THIS MORTAL COIL 
 
 VOL. L 
 
 I. 
 
THIS MORTAL COIL 
 
 a JQotiel 
 
 BY 
 
 GRANT ALLEN 
 
 Al'THOK Ob " IN ALL SHADES, 
 
 TMK dkvil's die, K'H-- 
 
 3^ 
 
 K'b 
 
 ,o3 
 
 /A^ y7/J?£^ VOLUMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 Uontjon 
 CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 
 
 1888 
 
 {Ail rights reserved} 
 
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 TO 
 
 FRP]D AND lUISHTON, 
 
 FK ATKUNA I. GRKKTINGH. 
 
 
 
 j^gtHJUMmtm 
 
CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 CHAVTBR 
 I. 
 
 Bohemia ... 
 
 • « f 
 
 PAGR 
 
 1 
 
 II. 
 
 Down Stream... 
 
 • tt • • 
 
 25 
 
 III. 
 
 Arcadia ... 
 
 • •« 
 
 ... 42 
 
 IV. 
 
 BgRiDAN's Ass 
 
 »•• • • 
 
 63 
 
 V. 
 
 Elective Affinities 
 
 • •fl 
 
 ... 81 
 
 VI. 
 
 Which Lady?... 
 
 f » • • • 
 
 106 
 
 VII. 
 
 Friends in Council 
 
 • I • 
 
 ... 131 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Roads divide 
 
 ... 
 
 142 
 
 IX. 
 
 High- WATER 
 
 ... 
 
 ... 162 
 
 X. 
 
 Shuffling it off 
 
 * ■ i 
 
 176 
 
 XI. 
 
 Sink or Swim? 
 
 • «• 
 
 ... 201 
 
 XII. 
 
 The Plan in Execution 
 
 217 
 
 XIII. 
 
 What Success? 
 
 • •• 
 
 ... 236 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Live or Die? ... 
 
 • • • t 
 
 263 
 
 XV. 
 
 The Plan extends itself ... 
 
 .... 271 
 
 XVI. 
 
 From Information received 
 
 . 285 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Breaking a Heart 
 
 • •• 
 
 ... 296 
 
 MaaaMMHttUBii 
 
^1 
 
 I 
 
THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BOHEMIA. 
 
 Whoever knows Bohemian London, knows 
 the smoking-room of the Cheyne Bow Club. 
 No more comfortable or congenial divan 
 exists anywhere between Regent Circus and 
 Hyde Park Corner than that chosen paradise 
 of unrecognized genius. The Cheyne Row 
 Club is not large, indeed, but it prides itself 
 upon being extremely select — too select to 
 admit upon its list of members peers, poli- 
 ticians, country gentlemen, or inhabitants of 
 eligible family residences in Mayfair or 
 Belgravia. Two qualifications are under- 
 stood to be indispensable in condidates for 
 membership : they must be truly great, and 
 
 VOL. I. B 
 
2 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 they must be unsuccessful. Possession of a 
 commodious suburban villa excludes ipso 
 facto. The Club is emphatically the head- 
 quarters of the great Bohemian clan ; the 
 gathering-place of unbung artists, unread 
 novelists, unpaid poets, and unheeded social 
 and political reformers generally. Hither 
 flock all the choicest spirits of the age during 
 that probationary period \, hen society, in its 
 slow and lumbering fa^ihion, is spending 
 twenty years in discovering for itself the 
 bare fact of their distinguished existence. 
 Here Maudle displays his latest designs to 
 Postlethwaite's critical and admiring eye ; 
 here Postletbwaite pours his honeyed sonnets 
 into Handle's receptive and sympathetic 
 tympanum. Everybody who is anybody has 
 once been a member of the " dear old Cheyne 
 Row : " Royal Academicians and Cabinet 
 Ministers and Society Journalists and suc- 
 cessful poets still speak witb lingering pride 
 and affection of the days when they lunched 
 there, as yet undiscovered, on a single chop 
 and a glass of draught claret by no means of 
 the daintiest. 
 
 Not that the Club can number any of them 
 
BOHEMIA, 
 
 t > 
 
 now on its existing roll-call : the Cheyne Row 
 is for prospective celebrity only ; accom- 
 plished facts transfer themselves at once to a 
 statelier site in Pall Mall near the Duke of 
 York's Column. Rising merit frequents the 
 Tavern, as scoffers profanely term it : risen 
 greatness basks ratlier on the lordly stuffed 
 couches of Waterloo Place. No man, it has 
 been acutely observed, remains a Bohemian 
 when he has daughters to marry. The pure 
 and blameless ratepayer avoids Prague. As 
 soon as Smith becomes Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, as soon as Brown takes silk, as 
 soon as Robinson is elected an Associate, as 
 soon as Tompkins publishes his popular 
 novel, they all incontinently with one accord 
 desert the lesser institution in the Piccadilly 
 byway, and pass on their names, their 
 honours, their hats, and their subscriptions 
 to the dignified repose of the Athenseum. 
 For them, the favourite haunt of judge and 
 bishop : for the young, the active, the strug- 
 gling, and the incipient, the chop and claret 
 of the less distinguished but more lively 
 caravanserai by the Green Park purlieus. 
 In the smoking-room of this eminent and 
 
4 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 unsuccessful Bohemian society, at the tag-end 
 of a London season, one warm evening in a 
 hot July, Hugh Massinger, of the Utter Bar, 
 sat lazily by the big bow window, turning 
 over the pages of the last number of the 
 (Viaring Cross Revieiv. 
 
 That he was truly great, nobody could 
 deny. He was in very fact a divine bard, or, 
 to be more strictly accurate, the author of a 
 pleasing and melodious volume of minor 
 poetry. Even away from the Cheyne Bow 
 Club, none but the most remote of country- 
 cousins — say from the wilder parts of Corn- 
 wall or the crofter-clad recesses of the Isle of 
 Skye — could have doubted for a moment the 
 patent fact that Hugh Massinger was a dis- 
 tinguished (though unknown) poet of the 
 antique school, so admirably did he fit his 
 part in life as to features, dress, and general 
 appearance. Indeed, mah'cious persons were 
 wont at times unkindly to insinuate that 
 Hugh was a poet, not because he found in 
 himself any special aptitude for stringing 
 verses or building the lofty rhyme, but 
 because his face and bearing imperatively 
 compelled him to adopt the thankless profes- 
 
BOHEMIA. ,) 
 
 sion of bard in self-justification and self- 
 defence. This was ill-natured, and it was 
 also untrue ; for Hugh Massinger had lisped 
 in numbers — at least in penny ones — ever 
 since he was able to lisp in print at all. 
 Elizabethan or nothing, he had taken to 
 poetry almost from his very cradle ; and had 
 astonished his father at sixteen by a rhymed 
 version of an ode of Horace, worthy the 
 inspiration of the great Dr. Watts himself, 
 and not, perhaps, far below the poetic 
 standard of Mr. Martin Farquhar Tupper. 
 At Oxford he had perpetrated a capital 
 Newdigate ; and two years after gaining his 
 fellowship at Oriel, he had published anony- 
 mously, in parchment covers, " Echoes from 
 Callimachus, and other Poems " — in the style 
 of the early romantic school — which had 
 fairly succeeded by careful nursing in attain- 
 ing the dignity of a second edition under his 
 own name. So that Massinger's claim to the 
 sodality of the craft whose workmen are 
 " born not made " might perhaps be con- 
 sidered as of the genuine order, and not 
 entirely dependent, as cynics averred, upon 
 his long hair, his pensive eyes, his dark- 
 
(5 THIS MOB.TAL COIL. 
 
 brown cheek, or the careless twist of his neck- 
 tie and his shirt-collar. 
 
 Nevertheless, even in these minor details 
 of the poetical character, it must candidly be 
 confessed that Hugh Massinger outstripped 
 by several points many of the more recognized 
 bards whose popular works are published in 
 regulation green-cloth octavos, and whose 
 hats and cloaks, of unique build, adorn with 
 their presence the vestibule pegs of the 
 Athenajum itself. He went back to the 
 traditions of the youth of our century. The 
 undistinofuished author of " Echoes from 
 Callimachus" was tall and pale, and a trifle 
 Byronic. That his face was beautiful, ex- 
 tremely beautiful, even a hostile review^er in 
 the organ of another clique could hardly 
 venture seriously to deny : those large grey 
 eyes, that long black hair, that exquisitely 
 chiselled and delicate mouth, would alone 
 have sufficed to attract attention and extort 
 admiration anywhere in the universe, or at 
 the very least in the solar system. 
 
 Hugh Massinger, in short, was (like Cole- 
 ridge) a noticeable man. It would have been 
 impossible to pass him by, even in a crowded 
 
BOHEMIA. 
 
 street, without a hurried glance of observa- 
 tion and pleasure at his singularly graceful 
 and noble face. He looked and moved every 
 inch a poet ; delicate, refined, cultivated, 
 expressive, and sicklied o'er with that pale 
 cast of thought which modern aBstheticism so 
 cruelly demands as a proof of attachment 
 from her highest votaries. Yet at the same 
 time, in spite of deceptive appearances to the 
 contrary, he was strong in muscular strength : 
 a wiry man, thin, but well knit : one of those 
 fallacious, uncanny, long-limbed creatures 
 who can scale an Alp or tramp a score or so 
 of miles before breakfast, while looking as if 
 a short stroll through the Park would kill 
 them outright with sheer exhaustion. Alto- 
 gether, a typical poet of the old-fashioned 
 school, that dark and handsome Italianesque 
 man : and as he sat there carelessly, with the 
 paper held before him, in an unstudied atti- 
 tude of natural grace, many a painter might 
 have done worse than choose the author of 
 " Echoes from Callimachus " for the subject 
 of a pretty Academy pot-boiler. 
 
 So Warren Relf, the unknown marine 
 artist, thought to himself in his armchair 
 
^ 
 
 8 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 opposite, as he raised his eyes by chance 
 from the etchings in the Portfolio, and glanced 
 across casually with a hasty look at the 
 undiscovered poet. 
 
 " Has the Charing Cross reviewed your 
 new volume yet ? " he asked politely, his 
 glance meeting Massinger's while he flung 
 down the paper on the table beside him. 
 
 The poet rose and stood with his hands 
 behind his back in an easy posture before the 
 empty fireplace. "I believe it has deigned 
 to assign me half a column of judicious 
 abuse," he answered, half yawning, with an 
 assumption of profound indifference and con- 
 tempt for the Charing Cross Review and all 
 its ideas or opinions collectively. " To tell 
 you the truth, the subject's one that doesn't 
 interest me. In the first place, I care very 
 little for my own verses. And in the second 
 place, I don't care at all for reviewers generally, 
 or for the Charing Cross Snarler and its kind 
 in particular. I disbelieve altogether in 
 reviews, in fact. Familiarity breeds con- 
 tempt. To be quite candid, I've written too 
 many of them." 
 
 " If criticism in literature's like criticism 
 
BOHEMIA. 9 
 
 in art," the young painter rejoined, smiling, 
 *- why, with the one usual polite exception of 
 yourself, Massinger, I can't say I think very 
 much of the critics. — But what do you mean, 
 I should like to know, by saying you don't 
 care for your own verses ? Surely no man 
 can do anything great, in literature or art — 
 or in shoe-blacking or pig-sticking, if it 
 comes to that — unless he thoroughly believes 
 in his own vocation." 
 
 Massinger laughed a musical laugh. " In 
 shoe-blacking or pig-sticking," he said with a 
 delicate curl of his thin lips, " that's no doubt 
 true ; but in verse-making, query ? Who on 
 earth at the present day could even pretend 
 to himself to believe in poetry ? Time was, I 
 dare say, — though I'm by no means sure of it 
 — when the bard, hoary old impostor, was a 
 sort of prophet, and went about the world 
 with a harp in his hand, and a profound con- 
 viction in his innocent old heart that when 
 he made ' Sapphic ' rhyme to ' traffic,' or pro- 
 duced a sonnet on the theme of ' Catullus,' 
 'lull us,' and 'cull us,' he was really and 
 truly enriching humanity with a noble gift of 
 divine poesy. If the amiable old humbug 
 
10 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 could actually bring himself to believe in his 
 soul that stringing together fourteen lines 
 into an indifferent piece, or balancing 
 ' mighty ' to chime with ' Aphrodite,' in best 
 Swinburnian style, was fulfilling his appointed 
 function in the scheme of the universe, I'm 
 sure I should be the last to interfere with the 
 agreeable delusion under which (like the 
 gentlemen from Argos in Horace) he must 
 have been labouring. It's so delightful to 
 believe in anything, that for my own part I 
 wouldn't attempt to insinuate doubts into the 
 mind of a contented Buddhist or a devout 
 worshipper of Mumbo Jumbo." 
 
 "But surely you look upon yourself as a 
 reaction against this modern school of Swin- 
 burnians and ballad-mongers, don't you ? " 
 Relf said with a shrug. 
 
 " Of course I do. Byron's my man. I go 
 back to the original divine inspiration of the 
 romantic school. It's simpler, and it's easier. 
 But what of that ? Our method's all the 
 same at bottom, after all. Who in London 
 in this nineteenth century can for a moment 
 affect to believe in the efficacy of poetry? 
 Look at this last new volume of my own, for 
 
I BOHEMIA. 11 
 
 ^ 
 
 example! — You won't look at it, of course, 
 Tm well aware, but that's no matter : nobody 
 ever does look at my immortal works, I'm only 
 too profoundly conscious. I cut them myself 
 in a dusty copy at all the libraries, in order 
 to create a delusive impression on the mind 
 of the public that I've had at least a solitary 
 reader. But let that pass. — Look, meta- 
 phorically, I mean, and not literally, at this 
 last new volume of mine ! How do you 
 think a divine bard does it ? Simply by 
 taking a series of rhymes — ' able,' and * stable,' 
 and 'table,' and 'cable;' 'Mabel,' and 'Babel,' 
 and ' fable,' and ' gable ' — and weaving them 
 all together cunningly by a set form into a 
 Procrustean mould to make up a poem. 
 Perhaps ' gable,' which you've mentally fixed 
 upon for the fourth line, won't suit the sense. 
 Very well, then ; you must do your best to 
 twist something reasonable, or at least in- 
 offensive, out of ' sable ' or * label,' or ' Cain 
 and Abel,' or anything else that will make 
 up the rhyme and complete the metre." 
 '* And is that your plan, Massinger ? " 
 " Yes, all this last lot of mine are done like 
 that : just bouts rimes — I admit the fact ; for 
 
12 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 what's all poetry but bouts rimes in the 
 highest perfection ? Mechanical, mechanical. 
 I draw up a lot of lists of rhymes beforehand : 
 ' kirtle/ and ' myrtle/ and * hurtle,' and 
 ' turtle ' (those are all original) ; * paean,' 
 ' ^gean,' * plebeian,' and ' Tean ' (those are 
 fairly new) ; ' battle,' and ' cattle,' and 
 ' prattle,' and * rattle ' (those are all common- 
 place) ; and then, when the divine afflatus 
 seizes me, I take out the lists and con them 
 over, and weave them up into an undying 
 so.ig for future generations to go wild about 
 and comment upon. ' What profound thought,' 
 my unborn Malones and Furnivalls and Leos 
 will ask confidingly in their learned editions, 
 ' did the immortal bard mean to convey by 
 this obscure couplet ? ' I'll tell you in con- 
 fidence. He meant to convey the abstruse 
 idea that ' passenger ' was the only English 
 word he could find in the dictionary at all 
 like a rhyme to the name of * Massinger.' " 
 
 Warren Eelf looked up at him a little un- 
 easily. 
 
 " I don't like to hear you run down poetry 
 like that," he said, with an evident tinge of 
 disapprobation. " I'm not a poet myself, of 
 
no HE MIA. 13 
 
 course ; but still I'm sure it isn't all a mere 
 matter of rhymes and refrains, of epithets 
 and prettinesses. What touches our hearts 
 lies deeper than mere expression, I'm certain. 
 It lies in the very core and fibre of the man. 
 There are passages even in your own poems 
 — though you're a great deal too cynical to 
 admit it now^ — that came straight out of the 
 depths of your own heart, I venture to con- 
 jecture — those ' Lines on a Lock of Hair,' for 
 example. — Aha, cynic! there I touched you 
 on the raw. — But if you think so lightly of 
 poetry as a pursuit, as you say, I wonder 
 why you ever came to take to it." 
 
 " Take to it, my dear fellow ! What an 
 Arcadian idea ! As if men nowadays chose 
 their sphere in life deliberately. Why, what 
 on earth makes any of us ever take to 
 anything, I should like to know, in this 
 miserable workaday modern world of ours ? 
 Because we're simply pitchforked into it by 
 circumstances. Does the crossing-sweeper 
 sweep crossings, do you suppose, for example, 
 by pure preference for the profession of a 
 sweep ? Does the milkman get up at five in 
 the morning because he sees in the purveying 
 
14 THIS MOIiTAL COIL. 
 
 of skim-milk to babes and sucklings a useful, 
 important, and even necessary industry to the 
 rising generation of this great Metropolis ? 
 Does the dustman empty the domestic bin out 
 of disinterested regard for public sanitation ? 
 or the engine-driver dash through rain and 
 snow in a drear-nighted December like a 
 Comtist prophet, out of high and noble 
 enthusiasm of humanity ? " He snapped his 
 fingers with an emphatic negative. — " We 
 don't choose our places in life at all, my dear 
 boy," he went on after a pause : *' we get 
 tumbled into them by pure caprice of circum- 
 stances. If I'd chosen mine, instead of strictly 
 meditating the thankless muse, I'd certainly 
 have adopted the exalted profession of a 
 landed proprietor, with the pleasing duty of 
 receiving my rents (by proxy) once every 
 quarter, and spending them royally with 
 becoming magnificence, in noble ways, like 
 the Greek gentleman one reads about in 
 Aristotle. I always admired that amiable 
 Greek gentleman — the megaloprepes, I think 
 Aristotle calls him. His berth would suit 
 me down to the ground. He had nothing at 
 all of any sort to do, and he did it most 
 
BOUEMTA. 
 
 15 
 
 gracefully with princely generosity on a 
 sufficient income." 
 
 " But you must write poetry for something 
 or other, Massinger; for if it isn't rude to 
 make the suggestion, you can hardly write it, 
 you know, for a livelihood." 
 
 Massinger's dark face flushed visibly. " I 
 write for fame," he answered majestically, 
 with a lordly wave of his long thin hand. 
 '* For glory — for honour — for time — for 
 eternity. Or, to be more precisely definite, 
 if yon prefer the phrase, for filthy lucre. In 
 the coarse and crude phraseology of political 
 economists, poetry takes rank nowadays, I 
 humbly conceive, as a long investment. I'm 
 a journalist by trade — a mere journeyman 
 journalist ; a gushing penny-a-liner of a 
 futile and demoralized London press. But I 
 have a soul within me above penny-a-lining : 
 I aspire ultimately to a pound a word. I 
 don't mean to live and die in Grub Street. 
 My soul looks forward to immortality, and a 
 footman in livery. Now, when once a man 
 has got pitchforked by fate into the rank and 
 file of contemporary journalism, there are 
 only two ways possible for him to extricate 
 
IG THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 himself with peace and honour from his 
 unfortunate position. One way is to write a 
 successful novel. That's the easiest, quickest, 
 and most immediate short-cut from Grub 
 Street to Eaton Place and affluence that I 
 know of anywhere. But unhappily it's 
 crowded, immensely overcrowded — vehicular 
 traffic for the present entirely suspended. 
 Therefore, the only possible alternative is to 
 take up poetry. The muse must descend to 
 feel the pulse of the market. I'm conscious 
 of the soul of song within me ; that is to say, 
 I can put ' Myrrha ' to rhyme with * Pyrrha,' 
 and alliterate JOS and ^s and w^ with any man 
 living (bar Algernon) in all England. Now, 
 poetry's a very long road round, I admit — 
 like going from Kensington to the City by 
 Willesden Junction : but in the end, if 
 properly worked, it lands you at last by a 
 circuitous route in fame and respectability. 
 To be Poet Laureate is eminently respectable. 
 A man can live on journalism meanwhile ; 
 but if he keeps pegging away at his Pegasus 
 in his spare moments, without intermission, 
 like a costermonger at his donkey, Pegasus 
 will raise him after many days to the top of 
 
BOHEMIA. 
 
 17 
 
 Parnassus, where he can build himself a 
 commodious family residence, lighted through- 
 out with electric lights, and commanding a 
 magnificent view in every direction over the 
 Yale of Tempe and the surrounding country. 
 Tennyson's done it already at Aldworth : 
 why shouldn't I, too, do it in time on 
 Parnassus ? " 
 
 Relf smiled dubiously, and knocked the 
 ash off his cigar into the Japanese tray that 
 stood by his side. " Then you look upon 
 poetry merely as an ultimate means of 
 making money ? " he suggested, with a 
 deprecatory look. 
 
 " Money ! Not money only, my dear 
 fellow, but position, reputation, recognition, 
 honour. Does any man work for anything 
 else ? Any man, I mean, but cobblers and 
 enthusiasts ? " 
 
 " Well, I don't know. I may be an 
 enthusiast myself," Relf answered slowly; 
 '* but I certainly do work at art to a great 
 extent for art's sake, because I really love 
 and admire and delight in it. Of course I 
 should like to make money too, within reason- 
 able limits — enough to keep myself and my 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
18 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 people in a modest sort of way, without the 
 footman or the eligible family residence. 
 Not that I want to be successful, either : 
 from what I've seen of successful men, I 
 incline to believe that success as a rule has 
 a very degenerating effect upon character. 
 Literature, science, and art thrive best in a 
 breezy, bracing air. I never aim at beinjr a 
 successful man myself; and if I go on as ± m 
 doing now, I shall no doubt succeed in not 
 succeeding. But apart from the money and 
 the livelihood altogether, I love my work as 
 an occupation. 1 like doing it; and I like 
 to see myself growing stronger and freer at 
 it every day." 
 
 '* That's all very well for 3'ou," Massinger 
 replied with another expansive wave of his 
 graceful hand. " You're doing work you 
 care for, as I play lawn-tennis, for a personal 
 amusement. I can sympathize with you 
 there. I once felt the same about poetry 
 myself. But that was a long time ago : 
 those days are dead — dead — hopelessly dead, 
 as dead as Mad Margaret's affidavit. I'm a 
 sceptic now : my faith in verse has evaporated 
 utterly. Have I not seen the public devour 
 
BOHEMIA. 
 
 ]() 
 
 ten successive editions of the ' E'pic of 
 Washerwomen,' or something of the sort ? 
 Have I not seen them reject the good and 
 cleave unto the evil, like the children of 
 Israel wandering in the Wilderness? I 
 know now that the world is hollow, and that 
 my doll is stuffed with sawdust. — Let's quit 
 the subject. It turns me always into a 
 gloomy pessimist. — What are you going to 
 do with yourself this summer ? " 
 
 "Me? Oh, just the usual thing, I sup- 
 pose. Going down in my tub to paint sweet 
 mudbanks off the coast of Suffolk.'' 
 
 " Suffolk to wit ! I see the finger of fate 
 in that ! Why, that's just where I'm going 
 too. I mean to take six or eight weeks' 
 holiday, if a poor drudge of a journalist can 
 ever be said to indulge in holidays at all — 
 with books for review, and proofs for correc- 
 tion, and editorial communications for con- 
 sideration, always weighing like a ton of lead 
 upon his unhappy breast : and I propose to 
 bury myself alive up to the chin in some 
 obscure, out-of-the-way Suffolk village they 
 call Whitestrand. — Have you ever heard of 
 it?" 
 
20 TBm MORTAL COIL. 
 
 " Oh, I know it well," Eelf answered with 
 a smile of delightful reminiscence. " It's 
 grand for mud. I go there painting again 
 and again. You'd call it the funniest little 
 stranded old-world village you ever came 
 across anywhere in England. Nothing could 
 be uglier, quainter, or more perfectly charm- 
 ing. It lies at the mouth of a dear little 
 muddy creek, with a funny old mill for 
 pumping the water off the sunken meadows ; 
 and all around for miles and miles is one 
 great flat of sedge and seapink, alive with 
 water-birds and intersected with dikes, where 
 the herons fish all day long, poised on one 
 leg in the middle of the stream as still as 
 mice, exactly as if they were sitting to Marks 
 for their portraits." 
 
 " Ah, delightful for a painter, I've no 
 doubt," Hugh Massinger replied, half yawn- 
 ing to himself, " especially for a painter to 
 whom mud and herons are bread and butter, 
 and brackish water is Bass and Allsopp'jr-but 
 scarcely, you'll admit, an attractive picture to 
 the inartistic public, among whom I take the 
 liberty, for this occasion only, humbly to rank 
 myself. I go there, in fact, as a martyr to 
 
BOHEMIA. 
 
 21 
 
 principle. I live for others. A member of 
 my family — not to put too fine a point upon 
 it, a lady — abides for the present moment at 
 Whitestrand, and believes herself to be seized 
 or possessed by prescriptive right of a lien 
 or claim to a certain fixed aliquot portion of 
 my time and attention. I've never admitted 
 the claim myself (being a legally-minded 
 soul) ; but just out of the natural sweetness 
 of my disposition, I go down, occasionally 
 (without prejudice) to whatever part of Eng- 
 land she may chance to be inhabiting, for the 
 sake of not disappointing her foregone expec- 
 tations, however ill-founded, and be the same 
 more or less. — You observe, I speak with the 
 charming precision of the English statute- 
 book." 
 
 " But how do you meo.n to get to White- 
 strand ? " Eelf asked suddenly after a short 
 pause. " It's a difficult place to reach, you 
 know. There's no station nearer than ten 
 miles off, and that a country one, so that 
 when you arrive there, you can get no con- 
 veyance to take you over." 
 
 " So my cousin gave me to understand. 
 She was kind enough to provide me with 
 
22 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 minute instructions for her bookless wilds. I 
 believe Fm to hire a costerraonger's cart or 
 something of the sort to convey my port- 
 manteau ; and I'm to get across myself by the 
 aid of the natural means of locomotion with 
 which a generous providence or survival of 
 the fittest has been good enough to endow 
 me by hereditary transmission. At least, so 
 my cousin Elsie instructs me." 
 
 " Why not come round with me in the 
 tub ? " Relf suggested good-humouredly. 
 
 " What ? your yacht ? Hatherley was 
 telling me you were the proud possessor of 
 a ship. — Are you going round that way any 
 time shortly ? " 
 
 " Well, she's not exactly what you call a 
 yacht," Eelf replied, with an apologetic tinge 
 in his tone of voice. " She's only a tub, you 
 know, an open boat almost, with a covered 
 well and just room for three to sleep and feed 
 in. ' A poor thing, but mine own,' as Touch- 
 stone says ; as broad as she's long, and as 
 shallow as she's broad, and quite flat- 
 bottomed, drawing so little water at a pinch 
 that you can sail her across an open meadow 
 when there's a heavy dew on. — And if you 
 
BOHEMIA. 
 
 
 come, you'll have to work your passage, of 
 course. I navigate her myself, as captain, 
 crew, cabin-boy, and passenger, with one 
 other painter fellow to share watches with 
 me. The fact is, I got her built as a sub- 
 stitute for rooms, because I found it cheaper 
 than taking lodgings at a seaside place and 
 hiring a rowboat whenever one wanted one. 
 I cruise about the English coast with her in 
 summer; and in the cold months, I run her 
 round to the Mediterranean. And besides, 
 one can get into such lovely little side-creeks 
 and neglected channels, all full of curious 
 objects of interest, which nobody can ever see 
 in anything else. She's a perfect treasure to 
 a marine painter in the mud-and-buoy busi- 
 ness. But I won't for a moment pretend to 
 say she's comfortable for a landsman. If you 
 come with me, in fact, you'll have to rough 
 
 it. 
 
 »> 
 
 "I love roughing it. — How long will it 
 take us to cruise round to Whitestrand ? " 
 
 " Oh, the voyage depends entirely upon 
 the wind and tide. Sailing-boats take their 
 own ti.ne. The Mud-Turtle — that's what I 
 call her — doesn't hurry. She's lying now off 
 
24 THIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 the Pool at the Tower, taking care of herself 
 in the absence of all her regular crew ; and 
 Potts, my mate, he's away in the north, 
 intending to meet me next week at Lowestoft, 
 where my mother and sister are stopping in 
 lodgings. We can start on our cruise when- 
 ever you like — say, if you choose, to-morrow 
 morning." 
 
 " Thanks, awfully," Hugh answered, with 
 a nod of assent. " To tell you the truth, I 
 should like nothing better. It'll be an ex- 
 perience, and the wise man lives upon new 
 experiences. Pallas, you remember, in 
 Tennyson's " CEnone," recommended to Paris 
 the deliberate cultivation of experiences as 
 such. — I'll certainly go. For my own part, 
 like Saint Simon I mean in my time to have 
 tried everything. Though Saint Simon, to 
 be sure, went rather far, for I believe he even 
 took a turn for a while at picking pockets." 
 
( 25 ) 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 DOWN STREAM. 
 
 Tide served next morning at eleven; and 
 punctual to the minute — for, besides being 
 a poet, he prided himself on his qualities 
 as a man of business — Hugh Massinger sur- 
 rendered himself in due course by previous 
 appointment on board the Mud-Turtle at the 
 Pool by the Tower. But his eyes were 
 heavier and redder than they had seemed 
 last night ; and his wearied manner showed 
 at once, by a hundred little signs, that he 
 had devoted but small time since Relf left him 
 to what Mr. Herbert Spencer periphrastically 
 describes as "reparative processes." 
 
 The painter, attired for the sea like a 
 common sailor in jersey and trousers and 
 knitted woollen cap, rose up from the deck to 
 greet him hospitably. His whole appearance 
 
26 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 betokened serious business. It was evident 
 that Warren Relf did not mean to play at 
 yachting. 
 
 " You've been making a night of it, I'm 
 afraid, Massinger," he said, as their eyes met. 
 ** Bad preparation, you know, for a day down 
 the river. We shall have a loppy sea, if this 
 wind holds, when we pass the Nore. You 
 ought to have gone straight to bed ^vhen you 
 left the club with me last evening." 
 
 " I know I ought," the poet responded 
 with affected cheerfulness. "The path of 
 duty's as plain as a pikestaff. But the things 
 I ought to do I mostly leave undone ; and 
 the things I ought not to do, I find, on the 
 contrary, vastly attractive. I may as well 
 make a clean breast of it. I strolled round 
 to Pallavicini's after you vacated the Row 
 last night, and found them having a turn or 
 two at lansquenet. Now, lansquenet's an 
 amusement I never can resist. The con- 
 sequence was, in three hours I was pretty 
 well cleaned out of ready cash, and shall 
 have to keep my nose to the grindstone 
 accordingly all through what ought by rights 
 to have been my summer holiday. This con- 
 
DOWN STREAM. 
 
 27 
 
 clusively shows the evils of high play, and 
 the moral superiority of the wise man who 
 goes home to bed and is sound asleep when 
 the clock strikes eleven." 
 
 Relfs face fell several tones. " I wish, 
 Massinger," he said very gravely, *' you'd 
 make up your mind never to touch those 
 hateful cards again. You'll ruin your health, 
 your mind, and your pocket with them. If 
 you spent the time you spend upon play in 
 writing some really great book now, you'd 
 make in the end ten times as much by it." 
 
 The poet smiled a calm smile of superior 
 wisdom. *' Good boy ! he cried, patting 
 Relf on the back in mock approbation of his 
 moral advice. " You talk for all the world 
 like a Sunday-school prize-book. Honest 
 industry has its due reward ; while pitch- 
 and-toss and wicked improper games land 
 one at last in prison or the workhouse. The 
 industrious apprentice rises in time to be 
 Lord Mayor (and to appropriate the public 
 funds ad libitum) ; whereas, the idle apprentice, 
 degraded by the evil influences of ha'penny 
 loo, ends his days with a collar of hemp 
 round his naughty neck in an equally exalted 
 
28 THIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 but perhaps less dignified position in life — on 
 a platform at Newgate. My dear Keif, how 
 on earth can you, who are a sensible man, 
 believe all that antiquated nursery rubbish ? 
 Cast your ^yes for a moment on the world 
 around you, here in the central hub of 
 London, within sight of all the wealth and 
 squalor of England, and ask yourself candidly 
 whether what you see in it at all corresponds 
 with the idyllic picture of the little-Jack- 
 Horner school of moralists. As a matter of 
 fact, is it always the good boys who pull the 
 plums with self-appreciative smile out of the 
 world's pudding ? Far from it : quite the 
 other way. I have seen the wicked flourish- 
 ing in my time like a green bay-tree. Honest 
 industry breaks stones on the road, while 
 successful robbery or successful gambling- 
 rolls by at its ease, cigar in mouth, lolling on 
 the cushions of its luxurious carriage. If 
 you stick to honest industry all your life 
 long, you may go on breaking stones con- 
 tentedly for the whole term of your natural 
 existence. But if you speculate boldly with 
 your week's earnings and land a haul, you 
 may set another fellow to break stones for 
 
DOWN STREAM, 
 
 20 
 
 you in time, and then you become at once a 
 respectable man, a capitalist, and a baronet. 
 All tlie great fortunes we see in the world 
 have been piled up in the last resort, if you'll 
 only believe it, by successful gambling." 
 
 " Every man has a right to his own 
 opinion," Warren Eelf answered with a more 
 serious air, as he turned aside to look after 
 the rigging. " I admit there's a great deal 
 of gambling in business ; but anyhow, honest 
 industry's a simple necessary on board the 
 Mud-Turtle. — Come aft, here, will you, from 
 your topsy-turvy moral philosophy, and help 
 me out with this sheet and the mainsail. 
 Before we reach the German Ocean, you'll 
 have the whole art of navigation at your 
 fingers' ends — for I mean to sketch while 
 you manage the ship — and be in a position 
 to write an ode in a Catalonian metre on the 
 Pleasures of Luffing, and the True Delight of 
 the Thames Waterway." 
 
 Massinger turned to do as he was directed, 
 and to inspect the temporary floating hotel in 
 which he was to make his way contentedly 
 down to the coast of Suffolk. The Mud- 
 Turtle was indeed as odd-looking and original 
 
30 THIS MOBTAL COIL. 
 
 a little craft as her owner and skipper had 
 proclaimed her to be. A centre-board yawl, 
 of seventeen tons registered burden, she 
 ranked as a yacht only by courtesy, on the 
 general principle of what the logicians call 
 excluded middle. If she wasn't that, wh}?, 
 then, pray what in the world was she ? The 
 Mud- Turtle measured almost as broad across 
 the beam as she reckoned feet in length from 
 stem to stern ; and her skipper maintained 
 with profound pride that she couldn't capsize 
 in the worst storm that ever blew out of an 
 English sky, even if she tried to. She drew 
 no more than three feet of water at a pinch ; 
 and though it was scarcely true, as Eelf had 
 averred, that a heavy dew was sufficient to 
 float her, she could at least go anywhere that 
 a man could wade up to his knees without 
 fear of wetting his tucked-up breeches. This 
 made her a capital boat for a marine artist to 
 go about sketching in ; for Eelf could lay 
 her alongside a wreck on shallow sands, or 
 run her up a narrow creek after picturesque 
 waterfowl, or a23proach the riskiest shore 
 to the very edge of the cliffs, without 
 any reference to the state of the tide, or 
 
DOWN STREAM. 
 
 31 
 
 the probable depth of the surrounding 
 channel. 
 
 " If she grounds," the artist said enthusiasti- 
 cally, expatiating on her merits to his new 
 passenger, "you see it doesn't really matter 
 twopence ; for the next high tide'll set her 
 afloat again within six hours. She's a great 
 opportunist : she knows well that all things 
 come in time to him who can wait. The 
 Mud' Turtle positively revels in mud; she 
 lies flat on it as on her native heath, and 
 stays patiently without one word of reproach 
 for the moon's attraction to come in its round 
 to her ultimate rescue." 
 
 The yawl's accommodation was opportunist 
 too : though excellent in kind, it was limited 
 in quantity, and by no means unduly luxurious 
 in quality. She was a working-man's yacht, 
 and she meant business. Her deck was 
 calculated on the most utilitarian principles 
 — just big enough for two persons to sketch 
 abreast ; her cabin contained three wooden 
 bunks, with their appropriate complement of 
 rugs and blankets ; and a small and primitive 
 open stove devoted to the service of the ship's 
 cookery, took up almost all the vacant space 
 
32 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 in the centre of the well, leaving hardly room 
 for the self-sacrificing volunteer who under- 
 took the functions of purveyor and bottle- 
 washer to turn about in. But the lockers 
 were amply stored with fresh bread, tinned 
 meats, and other simple necessaries for a 
 week's cruise ; while food for the mind 
 existed on a small shelf at the stern in the 
 crude shape of the *' Coaster's Companion," 
 the Sailing Directions issued by authority 
 of the Honourable Brethren of the Trinity 
 House, and the charts of the Thames, con- 
 structed from the latest official surveys of Her 
 Majesty's Board of Admiralty. Thus equipped 
 and accoutred Warren Relf was accustomed 
 to live an out-door life for weeks together with 
 his one like-minded chum and companion ; 
 and if the spray was sometimes rather moist, 
 and the yellow fog rather thick and slabby, and 
 the early mornings rather chill and raw, and 
 the German Ocean rather loppy and aggressive 
 on the digestive faculties, yet the good dose 
 of fresh air, the delicious salty feeling of the 
 free breeze, and the perpetual sense of ease 
 and lightness that comes with yachting, were 
 more than enough fully to atone to an en- 
 
DOWN STBEAM. 
 
 33 
 
 thusiastic marine artist for all these petty- 
 passing inconveniences. 
 
 As for Hugh Massinger, a confirmed lands- 
 man, the first few hours' sail down the crowded 
 Thames appeared to him at the outset a 
 perfect phantasmagoria of ever varying perils 
 and assorted terrors. He composed his soul 
 to instant death from the very beginning. 
 Not, indeed, that he minded one bit for that : 
 the poet dearly loved danger, as he loved 
 all other forms of sensation and excitement : 
 they were food for the Muse ; and the Muse, 
 like Blanche Amory, is apt to exclaim, " II 
 me faut des emotions ! " But the manifold 
 novel forms of enterprise as the lumbering- 
 little yawl made her way clumsily among the 
 great East-Indiamen and big ocean-going- 
 steamers, darting boldly now athwart the very 
 bows of a huge Monarch-liner, insinuating 
 herself now with delicate precision between 
 the broadsides of two heavy Eochester barges, 
 and just escaping collision now with some 
 laden collier from Cardiif or Newcastle, were 
 too comphcated and too ever-pressing at the 
 first blush for Massinger fully to take in their 
 meaning at a single glance. 
 
 VOL. I. \ li 
 

 34 THIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 The tidal Thames is the Cheapside of the 
 ocean, a mart of many nations, resorting to 
 it by sea and by land. It's all very well 
 going down the river on the Antwerp packet 
 or the outward-bound New-Zealander ; you 
 steam then at your ease along the broad un- 
 encumbered central channel, with serene con- 
 fidence that a duly qualified pilot stands at 
 your helm, and that everybody else will 
 gladly giYQ way to you, for the sake of saving 
 their own bacon. But it's quite another 
 matter to thread your way tortuously through 
 that thronged and bustling highway of the 
 shipping interest in a centre-board yawl of 
 seventeen tons registered burden, manned by 
 a single marine artist and an amateur pas- 
 senger of uncertain seamanship. Hugh 
 Massinger was at once amused and bewildered 
 by the careless confidence with which his 
 seafaring friend dashed boldly in and out 
 among brigs and schooners, smacks and 
 steamships, on port or starboard tack, in 
 endless confusion, backing the little Mud- 
 Turtle to hold her own in the unequal contest 
 against the biggest and swiftest craft that 
 sailed the river. Ilis opinion of Eelf rose 
 
DOWN STREAM. 36 
 
 rapidly many degrees in mental register as 
 he watched him tacking and luffing and 
 scudding and darting with cool unconcern in 
 his toy tub among so many huge and swiftly 
 moving monsters. 
 
 " Port your helm ! " Relf cried to him 
 hastily once, as they crossed the channel just 
 abreast of Grreenwich Hospital. " Here's 
 another sudden death down upon us round 
 the Reach yonder ! " And even as he spoke, 
 a big coal-steamer, with a black diamond 
 painted allusively on her bulky funnel, turn- 
 ing the low point of land that closed their 
 view, bore hastily down upon them from the 
 opposite direction with menacing swiftness. 
 Massinger, doing his best to obey orders, grew 
 bewildered after a time by the glib rapidity 
 of his friend's commands. He was perfectly 
 ready to act as he was bid when once he 
 understood his instructions ; but the seafaring 
 mind seems unable to comprehend that lands- 
 men do not possess an intuitive knowledge of 
 the strange names bestowed by technical souls 
 upon ropes, booms, gaffs, and mizzen-masts ; 
 so that Massinger's attempts to carry out his 
 orders in a prodigious hurry proved produc- 
 
'^6 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 tive for the most part rather of blank confu- 
 sion than of the effect intended by the master 
 skipper. After passing Greenhithe, how- 
 ever, they began to find the channel some- 
 what clearer, and Relf ceased for a while to 
 skip about the deck like the little hills of the 
 Psalmist, while Massinger felt his life com- 
 paratively safe at times for three minutes 
 together, without a single danger menacing 
 him ahead in the immediate future from port 
 or starboard, from bow or stern, from brig or 
 steamer, from grounding or collision. 
 
 About two o'clock, after a hot run, they 
 cast anchor a while out of the main channel, 
 where traders ply their flow of intercourse, 
 and stood by to eat their lunch in peace and 
 quietness under the lee of a projecting point 
 near Gravesend. 
 
 " If wind and tide serve like this," Relf 
 observed philosophically, as he poured out a 
 glassful of beer into a tin mug — the Mud- 
 Turtles appointments were all of the homeliest 
 — " we ought to get down to Whitestrand 
 before an easy breeze with two days' sail, 
 sleeping the nights in the quiet creeks at 
 Leigh and Orfordness." 
 
DOWN STREAM. 37 
 
 " That would exactly suit me," Massinger 
 answered, draining off the mugful at a gulp 
 after his unusual exertion. ** I wrote a hast}?- 
 line to my cousin in Suffolk this morning 
 telling her I should probably reach White- 
 strand the day after to-morrow, wind and 
 weather permitting. — I approve of your ship, 
 Relf, and of your tinned lobster too. It's fun 
 coming down to the great deep in this uncon- 
 ventional way. The regulation yacht, with 
 sailors and a cook and a floating drawing- 
 room, my soul wouldn't care for. You can 
 get drawing-rooms galore any day in Bel- 
 gravia ; but picnicking like this, with a spice 
 of adventure in it, falls in precisely with my 
 own view of the ends of existence." 
 
 " It's a cousin you're going down to Suffolk 
 to see, then ? " 
 
 " Well, yes ; a cousin — a sort of a cousin : 
 a Girton girl ; the newest thing out in 
 women. I call her a cousin for convenience' 
 sake. Not too nearly related, if it comes to 
 that ; a surfeit of family's a thing to be 
 avoided. But we're a decadent tribe, the 
 tribe of Massinger ; hardly any others of us 
 left alive ; when I put on my hat, I cover all 
 
38 THIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 that remains of us ; and cousinhood's a 
 capital thing in its way to keep up under 
 certain conditions. It enables a man to pay 
 a pretty girl a great deal of respectful 
 attention, without necessarily binding himself 
 down in the end to anything definite in the 
 matrimonial direction." 
 
 " That's rather a cruel way of regarding it, 
 isn't it ? " 
 
 " Well, my dear boy, what's a man to do 
 in these jammed and crushed and overcrowded 
 days of ours? Nature demands the safety- 
 valve of a harmless flirtation. If one can't 
 afford to marry, the natural affections will 
 find an outlet, on a cousin or somebody. But 
 it's quite impossible, as things go nowadays, 
 for a penniless man to dream of taking to 
 wife a penniless woman and living on the 
 sum of their joint properties. According to 
 Cocker, nought and nought 'make nothing. 
 So one must just wait till one's chance in life 
 turns up, one way or the other. If you 
 make a fluke some day, and paint a successful 
 picture, or write a successful book, or get off 
 a hopeless murderer at the Old Bailey, or 
 invent a new nervous disease for women, or 
 
DOWN STREAM. 39 
 
 otherwise rise to sudden fortune by any one 
 of the usual absurd roads, then you can marry 
 your pretty cousin or other little girl in a 
 lordly way out of your own resources. If 
 not, you must just put up with the plain 
 daughter of an eminent alderman in the wine 
 and spirit business, or connected with tallow, 
 or doing a good thing in hides, and let her 
 hard cash atone vicariously for your own 
 want of tender affection. When a man has 
 no patrimony, he must obviously make it up 
 in matrimony. Only, the great point to 
 avoid is letting the penniless girl meanwhile 
 get too deep a hold upon your personal 
 feelings. The wisest men — like me, for 
 example — are downright fools when it comes 
 to high play on the domestic instincts. Even 
 Achilles had a vulnerable point, you know. 
 So has every wise man. With Achilles, it 
 was the heel ; with us, it's the heart. The 
 heart will wreck the profoundest and most 
 deliberate philosopher living. I acknowledge 
 it myself. I ought to wait, of course, till I 
 catch the eminent alderman's richly endowed 
 daughter. Instead of that, I shall doubtless 
 fling myself away like a born fool upon the 
 
40 THIS MOIiTAL COIL. 
 
 pretty cousin or some other equally unprofit- 
 able investment." 
 
 " Well, I hope you will," Relf answered, 
 cutting himself a huge chunk of bread with 
 his pocket clasp-knife. '* I'm awfully glad to 
 hear you say so. For your own sake, I hope 
 you'll keep your word. I hope you won't 
 stifle everything you've got that's best 
 within you for the sake of money and position 
 and success. — Have a bit of this corned beef, 
 will you ? — A woman who sells herself for 
 money is bad enough, though it's woman's 
 way — they've all been trained to it for 
 generations. But a man who sells himself 
 for money — who takes himself to market for 
 the highest bidder — who makes capital out 
 of his face and his manners and his conversa- 
 tion — is absolutely contemptible, and nothing 
 short of it. — I could never go on knowing 
 you, if I thought you capable of it. But I 
 don't think you so. I'm sure you do yourself 
 a gross injustice. You're a great deal better 
 than you pretend yourself. If the occasion 
 ever actually arose, you'd follow your better 
 and not your worse nature. — I'll trouble you 
 for the mustard." 
 
DOWN STREAM. 41 
 
 Massiiiger passed it, and pretended to feel 
 awfully bored. " I'm sure I don't know," he 
 answered ; "I shall wait and see. I don't 
 undertake either to read or to guide my own 
 character. According to the fashionable 
 modern doctrine, it was all settled for me 
 irrevocably beforehand by my parents and 
 grandparents in past generations. I merely 
 stand by and watch where it leads me, with 
 passive resignation and silent curiosity. The 
 attitude's not entirely devoid of plot-interest. 
 It's amusing to sit, like the gods of Epicurus, 
 enthroned on high, and look down from 
 without with critical eyes upon the gradual 
 development on the stage of life of one's own 
 history and one's own idiosyncrasy." 
 
42 THIS MORTAL COIR 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ARCADIA. 
 
 The village of Whitestrand, on the Suffolk 
 coast — an oasis in a stretch of treeless desert 
 — was, and is, one of the remotest and most 
 primitive spots to be found anywhere on the 
 shores of England. The railways, running 
 inland away to the west, have left it for ages 
 far in the lurch ; and even the two or three 
 belated roads that converge upon it from 
 surrounding villages lead nowhere. It is, so 
 to speak, an absolute terminus. The World's 
 End is the whimsical title of the last house 
 at Whitestrand. The little river Char that 
 debouches into the sea just below the church, 
 with its scattered group of thatched cottages, 
 cuts off the hamlet effectually with its broad 
 estuary from the low stretch of reclaimed and 
 sluice-drained pasture-land of wiry grass that 
 
ABCADIA. 43 
 
 rolls away to southward. On the north, a 
 rank salt marsh hems it in with broad flats of 
 sedge and thrift and wan sea-lavender ; and 
 eastward, the low line of the German Ocean 
 spreads dimly in front its shallow horizon on 
 the very level of the beach and the village. 
 Only to the west is there any dry land, a 
 sandy heath across whose barren surface the 
 three roads from the neighbouring hamlets 
 meander meaninglessly by tortuous carves 
 towards the steeple of Whitestrand. All 
 around, the country lies flat, stale, and 
 singularly unprofitable. The village, in fact, 
 occupies a tiny triangular peninsula of level 
 ground, whose isthmus is formed by the 
 narrow belt of heath-clad waste which alone 
 connects it with the outer universe. 
 
 The very name Whitestrand, as old as the 
 uays of the Danish invasion of East Anglian 
 plain, at once describes the one striking and 
 noteworthy feature of the entire district. It 
 has absolutely no salient point of its own of 
 any sort, except the hard and firm floor of 
 pure white sand that extends for miles and 
 miles on either side of the village. The 
 sands begin at the diked land south of the 
 
44 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 river — rescued from the tide by Oliver's 
 Dutch engineers — and narrowing gradually 
 as they pass northward, disappear altogether 
 into low muddy cliff some four or five miles 
 beyond the church of Whitestrand. No strip 
 of coast anywhere in England can boast such 
 a splendid beach of uniform whiteness, firm- 
 ness, and solidity. At Whitestrand itself, 
 the sands extend for three-quarters of a mile 
 seaward at low tide, and are so smooth and 
 compact in their consistent level, that a horse 
 can gallop over them at full speed without 
 leaving so much as the mark of a hoof upon 
 the even surface of that natural arena. 
 Whitestranders are enormously proud of their 
 beach; the people of Walberswick, a rival 
 village some miles off, with a local reputation 
 for what passes in Suffolk as rural picturesque- 
 ness, maliciously declare this is because the 
 poor Whitestranders — heaven help them ! — 
 have nothing else on earth to be proud of. 
 Such remarks, however, savour no doubt of 
 mere neighbourly jealousy ; the Walberswick 
 folk, having no beach at all of their own to 
 brag about, are therefore naturally intolerant 
 of beaches in other places. 
 
ARCADIA. 45 
 
 All Whites irand — what there was left of it 
 — belonged to Mr. Wyville Meysey. His 
 family had bought the manor and estate a 
 hundred years before, from their elder 
 representatives, when the banking firm of 
 Meysey 's in the Strand was in the first 
 heydey of its financial glory. Unhappily for 
 him, his particular ancestor, a collateral 
 member of the great house, had preferred the 
 respectable position of a country gentleman 
 to an active share in the big concern in 
 London. From that day forth, the sea had 
 been steadily eating away the Meysey estate, 
 till very little was left of it now but salt 
 marsh and sandhills and swampy pasture- 
 lands. 
 
 It was Tuesday when Hugh Massinger 
 and Warren Relf set sail from the Tower on 
 their voyage in the Mud-Turtle down the 
 crowded tidal Thames ; on Thursday morning, 
 two pretty girls sat together on the roots of 
 an old gnarled poplar that overhung the 
 exact point where the Char empties itself 
 into the German Ocean. The Whitestrand 
 poplar, indeed, had formed for three centuries 
 a famous landmark to seafaring men who 
 
46 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 coast round the inlets of the Eastern Counties. 
 In the quaint words of the old county 
 historian, it rose " from the manor of White- 
 strand straight up towards the kingdom of 
 heaven ; " and round its knotted roots and 
 hollow trunk the current ran fierce at the 
 turn of the tides, for it formed the one frail 
 barrier to the encroachment of the sea on 
 that portion of the low and decaying Suffolk 
 coast-line. Everybody had known the 
 Whitestrand poplar as a point to sail by ever 
 since the spacious days of great Elizabeth. 
 When you get in a line with the steeple of 
 Walberswick, with the windmill on Snade 
 Hill opening to the right, you can run 
 straight up the mouth of Char towards 
 the tiny inland port of Woodford. Vessels 
 of small burden in distress off the coast in 
 easterly gales often take shelter in this little 
 creek as a harbour of refuge from heavy 
 weather on the German Ocean. 
 
 The elder of the two girls who sat together 
 picturesquely on this natural rustic seat was 
 dark and handsome, and so like Hugh 
 Massinger himself in face and feature, that 
 no one would have had much difficulty in 
 
ARCADIA. 47 
 
 recognizing her for the second cousin of 
 whom he had spoken, Elsie Challoner. Her 
 expression was more earnest and serious, to 
 be sure, than the London poet's ; her type of 
 beauty was more tender and true ; but she 
 had the same large melting pathetic eyes, 
 the same melancholy and chiselled mouth, 
 the same long black wiry hair, and the same 
 innate grace of bearing and manner in every 
 movement as her Byronic relative. The 
 younger girl, her pupil, was fairer and 
 shorter, a pretty and delicate blonde of 
 eighteen, with clear blue eyes and wistful 
 mouth, and a slender but dainty girlish 
 figure. They sat hand in hand on the roots 
 of the tree, half overarched by its hollow 
 funnel, looking out together over the low flat 
 sea, whose fresh breeze blew hard in their 
 faces, with the delicious bracing coolness and 
 airiness peculiar to the shore of the German 
 Ocean. There is no other air in all England 
 to equal that strong air of Suffolk ; it seems 
 to blow right through and through one, and 
 to brush away the dust and smoke of town 
 from all one's pores with a single whiff of 
 its clear bright purity. 
 
48 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 " How do you think your cousin'll come, 
 Elsie ? " the younger girl asked, twisting her 
 big straw hat by its strings carelessly in her 
 hands. '* I expect he'll drive over in a 
 carriage from Daw's from the Almundham 
 Station." 
 
 " I'm sure I don't know, dear," the elder 
 and darker answered with a smile. " But 
 how awfully interest" I you seem to be, 
 Winifred, in this celebrated cousin of mine ! 
 What a thing it is for a man to be a poet ! 
 You've talked of nothing else the whole 
 morning." 
 
 Winifred laughed. " Cousins are so very 
 rare in this part of the country, you see," she 
 said apologetically. " We don't get sight of 
 a cousin, you know — or, for the matter of 
 that, of any other male human being, erect 
 upon two legs, and with a beard on his face 
 — twice in a twelvemonth. The live young 
 man is rapidly becoming an extinct animal in 
 these parts, I believe. He exists only in the 
 form of a photograph. We shall soon have 
 him stuffed, whenever we catch him, or 
 exhibit a pair of his boots, with a label 
 attached, in a glass case at all the museums. 
 
AliCADIA, 49 
 
 side by side with the dodo and the something- 
 or-other-osaurian. A live young man in a 
 tourist suit is quite a rarity, I declare, 
 nowadays. And then a poet too ! I never 
 in my life set eyes yet upon a genuine 
 all-wool unadulterated poet. — And you say 
 he's handsome, extremely handsome ! Hand- 
 some, and a poet, and a live young man, all 
 at once, like three gentlemen rolled into one, 
 as Mrs. Malaprop says : that's really some- 
 thing to make one's self excited about." 
 
 " Winifred ! Winifred ! you naughty bad 
 girl ! " Elsie laughed out, half in jest and half 
 in earnest, " moderate your transports. 
 You've got no sense of propriety in you, I do 
 believe — and no respect for your instructress's 
 dignity either. I oughtn't to let you talk on 
 like that. It isn't becoming in the guardian 
 of youth. The guardian of youth ought 
 sternly to insist on due reticence in speaking 
 of strangers, especially when they belong to 
 the male persuasion. — But as it's only Hugh, 
 after all, I suppose it really doesn't matter. 
 I look upon Hugh, Winnie, like my own 
 brother." , ' 
 
 ". " What a jolly name, Hugh ! " Winifred 
 
 VOL. 1. 1 
 
50 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 cried, enthusiastically. " It goes so awfully 
 well together, too, Hugh Massinger. There's 
 a great deal in names going well together. 
 I wouldn't marry a man called Adair, now, 
 Elsie, or O'Dowd, either, not if you were to 
 pay me for it (though why you should pay 
 me, I'm sure I don't know), for Winifred 
 Adair doesn't sound a bit nice ; and yet 
 Elsie Adair goes just beautifully. — Winifred 
 Challoner — that's not bad, either. Three 
 syllables, with the accent on the first. 
 Winifred Massinger — that sounds very well 
 too ; best of all, perhaps. I shouldn't mind 
 marrying a man named Massinger." 
 
 " Other things equal," Elsie put in laughing. 
 
 " Oh, of course he must have a moustache," 
 Winifred went on in quite a serious voice. 
 *' Even if a man was a poet, and was called 
 Massinger, and had lovely eyes, and could 
 sing like a nightingale, but hadn't a moustache 
 — a beautiful, long, wiry, black moustache, 
 like the curate's at Snade — I wouldn't for the 
 world so much as look at him. No close- 
 shaven young man need apply. I insist 
 upon a moustache as absolutely indispensable. 
 Not red : red is quite inadmissible. If ever 
 
ABCADIA. 51 
 
 I marry— and I suppose I shall have to, 
 some day, to please papa — I shall lay it down 
 as a fixed point in the settlements, or what- 
 ever you call them, that my husband must 
 have a black moustache, and must bind 
 himself down by contract beforehand as long 
 as I live never to shave it." 
 
 Elsie shaded her eyes with her hand and 
 looked out seaward. " I shan't let you talk 
 so any more, Winnie," she said, with a 
 vigorous effort to be sternly authoritative. 
 " It isn't right ; and you know it isn't. The 
 instructress of youth must exert her authority. 
 We ought to be as grave as a couple of 
 church owls. — What a funny small sailing- 
 boat that is on the sea out yonder ! A 
 regular little tub ! So flat and broad ! She's 
 the roundest boat I ever saw in my life. 
 How she dances about like a walnut-shell on 
 the top of the water ! " 
 
 "Oh, that's the Mud-Turtle!" Winifred 
 cried eagerly, anxious to display her nautical 
 knowledge to the full extent before Elsie, the 
 town-bred governess. " She's a painter's 
 yawl, you know. I've seen her often. She 
 belongs to an artist, a marine artist, who 
 
52 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 comes this way every summer to sketch and 
 paint mud-banks. He lies by up here in the 
 shallows of the creek, and does, oh, the 
 funniest little pictures you ever saw, all full 
 of nothing — just mud and water and weeds 
 and herons — or else a great dull flat stretch 
 of calm sea, with a couple of gulls and a 
 buoy in the foreground. They're very 
 clever, I suppose, for people who understand 
 those things ; but, like the crater of Vesuvius, 
 there's nothing in them. She can go any- 
 where, though, even in a ditch — the Mud- 
 Turtle can ; and she sails like a bird, when 
 she's got all her canvas on. You should just 
 see her in a good breeze, putting out to sea 
 before a fresh sou'-wester ! " 
 
 " She's coming in here now, I think," Elsie 
 murmured, half aloud. — '' Oh no, she's not ; 
 she's gone beyond it, towards the point at 
 Walberswick." 
 
 " That's only to tack," Winifred answered 
 with conscious pride in her superior know- 
 ledge. " She's got to tack because of the 
 wind, you know. She'll come up the creek 
 as soon as she catches the breeze. She'll luff 
 soon. — Look there, now ; they're lufHng her, 
 
AUCADIA. 53 
 
 Then in a minute they'll put her about a bit, 
 and tack again for the creek's mouth. — There 
 you are, you see : she's tacking, as I told you. 
 — That's the artist, the shorter man in the 
 sailor's jersey. He looks like a common A.B. 
 when he's got up so in his seafaring clothes ; 
 but when you hear him speak, you can tell at 
 once by his voice he's really a gentleman. I 
 don't know who the second man is, though, 
 the tall man in th.e tweed suit — he's not the one 
 that generally comes — that's Mr. Potts. But, 
 oh, isn't he handsome ! I wonder if they're 
 going to sail close alcJngside. I do hope they 
 are. The water's awfully deep right in by 
 the poplar here. If they turn up the creek, 
 they'll run under the roots juc>t below us. 
 — They seem to be making signs to us now. 
 — Why, Elsie, the man in the tweed suit's 
 waving his hand to you ! " 
 
 Elsie's face was crimson to look upon. As 
 the instructress of youth, she felt herself 
 distinctly discomposed. " It's my cousin," 
 she cried, jumping up in a tremor of excite- 
 ment, and waving back to him eagerly with her 
 tiny handkerchief. " It's Hugh Massinger ! 
 How very delightful ! He must have come 
 down by sea with the painter." 
 
54 THIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 " They're going to run in just close by the 
 tree," Winifred exclaimed, quite excited also 
 at the sudden apparition of the real live poet. 
 " Oh, Elsie, doesn't he just look poetical ! A 
 man with a face and eyes like that couldn't 
 help writing poetry, even if he didn't want 
 to. He must be a friend of Mr. Eelfs, I 
 suppose. What a lovely, romantic, poetical 
 way to come down from London — tossing 
 about at sea in a glorious breeze on a wee bit 
 of a tub like that funny little Mud-Turtle ! " 
 
 By this time, the yawl, with the breeze 
 in her sails, had run rapidly before the wind 
 for the mouth of the river, and was close upon 
 them by the roots of the poplar. As it 
 neared the tree, Hugh stood up on the deck, 
 bronzed and ruddy with his three days' 
 yachting, and called out cheerily in a loud 
 voice, '* Hullo, Elsie, this is something like a 
 welcome ! We arrive at the port, after a 
 stormy passage on the high seas, and are met 
 at its mouth by a deputation of the leading 
 inhabitants. Shall we take you on board 
 with your friend at once, and carry you up 
 the rest of the way to Whitestrand ? " 
 . Elsie's heart came up into her mouth. She 
 
Alt CAD I A, ' 55 
 
 would have given the world to be able to cry out 
 cordially, "Oh, Hugh, that'd be just lovely; " 
 but propriety and a sense of the duties of her 
 position compelled her instead to answer in a 
 set voice, "Well, thank you; it's ever so 
 kind of you, Hugh ; but we're here in our 
 own grounds, you know, already.— This is 
 Miss Meysey, Winifred Meysey : Winnie, this 
 is my cousin Hugh, dear. Now you know 
 one another.— Hugh, I'm so awfully glad to 
 see you ! " 
 
 Warren Relf turned the bow toward the 
 tree, and ran the yawl close alongside till her 
 tiny taffi-ail almost touched the roots of the 
 big poplar. " That's better," he said. — " Now, 
 Massinger, introduce us. You do it like a 
 Lord Chamberlain, I know. — You won't come 
 up with us, then, Miss Challoner ? " 
 
 Elsie bent her head. " We mustn't," she 
 said candidly, " though I own I should like it. 
 — It's so very long since I've seen you, Hugh. 
 Where are you going to stop at in the 
 village ? You must come up this very after- 
 noon to see me." 
 
 Hugh bowed a bow of profound acqui- 
 escence. " If you say so," he answered with 
 
66 THIS MOltTAL COIL. 
 
 less languor than his wont, **your will is 
 law. We shall certainly come np. — I suppose 
 I may bring my friend Relf with me — the 
 owner and skipper of this magnificent and 
 luxurious vessel ?— We've had the most de- 
 lightful passage down, Elsie. In future, in 
 fact, I mean to live permanently upon a yawl. 
 It's glorious fun. You sail all day before the 
 free, free breeze ; and you dodge the steamers 
 that try to run you down ; and you put up at 
 night in a convenient creek ; and you sleep 
 like a top on the bare boards ; and you live 
 upon sea-biscuit and bottled beer and the 
 fresh sea-air ; and you feel like a king or a 
 Berserker or a street arab ; and you wonder 
 why the dickens you were ever such a stupid 
 fool before as to wear black clothes, and lie on a 
 feather-bed, and use a knife and fork, and eat 
 olives and pate de foie gras, and otherwise 
 give way to the ridiculous foibles of an effete 
 and superannuated western civilization. I 
 never in my life felt anything like it. The 
 blood of the old Sea-kings comes up in my 
 veins, and I've been rhyming 'viking' and 
 ' liking,' and ' striking ' and * diking,' ever 
 since we got well clear of London Bridge, till 
 
aucadia. 57 
 
 this present moment. — I shall write a volume 
 of * Sonnets of the Sea/ and dedicate them 
 duly to you — and Miss Meysey." 
 
 As for Winifred, with a red rose spreading^ 
 over all her face, she said nothing ; hut 
 twirling her hat still in her hand, she gazed 
 and gazed open-eyed, and almost open- 
 mouthed — except that an open mouth is so 
 very unhecoming — upon the wonderful 
 stranger with the big dark eyes, who had 
 thus dropped down from the cloudLi upon the 
 manor of Whitestrand. He was handsome, 
 indeed — as handsome as her dearest dreams ; 
 he had a black moustache, strictly according 
 to contract ; and he talked with an easy off- 
 hand airy grace — the easy grace of the 
 Cheyne Row Club — that was wholly foreign to 
 all her previous experience of the live young 
 man of the county of Suffolk. His tongue 
 was the pen of a ready writer. He poured 
 forth language with the full and regular 
 river-like flow of a practised London journalist 
 and first-leader hand. Crisp adjectives to 
 him came easy as " Yes " or " No," and 
 epigram flowed from his lips like water. 
 , " I'll put her in nearer," Warren Relf said 
 
58 THIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 quietly, after a few minutes, glancing with 
 mute admiration at Elsie's beautiful face and 
 slim figure. — " We're in no hurry to go, of 
 course, Massinger ; we've got the whole day 
 all free before us. — That's the best of navi- 
 gating your own craft you see, Miss Challoner ; 
 it makes you independent of all the outer 
 world beside. Bradshaw ceases to exercise 
 over you his iron tyranny. You've never to 
 catch the four-twenty. You go where you 
 like ; you stop when you please ; you start 
 when you choose ; and if, when you get there, 
 you don't like it, why, you simply go on 
 again till you reach elsewhere. It's the freest 
 life, this life on the ocean wave, that ever 
 was imagined ; though I believe Byron has 
 said the same thing already. — We'll lie by 
 here for half an hour, Hugh, and if you 
 prefer it, I'll put you ashore, and you can 
 walk up through the grounds of the Hall, 
 Avhile I navigate the ship to the Fisherman's 
 Eest, up yonder at Whitestrand." 
 
 As he spoke, he put over the boom for a 
 moment, to lay her in nearer to the roots of 
 the tree. It was an unlucky movement. 
 Winifred was sitting close to the water's edge, 
 
ARCADIA. 59 
 
 with her hat in her hand, dangling over the 
 side. The boom, flapping suddenly in the 
 wind with an unexpected twirl, struck her 
 wrist a smart blow, and made her drop the 
 hat with a cry of pain into the current of 
 the river. Tide was on the ebb ; and almost 
 before they had time to see what had happened, 
 the hat had floated on the swift stream far 
 out of reach, and was careering hastily in 
 circling eddies on its way seaward. 
 
 Hugh Massinger was too good an actor, 
 and too good a swimmer into the bargain, to 
 let slip such a splendid opportunity for a bit 
 of cheap and effective theatrical display. The 
 eyes of Europe and of Elsie were upon him — ■ 
 not to mention the unknown young lady, who, 
 for aught he knew to the contrary, might 
 perhaps turn out to be a veritable heiress to the 
 manor of Whitestrand. He had on his old 
 gray tourist knickerbocker suit, which had seen 
 service, and would be none the worse, if it 
 came to that, for one more wetting. In a 
 second, he had pulled off his coat and boots, 
 sprung lightly to the further deck of the 
 Mud-Turtle, and taken a header in his 
 knickerbockers and stockings and flannel 
 
60 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 shirt into tlie muddy water. In nothing 
 does a handsome man look handsomer than 
 in knickerbockers and flannels. The tide 
 was setting strong in a fierce stream round 
 the corner of the tree, and a few stout strokes, 
 made all the stouter by the consciousness of 
 an admiring trio of spectators, brought the 
 eager swimmer fairly abreast of the truant 
 hat in mid-current. He grasped it hastily in 
 his outstretched hand, waved it with a flourish 
 high above his head, and gave it a twist or 
 two of playful triumph, all wet and dripping, 
 in his graceful fingers, before he turned. An 
 act of daring is nothing if not gracefully or 
 masterfully performed. — And then he wheeled 
 round to swim back to the yawl again. 
 
 In that, however, he had reckoned clearly 
 without his host. The water proved in fact 
 a most inhospitable entertainer. Hand over 
 hand, he battled hard against the rapid 
 current, tying the recovered hat loosely 
 around his neck by its ribbon strings, and 
 striking out vigorously with his cramped and 
 trammelled legs in the vain effort to stem 
 and breast the rushing water. For a minute 
 or so he struggled manfully with the tide, 
 
ARCADIA. 61 
 
 putting all his energy into eacli stroke of his 
 thighs, and making his muscles ache with 
 the violence of his efforts. But it was all to 
 no purpose. The stream was too strong for 
 him. Human thews could never bear it 
 down. After thirty or forty strokes, he 
 looked in front of him casually, and saw, to 
 his surprise, not to say discomfiture, that he 
 was farther away from the yawl than ever. 
 This was distressing — this was even igno- 
 minious ; to any other man than Hugh 
 Massinger, it would indeed have been actually 
 alarming. But to Hugh the ignominy was 
 far more than the peiil : he was so filled with 
 the sentimental and personal side of the 
 difficulty — the consciousness that he was 
 showing himself off to bad advantage before 
 the eyes of two beautiful girls — ^that he never 
 even dreamt of the serious dano^er of beino- 
 swept out to sea and there drowned help- 
 lessly. He only thought to himself how 
 ridiculous and futile he must needs look to 
 that pair of womankind in having attempted 
 with so light a heart a feat that was utterly 
 beyond his utmost powers. 
 
 Vanity is a mighty ruler of men. If Hugh 
 
 L 
 
62 THIS MOBTAL COIL, 
 
 Massinger had stopped there till he died, he 
 would never have called aloud for help. 
 Better death with honour, on the damp bed of 
 a muddy stream, than the shame and sin of 
 confessing one's self openly beaten ^ in fair 
 fight by a mere insignificant tidal river. It 
 was Elsie who first recognized the straits he 
 was in— for though love is blind, yet love is 
 sharp-eyed— and cried out to Warren Relf in 
 an agony of fear : " He can't get back ! The 
 stream's too much for him !— Quick, quick 1 
 You've not a moment to lose ! Put about the 
 boat at once and save him ! " 
 
 With a hasty glance, Relf saw she was 
 rio-ht, and that Hugh was unable to battle 
 su^'ccessfully with the rapid current. He 
 turned the yawl's head with all speed outward, 
 and took a quick tack to get behind the baffled 
 swimmer and intercept him, if possible, on 
 his way toward the sea, whither he was now 
 so quickly and helplessly drifting. 
 
( 63 ) 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 buridan's ass. 
 
 For a minute the two girls stood in breath- 
 less suspense ; then Warren Eelf, cutting in 
 behind with the yawl, flung out a coil of 
 rope in a ring towards Hugh with true sea- 
 faring dexterity, so that it struck the water 
 straight in front of his face flat hke a quoit, 
 enabling him to grasp it and haul himself in 
 without the slightest difficulty. The help 
 came in the nick of time, yet most in- 
 opportunely. Hugh would have given 
 worlds just then to be able to disregard his 
 proffered aid, and to swim ashore by the tree 
 in lordly independence without extraneous 
 assistance. It is grotesque to throw yourself 
 wildly in, like a hero or a Leander, and then 
 have to be tamely pulled out again by another 
 fellow. But he recognized the fact that the 
 
64 THIS MOETAL COIL. 
 
 struggle was all in vain, and that the 
 interests of English literature and of a well- 
 known insurance office in which he held a 
 small life policy, imperatively demanded ac- 
 quiescence on his part in the friendly rescue. 
 He grasped the rope with a very bad grace 
 indeed, and permitted Eelf to haul him in, 
 hand over hand, to the side of the Mud- 
 Turtle. 
 
 Yet, as soon as he stood once more on the 
 yawFs deck, dripping and unpicturesque in 
 his clinging clothes, but with honour safe, 
 and the lost^ hat now clasped tight in his 
 triumphant right hand, it began to occur to 
 him that, after all, the little adventure had 
 turned out in its way quite as romantic, not 
 to say effective, as could have been reasonably 
 expected. He did not know the current ran 
 so fast, or perhaps he would never have 
 attempted the Quixotic task of recovering 
 that plain straw hat with the blue ribbon — 
 worth at best half-a-crown net — from its 
 angry eddies ; yet the very fact that he had 
 exposed himself to danger, real danger, how- 
 ever unvi^^-ttingly, on a lady's behalf, for so 
 3mall a cause, threw a not unpleasing dash of 
 
BVRIDAN'S ASS. 65 
 
 romance and sentiment into his foolish and 
 foolhardy bit of theatrical gallantry. To 
 risk your life for a plain straw hat — and for 
 a lady's sake — smacks, when one comes to 
 think of it, of antique chivalry. He forgave 
 himself liis wet and unbecoming attire, as he 
 handed the hat, with as graceful a bow as 
 circumstances permitted, from the yawl's side 
 to Winifred Meysey, who stretched out her 
 hands, all blushes and thanks and apologetic 
 regrets, from the roots of the poplar by the 
 edge, to receive it. 
 
 " And now, Elsie," Hugh cried, with such 
 virile cheerfulness as a man can assume who 
 stands shivering in wet clothes before a keen 
 east wind, " perhaps we'd better make our 
 way at once up to Whitestrand without 
 further delay to change our garments. Hood 
 makes garments rhyme under similar con- 
 ditions to * clinging like cerements,' and I 
 begin to perceive now the wisdom of his 
 allusion. A very bad rhyme, but very good 
 reason. They do cling, if you'll permit me 
 to say so — they cling, indeed, a trifle un- 
 pleasantly. Good-bye for the present. I'll 
 see you again this afternoon in a drier and, I 
 
 yoL. I. F 
 
66 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 hope, a more becoming costume. — Miss 
 Meysey, I'm afraid your hat's spoiled. - Put 
 her about now, Relf. Let's run up quick. I 
 don't mind how soon I get to Whitestrand." 
 
 Warren Relf headed the yawl round with 
 the wind, and they ran merrily before the 
 stiff breeze up stream towards the village. 
 Meanwhile, Hugh stood still on the deck in 
 his dripping clothes, smiling as benignly as 
 if nothing had happened, and waving farewell 
 with one airy hand — in spite of chattering 
 teeth — to Elsie and Winifred. The two 
 girls, taken aback by the incident, looked 
 after them with arms clasped round one 
 another's waists. Winifred was the first to 
 break abruptly the hushed silence of their 
 joint admiration. 
 
 " Oh, Elsie," she cried, '* it was so grand ! 
 Wasn't it just magnificent of him to jump iu 
 like that after my poor old straw ? I never 
 saw anything so lovely in my life. Exactly 
 like the sort of things one reads about in 
 novels ! " 
 
 Elsie smiled a more sober smile of maturer 
 appreciation. " Hugh's always so," she 
 answered, with proprietary pride in her 
 
BVniDAN'S ASS. GT 
 
 manly and handsome and chivalrous cousin. 
 " He invariably does just the right thing at 
 just the right moment; it's a way he has. 
 Nobody else has such splendid manners. 
 He's the dearest, nicest, kindest-hearted 
 fellow— — " She checked herself suddenly, 
 with a flushed face, for she felt her own 
 transports needed moderating now, and her 
 praise was getting perhaps somewhat beyond 
 the limits of due laudation as expected from 
 cousins. A governess, even when she comes 
 from Girton, must rise, like fesar's wife, 
 above suspicion. It must be generally under- 
 stood in her employer's family, that, though 
 apparently possessed of a circulating fluid 
 like other people's, she carries no such com- 
 promising and damaging an article as a heart 
 about with her. And yet, if, as somebody 
 once observed, there's "a deal of human 
 nature in man," is it not perhaps just equally 
 true that there's a deal of the selfsame perilous 
 commodity in woman also ? 
 
 The men made their way up stream to 
 Whitestrand, and landed at last, with an 
 easy run, beside the little hithe. At the 
 village inn— the Fisherman's Best, by 
 
C8 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 W. Stannaway — Hugh Massinger, in spite 
 of his disreputable dampness, soon obtained 
 comfortable board and lodging, on Warren 
 lielfs recommendation. Eelf was in the 
 habit of coming to Whitestrand frequently, 
 and was *' well-beknown," as the landlord 
 remarked, to the entire village, children 
 included, so that any of his friends was 
 immediately welcome at the quaint old 
 public-liouee by the water's edge. For his 
 own part the painter preferred the freedom 
 of the yawl, where he paid of course neither 
 rent nor taxes, and came and went at his 
 own free-will ; but as Massinger, not being 
 a " vagrom man," meant to spend his entire 
 summer holiday in harness at Whitestrand, 
 he desired to have some more settled jt?zV(i-a- 
 terre for his literary labours than the errant 
 Mild- Turtle. 
 
 " I'll change my clothes in a jiffy," the 
 poet cried to his friend as he leapt ashore, 
 " and be back with you at once, a new 
 creature. — Eelf, you'll stop and have some 
 lunch, of course. — Landlord, we'd like a nice 
 tender steak — you can raise a steak at White- 
 strand, I suppose ? — That's well. Under- 
 
BURIDAN'S ASS. GO 
 
 (lone, if you please. — Just band me out my 
 portmanteau there. — Thank you, thank you." 
 And with a graceful bound, be was off to his 
 room — a low-roofed old chamber on the 
 ground-floor — as airy and easy as if nothing 
 bad ever occurred at all to ruffle his temper 
 or disturb the affectedly careless set of his 
 immaculate collar and his loosely knotted 
 necktie. 
 
 In ten minutes he emerged again, as he 
 had predicted, in the front room, another 
 man — an avatar of glory — resplendent in a 
 light-brown velveteen coat and Eembrandt 
 cap, that served still more obviously than ever 
 to emphasize the full nature and extent of his 
 poetical pretensions. It was a coat that a 
 laureate might have envied and dreamt 
 about. The man who could carry such a 
 coat as that could surely have written the 
 whole of the '' Divina Commedia " before 
 breakfast, and tossed off a book or two of 
 " Paradise Lost " in a brief interval of 
 morning leisure. 
 
 " Awfully pretty girl that," he said as he 
 entered, and drummed on the table with 
 impatient forefinger for the expected steak ; 
 
70 THIS MOItTAL COIL. 
 
 " the little one, I mean, of course — not my 
 cousin. Fair, too. In some ways I prefer 
 them fair. Thoug'h dark girls have more go 
 in them, after all, I fancy ; for dark and true 
 and tender is the North, according to Tenny- 
 son. But fair or dark. North or South, like 
 Horniman's teas, they're ' all good alike,' if 
 vou take them as assorted. And she's 
 charmingly fresh and youthful and naive." 
 
 '* She's pretty, certainly," Warren Relf 
 replied with a certain amount of unusual 
 stiffness apparent in his manner ; " but not 
 anything like so pretty, to my mind, or 
 so graceful either, as your cousin, Miss 
 Challoner." 
 
 " Oh, Elsie's well enough in her own way, 
 no doubt," Hugh went on with a smile of 
 expansive admiration. " I like them all in 
 their own way. I'm nothing, indeed, if not 
 catholic and eclectic. On the whole, one 
 girl's much the same as another, if only she 
 gives you the true poetic thrill. As Alfred 
 de Musset calmly puts it, with delicious 
 French bluntness, ' Qu'importe le goblet 
 pourvu qu'on a I'ivresse ? ' Do you remember 
 that delightful student song of Blackie's ? 
 
^ mililDAN'S ASS. TI 
 
 " ' I can like a hundred women ; 
 I Ctan love a score ; 
 Only one with heart's devotion 
 "Worship and adore.' 
 
 I subscribe to that : all but the last two 
 verses ; about those Vm not quite so certain. 
 As to loving a score, I've tried it experi- 
 mentally, and I know I can manage it. But 
 anyway, Elsie's extremely pretty. I've 
 always allowed she's extremely pretty. The 
 trouble of it is that she hasn't, unfortunately, 
 got a brass farthing. Not a sou, not a cent, 
 not a doit, not a stiver. I don't myself 
 know the precise exchange value of doits and 
 stivers, but I take them to be something 
 exceptionally fractional. I could rhyme 
 away (without prejudice) to Elsie and Chelsea 
 and braes of Kelsie, or even at a pinch could 
 bring in Selsey — you must know Selsey Bill, 
 as you go in for yachting — if it weren't that 
 I feel how utterly futile and purposeless it all 
 is when a girl's fortune consists altogether of 
 a negative quantity in doits and stivers. 
 But the other — Miss Meysey, now — who's 
 she, I wonder? — Good name, Meysey. It 
 sounds like money, and it suggests daisy. 
 There was a Meysey a banker in the Strand, 
 
72 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 you know — not very daisy -like, that, is it ? — 
 and another who did something big in the 
 legal way — a judge, I fancy. — He doubtless 
 sat on the royal bench of British Themis 
 with immense applause (which was instantly 
 suppressed), and left his family a pot of 
 money. Meysey — lazy — crazy — hazy. None 
 of them'll do, you see, for a sonnet but daisy. 
 How many more Miss Meyseys are there, if 
 any ? I wonder. And if not, has she got a 
 brother ? So pretty a girl deserves to have 
 tin. If I were a childless, rich old man, I 
 think I'd incontinently establish and endow 
 her, just to improve the beauty and the future 
 of the race, on the strictest evolutionary and 
 Darwinian principles." 
 
 '' Her father's the Squire here," Warren 
 Relf replied, with a somewhat uneasy glance 
 at Hugh, shot sideways. " He lords the 
 manor and a great part of the parish. 
 Wyville Me^ ay's his full name. He's rich, 
 they say, tolerably rich still ; though a big 
 slice of the estate south of the river has been 
 swallowed up by the sea, or buried in the 
 sand, or otherwise disposed of. The sea's 
 encroaching greatly on this coast, you know ; 
 
BUBIDAN'S ASS. 73 
 
 some places, like Dimwich, have almost all 
 toppled over bodily into the water, churches 
 included ; while in others, the shifting sand 
 of the country has just marched over the 
 ground like a conquering army, pitching its 
 tent and taking up its quarters, to stay, in 
 the meadows. Old Meysey's lost a lot of 
 land that way, I believe, on the south side ; 
 it's covered by those pretty little wave-like 
 sandhills you see over yonder. But north of 
 the river, they say he's all right. That's his 
 place, the house in the fields, just up beyond 
 the poplar. " dare say you didn't notice it 
 as we passed, for it's built low-r-Elizabethan, 
 half hidden in the trees. All the big houses 
 along the East coast are always planned 
 rather squat and flat, to escape the wind, 
 which runs riot here in the winter, the 
 natives say, as if it blew out of the devil's 
 bellows ! But it's a fine place, the Hall, for 
 all that, as places go, down here in Suffolk. 
 The old gentleman's connected with the 
 bankers in the Strand — some sort of a cousin 
 or other, more or less distantly removed, 1 
 fancy." 
 
 " And the sons ? " Hugh asked, with evident 
 
74 THIS MOIiTAL COIL. 
 
 interest, tracking the subject to its solid 
 kernel. 
 
 " The sons ? There are none. They had 
 one once, I believe — a dragoon or hussar — 
 but he was shot, out soldiering in Zululand or 
 somewhere ; and this daughter's now the sole 
 living representative of the entire family." 
 
 "So she's an heiress?" Hugh inquired, 
 getting warmer at last, as children say at 
 hide-and-seek. 
 
 " Ye~es. In her way — no doubi, an heiress. 
 — Not a very big one, I suppose, but still what 
 one might fairly call an heiress. She'll have 
 whatever's left to inherit. — You seem very 
 anxious to know all about her." 
 
 " Oh, one naturally likes to know where 
 one stands — before committing one's self to 
 anything foolish," Hugh murmured placidly. 
 " And in this wicked world of ours, where 
 heiresses are scarce — and actions for breach 
 of promise painfully common — one never 
 knows beforehand where a single false step 
 may happen to land one. I've made mistakes 
 before now in my life ; I don't mean to make 
 another one through insufficient knowledge, 
 if I can help it." 
 
BURIDAN'S ASS. 75 
 
 He took up a pen that lay upon the table 
 of the little sitting-room before him, and 
 began drawing idly with it some curious 
 characters on the back of an envelope he 
 pulled from his pocket. Relf sat and watched 
 him in silence. 
 
 Presently, Massinger began again. "You're 
 very much shocked at my sentiments, I can 
 see," he said quietly, as he glanced with 
 approval at his careless hieroglyphics. 
 
 Relf drew his hand over his beard twice. 
 " Not so much shocked as grieved, I think," 
 he replied after a moment's pause. 
 
 " Why grieved ? " 
 
 " Well, because, Massinger, it was impossible 
 for any one who saw her this morning to 
 doubt that Miss Challoner is really in love 
 with you." 
 
 Hugh w-ent on fiddling with the pen and 
 ink and the envelope nervously. " You think 
 so?" he asked, w^ith some eagerness in his 
 voice, after another short pause. " You think 
 she really likes me ? " 
 
 " I don't merely think so," Relf answered 
 with confidence; "I'm absolutely certnin of 
 it — as sure as I ever was of anything. Re- 
 
76 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 member, I'm a painter, and I have a quick 
 eye. She was deeply moved when she saw 
 you come. It meant a great deal to her. — I 
 should be sorry to think you would play fast 
 and loose with any girl's affections." 
 
 " It's not the girl's affections I play fast 
 anu oose with," Massinger retorted lazily. 
 " I deeply regret to say it's very much more 
 my own I trifle with. I'm not a fool ; but 
 my one weak point is a too susceptible dis- 
 position. I can't help falling in love — really 
 in love — not merely flirting — with any nice 
 girl I happen to be thrown in with. I write 
 her a great many pretty verses ; I send her a 
 great many charming notes ; I say a great 
 many foolish things to her ; and at the time I 
 really mean them all. My heart is just at 
 that precise moment the theatre of a most 
 agreeable and unaffected flutter. I think to 
 myself, * This time, it's serious.' I look at 
 the moon, and feel sentimental. I apostrophise 
 the fountains, meadows, valleys, hills, and 
 groves to forebode not any severing of our 
 loves. And then I go away and reflect 
 calmly, in the solitude of my own chamber, 
 what a precious fool I've been — for, of course, 
 
BUniDAN'S ASS. 17 
 
 the girl's always a penniless one —I've never 
 had the luck or the art yet to captivate an 
 heiress ; and when it comes to breaking it all 
 off, I assure you it costs me a severe wrench, 
 a wrench that I wish I was sensible enou^rh 
 to foresee or adequately to guard against, on 
 the prevention-better-than-cure principle. 
 
 " And the girl ? " Eelf asked, with a grow- 
 ing sense of profound discomfort, for Elsie's 
 face and manner had instantly touched him. 
 
 " The girl," Massinger replied, putting a 
 finishing stroke or two to the queer formless 
 sketch he had scrawled upon the envelope, 
 and fixing it up on the frame of a cheap 
 lithograph that hung from a nail upon the 
 wall opposite : " well, the girl probably 
 regrets it also, though not, 1 sincerely trust, 
 so profoundly as I do. In this case, however, 
 t's a comfort to think Elsie's only a cousin. 
 Between cousins there can be no harm, you 
 will readily admit, in a little innocent flirta- 
 tion." 
 
 ''It's more than a flirtation to her, I'm 
 sure," Relf answered, with a dubious shake 
 of his head. ''She takes it all au grand 
 serieux. — I hope you don't mean to give her 
 
 1 
 
78 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 one of those horrid wrenches you talk so 
 lightly about ? — Why, Massiuger, what on 
 earth is this ? I — I didn't know you could 
 do this sort of thing ! " 
 
 He had walked across carelessly, as he 
 paced the room, to the lithograph in whose 
 frame the poet had slipped the back of his 
 envelope, and he was regarding the little 
 addition now with eyes of profound astonish- 
 ment and wonder. The picture was a coarsely 
 executed portrait of a distinguished statesman, 
 reduced to his shirt-sleeves, and caught in 
 the very act of felling a tree ; and on the 
 scrap of envelope, in exact imitation of the 
 right honourable gentleman's own familiar 
 signature, Hugh had written in bold free 
 letters the striking inscription, '*W. E. 
 Griadstone." 
 
 The poet laughed. "Yes, it's not so bad," 
 he said, regarding it from one side with 
 parental fondness. " I thought they'd 
 probably like to have the Grand Old Man's 
 own genuine autograph ; so I've turned one 
 out for them offhand, as good as real, and 
 twice as legible. I flatter myself it's a decent 
 copy. I can imitate anybody's hand at sight. 
 
BUIilDAN'S ASS. 79 
 
 — Look here, for example ; here's your own." 
 And taking another scrap of paper from a 
 bundle in his pocket, he wrote with rapid and 
 practised mastery, " Warren H. Eelf " on a 
 corner of the sheet in the precise likeness of 
 the painter's own large and flowing hand- 
 writing. 
 
 Relf gazed over his shoulder in some 
 surprise, not wholly unmingled with a faint 
 touch of alarm. " I'm an artist, Massinger," 
 he said slowly, as he scanned it close ; " but 
 I couldn't do that, no, not if you were to pay 
 me for it. I could paint anything you chose 
 to set me, in heaven above, or earth beneath, 
 or the waters that are under the earth ; but 
 I couldn't make a decent fac-simile of another 
 man's autograph. — And, do you know, on 
 the whole, I'm awfully glad that I could 
 never possibly learn to do it." 
 
 Massinger smiled a languid smile. " In 
 the hands of the foolish," he said, addressing 
 his soul to the beefsteak which had at last 
 arrived, " no doubt such abilities are liable to 
 serious abuse. But the wise man is an ex- 
 ception to all rules of life : he can safely be 
 trusted with edge-tools. We do well in 
 
80 Tins MORTAL COIL. 
 
 refusing firearms to children : grown people 
 can employ them properly. I'm never afraid 
 of any faculty or knowledge on earth I 
 possess. I know seventeen distinct ways of 
 cheating at loo, without the possibility of a 
 moment's detection, and yet that doesn't 
 prevent me, whenever I play, from being most 
 confoundedly out of pocket by it. The man 
 who distrusts himself must be conscious of 
 weakness. Depend upon it, no amount of 
 knowledge ever hurts those who repose im- 
 plicit confidence in their own prudence and 
 their own sagacity." 
 
( 81 ) 
 
 CHAPTER V, 
 
 ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 
 
 The GIrton governess of these latter days 
 stands on a very different footing indeed in 
 the family from the forty-poimd-a-year-and- 
 all-found young person who instructed youth 
 as a final bid for life in the last generation. 
 She ranks, in fact, in the unwritten table of 
 precedence with the tutor who has been a 
 university man ; and, as the outward and 
 visible sign of her superior position, she dines 
 with the rest of the household at seven-thirty, 
 instead of taking an early dinner in the 
 schoolroom with her junior pupils off hashed 
 mutton and rice-pudding at half-past one. 
 Elsie Challoner had been a Girton girl. She 
 was an orphan, left with little in the world 
 but her brains and her good looks to found 
 her fortune upon ; and she had wisely invested 
 
 VOL. I. ^ 
 
82 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 her whole small capital in getting herself an 
 education which would enable her to earn 
 herself in after life a moderate livelihood. In 
 the family at Whitestrand, where she had 
 lately come, she lived far more like a friend 
 tlian a governess : the difference in years 
 between herself and Winifred was not ex- 
 treme ; and the two girls, taking a fancy to 
 one another from the very first, became 
 companions at once, so intimate together 
 that Elsie could hardly with an effort now 
 and again bring herself to exert a little brief 
 authority over the minor details of Winifred's 
 conduct. And, indeed, the modern governess, 
 though still debarred the possession of a heart, 
 is now no longer exactly expected to prove 
 herself in everything a moral dragon : she is 
 j^ermitted to recognize the existence of human 
 instincts in the world we inhabit, and not 
 even forbidden to concede at times the abstract 
 possibility that either she or her pupils might 
 conceivably get married to an eligible person, 
 should the eligible person at the right 
 moment chance to present himself, with the 
 customary credentials as to position and 
 prospects. 
 
ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 83 
 
 " I wonder, Elsie," Winifred said after 
 luncli, " whether your cousin will really come 
 up this afternoon ? Perhaps he won't now, 
 after that dreadful wetting. I dare say, as 
 he only came down in the yawl, he hasn't 
 got anotlier suit of clothes with him. I 
 shouldn't be surprised if he had to go to bed 
 at the inn, as Mr. Eelf does, while they dry 
 his things for him by the kitchen fire ! Mr. 
 Eelf never brings more, they say, than his 
 one blue jersey." 
 
 " That's not like Hugh," Elsie answered 
 confidently. " Hugh wouldn't go anywhere, 
 by sea or land, without proper clothes for 
 every possible civilized contingency. He's 
 not a fop, you know — he's a man all over — 
 but he dresses nicely and appropriately 
 always. You should just see him in evening 
 clothes ; he's simply beautiful then. They 
 suit him splendidly." 
 
 *'So I should think, dear," Winifred 
 answered with warmth. — " I wonder, Elsie, 
 whether papa and mamma will like your 
 cousin ? " 
 
 "It's awfully good of you, darling, to 
 think go much of what sort of reception my 
 
84 Tins MOItTAL COIL, 
 
 cousin gets," Elsie replied with a kiss, in 
 perfect innocence. (Winifred blushed faintly). 
 " But, of course, your papa and mamma are 
 sure to like him. Everybody always does 
 like Hugh. There's something winning 
 about him that insures success. He's a uni- 
 versal favourite, wherever he goes. He's 
 so clever and so nice, and so kind and so 
 sympathetic. I never met anybody else so 
 sympathetic as Hugh. He knows exactly 
 beforehand how one feels about everything, 
 and makes allowances so cordially for all one's 
 little private sentiments. I suppose that's the 
 poetic temperament in him. Poetry must 
 mean at bottom, I should think, keen insight 
 into the emotions of otliers." 
 
 " But not always power of responding 
 sympathetically to those emotions. — Look, for 
 example, at such a case as Goethe's," a clear 
 voice said from the other side of the hedge. 
 They were walking along, as they often walked, 
 with arms clasped round one another's waists, 
 just inside the grounds, close to the footpath 
 that led across the fields; and only a high 
 fence of privet and dog-rose separated their 
 confidences from the ear of the fortuitous 
 
ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 85 
 
 public on the adjoining footpath. So Hugh 
 had come up, unawares from behind, and 
 overheard their confidential chit-chat ! How 
 far back had he overheard ? Elsie wondered 
 to herself. If he had caught it all, she would 
 be so ashamed of herself ! 
 
 " Hugh ! " she cried, running on to tlie 
 little wicket gate to meet him. " I'm so glad 
 you've come. It's delightful to see you. — But 
 oh, you must have thought us two dreadful 
 little sillies. — How much of our conversation 
 did you catch, I wonder ? " 
 
 " Only the last sentence," Hugh answered 
 lightly, taking both her hands in his and 
 kissing her a quiet cousinly kiss on her 
 smooth broad forehead. "Just that about 
 poetry meaning keen insight into the 
 emotions of others; so, if you were saying 
 any ill about me, my child, or bearing false 
 witness against your neighbour, you may 
 rest assured at any rate that 1 didn't hear it. — 
 Good-morning, Miss Meysey. I'm recovered, 
 you see : dried and clothed and in my right 
 mind— at least, I hope so. I trust the hat is 
 the same also." 
 
 Winifred held out a timid small hand. 
 
86 THIS MQRTAL COIL, 
 
 " It's all right, thank you," she said, with a 
 sudden flush ; " but I shall never, never wear 
 it again, for all that. I couldn't hear to. I 
 don't think you ought to have risked your 
 life for so very little." 
 
 " A life's nothing where a lady's con- 
 cerned," Hugh answered airily with a mock 
 bow. " But indeed you give me credit for 
 too much gallantry. My life was not ia 
 question at all ; I only risked a delightful 
 bath, which was somewhat impeded by an 
 unnecessarily heavy and awkward bathing- 
 dress. — What a sweet place this is, Elsie ; so 
 flowery and bowery, when you get inside it. 
 The little lane with the roses overhead seems 
 created after designs by Birket Foster. From 
 outside, I confess, to a casual observer the 
 first glimpse of East Anglian scenery is by 
 no means reassuring." 
 
 They strolled up slowly together to the 
 Hall door, where the senior branches were 
 seated on the lawn, under the shade of the 
 one big spreading lime-tree, enjoying the 
 delicious coolness of the breeze as it blew in 
 fresh from the open ocean. Elsie wondered 
 how Hugh and the Squire would get on 
 
ELECTIVE AFFINITIES, 87 
 
 together; but her wonder indeed was little 
 needed ; for Hugh, as she had said, always 
 got on admirably with everybody every- 
 where. He had a way of attacking people 
 instinctively on their strong point ; and in 
 ten minutes, he and the Squire were fast 
 friends, united by firm ties of common loves 
 and common animosities. They were both. 
 Oxford men — at whatever yawning interval 
 of time, that friendly link forms always a 
 solid bond of union between youth and age ; 
 and both had been at the same college. Oriel. 
 " I dare say you know my old rooms," the 
 Squire observed with a meditative sigh. 
 *'They looked out over Fellows' Quad, and 
 had a rhyming Latin hexameter on a pane of 
 stained glass in one of the bay windows.'* 
 
 " I know them well," Hugh answered, with 
 a rising smile of genuine pleasure — for he 
 loved Oxford with a love passing the love of 
 her ordinary children. " A friend of mine 
 had them in my time. And I remember the 
 line : ' Oxoniam quare venisti premeditare.' 
 An excellent leonine, as leonines go, though 
 limp in its quantity.— Do you know, I fell in 
 love with that pane so greatly, that I had a 
 
88 lEIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 wire framework made to put over it, for fear 
 some fellows should smash it some ni^ht, 
 flinging about oranges at a noisy wine- 
 party." 
 
 From Oxford, they soon got off upon 
 Suffolk, and the encroachment of the sea, 
 and the blown sands ; and then the Squire 
 insisted upon taking Hugh for a tour da 
 proprietaire round the whole estate, with 
 running comments upon the wasting of the 
 foreshore and the abominable remissness of 
 the Board of Admiralty in not erecting proper 
 groynes to protect the interests of coast-wise 
 proprietors. Hugh listened to it all with his 
 grave face of profound sympathy and lively 
 interest, putting in from time to time an 
 acquiescent remark confirmatory of the 
 wickedness of government officials in general, 
 and of the delinquent Board of Admiralty in 
 particular. 
 
 " iEolian sands ! " he said once, with a 
 lingering cadence, rolling the words on his 
 tongue, as the Squire paused by the big 
 poplar of that morning's adventure to point 
 him out the blown dunes on the opposite 
 shore — "^olian sands! Is that what they 
 
 \.' 
 
ELECTIVE AFFINITIES, 89 
 
 call them ? How very poetical ! Whiit a 
 lovely word to put in a sonnet ! iEolian — 
 just the very thing of all others to go on 
 all-fours witli an adjective like Tmolian ! — So 
 it swallowed up forty acres of prime salt- 
 marsh pasture — did it, really? That must 
 have been a very serious loss indeed. Forty 
 acres of prime salt-marsh ! I supj)ose it was 
 the sort of land covered with tall rank reedy 
 grasses, where you feed those magnificent 
 rough-coated, long-horned, Highland-looking 
 cattle we saw this morning ? Splendid beasts : 
 most picturesque and regal. ' Bulls that 
 walk the pastures in kingly-flashing coats,' 
 George Meredith would call them. We passed 
 a lot of them as we cruised up stream to-day 
 to Whitestrand. — And the sand has absolutely 
 overwhelmed and wasted it all? Dear me! 
 dear me! What a terrible calamity! It 
 was the Admiralty's fault! Might make a 
 capital article out of that to bully the govern- 
 ment in the Morning Telephone,'' 
 
 " If you did, my dear sir," the Squire said 
 warmly with an appreciative nod, *' you'd 
 earn the deepest gratitude of every owner of 
 property in the county of Sujffolk, and indeed 
 
90 THIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 along the whole neglected East Coast. — The 
 way we've been treated and abused, I assure 
 you, has been just scandalous — simply scan- 
 dalous. Governments, buiF or blue, have all 
 alike behaved to us with incredible levity. 
 When the present disgraceful administration, 
 for example, came into power " 
 
 Huerh never heard tlie remainder of that 
 impassioned harangue long since delivered 
 with profound gusto on a dozen distinct 
 election platforms. He was dimly aware of 
 the Squire's voice, pouring forth denunciation 
 of the powers that be in strident tones and 
 measured sentences ; but he didn't listen ; his 
 soul was occupied in two other far more 
 congenial pursuits : one of them, watching 
 Elsie and Winifred with Mrs. Meysey ; the 
 other, trying to find a practicable use for 
 ^olian sands in connection with his latest 
 projected heroic poem on the Burial of Alaric. 
 iEolian ; dashes : Tmolian ; abashes : not a bad 
 substratum, that, he flattered himself, for the 
 thunderous lilt of his opening stanza. 
 
 It was not till the close of the afternoon, 
 however, that he could snatch a few seconds 
 alone with Elsie. They wandered off by 
 
ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 91 
 
 themselves then, near the water's edge, among 
 
 the thick slirubbery ; and Hugh, sitting down 
 
 in a retired spot under the lee of a sheltering 
 
 group of guelder-roses, took his pretty cousin's 
 
 hands for a moment in his own, and looking 
 
 down into her great dark eyes with a fond 
 
 look, cried laughingly : ** Oh, Elsie, Elsie, this 
 
 is just what I've been longing for all day 
 
 long. I thought I should never manage to 
 
 get away from that amiable old bore, with 
 
 his encroachments, and his mandamuses, and 
 
 his groynes, and his interlocutors. As far as 
 
 I could understand him, he wants to get the 
 
 Board of Admiralty, or the Court of Chancery, 
 
 or somebody else high up in station, to issue 
 
 instructions to the east Avind not to blow 
 
 ^olian sands in future over his sacred 
 
 property. It's too grotesque : quite, quite too 
 
 laughable. He's trying to bring an action 
 
 for trespass against the German Ocean. 
 
 "Will jQ bridle the deep sea with reins? will ye 
 chasten the high sea with rods ? 
 Will ye take her to chain her with chains who is 
 older than all ye gods ? " 
 
 Or will you get an injunction against her in 
 due form on stamped paper from the Lord 
 
02 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 Chief Justice of Eno'Lind ? Canute tried it 
 on, and found it a failure. And all the time, 
 while the good old soul was moaning and 
 droning about his drowned land, there was I, 
 just sigliing and groaning to get away to a 
 convenient corner with a pretty little cousin 
 of mine with whom I had urgent private 
 affairs of my own to settle. — My dear Elsie, 
 Suffolk agrees with you. You're looking this 
 moment simply charming." 
 
 " It's your own fault, Hugh," Elsie an- 
 swered with a blush, never heeding overtly 
 his last strictly personal observation. " You 
 shouldn't make yourself so universally delight- 
 ful. Fm sure I thought, by the way you 
 talked with him, you were absolutely absorbed 
 in the wasting of the cliff, and personally 
 affronted by the aggressive east wind. I 
 was just beginning to get quite jealous of the 
 encroachments. — For you know, Hugh, it's 
 such a real pleasure to me always to see 
 you." 
 
 She spoke tenderly, with the innocent 
 openness of old acquaintance ; and Hugh, 
 still holding her hand in his own, leaned 
 forward with admiration in his sad dark 
 
ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. Oo 
 
 eyes, and put out his face close to hers, as he 
 had always done since they were children 
 together. " One kiss, Elsie," he said per- 
 suasively. — '* Quick, my child ; we may have 
 no other chance. Those dreadful old bores 
 will stick to us like leeches. * Gather ye 
 roses while you may : Old Time is still a- 
 flying." 
 
 Elsie drew hack her face half in alarm. 
 " No, no, Hugh," she cried, struggling with 
 him for a second. " We're both growing too 
 old for such nonsense now. Remember, we've 
 ceased long ago to be children." 
 
 " But as a cousin, Elsie," Hugh said Arith 
 a wistful look that belied his words. 
 
 Elsie preferred in her own heart to be 
 kissed by Hugh on different grounds; but 
 she did not say so. She held up her face, 
 however, with a rather bad grace, and Hugh 
 pressed it to his own tenderly. " That's 
 paradise, my houri," he murmured low, look- 
 ing deep into her beautiful liquid eyes. 
 
 " son of my uncle, that was paradise 
 indeed ; but that was not like a cousin," she 
 answered with a faint attempt to echo his 
 playfulness, as she withdrew, blushing. 
 
91 THIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 Hugh laughed, and glanced idly round him 
 with a merry look at the dancing water. 
 " You may call it what you like," he whispered 
 with a deep gaze into her big dark pupils. 
 " I don't care in what capacity on earth you 
 consider yourself kissed, so long as you still 
 permit me to kiss you." 
 
 For ten minutes they sat there talking — 
 saying those thousand-and-one sweet empty 
 things that young people say to one another 
 under such circumstances — have not we all 
 been young, and do not we all well know 
 them ? — and then Elsie rose with a sigh of 
 regret. " I think," she said, " we mustn't 
 stop here alone any longer ; perhaps Mrs. 
 Meysey wouldn't like it." 
 
 " Oh, bother Mrs. Meysey ! " Hugh cried, 
 with an angry sideward toss of his head. 
 " These old people are a terrible nuisance in 
 the world. I wish we could get a law passed 
 by a triumphant majority that at forty every- 
 body was to be promptly throttled, or at 
 least transported. There'd be some hope of 
 a little peace and enjoyment in the world 
 then." 
 
 " Oh, but, Hugh, Mrs. Meysey 's just knid- 
 
ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 
 
 95 
 
 iiess itself, and I know she'll let yon come 
 and see me ever so often. She said at lunch 
 I mig'ht go out on tlie water or anywhere \ 
 liked, whenever I chose, any time with my 
 cousin." 
 
 " A very sensible, reasonable, intelligent 
 old lady," liugh answered approvingly, with 
 a mollified nod. " I wish they were all as 
 wise in their generation. The profession of 
 chaperon, like most others, has been over- 
 done, and would be all the better now for a 
 short turn of judicious thinning. — But, Elsie, 
 you've told them I was a cousin, I see. 
 That's quite right. Have you explained to 
 them in detail the precise remoteness of our 
 actual relationship ? " 
 
 Elsie's lip quiv^ered visibly. " No, Hugh," 
 she answered. " But whv ? Does it matter ? " 
 
 *'Not at all — not at all. Yery much the 
 contrary. I'm glad you didn't. It's better 
 so. If I were you, my child, I think, do you 
 know, I'd allow them to believe, in a quiet 
 sort of way — unless, of course, they ask you 
 point-blank, that you and I are first-cousins. 
 It facilitates social intercourse considerably. 
 Oousinhood's such a jolly indefinite thing, 
 
OG THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 one may as well enjoy as long as possible the 
 full benefit of its charming vagueness." 
 
 " But, Hugh, is it right ? Do you think I 
 ought to ? — I mean, oughtn't I to let them 
 know at once, just for that very reason, how 
 slight the relationship really is between us ? " 
 " The relationship is not slight," Hugh 
 answered with warmth, darting an eloquent 
 glance deep dowii into her eyes. " The 
 relationship's a great deal closer, indeed, than 
 if it were a much nearer one. — That may be 
 paradox, but it's none the less true, for all 
 that. — Still, it's no use arguing a point of 
 casuistry with a real live Girton girl. You 
 know as much about ethics as I do, and a 
 great deal more into the bargain. Only, a 
 cousin's a cousin anvhow ; and I for my part 
 wouldn't go out of my way to descend 
 gratuitously into minute genealogical par- 
 ticulars of once, twice, thrice, or ten times 
 removed, out of pure puritanism. These 
 questions of pedigree are always tedious. 
 What subsists all tlirough is the individual 
 fact that I'm Hugh, and you're Elsie, and 
 that I love you dearly — of course with a 
 purely cousinly degree of devotion." 
 
ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 97 
 
 "Hugh, you needn't always flourish that 
 limitation in my face, like a broomstick." 
 
 '' Caution, my dear child — mere ingrained 
 caution — the solitary resource of poverty and 
 wisdom. What's the good of loving you 
 dearly on any other grounds, I should like 
 to know, as long as poetry, divine poetry, 
 remains a perfect drug in the publishing 
 market? A man and a girl can't live on 
 bread and cheese and the domestic affections, 
 can they, Elsie? Very well, then, for the 
 present we are both free. If ever circum- 
 stances should turn out differently " The 
 
 remainder of that sentence assumed a form 
 inexpressible by the resources of printer's ink, 
 even with the aid of a phonetic spelling. 
 
 When they turned aside from the guelder- 
 roses at last with crimson faces, they strolled 
 side by side up to the house once more, 
 talking about the weather or some equally 
 commonplace and uninteresting subject, and 
 joined the Meyseys under the big tree. The 
 Squire had disappeared, and Winifred came 
 out to meet them on the path. "Mamma 
 says, Mr. Massinger," she began timidly, 
 "we're going a little picnic all by ourselves 
 
 VOL. 1. g 
 
98 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 on the river to-morrow — up among the sand- 
 liills papa was showing you. They're a 
 delicious place to picnic in, the sandhills ; 
 and mamma thinks perhaps you wouldn't 
 mind coming to join us, and bringing your 
 friend the artist with you. But I dare say 
 you won't care to come : there'll be only 
 ourselves — just a family party." 
 
 " My tastes are catholic," Hugh answered 
 jauntily. " I love all innocent amusements — 
 and most wicked ones. There's nothing on 
 earth I should enjoy as much as a picnic in 
 the sandhills. — You'll be coming too, of 
 course, won't you, Elsie ? — Very well, then. 
 I'll bring Eelf, and the Mud-Turtle to boot. 
 I know he wants to go mud-painting himself. 
 He may as well take us all up in a body." 
 
 " We shall do nothing, you know," Wini- 
 fred cried apologetically. " We shall only 
 just sit on the sandhills and talk, or pick 
 yellow horned-poppies, and throw stones into 
 the sea, and behave ourselves generally like 
 a pack of idlers." 
 
 " That'll exactly suit me," Hugh replied 
 with a smile. *' My most marked charac- 
 teristics are indolence and the practice of the 
 
ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 
 
 09 
 
 Christian virtues. I hate the idea tliat when 
 people invite their friends to a feast they're 
 bound to do something or other definite to 
 amuse them. It's an insult to one's in- 
 telligence ; it's degrading one to the level of 
 innocent childhood, which has to be kept 
 engaged with Blindman's Buff and an un- 
 limited supply of Everton toffee, for fear it 
 should bore itself with its own inanity. On 
 that ground, I consider music and games at 
 suburban parties the resource of incompetence. 
 Sensible people find enough to amuse them in 
 one another's society, without playing dumb 
 crambo or asking riddles. Eelf and I will 
 find more than enough, I'm sure, to-morrow 
 in yours and Elsie's." 
 
 He shook hands witli them all round and 
 raised his hat in farewell with that inimitable 
 grace which was Hugh Massinger's peculiar 
 property. When he left the Hall that after- 
 noon, he left four separate conquests behind 
 him. The Squire thought this London news- 
 paper fellow was a most sensible, right- 
 minded, intelligent young man, with a head 
 on his shoulders, and a complete comprehen- 
 sion of the rights and wrongs of the intricate 
 
100 'Fins MOIITAL COIL. 
 
 rij)arian proprietors' question. Mrs. !^^eysey 
 thought Elsie's cousin was most polite and 
 attentive, as well as an extremely high- 
 principled and excellent person. (Ladies of 
 a certain age are always strong on the matter 
 of principles, which they discuss as though 
 they were a definitely measurable quantity, 
 like money or weight or degrees Fahrenheit.) 
 Winifred thought Mr. Massinger was a born 
 poet, and oh, so nice and kind and apprecia- 
 tive. Elsie thought dear darling Hugh was 
 just the same good, sweet, sympathetic old 
 friend and ally and comforter as ever. And 
 they all four united in thinking he was very 
 handsome, very clever, very brilliant, and 
 very delightful. 
 
 As for Hugh, he thought to himself, as he 
 sauntered back by the rose-bordered lane to 
 the village inn, that the Squire was a most 
 portentous and heavy old nuisance ; that Mrs. 
 Wyville Meysey was a comic old creature ; 
 that Elsie was really a most charming girl ; 
 and that Winifred, in spite of her bread-and- 
 butter blushes, wasn't half bad, after all — for 
 an heiress. 
 
 The heiress is apt to be plain and forbidding. 
 
ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 101 
 
 She is not fair to outward view, as many 
 maidens be. Her beauty has solid, not to 
 say strictly metallic qualities, and resides 
 principally in a safe at her bankers. To 
 have tracked down an heiress who was also 
 pretty was indeed, Hugh felt, a valuable 
 discovery. 
 
 When he reached the inn, he found Warren 
 Relf just returned from a sketching expedition 
 up the tidal flats. " Well, Eelf," he cried, 
 " you see me triumphant. I've been recon- 
 noitring Miss Meysey's outposts, with an 
 ultimate view to possible siege operations. 
 To judge by the first results of my reconnais- 
 sance, she seems a very decent sort of little 
 girl in her own way. If sonnets will carry 
 her by storm, I don't mind discharging a 
 few cartloads of them from a hundred-ton- 
 gun point-blank at her outworks. Most of 
 them can be used again, of course, in case of 
 need, in another campaign, if occasion offers." 
 
 "And Miss Challoner?" Relf suggested, 
 Avith some reproof in his tone. " Was she 
 there too ? Have you seen her also ? " 
 
 " Yes, Elsie was there," the poet answered 
 unconcernedly, as he rang the bell for a 
 
]02 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 glass of soda-water. ** Elsie was there, look- 
 ing as charming and as piquante and as 
 pretty as ever ; and, by Jove ! she's the 
 cleverest and brightest and most amusing girl 
 I ever met anywhere np and down in 
 England. Though she's my own cousin, and 
 it's me that says it, as oughtn't to say it, she's 
 a credit to the family. I like Elsie. At times, 
 I've almost half a mind, upon my soul, to 
 tiing prudence to the winds, and ask her to 
 rome and accept a share of my poor crust in 
 my humble garret. — But it won't do, you 
 Icnow — it won't do. Sine Cerere et Baccho, 
 friget Venus, Either I must make a fortune 
 nt a stroke, or I must marry a girl with a 
 fortune ready made to my hand already. 
 Love in a cottage is all very well in its way, 
 no doubt, with roses and eglantine — whatever 
 eglantine may be — climbing I'ound the 
 windows ; but love in a hovel — which is the 
 plain prose of it in these hard times — can't be 
 considered either pretty or poetical. Unless 
 some Columbus of a critic, cruising through 
 reams of minor verse, discovers my priceless 
 worth some day, and divulges me to the 
 world, there's no chance of my ever being 
 
ELECTIVE AFFINITIES, 
 
 103 
 
 able to afford anything so good and sweet as 
 Elsie. — But the other one's a nice small girl 
 of her sort too. I think for my part I shall 
 alter and amend those quaint little verses of 
 Blackie's a bit — make 'em run : 
 
 " I can like a hundred women ; 
 I can love a score ; 
 Only with a heart's devotion 
 Worship three or four." 
 
 Eelf laughed merrily in spite of himself. 
 
 Massiijger went on musing in an undertone : * 
 " Not that I like the first and third lines as 
 they stand, at all : a careful versifier would 
 have insisted upon rhyming them. T should 
 have made * devotion ' chime in with ' ocean,' 
 or ' lotion,' or ' Goshen,' or ' emotion,' or some- 
 thing of that sort, to polish it up a bit. 
 There's very good business to be got out of 
 ' emotion,' if you work it properly ; but 
 * ocean ' comes in handy, too, down here at 
 Whitestrand. I'll dress it up into a bit of 
 verse this evening, I think, for Elsie — or the 
 other girl. Winifred's her Christian name. 
 Hard case, Winifred. ' Been afraid ' is only 
 worthy of Browning, who'd perpetrate any- 
 thing in the way of a rhyme to save himself 
 
104 THIS MOItTAL COIL, 
 
 trouble. Has a false Ingoldsby gallop of 
 verse about it that I don't quite like. 
 Winnie's comparatively easy, of course: you've 
 got * skinny ' and ' finny,' and ' Minnie ' and 
 ' spinney.' But Winifred's a very hard case 
 indeed. ' Winnie ' and ' guinea ' are good 
 enough rhymes ; but not quite new : they've 
 been virtually done before by Rossetti, you 
 know : 
 
 " Lazy, laughing, languid Jenny, 
 Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea." 
 
 But I doubt if I could ever consent to make 
 love to a girl whose name's so utterly and 
 atrociously unmanageable as plain Winifred. 
 — Now, Mary — there's a name for you, if you 
 like : with ' fairy ' and ' airy, and * chary ' and 
 'vagary,' and all sorts of other jolly old- 
 world rhymes to go with it. Or if you want 
 to be rural, you can bring in ' dairy ' — do the 
 pretty-milkmaid business to perfection. But 
 ' Winifred ' — ' bin afraid ' — the thing's im- 
 possible. It compels you to murder the 
 English language. I wouldn't demean myself 
 — or I think it ought to be by rights bemean 
 myself — by writing verses to her with such a 
 name as that. — I shall send them to Elsie, 
 
ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 
 
 105 
 
 who, after all, deserves them more, and will 
 be flattered with the attention into the 
 
 bargain." 
 
 At ten o'clock, he came out once more from 
 his own room to the little parlour, where 
 Warren Relf was seated " cooking " a sky in 
 one of his hasty seaside sketches. He had an 
 envelope in his hand, and a hat on his head. 
 " Where are you off ? " Eelf asked carelessly. 
 
 " Oh, just to the post," Hugh Massinger 
 answered with a gay nod. " I've finished 
 my new batch of verses on the ocean — emotion 
 — potion — devotion theme, and I'm sending 
 them off, all hot from the oven, to my cousin 
 Elsie. — They're not bad in their way. I like 
 them myself I shall print them, I think, in 
 next week's Athenceum" 
 
106 THIS MOllTAL COIL. 
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 
 AVIIICn LADY? 
 
 PIuGH found the day among the sandhills 
 simply deliglitful. He had said with truth 
 he loved all innocent pleasures, for his was 
 one of tliose sunny, many-sided, a3sthetic 
 natures, in spite of its underlying tinge of 
 pessimism and sadness, that throw themselves 
 with ardour into every simple country delight, 
 and find deep enjoyment in trees and flowers 
 and waves and scenery, in the scent of new- 
 ]nown hay and the song of birds, and in 
 social intercourse with beautiful women. 
 Warren Relf had readily enough fallen in 
 with Hugh's plan for their day's outing ; for 
 Warren Relf in his turn was human too, and 
 at a first glance he had been greatly taken 
 with Hugh's pretty cousin, the dark-eyed 
 Girton girl. His possession of the Mud- 
 2'w'tle gave him for the moment a title to 
 
wmcn LADY? 107 
 
 respect, for a yacht's a yaclit, however tiny. 
 Ho he took tliem all up together in the yawl 
 to the foot of the sandhills ; and while Mrs. 
 Meysey and the girls were unpacking the 
 liampers and getting lunch ready on the 
 white slopes of the drifted dunes, he sat 
 down by the shore and sketched a little Lit of 
 the river foreground that exactly suited his 
 own peculiar style — nn islet of mud, rising 
 low from the bed of the sluggish stream, 
 crowned with purple sea-aster and white- 
 flowered scurvy-grass, and backed by a slimy 
 l)ed of tidal ooze, that shone with glancing 
 rays of gold and crimson in the broad flood 
 of the reflected sunlight. 
 
 Elsie was very happy, too, in her way ; for 
 had she not Hugh all the time by her side, 
 and was she not wearing the ardent verses 
 she had received from him by post that very 
 morning, inside her dress, pressed close 
 against her heart, and rising and falling with 
 eveiy pulse and flutter of her bosom ? To 
 him, the handicraftsman, they were a mere 
 matter of ocean, and potion, and lotion, and 
 devotion, strung together on a slender thread 
 of pretty conceit ; but to her, in the innocent 
 
lOS TniS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 ecstasy of a first great love, they meant more 
 than words could possibly utter. 
 
 She could not thank him for them ; her 
 pride and dclii^ht went too deep for that ; and 
 even were it otherwise, she had no opportunity. 
 But once, while they stood together by the 
 sounding sea, with Winifred by their side, 
 looking critically at the picture Warren Rolf 
 had sketched in hasty outline, and begun to 
 colour, she found an occasion to let the poet 
 know, by a graceful allusion, she had received 
 his little tribute of verse in safety. As the 
 painter with a few dainty strokes filled in 
 the floating iridescent tints upon the sunlit 
 ooze, she murmured aloud, as if quoting from 
 some well-known poem : 
 
 " Eed strands that faintly fleck and spot 
 The tawny flood thy banks enfold ; 
 A woof of Tyrian purple, shot 
 Through cloth of gold." 
 
 Hugh looked up at her appreciatively with 
 a smile of recognition. They were his own 
 verses, out of the Song of the Char he had 
 written and posted to her the night before. 
 " Mere faint Swinburnian echoes, nothing 
 worth," he murmured low in a deprecating 
 
WHICH LADYf 
 
 109 
 
 abide; but he was none the less ihittered Jit 
 tlio delicate attention, for all that. " And 
 how clever of her, too," he thought to himself 
 with a faint thrill, " to have pieced them in 
 so deftly with the subject of the picture 1 
 After all, she's a very intelligent girl, Elsie ! 
 A man might go further and fare worse — if 
 it were not for that negative quantity in 
 doits and stivers/' 
 
 Warren Relf looked up also with a quick 
 glance at the dark-eyed girl. *'• You're riglit, 
 Miss Challoner," he said, stealing a lover's 
 side-look at the iridescent peacock hues upon 
 the gleaming mud. *• It shines like opal. 
 No precious stone on earth could be lovelier 
 than that. Few people have the eye to see 
 beauty in a flat of tidal nuid like the one I'm 
 painting ; but cloth of gold and Tyrian 
 jDurple are the only words one could possibly 
 find to express in fit language the glow and 
 glory of its exquisite colouring. If only I 
 could put it on canvas now, as you've put 
 it in words, even the Hanging Committee 
 of the Academy, I believe- — hard-hearted 
 monsters — w^ould scarcely be stony enough to 
 dream of rejecting it." 
 
110 TUIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 Elsie smiled. How every man reads 
 things his own way, by the light of his own 
 personal interests ! Hugh had seen she wjis 
 trying to thank him unobtrusively for his 
 coj)y of verses; Warren Relf had only found 
 in her apt quotation a passing criticism on 
 his own little water-colour. 
 
 After lunch, the two seniors, the Squire 
 
 and Mrs. Meysey, manifested the distinct 
 
 desire of middle age for a quiet digestion in 
 
 the shade of the sandhills ; and the four 
 
 younger folks, nothing loth to be free, 
 
 wandered off in pairs at their own sweet will 
 
 along the bank of the river. Hugh took 
 
 Elsie for his companion at first, while Warren 
 
 Relf had to put himself off for the time being 
 
 with the blue-eyed Winifred. Now Relf 
 
 hated blue eyes. " But we must arrange it 
 
 like a set of Lancers," Hugh cried with an 
 
 easy flourish of his graceful hand ; " at the 
 
 end of the figure, set to corners and change 
 
 partners." Elsie might have felt half jealous 
 
 for a moment at this equitable suggestion, if 
 
 Hugh hadn't added to her in a lower tone, 
 
 and with his sweetest smile : *' I mustn't 
 
 monopolize you all the afternoon, you know, 
 
WHICH LADYf 
 
 Hi 
 
 Elsie; Keif must liave liis innin^i^s too; 1 c;iii 
 sec by his faee he's just <Jyiii;>- to talk to yon." 
 
 " I'd rather a great deal talk willi you, 
 Hugh," Elsie murmured gently, looking down 
 at the sands with an apparently sudden 
 geological interest in their minute composition. 
 
 "I'm proud to hear it; so would I," iiugfi 
 answered gallantly. " I>ut we mustn't he 
 selfish. I hate selfishness. I'll sacrifice myself 
 by-and-by on the altar of fraternity to giv(:; 
 Keif a turn in due season. Meanwhile, Elsie, 
 let's be happy together while we can. 
 Moments like these don't come to one often 
 in the course of a lifetime. They're as rare 
 as rubies and as all good things. When they 
 do come, I prize thein iar too much to think 
 of wasting them in petty altercation." 
 
 They strolled about among the undulating 
 dunes for an hour or more, talking: in that 
 vague emotional way that young men and 
 maidens naturally fall into when they walk 
 together by the shore of the great deep, and 
 each very much pleased with the other's 
 society, as usually happens under similar cir- 
 cumstances. The dunes were indeed a lovely 
 place for flirting in, as if made for the purpose 
 
112 Tins MOBTAL COIL. 
 
 — high hillowy hillocks of blown sand, all 
 white and firm, and rolling like chalk downs, 
 but matted together underfoot with a tussocky 
 network of spurges and campions and solda- 
 nella convolvulus. In the tiny combes and 
 valleys in between, where tall reed-like grasses 
 made a sort of petty imitation jungle, you 
 could sit down unobserved under the lee of 
 some mimic range ol mountains, and. take 
 your ease in an enchanted garden, like 
 sultans and sultanas of the " Arabian Nights," 
 without risk of intrusion. The sea tumbled 
 in gently on one side upon the long white 
 beach ; the river ran on the other just within 
 the belt of blown sandhills ; and wedged 
 between the two, in a long line, the barrier 
 ridge of miniature wolds stretched away for 
 miles and miles in long perspective towards 
 the southern horizon. It was a lotus-eating 
 place to lie and dream and make love in for 
 ever. As Hugh sat there idly with Elsie by 
 his side under the lee of the dunes, he 
 wondered the Squire could ever have had 
 the bad taste to object to the generous east 
 wind which had overwhelmed his miserable 
 utilitarian salt-marsh pastures with this 
 
WHICH LADTf 113 
 
 quaint little fairyland of tiny knolls and 
 Lilliputian valleys. For his own part, Hugh 
 was duly grateful to that unconscious atmo- 
 spheric landscape gardener for his admirable 
 additions to the flat Suffolk scenery ; he 
 wanted nothing better or sweeter in life 
 than to lie here for ever stretched at his ease 
 in the sun, and talk of poetry and love with 
 Elsie. 
 
 At the end of an hour, however, he roused 
 himself sturdily. Life, says the philosopher, 
 is not all beer and skittles ; nor is it all 
 poetry and dalliance either. " Stern duty 
 sways our lives against our will," say the 
 " Echoes from Callimachus." It's all very 
 well, at odd moments, to sport with Amaryllis 
 in the shade, or with the tangles of Nesera's 
 hair — for a reasonable period. But if Amaryllis 
 has no money of her own, or if Nesera is a 
 penniless governess in a country-house, the 
 wase man must sacrifice sentiment at last to 
 solid advantages ; he must quit Amaryllis in 
 search of Phyllis, or reject Nesera in favour 
 of Vera, that opulent virgin, who has lands 
 and houses, messuages and tenements, stocks 
 and shares, and is a ward in Chancery. Face 
 
 VOL. I. I 
 
114 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 to face with such a sad necessity, Hugh now 
 found himself. He was really grieved that 
 the circumstances of the case compelled him 
 to tear himself unwillingly away from Elsie ; 
 he was so thoroughly enjoying himself in his 
 own pet way; but duty, duty — duty before 
 everything ! The slave of duty jumped up 
 with a start. 
 
 " My dear child," he exclaimed, glancing 
 hastily at his watch, " Keif will really never 
 forgive me. I'm sure it's time for us to set 
 to corners and change partners. Not, of 
 course, that I want to do it myself. For two 
 people who are not engaged, I think we've 
 had a very snug little time of it here together, 
 Elsie. But a bargain's a bargain, and Relf 
 must be inwardly grinding his teeth at me. 
 — Let's go and meet them." 
 
 Elsie rose more slowly and wistfully. 
 " I'm never so happy anywhere, Hugh," she 
 said with a lingering cadence, " as when 
 you're with me," 
 
 *' And yet we are not engag3d," Hugh 
 went on in a meditative murraur — " we're 
 not engaged. We're only cousins! For 
 mere cousins, our cousinly solicitude for one 
 
WHICH LADYf 
 
 115 
 
 another's welfare is truly touching. . If all 
 families were only as united as ours, now! 
 interpreters of prophecy would not have far 
 to seek for the date of the millennium. Well, 
 well, instructress of youth, we must look out 
 for these other young people ; and if I were 
 you, experience would suggest to me the 
 desirability of not coming upon them from 
 behind too unexpectedly or abruptly. A 
 fellow-feelino' makes ns wondrous kind. Relf 
 is young, and the pretty pupil is by no means 
 unattractive." 
 
 " I'd trust Winifred as implicitly " 
 
 Elsie began, and broke off suddenly. 
 
 *' As you'd trust yourself," Hugh put in, 
 with a little quiet irony, completing her 
 sentence. " No doubt, no doubt ; I can 
 readily believe it. But even you and I — 
 who are staider and older, and merely cousins 
 — wouldn't have cared to be disturbed too 
 abruptly just now, you know, when we were 
 pulling soldanellas to pieces in concert in the 
 hollow down yonder. I shall climb to the 
 top of the big sandhill there, and from that 
 specular mount — as Satan remarks in ' Para- 
 dise Regained ' — I shall spy from afar where 
 
116 THIS MOBTAL COIL. 
 
 Relf has wandered off to with the immaculate 
 Winifred. — Ah, there they are, over yonder 
 by the beach, looking for pebbles or some- 
 thing — I suppose amber. Let's go over to 
 them, Elsie, and change partners. Common 
 politeness compels one, of course, to pay some 
 attention to one's host's daughter." 
 
 As they strolled away again with a change 
 of partners, back towards the spot where 
 Mrs. Meysey was somewhat anxiously await- 
 ing them, Hugh and Winifred turned their 
 talk casually on Elsie's manifold charms and 
 excellences. " She's a sweet, isn't she ? " 
 Winifred cried to her new acquaintance in 
 enthusiastic appreciation. " Did you ever in 
 your life meet anybody like her ? " 
 
 " No, never," Hugh answered with candid 
 praise. Candour was always Hugh's special 
 cue. " She's a dear, good girl, and I like 
 her immensely. I'm proud of her too. The 
 only inheritance I ever received from my 
 family is my cousinship to Elsie ; and I duly 
 prize it as my sole heirloom from fifty genera- 
 tions of penniless Massingers." 
 
 " Then you're very fond of her, Mr. Mas- 
 singer ? " 
 
WHICH LADY? 
 
 117 
 
 *' Yes, very fond of her. When a man's 
 only got one relative in the world, he naturally 
 values that unique possession far more than 
 those who have a couple of dozen or so of all 
 sexes and ages, assorted. Some people suffer 
 from too much family ; my misfortune is that, 
 beinff a naturally affectionate man, I suffer 
 from too little. It's the old case of the one 
 ewe lamb; Elsie is to me my brothers and 
 my sisters, and my cousins and my aunts, all 
 rolled into one, like the supers at the theatre." 
 
 " And are you and she " Winifred 
 
 began timidly. All girls are naturally 
 inquisitive on that important question. 
 
 Hugh broke her off with a quick, little 
 laugh. " Oh, dear no, nothing of the sort," 
 he answered hastily, in his jaunty way. 
 " We're not engaged, if that's what you 
 mean, Miss Meysey ; nor at all likely to be. 
 Our affection, though profound, is of the 
 brotherly and sisterly order only. It's much 
 nicer so, of course. When people are engaged, 
 they're always looking forward with yearning 
 and longing and other unpleasant internal 
 feelings, much enlarged upon in Miss Virginia 
 Gabriel's songs, to a delusive future. W^hen 
 
118 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 they're simply friends, or brothers and sisters, 
 tliey can enjoy their friendship or their 
 fraternity in the present tense, without for 
 ever gazing ahead with wistful eyes towards 
 a distant and ever receding horizon." 
 
 " But whv need it recede ? " Winifred 
 asked innocently. 
 
 "Why need it recede ? Ah, there you 
 pose me. Well, it needn't, of course, among 
 the rich and the mighty. If people are swells, 
 and amply provided for by their godfathers 
 and godmothers at their baptism, or otherwise, 
 they can marry at once ; but the poor and 
 the struggling — that's Elsie and me, you 
 know. Miss Meysey — the poor and the 
 struggling get engaged foolishly, and hope 
 and hope for a humble cottage — the poetical 
 cottage, all draped with roses and wild honey- 
 suckle, and the well-attired woodbine — and 
 toil and moil and labour exceedingly, and 
 find the cottage receding, receding, receding 
 still, away off in the distance, while they 
 plough their way through the hopeless years, 
 just as the horizon recedes for ever before 
 you when you steer straight out for it in a 
 boat at sea. The moral is — poor folk should 
 
WHICH LADT? 119 
 
 not indulge in the luxury of hearts, and 
 should wrap themselves up severely in their 
 own interests, till they're wholly and utterly 
 and irr.etrievably selfish." 
 
 " And are you selfish, I wonder, Mr. Mas- 
 singer f 
 
 " I try to be, of course, from a sense of 
 duty ; though I'm afraid I make a very poor 
 hand at it. I was born with a heart, and do 
 what I will, I can't quite stifle that irrepressible 
 natural organ. — But I take it all out, I believe, 
 in the end, in writing verses." 
 
 " You sent Elsie some verses this morning," 
 Winifred broke out in an artless way, as if 
 she were merely stating a common fact of 
 every-day experience. 
 
 Hugh had some difficulty in suppressing a 
 start, and in recovering his composure so as 
 to answer unconcernedly : *' Oh, she showed 
 them to you, then, did she ? " (How thought- 
 less of him to have posted those poor rhymeti 
 to Elsie, when he might have known before- 
 hand she would confide them at once to Miss 
 Meysey's sjanpathetic ear !) 
 
 "No, she didn't show them to me," 
 Winifred replied, in the same careless easy 
 
 ■0 
 
120 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 way as before. " I saw them drop out of the 
 envelope, that's all ; and Elsie put them 
 away as soon as she saw they were verses ; 
 but I was sure they were yours, because I 
 know your handwriting — Elsie's shown me 
 bits of your letters sometimes." 
 
 " I often send copies of my little pieces to 
 Elsie before I print them," Hugh went on 
 casually, in his most candid manner. " It 
 may be vain of me, but I like her to see them. 
 She's a capital critic, Elsie ; women often are : 
 she sometimes suggests to me most valuable 
 alterations and modifications in some of my 
 verses." 
 
 " Tell me these ones," Winifred asked 
 abruptly, with a little blush. 
 
 It was a trying moment. What was Hugh 
 to do ? The verses he had actually sent to 
 Elsie were all emotion and devotion, and 
 hearts and darts, and fairest and thou wearest, 
 and charms and arms ; amorous and clamorous 
 chimed together like old friends in one stanza, 
 and sorrow dispelled itself to-morrow with its 
 usual cheerful punctuality in the next. To 
 recite them to Winifred as they stood would 
 be to retire at once from his half-projected 
 
WHICH LADYf 
 
 121 
 
 siege of the pretty little heiress's heart and 
 hand. For that decisive step Hugh was not 
 at present entirely prepared. He mustn't 
 allow himself to be beaten by such a scholar's 
 mate as this. He cleared his throat, and hegan 
 boldly on another piece, ringing out his lines 
 with a sonorous lilt — a set of silly, garrulous, 
 childish verses he had written long since, but 
 never published, about some merry sea-elves 
 in an enchanted submarine fairy country. 
 
 *' A tiny fay 
 At the bottom lay 
 Of a purple bay 
 
 Unruffled, 
 On whose crystal floor 
 The distant roar 
 From the surf-bound shore 
 Was muffled. 
 
 " With his fairy wife 
 He passed his life, 
 Undimmed by strife 
 
 Or quarrel ; 
 And the livelong day 
 They would merrily play, 
 Through a labyrinth gay, 
 
 With coral. 
 
 " They loved to dwell 
 In a pearly shell, 
 And to deck their cell 
 With amber ; 
 
122 THIS MOUTAL COIL. 
 
 Or amid tlio caves, 
 That the riplet laves 
 And the beryl paves, 
 To clamber." 
 
 He went on so, with his jigging versicles, 
 line after line, as they walked along the firm 
 white sand together, through several foolish 
 sing-song stanzas ; till at last, when he was 
 more than half way through the meaningless 
 little piece, a sudden thought pulled him up 
 abruptly. He had chosen, as he thought, the 
 most innocent and non-committing bit of 
 utter trash in all his private poetical repertory ; 
 but now, as he repeated it over to Winifred 
 with easy intonaton, swinging his stick to 
 keep time as he went, he recollected all at 
 once that the last rhymes flew off at a tangent 
 to a very personal conclusion — and what was 
 worse, were addressed, too, not to Elsie, but 
 very obviously to another lady ! The end 
 was somewhat after this wise : 
 
 " On a darting shrimp 
 Our quaint little imp 
 With bridle of gimp 
 Would gambol ; 
 Or across the back 
 Of a sea-horg<^, black 
 As a gentleman's hack, 
 He'd amble. 
 

 wnicn LADYt 123 
 
 "Of emerald green 
 And supi)hiro's sheen 
 lie made his queen 
 
 A tiar; 
 And the merry two 
 Their whole life through 
 Were as happy as you 
 
 And I are." 
 
 And then came the seriously compromisino* 
 bit: 
 
 " But if you say 
 You think this lay 
 Of the tiny fay 
 Too silly ; 
 Let it have the praise 
 My eye betrays 
 To your own sweet gaze, 
 My Lily. 
 
 " For a man he tries, 
 And he toils and sighs 
 To be very wise 
 
 And witty; 
 But a dear little dame 
 Has enough of fame, 
 If she wins the name 
 Of pretty." 
 
 Lily ! Lily ! Oh, that discomposing, un- 
 fortunate, compromising Lily ! He had met 
 her down in Warwickshire two seasons since, 
 at a country-house where they were both 
 staying, and had fallen over head and ears in 
 
124 
 
 Tins MORTAL COIL. 
 
 love with her — then. Now, he only wished 
 with all his heart and soul she and her fays 
 were at the bottom of the sea in a body 
 together. For of course she was penniless. 
 If not, by this time she would no doubt have 
 been Mrs. Massinger. 
 
 Hugh Massinger was a capital actor; but 
 even he could hardly have ventured to 
 pretend with a grave face that those Lily 
 verses had ever been addressed to Elsie 
 Challoner. Everything depended upon his 
 presence of mind and a bold resolve. He 
 hesitated for a moment at the " emerald green 
 and sapphire's sheen," and seemed as though 
 he couldn't recall the next line. After a 
 minute or two's pretended searching he re- 
 covered it feebly, and then he stumbled again 
 over the end of the stanza. 
 
 " It's no use," he cried at last, as if angry 
 with himself. " I should only murder them 
 if I were to go on now. I've forgotten the 
 rest. The words escape me. And they're 
 really not worth your seriously listening 
 to." 
 
 " I like them," Winifred said in her simple 
 way. " They're so easy to understand : so 
 
WHICH LADYf 125 
 
 melodious and meaningless. I love verse 
 that you don't have to puzzle over. I can't 
 bear Browning for that — he's so impossible 
 to make anything sensible out of. But I 
 adore silly little things like these, that go in 
 of one ear and out of the other, and really 
 sound as if they meant something. I shall 
 ask Elsie to tell me the end of them." 
 
 Here was indeed a dilemma ! Suppose she 
 did, and suppose Elsie showed her the real 
 verses ! At all hazards, he must extricate 
 himself somehow from this impossible situa- 
 tion. 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't," he said gently, in 
 his softest and most persuasive voice. " Elsie 
 mightn't like you to know I sent her my 
 verses — though there's nothing in it — girls 
 are so sensitive sometimes about these matters. 
 — But I'll tell you what I'll do, if you'll kindly 
 allow me ; I'll write you out the end of them 
 when I get home to the inn, and bring them 
 written out in full, a nice clear copy, tlie next 
 time I have the pleasure of seeing you." (" I 
 can alter the end somehow," he thouglit to 
 himself with a sudden inspiration, *' and dress 
 them up iimocently one way or another with 
 
126 
 
 THIS MOBTAL COIL. 
 
 fresh rhymes, so as to have no special applic- 
 ability of any sort to anybody or anything 
 anywhere in particular.") 
 
 *' Thank you," Winifred replied, with 
 evident pleasure. " I should like that ever so 
 much better. It'll be so nice to have a poet's 
 verses written out for one's self in his own 
 handwriting." 
 
 " You do me too much honour," Hugh 
 answered with his mock little bow. " I don't 
 pretend to be a poet at all ; I'm only a 
 versifier." 
 
 They joined the old folks in time by the 
 yawl. The Squire was getting anxious to go 
 back to his garden now — he foresaw rain in 
 the sky to westward. 
 
 Hugh glanced hastily at his watch with a 
 sigh. " I must be going back too," he cried. 
 '' It's nearly five now ; we can't be up at the 
 village till six. Post goes out at nine, they 
 say, and I have a book to review before post- 
 time. It must positively reach town not later 
 than to-morrow morning. And what's worse, 
 I haven't yet so much as begun to dip 
 into it." 
 
 *'But you can never read it, and review 
 
WHICH LADYf 127 
 
 it too, in three hours ! " Winifred exclaimed, 
 aghast. 
 
 " Precisely so," Hugh answered, in his 
 jaunty way, with a stifled yawn ; " and there- 
 fore I propose to omit the reading as a very 
 unnecessary and wasteful preliminary. It 
 often prejudices one against a book to know 
 what's in it. You approach a work you 
 haven't read with a mind unbiased by pre- 
 conceived impressions. Besides, this is only 
 a three-volume novel ; they're all alike ; it 
 doesn't matter. You can say the plot is 
 crude and ill-constructed, the dialogue feeble, 
 the descriptions vile, the situations borrowed, 
 and the characters all mere conventional 
 puppets. The same review will do equally 
 well for the whole stupid lot of them. I 
 usually follow Sydney Smith's method in that 
 matter; I cut a few pages at random, here 
 and there, and then smell the paper-knife." 
 
 " But is that just ? " Elsie asked quietly, a 
 slight shade coming over her earnest face. 
 
 "My dear Miss Challoner," Warren Relf 
 put in hastily, " have you known Massinger 
 so many years without finding out that he's 
 always a great deal better than he himself pre- 
 
128 THIS MOBTAL COIL. 
 
 tends to be ? I know him well enougli to feel 
 quite confident he'll read every word of that 
 novel through to-night, if he sits up till four 
 o'clock in the morning to do it ; and he'll let 
 the London people have their review in time, 
 if he telegraphs up every blessed word of it 
 by special wire to-morrow morning. His 
 wickedness is always only his brag ; his 
 goodness he hides carefully under his own 
 extremely capacious bushel." 
 
 Hugh laughed. " As you know me so 
 much better than I know myself, my dear 
 boy," he replied easily, "there's nothing more 
 to be said about it. I'm glad to receive so 
 good a character from a connoisseur in 
 human nature. I really never knew before 
 want an amiable and estimable member of 
 society hid himself under my rugged and un- 
 prepossessing exterior." And as he said it, 
 lie drew himself up, and darting a laugh from 
 the corner of those sad black eyes, looked at 
 the moment the handsomest and most utterly 
 killing man in the county of Suffolk. 
 
 When Elsie and Winifred went up to their 
 own rooms that evening, the younger girl, 
 slipping into Elsie's bedroom for a moment. 
 
WlllCn LADYf 129 
 
 took her friend's hands tenderly in her own, 
 and looking long and eagerly into the other's 
 eyes, said at last in a quick tone of unexpected 
 discovery : '' Elsie, he's awfully nice-looking 
 and awfully clever, this Oxford cousin of 
 yours. I like him immensely." 
 
 Elsie brought back her eyes from infinity 
 with a sudden start. " I'm glad you do, 
 dear," she said, looking down at her kindly. 
 " I wanted you to like him. I should have 
 been dreadfully disappointed, in fact, if you 
 didn't. I'm exceedingly fond of Hugh, 
 Winnie." 
 
 Winifred paused for a second significantly ; 
 then she asked point-blank, " Elsie, are you 
 engaged to him ? " 
 
 ** Engaged to him ! My darling, what ever 
 made you dream of such a thing ? — Engaged 
 to Hugh! — engaged to Hugh Massinger! 
 — Why, Winnie, you know, he's my own 
 cousin." 
 
 "But you don't answer my question 
 plainly," Winifred persisted with girlish 
 determination. "Are you engaged to him 
 or are you not ? " 
 
 Elsie, mindful of Hugh's frequent declara- 
 
 YOL. 1. ir 
 
130 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 tioiis, answered boldly (and not quite un- 
 truthfully), " No, I'm not, Winifred." 
 
 The heiress of Wliitestrand stroked her 
 friend's hair with a sigh of relief. That sigh 
 was blind. Girl though she was, she might 
 clearly have seen with a woman's instinct 
 that Elsie's flushed cheek and downcast eyes 
 belied to the utmost her spoken word. But 
 she did not see it. All preoccupied as she 
 was with her own thoughts and her own 
 wishes, she never observed at all those mute 
 witnesses to Elsie's love for her handsome 
 cousin. She was satisfied in her heart with 
 Hugh's and Elsie's double verbal denial. She 
 said to herself with a thrill in her own soul, 
 as a girl will do in the first full flush of her 
 earliest passion, '' Then I may love him if I 
 like ! I may make him love me ! It won't 
 be wrong to Elsie for me to love him I " 
 
( 131 ) 
 
 CHxS.PTER Yll. 
 
 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. 
 
 That same night, as the Squire and Mrs. 
 Meysey sat by themselves towards the small- 
 hours — after the girls had unanimously 
 evacuated the drawing-room — discussing the 
 affairs of the universe generally, as then and 
 there envisaged, over a glass of claret-cup, 
 the mother looked up at last with a sudden 
 glance into the father's face, and said in a 
 tone half-anxious, half-timid : " Tom, did it 
 happen to strike you this afternoon that that 
 handsome cousin of Elsie Challoner's seemed 
 to take a great fancy to our Winifred ? " 
 
 The Squire stirred his claret-cup idly with 
 his spoon. " I suppose the fellow has eyes 
 in his head," he answered bluntly. " No 
 man in his senses could ever look at our little 
 Winnie, I should think, Emily, and not fall 
 over his ears in love with her." 
 
132 TUTS MOItTAL COIL. 
 
 Mrs. Meysey waited a minute or two more 
 in silent suspense before she spoke again ; 
 then she said once more, very tentatively, " He 
 seems a tolerably nice young man, I think, 
 Tom." 
 
 *' Oh, he's well enough, I dare say," the 
 Squire admitted grudgingly. 
 
 " A barrister, he says. That's a very good 
 profession," Mrs. Meysey went on, still feeling 
 her way by gradual stages. 
 
 " Never heard so in my life before," the 
 Squire grunted out. " There are barristers 
 and barristers. He gets no briefs. Lives on 
 literature, by what he tells me : next door to 
 living upon your wits, I call it." 
 
 " But I mean, it's a gentleman's profession, 
 anyhow, Tom, the bar." 
 
 " Oh, the man's a gentleman, of course, if 
 it comes to that — a perfect gentleman; and 
 an Oxford man, and a person of culture, and 
 all that sort of thing — I don't deny it. He's 
 a very presentable fellow, too, in his own 
 way ; and most intelligent : understands the 
 riparian proprietors' question as easy as any- 
 thing. — You can ask him to dinner whenever 
 you choose, if that's what you're driving at." 
 
FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. 
 
 1«> •> 
 
 Mrs. Meysey called another halt for a few 
 seconds before she reopened fire, still more 
 timidly than ever. "Tom, do you know I 
 rather fancy he really likes our Winifred ? " 
 she murmured, gasping. 
 
 " Of course he likes our Winifred," the 
 Rquire repeated, with profound conviction in 
 every tone of liis voice. " I should like to 
 know who on earth there is that doesn't like 
 our Winifred ! Nothing new in that. I 
 could have told you so myself. Go ahead 
 with it, then. — What next, now, Emily ? " 
 
 " Well, I think, Tom, if I'm not mistaken, 
 Winifred seemed rather inclined to take a 
 fancy to him too, somehow." 
 
 Thomas Wyville Meysey laid down his 
 glass incredulously on the small side-table. 
 He didn't explode, but he hung lire for a 
 moment. " You women are always fancying 
 things," he said at last, with a slight frown. 
 " You think you're so precious quick, you do, 
 at reading other people's faces. I don't deny 
 you often succeed in reading them right. You 
 read mine precious often, I know, when I 
 don't want you to — that I can swear to. But 
 sometimes, Emily, you know you read what 
 
134 THIS MOliTAL COIL. 
 
 isn't in them. That's the way with all 
 decipherers of hieroglyphics. They see a 
 great deal more in things than ever was put 
 there. You remember that time when I met 
 old Hillier down by the copse yonder " 
 
 " Yes, yes, I remember," Mrs. Meysey 
 admitted, checking him at the outset with an 
 astute concession. She had cause to remember 
 the facts, indeed, for the Squire reminded her 
 of that one obvious and palpable mistake 
 about the young fox-cubs at least three times 
 a week, the year round, on an average. " I 
 was wrong that time ; I know I was, of course. 
 You weren't in the least annoyed with Mr. 
 Hillier. But I think — I don't say I'm sure, 
 observe, dear — but I think Winifred's likely 
 to take a fancy in time to this young Mr. 
 Massinger. Now, the question is, if she does 
 take a fancy to him — a serious fancy — and he 
 to her — what are you and I to do about it ? " 
 
 As she spoke, Mrs. Meysey looked hard at 
 the lamp, and then at her husband, wondering 
 with what sort of grace he would receive this 
 very revolutionary and upsetting suggestion. 
 For herself — though mothers are hard to 
 please — it may as well be admitted off-hand. 
 
FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. 135 
 
 slie had fallen a ready victim at once to 
 Hugh Massinger's charms and brilliancy and 
 blandishments. Such a nice young man, so 
 handsome and gentlemanly, so adroit in his 
 talk, so admirable in his principles, and 
 though far from rich, yet, in his way, dis- 
 tinguished ! A better young man, darling 
 Winifred was liardly likely to meet with. 
 But what would dear Tom think about him ? 
 she wondered. Dear Tom had such very 
 expansive not to say Utopian ideas for Wini- 
 fred — thought nobody but a Duke or a Prince 
 of the blood half good enough for her : though, 
 to be sure, experience would seem to suggest 
 that Dukes and Princes, after all, are only 
 human, and not originally very much better 
 than other people. Whatever superior moral 
 excellence we usually detect in the finished 
 product may no doubt be safely set down in 
 ultimate analysis to the exceptional pains 
 bestowed by society upon their ethical educa- 
 tion. 
 
 The Squire looked into his claret-cup pro- 
 foundly for a few seconds before answering, 
 as if he expected to find it a perfect Dr. Dee's 
 divining crystal, big with hints as to his 
 
1;{G THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 (laughter's future ; and then be burst out 
 abruptly with a grunt : " I suppose we must 
 Jeave the answering of tliat question entirely 
 to Winnie." 
 
 Mrs. Meysey did not dare to let her internal 
 sigh of relief escape her throat ; that would 
 have been too compromising, and would have 
 alarmed dear Tom. So she stifled it quietly. 
 Then dear Tom was not wholly averse, after 
 all, to this young Mr. Massinger. He, too, 
 had fallen a victim to the poet's wiles. That 
 was well ; for Mrs. Meysey, with a mother's 
 eye, had read Winifred's heart through and 
 through. But we must not seem to give in 
 too soon. A show of resistance runs in the 
 grain with women. " He's got no money," 
 she murmured suggestively. 
 
 The Squire flared up. " Money ! " he cried, 
 with infinite contempt, " money ! money ! 
 Who the dickens says anything to me about 
 money ? I believe that's all on earth you 
 women think about. — Money indeed ! Much 
 I care about money, Emily. I dare say the 
 young fellow hasn't got money. What then ? 
 Who cares for that ? He's got money's worth. 
 He's got brains ; he's got principles ; he's got 
 
FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. 
 
 137 
 
 the will to work and to get on. He'll be ;i 
 iud«>-e in time, I don't doubt. If ii man like 
 that were to marry our Winifred, with the 
 aid we could give him and the friends we 
 could find liim, he ought to rise by quick 
 stages to be — anything you like — Lord 
 Chancellor, or Postmaster- general, or Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, for the matter of that, 
 if your tastes happen to run in that direction." 
 
 "He hasn't done much at the bar yet," 
 Mrs. Meysey continued, playing her fish 
 dexterously before landing it. 
 
 " Hasn't done much ! Of course he hasn't 
 done much ! How the dickens could he ? 
 Can a man make briefs for himself, do you 
 suppose ? He's given himself up, he tells 
 me, to earning a livelihood by writing for 
 the papers. Penny-a-lining ; writing for the 
 papers. He had to do it. It's a pity, upon 
 ray word, a clever young fellow like that — he 
 understands the riparian proprietors' question 
 down to the very ground — should be com- 
 pelled to turn aside from his proper work at 
 the bar to serve tables, so to speak — to gain 
 his daily bread by penny-a-lining. If Wini- 
 fred were to take a fancy to a young man 
 
138 Tins MORTAL COIL. 
 
 like that, now " The Squire paused, 
 
 and eyed the hght through his glass reflec- 
 tively. 
 
 "He's very presentable," Mrs. Meysey 
 went on, re-arranging her workbox, and still 
 angling cleverly for dear Tom's indignation. 
 
 " He's a man any woman might be perfectly 
 proud of," the Squire retorted in a thunderous 
 voice with firm conviction. 
 
 Mrs. Meysey followed up her advantage 
 persistently for twenty minutes, insinuating 
 every possible hint against Hugh, and leading 
 the Squire deeper and deeper into a hopeless 
 slough of unqualified commendation. At the 
 end of that time she said quietly, " Then I 
 understand, Tom, that if Winifred and this 
 young Massinger take a fancy to one another, 
 you don't put an absolute veto on the idea of 
 their getting engaged, do you ? " 
 
 " I only want Winnie to choose for her- 
 self," the Squire answered with prompt 
 decision. " Not that I suppose for a moment 
 there's anything in this young fellow's talking 
 a bit to her. Men will flirt, and girls will let 
 'em. Getting engaged indeed ! You count 
 your chickens before the eggs are laid. A 
 
FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. 139 
 
 man can't look at a girl nowadays, but you 
 women must take it into your precious heads 
 at once he wants to go straight off to church 
 and marry her. However, for my part, I'm 
 not going to interfere in the matter one way 
 or the other. I'd rather she'd marry the man 
 she loves, and the man who loves her, when- 
 ever he turns up, than marry fifty thousand 
 ])Ounds and the best estate in all Suffolk." 
 
 Mrs. Meysey had carried her point with 
 honours. " Perhaps you're right, dear," she 
 said diplomatically, as who should yield to 
 superior wisdom. It was her policy not to 
 appear too eager. 
 
 " Perhaps I'm right !" the Squire echoed, 
 half in complacency and half in anger. " Of 
 course I'm right. I know I'm right, Emily. 
 Why, I was reading in a book the other day 
 a most splendid appeal from some philosophic 
 writer or other about making fewer marriages 
 in future to please Mamma, and more to suit 
 the tastes of the parties concerned, and sub- 
 serve the good of coming generations. I 
 think it was an article in one of the magazines. 
 It's the right way, I'm sure of that ; and in 
 Winifred's case I mean to stick to it." 
 
140 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 80, from that day forth, if it was Hugh 
 .^lassinger's intention or desire to prosecute 
 his projected mihtary operations against Wini- 
 fred Meysey's hand and heart, he found at 
 least a benevolent neutral in the old Squire, 
 and a secret, silent, but none the less powerful 
 domestic ally in Mrs. Meysey. It is not often 
 that a penniless suitor thus enlists the sym- 
 pathies of the parental authorities, who ought 
 by precedent to form the central portion of 
 the defensive forces, on his own side in such 
 an aggressive enterprise. But with Hugh 
 Massinger, nobody ever even noticed it as a 
 singular exception. He was so clever, so 
 handsome, so full of promise, so courteous 
 and courtly in his demeanour to young and 
 old, so rich in future hopes and ambitions, 
 that not the Squire alone, but everybody else 
 who came in contact with his easy smile, 
 accepted him beforehand as almost already a 
 Lord Chancellor, or a Poet Laureate, or an 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, according as he 
 might choose to direct his talents into this 
 channel or that ; and failed to be surprised 
 that the Meyseys or anybody else on earth 
 should accept him with effusion as a favoured 
 
FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. 
 
 141 
 
 postulant for the hand of their only daughter 
 and heiress. There are a few such universal 
 favourites here and there in the world : 
 whenever you meet one, smile with the rest, 
 but remember that his recipe is a simple one 
 — Humbug. 
 
142 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE ROADS DIVIDE. 
 
 Hugh stopped for two months or more at 
 Y/hitestrand, and during all that time he saw 
 much hoth of Elsie and of Winifred. The 
 Meyseys introduced him with cordial pleasure 
 to all the melancholy gaieties of the sleepy 
 little peninsula. He duly attended with them 
 the somnolent garden-parties on the smooth 
 lawns of neighbouring Squires : the mono- 
 tonous picnics up the tidal stream of the 
 meandering Char ; the heavy dinners at 
 every local rector's and vicar's and resident 
 baronet's ; with all the other dead-alive en- 
 tertainments of the dullest and most stick-in- 
 the-mud corner of all England. The London 
 poet enlivened them all, however, with his 
 never-failing flow of exotic humour, and his 
 slow, drawled-out readiness of Pall-Mall 
 
THE ROADS DIVIDE. 143 
 
 repartee. It was a comfort to him, indeed, 
 to get among these unspoiled and unsophisti- 
 cated children of nature; he could palm off 
 upon them as original the last good thing of 
 that fellow Hatherley's from the smoking- 
 room of the Oheyne Eow Club, or fire back 
 upon them, undetected, dim reminiscences of 
 pungent chaff overheard in brilliant West-end 
 drawing-rooms. And then, there were Elsie 
 and Winifred to amuse him ; and Hugh, 
 luxurious, easy-going epicurean philosopher 
 that he was, took no trouble to decide in his 
 own mind even what might be his ultimate 
 intentions towards either fair lady, satisfied 
 only, as he phrased it to his inner self, to 
 take the goods the gods provided him for the 
 passing moment, and to keep them both well 
 in hand together. " How happy could I 
 be with either," sings Captain Macheath in 
 the oft-quoted couplet, " were t'other dear 
 charmer away." Hugh took a still more 
 lenient view of his personal responsibilities 
 than the happy-go-lucky knight of the high- 
 way : he was quite content to be blest, while 
 he could, with both at once, asking no 
 questions, for conscience' sake, of his own 
 
144 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 final disposition, marital or otherwise, towards 
 one or the other, but leaving the problem of 
 his matrimonial arrangements for fate, or 
 chance, to settle in its own good fashion. 
 
 It was jnst a week after his arrival at 
 Whitestrand that he went up one morning 
 early to the Hall. Elsie and Winifred were 
 seated together on a rug under the big tree, 
 engaged in reading one novel between them. 
 
 " You must wish Winifred many happy 
 returns of the day," Elsie called out gaily, 
 looking up from her book as Hugh approached 
 them. " It's her birthday, Hugh ; and just 
 see what a lovely delightful present Mr. 
 Meysey's given her ! " 
 
 Winifred held out the present at arm's 
 length for his admiration. It was a pretty 
 little watch, in gold and enamel, with her 
 initials engraved on the back on a broad 
 shield. " It's just a beauty ! I should love one 
 like it myself!" Elsie cried enthusiastically. 
 " Did you ever see such a dear little thing ? 
 It's keyless too, and so exquisitely finished. 
 It really makes me feel quite ashamed of my 
 own poor old battered silver one." 
 
 Hugh took the watch and examined it 
 
TEE ROADS DIVIDE. 145 
 
 carefully. He noted the maker's name upon 
 the dial, and opening the back, made a rapid 
 mental memorandum of the number. A 
 sudden thought had flashed across him at the 
 moment. He waited only a few minutes at 
 the Hall, and then asked the two girls if they 
 could walk down into the village with him. 
 He had a telegram to send off, he said, which 
 he had only just that moment remembered. 
 Would they mind stepping over with him as 
 far as the post-office ? 
 
 They strolled together into the sleepy High 
 Street. At the office, Hugh wrote and sent 
 off his telegram. It was addressed to a well- 
 known firm of watchmakers in Ludgate Hill. 
 '^ Could you send me by to-morrow evening's 
 post, to address as below, a lady's gold and 
 enamel watch with initials "E. C, from 
 H. M." engraved on shield on back, but in 
 every other respect precisely similar to 
 No. 2479 just supplied to Mr. Meysey, of 
 Whitestrand Hall ? If so, telegraph back 
 cash-price at once, and cheque for amount 
 shall be sent immediately. Reply paid. — 
 Hugh Massinger, Fisherman's Rest, White- 
 strand, Suffolk." 
 
 VOL. I. L 
 
14G THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 Before lunch-time, the reply had duly 
 arrived : " Watch shall be sent on receipt 
 of cheque. Price twenty-five guineas." So 
 far, good. It was a fair amount for a 
 journeyman journalist to pay for a present ; 
 but, as Hugh shrewdly reflected, it would 
 kill two birds with one stone. Day after 
 to-morrow was Elsie's birthday. The watch 
 would give Elsie pleasure ; and Hugh, to do 
 him justice, thoroughly loved giving pleasure 
 to anybody, especially a pretty girl, and 
 above all Elsie. But it could also do him 
 no harm in the Meyseys' eyes to see that, 
 journeyman journalist as he was, he was 
 earning enough to afford to throw away 
 twenty-five guineas on a mere present to 
 a governess-cousin. There is a time for 
 economy, and there is a time for lavishness. 
 The present moment clearly came under the 
 latter category. 
 
 On the second morning, true to promise, 
 the watch arrived by the early post ; and 
 Hugh took it up with pride to the Hall, to 
 bestow it in a casual way upon poor breathless 
 and affectionate Elsie. He took it up for a 
 set purpose. He would show these purse- 
 
 It 
 
THE ROADS DIVIDE. 
 
 147 
 
 proud landed aristocrats that his cousin could 
 sport as good a watch any day as tlieir own 
 daughter. The Masslngers themselves had 
 been landed aristocrats — not presumably 
 purse-proud — In tlieir own day in dear old 
 Devonshire ; but tlie estates had disappeared 
 in houses and port and Holuus living two 
 generations since ; and Hugh was now 
 proving in his own person the truth of the 
 naif old English adage — " When land Is gone 
 and money spent, then larning is most 
 excellent." Journalism is a poor sort of 
 trade in its way, but at any rate an able 
 man can earn his bread and salt at it some- 
 how. Hugh didn't grudge those twenty-five 
 guineas : he regarded them, as he regarded 
 his poems, in the light of a valuable long 
 investment. They were a sort of indirect 
 double bid for the senior Meyseys' respect 
 and for Winifred's fervent admiration. When 
 a man is paying attentions to a pretty girl, 
 there's nothing on earth he desires so much 
 as to appear in her eyes lavishly generous. 
 A less abstruse philosopher, however, might 
 perhaps have bestowed his generosity direct 
 upon Winifred in propria persona: Hugh, 
 
148 THIS MOItTAL COIL. 
 
 with his subtler calculation of long odds and 
 remote chances, deemed it wiser to display it 
 in the first instance obliquely upon Elsie. 
 This was an acute little piece of psychological 
 byplay. A man who can make a present like 
 that to a poor cousin, with whom he stands 
 upon a purely cousinly footing, must be, after 
 all, not only generous, but a ripping good 
 fellow into the bargain. Plow would he not 
 comport himself under similar circumstances 
 to the maiden of his choice, and to the wife 
 of his bosom ? 
 
 Elsie took the watch, when Hugh produced 
 it, with a little cry of delight and surprise ; 
 then, looking at the initials so hastily engraved 
 in neat Lombardic letters on the back, the 
 tears rose to her eyes irrepressibly as she said 
 with a gentle pressure of his hand in hers, 
 " I know now, Hugh, what that telegram 
 was about the other morning. How very, 
 very kind and good of you to think of it. — 
 But I almost wish you hadn't given it to me. 
 I shall never forgive myself for having said 
 before you I should^ like one the same sort as 
 Winifred's. I'm quite ashamed of your 
 having thought I meant to hint at it," 
 
THE ROADS DIVIDE, 
 
 140 
 
 " Not at all," Hug'h answered, witli just 
 the faintest possible return of her gentle 
 pressure. " I was twisting it over in my 
 own mind what on earth I could ever find to 
 give you. I thought first of a copy of my 
 last little volume ; but then that's nothing — 
 I'm only too sensible myself of its small 
 worth. A book from an autlior is like spoiled 
 peaches from a market-gardener : he gives 
 them away only when he has a glut of them. 
 So, when you said you'd like a watch of the 
 same sort as Miss Meysey's, it seemed to mo 
 a perfect interposition of chance on my 
 behalf. I knew what to get, and I got it at 
 once. I'm only glad those London watch- 
 maker fellows, whose respected name I've 
 quite forgotten, had time to engrave your 
 initials on it." 
 
 " But, Hugh, it must have cost you such a 
 mint of money." 
 
 Hugh waved a deprecatory hand with airy 
 magnificence over the broad shrubbery. *' A 
 mere trifle," he said, as who could command 
 thousands. '* It came just to the exact sum 
 the Contemporary paid me for that last article 
 of mine on ' The Future of Marriage. 
 
 1 ?> 
 
150 THIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 (Which was quite true, the urticle in question 
 having run to precisely twenty-five pages, at 
 the usual honorarium of a g'uinea a page.) 
 *' It took me a few hours, only, to dash it off." 
 (Which was scarcely so accurate, it not being 
 usual for even the most abandoned or practised 
 of journalists to "dash off" articles for a 
 leading review ; and the mere physical task 
 of writing twenty-five pages of solid letter- 
 ])ress being considerably greater than most 
 men, however rapid their pens, could venture 
 to undertake in a few hours.) 
 
 Winifred looked up at him with a timid 
 glance. " It's a lovely watch," she said, 
 taking it over with an admiring look from 
 Elsie : '' and the inscription makes it ever so 
 much nicer. One would prize it, of course, 
 for that alone. But if I'd been Elsie, I'd a 
 tliousand times rather have had a volume of 
 poems, with the author's autograph dedication, 
 than all the watches in all England." 
 
 " Would you ? " Hugh answered with an 
 amused smile. " You rate the autographs of 
 a living versifier immensely above their 
 market value. Even Tennyson's may be 
 bought at a shop in the Strand, you know, 
 
THE ROADS DIVIDE. 151 
 
 for a few shilliiip;s. I feel this is indeed 
 fame. I shall begin to grow conceited soon 
 at this rate. — And by the way, Elsie, I've 
 brought you a little bit of verse too. Your 
 Laureate has not forgotten or neglected his 
 customary duty. I shall expect a butt of 
 sack in return for these : or may I venture to 
 take it out instead in nectar ? " They stood 
 all three behind a group of syringa bushes. 
 He touched her lips with his own lightly as 
 he spoke. " Many happy returns of the day 
 — as a cousin," he added, laughing. — " And 
 now, what's your programme for the day, 
 Elsie ? " 
 
 *' We want you to row us up the river to 
 Snade, if it's not too hot, Hugh," his pretty 
 cousin responded, all blushes. 
 
 ** Tuus, Regina, quid optes, Explorare 
 labor ; mihi jussa capessere fas est," Hugh 
 quoted merrily. " That's the best of talking 
 to a Girton girl, you see. You can fire off 
 your most epigrammatic Latin quotation at 
 her, as it rises to your lips, and she under- 
 stands it. How delightful that is, now. As 
 a rule, my Latin quotations, which are 
 frequent and free, as Truthful James says, 
 
152 THIS MOBTAL COIL. 
 
 besides being neat and appropriate, like after- 
 dinner speeches, fall quite flat upon the stony 
 ground of the feminine intelligence — which 
 last remark, I flatter myself, in the matter of 
 mixed metaphor, would do credit to Sir 
 Boyle Eoche in his wildest flights of Hibernian 
 eloquence. I made a lovely Latin pun at a 
 jDicnic once. We had some chicken and ham 
 sausage — a great red German sausage of the 
 polony order, in a sort of huge boiled-lobster- 
 coloured skin ; and towards the end of lunch, 
 somebody asked me for another slice of it. 
 ' There isn't any,' said I. ' It's all gone. 
 Finis Poloniaa ! ' Nobody laughed. They 
 didn't know that ' Finis Polonise ' were the last 
 words uttered by a distinguished patriot and 
 soldier, * when Freedom shrieked as Kosciusko 
 fell.' That comes of firing off your remarks? 
 you see, quite above the head of your respected 
 audience." 
 
 " But what does that mean that you just 
 said this minute to Elsie ? " Winifred asked 
 doubtfullv. 
 
 " What ! A lady in these latter days who 
 doesn't talk Latin ! " Hugh cried, with pre- 
 tended rapture. " This is too delicious ! I 
 
TEE ROADS DIVIDE. 153 
 
 hardly expected such good fortune. I shall 
 have the well-known joy, then, of explaining 
 my own feeble little joke, after all, and grimly 
 translating my own poor quotation. It means, 
 ' Thy task it is, Queen, to state thy will : 
 Mine, thy behests to serve, for good or ill.' 
 Rough translation, not necessarily intended 
 for publication, but given merely as a 
 guarantee of good faith, as the newspapers 
 put it. iEolus makes the original remark to 
 Juno in the first ' jEneid,' when he's just 
 about to raise the wind — literally, not figura- 
 tively — on her behalf, against the unfortunate 
 Trojans. He was then occupying the same 
 post, as clerk of the weather, that is now 
 filled jointly by the correspondent of the New 
 York Herald and Mr. Robert Scott of the 
 Meteorological Office. I hope they'll send us 
 no squalls to-day, if you and Mrs. Meysey are 
 going to come with us up the river." 
 
 On their wa}^ to the boat, Hugh stopped a 
 moment at the inn to write hastily another 
 telegram. It was to his London publisher : 
 " Please kindly send a copy of ' Echoes from 
 Callimachus' by first post to my address as 
 under." And in five minutes more, the 
 
154 
 
 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 telegram despatched, they were all rowing 
 up stream in a merry party toward Snade 
 meadows. Hugh's plan of campaign was 
 now finally decided. He had nothing to do 
 but to carry out in detail his siege operations. 
 
 In the meadows, he had ten minutes or so 
 alone with Winifred. " Why, Mr. Mas- 
 singer, ' she said with a surprised look, " was 
 it you, then, who wrote that lovely article, 
 in the Contemporary^ on * The Future of 
 Marriage,' we've all been reading ? " 
 
 " I'm glad you liked it," Hugh answered 
 with evident pleasure ; " and I suppose it's 
 no use now trying any longer to conceal the 
 fact that I was indeed the culprit." 
 
 " But there's another name to it," Winifred 
 murmured in reply. " And mamma thought 
 it must be Mr. Stone, the novelist." 
 
 " Habitual criminals are often wrongly 
 suspected," Hugh answered with a languid 
 laugh. "I didn't put my own name to it, 
 however, because I was afraid it was a trifle 
 sentimental, and I hate sentiment. Indeed, 
 to say the truth — it was a cruel trick, per- 
 haps, but I imitated many of Stone's little 
 mannerisms, because I wanted people to 
 
THE ROADS DIVIDE. 155 
 
 think it was really Stone himself who wrote 
 it. But for all that, I believe it all — every 
 word of it, I assure you. Miss Meysey." 
 
 " It was a lovely article," Winifred cried, 
 eathusiastically. " Papa read it, and was 
 quite I enchanted with it. He said it was so 
 sensible — ^just what he's always tlioaght about 
 marriage himself, though he never could get 
 anybody else to agree with him. And I 
 liked it too, if you won't think it dreadfully 
 presumptuous of a girl to say so. I thought 
 it took such a grand, beautiful, ethereal point 
 of view, all up in the clouds, you know, with 
 no horrid earthy materialism or nonsense of 
 any sort to clog and spoil it. I think it was 
 splendid, all that you said about its being 
 treason to the race to take account of wealth 
 or position, or prospects or connections, or 
 any other worldly consideration, in choosing 
 a husband or wife for one's self — and that 
 one ought rather to be guided by instinct 
 alone, because instinct — or love, as we call it 
 — was the voice of nature speaking within 
 us. — Papa said that was beautifully put. 
 And I thought it was really true as well. I 
 thought it was just what a great prophet 
 
15 G THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 would have said if he were alive to say it ; 
 
 and that the man who wrote it " She 
 
 paused, breathless, partly because she was 
 quite abashed by this time at her own 
 temerity, and partly because Hugh Massinger, 
 wicked man ! was actually smiling a covert 
 smile through the corners of his mouth at her 
 youthful enthusiasm. 
 
 The pause sobered him. " Miss Meysey," 
 he broke in, with unwonted earnestness, and 
 with a certain strange tinge of subdued 
 melancholy in his tremulous voice, " I didn't 
 mean to laugh at you. I really believe it. I 
 believe in my heart every single word of 
 what I said there. I believe a man — or a 
 woman either — ought to choose in marriage 
 just the one other special person towards 
 whom their own hearts inevitably lead them. 
 I believe it all — I believe it without reserve. 
 Money or rank, or connection or position, 
 should be counted as nothing. We should 
 go simply where nature leads us ; and nature 
 will never lead us astray. For nature is 
 merely another name for the will of heaven 
 made clear within us." 
 
 Ingenuous youth blushed itself crimson. 
 
THE ROADS DIVIDE. 157 
 
 ** I believe so too," the timid girl answered in 
 a very low voiv.^ and with a heaving bosom. 
 
 He looked her through and through with 
 his large dark eyes. She shrank and fluttered 
 before his searching glance. Should he put 
 out a velvet paw for his mouse now, or 
 should he play with it artistically a little 
 longer ? Too much precipitancy spoils the 
 fun. Better wait till the " Echoes from 
 Callimachus " had arrived. They were very 
 fetching. And then, besides — besides, he 
 was not entirely without a conscience. A 
 man should think neither of wealth nor 
 position, nor prospects nor connections, in 
 choosing himself a partner for life. His own 
 heart led him straight towards Elsie, not 
 towards Winifred. Could he turn his back 
 upon it, with those words on his lips, and 
 trample poor Elsie's tender heart under foot 
 ruthlessly ? Principle demanded it ; but he 
 had not the strength of mind to follow 
 principle at that precise moment. He looked 
 long and deep into Winifred's eyes. They 
 were pretty blue eyes, though pale and 
 mawkish by the side of Elsie's. Then he 
 said with a sudden downcast, half-awkward 
 
158 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 glance — that consummate actor — " I think 
 we ought to go back to your mother now, 
 Miss Meysey." 
 
 Winifred sighed. Not yet ! Not yet ! But 
 he had looked at her hard ! he had fluttered 
 and trembled ! He was summoning up 
 courage. She felt sure of that. He didn't 
 venture as yet to assault her openly. Still, 
 she was certain he did really like her ; just a 
 little bit, if only a little. 
 
 Next morning, as she strolled alone on the 
 lawn, a village boy in a corduroy suit came 
 lounging up from the inn, in rustic insouciance^ 
 with a small parcel dangling by a string 
 from his little finger. She knew the boy, 
 and called him quickly towards her. " Dick," 
 she cried, " what's that you've got there ? " 
 
 The boy handed it to her with a mysterious 
 nod. " It's for yow, miss," he said, in his 
 native Suffolk, screwing up his face sideways 
 into a most excruciating pantomimic expres- 
 sion of the profoundest secrecy. " The 
 gentleman at our house — him wooth the black 
 moostosh, ye know — he towd me to give it to 
 yow, into yar own hands, he say, if I could 
 manage to ketch ye aloon anyhow. He fared 
 
« 
 
 THE BO ADS DIVIDE. lOll 
 
 partlckler about yar own hands. I heen't 
 got to wait, cos he say, there oon't be noo 
 answer." 
 
 Winifred tore the packet open with 
 trembh'ng hands. It was a neat little volume, 
 in a dainty delicate sage-green cover — 
 " Echoes from Callimachus, and other Poems ; 
 by Hugh Massinger, sometime Fellow of 
 Oriel College, Oxford." She turned at once 
 with a flutter from the title-page to the fly- 
 leaf: "A Mile. Winifred Meysey ; Hommage 
 de Tauteur." She only waited a moment to 
 slip a shilling into Dick's hand, and then 
 rushed up, all crimson with delight, into her 
 own bedroom. Twice she pressed the flimsy 
 little sage-green volume in an ecstasy to her 
 lips ; then she laid it hastily in the bottom 
 of a drawer, under a careless pile of handker- 
 chiefs and lace bodices. She wouldn't tell 
 even Elsie of that tardy much- prized birthday 
 gift. No one but herself must ever know 
 Hugh Massinger had sent her his volume of 
 poems. 
 
 When Dick returned to the inn ten minutes 
 later, environed in a pervading odour of 
 peppermint, the indirect result of Winifred 
 
IGO THIS MOBTAL COIL. 
 
 Meysey's shilling, Hugh called hiin in lazily 
 with his quiet authoritative air to the prim 
 little parlour, and asked him in an undertone 
 to whom he had given the precious parcel. 
 
 " To the young Vcmy harself," Dick answered 
 confidentially, thrusting the hull's-eye with 
 his tongue into his pouched cheek. '' I give 
 it to har behind the laylacs, too, where noo 
 one coon't see us." 
 
 '* Dick," Hugh Massinger said, in a pro- 
 foundly persuaded and sententious voice, 
 laying his hand magisterially on the boy's 
 shoulder, '' you're a sharp lad ; and if you 
 develop your talents steadily in this direction, 
 you may rise in time from the distinguished 
 ])Ost of gentleman's gentleman to be a private 
 detective or confidential agent, with an office 
 of your own at the top of Regent Street. 
 Dick, say nothing about this on any account 
 to anybody; and there, my boy — there's half- 
 a-crown for you." 
 
 " The young lady ha' gin me one shillen 
 a'ready," Dick replied with alacrity, pocketing 
 the coin with a broad grin. Business was 
 brisk indeed this morning. 
 
 " The young lady was well advised," 
 
TEE ROADS DIVIDE, iGl 
 
 Hugh answered grimly. *' They're cheap at 
 the price — dirt cheap, I call it, those immortal 
 poems — -with an autograph inscription by the 
 bard in person. — And I've done a good stroke 
 of business myself too. The ' Echoes from 
 Callimachus' are a capital landing-net. If 
 they don't succeed in bringing her out, all 
 flapping, on the turf, gaffed and done for, a 
 pretty speckled prey, why, no angler on 
 earth that ever fished for women will get so 
 much as a tiny rise out of her. — It's a very 
 fair estate still, is Whitestrand. ^ Paris vaut 
 bien une messe,' said Henri. I must make 
 some little sacrifices myself if I want to 
 conquer Whitestrand fair and even." 
 
 Paris vaut bien une messe, indeed. Was 
 Whitestrand worth sacrificing Elsie Challoner'^ 
 heart for ? 
 
 VOL. (. M 
 
.lG:i Tins MOliTAl COIL. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 niGIT-WATER. 
 
 Mkanwtttle, Warren Relf navigating tlie 
 pervasive and ubiquitous little Mud-Turtle, 
 had spent his summer congenially in cruising 
 in and out of Essex mud-flats and Norfolk 
 broads, accompanied by his friend and chum 
 Potts, the marine painter — now lying high 
 and dry with the ebbing tide on some broad 
 bare bank of ribbed sand, just relieved by a 
 battle-royal of gulls and rooks from the last 
 reproach of utter monotony ; now working 
 hard at the counterfeit presentment of a 
 green-grown wreck, all picturesque with 
 waving tresses of weed and sea-wrack, in 
 some stranded estuary of the Thames back- 
 waters ; and now again tossing and lopping 
 on the uneasy bosom of the German Ocean, 
 whose rise and fall would seem to suggest to 
 
mUll-WATKU, iO.'i 
 
 a casual observer's mind the y)}iyHioiogical 
 notion that its own included crabs and lol^sters 
 liad given it a [)rolonged and serious fit of 
 marine indigestion. For a couple of months 
 at a stretch the two young artists had toiled 
 away ceaselessly at their labour of love, 
 [)ainting the sea itself and all that therein is, 
 with the eyots, creeks, rivers, sands, cliffs, 
 banks, and inlets adjacent, in every variety of 
 mood or feature, from its glassiest calm to its 
 angriest tempest, with endless patience, de- 
 light, and satisfaction. They enjoyed their 
 work, and their work repaid them. It was 
 almost all the payment they ever got, indeed, 
 for, like loyal sons of the Cheyne Row Club, 
 the crew of the Mud-Turtle were not suc- 
 cessful. And now, as ^'eptember was more 
 than half through, Warren Relf began to 
 bethink him at last of Hugh Massinger, wdiom 
 he had left in rural ease on dry land at 
 Whitestrand under a general promise to 
 return for him " in the month of the long 
 decline of roses," some time between the 
 fifteenth and the twentieth. So, on a windy 
 morning, about that precise period of the 
 year, with a north-easterly breeze setting 
 
1(;4 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 strong across the North Sea, and a falling 
 barometer threatening squalls, according to 
 the printed weather report, he made his way 
 out of the mouth of the Yare, and turned 
 southward before the flowing tide in the 
 direction of Whitestrand. 
 
 The sea was running high and splendid, 
 and the two young painters, inured to toil and 
 accustomed to danger, thoroughly enjoyed its 
 wild magnificence, A storm to them was a 
 study in action. They could take notes calmly 
 of its fiercest moments. Almost every wave 
 broke over the deck ; and the patient little 
 Mud- Turtle, with her flat bottom and centre- 
 board keel, tossed about like a walnut shell 
 on the surface of the water, or drove her nose 
 madly from time to time into the crest of a 
 billow, to emerge triumphant one moment 
 later, all shining and dripping with sticky 
 brine, in the deep trough on the other side. 
 Painting in such a sea was of course simply 
 impossible ; but Warren Eelf, who loved his 
 art with supreme devotion, and never missed 
 an opportunity of catching a hint from his 
 ever-changing model under the most un- 
 promising circumstances, took out pencil and 
 
man-WATKR. 105 
 
 paper a dozen times in the course of tlie day 
 to preserve at least in black and white soim^ 
 passing aspect of her mutable features. Potts 
 for the most part managed sheet and helm ; 
 while Relf, in the intervals of luffing or 
 tacking, holding hard to the mainmast with 
 his left arm, and with the left hand just 
 grasping his drawing-pad on the other side of 
 the mast, jotted hastily down with his right 
 whatever peculiar form of spray or billow 
 happened for the moment to catch and impress 
 his artistic fancy. It was a glorious day for 
 those who liked it; though a land-lubber 
 would no doubt have roundly called it a 
 frightful voyage. 
 
 They had meant to make Whitestrand 
 before evening ; but half-way down, an 
 incident of a sort that Warren Relf could 
 never bear to miss intervened to delay them. 
 They fell in casually with a North Sea 
 trawler, disabled and distressed by last night's 
 gale, now scudding under bare poles before 
 the free breeze, that churned and whitened 
 the entire surface of the German Ocean. The 
 men on board were in sore straits, though 
 not as yet in immediate danger ; and the yawl 
 
IGG THIS MOBTAL COIL. 
 
 gallantly stood in close by her, to pick up 
 the swimmers in case of serious accident. 
 The shrill wind tore at her mainmast; the 
 waves charged her in yagiie ranks ; the gaff 
 quivered and moaned at the shocks ; and ever 
 and anon, with a bellowing rush, the resistless 
 sea swept over ber triumphantly from stem to 
 stern. Meanwhile, Warren Eelf, eager to fix 
 this stray episode on good white paper while 
 It was still before his eyes, made wild and 
 rapid dashes on his pad with a sprawling 
 hand, which conveyed to his mind, in strange 
 shorthand hieroglyphics, some faint idea of 
 the scene as it passed before him. 
 
 " She's a terrible bad sitter, this smack," 
 he observed in a loud voice to Potts, with 
 good-humoured enthusiasm, as they held on 
 together with struggling hands on the deck 
 of the Mud- Turtle. ■- The moment vou think 
 you've just caught her against the skyline on 
 the crest of a wave, she lurches again, and 
 over she goes, plump down into the trough, 
 before you've had a chance to make a single 
 mark upon your sheet of paper. Ships are 
 always precious bad sitters at the best of 
 times ; but when you and your model are 
 
man- WATER. 167 
 
 both plunging and tossing together in dirty 
 weather on a loppy channel, I don't believe 
 even Turner himself could make much out of 
 it in the way of a sketch from nature. — Hold 
 hard, there, Frank ! Look out for your 
 head ! She's going to ship a thundering big 
 sea across her bows this very minute. — By 
 Jove ! I wonder how the smack stood that 
 last high wave ! — Is she gone ? Did it break 
 over her ? Can you see her ahead there ? " 
 
 " She's all right still," Potts shouted from 
 the bow, where he stood now in his oilskin 
 suit, drenched from head to foot with the 
 dashing spray, but cheery as ever, in true 
 sailor fashion. "I can see her mast just 
 showing above the crest. But it must have 
 given her a jolly good wetting. Shall we 
 signal the men to know if they'd like to come 
 aboard here ? " 
 
 " Signal away," Warren Eelf answered 
 good-humouredly above the noise of the wind. 
 " No more sKetching for me to-day, I take 
 it. That last lot she shipped wet my pad 
 through and through with the nasty damp 
 brine. I'd better put my sketch, as far as it 
 goes, down below in the locker. Wind's 
 
1G8 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 freshening. We'll have enough to do to keep 
 her nose straight in half a gale like this. 
 We're going within four or five points of the 
 wind now, as it is. I wish we could run clear 
 ahead at once for the poplar at Whitestrand. 
 I would, too, if it weren't for the smack. 
 This is getting every bit as hot as I like it. 
 But we must keep an eye upon her, if we 
 don't want her crew to be all dead men. She 
 can't live six hours longer in a gale like 
 to-day's, I'll bet you any money." 
 
 They signalled the men, but found them 
 unwilling still, with true seafaring devotion, 
 to abandon their ship, which had yet some 
 hours of life left in her. They'd stick to the 
 smack, the skipper signalled back in mute 
 pantomime, as long as her timbers held out 
 the water. There was nothing for it, there- 
 fore, but to lie hard by her, for humanity's 
 sake, as close as possible, and to make as 
 slowly as the strength of the wind would 
 allow, by successive tacks, for the river-mouth 
 at Whitestrand. 
 
 All day long, they held up bravely, lurch- 
 ing and plunging on the angry waves ; and 
 only towards evening did they part company 
 
EIQH-WATEH. 101) 
 
 with the toiling smack, as it was growing- 
 dusk along the low flat stretch of shore by 
 Dunwich. There, a fish-carrier from the 
 North Sea, one of those fast long steamers 
 that plough the German Ocean on the look- 
 out for the fishing fleet — whose catches they 
 take up with all speed to the London market, 
 fell in with them in the very nick of time, 
 and transferring the crew on hoard with some 
 little difficulty, make fast the smack — or 
 rather her wreck — with a towline behind, 
 and started under all steam to save her life 
 for the port of Harwich. Warren Eelf and 
 his companion, despising such aid, and pre- 
 ferring to live it out by themselves at all 
 hazards, were left behind alone with the wild 
 evening, and proceeded in the growing shades 
 of twilight to find their way up the river at 
 Whitestrand. 
 
 " Can you make out the poplar, Frank ? " 
 Warren Eelf shouted out, as he peered ahead 
 into the deep gloom that enveloped the coast 
 with its murky covering. " We've left it 
 rather late, I'm afraid, for pushing up the 
 creek with a sea like this ! Unless we can 
 spot the poplar distinctly, I should hardly like 
 
170 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 to risk entering it by the red light on the 
 sandhills alone. Those must be the lamps at 
 Whitestrand Hall, the three windows to star- 
 board yonder. The poplar ought to show by 
 rights a point or so west of them, with the 
 striped buoy just a little this side of it." 
 
 " I can make out the striped buoy by the 
 white paint on it," his companion answered, 
 gazing eagerly in front of him ; " but I fancy 
 it's a shade too dark now to be sure of the 
 poplar. The lights of the Hall don't seem 
 quite regular. Still, I should think we could 
 make the creek by the red lantern and the 
 beacon at the hithe, without minding the tree, 
 if you care to risk it. You know your way 
 up and down the river as well as any man 
 living by this time ; and we've got a fair 
 breeze at our backs, you see, for going up 
 the mouth to the bend at Whitestrand." 
 
 The wind moaned like a woman in agony. 
 The timbers creaked and groaned and crackled. 
 The black waves lashed savagely over the 
 deck. The Mud-Turtle was almost on the 
 shore before they knew it. 
 
 " Luff, luff! " Relf called out hastily, as he 
 peered once more into the deepening gloom 
 
HIGH-WATER. 171 
 
 with all his eyes. " By George ! we're wrong. 
 I can see the poplar — over yonder ; do you 
 catch it ? We're out of our bearings a quarter 
 of a mile. We've gone too far now to make 
 it this tack. We must try again, and get 
 our points better by the high light. That 
 was a narrow squeak of it, by Jove, Frank ! 
 I can twig where we've got to now, distinctly. 
 It's the lights in the house that led us astray. 
 That's not the Hall : it's the windows of the 
 vicarage." 
 
 They ran out to eastward again, for more 
 sea-room, a couple of hundred yards, or 
 farther, and tacked afresh for the entrance of 
 the creek, this time adjusting their course better 
 for the open mouth by the green lamp of the 
 beacon on the sandhills. The light fixed on 
 their own masthead threw a glimmering ray 
 ahead from time to time upon the angry 
 water. It was a hard fight for mastery with 
 the wind. The waves were setting in fierce 
 and strong towards the creek now ; but the 
 tide and stream on the other hand were 
 ebbing rapidly and steadily outward. They 
 always ebbed fast at the turn of the tide, as 
 Relf knew well : a rushino; current set in 
 
172 THIS MOBTAL COIL. 
 
 then round the corner by the poplar tree, the 
 same current that had carried out Hugh 
 Massinger so resistlessly seaward in that little 
 adventure of his on the morning of their first 
 arrival at Whitestrand. Only an experienced 
 mariner dare face that bar. But Warren 
 Eelf was accustomed to the coast, and made 
 light of the danger that other men would 
 have trembled at. 
 
 As they neared the poplar a second time, 
 making straight for the mouth with nautical 
 dexterity, a pale object on the port bow, 
 rising and falling with each ripe or fall of the 
 waves on the bar, attracted Warren Eelfs 
 casual attention for a single moment by its 
 strange weird likeness to a human figure. 
 At first, he hardly regarded the thing 
 seriously as anything more than a stray bit 
 of floating wreckage ; but presently, the light 
 from the masthead fell full upon it, and with 
 a sudden flash he felt convinced at once it 
 was something stranger than a mere plank or 
 fragment of rigging. 
 
 " Look yonder, Frank," he called out in 
 echoing tones to his mate ; " that can't be a 
 buoy upon the port bow there ! " 
 
niGII'WATEIi. 173 
 
 The other man looked at it lono: and 
 steadily. As he looked, the Mud- Turtle 
 lurched once more, and cast a reflected pencil 
 ray of light from the masthead lamp over the 
 surface of the sea, away in the direction of 
 the suspicious object. Both men caught 
 sight at once of some floating white drapery, 
 swayed by the waves, and a pale face upturned 
 in ghastly silence to the uncertain starlight. 
 
 " Port your helm hard ! " Eelf cried in 
 haste. '^ It's a man overboard. Washed off 
 the smack perhaps. He's drowned by this 
 time, I expect, poor fellow." 
 
 His companion ported the helm at the 
 word with all his might. The yawl answered 
 well in spite of the breakers. With great 
 difficulty, between wind and tide, they lay up 
 towards the mysterious thing slowly in the 
 very trough of the billows that roared and 
 danced with hoarse joy over the shallow bar ; 
 and Relf, holding tight to the sheet with one 
 hand, and balancing himself as well as he 
 was able on the deck, reached out with the 
 other a stout boathook to draw the tossing 
 body alongside within hauling distance of the 
 Mud' Turtle, As he did so, the body, eluding 
 
174 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 liis grasp, rose once more on the crest of the 
 wave, and displayed to their view an open 
 bosom and a long white dress, with a floating 
 scarf or shawl of some thin material still 
 hanging loose around the neck and shoulders. 
 The face itself they couldn't as yet distinguish; 
 it fell back languid beneath the spray at the 
 top, so that only the throat and chin were 
 visible ; but by the dress and the open bosom 
 alone, it was clear at once that the object 
 they saw was not the corpse of a sailor. 
 Warren Eclf almost let drop the boathook in 
 horror and surprise. 
 
 " Great heavens ! " he excKiimed, turning 
 round excitedly, " it's a woman — a lady — dead 
 — in the water! " 
 
 The billow broke, and curled over majes- 
 tically with resistless force into the trough 
 below them. Its undertow sucked the Mud- 
 Turtle after it fiercely towards the shore, 
 away from the body. With a violent effort, 
 Warren Relf, lunging forward eagerly at the 
 lurch, seized hold of the corpse by the floating 
 scarf. It turned of itself as the hook caught 
 it, and displayed its face in the pale starlight. 
 A great awe fell suddenly upon the astonished 
 
EIQH'WATER. 175 
 
 young painter's mind. It was indeed a woman 
 that he held now by the dripping hair — a 
 beautiful young girl, in a white dress ; and 
 the wan face was one he had seen before. 
 Even in that dim half-light he recognized her 
 instantly. 
 
 '' Frank ! " he cried out in a voice of hushed 
 and reverent surprise — " never miud the ship. 
 Come forward and help me. We must take 
 her on board. I know her ! I know her ! 
 She's a friend of Massinger's." 
 
 The corpse was one of the two young girls 
 he had seen that day two months before 
 sitting with their arms round one another's 
 waists, close to the very spot where they now 
 lay up, on the gnarled and naked roots of the 
 famous old poplar. 
 
17G rnjs mortal coil. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SHUFFLING IT OFF. 
 
 The day had been an eventful one for Hugh 
 Massinger : the most eventful and pregnant 
 of his whole history. As long as he lived, 
 he could never possibly forget it. It was 
 indeed a critical turning-point for three 
 separate lives — his own, and Elsie's, and 
 Winifred Meysey's. For, as Hugh had 
 walked that morning, stick in hand and orchid 
 in buttonhole, down the rose-embowered lane 
 in the Squire's grounds with Winifred, he 
 had asked the frightened, blushing girl, in 
 simple and straightforward language, without 
 any preliminary, to become his wife. His 
 shy fish was fairly hooked at last, he thought 
 now : no need for daintily playing his catch 
 any longer ; it was but a question, as things 
 stood, of reel and of landing-net. The father 
 
SHUFFLING IT OFF. 177 
 
 and mother, those important accessories, were 
 pretty safe in their way too. He had sounded 
 tliem both by unobtrusive methods, with 
 dexterous plummets of oblique inquiry, and 
 had gauged their profoundest depths of 
 opinion with tolerable accuracy, as to settle- 
 ments and other ante-nuptial precontracts of 
 marriage. For what is the use of catching 
 an heiress on your own rod, if your heiress's 
 parents, upon whose testamentary disposition 
 in the last resort her entire market value 
 really depends, look askance with eyes of 
 obvious disfavour upon your personal preten- 
 sions as their future son-in-law ? Hugh 
 Massinger was keen enough sportsman in his 
 own line to make quite sure of his expected 
 game before irrevocably committing himself 
 to duck-shot cartridge. He was confident he 
 knew his ground now ; so, with a bold face 
 and a modest assurance, he ventured, in a 
 few plain and well-chosen words, to commend 
 his suit, his hand, and his heart to Winifred 
 Meysey's favourable attention. 
 
 It was a great sacrifice, and he felt it as 
 such. He was positively throwing himself 
 away upon Winifred. If he had followed his 
 
 VOL. I. N 
 
178 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 own crude inclinations alone, like a romantic 
 schoolboy, he would have waited for ever 
 and ever for his cousin Elsie. Elsie was 
 indeed the one true love of his youth. He 
 had always loved her, and he would always 
 love her. 'Twas foolish, perhaps, to indulge 
 overmuch in these personal preferences, but 
 after all it was very human ; and Hugh 
 acknowledged regretfully in his own heari 
 that he' was not entirely raised in that respect 
 above the average level of human weaknesses. 
 Still, a man, however humanesque, must not 
 be governed by impulse alone. He must 
 judge calmly, deliberately, impersonally, dis- 
 interestedly of his own future, and must act 
 for the best in the long run by the light of 
 his own final and judicial opinion. Now, 
 Winifred was without doubt a very excep- 
 tional and eligible chance for a briefless bar- 
 rister : your sucking poet doesn't get such 
 chances of an undisputed heiress every day 
 of the week, you may take your affidavit. If 
 he let her slip by on sentimental grounds, 
 aid waited for Elsie — poor, dear old Elsie — 
 heaven only knew how long they might both 
 have to wait for one another — and perhaps 
 
SHUFFLING IT OFF. 179 
 
 even then be finally disappointed. It was 
 a foolish dream on Elsie's part ; for, to say 
 the truth, he himself had never seriously 
 entertained it. The most merciful thing to 
 Elsie herself would be to snap it short now, 
 once for all, before things went further, and 
 let her stand face to face with naked facts : 
 all, how hideously naked !-^let her know she 
 must either look out another husband some- 
 where for herself, or go on earning her own 
 livelihood in maiden meditation, fancy free, 
 for the remaining term of her natural exist- 
 ence. Hugh could never help ending up a 
 subject, however unpleasant, even in his own 
 mind, with a poetical tag : it was a trick of 
 manner his soul had caught from the wonted 
 peroration of his political leaders in the first 
 editorial column of that exalted print, the 
 Morning Telephone, So he made up his 
 mind ; and he proposed to Winifred. 
 
 The girl's heart gave a sudden bo and, and 
 the red blood flushed her somewhat pallid 
 cheek with hasty roses as she listened to 
 Hugh's graceful and easy avowal of the pro- 
 found and unfeigned love that he proffered her. 
 She thought of the poem Hugh had read her 
 
ISO THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 aloud in his sonorous tones the evening before 
 — much virtue in a judiciously selected pas- 
 sage of poetry, well marked in delivery: 
 
 •' * He does not love me for my birth, 
 
 Nor for my lands so broad and fair ; 
 He loves me for my own true worth, 
 And that is well,' said Lady Clare." 
 
 That was how Hugh Massinger loved her, 
 she was quite sure. Had he not trembled 
 and hesitated to ask her ? Her bosom 
 fluttered with a delicious fluttering; but she 
 cast her eyes down, and answered nothing 
 for a brief space. Then her heart gave her 
 courage to look up once more, and to murmur 
 back, in answer to his pleading look : " Hugh, 
 I love you." And Hugh, carried away not 
 ungracefully by the impulse of the moment, 
 felt his own heart thrill responsive to hers 
 in real earnest, and in utter temporary for- 
 getfulness of poor betrayed and abandoned 
 Elsie. They walked back to the Hall 
 together next minute, whispering low, in the 
 fool's paradise of first young lovo — a fool's 
 paradise, indeed, for those two poor lovers, 
 whose wooing set out under such evil 
 auspices. 
 
SHUFFLING IT OFF. ISl 
 
 But when Hugh had left his landed prey 
 at the front door of the square-built manor- 
 house, and strolled off by himself towards the 
 village inn, the difficulty about Elsie for the 
 first time began to stare him openly in 
 the face in all its real and horrid magnitude. 
 He would have to confess and to explain to 
 Elsie. Worse still, for a man of his mettle 
 and his sensitiveness, he would have to 
 apologize for and excuse his own conduct. 
 That was unendurable— that was ignominious 
 — that was even absurd. His virility kicked 
 at it. There is something essentially insult- 
 ing and degrading to one's manhood in 
 having to tell a girl you've pretended to 
 love, that you really and truly don't love her 
 
 that you only care for her in a sisterly 
 
 fashion. It is practically to unsex one's self. 
 A pretty girl appeals quite otherwise to the 
 man that is in us. Hugh felt it bitterly and 
 deeply — for himself, not for Elsie. He pitied 
 his own sad plight most sincerely. But then, 
 there was poor Elsie to think of too. No use 
 in the world in blinking that. Elsie loved 
 him very, very dearly. True, they had never 
 been engaged to one another — so great is the 
 
182 THIS MOIiTAL COIL. 
 
 love of consistency in man, that even alone 
 in his own mind Hugh continued to hug that 
 transhicent fiction ; but she had been very 
 fond of liim, undeniably fond of him, and he 
 had perliaps from time to time, by overt acts, 
 unduly encouraged the display of her fond- 
 ness. It gratified his vanity and his sense 
 of his own power over women to do so : he 
 could make them love him — few men more 
 ♦easily — and he liked to exercise that dangerous 
 faculty on every suitable subject that flitted 
 across his changeful horizon. The man with 
 a mere passion for making conquests affords 
 no serious menace to the world's happiness ; 
 but the man with an innate gift for calling 
 forth wherever he goes all the deepest and 
 truest instincts of a woman's nature, is — when 
 he abuses his power — the most deadly, 
 terrible, and cruel creature known in our 
 age to civilized humanity. And yet he is 
 not always deliberately cruel ; sometimes, as 
 in Hugh Massinger's case, he almost believes 
 himself to be good and innocent. 
 
 He had warned Winifred to whisper 
 nothing for the present to Elsie about this 
 engagement of theirs. Elsie was his cousin. 
 
SHUFFLING IT OFF. 18:> 
 
 he said — his only relation — and he would 
 dearly like to tell her the secret of his heart 
 himself in private. He would see her that 
 evening, and hreak the news to her. " Why 
 break it ? " Winifred had asked in douht, all 
 unconscious. And Hugh, a strange sup- 
 pressed smile playing uneasily about the 
 corners of his thin lips, had answered with 
 guileless alacrity of speech : " Because Elsie's 
 like a sister to me, you know, Winifred ; and 
 sisters always to some extent resent the bare 
 idea of their brothers marrying." 
 
 For as yet Elsie herself suspected nothing. 
 It was best, Hugh thought, she should suspect 
 nothing. That was a cardinal point in his 
 easy-going practical philosophy of life. He 
 never went half-way to meet trouble. Till 
 Winifred had accepted him, why worry poor 
 dear Elsie's gentle little soul with what was, 
 after all, a mere remote chance, a contingent 
 possibility ? He would first make quite sure, 
 by actual trial, where he stood with Winifred ; 
 and then — and then, like a thunderbolt from 
 a clear sky, he might let the whole truth 
 burst in full force at once upon poor lonely 
 Elsie's devoted head. Meanwhile, with extra- 
 
184 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 ordinary cleverness and care, he continued 
 to dissemble. He never made open love to 
 Winifred before Elsie's face ; on the contrary, 
 he kept the whole small comedy of his rela- 
 tions with Winifred so skilfully concealed 
 from her feminine eyes, that to the very last 
 moment Elsie never even dreamt of her 
 pretty pupil as a possible rival, or regarded 
 her in any other conceivable light tlian as 
 the nearest of friends and the dearest of 
 sisters. Whenever Hugh sjDoke of Winifred 
 to Elsie at all, he spoke of her lightly, almost 
 slightingly, as a nice little girl, in her childisli 
 way — though much too blue-eyed — with a 
 sort of distant bread-and-butterish schoolroom 
 approbation, which wholly misled and hood- 
 winked Elsie as to his real intentions. And 
 whenever he spoke of Elsie to Winifred, he 
 spoke of her jestingly, with a good-humoured, 
 unmeaning, brotherly affection that made the 
 very notion of his ever contemplating mar- 
 riage with her seem simply ridiculous. She 
 was to 1dm indeed as the deceased wife's 
 sister is in the eye of the law to the British 
 widower. With his easy, off-hand London 
 cleverness, he had baffled and deceived both 
 
SHUFFLING IT OFF. 185 
 
 those innocent, simple-minded, t rustful women ; 
 and he stood face to face now with a general 
 edairclssemcnt which could no longer be de- 
 layed, but whose ultimate consequences might 
 perhaps prove fatal to all his little domestic 
 arrangements. 
 
 Would Elsie in her anger set Winifred 
 against him ? Would Winifred, justly in- 
 dignant at his conduct to Elsie, refuse, when 
 she learned the whole truth, to marry him ? 
 
 Nonsense — nonsense. No cause for alarm. 
 He had never really been engaged to Elsie 
 — he had said so to her face a thousand 
 times. If Elsie chose to misinterpret his kind 
 attentions, bestowed upon her solely as his 
 one remaining cousin and kinswoman, the 
 only other channel for the blood of the Mas- 
 singers, surely Winifred would never be so 
 foolish as to fall blindly into Elsie's self- 
 imposed error, and to hold him to a bargain 
 he had over and over again expressly re- 
 pudiated. He was a barrister, and he knew 
 his ground in these matters. Chitty on 
 Contract lays it down as an established prin- 
 ciple of English law that free consent of 
 both parties forms a condition precedent and 
 
18U THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 essential part of the very existence of a 
 compact of marriage. 
 
 AVitli such transparent internal sophisms 
 ♦lid Hugh Massinger strive all day to stifle 
 and smother his own conscience, for every 
 man always at least pretends to keep up 
 appearances in his private relations with that 
 inexorable domestic censor. But as evening 
 came on, cigarette in mouth, he strolled round 
 after dinner, by special appointment, to meet 
 Elsie at the big poplar. They often met 
 there, these warm summer nights ; and on 
 this particular occasion, anticipating trouble, 
 Hugh had definitely arranged v/ith Elsie 
 beforehand to come to him by eight at the 
 accustomed trysting-place. The Meyseys and 
 Winifred had gone out to dinner at a neigh- 
 bouring vicarage ; but Elsie had stopped at 
 home on purpose, on the hasty plea of some 
 slight passing headache. Hugh had specially 
 asked her to wait and meet him. Better get 
 it all over at once, he thought to himself, in 
 his shortsighted wisdom — like the measles or 
 the chicken-pox — and know straight oflf 
 exactly where he stood in his new position 
 with these two women. 
 
SHUFFLING IT OFF. 187 
 
 Women were the greatest nuisance in life. 
 For his own part, now he came to look the 
 thing squarely in the face, he really wished 
 he was well quit of them all for good and 
 ever. 
 
 He was early for his appointment ; but by 
 the tree he found Elsie, in her pretty white 
 dress, already waiting for him. His heart 
 gave a jnmp, a pleased jump, as he saw her 
 sitting there before her time. Dear, dear 
 Elsie ; she was very, very fond of him ! He 
 would have given worlds to fling his arms 
 tight around her then, and strain her to his 
 bosom and kiss her tenderly. He would 
 have given worlds, but not his reversionary 
 chances in the Whitestrand property. Worlds 
 don't count : the entire fee-simple of Mars 
 and Jupiter would fetch nothing in the real- 
 estate market. He was bound by contract to 
 Winifred now, and he must do his best to 
 break it gently to Elsie. 
 
 He stepped up and kissed her quietly on 
 the forehead, and took her hand in his like 
 a brother. Elsie let it lie in her own without 
 remonstrance. They rose and walked in 
 lovers' guise along the bank together. His 
 
188 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 lieart sank within him iit the hideous task 
 he had next to perform — nothing less than 
 to break poor Elsie's lieart for her. If only 
 he could have shuffled out of it sideways 
 anyhow ! But shufBing was impossible. He 
 hated himself; and he loved Elsie. Never 
 till that moment did he know how he loved 
 her. 
 
 This would never do ! He was feeling like 
 a fool. He crushed down the love sternly in 
 his heart, and began to talk about indifferent 
 subjects — the wind, the river, the rose-show 
 at the vicarage. But his voice trembled, 
 betraying him still against his will ; and he 
 could not refrain from stealing sidelong looks 
 at Elsie's dark eyes now and again, and 
 observing how beautiful she was, after all, in 
 a rare and exquisite type of beauty. Wini- 
 fred's blue eyes and light brown hair, 
 Winifred's small mouth and moulded nose, 
 Winifred's insipid smile and bashful blush, 
 were cheap as dirt in the matrimonial lottery. 
 She had but a doll-like, Lowther Arcade style 
 of prettiness. Maidenly as she looked, one 
 twist more of her nose, one shade lighter in 
 her hair, and she would become simply bar- 
 
SIIUFFLJyQ IT OFF. l8!) 
 
 mnidcnly. But Elsie's stroiif^ and powerful, 
 earnest face, with its serious lii)s and its lon^i;* 
 black eyelashes, its profound pathos and its 
 womanly dijs^nity, its very irrep^ularity and 
 faultiness of outline, pleased him ten thoufeiind 
 times more than all your baby-faced beauties 
 of the conventional, stereotyped, ballroom 
 pattern. He looked at her long and si^^hed 
 often. Must he really break her heart for 
 her? At last he could restrain that unruly 
 member, his tongue, no longer. " Elsie," he 
 cried, eyeing her full in a genuine outburst 
 of spontaneous admiration, " I never in my 
 life saw any one anywhere one-half so beautiful 
 and graceful as you are ! " 
 
 Elsie smiled a pleased smile. " And yet," 
 she murmured, with a half-malicious, teasing 
 tone of irony, " we're not engaged, Hugh, 
 after all, you remember." 
 
 Her words came at the very wrong 
 moment ; they brought the hot blood at a 
 rush into Hugh's cheek. " No," he answered 
 coldly, with a sudden revulsion and a spas- 
 modic effort ; " we're not engaged — nor ever 
 will be, Elsie ! " 
 
 Elsie turned round upon him with sudden 
 
190 THIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 abruptness in blank bewilderment. She was 
 not angry ; she was not even astonished ; she 
 simply failed altogether to take in his mean- 
 ing. It had always seemed to her so perfectly 
 natural, so simply obvious that she and Hugh 
 were sooner or later to marry one another ; 
 she had always regarded Hugh's frequent 
 reminder that they were not engaged as such 
 a mere playful warning against too much 
 precipitancy ; she had always taken it for 
 granted so fully and unreservedly that when- 
 ever Hugh was rich enough to provide for 
 a wife he would tell her so plainly, and carry 
 out the implied engagement between them — 
 that this sudden announcement of the exact 
 opposite meant to her ears less than nothing. 
 And now, when Hugh uttered those cruel, 
 crushing, annihilating words, " Xor ever will 
 be, Elsie," she couldn't possibly take in their 
 reality at the first blush, or believe in her 
 own heart that he really intended anything 
 so wicked, so merciless, so unnatural. 
 
 " Nor ever will be ! " she cried, incredulous. 
 " Why, Hugh, Hugh, I — I don't understand 
 you." 
 
 Hugh steeled his heart with a violent 
 
1 
 
 SBUFFLINQ IT OFF. 101 
 
 strain to answer back in one curt, killing 
 sentence : " I mean it, Elsie ; I'm going- to 
 marry Winifred." 
 
 Elsie gazed back at him in speechless sur- 
 prise. "Going to marry Winifred?" she 
 echoed at last vaguely, after a long pause, as 
 if the words conveyed no meaning to her 
 mind. " Going to marry Winifred ? To 
 marry Winifred ! — Hugh, did you really and 
 truly say you w^ere going to marry Winifred ? " 
 " I proposed to her this morning," Hug! 
 answered outright, with a choking throat and 
 a glassy eye ; " and she accepted me, Elsie ; 
 so I mean to marry her." 
 " Hugh ! " 
 
 She uttered only that one short word, in 
 a tone of awful and unspeakable agony. But 
 her bent brows, her pallid face, her husky 
 voice, her startled attitude, said more than 
 a thousand words, however wild, could pos- 
 sibly have said for her. She took it in dimly 
 and imperfectly now ; she began to grasp 
 what Hugh was talking about; but as yet 
 she could not understand to the full all the 
 man's profound and unfathomed infamy. She 
 looked at him feebly for some word of ex- 
 
192 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 planation. Surely he must have some deep 
 and subtle reason of his own for this astonish- 
 ing act and fact of furtive treachery. Some 
 horrible combination of adverse circumstances, 
 about which she knew and could know 
 nothing, must have driven him against his 
 will to this incredible solution of an insoluble 
 problem. He could not of his own mere 
 motion have proposed to Winifred. She 
 looked at him hard : he quailed before her 
 scrutiny. 
 
 " I love you, Elsie," he burst out with an 
 irresistible impulse at last, as she gazed 
 through and through him from her long black 
 lashes. 
 
 Elsie laid her hand on his shoulder blindly. 
 " You love me," she murmured. " Hugh, 
 Hugh, you still love me ? " 
 
 "I always loved you, Elsie," Hugh an- 
 swered bitterly with a sudden pang of abject 
 remorse ; ** and as long as I live I shall 
 always love you." 
 
 " And yet — you are going to marry 
 Winifred ! " 
 
 " Elsie ! We were never, never engaged." 
 
 She turned round upon him fiercely with 
 
STIUFFLINO IT OFF, 193 
 
 a burst of horror. He, to take refuge In 
 tliat hollow excuse ! " Never engaged ! " she 
 cried, aghast. " You mean it, Hugh ? — you 
 mean that mockery ? — And I, who would 
 have given up my life for love of you ! " 
 
 He tried to assume a calm judicial tone. 
 " Let us be reasonable, Elsie," he said, with 
 an attempt at ease, " and talk this matter 
 over without sentiment or hysterics. You 
 knew very well I was too poor to marry; 
 you knew I alwa^^s said we were only 
 cousins ; you knew I had my way in life to 
 make. You could never have thought I 
 really and seriously dreamt of marrying you." 
 
 Elsie looked up at him with a scared white 
 face. That Hugh should descend to such 
 transparent futilities ! " This is all new to 
 ine," she moaned out in a dazed voice. *' All, 
 ;ill — quite, quite new to me." 
 
 " But, Elsie, I've said it over and over a 
 thousand times before." 
 
 She gazed back at him like a stone. " Ah, 
 yes ; but till to-day," she murmured slowly, 
 '' you never, never, never meant it." 
 
 He sat down, unmanned, on the grass by 
 the bank. She seated herself by his side, 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
194 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 mechaDically as it were, with her Land on 
 his arm, and looked straight in front of hei* 
 with a vacant stare at the angry water. It 
 was growing dark. The shore was dark, and 
 the sea, and the river. Everything was dark 
 and black and gloomy around her. She laid 
 his hand one moment in her own. "Hugh!"' 
 she cried, turning towards him with appeal- 
 ing pathos, " you don't mean it now : you 
 will never mean it. You're only saying it 
 to try and prove me. Tell me it's that ! 
 You're yourself still. Oh, Hugh, my darling, 
 you can never mean it ! " 
 
 Her words burnt into his brain like liquid 
 fire ; and the better self within him groaned 
 and faltered ; but he crushed it down with 
 an iron heel. The demon of avarice held his 
 sordid soul. '* My child," he said, with a 
 tender inflection in his voice as he said it, 
 " we must understand one another. I do 
 seriously intend to marry Winifred Meysey." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 There was a terrible depth of suppressed 
 earnestness in that sharp short why, wrung 
 out of her by anguish, as of a woman who 
 asks the reason of her death-warrant. Hugh 
 
SHUFFLING IT OFF. 105 
 
 Massinger answered it slowly and awkwardly 
 with cumbrous, round-about, self-exculpating 
 verbosity. As for Elsie, sbe sat like a statue 
 and listened : rigid and immovable, she sat 
 there still; while Hugh, for the very first 
 time in her whole experience, revealed the 
 actual man he really was before her appalled 
 and horrified and speechless presence. He 
 talked of his position, his prospects, his 
 abilities. He talked of journalism, of the 
 bar, of promotion. He talked of literature, 
 of poetry, of fame. He talked of money, and 
 its absolute need to man and woman in these 
 latter days of ours. He talked of Winifred, 
 of AVhitestrand, and of the Meysey manor- 
 house. " It'll be best in the end for us both, 
 you know, Elsie," he said argumentatively, 
 in his foolish rigmarole, mistaking her silence 
 for something like unwilling acquiescence. 
 " Of course I shall still be very fond of you, 
 as I've always been fond of you — like a 
 cousin only — and I'll be a brother to you 
 now as long as I live ; and when Winifred 
 and I are really married, and I live here at 
 Whitestrand, I shall be able to do a great 
 deal more for you, and help you by every 
 
190 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 means in my power, and introduce you freely 
 into our own circle, on different terms, you 
 know, where you'll have chances of meetino; 
 — well, suitable persons. You must see 
 yourself it's the best thing for us both. The 
 idea of two penniless people like you and me 
 marrying one another in the present state 
 of society is simply ridiculous." 
 
 She heard him out to the bitter end, reveal- 
 ing the naked deformity of his inmost nature, 
 though her brain reeled at it, without one 
 passing word of reproach or dissent. Then 
 she said in an icy tone of utter horror : 
 " Hugh ! " 
 
 " Yes, Elsie." 
 
 '' Is that all ? " 
 
 " That is all." 
 
 " And you mean it ? " 
 
 " I mean it." 
 
 " Oh, for heaven's sake, before you kill me 
 outright, Hugh, Hugh ! is it really true ? 
 Are you really like that ? Do you really 
 mean it ? " 
 
 " I really mean to marry Winifred." 
 
 Elsie clasped her tw^o hands on either side 
 of her head, as if to hold it together from 
 
SHUFFLING IT OFF. 107 
 
 bursting with her agony. " Ilngli," she 
 cried, "it's fooHsli, I know, but I ask you 
 once more, before it's too late, in sight of 
 heaven, I ask you solemnly, are you seriously 
 in earnest? Is that what you're made of? 
 Are you goln^ to desert me ? To desert and 
 
 betray me ? " 
 
 " I don't know what you mean," Hugh 
 answered stonily, rising as if to go — for he 
 could stand it no longer. " I've never been 
 engaged to you. I always told you so. I 
 owe you tiothing. And now I mean to marry 
 Winifred." 
 
 With a cry of agony, she burst wildly 
 away from him. She saw it all now ; she 
 understood to the full the cruelty and base- 
 ness of the man's innermost underlying 
 nature. Fair outside ; but false, false, false to 
 the core ! Yet even so, she could scarcely 
 believe it. The faith of a lifetime fought 
 hard for life in her. He, that Hugh she had 
 so loved and trusted — he, the one Hugh in 
 all the universe — he to cast her off with such 
 callous selfishness ! He to turn upon her 
 now with his empty phrases ! He to sell and 
 betray her for a Winifred and a manor-house ! 
 
198 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 Oil, the guilt and the sin of it! Iler head 
 reeled and swam round deliriously. She 
 hardly knew what she felt or did. Mad 
 with agony, love, and terror, she rushed away 
 headlong from his polluted presence — not 
 from Hugh, but from this fiillen idol. He 
 saw her white dress disappearing fast through 
 the deep gloom in the direction of the poplar 
 tree, and he groped his way after her, almost 
 as mad as herself, struck dumb with remorse 
 and awe and shame at the ruin he had visibly 
 and instantly wrought in the fabric of that 
 trustful girl's whole being. 
 
 One moment she fled and stumbled in the 
 dark along the grassy path toward the roots 
 of the poplar. Then he caught a glimpse of 
 her for a second, dimlv silhouetted in the 
 faint starlight, a wan w^hite figure with out- 
 stretched arms against the black horizon. 
 She was poising, irresolute, on the gnarled 
 roots. It was but for the twinkling of 
 an eye that he saw her; next instant, a 
 splash, a gurgle, a shriek of terror, and 
 he beheld her borne wildly away, a helpless 
 burden, by that fierce current towards the 
 breakers that glistened white and roared 
 
SHUFFLING IT OFF. 199 
 
 hoarsely in their savage joy on the bar of 
 the river. 
 
 In her agony of disgrace, she had fallen, 
 rather than thrown herself in. As she stood 
 there, undecided, on the slippery roots, with 
 all her soul burning within her, her head 
 swimming and her eyes dim, a bruised, 
 humiliated, hopeless creature, she had missed 
 her foothold on the smooth worn stump, slimy 
 with lichens, and raising her hands as if to 
 balance herself, had thrown herself forward, 
 half wittingly, half unconsciously, on the 
 tender mercies of the rushing stream. When 
 she returned for a moment, a little later, to life 
 and thought, it was with a swirling sense of 
 many waters, eddying and seething in mad 
 conflict round her faint numb form. Strange 
 roaring noises thundered in her ear. A 
 choking sensation made her gasp for breath. 
 What she drank in with her gasp was not 
 air, but water — salt brackish water, an over- 
 whelming flood of it. Then she sank again, 
 and was dimly aware of the cold chill ocean 
 floating around her on every side. She took 
 a deep gulp, and with it sighed out her sense 
 of life and action. Hugb was lost to her, 
 
200 Tins MORTAL COIL. 
 
 and it was all over. She could die now. 
 She had nothing to live for. There was no 
 Hugh ; and she had not killed herself. 
 
 Those two dim thoughts were the last she 
 knew as her eyes closed in the rushing 
 current : there had never been a Hugh ; and 
 she had fallen in by accident. 
 
( 201 ) 
 
 CHArTEU IX. 
 
 SINK OR SWIM ? 
 
 Hugh was selfish, heartless, and unscrupulous; 
 but he was not physically a coward, a cur, or 
 a palterer. Without one second's thought, 
 he rushed wildly down to the water's edge, 
 and balancing himself for a plunge, with his 
 hands above his head, on the roots of the big 
 tree, he dived boldly into that wild current, 
 against whose terrific force he had once 
 already struggled so vainly on the morning 
 of his first arrival at Whitestrand. Elsie had 
 had but a few seconds' start of him ; with his 
 powerful arms to aid him in the quest, he 
 must surelv overtake and save her before she 
 could drown, even in that mad and swilling 
 tidal torrent. He flung himself on the water 
 with all his force, and goaded by remorse, 
 pity, and love — for, after all, he loved her, 
 
202 THIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 ho loved lier — he drew unwonted strength 
 i'roiii tlie internal fires, as he pushed back the 
 fierce fiood on either side with arms and 
 thews of feverish energy. At each strong 
 push, he moved forward apace with the 
 gliding current, and in the course of a few 
 stout strokes he was already many yards on his 
 way seaward from the point at which he had 
 originally started. But his boots and clothes 
 clogged his movements terribly, and his 
 sleeves in particular so impeded his arms that 
 he could hardly use them to any sensible 
 advantage. He felt conscious at once that, 
 imder such hampering conditions, it would 
 be impossible to swim for many minutes at a 
 stretch. He must find Elsie and save her 
 almost immediately, or both must go down 
 and drown together. 
 
 He wanted nothing more than to drown 
 with her now. " Elsie, Elsie, my darling 
 Elsie ! " he cried aloud on the top of the wave. 
 To lose Elsie was to lose everything. The 
 sea was running high as he neared the bar, 
 and Elsie had disappeared as if by magic. 
 Even in that dark black water on that moon- 
 less night he wondered ho couldn't catch 
 
SINK on SWIM* ^03 
 
 a sina'lc irlimP^'O of her wliitc druss l>y tlic 
 
 O c5 »/ 
 
 reflected stailiLrht. l>ut tlie trulli was, tlio 
 current had sucked her under — sucked lier 
 under wildly with its irresistible force, only 
 to fllnj^' her up af^aiu, a senseless hurden, 
 where sea and river met at last in tierce 
 conllict aiiiouG: the roariuG^ breakers that 
 danced and shivered upon the sliallow bar. 
 
 lie swam about blindly, looking* round him 
 on every side through the thick darkness 
 witli eager eyes for some glimpse of Elsie's 
 white dress in a stray gleam of starlight ; but 
 he saw not a trace of her presence anywhere. 
 Groping and feeling his w^ay still with 
 numbed limbs, that grew weary and stiff 
 with the frantic effort, he battled on through 
 the gurgling eddy till he reached the breakers 
 on the bar itself. There, his strength proved 
 of no avail — he might as well have tried to 
 stem Niagara. The great waves, rolling 
 their serried line against the stream from the 
 land, caught him and twisted him about re- 
 sistlessly, raising him now aloft on their 
 foaming crest, dashing him now down deep 
 in their hollow trough, and then flinging him 
 back again over some great curling mountain 
 
204 THIS MOBTAL COIL. 
 
 of water far on to tlie current from wliicli he 
 liad just emerged with his stout endeavour. 
 For ten minutes or more he struggled madly 
 against those titanic enemies ; tlien his 
 courage and his muscle failed together, and 
 he gave up the unequal contest out of sheer 
 fatigue and physical inability to continue it 
 longer. It was indeed an awful and appalling 
 situation. Alone there in the dark, whirled 
 about by a current that no man could stem, 
 and confronted with a rearing wall of water 
 that no man could face, he threw himself 
 wearily back for a moment at full length, and 
 looked up in his anguish from his floating 
 couch to the cold stars overhead, whose faint 
 light the spray every instant hid from his 
 sight as it showered over him from the curling 
 great crests of the great billows beyond him. 
 And it was to this that he had driven poor 
 innocent, trustful, wronged Elsie ! the one 
 woman he had ever truly loved ! the one 
 woman who, with all the force of a profound 
 nature — profounder ten thousand times than 
 his own — had truly loved him ! 
 
 Elsie was tossing up and down there just 
 as hopelessly now, no doubt. But Elsie had 
 
SINK on swiMf • 205 
 
 no pangs of conscience added to torment lier. 
 She had only a broken heart to reckon with. 
 
 He let himself float idly where wind and 
 waves might happen to bear him. There was 
 no help for it : he could swim no farther. It 
 w^as all over, all over now. Elsie was lost, 
 and for all the rest he cared that moment less 
 than nothing. Yf inifred ! He scorned and 
 hated her very name. He might drown at 
 liis ease, for anything be would ever do him- 
 self to prevent it. The waves broke over 
 him again and again. He let them burst 
 across his face or limbs, and floated on, with- 
 out endeavouring to swim or guide himself at 
 all. Would he never sink ? Was he to float 
 and float and float like this to all eternity ? 
 
 j^oar — roar — roar on the bar, each roar 
 PTOwinir fainter and fainter in his ears. 
 Clearly receding, receding still. The current 
 was carrying him away from it now, and 
 whirling him along in a back eddy, that set 
 strongly south-westward towards the dike of 
 the salt marshes. 
 
 He let himself drift wherever it might take 
 him. It took him back, back, back, steadily, 
 till he saw the white crest of the breakers on 
 
206 THIS MOBTAL COIL. 
 
 the ridge extend like a long gray line in the 
 dim distance upon the sea beyond him. He 
 was well into safer water by this time : the 
 estuary was only very rough here. He 
 miorht swim if he chose. But he did not 
 choose. He cared nothing for life, since 
 Elsie was gone. In a sudden revulsion of 
 wild despair, a frantic burst of hopeless 
 yearning, he knew, for the first ime in his 
 whole life, now it was too late, how truly and 
 deeply and intensely he had loved her. As 
 truly and deeply as he was capable of loving 
 anybody or anything on earth except him- 
 self. And that, after all, was nothing mucl) 
 to boast of. 
 
 Still, it was enough to overwhelm him for 
 the moment with agonies of remorse and 
 regret and pity, and to make him long just 
 then and there for instant death, as the easiest 
 escape from his own angry and accusing 
 conscience. He vvanted to die ; he yearned 
 and prayed for it. But death obstinately 
 refused to come to his aid. He turned him- 
 self round on his face now, and striking out 
 just onco with his wearied thighs, gazed 
 away blankly towards the foam on the bar, 
 
SINK OR SWIM? 207 
 
 where Elsie's body must still be tossing in a 
 horrible ghastly dance of death among the 
 careering breakers. 
 
 As he looked, a gleam of ruddy light 
 showed for a second from a masthead just 
 beyond the bar. A smack — a smack ! coming 
 in to the river ! The sight refilled him with 
 a faint fresh hope. That hope was too like 
 despair; but still it was something. He 
 swam out once more with the spasmodic 
 energy of utter despondency. The smack 
 mi2:ht still be in time to save Elsie ! Ho 
 would make his way out to it, though it ran 
 him down ; if it ran him down, so much the 
 better ! he would shout aloud at the top of 
 his voice, to outroar the breakers : " A lady 
 is drowning ! Save her ! — save her ! " 
 
 He struck out again with mad haste 
 through the back current. This time, he 
 had to fight against it with his wearied 
 limbs, and to plough his way by prodigious 
 efforts. The current was stronger, now he 
 came to face it, than he had at all imagined 
 when he merely let himself drift on its 
 surface. Battling with all his might against 
 the fierce swirls, he hardly seemed to make 
 
208 THIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 any headway at all through the angry water. 
 His strength was ahnost all used up now ; he 
 could scarcely last till he reached the smack. 
 — Great heavens, what was this ? She was 
 turning ! — she was turning ! The surf was 
 too much for her timbers to endure. She 
 couldn't make the mouth of the creek. She 
 was luffing seaward again, and it was all up, 
 all up with Elsie. 
 
 It was Warren Relf's yawl, bearing down 
 from Lowestoft, and trying for the first 
 time to enter the river through the wall of 
 breakers. 
 
 Oh, if only he had lain right in her path 
 just then, as she rode over the waves, that 
 she might run" him down and sink him for 
 ever, with his weight of infamy, beneath 
 those curling billows ! He could never endure 
 to q:o ashore aorain — and to feel that he had 
 virtually murdered Elsie. 
 
 Elsie, Elsie, poor murdered Elsie ! He 
 should hate to live, now he had murdered 
 Elsie ! 
 
 And then, as he battled still fiercely with 
 the tide, in a flash of his nerves, he felt 
 suddenly a wild spasm of pain seize on both 
 
, SINK OR SWIM? 209 
 
 his tliighs, and an utter disablement affect his 
 entire faculty of bodily motion. It was a 
 paroxysm of cramp — overwhelming — inex- 
 pressible — and it left him in one second 
 powerless to move or think or act or plan, a 
 mere dead log, incapable of anything but 
 a cry of pain, and helpless as a baby in the 
 midst of that cruel and unheeding eddy. 
 
 He flung himself back for dead on the 
 water once more. A choking sensation seized 
 hold of his senses. The sea was pouring in 
 at his nostrils and his ears. He knew he was 
 going, and he was glad to know it. He 
 would rather die than live with that burden 
 of guilt upon his black soul. The waves 
 washed over his face in serried ranks. He 
 didn't mind : he didn't struggle ; he didn't 
 try for one instant to save himself. He 
 floated on, unconscious at last, back, slowly 
 back, towards the bank of the salt marsh. 
 
 When Hugh Massinger next knew any- 
 thing, he was dimly conscious of lying at full 
 length on a very cold bed, and fumbling with 
 his fingers to pull the bed-clothes closer 
 around him. But there were no bed-clothes, 
 
 VOL. I. p 
 
210 THIS MOBTAL COIL, 
 
 and everything about was soaking wet. He 
 must be stretched in a pool of water, he 
 thought — so damp it was all round to the 
 touch — with a soft mattress or couch spread 
 beneath him. He put out his hands to feel 
 the mattress. He came upon mud, mud, deep 
 layers of mud ; all cold and sHmy in the dusk 
 of night. And then with a flash he remem- 
 bered all — Elsie dead ! Elsie drowned !— and 
 knew he was stranded by the ebbing tide on 
 the edge of the embankment. No hope of 
 helping Elsie now. With a violent effort, he 
 roused himself to consciousness, and crawled 
 feebly on his knees to the firm ground. It 
 was difficult work, floundering through the 
 mud, with his numb limbs ; but he floundered 
 on, upon hands and feet, till he reached the 
 shore, and stood at last, dripping with brine 
 and crusted with soft slimy tidal ooze, on the 
 broad bank of the moated dike that hemmed 
 in the salt marshes from the mud-bank of the 
 estuary. It was still dark night, but the 
 moon had risen. He could hardly say what 
 the time might be, for his watch had stopped, 
 of course, by immersion in the water ; but he 
 roughly guessed, by the look of the stars, it 
 
SINK OB SWIM? 211 
 
 was somewhere about half-past ten. We 
 have a vague sense of the lapse of time even 
 during sleep or other unconscious states ; and 
 Hugh was certain he couldn't have been 
 floating for much more than an hour or 
 thereabouts. 
 
 He gazed around him vaguely at the misty 
 meadows. He was a mile or more from the 
 village inn. The estuary, with its acrid flats 
 of mud, lay between him and the hard at 
 Whitestrand. Sheets of white surf still 
 shimmered dimly on the bar far out to sea. 
 And Elsie was lost — lost to him irrevocably. 
 
 He sat down and pondered on the bank for 
 a w^hile. Those five minutes were the turning- 
 point of his life. What should he do and 
 how comport himself under these sudden and 
 awful and unexpected circumstances ? Dazed 
 as he was, he saw even then the full horror 
 of the dilemma that hedged him in. Awe 
 and shame brought him back with a rush to 
 reason. If he went home and told the whole 
 horrid truth, everybody would say he was 
 Elsie's murderer. Perhaps they would even 
 suggest that he pushed her in— to get rid of 
 her. He dared not tell it ; he dared not face 
 
212 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 it. Should he fly the village — the county — 
 the country ? — That would be foolish and 
 precipitate indeed, not to say wicked : a 
 criminal surrender. All was not lost, though 
 Elsie was lost to him. In his calmer mood, 
 no longer heroic with the throes of de- 
 spondency, sitting shivering there with cold 
 in the keen breeze, between his dripping 
 clothes, upon the bare swept bank, he said 
 to himself many times over that all was not 
 lost ; he might still go back — and marry 
 Winifred. 
 
 Hideous — horrible-— ghastly — inhuman : he 
 reckoned even so his chances with Winifred. 
 
 The shrewd wind blew chill upon his wet 
 clothes. It bellowed and roared with hoarse 
 groans round the stakes on the dike-sluices. 
 His] head was whirling still with asphyxia 
 and numbness. He felt hardly in a condition 
 to think or reason. But this was a crisis, a 
 life-and-death crisis. He must pull himself 
 together like a man, and work it all out, his 
 doubtful course for the next three hours, or 
 else sink for ever in a sea of obloquy, remem- 
 bered only as Elsie's murderer. Everything 
 was at stake for him — live or die. Should 
 
SIXK OB SWIMf 213 
 
 lie jump once more into the cold wild streuni 
 — or rro home quietlv like a sensible man, and 
 play his hand out to marry Winifred ? 
 
 If he meant to go, he must go at once. It 
 was no use to think of delaying or shilly- 
 shallying. By eleven o'clock, the inn would 
 be closed. He must steal in, unperceived, by 
 the open French windows before eleven, if he 
 intended still to keep the game going. But 
 he must have his plan of action definitely 
 mapped out none the less beforehand; and 
 to map it out, he must wait a moment still ; 
 he must sum up chances in this desperate 
 emergency. 
 
 Life is a calculus of varying probabilities. 
 Was it likely he had been perceived at the 
 Hall that evening ? Did anybody know he 
 had been walking with Winifred ? 
 
 He fancied not — he believed not. — He was 
 certain not, now he came to think of it. 
 Thank heaven, he had made the appointment 
 verbally. If he'd written a note, that damning 
 evidence might have been produced against 
 him at the coroner's inquest. Inquest? 
 Unless they found the body — Elsie's body — 
 pah ! how horrible to think of — but still, a 
 
-T^^"^"^^ 
 
 214 TllliS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 man must steel himself to face facts, however 
 ghastly and however horrible. Unless they 
 found the body, then, there would be no 
 inquest ; and if only things were managed 
 well and cleverly, there needn't even be any 
 inquiry. Unless they found the body — 
 Elsie's body! — poor Elsie's body, whirled 
 about by the waves ! — But they would never 
 find it — they would never find it. The 
 current had sucked it under at once, and 
 carried it away careering madly to the sea. 
 It would toss and whirl on the breakers for 
 a while, and then sink unseen to the fathom- 
 less abysses of the German Ocean. 
 
 He hated himself for thinking all this — 
 with Elsie drowned — or not yet drowned 
 even — and yet he thought it, because he was 
 not man enough to face the alternative. 
 
 Had Elsie told any one she was going to 
 meet him ? No ; she wouldn't even tell 
 Winifred of that, he was sure. She met him 
 there often by a23pointment, it was true, but 
 always quietly : they kept their meetings a 
 profound secret between them. 
 
 Had any one seen them that evening 
 together ? He couldn't remember noticing 
 
SINK on SWIMf 215 
 
 anybody. — Ho.w shrill the wind blew through 
 his dripping* clothes. It cut him in two ; 
 and his head reeled still. — No ; nobody, 
 nobody. He was quite safe upon that score 
 at least. Nobody knew he was out with 
 Elsie. 
 
 Could he go back, then, and keep it all 
 quiet, saying nothing himself, but leaving 
 the world to form its own conclusions ? A 
 sudden thou^'ht flashed in an intuitive moment 
 across his brain. A Plan ! — a Plan ! How 
 happy ! A Policy ! He saw his way out of 
 it all at once. He could set everything right 
 by a simple method. Yes, that would do. 
 It was bold, but not risky. He might go 
 now : tlie scheme for the future was all 
 matured. Nobody need ever suspect any- 
 thing. A capital idea ! Honour was saved ; 
 and he might still go back and marry 
 Winifred. 
 
 Elsie dead ! Elsie drowned ! The world 
 lost, and his life a blank ! But he mi^rht 
 still go back and marry Winifred. 
 
 He rose, and shook himself in the wind 
 like a dog. The Plan was growing more 
 definite and rounded in his mind each moment. 
 
21G THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 lie turned liis face slowly towards the lights 
 at "Wliitestrand. The estuary spread between 
 him and them with its wide mud-flats. Cold 
 and tired as he was, he must make at all 
 speed for the point where it narrowed into 
 the running stream near Snade meadows. 
 He must swim the river there, with what 
 legs he had left, and cross to the village. 
 There was no time to be lost. It was neck 
 or nothing. At all hazards, he must do his 
 best to reach the inn before the doors were 
 shut and locked at eleven. 
 
 When he left the spot where he had been 
 tossed ashore, his idea for the future was 
 fully worked out. He ran along the bank 
 with eager haste in the direction of White- 
 strand. Once only did he turn and look 
 behind him. A ship's light gleamed feebly 
 in the offing across the angry sea. She was 
 beating up against a head wind to catch the 
 breeze outside towards Lowestoft or Yarmouth. 
 
( 217 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE PLAX IN EXECUTION. 
 
 Hugh hurried along the dike that bounded 
 the salt-marsh meadows seaward, till he 
 reached the point in his march up where tlie 
 river narrowed abruptly into a mere third- 
 class upland stream. There he jumped in, 
 and swam across, as well as he was able in 
 the cold dark water, to the opposite bank. 
 Once over, he had still to straggle as best he 
 might through two or three swampy fields, 
 and to climb a thickset hedge or so— regular 
 bullfinches — before he fairly gained the be- 
 lated little high-road. His head swam. Wet 
 and cold and miserable without, he was torn 
 within by conflicting passions ; but he walked 
 firm and erect now along the winding road 
 in the deep gloom, fortunately never meeting 
 
218 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 a soul in the half-mile or so of lonely way 
 that lay between the point where he had 
 crossed the stream and the Fisherman's East 
 by the bank at Whitestrand. He was glad 
 of that, for it was his cue now to escape 
 observation. In his own mind, he felt himself 
 a murderer; and every flicker of the wind 
 among the honeysuckle in the hedge, every 
 rustle of the leaves on the trees overhead, 
 every splash of the waves upon the distant 
 shore, made his heart flutter, and his breath 
 stop short in response, though he gave no 
 outer sign of fear or compunction in his even 
 tread and erect bearing — the evon tread and 
 erect bearing of a proud, self-confident, 
 English gentleman. 
 
 How lucky that his rooms at the inn hap- 
 pened to be placed on the ground- floor, and 
 that they opened by French windows down 
 to the ground on to the little garden ! How 
 lucky, too, that they lay on the hither side 
 of the door and the taproom, where men were 
 sitting late over their mug of beer, singing 
 and rollicking in vulgar mirth with their 
 loud half-Danish, East- Anglian merriment ! 
 He stole through the garden on tiptoe, un- 
 
THE PLAN IN EXECUTION 219 
 
 perceived, and glided like a ghost into the 
 tiny sitting-room. The lamp burned brightly 
 on the parlour table, as it had burnt all even- 
 ing, in readiness for his arrival. He slipped 
 quietly, on tiptoe still, into the bedroom 
 behind, tossed off a stiff glassful of brandy- 
 and-water cold, and changed his clothes from 
 head to foot with as much speed and noise- 
 lessness as circumstances permitted. Then, 
 treading more easily, he went out once more 
 with a bold front into the other room, flung 
 himself down at his ease in the big armchair, 
 took up a book, pretending to read, and rang 
 the bell w^th ostentatious clamour for the 
 good landlady. His plan was mature ; he 
 would proceed to put it into execution. 
 
 The landlady, a plentiful body of about 
 fifty, came in with evident surprise and 
 hesitation. " Lord a' mussy, sar," she cried 
 aloud in a slight flurry, " I thowt yow war 
 out ; an' them min a-singin' and a-bellerin' 
 like that oover there in the bar ! Stannaway 
 '11 be some riled when he find yow're come in 
 an' all that noise gooin' on in the house ! 
 Teen't respectable. But we din't Vear ye. 
 I hoop yow'll 'scuse 'em : they're oonly the 
 
220 ^ THIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 fishermen from Snade, enjoy in' theirselves in 
 the cool of the evenin'." 
 
 Hugh made a manful effort to appear un- 
 concerned. " I came in an hour ago or 
 more," he replied, smiling — a sugar-of-lead 
 smile. " But pray, don*t interfere with these 
 good people's merriment for worlds, I beg of 
 you. I should be sorry, indeed, if I thought 
 I put a stopper upon anybody's innocent 
 amusement anywhere. I don't want to be 
 considered a regular kill-joy. — I rang the 
 bell, Mrs. Stannaway, for a bottle of seltzer." 
 
 It was a simple way of letting them know 
 he was really there ; and though the lie 
 about the length of time he had been home 
 was a fairly audacious one — for somebody 
 might have come in meanwhile to trim the 
 lamp, or look if he was about, and so detect 
 the falsehood — he saw at once, by Mrs. 
 Stannaway's face, that it passed muster with- 
 out rousing the sliglitest suspicion. 
 
 '« Why, William," he heard her say when 
 she went out, in a hushed voice to her hus- 
 band in the taproom, **Mr. Massinger hev 
 bin in his own room the whool time, while 
 them chaps hev bin a-shoutin' an' swearin' 
 
THE PLAN IN EXECUTION. 221 
 
 suffin frightful out here, more like heathen 
 than human critters." 
 
 Then, they hadn't noticed his absence, at 
 any rate ! That was well. He was so far 
 safe. If the rest of his plan held wat&r 
 equally, all might yet come right — and he 
 might yet succeed in marrying Winifred. 
 
 To save appearances — and marry Winifred ! 
 With Elsie still tossing on the breakers of 
 the bar, he had it in his mind to marry 
 Winifred ! 
 
 When Mrs. Stannaway brought in the 
 seltzer, Hugh Massinger merely looked up 
 from the book he was reading with a pleasant 
 nod and a murmured " Thank you." 'Twas 
 the most he dared. His teeth chattered so 
 he could hardly trust himself to speak any 
 further ; but he tried with an agonized effort 
 within to look as comfortable under the cir- 
 cumstances as possible. As soon as she was 
 gone, however, he opened the seltzer, and 
 pouring himself out a second strong dose of 
 brandy, tossed it off at a gulp, almost neat, 
 to steady his nerves for serious business. 
 Then he opened his blotting-book, with a 
 furtive glance to right and left, and took out 
 
222 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 a few stray sheets of paper — to write a letter. 
 The first sheet had some stanzas of verse 
 scribbled loosely upon it, with many correc- 
 tions. Hugh's eyes unconsciously fell upon 
 one of them. It read to him just then like 
 an act of accusation. They were some simple 
 lines describing some ideal Utopian world — 
 a dream of the future — and the stanza on 
 which his glance had lighted so carelessly 
 ran thus : 
 
 " But, fairer and purer still, 
 
 True love is there to behold ; 
 And none may fetter his will 
 
 With law or with gold : 
 And none may sully his wings 
 
 With the deadly taint of lust ; 
 But freest of all free things 
 
 He soars from the dust." 
 
 " With law or with gold," indeed ! Fool ! 
 Idiot ! Jackanapes ! He crumpled the verses 
 angrily in his hand as he looked, and flung 
 them with clenched teeth into the empty fire- 
 place. His own words rose up in solemn 
 judgment against him, and condemned him 
 remorselessly by anticipation. He had sold 
 Elsie for Winifred's gold, and the Nemesis of 
 his crime was already pursuing him like a 
 
TEE PLAN IN EXECUTION. 223 
 
 
 deadly phantom througli all his wakiii 
 
 moments. 
 
 With a set cold look on his handsome dark 
 face, he selected another sheet of clean white 
 note-paper from the morocco-covered hlotting- 
 book, and then pulled a bundle of old, worn- 
 edged letters from his breast-pocket — a bundle 
 of letters in a girl's handwriting, secured by 
 an elastic india-rubber band, and carefully 
 numbered with red ink from one to seventy, 
 in the order they were received in. Hugh 
 was nothing, indeed, if not methodical. In 
 his own way, he had loved Elsie, as well as 
 he was capable of loving anybody : he had 
 kept every word she ever wrote to him ; and 
 now that she was gone — dead and gone for 
 ever — her letters were all he had left that 
 belonged to her. He laid one down on the 
 table before him, and yielding to a momentary 
 impulse of ecstasy, he kissed it first with 
 reverent tenderness. It was Elsie's letter — 
 poor dead Elsie's. — Elsie dead ! He could 
 hardly realize it. — His brain whirled and 
 swam with the manifold emotions of that 
 eventful evening. But he must brace him- 
 self up for his part like a man. He must not 
 
224 THIS MOItTAL COIL. 
 
 be weak. There was work to do ; lie must 
 make haste to do it. 
 
 He took a broad-nibbed pen carefully from 
 his desk — the broadest he could find — and 
 fitted it with pains to his ivory holder. Elsie 
 always used a broad nib — poor drowned Elsie 
 — dear, martyred Elsie ! Then, glancing 
 sideways at her last letter, he wrote on the 
 sheet, in a large flowing angular hand, deep 
 and black, most unlike his own, which was 
 neat and small and cramped and rounded, 
 the two soHtary words, " My darling." He 
 gazed at them when done with evident com- 
 placency. They would do very well : an 
 excellent imitation ! 
 
 Was he going, then, to copy Elsie's letter ? 
 No ; for its first words read plainly, " My 
 own darling Hugh." He had allowed her to 
 address him in such terms as that ; but still, 
 he muttered to himself even now, he was 
 never engaged to her — never engaged to her. 
 In copying, he omitted the word *' own." 
 That, he thought, would probably be con- 
 sidered quite too affectionate for any reason- 
 able probability. Even in emergencies he 
 was cool and collected. But " My darling," 
 
THE PLAN IN EXECUTION. 225 
 
 was just about the proper mean. Girls are 
 always stupidly gushing in their expression 
 of feeling to one another. No doubt Elsie 
 herself would have begun, " My darling." 
 
 After that, he turned over the letters with 
 careful scrutiny, as if looking down the pages 
 one by one for some particular phrase or 
 word he wanted. At last he came upon the 
 exact thing : " Mrs. Meysey and Winifred 
 are going out to-morrow." — *' That'll do," be 
 said in his soul to himself : " a curl to the w,'' 
 — and laying the blank sheet once more before 
 him, he wrote down boldly, in the same free 
 hand, with thick black down-strokes, " My 
 darling Winifred." 
 
 The Plan was shaping itself clearly in his 
 mind now. Word by word he fitted in so, 
 copying each direct from Elsie's letters, and 
 dovetailing the whole with skilled literary 
 craftsmanship into a curious cento of her pet 
 phrases, till at last, after an hour's hard and 
 anxious work, round drops of sweat standing 
 meanwhile cold and clammy upon his hot 
 forehead, he read it over with unmixed appro- 
 bation—to himself— an excellent letter both 
 in design and execution. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
22G THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 " Whitestrand Hall, 
 
 "September 17. 
 
 " My darling Winifred, 
 
 " I can hardly make up my mind 
 to write you this letter ; and yet I must : I 
 can no longer avoid it. I know you will 
 think me so wicked, so un2rrateful : I know 
 Mrs. Meysey will never forgive me ; but I 
 can't help it. Circumstances are too strong 
 for me. By the time this reaches you, I shall 
 have left Whitestrand, I fear for ever. Why 
 I am leaving, I can never, never, never tell 
 you. If you try to find out, you won't succeed 
 in discovering it. I know what you'll think ; 
 but you're quite mistaken. It's something 
 about which you have never heard ; some- 
 thing that I've told to nobody anywhere ; 
 something I can never, never tell, even to 
 you, darling. I've written a line to explain 
 to Hugh ; but if s no use either of you trying 
 to trace me. I shall write to you some day 
 again to let you know how I'm getting on — 
 but never my whereabouts. — Darling, for 
 heaven's sake, do try to hush this up as much 
 as you can. To have myself discussed by 
 half the county would drive me mad with 
 
 -.J.W<J.., 
 
:% 
 
 THE PLAN IN EXECUTION. 227 
 
 despair and shame. Get Mrs. Meysey to say 
 I've been called away suddenly by private 
 business, and will not return. If only you 
 knew all, you would forgive me everything. — 
 Good-bye, darling. Don't think too harshly 
 
 of me. 
 
 *' Ever your affectionate, but heart-broken, 
 
 " Elsie." 
 
 His soul approved the style and the matter. 
 Would it answer his purpose ? he wondered, 
 half tremulously. Would they really believe 
 Elsie had written it, and Elsie was gone ? 
 How account for her never having been seen to 
 quit the grounds of the Hall ? For her not 
 having been observed at Almundham Station ? 
 For no trace being left of her by rail or road, 
 or sea or river ? It was a desperate card to 
 play, he knew, but he held no other ; and 
 fortune often favours the brave. How often 
 at loo had he stood against all precedent upon 
 a hopeless hand, and swept the board in the 
 end by some audacious stroke of inspired good 
 play, or some strange turn of the favouring 
 chances ! He would stand to wun now in the 
 same spirit on the forged letter. It was his 
 
228 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 one good card. Nobody could ever prove lie 
 wrote it. And perhaps, with the unthinking 
 readiness of the world at large, they would 
 all accept it without further question. 
 
 If ever Elsie's body were recovered ! Ah, 
 ves : true : that would indeed be fatal. But 
 then, the chances were enormously against 
 it. The deep sea holds its own : it yields up 
 its dead only to patient and careful search ; 
 and who would ever dream of searching for 
 Elsie ? Except himself, she had no one to search 
 for her. The letter was vague and uncertain, to 
 be sure ; but its very vagueness was infinitely 
 better than the most definite lie : it left open 
 the door to so much width of conjecture. 
 Every man could invent his own solution. 
 If he had tried to tell a plausible story, it 
 might have broken down when confronted 
 with the inconvenient detail of stern reality : 
 but he had trusted everything to imagination. 
 And imagination is such a charmingly elastic 
 faculty ! The Meyseys might put their own 
 construction upon it. Each, no doubt, would 
 put a different one ; and each would be con- 
 vinced that his own was the truest. 
 
 He folded it up and thrust it into an 
 
THE PLAN JN EXECUTION. 22!) 
 
 envelope. Then he addressed the face boldly, 
 in the same free black hand as the letter itself, 
 to '<Miss Meysey, The Hall, Whitestrand." 
 In the corner he stuck the identical little 
 monogram, E. C, written with the strokes 
 crossing each other, that Elsie put on all her 
 letters. His power of imitating the minutest 
 details of any autograph stood him here in 
 good stead. It was a perfect fac-simile, letter 
 and address: and tortured as he was in his 
 own mind by remorse and fear, he still smiled 
 to himself an approving smile as he gazed at 
 the absolutely undetectable forgery. No 
 expert on earth could ever detect it. " That'll 
 clinch all," he thought serenely. " They'll 
 never for a moment doubt that it comes from 
 Elsie." 
 
 He* knew the Meyseys had gone out to 
 dinner at the vicarage that evening, and 
 would not return until after the hour at which 
 Elsie usually retired. As soon as they got 
 back, they would take it for granted she had 
 gone to bed, as she always did, and would in 
 all probability never inquire for her. If so, 
 nothing would be known till to-morrow at 
 breakfast. He must drop the letter into the 
 
230 THIS MOBTAL COIL. 
 
 box UDperceived to-night, and then it would 
 be delivered at Whitestrand Hall in due 
 course by the first post to-morrow. 
 
 He shut the front window, put out the 
 lamp, and stole quietly into the bedroom 
 l)ehind. That done, he opened the little 
 lattice into the back garden, and slipped out, 
 closing the window loosely after him, and 
 blowing out the candle. The post-office lay 
 just beyond the church. He walked there 
 fast, dropped his letter in safety into the box, 
 and turned, unseen, into the highroad once 
 more in the dusky moonlight. 
 
 Wearied and faint and half delirious as he 
 was after his long immersion, he couldn't 
 even now go back to the inn to rest quietly. 
 Elsie's image haunted him still. A strange 
 fascination led him across the fields and 
 through the lane to the Hall— to Elsie's last 
 dwelling-place. He walked in by the little 
 side-gate, the way he usually came to visit 
 Elsie, and prowled guiltily to the back of the 
 house. The family had evidently returned, 
 and suspected nothing : no sign of bustle or 
 commotion or disturbance betrayed itself 
 anywhere : not a light showed from a single 
 
THE PLAN IN EXECUTION. 231 
 
 window : all was dark and still from end to 
 end, as if poor dead Elsie were sleepino- 
 calmly in her own little bedroom in the main 
 ])uildin<r. It was close on one in the morning* 
 now. Hugh skulked and prowled around the 
 east wing on cautious tiptoe, like a convicted 
 1 )urglar. 
 
 As he passed Elsie's room, all dark and 
 empty, a mad desire seized upon him all at 
 once to look in at the window and see how 
 everything lay within there. At first, he had 
 no more reason for the act in his head than 
 that : the Plan only developed itself further 
 as be thought of it. It wouldn't be difficult 
 to climb to the sill by the aid of the porch and 
 the clambering wistaria. He hesitated a 
 moment ; then remorse and curiosity finally 
 conquered. The romantic suggestion came 
 to him, like a dream, in his fevered and almost 
 delirious condition : like a dream, he carried 
 it at once into effect. Groping and feeling 
 his way with numb fingers, dim eyes, and 
 head that still reeled and swam in terrible 
 giddiness from his long spell of continued 
 asphyxia, he raised himself cautiously to the 
 level of the sill, and prised the window open 
 
232 TUIIS 310RTAL COIL. 
 
 with his dead white hand. The lamp on 
 the table, though turned down so low that he 
 hadn't observed its glimmer from outside, 
 was still alight and burning faintly. He 
 turned it up just far enough to see through 
 the gloom his way about the bedroom. The 
 door was closed, but not locked. He twisted 
 the key noiselessly w^ith dexterous pressure, 
 so as to leave it fastened from the inside. — 
 That was a clever touch ! — They would think 
 Elsie had climbed out of the window. 
 
 A few letters and things lay loose about 
 the room. The devil within him was revelling 
 now in hideous suggestions. Why not make 
 everything clear behind him ? He gathered 
 them up and stuck them in his pocket. Elsie's 
 small black leather bag stood on a wooden 
 frame in the far corner. He pushed into it 
 hastily the nightdress on the bed, the brush 
 and comb, and a few selected articles of 
 underciothino; from the chest of drawers bv 
 the tiled fireplace. The drawers themselves 
 he left sedulously open. It argued haste. If 
 you choose to play for a high stake, you must 
 play boldly, but you must play well. Hugh 
 never for a moment concealed from himself 
 
THE PLAN IN EXECUTION. 233 
 
 the fact that the adversary against whom he 
 was playing now was the public hangman, 
 and that his own neck was the stake at issue. 
 
 If ever it was discovered that Elsie was 
 drowned, all the world, including the en- 
 lightened British jury — twelve butchers and 
 bakers and candlestick-makers, selected at 
 random from the Whitestrand rabble, he said 
 to himself angrily — would draw the inevitable 
 inference for themselves that Hugh had 
 murdered her. His own neck was the stake 
 at issue — his own neck, and honour and 
 honesty. 
 
 He glanced around the room with an 
 approving eye once more. It was capital ! 
 Splendid ! Everything was indeed in most 
 admired disorder. The very spot it looked, 
 in truth, from which a girl had escaped in a 
 breathless hurry. He left the lamp still 
 burning at half-height : that fitted well ; 
 lowered the bag by a piece of tape to the 
 garden below ; littered a few stray handker- 
 chiefs and lace bodices loosely on the floor ; 
 and crawling out of the window with anxious 
 care, tried to let himself down hand over 
 hand by a branch of the wistaria. 
 
234 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 The branch snapped short with an ugly 
 crack ; and Hugh found himself one second 
 later on the shrubbery below, bruised and 
 shaken. 
 

 ( 235 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 AVHAT SUCCESS ? 
 
 At the Meyseys' next morning, all was 
 turmoil and surprise. The servants' hall 
 fluttered with unwonted excitement. No less 
 an event than an elopement was suspected. 
 Miss Elsie had not come down to breakfast ; 
 and when Miss Winifred went up, on the 
 lady's-maid's report, to ask what was the 
 matter, she had found the door securely 
 locked on the inside, and received no answer 
 to her repeated questions. The butler, hastily 
 summoned to the rescue, broke open the lock ; 
 and Winifred entered, to find the lamp still 
 feebly burning at half-height, and a huddled 
 confusion ever where pervading the disordered 
 room. Clearly, some strange thing had 
 occurred. Elsie's drawers had been opened 
 and searched : the black bag was gone from 
 
236 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 the stand in tlie corner ; and the little jewel- 
 case with the silver shield on the top was 
 missing from its accustomed place on the 
 dressing-table. 
 
 With a sudden cry, Winifred rushed for- 
 ward, terrified. Her first idea was the usual 
 feminine one of robbery and murder. Elsie 
 was killed — killed by a burglar. Put one 
 glar^o at the bed dispelled that illusion ; it 
 had never been slept in. The nightdress and 
 the little embroidered nightdress-bag in red 
 silk were neither of them there in their 
 familiar fashion. The brush and comb had 
 disappeared from the base of the looking- 
 glass. The hairpins even had been removed 
 from the glass hairpin box. These indica- 
 tions seemed frankly inconsistent with the 
 theory of mere intrusive burglary. The 
 enterprising burglar doesn't make up the 
 beds of the robbed and murdered, after 
 pocketing their watches; nor does he walk 
 off, as a rule, with ordinary hairbrushes and 
 embroidered nightdress-bags. Surprised and 
 alarmed, Winifred rushed to the window : it 
 was open still : a branch of the wistaria 
 lay broken on the ground, and the mark 
 
I 
 
 WHAT SUCCESS? 237 
 
 of a falling body might be easily observed 
 among the plants and soil in the shrubbery 
 border. 
 
 By this time, the Squire had appeared 
 upon the scene, bringing in his hand a letter 
 for Winifred. With the cool common sense 
 of advancing years, he surveyed the room in 
 its littery condition, and gazed over his 
 daughter's shoulder as she read the shadowy 
 and incoherent jumble of phrases Hugh 
 Massinger had strung together so carefully 
 in Elsie's name last night at the Fisherman's 
 Rest. " Whew ! " he whistled to himself in 
 sharp surprise as the state of the case dawned 
 slowly upon him. " Depend upon it, there's 
 a young man at the bottom of this. " Cher- 
 chez la femme," says the French proverb. 
 When a young woman's in question, " Cher- 
 chez I'homme" comes very much nearer it. 
 The girl's run off with somebody, you may be 
 sure. I only hope she's run off all straight 
 and above-board, and not gone away with a 
 groom or a gamekeeper or a married clergy- 
 man." ■ 
 
 '* Papa ! " Winifred cried, laying down the 
 letter in haste and bursting into tears, " do 
 
238 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 you think Mr. Massinger can have anything 
 to do with it ? " 
 
 The Squire had been duly apprised last 
 night by Mrs. Meysey — in successive instal- 
 ments — as to the state of relations between 
 Hugh and Winifred ; but his blunt English 
 nature cavalierly rejected the suggested ex- 
 planation of Elsie's departure, and he brushed 
 it aside at once after the fashion of his kind 
 with an easy ^' Bless my soul ! no, child. 
 The girl's run off with some fool somewhere. 
 It's always fools who run off with women. 
 Do you think a man would be idiot enough 
 to " — he was just going to say, " propose to 
 one woman in the morning, and elope with 
 another the evening after ? " but he checked 
 himself in time, before the faces of the 
 servants, and finished his sentence lamely 
 by saying instead, '' commit himself so wnth 
 a girl of that sort ? " 
 
 " That wasn't what I meant, papa," Wini- 
 fred whispered low. " I meant, could she 
 have fancied ? You understand me." 
 
 The Squire gave a snort in place of No. 
 Impossible J impossible ; the young man was 
 so well connected. She could never have 
 
WHAT SUCCESS? 
 
 239 
 
 thought he meant to make up to her. Much 
 more likely, if it came to that, the girl would 
 run away with him than from him. Young 
 women don't really run away from a man 
 because their hearts are broken. They go 
 up to their own bedrooms instead, and muse 
 and mope over it, and cry their eyes red. 
 
 And indeed, the Squire remarked to himself 
 inwardly on the other hand, that if Hugh 
 were minded to elope with any one, he 
 would be far more likely to elope with the 
 heiress of Whitestrand than with a penniless 
 governess like Elsie Challoner. Elopement 
 implies parental opposition. Why the deuce 
 should a man take the trouble to run away 
 with an undowered orphan, whom nobody 
 on earth desires to prevent him from marry- 
 ing any day, in the strictly correctest manner, 
 by banns or license, at the parish church of 
 her own domicile? The suggestion was 
 clearly quite quixotic. If Elsie had run away 
 with any one, it was neither from nor with 
 this young man of Winifred's, the Squire felt 
 sure, but with the gardener's son or with the 
 under-gamekeeper. 
 
 Still, he felt distinctly relieved in his own 
 
1 
 
 240 THIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 mind when, at half-past ten, Hugh Massinger 
 strolled idly in, a rose in his button-hole and 
 a smile on his face — though a little lame of 
 the left leg — all unconscious, apparently, that 
 anything out of the common had happened 
 since last night at the great house. 
 
 Hugh was one of the very finest and most 
 finished actors then performing on the stage 
 of social England ; but even he had a difficult 
 part to play that stormy morning, and he 
 went through his role^ taking it altogether, 
 with but indifferent success, though with 
 sufficient candour to float him through un- 
 suspected somehow. The circumstances, in- 
 deed, were terribly against him. When he 
 fell the night before from Elsie's window, he 
 had bruised and shaken himself, already 
 fatigued as he was by his desperate swim 
 and his long unconsciousness ; and it was 
 with a violent effort, goaded on by the sense 
 of absolute necessity alone, that he picked him- 
 self up, black bag and all, and staggered home, 
 with one ankle strained, to his rooms at the 
 Stannaways'. Once arrived there, after that 
 night of terrors and manifold adventures, he 
 locked away Elsie's belongings cautiously in 
 
% 
 
 WHAT SUCCESS? 241 
 
 a back cupboard— incriminating evidence, 
 indeed, if anything should ever happen to 
 come out— and flung himself half undressed 
 at last in a fever of fatigue upon the bed in 
 the corner. 
 
 Strange to say, he slept— slept soundly. 
 Worn out with overwork and exertion and 
 faintness, he slept on peacefully like a tired 
 child, till at nine o'clock Mrs. Stannaway 
 rapped hard at the door to rouse him. Then 
 he woke with a start from a heavy sleep, his 
 head aching, but drowsy still, and with 
 feverish pains in all his limbs from his 
 desperate swim and his long immersion. He 
 was quite unfit to get up and dress; but he 
 rose for all that, as if all was well, and even 
 pretended to eat some breakfast, though a 
 cup of tea was the only thing he could really 
 gulp down his parched throat in his horror 
 and excitement. Last night's events came 
 clearly home to him now in their naked 
 ghastliness, and with sinking heart and 
 throbbing head, he realized the full extent of 
 his guilt and his danger, the depth of his 
 remorse, and the profundity of his folly. 
 
 Elsie was gone — that was his first thought. 
 
 VOL. I. R 
 
242 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 There was no more an Elsie to reckon with 
 in all this world. Her place was blank — 
 how blank he could never before have truly 
 realized. The whole world itself was blank 
 too. What he loved best in it all was gone 
 clean out of it. 
 
 Elsie, Elsie, poor drowned, lost Elsie ! His 
 heart ached as he thought to himself of Elsie, 
 gasping and struggling in that cold, cold sea, 
 among those fierce wild breakers, for one last 
 breath — and knew it was he v/ho had driven 
 her, by his baseness and wickedness and 
 cruelty, to that terrible end of a sweet young 
 existence. He had darkened the sun in 
 heaven for himself henceforth and for ever. 
 He had sown the wind, and he should reap 
 the whirlwind. He hated himself; he hated 
 Winifred ; he hated everybody and every- 
 thing but Elsie. Poor martyred Elsie! 
 Beautiful Elsie ! His own sweet, exquisite, 
 noble Elsie ! He would have given the whole 
 world at that moment to bring her back 
 again. But the past was irrevocable, quite 
 irrevocable. There was nothing for a strong 
 man now to do but to brace himself up and 
 face the present. 
 
WHAT succi:s^f 2-13 
 
 " If not, what resolution from despair ? '* — 
 That was all the comfort his philosophy could 
 give him. 
 
 Elsie's things were locked up in the cup- 
 board. If suspicion lighted upon him in any- 
 way now, it was all up with him. Elsie's 
 bag and jewel-case and clothing in the cup- 
 board would alone be more than enough to 
 hang him. Hang him ! What did he care 
 any longer for hanging ? They might hang 
 him and welcome, if they chose to try. For 
 sixpence he would save them the trouble, and 
 drown himself. He wanted to die. It was 
 fate that prevented him. Why hadn't he 
 drowned when he might, last night? An 
 ugly proverb that, about the man who is 
 born to be hanged, etc. Some of these 
 proverbs are downright rude — positively 
 vulgar in the coarse simplicity and directness 
 of their language. 
 
 He gulped down the tea with a terrible 
 effort : it was scalding hot, and it burnt his 
 mouth, but he scarcely noticed it. Then he 
 pulled about the sole on his fork for a 
 moment, to dirty the plate, and boning it 
 roughly, gave the flesh to the cat, who ate it 
 
2U THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 purring on the rug by the fireplace. He 
 waited for a reasonable interval next before 
 ringing the bell — it takes a lone man ten 
 minutes to breakfast — but as soon as that 
 necessary time had passed, he put on his hat, 
 crushing it down on his head, and with fiery 
 soul and bursting temples strolled up, with 
 tlie jauntiest air he could assume, to the 
 ]\Ieyseys' after breakfast. 
 
 Winifred met him at the front door. His 
 new sweetheart was pale and terrified, but 
 not now crying. Hugh felt himself con- 
 strained to presume upon their novel relations 
 and insist upon a kiss — she would expect it 
 of him. It was the very first time he had 
 ever kissed her, and, oh evil omen, it revolted 
 him at last that he had now to do it — with 
 Elsie's body tossed about that very moment 
 by the cruel waves upon that angry bar or 
 on the cold sea-bottom. It was treason to 
 Elsie — to poor dead Elsie — that he should 
 ever kiss any other woman. His kisses were 
 hers, his heart was hers, for ever and ever. 
 But what would you have? He looked on, 
 as he had said, as if from above, at circum- 
 stances wafting his own character and his 
 
l}. 
 
 WHAT SUCCESS? 245 
 
 own actions hither and thither wlierevcr they 
 willed — and this was the pass to which they 
 had now hrought him. lie must play out 
 the game— play it out to the end, whatever 
 it might cost him. 
 
 AVinifred took the kiss mechanically and 
 coldly, and handed him Elsie's letter — his 
 own forged letter — without one word of pre- 
 face or explanation. Hugh was glad she did 
 so at the very first moment — it allowed him 
 to relieve himself at once from the terrible 
 strain of the affected gaiety he was keeping 
 up just to save appearances. He couldn't 
 have kept it up much longer. His coun- 
 tenance fell visibly as he read the note — or 
 pretended to read it, for he had no need 
 really to glance at its words — every word of 
 them all now burnt into the very fibres and 
 fabric of his being. 
 
 " Why, what does this mean. Miss Meysey 
 — that is to say, Winifred ? " he corrected 
 himself hurriedly. " Elsie isn't gone ? She's 
 here this morning as usual, surely ? " 
 
 As he said it he almost hoped it might be 
 true. He could hardly believe the horrible, 
 horrible reality. His face was pale enougli 
 
24(3 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 in all conscience now — a little too pale, per- 
 haps, for the letter alone to justify. Winifred, 
 eyeing him close, saw at a glance that he was 
 deeply moved. 
 
 " She's gone," she said, not too tenderly 
 either. " She went away last night, taking 
 her things with her — at least some of them. — 
 Do you know where she's gone, Mr. Mas- 
 singer ? Has she written to you, as she 
 promises ? " 
 
 " Not Mr. Massinger," Hugh corrected 
 gravely, with a livid white face, yet affecting 
 jauntiness. "It was agreed yesterday it 
 should be ' Hugh ' in future. — No, I don't 
 at all know where she is, Winifred ; I wish 
 I did." He said it seriously. " She hasn't 
 written a single line to me." 
 
 Hugh's answer had the very ring of truth 
 in it — for indeed it was true ; and Winifred, 
 watching him with a woman's closeness, felt 
 certain in her own mind that in this at least 
 he was not deceiving her. But he certainly 
 grew unnecessarily pale. Cousinly affection 
 would hardly account for so much disturbance 
 of the vaso-motor system. She questioned 
 him closely as to all that had passed or might 
 
. WHAT SUCCESS f 247 
 
 have passed between them these weeks or 
 earlier. Did he know anything of Elsie's 
 movements or feelings ? Hugh, holding the 
 letter firmly in one hand, and playing with 
 the key of that incriminating cupboard, in 
 his waistcoat pocket, loosely with the other, 
 passed with credit his examination. He had 
 never, he said, with gay flippancy almost, 
 been really intimate with Elsie, talked con- 
 fidences with Elsie, or received any from 
 Elsie in return. She did not know of his 
 engagement to Winifred. Yet he feared, 
 whatever her course might be, some man or 
 other must be its leading motive. Perhaps — 
 but this w^th the utmost hesitation — Warren 
 Relf and she might have struck up a love 
 affair. 
 
 He felt, of course, it was a serious ordeal. 
 Apart from the profounder background of 
 possible consequences — the obvious charge of 
 having got rid of Elsie — two other unpleasant 
 notions stared him full in the face. The first 
 was, that the Meyseys might suspect him of 
 having driven Elsie to run away by his pro- 
 posal to Winifred. But supposing even they 
 never thought of that — which was highly 
 
248 THIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 unlikely, considering the close sequence of the 
 two events and the evident drift of Winifred's 
 questions — there still remained the second 
 unpleasantness — that his cousin, through 
 whom alone he had been introduced to the 
 family, should have disappeared under such 
 mysterious circumstances. Was it likely they 
 would wish their daughter to marry a man 
 among whose relations such odd and un- 
 accountable things were likely to happen ? 
 
 For, strangely enough, Hugh still wished 
 to marry Winifred. Though he loathed her 
 in his heart just then for not being Elsie, and 
 even, by some illogical twist of thought, for 
 having been the unconscious cause of Elsie's 
 misfortunes ; though he would have died 
 himself far rather than lived without Elsie ; 
 yet, if he lived, he wished for all that to 
 marry Winifred. For one thing, it was the 
 programme ; and because it was the pro- 
 gramme, he wanted, with his strict business 
 habits, to carry it out to the bitter end. For 
 another thing, his future all depended upon 
 it; and though he didn't care a straw at 
 present for his future, he went on acting, by 
 the pure force of habit in a prudent man, as 
 
WHAT SUCCESS? 
 
 240 
 
 deliberately and cautiously as if he had still 
 the same serious stake in existence as ever. 
 He wasn't going to chuck up everything all 
 at once, just because life was now an utter 
 blank to him. He would go on as usual in 
 the regular groove, and pretend to the world 
 he was still every bit as interested and 
 engaged in life as formerly. 
 
 So he brazened things out with the Meyseys 
 somehow, and to his immense astonishment, 
 he soon discovered they were ready dupes, in 
 no way set against him by this untoward 
 accident. On the contrary, instead of finding, 
 as he had expected, that they considered this 
 delinquency on the part of his cousin told 
 against himself as a remote partner of her 
 original sin, by right of heredity, he found 
 the Squire and Mrs. Meysey nervously anxious 
 for their part lest he, her nearest male relative, 
 should suspect them of having inefficiently 
 guarded his cousin's youth, inexperience, and 
 innocence. They were all apology, where he 
 had looked for coldness ; they were all on the 
 defensive, where he had expected to see them 
 vigorously carrying the war into Africa. 
 One thing, above all others, he noted with 
 
250 THIS MOIiTAL COIL. 
 
 profound satisfaction — nobody seemed to 
 doubt for one second the genuineness and 
 authenticity of the forged letter. Whatever 
 else they doubted, the letter was safe. They 
 all took it fully for granted that Elsie had 
 gone, of her own free-will, gone to the four 
 winds, with no trace left of her; and that 
 Hugh, in the perfect innocence of his heart, 
 knew no more than they themselves about it. 
 Nothing else, of course, was talked of at 
 Whitestrand that livelong day; and before 
 night, the gossips and quidnuncs of the 
 village inn and the servants' hall had a com- 
 plete theory of their own to account for the 
 episode. Their theory was simple, romantic, 
 and improbable. It had the dearly-loved 
 spice of mystery about it. The coastguard 
 had noticed that a ship, name unknown, with 
 a red light at the masthead and a green on 
 the port bow, had put in hastily about nine 
 o'clock the night before, near the big poplar. 
 The Whitestrand cronies had magnified this 
 fact before nightfall, through various additions 
 of more or less fanciful observers or non- 
 observers — for fiction, too, counts for some- 
 thing — into a consistent story of a most 
 
. WHAT SUCCESS? 251 
 
 orthodox elopement. Miss Elsie had let 
 herself down by a ir^^isted sheet out of her 
 own window, to escape observation — some 
 said a rope, but the majority voted for the 
 twisted sheet, as more strictly in accordance 
 with established precedent — she had slipped 
 away to the big tree, where a gentleman's 
 yacht, from parts unknown, had put in 
 cautiously, before a terrible gale, by previous 
 arrangement, and had carried her over 
 through a roaring sea across to the opposite 
 coast of Flanders. Detail after detail grew 
 apace ; and before long there were some who 
 even admitted to having actually seen a 
 foreign-looking gentleman in a dark cloak — 
 the cloak is a valuable romantic property 
 upon such occasions — catch a white-robed 
 lady in his stout arms as she leaped a wild 
 leap into an open boat from the spray-covered 
 platform of the gnarled poplar roots. Hugh 
 smiled a grim and hideous smile of polite 
 incredulity as he listened to these final imagi- 
 native embellishments of the popular fancy ; 
 but he accepted in outline the romantic tale 
 as the best possible version of Elsie's dis- 
 appearance for public acceptance. It kept 
 
252 Tim MOBTAL COIL, 
 
 the police at least from poking their noses 
 too deep into this family aifair, and it freed 
 him from any possible tinge of blame in the 
 eyes of the Meyseys. Nobody can be found 
 fault with for somebody else's elopement. 
 Two points at least seemed fairly certain to 
 the Whitestrand intelligence : first, that Miss 
 Eslie had run away of her own accord, in the 
 absence of the family ; and second, that she 
 neither went by road nor rail, so that only 
 the sea or river appeared to be left by way of 
 a possible explanation. 
 
 The Meyseys, of course, were less credulous 
 as to detail ; but even the Meyseys suspected 
 nothing serious in the matter. That Elsie 
 had gone was all they knew ; why she went, 
 was a profound mystery to them. 
 
( 253 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XIY. 
 
 LIVE OR DIE ? 
 
 And all this time, what had become of Elsie 
 and the men in the Mud- Turtle ? 
 
 Hugb Massinger, for his part, took it for 
 granted, from the moment he came to himself 
 again on the bank of the salt marshes, that 
 Elsie's body was lying unseen full fathoms 
 five beneath the German Ocean, and that no 
 tangible evidence of his crime and his deceit 
 would ever be forthcoming to prove the naked 
 truth in all its native ugliness against him. 
 From time to time, to be sure, one disquieting 
 thought for a moment occurred to his uneasy 
 mind : a back-current might perhaps cast up 
 the corpse upon the long dike where he had 
 himself been stranded, or the breakers on the 
 bar might fling it ashore upon the great sands 
 that stretched for miles on either side of the 
 
254 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 river-mouth at Whitestrand. But to these 
 terrible imaginings of the night-watches, the 
 more judicial functions of his waking brain 
 refused their assent on closer consideration. 
 He himself had floated through that seething 
 turmoil simply because he knew how to float. 
 A woman, caught wildly by the careering 
 current in its headlong course, would naturally 
 give a few mad struggles for life, gasping 
 and gulping and flinging up her hands, as 
 those untaught to swim invariably do ; but 
 when once the stream had carried her under, 
 she would never rise again from so profound 
 and measureless a depth of water. He did 
 not in any way doubt that the body had been 
 swept away seaward with irresistible might 
 by the first force of the outward flow, and 
 that it now lay huddled at the bottom of the 
 German Ocean in some deep pool, whence 
 dredge or diver could never by human means 
 recover it. 
 
 How differently would he have thought 
 and acted all along had he only known that 
 Warren Eelf and his companion on the Mud- 
 Turtle had found Elsie's body floating on the 
 surface, a limp burden, not half an hour after 
 its first immersion. 
 
LIVE OR DIE) 255 
 
 That damning fact rendered all his bold 
 precautions and daring plans for the future 
 worse than useless. As things really stood, 
 he was plotting and scheming for his own 
 condemnation. Through the mere accident 
 that Elsie's body had been recovered, he was 
 heaping up suspicious circumstantial evidence 
 against himself by tlie forged letter, by the 
 night escapade, by the wild design of enter- 
 ing Elsie's bedroom at the Hall, by the mad 
 idea of concealing at his own lodgings her 
 purloined clothes and jewelry and belongings. 
 If ever an inquiry should come to be raised 
 into the way that Elsie met her death, the 
 very cunning with which Hugh had fabricated 
 a false scent would recoil in the end most 
 sternly against himself. The spoor that he 
 scattered would come home to track him. 
 Could any one believe that an innocent man 
 would so carefully surround himself with an 
 enveloping atmosphere of suspicious circum- 
 stances out of pure wantonness ? 
 
 And yet, technically speaking, Hugh was 
 in reality quite innocent. Murderer as he 
 felt himself, he had done no murder. Morally 
 guilty though he might be of the causes 
 
25 G THIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 which led to Elsie's death, there was nothing 
 of legal or formal crime to object against him 
 in any court of so-called justice. Every man 
 has a right to marry whom he will ; and if a 
 young woman with whom he has cautiously 
 and scrupulously avoided contracting any 
 definite engagement, chooses to consider 
 herself aggrieved by his conduct, and to go 
 incontinently, whether by accident or design, 
 and drown herself in chagrin and despair 
 and misery, why, that is clearly no fault of 
 his, however much she may regard herself as 
 injured by him The law has nothing to do 
 with sentiment. Judges quote no precedent 
 from Shelley or Tennyson. If Hugh had told 
 the whole truth, he would at least have been 
 free from legal blame. By his extraordinary 
 precautions against possible doubts, he had 
 only succeeded in making himself seem guilty 
 in the eyes even of the unromantic lawyers. 
 
 When Warren Relf drew Elsie Challoner, a 
 huddled mass, on board the Mud- Turtle^ the 
 surf was rolling so high on the bar that, with 
 one accord, he and Potts decided together it 
 would be impossible for them, against such a 
 
^n 
 
 LIVE OR DIE? 
 
 257 
 
 sea, to run up the tidal mouth to Whitestrand. 
 Their piteous little dot of a craft could never 
 face it. Wind had veered to the south-east. 
 The only way possible now was to head her 
 round again, and make before the shifting 
 breeze for Lowestoft, the nearest northward 
 harbour of refuge. 
 
 It was an awful moment. The sea roared 
 onward through the black night ; the cross- 
 drift whirled and wreathed and eddied ; the 
 blinding foam lashed itself in volleys through 
 the dusk and gloom against their quivering 
 broadside. And those two men, nothing 
 dauuted, drove the Mud- Turtle once more 
 across the flank of the wind, and fronted her 
 bows in a direct line for the port of Lowestoft, 
 in spite of wind and sea and tempest. 
 
 But how were they to manage meanwhile, 
 in that tossing cockleshell of a boat, about 
 the lady they had scarcely rescued ? That 
 Elsie was drowned, Warren Relf didn't for 
 a moment doubt ; still, in every case of ap- 
 parent drowning, it is a duty to make sure 
 life is really extinct before one gives up all 
 hope ; and that duty was a difficult one indeed 
 to perform on board a tiny yawl, pitching 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 s 
 
258 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 and rolling before a violent gale, and manned 
 against the manifold dangers of the sea by 
 exactly two amateur sailors. But there was 
 no help for it. The ship must drift with one 
 mariner only. Potts did his best for the 
 moment to navigate the dancing little yawl 
 alone, now that they let her scud before the 
 full force of the favouring wind under little 
 canvas ; while Warren Relf, staggering and 
 steadying himself in the cabin below, rolled 
 the body round in rugs and blankets, and 
 tried his utmost to pour a few drops of brandy 
 down the pale lips of the beautiful girl who 
 lay listless and apparently lifeless before him. 
 It was to him indeed a terrible task ; for 
 from the first moment when the painter set 
 eyes on Elsie Challoner, he had felt some 
 nameless charm about her face and manner, 
 some tender cadence in her musical voice, that 
 affected him as no other face and no other 
 voice had ever affected him or could ever affect 
 him. He was not exactly in love with Elsie 
 — love with him was a plant of slower growth 
 — but he was fascinated, impressed, interested, 
 charmed by her. And to sit there alone in 
 that tossing cabin, with Elsie cold and stiff on 
 
LIVE OR DIEi 250 
 
 the be^in before hira, was to liim more utterly 
 painful ttiiv^ unmanning than he could ever 
 have imagined a week or two earlier. 
 
 lie did not doubt one instant the true story 
 of the case. He felt instinctively in his 
 heart that Hugh Massinger had shown her 
 his inmost nature, and that this was the 
 final and horrible result of Hugh's airy easy 
 protestations. 
 
 As he sat there, watching by the light of 
 the one oil lamp, and rubbing her hands and 
 arms gently with his rough hard palms, he 
 saw a sudden tumultuous movement of Elsie's 
 bosom, a sort of gasp that convulsed her 
 lungs — a deep inspiration, with a gurgling 
 noise ; and then, hke a flash, it was borne in 
 upon him suddenly that all was not over — 
 that Elsie might yet be saved — that she was 
 still living. 
 
 It was a terrible hour, a terrible position. 
 If only they had had one more hand on board, 
 one more person to help him with the task 
 of recovering her ! But how could he ever 
 hope to revive that fainting girl, alone and 
 unaided, while the ship drifted on, single- 
 handed, tossing and plunging before that 
 
260 mis MORTAL COIL. 
 
 stiffening breeze ? He almost despaired of 
 Leing able to effect anything. Yet life is 
 life, and he would nerve himself up for it. 
 He would try his best, and thank heaven 
 this boisterous wind that roared through the 
 rigging would carry them quick ?ind safe to 
 Lowestoft. 
 
 His mother and sister vs^ere still there, li 
 once he could get Miss Challoner safe to land, 
 they might even now hope to recover her. 
 Where there's life, there's hope. But what 
 hope in the dimly lighted cabin of a toy yawl, 
 just fit for two hardy weather-beaten men to 
 rough it hardly in, and pitching with wild 
 plunges before as fierce a gale as ever 
 ploughed the yeasty surface of the Germ-an 
 Ocean ? 
 
 He rushed to the companion-ladder as well 
 as he was able, steadying himself on his sea- 
 legs by the rail as he went, and shouted aloud 
 in breathless excitement ; " Potts, she's alive ! 
 she's not drowned ! Can you manage the 
 ship anyhow still, while 1 try my best to 
 luring her round again ? " 
 
 Potts answered back with a cheery : "All 
 right. There's nothing much to do but to 
 
 il 
 
LIVE OB DIEf 261 
 
 let her run. She's out of our hands, for good 
 or evil. The admiral of the fleet could do 
 no more for her. If we're swamped^ we're 
 swamped ; and if we're not, we're running 
 clear for Lowestoft harbour. Give her sea- 
 room enough, and she'll go anywhere. The 
 storm don't live that'll founder the Mud- 
 Turtle. I'll land you or drown you, but 
 anyhow I'll manage her," 
 
 With that manful assurance satisfying his 
 soul, Warren Eelf turned back, his heart on 
 fire, to the narrow cabin and flung himself 
 once more on his knees before Elsie. 
 
 A more terrible night was seldom remem- 
 bered by the oldest sailors on the North Sea. 
 Smacks were wrecked and colliers foundered, 
 and a British gunboat, manned by the usual 
 complement of scientific officers, dashed her- 
 self full tilt in mad fury against the very 
 base of a first-class lighthouse ; but the taut 
 little Mud-Turtle, true to her reputation as 
 the staunchest craft that sailed the British 
 channels, rode it bravely out, and battled her 
 way triumphantly, about one in the morning, 
 through the big waves that rolled up the 
 mouth of Lowestoft harbour. Potts had 
 
2G2 THIS MOBTAL COIL, 
 
 navigated her single-handed amid storm and 
 breakers, and Warren Eelf, in the cabin 
 below, had almost succeeded in making Elsie 
 Challoner open her eyes again. 
 
 But as soon as the excitement of that wild 
 race for life was fairly over, and the Mud- 
 Turtle lay in calm water once more, with 
 perfect safety, the embarrassing nature of 
 the situation, from the conventional point of 
 view, burst suddenly for the first time upon 
 Warren Relf's astonished vision ; and he 
 began to reflect that for two young men to 
 arrive in port about the small hours of the 
 morning, with a young lady very imperfectly 
 known to either of them, lying in a dead 
 faint on their cabin bunk, was, to say the 
 least of it, a fact open to social and even to 
 judicial misconstruction. It's all very well to 
 say offhand, you picked the lady up in the 
 German Ocean ; but Society is apt to move 
 the previous question, how did she get there ? 
 Still, something must be done with the un- 
 covenauted passenger. Th^re was nothing 
 for it, Warren Eelf felt, even at that late 
 season of the night, but to carry the half- 
 inanimate patient up to his mother's lodgirip-s. 
 
LIVE OR DIEf 203 
 
 and to send for a doctor to bring her round 
 at the earliest possible opportunity. 
 
 When Elsie was aware of herself once 
 more, it was broad daylight ; and she lay on 
 a bed in a strange room, dimly conscious 
 that two women whom she did not know 
 were bending tenderly and lovingly over her. 
 The elder, seen through a haze of half-closed 
 eyelashes, was a sweet old lady with snow- 
 white hair, and a gentle motherly expression 
 in her soft gray eyes : one of the few women 
 who know how to age graciously — 
 
 " Whose fair old faces grow more fair 
 As Point and Flanders yellow." 
 
 The younger was a girl about Elsie's own 
 time of life, who looked as sisterly as the 
 other looked motherly ; a pleasant- faced girl, 
 not exactly pretty, but with a clear brown 
 skin, a cheek like the sunny side of peaches, 
 and a smile that showed a faultless row of 
 teeth within, besides lighting up and irradi- 
 ating the whole countenance with a charming 
 sense of kindliness and girlish innocence. In 
 a single word it was a winning face. Elsie 
 lay with her eyes half open, looking up at 
 the face through her crossed eyelashes, for 
 
264 THIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 many minutes, not realizing in any way her 
 present position, but conscious only, in a 
 dimly pleased and dreamy fashion, that the 
 face seemed to soothe and comfort and console 
 her. 
 
 Soothe and comfort and console her for 
 what ? She hardly knew. Some deep-seated 
 pain in her inner nature — some hurt she had 
 had in her tenderest feelings — a horrible 
 aching blank and void. — She remembered 
 now that something unspeakable and in- 
 credible had happened. — The sun had grown 
 suddenly dark in heaven. — She had been 
 sitting by the waterside with dear Hugh — 
 as she thought of the name, that idolized 
 name, a smile played for a moment faintly 
 round the corners of her mouth ; and the 
 older lady, still seen half unconsciously 
 through the chink in the eyelids, whispered 
 in an audible tone to the younger and nearer 
 one : " She's coming round, Edie. She's 
 waking now. I hope, poor dear, she won't 
 be dreadfully frightened, when she sees only 
 two strangers by the bed beside her." 
 
 " Frightened at you, mother," the other 
 voice answered, soft and low, as in a pleasant 
 
 M 
 
LIVE OR DIE? 235 
 
 dream. " Why, nobody on earth could ever 
 be anything but delighted to wake up any- 
 where and find you, with your dear sweet 
 old face, sitting by their bedside." 
 
 Elsie, still peering with half her pupils 
 only through the closed lids, smiled to herself 
 once more at the gentle murmur of those 
 pleasant voices, both of them tender and. 
 womanly and musical, and went on to herself 
 placidly with her own imaginings. 
 
 Sitting by the waterside with her dear 
 
 Hugh — dear, dear Hugh — that prince of men. 
 How handsome he was ; and how clever, and 
 how generous ! And Hugh had begun to 
 tell her something. Eh ! but something ! 
 What was it ? What was it ? Slie couldn't 
 remember ; she only knew it was something 
 terrible, something disastrous, something un- 
 utterable, something killing. And then she 
 rushed away from him, mad with terror, 
 towards the big tree, and 
 
 Ah! 
 
 It was an awful, heart-broken, heart-rending 
 cry. Coming to herself suddenly, as the 
 whole truth flashed like lightning once more 
 across her bewildered brain, the poor girl 
 
2GG THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 flung up her arms, raised herself wildly erect 
 in the bed, and stared around her with a 
 horrible vacant, maddened look, as if all her 
 life were cut at once from under her. Both 
 of the strangers recognized instinctively what 
 that look meant. It was the look and the 
 cry of a crushed life. If ever they had har- 
 boured a single thought of blame against 
 that poor wounded, bleeding, torn heart for 
 what seemed like a hasty attempt at self- 
 murder, it was dissipated in a moment by 
 'that terrible voice — the voice of a goaded, 
 distracted, irresponsible creature from whom 
 all consciousness or thought of right and 
 wrong, of life and death, of sense and move- 
 ment, of motive and consequence, has been 
 stunned at one blow by some deadly act of 
 undeserved cruelty and unexpected wickedness. 
 
 The tears ran unchecked in silent sympathy 
 down the women's flushed cheeks. 
 
 Mrs. Relf leant over and caught her in her 
 arms. " My poor child," she whispered, 
 laying Elsie's head with motherly tenderness 
 on her own soft shoulder, and soothing the 
 girl's pallid white face with her gentle old 
 hand, " cry, cry, cry if you can ! Don't hold 
 
LIVE OR DIEf 267 
 
 back your tears ; let them run, darling. It'll 
 do you good. — Cry, cry, my child — we're all 
 friends here. Don't be afraid of us." 
 
 Elsie never knew, in the agony of the 
 moment, where she was or how she came 
 there ; but nestling her head on Mrs. Eelf s 
 shoulder, and fain of the sympathy that 
 gentle soul extended her so easily, she gave 
 free vent to her pent-up passion, aud let her 
 bosom sob itself out in great bursts and throbs 
 of choking grief; w^hile the two women, who 
 had never till that very morning seen her 
 fair face, cried and sobbed silently in mute 
 concert by her side for many, many minutes 
 together. 
 
 " Have you no mother, dear ? " Mrs. Relf 
 whispered through her tears at last; and 
 Elsie, finding her voice with difficulty, mur- 
 mured back in a choked and blinded tone : 
 " I never knew my mother." 
 
 *' Then Edie and I will be mother and 
 sister to you," the beautiful old lady answered 
 with a soft caress. " You mustn't talk any 
 more now. The doctor would be very, very 
 angry with me for letting you talk and cry 
 even this little bit. But crying's good for 
 
2G8 THIS MOBTAL COIL. 
 
 one when one's heart's sore. I know, my 
 child, yours is sore now. When you're a 
 great deal better, you'll tell us all about it. — 
 Edie, some more beef-tea and brandy. — We've 
 been feeding you with it all night, dear, with 
 a wet feather. — You can drink a little, I hope, 
 now. You must take a good drink and lie 
 back quietly." 
 
 Elsie smiled a faint sad smile. The world 
 was all lost and gone for her now ; but still 
 she liked these dear souls' ^jweet quiet sym- 
 pathy. As Edie glided across the room noise- 
 lessly to fetch the cup, and brought it over 
 and held it to her lips and made her drink, 
 Elsie's eyes followed every motion gratefully. 
 
 " Who are you ? " she cried, clutching her 
 new friend's plump soft hand eagerly. " Tell 
 me where I am. Who brought me here ? 
 How did I get here ? " 
 
 " I'm Edie Eelf," the girl answered in the 
 same low silvery voice as before, stooping 
 down and kissing her. " You know my 
 brother, Warren Relf, the artist whom you 
 met at Whitestrand. You've had an accident 
 — you fell into the water — from the shore at 
 Whitestrand. And Warren, who was cruising 
 
LIVE on DIEf 2G1) 
 
 about in his yawl, picked you up and brought 
 you ashore here. You're at Lowestoft now. 
 Mamma and I are here in lodgings. Nobody 
 ut Whitestrand knows anything about it yet, 
 we believe. — But darling," and she held poor 
 Elsie's hand tight at this, and whispered very 
 low and close in her ear, " we think we guess 
 all the rest too. We think we know how it 
 all happened. — Don't be afraid of us. You 
 may tell it all to us by-and-by, when you're 
 quite strong enough. Mother and I will do 
 all we can to make you better. We know 
 we can never make you forget it." 
 
 Elsie's head sank back on the pillow. It 
 was all terrible — terrible — terrible. But one 
 thought possessed her whole nature now. 
 Hugh must think she was really drowned : 
 that would grieve Hugh — dear affectionate 
 Hugh. — He might be cruel enough to cast 
 her off as he had done — though she couldn't, 
 believe it — it must surely be a hideous, 
 hideous dream, from which sooner or later 
 she would be certain to have a happy awaken- 
 ing — but at any rate it must have driven him 
 wild with grief and remorse and horror to 
 think he had killed her — to think she was 
 
270 
 
 THIS MOBTAL COIL, 
 
 lost to him.— Oughtn't she to telegraph at 
 once to Hugh — to dear, dear Hugh— and tell 
 liim at least she was saved, she was still 
 living ? 
 
 J 
 
( 271 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XY. 
 
 THE PLAN EXTENDS ITSELF. 
 
 For three or four days, Elsie lay at the Relfs' 
 lodgings at Lowestoft, seriously ill, but 
 slowly improving; and all the time, Mrs. 
 Relf and Edie watched over her tenderly 
 with unceasing solicitude, as though she had 
 been their own daughter and sister. Elsie's 
 heart was torn every moment by a devouring 
 desire to know what Hugh had done, what 
 Hugh was doing, what they had all said and 
 thought about her at Whitestrand. She never 
 said so directly to the Relfs, of course ; she 
 couldn't bring herself yet to speak of it to 
 anybody ; but Edie perceived it intuitively 
 from her silence and her words ; and after a 
 time, she mentioned the matter in sisterly con- 
 fidence to her brother Warren. They had both 
 looked in the local papers for some account of 
 
272 THIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 the accident — if accident it were — and saw, 
 to their surprise, that no note was taken any- 
 where of Elsie's sudden disappearance. 
 
 This was curious, not to say ominous ; for 
 in most English country villages a young 
 lady cannot vanish into space on a summer 
 evening, especially by flinging herself bodily 
 into the sea — as Warren Eelf did not doubt 
 for a second Elsie had done in the momentary 
 desperation of a terrible awakening — without 
 exciting some sort of local curiosity as to 
 where she has gone or what has become of 
 the body. We cannot emulate the calm social 
 atmosphere of the Bagdad of the Califs, where 
 a mysterious disappearance on an enchanted 
 carpet aroused but the faintest and most 
 languid passing interest in the breasts of the 
 bystanders. With us, the enchanted carpet 
 explanation has fallen out of date, and 
 mysterious disappearances, however remark- 
 able, form a subject rather of prosaic and 
 prying inquiry on the part of those common- 
 place and unromantic myrmidons, the county 
 constabulary. 
 
 So tlie strange absence of any allusion in 
 the Whitestrand news to what must needs 
 
THE PLAN EXTENDS ITSELF. 273 
 
 have formed a nine days' wonder in tlie quiet 
 little village, quickened all Warren Eelfs 
 profoundest suspicions as to Hugh's procedure. 
 At Whitestrand, all they could possibly know 
 was that Miss Challoner was missing — perhaps 
 even that Miss Challoner had drowned herself. 
 Why should it all be so unaccountably burked, 
 so strangely hushed up in the local news- 
 papers ? Why should no report be divulged 
 anywhere ? Why should nobody even hint 
 in the Lowestoft Times or the Ipswich Chronicle 
 that a young lady, of considerable personal 
 attractions, was unaccountably missing from 
 the familv of a well-known Suffolk land- 
 owner ? 
 
 Already on the very day after his return 
 to Lowestoft, Warren Relf had hastily tele- 
 graphed to Hugh Massinger at Whitestrand 
 that he was detained in the Broads, and 
 would be unable to carry out his loug-standing 
 engagement to take him round in the Mud- 
 Turtle to London. But as time went on, and 
 no news came from Massinger, Warren Relf's 
 suspicions deepened daily. It was clear that 
 Elsie, too, was lingering in her convalescence 
 from suspense and uncertainty. She couldn't 
 
 VOL. I. T 
 
274 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 make up her mind to write either to Hugh 
 or Winifred, and yet she couldn't bear the 
 long state of doubt which silence entailed 
 upon her. So at last, to set to rest their 
 joint fears, and to make sure what was really 
 being said and done and thought at White- 
 strand, Warren Eelf determined to run over 
 quietly for an afternoon's inquiry, and to 
 hear with his own ears how people were 
 talking about the topic of the hour in the 
 little village. 
 
 He never got there, however. At Almund- 
 ham Station, to his great surprise, he ran 
 suddenly against Mr. Wyville Meysey. The 
 Squire recognized him at a glance as the 
 young man who had taken them in his yawl 
 to the sandhills, and began to talk to him 
 freely at once about all that had since 
 happened in the family. But Relf was even 
 more astonished when he found that the 
 subject which lay uppermost in Mr. Meysey's 
 mind just then was not Elsie Challoner's 
 mysterious disappearance at all, but his 
 daughter Winifred's recent engagement to 
 Hugh Massinger. The painter was still some 
 years too young to have mastered the pro- 
 
THE PLAN EXTENDS ITSELF, 275 
 
 found anthropological truth that, even with 
 the best of us, man is always a self-centred 
 being. 
 
 " Well, yes," the Squire said, after a few 
 commonplaces of conversation had been inter- 
 changed between them. " You haven't heard, 
 then, from your friend Massinger lately, 
 haven't you ? I'm surprised at that. He 
 had something out of the common to com- 
 municate. I should have thought he'd have 
 been anxious to let you know at once that he 
 and my girl Winifred had hit things off 
 amicably together. — Oh yes, it's announced, 
 definitely announced : Society is aware of it. 
 Mrs. Meysey made it known to the county, so 
 to speak, at Sir Theodore Sheepshanks's on 
 Wednesday evening. Your friend Massinger 
 is not perhaps quite the precise man we might 
 have selected ourselves for Winifred, if we'd 
 taken the choice into our own hands; buL 
 what I say is, let the young people settle 
 these things themselves — let the young people 
 settle them between them. It's they who've 
 got to live with one another, afler all, not 
 we ; and they're a great deal more interested 
 in it at bottom, when one comes to think of 
 
27G THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 it, than the whole of the rest of us put 
 together." 
 
 " And Miss Challoner ? " Warren asked, as 
 soon as he could edge in a word conveniently, 
 after the Squire had dealt from many points 
 of view — all equally prosy — with Hugh 
 Massinger's position, character, and prospects 
 — " is she still with you ? I'm greatly in- 
 terested in her. She made an immense im- 
 pression on me that day in the sandhills." 
 
 The Squire's face fell somewhat. " Miss 
 Challoner?" he echoed. "Ah, yes; our 
 governess. Well, to tell you the truth — if 
 you ask me point-blank — Miss Challoner's 
 gone off a little suddenly. — We've been dis- 
 appointed in that girl, if you will have it. 
 We don't want it talked about in the neigh- 
 bourhood more than we can help, on Hugh 
 Massinger's account, more than anything else, 
 because, after all, she was a sort of a cousin 
 of his — a sort of a cousin, though a very 
 remote one ; as we learn now, an extremely 
 remote one. We've asked the servants to 
 liush it all up as much as they can, to prevent 
 gossip ; for my daughter's sake, we'd like to 
 avoid gossip ; but I don't mind telling you, in 
 
THE PLAN EXTENDS ITSELF. 277 
 
 strict confidence, as you're a friend of Mas- 
 singer's, that Miss Challoner left us, we all 
 think, in a most unkind and ungrateful 
 manner. It fell upon iis like a thunderbolt 
 from a clear sky. She wrote a letter to 
 Winifred the day before to say she was leaving 
 for parts unknown, without grounds stated. 
 She slipped away, like a thief in the night, as 
 the proverb says, taking just a small liandbag 
 with her, one dark evening ; and the only 
 other communication we've since received is 
 a telegram from London — sent to Hugh 
 Massinger — asking us, in the most mysterious, 
 romantic school- girlish style, to forward her 
 luggage and belongings to an address given." 
 
 " A telegram from London ! " Warren Relf 
 cried in blank surprise. " Do you think Miss 
 Challoner's in London, then ? That's very 
 remarkable. — Atelegram to Massinger! asking 
 you to send her luggage on to London ! — 
 You're quite sure it came from London, are 
 you ? " 
 
 "Quite sure! — Why, I've got it in my 
 pocket this very moment, my dear sir," the 
 Squire replied somewhat testily. (When an 
 elder man says " My dear sir," to a very much 
 
278 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 younger one, you may take it for granted he 
 always means to mark his strong disapproba- 
 tion of the particular turn the talk has taken.) 
 "Here it is — look: *To Hugh Massinger, 
 Fisherman's Rest, Whitestrand, Suffolk. — Ask 
 Winifred to send the rest of my luggage and 
 property to 27, Holmbury Place, Duke Street, 
 St. James's. Explanations by post hereafter. 
 — Elsie Ciialloner.' — And here's the letter 
 she wrote to Winifred : a very disappointing, 
 disheartening letter. I'd like you to read it, 
 as you beem interested in the girl. It's an 
 immense mistake ever to be interested in 
 anybody anywhere I A very bad lot, after 
 all, I'm afraid ; though she's clever, of course, 
 undeniably clever. — We had her with the best 
 credentials, too, from Girton. We're only too 
 thankful now to think she should have asso- 
 ciated for so very short a time with my 
 daughter Winifred." 
 
 Warren Relf took the letter and telegram 
 from the Squire's hand in speechless astonish- 
 ment. This was evidently a plot — a dark 
 and extraordinary plot of Massinger's. Just 
 at first he could hardly unravel its curious 
 intricacies. He knew the address in Holm- 
 
THE PLAN EXTENDS ITSELF. 279 
 
 bury Place well ; it was where the club porter 
 oftheCheyne Row lived. But be read the 
 letter with utter bewilderment. Then the 
 whole truth dawned piecemeal upon his 
 astonished mind as he read it over and over 
 slowly. It was all a lie — a hideous, hateful 
 lie. Hugh Massinger believed that Elsie was 
 drowned. He had forged the letter to Wini- 
 fred to cover the truth, and, incredible as it 
 seemed to a straightforward, honest nature 
 like Warren Relfs, he had managed to get 
 the telegram sent from London by some other 
 person, in Elsie's name, and to have Elsie's 
 belongings forwarded direct to the club 
 porter's, as if at her own request, by Miss 
 Meysey. Warren Eelf stood aghast with 
 horror at this unexpected revelation of Mas- 
 singer's utter baseness and extraordinary 
 cunning. He had suspected the man of 
 heartlessness and levity ; he had never sus- 
 pected him of anything like so profound a 
 capacity for serious crime — for forgery and 
 theft and concealment of evidence. 
 
 His fingers trembled as he held and ex- 
 amined the two documents. At all hazards, 
 he must show them to Miss Challoner. It 
 
280 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 was right she should know herself for exactly 
 what manner of man she had thrown herself 
 away. He hesitated a moment, then he said 
 boldly, " Tliese papers are very important to 
 me, as casting light on the whole matter. 
 Tm an acquaintance of Massinger's, and I'm 
 deeply interested in the young lady. It's 
 highly desirable she should be traced and 
 looked after. I have some reason to suspect 
 where she is at present. I want to ask a 
 favour of you now. Will you lend me these 
 documents, for three days only, and will you 
 kindly mention to nobody at present the fact 
 of your having seen me or spoken to me here 
 this morning ? " To gain time at least was 
 always something. 
 
 The Squire was somewhat taken aback at 
 first by this unexpected request ; but Warren 
 Eelf looked so honest and true as he asked it, 
 that, after a few words of hesitation and ex- 
 planation, the Squire, convinced of his friendly 
 intentions, acceded to both his propositions at 
 once. It flashed across his mind as a possible 
 solution that the painter had been pestering 
 Elsie with too pressing attentions, and that 
 Elsie, with hysterical girlish haste, had run 
 
THE PLAN EXTENDS ITSELF, 281 
 
 away from him to escape them — or perhaps 
 only to make him follow her. Anyhow, there 
 would be no great harm in his tracking her 
 down. " If the girl's in trouble, and you 
 think you can help her," he said good- 
 naturedly, " I don't mind giving you what 
 assistance I can in this matter. You can 
 have the papers. Send them back next week 
 or the week after. I'm going to Scotland for 
 a fortnight's shooting now — at Farquharson's 
 of Invertanar — and I shan't be back till the 
 tenth or eleventh. But I'm glad somebody 
 has some idea where the girl is. As it seems 
 to be confidential, I'll ask no questions at 
 present about her ; but I do hope she hasn't 
 got into any serious mischief." 
 
 " She has got into no mischief at all of any 
 sort," Warren Relf answered slowly and 
 seriously. " You are evidently labouring 
 under a complete misapprehension, Mr. 
 Meysey, as to her reasons for leaving you. I 
 have no doubt that mispprehension will be 
 cleared up in time. Miss Challoner's motives, 
 I can assure you, were perfectly right and 
 proper ; only the action of another person has 
 led you to mistake her conduct in the matter." 
 
2^2 377/.^ MOIiTAL COIL. 
 
 Tlji-H v.^iJi rny«t^;rio««, and th^ f?qtiire bated 
 mysten' ; but afu^r all, it favoured his theory 
 — and fxfftide*, the laatter wa.?f to him a rela- 
 tively unimj/^rtant one. Jt didn't concierri 
 his O'vn private interest, li-i ifi^nAy gus- 
 p,-cted Warren Relf of having r^oT himself 
 mixed up in s^^me fo^^lish love-affair writh 
 Eljfie Ctialloner, hin daug-hter's g-ovemes*, and 
 he varruelv conceived that one or other of 
 them had taken a very remar. ■-„.!-: and 
 romantic way of wrig-^rling" out of it. More- 
 over, at that precise moment hiij train came 
 in ; and .since time and train wait for no man, 
 the .Squire, with a ha.sty farewell to the 
 younrr painter, installed himself forthwith on 
 the comfortable cushiorjs of a first-class 
 carria;re. and steamed unconcerned) v out of 
 Almundham Station. 
 
 It was useless for Warren Relf now to ^o 
 on to Whitestrand. To .show him.>elf there 
 would l>e merely to display his hand of»enly 
 before Hucrh Massing-er. The caprice of cir- 
 cumstance.s had .settled evervthincr for him 
 exactly as he would have wished it. It was 
 lucky indeed that the Squire would be away 
 for a whole fortnight ; his absence would give 
 
THE PLAN EXTENDS ITSELF. 283 
 
 them time to concert a connected plan of 
 action, and to devise means for protecting 
 Elsie. For to Warren Relf that was now 
 the one great prohlem in the case — how to 
 hush the whole matter up, without exposing 
 Elsie's wounded heart to daws and jays — 
 without making her the matter of unneces- 
 sary suspicion, or the suhject of common 
 gossip and censorious chatter. At all costs, 
 it must never be said that Miss Challoner 
 had tried to drown herself in spite and 
 jealousy at Whitestrand poplar, because 
 Hugh Massinger had ventured to propose 
 to Winifred Meysey. 
 
 That was how the daws and jays would 
 put it, after their odious kind, over five o'clock 
 tea, in their demure drawing-rooms. 
 
 What Elsie herself would say to it all, or 
 think of doing in these difficult circumstances, 
 Warren Relf did not in the least know. As 
 yet, he was only very imperfectly informed 
 as to the real state of the case in all its minor 
 details. But he knew this much — that he 
 must screen Elsie at all hazards from the 
 slanderous tongues of five o'clock tea-tables, 
 and that the story must be kept as quiet as 
 
284 THIS MOBTAL COIL. 
 
 possible, safeguarded by himself, his mother, 
 and his sister. 
 
 So he took the next train back to Lowestoft, 
 to consult at leisure on these new proofs of 
 Hugh Massinger's guilt with his domestic 
 counsellors. 
 
( 285 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 FROM INFORMATION RECEIVED. 
 
 At Whitestrand itself, that same afternoon, 
 Hugh Massinger sat in his own little parlour 
 at the village inn, feverish and eager, as he 
 had always been since that terrible night 
 when *' Elsie was drowned," as he firmly 
 believed without doubt or question ; and in 
 the bar across the passage, a couple of new- 
 comers, rough waterside characters, were 
 talking loudly in the seafaring tongue about 
 some matter of their own over a pint of beer 
 and a pipe of tobacco. Hugh tried in vain 
 for many minutes to interest himself in the 
 concluding verses of his " Death of Alaric" — 
 anything for an escape from this gnawing- 
 remorse — but his Hippocrene was dry, his 
 Pegasus refused to budge a feather : he could 
 find no rhymes and grind out no sentiments ; 
 
28G THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 till, angry with himself at last for his own 
 unproductiveness, he leant back in his chair 
 with profound annoyance and listened list- 
 lessly to the strange disjointed echoes of 
 gossip that came to him in fragments through 
 the half-open door from the adjoining tap- 
 room. To his immense surprise, the talk was 
 not now of topsails or of spinnakers : conver- 
 sation seemed to have taken a literary turn ; 
 he caught more than once through a haze of 
 words the unexpected names of Chirles 
 Dickens and Rogue Riderhood. 
 
 The oddity of their occurrence in such 
 company made him prick up his ears. He 
 strained his hearing to catch the context. 
 
 ** Yis," the voice was drawling out, in very 
 pure Suffolk, just tinged with the more Metro- 
 politan Wapping accent ; " I read that there 
 book, ' Our Mutual Friend,' I think he call it. 
 A mate o' mine, he say to me one day, * Bill,' 
 he say, * he ha' bin a-takin yow off, bor. He 
 ha' showed yow up in print under the naame 
 o' Roogue Ridenhood,' he say, ' and yow owt 
 to read it, if oonly for the likeness. Blow 
 me if he heen't got you what ye call proper.' 
 * Yow don't mean that ? ' I say, 'cos I thowt 
 
1 
 
 FSOM INFORMATION RECEIVED. 28*7 
 
 he was a-jookin', ye know. ' I dew, though/ 
 he answer, ' and yow must look into it; 
 Well, I got howd o' the book, an' I read it 
 •ight throu : leastways, my missus, she read 
 it out loud to me : she ha' got more larnin' 
 than me, ye know : and the whool lot is what 
 I call a bargain o' squit. It's noo more like 
 nie than chalk's like cheese." 
 
 " The cap doon't fare to fit yow, then ? " 
 the other voice retorted with a gurgle of 
 tobacco. '' He heen't drew yow soo any one 
 would know who it is ? " 
 
 " Know me ? I should think not. What 
 he say 's a parcel of rubbidge. This here 
 Roogue Ridenhood, accordin' to the tale, ye 
 see, he used to row about Limehouse Reach, 
 a-searchin' for bodies." 
 
 " Searchin' for bodies ! " the second man 
 repeated with an incredulous whiff. '* Why, 
 what the deuce and turfy did he want to do 
 that for ? " 
 
 " Well, that's jest where it is, doon't ye 
 see ? He done it for a livin'. * For a livin',' 
 I say, when my missus up an' read that part 
 out to me ; ' why, what manner o' livin' could 
 a poor beggar make out o' that ? ' I say. * It 
 
288 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 een't as though a body was wuth anything 
 nowadays, as a body,' I say, argifyin' like. 
 * A man what knew anything about the 
 riverside wouldn't a wroot such rubbidge as 
 that an' put it into a printed book, what 
 ought to be ackerate. My belief is,' I say, 
 ' that that there Dickens is an ooverrated 
 man. In fact, the man's a fule. A body 
 nowadays, whether it be a drownded body or 
 a nat'ral one, een't wuth nothin', not the 
 clothes it stand upright in, a5 a body,' I put 
 it. * Times goon by,' I say to har, ' a body 
 was actshally a body, an' wuth savin' for 
 itself, afore body-snatchin' was done away 
 wooth by that there 'Natomy Ack. But what 
 is it now ? Wuth half a crown for landin' it, 
 paid by the parish, if it's landed in Essex, or 
 five bob if yow tow it oover Surrey side of 
 river. Not but what I grant yow there's 
 bodies an' bodies. If a nob drownd hisself, 
 why then in course there's sometimes as much 
 as fifty pound, or maybe a hundred, set on 
 the body. His friends are glad to get the 
 corpse back, an' prove his death, an' hev it 
 buried reg'lar in the family churchyard. 
 Saves a deal in lawyer's expenses, that do. 
 
FROM INFORMATION RECEIVED, 289. 
 
 I doon't deny but what they offer free enougli 
 for a nob. But how many nobs goo and 
 drownd theirselves in a season do yow sup- 
 pose? And who that knew anything about 
 the river would goo a-lookin' for nobs in 
 Limehouse Reach or down about Bermondsey 
 way? 
 
 " It stand to reason they woon't, Bill," the 
 other voice answered with a quiet chuckle. 
 
 '* In course it stand to reason," Bill replied 
 warmly with an emphatic expletive. " When 
 a nob drownd hisself, he doon't hull hisself 
 off London Bridge; no nor off Blackfriars' 
 nather, I warrant ye. He doon't put hisself 
 out aforehand for nothin' like that, takin' a 
 'bus into the City out o' pure fulishness. He 
 jest clap his hat on his hid an' stroll down to 
 Westminister Bridge, or to Charen Cross or 
 Waterloo — a lot on 'em goo oover Waterloo, 
 pleece or no pleece ; an' he jump in cloose an' 
 handy to his own door, in a way of speakin', 
 and a done wooth it. But what's the use of 
 lookin' for him arter that below Bridge, 
 down Limehouse way ? Anybody what know 
 the river know well enough that a body 
 startin' from Waterloo, or maybe from West- 
 
 TOL. 1. TJ 
 
290 TEIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 minister, doon't goo down to Limehouse, ebb 
 or flow, nor nothinfr like it. It oret into tlie 
 whirlpool off Saunders's wharf, an' ketch the 
 back current, and turn round and round till 
 it*s flung up by the tide, as vow may say. 
 upward, on the mud at Milbank, or by 
 Lambeth Stanirate. Soo tliere een't a livin' 
 to be made anyhow by pickin' up bodies 
 down about Limehouse ; an' it's alius been 
 my opinion ever since then that that there 
 Dickens is a very much ©overrated pusson." 
 
 ** There een't the least doubt about that," 
 the other answered. '* If he said soo, vow 
 can't be far wrong there nather/' 
 
 To Hugh Massinger, sitting apart in liis 
 own room, these strange scraps of an alien 
 conversation had just then a ghastly and 
 horrible fascination. These men were accus- 
 tomed, then, to drowned corpses ! They were 
 connoisseurs in drowninir. Thev knew the 
 ways of bodies like regular experts. He 
 listened, spellbound, to catch their next 
 sentences. There was a short pause, during 
 which — as he judged by the way they 
 breathed — each took a long pull at the pewter 
 mug, and then the last speaker began again. 
 
FiiO}[ iXFonyfATioy BE:cEn'ED. 201 
 
 " Yow owt to know," he miir:nurod 
 musingly, •• for I s'pose tlieiv een't any ni;ui 
 on the river anvwhere what a liad to do 
 wooth as many bodies as vow hev." 
 
 " Yow're right, bor," the tirst person as- 
 sented emphatically. **Thutty year I ha' 
 sarved the Trinity House, sunshine or rain, 
 an' vow doon't pervision lightships that long 
 woothout larnin' a thino- or two on the wav 
 about corpsus. The current carry 'em all one 
 wav round. A bodv what start on its iarney 
 at Westminister, as it mav be here, iroo ashore 
 at Milbank. A bodv which beii'in at TiOndon 
 Bridge, come out, as reg'lar as clockwuck, on 
 the f udder ind o' the Tsle o* Doo-s. — It's jest 
 the same along this here east coost. I }>icked 
 up that gal I ha' come about to-day on the 
 north side o' the Ortbrdness Iii^"ht, by the 
 back o' the Trinitv o-rovne or cloose by. A 
 body wliich come up on the nortii side of 
 Orfordness has alius drifted down from the 
 nor' westward. Soo it stand to reasoi\ this 
 here gal I ha' got layin' up tlien^ in tlie dead- 
 house must ha' come wooth the ebb from 
 Wal/erwiir or Aldeburi»*h or mavbe While- 
 strand. There cen't another way out oi' it 
 
202 TEIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 anyhow. Well, they towd nie at Walzerwig 
 there was a young lady missin oover here 
 at Whitestrand — a young lady from the Hall 
 — a nob niver doubt : an' as there might be 
 money in it, or agin there mightn't, why, in 
 course, I come up here to make all proper 
 enquiries." 
 
 Hugh Massinger's heart gave a terrible 
 bound. Oh, heavens! that things should 
 have come to this pass. That wretch had 
 found Elsie's body ! 
 
 In what a tangled maze of impossibilities 
 had he enmeshed himself for ever by that one 
 false step of the forged letter. This wretch 
 had found Elsie's body — the body that he 
 loved with all his soul — and he could neither 
 claim it himself nor look upon it, bury it nor 
 show the faintest interest in it, without in- 
 volving his case still further in endless com- 
 plications, and rousing suspicions of fatal 
 import against his own character. 
 
 He waited breathless for the next sentence. 
 The second speaker went on once more. 
 " And it doon't fit?" he suggested, inquiringly. 
 . " No, it doon't fit, drot it," the man called 
 Bill answered in an impatient tone. " She 
 
FROM INFORMATION RECEIVED. 29 
 
 o 
 
 een't drownded at all, wuss luck, the young 
 lady what's missin' from the Hall. They 
 ha' had letters an' talegraphs from har, dated 
 later'n the day I found har. I ha' handed 
 oover the body to the county pleece ; it's in 
 the dead-house at the Low Liorht : an' I 
 shan't hev noo more than half a crown from 
 the parish arter all for all my trouble. 
 Suffolk an' Essex are half a crown counties : 
 Surrey's more liberal ; it goo to five bob on 
 'em. Why, I'm more'n eight shillins out o' 
 pocket by that there gal a'ready, what wooth 
 loss o' time an' travellin' expenses an' soo on. 
 Next time I ketch a body knockin' about oii 
 a lee shore, wooth the tide runnin, an' the 
 breakers poundin' it on its face on the shingle, 
 they may whistle for it theirselves, that's 
 what they may doo : I eeu't a-gooin' to 
 trouble my hid about it. Make a livin' out 
 on it, indeed ! Why, it's all rubbidge, nothin' 
 more or less. It's my opinion that there 
 Dickens is a very much ooverrated pusson." 
 • Hugh Massinger rose slowly, like one 
 stunned, walked across the room, as in a 
 dream, to the door, closed it noiselessly, for 
 he could contain himself no longer, and then. 
 
294 THIS MOBTAL COIL. 
 
 burying his face silently in his arms, cried to 
 himself a long and bitter cry, the tears follow- 
 ing one another hot and fast down his burning 
 cheeks, while his throat was choked by a 
 rising ball that seemed to check his breath 
 and impede the utterance of his stifled sobs. 
 Elsie was dead, dead for him as if he had 
 actually seen her drowned body cast up, un- 
 known, as the man so hideously and graphi- 
 cally described it in his callous brutality, 
 upon the long spit of the Orfordness light- 
 house. He didn't for one moment doubt that 
 it was she indeed whom the fellow had found 
 and placed in the mortuary. His own lie 
 reacted fatally against himself. He had put 
 others on a false track, and now the false 
 track misled his own spirit. From that day 
 forth, Elsie was indeed dead, dead, dead for 
 him. Alive in reality, and for all else save 
 him, she was dead for him as though he had 
 seen her buried. And yet, most terrible irony 
 of all, he must still pretend before all the 
 world strenuously and ceaselessly to believe 
 her living. He must never in a single for- 
 getful moment display his grief and remorse 
 for the past ; his sorrow for the loss of the 
 
FROM INFORMATION RECEIVED. 295 
 
 one woman he had really loved — and basely 
 betrayed ; his profound affection for her now 
 she was gone and lo.st to him for ever. He 
 dare not even inquire — for the present at 
 least — where she would be laid, or what 
 would be done with her poor dishonoured 
 and neglected corpse. It must be buried, 
 unheeded, in a pauper's nameless grave, by 
 creatures as base and cruel as the one who 
 had discovered it tossing on the shore, and 
 regarded it only as a lucky find to make half 
 a crown out of. Hugh's inmost soul revolted 
 
 at the thought. And yet And yet, 
 
 even so, he was not m.an enough to go boldly 
 down to Orfordness and claim and rescue 
 that sacred corpse, as he truly and firmly 
 believed it to be, of Elsie Challoner's. He 
 meant still in his craven soul to stand well 
 with the world, and to crown his perfidy by 
 marrying Winifred. 
 
296 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 BREAKING A HEART. 
 
 "When Warren Eelf returned to Lowestoft, 
 burning with news and eager at his luck, his 
 first act was to call his sister Edie hurriedly 
 out of Elsie's room, and proceed to a consulta- 
 tion with her upon the strange evidence he 
 had picked up so unexpectedly at Almundham 
 Station. Should they show it to Elsie, or 
 should they keep it from her ? That was the 
 question. Fortune had indeed favoured the 
 brave; but how now to utilize her curious 
 information ? Should they let that wronged 
 and suffering girl see the utter abysses of 
 human baseness yawning in the man she once 
 loved and trusted, or should they sedulously 
 and carefully hide it all from her, lest they 
 break the bruised reed with their ungentle 
 handling ? Warren Eelf himself, after think- 
 
B HE AKIN A HEART. 297 
 
 ing it over in his own soul — all the way back 
 to Lowestoft in his third-class carriage — was 
 almost in favour now of the specious and 
 futile policy of concealment. Wliy needlessly 
 harrow the poor child's feelings ? Why rake 
 up the embers of her great grief? Surely she 
 had been wounded and lacerated enough 
 already. Let her rest content with what 
 she knew so far of Massinger's cruel and 
 treacherous selfishness. 
 
 But Edie met this plausible reasoning, after 
 a true woman's fashion, with an emphatic 
 negative. She stood out for the truth, the 
 whole truth, and nothing but the truth, come 
 what might of it. 
 
 " Why ? " Warren asked with a relenting 
 eye. 
 
 ** Because," Edie answered, looking up at 
 him resolutely, " it would be better she should 
 get it all over at once. It's like pulling a 
 tooth — one wrench, and be done with it ! 
 What a pity she should spend her whole life 
 long in mourning and wailing over this 
 wicked man, who isn't and never was in any 
 way worthy of her! — Warren, she's a dear, 
 sweet, gentle girl. She takes my heart. I 
 
2!)8 THIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 love her dearly already.— She'll mourn and 
 wail for him enough anyhow. I want to dis- 
 enchant her as much as I can before it's too 
 late. The sooner she learns to hate and 
 despise him as he deserves, the better for 
 
 everybody." 
 
 " Why ? " Warren asked once more, with 
 
 a curious side-glance. 
 
 ^' Because," Edie went on, very earnestly, 
 "she may some day meet some other better 
 man, who could make her ten thousand times 
 happier as his wife, than this wretched, 
 sordid, money-hunting creature could ever 
 make any one. If we disenchant her at once, 
 without "^remorse, it'll help that better mans 
 case forward whe-^ever he presents himself. 
 If not— " She paused significantly. Their 
 eyes met ; Warren s fell. They understood 
 
 one another. 
 
 " But isn't it selfish ? " Warren asked wist- 
 fully. 
 
 Edie looked up at him with a profoundly 
 
 meaningless expression on her soft round 
 face. '* Selfish!" she cried, making her 
 mouth small. "I don't understand you. 
 What on earth has selfishness to do with it 
 
BREAKING A HEART. 299 
 
 any way ? Nobody spoke about any particular 
 truer and better man. You jump too quick. 
 I merely laid on a young man in the abstract. 
 From the point of view of a young man in 
 the abstract, I'm sure I'm right, absolutely 
 right. I always am. It's a way I have, and 
 I can't help it." 
 
 " Besides which," Warren Relf interposed 
 suddenl}', " if Massinger really did write that 
 forged letter, she'll have to arrange some- 
 thing about it, you see, sooner or later. She'll 
 want to set herself right with the Meyseys, 
 of course, and she'll probably make some sort 
 of representation or proposition to Massinger." 
 
 " She'll do nothing of the kind, my dear," 
 Edie answered promptly with brisk con- 
 fidence. — " You're a goose, Warren, and you 
 don't one tiny little bit understand the inferior 
 creatures. You men always think you know 
 instinctively all about us women, and can 
 read us through and through at a single 
 glance, as if we were large print on a street- 
 poster ; while, as a matter of fact, you never 
 really see an inch deep below the surface. — 
 I'll tell you what she'll do, you great blind 
 creature : she'll accept the forgery as if it were 
 
o 
 
 00 TniS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 in actual fact her own letter: slie'll nevei" 
 write a word, for good or for evil, to contra- 
 dict it or confirm it, to anv of these horrid 
 Whitestrand people ; she'll allow this hateful 
 wretch Massinger to go on believing she's 
 really dead ; and shell cease to exist, as far 
 as he's concerned, in a passive sort of way, 
 henceforth and for ever." 
 
 " Will she ? " Warren Relf asked dubiouslv. 
 " How on earth do you know what she'll do, 
 Edie?" 
 
 " Why, what else on earth could she do, 
 silly ? " his sister answered, with the same 
 perfect conviction in her own inbred sagacity 
 and perspicacity as ever. '* Could she go and 
 say to him, with tears in her eyes and a 
 becoming smile on her pretty little lips : * My 
 own heart's darlins:, I love vou devotedlv — 
 and I know you signed my name to that 
 for<red letter ? ' Could she flinir herself on 
 these ]\[oxies, or Mumpsies, or Mixies, or 
 Meyseys, or whatever else you call them, and 
 say sweetly : * I didn't run away from you ; I 
 wasn't in earnest ? I only tried ineft'ectually 
 to drown myself, for love of this dear, sweet, 
 charming poetical cousin of mine, who dis- 
 
BBEAKIXG A HEART. 301 
 
 gracefully jilted me in order to propose to 
 your own daughter ; and then, believing me 
 to have killed mvself for shame and sorrow, 
 has ti umped up letters and telegrams in my 
 name, of malice prepense, on purpose to 
 deceive you. He's a mean scoundrel, and I 
 hate his very name ; and I want him for 
 myself; so I won't allow him to marry your 
 Winifred, or whatever else her precious new- 
 fancrled hio-h-falutino- name may be." Could 
 any woman on earth so utterly efface herself 
 and her own womanliness as to go and say 
 all that, do you suppose, to anybody any- 
 where ? — You may think so in your heart, I 
 dare say, my dear boy ; but you won't get a 
 solitary wnmian in the world to agree wntli 
 you on the point for one single minute." 
 
 The painter drew his hand slowly across 
 his cold brow. '^ I suppose you're right, 
 Edie," he answered, bewildered. ** But 
 whafU she do with herself, then, 1 wonder ? * 
 
 " Do ? " Edie echoed. " As if (/(> were the 
 word for it ? Why, do nothing, of course- 
 be; suffer ; exist ; mourn over it. She'd like, 
 if she could, poor, tender, bruised, broken- 
 hearted thing, to creep into a hole, with her 
 
302 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 head hanging down, and die quietly, like a 
 wounded creature, with no one on earth to 
 worry or bother her. She mustn't die ; but 
 she won't do anything. All w^e've got to do 
 ourselves is just to comfort her: to be silent 
 and comfort her. She'll cease to live now ; 
 she'll annihilate herself; she'll retire from 
 life ; and that horrid man'll think she's dead ; 
 and that'll be all. She'll accept the situation. 
 She won't expose him ; she loves him too 
 much a great deal for that. She won't expose 
 herself; she's a great deal too timid and 
 shrinking and modest for that. She'll leave 
 things alone ; that's all she can do. — And on 
 the whole, my dear, if you only knew, it's 
 really and truly the best thing possible." 
 
 So Edie took the letter and telegram 
 pitifully in her hand, and went with what 
 boldness she could muster up into Elsie's bed- 
 room. Elsie was lying on the sofa, propped 
 up on pillows, in the white dress she had 
 worn all along, and with her face and hands 
 as white as the dress stuff; and as Edie held 
 the incriminating documents, part hidden in 
 her gown, to keep them from Elsie, she felt 
 like the dentist who hides behind his back 
 
BREAKING A HEART. 30 
 
 o 
 
 the cruel wrencliing instrument with which 
 he means next moment in one fierce tuo- to 
 drag and tear your very nerves out. She 
 stooped down and kissed Elsie tenderly. 
 " Well, darling," slie said — for illness makes 
 women wonderfully intimate — " Warren's 
 come back. — Where do vou think he's been ? — 
 He's been over to-day as far as Almundham." 
 " Almundham ! " Elsie repeated, with cheek 
 more blanched and pale than ever. " Why, 
 what was he doing over there to-day, dear ? 
 
 Did he hear anything about — about 
 
 Were they all inquiring after me, I wonder ? 
 • — Was there a great deal of talk and gossip 
 abroad ? — Oh, Edie, tell me quick all about it ! " 
 
 " No, darling," Edie answered, pressing 
 her hand tight, and signing to her mother, 
 who sat by the bed, to clasp the other one ; 
 " nobody's talking. You shall not be dis- 
 cussed. Warren met Mr. Meysey himself at 
 the Almundham Station ; and Mr. Meysey 
 was going to Scotland ; and he said they'd 
 heard from you twice already, to explain it 
 all ; and nobody seemed to think that — that 
 anything serious in any way had happened.'* 
 
 " Heard from me twice ! " Elsie cried. 
 
304 THIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 puzzled. *' Heard from me twice — to explain 
 it all ! Why, what on earth did he mean, 
 Edie ? There must be some strange mistake 
 somewhere." 
 
 Edie leant over her with tears in her eyes. 
 It was a horrible wrench, but come it must, 
 and the sooner the better. They should 
 understand where they stood at once. " No, 
 no mistake, darling," she ansv/ered distinctly. 
 " Mr. Meysey gave Yvarren the letter to read. 
 — He's brought it back. I've got it here for 
 you. It's in your own hand, he says. — Would 
 you like to see it this moment, darling ? " 
 
 Elsie's cheek showed pale as death now ; 
 but she summoned up courage to murmur 
 ^' Yes." 
 
 It seemed the mere unearthly ghost of a 
 yeSy so hollow and empty was it ; but she 
 forced it out somehow, and took the letter. 
 Edie watched her with bent brows and 
 trembling lips. How would she take it? 
 Would she see what it meant ? Would she 
 know who wrote it ? Could she ever 
 believe it ? 
 
 Elsie gazod at it in dumb astonishment. 
 So admirable w^as the imitation, that for a 
 
BREAKING A EEAR2. 305 
 
 moment's space she actually thought it was 
 her own handwriting. She scanned it close. 
 " My darling Winifred," it began as usual, and 
 in her own hand too. Why, this must be 
 just an old letter of her own to her friend 
 and pupil ; what possible connection could 
 Mr. Meysey or Mr. Relf imagine it had with 
 the present crisis ? But then the date — the 
 date was so curious : " September 17 " — that 
 fatal evening ! She glanced through it all 
 with a burning eye. Great heavens, what 
 was this ? " So wicked, so ungrateful : I 
 know Mrs. Meysey will never forgive me." 
 — " By the time this reaches you, I shall have 
 left Whitestrand, I fear for ever." — " Darling, 
 for heaven's sake, do try to hush this up as 
 much as you can." — *' Ever your affectionate, 
 but heart-broken Elsie," 
 
 A gasp burst from her bloodless lips. She 
 laid it down, with both hands on her heart. 
 That siernature, Elsie, betraved the whole 
 truth. She was white as a sheet now, and 
 tremblins: visibly from head to foot. But she 
 would zo risfht throuirh with it ; she would 
 not flinch ; she would know it all — all — all, 
 utter! V. 
 
 TOL. I. i 
 
306 • TEIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 '* I never wrote it," she cried to Edie with 
 
 a choking voice. 
 
 '^ I know you didn't, darling," Edie whis- 
 pered in her ear. 
 
 ''And you know who did?" Elsie sohbed 
 
 out, terrified. 
 
 Edie nodded. " I know who did— at least, 
 I suspect.- Cry, darling, cry. Never mind 
 Don't burst your poor heart for want of 
 
 us. 
 crying." 
 
 But Elsie couldn't cry yet. She put her 
 white hand, trembling; into her open bosom, 
 and pulled out slowly, with long lingering 
 reluctance— a tiny bundle of water-stained 
 letters. They were Hugh's letters, that^ she 
 had worn at her breast on that terrible night. 
 She had dried them all carefully one by one 
 here in bed at Lowestoft ; and she kept them 
 still next the broken heart that Hugh had so 
 lightly sacrificed to mammon. Smudged and 
 half-erased by immersion as they were, she 
 could still read them in their blurred con- 
 dition ; and she knew them by heart already, 
 for the matter of that, if the water had made 
 them quite illegible. 
 
 She drew the last one out of its envelope 
 
BREAKING A HEART. 307 
 
 with reverent care, and laid it down side by 
 side with the forged letter to Winifred. Paper 
 for paper, they answered exactly, in size and 
 shape and glaze and quality. 
 
 Hugh had c'rcri shown her how admirably 
 he could imitate any particular handwriting. 
 The suspicion was profound; but she would 
 give him at least the full benefit of all possible 
 doubts. She held it up to the light and 
 examined the water-mark. Both were 
 identical — an unusual paper ; bought at a 
 fantastic stationer's in Brighton. It was 
 driving daggers into her own heart ; but she 
 would go right through with it : she must 
 know the truth. She gave a great gasp, 
 and then took three other letters singly 
 from the packet. Horror and dismay were 
 awakening within her the instincts and 
 ideas of an experienced detective. They 
 were the three previous letters she had last 
 received from Hugh, in regular order. A 
 stain caused by a drop of milk or grease, as 
 often happens, ran right through the entire 
 quire. It was biggest on the front page of 
 the earliest letter, and smallest and dimmest 
 on its back fly-leaf. It went on decreasing 
 
308 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 gradually byproportionats gradations through 
 the other three. She looked at the letter 
 to Winifred with tearless eyes. It corre- 
 sponded exactly in every respect ; for it 
 had been the fifth and middle sheet of the 
 original series. 
 
 Elsie laid them all down on the sofa by 
 her side with an exhausted air and turned 
 wearily to Edie. Her face was flushed and 
 feverish at last. She said nothing, but leaned 
 back with a ghastly sob on her pillow. She 
 knew to a certainty now it was Hugh who 
 had done this nameless thing — Hugh who 
 had done it, believing her, his lover, to be 
 drowned and dead — Hugh who had done it 
 at the very moment when, as he himself sup- 
 posed, her lifeless body was tossing and 
 dancing among the mad breakers, that roared 
 and shivered with unholy joy over the hoarse 
 sandbanks of the bar at Whitestrand. — It 
 was past belief — but it was Hugh who had 
 done it. 
 
 She could have forgiven him almost any- 
 thing else save that; but that, never, ten 
 thousand times never ! She could have for- 
 given him even his cold and cruel speech 
 
BBEAKINQ A HEART, 309 
 
 that last night by the river near the poplar : 
 *• I have never been engaged to you. I owe 
 you nothing. And now I mean to marry 
 Winifred." She could have forgiven him all, 
 in the depth of her despair. — She could have 
 loved him still, even — so profound is the 
 power of first-love in a true pure woman's 
 inmost nature — if only she could have believed 
 he had melted and repented in sackcloth and 
 ashes for his sin and her sorrow. If he had 
 lost his life in trying to save her ! If he 
 had roused the county to search for her body ! 
 Nay, even if he had merely gone home, 
 remorseful and self-reproaching, and had 
 proclaimed the truth and his own shame in 
 an agony of regret and pity and bereavement. 
 — For her own sake, she was glad, indeed, he 
 had not done all this ; or at least she would 
 perhaps have been glad if she had had the 
 heart to think of herself at all at such a 
 moment. But for him — for him — she was 
 ashamed and horrified and stricken dumb to 
 learn it. • . ^ -i ^ 
 
 For, instead of all this, what nameless and 
 unspeakable thing had Hugh Massinger 
 really done ? Gone home to the inn, at the 
 
310 THIS MORTAL COIL, 
 
 very moment when she lay there senseless, 
 the prey of the waves, that tossed her about 
 like a plaything on their cruel crests — gone 
 home to the inn, and without one thought of 
 her, one effort to rescue her — for how could 
 she think otherwise? — full only of vile and 
 craven fears for his own safety, sat down at 
 his desk and deliberately forged in alien 
 handwriting that embodied Lie, that visible 
 and tangible documentary Meanness, that she 
 saw staring her in the face from the paper 
 before her ! It was ghastly ; it was in- 
 credible ; it was past conception ; but it was, 
 nevertheless, the simple fact. As she floated 
 insensible down that hideous current, for the 
 sea and the river to fight over her blanched 
 corpse, the man she had loved, the man who 
 had so long pretended to love her, had been 
 quietly engaged in his own room in forging 
 her name to a false and horrible and mis- 
 leading letter, which might cover her with 
 shame in the unknown grave to which his 
 own cruelty and wickedness and callousness 
 had seemingly consigned her ! No wonder 
 the tears stood back unwillingly from her 
 burning eyeballs. For grief and horror and 
 
BREAKING A EEAIIT. 311 
 
 misery like hers, no relief can be found in 
 mere hysterical weeping. 
 
 And who had done this heartless, this 
 dastardly, this impossible thing ? Hugh 
 Massinger — her cousin Hugh — the man she 
 had set on such a pinnacle of goodness and 
 praise and affection — the man she had wor- 
 shipped with her whole full heart — the man 
 she had accepted as the very incarnation of 
 all that was truest and noblest and best and 
 most beautiful in human nature. Her idol 
 was dethroned from its shrine now ; and in 
 the empty niche from which it had cast itself 
 prone, she had nothing to set up instead for 
 worship. There was not, and there never 
 had been, a Hugh. The universe swam like 
 a frightful blank around her. The sun had 
 darkened itself at once in her sky. The 
 solid ground seemed to fail beneath her feet, 
 and she felt herself suspended alone above an 
 awful abyss, a seething and tossing and eddy- 
 ing abyss of utter chaos. 
 
 Edie Relf held her hand still ; while the 
 sweet gentle motherly old lady with the 
 snow-white hair and the tender eyes put a 
 cold palm up against her burning brow to 
 
312 IBIS MOBTAL COIL. 
 
 help her to hear it. But Elsie was hardly 
 aware of either of them now. Her head 
 swam wildly round and round in a horrible 
 phantasmagoria, of which the Hugh that was 
 not and that never had been formed the 
 central pivot and main revolving point; 
 while the Hugh that was just revealing 
 himself utterly in his inmost blackness and 
 vileness and nothingness whirled round and 
 round that fixed centre in a mad career, she 
 knew not how, and she asked not wherefore. 
 " Cry, cry, darling, do try to cry," both the 
 other women urged upon her with sobs and 
 tears; but Elsie's eyeballs were hard and 
 tearless, and her heart stood still every 
 moment within her with unspeakable awe 
 and horror and incredulity. 
 
 Presently she stretched out a vague hand 
 towards Edie. " Give me the telegram, 
 dear," she said in a cold hard voice, as cold 
 and hard as Hugh Massinger's own on that 
 
 fearful evening. 
 
 Edie handed it to her without a single word. 
 
 She looked at it mechanically, her lips set 
 tight; then she asked in the same cold 
 metallic tone as before: "Do you know 
 
BREAKING A HEART. 313 
 
 anything of 27 Holmbury Place, Duke Street, 
 St. James's ? " . 
 
 "Warren says the club porter of the 
 Cheyne Row lives there," Edie answered 
 softly. 
 
 Elsie fell back upon her pillows once more. 
 " Edie," she cried, " oh, Edie, Edie, hold me 
 tight, or I shall sink and die !— If only he 
 had been cruel and nothing more, I wouldn't 
 have minded it; indeed, I wouldn't. But 
 that he should be so cowardly, so mean, so 
 unworthy of himself— it kills me, it kills me 
 — I couldn't have believed it ! " 
 
 "Kiss her, mother," Edie whispered low. 
 " Kiss her, and lay her head, so, upon your 
 dear old shoulder ! She's going to cry now ! 
 I know she's going to cry ! Pat her cheek : 
 yes, so. If only she can cry, she can let her 
 heart out, and it won't quite kill her." 
 
 At the words, Elsie found the blessed relief 
 of tears ; they rose to her eyes in a torrent 
 flood. She cried and cried as if her heart 
 would burst. But it eased her somehow. 
 The two other women cried in sympathy, 
 holding her bands, and encouraging her to 
 let out her pent-up emotions to the very full 
 
314 THIS MORTAL COIL. 
 
 by that natural outlet. They cried together 
 silently for many minutes. Then Elsie 
 pressed their two hands with a convulsive 
 grasp; and they knew she would live, and 
 that the shock had not entirely killed out the 
 woman within her. 
 
 An hour later, when Edie, with eyes very 
 red and swollen, went out once more into the 
 little front parlour to fetch some needlework, 
 Warren Relf intercepted her with eager 
 questioning. " How is she now ? " he asked 
 with an anxious face. " Is she very ill ? 
 And how did she take it ? " 
 
 " She's crying her eyes out, thank heaven," 
 Edie answered fervently. " And it's broken 
 her heart. It's almost killed her, but not 
 quite. She's crushed and lacerated like a 
 wounded creature." 
 
 " But what will she do ? " Warren asked, 
 with a wistful look. 
 
 " Do ? Just what I said. Nothing at all. 
 Annihilate and efface herself. She'll accept 
 the position, leaving things exactly where 
 that wretched being has managed to put 
 them; and so far as he's concerned, she'll 
 drop altogether out of existence." 
 
BREAKING A HEART. 315 
 
 "How?" 
 
 " She'll go with mamma and me to San 
 Kemo." 
 
 " And the Meyseys ? " 
 
 "She'll leave them to form their own 
 conclusions. Henceforth, she prefers to be 
 simply nobody." 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 PRINTEU BY WILLIAM CLOWtS AND SONS, LIMITEU, LONDON AND BECCLES.