous mob at the oxford. at the orient there was an unity of effect, an individuality, and a conscious equipment. at the oxford the whole business had resembled a suburban parade. here was a real exposition of vice like the jetty of alexandria in olden days. indeed, so cynical was the function of the orient promenade that the frankness almost defeated its object, and the frequenters instead of profiting by the facilities for commerce allowed themselves to be drugged into perpetual meditation upon an attractive contingency. seen from this secluded corner, the promenade resembled a well-filled tank in an aquarium. the upholstery of shimmering green plush, the dim foreground, the splash of light from the bar in one corner, the gliding circumambient throng among the pillars and, displayed along the barrier, the bright-hued ladies like sea-anemones�there was nothing that spoiled the comparison. moreover, the longer michael looked, the more nearly was the effect achieved. at intervals women whose close-fitting dresses seemed deliberately to imitate scales went by: and generally the people eyed one another with the indifferent frozen eyes of swimming fish. there was indeed something cold-blooded in the very atmosphere, and it was from, this rapacious and vivid shoal of women that he was expecting lily to materialize. yet he was better able to imagine her in the luxury of the orient than sleeping down the sun over a crumpled novelette in such a room as poppy�s in camden town. the evening wore itself away, and the motion in that subaqueous air was restful in its continuity. michael was relieved by the assurance that he had still a little time in which to compose himself to face the shock he knew he must ultimately expect from meeting lily again. the evening wore itself away. the lady of the haute école was succeeded by a band of caucasian wrestlers, by a troupe of bolivian gymnasts, by half a dozen cosmopolitan ebullitions of ingenuity. the ballet went its mechanical course, and as each line of dancers grouped themselves, it was almost possible to hear the click of the kaleidoscope�s shifting squares and lozenges. michael wondered vaguely about the girls in the ballet and whether they were happy. it seemed absurd to think that down there on the stage there were eighty or ninety individuals each with a history, so little more did they seem from here than dolls. and on the promenade where it was quite certain that every woman had a history to account for her presence there, how utterly living had quenched life. the ballet was over, and he passed out into the streets. for a fortnight michael came every evening to the orient without finding lily. they were strange evenings, these that were spent in the heart of london without meeting anyone he knew. it was no doubt by the merest chance that none of his friends saw him at the orient, and yet he began to fancy that actually every evening he did, as it were, by some enchantment fade from the possibility of recognition. he felt as if his friends would not perceive his presence, so much would they in that circumambient throng take on the characteristics of its eternal motion. they too, he felt, irresponsive as fish, would glide backward and forward with the rest. nor did michael meet anyone whom he knew at any of the restaurants or cafés to which he went after the theater. by the intensity of his one idea, the discovery of lily, he cut himself off from all communion with the life of the places he visited. he often thought that perhaps acquaintances saw him there, that perhaps he had seemed deliberately to avoid their greetings and for that reason had never been hailed. yet he was aware of seeing women whom he had seen the night before, mostly because they bore a superficial likeness to lily; and sometimes he would be definitely conscious of a dress or a hat, perceiving it in the same place at the same hour, but never meeting the wearer�s glance. he did not make any attempt to be friendly with poppy after their unpleasant encounter, and he always tried to be sure they would not meet in the hall or outside the front door. that he was successful in avoiding her gave him a still sharper sense of the ease with which it was possible to seclude one�s self from the claims of human intercourse. he was happy in his room at neptune crescent, gazing out over the sickle-shaped garden of portugal laurels, listening in a dream to the distant cries of railway traffic and reading the books which every afternoon he brought back from charing cross road, so many books indeed that presently the room in neptune crescent came curiously to resemble rooms in remote digs at oxford, where poor scholars imposed their books on surroundings they could not afford to embellish. mrs. murdoch could not make michael out at all. she used to stand and watch him reading, as if he were performing an intricate surgical operation. �i never in all my life saw anyone read like you do,� she affirmed. �doesn�t it tire your eyes?� then she would move a step nearer and spell out the title of the book, looking sideways at it like a fat goose. �holy living and holy dying. ugh! enough to give you the horrors, isn�t it? and only this morning they hung that fellow at pentonville. this _is_ tuesday, isn�t it?� after three or four days of trying to understand him, mrs. murdoch decided that alf must be called in to solve his peculiarity. mr. alfred murdoch was younger than michael had expected. he could scarcely have been more than forty, and michael had formed a preconception of an elderly chemist reduced by misfortune and misdeeds to the status of one of those individuals who with a discreet manner somewhere between a family doctor and a grocer place themselves at the service of the public in an atmosphere of antiseptics. mr. murdoch was not at all like this. he was a squat swarthy man with one very dark eye that stared fixedly regardless of the expression of its fellow. michael could not make up his mind whether this eye were blind or not. he rather hoped it was, but in any case its fierce blankness was very disconcerting. conversation between michael and mr. murdoch was not very lively, and mrs. murdoch�s adjutant inquisitiveness made michael the more monosyllabic whenever her husband did commit himself to a direct inquiry. �i looked for you in the horseshoe the other evening,� said michael finally, at a loss how in any other way to give mr. murdoch an impression that he took the faintest interest in his existence. �in the horseshoe?� repeated mr. murdoch, in surprise. �i never go to the horseshoe only when a friend asks me in to have one.� michael saw mrs. murdoch frowning at him, and, perceiving that there was a reason why her husband must not suppose she had been to the horseshoe on the evening of his arrival, he said he had gathered somehow, he did not exactly know where or why or when, that mr. murdoch was often to be found in the horseshoe. he wished this awkward and unpleasant man would leave him and cock his rolling eye anywhere else but in his room. �bit of a reader, aren�t you?� inquired the chemist. michael admitted he read a good deal. �ever read jibbon�s decline and fall of the roman empire?� continued the chemist. �some of it.� mr. murdoch said in that case it was just as well he hadn�t bought some volumes he�d seen on a barrow in the caledonian road. �four-and-six, with two books out in the middle,� he proclaimed. michael could merely nod his comment, though he racked his brains to think of some remark that would betray a vestige of cordiality. mr. murdoch got up to retire to the kitchen. he evidently did not find his tenant sympathetic. outside on the landing michael heard him say to his wife: �stuck up la-di-da sort of a ��, isn�t he?� presently the wife came up again. �how did you like my old man?� �oh, very much.� �did you notice his eye?� michael said he had noticed something. �his brother fred did that for him.� she spoke proudly, as if fred�s act had been a humane achievement. �when they were boys,� she explained. �it gives him a funny look. i remember when i first met him it gave me the creeps, but i don�t notice it really now. would you believe he couldn�t see an elephant with it?� �i wondered if it were blind,� said michael. �blind as a leg of mutton,� said mrs. murdoch, and still there lingered in her accents a trace of pride. then suddenly her demeanor changed and there crept over her countenance what michael was bound to believe to be an expression of coyness. �don�t say anything more to alf about the horseshoe. you see, i only gave you the idea i was meeting him, because i didn�t really know you very well at the time. of course really i�d gone to see my sister. no, without a joke, i was spending the evening with a gentleman friend.� michael looked at her in astonishment. �my old man wouldn�t half knock me about, if he had the least suspicion. but it�s someone i knew before i was married, and that makes a difference, doesn�t it?� �does your husband go out with lady friends he knew before he was married?� michael asked, and wondered if mrs. murdoch would see an implied reproof. �what?� she shrilled. �i�d like to catch him nosing after another woman. he wouldn�t see a hundred elephants before i�d done with him. i�d show him.� �but why should you have freedom and not he?� michael asked. �never mind about him. you let him try. you see what he�d get.� michael did not think the argument could be carried on very profitably. so he showed signs of wanting to return to his book, and mrs. murdoch retired. what extraordinary standards she had, and how bitterly she was prepared to defend a convention, for after all in such a marriage the infidelity of the husband was nothing but a conventional offense: she obviously had no affection for him. the point of view became very topsyturvy in neptune crescent, michael decided. on the last evening of the fortnight during which he had regularly visited the orient, michael went straight back to camden town without waiting to scan the cafés and restaurants until half-past twelve as he usually had. this abode in neptune crescent was empty, and as always when that was the case the personality of the house was very vivid upon his imagination. as he turned up the gas-jet in the hall, the cramped interior with its fusty smell and its thread-bare staircarpet disappearing into the upper gloom round the corner seemed to be dreadfully closing in upon him. the old house conveyed a sense of having the power to choke out of him every sane and orderly and decent impulse. for a whim of tristfulness, for the luxury of consummating the ineffable depression the house created in him, michael prepared to glance at every one of the five rooms. the front door armed with the exaggerated defenses of an earlier period in building tempted him to lock and double-lock it, to draw each bolt and to fasten the two clanking chains. he had the fantastic notion to do this so that mr. and mrs. murdoch and poppy might stay knocking and ringing outside in the summer night, while himself escaped into the sunflowers of the back garden and went climbing over garden wall and garden wall to abandon this curious mixture of salacity and respectableness, of flimsiness and solidity, this quite indefinably raffish and sinister and yet in a way strangely cozy house. he opened gingerly the door of the ground-floor front. he peered cautiously in, lest poppy should be lying on her bed. the gas-jet was glimmering with a scarcely perceptible pinhead of blue flame, but the light from the passage showed all her clothes still strewn about. from the open door came out the faint perfume of stale scent which mingled with the fusty odor of the passage in a most subtle expression of the house�s personality. he closed the door gently. in the silence it seemed almost as if the least percussion would rouse the very clothes from their stupor of disuse. in the kitchen was burning another pinhead of gas, and the light from the passage reaching here very dimly was only just sufficient to give all the utensils a ghostly sheen and to show the mutilated hands at a quarter past five upon the luminous face of the clock. this unreal hour added the last touch to unreality, and when michael went upstairs and saw the books littering his room, even they were scarcely sound guarantors of his own actuality. he had a certain queasiness in opening the door of the murdochs� bedroom, and he was rather glad when he was confronted here by a black void whose secrecy he did not feel tempted to violate. with three or four books under his arm he went upstairs to bed. as he leaned out of the window two cats yawled and fizzed at one another among the laurels, and then scampered away into muteness. from a scintillation of colored lights upon the horizon he could hear the scrannel sounds of the railway come thinly along the night air. nothing else broke the silence of the nocturnal streets. michael felt tired, and he was disappointed by his failure to find lily. just as he was dozing off, he remembered that his viva voce at oxford was due some time this week. he must go back to cheyne walk to-morrow, and on this resolution he fell asleep. michael woke up with a start and instantly became aware that the house was full of discordant sounds. for a minute or two he lay motionless trying to connect the noise with the present, trying to separate his faculties from the inspissate air that seemed to be throttling them. he was not yet free from the confusion of sleep, and for a few seconds he could only perceive the sound almost visibly churning the clotted darkness that was stifling him. gradually the clamor resolved itself into the voices of mr. murdoch, mrs. murdoch and poppy at the pitch of excitement. nothing was intelligible except the oaths that came up in a series of explosions detached from the main din. he got out of bed and lit the gas, saw that it was one o�clock, dressed himself roughly, and opened the door of his room. �yes, my lad, you thought you was very clever.� �no, i didn�t think i was clever. now then.� �yes! you can spend all your money on that muck. the sauce of it. in a hansom!� here poppy�s voice came in with a malignant piping sound. �muck yourself, you dirty old case-keeper!� �you call me a case-keeper? what men have i ever let you bring back here?� mrs. murdoch�s voice was swollen with wrath. �you don�t know how many men i haven�t brought back. so now, you great ugly mare!� poppy howled. �the only fellow you�ve ever brought to my house is that one-eyed �� who calls himself my husband. mister _mur_doch! mis-ter _murdoch!_ and you get out of my house in the streets where you belong. i don�t want no two-and-fours in _my_ house.� �hark at her!� poppy cried, in a horrible screaming laugh. �why don�t you go back on the streets yourself? why, i can remember you as one of the old fourpenny hasbeens when i was still dressmaking; a dirty drunken old teat that couldn�t have got off with a blind tramp.� michael punctuated each fresh taunt and accusation with a step forward to interfere; and every time he held himself back, pondering the impossibility of extracting from these charges and countercharges any logical assignment of blame. it made him laugh to think how extraordinarily in the wrong they all three were and at the same time how they were all perfectly convinced they were right. the only factor left out of account was mrs. murdoch�s own behavior. he wondered rather what effect that gentleman friend would produce on the husband. he decided that he had better go back to bed until the racket subsided. then, just as he was turning away in the midst of an outpouring of vileness far more foul than anything uttered so far, he heard what sounded like a blow. that of course could not be tolerated, and he descended to intervene. the passage was the field of battle, and the narrow space seemed to give not only an added virulence to the fight, but also an added grotesquery. when michael arrived at the head of the staircase, alf had pinned his wife to the wall and was shouting to poppy over his shoulder to get back into her own room. poppy would go halfway, but always a new insult would occur to her, and she would return to fling it at mrs. murdoch, stabbing the while into its place again a hatpin which during her retreats she always half withdrew. as for mrs. murdoch, she was by now weeping hysterically and occasionally making sudden forward plunges that collapsed like jelly. michael paused at the head of the stairs, wondering what to say. it seemed to him really rather a good thing that alf was restraining his wife. it would be extremely unpleasant to have to separate the two women if they closed with each other. he had almost decided to retire upstairs again, when poppy caught sight of him and at once turned her abuse in his direction. �what�s it got to do with you?� she screamed. �what�s the good in you standing gaping there? we all know what _you_ are. we all know what she�s always going up to _your_ room for.� mrs. murdoch was heaving and puffing and groaning, and while alf held her, his rolling eye with fierce and meaningless stare nearly made michael laugh. however, he managed to be serious, and gravely advised poppy to go to bed. �don�t you dare try to order me about!� she shrieked. �keep your poncified ways for that fat old maggot which her husband can�t hardly hold, and i don�t blame him. she�s about as big as a omnibus.� �oh, you wicked woman,� sobbed mrs. murdoch. �oh, you mean, hateful snake-in-the-grass! oh, you filth!� �hold your jaw,� commanded alf. �if you don�t want me to punch into you.� �all day she�s in his room. let him stand up and deny it if he can, the dirty tyke. why don�t you punch into _him,_ alf?� poppy screamed. still that wobbling eye, blank and ferocious, was fixed upon vacancy. �let _me_ look after mrs. murdoch i _don�t_ think!� shouted poppy. �and be a man, even if you can�t keep your old woman out of the lodger�s room. �� ��! i wouldn�t half slosh his jaw in, if i was a man, the �� ��!� it was a question for michael either of laughing outright or of being nauseated at the oaths streaming from that little woman�s thin magenta lips. he laughed. even with her paint, she still looked so respectable. when he began to laugh, he laughed so uncontrollably that he had to hold on to the rail of the balusters until they rattled like ribs. michael�s laughter stung the group to frenzied action. mrs. murdoch spat in her husband�s face, whereupon he immediately loosed his grip upon her shoulders. in a moment she and poppy were clawing each other. michael, though he was still laughing unquenchably, rushed downstairs to part them. he had an idea that both of the women instantly turned and attacked him. the hat-stand fell over: the scurfy front-door mat slid up and down the oil cloth: there was a reek of stale scent and dust and spirituous breath. at last michael managed to secure poppy�s thin twitching arms and to hold her fast, though she was kicking him with sharp-heeled boots and he was weak with inward laughter. mrs. murdoch in the lull began fecklessly to gather together the strands of her disordered hair. alf, who had gone to peep from the window of the ground-floor front in case a policeman�s bull�s-eye were glancing on neptune crescent, reappeared in the doorway. �what a smell of gas!� he exclaimed nervously. there was indeed a smell of gas, and michael remembered that poppy in her struggle had grasped the bracket. she must have dislocated the lead pipe rather badly, for the light was already dimming and the gas was rushing out fast. the tumultuous scene was allayed. mr. murdoch hurried to cut off the main. poppy retired into her room, slammed and locked the door. michael went upstairs to bed, and just as darkness descended upon the house he saw his landlady painfully trying to raise the hat-stand, while with the other arm she felt aimlessly for strands of tumbled hair. next morning michael was surprised to see mrs. murdoch enter very cheerfully with his tea; her hair that so short a time since had seemed eternally intractable had now shriveled into subjugatory curl-papers: of last night�s tear-smudged face remained no memory in this beaming countenance. �quite a set-out we had last night, didn�t we?� she said expansively. �but that poppy, really, you know, she is the limit. driving home with my old man in a hansom cab. there�s a nice game to get up to. i was bound to let her have it. i couldn�t have held myself in.� �i suppose you�ll get rid of her now,� said michael. �oh, well, she�s not so bad in some ways, and very quiet as a rule. she was a bit canned last night, and i suppose i�d had one or two myself. oh, well, it wouldn�t do, would it, if we never had a little enjoyment in this life?� she left him wondering how he would ever be able to readjust his standards to the topsyturvy standards of the underworld, the topsyturvy feuds and reconciliations, the hatreds; the loves and jealousies and fears. but to-day he must leave this looking-glass world for a time. mrs. murdoch was very much upset by his departure from neptune crescent. �it seems such a pity,� she said. �and just as i was beginning to get used to your ways. oh, well, we�ll meet again some day, i hope, this side of the cemetery.� michael felt some misgivings about ordering a hansom after last night, but mrs. murdoch went cheerfully enough to fetch one. he drove away from neptune crescent, waving to her where she stood in the small doorway looking very large under that rusty frail veranda. he also waved rather maliciously to poppy, as he caught sight of her sharp nose pressed against the panes of the ground-floor front. chapter iii the caf� d�orange michael came back to cheyne walk with a sense of surprise at finding that it still existed; and when he saw the parlormaid he half expected she would display some emotion at his reappearance. after neptune crescent, it was almost impossible to imagine a female who was not subject to the violence of her mutable emotions. yet her private life, the life of the alternate sunday evening out, might be as passionate and gusty as any scene in neptune crescent. he looked at the tortoise-mouthed parlormaid with a new interest, until she became waxily pink under his stare. �mrs. fane is in the drawing-room, sir.� it was as if she were rebuking his observation. his mother rose from her desk when he came to greet her. �dearest boy, how delightful to see you again, and so thoughtful of you to send me those postcards.� if she had asked him directly where he had been, he would have told her about neptune crescent, and possibly even about lily. but as she did not, he could reveal nothing of the past fortnight. it would have seemed to him like the boring recitation of a dream, which from other people was a confidence he always resented. �stella and alan are in the studio,� she told him. they chatted for a while of unimportant things, and then michael said he would go and find them. as he crossed the little quadrangle of pallid grass and heard in the distance the sound of the piano he could not keep back the thought of how utterly alan�s company had replaced his own. not that he was jealous, not that he was not really delighted; but a period of life was being rounded off. the laws of change were being rather ruthless just now. both alan and stella were so obviously glad to see him that the fleck of bitterness vanished immediately, and he was at their service. �where have you been?� stella demanded. �we go to richmond. we send frantic wires to you to join us on the river, and when we come back you�re gone. where have you been?� �i�ve been away,� michael answered, with a certain amount of embarrassment. �my dear old michael, we never supposed you�d been hiding in the cistern-cupboard for a fortnight,� said stella, striking three chords of cheerful contempt. �i believe he went back to oxford,� suggested alan. �i am going up to-morrow,� michael said. �when is your viva?� �next week. where are you going to stay?� �in college, if i can get hold of a room.� �bother oxford,� interrupted stella. �we want to know where you�ve been this fortnight.� �you do,� alan corrected. �i�ll tell you both later on,� michael volunteered. �just at present i suppose you won�t grudge me a secret. people who are engaged to be married should show a very special altruism toward people who are not.� �michael, i will not have you being important and carrying about a secret with you,� stella declared. �you can manage either me or alan,� michael offered. �but you simply shall not manage both of us. personally, i recommend you to break-in alan.� with evasive banter he succeeded in postponing the revelation of what he was, as stella said, up to. �we�re going in for herefords,� alan suddenly announced without consideration for the trend of the talk. �you know. those white-faced chaps.� michael looked at him in astonishment. �i was thinking about this place of stella�s in huntingdonshire,� alan explained. �we went down to see it last week.� �oh, alan, why did you tell him? he doesn�t deserve to be told.� �is it decent?� michael asked. �awfully decent,� said alan. �rather large, you know.� �in fact, we shall belong to the squirearchy,� cried stella, crashing down upon the piano with the first bars of chopin�s most exciting polonaise and from the polonaise going off into an absurd impromptu recitative. �we shall have a dog-cart�a high and shining dog-cart�and we shall go bowling down the lanes of the county of hunts�because in books about people who live in the county and of the county and by with or from the county dog-carts invariably bowl�we shall have a herd of herefordshire bulls and bullocks and bullockesses�and my husband alan with a straw in his mouth will go every morning with the bailiff to inspect their well-being�and three days every week from november to march we shall go hunting in huntingdon�and when we aren�t actually hunting in huntingdon we shall be talking about hunting�and we shall also talk about the primrose league and the foot-and-mouth disease and the evolutions of the new high church vicar�we shall....� but michael threw a cushion at her, and the recitative came to an end. they all three talked for a long while more seriously of plans for life at hardingham hall. �you know dear old prescott requested me in his will that i would hyphen his name on to mine, whether i were married or single,� said stella. �so we shall be mr. and mrs. prescott-merivale. alan has been very good about that, though i think he�s got a dim idea it�s putting on side. stella prescott-merivale or the curse of the county! and when i play i�m going to be madame merivale. i decline to be done out of the madame! and everybody will pronounce it marivahleh and i shall receive the unanimous encomia of the critical press.� �life will be rather a rag,� said michael, with approbation. �of course it�s going to be simply wonderful. can�t you see the headlines? from chopin to sheep. madame merivale, the famous virtuosa, and her flock of barbary long-tails.� it was all so very remote from neptune crescent, michael thought. they really were going to be so ridiculously happy, these two, in their country life. and now they were talking of finding him a house close to hardingham hall. there must be just that small georgian house, they vowed, where with a large garden of stately walks and a well-proportioned library of books he could stay in contented retreat. they promised him, too, that beyond the tallest cedar on the lawn a gazebo should command the widest, the greenest expanse of england ever beheld. �it would so add to our reputation in the county of hunts,� said stella, �if you were near by. we should feel so utterly augustan. and of course you�d ride a nag. i�m not sure really that you wouldn�t have to wear knee-breeches. i declare, michael, that the very idea makes me feel like jane austen, or do i mean doctor johnson?� �i should make up your mind which,� michael advised. �but you know what i mean,� she persisted. �the doctor�s wife would come in to tea and tell us that her husband had dug up a mummy or whatever it was the romans left about. and i should say, �we must ask my brother about it. my brother, my dear mrs. jumble, will be sure to know. my brother knows everything.� and she would agree with a pursed-up mouth. �oh, pray do, my dear mrs. prescott-merivale. everyone says your brother is a great scholar. it�s such a pleasure to have him at the lodge. so very distinguished, is it not?�� �if you�re supposed to be imitating jane austen, i may as well tell you at once that it�s not a bit like it.� �but i think you ought to come and live near us,� alan solemnly put in. �of course, my dear, he�s coming,� stella declared. �of course i�m not,� michael contradicted. but he was very glad they wanted him; and then he thought with a pang how little they would want him with lily in that well-proportioned library. how little lily would enjoy the fat and placid huntingdon meadows. how little, too, she would care to see the blackbird swagger with twinkling rump by the shrubbery�s edge or hear him scatter the leaves in shrill affright. in the quick vision that came to him of a sleek lawn possessed by birds, michael experienced his first qualm about the wisdom of what he intended to do. �and how about michael�s wife?� alan asked. michael looked quite startled by a query so coincident with his own. �oh, of course we shall find someone quite perfect for him,� stella confidently prophesied. �no, really,� said michael to hide his embarrassment. �i object. matchmaking ought not to begin during an engagement.� stella paid no heed to the protest, and she began to describe a lady-love who should well become the surroundings in which she intended to place him. �i think rather a quakerish person, don�t you, alan? rather neat and tiny with a great sense of humor and....� �in fact, an admirable sick nurse,� michael interposed, laughing. soon he left them in the studio and went for a walk by the side of the river, thinking, as he strolled in the shade of the plane-trees, how naturally stella would enter the sphere of english country life now that by fortune the opportunity had been given to her of following in the long line of her ancestors. that she would be able to do so seemed to michael an additional reason why he should consider less the security of his own future, and he was vexed with himself for that fleeting disloyalty to his task. michael stayed at high for his viva. he occupied wedderburn�s old white-paneled room, which he noted with relief was still sacred to the tradition of a carefully chosen decorousness. the viva was short and irrelevant. he supposed he had obtained a comfortable third, and really it seemed of the utmost unimportance in view of what a gulf now lay between him and oxford. however, he mustered enough interest to stay in cheyne walk until the lists were out, and during those ten days he made no attempt to find lily. alan got a third in greats and michael a first in history. michael�s immediate emotion was of gladness that alan had no reason now to feel the disappointment. then he began to wonder how on earth he had achieved a first. many letters of congratulation arrived; and one or two of the st. mary�s dons suggested he should try for a fellowship at all souls. the idea occupied his fancy a good deal, for it was attractive to have anything so remote come suddenly within the region of feasibleness. he would lose nothing by trying for it, and if he succeeded what a congenial existence offered itself. with private means he would be able to divide his time between oxford and london. there would really be nothing to mar the perfect amenity of the life that seemed to stretch before him. since he apparently had some talent (he certainly had not worked hard enough to obtain a first without some talent) he would prosecute the study of history. he would make himself famous in a select sort of way. he would become the authority of a minor tributary to the great stream of research. a set of very scholarly, very thorough works would testify to his reputation. there were plenty of archaic problems still to be solved. he cast a proprietary glance over the centuries, and he had almost decided to devote himself to the service of otto i and sylvester ii, when in a moment the thought of lily, sweeping as visibly before his mind as the ghost in an elizabethan play, made every kind of research into the past seem a waste of resolution. he tore up the congratulatory letters and decided to let the future wait a while. this pursuit of lily was a mad business, no doubt, but to come to grips with the present called for a certain amount of madness. alan remonstrated with him, when he heard that he had no intention of trying for all souls. �you are an extraordinary chap. you were always grumbling when you were up that you didn�t know what you ought to do, and now when it�s perfectly obvious you won�t make the slightest attempt to do it.� �used i to grumble?� asked michael. �well, not exactly grumble. but you were always asking theoretical questions which had no answer,� said alan severely. �what if i told you i�d found an answer to a great many of them?� �ever since i�ve been engaged to stella you�ve found it necessary to be very mysterious. what are you playing at, michael?� �it�s imaginable, don�t you think, that i might be making up my mind to do something which i considered more vital for me than a fellowship at all souls?� �but it seems so obvious after your easy first that you should clinch it.� �i tell you it was a fluke.� �my third wasn�t a fluke,� said alan. �i worked really hard for it.� �thirds and firsts are equally unimportant in the long run,� michael argued. �you have already fitted into your place with the most complete exactitude. there�s no dimension in your future that can possibly trouble you. supposing i get this fellowship? it will either be too big for me, in which case i shall have to be perpetually puffing out my frills and furbelows to make a pretense of filling it, or it will be too small, and i shall have to pare down my very soul in order to squeeze into it most uncomfortably.� �you�ll never do anything,� alan prophesied. �because you�ll always be doubting.� �i might get rid finally of that sense of insecurity,� michael pointed out. �with all doubts and hesitations i�m perfectly convinced of one great factor in human life�the necessity to follow the impulse which lies deeper than any reason. reason is the enemy of civilization. reason carried to the _nth_ power can always with absurd ease be debauched by sentiment, and sentiment is mankind�s wretched little lament for disobeying impulse. women preserve this divinity because they are irrational. the new woman claims equality with man because she claims to be as reasonable as men. she has fixed on voting for a member of parliament as the medium to display her reasonableness. the franchise is to be endowed with a sacramental significance. if the new women win, they will degrade themselves to the slavery of modern men. but of course they won�t win, because god is so delightfully irrational. by the way, it�s worth noting that the peculiar vestment with which popular fancy has clothed the new woman is called rational costume. you often hear of �rationals� as a synonym for breeches. what was i saying? oh, yes, about god being irrational. you never know what he�ll do next. he is a dreadful problem for rationalists. that�s why they have abolished him.� �you�re confusing two different kinds of reason,� said alan. �what you call impulse�unless your impulse is mere madness�is what i might call reason.� �in that case i recommend you as a philosopher to set about the reconstruction of your terminology. i�m not a philosopher, and therefore i�ve given this vague generic name �impulse� to something which deserves, such a powerful and infallible and overmastering impetus does it give to conduct, a very long name indeed.� �but if you�re going through life depending on impulse,� alan objected, �you�ll be no better off than a weathercock. you can�t discount reason in this way. you must admit that our judgments are modified by experience.� �the chief thing we learn from experience is to place upon it no reliance whatever.� �it�s no good arguing with you,� alan said. �because what you call impulse i call reason, and what you call reason i call imperfect logic.� �alan, i can�t believe you only got a third. for really, you know, your conversation is a model of the philosophic manner. anyway, i�m not going to try to be a fellow of all souls and you are going to be a country squire. let�s hold on to what certainties we can.� michael would have liked to lead him into a discussion of the problem of evil, so that he might ascertain if alan had ever felt the intimations of evil which had haunted his own perceptions. however, he thought he had tested to the utmost that third in greats, and therefore he refrained. there was a discussion that evening about going away. august was already in sight and arrangements must be made quickly to avoid the burden of it in london. in the end, it was arranged that mrs. fane and stella and alan should go to scotland, where michael promised to join them, if he could get away from london. �if you can get away!� stella scoffed. �what rot you do talk.� but michael was not to be teased out of his determination to stay where he was, and in three or four days he said good-bye to the others northward bound, waving to them from the steps of cheyne walk on which already the august sun was casting a heavy heat untempered by the stagnant sheen of the thames. that evening michael went again to the orient promenade; but there was no sign of lily, and it seemed likely that she had gone away from london for a while. after the performance he visited the café d�orange in leicester square. he had never been there yet, but he had often noticed the riotous exodus at half-past twelve, and he argued from the quality of the frequenters who stood wrangling on the pavement that the café d�orange would be a step lower than any of the night-resorts he had so far attended. he scarcely expected to find lily here. indeed, he was rather inclined to think that she was someone�s mistress and that drake�s view of her at the orient did not argue necessarily that she had yet sunk to the promiscuous livelihood of the promenade. downstairs at the café d�orange was rather more like a corner of hell than michael had anticipated. the tobacco smoke which could not rise in these subterranean airs hung in a blue murk round the gaudy hats and vile faces, while from the roof the electric lamps shone dazzlingly down and made a patchwork of light and shade and color. in a corner left by the sweep of the stairs a quartet of unkempt musicians in seamy tunics of beer-stained scarlet frogged with debilitated braid were grinding out ragtime. the noisy tune in combination with the talking and laughter, the chink of glasses and the shouted acknowledgments of the waiters made such a din that michael stood for a moment in confusion, debating the possibility of one more person threading his way through the serried tables to a seat. there were three arched recesses at the opposite end of the room, and in one of these he thought he could see a table with a vacant place. so paying no heed to the women who hailed him on the way he moved across and sat down. a waiter pounced upon him voraciously for orders, and soon with an unrequited drink he was meditating upon the scene before him in that state of curious tranquillity which was nearly always induced by ceaseless circumfluent clamor. sitting in this tunnel-shaped alcove, he seemed to be in the box of a theater whence the actions and voices of the contemplated company had the unreality of an operatic finale. after a time the various groups and individuals were separated in his mind, so that in their movements he began to take an easily transferred interest, endowing them with pleasant or unpleasant characteristics in turn. round him in the alcove there were strange contrasts of behavior. at one table four offensive youths were showing off with exaggerated laughter for the benefit of nobody�s attention. behind them in the crepuscule of two broken lamps a leaden-lidded girl; ivory white and cloying the air with her heavy perfume, was arguing in low passionate tones with a cold-eyed listener who with a straw was tracing niggling hieroglyphics upon a moist surface of cigarette-ash. in the deepest corner a girl with a high complexion and bright eyes was making ardent love to a partially drunk and bearded man, winking the while over her shoulder at whoever would watch her comedy. the other places were filled by impersonal women who sipped from their glasses without relish and stared disdainfully at each other down their powdered noses. at michael�s own table was a blotchy man who alternately sucked his teeth and looked at his watch; and immediately opposite sat a girl with a merry, audacious and somewhat pale face of the gallic type under a very large and round black hat trimmed with daisies. she was twinkling at michael, but he would not catch her eye, and he looked steadily over the brim of her hat toward the raffish and rutilant assemblage beyond. along two sides of the wall were large mirrors painted with flowers and bloated naiads; here in reflection the throng performed its antics in numberless reduplications. advertisements of drink decorated the rest of the space on the walls, and at intervals hung notices warning ladies that they must not stay longer than twenty minutes unless accompanied by a gentleman, that they must not move to another table unless accompanied by a gentleman, and with a final stroke of ironic propriety that they must not smoke unless accompanied by a gentleman. the tawdry beer hall with its reek of alcohol and fog of tobacco smoke, with its harborage of all the flotsam of the underworld, must preserve a fiction of polite manners. michael was not allowed to maintain his attitude of disinterested commentary, for the girl in the daisied hat presently addressed him, and he did not wish to hurt her feelings by not replying. �you�re very silent, kiddie,� she said. �i�ll give you a penny for them.� �i really wasn�t thinking about anything in particular,� said michael. �will you have a drink?� �don�t mind if i do. alphonse!� she shouted, tugging at the arm of the overloaded waiter who was accomplishing his transit. �bring me a hot whisky-and-lemon. there�s a love.� alphonse made the slightest sign of having heard the request and passed on. michael held his breath while the girl was giving her order. he was expecting every moment that the waiter would break over the alcove in a fountain of glass. �i�ve taken quite a fancy to whisky-and-lemon hot,� she informed michael. �you know. anyone does, don�t they? get a sudden fit and keep on keeping on with one drink, i mean. this�ll be my sixth to-night. but i�m a long way off being drunk, kiddie. do you like my new hat? i reckon it�ll bring me luck.� �i expect it will,� michael said. �you are serious, aren�t you? when i first saw you i thought you was the spitting image of a fellow i know�bert saunders, who writes about the boxing matches for crime illustrated. he�s more of a bright-eyes than you are, though.� the whisky-and-lemon arrived, and she drank michael�s health. �funny-tasting stuff when you come to think of it,� she said meditatingly. �what�s your name, kiddie?� he told her. �michael,� she repeated. �you�re a jew, then?� he shook his head. �well, kid, i suppose you know best, but michael is a jewish name, isn�t it? michael? of course it is. i don�t mind jew fellows myself. one or two of them have been very good to me. my name�s daisy palmer.� the conversation languished slightly, because michael since his encounter with poppy at neptune crescent was determined to be very cautious. �you look rather french,� was his most audacious sally toward the personal. �funny you should have said that, because my mother was a stewardess on the calais boat. she was belgian herself.� again the conversation dropped. �i�m waiting for a friend,� daisy volunteered. �she�s been having a row with her fellow, and she promised to come on down to the orange and tell me about it. dolly wearne is her name. she ought to have been here by now. what�s the time, kid?� it was after midnight, and daisy began to look round anxiously. �i�m rather worried over doll,� she confided to michael, �because this fellow of hers, hungarian dave, is a proper little tyke when he turns nasty. i said to doll, i said to her, �doll, that dirty rotter you�re so soft over�ll swing for you before he�s done. why don�t you leave him,� i said, �and come and live along with me for a bit?�� �and what did she say?� michael asked. but there was no answer, for daisy had caught sight of dolly herself coming down the stairs, and she was now hailing her excitedly. �oh, doesn�t she look shocking white,� exclaimed daisy. �doll!� she shouted, waving to her. �over here, duck.� the four offensive youths near them in the alcove mimicked her in exaggerated falsetto. ��� to you,� she flung scornfully at them over her shoulder. there was a savage directness, a simple coarseness in the phrase that pleased michael. it seemed to him that nothing except that could ever be said to these young men. whatever else might be urged against the café d�orange, at least one was able to hear there a final verdict on otherwise indescribable humanity. by this time dolly wearne, a rather heavy girl with a long retreating chin and flabby cheeks, had reached her friend�s side. she began immediately a voluble tale: �oh, daisy, i put it across him straight. i give you my word, i told him off so as he could hardly look me in the face. �you call yourself a man,� i said, �why, you dirty little alien.� that�s what i called him. i did straight, �you dirty little���� �this is my friend,� interrupted daisy, indicating michael, who bowed. it amused him to see how in the very middle of what was evidently going to be a breathless and desperate story both the girls could remember the convention of their profession. �pleased to meet you,� said dolly, offering a black kid-gloved hand with half-a-simper. �what will you drink?� asked michael. �mine�s a brandy and soda, please. �you dirty little alien,� i said.� dolly was helter-skelter in the track of her tale again. �go on, did you? and what did he say?� asked daisy admiringly. �he never said nothing, my dear. what could he say?� �that�s right,� nodded daisy wisely. ��for two years,� i said, �you�ve let a girl keep you,� i said, �and then you can go and give one of my rings to that florrie. let me get hold of her,� i said. �i�ll tear her eyes out.� �no, you won�t, now then,� he said. �won�t i? i will, then,� and with that i just lost control of my feelings, i felt that wild....� �what did you do, doll?� asked daisy, plying her with brandy to soothe the outraged memory. �what did i do? why, i spat in his tea and came straight off down to the orange. �yes,� i said, �you can sit drinking tea while you break my heart.� don�t you ever go and have a fancy boy, daise. why, i was a straight girl when i first knew him. straight�well, anyway not on the game like what i am now.� here dolly wearne began to weep with bitter self-compassion. �i�ve slaved for that fellow, and now he serves me like dirt.� �go on. don�t cry, duck,� daisy begged. �come home with me to-night and we can send and fetch your things away to-morrow. i wouldn�t cry over him,� she said fiercely. �there�s no fellow worth crying over. the best of them isn�t worth crying over.� the four offensive youths in the alcove began to mock dolly�s tears, and michael, who was already bitten with some of the primitive pugnacity of the underworld, rose to attack them. �sit down,� daisy commanded. �i wouldn�t mess my hands, if i was you, with such a pack of filth. sit down, you stupid boy. you�ll get us all into trouble.� michael managed by a great effort to resume his seat, but for a minute or two he saw the beerhall through a mist of rage. gradually dolly�s tears ceased to flow, and after another brandy she became merely more abusive of the faithless dave. her cheeks swollen with crying seemed flabbier than ever, and her long retreating chin expressed a lugubrious misanthropy. �rotten, i call it, don�t you?� said the sympathetic daisy, appealing to michael. he agreed with a profound nod. �and she�s been that good to him. you wouldn�t believe.� michael thought it was rather risky to embark upon an enumeration of dolly�s virtuous acts. he feared another relapse into noisy grief. at this moment the subject of daisy�s eulogy rose from her seat and stared very dramatically at a corner of the main portion of the beerhall. �my god!� she said, with ominous calm. �what is it, duck?� asked daisy, anxiously peering. �my god!� daisy repeated intensely. then suddenly she poured forth a volley of obloquy, and with an hysterical scream caught up her glass evidently intending to hurl it in the direction of her abuse. daisy seized one arm: michael gripped the other, and together they pulled her back into her chair. she was still screaming loudly, and the noise of the beerhall, hitherto scattered and variable in pitch, concentrated in a low murmur of interest. round about them in the alcove the neighbors began to listen: the girl who had been arguing so passionately with the cold-eyed man stopped and stared; the partially drunk and bearded man collapsed into a glassy indifference, while his charmer no longer winked over her shoulder at the spectators of her wooing; the four offensive youths gaped like landed trout; even the blotchy-faced man ceased to look at his watch and confined himself to sucking steadily his teeth. it seemed probable, michael thought, that there was going to be rather a nasty row. dolly would not listen to persuasion from him or her friend. she was going to attack that florrie; she was going to mark that florrie for life with a glass; she was going to let her see if she could come it over doll wearne. it would take more than florrie to do that; yes, more than half-a-dozen florries, it would. the manager of the orange had been warned, and he was already edging his way slowly toward the table. the friends of florrie were using their best efforts to remove her from the temptation to retaliate. though she declared loudly that nothing would make her quit the orange, and certainly that dolly less than anybody, she did suffer herself to be coaxed away. dolly, when she found her rival had retreated, burst into tears again and was immediately surrounded by a crowd of inquisitive sympathizers, which made her utterly hysterical. michael, without knowing quite how it had happened, found that he was involved in the fortunes and enmities and friendships of a complete society. he found himself explaining to several bystanders the wrong which dolly had been compelled to endure at the hands of hungarian dave. it was extraordinary how suddenly this absurd intrigue of the underworld came to seem tremendously important. he felt that all his sense of proportion was rapidly disappearing. in the middle of an excited justification of dolly�s tears he was aware that he and his surroundings and his attitude were to himself incredible. he was positively in a nightmare, and a prey to the inconsequence of dreams. or was all his life until this moment a dream, and was this reality? one fact alone presented itself clearly, which was the necessity to see the miserable dolly safely through the rest of the evening. he felt very reliant upon daisy, who was behaving with admirable composure, and when he asked her advice about the course of action, he agreed at once with her that dolly must be persuaded into a cab and be allowed in daisy�s rooms in guilford street a freedom of rage and grief that was here, such was the propriety of the orange, a very imprudent display of emotion. �she�ll be barred from coming down here,� said daisy. �come on, let�s get her home.� �where�s that florrie?� screamed dolly. �she�s gone home. so what�s the use in your carrying on so mad? the manager�s got his eye on us, doll. come on, doll, let�s get on home. i tell you the manager�s looking at us. you are a silly girl.� ��� the manager,� said dolly obstinately. �let him look.� �why don�t you come and see if you can find florrie outside?� daisy suggested. dolly was moved by this proposal, and presently she agreed to vacate the orange, much to michael�s relief, for he was expecting every moment to see her attack the manager with the match-stand that was fretting her fingers. as it happened, daisy�s well-meant suggestion was very unlucky because hungarian dave, the cause of all the bother, was standing on the pavement close to the entrance. daisy whispered to michael to get a cab quickly, because hungarian dave was close at hand. he looked at him curiously, this degraded individual in whose domestic affairs he was now so deeply involved. a very objectionable creature he was, too, with his greasy hair and large red mouth. his cap was pulled down over the eyes, and he may have wished not to be seen; but an instinct for his presence made dolly turn round, and in a moment she was in the thick of the delight of telling him off for the benefit of a crowd increasing with every epithet she flung. it was useless now to attempt to get her away, and michael and daisy could only drag her back when she seemed inclined to attack him with finger-nails or hatpin. �get a cab,� cried daisy. �never mind what she says. get a cab, and we�ll put the silly thing into it and drive off. the coppers will be here in a moment.� michael managed to hail a hansom immediately, but when he turned back to the scene of the pavement the conditions of the dispute were entirely changed. hungarian dave, infuriated or frightened, had knocked dolly down, and she was just staggering to her feet, when a policeman stepped into the circle. �come on, move along,� he growled. the bully had merged himself in the ring of onlookers, and dolly, with a cry of fury, flung herself in his direction. �stop that, will you?� the policeman said savagely, seizing her by the arm. �go on, it�s a dirty shame,� cried daisy. �why don�t you take the fellow as knocked her down?� michael by this time had forced his way through the crowd, rage beating upon his brain like a great scarlet hammer. �you infernal ass,� he shouted to the constable. �haven�t you got the sense to see that this woman was attacked first? where is the blackguard who did it?� he demanded of the stupid, the gross, the vilely curious press of onlookers. no one came forward to support him, and hungarian dave had slipped away. �move on, will you?� the policeman repeated. �damn you,� cried michael. �will you let go of that woman�s arm?� the constable with a bovine density of purpose proceeded apparently to arrest the wretched dolly, and michael maddened by his idiocy felt that the only thing to do was to hit him as hard as he could. this he did. the constable immediately blew his whistle. other masses of inane bulk loomed up, and michael was barely able to control himself sufficiently not to resist all the way to vine street, as two of them marched him along, and four more followed with daisy and dolly. a spumy trail of nocturnal loiterers clung to their wake. next morning michael appeared before the magistrate. he listened to the charge against him and nearly laughed aloud in court, because the whole business so much resembled the trial in alice in wonderland. it was not that the magistrate was quite so illogical as the king of hearts; but he was so obviously biassed in favor of the veracity of a london policeman, that the inconsequence of the nightmare which had begun last night was unalterably preserved. michael, aware of the circumstances which had led up to what was being made to appear as wantonly riotous behavior in leicester square, could not fail to be exasperated by the inability of the magistrate to understand his own straightforward story. he began to sympathize with the lawless population. the law could only seem to them an unintelligent machine for crushing their freedom. if the conduct of this case were a specimen of administration, it was obvious that arrest must be synonymous with condemnation. the magistrate in the first place seemed dreadfully overcome by the sorrow of beholding a young man in michael�s position on the police-court. �i cannot help wondering when i see a young man who has had every opportunity ...� the magistrate went on in a voice that worked on the stale air of the court like a rusty file. �i�m not a defaulting bank clerk,� michael interrupted. �is it impossible for you to understand��� �don�t speak to me like that. keep quiet. i�ve never been spoken to like that in all my experience as a magistrate. keep quiet.� michael sighed in compassion for his age and stupidity. �are there any previous convictions against wearne and palmer?� the magistrate inquired. he was told that the woman palmer had not hitherto appeared, but that wearne had been previously fined for disorderly conduct in shaftesbury avenue. �ah!� said the magistrate. �ah!� he repeated, looking over the rim of his glasses. �and the case against the male defendant? i will take the evidence of constable c .� �your worship, i was on duty yesterday evening at . in leicester square. hearing a noise in the direction of the caffy dorringe and observing a crowd collect, i moved across the road to disperse it. the defendant wearne was using obscene language to an unknown man; and wishing to get her to move on i took hold of her arm. the male defendant, also using very obscene language, attempted to rescue her and struck me on the chest. i blew my whistle....� the ponderous constable with his thick red neck continued a sing-song narrative. when michael�s turn came to refute some of the evidence against him, he merely shrugged his shoulders. �it�s really useless, you know, for me to say anything. if �damn you� is obscene, then i was obscene. if a girl is knocked down by a bully and on rising to her feet is instantly arrested by a dunderhead in a blue uniform, and if an onlooker punches this functionary, then i did assault the constable.� �this sort of insolence won�t do,� said the magistrate trembling with a curious rarefied passion. �i have a very good mind to send you to prison without the option of a fine, but in consideration....� somehow or other it was made to appear a piece of extraordinary magnanimity on the part of the magistrate that michael was only fined three guineas and costs. �i wish to pay the fines of miss palmer and miss wearne,� he announced. later in the morning michael, with the two girls, emerged into the garish summer day. not even yet was the illusion of a nightmare dissipated, for as he looked at his two companions, feathered, frilled and bedraggled, who were walking beside him, he could scarcely acknowledge even their probable reality here in the sun. �i shan�t drink hot whisky-and-lemon again in a hurry,� vowed daisy. �i knew it was going to bring me bad luck when i said it tasted so funny.� �but you said your hat was going to be lucky,� michael pointed out. �yes, i�ve been properly sucked in over that,� daisy agreed. �nothing ever brings me luck,� grumbled dolly resentfully. as michael looked at the long retreating chin and down-drawn mouth he was inclined to agree that nothing could invigorate this fatal mournfulness with the prospect of good fortune. �i reckon i�ll go home and have a good lay down,� said daisy. �are you going to have dinner with me?� she asked, turning to dolly. �dinner?� echoed dolly. �nice time to talk to anyone about their dinner, when they�ve got the sick like i have! dinner!� they had reached piccadilly circus by now, and michael wondered if he might not put them into a cab and send them back to guilford street. he found it embarrassing when the people slowly turned away from swan and edgar�s window to stare instead at him and his companions. daisy pressed him to come back with them, but he promised he would call upon her very soon. then he slipped into her hand the change from the second five-pound note into which the law had broken. �is this for us?� she asked. he nodded. �you are a sport. mind you come and see us. come to tea. doll�s going to live with me a bit now, aren�t you, doll?� �i suppose so,� said doll. michael really admired the hospitality which was willing to shelter this lugubrious girl, and as he contemplated her, looking in the sunlight like a moist handkerchief, he had a fleeting sympathy with hungarian dave. when the girls had driven off, michael recovered his ordinary appearance by visiting a barber and a hosier. the effect of the shampoo was almost to make him incredulous of the night�s event, and he could not help paying a visit to the café d�orange, to verify the alcove in which he had sat. the entrance of the beerhall was closed, however, and he stood for a moment like a person who passes a theater which the night before he has seen glittering. as michael was going out of the bar, he thought he recognized a figure leaning over the counter. yes, it was certainly meats. he went up and tapped him on the shoulder, addressing him by name. meats turned round with a start. �don�t you remember me?� asked michael. �of course i do,� said meats nervously. �but for the love of jerusalem drop calling me by that name. here, let�s go outside.� in the street michael asked him why he had given up being meats. �oh, a bit of trouble, a bit of trouble,� said meats. �you are a strange chap,� said michael. �when i first met you it was brother aloysius. then it was meats. now��� �look here,� said meats, �give over, will you? i�ve told you once. if you call me that again i shall leave you. barnes is what i am now. now don�t forget.� �come and have a drink, and tell me what you�ve been doing in the four years since we met,� michael suggested. �b-a-r-n-e-s. have you got it?� michael assured him that everything but barnes as applicable to him had vanished from his mind. �come on, then,� said barnes. �we�ll go into the afrique, upstairs.� michael fancied he had met barnes this time in a reincarnation that was causing him a good deal of uneasiness. he had lost the knowingness which had belonged to meats and the sheer lasciviousness which had seemed the predominant quality of brother aloysius. instead, sitting at the round marble table opposite michael saw an individual who resembled an actor out of work in the lowest grades of his profession. there was the cheesy complexion, and the over-fashioned suit of another season too much worn and faded now to flaunt itself objectionably, but with its dismoded exaggerations still conveying an air of rococo smartness; perhaps, thought michael, these signs had always been obvious and it had merely been his own youth which had supposed a type to be an exception. certainly barnes could not arouse now anything but a compassionate amusement. how this figure with its grotesque indignity as of a puppet temporarily put out of action testified to his own morbid heightening of common things in the past. how incredible it seemed now that this barnes had once been able to work upon his soul with influential doctrine. �what have you been doing with yourself?� michael asked again. �oh, hopping and popping about. i�ve got the rats at present.� �where are you living?� barnes looked at michael in suspicious astonishment. �what do you want to know for?� he asked. �mere inquisitiveness,� michael assured him. �you really needn�t treat me like a detective, you know.� �my mistake,� said barnes. �but really, fane. let�s see, that is your name? thought it was. i don�t often forget a name. no, without swank, fane, i�ve been hounded off my legs lately. i�m living in leppard street. pimlico way.� �i�d like to come and see you some time,� said michael. �here, straight, what _is_ your game?� barnes could not conceal his suspicion. �inquisitiveness,� michael declared again. �also i rather want a sancho panza.� �oh, of course, any little thing i can do to oblige,� said barnes very sarcastically. it took michael a long time to convince him that no plot was looming, but at last he persuaded him to come to cheyne walk, and after that he knew that barnes could not refuse to show him leppard street. chapter iv leppard street while they were driving to cheyne walk, michael extracted from barnes an outline of his adventures since last they had met. the present narrative was probably not less cynical than the account of his life related to michael on various occasions in the past; but perhaps because his imagination had already to some extent been fed by reality, he could no longer be shocked. he received the most sordid avowals calmly, neither blaming barnes nor indulging himself with mental goose-flesh. yet amid all the frankness accorded to him he could not find out why barnes had changed his name. he was curious about this, because he could not conceive any shamelessness too outrageous for barnes to reveal. it would be interesting to find out what could really make even him pause; no doubt ultimately, with the contrariness of the underworld, it would turn out to be something that michael himself would consider trivial in comparison with so much of what barnes had boasted. anyway, whether he discovered the secret or not, it would certainly be interesting to study barnes, since in him good and evil might at any moment display themselves as clearly as a hidden substance to a reagent flung into a seething alembic. it might perhaps be assuming too much to say that there was any good in him; and yet michael was unwilling to suppose that all his conversions were merely the base drugs of a disordered morality. apart from his philosophic value, barnes might very actually be of service in the machinery of finding lily. at cheyne walk barnes looked about him rather bitterly. �easy enough to behave yourself in a house like this,� he commented. here spoke the child who imagines that grown-up people have no excuse to be anything but very good. there might be something worth pursuing in that thought. a child might consider itself chained more inseverably than one who apparently possesses the perfectiveness of free-will. had civilization complicated too unreasonably the problem of evil? it was a commonplace to suppose that the sense of moral responsibility increased with the opportunity of development, and yet after all was not the reverse true? �why should it be easier to behave here than in leppard street?� michael asked. �i do wish you could understand it�s really so much more difficult. i can�t distinguish what is wrong from what is right nearly so well as you can.� �well, in my experience, and my experience has done its bit i can tell you,� said barnes in self-satisfied parenthesis. �in my experience most of the difficulties in this world come from wanting something we haven�t got. i don�t care what it is�a woman or a drink or a new suit of clothes. money�ll buy any of them. give me ten pounds a week, and i could be a bloody angel.� �supposing i offered you half as much for three months,� suggested michael. �do you think you�d find life any easier while it lasted?� �well, don�t be silly,� said barnes. �of course i should. if you�d walked home every night with your eyes on the gutter in case anybody had dropped a threepenny bit, you�d think it was easier. it�s not a bit of good your running me down, fane. if you were me, you�d be just the same. those monks at the abbey used to jaw about holy poverty. the man who first said that ought to be walking about hell with donkey�s ears on his nob. what�s it done for me? i ask you. why, it�s made me so that i�d steal a farthing from one blind man to palm it off as half-a-quid on another.� �tell me about leppard street,� said michael, laughing. �what�s it like?� �well, you go and punch a few holes in a cheese rind. that�s what it looks like. and then go and think yourself a rat who�s lost all his teeth, and you�ve got what it feels like to be living in it.� �supposing i said i�d like to try?� asked michael. �what would you think?� �think? i shouldn�t think two seconds. i should know you were having a game. what good�s leppard street to you, when you can sit here bouncing up and down all day on cushions?� �experience,� said michael. �oh, rats! nothing�s experience that you haven�t had to do.� �well, i�ll give you five pounds a week,� michael offered, �if you�ll keep yourself free to do anything i want you to do. i shouldn�t want anything very dreadful, of course,� he added. it was difficult for michael to persuade barnes that he was in earnest, so difficult indeed that, even when he produced five sovereigns and offered them directly to him, he had to disclose partially his reason for wishing to go to leppard street. �you see, i want to find a girl,� he explained. �well, if you go and live in leppard street you�ll lose the best girl you�ve got straight off. that�s all there is to it.� �you don�t understand. this girl i used to know has gone wrong, and i want to find her and marry her.� it seemed to michael that barnes� manner changed in some scarcely definable way when he made this announcement. he pocketed the five pounds and invited michael to come to leppard street whenever he liked. he was evidently no longer suspicious of his sincerity, and a perky, an almost cunning cordiality had replaced the disheartened cynicism of his former attitude. it encouraged michael to see how obviously his resolve had impressed barnes. he accepted it as an augury of good hap. involuntarily he waited for his praise; and when barnes made no allusion to the merit of his action, he ascribed his silence to emotion. this was proving really a most delightful example of the truth of his theory. and it was clever of barnes�it was more than clever, it was truly imaginative of him�to realize without another question the need to leave for a while cheyne walk. �but is there a vacant room?� michael asked in sudden dread of disappointment. �look here, you�d better see the place before you decide on leaving here,� barnes advised. �it isn�t a cross between buckingham palace and the carlton, you know.� �i suppose it�s the name that attracts me,� said michael. �it sounds ferocious.� �i don�t know about the name, but old ma cleghorne who keeps the house is ferocious enough. never mind.� he jingled the five sovereigns. �i�ll go up and pack,� said michael. �by the way, i haven�t told you yet that i was run in last night.� �in quod you mean?� asked barnes. �whatever for?� �drunk and disorderly in leicester square.� �these coppers are the limit,� said barnes emphatically. �the absolute limit. really. they�ll pinch the archbishop of canterbury for looking into stagg and mantle�s window before we know where we are.� michael left barnes in the drawing-room, and as he turned in the doorway to see if he was at his ease, he thought the visitor and the macaw on its perch were about equally exotic. they started immediately after lunch and, as always, the drive along the river inspired michael with a jolly conception of the adventurousness of london. it was impossible to hear the gurgle of the high spring-tide without exulting in the movement of the stream that was washing out with its flood all the listlessness of the hot august afternoon. when chelsea bridge was left behind, the mystery of the banks of a great river sweeping through a great city began to be more evident. the whole character of the embankment changed at every hundred yards. first there was that somber canal which, flowing under the road straight from the thames, reappeared between a cañon of gloomy houses and vanished again underground not very unlike the styx. then came what was apparently a large private house which had been gutted of the tokens of humanity and filled with monstrous wheels and cylinders and pistons, all moving perpetually and slowly with a curious absence of noise. under grosvenor road bridge they went, the horse clattering forward and a train crashing overhead. out again from slimy bricks and girders dripping with the excrement of railway-engines, they came into grosvenor road. they passed the first habitations of pimlico, two or three terraces and isolated houses all different in character. there could scarcely be another road in london so varied as this. maurice had been wise to have his studio in grosvenor road. from the houses of parliament to chelsea bridge was an epitome of london. the hansom turned to the left up clapperton street, a very wide thoroughfare of houses with heavy porticoes, a very wide and very gray street, of a gray that almost achieved the effect of positive color, so insistent was it. michael remembered that there had been a clapperton street murder, and he wondered behind which of those muslin curtains the poison had been mixed. it was a street of quite extraordinarily sinister respectableness. it brooded with a mediocre prosperity, very wide and very gray and very silent. the columns of the porticoes were checked off by the window of the cab with dull regularity, and the noise of the horse�s hoofs echoed hollowly down the empty street, to which every evening men with black shiny bags would come hurrying home. it was impossible to imagine a nursemaid lolling over a perambulator in clapperton street. it was impossible to imagine that anyone lived here but dried-up little men with greenish-white complexions and hatchet-shaped whiskers and gnawed mustaches, dried-up little men whose wives kept arsenic in small triangular cupboards by the bed. �i wouldn�t mind having lodgings here,� said barnes. he had caught sight of a square of cardboard at the farther end of the street. this was the outpost of an array of apartment cards, for the next street was full of them. the next street was evidently a little nearer to the period of final dilapidation; but michael fancied that, in comparison with the middle-aged respectableness of clapperton street, this older and now very swiftly decaying warren of second-rate apartments was almost attractive. street followed street, each one, as they drew nearer to victoria station, being a little more raffish than its predecessor, each one being a little less able to resist the corrosion of a persistently inquinating migration. sometimes, and with a sharp effect of contrast, occurred prosperous squares; but even these, with their houses so uniformly tall and ocherous, delivered a presage of irremediable decadency. suddenly the long ranks of houses, which were beginning to seem endless, vanished upon the margin of a lake of railway lines. just before the hansom would have mounted the slope of an arcuated bridge, it swung to the right into leppard street, s.w. the beginning of the street ran between two high brown walls crowned with a ruching of broken glass: these guarded on one side the escarp of the railway, on the other a coal yard. at the farther end the street swept round to an exit between two rows of squalid dwellings called greenarbor court, an exit, however, that was barred to vehicles by a row of blistered posts. some fifty yards before this the wall deviated to form a recess in which five very tall houses rose gauntly against the sky from the very edge of the embankment. standing as they did upon a sort of bluff and flanked on either side by blind walls, these habitations gave an impression of quite exceptional height. this was emphasized by the narrow oblong windows of which there may have been nearly fifty. the houses were built of the same brick as the walls, and they had deepened from yellow to the same fuscous hue. this promontory seemed to serve as an appendix for the draff of the neighborhood�s rubbish. the ribs of an umbrella; a child�s boot; a broken sieve; rags of faded color, lay here in the gutter undisturbed, the jetsam of a deserted beach. �here we are,� said barnes. �here�s leppard street that you�ve been so anxious to see.� �it looks rather exciting,� michael commented. �oh, it�s the last act of a drury lane melodrama i don�t think. exciting?� barnes repeated. �you know, fane, there�s something wrong with you. if you think this is exciting, you�d go raving mad when i showed you some of the places where i�ve lived. well, here we are, anyhow. number one�the corner house.� they walked up the steps which were gradually scaling in widening ulcers of decay: the handle of the bell-pull hung limply forward like a parched tongue: and the iron railings of a basement strewn with potato parings were flaked with rust, and here and there decapitated. barnes opened the door. �we�ll take your bag up to my room first, and then we�ll go downstairs and talk to ma cleghorne about your room, that is if you don�t change your mind when you�ve seen the inside.� michael had no time to notice barnes� room very much. but vaguely he saw a rickety bed with a patchwork counterpane and frowzy recesses masked by cheap cretonnes in a pattern of disemboweled black and crimson fruits. after that glimpse they went down again over the grayish staircarpet that was worn to the very filaments. barnes shouted to the landlady in the basement. �she�ll have a fit if she hears me calling down to her,� he said to michael. �you see, just lately i�ve been very anxious to avoid meeting her.� he jingled with satisfaction the sovereigns in his pocket. they descended into the gloom that smelt of damp cloths and the stale soapiness of a sink. they peeped into the front room, as they went by: here a man in shirt-sleeves was lying under the scattered sheets of a sunday paper upon a bed that gave an effect of almost oriental luxury, so much was it overloaded with mattresses and coverlets. indeed; the whole room seemed clogged with woolly stuffs, and the partial twilight of its subterranean position added to the impression of airlessness. it was as if these quilted chairs and heavy hairy curtains had suffocated everything else. �that�s cleghorne,� said barnes. �i reckon he�d sleep rip van winkle barmy.� �what�s he do?� whispered michael, as they turned down the passage. �he snores for a living, he does,� said barnes. they entered the kitchen, and through the dim light michael saw the landlady with her arms plunged into a steaming cauldron. outside, two trains roared past in contrary directions; the utensils shivered and chinked; the ceiling was obscured by pendulous garments which exhaled a moist odorousness; on the table a chine of bacon striated by the carving-knife was black with heavy-winged flies. �i�ve brought a new lodger, mrs. cleghorne,� said barnes. �have you brought your five weeks� rent owing?� she asked sourly. he laid two pounds on the table, and mrs. cleghorne immediately cheered up, if so positive an expression could be applied to a woman whose angularities seemed to forbid any display of good-will. michael thought she looked rather like one of the withered nettles that overhung the wall of the sunken yard outside the kitchen window. �well, he can have the top-floor back, or he can have the double rooms on the ground floor which of course is unfurnished. do you want me to come up and show you?� she inquired grudgingly and rubbed the palm of her hand slowly along her sharp nose as if to express a doubtful willingness. �perhaps mr. cleghorne ...� michael began. �mis-ter cleghorne!� she interrupted scornfully, and immediately she began to dry her arms vigorously on a roller-towel which creaked continuously. �oh, i don�t want to disturb him,� said michael. �disturb him!� she sneered. �why, half bedlam could drive through his brains in a omnibus before he�d move a little finger to trouble hisself. yes,� she shouted, �yes!� her voice mingling with the creak of the roller seemed to be grating the air itself, and with every word it grew more strident. �why, the blessed house might burn before he�d even put on his boots, let alone go and show anyone upstairs, though his wife can work herself to the bone for him. disturb him! good job if anyone could disturb him. if i found a regiment of soldiers in the larder, he�d only grunt. asthmatic! yes, some people �ud be very pleased to be asthmatic, if they could lie snorting on a bed from morning to night.� mrs. cleghorne�s hands were dry now, and she led the way along the passage upstairs, sniffing as she passed her crapulous husband. she unlocked the door of the ground-floor rooms, and they entered. it was not an inspiring lodging as seen thus in its emptiness, with drifts of fluff along the bare dusty boards. the unblacked grate contained some dried-up bits of orange peel; with the last summons of the late tenant the bellrope had broken, and it now lay invertebrate; by the window, catching a shaft of sunlight, stood a drain pipe painted with a landscape in cobalt-blue and probably once used as an umbrella stand. �that�s all i got for two months� rent,� said mrs. cleghorne bitterly, surveying it. �and it�s just about fit for my old man to go and bury his good-for-nothing lazy head in, and that�s all. the bedroom�s in here, of course.� she opened the folding doors whose blebs of paint had been picked off up to a certain height above the floor, possibly as far as some child had been able to reach. the bedroom was rather dustier than the sitting-room, and it was much darker owing to a number of ferns which had been glued upon the window-panes. through this mesh could be seen the nettle-haunted square of back garden; and beyond, over a stucco wall pocked with small pebbles, a column of smoke was belching into the sky from a stationary engine on the invisible lake of railway lines. �do you want to see the top-floor back?� mrs. cleghorne asked. �well, if you wouldn�t mind.� michael felt bound to apologize to her, whatever was suggested. she sighed her way upstairs, and at last flung open a door for them to enter the vacant room. the view from here was certainly more spacious, and a great deal of the permeating depression was lightened by looking out as it were over another city across the railway, a city with streamers of smoke, and even here and there a flag flying. at the same time the room itself was less potentially endurable than the ground-floor; there was no fireplace and the few scraps of furniture were more discouraging than the positive emptiness downstairs. michael shuddered as he looked at the gimcrack washstand through whose scanty paint the original wood was visible in long fibrous sores. he shuddered, too, at the bedstead with its pleated iron laths furred by dust and rust, and at the red mattress exuding flock like clustered maggots. �this is furnished, of course,� said mrs. cleghorne, complacently sucking a tooth. �well, which will you have?� �i think perhaps i�ll take the ground-floor rooms. i�ll have them done up.� �oh, they�re quite clean. the last people was a bit dirty. so i gave them an extra-special clear-out.� �but you wouldn�t object to my doing them up?� persisted michael. �oh, no, i shouldn�t _object,�_ said mrs. cleghorne, and in her accent was the suggestion that equally she would not be likely to derive very much pleasure from the fruition of michael�s proposal. they were going downstairs again now, and mrs. cleghorne was evidently beginning to acquire a conviction of her own importance, because somebody had contemplated with a certain amount of interest those two empty rooms on the ground floor; in the gratification of her pride she was endowing them with a value and a character they did not possess. �i�ve always said that, properly cared for, those two rooms are worth any other two rooms in the house. and of course that�s the reason i�m really compelled to charge a bit more for them. i always say to everyone right out�if you want the two best rooms in the house, why, you must pay according. they�re only empty now because i�ve always been particular about letting them. i won�t have anybody, and that�s a fact. mr. barnes here knows i�m really fond of those rooms.� they had reentered them, and mrs. cleghorne stood with arms admiringly akimbo. �they really are a beautiful lodging,� she declared. �when would you want them from?� �well, as soon as i can get them done up,� said michael. �i see. perhaps you could explain a little more clearly just what you was thinking of doing?� michael gave some of his theories of decoration, while mrs. cleghorne waited in critical audience; as it were, feeling the pulse of the apartments under the stimulus of michael�s sketch of their potentiality. �all white?� the landlady echoed pessimistically. �that sounds very gloomy, doesn�t it? more like a outhouse or a coal-cellar than a nice couple of rooms.� �well, they couldn�t look rottener than what they do at present,� barnes put in. �so if you take my advice, you�ll say �yes� and be very thankful. they�ll look clean, anyway.� the landlady threw back her head and surveyed barnes like a snake about to strike. �rotten?� she sniffed. �i�m sure this gentleman here isn�t likely to find a nicer and cheaper pair of rooms or a more convenient and a quieter pair of rooms anywhere in pimlico. a lot of people is very anxious to be in this neighborhood.� mrs. cleghorne was much offended by barnes� criticism, and there was a long period of dubiety before it was settled that michael should be accepted as a tenant. �i�ve never cared for white,� she said, in final protest. �not since i was married.� reminded of mr. cleghorne�s existence in the basement, she hurried forthwith to rout him out. as she disappeared, michael saw that she was searching in the musty folds of her skirt in order to deposit in her purse the month�s rent he had paid in advance. a couple of weeks passed while the decorators worked hard; and michael returned from an unwilling visit to scotland to find them ready for him. he got together a certain amount of furniture, and toward the end of august he moved into leppard street. barnes on account of the prosperity which had come to him through michael�s money had managed to dress himself in a series of outrageously new and fashionable suits, and on the afternoon of his patron�s arrival he strutted about the apartments. �very nice,� he said. �very nice, indeed. i reckon old ma cleghorne ought to be very pleased with herself. some of these pictures are a bit too religious for me just at present, but everyone to their own taste, that�s what i always say. to their own taste,� he repeated. �otherwise, what�s the good in being given an opinion of your own?� michael felt it was time to explain to barnes more particularly his quest of lily. �you don�t know a girl called lily haden?� he asked. �lily haden,� said barnes thoughtfully. �lily hopkins. a great fat girl with red....� �no, no,� michael interrupted. �lily haden. tall. slim. very fair hair. of course she may have another name now.� �that�s it, you see,� said barnes wisely. �wherever she is, whatever she�s doing, i must find her,� michael went on. �well, if you go about it in that spirit, you�ll soon find her,� barnes prophesied. michael looked at him sharply. he thought he noticed in barnes� manner a suggestion of humoring him. he rather resented the way in which barnes seemed to encourage him as one might encourage a child. �you understand i want to marry her?� michael asked fiercely. �that�s all right, old chap. i�m not trying to stop you, am i?� �but why are you talking as if i weren�t in earnest?� michael demanded. �when i first told you about it you were evidently very pleased, and now you�ve got a sneer which frankly i tell you i find extraordinarily objectionable.� barnes looked much alarmed by michael�s sudden attack, and explained that he meant nothing by his remarks beyond a bit of fun. �is it funny to marry somebody?� michael demanded. �sometimes it�s very funny to marry a tart,� said barnes. michael flushed. this was a directness of speech for which he was not prepared. �but when i first told you,� michael said, �you seemed very pleased.� �i was very pleased to find i�d evidently struck a nice-mannered lunatic,� said barnes. �you offered me five quid a week, didn�t you? well, you didn�t offer me that to give you good advice, now did you?� michael tried to conceal the mortification that was being inflicted upon him. he had been very near to making a fool of himself by supposing that his announcement had aroused admiration. instead of admiring him, barnes evidently regarded him as an idiot whom it were politic to encourage on account of the money this idiot could provide. it was an humiliating discovery. the chivalry on which he congratulated himself had not touched a single chord in barnes. was it likely that in lily herself he would find someone more responsive to what he still obstinately maintained to himself was really rather a fine impulse? michael began to feel half sorry for barnes because he could not appreciate nobility of motive. it began to seem worth while trying to impose upon him the appreciation which he felt he owed. michael was sorry for his uncultivated ideals, and he took a certain amount of pleasure in the thought of how much barnes might benefit from a close association with himself. he did not regret the whim which had brought them to leppard street. whatever else might happen, it would always be consoling to think that he would be helping barnes. in half a dream michael began to build up the vision of a newer and a finer barnes, a barnes with sensitiveness and decent instincts, a barnes who would forsake very willingly the sordid existence he had hitherto led in order to rise under michael�s guidance and help to a wider and better life. michael suddenly experienced a sense of affection for barnes, the affection of the missionary for the prospective convert. he forgave him his cynical acceptance of the five pounds a week, and he made up his mind not to refer to lily again until barnes should be able to esteem at its true value the step he proposed to take. michael looked round at the new rooms he had succeeded in creating out of the ground floor of leppard street. these novel surroundings would surely be strong enough to make the first impression upon barnes. he could not fail to be influenced by this whiteness and cleanliness, so much more white and clean where everything else was dingy and vile. it was all so spare and simple that it surely must produce an effect. barnes would see him living every day in perfect contentment with a few books and a few pictures. he must admire those cherry-red curtains and those green shelves. he must respect the cloistral air michael had managed to import even into this warren of queer inhabitants whom as yet he had scarcely seen. it was romantic to come like this into a small secluded world which did not know him; to bring like this a fresh atmosphere into a melancholy street of human beings who lived perpetually in a social twilight. michael�s missionary affection began to extend beyond barnes and to embrace all the people in this house. he felt a great fondness for them, a great desire to identify himself with their aspirations, so that they would be glad to think he was living in their midst. he began to feel very poignantly that his own existence hitherto had been disgracefully unprofitable both to himself and everybody else. he was grateful that destiny had brought him here to fulfill what was plainly a purpose. but what did fate intend should be his effect upon these people? to what was he to lead them? michael had an impulse to kneel down and pray for knowledge. he wished that barnes were not in this white room. otherwise he would surely have knelt down, and in the peace of the afternoon sunlight he might have resigned himself to a condition of spirit he had coveted in vain for a very long time. just then there was a tap at the door, and a middle-aged man with blinking watery eyes and a green plush smoking-cap peeped round the corner. �come in,� michael cheerfully invited him. the stranger entered in a slipshod hesitant manner. he looked as if all his clothes were on the verge of coming off, so much like a frayed accordion did his trousers rest upon the carpet slippers; so wide a space of shirt was visible between the top of the trousers and the bottom of the waistcoat; so utterly amorphous was his gray alpaca coat. �what i really came down for was a match,� the stranger explained. michael offered him a box, and with fumbling hands he stored it away in one of his pockets. �you don�t go in for puzzles, i suppose?� he asked tentatively. �but any time i can help. i�m the solutionist, you know. don�t let me keep you. good afternoon, mr. barnes. i�m worrying out this week�s lot in the golden penny very slowly. i�ve really had a sort of a headache the last few days�a very nasty headache. do you know anything about cricketers?� he asked, turning to michael. �famous cricketers, of course, that is? for instance, i cannot think what this one can be.� he produced after much uncertainty a torn and dirty sheet of some penny weekly. �i�ve got all the others,� he said to michael. �but one picture will often stump you like this. no joke intended.� he smiled feebly and pointed to a woman holding in one hand the letter s, in the other the letter t. �what about hirst?� michael asked. �hirst,� repeated the solutionist. �her s t. that�s it. that�s it.� in his excitement he began to dribble. �i�m very much obliged to you, sir. her s. t. yes, that�s it.� he began to shuffle toward the door. �anything you want solved at any time,� he said to michael. �i�m only just upstairs, you know, in the room next to mr. barnes. i shall be most delighted to solve anything�anything!� he vanished, and michael smiled to think how completely some of his problems would puzzle the solutionist. �what�s his name?� he inquired of barnes. �who? barmy sid? sydney carvel, as he calls himself. yet he makes a living at it.� �at what?� michael asked. �solving those puzzles and sending solutions at so much a time. he took fifteen-and-six last week, or so he told me. you can see his advertisement in reynolds. barmy sid i call him. he says he used to be a conjurer and take his ten pounds a week easily. but he looks to me more like one of these here soft fellows who ought to be shut up. you should see his room. all stuck over with bits of paper. regular dust-hole, that�s what it is. did you hear what he said? solve anything�anything! he hasn�t solved how to earn more than ten bob a week, year in year out. silly��! that�s what he is, barmy.� michael�s hope of entering into a close relation with all the lodgers of leppard street was falsified. none of them except barmy sid once visited his rooms; nor did he find it at all easy to strike up even a staircase acquaintance. vaguely he became aware of the various personalities that lurked behind the four stories of long narrow windows. yet so fleeting was the population that the almost weekly arrivals and departures perpetually disorganized his attempts to observe them as individuals or to theorize upon them in the mass. no doubt barnes himself would have left by now, had he not been sustained by michael�s subsidy; and it was always a great perplexity to michael how mrs. cleghorne managed to pay the rent, since apparently half the inquilines of a night and even some of the less transient lodgers ultimately escaped owing her money. it was a silent and a dreary house, and although children would doubtless have been a nuisance, michael sometimes wished that the landlady�s strict regulation no longer to take them in could be relaxed. all the five houses of leppard street seemed to be untenanted by children, which certainly added a touch to their decrepitude. in greenarbor court close at hand the pavements writhed with children, and occasionally small predatory bands advanced as far as leppard street to play in a half-hearted manner with some of the less unpromising rubbish that was moldering there. on the steps of number three, two pale little girls in stammel petticoats used to sit for hours over a grocer�s shop of grit and waste paper and refined mud. they apparently belonged to the basement of number three, for michael often saw them disappear below at twilight. michael thought of the children who swarmed above the walls of the embankment before paddington station, and he wondered what sort of a desolate appearance these five houses must present for voyagers to and from victoria. they must surely stand up very forbidding in abandonment to those who were traveling back to their cherished dolls-houses in dulwich. from his bedroom window he could not actually see the trains, but always he could hear their shrieking and their clangor, and he looked almost with apprehension at st. ursula in her high serene four-poster reposing tranquilly upon the white wall. nothing except the trains could vex her sleep; for in this house was a perpetual silence. even when mrs. cleghorne was vociferously arguing with her husband, the noise of her rage down in the basement among the quilts and coverlets never penetrated beyond the door at the head of the inclosing staircase, save in sounds of fury greatly minified. so silent was the house that had it not been for the variety of the smells, michael might easily have supposed that it really was empty and that life here was indeed an illusion. the smells, however, of onions or hot blankets or machine-oil or tom-cats or dirty bicycles proclaimed emphatically that a community shared these ascending mustard-colored walls, that human beings passed along the stale landings to frowst behind those finger-stained doors of salmon-pink. sometimes, too, michael emerging into the passage from his room would hear from dingy altitudes descend the noise of a door hurriedly slammed; and sometimes he would see go down the ulcerous steps in front of the house depressing women in black, or unshaven men with the debtor�s wary and furtive eye. the only lodgers who seemed to be permanent were barnes and carvel the solutionist. barnes on the strength of michael�s allowance used to go up west, as he described it, every night. he used to assure michael, when toward two o�clock of the next afternoon he extracted himself from bed, that he devoted himself with the greatest pertinacity to obtaining definite news of lily haden. the solutionist occasionally visited michael with a draggled piece of newspaper, and often he was visible in the garden attending to a couple of belgian hares who lived in a packing-case marked fragile among the nettles of the back-yard. after he had spent a week or so in absorbing the atmosphere of leppard street, michael felt it was time for him to move forth again at any rate into that underworld whose gaiety, however tawdry and feverish, would be welcome after this turbid backwater. there was here the danger of being drugged by the miasma that rose from this unreflecting surface. he felt inclined to renew his acquaintance with daisy palmer, and to hear from her the sequel to the affair of dolly wearne and hungarian dave. he found her card with the guilford street address and went over to bloomsbury, hoping to find her in to tea. the landlady looked surprised when he inquired for miss palmer. �oh, she�s been gone this fortnight,� the woman informed him. michael asked where she was living now. �i don�t know, i�m sure,� said the landlady, and as she was already slowly and very unpleasantly closing the door, michael came away a little disconsolate. these abrupt dematerializations of the underworld were really very difficult to grapple with. it gave him a sense of the futility of his search for lily (though lately he had prosecuted it somewhat lazily) when girls, who a month ago offered what was presumably a permanent address, could have vanished completely a fortnight later. perhaps daisy would be at the orange. he would take barnes with him this evening and ask his opinion of her and dolly and hungarian dave. the beerhall downstairs looked exactly the same as when he had visited it a month ago. michael could sympathize with the affection such places roused in the hearts of their frequenters. there was a great deal to be said for an institution that could present, day in, day out, a steady aspect to a society whose life was spent in such extremes of elation and despair, of prosperity and wretchedness, and whose actual lodging was liable to be changed at any moment for better or worse. �not a bad place, is it?� said barnes, looking round in critical approval at the prostitutes and bullies hoarded round the tables puddly with the overflow of mineral waters and froth of beer. �you really like it?� michael asked. �oh, it�s cheerful,� said barnes. �and that�s something nowadays.� michael perceived daisy before they were halfway across the room. he greeted her with particular friendliness as an individual among these hard-eyed constellations. �hulloa!� she cried. �wherever have you been all this time?� �i called at guilford street, but you were gone.� �oh, yes. i left there. i couldn�t stand the woman there any longer. sit down. who�s your friend?� michael brought barnes into the conversation, and suggested moving into one of the alcoves where it was easier to talk. �no, come on, sit down here. fritz won�t like it, if we move.� michael looked round for the protector, and she laughed. �you silly thing! fritz is the waiter.� michael presently grew accustomed to being jogged in the back by everyone who passed, and so powerful was the personality of the orange that very soon he, like the rest of the crowd, was able to discuss private affairs without paying any heed to the solitary smoking listeners around. �where�s dolly?� he asked. �oh, i had to get rid of her very sharp,� said daisy. �she served me a very nasty trick after i�d been so good to her. besides, i�ve taken up with a fellow. bert saunders. he does the boxing for crime illustrated.� �you told me i was like him,� michael reminded her. �that�s right. i remember now. i�m living down off judd street in a flat. why don�t you come round and see me there?� �i will,� michael promised. �wasn�t bert saunders the fellow who was keeping kitty metcalfe?� asked barnes. �that�s right. only he gave her the push after she hit maudie clive over the head with a port-wine glass in the half moon upstairs.� �i knew kitty,� said barnes, shaking his head to imply that acquaintance with kitty had involved a wider experience than fell to most men. �what�s happened to her?� �oh, gard, don�t ask me,� said daisy. �she�s got in with a fellow who kept a fried-fish place in the caledonian road, and i�ve never even seen her since.� �and what�s happened to dolly?� asked michael. �oh, good job if that love-boy of hers does punch into her. silly cow! she ought to know better. fancy going off as soft as you like with that big-mouthed five-to-two, and after i�d just given her six of my new handkerchiefs.� michael wished he could have an opportunity of explaining to barnes that on account of daisy�s friendship for dolly, he and she and the cast-off had spent a night in the police-cells. he thought it would have amused him. �where�s the half moon?� he asked instead. daisy said it was a place in glasshouse street for which she had no very great affection. however, michael was anxious to see it; and soon they left the orange to visit the half moon. it was a public-house with nothing that was demirep in its exterior; but upstairs there was a room frequented after eleven o�clock by ladies of the town. they walked up a narrow twisting staircase carpeted with bright red felt and lit by a red-shaded lamp, and found themselves in a room even more densely fumed with tobacco smoke than downstairs at the orange. in a corner was an electric organ which was fed with a stream of pennies and blared forth its repertory of ten tunes with maddening persistence. one of these tunes was gay enough to make the girls wish to dance, and always with its recurrence there was a certain amount of cake-walking which was immediately stopped by a commissionaire who stood in the doorway and shouted �order, please! quiet, please! no dancing, ladies!� to the nearest couple he always whispered that the police were outside. daisy, having stigmatized the half moon as the rottenest hole within a mile of the dilly, proceeded to become more cheerful with every penny dropped into the slot; and finally she invited michael to come back with her to judd street, as her boy had gone down to margate to see young sancy, a prospective lightweight champion, who was training there. �anyway, you can see me home,� she said. �even if you don�t come in. besides, my flat�s all right. it is, really. you know. comfortable. he�s very good to me, is bert, though he�s a bit soppified. he dresses very nice, and he earns good money. well, three pound a week. that�s not so bad, is it?� �that�s all right,� said barnes. �with what you earn as well.� �there�s a nerve,� said daisy. �well, i can�t stay moping indoors all the evening, can i? but he�s most shocking jealous is bert. and he calls me his pussy-cat. puss, puss! there�s a scream. he�s really a bit soft, and his eyes is awful. but it�s nice, so here�s luck.� she drained her glass. ��do you love me, puss?� he says. silly thing! but they think a lot of him at the office. his governor came down to see him the other morning about something he�s been writing. i don�t know what it was. i hate the sight of his writing. i carry on at him something dreadful, and then he says, �my pussy-cat mustn�t disturb me.�� daisy shrieked with laughter at the recollection, and michael who was beginning to be rather fearful for her sobriety suggested home as a good move. �i shan�t go if you don�t come back with me,� she declared. since their incarceration michael had a tender feeling for daisy, and he promised to accompany her. she would not go in a hansom, however; nor would she allow barnes to make a third; and in the end she and michael went wandering off down shaftesbury avenue through the warm september night. michael enjoyed walking with her, for she rambled on with long tales of her past that seemed the inconsequent threads of a legendary odyssey. he flattered himself with her companionship, and told himself that here at last was a demonstration of the possibility of a true friendship with a woman of that class with whom mere friendship would be more improbable than with any woman. it was really delightful to stroll with her homeward under this starlit sky of london; to wander on and on while she chattered forth her history. there had been no hint of any other relation between them; she was accepting him as a friend. he was proud as they walked through russell square, overshadowed by the benign trees that hung down with truculent green sprays in the lamplight; he felt a thrill in her companionship, as they dawdled along the railings of brunswick square in the acrid scent of the privet. it was curious to think that from the glitter and jangle of the half moon could rise this friendship that was giving to all the houses they passed a strange peacefulness. he fancied that here and there the windows were blinking at them in drowsy content, when the gas was extinguished by the unknown bedfarer within. judd street shone before them in a lane of lamps, and beyond, against the night, the gothic cliff of st. pancras station was indistinctly present. they turned down into little quondam street, and presently came to a red brick house with a pretentious portico. �our flat�s in here. agnes house, it�s called. come in and have one before you go home,� she invited. michael entered willingly. he was glad to show so quickly his confidence in their new friendship. agnes house was only entitled to the distinction of a name rather than a number, because the rest of the houses in quondam street were shabby, small, and old. it was a new building three stories high, and it was already falling to pieces, owing to work which must have been exceptionally dishonest to give so swiftly the effect of caducity. this collapse was more obvious because it was not dignified by the charm of age; and agnes house in its premature dissolution was not much more admirable than a cardboard box which has been left out in the rain. upon michael it made an impression as of something positively corrupt in itself apart from any association with depravity: it was like a young person with a vile disease whose condition nauseated without arousing pity. �rather nice, eh?� said daisy, as she lit the gas in the kitchen of the flat. �sit down. i�ll get some whisky. there�s a bathroom, you know. and it�s grand being on the ground floor. i should get the hump, if we was upstairs. i always swore i�d never live in a flat. well, i don�t really call them safe, do you? anything might happen and nothing ever be found out.� michael as he saw the crude pink sheets of crime illustrated strewn about the room was not surprised that daisy should often get nervous when left alone. these horrors in which fashion-plates with mangled throats lay weltering in pools of blood could scarcely conduce to a placid loneliness, and michael knew that she probably spent a great deal of every day in solitude. her life with crime illustrated to fright her fancy must always be haunted by presentiments of dread at the sound of a key in the latch. it was curious, this half childlike existence of the underworld always upon the boundaries of fear. michael could see the villainous paper used for every kind of domestic service�to wrap up a piece of raw meat, to contain the scraps for the cat�s dinner, and spread half over the kitchen table as a cloth whereon the disks of grease lay like great thunder-drops. it would be very natural, when the eyes never rested from these views of sordid violence, to expect evil everywhere. himself, as he sat here, was already half inclined to accept the underworld�s preoccupation with crime as a truer judgment of human nature than was held by a sentimental civilization, and he began to wonder whether a good deal of his own privacy had not been spent in a fool�s paradise of security. the moated grange and the dark tower were harmless rococo terrors beside the maleficent commonplace of agnes house. �the kitchen�s in a rare old mess, isn�t it?� said daisy looking round her. �it gives bert the rats to see it like this.� �are you fond of him?� michael asked. he was anxious to display his friendly interest. �oh, he�s all right. but i wouldn�t ever get fond of _any_body. it doesn�t pay with men. the more you give them, the more they think they can do as they like with you.� �i don�t understand why you live with him, if he�s nothing better than all right,� said michael. �well, i�m used to him, and he�s not always in the way like some fellows are.� michael would have liked to ask her about the beginning of her life as it was now conducted. daisy was so essentially of the streets that it was impossible to suppose she had ever known a period of innocency. her ancestry seemed to go back to the doxies of the eighteenth century, and beyond them to alsatian queens, and yet farther to the tavern wenches of françois villon and the chronique scandaleuse. there was nothing pathetic about her; he could not imagine her ever in a position to be wronged by a man. she was in very fact the gay woman who was bred first from some primordial heedlessness unchronicled. she would be a hard subject for chivalrous treatment, so deeply would she inevitably despise it. nevertheless, he wanted to try to bring home to her the quality of the feeling she had inspired in him. he was anxious to prove to her the reality of a friendliness untainted by any thought of the relation in which she might justifiably think he would prefer to stand. �there�s something extraordinarily attractive about being friends,� he began. �isn�t it a great relief for you to meet someone who wishes to be nothing more than a friend?� �friends,� daisy repeated. �i don�t know that i think much of friends. you don�t get much out of _them_, do you?� �is that all anybody is for,� michael asked in disappointment. �to get something out of?� �well, naturally. anyone can�t live on nothing, can they?� �but i don�t see why a friend shouldn�t be as profitable as an ephemeral ... as a lover ... well, what i mean is, as a man you meet at eleven and say good-bye to next morning. a friend could be quite as generous.� �i never knew anyone in this world give anything unless they wanted twice as much back in return,� said daisy. �why do you suppose i gave you money the other day and paid your fine in the police court?� he asked, for, though he did not like it, he was so anxious to persuade her of the feasibleness of friendship, that he could not help making the allusion. �i suppose you wanted to,� she said. �as a friend,� he persisted. �oh, all right,� she agreed with him lazily. �have it your own way. i�m too sleepy to argue.� �then we are friends?� michael asked gravely. �yes. yes. yes. yes. a couple of old talk-you-deads joring over a clothes-line. get on with it, roy�or what�s your name? michael, eh? that�s right.� �good! now, supposing i ask your advice, will you give it to me?� �advice is very cheap,� said daisy. �i used to know a girl,� michael began. �a straight-cut?� �oh, yes. certainly. oh, rather. at least in those days she was.� �i see. and now she�s got a naughty little twinkle in her eye.� �look here. do listen seriously,� michael begged. �she isn�t a straight-cut any longer.� �well, what did i tell you? that�s what i said. she�s gone gay.� �i want to get her away from this life,� michael announced, with such solemnity that daisy was insulted. �why, what�s the matter with it? you�re as bad as a german ponce i knew who joined the salvation army. don�t you try taking me home to-night to our loving heavenly father. it gives me the sick.� �but this girl was brought up differently. she was what is called a �lady.�� �more shame for her then,� said daisy indignantly. �she ought to have known better.� it was curious this sense of intrusion which lily�s fall gave to one so deeply plunged. there was in daisy�s attitude something of the unionist�s toward foreign blackleg labor. �well, you see,� michael pointed out. �as even you have no pity for her, wouldn�t it be right for me to try to get her out of the life altogether?� �how are you going to do it? if she was walking about with a sunshade all day, before you sprang it on her....� �i had nothing to do with it,� michael interrupted. �at least not directly.� �well, what are you pulling your hair out over?� she demanded in surprise. �i feel a certain responsibility,� he explained. �go on with what you were saying.� �if she left a nice home,� daisy continued, �to live gay, she isn�t going to be whistled back to virginia the same as you would a dog. now, is she?� �but i want to marry her,� said michael simply. daisy stared at him in commiseration for his folly. �you must be worse than potty over her,� she gasped. �why?� �why? why, because it doesn�t pay to marry that sort of girl. she�ll only do you down with some fancy fellow, and then you�ll wish you hadn�t been such a grass-eyes.� a blackbeetle ran quickly across the gaudy oilcloth, and michael sitting in this scrofulous kitchen had a presentiment that daisy was right. sitting here, he was susceptible to the rottenness that was coeval with all creation. it called forth in him a sense of futility, so that he felt inclined to surrender his resolve to an universal pessimism. yet in the same instant he was aware of the need for him to do something, even if his action were to carry within itself the potential destruction of more than he was setting out to accomplish. �when do you see her?� asked daisy. �and what does _she_ say about being married?� �well, as a matter of fact, i haven�t seen her for nearly five years,� michael explained rather apologetically. �i�m searching for her now. i�ve got to find her.� �strike me, if you aren�t the funniest �� i ever met,� daisy exclaimed. she leaned back in her chair and began to laugh. her mockery was for michael intensified by the surroundings through which it was echoing. the kitchen was crowded with untidy accumulations, with half-washed plates and dishes, with odds and ends of attire; but the laughter seemed to be ringing through a desert. perhaps the illusion of emptiness was due to the pictures nailed without frames to the walls of the room, whose eyes watched him with unnatural fixity; and yet so homely was the behavior of the people in the pictures that by contrast suddenly they made the kitchen seem unreal. indeed, the whole house, no more substantial than a house in a puppet-show, betrayed its hollowness. it became an interior very much like those glimpses of interiors in crime illustrated. the slightest effort of fancy would have shown daisy palmer cloven by a hatchet, yet coquettish enough even in sanguinary death to display lisle-thread stockings and the scalloped edge of a white petticoat. there was nothing like this of which to dream in leppard street. death would come as slowly and wearily thither as here he would enter sensationally. daisy ceased to rock herself with mirth. �no, really,� she said. �it�s a shame to laugh, but you are the limit. only you did ask my advice, and i tell you straight you�ll be sorry if you do marry her. what�s she like, wandering willie? have some cocoa if i make it? go on, do. i�ll boil it on the gas-ring.� michael was touched by her attention, and he accepted the offer of cocoa. then he began to describe lily�s appearance. he could not, however much she might laugh, keep off the object of his quest. lily was, after all, the only rational explanation of his present mode of life. �she sounds a bit washed out according to your description of her,� daisy commented. �still, everyone to their own fancy, and if you like blue-eyed bottles of peroxide, that�s your look-out.� they were drinking the cocoa she had made, and the flame of the gas-ring gave just the barren comfort that the kitchen seemed to demand. another blackbeetle hurried over the oilcloth. a belated fly buzzed angrily against the shade of the electric light. daisy yawned and looked up at the metal clock with its husky tick. suddenly there was the sound of a latchkey in the outer door. she leaped up. �gard, supposing that�s bert come back from margate!� she pushed michael hurriedly across the passage into the front room, commanding him to keep quiet and stay in an empty curtained recess. then she hurried back to the kitchen, leaving him in a very unpleasant frame of mind. he heard through the closed door daisy�s voice in colloquy with a deeper voice. evidently bert had come back; but his return had been so abrupt that he had had no time to prevent himself being placed in this ridiculous position. would he have to stay in this recess all night? he peered out into the room, which was in a filigree of bleak shadows made by the street lamp shining through the muslin curtains of the window. through a desolation of undrawn blinds the houses of little quondam street were visible across the road. the unused room smelt moldy, and if michael had ever pictured himself in the complexity of a clandestine affair, this was not at all the romantic environment he would have chosen for his drama. this was really damned annoying, and he made a step in the direction of the kitchen to put an end to the misunderstanding. surely saunders would have realized that his visit to daisy was harmless: and yet would he? how stupid she had been to hustle him out of the way like this. naturally the fellow would be suspicious now. would that hum of conversation never stop? it reminded him of the fly which had been buzzing round the lamp. supposing saunders came in here to fetch something? was he to hide ignominiously behind this confounded curtain, and what on earth would happen if he were discovered? michael boiled with rage at the prospect of such an indignity. saunders would probably want to fight him. a man who spent his life helping to produce crime illustrated was no doubt deep-dyed himself in the vulgar crudity of his material. ten minutes passed. still that maddening hum of talk rose and fell. ten more minutes passed; and michael began to estimate the difficulty of climbing out of the window into the street. it had been delightful, this experience, until he had entered this cursed flat. he should have parted from daisy on the doorstep, and then he would have carried home with him the memory of a friendship that belonged to the london starlight. the whole relation had been ruined by entering this scabrous building. he must have been here for more than an hour. it was insufferable. he would go boldly into the kitchen and brave saunders� violence. yet he could not do that because daisy would be involved by such a step. what could they be talking about? it was really unreasonable for people who lived together to sit up chatting half the night. at last he heard the sound of an opening door; there were footsteps in the passage; another door-opened; after a minute or two somebody walked out into the street. michael had just sighed with relief, when he heard footsteps coming back; and the buzz of conversation began again in a lighter timbre. this was simply intolerable. he was evidently going to stay here until the filigree of shadows faded in the dawn. saunders must have brought in a friend with him. another half hour passed and michael had reached a stage of cynicism which disclaimed any belief in friendship. not again would he so easily let himself be made ridiculous. then he became conscious of a keen desire to see this saunders whom, by the way, he was supposed to resemble. it was tantalizing to miss the opportunity of comparison. the hum of conversation stopped. soon afterward daisy came into the room and whispered that he could creep out now, but that he must not slam the front door. she would see him at the orange to-morrow. when they reached the passage, she called back through the kitchen: �bert, do you know you left the front door open?� idiotically and uxoriously floated from the inner bedroom: �did i, pussy cat? puss must shut it then.� daisy dug michael violently in the ribs to express her inward hilarity; then suddenly she pulled him to her and kissed him roughly. in another second he was in the lamplight of little quondam street. as in a nightmare it converged before him: a lean dog was routing in some garbage: a drunken man, reeling along the pavement opposite, abused him in queer disjointed obscenities without significance. barnes was sitting in michael�s room, when he got back to leppard street. �what ho,� he said sleepily. �you�ve been enjoying yourself with that piece, then?� michael regarded him angrily. �what do you mean?� �oh, chuck it, fane. you needn�t look so solemn; she�s not a bad bit of goods, either. i�ve heard of her before.� michael turned away from him. he knew it would be useless to try to convince barnes that there was nothing between him and daisy. moreover, if he told the true tale of the evening, he would only make himself out utterly absurd. it was a pity that an evening which had promised such a reward for his theories should now be tainted. but when barnes had slouched upstairs to bed, michael realized how little his insinuations had mattered. the adventure had been primarily a comic experience; it had displayed him once more grotesquely reflected in the underworld�s distorting mirror. on the following night michael went to the café d�orange, and heard daisy�s account of the wonderful way in which she had fooled bert saunders. �but really, you know,� she said. �it did give me a turn. fancy him coming back all of a sudden like that, and bringing in that fighting fellow. what a terrible thing, if bert had found out you was in there and put him up to bashing your face. oh, but bert�s all right with his pussy-cat.� �but why didn�t you let me stay where i was?� michael asked. �and introduce me quite calmly. he couldn�t have said anything.� �couldn�t he?� daisy cried. �i reckon he could then. i reckon he could have said a lot. if he hadn�t, i�d have given him the chuck right away. i don�t want no fellow hanging around me that hasn�t got the pluck to go for anyone he finds messing about with his girl. _couldn�t_ he have said anything?� michael was again face to face with topsyturvydom. it really was time to meditate on the absurdity of trying to control these people of the underworld with laws and regulations and penalties which had been devised to control individuals who represented moral declension from the standards of a genteel civilization. mrs. murdoch, poppy, barnes, daisy�they all inverted the very fabric of society. they were moral antipodeans to the magistrate or the legislator or the social reformer. they were pursuing and acting up to their own ideals of conduct: they were not fleeing or falling away from a political morality. was it possible, then, to say that evil was something more than a mere failure to conform to goodness? was it possible to declare confidently the absolutism of evil? in this topsyturvydom might there not be perceived a great constructive force? michael pondered these questions a good deal. he had not enough evidence as yet to provide him with a synthesis; but as he sat through the rapid darkening of the september dusks, it seemed to him that very often he was trembling upon the verge of a discovery. leppard street came to stand as a dark antechamber with massive curtains drawn against the light, the light which in the past he had only perceived through the chinks of impenetrable walls. leppard street was dante�s obscure wood of the soul; it rustled with a thousand intimations of spiritual events. leppard street was dark, but michael did not fear the gloom, because he knew that he was winning here with each new experience a small advance; at oxford he had merely contemplated the result of the former pilgrimages of other people. with a quickening of his ambition he told himself that the light would be visible when he married lily, that through her salvation he would save himself. michael did not reënter his own world, whose confusion of minor problems would have destroyed completely his hope to stand unperplexed before the problems of the underworld, the solution of which might help to solve the universe or at any rate his own share in the universe. he did not tell his mother or stella where he was living, and their letters came to him at his club. they did not worry him, although stella threatened a terrible punishment if he did not appear in their midst in time to give her away in november. this he promised to do in spite of everything. he was faithful to his search for lily, and he even went so far as to call upon drake to ask if he had ever seen her since that night at the orient. but he had not. michael did not vex himself over the failure to discover lily�s whereabauts. having placed himself at the nod of destiny, he was content to believe that if he never found her he must be content to look elsewhere for the expression of himself. september became october. it would be six years this month since first they met, and she was twenty-two now. could seventeen be captured anew? one afternoon from his window michael was pondering the etiolated season whose ghostliness was more apparent in leppard street, because no fall of leaves marked material decline. hurrying along the brindled walls from the direction of greenarbor court was a parson whose walk was perfectly familiar, though he could not affix it to any person he knew. yes, he could. it was chator�s, the dear, the pious and the bubbling chator�s; and how absurdly the same as it used to be along the corridors of st. james�. michael rushed out to meet him, and had seized and shaken his hand before chator recognized him. when he did, however, he was twice as much excited as michael, and spluttered forth a fountain of questions about his progress during these years with a great deal of information about his own. he came in eagerly at michael�s invitation, and so much had he still to ask and tell that it was a long time before he wanted to know what had brought michael to leppard street. �how extraordinary to find you here, my dear fellow! this isn�t my district, you know. but the senior curate is ill. greenarbor court! i say, what a dreadful slum!� chator looked very intensely at michael, as if he expected he would offer to raze it to the ground immediately. �i never realized we had anything quite so bad in the parish. but what really is extraordinary about running across you like this is that a man who�s just come to us from ely was talking about you only yesterday. my goodness, how ...� �it�s no larger than a grain of sand,� michael interrupted quickly. �what is?� asked chator, with his familiar expression of perplexity at michael. �you were going to comment on the size of the world, weren�t you?� �i suppose you�ll rag me just as much as ever, you old brute.� chator was beaming with delight at the prospect. �but seriously, this man stewart�nigel stewart. i think he was at trinity, oxford. you do know him?� �nigel isn�t here, too?� michael exclaimed. �he�s our deacon.� �oh, how priceless you�ll both be in the pulpit,� said michael. �and to-morrow�s sunday. which of you will be preaching at mass?� �my dear fellow, the vicar always preaches at mass. i shall be preaching at evening prayer. why don�t you come to supper in the clergy house afterward?� �how do you like your vicar?� �oh, very sound, very sound,� said chator, shaking his head. �does he take the ablutions at the right moment?� asked michael, twinkling. �oh, yes. oh, yes. he�s very sound. quite all right. i was afraid at first he was going to be a leetle high church. but he�s not. not a bit. we had a procession this june on corpus christi. the people liked it. and of course we�ve got the children.� they talked for an hour of old friends, of viner, of dom cuthbert and clere abbey and schooldays, until at last chator had to be going. �you will come on sunday?� �of course. but what�s the name of your church?� �my dear fellow, that shows you haven�t heard your parochial mass,� said chator, with mock seriousness. �st. chad�s is our church.� �it sounds as if you had a saintly fish for patron,� said michael. �i say, steady. steady. st. chad, you know, of lichfield.� michael laughed loudly. �my dear old chator, you are just as inimitable as ever. you haven�t changed a bit. well, saint chad�s�sunday.� from the window he watched chator hurrying along beside the brindled walls. he thought how every excited step he took showed him to be bubbling over with the joy of telling nigel stewart of such a coincidence in the district of the senior curate. michael suggested to barnes that he should come with him to church on sunday, and barnes, who evidently thought his salary demanded deference to michael�s wishes, made no objection. it was an october evening through which a wintry rawness had already penetrated, and the interior of st. chad�s with its smell of people and warm wax and stale incense was significant of comfort and shelter. the church, a dreary byzantine edifice, was nevertheless a very essential piece of london, being built of the yellow bricks whose texture and color more than that of any other material adapt themselves to the grime of the city. nothing deliberately beautiful would have had power here. these people who sat thawing in a stupor of waiting felt at home. they were submerged in london streets, and their church was as deeply engulfed as themselves. the stations of the cross did not seem much more strange here than the lithographs in their own kitchens, and the raucous drone of gregorians was familiar music. as the office proceeded, michael glanced from time to time toward his companion. at first barnes had kept an expression of injured boredom, but with each chant he seemed less able to resist the habits of the past. michael felt bound to ascribe to habit his compliance with the forms and ceremonies, for it was scarcely conceivable that he could any longer be moved by the appeal of a sensuous worship, still less by the craving of his soul for god. chator�s discourse was a simple one delivered with all the spluttering simplicity he could bring to it. michael was not sure of the effect upon the congregation, but himself found it moving in a gently pathetic way. the sermon had the naïve obviousness and the sweet seriousness of a child telling a long tale of imaginary adventure. it was easy to see that chator had never known from the moment of his ordination, or indeed from the moment he began to suppose he was thinking for himself, a single doubt of the absolute truth of his religion, still less of its expediency. michael wondered again what effect the sermon was having upon the congregation, which was sitting all round him woodenly in a sort of browse. did one sentence reach it, or was the whole business of the sermon merely an excuse to sit here basking in the stuffiness of the homely church? michael turned a sidelong look at barnes. tears were in his eyes, and he was staring into the gloom of the dingy apse with its tesselations of dull gold. this was disconcerting to michael�s opinion of the sermon, for chator could not be shaking barnes by his eloquence: these splutterings of dogma were surely not able to rouse one so deep in the quagmire of his own corruption. must he confess that a positive sanctity abode in this church? he would be glad to believe it did; he would be glad to imagine that an imperishable temple of truth was posited among these perishable streets. the sermon was over, and as the congregation rose to sing the hymn, michael was aware, he could not have said how, that these people pouring forth this sacred jingle were all very weary. they had come here to rest from the fatigue of dullness, and in a moment now the chill vapors of the autumn night would wreathe themselves round their journey home. sunday was a day of pause when the people of the city had leisure to sigh out their weariness: it was no shutting of theaters or shops that made it sad. this congregation was composed of weaklings fit for neither good nor evil, and every sunday night they were gathered together for a little while in the smell of warm wax and incense. now already they were trooping out into the frore evening; their footsteps would shuffle for a space over the dark pavements; a few would have pickled cabbage and cheese for supper, a few would not; such was life in this limbo between hell and heaven. barnes, however, was not to be judged with the bulk of the congregation: another reason must be found for the influence of evening prayer or of chator�s words upon him. �did you like the sermon?� michael asked in the porch. �i didn�t listen to a word of it,� said barnes emphatically. �oh, really? i thought you were interested. you seemed interested,� said michael. �i was thinking what a mug i�d been not to back the clown for the cesarewitch. i had the tip. you know, fane, i�ll tell you what it is. i�m not used to money, and that�s a fact. i don�t know how to spend it. i�m afraid of it. so bang it all goes on drinks.� �i thought you enjoyed the service,� said michael. �oh, i�m used to services. you know. on and off i�ve done a lot of churchifying, i have. it would take something more than that fellow preaching to curdle me up. i�ve gone through it. religion, love, and measles; they�re all about the same. i don�t reckon anybody gets them more than once properly.� michael told barnes he was going on to supper at the clergy house, and though he had intended to invite him to come as well, he was so much irritated by his unconscious deception that he let him go off, and went back into the empty church to wait for chator and nigel stewart. what puzzled michael most about barnes was how himself had ever managed to be impressed by his unusual wickedness. as he beheld him nowadays, a mean and common little squirt of exceptional beastliness really, he was amazed to think that once he had endowed him with almost diabolical powers. he remembered to this day the gleam in brother aloysius� blue eyes when he was gathering the blackberries by that hazel-coppice. perhaps it had been the monkish habit, which by contrast with his expression had made him seem almost supernaturally evil; and yet when he met him again at earl�s court he had been kindled by those blue eyes. henry meats had been very much like henry barnes; but where was now that lambent flame in the eyes? he had looked at them many times lately, but they had always been cold and unintelligent as a doll�s. �i really must have been mad when i was young,� michael said to himself. �and yet other people have preserved the influence they used to have over me. other people haven�t changed. why should he? i wonder whether it was always myself i saw in him: my own evil genius?� chator came to fetch him while he was worrying over barnes� lapse into unimportance, and together they passed through the sacristy into the clergy house. nigel stewart�s room, which they visited in the minutes before supper, had changed very little from his digs in the high. ely had added a picture or two; that was all. nor had nigel changed, except that his clerical attire made him more seraphic than ever. while he and michael chattered of oxford friends, chator stood with his back to the fire beaming at the reunion which he felt he had brought about: his biretta at a military angle gave him a look of knowing benevolence. the bell sounded for supper, and they went along corridors hung with arundel prints and faded photographs of cathedrals, until they came to a brightly lit room where it seemed that quite twenty people were going to sit down at the trestle-table. michael was introduced to the vicar and two more curates, and also to a dozen church workers who made the same sort of jokes about whatever dish they were helping. also he met that walrus-like man who, whether as organist or ceremonarius or treasurer of club accounts or vicar�s churchwarden, is always to be found attached to the clergy. michael sat next to him, as it happened, and found he had a deep voice and was unable to get nearer to �th� than �v.� �we�re raver finking,� he confided to michael over a high-heaped plate, �of starting benediction, vis year.� �that will be wonderful,� said michael politely. �yes, it ought to annoy ver poor old bishop raver.� the walrus-like man chuckled and bent over his food with a relish stimulated by such a prospect. after supper the two curates carried off their favorites upstairs to their own rooms; and as chator, stewart, and michael were determined to spend the evening together, the vicar was left with rather more people than usual to smoke his cigarettes. �i envy you people,� said michael, as the three of them sank down into deep wicker chairs. �i envy this power you have to bring oxford�or cambridge�into london. for it is the same spirit in terms of action, isn�t it? and you�re free from the thought which must often worry dons that perhaps they are having a very good time without doing very much to deserve it.� �we work hard in this parish,� spluttered chator. �oh, rather. very hard.� �that�s what i say. you have the true peace that thrives on activity,� said michael. �but at the same time, what i�m rather anxious to know is how nearly you touch the real sinners.� stewart and chator looked at one another across his chair. �how much do we, brother?� asked stewart. �no, really,� protested michael. �my dear nigel, i can�t have you being so affected. brother! you must give up being archaic now that you�re a pale young curate.� �what do you call the real sinners?� asked chator. �you saw our congregation to-night. all poor, of course.� �shall i say frankly what i think?� michael asked. the other two nodded. �i�m not sure if that congregation is worth a very great deal. i�m not trying to be offensive, so listen to me patiently. that congregation would come whatever you did. they came not because they wanted to worship god or because they desired the forgiveness of their sins, nor even because they think that going to church is a good habit. no, they came in a sort of sad drift of aimlessness; they came in out of the dreariness of their lives to sit for a little while in the glow that a church like yours can always provide. they went out again with a vague memory of comfort, material comfort, i mean; but they took away with them nothing that would kindle a flame to light up the gray week-days. do you know, i fancy that when these picture-theaters become more common, as they will, most of your people will get from them just the same sensation of warmth and material comfort. obviously if this is a true observation on my part, your people regard church from a merely negative attitude. that isn�t enough, as you�ll admit.� �but it�s not fair to judge by the evening congregation,� chator burst out. �you must remember that we get quite a different crowd at mass.� �but do you get the real sinners?� michael repeated. �my dear michael, what does this inquisition forebode?� said stewart. �you�re becoming wrapped in mystery. you�re found in leppard street for no reason that i�ve yet heard. and now you attack us in this unkind way.� �i�m not attacking you,� michael said. �i�m trying to extract from you a point of view. lately it happens that i�ve found myself in the company of a certain class, well�the company of bullies and prostitutes. you must have lots of them in this parish. do you get hold of them? i don�t believe you do, because the chief thing which has struck me is the utter remoteness of the church or indeed of any kind of religion from the life of that class. and their standards are upside-down�actually upside-down. they�re handed over entirely to the powers of darkness. now, as far as i can see, the devil�or whatever you choose to call him�only cares about people who are worth his while. he hands the others over to anybody that likes to deal with them. equally i would say that god is a little contemptuous of the poor intermediates. the church, however, in these hard times for religion is glad to get hold even of them, and this miserable spirit of mediocrity runs through the whole organization. the bishops are moderate; the successful parsons are moderate; and the flock is moderate. to come back to the sinners. you know, they _would_ be worth getting. you�ve no idea what a force they would raise. and now, all their industry, all their ingenuity, all their vitality is devoted to the service of evil.� chator could contain himself no longer. �my dear fellow, you don�t understand how impossible it is to get in touch with the people you�re talking about. they elude one. of course, we should rejoice to get them. but they�re impossible.� �christ moved among sinners,� said michael. �it�s not because we don�t long to move among them,� chator spluttered in exasperation. �we would give anything to move among them. but we can�t. i don�t know why. but they won�t relax any of their barriers. they�re notoriously difficult.� �then it all comes down to a �no� in answer to my question,� said michael. �you don�t get the real sinners. that�s what�s the matter with st. chad�s�until you can compel the sinner to come in, you�ll stay in a spiritual backwater.� �if you were a priest,� said chator, �you�d realize our handicap better.� �no doubt,� michael agreed. �but don�t forget that the salvation army gets hold of sinners. in fact, i�ll wager that nine out of ten of the people with whom i�ve been in contact lately would only understand by religion the salvation army. personally i loathe the salvation army. i think it is almost a more disruptive organization than anything else in the world. but at least it is alive; it�s not suet like most of the dissenting sects or a rather rich and heavy plum-pudding like the greater part of the church of england. it�s a maddening and atrociously bad and cheap alcohol, but it does enflame. i tell you, my dear old chator and my dear old nigel, you have the greatest opportunity imaginable for energy, for living and bringing life to others, if only you�ll not sit down and be content because you�ve got the children and can fill the church for evening prayer with that colorless, dreary, dreadfully sorrowful crowd i saw to-night.� michael leaned back in his chair; the fire crackled above the silence; and, outside, the disheartened quiet of the sabbath was brooding. chator was the first to speak. �some of what you say may be true, but the rest of it is a mere muddle of heresies and misconceptions and misstatements. it�s absolute blasphemy to say that god is contemptuous of what you called the intermediates, and you apparently believe that evil is only misdirected good. you apparently think that your harlots and bullies are better for being more actively harmful.� �no, no,� michael corrected. �you didn�t follow my argument. as a matter of fact, i believe in the absolutism of evil the more, the more i see of evil men and women. what i meant was that in proportion to the harm they have power to effect would be the inspiration and advantage of turning their abilities toward good. but cut out all theological questions and confess that the church has failed with the class i speak of.� the argument swayed backward and forward for a long time, without reaching a conclusion. �you can�t have friars nowadays,� said chator in response to michael�s last expression of ambition. �conditions have changed.� �conditions had changed when st. francis of assisi tried to revive an absolute christianity,� michael pointed out. �conditions had changed when the incarnation took place. pontius pilate, caiaphas, judas, and a host of contemporaries must have tried to point that out. materialists are always peculiarly sensitive to the change of external conditions. do you believe in christ?� �don�t try to be objectionable, my dear fellow,� said chator, getting very red. �well, if you do,� persisted michael, �if you accept the gospels, it is utterly absurd for you as a christian priest to make �change of conditions� an excuse for having failed to rescue the sinners of your parish.� �michael,� said stewart, intervening on account of chator�s obviously rising anger. �why are you living in leppard street? what fiery mission are you upon? i believe you�re getting too much wrapped up in private fads and fancies. why don�t you come and work for us at st. chad�s?� �he�s one of those clever people who can always criticize with intense fervor,� said chator bitterly. he was still very red and ruffled, and michael felt rather penitent. �i wish i _could_ work here. chator, do forgive me for being so offensive. i really have no right to criticize, because my own vice is inability to do anything in company with other people. the very sight of workers in coöperation freezes me into apathy. if i were a priest, i should probably feel like you that the children were the most important. have neither of you ever heard of anybody whose faith was confirmed by the realization of evil? usually, it�s the other way about, isn�t it? i�ve met many unbelievers who first began to doubt, because the problem of evil upset their notions of divine efficiency. chator, you have forgiven me, haven�t you?� �i ought to have realized that you didn�t mean half you were saying,� said chator. michael smiled. should he start the argument again by insisting that he had meant even twice as much as he had said? in the end, however, he let chator believe in his exaggeration, and they parted good friends. nigel stewart came often to see him during the next fortnight, and he was very anxious to find out why michael was living in leppard street. michael would not tell him, however, but instead he introduced him to barnes who with money in his pocket was very independent and gave up sign of his boasted ability to circumvent parsons financially. no doubt, however, when he was thrown back on his own resources, he would benefit greatly by this acquaintance. stewart had a theory that michael had shut himself in leppard street to test the personality of satan, and he used to insist that michael performed all kinds of magical experiments in his solitude there. having himself been a satanist on several occasions at oxford, he felt less than chator would have done the daring of discussing baudelaire and huysmans. deacon though he was, nigel was still an undergraduate, nor did it seem probable that he would ever cease to be one. he tried to thrill michael with some of his own diabolic experiences, but michael was a little contemptuous and told him that his devil was merely a figure of academic naughtiness. �all that kind of subjective wickedness is nothing at all,� said michael. �at the worst, it can only unbalance your judgment. i passed through it at the age of sixteen.� �you must have been horribly precocious,� said nigel disapprovingly. �oh, not more so than anyone who has freedom to develop. i should give up subjective encounters with evil, if i were you. you�ll be telling me soon that you�ve been pinched by demons like an egyptian eremite.� nigel gave the impression of rather deploring the lack of such an experience, and michael laughed: �go and see maurice avery in grosvenor road. he�s just the person you ought to convert. nothing could be easier than to turn mossy into an æsthetic christian. would that satisfy your zeal?� �i really think you _are_ growing very offensive,� said nigel. �no, i�m not. i�m illustrating a point. your encounters with evil and maurice�s encounters with religion would match each other. both would have a very wide, but also a very superficial area.� november had arrived, and michael reappeared in cheyne walk to assist at stella�s wedding. he paid no attention to the scorn she flung at his affected mode of life, and he successfully resisted her most carefully planned sallies of curiosity: �what you have to do at present is to keep your own head, not mine. think of the responsibilities of marriage and let me alone. i�ll tell you quite enough when the moment comes for telling.� �michael, you�re getting dreadfully obstinate,� stella declared. �i remember when i could get a secret out of you in no time.� �it�s not i who am obstinate,� said michael. �it�s you who are utterly spoiled by the lovelorn alan.� michael and alan went for a long walk in richmond park on the day before the wedding. it was a limpid day at the shutting-in of st. martin�s summer, and to michael it seemed like the ghost of one of those june saturdays of eight years ago. time had faded that warmer blue to a wintry turquoise, but there was enough of summer�s image in this wraith of a day to render very poignantly to him the past. he wondered if alan were thinking of the afternoons when they had sent the sun down from richmond hill. that evening before the examinations of a summer term recurred to him now more insistently than any of those dead days. thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in vallombrosa. now the leaves were lying brown and dewy in the richmond thickets. then it was a summer evening of foliage in the prime. he wished he could remember the lines of virgil which had matched the milton. he used to know them so well: matres atque viri defunctaque corpora vita magnanimum heroum, pueri innuptæque puellæ. there were two complex hexameters, but all that remained in his memory of the rest were two or three disjointed phrases: lapsa cadunt folia ... ubi frigidus annus ... et ... terris apricis. even at fourteen he had been able to respond to the melancholy of these lines; really, he had been rather an extraordinary boy. the sensation of other times which was evoked by walking like this in richmond park would soon be too strong for him any longer not to speak of it. yet because those dead summer days seemed now to belong to the mystery of youth, to the still unexpressed and inviolate heart of a period that was forever overpast, michael could not bring himself to destroy their sanctity with sentimental reminiscence. however, there had been comedy and absurdity also, perhaps rather more fit for exhumation now than those deeper moments. �do you remember the wedding of mrs. ross?� he asked. �rather,� said alan, and they both smiled. �do you remember when you first called her aunt maud, and we both burst out laughing and had to rush out of the room?� �rather,� said alan. �boys _are_ ridiculous, aren�t they?� �supposing we both laugh like that when stella is first called mrs. merivale?� michael queried. �i shall be in much too much of a self-conscious funk to laugh at anything,� said alan. �and yet do you realize that we�re only talking of eight years ago? nothing at all really. six years less than we had already lived at the time when that wedding took place.� to alan upon the verge of the most important action of his life michael�s calculation seemed very profound indeed, and they both walked on in silence, meditating upon the revelation it afforded of a fugitive mortality. �you�ll be writing epitaphs next,� said alan, in rather an aggrieved voice. he had evidently traversed the swift years of the future during the silence. �at any rate,� michael said. �you can congratulate yourself upon not having wasted time.� �my god,� cried alan, stopping suddenly. �i believe i�m the luckiest man alive.� �i thought you�d found a sovereign,� said michael. he had never heard alan come so near to emotional expression and, knowing that a moment later alan would be blushing at his want of reserve, he loyally covered up with a joke the confusion that must ensue. very few people came to the wedding, for stella had insisted that as none of her girl friends were reputable enough to be bridesmaids, she must do without them. mrs. ross came, however, and she brought with her kenneth to be a solemn and freckled and carroty page. she was very anxious that michael should come back after the wedding to cobble place, but he said he would rather wait until after christmas. nancy came, and michael tried to remember if he had once seriously contemplated marrying her. how well he remembered her in short skirts, and here she was a woman of thirty with a brusque jolly manner and gold pince-nez. �you _are_ a brute always to avoid my visits at cobble place,� grumbled nancy. �do you realize we haven�t met for years?� �you�re such a woman of affairs,� said michael. �well, do let�s try to meet next time. i say, don�t you think maud looks terribly ill since she became a romanist?� michael looked across to where mrs. ross was standing. �i think she�s looking rather well.� �absolute destruction of individuality, you know,� said nancy, shaking her head. �i was awfully sick about that business. however, i must admit that she hasn�t forced her religion down our throats.� �did you expect an auto-da-fé in the middle of the lawn?� he asked. she thumped him on the shoulder: �silly ass! don�t you try to rag me.� they had a jolly talk, but michael was glad he had not married her at eight years old. he decided that by now he would probably have regretted the step. michael managed to get two or three minutes alone with stella after the ceremony. �well, mrs. prescott-merivale?� �you�ve admitted i�m a married woman,� she exclaimed. �now surely you can tell me what you�ve been doing since august and where you�ve been.� �i thought very fondly that you were without the curiosity of every woman,� said michael. �alas, you are not!� �michael, you�re perfectly horrid to me.� �don�t be too much the young wife,� he advised, with mocking earnestness. �i won�t listen to anything you say, until i know where you�ve been. of course, if i hadn�t been so busy, i could easily have found you out.� �not even can you sting me into the revelation of my hiding-place,� michael laughed. �you shan�t stay with us at hardingham unless you tell me.� �by the time you come back from your honeymoon, i may have wonderful news,� said michael. �oh, and by the way, where are you going for your honeymoon? it sounds absurd to ask such a question at this hour, but i�ve never heard.� �we�re going to compiègne,� said stella. �i wrote to little castéra-verduzan, and he�s lent us the cottage where you and i stayed.� that choice of stella�s seemed to mark more decisively than anything she had said or done his own second place in her thoughts nowadays. when the bride and bridegroom were gone, michael sat with his mother, talking. �i had arranged to go to the south of france with mrs. carruthers,� she told him. �but if you�re going to be here, i could put her off.� michael felt rather guilty. he had not considered his mother�s loneliness, and he had meant to return at once to leppard street. �no, no, i�m going away again,� he told her. �just as you like, dearest boy.� �you�re glad about stella?� �very glad.� �and you like alan?� �of course. charming�charming.� the firelight danced in opals on the window-panes, and the macaw who had been brought up to mrs. fane�s sitting-room out of the way of the wedding guests sharpened his beak on the perch. �it�s really quite chilly this afternoon,� said mrs. fane. �yes, there�s a good deal of mist along the river,� said michael. �a pity that the fine weather should have broken up. it may be rather dreary in the forest.� �why did they go to a forest?� she asked. �so like stella to choose a forest in november. most unpractical. still, when one is young and in love, one doesn�t notice the mud.� next day mrs. fane went off to the south of france, and michael went back to leppard street. chapter v the innermost circle november fogs began soon after michael returned to leppard street, and these fuliginous days could cast their own peculiar spell. to enter the house at dusk was to stand for a moment choking in blackness; and even when the gas flared and whistled through a sickly nebula, it only made more vast the lightless vapors above, so that the interior seemed at first not a place of shelter, but a mirage of the streets that would presently dissolve in the drifting fog. these nights made pimlico magical for walking. distance was obliterated; time was abolished; life was disembodied. he never tired of wandering up and down the vauxhall bridge road where the trams came trafficking like strange ships, so unfamiliar did they seem here beside the dumpy horse omnibuses. one evening when the fog was not very dense michael went up to piccadilly. here the lamps were strong enough to shine through the murk with a golden softness that made the circus like a landscape seen in a dying fire. michael could not bear to withdraw from this glow in which every human countenance was idealized as by amber limes in a theater. at the o.u.d.s. performance of the merchant of venice they had been given a sunset like this on the rialto. it would be jolly to meet somebody from oxford to-night�lonsdale, for instance. he looked round half-expectant of recognition; but there was only the shifting crowd about him. how were stella and alan getting on at compiègne? probably they were having clear blue days there, and in the forest would be a smell of woodfires. with such unrelated thoughts michael strolled round piccadilly, sometimes in a wider revolution turning up the darker side streets, but always ultimately returning to the island in the middle. here he would stand in a dream, watching the omnibuses go east and west and south and north. the crowd grew stronger, for the people were coming out of the theaters. should he go to the orange and talk to daisy? should he call a hansom and drive home? bewitched as by the spinning of a polychromatic top, he could not leave the island. they were coming out of the orient now, and he watched the women emerge one by one. their ankles all looked so white and frail under the opera-cloaks puffed out with swans-down; and they all of them walked to their carriages with the same knock-kneed little steps. soon he must begin to frequent the orient again. suddenly michael felt himself seized with the powerless excitement of a nightmare. there in black, strolling nonchalantly across the pavement to a hansom, was lily! she was with another girl. then drake�s story had been true. michael realized that gradually all this time he had been slowly beginning to doubt whether drake had ever seen her. lily had become like a princess in a fairy tale. now she was here! he threw off the stupefaction that was paralyzing him, and started to cross the road. a wave of traffic swept up and he was driven back. when the stream had passed, lily was gone. in a rage with his silly indecision he set out to walk back to pimlico. the fog had lifted entirely, and there was frost in the air. michael walked very quickly because it seemed the only way to wear out his chagrin. how idiotic it had been to let himself be caught like that. supposing she did not visit the orient again for a long time? it would serve him right. oh, why had he not managed to get in front of those vehicles in time? he and she might have been driving together now; instead of which he was stamping his way along this dull dark pavement. how tall she had seemed, how beautiful in her black frock. at last he knew why all this time women had left him cold. he loved her still. what nonsense it had been for him to think he wanted to marry her in order to rescue her. what priggish insolence! he loved her still: he loved her now: he loved her: he loved her! the railings of green park rattled to his stick. he loved her more passionately because the ghost of her whom he had thought of with romantic embellishment all these years was but a caricature of her reality. that image of gossamer which had floated through his dreams was become nothing, now that again he had seen herself with her tall neck and the aureole of her hair and the delicate poise of her as she waited among those knock-kneed women on the pavement. he brought his stick crashing down upon a bin of gravel by the curb that it might clang forth his rage. in what direction had she driven away? even that he did not know. she might have driven past this very lamp-post a few minutes back. here was hyde park corner. in london it was overwhelming to speculate upon a hansom�s progress. here already were main roads branching, and these in their turn would branch, and others after them until the imagination was baffled. waste of time. waste of time. he would not picture her in any quarter of london. but never one night should escape without his waiting for her at the orient. where was she now? he would put her from his mind until they met. supposing that round the corner of that wall she were waiting, because the cab horse had slipped. how she would turn toward him in her black dress. �i saw you outside the orient,� he would say. she should know immediately that he was not deceived about her life. so vividly had he conjured the scene that when he rounded the wall on his way down buckingham palace road, he was disappointed to see no cab, no lily standing perplexed; merely a tabid woman clothed in a cobweb of crape, asleep over her tray of matches and huddled against the wall of the king�s garden. he put a sixpence among her match-boxes, and wondered of what were her dark dreams. the stars were blue as steel in the moonless sky above the arc-lamps; and a cold parching wind had sprung up. michael deviated from the nearest way to leppard street, and walked on quickly into the heart of pimlico. this kind of clear-cut air suited the architecture of the ashen streets. one after another they stretched before him with their dim checkers of doors and windows. sometimes, where they were intersected by wider thoroughfares, an arc-lamp fizzed above the shape of a solitary policeman, and the corner-houses stood out sharper and more cadaverous. and always in contrast with these necropolitan streets, these masks of human dwellings, were michael�s own thoughts thronged with fancies of himself and lily. it was nearly one o�clock when he walked over the arcuated bridge across the lake of railway lines and turned the corner into leppard street. from the opposite pavement a woman�s figure stepped quickly toward him out of a circle of lamplight. the sudden shadow lanced across the road made him start. perhaps she noticed him jump, for she stopped at once and stared at him owlishly. he felt sick for a moment, and yet he could not, from an absurd compassion for her, do as he would have liked and run. �where are you off to in such a hurry?� he heard her say. it was too late to avoid her now. he only had two sovereigns in his pocket. it would be ridiculous and cowardly to escape by offering her one of them. he had given his last silver coin to the match-seller. yet it would have been just as cowardly to have offered her that. he pitied the degradation that prompted her so casual question; the diffidence in her tones marked the fear of answering brutality which must always haunt her. now that she was close to him, he no longer dreaded her. she was not an ancient drab, a dreadful old woman with black cotton gloves, as at first he had shuddered to suppose her. if those raddled smears and that deathly blanch of coarse powder were cleared from her cheeks, there would be nothing to attract or repel: she would scarcely become even an individual in the multitude of weary london women. �where are you off to, dearie, in such a hurry?� she repeated. �home. i�m going home,� he said. �let�s walk a bit of the way together.� he could say nothing to her, and if he hurried on, he would hear her voice whining after him like a cat in a yard. he did not wish to let her know where he was living; for every evening he would expect to see her materialize from a quivering circle of lamplight so close to leppard street. �why don�t you come back with me? i live quite near here,� she murmured. �go on. you look as if you wanted someone to make a fuss of you.� already they were beside the five houses that rose jet-black against the star-incrusted sky. �come on, dear. i live in the corner house.� michael looked at her in astonishment, and she mistaking his scrutiny smiled in pitiable allurement. he felt as if a marionette were blandishing him. the woman evidently thought he was considering the question of money, and she sidled close up to him. �go on, dear, you�ve got some money with you?� �it�s not that,� said michael. �i don�t want to come in with you.� yet he knew that he must enter number one with her in order to find in what secret room she lived. and to-morrow morning he would leave the house forever, since it would be unimaginable to stay there longer with the consciousness that perhaps they were creatures like this, who slammed the doors in passages far upstairs. he would not sleep comfortably again with the sense that women like this were creeping about the stairs like spiders. he must probe her existence, and he put his foot on the steps of the front door. �not that door,� she said. �down here.� she pushed back the gate of the area-steps, and led the way down into the basement. it was incredible that she could live on the same floor as the cleghornes. yet obviously she did. �don�t make a noise,� she whispered. �because the woman who keeps the house sleeps down here.� she opened the back door, and he followed her into the frowsty passage. when the door was dosed behind them, the blackness was absolute. �got a vesta with you?� she whispered. michael felt her hands pawing him, and he shrank back against the greasy wall. �here you are. here you are.� the match flamed, but went out before he could light the nodulous candle she proffered. in the darkness he felt her spongy lips upon his cheek, but disengaging himself from her assiduousness, he managed to light the candle. they went along the corridor past the front room where cleghorne snored the day away; past the kitchen whose open door exhaled an odorous breath of habitation; and through a stone pantry. then she led him down three steps and up another, unlocked a rickety door, and welcomed him. �i�m quite on my own, you see,� she said, in a voice of tentative satisfaction. michael looked round at the room which was small and smelt very damp. the ceiling sloped to a window closely curtained with the cretonne of black and crimson fruits which michael recognized as the same stuff he had seen in barnes� room above. he tried to recall how much of this room he could see from his bedroom window, and he connected it in his mind with a projecting roof of cracked slates which he had often noticed. the action of the rain on the plaster had made it look like a map of the moon in relief. the furniture consisted of a bed, a washstand and a light blue chest. there was also a narrow shelf on which was a lamp with a reflector of corrugated tin, a bald powder-puff, and two boot-buttons. the woman lit the lamp, and as she stooped to look at the jagged flame, michael saw that her hair was as iridescent as oil on a canal with what remained of henna and peroxide. �that�s more cheerful. though i must say it�s a pity they haven�t put the gas in here. oh, don�t sit on that old box. it makes you look such a stranger.� michael said he had a great fondness for sitting on something that was hard; but he thought how absurd he must appear sitting like this on a pale blue chest next to a washstand. �are you looking at my cat?� she asked. �what cat?� �he�s under the bed, i�ll be bound.� she called, and a small black cat came out. �isn�t he lovely? but, fancy, he�s afraid of me. he always gets under the bed like that.� michael felt he ought to make up to the cat what his cordiality had lacked toward the mistress, and he paid so much attention to it that finally the animal lost all fear and jumped on his knee. �well, there!� the woman exclaimed. �did you ever? i�ve never seen him do that before. he knows you�re a gentleman. oh, yes, they know. his mother ran away. but she comes to see me sometimes and always looks very well, so she�s got a good home. but _he_ isn�t stinted. oh, no. he gets his milk every day. what i say is, if you�re going to have animals, look after them.� michael nodded agreement. �because to my mind,� she went on, �a great many animals are better than human beings.� �oh, yes, i think they probably are,� said michael. �poor peter!� she crooned. �i wouldn�t starve you, would i?� the cat left michael and went and sat beside her on the bed. �why do you call it peter?� he asked. the name savored rather of the deliberate novelist. �after my boy.� �your boy?� he echoed. �oh, he�s a fine boy, and a good boy.� the mention of her son stiffened the woman into a fleeting dignity. �i suppose he�s about twelve?� michael asked. her age had puzzled him. �well, thirteen really. of course, you see, i�m a little older than what i look.� as she looked about forty-five, michael thought that the converse was more probable. �he�s not living with you?� �oh, no, certainly not. why, i wouldn�t have him here for anything�not ever. oh, no, he�s at school with the jesuits. he�s to go in the civil service. i lived with his father for many years�in fact, from the time i was sixteen. his father was a frenchman. a silk-merchant he was. he�s been dead about six years now.� �i suppose he left money to provide for the boy.� �oh no! no, he left nothing. well, you see, silk merchants weren�t what they used to be, when he died; and before that his business was always falling off bit by bit. no, the jesuits took him. of course i�m a catholic myself.� as she made her profession of faith, he saw hanging from the knob of the bed a rosary. with whatever repulsion, with whatever curiosity he had entered, michael now sat here on the pale blue chest in perfect humility of spirit. �i suppose you don�t care for this life?� he asked after a short silence. �well, no, i do not. it�s not at all what i should call a refined way of living, and often it�s really very unpleasant.� somehow their relation had entirely changed, and michael found himself discussing her career as if he were talking to an old maid about her health. �for one thing,� she continued, �the police are very rough with one, and if anyone doesn�t behave just as they�d like for them to behave, they make it very awkward. they really take it out of anyone. that isn�t right, is it? it�s really not as it should be, i don�t think.� michael thought of the police in leicester square. �it�s damnable!� he growled. �and i suppose you have to put up with a good deal from some of the men?� �undoubtedly,� she said, shaking her head, and becoming every moment more and more like a spinster who kept a stationer�s shop in a provincial town. �undoubtedly. well, for one thing, i�m at anyone�s mercy in here. of course, if i called out, i might be heard and i might not. really, if it wasn�t for the woman who keeps the house being always so anxious for her rent, i might be murdered any time and stay in here for days without anyone knowing about it. last wednesday�or was it thursday?�time goes by so fast, it seems hardly worth while to count the days, does it? one day last week i did what i�ve never done before: i accepted six shillings. well, it was late and what with one thing and another i wanted the money. will you believe it, i very carefully, as i thought, hid it safe away in my bag, and this man�a very rough sort of a man he was, i�m not surprised poor peter runs away from them�i heard him walking about the room when i woke up in the middle of the night. and will you believe it, he�d gone to my bag and taken out his six shillings, as well as fourpence-halfpenny of my own which was all i had at the moment. he was really out of the house and gone in a flash, as they say. i wouldn�t be surprised if he makes a regular trade of it with women like myself. well now, you can�t say a man like that is any better than my cat. i was very angry about it, but anyone soon forgets. though i will say it was a warning.� �i suppose you�d be glad to give up the life,� said michael, and as he asked the question, it seemed to him in this room and in the presence of this woman a very futile one. �oh, i should be glad to give it up. yes. you see, as i say, i�m really at anyone�s mercy in here. but really what else could i do? you see, in one way, the harm�s done.� michael looked at her tarnished hair; at her baggy cheeks raddled and powdered; at the clumsy black upon her lashes that made so much the more obvious the pleated lids beneath; at her neck already flaccid, and at her dress plumped out like an ill-stuffed pillow to conceal the arid flesh beneath. it certainly seemed as if the harm had been done. �you see,� she went on, �though i have to put up with a great deal, it�s only to be expected, after all. now i was very severely brought up by my father, and my mother being�well, it�s no use to mince matters as they say�my mother really was a saint. then of course after this occurred with the frenchman i told you about�that really was a downward step, though at the time i was happy and though he was always very good to me from the beginning to the end. still, i�m used to refinement, and i have a great deal to put up with here in this house. not that i dislike the woman who keeps it. but having paid my rent regular�eight-and-six, that is....� �quite enough, too,� said michael, looking up at the ceiling that was so like the scarred surface of the moon. �you�re right. it is enough. it is quite enough. but still i�m my own mistress. no one interferes with me. at the same time i don�t interfere with anybody else. i have the right to use the kitchen for my cooking, but really mrs. cleghorne�that is the woman who keeps the house�really she is not a clean cook, and very often my stomach is so turned that i go all day with only a cup of tea.� michael was grateful to the impulse which had led him to cook his own breakfast on a chafing dish. �i interrupted you,� he said. �you were going to tell me something about mrs. cleghorne.� �well, you must know, i had a friend who was very good to me, and this seemed to annoy her. perhaps she disliked the independence it gave me. well, she really caused a row between us by telling me she�d seen him going round drinking with another woman. now that isn�t a nice thing to do, is it? one doesn�t want to go round drinking in public-houses. it looks so bad. i spoke to him about it a bit sharp, and we�ve fallen out over it. in fact, i haven�t seen him for some months. still i shouldn�t complain, but just lately what with one thing and another i had some extras to get for my boy which was highly necessary you�ll understand�well, as i was saying�what with one thing and another my rent has been a little bit behind. still, after you�ve paid regular for close on two years, you expect a little consideration.� �have you lived in this burrow for two years?� michael asked in amazement. �in the week before christmas it�ll be two years. yes. not that mrs. cleghorne herself has been so nasty, but she lets her mother come round here and abuse me. her mother�s an old woman, you�ll understand, and her language�well, really it has sometimes made me feel sick.� she put her hand up to her face with a gesture of disgust. �she stands in that doorway and bullies me until i�m ashamed to sit on this bed and stand it. i really am. you�d hardly believe there was such things to say to anyone. i think i have a right to feel aggravated, and i�ve made up my mind she isn�t going to do it again. i�m not going to _have_ it.� she was nodding at michael with such energetic affirmation that the springs of the bed creaked. �the mother doesn�t live here?� he asked. �oh, no; she simply comes here for the purpose of bullying me. but i�m not going to let it occur again. i don�t consider i�ve been well treated. if i�d spent the money on gin, i shouldn�t so much object to what the old woman calls me, for i don�t say my life isn�t a bit of a struggle. but there�s so many things to use up the money, when i�ve got what�s wanted for my boy, and paid the policeman on this beat his half-crown which he expects, and tried to keep myself looking a little bit smart�really i have to buy something occasionally, or where should i be?�and i never waste money on clothes for clothes� sake, as they say�well, after that it�s none so easy to find eight-and-six for the week�s rent and buy myself a bit of food and the cat�s milk.� michael had nothing to say in commentary. it seemed to him that even by living above this woman he shared in the responsibility for her wretchedness. �i hope your boy will turn out well,� he ventured at last. �oh, he�s a good boy, he really is. and i have had hopes that perhaps the fathers will make him a brother. i should really prefer that to his being in the civil service.� �or even a priest,� michael suggested. �well, you see, he wasn�t born in wedlock. would that make a difference?� �i don�t think so,� said michael gently. �oh, no, i hope that wouldn�t make a difference.� he was finding the imagination of this woman�s life too poignant, and he rose from the light blue chest to bid her good-bye. he begged inwardly that she would not attempt to remind him of the relation in which she had expected to stand to him. he feared to wound her, but he would have to repulse her or go mad if she came near him. he plunged down into his pocket for the two sovereigns. half of this money he had thought an exaggerated and cowardly bribe to buy off her importunity when she had stood in the circle of lamplight, owlishly staring. now he wished he had five times as much. his pocket was empty! he felt quickly and hopelessly in his other pockets. he could not find the gold. she must have robbed him. he looked at her reproachfully. was that the thief�s and liar�s film glazing her eyes as they stared straight into his own? was it impossible to believe that he had pulled the sovereigns out of his pocket, when nervously he had first seen her. but she had pawed him with her hands in the black passage, and if the money had fallen on the road, he must have heard it. he ought to tax her with the unjust theft; he ought to tell her that what she had taken he had meant to give her. and yet supposing she had not taken the money? she had said the cat recognized him as a gentleman. supposing she had not taken the sovereigns, he would add by his accusation another stone to the weight she bore. and if she had taken them, why not? the cat was not at hand to warn her that he was to be trusted. she had not wanted the money for herself. she had been preyed upon, and had learned to prey upon others in self-defense. �i find i haven�t any money with me,� said michael, looking at her. �that doesn�t matter. i�ve really quite enjoyed our little talk.� �but i�ll send you some more,� he promised. �no, it doesn�t matter. i haven�t done anything to have you send your money for. i expect when you saw me in the light, you didn�t think i was really quite your style. of course, i�ve really come down. it�s no use denying it. i�m _not_ what i was.� if she had robbed him, she wanted nothing more from him. if she had robbed him, it was because in the humility of her degradation she had feared to see him shrink from her in disgust. �i shall send you some money for your boy,� he said, in the darkness by the door. �no, it doesn�t matter.� �what�s your name?� �well, i�m known here as mrs. smith.� doubtfully she whispered as the cold air came in through the open door: �i don�t expect you�d care about giving me a kiss.� michael had never known anything in his life so difficult to do, but he kissed her cold and flaccid cheek and hurried up the area steps. when he stood again upon the pavement in the menace of the five black houses of leppard street, michael felt that he never again could endure to return to them at night, nor ever again in the day perceive their fifty windows inscrutable as water. yet he must walk for a while in the stinging northerly air before he went back to his rooms; he must try to rid himself of the oppression which now lay so heavily upon him; he must be braced even by this lugubrious night of pimlico before he could encounter again the permeating fug of leppard street. he walked as far as the corner, and saw in silhouette upon the bridge a solitary policeman thudding his chest for warmth. in this abominable desert of lamps he should have seemed a symbol of comfort, but michael with the knowledge of the power he wielded over the unfortunates beheld him now as the brutish servant of a dominating class. he was, after all, very much like a dressed-up gorilla, as he stood there thudding his chest in the haggard lamplight. michael turned and went back to his rooms. he stared at the picture of st. ursula on the white wall, and suddenly in a fit of rage he plucked it from the hook and ground it face downward upon his writing-table. it seemed to him almost monstrous that anything so serene should be allowed any longer to exist. immediately afterward he thought that his action had been melodramatic, and shamefacedly he put away the broken picture in a drawer. lily was in london: and mrs. smith was beneath him in this house. in twenty years lily might be sunk in such a pit, unless he were quick to save her now. all through the night he kept waking up with the fancy that he could hear the rosary rattling in that den beneath; and every time he knew it was only the sound of the broken hasp on his window rattling in the wind. chapter vi tinderbox lane next morning, when he woke, michael made up his mind to leave leppard street finally in the course of this day. he could not bear the thought that he would only have to lean out of his window to see the actual roof which covered that unforgettable den beneath him. he wondered what would be the best thing to do with the furniture. it might be worth while to install barnes in these rooms and pay his rent for some months instead of the salary which, now that lily had been seen, was no longer a justifiable expenditure. he certainly would prefer that barnes should never meet lily now, and he regretted he had revealed her name. still he had a sort of affection for barnes which precluded the notion of deserting him altogether. these rooms with their simple and unmuffled furniture, the green shelves and narrow white bed, would be good for his character. he would also leave a few chosen books behind, and he would write and ask nigel stewart to visit here from time to time. michael dressed himself and went upstairs to interview barnes where he lay beneath a heap of bedclothes. �oh, i daresay i could make the rooms look all right,� said barnes. �but what about coal?� �i shall pay for coal and light as well as the rent.� �i thought you�d find it a bit dismal here,� said barnes knowingly. �i wonder you�ve stuck it out as long as you have.� �after february,� michael said, �i may want to come to some other arrangement; but you can count on being here till then. of course, you understand that when the three months are up, i shan�t be able to allow you five pounds a week any longer.� �no, i never supposed you would,� said barnes, in a tone of resignation. michael hesitated whether to speak to him about mrs. smith or not: however, probably he was aware of her existence already, and it could do no harm to mention it. �did you know that there was a woman living down in the basement here?� he asked. �i didn�t know there was one here; but it�s not a very rare occurrence in this part of london, nor any other part of london, if it comes to that.� �if you hear any row going on down there,� said michael, �you had better interfere at once.� �who with?� barnes inquired indignantly. �with the row,� said michael. �if the woman is being badly treated on account of money she owes, you must let me know immediately.� �well, i�m not in the old tear�s secret, am i?� asked barnes, in an injured tone. �you can�t expect me to go routing about after every old fly-by-night stuck in a basement.� �i�m particularly anxious to know that she is all right,� michael insisted. �oh well, of course, if she�s a friend of yours, fane, that�s another matter. if it�s any little thing to oblige you, why certainly i�ll do it.� michael said good-bye and left him in bed. then he called in to see the solutionist, who was also in bed. �i�ve got a commission for you,� said michael. the solutionist�s watery eyes brightened faintly. �you�re fond of animals, aren�t you?� michael went on. �i see you feeding your belgian hares. well, i�m interested in a cat who appreciated my point of view. i want you to see that this cat has a quart of milk left for her outside mrs. smith�s door every morning. mrs. smith lives in the basement. you must explain to her that you are fond of animals; but you mustn�t mention me. here�s a check for five pounds. spend half this on the cat and the other half on your rabbits.� the solutionist held the check between his tremulous fingers. �i couldn�t cash this nowadays,� he said helplessly. �and get a quart of milk for a cat? why, the thing would burst.� �all right. i�ll send you postal orders,� said michael. �now i�m going away for a bit. never mind if a quart is too much. i want that amount left every day. you�ll do what i ask? and you�ll promise not to say a word about me?� the solutionist promised, and michael left him looking more completely puzzled than he had ever seen him. michael could not bring himself to the point either of going down into the basement or of calling to mrs. cleghorne from the entrance to her cave; and as the bell-pull in his room had never been mended, he did not know how to reach her. the existence of mrs. smith had dreadfully complicated the mechanism of number one. he ought to have made barnes get out of bed and fetch her. by good luck michael saw from his window the landlady standing at the top of the area steps. he ran out and asked her to come and speak to him. �i see,� she said. �mr. barnes is to have your rooms, and you�re paying in advance up to february. oh, and his coal and his gas as well? i see. well, that you can settle month by month. through me? oh, yes.� mrs. cleghorne was in a very good temper this morning. michael could not help wondering if mrs. smith had paid some arrears of her rent. �do you think mr. cleghorne would go and fetch me a hansom?� michael asked. �he�s still in his bed, but i�ll go myself.� this cheerfulness was really extraordinary; and michael was flattered. already he was beginning to feel some of the deference mixed with hate which throughout the underworld was felt toward landladies. her condescension struck him with the sense of a peculiar favor, as if it were being bestowed from a superior height. michael packed up his kitbags and turned for a last look at the white rooms in leppard street. suddenly it struck him that he would take with him one or two of the pictures and present them to maurice�s studio in grosvenor road. mona lisa should go there, and the prince of orange whom himself was supposed to resemble slightly, and don baltazar on his big horse. they should be the contribution which he had been intending for some time to pay to that household. the cab was at the door, and presently michael drove away from leppard street. as soon as he was in the hansom he felt he could begin to think of lily again, and though he knew that probably he was going to suffer a good deal when they met, he nevertheless thought of her now with elation. it had not seemed to be so sparkling a morning in leppard street; but driving toward maurice�s studio along the banks of the river, michael thought it was the most crystalline morning he had ever known. �i�ve brought you these pictures,� he explained to maurice, and let the gift account for his own long disappearance from communion with his friends. �they�re pretty hackneyed, but i think it�s rather good for you to have a few hackneyed things amid the riot of originality here. what are you doing, mossy?� �well, i�m rather hoping to get a job as dramatic critic on the point of view.� �you haven�t met your lady-love yet?� �no, rather not, worse luck. still, there�s plenty of time. what about you?� maurice asked the question indifferently. he regarded his friend as a stone where women were concerned. �i�ve seen her,� said michael. he simply had to give himself the pleasure of announcing so much. �by jove, have you really? you�ve actually found your fate?� maurice was evidently very much excited by michael�s lapse into humanity; he had been snubbed so often when he had rhapsodized over girls. �what�s she like?� �i haven�t spoken to her yet. i�ve only seen her in the distance.� �and you�ve really fallen in love? i say, do stay and have lunch with me here. castleton isn�t coming back from the temple until after tea.� michael would have liked to sit at the window and talk of lily, while he stared out over the sea of roofs under one of which at this very moment herself might be looking in his direction. however, he thought if he once began to talk about lily to maurice, he would tell him too much, and he might regret that afterward. yet he could not resist saying that she was tall and fair and slim. such epithets might be applied to many girls, and it was only for himself that in this case they had all the thrilling significance they did. �i like fair girls best,� maurice agreed. �but most fair girls are dolls. if i met one who wasn�t, i should be hopelessly in love with her.� �perhaps you will,� michael said. since he had seen lily he felt very generous, and even more than generosity he felt that he actually had the power to offer to maurice dozens of fair girls from whom he could choose his own ideal. really he must not stay a moment longer in the studio, or he would be blurting out the whole tale of lily; and were she to be his, he must hold secrets about her that could never be unfolded. �i really must bolt off,� he declared. �i�ve got a cab waiting.� michael drove along to cheyne walk, and when he reached home, it caused the parlormaid not a flicker to receive him and to take his luggage and inquire what should be obtained for his lunch. �life�s really too easy in this house,� he thought. �it�s so impossible to surprise the servants here that one would give up trying ultimately. i suppose that will be the beginning of settling down. at this rate, i shall settle down much too soon. yes, life is too easy here.� michael went to the orient that night certain that he would meet lily at once, so much since he left leppard street had the imagination of her raced backward and forward in his brain. everything that would have made their meeting painful in such surroundings was forgotten in the joyful prospect at hand. the amount they would have to talk about was really tremendous. love had destroyed time so completely that lily was to be exactly the same as when first he had met her in kensington gardens. however, her appearance on the pavement outside the theater had made such a vivid new impression that michael did pay as much attention to lapsing time as to visualize her now in that black dress. otherwise he was himself again of six years ago, with only the delightful difference that he was now independent and could carry her forthwith into marriage. the knowledge that from a material point of view he could do this filled him with a magnificent consciousness of life�s plenitude. so far, all his experiments in living had been bounded by ignorance or credulity on his own side, and on the side of other people by their unsuitableness for experiments. certainly he had made discoveries, but they might better be called disillusionments. now here was lily who would give him herself to discover, who would open for him, not a looking-glass world in which human nature reflected itself in endless reduplications of perversity, but a world such as lovers only know, wherein the greatest deeps are themselves. michael scarcely bothered to worry himself with the thought that lily had embarked upon her own discoveries apart from him; she had been bewitched again by his romantic spells into the innocent girl of seventeen. all his hopes, all his quixotry, all his capacity for idealization, all his prejudice and impulsiveness converged upon her. whatever had lately happened to spoil his theory of behavior was discounted; and even the very theory fell to pieces in this intoxication of happiness. with so much therefore to make him buoyant, it was depressing to visit the orient that evening without a glimpse of lily. the disappointment threw michael very unpleasantly back into those evenings when he had come here regularly and had always been haunted by the dread that, when he did see her, his resolve would collapse in the presence of a new lily wrought upon by man and not made more lovable thereby. the vision of her last night (it was only last night) had swept him aloft; the queer adventure with the woman in the basement had exalted him still higher upon his determination; his flight from leppard street and his return to cheyne walk had helped to strengthen his hopefulness. now he had returned to this circumambient crowd, looking round as each newcomer came up the steps, and all the while horribly aware that this evening lily was not coming to the orient. he had never been upset like this since his resolve was taken. the glimpse of her last night had made him very impatient, and he reviled himself again for having been such a fool as to let her escape. he fell in a rage with his immobility here in london. he demanded why it was not possible to swirl in widening circles round the city until he found her. he was no longer content to remain in this aquarium, stuck like a mollusc to the side of the tank. he wanted to see her again. he was fretful for her slow contemptuous walk and her debonair smile. he wanted to see her again. already this quest was becoming the true torment of love. every single other person in sight was a dreary automaton in whom he took no trace of interest. every movement, every laugh, every shadow made him repine at its uselessness to him. all those years at oxford of dreams and hesitations had let him store up within himself a very fury of love. he had been living falsely all this time: there had never been one dull hour which could not have been enchanted by her to the most glorious hour imaginable. he had realized that when he saw her last night; he had realized all the waste, all the deadness, all the idiotic philosophy and impotence of these years without her. how the fancy of her vexed him now; how easily could he in his frustration knock down the individuals of this senseless restless crowd, one after another, like the dummies of humanity they were. the last tableau of the ballet had dissolved behind the falling curtain. lily was not here to-night, and he hurried out into piccadilly. she must be somewhere close at hand. it was impossible for her to come casually like that to the orient and afterward to disappear for weeks. or was she a man�s mistress, the mistress of a man of forty? he could picture him. he would be a stockbroker, the sort of man whom one saw in first-class railway carriages traveling up to town in the morning and reading the financial times. he would wear a hideous orchid in his buttonhole and take her to brighton for week-ends. he knew just the shade of bluish pink that his cheeks were; and the way his neck looked against his collar; the shape of his mustache, the smell of his cigar, and his handicap at golf. it was impossible that lily could be the mistress of a man like that. last night she had come out of the orient with a girl. obviously they must at this moment be somewhere near piccadilly. michael rushed along as wildly as a cat running after its tail. he entered restaurant after restaurant, café after café, standing in the doorways and staring at the tables one after another. the swinging doors would often hit him, as people came in; the drinkers or the diners would often laugh at his frown and his pale, eager gaze; often the manager would hurry up and ask what he could do for him, evidently suspecting the irruption of a lunatic. michael�s behavior in the street was even more noticeable. he often ricocheted from the inside to the outside of the pavement to get a nearer view of a passing hansom whose occupant had faintly resembled lily. he mounted omnibuses going in all sorts of strange directions, because he fancied for an instant that he had caught a glimpse of lily among the passengers. it was closing-time before he thought he had been searching for five minutes; and when the lights were dimmed, he walked up and down regent street, up and down piccadilly, up and down coventry street, hurrying time after time to pursue a walk that might have been hers. by one o�clock piccadilly was nearly empty, and it was an insult to suppose that lily would be found among these furtive women with their waylaying eyes in the gloom. michael went back tired out to cheyne walk. on the following night he visited the orient again and afterward searched every likely and unlikely place in the neighborhood of the heart of pleasure. he went also to the empire and to the alhambra; sometimes hurrying from one to the other twice in the evening, when panics that he was missing lily overtook him. he met lonsdale one night at the empire, and lonsdale took him to several night-clubs which gave a great zest to michael�s search; for he became a member of them himself, and so possessed every night another hour or more before he had to give up hope of finding her. mrs. fane wrote to him from cannes to say she thought that, as she was greatly enjoying herself on the riviera, she would not come home for christmas. michael was relieved by her letter, because he had felt qualms about deserting her, and he would have found it difficult, impossible really, to go away so far from london and lily. guy wrote to him several times, urging him to come and stay at plashers mead. finally he went there for a week-end; and guy spent the whole time rushing in and out of the house on the chance of meeting pauline grey, the girl whom michael had seen with him in the canoe last summer. guy explained the complications of his engagement to pauline; how it seemed he would soon have to choose between love and art; how restrictions were continually being put upon their meeting each other; and how violently difficult life was becoming here at plashers mead, where michael had prophesied such abundant ease. michael was very sympathetic, and when he met pauline on a soft december morning, he did think she was beautiful and very much like the wild rose that guy had taken as the symbol of her. she seemed such a fairy child that he could not imagine problems of conduct in which she could be involved. nevertheless, it was impossible not to feel that over plashers mead brooded a sense of tragedy: and yet it seemed ridiculous to compare guy�s difficulties with his own. for christmas michael went down to hardingham, where stella and alan had by this time settled down in their fat country. he was delighted to see how much the squire alan was already become; and there was certainly something very attractive in these two young people moving about that grave georgian house. the house itself was of red brick and stood at the end of an avenue of oaks in a park of about two hundred acres. that it could ever have not been there; that ever those lawns had been defaced by builder�s rubbish was now inconceivable. so too within, michael could not realize that anybody else but stella and alan had ever stood in this drawing-room, looking out of the tall windows whose sills scarcely rose above the level of the grass outside; that anyone else but stella and alan had ever laughed in this solemn library with its pilasters and calf-bound volumes and terrestrial globe; that anyone else but stella and alan had ever sat at dinner under the eyes of those bag-wigged squires, that long-nosed light dragoon, or that girl in her chip hat, holding a bunch of cherries. �no doubt you�ve got a keen scent for tradition,� said michael to stella. �but really you have been able to get into the manner surprisingly fast. these cocker-spaniels, for instance, who follow you both round, and the deerhound on the steps of the terrace�stella, i�m afraid the concert platform has taught you the value of effect; and where do hounds meet to-morrow?� �we�re simply loving it here,� stella said. �but i think the piano is feeling a little bit out of his element. he�s stiff with being on his best behavior.� �i�m hoping to get rather a good pitch in six ash field,� said alan. �i�ll show it to you to-morrow morning.� the butler came in with news of callers: �the countess of stilton and lady anne varley.� �oh, damn!� stella exclaimed, when the butler had retired. �i really don�t think people ought to call just before christmas. however, you�ve both got to come in and be polite.� michael managed to squeeze himself into a corner of the drawing-room, whence he could watch lady stilton and her daughter talking to mr. and mrs. prescott-merivale. �we ought not to have bothered you in this busy week before christmas, but my husband has been so ill in marienbad, ever since the summer really, that we only got home a fortnight ago. so very trying. and i�ve been longing to meet you. poor dick prescott was a great friends of ours.� michael had a sudden intuition that prescott had bequeathed stella�s interests to lady stilton, who probably knew all about her. he wondered if stella had guessed this. �and anne heard you play at king�s hall. didn�t you, anne dear?� lady anne nodded and blushed. �that child is going to worship stella,� michael thought. �we�re hoping you will all be able to come and dine with us for twelfth night. my husband is so fond of keeping up old english festivals. mr. fane, you�ll still be at hardingham, i hope, so that we may have the pleasure of seeing you as well?� michael said he was afraid he would have to be back in town. �what absolute rot!� stella cried. �of course you�ll be here.� but michael insisted that he would be gone. �they tell us you�ve been buying herefords, mr. merivale. my husband was so much interested and is so much looking forward to seeing your stock; but at present he must not drive far. i�ve also heard of you from my youngest boy who went up to christ church last october year. he is very much excited to think that hardingham is going to have such a famous�what is it called, anne?�some kind of a bowler.� �a googlie bowler, i expect you mean, mother,� said lady anne. �wasn�t he in the eton eleven?� asked alan. �well, no. something happened to oust him at the last moment,� said lady stilton. �possibly a superior player.� �oh, no, mother!� lady anne indignantly declared. �he would have played for certain against harrow, if he hadn�t sprained his ankle at the nets the week before.� �i do hope you�ll let him come and see you this vacation,� lady stilton said. �oh, rather. i shall be awfully keen to talk about the cricket round here,� alan replied. �i�m just planning out a new pitch now.� �how delightful all this is,� thought michael, with visions of summer evenings. soon lady stilton and her daughter went away, having plainly been a great success with mr. and mrs. prescott-merivale. �of course, _you�ve_ got to marry anne,� said stella to michael, as soon as they were comfortably round the great fire in the library. �alan,� michael appealed. �is it impossible for you to nip now forever this bud of matchmaking?� �i think it�s rather a good idea,� said alan. �i knew young varley by sight. he�s a very sound bat.� �i shan�t come here again,� michael threatened, �until you�ve dissolved this alliance of mutual admiration. instead of agreeing with stella to marry me to every girl you meet, why don�t you devote yourself to the task of making huntingdon a first-class county in cricket? stella might captain the team.� time passed very pleasantly with long walks and rides and drives, with long evenings of cut-throat bridge and schumann; but on new year�s morning michael said he must go back to london. nor would he let himself be deterred by stella�s gibes. �i admit you�re as happy as you can be,� he said. �now surely you, after so much generosity on my side, will admit that i may know almost as well as yourselves how to make myself happy, though not yet married.� �michael, you�re having an affair with some girl,� stella said accusingly. he shook his head. �swear?� �by everything i believe in, i vow i�m not having an affair with any girl. i wish i were.� his luggage was in the hall, and the dogcart was waiting. at king�s cross he found a taxi, which was so difficult to do in those days that it made him hail the achievement as a good omen for the new year. near south kensington station he caught sight of a poster advertising a carnival in the neighborhood: he thought it looked rather attractive with the bright colors glowing into the gray january day. later on in the afternoon, when he went to his tobacconist�s in the king�s road, he saw the poster again and read that to-night at redcliffe hall, fulham road, would take place a grand carnival and masked ball for the benefit of some orphanage connected with licensed victualing. tickets were on sale in various public-houses of the neighborhood, at seven and sixpence for gentlemen and five shillings for ladies. �ought to be very good,� commented the tobacconist. �well, we want a bit of brightening up nowadays down this way, and that�s a fact. why, i can remember cremorne gardens. tut-tut! bless my soul. yes, and the old world�s end. that�s going back into the seventies, that is. and it seems only yesterday.� �i rather wish i�d got a ticket,� said michael. �why not let me get you one, sir, and send it round to cheyne walk? i suppose you�d like one for a lady as well?� �no, i�ll have two men�s tickets.� michael had a vague notion of getting maurice or lonsdale to accompany him, and he went off immediately to grosvenor road; but the studio was deserted. nor was he successful in finding lonsdale. nobody seemed to have finished his holidays yet. it would be rather boring to go alone, he thought; but when he found the tickets waiting for him, they seemed to promise a jolly evening, even if he did no more than watch other people enjoying themselves. no doubt there would be plenty of spectators without masks, like himself, and in ordinary evening dress. so about half-past nine michael set off alone to the carnival. redcliffe hall, viewed from the outside in the january fog which was deepening over the city, seemed the last place in the world likely to contain a carnival. it was one of those dismal gothic edifices which, having passed through ecclesiastical and municipal hands with equal loss to both, awaits a suitable moment for destruction before it rises again in a phoenix of new flats. however, the awning hung with japanese lanterns that ran from the edge of the curb up to the entrance made it now not positively forbidding. michael went up to the gallery and watched the crowd of dancers. many of the fancy dresses had a very homely look, but there were also professional equipments from costumiers and a very few really beautiful inventions. the medley of colors, the motion of the dance, the sound of the music, the streamers of bunting and the ribbons fluttering round the maypole in the middle of the room, all combined to give michael an illusion of a very jocund assemblage. there were plenty of men dancing without masks, which was rather a pity, as their dull, ordinary faces halted abruptly the play of fancy. on second thoughts he was glad such revelers were allowed upon the floor, since as the scene gradually began to affect him he felt it might be amusing for himself to dance once or twice before the evening ended. with this notion in view, he began to follow more particularly the progress of different girls, balancing their charms one against another, and always deriving a good deal of pleasure from the reflection that, while at this moment they did not know of his existence, in an hour�s time he might have entered their lives. this thought did give a romantic zest to an entertainment which would otherwise have been quite cut off from his appreciation. suddenly michael�s heart began to quicken: the blood came in rushes and swift recessions that made him feel cold and sick. two girls walking away from him along the side of the hall�those two pierrettes in black�that one with the pale blue pompons was lily! why didn�t she turn round? it must be lily. the figure, the walk, the hair were hers. the pierrettes turned, but as they were masked michael could still not be sure if one were lily. they were dancing together now. it must be lily. he leaned over the rail of the gallery to watch them sweep round below him, so that he might listen if by chance above the noise lily�s languorous voice could reach him. michael became almost positive that it was she. there could not be another girl to seem so like her. he hurried down from the gallery and stood in the entrance to the ball-room. where were they now? they were coming toward him: the other pierrette with the rose pompons said something as they passed. it could only be lily who bowed her head like that in lazy assent. it was lily! should he call out to her, when next they passed him? if it were not lily, what a fool he would look. if it were not lily, it would not matter what he looked, for the disappointment would outweigh everything else. they were going up the room again. they were turning the corner again. they were sweeping toward him again. they were passing him again. he called �lily! lily!� in a voice sharp with eagerness. neither girl gave a sign of attention. it was not she, after all. yet his voice might have been drowned in the noise of the dance. he would call again; but again they passed him by unheeding. the dance was over. they had stopped at the other end of the room. he pressed forward against the egress of the dancers. he pressed forward roughly, and once or twice he heard grumbling murmurs because he had deranged a difficult piece of costumery. he was conscious of angry masks regarding him; and then he was free of the crowd, and before him, talking together under a canopy of holly were the two pierrettes. the musicians sat among the palms looking at him as they rested upon their instruments. michael felt that his voice was going to refuse to utter her name: �lily! lily!� the pierrette with the pale blue pompons turned at the sound of his voice. why did she not step forward to greet him, if indeed she were lily? she was, she was lily: the other pierrette had turned to see what she was going to do. �i say, how on earth did you recognize me?� lily murmured, raising her mask and looking at michael with her smile that was so debonair and tender, so scornful and so passionate. �i saw you in november coming out of the orient. i tried to get across the road to speak to you, but you�d gone before i could manage it. where have you been all these years? once i went to trelawny road, but the house was empty.� he could not tell her that drake had been the first to bring him news of her. �it�s years since i was there,� said lily. �years and years.� she turned to call her friend, and the pierrette with the rose pompons came closer to be introduced. �miss sylvia scarlett: mr. michael fane. aren�t i good to remember your name quite correctly?� michael thought that her mouth for a moment was utterly scornful. �what made you come here? have you got a friend with you?� michael explained that he was alone, and that his visit here was an accident. �why did _you_ come?� he asked. �oh, something to do,� said lily. �we live near here.� �so do i,� said michael hastily. �do you?� her eyebrows went up in what he imagined was an expression of rather cruel interrogation. �this is a silly sort of a show. still, even covent garden is dull now.� michael thought what a fool he had been not to include covent garden in his search. how well he might have known she would go there. �where�s doris?� he asked. lily shrugged her shoulders. �i never see anything of her nowadays. she married an actor. i don�t often get letters from home, do i, sylvia?� the pierrette with rose pompons, who ever since her introduction had still been standing outside the conversation, now raised her mask. michael liked her face. she had merry eyes, and a wide nose rather slavonic. next to lily she seemed almost dumpy. �letters, my dear,� she exclaimed, in a very deep voice, �who wants letters?� the music of a waltz was beginning, and michael asked lily if she would dance with him. she looked at sylvia. �i don�t think....� �oh, what rot, lily! of course you can dance.� michael gave her a grateful smile. in a moment lily had lowered her mask, and they were waltzing together. �my gad, how gloriously you waltz!� he whispered. �did we ever dance together five years ago?� she shrugged her shoulders, and he felt the faint movement tremble through the imponderable form he held. �lily, i�ve been looking for you since june,� he sighed. �you�re breaking step,� she said. though her mask was down, michael was sure that she was frowning at him. �lily, why are you so cold with me? have you forgotten?� �what?� �why, everything!� michael gasped. �you�re absolutely out of time now,� she said sternly. they waltzed for a while in silence, and michael felt like a midge spinning upon a dazzle. �do you remember when we met in kensington gardens?� he ventured. �i remember you had black pompons on your shoes then, and now you have pale blue pompons on your dress.� she was not answering him. �it�s funny you should still be living near me,� he went on. �i suppose you�re angry with me because i suddenly never saw you again. that was partly your mother�s fault.� she looked at him in faint perplexity, swaying to the melody of the waltz. michael thought he had blundered in betraying himself as so obviously lovestruck now. he must be seeming to her like that absurd and sentimental boy of five years ago. perhaps she was despising him, for she could compare him with other men. ejaculations of wonder at her beauty would no longer serve, with all the experience she might bring to mock them. she was smiling at him now, and the mask she wore made the smile seem a sneer. he grew so angry with her suddenly that almost he stopped in the swing of the dance to shake her. �but it was much more your fault,� he said savagely. �do you remember drake?� she shook her head; then she corrected herself. �oh, yes. arthur drake who lived next door to us.� �well, i saw you in the garden from his window. you were being kissed by some terrible bounder. that was jolly for me. why did you do that? couldn�t you say �no�? were you too lazy?� michael thought she moved closer to him as they danced. �answer me, will you; answer me, i say. were you too lazy to resist, or did you enjoy being cheapened by that insufferable brute you were flirting with?� michael in his rage of remembrance twisted her hand. but she made no gesture, nor uttered any sound of pain. instead she sank closer to his arms, and as the dance rolled on, he told himself triumphantly that, while she was with him, she was his again. what did the past matter? �ah, lily, you love me still! i�ll ask no more questions. am i out of step?� �no, not now,� she whispered, and he saw that her face was pale with the swoon of their dancing. �take off that silly mask,� he commanded. �take it off and give it to me. i can hold you with one arm.� she obeyed him, and with a tremendous exultation he swung her round, as if indeed he were carrying her to the edge of the world. the mask no longer veiled her face; her eyelids drooped, clouding her eyes; her lips were parted: she was now dead white. michael crooked her left arm until he could touch her shoulder. �look at me. look at me. the dance will soon be over.� she opened her eyes, and into their depths of dusky blue he danced and danced until, waking with the end of the music, he found himself and lily close to sylvia scarlett, who was laughing at them where she stood in the corner of the room under a canopy of holly. lily was for the rest of the evening herself as michael had always known her. she had always been superficially indifferent to anything that was happening round her, and she behaved at this carnival as if it were a street full of dull people among whom by chance she was walking. nor with her companions was she much more alert, though when she danced with michael her indifference became a passionate languor. soon after midnight both the girls declared they were tired of the redcliffe hall, and they asked michael to escort them home. he was going to fetch a cab, but they stopped him, saying that tinderbox lane, where they lived, was only a little way along on the other side of the fulham road. the fog was very dense when they came out, and michael took the girls� arms with a delicious sense of intimacy, with a feeling, too, of extraordinary freedom from the world, as if they were all three embarked upon an adventure in this eclipse of fog. he had packed their shoes deep down in the pockets of his overcoat, and with the possession of their shoes he had a sensation of possessing the wearers of them. the fog was denser and denser: they paused upon the edge of the curb, listening for oncoming traffic. a distant omnibus was lumbering far down the fulham road. michael caught their arms close, and the three of them seemed to sail across to the opposite pavement. he had nothing to say because he was so happy, and lily had nothing to say because she talked now no more than she used to talk. so it was sylvia who had to carry on the conversation, and since most of this consisted of questions to lily and michael about their former friendship, which neither lily nor michael answered, even sylvia was discouraged at last; and they walked on silently through the fog, michael clasping the girls close to him and watching all the time lily�s hand holding up her big black cloak. �here we are, you two dreamers,� said sylvia, pulling them to a stop by a narrow turning which led straight from the pavement unexpectedly, without any dip down into a road. �through here? how fascinating!� said michael. they passed between two posts, and in another three minutes stopped in front of a door set in a wall. �i�ve got the key,� said sylvia, and she unlocked the door. �but this is extraordinary,� michael exclaimed. �aren�t we walking through a garden?� �yes, it�s quite a long garden,� sylvia informed him. there was a smell of damp earth here that sweetened the harshness of the fog, and michael thought that he had never imagined anything so romantic as following lily in single file along the narrow gravel path of a mysterious garden like this. there must have been thirty yards of path, before they walked up the steps of what seemed to be a sort of balcony. �she�s downstairs,� said sylvia, tapping upon a glass door with the key. a woman�s figure appeared with an orange-shaded lamp in the passage. �open quickly, mrs. gainsborough. we�re frozen,� sylvia called. as the woman opened the door, sylvia went on in her deep voice: �we�ve brought an old friend of lily�s back from the dance. it wasn�t really worth going to. oh, i oughtn�t to have said that, ought i?� she laughed, turning round to michael. �come in and get warm. this is mrs. gainsborough, who�s the queen of cards.� �get along with you, you great saucy thing,� said mrs. gainsborough, laughing. she was a woman of enormous size with a triplication of chins. her crimson cheeks shone with the same glister as her black dress; and her black hair, so black that it must have been dyed, was parted in the middle and lay in a chignon upon her neck. she seemed all the larger, sitting in this small room full of victorian finery, and michael was amused to hear her address sylvia as �great.� �we want something to eat and something to drink, you lovely old mountain,� sylvia said. mrs. gainsborough doubled herself up and smacked her knees in a tempest of wheezy laughter. �sit here, you terrors, while i get the cloth on the dining-room table,� and out she went, her laughter dying in sibilations along the diminutive corridor. lily had flung herself down in an armchair near the fire. behind her stood a small mahogany table on which was a glass case of humming-birds; by her elbow on the wall was a white china bell coronated with a filigree of gilt, and by chance the antimacassar on the chair was of berlin wool checkered black and blue. she in her pierrette�s dress of black with light blue pompons looked strangely remote from present time in that setting. michael could not connect this secluded house with anything which had made an impression upon him during his experience of the underworld. here was nothing that was not cozy and old-fashioned; here was no sign of decay, whether in the fabric of the house or in the attitude of the people living there. this small square room with the heavy furniture that occupied so much of the space had no demirep demeanor. that horsehair sofa with lyre-shaped sides and back of floriated wood; that brass birdcage hanging in the window against the curtains of maroon serge; those cabinets in miniature, some lacquered, some of plain wood with tiny drop-handles of brass; those black chairs with seats of gilded cane; those trays with marquetery in mother-of-pearl of wreaths and rivulets and parrots; that table-cloth like a dish of black sèvres; those simpering steel engravings�there was nothing that did not bespeak the sobriety of the victorian prime here miraculously preserved. lily and sylvia in such dresses belonged to a period of fantasy; mrs. gainsborough was in keeping with her furniture; and michael, as he looked at himself in the glass overmantel, did not think that he was seeming very intrusive. �whose are these rooms?� he asked. lily was adorable, but he did not believe they were her creation or discovery. �i found them,� said sylvia. �the old girl who owns the house is bad, but beautiful. aren�t you, you most astonishing but attractive mammoth?� this was addressed to mrs. gainsborough, who was at the moment panting into the room for some accessory to the dining-table. �get along with you,� the landlady chuckled. �now don�t go to sleep, lily. your supper is just on ready.� she went puffing from the room in busy mirthfulness. �she�s one of the best,� said sylvia. �this house was given to her by an old general who died about two years ago. you can see the painting of him up in her bedroom as a dare-devil hussar with drooping whiskers. she was a gay contemporary of the albert memorial. you know. argyle rooms and cremorne. with the haymarket as the center of naughtiness.� it was funny, michael thought, that his tobacconist should have mentioned cremorne only this afternoon. that he had done so affected him more sharply now with a sense of the appropriateness of this house in tinderbox lane. appropriateness to what? perhaps merely to the mood of this foggy night. �supper! supper!� mrs. gainsborough was crying. it was dismaying for michael to think that he had not kissed lily yet, and he wished that sylvia would hurry ahead into the other room and give him an opportunity. he wanted to pull her gently from that chair, up from that chair into his arms. but sylvia was the one who did so, and she kissed lily half fiercely, leaving michael disconsolately to follow them across the passage. it was jolly to see mrs. gainsborough sitting at the head of the table with the orange-shaded lamp throwing warm rays upon her countenance. that it was near the chilly hour of one, with a cold thick fog outside, was inconceivable when he looked at that cheery great porpoise of a woman unscrewing bottles of india pale ale. michael did not want the questions about him and lily to begin again. so he turned the conversation upon a more remote past. �oh, my eye, my eye!� laughed sylvia. �to think that aunt enormous was once in the ballet at the opera.� �how dare you laugh at me? whoof!� mrs. gainsborough gave a sort of muffled bark as her arm pounced out to grab sylvia. the two of them frisked with each other absurdly, while lily sat with wide-open blue eyes, so graceful even in that stiff chair close up to the table, that michael was in an ecstasy of admiration, and marveled gratefully at the new year�s day which could so change his fortune. �were you in the ballet?� he asked. �certainly i was, though this great teazing thing beside me would like to make out that when i was eighteen i looked just as i do now.� �show the kind gentleman your picture,� said sylvia. �she wears it round her neck in a locket, the vain old mountebank.� mrs. gainsborough opened a gold locket, and michael looked at a rosy young woman in a pork-pie hat. �that�s myself,� said mrs. gainsborough sentimentally. �well, and i always loved being young better than anything or anybody, so why shouldn�t i wear next my own heart myself as i used to be?� �but show him the others,� sylvia demanded. mrs. gainsborough fetched from a desk two daguerreotypes in stained morocco cases lined with faded piece velvet. by tilting their surfaces against the light could be seen the shadow of a portrait�s wraith: a girl appearing in pantalettes and tartan frock; a ballerina glimmering, with points of faint celeste for eyes, and for cheeks the evanescence of a ghostly bloom. �oh, look at her,� cried sylvia. �in her beautiful pantalettes!� �hold your tongue, you!� they started again with their sparring and mock encounters, which lasted on and off until supper was over. then they all went back to the other room and sat round the fire. �tell us about the general,� said sylvia. �go on, as if you hadn�t heard a score of times all i�ve got to tell about the general�though you know i hate him to be called that. he�ll always be the captain to me.� soon afterward, notwithstanding her first refusal, mrs. gainsborough embarked upon tales of gay days in the �sixties and �seventies. it was astonishing to think that this room in which they were sitting could scarcely have changed since then. �the dear captain! he bought this house for me in eighteen-sixty-nine before i was twenty, and i�ve lived in it ever since. ah, dear! many�s the summer daybreak we�ve walked back here after dancing all night at cremorne. such lovely lights and fireworks. earl�s court is nothing to cremorne. fancy their pulling it down as they did. but perhaps it�s as well it went, as all the old faces have gone. it would have given me the dismals to be going there now without my captain.� she went on with old tales of london, tales that had in them the very smoke and grime of the city. �who knows what�s going to happen when the clock strikes twelve?� she said, shaking her head. �so enjoy yourselves while you can. that�s my motto. and if there�s a hereafter, which good god forbid, i should be very aggravated to find myself waltzing around as fat and funny as i am now.� the old pagan, who had mellowed slowly with her house for company, seemed to sit here hugging the old friend; and as she told her tales it was difficult not to think she was playing hostess to the spirits of her youths to ghostly dundrearies and spectral belles with oval faces. michael could have listened all night to her reminiscences of dead singers and dead dancers, of gay women become dust and of rakes reformed, of beauties that were now hags, and of handsome young subalterns grown parched and liverish. sylvia egged her on from story to story, and lily lay languidly back in her chair. it must be after two o�clock, and michael rose to go. �we�ll have one song,� cried sylvia, and she pulled mrs. gainsborough to the piano. the top of the instrument was hidden by stacked-up albums, and the front of it was of fretted walnut-wood across a pleating of claret-colored silk. mrs. gainsborough, pounding with her fat fingers the keys that seemed in comparison so frail and old, sang in a wheezy pipe of a voice: _the captain with his whiskers took a sly glance at me._ �but you only get me to do it, so as you can have a good laugh at me behind my back,� she declared, swinging round upon the stool to face sylvia when she had finished. �nothing of the sort, you fat old darling. we do it because we like it.� �bless your heart, my dearie.� she laid a hand on sylvia�s for an instant. michael thanked mrs. gainsborough for the entertainment, and asked sylvia if she thought he might come round to-morrow and take lily and her out to lunch. �we can lunch to-morrow, can�t we?� sylvia asked, tugging at lily�s arm, for she was now fast asleep. �is michael going? yes, we can lunch with him to-morrow,� lily yawned. he promised to call for them about midday. it seemed ridiculous to shake hands so formally with lily, and he hoped she would suggest that the outside door was difficult to open. alas, it was sylvia who came to speed his departure. the fog was welcome to michael for his going home. at this hour of the night there was not a sound of anything, and he could walk on, dreaming undisturbed. he supposed he would arrive ultimately at cheyne walk. but he did not care. he would have been content to fill the long winter night with his fancies. plunging his hands down into the pockets of his overcoat, he discovered that he had forgotten to take out the girls� shoes, and what company they were through the gloom! it was a most fascinating experience, to wander along holding these silky slippers which had twinkled through the evening of this night. not a cab-horse blew a frosty breath by the curb; not a policeman loomed; nor passer-by nor cat offended his isolation. the london night belonged to him; his only were the footsteps echoing back from the invisible houses on either side; and the golden room in tinderbox lane was never more than a few yards in front. he had found lily at last, and he held her shoes for a token of his good luck. let no one tell him again that destiny was a fable. nothing was ever more deliberately foredoomed than the meeting at that carnival. michael was so grateful to his tobacconist that he determined to buy all sorts of extravagant pipes and cigarette holders he had fingered vaguely from time to time in the shop. for a while lily�s discovery was colored with such a glamour that michael did not analyze the situation in which he had found her. walking back to chelsea through the fog, he was bemused by the romantic memory of her which was traveling along with his thoughts. he could hold very tightly her shoes: he could almost embrace the phantom of her beauty that curled upon the vapors round each lamp: he was intoxicated merely by the sound of the street where she lived. �tinderbox lane! tinderbox lane! tinderbox lane!� he sang it in triumph, remembering how only this morning he had sighed to himself, as he chased the telegraph-wires up and down the window of the railway-carriage: �where is she? where is she? where is she?� �tinderbox lane! tinderbox lane! tinderbox lane!� he chanted at the fog, and, throwing a slipper into the air, he caught it and ran on ridiculously until he bumped into a policeman standing by the corner. �i�m awfully sorry, constable.� �feeling a bit happy, sir, aren�t you?� �frightfully happy. i say, by the by, happy new year, constable. drink my health when you�re off duty.� he pressed half-a-crown into the policeman�s hand, and as he left the stolid form behind him in the fog, he remembered that half-a-crown was the weekly blackmail paid by mrs. smith of leppard street. he was on the embankment now, and the fog had lifted so that he saw the black river flowing sullenly through the night. the plane-trees dripped with monotonous beads of dankness. the fog was become a mist here, a frore whitish mist that saturated him with a malignant chill. michael was glad to find himself looking at the dolphin-headed knocker of cheyne walk. the effect of being in his own bedroom again, even though the girls� shoes lay fantastically upon the floor, was at first to make him believe that tinderbox lane might have been a dream, and after that, because he knew it was not a dream, to wonder about it. yet not even now in this austere and icy bedroom of his own could michael feel that there was anything really wrong about that small house. it still preserved for him an illusion of sobriety and stability, almost of primness, yet of being rich with a demure gaiety. mrs. gainsborough, however, was scarcely a chaperone. nor was she very demure. and who was sylvia? and what was lily doing there? it would have been mysterious, that household, in any case, but was it necessary to assume that there was anything wrong? sylvia was obviously a girl of high spirits. he had asked her no questions about herself. she might be on the stage. for fun, or perhaps because of their landlady�s kindling stories, sylvia might have persuaded lily to come once or twice to the orient. it did not follow that there was anything wrong. there had been nothing wrong in that carnival. michael�s heart leaped with the fancy that he was not too late. that would indeed crown this romantic night; and, picking up lily�s shoe, he held it for a while, wondering about its secrets. in the morning the fog had turned to a drench of dull january rain; but michael greeted the outlook as cheerfully as if it had been perfect may weather. he went first to a post office to send off the money he had promised to mrs. smith and the solutionist. after this discharge of business, he felt more cheerful than ever, and, as if to capture the final touch of fantasy necessary to bewitch yesterday night, he suddenly realized, when he was hurrying along fulham road in the rain, that he had no idea of the number of mrs. gainsborough�s house. he also began to wonder if there really could be such a place as tinderbox lane, and as he walked on without discovering any indication of its existence, he wondered if sylvia had invented the name, so that he might never find her and lily again. it was an uneasy thought, for without a number and without a name�but just as he was planning an elaborate way to discover the real name of the street, he saw in front of him tinderbox lane enameled in the ordinary characters of municipal direction. here were the two posts: here was the narrow entrance. the rumble of the traffic grew fainter. on one side was a high blank wall; on the other a row of two-storied houses. they were naturally dwellings of the poorer classes, but at intervals a painter had acquired one, and had painted it white or affixed green shutters with heart-shaped openings. the width of the pavement varied continually, but generally at the beginning it was very narrow. later on, however, it became wide enough to allow trees to be planted down the middle. beyond this part was a block of new flats round which tinderbox lane narrowed again to a mere alley looking now rather dank and gloomy in the rain. michael could not remember from last night in the fog either the trees or the flats. the door of lily�s lodging had been set in a wall: here on one side was certainly a wall, but never a door to relieve the grimy blankness. he began to feel discouraged, and he walked round into the narrow alley behind the flats. here were doors in the wall at last, and michael examined each of them in turn. two were dark blue: one was green: one was brown. : : : . he chose because it was farthest away from the flats. after a very long wait, an old woman holding over herself a very large umbrella opened it. �mrs. gainsborough ...?� michael began. but the old woman had slammed the door before he could finish his inquiry. michael rang the bell of , and again he waited a long time. at last the door was opened, and to his relief he saw mrs. gainsborough herself under a green and much larger umbrella than the old woman�s next door. �i�ve come to take the girls out to lunch.� �that�s a good boy,� she wheezed. �the dearies will be glad to get out and enjoy themselves a bit. here�s a day. this would have suited noah, wouldn�t it?� she was leading the way up the gravel path, and michael saw that in the garden-beds there were actually christmas roses in bloom. the house itself was covered with a mat of virginia creeper and jasmine, and the astonishing rusticity of it was not at all diminished by the pretentious gray houses of the next road which towered above it behind, nor even in front by the flats with their eruption of windows. these houses with doors in their garden-walls probably all belonged to individuals, and for that reason they had escaped being overwhelmed by the development of the neighborhood twenty years ago. their four long gardens in a row must be a bower of greenery in summer, and it was sad to think that the flats opposite were no doubt due to the death of someone who had owned a similar house and garden. michael remembered the balcony in front with steps on either side. underneath this he now saw that there was another entrance, evidently to the kitchen. two fairly large trees were planted in the grass that ran up to the house on either side of the balcony. �those are my mulberries,� said mrs. gainsborough. �this is called mulberry cottage. i�ve been meaning to have the name painted on the outside door for nearly forty years, but i always forget. there�s a character to give myself. ah, dear me! the captain loved his mulberries. but you ought to see this in the springtime. well, my flowers are really remarkable. but there, it�s not to be wondered at. m� father was a nursery gardener.� she looked round at michael and winked broadly. he could not think why. possibly it was a comic association in her mind with the behavior of the captain in carrying her off from such a home. �the duke of fulham to see you, girls,� she wheezed at the door of the sitting-room, and, giving michael a push, retreated with volleys of bronchial laughter. the girls were sitting in front of the fire. lily was pretending to trim a hat: sylvia was reading, but she flung her book down as michael entered. he had the curiosity to look at the title, and found it was the contes drôlatiques of balzac. an unusual girl, he thought: but his eyes were all for lily, and because he could not kiss her, he felt shy and stupid. however, the shoes, which he now restored, supplied an immediate topic, and he was soon perfectly at ease again. presently the girls left him to get ready to go out, and he sat thinking of lily, while the canary chirped in the brass cage. the silence here was very like the country. london was a thousand miles away, and he could hear lily and sylvia moving about overhead. less and less did he think there could be anything wrong with mulberry cottage. yet the apparent security was going to make it rather difficult to take lily away. certainly he could ask her to marry him at once; but she might not want to marry him at once. the discovery of her in this pleasant house with a jolly friend was spoiling the grand swoop of rescue which he had planned. she would not presumably be escaping from a situation she abhorred. it was difficult to approach lily here. was it sylvia who was making it difficult? he must talk to sylvia and explain that he had no predatory intentions. she would surely be glad that he wanted to marry lily. or would she not? michael jumped up and tinkled the lusters on the mantelshelf. �sweet,� said the canary in the brass cage: the rain sizzled without. faintly pervading this small square room was the malaise of someone�s jealousy. the tentative solution that was propounding itself did not come from his own impression of sylvia, but it seemed positively to be an emanation from the four walls of the room which in the stillness was able to force its reality upon him. �sweet,� said the canary: the lusters stopped their tinkling: the rain sizzled steadily outside. lunch at kettner�s was a great success. at least michael thought it was a great success, because lily looked exquisite against the bronzy walls, and her hair on this dull day seemed not to lack sunlight, but rather to give to the atmosphere a thought of the sun, the rare and wintry sun. sylvia talked a great deal in her deep voice, and he was conscious that the other people in the restaurant were turning round to envy their table. the longer that michael was in the company of lily and sylvia, the less he was able to ask the direct questions that would have been comparatively easy at the beginning. sylvia, by the capacity she displayed of appreciating worldliness without ever appearing worldly herself, made it impossible for him to risk her contempt by a stupid question. she was not on the stage; so much he had discovered. she and lily had apparently a number of men friends. that fact would have been disquieting, but that sylvia talked of them with such a really tomboyish zest as made it impossible to suppose they represented more than what they were superficially, the companions of jolly days on the river and at race-meetings, of jolly evenings at theaters and balls. quite definitely michael was able to assure himself that out of the host of allusions there was not one which pointed to any man favored above the rest. he was able to be positive that lily and sylvia were independent. yet lily had no private allowance or means. it must be sylvia who was helping her. perhaps sylvia was always strict, and perhaps all these friends were by her held at arm�s length from lily, as he felt himself being held now. her attitude might have nothing to do with jealousy. but sylvia was not strict in her conversation; she was, indeed, exceptionally free. that might be a good sign. a girl who read the contes drôlatiques might easily read rabelais himself, and a girl who read rabelais would be inviolable. michael, when sylvia had said something particularly broad, used to look away from lily; and yet he knew he need not have bothered, for lily was always outside the conversation; always under a spell of silence and remoteness. of what was she forever thinking? there were looking-glasses upon the bronzy walls. for a fortnight michael came every day to tinderbox lane and took the girls out; but for the whole of that fortnight he never managed to be alone with lily. then one day sylvia was not there when he called. to find lily like this after a tantalizing fortnight was like being in a room heavily perfumed with flowers. it seemed to stifle his initiative, so that for a few minutes he sat coldly and awkwardly by the window. �we�re alone,� he managed to say at last. �sylvia�s gone to brighton. she didn�t want to go a bit.� �bother sylvia! lily, we haven�t kissed for five years.� he stumbled across to take her in his arms; and as he held her to him, it was a rose falling to pieces, so did she melt upon his passion. he heard her sigh; a coal slipped in the grate; the canary hopped from perch to perch. these small sounds but wrapped him more closely in the trance of silence. �lily, you will marry me, won�t you? very soon? at once?� michael was kneeling beside her chair, and she was looking down at him from clouded eyes still passionate. marriage was an intrusion upon the remoteness where they brooded; and he, ravished by their flamy blue relucency, could not care whether she answered him or not. this was such a contentment of desire that the future with the visible shapes of action it tried to display was unheeded, while now she stirred in his arms. she was his, and so for an hour she stayed, immortal, and yet most poignantly the prisoner of time. michael, with all that he had dreaded at the back of his mind he would have to face in her condition, scarcely knew how to celebrate this reward of his tenacity. this tranquillity of caresses, this slow fondling of her wrist were a lullaby to his fears. it was the very rhapsody of his intention to kneel beside her, murmuring huskily the little words of love. he would have married her wherever and whatever he found her, but the relief was overwhelming. he had thought of a beautiful thing ruined; he had foreshadowed glooms and tragic colloquies; he had desperately hoped his devotion might be granted at least the virtue of a balm. instead, he found this ivory girl, this loveliness of rose and coral within his arms. so many times she had eluded him in dreams upon the midway of the night, and so often in dreams he had held her for kisses that were robbed from him by the sunlight of the morning, that he scarcely could believe he held her now, now when her hair was thistledown upon his cheeks, when her mouth was a butterfly. he shuddered to think how soon this airy beauty must have perished; and even now what was she? a shred of goldleaf on his open hand, pliant, but fugitive at a breath, and destructible in a moment of adversity. always in their youth, when they had sat imparadised, michael had been aware of the vulgar haden household in the background. now, here she was placed in exactly the room where he would have wished to find her, though he would scarcely desire to maintain her in such a setting. he could picture her at not so distant a time in wonderful rooms, about whose slim furniture she would move in delicate and languorous promenades. this room pleased him, because it was the one from which he would have wished to take her into the misty grandeurs he imagined for her lodging. it was a room he would always regard with affection, thinking of the canary in the brass cage and the christmas roses blowing in the garden and the low sounds of mrs. gainsborough busy in her kitchen underneath. tinderbox lane! it was an epithalamium in itself; and as for mulberry cottage, it had been carried here by the fat pink loves painted on the ceiling of that cremorne arbor in which the captain had first imagined his gift. so with fantastic thoughts and perfect kisses, perfect but yet ineffably vain because they expressed so little of what michael would have had them express, the hour passed. �we must talk of practical things,� he declared, rising from his knees. �you always want to talk,� lily pouted. �i want to marry you. do you want to marry me?� �yes; but it�s so difficult to do things quickly.� �we�ll be married in a month. we�ll be married on saint valentine�s day,� michael announced. �it�s so wet now to think of weddings.� she looked peevishly out of the window. �you haven�t got to think about it. you�ve got to do it.� �and it�s so dull,� she objected. �sylvia says it�s appallingly dull. and she�s been married.� �what has sylvia got to do with it?� he demanded. �oh, well, she�s been awfully sweet to me. and after all, when mother died, what was i to do? i couldn�t bear doris any more. she always gets on my nerves. anyway, don�t let�s talk about marriage now. in the summer i shall feel more cheerful. i hate this weather.� �but look here,� he persisted. �are you in love with me?� she nodded, yet too doubtfully to please him. �well, if you�re not in love with me....� �oh, i am, i am! don�t shout so, michael. if i wasn�t awfully fond of you, i shouldn�t have made sylvia ask you to come back. she hates men coming here.� �are you sylvia�s servant?� said michael, in exasperation. �don�t be stupid. of course not.� �it�s ridiculous,� he grumbled, �to quote her with every sentence.� �why you couldn�t have stayed where you were,� said lily fretfully, �i don�t know. it was lovely sitting by the fire and being kissed. if you�re so much in love with me, i wonder you wanted to get up.� �so, we�re not to talk any more about marriage?� after all, he told himself, it was unreasonable of him to suppose that lily was likely to be as impulsive as himself. her temperament was not the same. she did not mean to discourage him. �don�t let�s talk about anything,� said lily. he could not stand aloof from the arms she held wide open. sylvia would not be coming back for at least three days, and michael spent all his time with lily. he thought that mrs. gainsborough looked approvingly upon their love; at any rate, she never worried them. the weather was steadily unpleasant, and though he took lily out to lunch, it never seemed worth while to stay away from tinderbox lane very long. one night, however, they went to the palace, and afterward, when he asked her where she would like to go, she suggested verrey�s. michael had never been there before, and he was rather jealous that lily should seem to know it so well. however, he liked to see her sitting in what he told himself was the only café in london which had escaped the cheapening of popularity and had kept its old air of the third empire. as lily was stirring her lemon-squash, her languid forearm looked very white swaying from the somber mufflings of her cloak. something in her self-possession, a momentary hardness and disdain, made michael suddenly suspicious. �do you enjoy covent garden balls?� he asked. she shrugged her shoulders. �it depends who we go with. often i don�t care for them much. and the girls you see there are frightfully common.� he could not bring himself to ask her straight out what he feared. if it were so, let it rest unrevealed. the knowledge would make no difference to his resolution. people began to come into the café, shaking the wet from their shoulders; and the noise of the rain was audible above the conversation. �i wish we could have had one fine day together,� said michael regretfully. �do you remember when we used to go for long walks in the winter?� �i must have been very fond of you,� lily laughed. �i don�t think you could make me walk like that now.� �aren�t you so fond of me now?� he asked reproachfully. �you ought to know,� she whispered. all the way home the raindrops were flashing in the road like bayonets, and her cheeks were dabbled with the wet. �shall i come in?� michael asked, as he waited by the door in the wall. �yes, come in and have something to drink, of course.� he was stabbed by the ease of her invitation. �do you ask all these friends of yours to come in and have a drink after midnight?� �i told you that sylvia doesn�t like me to,� she said. �but you would, if she didn�t mind?� michael went on, torturing himself. �how fond you are of �ifs,�� she answered. �i can�t bother to think about �ifs� myself.� if only he had the pluck to avoid allusions and come at once to grips with truth. sharply he advised himself to let the truth alone. already he was feeling the influence of lily�s attitude. he wondered if, when he married her, all his activity would swoon upon calypso like this. it was as easy to dream life away in the contemplation of a beautiful woman as in the meditation of the oxford landscape. �happiness makes me inactive,� said michael to himself. �so of course i shall never really be happy. what a paradox.� he would not take off his overcoat. he was feeling afraid of a surrender to-night. �i�m glad i didn�t suggest staying late,� he thought, as he walked away down the dripping garden path. �i should have been mad with unreasonable suspicions, if she had said �yes.�� sylvia came back next day, and though michael still liked her very much, he was certain now of her hostility to him. he was conscious of malice in the air, when she said to lily that jack wanted them to have dinner with him to-night and go afterward to some dance at richmond. michael was furious that lily should be invited to richmond, and yet until she had promised to marry him how could he combat sylvia�s influence? and who was jack? and with whom had sylvia been to brighton? the day after the dance, michael came round about twelve o�clock as usual, but when he reached the sitting-room only sylvia was before the fire. �lily isn�t down yet,� she told him. he was aware of a breathlessness in the atmosphere, and he knew that he and sylvia were shortly going to clash. �jolly dance?� he asked. she shrugged her shoulders, and there was a long pause. �will lily be dressed soon? i rather want to take her out.� michael flung down his challenge. �she�s been talking to me about what you said yesterday,� sylvia began. michael could not help liking her more and more, although her countenance was set against him. he could not help admiring that out-thrust underlip and those wide-set, deep and bitter brown eyes. �when do you propose to marry her?� sylvia went on. �as soon as possible,� he said coolly. �which of us do you think has the greater influence over her?� she demanded. �i really don�t know. you have rather an advantage over me in that respect.� �i�m glad you admit that,� interrupted sylvia, with sarcastic chill. �you have personality. you�ve probably been very kind to lily. you�re cleverer than she is. you�re with her all the time. i�ve only quite suddenly come into her life again.� �i�m glad you think you�ve managed to do that,� she said, glowering. more and more, michael thought, with her wide-set eyes was she like a cat crouching by the fire. �just because i had to go away for three days and you had an opportunity to be alone with lily, you now think you�ve come into her life. my god, you�re like some damned fool in a novel!� �a novel by whom?� michael asked. partly he was trying to score off sylvia, but at the same time he was sincerely curious to know, for he never could resist the amplification of a comparison. �oh, any ink-slinger with a brain of pulp,� she answered savagely. he bowed. �i suppose you�re suffering from the virus of sentimental redemption?� she sneered. michael was rather startled by her divination. �what should i redeem her from?� �i thought you boasted of knowing lily six years ago?� �i don�t know that i boasted of it,� he replied, in rather an injured tone. �but i did know her�very well.� �couldn�t you foresee what she was bound to become? personally i should have said that lily�s future must have been obvious from the time she was five years old. certainly at seventeen it must have been. you got out of her life then: what the hell�s your object in coming into it again now, as you call it, unless you�re a sentimentalist? people don�t let passion lapse for six years and pick up the broken thread without the help of sentiment.� michael in the middle of the increasing tension of the conversation was able to stop for a moment and ask himself if this by chance were true. he was standing by the mantelpiece and tinkling the lusters. sylvia looked up at him irritably, and he silenced them at once. �sentiment about what?� he asked, taking the chair opposite hers. �you think lily�s a tart, don�t you? and you think i am, don�t you?� he frowned at the brutality of the expression. �i did think so,� he said. �but of course i�ve changed my mind since i�ve seen something of you.� �oh, of course you�ve changed your mind, have you?� she laughed contemptuously. �and what made you do that? my visit to brighton?� �even if _you_ are,� said michael hotly, �i needn�t believe that lily is. and even if she is, it makes no difference to my wanting to marry her.� �sentimentalist,� she jeered. �damned sugar-and-water sentimentalist.� �your sneers don�t particularly affect me, you know,� he said politely. �oh, for god�s sake, be less the well-brought-up little gentleman. cut out the undergraduate. you fool, i was married to an oxford man. and i�m sitting here now with the glorious knowledge that i�m a perpetual bugbear to his good form.� �because you made a hash of marriage,� michael pointed out, �it doesn�t follow that i�m not to marry lily. i can�t understand your objections.� �listen. you couldn�t make her happy. you couldn�t make her any happier than the dozens of men who want to be fond of her for a short time without accepting the responsibility of marriage. do you think i let any one of those dozens touch her? not one, if i can get the money myself. and i usually can. well, why should i stand aside now and let you carry her off, even though you do want to marry her? i could argue against it on your side by telling you that you have no chance of keeping lily faithful to you? can�t you see that she has no moral energy? can�t you see that she�s vain and empty-headed? can�t you see that? but why should i argue with you for your benefit? i don�t care a damn about your side in the matter.� �what exactly do you care about?� michael asked. �if lily is what you say, i should have thought you�d be glad to be rid of her. after all, i�m not proposing to do her any wrong.� �oh, to the devil with your right and wrong!� sylvia cried. �man can only wrong woman, when he owns her, and if this marriage is going to be a success, you�ll have to own lily. that�s what i rebel against�the ownership of women. it makes me mad.� �yes, it seems to,� michael put in. he was beginning to be in a rage with sylvia�s unreasonableness. �if it comes to ownership,� he went on angrily, �i should have thought that handing her over to the highest bidder time after time would be the real way to make her the pitiable slave of man.� �why?� challenged sylvia. �you sentimental ass, can�t you understand that she treats them as i treat them, like the swine they are. she�s free. i�m free.� �you�re not at all free,� michael indignantly contradicted. �you�re bound hand and foot by the lust of wealthy brutes. if you read a few less elaborately clever books, and thought a few simpler thoughts, you�d be a good deal happier.� �i don�t want to be happier.� �oh, i think you�re merely hysterical,� he said disdainfully. �but, after all, your opinions about yourself don�t matter to me. only i can�t see what right you have to apply them to lily; and even if you have the right, i don�t grasp your reason for wanting to.� �when i met lily first,� said sylvia, �she had joined the chorus of a touring company in which i was. her mother had just died, and i�d just run away from my husband. i thought her the most beautiful thing i�d ever seen. that�s three years ago. is she beautiful still?� �of course she is,� said michael. �well, it�s i who have kept her beautiful. i�ve kept her free also. if sometimes i�ve let her have affairs with men, i�ve taken care that they were with men who could do her no harm, for whom she had no sort of....� �look here,� michael burst in. �i�m sick of this conversation. you�re talking like a criminal lunatic. i tell you i�m going to marry her, whatever you think.� �i say you won�t, and you shan�t,� sylvia declared. the deadlock had been reached, and they sat there on either side of the fire, glaring at each other. �the extraordinary thing is,� said michael at last, �i thought you had a sense of humor when i first met you. and another extraordinary thing is that i still like you very much. which probably rather annoys you. but i can�t help saying it.� �the opinions of sentimentalists don�t interest me one way or the other,� sylvia snapped. �will you answer one question? will you tell me why you were so pleasant on the evening we met?� �i really can�t bother to go back as far as that.� �you weren�t jealous _then_,� michael persisted. �who says i�m jealous now?� she cried. �i do. what do you think you are, unless you�re jealous? when is lily coming down?� �she isn�t coming down until you�ve gone.� �then i shall go and call her.� �she�s not in london.� �i don�t believe you.� a second deadlock was reached. finally michael decided to give sylvia the pleasure of supposing that he was beaten for the moment. he congratulated himself upon the cunning of such a move. she was obviously going to be rather difficult to circumvent. on the steps of the balcony he turned to her: �you hate me because i love lily, and you hate me twice as much because lily loves me.� �it�s not true,� sylvia declared. �it�s not true. she doesn�t love you, and what right have you to love her?� she tossed back her mane of brown hair, biting her nails. �what college was your husband at?� michael suddenly inquired. �balliol.� �i wonder if i knew him.� �oh, no. he was older than you.� it was satisfactory, michael thought as he walked down tinderbox lane, that the conversation had ended normally. at least, he had effected so much. she had really been rather wonderful, that strange sylvia. he would very much like to pit her against stella. it was satisfactory to have his doubts allayed: notwithstanding her present opposition, he felt that he did owe sylvia a good deal. but it would be absurd to let lily continue in such a life: women always quarreled ultimately, and if sylvia were to leave her, her fall would be rapid and probably irredeemable. besides, he wanted her for himself. she was to him no less than to sylvia the most beautiful thing in the world. he did not want to marry a clever woman: he would be much more content with lily, from whom there could be no reaction upon his nerves. somehow all his theories of behavior were being referred back to his own desires. it was useless to pretend any longer that his pursuit had been quixotry. even if it had seemed so on that night when he first heard the news of lily from drake, the impulse at the back of his resolve had been his passion for her. when he looked back at his behavior lately, a good deal of it seemed to have been dictated by self-gratification. he remembered how deeply hurt he had felt by poppy�s treatment of what he had supposed his chivalry. in retrospect his chivalry was seeming uncommonly like self-satisfaction. his friendship for daisy; for barnes; for the underworld; it had been nothing but self-satisfaction. very well, then. if self was to be the touchstone in future, he could face that standard as easily as any other. by the time he had reached the end of tinderbox lane michael was convinced of his profound cynicism. he felt truly obliged to sylvia for curing him of sentiment. he had so often inveighed against sentiment as the spring of human action, that he was most sincerely grateful for the proof of his own sentimental bias. he would go to sylvia to-morrow and say frankly that he did not care a bit what lily had been, was now, or would be; he wanted her. she was something beautiful which he coveted. for the possession of her he was ready to struggle. he would declare war upon sylvia as upon a rival. she should be rather surprised to-morrow morning, michael thought, congratulating himself upon this new and ruthless policy. on the next morning, however, all michael�s plans for his future behavior were knocked askew by being unable to get into mulberry cottage. his brutal frankness; his cynical egotism; his cold resolution, were ignominiously repulsed by a fast-closed door. ringing a bell at intervals of a minute was a very undignified substitute for the position he had imagined himself taking up in that small square room. this errand-boy who stood at his elbow, gazing with such rapt interest at his ringing of the bell, was by no means the audience he had pictured. �does it amuse you to watch a bell being rung?� michael asked. the errand-boy shook his head. �well, why do you do it?� �i wasn�t,� said the errand-boy. �what are you doing, then?� �nothing.� michael could not grapple with the errand-boy, and he retired from tinderbox lane until after lunch. he rang again, but he could get no answer to his ringing. at intervals until midnight he came back, but there was never an answer all the time. he went home and wrote to sylvia: cheyne walk, s.w. _dear sylvia,_ _if you aren�t afraid of being beaten, why are you afraid to let me see lily?_ _i dare you to let me see her. be sporting._ _yours,_ _m. f._ to lily he wrote: _darling,_ _meet me outside south kensington station any time from twelve to three._ _michael._ alone, of course. next day he waited three hours and a half for lily, but she did not come. all the time he spent in a second-hand bookshop with one eye on the street. when he got home, he found a note from sylvia: _come to-morrow at twelve._ _s. s._ michael crumpled up the note and flung it triumphantly into the waste-paper basket. �i thought i should sting you into giving way,� he exclaimed. mrs. gainsborough opened the door to him, when he arrived. �they�ve gone away, the demons!� was what she said. michael was conscious of the garden rimmed with hoar-frost stretching behind her in a vista; and as he stared at this silver sparkling desert he realized that sylvia had inflicted upon him a crushing humiliation. �where have they gone?� he asked blankly. �oh, they never tell me where they get to. but they took their luggage. there�s a note for you from sylvia. come in, and i�ll give it to you.� michael followed her drearily along the gravel path. �we shall be having the snowdrops before we know where we are,� mrs. gainsborough said. �very soon,� he agreed. he would have assented if she had foretold begonias to-morrow morning. in the sitting-room michael saw sylvia�s note, a bleak little envelope waiting for him on that table-cloth. mrs. gainsborough left him to read it alone. the old silence of the room haunted him again now, the silence that was so much intensified by the canary hopping about his cage. almost he decided to throw the letter unread into the fire. from every corner of the room the message of sylvia�s hostility was stretching out toward him. �sweet,� said the canary. michael tore open the envelope and read: _perhaps you�ll admit that my influence is as strong as yours. you�d much better give her up. in a way, i�m rather sorry for you, but not enough to make me hand over lily to you. do realize, my dear young thing, that you aren�t even beginning to understand women. i admit that there�s precious little to understand in lily. and for that very reason, when even you begin to see through her beauty, you�ll hate her. now_ i _hate to think of this happening. she�s a thousand times better off with me than she ever could be with you. perhaps my maternal instinct has gone off the lines a bit and fixed itself on lily. and yet i don�t think it�s anything so sickly as sentimental mothering. no, i believe i just like to sit and look at her. lily�s rather cross with me for taking her away from �such a nice boy.� does that please you? and doesn�t it exactly describe you? however, i won�t crow. don�t break the lusters, when you read this. they belong to fatty. what i suggest for you is a walk in kensington gardens to the refrain of �blast the whole bloody world!� now look shocked, my little vandyck._ _s. s._ michael tore the letter up. he did not want to read and re-read it for the rest of the day. his eyelids were pricking unpleasantly, and he went out to find mrs. gainsborough. he was really sensitive that even a room should witness such a discomfiture. the landlady was downstairs in the kitchen, where he had not yet been. in this room of copper pots and pans, with only the garden in view, she might have been a farmer�s wife. �sit down,� she said. �and make yourself at home.� �will you sit down?� michael asked. �oh, well, yes, if it�s any pleasure to you.� she took off her apron and seated herself, smoothing the bombasine skirt over her knees. a tabby cat purred between them; a kettle was singing; and there was a smell of allspice. �you really don�t know where the girls have gone?� michael began. �no more than you do,� she assured him. �but that sylvia is really a turk.� �i suppose lily didn�t tell you that i used to know her six years ago?� he asked. �oh, yes, she talked about you a lot. a good deal more than miss sylvia liked, that�s a sure thing.� �well, do you think it�s fair for sylvia to carry her off like this? i want to marry lily, mrs. gainsborough.� �there, only fancy what a daring that sylvia has. she�s a nice girl, and very high-spirited, but she _is_ a miss dictatorial.� michael felt encouraged by mrs. gainsborough�s attitude, and he made up his mind to throw himself upon her mercy. sentiment would be his only weapon, and he found some irony in the reflection that he had set out this morning to be a brutal cynic in his treatment of the situation. �do you think it�s fair to try to prevent lily from marrying me? you know as well as i do that the life she�s leading now isn�t going to be the best life possible for her. you�re a woman of the world, mrs. gainsborough��� �i was once,� she corrected. �and a very naughty world it was, too.� �you were glad, weren�t you, when the captain brought you to this house? you were glad to feel secure? you would have married him?� �no, i wouldn�t marry him. i preferred to be as i am. still that�s nothing for lily to go by. she�s more suited for marriage than what i was.� �don�t you think,� michael went on eagerly, �that if after six years i�m longing to marry her, i ought to marry her? i know that she might be much worse off than she is, but equally she might be much better off. look here, mrs. gainsborough, it�s up to you. you�ve got to make it possible for me to see her. you�ve got to.� �but if i do anything like that,� said mrs. gainsborough, �it means i have an unpleasantness with sylvia. that girl�s a regular heathen when she turns nasty. i should be left all alone in my little house. and what with spring coming on and all, and the flowers looking so nice in the garden, i should feel very much the square peg in the round hole.� �lily and i would come and see you,� he promised. �and i don�t think sylvia would leave you. she�d never find another house like mulberry cottage or another landlady like you.� �yes, i daresay; but you can�t tell these things. once she�s in her tantrums, there�s no saying what will happen. and, besides, i don�t know what you want me to do.� �i want you to send me word the first moment that lily�s alone for an hour; and when i ring, do answer the bell.� �now that wasn�t my fault yesterday,� said mrs. gainsborough. �really i thought we should have the fire-escape in. the way you nagged at that poor bell! it was really chronic. but would she let me so much as speak to you, even with the door only on the jar? certainly not! and all the time she was snapping round the house like a young crocodile. and yet i�m really fond of that girl. well, when the captain died, she was a daughter to me. oh, she was, she was really a daughter to me. well, you see, his sister invited me to the funeral, which i thought was very nice, her being an old maid and very strict. now, i hardly liked to put on a widow�s cap and yet i hardly didn�t like to. but sylvia, she said not on any account, and i was very glad i didn�t, because there was a lot of persons there very stand-offish, and i should have been at my wits to know whatever i was going to say.� �look here,� said michael. �when the captain gave you this house, he loved you. you were young, weren�t you? you were young and beautiful? well, would you like to think your house was going to be used to separate two people very much in love with each other? you can say i climbed over the wall. you can make any excuse you like to sylvia. but, mrs. gainsborough, do, do let me know when lily is going to be alone. if she doesn�t want to come away with me, it will be my fault, and that will be the end of it. if only you�ll help me at the beginning. will you? will you promise to help me?� �i never could resist a man,� sighed mrs. gainsborough, with resignation. �there�s a character! oh, well, it�s my own and no one else�s, that�s one good job.� michael had to wait until february was nearly over before he heard from her. it had been very difficult to remain quietly at cheyne walk, but he knew that if he were to show any sign of activity, sylvia would carry lily off again. �a person to see you, sir,� said the tortoise-mouthed parlormaid. michael found mrs. gainsborough sitting in the hall. she was wearing a bonnet tied with very bright cerise ribbons. �they�ve had a rumpus, the pair of them, this afternoon. and sylvia�s gone off in the sulks. i really was quite aggravated with her. oh, she�s a willful spitfire, that girl, sometimes. she really is.� michael was coming away without a coat or hat, and mrs. gainsborough stopped him. �now don�t behave like a silly. dress yourself properly and don�t make me run. i�m getting stout, you know,� she protested. �we�ll get a hansom.� �what, ride in a hansom? never! a four-wheeler if you _like_.� it was difficult to find a four-wheeler, and michael was nearly mad with impatience. �now don�t upset yourself. sylvia won�t be back to-night, and there�s no need to tug at me as if i was a cork in a bottle. people will think we�re a walking poppy-show, if you don�t act more quiet. they�re all turning round to stare at us.� a four-wheeler appeared presently, and very soon they were walking down tinderbox lane. michael felt rather like a little boy out with his nurse, as he kept turning back to exhort mrs. gainsborough to come more quickly. she grew more and more red in the face, and so wheezy that he was afraid something would happen to her, and for a few yards made no attempt to hurry her along. at last they reached mulberry cottage. �supposing sylvia has come back!� he said. �i keep on telling you she�s gone away for the night. now get on indoors with you. you�ve nearly been my death.� �i say, you don�t know how grateful i am to you!� michael exclaimed, turning round and grasping her fat hands. mrs. gainsborough shouted upstairs to lily as loudly as her breathlessness would permit: �i�ve brought you back that surprise packet i promised.� then she vanished, and michael waited for lily at the foot of the stairs. she came down very soon, looking very straight and slim in her philamot frock of chinese crêpe that so well became her. soon she was in his arms and glad enough to be petted after sylvia�s rages. �lily, how can you bear to let sylvia manage you like this? it�s absolutely intolerable.� �she�s been horrid to me to-day,� said lily resentfully. �well, why do you put up with it?� �oh, i don�t know. i hate always squabbling. it�s much easier to give way to her, and usually i don�t much mind.� �you don�t much mind whether we�re married!� michael exclaimed. �how can you let sylvia persuade you against marriage? darling girl, if you marry me you shall do just as you like. i simply want you to look beautiful. you�d be happy married to me�you really would.� �sylvia says marriage is appallingly dull, and my mother and father didn�t get on, and doris doesn�t get on with the man she�s married to. in fact, everybody seems to hate it.� �do you hate me?� michael demanded. �no, i think you�re awfully sweet.� �well, why don�t you marry me? you�ll have plenty of money and nothing to bother about. i think you�d thoroughly enjoy being married.� for an instant, as he argued with her, michael wavered in his resolve. for an instant it seemed, after all, impossible to marry this girl. a chill came over him, but he shook it off, and he saw only her loveliness, the eyes sullen with thoughts of sylvia, the lips pouting at the remembrance of a tyranny. and again as he watched her beauty, the bitter thought crossed his mind that it would be easier to possess her without marriage. then he thought of her at seventeen. �_michael, why do you make me love you so?_� was that the last protest she ever made against the thralldom of passion? if it was, the blame must primarily be his, since he had not heeded her reproach. �lily,� he cried, catching her to him. �you�re coming away with me now.� he kissed her a hundred times. �now! now! do you hear me?� she surrendered to his will, and as he held her michael thought grimly what an absurd paradox it was, that in order to make her consent to marry him, he like the others must play upon the baser side of her yielding nature. there were difficulties of packing and of choosing frocks and hats, but michael had his way through them all. �quite an elopement,� mrs. gainsborough proclaimed. �a very virtuous elopement,� said michael, with a laugh. �oh, but shan�t i catch it when that hottentot comes back!� �well, it�s sylvia�s fault,� said lily fretfully. �she shouldn�t worry me all the time to know whether i like her better than anyone else in the world.� the man arrived with a truck for the luggage. �where are you going?� mrs. gainsborough asked. �i declare, you�re like two babes in the wood.� �to my sister�s in huntingdonshire,� said michael, and he wrote out the address. �oh, in the country! well, summer�ll be on us before we know where we are. i declare, my snowdrops are quite finished.� �is your sister pretty?� lily asked, as they were driving to king�s cross. �she�s handsome,� said michael. �you�ll like her, i think. and her husband was a great friend of mine. by the way, i must send a wire to say we�re coming.� chapter vii the gate of ivory it was only when he was sitting opposite to lily in a first class compartment that michael began to wonder if their sudden arrival would create a kind of consternation at hardingham. he managed to reassure himself when he looked at her. the telegram might have puzzled stella, but in meeting lily she would understand his action. nevertheless, he felt a little anxious when he saw the hardingham brougham waiting outside the little station. the cold drive of four miles through the still, misty evening gave him too long to meditate the consequences of his action. impulse was very visibly on trial, and he began to fear a little stella�s judgment of it. the carriage-lamps splashed the hedgerows monotonously, and the horses� breath curled round the rigid form of the coachman. trees, hedges, gates, signposts went past in the blackness and chill. michael drew lily close, and asked in a whisper if she were happy. �it makes me sleepy driving like this,� she murmured. her head was on his shoulder; the astrakan collar was silky to his chin. so she traveled until they reached the gates of the park: then michael woke her up. there was not time to do much but dress quickly for dinner when they arrived, though michael watched stella�s glances rather anxiously. lily put on a chiffon frock, of aquamarine, and, though she looked beautiful in it, he wished she had worn black: this frock made her seem a little theatrical, he fancied; or was it the effect of her against the stern dining-room, and nothing whatever to do with the frock? stella, too, whom he had always considered a personality of some extravagance, seemed to have grown suddenly very stiff and conventional. it used always to be himself who criticized people: stella had always been rather too lenient. perhaps it was being married to alan; or was lily the reason? yet superficially everything seemed to be going all right, especially when he consoled himself by remembering the abruptness of lily�s introduction. after dinner stella took lily away with her into the drawing-room and left michael with alan. michael tried to feel that this was what he had expected would happen; but he could not drive away the consciousness of a new formality brooding over hardingham. it was annoying, too, the way in which alan seemed deliberately to avoid any reference to lily. he would not even remind michael of the evening at the drury lane pantomime, when he had met her five or six years ago. perhaps he had forgotten driving home in a cab with her sister on that occasion. michael grew exasperated by his talk about cricket pitches; and yet he could not bring himself to ask right out what alan thought of her, because it would have impinged upon his pride to do so. in about ten minutes they heard the sound of the piano, and tacitly they agreed to forego the intimacy of drinking port together any longer. stella closed the piano with a slam when they came into the drawing-room, and asked lily if she would like some bridge. �oh, no. i hate playing cards. but you play.� it was for michael a nervous evening. he was perpetually on guard for hostile criticism; he was terribly anxious that lily should make a good impression. everything seemed to go wrong. games were begun and ended almost in the same breath. finally he managed to find a song that lily thought she remembered, and stella played her accompaniment very aggressively, michael fancied; for by this time he regarded the slightest movement on her part or alan�s as an implication of disapproval. lily was tired, luckily, and was ready to go to bed early. when stella came down again, michael felt he ought to supplement the few details of his telegram, and it began to seem almost impossible to explain reasonably his arrival here with lily. an account of tinderbox lane would sound fantastic: a hint of lily�s life would be fatal. he found himself enmeshed in a vague tale of having found her very hard up and of wishing to get her away from the influence of a rather depressing home. it sounded very unconvincing as he told it, but he hoped that the declaration of his intention to marry her at once would smother everything else in a great surprise. �of course, that�s what i imagined you were thinking of doing,� said stella. �so you�ve made up your quarrel of five years ago?� �when are you going to get married?� alan asked. �well, i hoped you�d be able to have us here for a week or so, or at any rate lily, while i go up to town and find a place for us to live.� �oh, of course she can stay here,� said stella. �oh, rather, of course,� alan echoed. next morning it rained hard, and michael thought he saw stella making signs of dissent when at breakfast alan proposed taking him over to a farm a couple of miles away. he was furious to think that stella was objecting to being left alone with lily, and he retired to the billiard-room, where he spent half an hour playing a game with himself between spot and plain, a game which produced long breaks that seemed quite unremarkable, so profound was the trance of vexation in which he was plunged. a fortnight passed, through the whole of which alan never once referred to lily; and, as michael was always too proud to make the first advance toward the topic, he felt that his friendship with alan was being slowly chipped away. he knew that stella, on the other hand, was rather anxious to talk to him, but perversely he avoided giving her any opportunity. as for lily, she seemed perfectly happy doing nothing and saying very little. obviously, however, this sort of existence under the shadow of disapproval could not continue much longer, and michael determined to come to grips with the situation. therefore, one morning of strong easterly wind when lily wanted to stay indoors, he proposed a walk to stella. they crossed three or four fields in complete silence, the dogs scampering to right and left, the gale crimsoning their cheeks. �i don�t think i care much for this country of yours,� said michael at last. �it�s flat and cold and damp. why on earth you ever thought i should care to live here, i don�t know.� �there�s a wood about a quarter of a mile farther on. we can get out of the wind there.� michael resented stella�s pleasantness. he wanted her to be angry and so launch him easily upon the grievances he had been storing up for a fortnight. �i hate badly trained dogs,� he grumbled when stella turned round to whistle vainly for one of the spaniels. �so do i,� she agreed. it was really unfair of her to effect a deadlock by being perpetually and unexpectedly polite. he would try being gracious himself: it was easier in the shelter of the wood. �i don�t think i�ve properly thanked you for having us to stay down here,� he began. stella stopped dead in the middle of the glade: �look here, do you want me to talk about this business?� she demanded. her use of the word �business� annoyed him: it crystallized all the offensiveness, as he was now calling it to himself, of her sisterly attitude these two weeks. �i shall be delighted to talk about this �business.� though why you should refer to my engagement as if a hot-water pipe had burst, i don�t quite know.� �do you want me to speak out frankly�to say exactly what i think of you and lily and of your marrying her? you won�t like it, and i won�t do it unless you ask me.� �go on,� said michael gloomily. stella had gathered the dogs round her again, and in this glade she appeared to michael as a severe artemis with her short tweed skirt and her golf-coat swinging from her shoulders like a chlamys. these oaks were hers: the starry moss was hers: the anemones flushing and silvering to the ground wind, they were all hers. it suddenly struck him as monstrously unfair that stella should be able to criticize lily. here she stood on her own land forever secure against the smallest ills that could come to the other girl; and, with this consciousness of a strength behind her, already she was conveying that rustic haughtiness of england. michael loved her, this cool and indomitable mistress of hardingham; but while he loved her, almost he hated her for the power she had to look down on lily. michael wished he had sylvia with him. that would have been a royal battle in this wood. stella with her dogs and trees behind her, with her green acres all round her and the very wind fighting for her, might yet have found it difficult to discomfit sylvia. �go on, i�m waiting for you to begin,� michael repeated. �straight off, then,� she said, �i may as well tell you that this marriage is impossible. i don�t know where you found her again, and i don�t care. it wouldn�t make the slightest difference to me what she had been, if i thought she had a chance of ever being anything else. but, michael, she�s flabby. you�ll hate me for saying so, but she is, she really is! in a year you�ll admit that; you�ll see her growing older and flabbier, more and more vain; emptier and emptier, if that�s possible. even her beauty won�t last. these very fair girls fall to pieces like moth-eaten dolls. i�ve tried to find something in her during this fortnight. i�ve tried and tried; but there�s nothing. you may be in love with her now, though i don�t believe you are. i think it�s all a piece of sentimentalism. i�ve often teased you about getting married, but please don�t suppose that i haven�t realized how almost impossible it would be, ever to find a woman that would stand the wear and tear of your idealism. i�m prepared to bet that behind your determination to marry this girl there�s a reason, a lovely, unpractical, idealistic reason. isn�t there? you�ve been away with her for a week-end, and have tortured yourself into a theory of reparation. is that it? or you�ve fallen in love with the notion of yourself in love at eighteen. oh, you can�t marry her, you foolish old darling.� �your oratory would be more effective if you wouldn�t keep whistling to that infernal dog,� said michael. �if this marriage is so terrible, i should have thought you�d have forgotten there were such animals as cocker-spaniels. it�s rubbish for you to say you�ve tried to find something in lily. you haven�t made the slightest attempt. you�ve criticized her from the moment she entered the house. you�re sunk deep already in the horrible selfishness of being happy. a happy marriage is the most devastating joint egotism in the world. damn it, stella, when you were making a fool of yourself with half the men in europe, i didn�t talk as you�ve been talking to me.� �no, you were always very cautiously fraternal,� said stella. �ah, no, i won�t say bitter things, for, michael, i adore you; and you�ll break my heart if you marry this girl.� �you won�t do anything of the kind,� he contradicted. �you�ll be whistling to spaniels all the time.� �michael, it�s really unkind of you to try and make me laugh, when i�m feeling so wretched about you.� �it�s all fine for you to sneer at lily,� said michael. �but i can remember your coming back from vienna and crying all day in your room over some man who�d made a fool of you. _you_ looked pretty flabby then.� �how dare you remind me of that?� stella cried, in a fury. �how dare you? how dare you?� �you brought it on yourself,� said michael coldly. �you�re going to pieces already under the influence of that girl. marry her, then! but don�t come to me for sympathy, when she�s forced you to drag yourself through the divorce court.� �no, i shall take care not to come to you for anything ever again,� said michael bitterly. �unless it�s for advice when i want to buy a spaniel.� they had turned again in the direction of the hall, and over the windy fields they walked silently. michael was angry with himself for having referred to that vienna time. after all, it had been the only occasion on which he had seen stella betray a hint of weakness; besides, she had always treated him generously in the matter of confidences. he looked sidelong at her, but she walked on steadily, and he wondered if she would tell alan that they had been nearer to quarreling than so far they had ever been. perhaps this sort of thing was inevitable with marriage. chains of sympathy and affection forged to last eternally were smashed by marriage in a moment. he had heard nothing said about stella�s music lately. was that also to vanish on account of marriage? the sooner he and lily left hardingham, the better. he supposed he ought to suggest going immediately. but lily would be a problem until he could find a place for her to live, and someone to chaperone her. they would be married next month, and he would take her abroad. he would be able to see her at last in some of the places where in days gone by he had dreamed of seeing her. �i suppose you wouldn�t object to keeping lily here two or three days more, while i find a place in town?� said michael. it only struck him when the request was out how much it sounded like asking for a favor. stella would despise him more than ever. �michael,� stella exclaimed, turning round and stopping in his path. �once more i beg you to give up this idea of marriage. surely you can realize how deeply i feel about it, when even after what you said i�m willing actually to plead with you. it�s intolerable to think of you tied to her!� �it�s too late,� said michael. �i must marry her. not for any reasons that the world would consider reasons,� he went on. �but because i want to marry her. the least you can do for me is to pretend to support me before the world.� �i won�t, i won�t, i won�t! it�s all wrong. she�s all wrong. her people are all wrong. why, even alan remembers them as dreadful, and you know how casual he is about people he doesn�t like. he usually flings them out of his mind at once.� �oh, alan�s amazing in every way,� said michael. he longed to say that he and lily would go by the first train possible, but he dreaded so much the effect of bringing her back to london without any definite place to which she could go, that he was willing to leave her here for a few days, if she would stay. he hated himself for doing this, but the problems of marriage and lily were growing unwieldy. he wished now that he had asked his mother to come back, so that he could have taken lily to cheyne walk. it was stupid to let himself be caught unprepared like this. after all, perhaps it would be a good thing to leave lily and stella together for a bit. as he was going to marry her and as he could not face the possibility of quarreling with stella finally, it would be better to pocket his pride. suddenly stella caught hold of his arm. �look here,� she said. �you absurd old quixote, listen. i�m going to do all in my power to stop your marrying lily. but meanwhile go up to town and leave her here. i promise to declare a truce of a fortnight, if you�ll promise me not to marry her until the middle of april. by a truce i mean that i�ll be charming to her and take no steps to influence her to give you up. but after the fortnight it must be war, even if you win in the end and marry her.� �does that mean we should cease to be on speaking terms?� �oh, no, of course; as a matter of fact, if you marry her, i suppose we shall all settle down together and be great friends, until she lands you in the divorce court with half a dozen co-respondents. then you�ll come and live with us at hardingham, a confirmed cynic and the despair of all the eligible young women in the neighborhood.� �i wish you wouldn�t talk like that about lily,� said michael, frowning. �the truce has begun,� stella declared. �for a fortnight i�ll be an angel.� just before dusk was falling, the gale died away, and michael persuaded lily to come for a walk with him. almost unconsciously he took her to the wood where he and stella had talked so angrily in the morning. chaffinches flashed their silver wings about them in the fading light. �lily, you look adorable in this glade,� he told her. �i believe, if you were a little way off from me, i should think you were a birch tree.� the wood was rosy brown and purple. every object had taken on rich deeps of quality and color reflected from the march twilight. the body of the missel-thrush flinging his song from the bare oak-bough into the ragged sky, flickered with a magical sublucency. michael found some primroses and brought them to lily. �these are for you, you tall tall primrose of a girl. listen, will you let me leave you for a very few days so that i can find the house you�re going to live in? will you not be lonely?� �i like to have you with me always,� she murmured. he was intoxicated by so close an avowal of love from lips that were usually mute. �we shall be married in a month,� he cried. �can you smell violets?� �something sweet i smell.� but it was getting too dusky in the coppice to find these violets themselves twilight-hued, and they turned homeward across the open fields. birds were flying to the coverts, linnets mostly, in twittering companies. �these eves of early spring are like swords,� michael exclaimed. �like what?� lily asked, smiling at his exaggeration. �like swords. they seem to cut one through and through with their sharpness and sweetness.� �oh, you mean it�s cold,� she said. �take my arm.� �well, i meant rather more than that, really,� michael laughed. but because she had offered him her arm he forgot at once how far she had been from following his thoughts. michael went up to london after dinner. he left lily curled up before the fire presumably quite content to stay at hardingham. �not more than a fortnight, mind,� were stella�s last words. he went to see maurice next morning to get the benefit of his advice about possible places in which to live. maurice was in his element. �of course there really are very few good places. cheyne walk and grosvenor road, the albany, parts of hampstead and campden hill, kensington square, one or two streets near the regent�s canal, adelphi terrace, the inns of court and westminster. otherwise, london is impossible. but you�re living in cheyne walk now. why do you want to move from there?� michael made up his mind to take maurice into his confidence. he supposed that of all his friends he would be as likely as any to be sympathetic. maurice was delighted by his description of lily, so much delighted, that he accepted her as a fact without wanting to know who she was or where michael had met her. �by jove, i must hurry up and find my girl. but i don�t think i�m desperately keen to get married yet. i vote for a house near the canal, if we can find the right one.� that afternoon they set out. they changed their minds and went to hampstead first, where maurice was very anxious to take a large georgian house with a garden of about fifteen acres. he offered to move himself and castleton from grosvenor road in order to occupy one of the floors, and he was convinced that the stable would be very useful if they wanted to start a printing press. �yes, but we don�t want to start a printing press,� michael objected. �and really, mossy, i think twenty-three bedrooms more than one servant can manage.� it was with great reluctance that maurice gave up the idea of this house, and he was so much depressed by the prospect of considering anything less huge that he declared hampstead was impossible, and they went off to regent�s park. �i don�t think you�re likely to find anything so good as that house,� maurice said gloomily. �in fact, i know you won�t. i wish i could afford to take it myself. i should, like a shot. castleton could be at the temple just as soon from there.� �i don�t see why he should bother about the temple,� said michael. �that house was rather bigger.� �you�ll never find another house like it,� maurice prophesied. �look at this neighborhood we�re driving through now. impossible to live here!� they were in the hampstead road. �i haven�t any intention of doing so,� michael laughed. �but there remains the neighborhood of the canal, the neighborhood you originally suggested. hampstead was an afterthought.� �wonderful house!� maurice sighed. �i shall always regret you didn�t take it.� however, when they had paid off the cab, he became interested by the new prospect; and they wandered for a while, peering through fantastic railings at houses upon the steep banks of the canal, houses that seemed to have been stained to a sad green by the laurels planted close around them. nothing feasible for a lodging was discovered near regent�s park; and they crossed st. john�s wood and maida vale, walking on until they reached a point where at the confluence of two branches the canal became a large triangular sheet of water. occupying the whole length of the base of this triangle and almost level with the water, stood the garden of a very large square house. �there�s a curious place,� said michael. �how on earth does one get at it?� they followed the road, which was considerably higher than the level of the canal, and found that the front door was reached by an entrance down a flight of steps. �ararat house,� michael read. �flat to let,� maurice read. �i think this looks rather promising,� said michael. it was an extraordinary pile, built in some palladian nightmare. a portico of dull crimson columns ran round three sides of the house, under a frieze of bearded masks. the windows were all very large, and so irregularly placed as completely to destroy the classic illusion. the stucco had been painted a color that was neither pink nor cream nor buff, but a mixture of all three; and every bit of space left by the windows was filled with banderoles of illegible inscriptions and with plaster garlands, horns, lyres, urns, and grecian helmets. there must have been half an acre of garden round it, a wilderness of shrubs and rank grass with here and there a dislustered conservatory. the house would have seemed uninhabitable save for the announcement of the flat to be let, which was painted on a board roped to one of the columns. they descended the steps and pressed a bell marked housekeeper. yes, there was a flat to let on the ground floor; in fact, the whole of the ground floor with the exception of this part of the hall and the rooms on either side. the housekeeper threw her apron over her shoulder like a plaid and unlocked a door in a wooden partition that divided the flat called number one from the rest of ararat house. they passed through and examined the two gaunt bedrooms: one of them had an alcove, which pleased michael very much. he decided that without much difficulty it could be made to resemble a carpaccio interior. the dining-room was decorated with spanish leather and must have been very brilliantly lit by the late tenants, for everywhere from the ceiling and walls electric wires protruded like asps. there was also a murky kitchen; and finally the housekeeper led the way through double doors into the drawing-room. as soon as he had stepped inside, michael was sure that he and lily must live here. it was a room that recalled at the first glance one of those gigantic saloons in ancient venetian palaces; but as he looked about him he decided that any assignment in known topography was absurd. it was a room at once for werther, for taglioni, for the nocturnes of chopin and the cameos of théophile gautier. beckford might have filled it with orient gewgaws; barbey d�aurevilly could have strutted here; and in a corner villiers de l�isle adam might have sat fiercely. the room was a tatterdemalion rococo barbarized more completely by gothic embellishments that nevertheless gave it the atmosphere of the fantasts with whom michael had identified it. �but this is like a scene in a pantomime,� maurice exclaimed. it was indeed like a scene in a pantomime, and a proscenium was wanted to frame suitably the effect of those fluted pillars that supported the ceiling with their groined arches. the traceries of the latter were gilded, and the spaces between were painted with florid groups of nymphs and cornucopias. at either end of the room were large fireplaces fructuated with marble pears and melons, and the floor was a parquet of black and yellow lozenges. �it�s hideous,� maurice exclaimed. the housekeeper stood aside, watching impersonally. �hideous but rather fascinating,� michael said. �look at the queer melancholy light, and look at the view.� it was, after all, the view which gave the character of romance to the room. eight french windows, whose shutters one by one the housekeeper had opened while they were talking, admitted a light that was much subdued by the sprays of glossy evergreen outside. seen through their leaves, the garden appeared to be a green twilight in which the statues and baskets of chipped and discolored stone had an air of overthrown magnificence. the housekeeper opened one of the windows, and they walked out into the wilderness, where ferns were growing on rockeries of slag and old tree-stumps; where the paths were smeared with bright green slime, with moss and sodden vegetation. they came to a wider path running by the bank of the canal, and, pausing here, they pondered the sheet of dead water where two swans were gliding slowly round an islet and where the reflections of the house beyond lay still and deep everywhere along the edge. the distant cries of london floated sharply down the air; smuts were falling perpetually; the bitter march air diffused in a dull sparkle tasted of the city�s breath: the circling of the swans round their islet made everything else the more immotionable. �in summer this will be wonderful,� michael predicted. �on summer nights those swans will be swimming about among the stars,� maurice said. �except that they�ll probably have retired to bed,� michael pointed out. �i wonder if they build their nests on chimney-tops like storks,� maurice laughed. �let�s ask the housekeeper,� michael said solemnly. they went back into the drawing-room, and more than ever did it seem exactly the room one would expect to enter after pondering that dead water without. �who lives in the other flats?� michael inquired of the housekeeper. �there�s four others,� she began. �up above there�s colonel and mrs....� �i see,� michael interrupted. �just ordinary people. do they ever go out? or do they sit and peer at the water all day from behind strange curtains?� the housekeeper stared at him. �they play tennis and croquet a good deal in the summer, sir. the courts is on the other side of the house. mr. gartside is the gentleman to see about the flat.� she gave michael the address, and that afternoon he settled to take number one, ararat house. �it absolutely was made to set her off,� he told maurice. �you wait till i�ve furnished it as it ought to be furnished.� �and we�ll have amazing fêtes aqueuses in the summer,� maurice declared. �we�ll buy a barge and�why, of course�the canal flows into the thames at grosvenor road.� �underground�like the styx,� said michael, nodding. �of course, it�s going to be wonderful. we must never visit each other except by water.� �like splendid dead venetians,� said michael. the fortnight of lily�s stay at hardingham was spent by him and maurice in a fever of decoration. michael bought oval mirrors of venetian glass; oblong mirrors crowned with gilt griffins and scallops; small round mirrors in frames of porcelain garlanded with flowerbuds; so many mirrors that the room became even more mysteriously vast. the walls were hung with brocades of gold and philamot and pomona green. there were slim settees the color of ivory, with cushions of primrose and lemon satin, of cinnamon and canary citron and worn russet silks. over the parquet was a great gray aubusson carpet with a design of monstrous roses as deep as damsons or burgundy; and from the ceiling hung two chandeliers of cut glass. �you know,� said maurice seriously, �she�ll have to be very beautiful to carry this off.� �she is very beautiful,� said michael. �and there�s room for her to walk about here. she�ll move about this room as wonderfully as those swans upon the canal.� �michael, what�s happened to you? you�re becoming as eccentric as me.� maurice looked at him rather jealously. �and, i say, do you really want me to come with you to king�s cross to-morrow afternoon?� michael nodded. �after you�ve helped to gather together this room, you deserve to see the person we�ve done it for.� �yes, but look here. who�s going to stay in the flat with her? you can�t leave her alone until you�re married. as you told me the story, it sounded very romantic; but if she�s going to be your wife, you�ve got to guard her reputation.� michael had never given maurice more than a slight elaboration of the tale which had served for stella; and he thought how much more romantic maurice would consider the affair if he knew the whole truth. he felt inclined to tell him, but he doubted his ability to keep it to himself. �i thought of getting hold of some elderly woman,� he said. �that�s all very well, but you ought to have been doing it all this time.� �you don�t know anybody?� �i? great scott, no!� they were walking toward chelsea, and presently maurice had to leave him for an appointment. �to-morrow afternoon then at king�s cross,� he said, and jumped on an omnibus. michael walked along in a quandary. whom on earth could he get to stay with lily? would it not be better to marry at once? but that would involve breaking his promise to stella. if he asked mrs. gainsborough, it would mean sylvia knowing where lily was. if, on the other hand, he should employ a strange woman, lily might dislike her. could he ask mrs. ross to come up to town? no, of course, that was absurd. it looked as if he would have to ask mrs. gainsborough. or why not ask sylvia herself? in that case, why establish lily at ararat house before they were married? this marriage had seemed so very easy an achievement; but slowly it was turning into an insoluble complex. he might sound sylvia upon her attitude. it would enormously simplify everything if she would consent; and if she consented she would, he believed, play fair with him. the longer michael thought about it, the more it seemed the safest course to call in sylvia�s aid. he was almost hailing a hansom to go to tinderbox lane, when he realized how foolish it would be not to try to sever lily completely from the life she had been leading in sylvia�s company. not even ought he to expose her to the beaming laxity of mrs. gainsborough. michael had reached notting hill gate, and, still pondering the problem which had destroyed half the pleasure of the enterprise, he caught sight of a registry for servants. why not employ two servants, two of the automatons who simplified life as it was simplified in cheyne walk? then he remembered that he had forgotten to make any attempt to equip the kitchen. surely lily would be able to help with that. he entered the registry and interviewed a severe woman wearing glasses, who read in a sing-song the virtues of a procession of various automatons seeking situations as cooks and housemaids. �what wages do you wish to give?� �oh, the usual wages,� michael said. �but i rather want these servants to-day.� he made an appointment to interview half a dozen after lunch. he chose the first two that presented themselves, and told them to come round to ararat house. here he threw himself on their mercy and begged them to make a list of what was wanted in the kitchen. they gave notice on the spot, and michael rushed off to the registry again. to the severe woman in glasses he explained the outlines of the situation and made her promise to suit him by to-morrow at midday. she suggested a capable housekeeper; and next morning a hard-featured, handsome woman very well dressed in the fashion of about arrived at ararat house. she undertook to find someone to help, and also to procure at once the absolute necessities for the kitchen. miss harper was a great relief to michael, though he did not think he liked her very much; and he made up his mind to get rid of her, as soon as some sort of domestic comfort was perceptible. lily would arrive about four o�clock, and he drove off to king�s cross to meet her. he felt greatly excited by the prospect of introducing her to maurice, who for a wonder was punctually waiting for him on the platform. lily evidently liked maurice, and michael was rather disappointed when he said he could not come back with them to assist at the first entry into ararat house. maurice had certainly given him to understand that he was free this afternoon. �look in at grosvenor road on your way home to-night,� said maurice. �or will you be very late?� �oh, no, i shan�t be late,� michael answering, flushing. he had a notion that maurice was implying a suspicion of him by his invitation. it seemed as if he were testing his behavior. lily liked the rooms; and, although she thought the carpaccio bedroom was a little bare, it was soon strewn with her clothes, and made thereby inhabitable. �and of course,� said michael, �you�ve got to buy lots and lots of clothes this fortnight. how much do you want to spend? two hundred�three hundred pounds?� the idea of buying clothes on such a scale of extravagance seemed to delight her, and she kissed him, he thought almost for the first time, in mere affection without a trace of passion. michael felt happy that he had so much money for her to spend, and he was glad that no one had been given authority to interfere with his capital. there flashed through his mind a comparison of himself with the chevalier des grieux, and, remembering how soon that money had come to an end, he was glad that lily would not be exposed to the temptation which had ruined manon. �and do you like miss harper?� he inquired. �yes, she seems all right.� they went out to dine in town, and came back about eleven to find the flat looking wonderfully settled. michael confessed how much he had forgotten to order, but lily talked of her dresses and took no interest in household affairs. �i think i ought to go now,� said michael. �oh, no, stay a little longer.� but he would not, feeling the violent necessity to impress upon her as much as possible, during this fortnight before they were married, how important were the conventions of life, even when it was going to be lived in so strange a place as ararat house. �oh, you�re going now?� said miss harper, looking at him rather curiously. �i shall be round in the morning. you�ll finish making the lists of what you still want?� michael felt very deeply plunged into domestic arrangements, as he drove to grosvenor road. maurice was sitting up for him, but castleton had gone to bed. �look here, old chap,� maurice began at once, �you can�t possibly marry that girl.� michael frowned. �you too?� �i know all about her,� maurice went on. �i�ve never actually met her, but i recognized her at once. even if you did know her people five years ago, you ought to have taken care to find out what had happened in between. as a matter of fact, i happen to know a man who�s had an affair with her�a painter called walker. ronnie walker. he�s often up here. you�re bound to meet him some time.� �not at all, if i never come here again,� said michael, in a cold rage. �it�s no use for you to be angry with me,� said maurice. �i should be a rotten friend, if i didn�t warn you.� �oh, go to hell!� said michael, and he marched out of the studio. �i�ll die first,� retorted maurice, grinning. maurice came on the landing and called, begging him to come up and not to be so hasty, but michael paid no attention. �so much for grosvenor road,� he said, slamming the big front door behind him. he heard maurice calling to him from the window, but he walked on without turning his head. it was a miserable coincidence that one of his friends should know about her. it was a disappointment, but it could not be helped. if maurice chattered about a disastrous marriage, why, other friends would have to be dropped in the same way. after all, he had been aware from the first moment of his resolve that this sort of thing was bound to happen. it left him curiously indifferent. a week passed. there were hundreds of daffodils blooming in the garden round ararat house; and april bringing an unexpected halcyon was the very april of the poets whose verses haunted that great rococo room. every day michael went with lily to dressmakers and worshiped her taste. every day he bought her old pieces of jewelry, old fans, or old silver, or pots of purple hyacinths. he was just conscious that it was london and the prime of the spring; but mostly he lived in the enchantment of her presence. often they walked up and down the still deserted garden, by the edge of the canal. the swans used to glide nearer to them, waiting for bread to be thrown; and lily would stand with her hair in a stream of sunlight and her arms moving languidly like the necks of the birds she was feeding. nor was she less graceful in the long luminous dusks under the young moon and the yellow evening star that were shining upon them as they walked by the edge of the water. for a week michael lived in a city that was become a mere background to the swoons and fevers of love. he knew that round him houses blinked in the night and that chimney-smoke curled upward in the morning; that people paced the streets; that there was a thunder of far-off traffic; that london was possessed by april. but the heart of life was in this room, when the candles were lit in the chandeliers and he could see a hundred lilies in the mirrors. it seemed wrong to leave her at midnight, to leave that room so perilously golden with the golden stuffs and candle-flames. it seemed unfair to surprise miss harper by going away at midnight, when so easily he could have stayed. yet every night he went away, however hard it was to leave lily in her black dress, to leave in the mirrors those hundred lilies that drowsily were not forbidding him to stay. or when she stood under the portico sleepily resting in his arms, it was difficult to let her turn back alone. how close were their kisses wrapped in that velvet moonlessness! this was no london that he knew, this scented city of spring, this tropic gloom, this mad innominate cavern that engorged them. the very stars were melting in the water of the canal: the earth bedewed with fevers of the spring was warm as blood: why should he forsake her each night of this week? yet every midnight when the heavy clocks buzzed and clamored, michael left her, saying that may would come, and june, and another april, when she would have been his a year. the weather veered back in the second week of the fortnight to rawness and wet. yet it made no difference to michael; for he was finding these days spent with lily so full of romance that weather was forgotten. they could not walk in the garden and watch the swans: of nothing else did the weather deprive him. two days before the marriage was to take place, mrs. fane arrived back from the south of france. michael was glad to see her, for he was so deeply infatuated with lily that his first emotion was of pleasure in the thought of being able now to bring her to see his mother, and of taking his mother to see her in ararat house among those chandeliers and mirrors. �why didn�t you wire me to say you were coming?� he asked. �i came because stella wrote to me.� michael frowned, and his mother went on: �it wasn�t very thoughtful of you to let me know about your marriage through her. i think you might have managed to write to me about it yourself.� michael had been so much wrapped up in his arrangements, and apart from them so utterly engrossed in his secluded life with lily during the past ten days, that it came upon him with a shock to realize that his mother might be justified in thinking that he had treated her very inconsiderately. �i�m sorry. it was wrong of me,� he admitted. �but life has been such a whirl lately that i�ve somehow taken for granted the obvious courtesies. besides, stella was so very unfair to lily that it rather choked me off taking anybody else into my confidence. and, mother, why do you begin on the subject at once, before you�ve even taken your things off?� she flung back her furs and regarded him tragically. �michael, how can you dare to think of such trivialities when you are standing at the edge of this terrible step?� �oh, i think i�m perfectly level-headed,� he said, �even on the brink of disaster.� �such a dreadful journey from cannes! i wish i�d come back in march as i meant to. but mrs. carruthers was ill, and i couldn�t very well leave her. she�s always nervous in lifts, and hates the central-heating. i did not sleep a moment, and a most objectionable couple of germans in the next compartment of the wagons-lits used all the water in the washing-place. so very annoying, for one never expects foreigners to think about washing. oh, yes, a dreadful night and all because of you, and now you ask most cruelly why i don�t take my things off.� �there wasn�t any need for you to worry yourself,� he said hotly. �stella had no business to scare you with her prejudices.� �prejudices!� his mother repeated. �prejudice is a very mild word for what she feels about this dreadful girl you want to marry.� �but it is prejudice,� michael insisted. �she knows nothing against her.� �she knows a great deal.� �how?� he demanded incredulously. �you�d better read her letter to me. and i really must go and take off these furs. it�s stifling in london. so very much hotter than the riviera.� mrs. fane left him with stella�s letter. long�s hotel, _april ._ _darling mother,_ _when you get this you must come_ at once _to london. you are the only person who can save michael from marrying the most impossible creature imaginable. he had a stupid love-affair with her, when he was eighteen, and i think she treated him badly even then�i remember his being very upset about it in the summer before my first concert. apparently he rediscovered her this winter, and for some reason or other wants to_ marry _her now. he brought her down to hardingham, and i saw then that she was a minx. alan remembers her mother as a dreadful woman who tried to make love to him. imagine alan at eighteen being pursued!_ _of course, i tackled michael about her, and we had rather a row about it. we kept her at hardingham for a month (a fortnight by herself), and we were bored to death by her. she had nothing to say, and nothing to do except look at herself in the glass. i had declared war on the marriage from the moment she left, but i had only a fortnight to stop it. i was rather in a difficulty because i knew nothing definite against her, though i was sure that if she wasn�t a bad lot already, she would be later on. i wrote first of all to maurice avery, who told me that she�d had a not at all reputable affair with a painter friend of his. it seems, however, that he had already spoken to michael about this and that michael walked out of the house in a rage. then i came up to town with alan and saw wedderburn, who knew nothing about her and hadn�t seen michael for months. then we got hold of lonsdale. he has apparently met her at covent garden, and_ i�m perfectly sure _that he has actually been away with her himself. though, of course, he was much too polite to tell me so. he was absolutely horrified when he heard about her and michael. i asked him to tell michael anything he knew against her, but he didn�t see how he could. he said he wouldn�t have the heart. i told him it was his duty, but he said he wouldn�t be able to bear the sight of michael�s face when he told him. of course, the poor darling knows nothing about her. you must come at once to london and talk to him yourself. you�ve no time to lose. i�ll meet you if you send me a wire. i�ve no influence over michael any more. you�re the only person who can stop it. he�s so sweet about her. she�s rather lovely to look at, i must say. lots of love from alan and from me._ _your loving_ _stella._ michael was touched by lonsdale�s attitude. it showed, he thought, an exquisite sensitiveness, and he was grateful for it. stella had certainly been very active: but he had foreseen all of this. nothing was going to alter his determination. he waited gloomily for his mother to come down. of all antagonists she would be the hardest to combat in argument, because he was debarred from referring to so much that had weighed heavily with him in his decision. his mother was upstairs such a very short time that michael realized with a smile how deeply she must have been moved. nothing but this marriage of his had ever brought her downstairs so rapidly from taking off her things. �have you read stella�s letter?� she asked. he nodded. �well, of course you see that the whole business must be stopped at once. it�s dreadful for you to hear all these things, and i know you must be suffering, dearest boy; but you ought to be obliged to stella and not resent her interference.� �i see that you feel bound to apologize for her,� michael observed. �now, that is so bitter.� he shrugged his shoulders. �i feel rather bitter that she should come charging up to town to find out things i know already.� �michael! you knew about lonsdale?� �i didn�t know about him in particular, but i knew that there had been people. that�s one of the reasons i�m going to marry her.� �but you�ll lose all your friends. it would be impossible for you to go on knowing lonsdale, for instance.� �marriage seems to destroy friendships in any case,� michael said. �you couldn�t have a better example of that than stella and alan. i daresay i shall be able to make new friends.� �but, darling boy,� she said pleadingly, �your position will be so terribly ambiguous. here you are with everything that you can possibly want, with any career you choose open to you. and you let yourself be dragged down by this horrible creature!� �mother, believe me, you�re getting a very distorted idea of lily. she�s beautiful, you know; and if she�s not so clever as stella, i�m rather glad of it. i don�t think i want a clever wife. at any rate, she hasn�t committed the sin of being common. she won�t disgrace you outwardly, and if stella hadn�t gone round raking up all this abominable information about her you would have liked her very much.� �my dearest boy, you are very young, but you surely aren�t too young to know that it�s impossible to marry a woman whose past is not without reproach.� �but, mother, you ...� he stopped himself abruptly, and looked out of the window in embarrassment. yet his mother seemed quite unconscious that she was using a weapon which could be turned against herself. �will nothing persuade you? oh, why did dick prescott kill himself? i knew at the time that something like this would happen. you won�t marry her, you won�t, will you?� �yes, mother. i�m going to,� he said coldly. �but why so impetuously?� she asked. �why won�t you wait a little time?� �there�s no object in waiting while stella rakes up a few more facts.� �if only your father were alive!� she exclaimed. �it would have shocked him so inexpressibly.� �he felt so strongly the unwisdom of marriage, didn�t he?� michael said, and wished he could have bitten his tongue out. she had risen from her chair, and seemed to tower above him in tragical and heroic dignity of reproach: �i could never have believed you would say such a thing to me.� �i�m awfully sorry,� he murmured. �it was inexcusable.� �michael,� she pleaded, coming to him sorrowfully, �won�t you give up this marriage?� he was touched by her manner so gently despairing after his sneer. �mother, i must keep faith with myself.� �only with yourself? then she doesn�t care for you? and you�re not thinking of _her?_� �of course she cares for me.� �but she�d get over it almost at once?� �perhaps,� he admitted. �do you trust her? do you believe she will be able to be a good woman?� �that will be my look-out,� he said impatiently. �if she fails, it will be my fault. it�s always the man�s fault. always.� �very well,� said his mother resignedly. �i can say no more, can i? you must do as you like.� the sudden withdrawal of her opposition softened him as nothing else would have done. he compared the sweetness of her resignation with his own sneer of a minute ago. he felt anxious to do something that would show his penitence. �mother, i hate to wound you. but i must be true to what i have worked out for myself. i must marry lily. apart from a mad love i have for her, there is a deeper cause, a reason that�s bound up with my whole theory of behavior, my whole attitude toward existence. i could not back out of this marriage.� �is all your chivalry to be devoted to the service of lily?� she asked. he felt grateful to her for the name. when his mother no longer called her �this girl,� half his resentment fled. the situation concerned the happiness of human beings again; there were no longer prejudices or abstractions of morality to obscure it. �not at all, mother. i would do anything for you.� �except not marry her.� �that wouldn�t be a sacrifice worth making,� he argued. �because if i did that i should destroy myself to myself, and what was left of me wouldn�t be a complete michael. it wouldn�t be your son.� �will you postpone your marriage, say for three months?� he hesitated. how could he refuse her this? �not merely for your own sake,� she urged; �but for all our sakes. we shall all see things more clearly and pleasantly, perhaps, in three months� time.� he was conquered by the implication of justice for lily. �i won�t marry her for three months,� he promised. �and you know, darling boy, the dreadful thing is that i very nearly missed the train owing to the idiocy of the head porter at the hotel.� she was smiling through her tears, and very soon she became her stately self again. michael went at once to ararat house, and told lily that he had promised his mother to put off their marriage for three months. she pouted over her frocks. �i wish you�d settled that before. what good will all these dresses be now?� �you shall have as many more as you want. but will you be happy here without me?� �without you? why are you going away?� �because i must, lily. because ... oh, dearest girl, can�t you see that i�m too passionately in love with you to be able to see you every day and every night as i have been all this fortnight?� �if you want to go away, of course you must; but i shall be rather dull, shan�t i?� �and shan�t i?� he asked. she looked at him. �perhaps.� �i shall write every day to you, and you must write to me.� he held her close and kissed her. then he hurried away. now that he had made the sacrifice to please his mother, he was angry with himself for having done so. he felt that during this coming time of trial he could not bear to see either his mother or stella. he must be married and fulfill his destiny, and, after that, all would be well. he was enraged with his weakness, wondering where he could go to avoid the people who had brought it about. suddenly michael thought he would like to see clere abbey again, and he turned into paddington station to find out if there were a train that would take him down into berkshire at once. chapter viii seeds of pomegranate it was almost dark when michael reached the little station at the foot of the downs. he was half inclined to put up at the village inn and arrive at the abbey in the morning; but he was feeling depressed by the alteration of his plans, and longed to withdraw immediately into the monastic peace. he had bought what he needed for the couple of nights before any luggage could reach him, and he thought that with so little to carry he might as well walk the six miles to the abbey. he asked when the moon would be up. �oh, not much before half-past nine, sir,� the porter said. michael suddenly remembered that to-morrow was easter sunday, and, thinking it would be as well not to arrive too late, in case there should be a number of guests, he managed to get hold of a cart. the wind blew very freshly as they slowly climbed the downs, and the man who was driving him was very voluble on the subject of the large additions which had been made to the abbey buildings during the last few years. �they�ve put up a grand sort of a lodge�gatehouse, so some do call it. a bit after the style of the tower of london, i�ve heard some say.� michael was glad to think that dom cuthbert�s plans seemed to be coming to perfection in their course. how long was it since he and chator were here? eight or nine years; now chator was a priest, and himself had done nothing. the abbey gatehouse was majestic in the darkness, and the driver pealed the great bell with a portentous clangor. michael recognized the pock-marked brother who opened the door; but he could not remember his name. he felt it would be rather absurd to ask the monk if he recognized him by this wavering lanthorn-light. �is the reverend�is dom cuthbert at the abbey now?� he asked. �you don�t remember me, i expect? michael fane. i stayed here one autumn eight or nine years ago.� the monk held up the lanthorn and stared at him. �the reverend father is in the guest room now,� said brother ambrose. michael had suddenly recalled his name. �do you think i shall be able to stay here to-night? or have you a lot of guests for easter?� �we can always find room,� said brother ambrose. michael dismissed his driver and followed the monk along the drive. dom cuthbert knew him at once, and seemed very glad that he had come to the abbey. �you can have a cell in the gatehouse. our new gatehouse. it�s copied from the one at cerne abbas in dorsetshire. very beautiful. very beautiful.� michael was introduced to the three or four guests, all types of ecclesiastical laymen, who had been talking with the abbot. the compline bell rang almost at once, and the office was still held in the little chapel of mud and laths built by the hands of the monks. keep me as the apple of an eye. hide me in the shadow of thy wing. here was worship unhampered by problems of social behavior: here was peace. lying awake that night in his cell; watching the lattices very luminous in the moonlight; hearing the april wind in the hazel coppice, michael tried to reach a perspective of his life these nine months since oxford, but sleep came to him and pacified all confusions. he went to mass next morning, but did not make his communion, because he had a feeling that he could only have done so under false pretenses. there was no reason why he should have felt thus, he assured himself; but this morning there had fallen upon him at the moment a dismaying chill. he went for a walk on the downs, over the great green spaces that marked no season save in the change of the small flowers blowing in their turf. he wondered if he would be able to find the stones he had erected that july day when he first came here with chator. he found what, as far as he could remember, was the place; and he also found a group of stones that might have been the ruins of his little monument. more remarkable than old stones now seemed to him a pasque anemone colored a sharp cold violet. it curiously reminded him of the evening in march when he had walked with lily in the wood at hardingham. the peace of last night vanished in a dread of the future: michael�s partial surrender to his mother cut at his destiny with ominous stroke. he was in a turmoil of uncertainty, and afraid to find himself out here on these downs with so little achieved behind him in the city. he hurried back to the abbey and wrote a wild letter to lily, declaring his sorrow for leaving her, urging her to be patient, protesting a feverish adoration. he wrote also to miss harper a hundred directions for lily�s entertainment while he was away. he wrote to nigel stewart, begging him to look after barnes. all the time he had a sense of being pursued and haunted; an intolerable idea that he was the quarry of an evil chase. he could not stay at the abbey any longer: he was being rejected by the spirit of the place. dom cuthbert was disappointed when he said he must go. �stay at least to-night,� he urged, and michael gave way. he did not sleep at all that night. the alabaster image of the blessed virgin kept turning to a paper thing, kept nodding at him like a zany. he seemed to hear the gatehouse bell clanging hour after hour. he felt more deeply sunk in darkness than ever in leppard street. at daybreak he dressed and fled through the woods, trampling under foot the primroses limp with dew. he hurried faster and faster across the downs; and when the sun was up, he was standing on the platform of the railway station. to-day he ought to have married lily. at paddington, notwithstanding all that he had suffered in the parting, unaccountably to himself he did not want to turn in the direction of ararat house. it puzzled him that he should drive so calmly to cheyne walk. �i think my temperature must have been a point or two up last night,� was the explanation he gave himself of what already seemed mere sleeplessness. michael found his mother very much worried by his disappearance; she had assumed that he had broken his promise. he consoled her, but excused himself from staying with her in town. �you mustn�t ask too much of me,� he said. �no, no, dearest boy; i�m glad for you to go away, but where will you go?� he thought he would pay an overdue visit to cobble place. mrs. ross and mrs. carthew were delighted to see him, and he felt as he always felt at cobble place the persistent tranquillity which not the greatest inquietude of spirit could long withstand. it was now nearly three years since he had been there, and he was surprised to see how very old mrs. carthew had grown in that time. this and the active presence of kenneth, now a jolly boy of nine, were the only changes in the aspect of the household. michael enjoyed himself in firing kenneth with a passion for birds� eggs and butterflies, and they went long walks together and made expeditions in the canoe. yet every day when michael sat down to write to lily, he almost wrote to say he was coming to london as soon as his letter. her letters to him, written in a sprawling girlish hand, were always very much alike. ararat house, island road, w. _my dear,_ _come back soon. i�m getting bored. miss harper isn�t bad. can�t write a long letter because this nib is awful. kisses._ _your loving_ _lily._ this would stand for any of them. may month had come in: michael and kenneth were finding whitethroats� nests in the nettle-beds of the paddock, before a word to mrs. ross was said about the marriage. �stella has written to me about it,� she told him. they were sitting in the straggling wind-frayed orchard beyond the stream: lamps were leaping: apple-blossom stippled the grass: kenneth was chasing orange tips up the slope toward grogg�s folly. �stella has been very busy all round,� said michael. �i suppose according to her i�m going to marry an impossible creature. creature is as far as she usually gets in particular description of lily.� �she certainly wasn�t very complimentary about your choice,� mrs. ross admitted. �i wish somebody could understand that it doesn�t necessarily mean that i�m mad because i�m going to marry a beautiful girl who isn�t very clever.� �but i gathered from stella,� mrs. ross said, �that her past ... michael, you must be very tolerant of me if i upset you, because we happen to be sitting just where i was stupid and unsympathetic once before. you see what an impression that made on me. i actually remember the very place.� �she probably has done things in the past,� said michael. �but she�s scarcely twenty-three yet, and i love her. her past becomes a trifle. besides, i was in love with her six years ago, and i�well, six years ago i was rather thoughtless very often. i don�t want you to think that i�m going to marry her now from any sense of duty. i love her. at the same time when people argue that she�s not the correct young miss they apparently expect me to marry, i�m left unmoved. pasts belong to men as well as to women.� mrs. ross nodded slowly. kenneth came rushing up, shouting that he had caught a frightfully rare butterfly. michael looked at it. �a female orange tip,� was the verdict. �but isn�t that frightfully rare?� michael shook his head. �no rarer than the males; but you don�t notice them, that�s all.� kenneth retired to find some more. �and you�re sure you�ll be happy with her?� mrs. ross asked. �as sure as i am that i shall be happy with anybody. i ought to be married to her by now. this delay that i�ve so weakly allowed isn�t going to effect much.� michael sighed. he had meant to be in provence this month of may. �but the delay can�t do any harm,� mrs. ross pointed out. �at any rate, it will enable you to feel more sure of yourself, and more sure of her, too.� �i don�t know,� said michael doubtfully. �my theory has always been that if a thing�s worth doing at all, it�s worth doing at once.� �and after you�re married,� she asked, �what are you going to do? just lead a lazy life?� �oh, no; i suppose i shall find some occupation that will keep me out of mischief.� �that sounds a little cynical. ah, well, i suppose it is a disappointment to me.� �what�s a disappointment?� �i�ve hoped and prayed so much lately that you would have a vocation....� �a priest,� he interrupted quickly, �it�s no good, mrs. ross. i have thought of being one, but i�m always put off by the professional side of it. and there are ways of doing what a priest does without being one.� �of course, i can�t agree with you there,� she said. �well, apart from the sacraments, i mean. lately i�ve seen something of the underworld, and i shall think of some way of being useful down there. already i believe i�ve done a bit.� they talked of the problems of the underworld and michael was encouraged by what he fancied was a much greater breadth in her point of view nowadays to speak of things that formerly would have made her gray eyes harden in fastidious disapproval. �i feel happier about you since this talk,� she said. �as long as you won�t be content to let your great gift of humanity be wasted, as long as you won�t be content to think that in marrying your lily you have done with all your obligations.� �oh, no, i shan�t feel that. in fact, i shall be all the more anxious to justify myself.� kenneth came back to importune michael for a walk as far as grogg�s folly. �it�s such fun for kenneth to have you here!� mrs. ross exclaimed. �i�ve never seen him so boisterously happy.� �i used to enjoy myself here just as much as he does,� said michael. �though perhaps i didn�t show it. i always think of myself as rather a dreary little beast when i was a kid.� �on the contrary, you were a most attractive boy; such a wide-eyed little boy,� said mrs. ross softly, looking back into time. �i�ve seldom seen you so happy as just before i blew out your candle the first night of your first stay here.� �i say, do come up the hill,� interrupted kenneth despairingly. �a thousand apologies, my lord,� said michael. �we�ll go now.� they did not stop until they reached the tower on the summit. �when i was your age,� michael told him, �i used to think that i could see the whole of england from here.� �could you really?� said kenneth, in admiration. �could you see any of france, too?� �i expect so,� michael answered. �i expect really i thought i could see the whole world. kenneth, what are you going to be when you grow up? a soldier?� �yes, if i can�or what is a philosopher?� �a philosopher philosophizes.� �does he really? is that a difficult thing to do, to philosopherize?� �yes; it�s almost harder to do than to pronounce.� soon they were tearing down the hill, frightening the larks to right and left of their progress. the weather grew warmer every day, and at last mrs. carthew came out in a wheel-chair to see the long-spurred columbines, claret and gold, watchet, rose and white. �really quite a display,� she said to michael. �and so you�re to get married?� he nodded. �what for?� the old lady demanded, looking at him over her spectacles. �well, principally because i want to,� michael answered, after a short pause. �the best reason,� she agreed. �but in your case insufficient, and i�ll tell you why�you aren�t old enough yet to know what you do want.� �twenty-three,� michael reminded her. �twenty-fiddlesticks!� she snapped. �and isn�t there a good deal of opposition?� �a good deal.� �and no doubt you feel a fine romantical heroical young fellow?� �not particularly.� �well, i�m not going to argue against your marrying her,� said mrs. carthew. �because i know quite well that the more i proved you to be wrong, the more you�d be determined to prove _i_ was. but i can give you advice about marriage, because i�ve been married and you haven�t. is she dark? if she�s dark, be very cold for a year, and if she doesn�t leave you in that time, she�ll adore you for the rest of her life.� �but she�s fair,� said michael. �very fair indeed.� �then beat her. not actually, of course; but beat her figuratively for a year. if you don�t, she�ll either be a shrew or a whiner. both impossible to live with.� �which did captain carthew do to you?� asked michael, twinkling. �neither; i ruled him with a rod of iron.� �but do you think i�m wise to wait like this before marrying her?� michael asked. �there�s no wisdom in waiting to do an unwise thing.� �you�re so sure it is unwise?� �all marriages are unwise,� said mrs. carthew sharply. �that�s why everybody gets married. for most people it is the only imprudence they have an opportunity of committing. after that, they�re permanently cured of rashness, and settle down. there are exceptions, of course: they take to drink. i must say i�m greatly pleased with these long-spurred columbines.� michael thought she had finished the discussion of his marriage, but suddenly she said: �i thought i told you to come and see me when you went down from oxford.� �i ought to have come,� michael agreed rather humbly. he always felt inclined to propitiate the old lady. �here we have the lamentable result. marriage at twenty-three.� �alan married at twenty-three,� he pointed out. �two fools don�t make a wise-man,� said mrs. carthew. �he�s very happy.� �he would be satisfied with much less than you, and he has married a delightful girl.� �i�m going to marry a delightful girl.� the old lady made no reply. nor did she comment again upon his prospect of happiness. in mid-may, after a visit of nearly a month, michael left cobble place and went to stay at plashers mead. guy hazlewood was the only friend he still had who could not possibly have come into contact with lily or her former surroundings. moreover, guy was deep in love himself, and he had been very sympathetic when he wrote to michael about his engagement. �do i intrude upon your may idyll?� michael asked. �my dear chap, don�t be so absurd. but why aren�t you married? you�re as bad as me.� �why aren�t _you_ married?� �oh, i don�t know,� guy sighed. �everybody seems to be conspiring to put it off.� they were sitting in guy�s green library. the windows wide open let in across the sound of the burbling stream the warm air of the lucid may night, where bats and owls and evejars flew across the face of the decrescent moon. �it�s this dreamy country in which you live,� said michael. �what about you? you�ve let people put off your marriage.� �only for another two months,� michael explained. �you see i�m down to one hundred and fifty pounds a year now,� guy muttered. �i can�t marry on that, and i can�t leave this place, and her people can�t afford to make her an allowance. they think i ought to go away and work at journalism. however, i�m not going to worry you with my troubles.� guy was a good deal with pauline every day: michael wrote long letters to lily and read poetry. �browning?� asked guy one afternoon, looking over michael�s shoulder. �yes; the statue and the bust.� �oh, don�t remind me of that poem. it haunts me,� guy declared. a week passed. there was no moon now, and the nights grew warmer. it was weather to make lovers happy, but guy seemed worried. he would not come for walks with michael through the dark and scented water-meadows, and michael used to think that often at night he was meeting pauline. it made him jealous to imagine them lost in this amaranthine profundity. they were happy now, if through all their lives they should never be happy again. yet guy was obviously fretted: he was getting spoiled by good fortune. �and i have had about a fortnight of incomplete happiness,� michael said to himself. supposing that a calamity fell upon him during this delay. he would never cease to regret his weakness in granting his mother�s request: he would hate stella for having interfered: his life would be miserable forever. yet what calamity did he fear? in a sudden apprehension, he struck a match and read her last letter: ararat house, island road, w. _my dear,_ _it�s getting awfully dull in london. miss harper asked me to call her �mabel.� rather cheek, i thought, don�t you think so? but she�s really awfully decent. i can�t write a long letter because we�re going to the palace. i say, do buck up and come back to london, i�m getting bored. love and kisses._ _lily._ what�s the good of _writing_ �kisses�? what indeed was the good of writing �kisses�? michael thought, as the match fizzed out in the dewy grass at his feet. it was not fair to treat lily like this. he had captured her from life with sylvia, because he had meant to marry her at once. now he had left her alone in that flat with a woman he did not know at all. whatever people might say against lily, she was very patient and trustful. �she must love me a good deal,� michael said. �or she wouldn�t stand this casual treatment.� pauline came to tea next day with her sisters margaret and monica. michael had an idea that she did not like him very much. she talked shyly and breathlessly to him; and he, embarrassed by her shyness, answered in monosyllables. �pauline is rather jealous of you,� said guy that evening, as they sat in the library. �jealous of me?� michael was amazed. �she has some fantastic idea that you don�t approve of our engagement. of course, i told her what nonsense she was thinking; but she vowed that this afternoon you showed quite plainly your disapproval of her. she insists that you are very cold and severe.� �i�m afraid i was very dull,� michael confessed apologetically. �but i was really envying you and her for being together in may.� �together!� guy repeated. �it�s the object of everyone in wychford to keep us apart!� �do tell her i�m not cold,� michael begged. �and say how lovely i think her; for really, guy, she is very lovely and strange. she is a fairy�s child.� �she is, she is,� guy said. �sometimes i�m nearly off my head with the sense of responsibility i have for her happiness. i wonder and wonder until i�m nearly crazed.� �i�m feeling responsible just now about lily. i�ve never told you, guy, but you may hear from other people that i�ve made what is called a mésalliance. of course, lily has been....� he stumbled. he could find no words that would not humiliate himself and her. �guy, come up with me to-morrow and meet her. it�s not fair to leave her like this,� he suddenly proclaimed. �i don�t think i can come away.� �oh, yes, you can. of course. you must,� michael urged. �pauline will be more jealous of you than ever, if i do.� �for one night,� michael pleaded. �i must see her. and you must meet her. everyone has been so rotten about her, and, guy, you�ll appreciate her. i won�t bore you by describing her. you must meet her to-morrow. and the rooms in ararat house. by jove, you�ll think them wonderful. you should see her in candlelight among the mirrors. pauline won�t mind your coming away with me for a night. we�ll stay at cheyne walk.� �well, as a matter of fact, i�m rather hard up just now....� �oh, what rot! this is my expedition. and when you�ve seen her, you must talk to my mother about her. she�s so prejudiced against lily. you will come, won�t you?� guy nodded a promise, and michael went off to bed on the excitement of to-morrow�s joy. guy would not start before the afternoon, and michael spent the morning under a willow beside the river. it was good to lie staring up at the boughs, and know that every fleecy cloud going by was a cloud nearer to his seeing lily again. michael and guy arrived at paddington about five o�clock. �we�ll go straight round from here and surprise her,� michael said, laughing with excitement, as they got into a taxi. �she�ll have had a letter from me this morning, in which i was lamenting not seeing her for six weeks. my gad, supposing she isn�t in! oh, well, we can wait. you�ll love the room, and we�ll all three sit out in the garden to-night, and you�ll tell me as we walk home to chelsea what you think of her. guy you�ve absolutely got to like her. and if you don�t ... oh, but you will. it isn�t everybody who can appreciate beauty like hers. and there�s an extraordinary subtlety about her. of course, she isn�t at all subtle. she�s simple. in fact, that�s one of the things stella has got against her. what i call simplicity and absence of training for effect stella calls stupidity. my own belief is that you�ll be quite content to look at her and not care whether she talks or not. i tell you, she�s like a piero della francesca angel. cheer up, guy. why are you looking so depressed?� �oh, i don�t know,� said guy. �i�m thinking what a lucky chap you are. what�s a little family opposition when you know you�re going to be able to do what you want? who can stop you? you�re independent, and you�re in love.� �of course they can�t stop me!� michael cried, jumping up and down on the cushions of the taxi in his excitement. �guy, you�re great! you really are. you�re the only person who�s seen the advantage of going right ahead. but don�t look so sad yourself. you�ll marry your pauline.� �yes, in about four years,� guy sighed. �oh, no, no; in about four months. will pauline like lily? she won�t be jealous of me when i�m married will she?� �no, but i think i shall be,� guy laughed. �laugh, you old devil, laugh!� michael shouted. �here we are. did you ever see such a house? it hasn�t quite the austerity of plashers mead, has it?� �it looks rather fun,� guy commented. �you know,� michael said solemnly, pausing for a moment at the head of the steps going down to the front door. �you know, guy, i believe that you�ll be able to persuade my mother to withdraw all her opposition to-night. i believe i�m going to marry lily this week. and i shall be so glad�guy, you don�t know how glad i shall be.� he ran hurriedly down the steps and had pressed the bell of number one before guy had entered the main door. �i say, you know, it will be really terrible if she�s out after all my boasting,� said michael. �and miss harper, too�that�s the housekeeper�my housekeeper, you know. if they�re both out, we�ll have to go round and wait in the garden until they come in. hark, there�s somebody coming.� the door opened, and michael hurried in. �hullo, good afternoon, miss harper. you didn�t expect to see me, eh? i�ve brought a friend. is miss haden in the big room?� �miss haden is out, mr. fane,� said the housekeeper. �what�s the matter? you�re looking rather upset.� �am i, mr. fane?� she asked blankly. �am i? oh, no, i�m very well. oh, yes, very well. it�s the funny light, i expect, mr. fane.� she seemed to be choking out all her words, and michael looked at her sharply. �well, we�ll wait in the big room.� �it�s rather untidy. you see, we�i wasn�t expecting you, mr. fane.� �that�s all right,� said michael. �hulloa ...i say, guy, go on into that room ahead. i�ll be with you in a minute.� guy mistook the direction and turned the handle of lily�s bedroom door. �no, no,� michael called. �the double doors opposite.� �my mistake,� said guy cheerfully. �but don�t worry: the other door was locked. so if you�ve got a bluebeard�s closet, i�ve done no harm.� he disappeared into the big room, and the moment he was inside michael turned fiercely to miss harper. �who�s is this hat?� he demanded, snatching it up. �hat? what hat?� she choked out. �why is the door of her bedroom locked? why is it locked�locked?� the stillness of the crepuscular hall seemed to palpitate with the woman�s breath. �miss haden must have locked it when she went out,� she stammered. �is that the truth?� michael demanded. �it�s not the truth. it�s a lie. you wouldn�t be panting like a fish in a basket, unless there was something wrong. i�ll break the door in.� �no, mr. fane, don�t do that!� the woman groaned out, in a cracked expostulation. �this is the first time since you�ve been away. and it was an old friend.� �how dare you tell me anything about him? guy! guy!� michael rushed into the big room and dragged guy out. �come away, come away, come away! i�ve been sold!� �if you�d only listen a moment. i could��� miss harper began. michael pushed her out of their path. �what on earth is it?� guy asked. �come on, don�t hang about in this hell of a house. come on, guy.� michael had flung the door back to slam into miss harper�s face, and, seizing guy by the wrist, he dragged him up the steps, and had started to run down the road, when guy shouted: �michael, the taxi! the taxi�s waiting with our bags.� �oh, very well, in a taxi then, a taxi if you like,� michael chattered, and he plunged into it. �where to?� the driver asked. �cheyne walk. but drive quickly. don�t hang about up and down this road.� the driver looked round with an expression of injured dignity, shook his head in exclamation, and drove off. �what on earth has happened?� guy asked. �and why on earth are you holding a top-hat?� michael burst into laughter. �so i am. look at it. a top-hat. i say, guy, did you ever hear of anyone being cut out by a top-hat, cuckolded by a top-hat? we�ll present it to the driver. driver! do you want a top-hat?� �here, who are you having a game with?� demanded the driver, pulling up the car. �i�m not having a game with anybody,� michael said. �but two people and this top-hat have just been having a hell of a game with me. you�d much better take it as a present. i shall only throw it away. he refuses,� michael went on. �he refuses a perfectly good top-hat. who�s the maker? my god, his dirty greasy head has obliterated the name of the maker. good-bye, hat! drive on, drive on!� he shouted to the driver, and hurled the hat spinning under an omnibus. then he turned to guy. �i�ve been sold by the girl i was going to marry,� he said. �i say, guy, i�ve got some jolly good advice for you. don�t you marry a whore. sorry, old chap!�i forgot you were engaged already. besides, people don�t marry whores, unless they�re fools like me. didn�t you say just now that i was very lucky? do you know�i think i am lucky. i think it was a great piece of luck bringing you to see that girl to-day. don�t you? oh, guy, i could go mad with disappointment. will nothing in all the world ever be what it seems?� �look here, michael, are you sure you weren�t too hasty? you didn�t wait to see if there was any explanation, did you?� �she was only going back to her old habits,� said michael bitterly. �i was a fool to think she wouldn�t. and yet i adored her. fancy, you�ve never seen her, after all. lovely, lovely animal!� �oh, you knew what she was?� exclaimed guy. �knew? yes, of course i knew; but i thought she loved me. i didn�t care about anything when i was sure she loved me. she could only have gone such a little way down, i thought. she seemed so easy to bring out. seeds of pomegranate. seeds of pomegranate! she�s only eaten seeds of pomegranate, but they were enough to keep her behind. where are we going? oh, yes, cheyne walk. my mother will be delighted when she hears my news, and so will everybody. that�s what�s amusing me. everybody will clap their hands, and i�m wretched. but you are sorry for me, guy? you don�t think i�m just a fool being shown his folly? and at eighteen i was nearly off my head only because i saw someone kiss her! there�s one thing over which i score�the only person who can appreciate all the humor of this situation is myself.� nearly all the way to cheyne walk michael was laughing very loudly. chapter ix the gate of horn guy thought it would be better if he went straight back to plashers mead; but michael asked him to stay until the next day. he was in no mood, he said, for a solitary evening, and he could not bear the notion of visiting friends, or of talking to his mother without the restriction that somebody else�s presence would produce. so guy agreed to spend the night in london, and they dined with mrs. fane. michael in the sun-colored summer room felt smothered by a complete listlessness; and talking very little, he sat wondering at the swiftness with which a strong fabric of the imagination had tumbled down. the quiet of cheyne walk became a consciousness of boredom and futility, and he suggested on a sudden impulse that he and guy should go and visit maurice in the studio. it would be pleasant walking along the embankment, he said. �but i thought you wanted to keep quiet,� guy exclaimed. �no, i�ve grown restless during dinner; and, besides, i want to make a few arrangements about the flat, and then be done with that business�forever.� they started off without waiting for coffee. it was a calm summer evening of shadows blue and amethyst, of footfalls and murmurs, an evening plumy as a moth, warm and gentle as the throat of a pigeon. nobody on any pavement was hurrying; and maidservants loitered in area gates, looking up and down the roads. the big room at the top of grosvenor road had never seemed so romantic. there were half a dozen people sitting at the open windows; and cunningham was playing a sonata of brahms, a sonata with a melody that was drawing the london night into this big room where the cigarettes dimmed and brightened like stars. the player sat at the piano for an hour, and maurice unexpectedly made no attempt to disturb the occasion. michael thought that perhaps he was wondering what had brought himself and guy here, and for that reason did not rush to show guy his studio by gaslight: maurice was probably thinking how strange it was for michael to revisit him suddenly like this after their quarrel. when the room was lighted up, michael and guy were introduced to the men they did not know. among them was ronnie walker, the painter whom maurice had mentioned to michael as an old lover of lily. michael knew now why maurice had allowed the music to go on so long, and he was careful to talk as much as possible to walker in order to embarrass maurice, who could scarcely pay any attention to guy, so nervously was he watching over his shoulder the progress of the conversation. later on michael called maurice aside, and they withdrew to the window-seat which looked out over the housetops. a cat was yauling on a distant roof, and in the studio cunningham had seated himself at the piano again. �i say, i�m awfully sorry that ronnie walker should happen to be here to-night,� maurice began. �i have been rather cursing myself for telling you about him and....� �it doesn�t matter at all,� michael interrupted. �i�m not going to marry her.� �oh, that�s splendid!� maurice exclaimed. �i�ve been tremendously worried about you.� michael looked at him; he was wondering if it were possible that maurice could be �tremendously worried� by anything. �i want you to arrange matters,� said michael. �i can�t go near the place again. she will probably prefer to go away from ararat house. the rent is paid up to the june quarter. the furniture you can do what you like with. bring some of it here. sell the rest, and give her the money. get rid of the woman who�s there�miss harper her name is.� �but i shall feel rather awkward....� �oh, don�t do it. don�t do it, then!� michael broke in fretfully. �i�ll ask guy.� �you�re getting awfully irascible,� maurice complained. �of course i�ll do anything you want, if you won�t always jump down my throat at the first word i utter. what has happened, though?� �what do you expect to happen when you�re engaged to a girl like that?� michael asked. maurice shrugged his shoulders. �oh, well, of course i should expect to be badly let down. but then, you see, i�m not a very great believer in women. what are you going to do yourself?� �i haven�t settled yet. i�ve got to arrange one or two things in town, and then i shall go abroad. would you be able to come with me in about a week?� �i daresay i might,� maurice answered, looking vaguely round the room. already, michael thought, the subject was floating away from his facile comprehension. the piano had stopped, and conversation became general again. �this is where you ought to be, if you want to write,� maurice proclaimed to guy. �it�s ridiculous for you to bury yourself in the country. you�ll expire of stagnation.� �just at present i recommend you to stay where you are,� said castleton. �i�m almost expiring from the violence with which i am being precipitated from one to another of maurice�s energies.� soon afterward michael and guy left the studio and walked home; and next morning guy went back to wychford. michael was astonished at his own calmness. after the first shock of the betrayal he had gone and talked to a lot of people; he had coldly made financial arrangements; he had even met and rather liked a man whom only yesterday morning he could not have regarded without hatred for the part he had played in lily�s life. perhaps he had lost the power to feel anything deeply for long; perhaps he was become a sort of maurice; already lily seemed a shade of the underworld, merely more clearly remembered than the others. yet in the moment that he was calling her a shade his present emotion proved that she was much more than that, for the conjured image of her was an icy pang to his heart. then the indifference returned, but always underneath it the chill remained. mrs. fane asked if he would care to go to the opera in the evening: and they went to bohême. michael used to be wrung by the music, but he sat unmoved to-night. afterward, at supper, he looked at his mother as if she were a person in a picture; he was saddened by the uselessness of all beauty, and by the number of times he would have to undress at night and dress again in the morning. he had no objection to life itself, but he felt an overwhelming despair at the thought of any activity in the conduct of it. he was sorry for the people sitting here at supper and for their footmen waiting outside. he felt that he was spiritually withered, because he was aware that he was surrendering to the notion of a debased material comfort as the only condition worth achieving for a body that remained perfectly well; grossly well, it almost seemed. �michael, have you been bored to-night?� his mother asked, when they had come home and were sitting by the window in the drawing-room, while michael finished a cigar. he shook his head. �you seemed to take no interest in the opera, and you usually enjoy puccini, don�t you? or was it wagner you enjoy so much?� �i think summer in london is always tiring,� he said. she was in that rosy mist of clothes with which his earliest pictures of her were vivid. suddenly he began to cry. �dear child, what is it?� she whispered, with fluttering arms outstretched to comfort him. �oh, i�ve finished with all that! i�ve finished with all that! you�ll be delighted�you mustn�t be worried because i seem upset for the moment. i found out that lily did not care anything about me. i�m not going to marry her or even see her again.� �michael! my dearest boy! what is it?� �finished! finished! finished!� he sobbed. �nothing is finished at twenty-three,� she murmured, leaning over to pet him. �i do hate myself for having hurt your feelings the other day.� it was as if he seized upon a justification for grief so manifest. it seemed to him exquisitely sad that he should have wounded his mother on account of that broken toy of a girl. soon he could control himself again; and he went off to bed. next day michael�s depression was profound because he could perceive no reaction from himself on lily. the sense of personal loss was merged in the reproach of failure; he had simply been unable to influence her. she was the consummation of many minor failures. and what was to happen to her now? what was to happen to all the people with whose lives he had lately been involved? must he withdraw entirely and confess defeat? no doubt a cynic would argue that lily was hopeless, and indeed he knew that from any point of view where marriage was concerned she was hopeless. he must leave her where he had found her, in that pretty paradise of evil which now she well adorned. if her destiny was to whirl downward through the labyrinths of the underworld, he could do no more. that himself had issued with the false dreams through the ivory gate was her fault, and she must pay the penalty of her misdirection. he would revisit leppard street, and from the innermost circle where he had beheld mrs. smith he would seek a way out through the gate of true dreams. he would be glad to see if the amount of security he had been able to guarantee to barnes had helped him at all. he had money and he could leave money behind in leppard street, money that might preserve the people in the house where he had lived. was this a quixotic notion, to leave one set of people free from the necessity to hand themselves over to evil? michael�s spirits began to rise as he looked forward to what he could still effect in leppard street. and for lily what could he still do? he would visit sylvia and consult with her. she was strong, and if she had chosen harlotry, she was still strong. she was not lazy nor languid. lazy, laughing, languid lily! lily did not laugh much; she was too lazy even for that. how beautiful she had been! her beauty stabbed him with the poignancy of what was past. how beautiful she had been! when maurice went to tell her of the final ending of it all, she would pout and shrug her shoulders. that was all she would do; and she would be faintly resentful at having been disturbed in her lazy life. perhaps maurice would fall in love with her, and it would be ironical and just that she should fall violently in love with maurice and be cast off by him. maurice would never suffer; as soon as a woman showed a sign of upsetting his theories about feminine behavior he would be done with her. he would jilt her as easily as he jilted one muse for another. why was he being so hard on maurice? �i believe that down in my heart i still don�t really like him,� michael said to himself. �right back from the time i met him in macrae�s form at randell�s i�ve never really liked him.� it was curious how one could grow more and more intimate with a person, and all the time never really like him; so intimate with him as to intrust him with the disposal of a wrecked love-affair, and all the while never really like him. why, then, had he invited maurice to go abroad? perhaps he wanted the company of someone he could faintly despise. even friendship must pay tribute to human vanity. life became a merciless business when one ceased to stand alone. the herding instinct of man was responsible for the corruption of civilization, and michael thought of the bestiality of a crowd. how loathsome humanity was in the aggregate, but individually how rare, how wonderful. michael walked boldly enough toward tinderbox lane; and when he rang the bell of mulberry cottage not a qualm of sentiment assailed him. he was definitely pleased with himself, as he stood outside the door in the wall, to think with what a serenity of indifference he was able to visit a place so much endeared to him a little time ago. mrs. gainsborough answered the door and nearly fell upon michael�s neck. �good land! here�s a surprise.� �it�s almost more of a surprise for me to see you, mrs. gainsborough.� �why, who else should you see?� �i was beginning to think you never existed. can i come in?� �sylvia�s indoors,� she said warningly. �i rather wanted to see her.� �she�s been carrying on alarming about you ever since you stole her lily. and she didn�t take me on her knee and cuddle me, when she found you were gone off. how do you like me new frock?� michael thought that in her checkered black and green gingham she looked like an old summer number of an illustrated magazine, and he told her so. �well, there! did you ever? i never did. there�s a bouquet to hand a lady! back number! whatever next? i wonder you hadn�t the liberty to say i�d rose from the grave.� �aren�t i to see sylvia?� michael asked, laughing. �well, don�t blame me if she packs you off with a flea in your ear, as they say�well, she is a miss temper, and no mistake. how do you like me garden?� mulberry cottage was just the bower of greenery that michael had supposed he would find in early june. �actually roses,� he exclaimed. �or at least there will be very soon.� �oh, yes. glory de die-johns. that was always pa�s favorite. that and a good snooze of a sunday afternoon was about what he cared most for in this world. but my captain he used to like camellias, and gardenias of course�oh, he had a very soft corner in his heart for a nice gardenia. ah dear, what a masher he was to be sure!� sylvia had evidently seen them walking up the garden path, for leaning over the railings of the balcony she was waiting for them. �here�s quite a stranger come to see you,� said mrs. gainsborough, with a propitiatory glance in sylvia�s direction. �i rather want to have a talk with you,� said michael, and he, too, found himself rather annoyingly adopting a deprecating manner. sylvia came slowly down the balcony steps. �i suppose you want my help,� she said, and her underlip had a warning out-thrust. �i�ll get on with my fal-lals,� mrs. gainsborough muttered, and she bundled herself quickly indoors. sylvia and michael sat down on the garden-seat under the mulberry tree whose leaves were scarcely yet uncurling. michael found a great charm in sitting close to sylvia like this: she and stella both possessed a capacity for bracing him that he did not find in anyone else. sylvia was really worth quarreling with; but it would be very delightful to be friends with her. he had never liked a person so much whom he had so little reason to like. he could not help thinking that in her heart sylvia must like him. it was a strangely provocative fancy. �lily and i have parted,� he began at once. �and why do you suppose that piece of information will interest me?� sylvia asked. michael was rather taken aback. when he came to consider it, there did seem no good reason why sylvia should any longer be interested after the way in which lily had been snatched away from her. he was silent for a moment. �but it would have interested you a short time ago,� he said. �no doubt,� sylvia agreed. �but luckily for me one of the benefits conferred by my temperament is an ability to throw aside things that have disappointed me, things that have ceased to be useful�and what applies to things applies even more strongly to people.� �you mean to say you�ve put lily right out of your life?� michael exclaimed. he was shocked by the notion, for he did not realize until this moment how much he had been depending upon sylvia for peace of mind. �haven�t you put her out of _your_ life?� she asked, looking round at him sharply. until this question she had been staring sullenly down at the grass. �well, i had to,� said michael. �you�re bearing up very well under the sad necessity,� she sneered. �i don�t know that i am bearing up very well. i don�t think that coming to you to talk about it is a special sign of fortitude.� �what do you want me to do?� sylvia demanded. �get her back into your life again? isn�t that the phrase you like?� �oh, no, that�s unimaginable,� said michael. �you see, it was really the second time. once six years ago, and again now, very much more�more utterly. you said that your temperament enables you to throw off things and people. mine makes me bow to what i fancy are irremediable strokes of fate.� �unimaginable! irremediable! we�re turning this interview into a rossetti sonnet,� sylvia scoffed. �i was thinking about that poem jenny to-day. it�s funny you should mention rossetti.� �impervious youth!� she exclaimed. �it�s hopeless for you to try to wound me with words,� michael assured her, with grave earnestness. �i was wounded the day before yesterday into complete immunity from small pains.� �i suppose you found her ...� michael flushed and gripped her by the wrist. �no, no, don�t say something brutal and beastly!� he stammered. �you know what happened. you prophesied it. well, i thought you were wrong, and you were right. that�s a victory for you. you couldn�t wish for me to be more humbled than i am by having to admit that i wasn�t strong enough to keep her faithful for six weeks. but we did agree, i think, about one thing.� he smiled sadly. �we did agree that she was beautiful. you were as proud of that as i was, and of course you had a great deal more reason to be proud. you did own her. i never owned her, and isn�t that your great objection to the relation between man and woman?� �what are you trying to make me do?� sylvia asked. �i want you to have lily to live with you again.� �to relieve yourself of all responsibility, i suppose,� she said bitterly. �no, no; why will you persist in ascribing the worst motive to everything i say? isn�t your jealousy fed full enough even yet?� sylvia made the garden-seat quiver with an irritable movement. �you will persist in thinking that jealousy solved all problems,� she cried. �oh, don�t let us turn aside into what isn�t very important. you can�t care whether i think you�re jealous or not.� �i don�t care in so far as it is your opinion,� sylvia admitted. �but i object to inaccurate thinking. if your life was spent in a confusion of all moral values as mine is, you would be anxious for a little straightforward computation for a change.� �perhaps you are right,� michael admitted, �in thinking that i�m asking you to look after lily to relieve myself of a responsibility. but it�s only because i see no chance of doing it in any other way. i mean�it�s not laziness on my part. it�s a confession of absolute failure.� �in fact, you�re throwing yourself on my mercy,� sylvia said. �yes; and also her,� he added gently. �am i such a moral companion�such an ennobling influence?� �i would sooner think of her under your influence than think of her drifting. what i want you to understand is that i�m not consigning her to you for sentimental reasons. i would sooner that lily were dragged down by you at a gallop than that she should sink slowly and lazily of her own accord. you have a strong personality. you are well-read. you are quite out of the common, and in the life you have chosen, so far as i have had experience, you are unique.� sylvia stared in front of her, and michael waited anxiously for the reply. �have you ever read petronius?� she asked suddenly. �yes, but what an extraordinary girl you are�have you ever read petronius?� �it�s the only book in which anyone in my position with my brains could behold herself. oh, it is such a nightmare. and life is a nightmare, too. after all, what is life for me? strange doors in strange houses. strange men and strange intimacies. scenes incredibly grotesque and incredibly beastly. the secret vileness of human nature flung at me. man revealing himself through individual after individual as utterly contemptible. what can i worship? not my own body soiled by my traffic in it. not any religion i�ve ever heard of, for in all religions man is set up to be respected. i tell you, my dear eager fool, it is beyond my conception ever, ever, ever to regard a man as higher than a frog, as less repulsive than�ugh! it makes me shudder�but oh, my son, doesn�t it make me laugh....� she rocked herself with extravagant mirth for a moment. then she began again, staring out in front of her intensely, fiercely, speaking with the monotonous voice of a visionary. �so i worship woman, and in this nightmare city, in this nightmare life, lily was always beautiful; only beautiful, mind you. i don�t want to worship anything but beauty. i don�t care about purity or uprightness, but i must have beauty. and you came blundering along and kidnapped my lovely girl. you came along, thinking you were going to regenerate her, and you can�t understand that i�m only able to see you in the shape of a frog. it does amuse me to hear you talking to me so solemnly and so earnestly and so nobly ... and all the time i can only see a clumsy frog.� �but what has all this to do with petronius? there�s nothing in that romance particularly complimentary to women,� michael argued. �it�s the nightmare effect of it that i adore,� sylvia exclaimed. �it�s the sensation of being hopelessly plunged into a maze of streets from which there�s no escape. i was plunged just like that into london. it is gloriously and sometimes horribly mad, and that�s all i want in my reading now. i want to be given the sensation of other people having been mad before me ... years ago in a nightmare. besides, think of the truth, the truth of a work of art that seems ignorant of goodness. not one moderately decent person all through.� �and you will take lily back?� michael asked. �yes, yes, of course i will. but not because you ask me, mind. don�t for heaven�s sake, puff yourself up with the idea that i�m doing anything except gratify myself in this matter.� �i don�t want you to do it for any other reason,� he said. �i shall feel more secure with that pledge than with any you could think of. by the way, tell me about a man called walker. ronald walker�a painter. he had an affair with lily, didn�t he?� �ronnie walker? he painted her; that was all. there was never anything more.� �and lonsdale? arthur lonsdale?� �who? the honorable arthur?� michael nodded. �yes, we met him first at covent garden, and went to brighton with him and another boy�clarehaven�lord clarehaven.� �oh, i remember him at the house,� said michael. �money is necessary sometimes, you know,� sylvia laughed. �of course it is. look here. will you in future, whenever you feel you�re in a nightmare�will you write to me and let me send money?� he asked. �i know you despise me and of course ... i understand; but i can�t bear to think of anyone being haunted as you must be haunted sometimes. don�t be proud about this, because _i�ve_ got no pride left. i�m only terribly anxious to be of service to somebody. there�s really no reason for you to be proud. you see, i should always be so very much more anxious to help than you would to be helped. and it really isn�t only because of lily that i say this. i�ve got a good many books you�d enjoy, and i think i�ll send them to you. good-bye.� �good-bye,� she said, looking at him curiously. michael turned away from her down the gravel-path, and a moment later slammed the door. he had only gone a few steps away, when he heard sylvia calling after him. �you stupid!� she said. �you never told me lily�s address.� �i�ll give you a card.� �mr. michael fane,� she read, � ararat house, island road.� she looked at him and raised her eyebrows. �you see, i expected to live there myself,� michael explained. �i told a friend of mine, maurice avery, to clear up everything. the furniture can all be sold. if you want anything for here, take it of course; but i think most of the things will be too large for mulberry cottage.� �and what shall i say to lily?� she asked. �oh, i don�t think i should say anything about me.� �who was the man?� �i never saw him,� said michael. �i only saw his hat.� she pulled him to her and kissed him. �how many women have done that suddenly like that?� she demanded. �one�well, perhaps two.� he was wondering if mrs. smith�s kiss ought to count in the comparison. �i never have to any man,� she said, and vanished through the door in the wall. michael hoped that sylvia intended to imply by that kiss that his offer of help was accepted. fancy her having read petronius! he could send her his adlington�s apuleius. she would enjoy reading that, and he would write in it: _i�ve eaten rose-leaves and i am no longer a golden ass._ perhaps he would also send her his shelton�s don quixote. when michael turned out of tinderbox lane into the fulham road, each person of humanity he passed upon the pavement seemed to him strange with unrevealed secrets. the people of london were somehow transfigured, and he longed to see their souls, if it were only in the lucid flashes of a nightmare. yet for nearly a year he had been peering into the souls of people. had he, indeed. had he not rather been peering to see in their souls the reflection of his own? he was moved by the thought of sylvia in london, and suddenly he was swept from his feet by the surging against him of the thoughts of all the passers-by and, struggling in the trough of these thoughts, he was more and more conscious that unless he fought for himself he would be lost. the illusion fled on the instant of its creation; and the people were themselves again�dull, quick, slow, ordinary, depressed, gay; political busy-bodies, political fools, political slaves, political animals. how they huddled together, each one of them afraid to stand for himself. it was political passion that made them animals, each dependent in turn on the mimicry of his neighbor. each was solicitous or jealous or fond or envious of his neighbor�s opinion. god was meaningless to the political state: this herd cared only for idols. michael began to make a catalogue of the golden calves that the golden asses of green england worshiped. they were bowing down and braying to their golden calves, these golden asses, and they could not see that there were rose-trees growing everywhere, most prodigally of all in the gutter, any one petal of which (what did the thorns matter?) would have given back to them their humanity. yet even then, michael dismally concluded, they would continue to bow down to the golden calves, because they would fancy that it was the calves who had planted and cultivated the rose-trees. then out of all the thronging thoughts made visible he began to pursue the fancy of sylvia in london, and, as he did so, she faded farther and farther from his vision like a butterfly seen from a train, that keeps pace, it seems for a moment, and is lost upon the flowery embankment behind. meanwhile, michael was feeling sharpened for conflict by that talk under the mulberry tree: he realized what an amount of determination he had stored up for the persuasion of sylvia. now there only remained leppard street, and then he would go away from london. he walked on through the chelsea slums. leppard street was more melancholy in the sunshine than it had ever seemed in winter, not so much because the sun made more evident the corrosion and the foulness as because of the stillness it shed. not a breath of air twitched the torn paper-bag on the doorstep of number one; and the five tall houses with their fifty windows stared at the blank wall opposite. michael wondered if barnes would be out of bed: it was not yet one o�clock. he rang the front-door bell, or rather he hoped that the creaking of the broken wire along the basement passage would attract mrs. cleghorne�s attention. when he had tugged many times, she came out into the area, and peered up to see who it was. the sudden sunlight must have dazzled her eyes, for she was shading them with her hand. with her fibrous neck working and with an old cap of her husband�s pinned on a skimpy bun at the back of her head, she was horrible after mrs. gainsborough in the black and green gingham. michael looked down at her over the railings; and she, recognizing him at last, pounced back to come up and open the door. �i couldn�t think who it was. we had a man round selling pots of musk this morning, and i didn�t want to come trapesing upstairs for nothing.� mrs. cleghorne was receiving him so pleasantly that michael scarcely knew what to say. no doubt his regular payment of rent had a good deal to do with it. �is mr. barnes up?� he asked. �i don�t know, i�m sure. i never go inside his door now. no.� �oh, really? why not?� �i�m the last person to make mischief, mr. fane, but i don�t consider he has treated us fair.� �oh, really?� �he�s got a woman here living with him. now of course that�s a thing i should never allow, but seeing as you weren�t here and was paying the rent regular i thought to myself that i�ll just shut my eyes until you came back. it�s really disgusting, and we has to be so particular with the other lodgers. it�s quite upset me, it has; and _mis_-ter cleghorne has been intending to speak to him about it. only his asthma�s been so bad lately�it really seems to have knocked all the heart out of him.� this pity for her husband was very ominous, michael thought. evidently the landlady was defending herself against an abrupt forfeiture of rent for the ground floor. michael tapped at the door of his old room: it was locked. �i�ll get on down again to my oven,� said mrs. cleghorne with a ratlike glance at the closed door. �i�m just cooking a bit of fish for my old man�s dinner.� she fixed him with her eyes that were beady like the head of the hatpin in her cap, and sweeping her hand upward over her nose, she vanished. michael rapped again and, as there was no answer, he went along the passage and tried the bedroom door. barnes� voice called out to know who was there. michael shouted his name, and heard barnes whispering to somebody inside. presently he opened the sitting-room door and invited michael to come in. it was extraordinary to see how with a few additions the character of the room had changed since michael left it. the furniture was still there; but what had seemed ascetic was now mean. spangled picture-postcards were standing along the mantelpiece. the autotypes of st. george and the knight in armor were both askew: the shelves had novelettes interspersed among the books; a soiled petticoat of yellow moirette lay over michael�s narrow bed, which he was surprised to see in the sitting-room: a gas-stove had been fixed in the fireplace, and the old steel grate had been turned into a deposit for dirty plates and dishes: but what struck michael most were the heavy curtains over the folding-doors between the two rooms. he looked at barnes, waiting for him to explain the alterations. �looks a bit more homelike than it did, doesn�t it?� said barnes, blinking round him. a deterioration was visible even in barnes himself. this was not merely the result of being without a collar or a shave, michael decided: it was as hard to define as the evidence of death in a man�s eyes; but there clung to him an aura of corruption, and it seemed as if at a touch he would dissolve into a vile deliquescence. �you look pretty pasty,� said michael severely. �worry, old man, worry,� said barnes. �well, to put it straight, i fell in with a girl who was down on her luck, and i knew you�d be the very one to encourage a bit of charity. so i brought her here.� �why are you sleeping in this room?� michael asked. �you�re getting a mr. smart, aren�t you?� said barnes. �fancy you�re noticing that. oh, well, i suppose you�ve come to ask for your rooms back?� michael with the consciousness of the woman behind those curtained doors knew that he could discuss nothing at present. he felt that all the time her ear was at the keyhole, and he went out suddenly, telling barnes to meet him at the orange that night. again the beerhall impressed him with its eternal sameness. it was as if a cinema film had broken when he last went out of the café d�orange, and had been set in action again at the moment of his return. he looked round to see if daisy was there, and she was. her hat which had formerly been black and trimmed with white daisies was now, to mark the season, white and trimmed with black daisies. �hulloa, little stranger!� she exclaimed. �where have you been?� so exactly the same was the orange that michael was almost surprised that she should have observed a passage of time. �you never seem to come here now,� she said reproachfully. �come on. sit down. don�t stand about like a man selling matches on the curb.� �how�s bert?� michael asked. �who?� �bert saunders. the man you were living with in little quondam street.� �oh, him! oh, i had to get rid of him double quick. what? yes, when it came to asking me to go to paris with a fighting fellow. only fancy the cheek of it! it would help him, he said, with his business. dirty ecnop! i soon shoved him down the apples-and-pears.� �i haven�t understood a word of that last sentence,� said michael. �don�t you know back-slang and rhyming-slang? oh, it�s grand! here, i forgot, there�s something i wanted to tell you. do you remember you was in here with a fellow who you said his name was burns?� �barnes, you mean, i expect. yes, he�s supposed to be meeting me here to-night, as a matter of fact.� �well, you be careful of him. he�ll get you into trouble.� michael looked incredulous. �it�s true as i sit here,� said daisy earnestly. �come over in the corner and let�s have our drink there. i can�t talk here with that blue-nosed �� behind me, squinting at us across his lager.� she looked round indignantly at the man in question. they moved across to one of the alcoves, and daisy leaned over and spoke quietly and rather tensely, so differently from the usual rollick of her voice that michael began to feel a presentiment of dread. �i was out on the dilly one night soon after you�d been round to my place, and i was with a girl called janie filson. �oo-er,� she said to me. �did you see who that was passed?� i looked round and saw this fellow burns.� �barnes,� michael corrected. �oh, well, barnes. his name doesn�t matter, because it isn�t his own, anyway. �that�s harry meats,� she said. and she called out after him. �hulloa, harry, where�s cissie?� he went as white as ... oh, he did go shocking white. he just turned to see who it was had called out after him, and then he slid up swallow street like a bit of paper. �who�s cissie?� i said. �don�t you remember cissie cummings?� she said. �that fair girl who always wore a big purple hat and used to be in the leicester lounge and always carried a box of chocolates for swank?� i did remember the girl when janie spoke about her. only i never knew her, see? �he wasn�t very pleased when you mentioned her,� i said. �didn�t he look awful?� said janie, and just then she got off with a fellow and i couldn�t ask her any more.� �i don�t think that�s enough to make me very much afraid of barnes,� michael commented. �wait a minute, i haven�t finished yet. don�t be in such a hurry. the other day i saw janie filson again. she�s been away to italy�is there a place called italy? of course there is. well, as i was saying, she�d been to italy with her fellow who�s a commercial traveler and that�s why i hadn�t seen her. and janie said to me, �do you know what they�re saying?� i said, �no, what?� and she said, �did you read nearly a year ago about a woman who was found murdered in the euston road? a gay woman it was,� she said. so i said, �lots of women is found murdered, my dear. i can�t remember every one i see the picture of.� well, anyone can�t, can they?� daisy broke off to ask michael in an injured voice. then she resumed her tale. �when i was with that fellow bert i used to read nothing else but murders all the time. give anyone the rats, it would. �lots of women, my dear,� i said. and she said, �well, there was one in particular who the police never found out the name of, because there wasn�t any clothing or nothing found.� so i did remember about it, and she said, �well, they�re saying now it was cissie cummings.� and i said, �well, what of it, if it was?� and she said, �what of it?� she said. �well, if it was her,� she said, �i know who done it.� �who done it?� i asked�because, you see, i�d forgotten about this fellow burns. �why, harry meats,� she said. �that fellow i saw on the dilly the night when i was along with you.�� �i don�t think you have enough evidence for the police,� michael decided, with half a smile. yet nevertheless a malaise chilled him, and he looked over his shoulder at the mob in the beer hall. ��� the police!� daisy exclaimed. �i don�t care about them when i�m positive certain of something. i tell you, i know that fellow burns, or meats, or whatever his name is, done it.� �but what am i to do about it?� michael asked. �well, you�ll get into trouble, that�s all,� daisy prophesied. �you�d look very funny if he was pinched for murder while you was out walking with him. ugh! it gives me the creeps. order me a gin, there�s a good boy.� michael obtained for daisy her drink, and sat waiting for barnes to appear. �he won�t come,� daisy scoffed. �if he�s feeling funny about the neck, he won�t come down here. he�s never been down since that night he came down with you. fancy, to go and do a poor girl in like that! i�d spit in his face, if i saw him.� �daisy, you really mustn�t assume such horrible things about a man. he�s as innocent as you or me.� �is he?� daisy retorted. �i don�t think so then. you never saw how shocking white his face went when janie asked him about cissie.� �but if there were any suspicion of him,� michael pointed out, �the police would have tackled him long ago.� �oh, they aren�t half artful, the police aren�t,� said daisy. �nothing they�d like better than get waiting about and seeing if he didn�t go and murder another poor girl, so as they could have him for the two, and be all the more pleased about it.� �that�s talking nonsense,� michael protested. �the police don�t do that sort of thing.� �i don�t know,� daisy argued. �one or two poor girls more or less wouldn�t worry them. after all, that�s what we�re for�to get pinched when they�ve got nothing better to do. of course, i know it�s part of the game, but there it is. if you steal my purse and i follow you round and tell a copper, what would he do? why, pinch me for soliciting. no, my motto is, �keep out of the way of the police.� and if you take my advice, you�ll do the same. if this fellow didn�t do the girl in,� daisy asked earnestly, leaning forward over the table, �why doesn�t he come down here and keep his appointment with you to-night? don�t you worry. he knows the word has gone round, and he�s going to lie very low for a bit. i wouldn�t say the tecs aren�t watching out for him even now.� �my dear daisy, you�re getting absolutely fanciful,� michael declared. �oh, well, good luck to fanciful,� said daisy, draining her glass. �here, why don�t you come home with me to-night?� �what, and spend another three hours hiding in a cupboard?� �no, properly, i mean, this time. only we should have to go to a hotel, because the woman i�m living with�s got her son come home from being a soldier and she wouldn�t like for him to know anything. well, it�s better not. you�re much more comfortable when you aren�t in gay rooms, because they haven�t got a hold over you. are you coming?� for a moment michael was inclined to invite daisy to go away with him. for a moment it seemed desirable to bury himself in a corner of the underworld: to pass his life there for as long as he could stand it. he could easily make this girl fond of him, and he might be happy with her. no doubt, it would be ultimately a degrading happiness, but yet not much more degrading than the prosperity of many of his friends. he had always escaped so far and hidden himself successfully. why not again more completely? what, after all, did he know of this underworld without having lived of it as well as in it? hitherto he had been a spectator, intervening sometimes in the sudden tragedies and comedies, but never intervening except as very essentially a spectator. he thought, as he sat opposite to daisy with her white dress and candid roguery, that it would be amusing to become a rogue himself. there would be no strain in living with daisy. love in the way that he had loved lily would be a joke to her. why should not he take her for what she was�shrewd, mirthful, kind, honest, the natural light of love? he would do her no wrong by accepting her as such. she was immemorial in the scheme of the universe. michael was on the point of offering to daisy his alliance, when he remembered what sylvia had said about men and, though he knew that daisy could not possibly think in that way about men, he had no courage to plunge with her into deeper labyrinths not yet explored. he thought of the contempt with which sylvia would hail him, were they in this nightmare of london to meet in such circumstances. a few weeks ago�yesterday, indeed�he might have joined himself to daisy under the pretext of helping her and improving her. now he must help himself: he must aim at perfecting himself. experiments, when at any moment passion might enter, were too dangerous. �no, i won�t come home with you, dear daisy,� he said, taking her hand over the puddly table. �you know, you didn�t kiss me that night in quondam street because you thought i might one day come home with you, did you?� she shrugged her shoulders. �what�s the good of asking me why i kissed you?� she said, embarrassed and almost made angry by his reminder. �perhaps i was twopence on the can. i can get very loving on a quartern of gin, i can. oh, well, if you aren�t coming home, you aren�t, and i must get along. sitting talking to you isn�t paying my rent, is it?� he longed to offer her money, but he could not, because it was seeming to him now indissolubly linked with hiring. however genuinely it was a token of exchange, money was eluding his capacity for idealization, and he was at a loss to find a symbol service. �is there nothing i can do for you?� �yes, you can give me two quid in case i don�t get off to-night.� he offered them to her eagerly. �go on, you silly thing,� she said, pushing the money away. �as if i meant it.� �if you didn�t, i did,� said michael. �oh, all right,� she replied, with a wink, putting the money in her purse. �well, chin-chin, clive, don�t be so long coming down here next time.� �michael is my name,� he said, for he was rather distressed to think that she would pass forever from his life supposing him to be called clive. �as if i didn�t know that,� she said. �i remember, because it�s a jew name.� �but it isn�t,� michael contradicted. �jews are called that.� �very likely,� he admitted. �oh, well, it�ll be all the same in a hundred years.� she picked up her white gloves, and swaggered across the crowded beerhall. at the foot of the stairs she turned and waved them to him. then she disappeared. michael sat on in the café d�orange, waiting for barnes, but he did not arrive before closing-time; and when michael was walking home, the tale of daisy gathered import, and he had a dreary feeling that her suspicions were true. he did not feel depressed so much because he was shocked by the notion of barnes as a murderer (he thought that probably murder was by no means the greatest evil he had done), as because he feared the fancy of him in the hands of the police. it appalled him to imagine that material hell of the trial. the bandage dropped from the eyes of justice, and he saw her pig�s-eyes mean, cowardly, revengeful; and her scales were like a grocer�s. he pitied barnes in the clutches of anthropocracy. what a ridiculous word: it probably did not exist. after all, daisy�s story was ridiculous, too. barnes had objected to himself�s hailing him as meats: and there were plenty of reasons to account for his dislike of janie filson�s salute without supposing murder. nevertheless, back again, as softly and coaxingly as the thought used to come to michael when he was a small boy lying in bed, the thought of murder maintained an innuendo of probability. yet it was absurd to think of murder on this summer night, with all these jingling hansoms and all that fountainous sky of stars. why, then, had barnes not met him at the orange to-night? it was not like him to break an appointment when his pocket might be hurt. what rumor of cissie cummings had traveled even to leppard street? michael had reached buckingham palace road, and he took the direction for pimlico; it was not too late to get into the house. he changed his mind again and drove back to cheyne walk. up in his bedroom, the curiosity to know why barnes had not kept the appointment recurred with double force, and michael after a search found the key of the house in leppard street and went out again. it was getting on for two o�clock, and without the lights of vehicles the night was more than ever brilliant. under the plane-trees michael was stabbed with one pang for lily, and he repined at the waste of this warm june. the clocks had struck two when he reached leppard street, and the houses confronted him, their roofs and chimneys prinked with stars. several windows glimmered with a turbid orange light; but these signals of habitation only emphasized the unconsciousness of the sleepers behind, and made the desolation of the rest more positive. the windows of his old rooms were black, and michael unlocked the front door quietly and stood listening for a moment in the passage. he could hear a low snarling in the bedroom, but from where he was standing not a word was distinct, and he could not bring himself to point of listening close to the keyhole. he shut the front door and waited in the blackness, fascinated by the rise and fall of the low snarl that was seeming so sinister in this house. it was incredible that a brief movement would open the front door again and let in the starlight; for, as he stood here, leppard street was under the earth deep down. he moved a little farther into the hall, and, putting out his hand to feel for the balusters, drew back with a start, for he might have clapped it down upon a cold bald head, so much like that was the newel�s wooden knob. still the snarling rose and fell: the darkness grew thicker and every instant more atramental, beating upon him from the steeps of the house like the filthy wings of a great bat: and still the snarling rose and fell. it rose and fell like the bubbling of a kettle, and then without warning the kettle overflowed with spit and hiss and commotion. every word spoken by barnes and the woman was now audible. �i say he gave you thirty shillings. now then!� barnes yapped. �and i tell you he only gave me a sovereign, which you�ve had.� �don�t i hear through the door what you get?� michael knew why barnes had not been able to keep his appointment to-night, and though he was outraged at the use to which his rooms had been put, he was glad to be relieved of the fear that this snarling was the prelude to the revelation of barnes as a murderer. the recriminations with their details of vileness were not worth hearing longer, and michael went quickly and quietly out into the summer night, which smelled so sweet after that passage. he turned round by the lamp-post at the corner and looked back at the five stark houses; he could not abandon their contemplation; and he pored upon them as intensely as he might have pored upon a tomb of black basalt rising out of desert sand. he was immured in the speculation of their blackness: he pondered hopelessly their meaning and brooded upon the builders that built them and the sphinx that commanded them to be built. in his present mood michael would have thought stonehenge rather prosaic; and he leaned against the wall in the silence, thinking of brick upon brick, or brick upon brick slabbed with mortar and chipped and tapped in the past, of brick upon brick as the houses grew higher and higher ... a railway engine shrieked suddenly: the door of number one slammed: and a woman came hurrying down the steps. she looked for a moment to right and left of her, and then she moved swiftly with a wild, irregular walk in michael�s direction. he had a sensation that she had known he was standing here against this wall, that she had watched him all the while and was hurrying now to ask why he had been standing here against this wall. he could not turn and walk away: he could not advance to meet her: so he stood still leaning against the wall. michael saw her very plainly as she passed him in the lamplight. her hat was askew, and a black ostrich plume hung down over her big chalky face: her lips were glistening as if they had been smeared with jam. she was wearing a black satin cloak, and she seemed, as her skirts swept past him, like an overblown grotesque of tragedy being dragged by a wire from the scene. michael shuddered at the monstrousness of her femininity; he seemed to have been given a glimpse of a mere mass of woman, a soft obscene primeval thing that demanded blows from a club, nothing else. he realized how in a moment men could become haters of femininity, could hate its animalism and wish to stamp upon it. the physical repulsion he had felt vanished when the sound of her footsteps had died away. in the reaction michael pitied her, and he went back quietly to number one with the intention of turning barnes into the street. he was rather startled as he walked up the steps to see barnes� face pressed against the window-pane, for it seemed to him ludicrous that he should wave reassuringly to a mask like that. barnes hurried to open the front door before michael had taken the key from his pocket, and was not at all surprised to see him. �here, i couldn�t get down to the orange to-night. i�ve had a bit of trouble with this girl.� the gas was flaring in the sitting-room by now, and the night, which outside had been lightening for dawn, was black as ink upon the panes. �sit on the bed. the chairs are all full of her dirty clothes. i�ll pull the blinds down. i�m going to leave here to-morrow, fane. did you see her going down the road? she must have passed you by. i tell you straight, fane, half an hour back i was in two minds to do her in. i was, straight. and i would have, if ... oh, well, i kept my temper and threw her out instead. gratitude! it�s my belief gratitude doesn�t exist in this world. you sit down and have a smoke. he left some cigarettes behind.� �who did?� michael asked sharply. �who did what?� �left these cigarettes.� �oh, they�re some i bought yesterday,� said barnes. �i think it�s just as well for you that you are going to-morrow morning. i hope you quite realize that otherwise i should have turned you out.� �well, don�t look at me in that tone of voice,� barnes protested. �i�ve had quite enough to worry me without any nastiness between old friends to make it worse.� �you can�t expect me to be pleased at the way you�ve treated my rooms,� michael said. �oh, the gas-stove, you mean?� �it�s not a question of gas-stoves. it�s a question of living on a woman.� �who did?� �you.� �if i�d had to live on her earnings, i should be very poorly off now,� grumbled barnes, in an injured voice. under michael�s attack he was regaining his old perkiness. �at any rate, you must go to-morrow morning,� michael insisted. �don�t i keep on telling you that i�m going? it�s no good for you to nag at me, fane.� �and what about the woman?� �her? let her go to ��,� said barnes contemptuously. �she can�t do me any harm. what if she does tell the coppers i�ve been living on her? they won�t worry me unless they�ve nothing better to do, and i�ll have hooked it by then.� �you�re sure she can�t do you any harm?� michael asked gravely. �there�s nothing else she could tell the police?� �here, what are you talking about?� asked barnes, coming close to michael and staring at him fixedly. michael debated whether he should mention cissie cummings, but he lacked the courage either to frighten barnes with the suggestion of his guilt or to preserve a superior attitude in the face of his enraged innocence. �i shall come round to-morrow morning, or rather this morning, at nine,� said michael. �and i shall expect to find you ready to clear out of here for good.� �you�re very short with a fellow, aren�t you?� said barnes. �what do you want to go away for? why don�t you stay so as you can see me off the premises?� michael thought that he could observe underneath all the assurance a sharp anxiety on barnes� part not to be left alone. �you can lay down and have a sleep in here. i�ll get on into the bedroom.� michael consented to stay, and barnes was obviously relieved. he put out the gas and retired into the bedroom. the dawn was graying the room, and the sun would be up in less than an hour. early sparrows were beginning to chirp. the woman who had burst out of the door and fled up the street seemed now a chimera of the night. half-dozing, michael lay on the bed, half dozing and faintly oppressed by the odor of patchouli coming from the clothes heaped upon the chairs. st. george was visible already, and even the outlines of the knight in armor were tremulously apparent. michael wondered why he did not feel a greater resentment at the profanation of these rooms. and why did barnes keep fidgeting on the other side of the folding doors? the sparrows were cheeping more loudly: the trains were more frequent. michael woke from sleep with a start and saw that barnes was throwing the clothes from the chairs on the floor: stirred up thus in this clear light the scent of patchouli was even more noticeable. what on earth was barnes doing? he was turning the whole room upside-down. �what the deuce are you looking for?� michael yawned. �that�s all right, old man, you get on with your sleep. i�m just putting my things together,� barnes told him. michael turned over and was beginning to doze again when barnes woke him by the noise he made in taking the dirty dishes out of the old grate. �how on earth can i sleep, when you�re continually fidgeting?� michael demanded fretfully. �what�s the time?� �just gone half-past five.� barnes paid no more attention to michael�s rest, but began more feverishly than ever to rummage among all the things in the room. michael could not stand his activity any longer, and dry-mouthed from an uncomfortable sleep, he sat up. �what _are_ you looking for?� �well, if you want to know, i�m looking for a watch-bracelet.� �it�s not likely to be under the carpet,� said michael severely. barnes was wrenching out the tacks to michael�s annoyance. �perhaps it isn�t,� barnes agreed. �but i�ve got to find this watch-bracelet. it�s gold. i don�t want to lose it.� �was it a woman�s?� barnes looked round at him like a small animal alarmed. �yes, it was a woman�s. what makes you ask?� �what�s it like?� �gold. gold, i keep telling you.� �when did you have it last?� �last night.� �well, it can�t have gone far.� �no, blast it, of course it can�t,� said barnes, searching with renewed impatience. he was throwing the clothes about the room again, and the odor of staleness became nauseating. �i�m going to wash,� michael announced, moving across to the bedroom. �you�ll excuse the untidiness,� barnes called out after him, in a tone of rather strained jocularity. of michael�s old room no vestige remained. a very large double-bed took up almost all the space, and all the furniture was new and tawdry. the walls were hung with studies of cocottes pretending to be naiads and dryads, horrible women posed in the silvanity of a photographer�s studio. the room was littered with clothes, and michael could not move a step without entangling his feet in a petticoat or treading upon hidden shoes. he tried to splash his face, but the very washstand was sickly. �well, you�ve managed to debauch my bedroom quite successfully,� he said to barnes, when he came back to the sitting-room. �that�s all right. i�ll get rid of all the new furniture. i can pop the lot. well, it�s mine. if i could find this bloody watch-bracelet, i could begin to make some arrangements.� �what about breakfast?� michael began to look for something to eat. every plate and knife was dirty, and there were three or four half-finished tins of condensed milk which had turned pistachio green and stank abominably. �there�s a couple of herrings somewhere,� said barnes. �or there was. but everything seems upside-down this morning. where the hell is that watch? it can�t have walked away on its own. if that mare took it! i�ve a very particular reason for not wanting to lose that watch. oh, �� ��! wherever can it have got to?� �well, anyway shut up using such filthy language. when does the milkman come round?� �i don�t know when he comes round. here, fane, have you ever heard of anyone talking in their sleep?� �of course i�ve heard of people talking in their sleep,� michael answered. �it�s not very unusual.� �ah, hollering out, yes�but talking in a sensible sort of a way, so that if you came in and listened to what they said, you�d think it was the truth? have you ever heard of that?� �i don�t suppose i can give you an instance, but obviously it must often happen.� �must it?� said barnes, in a depressed voice. �you see, i set particular value by this watch-bracelet; and i thought perhaps i might have talked about it in my sleep, and that mare just to spite me have gone and taken it. i wonder where it is now.� michael also began to wonder where it was now, and barnes� anxiety was transferred to him, so that he began to fancy the whole of this fine morning was tremendously bound up with exactly where the watch-bracelet now was. barnes had begun to turn over everything for about the sixth time. �if the watch is here,� said michael irritably, �it will be found when you move your things out, and if it�s not here, it�s useless to go on worrying about it.� �ah, it�s all very nice for you to be so calm! but what price it�s being my watch that�s lost, not yours, old sport?� �i�m not going to talk about it any more,� michael declared. �i want to know what you�re going to do when you leave here.� �ah, that�s it! what am i?� �would you like to go to the colonies?� �what, say good-bye to dear old leicester square and pop off for good and all? i wouldn�t mind.� �i don�t mind telling you,� said michael, �that if i�d discovered you here a week ago living like this, i should have had nothing more to do with you. as it is, i�ve a good mind to sling you out to look after yourself. however, i�m willing to get you a ticket for wherever you think you�d like to go, and when i hear you�ve arrived, i�ll send you enough money to keep you going for a time.� �fane, i don�t mind saying it. you�ve been a good pal to me.� �hark, there�s the milkman at last!� michael exclaimed. he went out into the sparkling air of the fine summer morning and came back with plenty of milk for breakfast. after they had made a sort of meal, he suggested that barnes ought to come with him and visit some of the colonial agencies. they walked down victoria street and across st. james� park, and in the strand he made barnes have a shave. the visit to the barber took away some of his nocturnal raffishness, and michael found him very amusing during the various discussions that took place in the agencies. �i think the walk has done you good.� �yes,� barnes doubtfully admitted. �i don�t think it has done me much harm.� they had lunch at romano�s, where barnes drank a good deal of chianti and became full of confidence in his future. �that�s where it is, fane. a fellow like you is lucky. but that�s no reason why i shouldn�t be lucky in my turn. my life has been a failure so far. yes, i�m not going to attempt to deny it. there are lots of things in my life that might have been different. you�ll understand when i say different i mean pleasanter for everybody all round, myself included. but that�s all finished. with this fruit-farm�well, of course it�s no good grumbling and running down good things�those apples we saw were big enough to make anybody�s fortune. cawdashit, fane, i can see myself sitting under one of those apple-trees and counting the bloody fruit falling down at my feet and me popping them into baskets and selling them�where was it he said we sold them?� barnes poured out more chianti. �really, it seems a sin on a fine day like this to be hanging about in london. well, i�ve had some sprees in old london, and that�s a fact; so i�m not going to start running it down now. if i hadn�t lost that watch-bracelet, i wouldn�t give a damn for anybody. good old london,� he went on meditatively. �yes, i�ve had some times�good times and bad times�and here i am.� he gradually became incoherent, and michael thought it would be as well to escort him back to leppard street and impress on him once again that he must remove all his things immediately. �you�ll have to be quick with your packing-up. you ought to sail next week. i shall go and see about your passage to-morrow.� they drove back to leppard street in a taxi, and as they got out barnes said emphatically: �you know what it is, fane? cawdashit! i feel like a marquis when i�m out with you, and it i hadn�t have lost that watch-bracelet i�d feel like the bloody german emperor. that�s me. all up in the air one minute, and yet worry myself barmy over a little thing like a watch the next.� �hullo!� he exclaimed, looking up the road as their taxi drove off. �somebody else is playing at being a millionaire.� another taxi was driving into leppard street. michael had already opened the front door, and he told barnes not to hang about on the steps. barnes turned reluctantly from his inspection of the new taxi�s approach. it pulled up at number one, and three men jumped out. �that�s your man,� michael heard one of them say, and in another moment he heard, �henry meats ... i hold a warrant ... murder of cissie ... anything you say ... used against you,� all in the mumbo-jumbo of a nightmare. michael came down the steps again very quickly; and barnes, now handcuffed, turned to him despairingly. �tell �em my name isn�t meats, fane. tell �em they�ve made a mistake. oh, my god, i never done it! i never done it!� the two men were pushing him, dead white, crumpled, sobbing, into the taxi; he seemed very small beside the big men with their square shoulders and bristly mustaches. michael heard him still moaning as the taxi jangled and whirred abruptly forward. the third man watched it disappear between the two walls; then he strolled up the steps to enter the house. mrs. cleghorne was already in the hall, and over the balusters of each landing faces could be seen peering down. as if the word were uttered by the house itself, �murder� floated in a whisper upon the air. the faces shifted; doors opened and shut far above; footsteps hurried to and fro; and still of all these sounds �murder� was the most audible. �this is the gentleman who rents the rooms,� mrs. cleghorne was saying. �but i�ve not been near them till yesterday evening for six months,� michael hurriedly explained. �that�s quite right,� mrs. cleghorne echoed. �well, i�m afraid we must go through them,� said the officer. �oh, of course.� �let me see, is this your address?� �well, no�cheyne walk� .� �we might want to have a little talk with you about this here meats.� michael was enraged with himself for not asseverating �barnes! barnes! barnes!� as he had been begged to do. he despised himself for not trying to save that white crumpled thing huddled between those big men with their bristly mustaches; yet all the while he felt violently afraid that the police officer would think him involved in these disgraceful rooms, that he would suppose the pictures and the tawdry furniture belonged to him, that he would imagine the petticoats and underlinen strewn about the floor had something to do with him. �if you want me,� he found himself saying, �you have my address.� quickly he hurried away from leppard street, and traveled in a trance of shame to hardingham. alan was just going in to bat, when michael walked across from the hall to the cricket-field. stella came from her big basket chair to greet him, and for a while he sat with her in the buttercups, watching alan at the wicket. nothing had ever seemed so easy as the bowling of the opposite side on this fine june evening, and michael tried to banish the thought of barnes in the spaciousness of these level fields. stella was evidently being very careful not to convey the impression that she had lately won a victory over him. it was really ridiculous, michael thought, as he plucked idly the buttercups and made desultory observations to stella about the merit of a stroke by alan, it was more than ridiculous, it was deliberate folly to enmesh himself with such horrors as he had beheld at leppard street. there were doubtless very unpleasant events continually happening in this world, but willfully to drag one�s self into misery on account of them was merely to show an incapacity to appreciate the more fortunate surroundings of one�s allotted niche. the avoidance of even the sight of evil was as justifiable as the avoidance of evil itself, and the moral economy of the world might suffer a dangerous displacement, if everyone were to involve themselves in such events as those in which himself had lately been involved. duty was owing all the time to people nearer at hand than barnes. no doubt the world would be better for being rid of him; diseases of the body must be fought, and the corruption of human society must be cleansed. any pity for barnes was a base sentimentalism; it was merely a reaction of personal discomfort at having seen an unpleasant operation. the sentimentalism of that cry �don�t hurt him!� was really contemptible, and since it seemed that he was likely to be too weak to bear the sight of the cleansing knife, he must in future avoid the occasion of its use. otherwise his intellectual outlook was going to be sapped, and he would find himself in the ranks of the faddists. �i think i shall stay down here the rest of the summer, if i may,� he said to stella. �my dear, of course you can. we�ll have a wonderful time. hullo, alan is retiring.� alan came up and sat beside them in the buttercups. �i thought i saw you just as i was going in,� he said. �anything going on in town?� �no, nothing much,� said michael. �i saw a man arrested for murder this afternoon.� �did you really? how beastly! our team�s just beginning to get into shape. i say, stella. that youth working on old rundle�s farm is going to be pret-ty good. did you see him lift their fast bowlers twice running over the pond?� michael strolled away to take a solitary walk. it seemed incredible now to think that he had brought lily down here, that he had wandered with her over this field. what an infringement it must have seemed to stella and alan of their already immemorial peace. they had really been very good about his invasion. and here was the wood where he and stella had fought. michael sat down in the glade and listened to the busy flutterings of the birds. why had stella objected to his marriage with lily? all the superficial answers were ready at once; but was not her real objection only another facet of the diamond of selfishness? selfishness was a diamond. precious, hard, and very often beautiful�when seen by itself. michael spent a week at hardingham, during which he managed to put out of his mind the thought of barnes in prison awaiting his trial. then one day the butler informed him of a person wishing to speak to him. in the library he found the detective who had asked for his address at leppard street. �sorry to have to trouble you, sir, but there was one or two little questions we wanted to ask.� michael feared he would have to appear at the trial, and asked at once if that was going to be necessary. �oh, no, i don�t think so. we�ve got it all marked out fair and square against mr. meats. he doesn�t stand a chance of getting off. how did you come to be mixed up with him?� michael explained the circumstances which had led up to his knowing meats. �i see; and you just wanted to give him a bit of a helping hand. oh, well, the feeling does you credit, i�m bound to say; but another time, sir, i should make a few inquiries first. we should probably have had him before, if he hadn�t been helped by you. of course, i quite understand you knew nothing about this murder, but anyone can often do a lot of harm by helping undeserving people. we mightn�t have nabbed him even now, if some woman hadn�t brought us a nice little bit of evidence, and i found some more things myself after a search. oh, yes, he doesn�t stand an earthly. we knew for a moral cert who did it, straightaway; but the police don�t get a fair chance in england. we let all these blooming radicals interfere too much. that�s my opinion. anyone would think the police was a lot of criminals by the way some people talk about them.� �is anybody defending him?� michael asked. �oh, he�ll be awarded a counsel,� said the detective indignantly. �for which you and me has to pay. that�s a nice thing, isn�t it? but he doesn�t stand an earthly.� �where will he be hanged?� �pentonville.� michael thought how mrs. murdoch in neptune crescent would shudder some tuesday morning in the near future. �i�m sorry you should have had to come all this way to find me,� michael said. he hated himself for being polite to the inspector, but he could not help it. he rang the bell. �oh, dawkins, will you give inspector�what is your name, by the bye?� �dawkins,� said the inspector. �how curious!� michael laughed. �yes, sir,� the inspector laughed. �lunch in the gun room, dawkins. you must be hungry.� �well, sir, i could do with a snack, i daresay.� he followed his namesake from the room, and outside michael could hear them begin to chatter of the coincidence. �but supposing i�d been in the same state of life as meats,� michael said to himself. �what devil�s web wouldn�t they be trying to spin round me?� he was seized with fury at himself for his cowardice. he had thought of nothing but his own reputation ever since meats had been arrested. he had worried over the opinion of a police inspector; had been ashamed of the appearance of the rooms; had actually been afraid that he would be implicated in the disgraceful affair. so long as it had been easy to flatter himself with the pleasure he was giving or the good he was doing to meats, he had kept him with money. now when meats had been dragged away, he was anxious to disclaim the whole acquaintanceship for fear of the criticism of a big man with a bristly mustache. the despair in meats� last cry to him echoed round this library. he had seen society in action: not all the devils and fiends imagined by mediæval monks were so horrible as those big men with bristly mustaches. what did they know of meats and his life? what did they care, but that they were paid by society to remove rubbish? justice had decreed that meats should be arrested, and like a dead rat in the gutter he was swept up by these scavengers. what compact had he broken that men should freeze to stones and crush him? he had broken the laws of men and the laws of god; he had committed murder. and were not murders as foul being committed every moment? murdered ambition, murdered love, murdered pity, murdered gratitude, murdered faith, did none of these cry out for vengeance? society had seized the murderer, and it was useless to cry out. himself was as impotent as the prisoner. meats had sinned against the hive: this infernal hive, herd, pack, swarm, whichever word expressed what he felt to be the degradation of an interdependent existence. mankind was become a great complication of machinery fed by gold and directed by fear. something was needed to destroy this gregarious organism. war and pestilence must come; but in the past these two had come often enough, and mankind was the same afterward. this ant-hill of a globe had been ravaged often enough, but the ants were all busy again carrying their mean little burdens of food hither and thither in affright for the comfort of their mean little lives. �and i�m as bad as any of them,� said michael to himself. �i know i have obligations in leppard street, and i�ve run away from them because i�m afraid of what people will think. of course, i always fail. i�m a coward.� he could not stay any longer at hardingham. he must go and see about mrs. smith now. society would be seizing her soon and bringing her miserable life to an end in whitewashed prison corridors. he must do something for meats. perhaps he would not be able to save him from death, but he must not sit here ringing bells for butlers called dawkins to feed inspectors called dawkins. stella came in with the first roses of the year. �aren�t they beauties?� �yes, splendid. i�m going up to town this afternoon.� �but not for long?� �i don�t know. it depends. do you know, stella, it�s an extraordinary thing, but ever since you�ve practically given up playing, i feel very much more alive. how do you account for that?� �well, i haven�t given up playing for one thing,� stella contradicted. �stella do you ever feel inspired nowadays?� �not so much as i did,� she admitted. �i feel now as if i were on the verge of an inspiration.� �not another lily,� she said quickly, with half a laugh. �you�ve no right to sneer at me about that,� he said fiercely. �you must be very careful, you know. _you�ll_ become flabby, if you aren�t careful, here at hardingham.� �oh, michael!� she laughed. �don�t look at me as if you were a major prophet. i won�t become flabby. i shall start composing at once.� �there you are!� he cried triumphantly. �never say again that i can�t wake you up.� �you did not wake me up.� �i did. i did. and do you know i believe i�ve discovered that i�m an anarchist?� �is that your inspiration?� �who knows? it may be.� �well, don�t come and be anarchical down here, because alan is going to stand at the next election.� �what on earth good would alan be in parliament?� michael asked derisively. �he�s much too happy.� �michael, why are you so horrid about alan nowadays?� he was penitent in a moment at the suggestion, but when he said good-bye to stella he had a curious feeling that from henceforth he was going to be stronger than her. on reaching london, michael went to see castleton at the temple, and he found him in chambers at the top of dusty stairs in king�s beach walk. �lucky to get these, wasn�t i?� said castleton. by craning out of the window, the river was visible. �i suppose you�ve never had a murder case yet?� michael asked. �not yet,� said castleton. �in fact, i�m going in for chancery work. and i shall get my first brief in about five years, with luck.� michael inquired how one went to work to retain the greatest criminal advocate of the day, and castleton said he would have to be approached through a solicitor. �well, will you get hold of him for me?� castleton looked rather blank. �if you can�t get him, get the next best, and so on. tell him the man i want to defend hasn�t a chance, and that�s why i�m particularly anxious he should get off.� they discussed details for some time, and castleton was astonished at michael�s wish to aid meats. �it seems very perverse,� he said. �perverse!� michael echoed. �and what about your profession? that is really the most perverse factor in modern life.� �but in this case,� castleton argued, �the victim seems so utterly worthless.� �exactly,� said michael. �but as society never interfered when he was passively offensive, why, the moment he becomes actively offensive, should society have the right to put him out of the way? they never tried to cure him for his own good. why should they kill him for their own?� �you want to strike at the foundations of the legal system,� said the barrister. �exactly,� michael agreed; and the argument came to an end because there was obviously nothing more to be said. castleton promises to do all he could for meats, and also to keep michael�s name out of the business. as michael walked down the stairs, it gave him a splendid satisfaction to think how already the law was being set in motion against the law. a blow for inspector dawkins. and what about the murdered girl? �she won�t be helped by meats� death,� said michael to himself. �society is not considering her protection now any more than it did when she was alive.� _no slops must be emptied here_: and as michael read the ascetic command above the tap on the stairs he wondered for a moment if he were, after all, a sentimentalist. mrs. cleghorne was very voluble when he reached leppard street. �a nice set-out and no mistake!� she declared. �half of the neighborhood have been peeping over my area railings as if the murder had been done in here. mr. cleghorne�s quite hoarse with hollering out to them to keep off. and it never rains but what it pours. there�s a poor woman gone and died here now. however, a funeral�s a little more lively than the police nosing round, though her not having a blessed halfpenny and owing me three weeks on the rent it certainly won�t be anything better than a pauper�s funeral.� �what woman?� michael asked. �oh, a invalid dressmaker which i�ve been very good to�a mrs. smith.� �dead?� he echoed. �yes, dead, and laid out, and got a clergyman sitting with her body. what clergyman? roman catholic, i _should_ say. it quite worried mr. cleghorne. he said it gave him the rats to have a priest hanging around so close at hand. you see, being asthmatic, he�s read a lot about these roman catholics, and he doesn�t hold with them. they�re that underhand, he says, it makes him nervous.� �can i see this priest?� michael asked. �well, it�s hardly the room you�re accustomed to. i�ve really looked at her more as a charity than an actual lodger. in fact, my poor old mother has gone on at me something cruel for being so good to her.� �i think i should like to see this priest,� michael persisted. mrs. cleghorne was with difficulty persuaded to show him the way, and she was evidently a little suspicious of the motive of his visit. they descended into the gloom of the basement, and the landlady pointed out to him the room that was down three steps and up another. she excused herself from coming too. the priest, a monkey-faced irishman, was sitting on the pale blue chest, and as michael entered, he did not look up from his office. �is that you, sister?� he asked. then he perceived michael and waited for him to explain his business. �i wanted to ask about this poor woman.� mrs. smith lay under a sheet with candles winking at her head. nothing was visible except her face still faintly rouged in the daylight. �i was interested in her,� michael exclaimed. �indeed!� said the priest dryly. �i wouldn�t have thought so.� �is her cat here?� �there was some sort of an animal, but the woman of the house took it off.� a silence followed, and michael was aware of the priest�s hostility. �i suppose she didn�t see her son before she died?� michael went on. �her son is with the jesuits.� �you seem to know a great deal about the poor soul?� �i thought i had managed to help her,� said michael, in a sad voice. �indeed?� commented the priest, even more dryly. �and there is nothing i can do now?� �almighty god has taken her,� said the priest. �there is nothing you can do.� �i could have some masses said for her.� �are you a catholic?� the priest asked. �no; but i fancy i shall be a catholic,� michael said; and as he spoke it was like a rushing wind. he hurried out into the passage where a nun passed him in the gloom. �she will be praying,� michael thought, and, looking back over his shoulder, he said: �pray for me, sister.� the nun was evidently startled by the voice, and went on quickly down the three steps and up the other into mrs. smith�s den. michael climbed upstairs to interview the solutionist. he found him lying in bed. �why wasn�t that money paid regularly?� he asked severely. �who is it?� the solutionist muttered, in fuddled accents. �wanted the money myself. had a glorious time. the cat�s all right, and the poor old rabbits are dead. can�t give everybody a good time. somebody�s got to suffer in this world.� michael left him, and without entering his old rooms again went away from leppard street. the moment had come to visit rome, and remembering how he had once dissuaded maurice from going there, he felt some compunction now in telling him that he wanted to travel alone. however, it would be impossible to visit rome for the first time with maurice. in the studio he led up to his backing out of the engagement. �about this going abroad,� he began. �i say, michael, i don�t think i can come just now. the editor of the point of view wants a series of articles on the ballet, and i�m going to start on them at once.� it was a relief to michael, and he wished maurice good luck. �yes, i think they�re going to be rather good,� he said confidently. �i�m going to begin with the opera: then the empire and the alhambra: and in september there will be the new ballet at the orient. of course, i�ve got a theory about english ballet.� �is there anything about which you haven�t got a theory?� michael asked. �hullo, you�ve got the venetian mirror from ararat house. i�m so glad!� �i�ve arranged all that,� maurice said. �lily haden has gone to live with a girl called sylvia scarlett. rather a terror, i thought.� �yes, i had an idea you�d find her a bit difficult.� �oh, but i scored off her in the end,� said maurice quickly. �congratulations,� said michael. �well, i�m going to rome.� �i say, rather hot.� �so much the better.� �i used to be rather keen on rome, but i�ve a theory it�s generally a disappointment. however, i suppose i shall have to go one day.� �yes, i don�t think rome ought to miss your patronage, maurice.� they parted as intimate friends, but while michael was going downstairs from the studio he thought that it might very easily be for the last time. his mother was at home for tea; lots of women and a bishop were having a committee about something. when they had all rustled away into the mellow june evening, michael asked what had been accomplished. �it�s this terrible state of the london streets,� said mrs. fane. �something has got to be done about these miserable women. the bishop of chelsea has promised to bring in some kind of a bill in parliament. he feels so strongly about it.� �what does he feel?� michael asked. �why, of course, that they shouldn�t be allowed.� �the remedy lies with him,� michael said. �he must take them the sacraments.� �my dearest boy, what are you talking about? he does his best. he�s always picking them up and driving them home in his brougham. he can�t do more than that. really he quite thrilled us with some of his experiences.� michael laughed and took hold of her hand. �what would you say if i told you that i was thinking very seriously of being a priest?� �oh, my dear michael, and you look so particularly nice in tweeds!� michael laughed and went upstairs to pack. he would leave london to-morrow morning. chapter x the old world the train crashed southward from paris through the night; and when dawn was quivering upon the meadows near chambéry michael was sure with an almost violent elation that he had left behind him the worst hardships of thought. waterfalls swayed from the mountains, and the gray torrents they fed plunged along beside the train. down through italy they traveled all day, past the cypresses, and the olive-trees wise and graceful in the sunlight. it was already dusk when they reached the campagna, and through the ghostly light the ghostly flowers and grasses shimmered for a while and faded out. it was hot traveling after sunset; but when the lights of rome broke in a sudden blaze and the train reached the station it was cool upon the platform. michael let a porter carry his luggage to a hotel close at hand. then he walked quickly down the esquiline hill. he wandered on past the restaurants and the barber shops, caring for nothing but the sensation of walking down a wide street in rome. �there has been nothing like this,� he said, �since i walked down the high. there will be nothing like this ever again.� suddenly in a deserted square he was looking over a parapet at groups of ruined columns, and immediately afterward he was gazing up at one mighty column jet black against the starshine. he saw that it was figured with innumerable horses and warriors. �we must seek for truth in the past,� he said. how this great column affected him with the secrets of the past! it was only by that made so much mightier than the bars of his cot in carlington road, which had once seemed to hold passions, intrigues, rumors, ambitions, and revenges. all that he had once dimly perceived as shadowed forth by them was here set forth absolutely. what was this column called? he looked round vaguely for an indication of the name. what did the name matter? there would be time to find a name in the morning. there would be time in the morning to begin again the conduct of his life. the old world held the secret; and he would accept this solitary and perdurable column as the symbol of that secret. �all that i have done and experienced so far,� michael thought, �would not scratch this stone. i have been concerned for the happiness of other people without gratitude for the privilege of service. i have been given knowledge and i fancied i was given disillusion. if now i offer myself to god very humbly, i give myself to the service of man. man for man standing in his own might is a blind and arrogant leader. the reason why the modern world is so critical of the fruits of christianity after nineteen hundred years is because they have expected it from the beginning to be a social panacea. god has only offered to the individual the chance to perfect himself, but the individual is much more anxious about his neighbor. how in a moment our little herds are destroyed, whether in ships on the sea or in towns by earthquake, or by the great illusions of political experiment! soon will come a great war, and everybody will discover it has come either because people are christians or because they are not christians. nobody will think it is because each man wants to interfere with the conduct of his neighbor. that woman in leppard street who died in the peace of god, how much more was she a christian than me, who, without perceiving the beam in my own eye, have trotted round operating on the motes of other people. and once i had to make an effort to kiss her in fellowship. rome! rome! how parochial you make my youth!� the last exclamation was uttered aloud. �meditating upon the decline and fall of the roman empire?� said a voice. a man in a black cloak was speaking. �no; i was thinking of the pettiness of youthful tragedies,� said michael. �there is only one tragedy for youth.� �and that is?� �age,� said the stranger. �and what is the tragedy of age?� �there is no tragedy of age,� said the stranger. the end epilogical letter to john nicolas mavrogordato my dear john, there is, i am inclined to think, a very obstinate shamelessness in prolonging this book with a letter to you. for that reason i append it thus as an epilogue: so that whoever wishes to read it will only have himself to blame, since he will already, as i hope, have finished the book. you will remember that last year �youth�s encounter,� the first part of michael fane�s story, obtained a great advertisement through the action of certain libraries. whatever boom was thus effected will certainly be drowned this year in the roar of cannon, and the doctrine of compensation is in no danger of being disproved. i fancy, too, that the realities of war will obtain me a pardon in �sinister street,� the second volume, for anything that might formerly have offended the sensitive or affronted the simple. much more important than libraries and outraged puritans is the question of the form of the english novel. there has lately been noticeable in the press a continuous suggestion that the modern novel is thinly disguised autobiography; and since the lives of most men are peculiarly formless this suggestion has been amplified into an attack upon the form of the novel. in my own case many critics have persisted in regarding �youth�s encounter� merely as an achievement of memory, and i have felt sometimes that i ought to regard myself as a sort of literary datas, rather than as a mask veiling the nature of a novelist. you know from many hours of talk that if i were to set down all i could remember of my childhood, the book would not by this time have reached much beyond my fifth year. obviously in so far as i chose my own public school and my own college at oxford there has been autobiography, but i fancy it would have been merely foolish to send michael to cambridge, a place of which i know absolutely nothing. yourself assures me that nowadays it is a much better university than oxford, and in thinking thus you are the only oxford man who has ever held such a heresy. obviously, too, it was unavoidable in writing about st. james� that i should draw certain characters from the life, and for doing this i have been attacked on grounds of good taste. i do not recognize the right of schoolmasters to be exempt from the privilege of public men to be sometimes caricatured. therefore, i offer no apology for doing so. with regard to the oxford dons i felt it really would be unfair to apply to them what is after all much more likely to be a true impression of their virtues and follies than those formed by a schoolboy of his masters. therefore, in this second volume, �sinister street,� there is not a single portrait of a don. as a matter of fact, dons are to the undergraduate a much less important factor than the schoolmaster is to the schoolboy, and the few shadows of dons which appear in this volume are as vital as most dons in the flesh seem to the normal undergraduate. the theme of these two stories is the youth of a man who presumably will be a priest. i shall be grateful if my readers will accept it as such rather than as an idealized or debased presentation of my own existence up to the age of twenty-three. whether or not it was worth writing at such length depends finally, i claim, upon the number of people who can bear to read about it. a work of art is bounded by the capacity of the spectator to apprehend it as a whole. this on your authority was said by aristotle. �art,� says _the sydney bulletin_, a curious antipodean paper, �is selection.� �it is time to protest,� says an american paper, �against these long books.� at this rate, we shall soon be spending all our time with books. �the enormous length must make it formless,� other critics have decided. ultimately i believe aristotle�s remark to be the truest guide, and i am tempted to hope that with the publication of the second volume many irrelevancies have established their relevancy. it is obvious that were i to continue the life of michael fane to the end of his seventy-second year, his story would run into twenty volumes as thick as this book. my intention, however, was not to write a life, but the prologue of a life. he is growing up on the last page, and for me his interest begins to fade. he may have before him a thousand new adventures: he may become a benedictine monk: he may become a society preacher. i have given you as fully as i could the various influences that went to mold him. your imagination of him as a man will be determined by your prejudice gathered from the narrative of these influences. i do not identify myself with his opinions: at the same time i may believe in all of them. he is to me an objective reality: he is not myself in a looking-glass. i would like to detain you for a moment with a defense of my occasional use of archaic and obsolete words. this is not due to any �preciousness,� but to efforts at finding the only word that will say what i mean. to take two examples: �reasty� signifies �covered with a kind of rust and having a rancid taste,� and it seems to me exactly to describe the london air at certain seasons, and also by several suggestive assonances to convey a variety of subtler effects. �inquiline� sounds a pompous word for lodgers, but it has not yet been sentimentalized like �pilgrim�; it is not an americanism like �transients,� and it does give to me the sense of a fleeting stay; whereas lodgers sound dreadfully permanent since they have been given votes. we have in the english language the richest and noblest in the world, and perhaps after this war we shall hear less of the advocates of pure saxon, an advocacy which personally i find rather like the attitude of the plain man who wants to assert himself on his first introduction to a duke. there remains for me to apologize for the delay in the appearance of this volume. you who know how many weeks i have spent ill in bed this year will forgive me, and through you i make an apology to other readers who by their expressions of interest in the date of the second volume have encouraged me so greatly. finally it strikes me that i have seemed above to be grumbling at criticism. this is not so. i believe there is nobody, certainly no young writer who is under such a debt of obligation as i am to the encouragement and the sympathy of his anonymous critics. accept this dedicatory epilogue, my dear john, as the pledge of our enduring friendship. yours ever, compton mackenzie. none