05! CALIF* LIlRaHY, LOS 
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST
 
 THE 
 
 HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 A STUDY IN INCOMPATIBILITIES 
 
 BY 
 
 VIOLET HUNT 
 
 AUTHOR Of 
 "A HARD WOMAN," " UNKI8T UNKIND," " THE MAIDEN'S PROGRESS." 
 
 HERBERT S. STONE AND COMPANY 
 CHICAGO AND NEW YORK 
 
 MDCCCXCIX 
 
 \ fo '
 
 COPYRIGHT 1899, BY 
 HERBERT 8. STONE & CO
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 One dull afternoon and it was in summer a 
 London authoress of some repute, whose nom-de- 
 gnerre was Egidia, was wandering along the pave- 
 ment of a dull and imposing street in Newcastle. 
 Day was beginning to decline, but the approach of 
 evening was not alone responsible for the heartfelt 
 ejaculation of the South-country woman, "Oh, this 
 Northern gloom!" as she walked along under the 
 smoky pall that, summer and winter, shrouds the city. 
 
 She stood still presently, carefully scanning the 
 solemn, stately houses with pillared porticos all of 
 the self -same pattern, which run in an interminable 
 row to a vanishing point seemingly far beyond con- 
 jecture. 
 
 "Each of the houses is exactly like the other," she 
 murmured to herself. "In which, I wonder, does 
 the Muse of Newcastle hold her court? Like most 
 muses, she gave no number. I must judge by out- 
 
 1
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 sides. Oh, here we are; green Liberty curtains in 
 the windows a more daring green on the door a 
 knocker of mediaeval tendencies! I will try." 
 
 She went up the steps of No. 59 Savile Street and 
 rang the bell, and stood there pensive. 
 
 "I promised to call on this woman, and I am doing 
 it, but I shall be bored. She will talk of Ibsen, and 
 Meredith, and tell me she had read Plato through 
 before she was fifteen. She will take herself seri- 
 ously, and me too, and inundate me with questions 
 about the people in London. All these provincials 
 do. Still, she pressed me so prettily to call that I 
 could not say No. But I shall be bored! Is Mrs. 
 Mortimer Elles at home?" she enquired of the hand- 
 some, full-blown parlour maid who opened the door 
 widely and invitingly. 
 
 "Oh, yes, ma'am this is Mrs. Elles' day at home." 
 
 "Much too familiar!" thought Egidia, as she fol- 
 lowed the swing of the maid's cap streamers through 
 portiered doorways and past Syrian shawl-draped 
 cornices, and other pathetically futile attempts to 
 conceal the impossible architecture of a commonplace 
 house, built in a bad period, and decorated originally 
 on the worst principles. 
 
 "Muslin curtains are a mistake in an atmosphere 
 like this of Newcastle!" she thought, "and a parlour- 
 maid should not aim at looking like Madame Sans 
 Gene." 
 
 She was shown into a drawing-room, "stamped 
 with the evidences of culture," as the interviewer
 
 THE HUMAN INTEKEST 
 
 would say, and "redolent of a personality." Books 
 were scattered about ; the piano stood open, with the 
 latest "mood" of the latest fashionable composer 
 lying on it; there were magazines, with paper-knives 
 negligently bisecting their leaves. There were, on 
 the walls, some grim old pictures family portraits, 
 presumably of ill-tempered, high-stocked old gentle- 
 men and prim, dignified ladies, but they were inter- 
 spersed with sundry scratchy and erratic modern 
 etchings and photogravures; there were great bowls 
 of flowers whose apparent substance, the authoress 
 could not help suspecting, was cleverly eked out with 
 artificial imitations procurable at drapers' shops. 
 The whole effect was rather pretty and French, and 
 thoroughly out of keeping with the grim realities of 
 Northern hardness and abnegation of art-feeling that 
 reigned outside. 
 
 A young woman, beautifully dressed, who was sit- 
 ting over the fire, though it was not cold, rose eagerly 
 to receive her distinguished guest, exclaiming, with 
 the most flattering and heart-felt emphasis, 
 
 "Oh, Miss Giles, how good of you to come! I was 
 afraid you would have quite forgotten me and my day ! ' ' 
 
 She was a slight woman, not tall, but slender 
 enough to look so. Her eyes were very large and 
 bright, her cheeks, flushed, perhaps with the fire. 
 She made wrinkles when she laughed, but she did not 
 look more than twenty-eight. A little powder, care- 
 lessly and innocently cast there, showed on cheeks 
 "hollowed a little mournfully," as the poet has it.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 Her hair was arranged in hundreds of little waves and 
 curls, and her dress Egidia had been in the best 
 houses in Newcastle, during the last few days, but 
 had seen nothing to equal the style and taste of this 
 little solicitor's wife. Thought and ingenuity had 
 gone to the devising of that gown, but the wearer of 
 it had forgotten to fasten the last two buttons of her 
 sleeve. 
 
 "The artistic sense strongly developed but very 
 little power of co-ordination." So the authoress, 
 taking all these points into consideration and exercis- 
 ing her own professional faculty of classification, 
 mentally assessed her hostess. 
 
 "This is my day," Mrs. Elles was assuring her. 
 "I partly hope people will come, and partly not. I 
 would so much rather have you to myself but then, 
 some of my friends were so anxious to meet you when 
 I said I knew you so I had to give them a chance 
 you don't mind being lionized a little, do you? We 
 can't help it!" 
 
 The "celebrity" had been a "celebrity" so long 
 that she had left off objecting to the outward indica- 
 tions of her supremacy. Though she was a lion, and 
 gave lectures, she was modest and easily pacified. 
 She was fascinated by something curiously plaintive 
 and beguiling about her hostess's voice and manner ; 
 a suggestion of childishness, of almost weakness as 
 she thought, in its artificial cadences. For it was an 
 affectation, Miss Giles, whose nom-de-guerre was 
 Egidia, decided, though a pleasing one.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "I wonder if she scolds her servants in that tone?" 
 she thought, while submitting to the charm, and, 
 lying easily back in her chair, listened to her hostess's 
 ecstasies about her books and her lectures, her prettily 
 expressed enviousness of the presumably happier con- 
 ditions of her guest's life in London. 
 
 4 'Oh, what it must be to be in the midst of life, 
 really in it of it part of it! Here one sits, and 
 yearns, and only catches the far-away echoes, the 
 reverberations of the delightful things that are hap- 
 pening, away down there, where you are in the very, 
 very heart of it all!" 
 
 The peri left out of Paradise clasped her pretty, 
 soft, pliant hands, and the novelist asked her, willing 
 to be instructed, 
 
 "Is Newcastle, then, worse than other provincial 
 towns?" 
 
 "I only know Newcastle, but I am sure it's worse. 
 There are a few nice advanced people, but they go 
 away all the time, or if they bring nice people down 
 from London, they keep them to themselves. I never 
 see any one worth talking to. Oh, it is hopeless 
 hopeless!" She shrugged her shoiilders. "It is 
 simply a form of Hades, this life for me, for I have 
 'glimpses of what might make me less forlorn,' of a 
 life to live, a world to move in. I feel I was not 
 meant to merely stagnate to vegetate to wither 
 gradually away, consumed by my own wasted energies. 
 You laugh! coming straight, as you do, from that 
 paradise of life and movement, that I am sure London
 
 6 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 i 
 
 is, you can have no idea of what Newcastle and my 
 life is! Inertia kills people like me, one's soul is 
 starved, don't you know? one's mental life has noth- 
 ing to feed on, no pabulum, except books and they 
 are not easy to get new books. I am the trial and 
 pest of the libraries here!" 
 
 "You read a great deal?" 
 
 "Oh, yes. I live on books. They are the greatest 
 possible comfort to me. They are literally my sav- 
 iours. I quite sympathize with the heroine of a novel 
 I read lately, who was kept from suicide by the sight 
 of her favourite poets on her book -shelf! I make 
 myself up a dream-life, don't you know the life I 
 should like to live if I could choose. One dream- 
 life, do I say?" Her eyes lightened and brightened: 
 she was extraordinarily alert and vivid. "Two or 
 three a perfect orgy of dream-lives! They cost 
 nothing. But I have always read a great deal. The 
 classics I don't neglect. I read Plato before I was 
 fifteen in Jowett's translation, of course." 
 
 Egidia smiled. 
 
 "And your books?" 
 
 "Don't ! don't !" Egidia held up her hands. 
 
 "But I love them I go to them for comfort and 
 help. I have them all on a shelf near my bed a 
 whole row of my favourites Browning, and Meredith 
 and Ibsen. I am a great Ibsenite are not you?" 
 
 "It is very fashionable!" 
 
 "Oh! but really, don't you think?" She was 
 becoming quite incoherent in her excitement. "Now,
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 Nora in the 'Doll's House'? It is the story of so 
 many of us. Only it is a mistake of Ibsen to make 
 the husband a cheat that seems to put him too much 
 in the wrong, he is wrong enough, without that. 
 Oh, Nora was so right to leave him, I think. So 
 strong ! Do you know the sound of the house door 
 banging in that play stirs me like the sound of a 
 trumpet?" 
 
 "You should write a book yourself!" suggested 
 Egidia, indulgently, knowing well the answer she 
 would receive. 
 
 "Ah! I haven't time. But if I did, I could put in 
 things things that have happened to me experience 
 more of feeling than of incident, perhaps. I was 
 an only daughter; my father was in the army; I 
 travelled a good deal ; but I have not had a life of 
 adventure; I married when I was seventeen. My 
 husband was a widower then, and his son, Charles, 
 lives with us and his aunt, Mrs. Poynder." She 
 had an involuntary little shudder. "He is a solici- 
 tor; you know that. And he has a huge practice. 
 He is very much occupied, and takes no interest in 
 the things you and I care about. Of course, he 
 laughs at me for my enthusiasms but I should die 
 if I didn't." 
 
 There were tears in her eyes. 
 
 "Some day, if you will, you must come and stop 
 with me in town," said Egidia, in an access of 
 womanly compassion for this somewhat ungrammat- 
 ical but sincere tale of misfortune.
 
 8 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "Shall I? Shall I? Oh, how lovely that would 
 be!" Her brilliant smile came out again. "To see 
 to have a glimpse of all those wonderful literary 
 people in whose company your life is spent." 
 
 "Well, I happen to know more of artists than I do 
 of literary people," said Egidia. "You see, my own 
 'shop' bores me. Do you collect I am sure you do?" 
 She had seen the unmistakable flame of the auto- 
 graph-fever leap into Mrs. Elles' eyes. "I can send 
 you some, if you like. I have one in my pocket now 
 that I can give you, from Edmund Rivers, the land- 
 scape painter. " 
 
 "The R. A.?" Mrs. Elles, who always took care to 
 have a Royal Academy Catalogue sent up to her 
 every year, and learnt it by heart, enquired eagerly. 
 
 "Yes, the R. A. and my second cousin!" Egidia 
 answered, carelessly pulling a crumpled note out 
 of her pocket and handing it to Mrs. Elles. "Read 
 it!" 
 
 "Dear Alice," (read Mrs. Elles), "I am so sorry 
 that I cannot have the pleasure of dining with you 
 on the 31st, but I hope to be in the North on the 
 26th, at latest, to begin my summer campaign. I see 
 the spring buds in the parks, and the Inspector of 
 Nuisances has invited me to clip my sprouting lilac 
 bushes, and it all reminds me too painfully of the 
 paradise of greenness that is growing up in the 
 country, and calling me. I shall soon be 'a green 
 thought in a green shade' as Marvel says, and very 
 much in my element. Yours ever, Edmund Rivers."
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 9 
 
 "The twenty-sixth," said Mrs. Elles, meditating. 
 "This is the thirtieth. Then he is gone." 
 
 "Oh, yes, no one will set eyes on him again till 
 November, when he comes back from what he calls 
 his summer campaign. He takes good care that none 
 of us shall even know where his happy hunting 
 ground is somewhere in Yorkshire, I believe ! Oh, 
 yes, you may keep the letter." 
 
 Mrs. Elles took the letter with her pretty, be-ringed 
 fingers, and scanned it again with the air of a con- 
 noisseur. 
 
 "Do you know," she said, "I take a double inter- 
 est in these things ; first of all, because they are auto- 
 graphs of distinguished people, but, in the second 
 place, because I can read their characters so well 
 from their handwritings." 
 
 "I wonder if you can tell me anything of this 
 man's character, then?" said the novelist, with a look 
 in her eyes which set Mrs. Elles thinking. Miss 
 Giles, in her way, was attractive. It was not Mrs. 
 Elles' way, but Mrs. Elles had sufficient discernment 
 to see merit in a style that was not her style at all. 
 Miss Giles had no pose, unless it was that of bon- 
 homie. The charm of her face lay in its nobility, 
 touched with shrewdness ; a certain modest mannish- 
 ness as of a woman who had to look after herself, and 
 who had cut out a way for herself, marked her appear- 
 ance. Her dress was not in any way unfeminine, but 
 Mrs. Elles decided that she would have looked well, 
 dressed as a boy. She had beautiful eyes, and dark
 
 10 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 hair that curled. She must always have looked 
 thirty-six, and would probably never look any older 
 than she looked now. 
 
 "It is a very odd, characteristic handwriting 
 indeed," she began gravely, "he is complicated, tre- 
 mendously complicated, I should say." 
 
 "He is an artist, a genius indeed, in my opinion," 
 said the novelist, soberly. 
 
 "Ah! then, of course, he has a right to be eccen- 
 tric. They all are, aren't they? Well, isn't he a little 
 how shall I say it? fanciful, faddish, difficult to 
 got on with?" 
 
 "You have, in the words of the song, 'got to know 
 him first,' " quoted Egidia, laughing. 
 
 "And you do know him, well, of course! But still, 
 I should say he is what is called a misogynist." 
 
 She was watching the effect of her words on the 
 other. Even the strong-minded authoress of novels 
 with a purpose has her weak spot, she was glad to see. 
 
 "Hating women! Well, I can't say he pays them 
 much attention. I don't suppose he ever looked at 
 a woman in his life!" There was certainly a touch of 
 bitterness in this speech, and Mrs. Elles was delighted. 
 
 "Not married then!" she exclaimed. "And yet, I 
 should say that he is not obtuse to the charm of 
 material things that he is even a great lover of 
 beauty in the abstract, then, I suppose. Nature 
 you said he was a landscape painter, didn't you? 
 Does he never put people into his pictures never put 
 you, for instance?"
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 11 
 
 Egidia laughed. 
 
 "No? Well, I must say I don't care for pictures 
 without any human interest at all." 
 
 "Then you wouldn't care for Edmund Rivers' work, 
 unless you could get your romance out of the scarred, 
 weather-beaten face of an old windmill or a ruined 
 castle ! He leaves the human interest entirely out of 
 his pictures." 
 
 "And out of his life, too, it seems," said the other, 
 "and both suffer in consequence. Don't tell me; 
 there is something wrong about a man who doesn't 
 care for women ! Some day one will awaken him. 
 But meantime I see a certain want of sympathy in the 
 determined uprightness of these capital N's that 
 refuse to merge properly into the letters that come 
 after, and obstinacy in the blunt endings of those g's. 
 And yet he must have great delicacy of touch he 
 seems to feel certain words as he writes them. Isn't 
 his painting very refined and delicate?" 
 
 "It is all sorts, strong and delicate at once," Egidia 
 asseverated with enthusiasm. 
 
 "And he is a great friend of yours!" Mrs. Elles 
 remarked conclusively, folding up the letter and put- 
 ting it in her pocket. She was now quite confirmed 
 in her theory that the authoress had a secret passion 
 for the painter. "Is he young?" 
 
 "Fifty!" said Egidia, bluntly; she was beginning 
 to guess the drift of her companion's thoughts, and, 
 though secretly amused at them, was minded to put 
 her off a little, "and his hair is turning grey. "
 
 12 
 
 "But I adore grey hair," Mrs. Elles exclaimed 
 hastily and enthusiastically, as the door opened and 
 a Miss Drummond was announced. 
 
 "Oh dear!" ejaculated the hostess, almost in the 
 new arrival's hearing, but made amends for her dis- 
 courtesy by a very effusive greeting. She introduced 
 "Miss Giles Egidia, you know;" with a flourish as 
 one" with whom she was on deeply intimate terms, 
 casting at the same time a pathetic, imploring look in 
 the latter's direction, as much as to ask her not to 
 discount her statement. Then more people came in. 
 The room was filling. 
 
 "Don't go," she whispered to Egidia, more as an 
 appeal than a civility, and the good-natured authoress 
 stayed and watched her, and studied her. 
 
 She saw that dim notions of Madame Recamier to 
 be emulated and a salon to be held prevailed in the 
 mind of the lady whom she had dubbed the Muse of 
 Newcastle. Such culture, such an atmosphere of 
 literary gossip as is current in many a second-class 
 literary centre in London, flourished here, and Mrs. 
 Elles led the inferior revels with aplomb and discrimi- 
 nation. She manoeuvred her guests very cleverly, on 
 the whole, and talked much and well with the slight 
 tendency to exaggerate which Egidia had already 
 noticed in her. Like many restless, excitable people, 
 she did not seem able to both talk and look at a per- 
 son at the same time, and her restless eyes were con- 
 tinually directed towards the door, as if expecting 
 and dreading a fresh arrival.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 13 
 
 About half -past five the mystery was solved; a tall, 
 well set-up woman of fifty walked in, bonnetless, who 
 seemed to know nearly everybody and shook hands 
 with all the painful effect of a bone-crushing machine, 
 as Egidia experienced when "my aunt, Mrs. Poyn- 
 der," was introduced to her. The stout lady then 
 took a tiny seat near Miss Drummond, and Egidia 
 was much diverted by her loudly -spoken comments on 
 her niece's guests. She was a woman to whom a 
 whisper was obviously an impossible operation. 
 
 "And which is Fibby's grand London authoress 
 she's so set up with?" she was heard to ask. "Fibby 
 mumbles names so that I haven't a notion which it 
 is! Oh, deary me, here's the Newcastle poet. I'm 
 sure he has no call to stoop as he comes in; he 
 needn't think he's tall enough to graze the lintel. 
 . . . But I would dearly like to cut his hair for him. 
 . . . Po-uttry! No! po-uttry I can't stand . . . 
 why, if a man's got anything to say, can't he say it 
 straight without so much ado?" The Newcastle poet, 
 who wore his hair nearly as long as poets do in Lon- 
 don, shook hands and presented a slim, green volume 
 to Mrs. Elles. 
 
 "You must write 'Phoebe Elles' in it!" his hostess 
 said, imperiously, and led him to a side table, where, 
 with many a dedicatory flourish, he did as she required. 
 Then she introduced him to Egidia, with the air of 
 one introducing Theocritus and Sappho. 
 
 "And do you kill the lovers?" she asked, alluding, 
 presumably, to characters in the volume she held.
 
 14 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "How relentless of you!" She added to her guests, 
 "I had the privilege of reading it in the proof, you 
 know." 
 
 "Ah! I had to kill them," he murmured, plaint- 
 ively, "sooner than let them know the sad satiety of 
 love." 
 
 "My goodness!" Mrs. Poynder muttered. 
 
 The conversation, appallingly immoral as it was, yet 
 seemed to interest the good lady, for she drew nearer 
 and formed a chorus to the very modern discussion 
 that ensued between the poet and Egidia and her 
 niece, of which London and London literary society 
 was the theme. The epigrams that were flying about 
 she visibly and audibly pooh-poohed. "Give me 
 Newcastle!" she murmured at intervals, and "You, 
 a mere lad, too!" was elicited from her by any 
 world-weary extravagance of the poet's. He was in 
 self-defence ; driven to incidentally mention his age 
 quite a respectable age, as it appeared. Mrs. Elles 
 was not to be outdone 
 
 "I am twenty -six," he remarked, with an air of 
 reluctant candour. 
 
 "And a very good age to stop at!" observed her 
 aunt, with intention. 
 
 The novelist looked with compassion on this poor 
 woman who, like Widrington, fought the battle of 
 pose and society, at such frightful odds. The poet 
 presently drifted in her direction and they held a 
 short but epoch-making as regarded Mrs. Elles 
 conversation.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 15 
 
 "Mrs. Poynder is to me just like an upas-tree," he 
 confided to Egidia, wringing his hands together. 
 "In her shadow, any poetical idea would wither and 
 die!" 
 
 "There is, indeed, a good deal of shadow!" 
 remarked Egidia, alluding to Mrs. Poynder 's truly 
 majestic proportions. "She is a handsome woman in 
 her way!" 
 
 "l^es," he replied wearily, "plenty of presence, 
 and all of it bad, as they said of George III. But 
 seriously, you know, she leads our dear friend a sad 
 life. She contradicts her in everything, and thwarts 
 every instinct of culture. If Mrs. Elles had not 
 plenty of pluck, she would have given in long ago. 
 And her husband!" he held up his hands. 
 
 The poet's indiscretions bore fruit in a hearty invi- 
 tation from Egidia to Mrs. Elles, to visit her often at 
 the house where she was staying in Newcastle. 
 
 "Brave little woman! I will try and cheer her up 
 a bit!" she thought, as she left the house. 
 
 The little party broke up soon after, and Mrs. Elles 
 was left alone with her aunt, who, as the door closed 
 on the last guest, opened her lips and gave, uncalled 
 for, her opinions of the guest. 
 
 "That's a real nice woman!" she said, "that littry 
 friend of yours; I approve of her. It's a good thing 
 I didn't take your advice, Fibby, and go trapesing up 
 to Jesmond, this afternoon, to call on Miss Drum- 
 mond. Why, the girl was here. And such a crowd, too. 
 You said there wouldn't be anybody here to-day!"
 
 16 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "Did I? One never knows," replied her niece 
 negligently, sauntering up to the piano, and opening 
 it. 
 
 "I'll be bound you knew well enough, Fibby. 
 Wanted to be rid of the old woman, eh? Well, I'm 
 glad I defeated your little plans, and saw your friend, 
 who seemed a sensible sort of woman, not the flyabas- 
 tic sort you generally get here. Pity but she'd seen 
 Mortimer!" 
 
 "Do you think Mortimer would have impressed 
 her?" asked his wife, bitterly. 
 
 "And why not? Are you ashamed of your hus- 
 band, Fibby? It's my belief that you are ashamed of 
 us all, and hankering after those London people and 
 the ramshackle life they seem to lead. Gallant times 
 they have, to be sure! Thinking only of themselves 
 and their pleasures and making love to each other's 
 wives ! And you are just savage because you aren't 
 there, too! Oh! I know you!" 
 
 Mrs. Elles had broken out into a stormy mazurka 
 that nearly drowned Mrs. Poynder's words, as possibly 
 she intended it to do. "Ay! ay!" the latter 
 remarked, "work it off that way I advise you!" 
 
 "Don't insult me, aunt!" 
 
 Mrs. Poynder laughed in her own harsh fashion, 
 and, looking towards the door whose handles just 
 then turned, called out, "Come in, Mortimer! Come 
 and speak to this wife of yours!" 
 
 The clumsy, thick-necked man who entered stopped 
 short and looked round stupidly ; his wife sat with her
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 17 
 
 back turned, playing; his aunt stood there, smiling 
 her cruel, blighting smile, that showed a set of the 
 most perfectly formed teeth that money could buy. 
 He took his cue from her, and going across the room, 
 laid a heavy hand on his wife's shoulder, saying 
 kindly, 
 
 "What's the matter, old lady?" 
 
 "Oh, Mortimer, please don't call me that. I can't 
 bear it!" 
 
 She hid her face in the keyboard and sobbed vio- 
 lently. 
 
 "Well, really! "said he. 
 
 "Hysterical!" said the aunt, still smiling. "I 
 don't wonder, after the conversation we have been 
 having, and the things we have been hearing! 
 Fibby's had grand new London friends here to put 
 her out of love with us all. We're all too plain and 
 common for Fibby now!" 
 
 Still smiling was a smile ever so denuded of grace 
 and benevolence? she gathered up her crochet and 
 left the room. Mrs. Elles then rose from the piano, 
 and, dabbing her handkerchief to her eyes, made a 
 step in the direction of the door. But she changed 
 her mind and stood still by the mantelpiece with the 
 figure half averted. 
 
 "I'm sure I beg all your pardons," she murmured, 
 almost inaudibly. "Oh, damn! where 's the paper?" 
 said Mortimer Elles. Securing it, and sinking into 
 an arm-chair with a great, puffing breath, he hid his 
 face behind the broad white sheet. His coat tails
 
 18 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 caught the Oriental cloth on a small table near him 
 and dragged it nearly off. Mrs. Elles rushed forward 
 and saved one of the many pieces of china that rested 
 on it from destruction. 
 
 "Throw the beastly thing on the fire!" he growled 
 out, without looking up. "This house is far too full." 
 A gong sounded. 
 
 "I am going up to dress for dinner," she said, 
 aggressively, standing in front of him. "Shan't you, 
 Mortimer?" 
 
 "There's nobody coming, is there?" 
 "No unfortunately but I like to dress." 
 "Dress if you like, but don't bother me!" 
 "Oh, I do wonder what you married me for, Morti- 
 mer?" she complained with plaintive savageness. 
 
 "I do wish you wouldn't talk nonsense!" he an- 
 swered. "What has marriage to do with dressing for 
 dinner?" 
 
 "Perhaps more than you think," she murmured 
 still in a low key, as she walked past him and opened 
 the door. She crossed the hall slowly, like a somnam- 
 bulist. It was true the conversation of Egidia and of 
 the poet, who was no fool, and who had been brought 
 out by the tact of the London woman, had set her 
 thinking, and her mind travelling in a new direction. 
 She trod on her gown going upstairs, and picked it up. 
 with the tragically careless gesture of a Joan of Arc 
 going to the stake. She made herself the effect of a 
 prisoner in a strange land an alien princess in the 
 hands of the Saracens the Lady of "Comus" among
 
 THE HUMAN INTEKEST 19 
 
 the rabble rout. She was a delicate piece of porce- 
 lain among rough earthenware pots a harp played 
 upon by unknowing boors. She muttered to herself 
 phrases of philosophy and resignation that she did not 
 feel her whole soul was in revolt against the condi- 
 tions of her life. 
 
 "Oh, it is all so ugly!" she murmured. 
 
 She paused on the landing and looked down. 
 Charles, her step-son, had just come in and hung up 
 his hat and clattered down every other hat in the hall. 
 
 "Hallo, Mater!" he shouted up, "don't commit 
 suicide over the banisters and make a mess ! Hurry 
 up and get ready for dinner!" 
 
 'I am glad I did not have a child," she said to 
 herself. "He might have been half like that!" 
 
 She dressed for dinner, in a very handsome, vapor- 
 ous tea-gown, drank a little sal-volatile, read a couple 
 of verses of Omar Khayam, and sailed into the dining- 
 room, determined to be resigned, pathetic and amiable. 
 Her husband's untidy, baggy shooting jacket, and 
 Charles's abominable "blazer," gave her the usual 
 jar, while Mrs. Poynder's cheap white lace tippet 
 with pink ribbons was only another item in the gen- 
 eral tale of the inappropriateness and disgust. She 
 pouted, and dropped gracefully into her accustomed 
 seat, looking like a piece of thistledown suddenly 
 lighted on the dull leather-covered mahogany chair. 
 
 The mild, provincial dinner proceeded. "What's 
 this?" asked Mortimer, when a dish came round to 
 him. "Put it on the table, can't you?"
 
 20 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "Chicken croquettes. I like things handed!" she 
 pleaded. 
 
 "Do you? I don't. I like to have what I am eat- 
 ing in front of me. You won't take any, Phoebe? 
 Oh, very well. You want to get scraggier than you 
 are. A lean wife is a standing reproach to a fellow." 
 
 "Fibby is afraid of spoiling her fashionable figure!" 
 observed Mrs. Poynder, drawing herself up, to show 
 her own to the best advantage. It was of a certain 
 solid merit, not to be gainsaid. 
 
 "With these, and other family amenities, was the 
 time of dining enlivened. Mrs. Elles' attitude was 
 one of faintly raised eyebrows, but she did not allow 
 herself to say anything to-day, that a heroine might 
 regret. She was not generally so circumspect. As 
 soon as dinner was over, she rose and followed Mrs. 
 Poynder out of the room. Mrs. Poynder liked to go 
 first, and she was allowed to do so when no one was 
 there. Mortimer Elles, who was by no means in a 
 bad humour, moved his chair a little to make way for 
 his wife. 
 
 "Do you call that a gown?" he said, fingering a 
 fold of the shining satin. "And pray, what may 
 that have cost me?" 
 
 "Don't!" she said, drawing it away. 
 
 "Surely I may touch it if I am to have the privi- 
 lege of paying for it?" 
 
 "It is not very nice of you, Mortimer, to remind 
 me that I haven't a penny of my own, and must 
 depend on your bounty!"
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 21 
 
 "And a good job, too!" he said, laughing; he was 
 certainly in a very good humour. "It's the only 
 hold I've got on you the only way I have of keep- 
 ing you in order." 
 
 "Mortimer I am not a child!" 
 
 "No, by Jove, not quite! Let me see, yon were 
 nineteen when I married you we have been married 
 ten years that makes you out ?" 
 
 "You needn't trouble to go on," she replied 
 haughtily, "I can't say that the subject interests me 
 one only counts birthdays when one is happy." 
 
 She escaped to her room, tore off the gauzy tea gown, 
 and put on a black one which she reserved for occa- 
 sions like this, when the mood of gloom preponder- 
 ated. It was a little affectation of hers to dress as far 
 as possible in character with her mood of the moment. 
 
 Yes, she was very wretched had been for the 
 last ten years. She wondered how she had borne it so 
 long, and if she could go on bearing it. The time 
 had surely come for her to do something what? 
 She would go, to-morrow, and call on Egidia in the 
 big house where she was staying at Jesmond Dene, 
 and talk it all over with her. Egidia, being a pro- 
 fessed searcher into the secrets of the heart, would be 
 able to understand, and perhaps offer some solution 
 of her dreadful predicament. She might even take a 
 professional interest in it. "She can put me in a 
 novel if she likes," Phoebe Elles said to herself, 
 wearily, "but I must speak or I shall die!" 
 
 Die of dullness, die of disappointment, die of inani-
 
 22 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 tion, or, what was worse, lose her looks. "They are 
 the silent griefs that cut the heart-strings," she 
 quoted, from Heaven knows what recondite Eliza- 
 bethan play, "and dull the complexion," she added 
 on her responsibility. She always read everything 
 more or less with reference to herself, and twisted the 
 most impassioned utterances of poetry and the drama 
 into apt coincidence with her own affairs. 
 
 Up till now, she had sedulously preserved the one 
 virtue of neglected wives she had never "peached." 
 She had scrupulously disdained the common vulgarity 
 of confidences, the petty relief of expansion, and no 
 one had ever heard her abuse her husband. She had 
 learned to speak of him with an amused tolerance, 
 whose undercurrent of contempt was not necessarily 
 apparent to the merely superficial observer. It was a 
 point of honour with her ; but deep below her grace- 
 ful reticence lay the point of vanity she wanted 
 people to think, if possible, that Mortimer, whom she 
 had ceased to care for, was still desperately in love 
 with her. 
 
 She had read many French novels, and she knew 
 that, socially speaking, there was one modus vivendi 
 to be adopted by a woman in her position. She 
 might create for herself some outside interest she 
 might get up the harmless, necessary flirtation, by 
 which women, circumstanced as she was, are apt to 
 console themselves. 
 
 Without the remotest intention of actually pursuing 
 it, she began to cast about in her mind for a possible
 
 THE HUMAN INTEKEST 23 
 
 coadjutor in such a course of action. She began to 
 count heads, to consider all the eligible flirtations- 
 that Newcastle afforded, with a drear little smile at 
 the paucity of attractions, at the inferiority of the 
 subject material which presented itself to her mind. 
 
 The poet! He was handsome, clever, romantic; 
 he admired her much, but only on condition that she 
 returned his compliment and admired him more! 
 That would not do. Besides, her present pose to him 
 was that of a mother a very young mother of course 
 and promoter of his incipient predilection for the 
 handsome and "horsey" Miss Drummond, Atalanta- 
 Diana as he was pleased to call her ; the girl of strong 
 physique and mannish tastes, who was the comple- 
 ment of his own nature. Then there was Dr. Moor- 
 som, who lived next door "The man whose business 
 it would be to doctor me if I fell ill!" she sneered to 
 herself. Everyone was supremely uninteresting as 
 uninteresting as Mortimer. That was the worst of it 
 Mortimer was odious, but then, so was everybody 
 else. 
 
 No, better be "straight" and a martyr, than set 
 herself, at the cost of her reputation, perhaps, to 
 wrest from society a merely nominal happiness, and 
 court a catastrophe that would have none of the ele- 
 ments of grandeur or romance about it. She would 
 go back to her "dream-lives" to the literary simu- 
 lacra of existence which, till the epoch-making 
 advent of the South-country novelist, had sufficed 
 her, and had been as the mirror Perseus held up
 
 24 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 before Andromeda, affording her the harmless vision 
 of the Gorgon's head with the snaky horror of its 
 locks that may stand for life and the hideous compli- 
 cations thereof.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 "But then, you know, I have never seen your hus- 
 band," Egidia was saying to the pretty little woman 
 who, sunk deep in the billowy mound of a very 
 easy chair, her feet upheld to the glow of a North- 
 country fire blazing away in the very height of summer, 
 as usual, was expatiating in the sweetest of voices 
 on her matrimonial unhappiness. She was telling 
 Egidia all the truth, or thought she was, and the 
 novelist, in her double capacity of friend and gatherer 
 of welcome "copy," was listening sympathetically 
 from her sofa. 
 
 It was a charming house in the suburbs of New- 
 castle, the abode of charming people, where Egidia 
 was staying, and Mrs. Elles deeply appreciated the 
 friendship with the fashionable lecturer, which had 
 gained her the entry into this home of modernity and 
 culture. 
 
 "Yes, if yon once saw Mortimer," Mrs. Elles went 
 on, "you would understand all!" 
 
 The way she uttered the last word would not have 
 disgraced a tragic actress. 
 
 "I want you to come and dine will you? "What 
 day shall it be? Tell me, and I'll fix it. Then you 
 will see him, and judge for yourself." 
 
 25
 
 26 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "My dear," said the novelist, slowly, "I will come 
 to your dinner with pleasure, but I shall not know 
 any more than you have told me." 
 
 "Yes; I have been very, very frank," said Mrs. 
 Elles. "And there is another thing" she sighed 
 vaguely. She was aluding to her husband's habit of 
 tippling, to which as a loyal wife she forbore from a 
 more direct allusion. 
 
 "As a general rule," Egidia went on, a little 
 didactically, in her capacity of mentor, "no husband 
 understands any wife. If he did, he wouldn't have 
 cared to marry her. It is the mutual antagonism 
 between the sexes which makes them interesting to 
 each other in the beginning. But, afterwards if 
 they are unable to play the game exciting enough, I 
 should think of observing, of adjusting, of utilizing 
 their mutual divergences of character and getting 
 amusement out of them if she finds no pleasure in 
 the exercise of tact, if he none in the further analysis 
 of the feminine vagaries that he began by finding so 
 charming then, they begin to jar mutually on each 
 other, and turn that into tragedy which should be 
 the comedy of life for both of them." 
 
 "I understand, "said Mrs. Elles, humbly; "butthen 
 there is not, and could not be, any comedy of life 
 with Mortimer, or tragedy either! There never was. 
 I don't seem to care to appreciate his character, I 
 know it it is quite simple I see it all spread out 
 before me like a map of a country I don't care to 
 travel over."
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 27 
 
 "But perhaps he can say the same of you," haz- 
 arded Egidia. 
 
 "No, Mortimer has never understood me, never! 
 I am a sealed book to him," said the wife, airily, 
 although Miss Giles' suggestion had indeed given her 
 a little shock. 
 
 "Don't flatter yourself, my dear, that you are a 
 sealed book to anyone. It is the common delusion." 
 (Another shock to Mrs. Elles!) "One is always so 
 much less interesting, so much less complicated, so 
 much less of a sphinx than one thinks." 
 
 "But I have always thought of mine as a very com- 
 plicated nature," Mrs. Elles rejoined, pouting; "I 
 am sure I can't tell you how many thoughts pass 
 through my mind in a day, and I seem to have a 
 perfectly new mood every minute." 
 
 "So we all have, but we don't take cognizance of 
 them or act on them all. I should say that you are 
 one of those people who begin with a radical mistake 
 that of expecting too much of life. You think you 
 have a right to be happy. Good Heavens ! You seek 
 for midi a quatorze heures, you love change for its 
 own sake; you positively enjoy hot water. You 
 would rather have a painful emotion than none at all, 
 you would like to cry, with Sophie Arnould, 'Oh, le 
 bon temps, j'etais si malheureuse!' You have not 
 mastered the great fact, that emotions are not to the 
 emotional; to them is generally awarded the dreary 
 crux of the commonplace, and that I think is hardest 
 to bear of all, that one's cross should come in the way
 
 28 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 of material comfort and spiritual uneventfulness, and 
 when it comes to the point, instead of action to be 
 taken there is only temper to be kept!" 
 
 "I always scorn to nag," said Mrs. Elles, "it seems 
 so ungraceful." 
 
 "I am sure, my dear, that whatever you may feel, 
 you always manage to look decorative !" said the other, 
 smiling. "Still, you expect too much and give too 
 little to be what I call easy to live with!" 
 
 "That is what I say," cried Mrs. Elles, trium- 
 phantly. "I call that being complicated." 
 
 "Do you?" said the authoress, drily. "I should be 
 tempted to call it want of social tact an almost cul- 
 pable ignorance of the science of give and take, 
 a you must really forgive me for my brutal frank- 
 ness" she broke off suddenly and laughed con- 
 fusedly "but, you know, you asked me to speak 
 freely." 
 
 "I love it," declared Phoebe Elles, adjusting a 
 cushion behind her head. "I think I like to talk 
 about myself, even if it is disagreeable," she added, 
 with unusual frankness. 
 
 Egidia smiled irresistibly. It was impossible for 
 her to help liking this unconscious egotist, who con- 
 fessed to her failings with such a grace, and took 
 plain speaking with such aplomb. 
 
 "I think, " she said, trying to give aless serious turn 
 to the conversation, "what you really wanted, in 
 marriage, was a man who would have dominated you 
 have beaten you, perhaps."
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 29 
 
 "Yes, I do really believe I should," said Mrs. 
 Elles; "that is, if I loved him desperately at the time 
 and he loved me desperately afterwards ! But," she 
 went on, seriously, "you have given me your views on 
 marriage, and my marriage in particular, but, now 
 you know all my life, what do you advise me to do?" 
 
 "Do? Do nothing! What can you do? What 
 can any woman do?" asked Egidia, raising her well- 
 marked eyebrows, and with an air of dismissing an 
 impracticable subject. 
 
 Then, seeing the unmistakable look of disappoint- 
 ment in the eyes of her feminine Telemachus, she 
 added kindly, "Ah, you see, when we outsiders come 
 to the domain of practical politics, we are mere 
 theorists all at sea, and just as helpless and resource- 
 less as any of you slaves of the ring can possibly be. 
 I should advise you to make the best of it, and pray 
 that you may never meet anybody you like better 
 than the man you have got!" 
 
 Mrs. Elles rose to go, it was late. She had had a 
 good time. She had enjoyed the personal discussion, 
 but there was a wilful twist about her mouth, as of 
 one which had swallowed much advice, but had 
 swallowed it the wrong way. 
 
 "After this, I must not ask you to come and stop 
 with me in London, I am afraid," added Egidia. 
 
 "Oh, please do, and I will promise to wear blinkers. " 
 
 "Blue spectacles would be nearer the mark!" said 
 the novelist. "Do that, and I will engage to intro- 
 duce you to Edmund Rivers with impunity."
 
 30 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "Well, but you said just now he was incapable of 
 falling in love with any woman." 
 
 "Yes, but I never implied that women found it 
 impossible to fall in love with him!" answered Egidia, 
 quite gravely. "He is handsome and indifferent, 
 and I know of no combination more dangerous to the 
 peace of our sex!" 
 
 Mrs. Elles' little dinner was arranged; the invita- 
 tions, written on beautiful rough note paper with an 
 artistic ragged edge, sent out. Mrs. Elles had con- 
 scientiously consulted her husband's list of engage- 
 ments and saw that he was free, and put down a large 
 cross for the eleventh. Mortimer would see that he 
 was engaged, and would, as usual, be too lazy or care- 
 less to enquire further. On the evening in question, 
 he would necessarily see "what was up," and would 
 grumblingly admit that he was "let in for one of 
 Phoebe's confounded dinners" instead of a happy 
 gathering at the Continental Club with the "fellows. " 
 
 His wife would, of course, have got on far better 
 without him, as far as the success of her party was 
 concerned, only society so far considers the husband, 
 even if his social capacities are nil, as a necessary 
 adjunct to the dinner table. He has not yet gone 
 out with the epergne, and therefore must be toler- 
 ated. But with regard to Mrs. Poynder and Charles, 
 the mistress of the house had put her foot down. 
 She was famous for her little dinners, the entrain of 
 which the presence of her husband did not seem, so
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 31 
 
 far, to have materially diminished. But that of the 
 other two would have been fatally destructive of 
 charm. The pair had been induced to see the matter 
 in somewhat of the same light four members of a 
 family were a little overwhelming and the question 
 of economy had weight with Mrs. Poynder. Aunt 
 and nephew were in the habit of considerately inviting 
 themselves out to high tea at the house of a relation 
 of Mortimer's in Newcastle on these occasions. 
 Mrs. Poynder, indeed, owned to a want of sympathy 
 with the "people Fibby contrived to get together," and 
 she was not informed that Miss Giles, for whom she 
 had developed an unaccountable fancy, was to be of 
 the party. 
 
 "My old woman of the sea," so Mrs. Elles some- 
 times spoke of her to her intimates, in whose eyes the 
 ways and speeches of the terrible old lady amply justi- 
 fied the want of reticence implied in her niece's indis- 
 creet sobriquet. Why must she form part of the 
 Elles household? Everybody wondered, but Mrs. 
 Elles knew. 
 
 For on this point the husband was immutable. He 
 saw plainly that on Mrs. Poynder did his manly 
 bourgeois comfort depend. His wife only attended 
 to the show side of housekeeping ; she saw that there 
 was always plenty of flowers in the drawing-room, 
 winter and summer but Mrs. Poynder attended to 
 his shirts and their proper complement of buttons. 
 Mrs. Elles ordered dinner, but Mrs. Poynder kept 
 the books and interviewed the tradesmen. His wife
 
 32 THE HUMAN INTEKEST 
 
 paid the smart calls, but Mrs. Poyndcr looked up his 
 dull and important relations, and, in her rough 
 undiplomatic way, advanced his affairs. She exer- 
 cised a certain modest supervision over the whisky 
 bottle, and without saying much, curbed Mortimer's 
 drunken tendencies a good deal. 
 
 Mrs. Elles herself was vaguely cognizant of the 
 advantages of this system, and realized that Mrs. 
 Poynder's presence in the menage gave her leisure 
 to attend to the cultivation of the graces of her own 
 mind and person, and exonerated her from the thank- 
 less task of confronting Mortimer on the tedious mat- 
 ters of servants, wages, and housekeeping and partial 
 abstention. 
 
 "Aunt Poynder goes down into the arena for 
 me, and fights with wild beasts in the kitchen," the 
 ungrateful young woman used to say. "She likes it, 
 I verily believe. But some of their roughness rubs 
 off on her," she would add, and nobody would gainsay 
 her. Mrs. Poynder was the professed Disagreeable 
 Woman of Newcastle, and people were apt to fly up 
 side alleys and into shops when they saw her come 
 sailing majestically down Granger Street. 
 
 "Oh, Mortimer, why did you go and have such 
 awful relations?" Mrs. Elles exclaimed casually to 
 her husband, one afternoon, when she came back 
 from a visit to Egidia at Jesmond. She was impelled 
 to say it. Mrs. Poynder's coarseness and Charles' 
 roughness seemed now-a-days more obtrusive by con- 
 trast with the pleasant manners of the people with
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 33 
 
 whom, by the accident of her friendship with Egidia, 
 she had been almost daily thrown into contact. This 
 had been her farewell visit. Egidia was going back 
 to town; but, in the course of many and many a 
 long talk, she had sown a plentiful crop of ideas 
 in this wayward head a seed whose harvest was to 
 prove a very different one to that which she had 
 expected. 
 
 Mortimer Elles was not seriously discomposed by 
 his wife's remark. "That's a nice remark to make 
 to a man!" was his not ungentle rejoinder. He had 
 ceased to expect Phoabe to curb any expression of 
 opinion out of respect to his feelings, and in return 
 permitted himself his full measure of brutality towards 
 her. 
 
 "Well, aren't they?" she repeated, yawning; "when 
 is Charles going to pass his examination and relieve 
 us of his presence? I did not bargain for Charles as 
 a permanent lodger when I married you, nor Aunt 
 Poynder indeed, for that matter, but I suppose all is 
 for the worst, in this dreariest of all possible house- 
 holds!" 
 
 She expected no answer. These two always 
 wrangled at cross purposes. There was very seldom 
 a positive engagement between them. Mrs. Elles 
 knew that Charles could not leave just yet, knew, 
 too, that Mrs. Poynder would never go, was not posi- 
 tively sure that she wanted her to go, but just now, 
 when her normal state of discontent was quadrupled 
 by the new influences that had lately come into her
 
 34 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 life, she could not resist a repetition of an oft- 
 repeated complaint. 
 
 She went on in a soft but irritating voice. 
 
 "I have no objection to Aunt Poynder's engaging 
 all the servants and managing them, but I must say I 
 wish she would let Jane alone. I have reserved the right 
 of choosing my own parlour-maid, and when I have 
 succeeded in getting one that suits me, I don't want 
 her bullied and the place made impossible for her." 
 
 "Who bullies her? An idle, good-for-nothing trol- 
 lop of a creature." 
 
 "There, you see, you don't like her." 
 
 "No, I don't," he replied brutally. "I don't like 
 her style. She copies you, and you're not a par- 
 ticularly good model." 
 
 "Ah, how miserable I am!" she exclaimed, irrele- 
 vantly. "Mortimer, tell me, why can't we get on? 
 It is not my fault, is it?" 
 
 "Oh ! no," he replied ironically. "You are always 
 in the right. There is nothing more tiresome in a 
 woman." 
 
 "You are frank, Mortimer, and almost epigram- 
 matic!" 
 
 \ 
 
 "Shut up, can't you?" he exclaimed, in accents of 
 annoyance. "I wonder why it is that you always con- 
 trive to rub me up the wrong way. Here you are 
 abusing me abusing my relations why can't you 
 let them alone? I don't abuse yours." 
 
 "Mine are all dead!" she said, pathetically. 
 "Fair game for you!"
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 35 
 
 "And a nice lot they were!" said the man, now 
 thoroughly roused to ill-temper. "That is, if you 
 have told me the truth about them. You're pretty 
 good at drawing the long bow, you know." 
 
 At this point in the discussion, Mrs. Elles with- 
 drew. Her relations were or had been a weak 
 point, and Mortimer had suffered in his purse 
 from claims of a ne'er-do-well father-in-law, and 
 a foolish, extravagant mother. Phoebe had been 
 brought up badly as a child, had been neglected in 
 her girlhood, and her marriage with Mortimer Elles 
 had been the making of her as her people said, and 
 as she had agreed at the time but it was a grievance 
 with her that, try as she might, she could not give 
 her history a romantic turn in her husband's eyes. He 
 knew all about her, was full of preconceived notions 
 about her, arid she resented the impossibility of keep- 
 ing up a consistent pose with him, being one of those 
 who reverse the proverb and expect to be heroes to 
 their valets de chambre and heroines to their husbands. 
 
 This weakness of hers entailed the other weakness 
 to which her husband had alluded her consistent 
 ambiguity of phrase, her frequent lapses from truth. 
 These lapses were for the most part unconscious, they 
 were the good face she put on every matter, her 
 artistic presentment of incidents relating to herself 
 and* other people, for, to do her justice, she applied 
 the same method to her fellow-creatures, and was 
 never known to retail a spiteful or unpicturesque 
 version of another woman's affairs.
 
 36 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 She considered herself the soul of honour, it is 
 true ; she literally would not have told a lie to save her 
 life ; but to save her pose and her dramatic present- 
 ment from discomfiture, she shrank from no form of 
 embellishment or extenuation. So she "doctored" 
 facts served up the plain "roast and boiled" of every- 
 day existence with a sauce piquante of her own 
 devising, and thought of herself as one who, compass- 
 ing under difficulties the whole duty of woman, 
 makes herself as charming, as romantic, as mysteri- 
 ous as circumstances will allow. 
 
 Half an hour later she looked into the study, 
 where Mortimer was sitting, a revolting picture of 
 middle-class ease, with his legs on the table, drinking 
 whisky and water. 
 
 "I thought I heard someone crying?" 
 
 "So you did. Jane. I have told her to go." 
 
 "What?" she screamed. 
 
 "Yes; we've had a row, Jane and I. I have sent 
 her packing. I paid her her wages told her to pack 
 up and go not later than to-morrow. She was 
 cheeky to me you teach them all to be damned 
 cheeky to me and I won't stand it." He filled his 
 glass again, pouring with a want of precision that 
 spoke of many previous attacks on the bottle. 
 
 "Jane cannot have meant" his wife murmured 
 humbly, cowed by the enormity of the misfortune that 
 had befallen her. Jane was her ally, her confidante, 
 her all.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 37 
 
 "Oh, yes; Jane meant it fast enough. Don't talk 
 to me about it. To-morrow she goes!" 
 
 He brought his fist heavily down upon the table. 
 His wife started, a start partly real, partly affected. 
 
 "If Jane goes, I go." 
 
 "Nonsense, you are not a servant I have not dis- 
 missed you!" 
 
 "Dismiss !" She tossed her head. Then the real, 
 imminent need of propitiating Mortimer occurred to 
 her. She must keep Jane at the cost of all humili- 
 ation. "Mortimer, listen it puts me out very much. 
 I have a dinner party of twelve next week!" 
 
 "The deuce you have ! "What a woman you are for 
 kick-ups! And I don't suppose there is a soul com- 
 ing that I shall care twopence for ! Well, you must 
 put it off, that 'sail!" 
 
 "One doesn't do these things!" 
 
 "Oh, I do. I'll write the excuses for you, if you 
 like." 
 
 She stamped her foot. "Mortimer I will not be 
 put to shame before my friends ! You have no right 
 to do this to me! Oh, what shall I do, what shall I 
 do, tied to a perfect beast like you for the rest of my 
 life?" 
 
 'Grin and bear it, I suppose. You won't make 
 me any better by swearing at me!" 
 
 "I don't swear at you! How you speak to me! 
 To me! to me! Your wife! How dared you marry 
 me, Mortimer?" 
 
 "I don't know about dare," he said, growing red.
 
 38 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "When all is said and done, I don't think you did 
 much to prevent me!" 
 
 "That's enough!" she raised her hand with a the- 
 atrical gesture as if to stop him, and, sinking into an 
 armchair, hid her face in her hands. "Insulting! 
 No I see now you never loved me ! Never ! 
 Never!" 
 
 He ostentatiously turned his back on her tragic 
 pose. 
 
 "There you go! Always in extremes always 
 injured always making the worst of it! You 
 couldn't live without a grievance, I do believe ! Of 
 course I married you for love if you must use the 
 absurd word and now you pay me back by plaguing 
 my life out! And then begin to talk damned senti- 
 mental rot about my never having loved you, and so 
 on! Now, really, don't you think we are both a bit 
 too old for that sort of thing?" 
 
 "Oh, you are impossible!" she moaned. It was 
 what she felt. It was the one word which fitted the 
 situation, which was no situation, except to herself. 
 Mortimer kicked a coal out of the grate savagely with 
 his carpet-slippered foot, and, her sense assaulted by 
 the sickening smell of singed wool, she left the room. 
 
 Mortimer was drunk he often was; it was the 
 least heinous of his crimes. She went upstairs cry- 
 ing, and went to bed, but she knew she could not 
 sleep that night, and yet she took no bromide or sul- 
 phonal. She wanted to think she meant to think
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 39 
 
 things out so she lay, and thought, and thought, 
 with extreme intensity and vigour, if with little 
 coherence. So intent was she that she lay quite 
 straight out and still, and did not toss, while the 
 trains of thought succeeded each other with extraor- 
 dinary rapidity. The tall clock on the stairs out- 
 side her door ticked loudly and monotonously, and 
 the whole problem of her life arrayed itself and 
 measured out its phases to the beat of the pendulum, 
 which seemed to balance them, as it were. 
 
 Mortimer was impossible! He had always been 
 impossible ! His conduct this evening was of a piece 
 with his whole conduct to her, ever since a few weeks 
 after marriage. Halcyon weeks, which every woman 
 has a right to expect, while they in no wise concern 
 or affect the life that follows after. His taunt about 
 the circumstances of her marriage to him she dis- 
 missed, she knew quite well that she had provoked 
 him to it, he had not meant it, there was no founda- 
 tion for it. He had wooed and won her in the usual, 
 commonplace way, been timid and attentive, and had 
 begged her for locks of her hair. And she had been 
 complaisant and loving, and had treasured his photo- 
 graph and made excuses for its ugliness, just like any 
 other foolish girl with her first sweetheart. 
 
 Why had she done all this? Why had she bought 
 that rose-coloured satin dress last Christmas, that she 
 had taken such a dislike to, since, that she had only 
 worn it twice? Her marriage was a very nearly par- 
 allel case, only she had been able to afford to throw
 
 40 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 aside the one bad bargain, and she had been obliged 
 to abide by the other. 
 
 "Yes, I can't say I did not know my own mind, 
 such as it was, when I took Mortimer, but, unfortu- 
 nately, it isn't the same mind that I have now. It 
 was a child's mind. The whole fabric of our bodies 
 alters every seven years, they say well, that means 
 our minds, too body and soul are one in my creed. 
 It was not this me that was glad to marry Mortimer, 
 as he so politely put it " she laughed bitterly. "It 
 was another me, who had not read Ibsen." She 
 laughed again. "Books alter one reading alters one 
 life alters one, after all ! I married Mortimer like 
 a blind puppy, not knowing, not seeing. I am noth- 
 ing wonderful, but I do think I am too good for him ! 
 Why did I not see it then? Why is a girl such a 
 fool? Why does nobody tell her? It is very hard. 
 They say, as one has made one's bed, so one must lie 
 on it. ... But suppose I decline to lie on it?" 
 
 She almost leaped in her bed with the shock of this 
 crude presentment of a new idea. Then she rose, 
 lit a candle and walked out of her room, and across a 
 landing, and straight into Mortimer's room. She 
 Boftly approached the bed on which he lay, and, like 
 Psyche over again, held the light up on high, and 
 looked critically down upon her sleeping husband. 
 
 She felt an indefinable pleasure in thus surveying 
 him helpless who was technically her master. This 
 coarse, clumsy-fibred creature who had yet his full 
 complement of the shrewdness and acuteness that
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 41 
 
 gave him dominion over his fellow-men, and made 
 him known as a "tough customer" in business, slept 
 the sleep well, if not precisely that of the just, at any 
 rate that of the man whose balance at his bank is 
 secure and his investment sound. He slept like a 
 savage who has laid aside his clubs, and enjoys the 
 dreamless, primitive sleep that he has earned by his 
 feats of arms. His thick, broad eyelids rested peace- 
 fully on the cold, blue eyes whose empty glare his 
 wife knew and detested. His. lips were closed on his 
 cruel little teeth in a firm, inexpressive line, pacific 
 and meaningless, and his clumsy hands, with their 
 short, square-nailed finger tips, lay palm outwards on 
 the coverlet, as innocently as a child's. 
 
 She might stare at him as long as she pleased, with 
 those burning, insistent eyes of hers, and not fear to 
 break his sleep; his simple nervous system would 
 surely withstand the hypnotism of her enquiring 
 gaze. 
 
 But next morning, he would be "all there" as 
 usual ; the hectoring, bantering, exacerbating person- 
 ality would re-assert itself, and make its hundred and 
 one demands on her self-control all through the day, 
 till sometimes it seemed as if she could not look at 
 him or hear his voice without screaming. 
 
 "Why should I bear it? Why should I?" she 
 asked herself, passionately, aloud; and the pettish 
 exclamation was significant of the great revulsion that 
 was taking place in her, a result of the passionate, 
 elucidating fortnight she had passed.
 
 42 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 She went back to her room and lay down again, 
 but she closed her eyes no more that night, and by 
 the time the pallid dawn of Newcastle had begun to 
 filter through the window curtains, a whole plan of 
 action had shaped itself in her mind. She came 
 down punctually to the eight o'clock breakfast which 
 was exacted by Mortimer and which he had never 
 allowed her to forego, putting some constraint on her- 
 self to appear perfectly composed, for her heart was 
 beating violently, and she felt the suspicious flush 
 mounting to her cheek, which had so often given 
 unkind friends occasion to say that she painted. 
 But Mrs. Poynder, who was presiding over the tea 
 and coffee, looked her over with some approval. 
 
 "Now, that's the first decent dress I have seen you 
 in, Fibby, for many a long day!" she observed, con- 
 templating the plain dress of blue serge not very 
 new, not very smart in which Mrs. Elles had chosen 
 to array herself. 
 
 "I am glad you are pleased, Aunt Poynder," replied 
 her niece, demurely, gracefully accepting her cup of 
 coffee from the stout, red fingers where the sub- 
 merged wedding-ring, planted there by the late Mr. 
 Poynder, glittered. Charles Elles, who could get 
 more noise out of a cup of coffee than anybody, was 
 drinking his and enjoying it thoroughly. Mrs. 
 Poynder somehow contrived to knock her knife and 
 fork together on the rim of her plate with vigour 
 every time she took a morsel. Mortimer's carpet 
 slippers, and the dish of bacon which his aunt had
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 43 
 
 set down by the fire to keep warm for him, stood by 
 the fire in grotesque proximity. 
 
 "I am going to put off my dinner on the thirty- 
 first," Mrs. Elles announced, quietly. "Jane is 
 going, and I couldn't attempt it with a new parlour- 
 maid." 
 
 "I am glad, Fibby, to see you in such a peaceable 
 frame of mind," Mrs. Poynder rejoined. "Morti- 
 mer says yon. were fairly put out at. first about his 
 sending Jane away." 
 
 "So I was, Aunt, but " 
 
 "Ye're quite right, Fibby, to take it calm. Hus- 
 bands must have their way. I never thought much 
 of the girl myself; she's lazy and wears far too much 
 fringe. Besides, a man must be master in his own 
 house, and if he can't send away his own housemaid 
 when it pleases him " 
 
 "Yes, Aunt." Mrs. Elles was playing at meek- 
 ness, and the sensation was so unusual that she found 
 it rather amusing so far. Mrs. Poynder could not 
 make it out at all. 
 
 "Are ye ill, my dear?" she enquired, with some 
 show of solicitude. "To look at ye, I should say 
 that your digestion was not in just apple-pie order." 
 'I am all right, Aunt," replied Mrs. Elles, with 
 forced composure, stamping her foot, however, under 
 the table. Her colour was high, as Mrs. Poynder had 
 remarked, but very clear and bright, and she looked 
 quite ten years younger. Her aunt continued to 
 make little onslaughts of this kind on her through
 
 44 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 breakfast, but she did not retort. Her lips formed 
 themselves every now and again into the words, "I 
 am going I am going I am going!" as a kind of 
 secret satisfaction. When her husband came down, 
 she actually got up and fetched the terribly plebeian 
 dish of bacon from the fender and put it down in 
 front of him. He thanked her drily. 
 
 "If you will excuse me," she said to them all, "I 
 will go and write some notes that have to be attended 
 to at once." 
 
 She left the room, and the scratching of a feverish 
 pen within the drawing-room was heard for the next 
 twenty minutes through the open door, while Morti- 
 mer Elles, having eaten an enormous breakfast in the 
 short time he had devoted to that purpose, went into 
 the hall and began to rummage for his stick and hat 
 and struggle into his coat. His wife knew the sound 
 well. 
 
 "Good-bye, Mortimer!" she called out. There 
 was a slight suspicion of mockery in her tone that he 
 perceived and resented. He did not answer her, but 
 went out, banging the door behind him loudly and 
 aggressively. 
 
 "Helmer bangs the door; not Nora!" she smiled to 
 herself. She felt extraordinarily gay. The more 
 serious aspects of the step she was taking were not 
 obvious to her at the present moment. She was for 
 the time merely possessed by an irrepressible zeal for 
 the assertion of self, and its disassociation from all 
 trammelling human responsibilities.
 
 45 
 
 Presently Mrs. Poynder went out too, to attend 
 some Busy bodies' committee meeting, and Mrs. Elles 
 took three five-pound notes out of a drawer in her 
 desk, locked it, and, going downstairs, ordered lunch 
 and dinner very carefully. This duty accomplished, 
 she went up to her room, and presented Jane, whom 
 she found there, with a very handsome cloth dress 
 she had hardly worn, and her blessing. The affec- 
 tionate and devoted Jane wept, and it was with diffi- 
 culty that her mistress prevented herself from crying 
 too. 
 
 Then Jane went about her business, and Mrs. Elles 
 locked herself in. She undid the complicated 
 arrangement of her hair and with a comb parted it as 
 severely as she could resign herself to do, and with a 
 brush dipped in water smoothed out the little curls 
 on her forehead, sighing deeply the while. Then she 
 went to a cupboard, and from its most recondite 
 recesses produced a box containing a pah* of blue 
 spectacles her husband's. She put them on, and 
 standing resolutely in front of a cheval glass, surveyed 
 her appearance. 
 
 "Good God, can I bear it?" she said aloud, in 
 tones of the very deepest anguish. Her face grew 
 sombre for the first time since the conception of flight 
 had become an established fact in her mind. She 
 desperately tugged down a lock and disposed it 
 becomingly on her forehead as usual, and then put it 
 back again. 
 
 "No! , Yes! . . I must do it like this. . . .
 
 46 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 It is the only way I can do it without blame. ... It 
 shows that my intentions are honourable. ... I am 
 going away to be free, not to flirt. ... I must make 
 all that an absolute impossibility!" 
 
 She flung a lace scarf over the glass and busied her- 
 self with a few necessary preparations. She got out 
 a Gladstone bag just the size she could manage to 
 carry herself and threw in a few clothes, including a 
 fine white muslin dress she had worn at her "at 
 home" that day, so fine that it would go through a 
 ring almost and took up no room to speak of. A 
 rather valuable sapphire ring she put on her finger, 
 and on second thoughts added a diamond one. Then 
 she opened the door of her room, and leaning over the 
 banisters called out, "Jane!" 
 
 Jane replied. 
 
 "Jane, will you go and draw down those blinds in 
 the drawing-room all of them half down. The 
 sun is getting so strong. And then, will you take 
 the heap of letters you will see lying on the bureau, 
 and go and post them at once." 
 
 She put on a sailor hat and a white lace veil over 
 her blue spectacles, and was downstairs and out in the 
 street before Jane had got to the fourth blind of the 
 drawing-room, which happened to look out on the 
 back of the house. Nora was gone !
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Mrs. Elles took a ticket for London. The train 
 was due to leave in ten minutes. She was out of 
 breath and felt the compromising colour mounting to 
 her cheeks under her thick white veil. The young poet 
 was on the platform, apparently seeing Miss Drum- 
 mond off. Phoebe Elles smiled at the little love 
 drama here developing. It would have been hers to 
 further it if she had been staying at home, for she 
 was a born matchmaker with a very kind heart and 
 dearly loved helping people, from a variety of motives. 
 But for the moment she had something else to do. 
 She got quickly into her carriage. The poet had 
 glanced at her, but had, of course, soon averted his 
 gaze from such an uninteresting object as the pretty 
 Mrs. Elles now presented. 
 
 Atalanta Drummond was probably only going as 
 far as Darlington, where, as everybody knew, she had 
 relations. But still her presence in the same train 
 was a dangerous and delightful fact. Mrs. Elles felt 
 all the exhilaration of a superior criminal evading the 
 pursuit of justice and forthwith planned to play an 
 exciting game of hide-and-seek with her unwitting 
 fellow-traveller. She would manoeuvre the most 
 carefully-arranged, hair-breadth escapes from the 
 unconscious pursuer. How nice it was to be running 
 
 47
 
 48 
 
 away, so to speak, and how it at once removed every- 
 thing from the region of the commonplace ! 
 
 She got out of her carriage at Darlington, and 
 looked about the great station. She was one of those 
 persons in whom the mere sight of a telegraph office 
 immediately inspires a desire to send a message of 
 some sort, and she at once went into the bureau and 
 proceeded to compose a wire to Mortimer. 
 
 "Gone away for the present; do not be anxious 
 about me. Phcebe." Then she crossed out "for the 
 present" and substituted "for a change." 
 
 "I don't want him to be dragging the Tyne for 
 me!" she thought. "That is, if his affection for me 
 should prompt him to such an extreme course, which 
 I do not think it would." 
 
 When she got back to her carriage, a porter was 
 engaged in putting some effects into the rack, which 
 she at once recognized as belonging to Miss Drum- 
 mond. In spite of her plans, terror then filled her 
 soul. Had that young lady recognized her? Was 
 she intending to join her for the pleasure of her com- 
 pany? Or was it only because this was a through 
 carriage to London? 
 
 The poor, hunted creature dared not stay to ascer- 
 tain, but, seizing her bag, jumped out and searched 
 wildly for another compartment. She was bewildered 
 and uncertain. Nobody helped her or took any 
 interest in her, because she was unattractive, so she 
 thought, and the end of it was that the London train 
 moved on without her, as trains will.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 49 
 
 She watched it steaming out of the station, but she 
 was far too much excited to care. There happened 
 to be another train, just like it, on the other side 
 of the station, about to go westwards to Barnard 
 Castle. 
 
 "Scott's Eokeby!" she said to herself. Scott was 
 not one of her modern gods, but still the names 
 famous and familiar to everyone "Brignal Banks" 
 and Greta Bridge had a certain old-world magic of 
 their own. So, acting on the inspiration of the 
 moment, she took a ticket for Barnard Castle, and 
 at twelve o'clock found herself in the market-place 
 of the sleepy little town on the Tees, in front of a 
 char-a-banc full of tourists just starting for Rokeby, 
 four miles off. She took a seat. 
 
 Once arrived there, she declined to make the tour 
 of the famous Park with a guide and a noisy party of 
 barbarians, with fern-leaves artlessly stuck behind 
 their ears, but, leaving her bag in charge of the 
 obliging porter at the gates, whom the more effectu- 
 ally to cajole she took off her spectacles for a second, 
 started on a voyage of discovery in the opposite direc- 
 tion, across the bridge, following the course of the 
 Greta, along a cart track in a wood, to the east. She 
 did not in the least know where this path would lead 
 her; she only knew that she was extremely happy. 
 She felt just as she imagined the young journeyman 
 heroes in the tales of Grimm must have felt when 
 they walked, knapsack in hand, to seek their for- 
 tunes. She walked with an assured step, she sang to
 
 50 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 herself, she listened to the jubilant song of the mount- 
 ing larks that came from the fields on the other side 
 of the river, she enjoyed the country as only a town- 
 bred person can ; she actually experienced the joy of 
 life she had read about so often. "I have not seen 
 enough of nature!" she said to herself, as one says of 
 a friend who lives a long way off, and whom one has 
 somehow neglected. Tags of poetry, scraps of phi- 
 losophy, queer mythological ideas, born of her miscel- 
 laneous reading, about the Earth Mother and the 
 Earth Spirit, passed through her mind. What a 
 terribly artificial life it was that she had been leading ! 
 Nature was the real thing after all ! 
 
 And meantime, at home in smoky, sophisticated 
 Newcastle, Mortimer and Mrs. Poynder and Charles 
 would be sitting down to the substantial midday meal 
 that their souls loved, and that she had carefully 
 ordered for them before she left, as a valedictory 
 service. She pictured the complacent three, pent up 
 in the hideous, stuffy dining-room (Mortimer's taste 
 she was only permitted jurisdiction over the draw- 
 ing-room), with all the windows fast closed down in 
 accordance with that innate dislike of fresh air inher- 
 ent in some persons, and a blazing fire for the crown 
 of discomfort. 
 
 She, whose spiritual needs were being so thoroughly 
 satisfied, for once, was not in the least materially 
 hungry, and, if she became so, would eat roots like 
 other heroines before her. There must be plenty of 
 things edible in this luxuriance of undergrowth in
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 51 
 
 which she was wandering, where all possible forms of 
 vegetable life seemed literally crushing one another 
 out in their mutual excess and exuberance. There 
 were great, flame-coloured fungi glistering from the 
 boles of enormous beech trees whose leaves grew so 
 closely that, althougth he hot July sun, she knew, 
 was beating outside on their thick panopoly, she yet 
 was able to walk at ease in their cool penumbra. Beds 
 of magnificent nettles, and the broad, green discs of 
 what the children call "fairy tables" filled all the hol- 
 lows of the dells. Here and there, tall -stemmed, 
 pale lilac campanulas rose and lightened the gloom 
 through which the sunbeams pierced in vivid streaks, 
 like golden spears probing the dimness. The low 
 bank of red sandstone that formed the background to 
 the grove showed at intervals like a rosy wall, but on 
 the opposite side the character of the country had 
 changed; there were no more meadows; she was 
 hemmed in ; the granite cliff rose sheer, clothed with 
 trees that found but a scanty purchase in the rocky 
 clefts to which they seemed to cling frantically with 
 hoary roots upturned, detached almost, the relative 
 positions of roots and boughs nearly reversed. The 
 call of the wood-pigeons that nested in these coverts 
 she sentimentally called them doves came to her 
 across the river that flowed along beside her, red like 
 wine, over shiny stones and deep, rocky crevices that 
 modified the sound of its ripples into a thousand 
 musical varieties. 
 
 She was in an ecstasy. To herself she murmured,
 
 52 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 softly, Eossetti's lines about the "Banks in Willow 
 Wood": 
 
 " With woodspnrge wan, with bloodwort burning 
 
 red" 
 
 and was in a mood to utter invocations to the "spotted 
 snakes, with double tongue," that must be lurking 
 in those dark beds of hoary nettles. She was a well- 
 read woman, and had her poets at her fingers' ends, 
 for use, not ornament, since she BO frequently quoted 
 them. She walked on, imagining that she heard the 
 interesting rustle of wild animals that her footsteps 
 affrighted, and presently, out of pure caprice, left the 
 path and began to clamber up the bank, in the vague 
 aspiration after blackberries in July. 
 
 The dell began to widen out, and the river, which 
 up to that time had flowed in a more or less massive 
 and self-contained flood, began to spread and lose 
 itself in shallows. The noise of many counter -ripples, 
 of the suction of large masses of water pouring into 
 crevices and over many different levels, grew very 
 loud. She stood, as it were, at the end of a funnel, 
 looking towards a sunlit clearing where the trees grew 
 more thinly and more interspersedly, and the cliffs 
 stood away on either side. 
 
 She stopped and stood still, and pushed her spec- 
 tacles, which she had been wearing very laxly, a little 
 further up her forehead. 
 
 "This is like a glimpse of Paradise," she thought, 
 looking towards the golden space in front of her, 
 "coming as it does, just after this long, cool dark
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 53 
 
 grove that I have been walking in for more than half an 
 hour! That was a kind of Pur gator io. This is a painter's 
 paradise, I might say, and there is the painter !" 
 
 For very nearly under her feet she was half-way 
 up the sloping bank that sheltered this little oasis on 
 the south was the white calico umbrella planted on 
 its spiked stick, like a gigantic mushroom, which 
 Mrs. Elles was well-informed enough to associate 
 at once with the painter's craft. 
 
 The painter was, of course, seated on his campstool 
 under it, and she looked down on the back of his sun- 
 burnt neck and noticed the way his hair curled a 
 little on it. One rash step would bring her 
 down on him in a helpless rush, for she was not an 
 expert climber and her steps were rendered precarious 
 by the crumbly nature of the soil on which she stood. 
 
 She settled her spectacles firmly on her nose "I 
 shall probably fall and break them into my eyes, but 
 it can't be helped!" and began to skirt round to the 
 left, intending to make a circuit of the umbrella and 
 approach the artist from the front. She had a wild 
 desire to speak to someone. She had actually not 
 opened her lips since ten o'clock that morning, and 
 she was a woman hardly cast by nature for the part 
 of a Trappist ! In this lonely place, the least a man 
 could do would be to wish her good day ! Then she 
 might possibly go so far as to ask him to tell her the 
 name of the place where she found herself, and a 
 pleasant conversation would thereby be inaugurated. 
 
 She worked gradually round to him how ugly the
 
 54 
 
 world looked through the wall of cold blue in front of 
 her eyes! and the continuous ripple of the water, 
 flowing over the many obstacles and narrow channels 
 of its bed, effectually drowned the noise of the snap- 
 ping of dry twigs and the breaking of pulpy burdock 
 stalks that attended her clumsy progress. 
 
 She was almost in front of him a few yards off 
 only but he had not raised his head. He did so 
 presently, in the natural course of things, and she 
 made a step forward. 
 
 "For God's sake, mind that foxglove!" he shouted, 
 but, even as he spoke, it was doomed and the splendid 
 column of pink bells fell prone to the ground. She 
 stood aghast. 
 
 "I beg your pardon!' 1 he said, in a tone as civil as 
 was consistent with the most obvious and excessive 
 irritation, "but do you know you have completely 
 ruined my foreground?" 
 
 "I beg your pardon oh, ten thousand times!" she 
 replied, ruefully surveying the snapped stem of the 
 injured flower. "But it will grow again, won't it?" 
 
 "Not that one not this summer and it came in 
 just right! Well, well; it can't be helped. . . . 
 Please don't apologise! . . . It is no matter." 
 
 But she continued to apologise, and he to beg her 
 not to do so. The voice in which she conveyed her 
 protestations, however, became more and more feeble. 
 The hot sun was beating down on her head as she 
 stood, and she was conscious of an overpowering 
 faintness and desire to sink down on the desecrated
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 55 
 
 bed of foxgloves and rest; but she felt also very 
 strongly that she must resist and conquer the impulse 
 until she could remove herself to a place beyond the 
 artist's proximity. 
 
 "You seem faint," she heard him saying, and his 
 voice, grown gentle now, seemed to come from miles 
 away. "Sit down on this!" and he hastily emptied a 
 bulgy canvas sketching bag and laid it down beside 
 her. "Now shall I get you some water?" 
 
 She was so really ill that she could only nod in re- 
 sponse to his offer. 
 
 "I have no glass," he said; "but this little thing 
 will be quite clean when I have washed it out." He 
 took the japanned tin attached to his water-colour 
 paint box, and ran down to the river to fill it. She 
 watched him. 
 
 "How nice of him!" she thought to herself; "and 
 I was just thinking him such a bear; and I spoiled 
 his poor foxglove; and I am so hungry!" 
 
 There were several crusts of dry bread lying about 
 which he had thrown out of the canvas bag how dry 
 she dared not think, but she put out her hand and 
 nibbled at one. 
 
 "Good Heavens, you must not eat that!" he said, 
 when he came back, raising his eyebrows. His eyes 
 were quite dark, though his hair was grey. "Mrs. 
 Watson put some sandwiches into my bag this morn- 
 ing, but I regret to say I ate them all half-an-hour 
 ago ! I generally take them back with me untouched. 
 How unlucky!"
 
 56 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 He raised his voice and called, and after a time a 
 lubberly boy came slouching up. 
 
 "Now, Billy Gale, where the devil have you been? 
 What is the good of you? Go up to the cottage and 
 ask them for a glass of milk and a slice of bread-and- 
 butter on a plate, mind!" 
 
 The boy was off, and he turned to Mrs. Elles, who 
 had drunk her cool, pure river water, and was looking 
 less pale. 
 
 "You are very kind to me," she murmured, "and 
 I know how you must hate being interrupted ! Please 
 do go on painting now as if I were not here. I won't 
 say a single word, and, as soon as I am a little rested, 
 I will go away and leave you in peace. ... I am 
 very fond of art!" she added, inconsequently. "I 
 used to do a little myself." 
 
 But the artist seemed to have taken her at her word, 
 and she did not think he could have heard her, as he 
 sat complacently dabbling his brush in the little 
 water-tin, now restored to its proper use, and then 
 put it to his lips, and then touched his paper with it. 
 There was no colour in the brush, and no particular 
 effect upon the paper, so it seemed to the ignorant 
 tyro at his side. In spite of her promise of silence, 
 she could not resist pointing this out to him. 
 
 "Don't be too sure, "he said; "every touch counts." 
 
 "I do wish I might have a look at it!" 
 
 She was quite unprepared for the terrible frown 
 that appeared on his mild countenance when she pre- 
 ferred this innocent-seeming request.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 57 
 
 "You must excuse me, please. I cannot bear to 
 show my things before they are done. I could never 
 work at them again if I did. It is a peculiarity of 
 mine dreadful, but here is Billy ! I am afraid he 
 will have spilt most of the milk by the time he gets 
 here." 
 
 "Mr. Elvers, sir," said the boy, as soon as he got 
 within earshot, "Farmer says as one o' they little 
 black pigs you knows 'em, sir ?" 
 
 "Intimately, every one of them, " replied the artist, 
 bitterly. "It's your business to keep them off me, 
 you young villain, and instead of that you go and let 
 them rout about in my colour box " 
 
 "That's just it, sir," Billy answered, grinning joy- 
 fully ; one of 'em has died suddent-like, and Farmer 
 says as how it died along of eating those little sticky 
 things o' yourn that squeedge in and out." 
 
 * ' One of my oil-colour tubes ! What nonsense ! Just 
 go and tell Mr. Ward no, stop; I'll speak to him 
 myself, later." He turned and laughed at Mrs. Elles 
 very pleasantly. "What an absurd thing! But I 
 certainly have missed my Naples yellow, lately." 
 
 She laughed too. "Now I have heard your name, ' ' 
 she said. 
 
 "Edmund Eivera." 
 
 "Yes, Edmund Rivers, the famous landscape- 
 painter you see I know all about your fame and I 
 have a letter of yours in my pocket." 
 
 As a matter of fact, she had not, she was thinking 
 of the muslin dress she had worn days ago, into whose
 
 58 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 pocket she had thrust the autograph letter Egidia had 
 given her. The dress was in her bag, lying at the 
 Porter's lodge, a mile away. Still it sounded better. 
 The artist luckily did not ask to see the letter, but 
 looked puzzled, and a little displeased. 
 
 "I collect autographs!" she went on hastily, "and 
 Miss Giles Egidia, you know, the famous novelist 
 gave it to me. She said she was a relation of yours. 
 She is a great friend of mine, too. I am on my way 
 to stay with her." 
 
 "Oh, indeed!" he said, stiffly. 
 
 "But I must ask you," she went on, clasping her 
 hands together, "not to mention my name to her 
 when you write, or even to say that you have seen 
 me. Please promise?" 
 
 "But, my dear madam, I don't know your name, 
 and am never likely to." 
 
 "Oh, yes; but indeed you must know my name," 
 she said simply, "Miss Frick." 
 
 It was a pseudonym adopted on the spur of the 
 moment; she had known a German governess of the 
 name. Once fairly launched in fiction she went on 
 easily. 
 
 "I am the daughter of a country clergyman, and 
 he's very poor we are seven and we all earn our 
 bread. It is a very strange story. My father married 
 again, an odious woman none of us could live with. 
 I did type-writing that is how I weakened my eyes 
 and then I broke down, and I had to go into the 
 country for my health."
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 59 
 
 "I am very sorry to hear all this," said the artist, 
 languidly. 
 
 "Oh, not at all. And then there was a further 
 complication there was a man, and he pestered me 
 annoyed me molested me, in fact, till I got ill. 
 It was not all the fault of the type- writing, you see" 
 she had a wan, well-executed smile under her veil. 
 "My life was a torment to me. He followed me 
 about; he even threatened to shoot me! You may 
 have read about it in the papers." 
 
 "No, I never have." His voice betrayed no 
 interest. 
 
 "People do such dreadful things, sometimes!" she 
 observed, vaguely, to Nature at large, for the artist 
 had become quite absorbed in his work and seemed to 
 be paying no attention to what she was saying. "He 
 is all the time wishing me at the devil!" she thought 
 to herself, but she did not go. She was perforce 
 silent awhile, but took the opportunity to look closely 
 at and focus this personage who had so completely 
 filled up her field of vision. 
 
 "He looks rather like a foreign sailor, such as one 
 sees on the quays at Newcastle," she thought. " He 
 only wants earrings to complete the effect. I suppose 
 it is because he is so sunburnt, and his eyes are so 
 dark. They are like brown pools like the river here, 
 as if they grew like what they looked on. There 
 are all sorts of little wrinkles round them not 
 money wrinkles, as I always call Mortimer's but 
 wrinkles that come of screwing up his eyes to see
 
 60 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 effects, and shutting one of them altogether now and 
 then, as he is doing. He talks languidly, like a 
 society man, as if everything was a bore, but then his 
 eager eyes are all over the place. I like that greyish 
 hair in so young a man it is 'a sable silvered,' as 
 Hamlet said of his father. What a beautiful mouth ! 
 It is like a woman's, and yet it is strong. His mous- 
 tache hides it a good deal. Well, a mouth like that 
 should not be too obvious to the vulgar eye. It tells 
 too much. He is very thin. I wonder if he is deli- 
 cate? No, not with a figure like that he must be 
 strong, and his instep is beautifully arched that 
 comes of springing about these rocks people grow 
 flat-footed in Newcastle. ..." 
 
 She started suddenly. 
 
 "Why am I sitting here beside a strange man of 
 whose existence I did not even know an hour ago? It 
 is as if I had been here all my life ! I ought to go, 
 of course, but where?" 
 
 She looked round her distractedly. The sun had 
 declined; the day had changed from morning to 
 afternoon. She had been in this man's company for 
 nearly two hours, without any excuse beyond her 
 temporary faintness. She got up nervously, though 
 he did not seem to notice her, and wandered a little 
 way off across the meadow trying to collect her 
 thoughts and make a plan. A curious brown ball 
 lying at the foot of a wild rose tree attracted her 
 attention. She picked it up and, with childish 
 inconsequence, carried it back to the artist to ask him
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 61 
 
 to tell her what it was. Suddenly it uncurled in her 
 hand, and a tiny snout appeared in front of the 
 bristles ! She dropped it with a modish scream, and 
 the artist perforce raised his head. He saw the situ- 
 ation at once, and smiled a little. There was a 
 cynical twist in his mouth that delighted her. 
 
 "Did you say you had been bred in the country?" 
 he asked. 
 
 "Why, what is it?" 
 
 "Only a hedgehog a 'hodgeon," as they call them 
 here. "Poor thing: it trusted you, you see, and 
 uncurled itself!" 
 
 "The darling; I must take it home." 
 
 "I would," he said dryly, and looked at his watch. 
 "Four o'clock ! I must go to my afternoon subject." 
 
 Trembling with apprehension, she watched him as 
 he took the sketching bag, and rammed his sketching 
 things into it. He then summoned Billy to take 
 down the umbrella and follow with it, and shoulder- 
 ing the bag himself, raised his cap civilly, bade her 
 good morning, and was gone. 
 
 She sat there stupidly staring at the little yellow 
 patch of trodden grass where his feet had rested, and 
 his camp had been set. 
 
 She was alone in the world again, a runaway wife, 
 with all the problem of her life before her ! 
 
 The obvious course was to get up and go; but 
 where? To London? What did she care for London 
 now? And anyhow, it was far too late to go on there 
 that night!
 
 The smoke was rising from the chimneys of the 
 cottage up there on the brow, whence Billy Gale had 
 brought the milk. Was the artist staying there? 
 She cast her eyes vaguely round her as if to ask the 
 mild heavens for help, and saw the boy in the dis- 
 tance, sitting kicking his heels about on a dry rock, 
 in mid-stream, not far from his master, presumably ! 
 
 Then she rose, having conceived a reckless plan of 
 action which she felt the necessity of putting into 
 execution at once ; for if she were to allow herself to 
 think it over, she would never be able to bring her- 
 self to do it at all. She beckoned to Billy Gale, 
 and asked him to be so good as to direct her to Mr. 
 Kivers' "afternoon subject" as she had heard him 
 call it. 
 
 The lad stared, but obediently led her to a place 
 about a quarter of a mile further down the river, 
 opposite a ruined church, and a church garth full of 
 antique, wooden headstones, smothered in burdock 
 leaves ; a scene of beautiful desolation. 
 
 Mr. Rivers was standing, sketch book in hand, on 
 a little beach of pebbles under the shelving, undercut 
 bank, executing with incredible dexterity what 
 looked like meaningless parabolic curves, with a hard 
 lead pencil. His back was turned to her. She 
 jumped down the bank, and, though the crunching 
 of the pebbles under her feet, and the sound of her 
 own voice, affrighted her, managed to pluck up cour- 
 age to address him. 
 
 "I must apologise for troubling you again but you
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 63 
 
 were so very kind to me before perhaps you would 
 not mind telling me if there is any if I could find 
 any accommodation here?" 
 
 "No, none!" he replied hastily, without even turn- 
 ing round. 
 
 After an appreciable pause he added, unwillingly, 
 "At least there's an inn a mile off about a 
 mile " 
 
 "But that is what I mean!" she cried, joyfully. 
 "And is that where you stop?" 
 
 He turned on her a gaze of acute distress. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I suppose so, but I warn you I, of 
 course, can put up with anything it is very rough, 
 very rough indeed. They are not good hands at 
 cooking I have had a chop a day for the last fort- 
 night. And the beds are very hard!" 
 
 Here he shuddered somewhat elaborately. 
 
 "I don't happen to mind that sort of thing at 
 all." 
 
 "I chose it for quiet," he went on, pathetically. 
 "The landlady is a good soul, who understands my 
 little ways, but " 
 
 "That quite decides me " 
 
 "They may have a room I am sure I don't know 
 but I should advise you not " 
 
 "I should not be in your way at all," she went on, 
 barefacedly assuming her acquaintance with the 
 remoter causes of his feeble degree of encouragement, 
 and smiling sweetly into his blank face, "in fact, I 
 should be a comfort to you I mean, I am very quiet,
 
 64 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 and if I occupy the room, no one else can, don't you 
 see? I should at any rate serve to keep noisier people 
 out." 
 
 "There is something in that!" he observed, as if to 
 himself. 
 
 "So I will go along and see," she went on, pursuing 
 her advantage. 
 
 "My lad can show you a short cut over the river," 
 was the painter's unexpected rejoinder. She was not 
 deceived by his mildness. He only wanted to get rid 
 of her, and the moment he had spoken he turned 
 round and resumed his drawing again. 
 
 "Delightful, but not quite human," she thought 
 to herself. 
 
 His "lad," with frank confidence in her power of 
 accommodation to somewhat unusual methods of pro- 
 gression, piloted her across the river by way of a 
 rough bridge of stepping stones, apparently half 
 natural, half artificial, and then led her by many a 
 varied and devious track, through a succession of 
 brambly coppices, and over many stiles of many pat- 
 terns, tantalizing enough to a town-bred woman. 
 She enjoyed it, however, and was proud of her newly- 
 discovered powers, as she surmounted one unusual 
 impediment after another, and was as quick about it 
 as the long-legged country lad who guided her. Then 
 they crossed a couple of upland pastures where the 
 great, mild-eyed cows were grazing, and half -turning 
 their heads to look at her and Billy Gale, who left 
 her no time to be afraid of them, and at last the
 
 THE HUMAN INTEKEST 65 
 
 slender smoke spirals from the chimneys of a little 
 homestead rose in sight. 
 
 "The Heather Bell" was an old-fashioned coaching 
 inn on the outskirts of the great park of Eokeby, and 
 opposite one of its gates. The enormous beech trees 
 leaned over the high Park wall and shadowed the inn 
 that was only separated from it by the width of the 
 road, and whose windows were darkened at noonday 
 by their shade. The inn itself was a large, straggling 
 building, with a low-pitched, tiled roof covered with 
 houseleek. A bushy, garish-coloured garden on the 
 south side, full of flowers, reached to where the fields 
 ended. A woman was standing under the rose-hung 
 porch, shading her eyes with her hand. 
 
 "Yon 'a the Mistress!" said Billy Gale, suddenly, 
 "and she owes me a skelping, so I think I'll just 
 mak' myself skarse!" He bolted, and just in time, 
 for the landlady came striding up the garden path 
 with obviously less zeal for the welcoming of the 
 guest than for Billy Gale's discomfiture. 
 
 "Little, idle good-f or -nought!" exclaimed she, 
 shaking her fist in the direction of his recalcitrant 
 back. "Is this the proper way for to bring fowk 
 in? What's the front entrance for? Good morning, 
 Mem. Coom in this way, since ye are here!" 
 
 Mrs. Elles asked for a bedroom, and was told that 
 she could have one. 
 
 "It's a bit smarl, but ye 're no very big yersel'," 
 said the landlady, tenderly patronizing her already. 
 People always did. "Coom, an' I'se show ye! . . .
 
 66 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 Ye'll be a penter, too, will ye?" she enquired, on the 
 way upstairs. "Lord love ye, there's heaps on 'em 
 cooms here! It's a fine place for such as them! 
 There's the Joonction the Greta and the Tees, ye 
 know, and the Dairy Bridge and Mortham Tower, 
 they're all bonnie ye'se find plenty for to ockipy ye 
 here. We've got a grand artiss here now. . . . 
 That's his room, see ye, next yours ye'll mebbies 
 have seen his pectewers in Lunnon, Mem?" 
 
 "Miss," corrected Mrs. Elles. 
 
 "He's a permanent lodger like. It's a matter o' 
 ten year since he first coomed here, seeking rooms. I 
 seed he was a painter lad at onst, and I says to my 
 man I had a man then 'Tak' him, George, and 
 ye'll ne'er repent it ! He'll be out a' the day long a 
 dirtying o' bits of nice clean paper, and amusing his- 
 self, and no trouble at all!' . . . Well, he'll be in 
 soon to his bit denner. Ye'll be having a chop to 
 yer tea, along of he?" 
 
 "Oh, but can't I have a sitting-room of my own?" 
 
 "Nay, we haven't another setting-room, honey. 
 There's only the big meetin'-room, ye know 'tis only 
 fit for picnic parties, and sich like but Mr. Eivers 
 is a nice quiet body; he'll not be in your way, I 
 promise ye." 
 
 But Mrs. Elles, whatever her private wishes might 
 have been, was resolved not to have any appearance 
 of intruding on the hermit painter ; and six o'clock 
 for she was ridiculously, unromantically hungry 
 found her established at a corner of a long-rudimen-
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 67 
 
 tary, wooden table, built on trestles, that ran the 
 whole length of a bare, barn-like room, evidently a 
 recent addition to the comfortable old coaching inn, 
 for it was high-pitched, with three tall sash windows, 
 and the walls distempered in French grey. The floor 
 was sanded, and its raftered ceiling was not free from 
 spiders, that ever and anon made terrifying voyages 
 of discovery down their shadowy webs to the end of 
 the long table that was spread with a coarse, white 
 cloth for her benefit. 
 
 She was struck, amid all this roughness and rusticity, 
 with the white, well-tended hands that served her. 
 It was not a servant who stood behind her chair, and 
 who was continually addressed from afar by the land- 
 lady as "Jane Anne!" Jane Anne was a short, thick- 
 set young woman in a well-made black dress, and an 
 opulent watch-chain. Mrs. Elles did not like her 
 face, with its heavy chin and sullen eyes and masses 
 of crisped black hair parted carefully on a low fore- 
 head, or the mincing Cockney pronunciation, grafted 
 on a native Yorkshire accent, with which the girl 
 answered the trifling questions she asked her. She 
 wore no cap or apron, and performed her service with 
 a silent concentration which showed that it was not 
 her usual vocation. To all Mrs. Elles' remarks she 
 replied civilly, but with a suggestion of closure in 
 each answer. Mrs. Elles took a strong dislike to her 
 at once. 
 
 The three windows of the room opened on to the 
 garden, the main path of which led by a slight
 
 68 THE HUMAN INTEEEST 
 
 upward gradient to the wicket gate and the series of 
 upland pastures which she had traversed a few hours 
 before on her way back from Brignal. That, she had 
 ascertained, was the name of the place where she had 
 first met Mr. Eivers. He must surely be even now 
 crossing them on his way home from his work. She 
 went across to the window and leaned out, and gazed 
 disconsolately towards the empty sunset sky. 
 
 Two pretty brown cows were leaning over and rub- 
 bing their noses against the stumps of the gate, lowing 
 gently for human sympathy. Suddenly their heads 
 were persuasively pushed aside, and the painter ap- 
 peared, silhouetted against the saffron background. 
 He stroked them, and then coming through, closed 
 the gate carefully against their obtrusive noses. Mrs. 
 Elles watched him as he walked down the path, 
 pebbly and uneven with the washing down of previous 
 heavy rains, between the low espalier pear trees, and 
 disappeared under the porch a few yards to the left. 
 Then, with a little suppressed sigh, she withdrew her 
 gaze from the gleaming sky and turned sharply, to 
 find the body of the girl who had waited on her at 
 dinner in close proximity to her own. 
 
 The girl had evidently been watching the painter's 
 entry, too, over her unsuspecting' shoulders. Mrs. 
 Elles conceived a violent dislike to her, which, in her 
 wilful way, she was at no pains to hide. 
 
 Everybody here seemed to be attached to Mr. 
 Eivers. Through the open door of the room, she 
 heard the landlady's ecstatic welcome to him as he
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 69 
 
 passed under the rose-hung porch of the "Heather 
 Bell." "Well, and here ye coom, sir!" as of one 
 receiving a cherished lamb back into the fold. 
 Presently, the listening woman heard him walk 
 wearily into his sitting-room it happened to be next 
 door to the kind of annex in which she was and 
 close the door. 
 
 She now felt strangely and unutterably lonely. 
 What had she come here for? During the rest of the 
 evening, she sat in a hard cane chair by the window, 
 and leaned her elbow on the equally hard stone sill. 
 The light slowly faded out of the sky and the scent of 
 the nightstocks came to her in sweet, overpowering 
 wafts, and the evening primroses opened wider and 
 wider till they seemed to shine like yellow moons in 
 the dusky garden beds. Then the real moon came 
 out, and still she could smell nothing but the sweet 
 smells of the garden and she wondered whether Mr. 
 Kivers would begin to smoke enormous strong cigars 
 or a horrid pipe, like Mortimer, and thus kill all 
 the poetry of the evening. His window was next 
 to the one out of which she was now leaning, and it 
 was wide open. Her window was raw and square, 
 his was smothered in the leaves of an immense pear 
 which she had noticed as she came in, growing, in 
 stiffly arranged branches like a genealogical tree, all 
 over the southern side of the house. 
 
 No, he was not smoking! What was he doing? 
 She suddenly conceived the notion of going out of 
 doors of taking a walk in the Park, that is, if the
 
 70 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 porter would allow her to pass at this hour. She 
 would see the famous yew grove she had read of, 
 dark at noonday, and positively sepulchral at night, 
 where the White Lady of Mortham walked and 
 bewailed her unnamed woes. She would listen to 
 the mysterious "hum" beetles, which served for 
 "tuck of drum" to marshal the gallant outlaws of 
 the ballad : 
 
 "Oh, Brignal Banks are fresh and fair, 
 
 And Greta woods are green ; 
 I'd rather rove with Edmund there 
 Than reign our English Queen!" 
 
 "How strange his name should be Edmund, too!" 
 
 So musing, she went out. She did not trouble to 
 put on a hat, and she took off her tiresome spectacles 
 and put them in her pocket, for it had grown so dark 
 that, even if anyone were to meet her going out of the 
 inn door, he would not be able to see her face with 
 any degree of clearness. 
 
 But when she got into the hall, she changed her 
 mind capriciously and went into the garden instead 
 of the Park. 
 
 As she passed the window of his room, she noticed 
 that the white linen blind was not drawn down, and 
 the lighted lamp inside showed the table with its 
 queer, old-fashioned, rose-embroidered cloth, all 
 littered with the paraphernalia of an artist's work, 
 and the artist himself intently bending over a sepia 
 sketch lying in front of him.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 71 
 
 He had evidently forgotten her very existence ! 
 
 No wonder! A plain woman with smoked spec- 
 tacles and a bald forehead. So she characterized her- 
 self. That was all she had allowed him to see of her. 
 She stood there for a very long time, watching him, 
 her hand raised to her face ready to veil it in case he 
 should look up. She had no scruples, for if he had 
 objected to being looked at, he would have pulled down 
 the blind. 
 
 Every now and then, a ripe pear, ruined by the in- 
 sidious wasp that preyed on it secretly, fell heavily 
 down on the sodden earth under the window, and 
 startled her, but he never raised his head. She ceased 
 to expect him to do so, and stood at ease, listening to 
 the various puzzling night sounds and quite uncon- 
 scious of the flight of time. Queer noises came from 
 the great, mysterious demesne on the other side of 
 the house that excess of rank foliage in which it 
 seemed that every known variety of animal might 
 find a home; it was so "whick," in local parlance, so 
 full of all the forms of sylvan life, crawling, creeping, 
 rustling in among the long grasses and twisted boughs 
 all through the summer night. Presently, the short, 
 sharp bark of a fox, that came from the covert, did 
 penetrate to his ears through the thickness of the 
 pane; he looked up, seemed to stare at her, and she 
 fled.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 A maid deposited a can of hot water, and knocked 
 at Mrs. Elles' door next morning, as the latter had 
 desired her to do over night. Thinking, perhaps, of 
 her faithful Jane, she sleepily called out "Come in!" 
 from force of habit. 
 
 The servant stared at the new inmate of the 
 "Heather Bell," unrestrainedly, as she lay there, in 
 bed, her pretty hair ruffled over her forehead, and the 
 disfiguring spectacles lying on the dressing-table 
 beside her. Mrs. Elles did not know what hour it 
 was ; she had left her watch behind her in Newcastle, 
 but she was sure she had been lying awake for hours 
 and hours, listening to the bewildering chorus of 
 birds from the pear tree all round her window, and 
 the rub-a-dub of the churning in the yard below. 
 
 "Nine o'clock, you say? Why did you not call me 
 earlier? Has Mr. Rivers gone out sketching already?' ' 
 was her first thoughtless question. 
 
 "Yes, ma'am!" 
 
 "Does he go every day?" Mrs. Elles further en- 
 quired, forgetting, too, to correct the title. 
 
 "Every day, unless it rains." 
 
 "And what does he do then?" 
 
 "Bides at home and pents." 
 73
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 73 
 
 Mrs. Elles was recalled to a sense of the impropriety 
 of all these questions on her part, and she dismissed 
 the girl haughtily. She dressed, put back her hair, 
 and resumed her spectacles with a sigh, but without 
 hesitation. She had no full length mirror here to 
 show her the oddish, but not ungraceful appearance 
 that she presented, for, although her facial beauties 
 were temporarily obscured, her slight figure in its 
 boyish trim had a certain attractiveness of its own. 
 The average glance would cursorily set her down for 
 a well-grown school girl, labouring under a temporary 
 affection of the eyes, which was, however, not serious 
 enough to interfere with her health and spirits. 
 
 After she had breakfasted, in pursuance of a plan 
 that she had conceived, she got one of the landlady's 
 sons to drive her over to Barnard Castle, where she 
 purchased an outfit of drawing materials and a cheap 
 Student's Manual of Art. In the afternoon Mr. 
 Rivers, she ascertained, never came back to the inn 
 for luncheon, but took out some sandwiches, which 
 he ate, if he remembered to do so she selected a 
 point of view, just by the bridge over the Greta, a 
 stone's throw from the inn. She there began a study 
 of the Student's Manual, and her own capabilities in 
 the way of handling a pencil. 
 
 She had had no previous training, but she was just 
 clever enough to produce a not utterly despicable 
 result, and that was all she had dared to hope. She 
 did not expect to see the artist that day, nor did she ; 
 but she was not bored, although she had no one to
 
 74 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 speak to, and, to a woman of her temperament, that 
 fact alone would, in the ordinary course of things, 
 have engendered complete despair. But then, things 
 were not by any means in then* ordinary course ; the 
 very air was full of adventure and excitement of the 
 vaguest and most blameless nature. Mrs. Elles had 
 no precise idea of what it was that she hoped and 
 desired, and with the unconscious diplomacy of the 
 dual mind, took very good care not even to formu- 
 late it. 
 
 But next day, as she sat on her camp stool, with a 
 half finished sketch of the picturesque stone bridge 
 across her knee, she felt, rather than heard, Mr. 
 Rivers coming down the road behind her. Hastily 
 she pushed her spectacles back into position over her 
 eyes, and turned a very little in his direction. 
 
 "Good morning," he said, pleasantly enough. 
 
 "Good morning," she said, half rising. "I 
 have been wanting to thank you so much all these 
 days." 
 
 "For what?" 
 
 "For recommending this delightful inn to me, of 
 course." 
 
 The spectacles interfered somewhat with the arch 
 play of her eyebrows as she said this, very demurely. 
 
 He looked, if possible, a little abashed. 
 
 "Well, I can hardly say that I recommended it. 
 In fact, I rather tried to warn you off it. I thought 
 it would be too rough for a lady. I am glad you find 
 it pretty comfortable."
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 75 
 
 "I only wanted quiet, like you," she said. "I have 
 been very much overwrought, lately, and this is the 
 very thing for me. You see, I am trying to occupy 
 myself a little!" she pointed to her sketch. 
 
 "But you have not got the best point of view not 
 by any means," he exclaimed. "I am not venturing 
 to look at your drawing, of course, but I know " 
 
 "Oh, please!" she said, holding up the sketch. 
 "If only you would, I should be so grateful." 
 
 He looked at her drawing carefully and critically. 
 
 "You really have not at all a bad idea ; but I should 
 sacrifice that sketch if I were you you have not got 
 very far on with it, and the abutment of the bridge 
 comes so badly in it and begin a new one, here, 
 further down . . . I will show you." 
 
 Without any exhibition of the amateur's stubborn- 
 ness, she rose cheerfully, and allowed him to move 
 her camp-stool for her to a place where the abutment 
 presented a more graceful aspect. Little did she care 
 for abutments, but she was delighted that he should 
 take an interest in her work. He stood looking at 
 the view he had chosen for her with professionally 
 half -closed eyes. 
 
 "It comes better from here, don't you think!" he 
 said. 
 
 "Oh, I don't think I know nothing about it!" 
 she cried. "I am only a beginner, and have never 
 had any instruction at all!" 
 
 "Yes, I can see that," he replied drily, "but let 
 me tell you, you haven't at all a bad notion of per-
 
 76 
 
 spective! Plenty of people learn perspective pain- 
 fully and never get as near it as that. I have always 
 held that perspective came by nature I never learned 
 it, at any rate!" 
 
 He looked down at her then with considerable 
 benignity, as supporting a beloved theory, adding, 
 however, sharply, "I cannot understand how you 
 manage to see through those. "Well, persevere! You 
 will find it come very nicely like that And now, I 
 must be off !" 
 
 "Are you going to that place where I saw you the 
 other day?" she enquired, with eager simplicity. 
 Since he spoke to her as if he considered her a school- 
 girl, she would use the privileges appertaining to that 
 inchoate and irresponsible age towards him. At the 
 same time she shot a glance not precisely of the 
 schoolgirl in his direction, that was only rendered 
 void and vain by the smoky barrier interposed between 
 it and its object. In another minute she would have 
 summoned up courage to ask him if she might go to 
 Brignal with him, but he nonplussed her by raising 
 his cap, in token of farewell, and making a quick, 
 decisive movement across the bridge, as if he had not 
 heard her question. 
 
 She sat down resignedly in the new place he had 
 chosen for her, and made a few ineffectual strokes 
 with her pencil. To herself she muttered, "I wonder 
 how old? a forward sixteen? or a stunted eighteen, 
 perhaps?" words which had obviously no reference to 
 her drawing. She knitted her brows with all the
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 77 
 
 petty rage of the amateur ; she aggressively sharpened 
 her pencil and broke it, five times over; and at last, 
 in a fit of temper consistent with the extreme juve- 
 nility of Rivers' presumed conception of her, tosssd 
 both the sketches into the Greta and watched them 
 float easily away on the changing ripples. 
 
 "They will go down to where he is," she thought, 
 full of a sense of the continuity of this stream flowing 
 down that long dark glen leading to the light, where 
 the master sat in his earthly paradise and recked not 
 of his hopeless and despairing pupil. 
 
 "And why should he?" was her next reflection. 
 "What a fool I am! But, indeed, a man like that is 
 wasted on Nature, and Nature is evidently the only 
 thing in the world that he cares for!" 
 
 Signs of unusual activity, and the smell of piping 
 hot pie-crust greeted her when she went rather 
 drearily back to the inn for her luncheon. 
 
 The bare, barn-like room was swept and garnished 
 unusually. Great bunches of pink phlox, tied up 
 with blue ribbons, were nailed into the corners and 
 clashed with the lavender-coloured plaster; festoons 
 of miscellaneous verdure were disposed across and all 
 round the severe texts on the walls, and the terrors 
 of "Prepare to meet thy God!" were veiled in purple 
 fuchias and yellow marigolds. Her humble little 
 lunch of cold British beef was laid for her, as usual, 
 on a corner of the tressel table. The landlady of the 
 "Heather Bell" came up to her as she was eating it, 
 and her buxom arms were floured to the elbow, where
 
 78 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 a couple of currants were sticking in token of her 
 recent occupation. 
 
 "We 're that busy," she began, breathlessly. "We've 
 got a cheap trip comin' fra' Barney Cassel this after- 
 noon near a hundred of 'em. I've baked thirty pies 
 this very morning, and I was a-goin' to ask ye, Miss, 
 if ye would mind get tin' yer dinner along o' the 
 gentleman, for we shall na have seen the last on 'em 
 till fair on to neet, and a tarrible mess they'se leave 
 behind, I'se warrant 'em!" 
 
 Mrs. Elles' heart leaped, but she controlled her 
 emotions and recalled the busy landlady, who had 
 turned away as if the point was settled. 
 
 'Stop, Mrs. Watson I am not sure that Mr. 
 Rivers will like that!" 
 
 "Hout, lassie, then he'll just hae to put up wi' it! 
 Leave him alone; I'll settle it wi' him." 
 
 "No, no!" dubiously. 
 
 "But I tell ye, ye must ! We canna let ye have the 
 
 *t * */ <J 
 
 room to-day, and that's flat!" repeated Mrs. Watson, 
 sturdily, but without acrimony. 
 
 "Then I won't dine at all!" Mrs. Elles said, 
 vehemently, but without decision. 
 
 She took up her hat, however, and walked slowly 
 down the road to the Park Gates, rang the porter's 
 bell, and was admitted. She went along the Broad 
 Walk and through the yew grove, till she came to the 
 right bank of the Greta, which flows through the Park 
 of Rokeby on its way to join the Tees, just outside 
 its limits.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEEEST 79 
 
 She sat there for the whole of the afternoon, 
 watching the owner of the Park and the Hall, whose 
 smoke she could just see curling through the trees, 
 as he waded about in his own river, in his loose india- 
 rubber leggings, and caught his own trout in calm 
 and contentment. 
 
 She was surprised to find how little bored she was. 
 She did not intend to be. She made a point of being 
 amused by the varied aspects of nature free untram- 
 melled exuberant nature that were being presented 
 to her. It was the very quintessence of wild life that 
 surrounded her now. The ceaseless ripple of the 
 river was relieved by the frequent splash and flicker 
 of the enormous trout that tenanted it, as they rose 
 flippantly to the surface or were dragged there by the 
 imperious rod. Queer cries, that came out of the 
 brake behind her, betokened the sad little dramas of 
 animal life that were going on behind the leafy screen. 
 The squeak of the rabbit at its last stand before the 
 murderous weasel ; the scuffle of the little birds upon 
 whom the sparrow-hawk dashed, leaving those sad 
 heaps of grey, white-rooted feathers to tell the tale of 
 rapine, came to her ears, as did the more peaceful 
 coo of the wood-pigeons from the coverts of thorn and 
 hazel on the other and steeper side of the river. 
 "Milk the coo, Katie!" such was Mrs. Watson's 
 homely interpretation of their cry, and she found 
 herself repeating it over and over again to herself. 
 
 Everything pleased her and responded to the mood 
 she was in. There was a "distant dearness" in the
 
 80 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 hilla that bowered in this happy valley, "a secret 
 sweetness in the stream" that flowed to a place two 
 miles off, where, indeed, she would fain have been, 
 but that would come in time. She was full of a 
 great peace. She thought she could almost feel the 
 wrinkles of ennui and harassment slowly fading out 
 of her forehead, and the tangle of rebellious nerves 
 that had driven her away from her home smoothing 
 themselves out, as she sat there, and, like Words- 
 worth's Lucy, allowed "beauty born of murmuring 
 sound to pass into her face." True to herself, she 
 immediately forced a personal application, and 
 reduced Nature into subserviency to the Human 
 Interest. With a well pointed tag of verse she pointed 
 and emphasized the sensations of Phoebe Elles now 
 become the motive and main pivot of the most beauti- 
 ful landscape in the world. 
 
 For the moment with her the health motive reigned 
 supreme. She was no longer a runaway wife, she was 
 an invalid profiting by change of air. Nothing was 
 going to happen ; let the world stand still while she 
 was happy for the first time in her life. Surely she 
 had a right to a little happiness ! 
 
 She stayed there until the one red-trunked fir tree, 
 up there on the heights by Mortham Peel, caught 
 and glowed in the sunset light, and the damp mists 
 began to rise in their proportion from this enormous 
 area of rank foliage that engendered them. The 
 fisherman put up his rod and went home. The 
 doves cooed in a continuous monotone. Mrs. Elles
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 81 
 
 knew well enough by all these signs that it was get- 
 ting late. As she loitered slowly home, she could 
 hear on the other side of the high Park wall the 
 noisy passage of char-a-bancs, and vans full of jovial 
 people, whose hoarsely shouted refrain of "She's a 
 jolly good fellow!" testified to their appreciation of 
 Mrs. Watson's thirty pies and cheerful welcome. 
 Peace was evidently restored, and Mr. Eivers would 
 have had his dinner quietly and be done by the time 
 she got back. She was not at all hungry ; she would 
 have a glass of milk and a sandwich in her room. 
 She was a woman who habitually took strong coffee 
 twice a day. 
 
 "How changed I am!" she thought. 
 
 The party of trippers had gone, silence reigned, 
 but the open door of the meeting room, as she crossed 
 the hall on her way in, showed a wild and hideous 
 scene of tea-stained table-cloths and broken meats. 
 
 "An awful sight, isn't it?" asked Mr. Rivers, who 
 was standing a dark shape filling up the space, at 
 the door of his own room. Then he hesitated a 
 little. ... 
 
 "Mrs. Watson tells me that I am to have the 
 pleasure of your company to-night?" 
 
 His tone was absolutely courteous, but she failed to 
 detect any very strong cordiality in it, as was of 
 course natural. 
 
 "He thinks me an awful bore!" she thought, but 
 what she said was "I thought you would have dined 
 by this time."
 
 82 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "Of course I have not," he replied, raising his eye- 
 brows, "but I believe dinner is just ready." 
 
 He held the door of the sitting-room wide open for 
 her with just the right gesture and the right attitude 
 of courtly invitation. 
 
 "I must go and take off my hat," she said, quite 
 humbly, and ran upstairs. 
 
 Indeed, she had given fate every chance of depriv- 
 ing her of this pleasure. Fate was against her 
 or for her ! She conscientiously rubbed her hair flat 
 with a wet brush, disposed her spectacles squarely 
 over her eyes and walked' demurely downstairs to join 
 Mr. Eivers. 
 
 "Yes, it is fate!" she said to herself again, as she 
 sat down opposite him. The slatternly maid removed 
 the dull pewter cover from three sad and starved look- 
 ing chops and the shapeless ghosts of three potatoes, 
 and then shuffled out of the room like an escaped 
 convict. It was not luxury, but it was Paradise. 
 
 Still, in order to lead up to a question she wished 
 to ask him about the black-browed girl who had 
 waited on her a day or two before, Mrs. Elles 
 remarked, carelessly, "I don't think much of the 
 service at this inn; do you?" 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. "I think I warned you 
 not to expect much, did I not? But it is clean, at 
 any rate, and that's all I care for." 
 
 "Oh, yes, it is quite charming. But still that 
 clumsy servant must be rather a trial to you?" 
 
 "I am not fidgety," he said. "And I have taught
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 83 
 
 her not to touch my painting things. That is the 
 main point, for me. I had to be very strict about 
 that, for she completely ruined a drawing of mine, 
 once." 
 
 "How?" asked Mrs. Elles, interested. 
 
 "Oh, with the enquiring thumb of her class. It 
 lighted on the sky, unfortunately. She was dread- 
 fully sorry about it, and actually brought me five 
 shillings and asked me if that would cover the 
 damage? You know it takes an expert to handle a 
 drawing as the painter of it would like to see it 
 handled. I am quite beside myself sometimes, when 
 I have to stand by and see intending purchasers take 
 hold of them, and run their thumbs into the corners, 
 and make creases in the paper! But one can say 
 nothing, of course." 
 
 She looked at the artist's own hands, and noticed 
 the way he took hold of things. His long, thin, 
 eminently prehensile fingers had a way of deliber- 
 ately grasping an object in exactly the place where 
 the eye had previously decreed that it should be 
 grasped, without false shots or clumsy bungling of 
 any kind. It was a hand skilled in all mechanical 
 exercises, and apt at all delicate manoeuvres. It was 
 firm and strong, too the hand of an artist and a 
 craftsman. 
 
 He did not seem to notice that she was looking at 
 his hands and neglecting to carry on the conversa- 
 tion ; he had a trick of becoming absorbed in his own 
 thoughts at a moment's notice, so she had observed;
 
 84 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 but he could be recalled just as easily and quickly. 
 She went on presently 
 
 "That other girl's hands wouldn't make a mark, 
 would they? She seems rather superior." 
 
 "Who? The landlady's niece. Oh, she has been 
 at school in London, and is quite a personage 
 plays this piano in the winter, and reads 'George 
 Eliot.'" 
 
 "I don't like her," said Mrs. Elles, "and she 
 doesn't like me." 
 
 "Nonsense!" he said, as if he were speaking to a 
 child; "Jane Ann is a very good girl indeed." 
 
 "Her head is too big for her body," Mrs. Elles 
 added, irrelevantly; "and I can't bear people who 
 are what is called above then* station. A little edu- 
 cation is a dangerous thing, I think, if it makes 
 people priggish and stunts their growth. I notice 
 she never looks one straight in the face." 
 
 "Why should she?" said the painter, unexpectedly, 
 and that rather put an end to the conversation. 
 
 "I think of going and taking a little walk in the 
 Park, if I can, after dinner," Mrs. Elles presently 
 remarked, wishing to show that she did not intend to 
 be a nuisance. "I have spent the whole afternoon 
 there, already, and I think it must be most mysterious 
 and wonderful at night." 
 
 "Are you not afraid to meet the ghost?" 
 
 "I should perfectly love to meet it!" cried she, 
 clasping her hands together. 
 
 "Then, of course, you won't. 'The White Lady
 
 85 
 
 of Mortham' I believe here she is called by the less 
 poetical name of the 'Dobie!' won't show unless she 
 is to produce her effect and frighten you," 
 
 "I might frighten her," said Mrs. Elles, still harp- 
 ing on her own grotesque personal metamorphosis, 
 which was ever present to her mind. 
 
 But he did not take her up and she went on 
 
 "The Park reminds me of the Forest in Undine. 
 Do you remember Kiiheleborn and the mysterious 
 faces that used to come out of the Forest and peer in 
 at the window of the fisherman's cottage?" 
 
 She glanced as she said this at the window of the 
 room they were sitting in, the blind of which was not 
 drawn down, as usual. She could only suppose that 
 it was a fad of his, and that he had given the maid 
 orders to leave it so. She had not been in his com- 
 pany a couple of hours without realizing that he was 
 full of fads. 
 
 'The black night comes straight against the 
 pane," she went on dreamily. "All the ghosts in 
 the forest may come and look in on us if they choose ! 
 I rather like it, I have a weakness for ghosts. I feel 
 as if the White Lady of Mortham I prefer to call 
 her the spirit of the Greta might be looking in on 
 us now!" 
 
 She gave a little shudder, part real, part affected. 
 
 "I did see a woman's face at the window not now, 
 but last night!" mused the painter with a touch of 
 unexpected seriousness that finished the subjugation 
 of his sentimental listener. "I saw it quite clearly,
 
 86 THE HUMAN INTEKEST 
 
 as I see you now. It was wild and distraught look- 
 ing, as a spirit's face should be " 
 
 "Oh, you believe in ghosts, then? I am so glad." 
 
 "A landscape painter must personify Nature a 
 little, don't you think? He should raise altars to 
 propitiate the divinities of rivers and groves, so 
 important for him. The Greta especially has a very 
 wicked tutelary spirit, who needs keeping in a good 
 humour, only I have not time." 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "It has its bore, like the Severn, or the Seine its 
 Mascaret, and comes down occasionally without the 
 slightest warning, like a brown wall, and sweeps 
 everything, including landscape painters, before it." 
 
 "You have seen it?" 
 
 "No, I have only heard of it, as yet. And I hope, 
 when it comes, it will not take me unawares sitting 
 in the bed of the river as I so often do ! I should 
 have to run or rather leap for it!" 
 
 "It is a danger!" she said, quite seriously. 
 
 "Oh, one of the very few that beset the artistic field 
 of battle," he said, laughing; "there are not many. 
 It teaches us painters to 'look alive' and cultivate 
 some of the qualities of a sailor. I do have to get 
 into such funny places to paint from sometimes 
 places where I literally must hang on by my eyelids ! 
 . . . Now shall I ring for Dorothy to bring in some 
 other luxuries?" 
 
 Dorothy, summoned by a handbell, shambled in, 
 bringing a bleached and tremulous cornflour pudding
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 87 
 
 and three doddering baked apples, and set them down 
 solemnly before Mr. Rivers and Mrs. Elles. The 
 infatuated woman did not mind 
 
 "A jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou 
 Beside me, singing in the Wilderness, 
 Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!" 
 
 But when the maid had cleared the table, in her 
 own primitive, knock-me-down fashion, and replaced 
 the white cloth by the hideous tapestry one, covered 
 with its pattern of pink roses, faded and dulled, more- 
 over, by the constant splashing of the painter's brush 
 in the tumbler full of water which she, as regularly 
 as clockwork, placed on the middle 'patch of flowers 
 every evening, Mrs. Elles was suddenly overcome 
 by an unusual sense of shyness. This man made her 
 shy as no man before had ever done. He was so polite 
 and yet so distant. His want of self-consciousness 
 seemed a reproof to her imperious and pampered 
 personality. 
 
 To cover it, she rose and shyly looked round the 
 room that the artist had occupied year after year, and 
 on which he had presumably impressed himself, his 
 tastes, his prevailing habit of mind. 
 
 That habit, to judge by its chosen surroundings, 
 was a very ascetic one ; as different from her own as 
 possibly could be imagined. This was a workroom 
 pure and simple. Not an attempt had been made, it 
 would seem, to redeem its humble, commonplace 
 ugliness. Abraham, in coloured worsteds, com-
 
 88 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 placently sacrificed Isaac, over the mantelpiece; Mrs. 
 Elles would have covered the pair with an art rug of 
 some sort. The frosted-sugar top of Mrs. Watson's 
 wedding cake stood on the console; Mrs. Elles 
 would, regardless of offence to the poor old lady, 
 have requested her to remove it. Every other avail- 
 able table and cornice was heaped and piled with 
 sketch books; easels and bulging umbrellas filled up 
 all the four corners. There was a little stack of 
 books on the mantelshelf, but not a single work of 
 fiction was to be discerned among them. There was 
 Shelley just the watery, bloodless, spiritually intense 
 poet that she would expect Rivers to appreciate. 
 There were some flowers in a little china dog on the 
 side table, garden flowers, phloxes and stocks, but 
 these Mrs. Elles rightly attributed to the solicitude 
 of the landlady's niece. The whole room was 
 intensely significant to her of those qualities, which, 
 with her trick of hasty generalization, she now chose 
 to attribute to this man, modesty, endurance, and 
 self-abnegation, and a whole-souled devotion to his 
 art and the purposes of his art. 
 
 There was the old-fashioned, silk-fluted piano on 
 one side of the room, to which he had alluded, and 
 she paused, with her hand on the curved lid. 
 
 "Oh, that has stood there ever since I first came 
 here," the artist said; "I have never dared to open 
 it. Jane Anne plays on it in the winter, I believe. 
 This house, from its neighbourhood to the park, is so 
 damp that I am sure that no piano could endure it
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 89 
 
 and live. That is the worst of all embowering trees ! 
 Have you noticed that one's notepaper becomes like 
 blotting paper?" 
 
 How should she notice, who had no notepaper of 
 her own, and wrote no letters? She opened the 
 instrument and played a bar or two. 
 
 "Quite tolerable!" she pronounced. 
 
 He quietly put a chair in front of it, without say- 
 ing anything, and she sat down and played a bit of 
 her favourite Chopin. 
 
 He thanked her, not very warmly. 
 
 "Don't you like Chopin?" 
 
 "He does me no good. Too restless! What is 
 the use of setting all one's nerves in an uproar, as he 
 does, and giving one no solution? I confess that I 
 like music that resolves me. Beethoven, for in- 
 stance." 
 
 "Oh, Beethoven resolves you, does he?" She 
 hardly knew what Rivers meant, but she knew that 
 she did not care for Beethoven. "What a pity I don't 
 know any of him! Is he " she hesitated; she was 
 becoming shy of airing her tentative little theories to 
 this man whose culture, as she apprehended, had its 
 roots in tradition, in a knowledge far deeper than she 
 could claim for her own, mere "self-made" woman 
 that she was "is he the landscape painter's musi- 
 cian, as Shelley is his poet?" 
 
 "I should say that Wordsworth was that, more 
 properly." 
 
 "I hate Wordsworth!" she answered, with vigour
 
 90 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 and truth, "and as for Shelley, I should call him the 
 poet of physical geography!" 
 
 He laughed. "You don't care for atmospheric 
 effects in poetry, I see. You prefer Keats." 
 
 "Yes, I do. And as for putting on his tombstone 
 that his name was to be writ in water, I think that 
 would have suited Shelley far better. Keats' name 
 should have been written in blood he was passionate. 
 . . . Shall I try to sing something to you." Her 
 singing was nothing wonderful, but sweet and sym- 
 pathetic and never out of tune. All her gifts wero 
 natural, she had always been too restless to apply 
 herself to any but that of pose, which she had 
 brought to so high a pitch of perfection. 
 
 But the songs which she sang were the kind of songs 
 that Rivers seemed to like, for his brown eyes grow 
 soft and limpid and his face looked less set and more 
 open as he listened. 
 
 For this parity in their likings she had to thank 
 her husband, who, in the days when she had cared to 
 please him, had insisted on her cultivating an 
 acquaintance with the simple national airs of all 
 countries that he could join in. She felt, somehow, 
 that a little French repertory she had would not be 
 appropriate just now and refrained from producing it. 
 
 She sang on until the sound of shutters closing and 
 the tramp of heavy-booted men the landlady's two 
 stalwart sons trooping up to their beds in the attics, 
 warned them of the lateness of the hour according to 
 country canons.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 91 
 
 "If yon do care at all for my songs," she asked, 
 deprecatingly, as he lit her candle for her at the foot 
 of the stairs, "may I come and play for you again 
 another evening?" 
 
 Her glance both their glances, as she spoke, were 
 irresistibly directed to that scene of havoc and dis- 
 aster, the meeting-room, whose open door confronted 
 them. It was swept and cleared now of the litter of 
 the tea, and freshly sanded, but still as dreary and 
 comfortless an abiding place as could well be 
 imagined. 
 
 "You had better use my sitting-room in future 
 that is, if you will. That barrack of a room is not fit 
 for anyone to inhabit. But you will not mind my 
 working as usual, and then, I am afraid I get so 
 absorbed that I cannot talk, or even be ordinarily 
 civil!" 
 
 "Oh, may I really?" she cried. "I assure you I 
 shall be quite happy sitting beside you," she was 
 going to say, but corrected it into "with my book!" 
 Though where the literature was to come from that 
 was to keep her quiet was more than she knew. 
 Excepting the Shelley, Taine's "Historic de PEsthet- 
 ique Anglaise" was quite the lightest work on 
 Rivers' mantelpiece, and she had had, of course, no 
 books among her luggage. 
 
 "Very well, then, we will look upon that as set- 
 tled," he said, shortly, and held out his hand again 
 to say good- night. 
 
 "I will come in in the evenings, if you will let me,
 
 92 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 when it really is melancholy in that big meeting- 
 room, but during the day " 
 
 "During the day I am generally out, so you will 
 be able to have the room entirely to yourself," he 
 rejoined, in his own disconcerting manner, and the 
 candle he was holding seemed to her to light up a 
 little flicker of something like amusement in his eyes. 
 
 "Yes, I know," she said, desperately, "at that 
 place in the woods where I first met you. Has the 
 foxglove grown again? I wanted to ask you. I shall 
 come and see for myself some day." 
 
 She spoke with an assumed archness, with all the 
 while a fearful stricture about the heart, lest she was 
 alienating him by her boldness as of the schoolgirl 
 she believed him to believe her to be. Her candle- 
 stick, which she had now taken from his hand, 
 trembled in her own. 
 
 "Do!" he replied, civilly, in a tone absolutely 
 devoid of all enthusiasm. Jane Anne crossed the 
 hall as they loosed their hands. "And now, good- 
 night!" 
 
 Mrs. Elles waited a whole day before she profited 
 by the artist's invitation to visit him at the place 
 where he worked. She was rewarded for her discre- 
 tion, for, at dinner that very evening, he asked her 
 coolly why she had not been? So, the day after,' she 
 walked over to Brignal and stayed full fifteen min- 
 utes at his side. She managed to be so little of a 
 nuisance that, next day, she was emboldened to take 
 over her drawing materials at the artist 's own sugges-
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 93 
 
 tion, and began a series of minute and painstaking 
 sketches of the vegetation of the immediate fore- 
 ground, to be used by him afterwards as memoranda. 
 He had admitted that it would be useful to him. 
 
 Then it became a settled thing that she should walk 
 over every day after twelve o'clock, and take him his 
 letters and the papers which were left at the "Heather 
 Bell" by the postman from Barnard Castle quite an 
 hour after his departure. Thus the compromising 
 fact of her own total dearth of correspondence 
 escaped his attention, if, indeed, he should take cog- 
 nizance of such a detail. 
 
 She marvelled at his extraordinary power of detach- 
 ment. Did matters merely mundane ever impress 
 him? Did anything, humanly speaking, ever put 
 him out, except in so far as it interfered with his 
 work? Was he literally, as he used to say himself, 
 only a registering machine of effects and views, 
 pledged to render an actual transcript of Nature, 
 seen, as is the condition of all art, through a tem- 
 perament, but a temperament merely receptive, 
 limpid, clear, and untroubled by the waves of passion- 
 ate human yearnings and desires? There was actually 
 something of what Browning calls the "terrible com- 
 posure" of Nature about him, she thought, a patient, 
 broad-minded, magnificent way of regarding things 
 entailed by a continual contemplation of her vast- 
 ness, her implacabilities, her unconscious cruelties 
 and brutalities. She never could forget Eivers' 
 behaviour in a thunderstorm that overtook them one
 
 94 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 Sunday afternoon by Scargill Tower. Out came the 
 sketch book, quick as the lightning that seemed to 
 flicker in its horribly malicious way down by the 
 stone wall that edged the road they wore walking 
 along. 
 
 "I must have that!" he murmured. V By Jove!" 
 He actually stopped, and stood still on the white 
 road among the falling thunderbolts, as it seemed to 
 her. She stopped too and opened her puny umbrella, 
 trying to ward off some of the heavy rain-drops from 
 the leaves of the sketch book. It never even seemed 
 to occur to the artist that she might be afraid, or wet. 
 She was not afraid, such was the contagion of his 
 courage, but she was wet through. The rain splashed 
 on his paper in spite of her efforts, and blended 
 together colours that the artist hastily cast on, into 
 shapes unexpected by him, but still a memorandum 
 of the breathing light and steam of mist over there 
 by Cotherstone, where the storm that oppressed them 
 now was passing off, had been secured. It was quite 
 worth her while ; she had the satisfaction of knowing 
 that Rivers could not think her a coward. He did 
 not tell her so, but took her pluck and superiority to 
 feminine weakness as a matter of course. 
 
 She was driven to try and please him by the 
 achievement of new virtues, entirely foreign to her 
 nature. She laughed, sometimes, when she thought 
 of herself, the leader of what there was of advanced 
 literary thought in Newcastle the lady who could 
 discuss the higher ethics, and expound the morbid-
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 95 
 
 ities of Amiel and Meredith to a select cultured circle, 
 being forced to recommend herself to the man she 
 loved by a display of mere physical courage, and even 
 manual dexterity. Yes, she found she could really 
 please Eivers best by attending to his bridge for him. 
 
 This was a rough arrangement of stepping stones, 
 which the painter had made for himself before he 
 came there, by manipulating the loose boulders of 
 the river bed a little. It constituted a short cut from 
 the inn to his sketching place, and saved him a 
 mile's walk at least. He had taken good care to give 
 the stream play between the rough piers of his bridge 
 as it were, leaving enormous gaps and chasms, but 
 still the river resented being interfered with, and 
 altered the position of the stones and washed them 
 away sometimes in the night, of malice prepense, as 
 Mrs. Elles declared. She found plenty to do every 
 day in replacing the stones that had been dislodged 
 and adding new ones, and worked away merrily, 
 thinking of Cincinnatus and his plough, and of the 
 picture Dante began to paint for Beatrice, in this 
 connection. 
 
 "The very first time the river comes down," Eivers 
 prophesied, "all our work will have to be done over 
 again. There will be no bridge left!" 
 
 She could, of course, have shown herself a great 
 deal more agile without her spectacles, which ham- 
 pered her continually, but she had made a point of 
 never removing them in sight of her fellow creatures, 
 and only ventured to push them up over her brows
 
 96 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 when she was alone with only cows and squirrels for 
 witnesses. She clung to them, as a saint might hug 
 his cross or an anchorite his hair-shirt. They sym- 
 bolized the purity of her intentions, they were her 
 armour of honourable woman and loyal wife to Morti- 
 mer ; her ticket-of -leave indeed, when she thought of 
 him and all that he implied. She put the odious and 
 tiresome things on every morning, as a knight endures 
 his panoply or buckles on his shield of proof, and 
 honourably continued to wander about in a cold, blue, 
 local atmosphere of her own, aware only through her 
 other senses of the glow of yellow light and hope that 
 lay outside, besieging the frigid unreceptive discs of 
 her self-imposed barrier in vain. 
 
 'It is hateful, but it just saves the situation," she 
 would say to herself. "And it makes me free. I 
 can say what I like and do what I like, so long as I 
 don't look what I like!" But, indeed, there were 
 times when that last item of forbearance seemed the 
 hardest item of all. 
 
 Yes, the odd and distressing thing was that, in con- 
 sequence of her wearing them, she had never really 
 seen Rivers' face, and, worse than that even, he had 
 never seen hers. He betrayed no curiosity, no desire 
 at all to see it, and his indifference affronted her 
 vanity not a little. There must be something left out 
 of a man, she argued, who could take pleasure in the 
 society of such an example of unsexed, negative 
 womanhood as she presented. For she was sure that 
 he did take pleasure in her society, now, in an odd,
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 97 
 
 misogynistical way that he was glad when he saw 
 her come stumbling and tottering across the bridge of 
 slippery stones to him of a morning, sometimes even 
 staying herself by one hand on the moist slabs of 
 moss-grown rock that lay in her passage, the other 
 holding high and dry her budget of letters and news. 
 His voice, as he bade her good morning, sometimes 
 even without looking up he was so occupied testi- 
 fied to a certain pleasurable anticipation of her com- 
 pany, or at least she thought so. 
 
 'Oh, only your bridge-maker!" she used to say to 
 him as she came up, frankly accepting the position. 
 "I have put three new stones in to-day." 
 
 "He doesn't treat me as if I were a woman at all!" 
 she said to herself bitterly, "and I believe I am less 
 of a woman than I was. I am more manly; I think 
 less of my looks and more of my muscles. I never 
 even knew I had any, till I came here!" She sighed. 
 "Yes, I see I must cultivate this aspect of me, and 
 keep the eternal feminine relentlessly down. It 
 would frighten him, or at any rate disturb him. 
 Would it? Ah, I dare not try. I must stay as I am, 
 absolutely non-committal!" 
 
 She sighed again.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Mrs. Elles had arrived at Rokeby on a Monday. 
 When Sunday came round, she had been prepared for 
 the usual flying in the face of Philistine custom and 
 observance that prevailed in her own circle and 
 imagined that the artist would go out to paint as 
 usual or perhaps as a concession to popular prejudice 
 stay and work indoors. But to her intense surprise 
 and amusement, eleven o'clock on Sunday morning 
 found her murmuring the Litany by the side of the 
 artist in the parish church, among the placid farmers 
 and their complacent, Sunday-bedizened wives. Mr. 
 Rivers, it seemed, was in the habit of going to church 
 every Sunday, and, when she discovered this, it had 
 seemed quite natural to go with him, though it was 
 the first time she had been inside the walls of a 
 church since her marriage. The service, to her mind 
 unblunted by custom, seemed very picturesque; so 
 was the church, a beautiful specimen of pure early 
 Gothic, and the figure of this grave, handsome man, 
 standing by her side, with his dark head relieved 
 against the white plaster background, most natural of 
 all. 
 
 "If anyone had told me, a month ago," she 
 98
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 99 
 
 thought, "that I should be doing this, I believe I 
 should have laughed in his face." 
 
 She felt happy, but a little out of place, and looked 
 it, perhaps, for the vicar, a stolid, white-bearded, 
 dignified man, stared at her over the pulpit cushion, 
 discreetly, while a thin, little, sharp-nosed lady, pre- 
 sumably of some authority in the congregation, did 
 so, too, indiscreetly. Jane Anne, who played the har- 
 monium, was discretion itself and never even glanced 
 her way, but Mrs. Elles thought she read excommu- 
 nication and condemnation in every turn of her not 
 too supple wrist. 
 
 "So you go to church every Sunday?" Mrs. Elles 
 said to Kivers, as they walked down the path and 
 away together. "Somehow I thought artists " 
 
 "Never went to church?" He finished her sen- 
 tence for her. "Well, I don't know. I don't do it 
 as a religious observance, exactly, I am afraid. I do 
 it because I like it, here in the country. Besides," 
 he added, "it is a beautiful church!" 
 
 Mrs. Elles, who considered herself an agnostic, was 
 satisfied, by this speech, that Rivers' church-going 
 was the result of his indulgence of aesthetic needs 
 rather than spiritual ones; though, indeed, she 
 would have been quite ready to embrace any faith to 
 which he should pronounce his adhesion. 
 
 "How picturesque the Vicar's white hair is!" she 
 remarked, aloud. "Do you know him?" 
 
 "Oh, yes; Mr. Popham. He will come now to call 
 on you, since you have been to call on him."
 
 100 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "Good heavens! Does he go to see you?" she 
 cried, with what would appear to be uncalled-for 
 emphasis. 
 
 "Yes; he comes now and again, but I am always 
 out. We generally meet somewhere about the place, 
 and then we get on very well. He had a tiresome 
 habit of coming and looking over my shoulder at 
 Brignal, but I have trained him not to stay very long. " 
 
 "Is he married?" she enquired, eagerly. 
 
 "Yes; that was his wife in the pew to the right." 
 
 "Does she come and look over your shoulder, 
 too?" 
 
 "She takes a tender interest in my work," Rivers 
 said, laughing. "She is by way of being an artist 
 herself, you see." 
 
 "That little, starved, angular, high-cheek-boned 
 woman, without a touch of artistic feeling about her, 
 and bonnet strings of the wrong colour ! ' ' 
 
 "You must not go by bonnet strings entirely. 
 They are a matter of convention. Mrs. Popham has 
 a very good eye for colour, let me tell you, only she is 
 dreadfully shy of publicity, and would think it quite 
 improper to exhibit. One never knows into what 
 vessels the spirit will be poured. I go in in the 
 evening sometimes and look over her sketches ; she is 
 very good to me. She walked all the way to Brignal 
 once, with a cork mat for me to put my feet on!" 
 
 "And did you use it? I never see you!" 
 
 "It bores me that sort of thing bores me. You 
 will find it in my sketching bag, though."
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 101 
 
 "What is the good of carrying it there and back 
 every day, if you don't use it?" 
 
 "Ah, but in case she were to come, I would hastily 
 adjust it under my feet, so as not to hurt her feelings. 
 But she is not likely to walk so far." 
 
 "I suppose she is perfectly devoted to you, like 
 everybody else?" 
 
 He did not take any notice of her remark. 
 
 "So is Jane Anne!" she next observed. 
 
 "Jane Anne is a very clever girl," replied Eivers, 
 too single-minded and too busy to see the construction 
 that might be put on the turn of his phrase. 
 
 "She may be a mute inglorious Milton!" remarked 
 Mrs. Elles, "but I am sure she is not a nice nature. 
 She looks a potential murderess with those lowering 
 brows. As for Mrs. Popham, I don't know her." 
 
 "Ah, but you will!" 
 
 "I hope sincerely I shall not," Mrs. Elles muttered, 
 under her breath. Mrs. Popham might be a noble 
 soul, and a very fair water-colour artist, but still a 
 woman with surely an enquiring mind and a scent 
 for irregular situations. 
 
 She began to dread the Pophams and Jane Anne, 
 and to regard them as natural enemies. Jane Anne 
 she could not avoid meeting about the house, and the 
 girl was so antipathetic to her that she made a point 
 of not encountering her eyes, and did this so obviously 
 as to provoke an enmity which, possibly, had so far 
 only existed in her own imagination. 
 
 The vicar and his wife, whether by accident or
 
 102 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 design, never crossed her path. One day, when she 
 made her accustomed pilgrimage to Brignal, she saw 
 that Rivers was not alone, and, at first, thought it 
 was the sacerdotal back that blotted the fan* land- 
 scape. But it was not Mr. Popham's; it was that of 
 the opulent farmer on whose land Rivers had taken 
 up his position, and with whom the dispute of the 
 pig's unlawful consumption of Naples yellow had long 
 been arranged amicably. Farmer Ward was standing 
 by the side of the artist, passing his felt wide-awake 
 from one hand to the other and staring up into the sky 
 as if he expected the first rain-drop of the autumn to 
 fall on his expectant features from moment to moment. 
 
 "No, it won't rain to-day," Rivers was saying, 
 decidedly, "but yon had better make the most of the 
 opportunity, for I won't vouch for this spell of 
 weather lasting." 
 
 "Aal reet, Measter, I'll take yer word for't. . . . 
 Ye see, Miss," he turned to the young woman who 
 now approached, "artisses and sech like, they seem 
 to know the meanin' of it all! " he waved his hand 
 comprehensively round the horizon, "a deal better 
 nor we do." 
 
 "We are bound to notice it," said Rivers, indul- 
 gently. "You see, the weather affects our crops, 
 too!" He pointed to his canvas. 
 
 "Ha! Ha! Measter, I takes ye! And if I might be 
 so bold as to ask, what might ye happen to get for that 
 little pectewer there? A matter o' fifteen shillin' 
 or saxteen, maybe."
 
 THE HUMAN INTEEEST 103 
 
 "My good man, how do you think I could possibly 
 live at that rate? I have been at this thing a month 
 already!" 
 
 "Ay, ay, Measter, but then, some folks is pertiekler 
 slow!" 
 
 "There's a snub for me!" whispered Rivers to 
 Mrs. Elles. 
 
 "But it's agrand pectewer, all the same," continued 
 the honest farmer, "though I'd like it better a deal, 
 I must say, if there was a bit o' life in it, just a hen 
 and chicken preening about maybe, or a bit doggie, 
 ye knaw, or even the young leddie here! . . . Well, 
 I'll just be going now, I'm thinkin' !" 
 
 He touched his cap and withdrew, tactfully, con- 
 scious that the "gentry" might perhaps be getting a 
 little tired of him. 
 
 "Why do you never put people into your pictures?" 
 Mrs. Elles enquired. "I confess I am like Farmer 
 Ward; I should like it better, too!" 
 
 "Somehow, I never care much for the human 
 interest in landscape." 
 
 "Or in life either?" Mrs. Elles hazarded. It was 
 the same remark she had made to Egidia. 
 
 "I don't know anything about that," he replied, 
 distantly, "but I think the introduction of figures is 
 always somewhat of an insult to landscape. One 
 ought to be able to make a transcript of nature 
 interesting without the adventitious aid of figures, it 
 seems to me, though certainly Turner had no such 
 theory. There is generally a boy and a kite, or a
 
 104 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 man and a dog in the foreground of his pictures. 
 There is^ often a suggestion of cruelty, of tor- 
 ture of animals that I could wish a\vay, for in- 
 stance " 
 
 "Yes, you do hate people!" Mrs. Elles insisted, 
 unconsciously cutting short his little dissertation on 
 his idol, Turner, far too impersonal in its application 
 to interest her. "You have all the instincts of a 
 recluse, although you force yourself to he civil to 
 bores when they come your way. Tell me, didn't 
 you hate me when I first came?" 
 
 'You took me hy storm rather," he admitted. 
 "You were so rapid in your tactics that you didn't 
 even give me time to harden my heart against you. 
 Of course I am speaking of you as a mere tourist, as I 
 thought you were the first time I saw you. And I 
 was rather rude to you at first?" 
 
 "Very," she said. "You did your best to put me 
 off the inn, but you are not sorry now that you 
 failed, are you?" 
 
 "Of course I am not!" he replied, cordially, and it 
 was quite the nicest and most encouraging thing he 
 had ever said to her. 
 
 "It seems to me that I have frightened away your 
 other bore the Vicar," she said, carelessly. "He 
 never comes here, and she has never called on me, as 
 you said she would. Not that I think you mind not 
 seeing anyone! Yes, you are an arrant hermit at 
 heart Shelley must have meant you when he wrote 
 Alaetor the Spirit of Solitude. I was reading that
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 105 
 
 the other day in your Shelley ; I am studying Shelley, 
 now." 
 
 "I admit that my instincts are unsociable," he said, 
 with his brush between his teeth. "I don't see how 
 I am to help it. The conditions of a landscape 
 painter's life make it necessarily a very solitary and 
 inhuman one. You see I am in the country for the 
 greater part of the year, and I never tell anyone 
 where I go. I call my pictures by fanciful titles, so 
 as not to have to put the name of the place in the 
 catalogues. It is absurd, but then it happens to be 
 the only way I can work. I generally don't open my 
 lips from June to November, at least not to talk to 
 persons of culture! The other sort doesn't matter." 
 
 "Don't you care to study people?" she said. 
 
 "It is my business to study the physiognomy of 
 clouds, the character of tree trunks, not faces!" 
 
 "Don't speak so ferociously!" she said laughingly. 
 "You mean that your only books are not women's 
 looks. It is Nature who is your mistress " 
 
 "Yes, and a nice capricious mistress she is, and very 
 hard her service!" 
 
 "But she never did betray the heart that loved her 
 we have that on good authority!" 
 
 "Betray no, but she does lead him a dance!" the 
 artist exclaimed passionately. "She rains her tears 
 on him, she blows hurricanes on him, she plagues him 
 with flies, and, what is worse, wasps she lets him 
 break his back, and contract his chest with stooping, 
 the better to deal with her. She is never the same
 
 106 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 for two minutes together. She is exacting and 
 exclusive. 'Thou shalt have no other mistress but 
 me!' she says. 'You shall dance attendance on all 
 my moods, and submit to all my caprices, and you 
 shall go on trying to paint the unpaintable all your 
 life, and die before you have succeeded in doing it!' " 
 
 The painter, having grown a little serious and 
 excited over his own tirade, ended it with a little laugh 
 at himself, and she murmured with apparent inconse- 
 quence, "Oh, I think it such a pity such a waste!" 
 
 "What do you mean?" he asked her, negligently, 
 and stayed not for an answer it was a little way he 
 had. She would have been ashamed to admit to him 
 what her meaning had been ; that he was still young, 
 that he was handsome, that, in her opinion, such a 
 man was thrown away on the service of Nature. She 
 changed the conversation by offering to read him some 
 passages from the Newcastle paper. 
 
 He nodded in assent. She first gathered and 
 fastened two large fern fronds behind each ear, as a 
 clerk his pen, to keep away the flies which Rivers' 
 mistress Nature continued to send him. She felt 
 herself already so hideously travestied, that an 
 added touch of grotesqueness or so did not matter. 
 Then she began to read aloud in her quick, impulsive 
 way. She had not read more than a few sentences, 
 when she stopped suddenly. The painter might, or 
 might not, have been attending to her, but the sud- 
 den cessation of her voice inevitably excited his 
 attention.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 107 
 
 "Well?" he asked her sharply. 
 
 "I stopped. It was getting so dull in that part of 
 the paper," she said, confusedly, bent on herself 
 getting the gist of a certain paragraph that had 
 caught her eye. 
 
 It was an account of an archaeological meeting that 
 had recently been held in Newcastle, where Mr. 
 Mortimer Elles had seconded the motion of somebody 
 or other, and had "given an exceedingly humorous 
 turn" to the debate. 
 
 She pored over it with a certain sense of bitterness, 
 mingled with relief. 
 
 "So he is cheerful enough to make bad jokes! 
 He is getting on all right. I need not have troubled 
 to be anxious ! He will have told all my friends and 
 his that his gadding fool of a wife is away amusing 
 herself on a visit. He is quite clever enough to 
 invent some excuse like that! Men don't care to 
 admit that they have been run away from!" 
 
 Mr. Kivers had meanwhile idly taken up the few 
 letters she had brought and laid down beside him as 
 usual, ready to his hand. He was quite capable of 
 leaving them for hours unopened, to her continual 
 surprise and somewhat to her annoyance. She could 
 not understand dilatoriness in such matters. But he 
 was reading one now, of which the immense signature 
 inevitably caught her eye. It was Egidia's real name 
 Alice Giles which she happened to know. 
 
 "I had a few letters this morning," she remarked, 
 pointedly, "but they were all very dull."
 
 108 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "This one of mine is rather amusing," returned 
 the guileless artist. "It is from my cousin I dare- 
 say you know her by the name she writes under 
 'Egidia.' " 
 
 4 'Why, I told you I did when I first came here!" 
 she exclaimed. "Don't you remember? It is through 
 Egidia that we know each other. And is that from 
 her? Oh, do, if you can, read me some of it." 
 
 Eivers tossed the letter into her lap. 
 
 "Read it all, if you like. It is a lively account of 
 her Northern experiences. There seem to be some 
 odd types in Newcastle, to judge by what she says!" 
 
 Thus empowered, Phoebe Elles devoured the letter. 
 A great many of her friends were mentioned in it 
 the poet, Miss Drummond, and Mrs. Poynder, while 
 there was a whole page entirely devoted to the muse 
 of Newcastle. 
 
 "I met her at a lecture I was giving. Somebody 
 or other on the platform introduced us. I had 
 noticed her big eyes fixed on me, and her lips parted, 
 following every word I said. It was nattering. She 
 implored me to call. It was because I wrote books. 
 I went because I liked her. She was an audience in 
 herself! And her home! She has, I could see, a 
 hard fight of it, poor little thing, to cultivate culture 
 there. It was quite pathetic to see her straining 
 every nerve to be modern and morbid and blase, as 
 she thinks we are in London. But give me the 
 provinces for morbidity and unconscious Ibsenism! 
 In spite of her amusing little affectations and pre-
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 109 
 
 ciousnesses, she is a dear little woman, and I think I 
 shall ask her to come and stay with me in town 
 there is no one who would enjoy it more. If I do, 
 you must come and meet her, you would like her. 
 Pretty, too, though I don't think you care much 
 about that. But so intensely interested in every- 
 thing, so eager, too nervous, perhaps, to be soothing, 
 a woman with more brain than temperament, and 
 perhaps not so very much of that. Incapable, I 
 should think, of a grande passion, but so anxious to 
 have one ! She is really to be pitied, I think, for the 
 milieu she lives in is naturally abhorrent to one of her 
 way of thinking. It is unfortunately that of nine- 
 tenths of her class, the provincial women whose wits 
 outrun their opportunities, and their aspirations their 
 social possibilities. The type is so sadly common. 
 English Madame Bovarys ! 
 
 "She has a husband, but I did not see him. I was 
 going to dine there to meet him, but she put me off. 
 Perhaps he explains her. At any rate, from what she 
 told me, and allowing for her very strong bias, he 
 furnishes a very good excuse for any vagaries she may 
 choose to commit. I believe he drinks, though she 
 did not say so, and I respected her for not giving him 
 away. An ordinary, middle-class brute, my dear 
 Edmund, incapable of making even a goose happy, 
 far less a woman who has educated herself into some 
 of the subtleties of refinement. 
 
 "I don't know why I write all this about a perhaps 
 not specially interesting person, but her eyes when
 
 110 THE HUMAN INTEEEST 
 
 she looked at me, and was not posing ! were the eyes 
 of a prisoner. I see them now!" 
 
 Interesting as this document was to the subject of 
 it, there were things about it that she did not quite 
 like. She was silent for a little time, quite ten 
 minutes. Then an irresistible impulse prompted her 
 to say, "I happen to know that woman Egidia writes 
 of, very well." 
 
 "Do you really? Then perhaps I ought not to 
 have shown you the letter. One never knows.'" 
 
 "Oh, it doesn't matter. Phcebe Elles is one of my 
 greatest friends poor thing!" 
 
 "Why poor thing?" 
 
 "Oh, don't you know she is one of the unhappy 
 ones. She made the usual mistake, ten years ago, 
 and has been repenting it ever since." 
 
 "What was that?" 
 
 "She married, that's all. They all do it. But 
 Phoebe my friend complicated matters by marrying 
 a man who was unworthy of her, though I am 
 bound to say she was in love with him at the time 
 she married him or thought she was." 
 
 "If she thought so, she probably was," came from 
 behind the easel. 
 
 "You think that proves it? Well, 'there is nothing 
 either good or bad but thinking makes it so,' as 
 Hamlet says. However, poor Phoebe Elles never knew 
 what it was to be happy with the man she had chosen, 
 though she had a vague idea that there was happiness 
 somewhere in the world for her, as all we poor deluded
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 111 
 
 fools of women have. There was nothing to make 
 her happy, her life was starved, maimed, stunted no 
 colour in it at all. He had been married before, and 
 the house was full of what shall I call them? 
 obstacles to sentiment, in the shape of stepsons, and 
 awful aunts " 
 
 "How many aunts?" 
 
 "Only one, perhaps, but a horror, a perfectly awful 
 woman! I shall never forget what I " 
 
 She recovered herself and went on. "He her 
 husband was not unkind to her not cruel, oh no, he 
 took good care of that! but he contrived to make 
 himself generally odious to her, and was antagonistic 
 in every possible way " 
 
 "Poor man !" ejaculated Eivers, in rather an incom- 
 prehensible manner. 
 
 "Then," Mrs. Elles went on, complacently, warm- 
 ing to her subject, "there came a final scene such a 
 sordid affair too, but it brought matters to a head. 
 He sent away all her servants at an hour's notice, on 
 the very flimsiest of pretexts, and when she ventured, 
 very naturally, to expostulate, he turned round on 
 her and insulted her grossly. He told her that he 
 had never loved her, but had only married her out of 
 pity, because she had so obviously set her affections 
 on him; and that now, when she had entirely lost 
 her looks and her youth " 
 
 "The man must have been an utter cad." 
 
 "Yes, wasn't he!" exclaimed Mrs. Elles, delighted 
 with his concurrence. "I was sure you would say
 
 113 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 so. And then he abused her and called her names 
 I am sure you could never bring yourself to use such 
 words as he used to Phcebe, to your wife!" She 
 snatched a fearful joy in the use of this phrase. 
 
 "No, I suppose not," said Bivers, who, for some 
 reason or other, did not seem inclined to treat this 
 story very seriously. "No, I suppose not, unless she 
 aggravated me beyond endurance. Then there is no 
 knowing what I might not say." 
 
 "Oh, yes, I quite understand, if she was a nagging 
 woman but poor Phoebe I know her so well is 
 incapable of anything of the sort. She is too gentle 
 ever to make a fuss and too dignified, besides. She 
 behaved simply like an angel all through a perfect 
 martyr she hardly said a word, but " 
 
 "But what?" 
 
 "She did the only thing that was left her to do. 
 She left him." 
 
 "I call that rather a strong measure!" 
 
 "Oh, but alone! She did not leave him to go to 
 another man!" 
 
 Here the narrator of Phoebe Elles' fortunes stopped 
 and hesitated, a little overcome by a reflection that 
 necessarily occurred to her. Presently she resumed. 
 "Tell me, do you disapprove of poor Phoebe?" 
 
 "I can hardly form an opinion, can I, without 
 knowing the rights and wrongs of the case. But as 
 a general thing Was he unfaithful to her?" 
 
 "No indeed, she only wishes he were!" Mrs. Elles 
 broke out, in an uncontrollable burst of candour.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEEEST 113 
 
 "Now, I've shocked yon," she said, looking tip into 
 his face and bitterly repenting her flippant outspoken- 
 ness. 
 
 She went on, nervously, "You think she ought to 
 have stuck to her post ought not to have thrown up 
 her cards like that." 
 
 She was translating the thoughts that she thought 
 she could read on his face, and expostulating with 
 them. "But still, you know, I had a woman has 
 surely a right to live her own life?" 
 
 "Only another phrase for selfishness," he retorted 
 vehemently. "I hate it. Nobody has a right. Our 
 lives are far too inextricably bound up with other lives 
 for us to be able to assume complete freedom. We 
 can't live our own lives anything like it for the 
 very sufficient reason that it isn't to be done without 
 spoiling other people's." 
 
 "But you seem to be able to manage to do it live 
 your own life in the way I mean?" Mrs. Elles 
 retorted, in the heat of argument, carrying the war 
 into the enemy's country. 
 
 "I am a selfish beggar, I daresay, and don't prac- 
 tice what I preach." 
 
 He spoke sharply, bending down over his drawing, 
 and she felt that she had been tactless to force the 
 personal application. 
 
 She fancied that it was a touch of remorse at his 
 curtness that made him say presently, in a benignant 
 manner, "And what is your friend doing now?" 
 
 "Oh, Phcebe is all right for the present. She is
 
 114 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 comparatively free ; she does not have to sit opposite 
 that man at breakfast every morning and listen to his 
 coarse jokes and shiver at his impossible manners all 
 day long. Now, she is in the society of persons 
 congenial to her, at least. ... I really must write to 
 Phoabe." 
 
 "Don't bring her here, for heaven's sake!" 
 exclaimed Rivers, in real or affected alarm. "I 
 should have to pack up my traps and bolt at once." 
 
 "Oh, don't be afraid of poor Phoabe!" pleaded 
 Mrs. Elles, not without some appreciation of the 
 humour of the situation. 
 
 "You really wouldn't mind her if you knew her, I 
 do assure you. Anyhow she wouldn't be any worse 
 than I." 
 
 "Oh, by Jove, though, but she would! A woman 
 with a grievance is worse than anything else in the 
 world." 
 
 "Of course," Mrs. Elles replied, with some dignity 
 she did not like being snubbed, even in the person 
 of her pseudo-self, "I am not thinking of asking 
 Phoabe here. I shall not even put an address when I 
 write. I will send the letter to a friend to forward. 
 You know I have my own reasons for not wishing the 
 world to know where I am at present." 
 
 She made this statement for about the hundredth 
 time, and the artist, as usual, completely ignored the 
 allusion to her ambiguous position at Greta Bridge. 
 And yet he was obviously Bohemian, but of the 
 world where such social rules are used to be enforced.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEKEST 115 
 
 Another instance of the anomalousness of the artist 
 nature ! 
 
 She was not without tact, though she was so 
 impulsive, and she now fancied, with the morbid and 
 strained apprehension of one whose feelings are deeply 
 engaged, that he was colder to her as they walked 
 home together. She felt, in some indefinable way, 
 that she had lost ground with him, and that her 
 relation of and flippant comments on the story of 
 Phcabe Elles had been the cause of it. 
 
 Her brain was working furiously as she walked on, 
 treading rough and smooth at his side, her head 
 bowed, and her eyes fixed on the enormous dried-up 
 hoof marks that the cows had made on then* way 
 down the bank to drink at the ford, and into which 
 she sedulously and mechanically made a point of fit- 
 ting her little foot. Higher up, in the upland field, 
 the footpath was so narrow that she was obliged to 
 walk, not beside, but in front of Eivers, who was 
 universally beloved of farmers because of his fixed 
 principle never heedlessly to widen a footpath, though 
 he would fight tooth and nail for the right of way. 
 He and she were thus perforce more or less silent, 
 but nothing would have surprised the modest artist 
 more than to think that he himself was the subject of 
 the cogitations that were agitating the brain behind 
 the little knot of brown curls which was presented to 
 his gaze, as they walked along about a yard apart 
 from each other. 
 
 ' ' I have vexed him I have shocked him ! He is a
 
 116 THE HUMAN INTEEEST 
 
 gentleman, and he isn't modern, thank God ! and I 
 have talked flippantly of things that a gentleman 
 and an old-fashioned gentleman takes seriously. He 
 has a higher moral standard than I have, and I have 
 been fool enough to let him see that mine is lower. 
 How tiresome!" 
 
 Then she consoled herself a little. "He is sweet, 
 but he is not quite human. It is very easy to talk 
 about duties and self-effacement and all that, but 
 what can a bachelor he is not married, I am sure 
 what can a hermit, a recluse, know of the stress of 
 life? How can a bachelor possibly enter into the 
 agonies of the married? How can Alastor sympathize 
 with the miseries of Incompatibles?" 
 
 "You must think me a very odd kind of woman," 
 she said to him that night, adding hastily: "That is, 
 if you think about me at all." 
 
 It was a habit of hers to put leading questions of 
 this kind to the artist, but generally, like Pilate, she 
 stayed not for an answer, and nervously hastened to 
 fill up the pause by a further remark of her own. 
 The result was a somewhat one-sided conversation. 
 
 "Yes, I am mysterious, I suppose," she went on, 
 leaning her elbows on the table in front of her and 
 looking fixedly at him through her glasses. She had 
 drunk nothing but water at dinner, yet her cheeks 
 burned with an unaccountable flush, and her eyes 
 were bright with excitement. 
 
 "How strange it is !" she went on. "You cannot 
 have the remotest idea of what I am really like as if
 
 THE HUMAN INTEEEST 117 
 
 it mattered!" She laughed apologetically. "It is 
 strange, though, to think that though we are such 
 friends, you have never seen my face." 
 
 "You mean because you wear those glasses?" he 
 replied, in the blunt, matter-of-fact way in which he 
 generally did receive her personal allusions, and which 
 disconcerted her and drove her to utter desperation 
 sometimes. "I suppose you have some good reason 
 for wearing them?" 
 
 "I have a reason, but I don't know if it is a good 
 one," she replied in tones sharp from nervousness. 
 
 "You wear them under advice, I imagine?" 
 
 "No, really my own idea," she said, airily. "Shall 
 I take them off? Tell me to, and I will !" 
 
 Her voice was trembling, her hands were twitching 
 with the overmastering desire to do away, once for all, 
 with this absurd barrier between them. A woman, 
 shorn of her powers, mulcted of her charm, handi- 
 capped, at the very moment when she needed the full 
 arsenal of her feminine armoury ! That was what she 
 was, and his imperturbability irritated her vanity, 
 and made it, for the moment, paramount. 
 
 She realized the full gravity of the situation, she 
 felt it a turning point, she had attached an almost 
 fetish-like importance to the insignia of her virtuous 
 resolutions, but in the wild desire to assert her 
 womanhood that mastered her now, she was prepared 
 to abandon anything and everything that stood in the 
 way of its accomplishment. 
 
 "Shall I take them off? Shall I?" was her irre-
 
 118 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 sponsible cry. "You have advised me to. Bemember 
 that." 
 
 There was a pause a century of vital emotion for 
 her, the mere opportunity for an added touch of the 
 brush on to a ticklish corner of his foreground for the 
 painter. 
 
 "Did I?" he asked, carelessly, as she deliberately 
 laid aside the spectacles, and looked him full in the 
 face. 
 
 But the heavens did not fall or the solid earth fail, 
 and with the single unconcerned remark: "I should 
 not have said that your eyes were at all weak!" the 
 painter continued tranquilly to deposit brushes full of 
 diluted sepia and water on to his drawing. There 
 were tears in her eyes next time she raised them.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Mrs. Elles never put the spectacles on again. They 
 had made no difference except to herself. And 
 further intimacy with Eivers convinced her that any 
 such artificial safeguards against flirtation were quite 
 unnecessary. 
 
 She realized his want of sympathy and humanity, 
 his elaborate attitude of standing aside from the prob- 
 lems of life in favour of a closer contemplation of 
 those of Nature. It was Nature he loved, and Nature 
 only, with his full heart. The human interest was a 
 purely secondary consideration with him. Not "in 
 many mortal forms" did he seek "the shadow of that 
 idol." He was Alastor and she was the Lady. She 
 must remember that. Alastor could doubtless have 
 done quite well without the Lady. She represented 
 the ever -restless Spirit of Humanity which Alastor 
 had come into the wilderness to avoid. And, for his 
 sake, for the sake of her valued privileges, she must 
 learn to keep it in abeyance and suppress it as far as 
 she could. She must love Nature too. It was 
 difficult, for though, in her quality of romanticist, 
 she had always talked a good deal about it, Nature, 
 to her, was merely a background for people, just as 
 flowers were an adornment for her bodice or her 
 parlour. 
 
 119
 
 120 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 But the very conditions of her tenure here 
 demanded that she should accommodate herself to 
 the mood of her companion. Since, by happy chance, 
 she was admitted to be an inmate with him of the ter- 
 restrial Paradise of which he was the tutelary God, 
 she must contrive, as animals do, to adapt herself to 
 her new habitat. She thought of herself as a tremu- 
 lous, storm-tossed soul, newly entered into bliss, and 
 afraid to compromise her precarious happiness by any 
 assumption of right or too marked a signalizing of her 
 presence there. 
 
 With this end in view, she began to cultivate a 
 capacity for silence, an art of self-effacement, a spirit- 
 like vagueness of outline. Her wish was to dissimu- 
 late her personality as far as was possible, and merely 
 to form, as it were, part of the silent, unobtrusive 
 world of Nature that he loved. It was a stiff noviti- 
 ate to a complete education. 
 
 Her plan was successful, on the whole. The painter 
 began to take her as a matter of course, to treat her 
 as if she had always been there, as a busy man might 
 treat a sister, or a college companion, without cere- 
 mony, but with much protective kindness and cama- 
 raderie. She was sure that the notion of her being in 
 any way compromised by her stay with him in this 
 lonely inn never so much as entered his mind. It 
 was not that he was ignorant of conventions ; he was 
 simply too preoccupied to think of them. 
 
 But, indeed, the new brightness of her eyes, bred 
 of her happiness, the lovely, natural colour in her
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 121 
 
 cheeks, the conscious curve of her red lips, inevitably 
 suggested the world's cry for a chaperon. She had 
 been an interesting woman when she came to Eokeby ; 
 she was now almost a beautiful one. The little hol- 
 lows in her cheeks had filled up; her figure had 
 improved; she was like a blue serge wood nymph 
 darting about the broken pathways and shelving 
 banks of this embowered painter's paradise. 
 
 She knew, with a woman's intuition, that he was 
 not entirely blind to her beauty. His eye rested on 
 her with the same searching and affectionate gaze 
 with which it might linger on a "beautiful bit," as 
 the technical phrase runs ; and the light in her eyes and 
 the changes in her expression, as the varying moods 
 flitted over her face, were to him as the cloud shadows 
 chasing each other over Barningham Moor, or the 
 sunlight glinting in the brown pools of the Greta 
 where it was deepest. It was something, but not 
 enough. A woman does not care to be looked at as 
 if she were a landscape by the man whom she pas- 
 sionately loves. She longed to draw from him some 
 personal expression of admiration; but, beyond an 
 occasional "Well done!" upon the performance of 
 some unusually agile feat of climbing, she was 
 always disappointed. 
 
 Others noticed the improvement in her looks and 
 health and told her of it. 
 
 "On my word, Miss," remarked the landlady of 
 the "Heather Bell" to her, one afternoon, when she 
 was "learning her," by a course of practical demon-
 
 122 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 stration, to make the cake of the country, "ye're 
 fair credit to the 'Heather Bell!' Ye look twice the 
 woman ye did when ye first corned here, not near so 
 peaked and piny like! I'll be bound the gentleman 
 thinks so, too! Eh, we shall see what we shall see!" 
 
 "What shall we see, Mrs. Watson?" asked Mrs. 
 Elles, complaisantly, leaning her elbows on the floury 
 table. She was always most susceptible to any kind 
 of compliment, and to do her justice, she had no 
 idea of the woman's meaning. 
 
 "You and he will be setting up together, one of 
 these fine days! Eh, I see what I see! I'm none 
 blind, honey." 
 
 "Nonsense, Mrs. Watson!" 
 
 "Nae nonsense at all! He tak's a good deal o' 
 notish on ye, I consider. I was just a-saying sae to 
 oor Jane Anne later than yesterday. Sorrow befaa' 
 my tongue she's fair upset aboot it, I can tell ye!" 
 
 "Jane Anne! Upset?" 
 
 "Ay, sure, who but Jane Anne Cawthorne? She's 
 got a bit fancy for Mr. Eivers herseP, ye mun knaw. 
 She sends a' the ither lads away on his account, he 
 that's never thinkin' of her! I whiles say to her, 
 'Hont, lass, he'll never tak' that much notice on ye, 
 beyond lending ye some beuk ye's a deal better with- 
 out.' I don't hold wi' readin', mysel', he knaw. 
 But the fond lass shakes her head and says nowt, and 
 throws away the bonny flowers ye put in his glass, 
 and sets some on her own pickin' there." 
 
 "Yes, I have noticed that," said Mrs. Elles sharply.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 123 
 
 "And I'll wager he's niver so much as gien her a 
 chuck on the chin, for all she's walk barefoot to 
 Barney Cassel and back for him. Eh, it's you that's 
 got him. Mistress Popham was axing me, only the other 
 day, when ye was going to get the vicar to call ye?" 
 
 "Callus! What's that?" 
 
 "Ask ye; call the banns in church. Eh, that'll be 
 a grand day for us all. Noo, there's a bonny cake," 
 she ended, clapping it on to the "girdle," "and you 
 and he can have it cold to your teas." 
 
 "Did you ever lend or give Jane Anne books?" she 
 asked Eivers, at dinner, that night. 
 
 "I ordered her a set of George Eliot's novels once," 
 he said, "and all Scott's. She's clever enough to get 
 something out of them. I see that from what she 
 says to me about them. She is quite a superior girl." 
 
 "I don't like her, and she doesn't like me. And 
 novels that she only half understands put things 
 into her head that are better out of it. Now, suppose 
 this girl, Jane Anne, were to write to my people and 
 betray me," she said, with a slightly simulated ex- 
 pression of apprehension. 
 
 "Why should she betray you?" he said, showing by 
 his slight accent on the betray that he thought it 
 somewhat too forcible. "She would have no object. " 
 
 "Oh no!" said Mrs. Elles. "I am not a criminal. 
 And besides, there is no one for her to betray me to. 
 I owe nobody any allegiance. I am perfectly inde- 
 pendent. There is not a soul in the world who cares 
 what becomes of me!"
 
 124 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 She sighed appropriately as she uttered this fiction, 
 but if she had expected Mr. Rivers to openly com- 
 miserate her, she was disappointed. It was by no 
 means the first time. Alastor always refused to take 
 any interest in the fortunes of the Lady before she 
 came to him. 
 
 She wondered if he even took in the idea of the 
 lonely and friendless condition. Did he really swal- 
 low the legend of herself that she had been at such 
 pains to concoct and serve up to him when she first 
 came? 
 
 The lies she had told him, in the light of the new 
 morality that her intercourse with his blameless recti- 
 tude had flashed upon her, began to weigh heavily 
 upon her regenerate soul. He was so straight, so 
 sincere, so guileless, so simple, she might tell him 
 what she chose and he would credit her story as that 
 of one holding the same rigid code of honour as him- 
 self. She was beginning to realize, as she had never 
 realized before, what that code of honour what every 
 gentleman's code of honour was. 
 
 It was not so much that it was wrong to lie, but it 
 was a mark of ill-breeding, and her cheeks burned at 
 the recollection of the imposition she had practised 
 was still practising on this gentleman. 
 
 He had asked her no questions, and she had told 
 him lies ! 
 
 The only little point of comfort which she could 
 wrest for herself from circumstances was the possibil- 
 ity that he had not chosen to burden his mind full
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 125 
 
 of tree and cloud forms, and such artistic lumber 
 with her story as she had related it to him. Was it 
 likely that a man, with his strange and disconcerting 
 capacity for the ignoring of details and all the minor 
 facts of life, should have permitted anything so human 
 and unimportant to make an impression on his mind? 
 No, it had probably glided off him, while every 
 mutation of the sunset they had watched together 
 yesterday was indelibly fixed in his memory. Of 
 what consequence were she and her trifling affairs in 
 comparison? So she thought and hoped, in the new 
 humility which her love for him had engendered in her. 
 
 Still, in spite of these halcyon days, it was impos- 
 sible that she could entirely shut out the thought of 
 the future. Things could not stay as they were. 
 The stack of canvas umbrella covers, and packing 
 cases, piled out of the way in all the four corners of 
 the sitting-room, reminded the poor young woman 
 only too painfully of the dies irae, dies ilia when the 
 autumn tints, beloved of amateurs, would begin to 
 show and bear their indubitable message. The leaves 
 would turn brown and fall, and the lover of Nature 
 would pack up his colour box, and strap his easels 
 together, and look out a train in Bradshaw, and order 
 the trap over-night to take him to the station at 
 Barnard Castle. 
 
 What should she say then? What should she do? 
 He was everything to her, and she was nothing to 
 him. She was the wife of Mortimer Elles, and her 
 home was in Newcastle !
 
 126 THE HUMAN INTEKEST 
 
 But it was borne in upon her that, come what 
 might, she could never go back to Mortimer. The 
 mere contemplation of a renewed term of life with 
 him was terrible and impossible to her, now that she 
 had known the greatest good, the highest development 
 of which human nature was capable, in the person of 
 this man in whose intimacy she was living. 
 
 There were times when she could not bear her own 
 thoughts, when she would jump up and leave the 
 room where Eivers sat composedly working, and, 
 hatless and cloakless, run out into the moonlit road 
 and even into the Park itself. The painter, in his 
 absorption, would never even look up or seem to hear 
 the panting breaths that betrayed her emotion. 
 
 Bitterly did she con this and other signs of his 
 indifference, as she wandered deviously about the 
 glades and alleys of the great demesne, now under the 
 staring moonlight, now where the over-arching trees 
 shut it hopelessly out and made walking a mere mat- 
 ter of outstretched hands and groping steps. Even 
 the darksome yew grove the haunt of the Lady of 
 Mortham had no terrors for her now. Love casts 
 out fear ; a woman in her state of mind has no horror 
 of the supernatural. 
 
 One night, the most beautiful moonlight night of 
 the whole year, she wandered far into the Park and 
 along to the banks of the Greta, where it runs under 
 the shadow of the cliffs crowned with fir trees, and 
 the desolate tower of Mortham stands out against the 
 sky behind them. She scrambled down the bank,
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 127 
 
 on the hither side, to one of the little stretches of 
 pebbly shore that line the stream here and there and 
 stood wistfully gazing into its flow, her hands crossed 
 at the back of her neck, a white lady, "mystic, 
 wonderful." 
 
 The further shore lay all in mysterious shadow, but 
 at her feet was a sheet of rippling silver, with dark 
 oily rocks, like islands or sleeping seals, breaking 
 through its course here and there. She saw, in 
 imagination, a drowned woman lying there in mid- 
 stream, face upwards, caught among the snags and 
 snares that clogged the shallows, and irradiated by 
 the same moon rays that turned the brown water white. 
 
 "Look there!" she said, wildly, turning sharply 
 round to Rivers, who was standing behind her. 
 "Look! I see myself there!" 
 
 She was so wrought up that she felt and showed 
 no surprise at his presence. It was so picturesquely 
 natural that she should be standing there in the 
 moonlight, on the bank of the most romantic river in 
 the whole world, with the only man she had ever loved. 
 Time and chance had combined to bring about this 
 hour. Rivers had never thought of following her 
 before. 
 
 But he completely ignored her morbid speech. She 
 was hurt, though, indeed, it was what she might 
 have expected. She said no more, but stood looking 
 tragically down into the flood. 
 
 "By Jove, but it is fine!" the artist presently mur- 
 mured to himself, in tones of deep conviction.
 
 128 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 Nature mere non-sentient, abstract Nature again 
 and a woman, eager, passionate and romantic, 
 standing by him ! 
 
 "Don't you wish you had your sketch book here?" 
 that woman asked him, bitterly. 
 
 "Oh, I can remember it!" he replied, simply. 
 "But I am very glad I came out. How did you hap- 
 pen to know there was a moon, and that she would be 
 shining over this reach of the river?" 
 
 "I didn't know," she said. "I just came out I 
 don't know why I suppose, because I was restless." 
 
 She sighed, and fingered her sash, and sighed again. 
 
 "How did you know where I had gone? I have 
 been" reproachfully "an hour away, and you 
 never even looked up when I left the room!" 
 
 "I missed you, though," he said. "I feel things, 
 sometimes, when I am very busy, without seeing 
 them." 
 
 "Perhaps, then, it occurred to you that I might 
 have got into mischief," she went on lightly. "You 
 didn't know that I come here nearly every night?" 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "And yet this is the first time you have followed 
 me!" she said, regretfully. "Yes, I come here, night 
 after night, and I look down into this pool, and I 
 imagine myself lying in it with my face turned up to 
 the moon, drowned and dead, and at an end of all my 
 troubles, and you hearing of it, and being a little a 
 very little sorry for me!" 
 
 "But you are surely not thinking of committing
 
 THE HUMAN INTEEEST 129 
 
 suicide, are you?" he asked her, quite calmly, "for, 
 really, no one would have the slightest excuse for 
 falling in off this miniature beach?" 
 
 She made a gesture of impatience then she 
 laughed, in tragic impotence. 
 
 "One can drown oneself in a teacup, if one has a 
 mind. But I think I will go up the bank, now, and 
 put myself out of the reach of temptation." 
 
 4 'Do you want to go indoors? If not, let us walk a 
 little way to the Junction, if you don't mind? I 
 want to see the Greta meet the Tees under this 
 strong moonlight. It must be magnificent. It is a 
 shame to stay in the house when the moon is out like 
 this. Browning speaks of her 'unhandsome thrift 
 of silver.' There's plenty of her now, isn't there? 
 Glorious ! It is a night of nights !" 
 
 Mrs. Elles agreed with him but from a different 
 point of view. 
 
 "Are you frightened?" he asked her, as they left 
 the river bank and began gropingly to follow a track 
 between two darknesses of tangled brushwood. 
 
 "Not with you!" she said, manfully; and he did 
 not offer his arm. 
 
 She walked along, a little in front of him, in the 
 narrow path they had chosen, a short cut to the place 
 where the two rivers meet. She was wearing her 
 thin, clinging white gown, and, without the unro- 
 mantic adjuncts of hat, parasol, or gloves, she looked 
 as ghostly, as unreal, as far removed from the com- 
 monplace, as even she herself could have wished.
 
 130 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 They reached the Junction, just outside the Park 
 confines, where the brown moorland flood of the 
 Greta, hasty, capricious, passionate, like herself, 
 merged into the broad, calm flood of the Tees flow- 
 ing quietly, in its great volume and depth, over its 
 granite-bouldered bed under Wycliffe. Eivers, for 
 some reason or other, took off his hat, stood his hair 
 looking quite white in the moonshine silent, his 
 artist soul, presumably, stirred to the very depths by 
 the mysterious harmonies of tone and magnificent 
 lines of composition which the sight afforded him. 
 
 "How well that comes!" he murmured, passion- 
 ately, while the woman beside him stood breathless, 
 affected, too, by the vision, but in her own way; 
 weaving her fanciful, personal allegories of him, and 
 her, and the two rivers, and longing for some signs 
 in him of the more human enthusiasm that she could 
 have shared. 
 
 She shivered, but not from cold. "We must go 
 back!" he said, in response to her unspoken com- 
 plaint. 
 
 They turned and walked up the glen the moon 
 had gone behind a cloud, and the Greta lay dull and 
 sullen under the hanging terraces of trees. But in 
 the yew grove was darkness unspeakable. 
 
 "Oh, I can't see you," she murmured, involun- 
 tarily; "I shall lose you!" 
 
 He silently held out his hand to her, and she 
 took it. 
 
 When they came out into the Broad Walk where it
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 131 
 
 was lighter, she dutifully made a little movement to 
 withdraw her hand a very slight movement but he 
 did not accept it. 
 
 He had forgotten ! Was there another man in the 
 world who could thus hold and retain a woman's hand 
 without knowing it? 
 
 In all her life, such pure, unalloyed happiness had 
 not been hers, as they walked up to the gates of the 
 Park together. It was just ten o'clock. 
 
 In the hall of the inn, he lit her candle, as usual, 
 and gave it to her. She held it just under her chin, 
 and it lighted up her face, blanched and spiritualized 
 by the emotions she had gone through. He looked at 
 her, for once, very closely. 
 
 "You look, to-night," he said, in the dreamy 
 voice he only used sometimes, "like the Spirit of the 
 Greta that peered through the window at me the 
 other night. I told you about it at the time, did I 
 not? It was a strange hallucination! Quite white 
 and pale, and its eyes fixed meaningly on me. The 
 lines of the face, as I remember it now, were curiously 
 like yours, or is it that you have identified yourself 
 with that spirit in my thoughts? I have never got it 
 quite out of my head, do you know!" 
 
 "TVhy should you try?" was all that Phcebe Biles 
 could find to say. A mist seemed to have come over 
 her eyes, and she bade him "good-night," and 
 stumbled helplessly over her gown as she went 
 upstairs. 
 
 She lay awake all night. She cried quietly to her-
 
 132 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 self. This was what she had wanted. This was life. 
 She was very happy and yet most miserable. 
 
 Did this man care for her? Yes? No? A little? 
 There was no knowing. His ways were not as the 
 ways of other men at least, not the men she had 
 known and the ordinary canons of flirtation, as she 
 knew them, had no correspondence with his conduct 
 towards her. 
 
 She thought he liked her ; she knew she loved him ; 
 that was what it all came to. 
 
 She was an honourable woman, with a newly super- 
 added canon of honour, and she did not dream of 
 being false to her husband. If Eivers loved her as 
 she loved him, she ought to go away. That was her 
 clear duty to herself, to him and to Mortimer. 
 
 Mortimer would take her back of that she had not 
 the slightest doubt. There was no reason why he 
 should ever hear of this, her vagary, among the green 
 shades of Brignal. She might take the train back to 
 Newcastle, refuse to give any further account of her- 
 self than that she had been away for a holiday or any 
 reason for that holiday except the usual "nerves" of 
 society, and resume her end of the matrimonial chain 
 without let or hindrance. 
 
 But since she was uncertain as to Rivers' feelings 
 with regard to her, hardly that, indeed, since he gave 
 her, literally, no reason to suppose that he looked 
 upon her in any other light than the light of a friend, 
 might she not oh, might she not ! take the benefit 
 of the doubt and stay there till he went away, and be
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 133 
 
 as happy as she could for as long as she could? She 
 felt that she must not quarrel with Elvers' reserve, 
 since it gave her the title to his company. She 
 decided not to do so. 
 
 She was beginning to find him less obscure, for she 
 had learned to seek for the expression of him in his 
 art : the art by which he chose to reveal himself to 
 those who had the will and the skill to read. Where 
 other men spoke or wrote, he painted. She had only 
 to look at the beautifully stained bits of paper that 
 issued from his hand, to watch the wonderful combi- 
 nations of colour subtle, passionate, striking, tender 
 that were evolved by this man of few words, to see 
 that he was no stranger to the whole gamut of human 
 emotions, full of delightful, undisciplined moods, and 
 mutabilities, and pleasant perversions of character. 
 There were strength and force in certain abrupt combi- 
 nations that stirred like the sound of a trumpet; 
 there were tenderness and the fancif ulness that women 
 love in certain harmonies that moved almost to tears. 
 She read sentiment and sweetness in the delicacy of 
 his sunsets, and character and passion in the gloom of 
 deep cloud-shadows, and sullen mist-wreaths lurking 
 in clefts and hollows of the hills, and mystery in the 
 tangled undergrowth whose complication and variety 
 he rendered so well. 
 
 There was one drawing of his that she specially 
 cared for, and whose progress she surveyed as she 
 might that of a beloved child of his brain and hers. 
 "Oh, Brignal Banks are wild and fair!" says the lady
 
 134 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 in Scott's ballad, and. here they were, caught and 
 immortalized forever on one piece of Whatman's 
 paper, three feet by two. There was hardly any sky 
 in it. The leafy, heavily-berried coverts hung tossing 
 from the cliff, streaming down to the water's edge, 
 that lay, in brown pools, deep and immutable, like a 
 true man's heart, at its base. In the immediate fore- 
 ground was the broken mass of stones that formed the 
 bed of the wayward river that had so many moods, 
 both of grave and gay. There the painter sat, on one 
 of these stones, with the water parted and rippling all 
 round him, in the most precarious of positions, his 
 drawing propped on his knee, uncomfortably, his 
 feet nearly in the stream. The burning sun shone 
 straight down on his head, for there was no foothold 
 for his umbrella in the spot which he had chosen. 
 He never spared himself, or complained of the terrible 
 constriction of the chest, which the constrained atti- 
 tude of stooping necessarily engendered. Perhaps he 
 did not notice it in the excitement of his work. She 
 sat under his umbrella, on the bank, and watched 
 him. 
 
 Morning after morning she sat there, as it were in 
 a bay of opalescent colours ; the horizou of her land- 
 scape bounded by the pink cliffs and overhanging 
 belts of trees, the foreground quivering with refrac- 
 tion, and golden with the flowering ragwort. She 
 was drunk, but not blind with light, and lulled con- 
 tinually by the hum of the bees at their task and the 
 self-satisfied purl of the stream at her feet, she sat
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 135 
 
 peacefully noting and enjoying the dreamy transitions 
 of a painter's day. 
 
 To herself, she seemed to be fast becoming a "green 
 thought in a green shade" the fanciful title of 
 Eivers' picture, adopted from his favourite poet, Mar- 
 vel her favourite, too, now. Eivers was for ever 
 associated in her mind with green, the colour of hope ; 
 she had banished grey the colour of despair and 
 Newcastle from her mind, as it certainly existed not 
 in the landscape before her eyes. Newcastle, under 
 its smoky pall, and Eokeby, in its gorgeous vestiture 
 of many colours, could not surely form a part of the 
 same hemisphere. And the extraordinary thing was, 
 that she had run away to find adventure, and had 
 found peace! She had thought she had need of a 
 world full of men, and now the society of one summed 
 up all interest, all excitement, all hope, all that she 
 had ever dreamed. She had longed for the fuller 
 life of cities ; now a lonely grove by the side of the 
 river sufficed her. 
 
 Her eyes she never read, or cared to read were 
 continually fixed on the stooping figure, in its neutral 
 garb of brown, perched so precariously on a rock in 
 mid-stream. In front of his post was the dell of 
 Brignal, where the river wound round abruptly, and 
 seemed to issue from a darksome hollow, formed by 
 the meeting trees on either bank. Suddenly, her eyes 
 grew eager and then startled she fancied all was not 
 right. Something was different. The hollow was 
 filled up. A brown wall of water was gathering from
 
 136 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 that hollow, was advancing, rushing, with a dull, 
 murmurous roar as of distant thunder, straight down 
 between the two banks towards the painter. 
 
 She sprang to her feet. 
 
 Rivers had told her of the Bore of the Greta she 
 knew how, after a very slight rainfall such as they 
 had had, the river was used to come down without 
 warning. This was it ! And his life was in danger ! 
 She screamed frantically to the artist, whose head had 
 for an unconscionable time been bent over his draw- 
 ing. She screamed as loudly as she could, but her 
 voice came thinly and hoarsely, so he did not hear her. 
 
 Then she began to leap from rock to rock to go to him , 
 when she saw him suddenly spring to his feet, take in 
 the whole situation at a glance, and, his drawing held 
 high in the air in one hand, begin to make for the shore. 
 
 Then he caught sight of Phoebe Elles, and his 
 course deviated. She had not got very far from the 
 bank, but she was in danger, and he was coming to 
 her. The flood was very nearly on them both. Even 
 in her agony, she noticed his slight pause of hesita- 
 tion before he tossed the drawing he held recklessly 
 on to the bank without looking after it, and the next 
 moment his protecting arm was round her, and the 
 flood swept partially over them. His other arm was 
 round the bough of a tree that hung over the stream 
 near where she was standing when he reached her. 
 They were both overthrown by the rush of water, 
 which passed over them, and then seemed to subside 
 somewhat. She fainted, for the first time in her life.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 She was lying on her bed at the "Heather Bell," 
 with only a very confused recollection of what had 
 happened, and a bandaged foot that hurt dreadfully. 
 A doctor had been sent for from Barnard Castle, so 
 she was told, who had pronounced it only a slight 
 sprain, but the skin of her leg was abraded from knee 
 to instep, and that was the cause of the pain. She 
 could not remember how it had happened there was 
 a jagged bough, or a snag, she supposed, of the tree 
 that Eivers had held on to, as the flood rushed past 
 them, and which had caught her, somehow, as she 
 slid down in his arms. She was a little light-headed 
 still, and she kept calling out for the artist like a fret- 
 ful child, and upbraiding him for refusing to come to 
 her. Jane Anne, who was in and out of her room a 
 great deal, treated these appeals sternly, and minis- 
 tered to her with stony, condemnatory eyes, but Mrs. 
 Watson's motherly heart was melted by her distress. 
 
 "Just ye get yerself well, ma honey, and then ye'll 
 see him! He's sore put out about ye, sure and that 
 he is, and he's alway axing me how you's getting on. 
 But ye must just keep yerself quiet!" 
 
 Realizing that her only chance of seeing Rivers 
 depended on her recovery, the restless woman put 
 
 137
 
 138 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 great constraint upon herself, and in a couple of days, 
 was well enough to be carried downstairs and laid on 
 a horsehair sofa in the sitting-room. 
 
 Her first day downstairs happened to be a hopelessly 
 wet day, and the artist was perforce kept indoors, and 
 painted all day at her side. He was busy, of course, 
 but with extreme unselfishness he offered to read 
 aloud to her. 
 
 Tears of gratitude came into her eyes as she realised 
 this. 
 
 "I couldn't let you," she said, "but if you would 
 let me talk to you a little, and go on painting the 
 foreground, or some part that doesn't matter ?" 
 
 He smiled, and turned so as to face her. "Don't 
 let me get absorbed, then, and stray into the middle 
 distance! I can't promise anything when I have got 
 a brush in my hand." 
 
 ' ' Tell me all about the other day, ' ' she said. ' ' You 
 saved my life!" 
 
 "Which you very foolishly risked to save mine!" 
 She was weak and he unconsciously spoke in the 
 aggressively cheerful, indulgent tone one uses to an 
 invalid. "I was very angry with you indeed for 
 jumping in after me like that. A shout would have 
 done." 
 
 "I did call to you, but I could not make you hear." 
 
 "Your voice must have been drowned by the rush- 
 ing of the water. I knew that there was something 
 wrong, though. I looked up from my drawing, and 
 saw the water coming, and you a yard from the bank !"
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 139 
 
 At the sound of the word drawing she gave a little 
 scream she had quite forgotten it ! 
 
 "I know I know the drawing! What became 
 of the drawing?" 
 
 "Well, you know, I had to have my hands free " 
 he began, almost apologetically. 
 
 "Of course! Forme! And now I remember see- 
 ing you fling it away on to the bank. Was it" she 
 spoke with bated breath, as one might speak of the 
 fall of empires "was it quite spoiled?" 
 
 "Pretty bad," he answered, moodily. 
 
 "You can't think how I wish you had not saved me 
 at its expense ! Why did you? Why did you?" she 
 asked, with absolute sincerity. 
 
 Eivers seemed to repent of his lapse into temper, 
 slight as it had been. He said, laughingly, "Well, I 
 must tell you that I thought it over ! It was a fear- 
 ful wrench, of course, but I decided in your favour. 
 Do you blame me?" 
 
 She resented his not taking her seriously, and 
 replied, gravely, "Yes, I do. I was not worth the 
 drawing to you, I am sure. You should have con- 
 sidered it first of all. Who was it was it Csesar 
 who swam across the Channel with his Commentaries 
 in his mouth?" 
 
 "He did something of the kind but I never 
 heard that he had a woman to look after as well." 
 
 "And then you carried me home?" she went on, 
 in a tone of sentimental reminiscence. 
 
 "Yes," he replied, briskly. "One couldn't have
 
 140 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 got a carriage down there, and I could hardly have 
 packed you into Farmer Ward's wheelbarrow!" 
 
 "Did anyone see you carry me across the fields?" 
 
 "Mrs. Popham did," he said, laughing at the recol- 
 lection. "She even offered to help me! A woman 
 who could hardly lift a fly!" 
 
 "I must have looked awful!" Mrs. Elles pondered; 
 she had often thought it over. "A wet woman is 
 such an abject object! . . . And then you carried 
 me up to bed?" 
 
 "Yes. Mrs. Watson was very anxious to get her 
 son, Jock, to do it but I thought of Jock and how 
 he would have knocked your head against the banisters 
 at every step, so I insisted on doing it myself. " 
 
 "And then?" 
 
 "And then the doctor came, and saw you, and saw 
 me, and told me it was not much and then I was 
 easier in my mind." 
 
 "Then you were anxious about me?" 
 
 "Very," he said. "Poor thing, you suffered so; 
 and you were so good about it!" 
 
 "Was I? I am glad." 
 
 She then returned to the subject that was distress- 
 ing her. "Are you sure you don't regret the draw- 
 ing are not cross with me about it? Isn't it in that 
 portfolio what remains of it? Show it me." 
 
 "Oh, no, no!" he said, shuddering. 
 
 But she had reached out for the portfolio that lay 
 near her hand, and, with the wilfulness of illness, 
 insisted on taking out the hopelessly blurred, grey-
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 141 
 
 streaked sheet of paper stretched on a board. There 
 was a hole in the paper, the size of a shilling, just 
 where the sky-line met the cliff. It was utterly 
 ruined, as the merest tyro in art must have realised. 
 
 "Oh, poor, poor thing! A snag has caught it, too, 
 like my leg," she moaned. 
 
 Rivers dabbled furiously away in the glass of water 
 with his fat brush. He was an artist and human. 
 
 "I wish you would take it away!" he said, sulkily, 
 without looking at it or her. 
 
 "Where to?" asked Mrs. Elles, almost weeping. 
 
 "Oh, anywhere to the devil, if you like." 
 
 "I'll put it in my room, then," she said, calmly. 
 "I shall like to have it as a memento." 
 
 She slyly dropped it behind the sofa until she 
 could carry it upstairs, and he did not seem even to 
 notice what she was doing. 
 
 The next day was very fine, and the artist had per- 
 force to go out and paint as usual. Mrs. Elles felt 
 unutterably solitary. She could not walk as far as 
 Brignal, but she could not expect Rivers to stop at 
 home and neglect his picture in order to amuse her. 
 She virtuously stayed upstairs on one floor, as she was 
 recommended to do, until evening, but she was too 
 restless to sit or lie still, and wandered about from one 
 room of the old inn to another. 
 
 There were three bedrooms on the first story, hers 
 and Rivers' and one unoccupied room whose floor was 
 on a somewhat higher level than the others, up a tiny
 
 142 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 flight of stairs. She "changed the air," as Mrs. 
 Watson put it, by sitting in there some part of the 
 morning, and once an irresistible impulse led her 
 into the artist's room, which was the most ascetic and 
 the least comfortable of the three. 
 
 She stayed a long while looking out of the window, 
 gazing fondly at the view which must meet his eyes 
 every morning as he lay in his bed. It was very 
 nearly the same as that which met hers, naturally, 
 since the two rooms adjoined. 
 
 She noticed a chair, drawn between the dressing- 
 table and the window. He sat there, she supposed, 
 sometimes, and looked out. So would she. 
 
 But she found herself looking in, not out. Her 
 loving eyes gloated on all the details of his room ; the 
 little heap of sketch books on the corner of the dress- 
 ing-table ; the martyred pocket-handkerchief, stained 
 all the colours of the rainbow, that he had used to 
 dab his drawing with ; and the razors, that he kept 
 so sharp, wherewith to scrape down its surface, lying 
 beside those devoted to his own use ; the three mother 
 o' pearl studs placed neatly on the ledge of the look- 
 ing-glass, beside the heap of pence he had last turned 
 out of his pockets ; the fair white china palettes that 
 he made a point of washing out carefully with his own 
 hands, and whereon it was now her adored occupation 
 to "rub" the delicate proportions of each colour 
 required during the day. All this curious intermix- 
 ture of art materials and objects of personal use, so 
 characteristic of the artist's room, struck her sense of
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 143 
 
 dramatic incongruity and pleased her. Then she 
 leaned out over the sill in a dream of what never 
 could be, and forgot herself. Half an hour elapsed. 
 
 A slight rustle behind her warned her of the pres- 
 ence of Jane Anne, who, aggressively remarking, "I 
 came to see to the blind," established herself there 
 with a needle and cotton and drove Mrs. Elles away, 
 although to uninitiated eyes the blind seemed in very 
 good order. 
 
 She went into her own room and spent the after- 
 noon there ; she fell asleep, or she would have heard 
 voices in the room below the sitting-room she shared 
 with Rivers. 
 
 A little, thin, consumptive -looking woman of fifty, 
 in a homely utilitarian suit of tweeds which made her 
 look like a schoolgirl, was interviewing Jane Anne on 
 the subject of the harmonium's programme for next 
 Sunday. She was the Vicar's wife, and, that subject 
 concluded, the pair had moved across the hall and 
 over the threshold of Rivers' sitting-room, the door of 
 which stood carelessly open. 
 
 "Out?" said Mrs. Popham, with an interrogatory 
 gesture. "Both of them?" 
 
 "He's out," answered Jane Anne. "She's 
 upstairs!" 
 
 "Now, who and what is she?" asked the other, in 
 the tone of decent curiosity. "I asked your aunt, 
 but she says she knows nothing, and doesn't care." 
 
 "Aunt's fulish!" 
 
 "I told her she'd care fast enough if her inn were
 
 144 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 to lose its character, as it's in a very fine way to do 
 with all this. Mr. Popham and I have been talking 
 about it only to-day. Everybody is talking about it!" 
 Mrs. Popham spoke as if Eokeby were a centre of 
 civilization. "Several people saw Mr. Rivers carry- 
 ing her back across the fields, the day of her acci- 
 dent, and we all wonder .what her relationship to 
 him can be! Frick is a foreign name. Is she a 
 foreigner?" 
 
 "Nay, she's right English?" Jane Anne replied, 
 with conviction, forgetting, in her excitement, to 
 mince her words as usual. "And Frick is not her 
 name, neither!" 
 
 "How do you know that? Then I am right and 
 my husband is wrong. He is for taking the most 
 charitable view of her, as indeed he does of every- 
 one but I told him that I was perfectly convinced, 
 in my own mind, that the woman is an adventuress 
 of the most disreputable kind! Everything proves 
 it!" 
 
 "Can you tell me what is meant precisely by an 
 adventuress, Ma'am?" her favourite Sunday-school 
 teacher enquired, pedantically. 
 
 "People mean by an adventuress," Mrs. Popham 
 replied, "an unclassed creature, a person with no 
 visible means of subsistence or regular occupation. 
 They go about the country seeing whom they can 
 make fools of. There are plenty of them about, I 
 am told. Russian spies, some of them, who worm 
 themselves into families as governesses, and so on, in
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 145 
 
 order to surprise secrets. What this one can possibly 
 want with Mr. Rivers, I can't tell, but no good, I am 
 sure!" 
 
 "Him to marry her!" said Jane Anne sombrely, as 
 one who had thought out thoroughly all the tragic 
 issues of the case. 
 
 "It is possible," said Mrs. Popham, "and he is so 
 good, so trusting, that anybody could take him in 
 who set herself to do it, as this creature is probably 
 doing. I can't tell you how it distresses me that 
 such a nice man should be made a prey of ! It must 
 really be put a stop to, Jane Anne!" 
 
 "Yes, Ma'am," eagerly agreed Jane, forgetting to 
 be dignified. Whether Mrs. Elles should prove to be 
 a Russian spy or not, the important thing was to 
 separate her from Mr. Rivers. "She isn't fit for 
 him. I can't abide her myself. I mistrusted her 
 from the very first time I set eyes on her. Nasty 
 painted thing! She's only got two dresses to her 
 back, and yet she wears rings worth I don't know 
 how much! Great big stones. She sings foreign 
 songs to him, of an evening, in all sorts of queer lan- 
 guages on my piano ! He niver speaks a word to me 
 now that she's come ! He used to say a kind word 
 now and then. She was out with him in the Park, 
 one night lately, till I don't know what hour. It's 
 not decent ! I was waiting at my window and I saw 
 through a chink in the trees I can see all down the 
 Broad Walk, if I have a mind. I waited long enough, 
 and I saw thern come back down the walk together,
 
 146 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 and the moon was shining full on them, and I 
 saw " She hesitated. 
 
 "Was he? Was she ?" Mrs. Popham asked, with 
 timid, scared eagerness. 
 
 "They were walking hand in hand," said Jane 
 Anne, shyly, "and if that's not being lovers, I 
 don't know what is!" 
 
 Her face relaxed, and she burst into tears. 
 
 "Don't, Jane Anne, don't go on like that ! Per- 
 haps they are engaged. My husband says so," said 
 Mrs. Popham, assuming that the staid girl's tears 
 proceeded from her sense of outraged morality. 
 "But still, it is a very odd way to behave. They 
 ought to get married, that's all I can say!" 
 
 "Oh, ma'am, Mr. Rivers and a woman like that, 
 with her painted cheeks and her hair well, I 
 shouldn't like to have to swear that it is even her 
 own! She's not respectable, even if she is engaged 
 to him. I could tell you things and so could 
 Dorothy, who waits on them!" 
 
 "Sh-h!" said the Vicar's wife. "But we must get 
 her away from him, somehow, Jane Anne." 
 
 "Oh, Ma'am, if we only could! Dear Mr. Rivers! 
 I'd do anything I could. Only, she can't walk now. " 
 
 "If she is what we think her, that sprain of hers 
 may be just a ruse. It probably is. I can bring 
 myself to believe anything of a woman who masquer- 
 ades under an assumed name. How do you know, by 
 the way, that it is so?" 
 
 Jane Anne went into Rivers' room with the air of
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 147 
 
 one performing a religious rite, and fetched an 
 umbrella out of the corner and handed it solemnly to 
 the Vicar's wife. 
 
 "That is hers! "she said. 
 
 Mrs. Popham held it up to the light and read in 
 characters half effaced by time, not by prudence the 
 letters "P. E. " on its battered, silver handle, and, 
 furthermore, the address, 59 Saville Place, Newcastle. 
 
 "E. doesn't spell Frick!"said the Board School 
 girl, proudly. 
 
 "I don't quite like doing it," murmured the 
 Vicar's wife. "But really I can't let this goon! 
 It can do her no harm if she is respectable, and if she 
 isn't ? One must think of Mr. Rivers ! Read out 
 that address again, Jane Anne." 
 
 Jane Anne looked quite animated as she did so, and 
 Mrs. Popham wrote it down in a note-book. 
 
 "Now, put the umbrella back!" that lady added, 
 in rather a shame-faced way, "and leave it all to me. 
 And, Jane Anne, mind you practise up that thing of 
 Arcadelt's in time for Divine service; you seemed 
 rather weak in it last Sunday, or perhaps you were 
 not attending? I saw her in church. She probably 
 gets Mr. Rivers to take her there to throw a little 
 dust in all our eyes. I notice she never kneels or 
 sings. It is evidently the first time she has ever been 
 regularly to church in her life!"
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Two days after this incident, of which she naturally 
 remained unaware, Mrs. Elles was well enough to 
 walk across three fields to meet the artist on his way 
 back from his work. She exulted in the fact that 
 she had become so countrified as to disdain to put on 
 a hat even, and her red-golden hair, less elaborately 
 arranged than it used to be, shone beautifully in the 
 slanting light of the setting sun. 
 
 She waved her hand to him as he came in sight, 
 crying, in accents of frank camaraderie: "Have you 
 had a good day?" 
 
 "Not at all!" 
 
 "He's cross," she thought, and as he answered her 
 so curtly, and moreover stared at her in an oddly 
 unconscious way, as if he were taking her in for the 
 first time, she felt all her joyous welcome frozen on 
 her lips and at once jumped to the conclusion that 
 somebody had been abusing her to him. 
 
 "You look at me as if you didn't know me or like 
 me!" she said, undiplomatically, because she felt it 
 so acutely. 
 
 "And as I happen to do both " He spoke 
 
 quite roughly between his teeth the justification she 
 forced upon him. He re-adjusted the sketching bag 
 
 148
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 149 
 
 on his shoulders with a hasty impatient movement. 
 The bag was heavy, and it had been a very hot day. 
 
 "Did any tiresome tourists come and overlook you?" 
 she asked presently. She knew how he hated being 
 overlooked, and even here in these wilds, periodical 
 intrusions of the outer barbarian were possible. An 
 encounter with an 'Arry of Leeds or Scarborough 
 would account for any amount of ill-temper. 
 
 "The Vicar came and spoke to me," he answered 
 her grudgingly. 
 
 "Ah! Like old times," she said. "It was I who 
 frightened him away. Ever since the Vicaress saw 
 you carry me home, I think she has disapproved of us 
 both. She never came to call on me, as you said she 
 would. I don't want her to, I am sure, I could not 
 return a formal call in a sailor hat, and that is all I 
 have got. ... Do you mind not walking quite so 
 fast? It hurts my foot." 
 
 "I beg your pardon!" he said. "I keep forgetting 
 you are an invalid still. It is most unfortunate!" 
 
 Again she noticed the accents of irritation and 
 wondered at them. He had always been so nice about 
 her accident till now. 
 
 "It will be all right if we go on gently like this," 
 she said with intent to soothe. "In a few days I 
 shan't mind what I do. We can go one of our nice 
 long Sunday walks again." He made a movement. 
 "They are the greatest pleasure I have in the world 
 even when it thunders and lightens. ... By the way, 
 I have some news for you bad news. There is a
 
 150 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 new arrival at the hotel. I heard the noise of instal- 
 lation." 
 
 "The deuce there is!" he said, the current of his 
 thoughts, whatever they were, entirely changed in a 
 moment by news so stirring. "A man or a woman?" 
 
 "A man, I think. His boots made such a noise, 
 stamping over my head." 
 
 "One of those wretched touring bicyclists probably. 
 He will perhaps only stop the night. Any luggage?" 
 
 "I saw none. That rather helps the bicyclist 
 theory. But then, I saw no bicycle. Oh! I do 
 hope, though, that it is all right. We don't want 
 anyone else here, do we?" 
 
 She came a little nearer to him, unconsciously, as 
 she spoke. "We" she enjoyed using the pronoun. 
 Together they walked down the espalier -bordered path 
 of the inn garden ; and, as they turned in under the 
 porch, she raised her arm and broke off a rose and put 
 it, somewhat obtrusively, and a little against his will 
 perhaps, into the artist's button-hole. 
 
 It was all done in the sight of Jane Anne, who 
 came rushing downstairs from the upper rooms as 
 they entered, looking, somehow, very busy and 
 excited. It was Jane Anne, not Dorothy, who for 
 some reason or other brought in the lamp to them 
 that evening, setting it down heavily, so heavily that 
 Mrs. Elles, looking up, saw that the girl's hands 
 were trembling with nervousness. 
 
 But through some unaccountable swing of the 
 mental pendulum Phoebe Ellea was to-night so nearly
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 151 
 
 absolutely happy that she did not waste a thought on 
 the causes of the young woman's excitement, or that 
 other problem, the possible duration of the mysteri- 
 ous visitor's stay. Tourists might and would come 
 and go, she and Bivers were there it might be for ever. 
 For ever! Yes, she felt to-night as if that might 
 really be, and life remain for ever a fairy tale. The 
 prince was here, in the enchanted castle, in willing 
 bonds to the enchanted princess, and so far, no 
 dragons or other princesses contested him with her. 
 
 She sat in the low window seat and leaned back 
 against the sill, her hands idly clasped behind her 
 head, and closed her eyes now and then, and felt so 
 happy that she smiled without knowing it. She had 
 bidden truce to her eternal self-consciousness for 
 once. 
 
 Eivers looked up now and then, but there was no 
 apprehension in his eyes. He did not see her he 
 was in another world a world where neither Phoebe 
 Elles, nor any other woman, could follow him. That 
 could not be helped, but meantime his physical pres- 
 ence sufficed the woman who adored him. Her tense 
 nerve fibres were momentarily relaxed , she was soothed 
 and lulled into a state of happy acquiescence in the 
 present order of things. It had been very hot all this 
 An gust 'day, but now the cool airs of evening were 
 just beginning to qualify the dry heat that had been 
 so intense as to blister the window shutters, and make 
 the air seem to dance on the distant skyline of the 
 moors. Mrs. Elles was very lightly dressed, her thin
 
 152 THE HUMAN INTEEEST 
 
 muslin shirt showed the rosy skin of her shoulder that 
 rested against the jamb of the window frame, half in, 
 half out. She deliberately inhaled the sweet aro- 
 matic smell of the jessamine and the phloxes that grew 
 under the window, and the mild breath of the cows 
 that leaned over the fence. There were people in the 
 garden, she could hear then* whispering voices. 
 
 "Lovers probably," she thought "the landlady's 
 sons courting then* lasses. How sweet it all is!" 
 
 After half an hour's steady work, the painter 
 became restless. Perhaps he remembered the advent 
 of the presumed cyclist, and if he did, it worried 
 him. He seemed to be listening once or twice to 
 vague sounds heard in the passage outside, then he 
 began to walk about. Once he brought up sharply in 
 his walk in front of the stack of umbrellas and travel- 
 ling gear in the corner of the room, and stood there. 
 She happened to be looking out into the garden just 
 then, or she would have thought this terribly omi- 
 nous, and all her peace of mind would have been de- 
 stroyed. When he came back to the table, he looked 
 at the drawing and shook his head. That gesture 
 escaped her too. Then he left the room and she saw 
 him stroll deviously up the garden and look over the 
 gate into the fields. When he came back, she had 
 not moved or in any way modified the picture of rest- 
 ful contentment she presented. He looked at her a 
 puzzled look then he said : 
 
 "I have seen the new lodger!" he said. "At least 
 I think it was she!"
 
 THE HUMAN INTEEEST 153 
 
 "You have? A woman?" 
 
 "Ye8, a tall, handsome personage, dressed all in 
 forbidding and ponderous black. She was sitting in 
 the arbour out there, talking to Jane Anne in a very 
 friendly way." 
 
 "It was the girl's own mother, probably. Every 
 girl of her class has got a bombazine mother that she 
 produces on occasion." 
 
 "Jane Anne is an orphan. Besides this was more 
 than bombazine it was it was something very 
 handsome, if I know anything about it which I 
 don't!" 
 
 "No, there's no black in nature!" said Mrs. Elles, 
 smiling fondly at him, "And I should not expect 
 you to know much about women's dress. My er 
 father knows there are such things as ruches and 
 pipings, and that is all." 
 
 "I do happen to know that there is such a thing as 
 jet, and that it is very expensive. A sort of glittering 
 coat of mail, you know, that women wear." 
 
 "Egidia does!" cried Mrs. Elles, with a sudden 
 little pang of jealousy. "She wore one in Newcastle, 
 I remember, when I went to see her. Sequins!" 
 
 "Yes, the 'bombazine mother' wore little shining 
 things like hers," he replied, with a disconcerting 
 apprehension of the intricacies of feminine apparel in 
 Miss Giles's case which disclosed to the woman at his 
 
 N 
 
 side the parlous state of her own heart, if indeed she 
 had been under any doubt about it. 
 
 He went on, "As for this wretched woman, I do
 
 154 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 hope we shall not come across her ! Her voice was 
 enough for me. I wonder how a woman with a 
 strident unsympathetic voice like that can find anyone 
 to live with her. I could not be in her company an 
 hour." 
 
 "I daresay she is somebody's mother-in-law," 
 remarked Mrs. Elles, with pathos. 
 
 " And eyes like gimlets! She had a good look at 
 me!" 
 
 "And now she is most probably pumping them 
 about you, and me, and who and what we are!" 
 
 "Probably," he replied rather grimly, and sat down 
 in front of his drawing, and began to work at it with 
 all the signs of intense concentration. 
 
 She stayed where she was, in the window seat, and 
 watched him, with an ardent, timidly devouring gaze. 
 This time, he was too much absorbed to look up, so it 
 was quite safe. 
 
 She found herself wondering how a man could live 
 in such an atmosphere of passionate regard, and not 
 know it. It seemed to her that the cloud, as it were, 
 of devotion and admiration with which she enwrapped 
 him, was so intensely actual a positive physical fact, 
 it seemed to her that she could see the halo with 
 which she crowned him. 
 
 For literally half-an-hour she heard nothing but the 
 intermittent plip-plop of the brush in the glass of 
 water, fast growing muddy coloured. He seemed to 
 her to dash the brush into it with more energy nay 
 virulence than usual.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 155 
 
 She presently observed aloud, with the sweet imper- 
 tinence permitted by intimacy: "How you are dash- 
 ing it in ! I call that the splash and carry one of art, 
 but I suppose it will all come out right in the end." 
 
 "Or all wrong," he said and his voice was so 
 changed that she looked up in surprise. "The 
 chances are that I shall never finish it. I am think- 
 ing of leaving this place to-morrow!" 
 
 "What?" she screamed, rather than said; and her 
 voice from excess of emotion was shrill and strident 
 enough to apprise even one so absorbed as Rivers that 
 his intelligence was of no ordinary degree of impor- 
 tance to his listener. 
 
 She had known all along that this must come and 
 she had made up her mind how she would behave 
 when it came but not so suddenly, good God ! Her 
 resolution deserted her and her voice betrayed her. 
 
 The painter deliberately laid down his brush, and 
 came to where she was sitting in the window-seat, 
 and taking her two unresisting hands, led her a few 
 paces into the room. 
 
 "There are people in the garden," he said quietly. 
 He screwed up his eyes, and looked at her exactly as 
 if she were a "subject," and a difficult one, as she 
 thought afterwards. 
 
 "Now, please listen to me," he went on, with a little 
 gentle pressure of the hands pushing her into a seat. 
 "I have been thinking " 
 
 "Oh, dear!" she murmured, like a spoilt child. 
 She was so acutely conscious that any reflection on his
 
 156 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 part was likely to mean a conclusion inimical to her 
 peace. The moment he thought about it, he would 
 be sure to see how wrong and impossible the whole 
 situation was. 
 
 "I am a careless fellow," Rivers proceeded to say, 
 "and my head is generally full of my own work, to 
 the exclusion of everything else. ... I can't say I 
 ever thought about it, but I have heard something 
 to-day Mr. Popham made an absurd suggestion to 
 me which shows me that I am very stupidly com- 
 promising you by my presence here." 
 
 Mrs. Elles interrupted him with vehemence, stung 
 by his generosity in putting it so. 
 
 "Indeed no, it is I who am the interloper! I is I 
 who ought to go and I will!" She drew herself up 
 proudly. "You to go! Why, your picture isn't any- 
 thing like finished." 
 
 "The picture is a minor matter, compared with " 
 
 "It is quite the most important thing in the 
 world," she rejoined, with a little touch of irony, 
 bitterly aware that to him it was so, indeed. Then 
 her spirit oozed away, and she said, weakly, "No, 
 no, it is for me to go, of course but, oh. we were so 
 happy ! Why must you make me ' ' 
 
 "I don't make you go of course not!" he said 
 irritably. "I intend to go myself. Did I not say so?" 
 
 "Nonsense," she answered, quite rudely, in her 
 extreme anguish. "That would be no good at all. 
 Besides, do you suppose I should care to be here at 
 all unless you were?"
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 157 
 
 She uttered the crude fact recklessly, imperiously, 
 contemptuously almost. Surely he must see ; she had 
 nothing to conceal from him now ! She hid her face 
 in her hands a moment after, and tried to leave the 
 room, but Rivers caught her to him as she passed. 
 
 "Then, for God's sake, don't go!" he said, tearing 
 her hands down from her face. With one quick look 
 at him as he sat across the chair holding her body, she 
 flnng her arms round his neck, and returned his 
 embrace with all the passion and abandonment of one 
 doomed. Married to one man and beloved of another, 
 she felt herself to be so. A look in Rivers' eyes had 
 warned her that Alastor's asceticism was only skin 
 deep; a mysterious, material rapport was established 
 between them. She felt as if she had known him all 
 her life. 
 
 "It is all right, then, if you care for me," he said, 
 in a matter-of-fact voice. "What do you suppose it 
 was that Mr. Popham wanted to-day? He wanted to 
 marry us, by way of looking after the morals of his 
 parish ! ' ' 
 
 He laughed; he was gay. Even she had never 
 dreamed that he could be so charming ! She removed 
 herself a few paces away from him, and stood, sobbing 
 convulsively. 
 
 "Oh, forgive me, forgive me!" she repeated. 
 
 He became grave and stern in a moment, struck by 
 the utter conviction in her tone. 
 
 "What for? Because you don't care for me? Why 
 should you? I have made a mistake, that's all!"
 
 158 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 He turned away impatiently, possessed for the 
 moment by the mere surface irritation of the man 
 who has been refused. 
 
 "No, no, not that! Oh, I adore you!" 
 
 She laid frantic hold on the lapel of hia coat. He 
 covered her hand with his. 
 
 "What then? How nervous you are! What can 
 it be?" 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 "You are not going to tell me that you are married 
 already, I suppose?" 
 
 "Yes, yes, that's just it. I am!" 
 
 There was a pause. Then 
 
 "I said it in joke. Do you mean to say that you 
 are not joking?" 
 
 "No, no, I wish I were. I have deceived you 
 shamefully." 
 
 He stared at her, then he sat down heavily on the 
 chair by the table in front of his work. He looked a 
 little bewildered and very angry. 
 
 "Shall I tell you all?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, if you care to not that it concerns me 
 now." 
 
 He idly picked up his brush, charged with colour 
 as it was, and let it fall full on the drawing in front 
 of him. 
 
 She caught his hands. 
 
 'Oh, don't, don't spoil your drawing because of 
 me! And listen to me, for it does concern you, since 
 I love you, and you Bay that you love me. I must
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 159 
 
 tell you, I must explain what I have done. Oh, 
 don't look at me so ! You were my lover a moment 
 ago, and now you are my judge." 
 
 "A woman has no right to let a man " 
 
 "No, I know she hasn't. I ought not to have let 
 you tell me that you cared for me. But I am so glad 
 you did! It will be something to remember after- 
 wards. I must tell you my story my true story! I 
 told you once, you remember, the story of Phoebe 
 Elles the woman who left her husband, because he 
 was so unkind to her " 
 
 "Oh, so that is your story, is it? And the one you 
 told me about yourself your pretended self " 
 
 "That I invented. I had to tell you something 
 He rose from his chair. She went on "Oh, 
 
 forgive me, forgive me! I have not told you the 
 
 truth " 
 
 "So it seems! "he replied, coldly, opening the door, 
 and going out. "Good-night." 
 
 She was left alone, with the worst of all scourges 
 that a woman may have to suffer, that of reading in 
 the eyes of the man she loves the expression of the 
 scorn, deserved or undeserved, that he bears her. 
 
 For a long time she sat there, in this little narrow 
 room that had framed all her brief happiness, half 
 stunned by the judgment that had been passed on 
 her, and also by the shock of self-revelation that 
 went with it. She felt mean, as well as miserable.
 
 160 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 The noises about the house ceased gradually there 
 was no sound of footsteps overhead, yet she had heard 
 Elvers go to his room and close the door. He was 
 probably sitting brooding by the window in that 
 chair she had sat in. He had omitted to put his 
 drawing away, presently she rose and tenderly put 
 a sheet of tissue paper over it, as she had seen him 
 do sometimes, when called away even for a moment. 
 Then she sat down again. Her eyes fell on a Brad- 
 shaw on the mantelpiece; she thought of getting it 
 and looking out a train to go home by to-morrow. 
 She had no longer any thought of committing suicide, 
 the idea of expiation of which she was now possessed 
 did not admit of any selfish solution of that sort. 
 But she had never yet been able to find out anything 
 in Bradshaw for herself ; she would have to ask Mr. 
 Rivers. 
 
 That she must not do ; on the contrary, she must 
 never see him again! She must arrange to breakfast 
 in her own room to-morrow, wait till he went out to 
 his work, and leave Greta Bridge without even 
 attempting to bid him good-bye ! 
 
 The lamp began to gurgle, and she realised that the 
 oil in it was getting so low that it would be out in a 
 few minutes. She would be left alone in the dark! 
 She was afraid of the dark like a child. The window 
 was still wide open to the night, she could tell by the 
 cool wind blowing in on her and chilling her through 
 her thin blouse. Suppose, too, that the Spirit of the 
 Greta, evolved in happier days by Rivers' imagination,
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 161 
 
 should suddenly appear, framed in the black square! 
 She was indeed haunted by the vision of a face seen 
 there during her recent interview with him ; it had 
 impressed itself somehow on her consciousness, though 
 she was too much excited to take cognizance of it at 
 the time, but now the impression returned to her 
 with extraordinary vividness, as of a real person who 
 had been there ! 
 
 She started to her feet in terror, and made for the 
 door. 
 
 She ran upstairs all in one breath, as it were, and 
 then paused, by the door of his room, panting a little. 
 She gently proceeded to run her fingers down its 
 uncommunicable surface. Behind those boards was 
 the man she loved, and who despised her. 
 
 But he had said he loved her, before he had found 
 out that she was a liar. Nothing could take that 
 away. 
 
 She crouched down by the door, forgetful of every 
 consideration of prudence. She was a chidden child, 
 that longed to sue childishly for pardon. 
 
 Yes, she was a liar, a criminal! 
 
 She had almost tamely accepted his view in the first 
 instance, because it was his view, it was his contempt 
 that had made her feel contemptible. But now her 
 eyes the eyes of her spirit were opened, and she even 
 exaggerated the heinousness of her crime, the black- 
 ness of her own soul, till she felt herself absolutely 
 shrink from her own carefully cherished and pam- 
 pered personality. She saw herself morally naked and
 
 162 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 unpicturesque. All her little ingeniously disposed 
 veils of sophistry and plausibility she tore rudely 
 away. She took a quite savage joy in shattering her 
 own elaborate life-system of pose. The truth, she 
 sadly, tragically perceived, was not in her it never 
 had been, and again she blamed her mother's train- 
 ing, and Truth was everything. 
 
 No sound came from the room within. Had she 
 but known it, the artist had flung himself on the bed 
 in his clothes as he was, and had fallen asleep, the 
 heavy complete sleep of a man whose lungs have been 
 breathing in the fresh outside air all day, under cir- 
 cumstances of intense creative excitement. Even 
 now, Art came first. 
 
 The door of room number three, a few steps along 
 the passage, opened and closed again. It was the 
 room necessarily occupied by the unknown lodger. 
 Mrs. Elles was too much absorbed either to hear or 
 notice. Her thought, like the thought of a hypnotic 
 subject, was concentrated on the yellow brass handle 
 of the door against which she crouched, which mes- 
 merized her, in its shining immutability. In about 
 half an hour, she made an effort to shake off the 
 lethargy which had taken possession of her, and walk- 
 ing away, like a somnambulist, her hand to her head, 
 and stumbling over her gown, regained her own 
 room.
 
 CHAPTEK IX 
 
 She cried a great deal and she slept a little. She 
 would have died sooner than own it, but luckily for 
 her newly developed sense of veracity, there was no 
 one to question her on this point. About eight 
 o'clock in the morning she rose and dressed, resolved 
 to go downstairs to breakfast as usual. She found it 
 practically impossible not to see Eivers again. If he 
 wished to avoid her, he easily could do so. 
 
 So at the usual hour, she drifted into the little 
 sitting-room, her face composed to a certain extent, 
 but her eyelids swelled, and her cheeks bleached and 
 seared by a sufficient percentage of the hours of the 
 night devoted to weeping. 
 
 The man of her thoughts was sitting at the break- 
 fast table, bending studiously over a Bradshaw. He 
 hardly looked up, but he muttered something civil. 
 Mrs. Elles was woman of the world enough to be able 
 to murmur her conventional "Good morning" in 
 return, for the benefit of Dorothy, who was in attend- 
 ance, and who watched them both so intently as to 
 justify Mrs. Elles' peevish remark, "I do wish 
 Dorothy would not stare so." 
 
 "Does she? I have not noticed," he replied, list- 
 lessly. "Would you mind pouring out the tea?" 
 
 163
 
 164 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 This commonplace suggestion brought her back 
 from the verge of hysterics, as it was perhaps intended 
 to do. 
 
 "Oh, I forgot," she exclaimed, taking her hands 
 ont of her lap, and becoming suddenly and ineffi- 
 ciently active. Elvers never got a worse cup of tea in 
 his life, probably, than the one Mrs. Elles gave him 
 that morning, and he took it without sugar, comment, 
 or complaint. 
 
 They ate and drank in silence. Mrs. Elles could 
 bear anything but that. 
 
 "Will you look out a train for me a train home?" 
 she asked, in tones as nearly devoid of all emotion as 
 she could compass. 
 
 "I will, if you will tell me where you live!" ha 
 replied, with equal coldness. 
 
 "Newcastle," she murmured, in a voice choked 
 with incipient sobs. 
 
 "He opened the Guide with cruelly assured hands. 
 "There is a train at 12:45," he said, looking up. 
 
 But the strain had been too much for her, she had 
 flung down her napkin, and had risen from the table, 
 and hurrying across the room to the sofa, had flung 
 herself down there in a heap, with her face to the 
 wall. He caught the white gleam of a pocket 
 handkerchief, which alone told him she was 
 weeping. 
 
 There was a silence. Eivers groaned the nervous 
 groan of a man who is too well bred to swear at a 
 woman.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 165 
 
 She tried to refrain from sobbing aloud. She lay 
 quite still. Her eyes, half open in the dim penumbra 
 of the sofa corner, saw only, as in a nightmare, its 
 rough horse-hair surface, like a dreary hill, studded 
 with briars of incommensurate proportions, and over 
 which she somehow imagined herself climbing. Her 
 ears, preposterously sharpened by her excitement, 
 next heard the faint click of a teacup, hastily pushed 
 aside. A panic fear overcame her, lest thia should be 
 the signal of his rising, and that the clash of the door 
 closing behind him, as she had heard it last night, 
 and remembered it, would be the next sound that 
 would come to her ears. But as in some stages of 
 the mesmeric trance, she was powerless to stop him; 
 she would not be able to raise a finger even to save her 
 life, and her life it would be that she would lose. He 
 would go out of the room out of her world for ever ! 
 She listened . . . her ears were tingling ... it was 
 positive pain. . . . 
 
 He did rise and she presently felt his hand on 
 her shoulder, and heard strange, unexpected words of 
 tenderness from his lips. 
 
 "Dear I love you but what can I do? You are 
 another man's wife." 
 
 She turned her whole body round, and caught his 
 arm to her, and hid her face on his sleeve. 
 
 "Yes, I know, but can you ever forgive me for 
 the lies I have told you? That is what I want to 
 know." 
 
 "I have said that I loved you," he said, simply.
 
 166 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "I can't say more than that. Women are different, I 
 suppose." 
 
 She never remembered anything sadder than the 
 sigh with which he said this. She realized that in 
 order to exonerate the woman he said he cared for, 
 and to condone her fault, he had been obliged to 
 involve the whole of her sex in her disgrace, and to 
 set all womankind a few degrees lower. 
 
 "What am I to do then?" she asked like a child, 
 sitting up, and pushing the disordered hah- off her 
 brows without regard to order or becomingness. 
 
 "Obviously," he said, and his tone was almost 
 brutal, "go, unless you will let me? Only, as you 
 have a home and a husband to go to " 
 
 "You might have spared me that!" she said, with 
 a flash of her old spirit, rising, and wandering devi- 
 ously towards the door, like one in a sad and hopeless 
 dream. "Of course I must go!" she said meekly, 
 fumbling with the door handle. "Will you please 
 open it? I have things to do . . . give up my room 
 . . . pay my bill. ..." 
 
 "Have you are you sure you have enough money?" 
 
 "No, I daresay not," she answered with dreary 
 inconsequence. "But it doesn't matter!" 
 
 "What nonsense ! Of course it matters. You must 
 let me lend you some." 
 
 She shuddered. "Oh, I couldn't borrow of yon." 
 
 "Why not? You don't know what you are saving, 
 poor thing!" 
 
 At that word she began to cry.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEEEST 167 
 
 "Look here " His words were rough, but his 
 
 voice was gentle. "For Heaven's sake, don't go and 
 expose yourself expose us" for she had made a ges- 
 ture expressive of entire disregard of all malign infer- 
 ences with regard to herself ' 'to the whole household ! 
 It is bad enough already!" 
 
 He took her hand, and she ceased to weep, and 
 looked up into the face of her supreme arbiter with a 
 dull submission. 
 
 "You must take these three notes that I am going 
 to give you," he said authoritatively, "and go quietly 
 up to your room and ring for the servant and ask for 
 your bill and pay it I can't do all this for you, or I 
 would but I will order the trap to take you to the 
 station in time for the 12 :45 !" 
 
 "Drive to the station with me," she murmured. 
 
 "No, I must not do that, but I will tell you what I 
 will do. As soon as you have made all your arrange- 
 ments, we will take a little walk in the Park, shall 
 we?" 
 
 He spoke like an ascetic, dealing himself out many 
 penances, and but one indulgence. His tone through- 
 out was businesslike and decided, he was no longer 
 the quiet indifferent dreamer of dreams, but the 
 efficient man of the world, the man of action ; and 
 the fanciful hysterical woman at his side was com- 
 pletely dominated by his decision, and stilled for the 
 moment into something like acquiescence with her 
 fate. 
 
 She carried out all his directions faithfully and
 
 168 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 accurately, and in less than half an hour, joined him 
 in the road outside the inn, veiled and spectacled, 
 and demure as a nun about to take the vow ! 
 
 "I have told them," he said, "to bring the trap 
 round to the Park Gates to meet you. So you will 
 not need to go back to the inn at all. We have just 
 half an hour." 
 
 "But you are wasting your whole morning's work," 
 she said as they turned in at the Park Gates. It was 
 the first thing that occurred to her to say. 
 
 "Oh, just for once!" he replied. "My work will 
 have no cause to complain of me after to-day. " 
 
 She shuddered at the grimness of his accent she 
 apprehended his meaning only too well. She seemed 
 to see him in her mind's eye, as he would be hence- 
 forth, stooping, brooding, gloating over his work in 
 the dell of Brignal, alone, as he was before she came 
 there, and mildly, dully happy perhaps, as he may 
 have been, before the Human Interest came to trouble 
 him. 
 
 And yet "He does not want to let me see how 
 he feels it," was the secret consolation that lay all the 
 while at the back of her thought, explaining his 
 brusqueness, his taciturnity, his hardness, which her 
 surface mind could not help resenting and deprecat- 
 ing. Her soul's life, which was then at its lowest ebb, 
 lived on that thought, and her body took courage 
 from it. 
 
 She walked into the Park almost briskly by his 
 side, and when they had travelled a certain distance
 
 THE HUMAN INTEKEST 169 
 
 along the broad path, he made a significant move- 
 ment of hia hand towards her spectacles. 
 
 "Can you take those things off?" he asked her, 
 imperiously. 
 
 She obediently doffed the symbol of her martyrdom 
 and return to the paths of virtue, and handed them 
 to him. He folded the spectacles and put them in 
 his coat pocket. 
 
 "The bill was only thirteen pounds," she next 
 remarked, holding out the notes he had lent her. 
 "I had plenty of money of my own, so I return 
 these." 
 
 The notes, too, he put into his pocket without com- 
 ment. Then she said reproachfully : 
 
 "Don't you want to know my name?" 
 
 He started. "Your name? That does not matter, 
 does it?" 
 
 "But you surely must know my name to write to 
 me by?" 
 
 "I am not going to write to you." 
 
 "Why not?" There was a sharp note of prescient 
 anguish in her voice. 
 
 "I am not good at writing letters." 
 
 "Ah, no, it isn't that," she answered sadly. "You 
 mean of course that you want to go quite out of my 
 life." 
 
 "What can I do?" 
 
 "Do!" she repeated after him vaguely. Then 
 "Must you?" 
 "Yes I must."
 
 170 THE HUMAN INTEKEST 
 
 "But it isn't possible, no, it isn't possible!" she 
 cried. 
 
 "Quite possible," he answered her doggedly. "I 
 did not know you a month ago I shall not know you 
 a month hence, that's all!" 
 
 She wailed out gently, like a child. "But what 
 am I to do? What are you going to do?" 
 
 "I am going to do my work," he answered her 
 severely and coldly. "My work, that I have been 
 letting go to the dogs lately. I shall paint and 
 paint like the very devil as I did before you came. 
 You must do that too. Work is the only thing, I 
 find." 
 
 "Work, work, honest work!" she repeated mechan- 
 ically. "But will you tell me what work I have to 
 do? It is all very well for you you speak as if you 
 quite looked forward to your life without me but I 
 shall eat my heart out." 
 
 "Oh, people say that, but there is a certain savage 
 pleasure in renunciation, as you will find." 
 
 His tone was so extraordinarily bitter, that she cried 
 out joyfully, "Oh, then you do care a little? You 
 speak of renunciation! Then I can speak. I was 
 afraid to. I was beginning to think that you had 
 only oh, how difficult it is to say these things ! that 
 you had only proposed to me, because I had com- 
 promised myself by staying here with you so long. 
 Out of pity, you know!" 
 
 They had left the Broad Walk, and were wandering 
 down a track in the undergrowth. He turned round
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 171 
 
 to her, and his voice was quite different from the one 
 he had been hitherto using. 
 
 "You are quite wrong if you think that. On the 
 
 contrary " He stopped, and seemed embarrassed 
 
 for the first time. "It was what I wanted I said 
 that I loved you and I did. I do only " 
 
 "Then then if you can say that " She 
 
 seized his hand, raised it to her lips, and kissed it. 
 "Then let him let my husband divorce me! I must 
 aay it! I can't let myself drown without a word! 
 Mortimer will have every excuse to divorce me, 
 don't you see? I have been living practically alone 
 with you for a whole month ! It looks bad enough 
 even old Mr. Popham saw it. I could not defend it 
 and I won't ! Mortimer will have to divorce me, 
 and we will marry each other and be happy. . . . 
 Why do you shake your head like that? No ! But 
 why not? You think my proposal dreadful ! So it 
 is, but I would do anything anything in the world 
 to come to you." 
 
 "And so would I for you you must not doubt 
 that!" he replied, and his slow deliberate tones in no 
 wise expressed the emotion that, for her comfort, she 
 could see in his eyes. He gave her back her hands, 
 as it were. 
 
 "Anything," he repeated gravely, "but a dis- 
 honourable thing! No, not even for you! . . . 
 Look here ! it is now half past eleven you can only 
 just do it! The trap will be there already! You 
 shall leave me here. Please don't make diffi-
 
 172 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 culties, my dear. It has to be. We have decided it, 
 haven't we? Good-bye . . . good-bye!" 
 
 She did not cry. She stood still and leant her head 
 against the trunk of a huge beech tree, and felt her 
 hair catch in its rough bark, and half closed her eyes 
 in anticipation of a parting that would be worse to 
 bear than a blow. Would he kiss her? He must, 
 and yet she would not ask him. 
 
 He did; he took her in his arms, and gratified her 
 great love with a kiss more perfunctory than passion- 
 ate, perhaps, and which yet awakened the woman's 
 heart in her body once and for all. Then he turned 
 sharply on his heel and raised his hat she smiled 
 even in her misery at the irony of it, but she under- 
 stood him now and left her. 
 
 She dared not watch him go, lest she fall into the 
 crime of calling him back to her. He might hate her 
 for that. She looked up into the branches of the 
 tree overhead, till a sudden rush of tears mercifully 
 blinded her ! 
 
 Ten minutes later, she made her way down the 
 Broad Walk to the Gate, turning a foolish unintelli- 
 gent stare on the porter who opened it for her as 
 he had done for Rivers ten minutes before she felt a 
 wild desire to ask him how her lover had looked as 
 he passed through. Still in a merciful dream she 
 mounted the steps of the dog-cart that was waiting in 
 the road for her, and was whirled away in the direc- 
 tion of Barnard Castle. 
 
 She was wrong in her supposition Rivers had not
 
 THE HUMAN INTEEEST 173 
 
 left the Park, but had turned down a little side path 
 to the right. He stayed in the Park till he heard the 
 sound of the wheels of the dog-cart going past the 
 high boundary wall. Then he walked with his quick 
 elastic step to the gate, and back to the "Heather Bell. " 
 
 "I wonder if I shall ever paint another decent pic- 
 ture?" was the purely technical remark that he made 
 to himself. He was very pale, and he lifted his hat 
 off, once or twice, and breathed deeply as the cold 
 morning air met his forehead. 
 
 "A lady to see you, Mr. Eivers," said Jane Anne to 
 him, as he crossed the porch. 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "She asked to be shown into your sitting-room, 
 Sir," answered Jane Anne, with great suavity of 
 manner. 
 
 "You should not have done that!" the painter said 
 wearily, and passed in. 
 
 The first thing that caught his eyes on entering the 
 little parlour that he had shared with Mrs. Elles was 
 her tear-stained handkerchief lying like a white blot 
 on the black horsehair sofa, and her long tan- coloured 
 gloves spread at length upon the table. If he had 
 thought about it, he would have recollected that the 
 gloves had not lain there when he left the room, or at 
 any rate, were not in the same position. In the very 
 middle of the room stood a tall commanding presence, 
 the "Bombazine Mother" as Mrs. Elles had insisted 
 on calling her the lady he had seen talking to Jane 
 Anne in the garden last night !
 
 174 THE HUMAN INTEBEST 
 
 One bony hand was firmly planted on the table in 
 the neighbourhood of the gloves, the other flourished 
 a letter in an aggressively judicial manner. The 
 artist bowed, and waited for her to speak. 
 
 "I daresay you know my name, Sir!" she said. 
 
 "I have not the pleasure," he answered, curtly. 
 Her voice had a most painful effect on him. 
 
 "Poynder Mrs. George Poynder I am the aunt 
 by marriage of the lady who has been living with 
 you here for one calendar month! Don't attempt to 
 deny it, man " 
 
 She spoke so preposterously fast that he had no 
 opportunity of doing so. Pointing to Jane Anne, 
 who had slunk into the room during her speech, she 
 continued : 
 
 "This young lady will bear out what I have said, 
 and the good people of the inn. There are plenty of 
 Phoebe's things about; for instance, that object on 
 the sofa you will hardly say it is yours, I presume? 
 I saw besides, with my own eyes last night, an unpar- 
 allelled scene of " 
 
 Here the painter interrupted her by almost roaring 
 out: 
 
 "Please to leave the room, Jane Anne!" 
 
 The girl, cowed, crept out. The painter continued : 
 
 "If this lady is your niece, Madam, you will hardly 
 wish to discuss her reputation in public. Now, all I 
 have to say to you is this, that this is the parlour of 
 the inn, common to all, and the only available sitting- 
 room. Your niece, Miss ," he hesitated, he did
 
 THE HUMAN INTEEEST 175 
 
 not remember to have ever called Mrs. Elles by any 
 name "has been good enough to consent to share it 
 with me during the time you name " 
 
 "Nonsense ! Now look here ! it is no earthly use 
 your beginning to tell me a pack of cock-and-bull 
 stories like that!" struck in the old woman, and her 
 overpowering emphasis actually silenced the man 
 with the mere physical oppression of volume of sound 
 and harsh quality of tone. The genius was no match 
 for the virago. 
 
 "I have stayed here, in this very inn, from last 
 night. I meant to see for myself and I have seen ! 
 The Vicar's wife if there is such a thing as a vicar 
 in this God-forgotten place ! who was scandalized by 
 the goings on here, wrote to me and apprised me that 
 Mrs. Elles my niece by marriage -.perhaps you 
 will have the brass to say that you did not know that 
 she was a married lady?" 
 
 "I certainly did not know" began the artist, 
 almost mildly for the sake of another woman, grown 
 suddenly dearer to him than she had been, he 
 thought to exercise diplomacy in dealing with the 
 coarse virago who held that woman's fate in her 
 hands but it was of no avail, since she inter- 
 rupted him again, stridently, volubly, overwhelm- 
 ingly, so that his forehead contracted, and he turned 
 pale under the mere shock of the impact of the words 
 she flung at him. 
 
 "Yes, my niece Phoebe ran away from her husband 
 my nephew and came straight here to you, and has
 
 176 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 been living here with you for a clear month under an 
 assumed name. That looks pretty bad, doesn't it? 
 So bad that Mortimer my nephew will have no 
 difficulty in getting his divorce?" 
 
 "Divorce!" muttered Rivers, taken by surprise, 
 and foolishly allowing her to see the shock her words 
 had given him. 
 
 "Yes indeed, divorce, what else would you have? 
 He will be perfectly justified. The woman has 
 always been a constant source of trouble and disgrace 
 to him. She has never known how to behave her- 
 self, and God knows what might have happened, and 
 I, for one, am rare and glad to be shot of the little 
 >! And now " 
 
 Mrs. Poynder was not without a certain kind of 
 penetration, and seeing herself in imminent danger 
 of being ordered out of the room, adroitly concluded 
 to be beforehand with the man whom she had goaded 
 into fury. 
 
 "And now, Sir, I will wish you a very good day!" 
 she said, quite quietly, moving towards the door. 
 "And since you are so very careful of Phoebe's repu- 
 tation there isn't much of it but the landlady here 
 tells me she was under the impression that you and 
 she were courting. Well, perhaps now that you 
 have ruined her, you will be gentleman enough to 
 marry her. It is the very least you can do, when 
 you have got her kicked out of her husband's 
 house!" 
 
 "And by God, I will, if it comes to that!" Rivers
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 177 
 
 said, with sudden and determined emphasis. He 
 strode to the door. 
 
 "Now, Madam, have the goodness to leave my 
 room." 
 
 He held the door open for her as she passed out. 
 He was white with rage. 
 
 "I am sure I thought I heard you say it was the 
 common parlour?" the terrible woman remarked to 
 him, over her shoulder. 
 
 A moment later, he seized his hat and went out. 
 Jane Anne was waiting for him in the passage, her 
 comely face marred with tears. She caught his hand 
 and held it. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Eivers, do please forgive me! Mrs. 
 Topham wrote the letter, she did indeed, and the 
 other lady stayed here all night and saw you " 
 
 He shook her hand off his sleeve, and passed out 
 into the road, without even looking at her. 
 
 Jane Anne looked at her hand the hand he had 
 disdained as if she would like to cut it off. Her heavy 
 brows contracted met together in a dull frown of 
 rage and disappointment. 
 
 "Then I'll just swear anything they like!" she 
 muttered to herself.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Mrs. Elles, on arriving at Newcastle, took a fly and 
 drove straight up to her own door. 
 
 This detail was significant of the course she had 
 undertaken to pursue, and the attitude she meant to 
 assume with regard to her own life what was left 
 of it. 
 
 She was only thirty, she had presumably as many 
 years again to live, and she had no intention of com- 
 mitting suicide. On the contrary, she meant to go 
 through the process known as picking up the pieces. 
 
 Her policy of life was optimism pessimism was her 
 pose. But her unconscious tendency was to look 
 forward very much forward. The past she ignored, 
 the present she disdained, the future she brooded 
 over. It had always been so with her, even in the 
 old days before this cyclone of emotion had swept 
 over her, and the trivial round of things pleasant and 
 unpleasant had been all her care and preoccupation. 
 It would be so again. 
 
 She had the peculiar shrewdness of the feather- 
 brained, the perspicacity of the trivial-minded; and 
 the practical basis of her nature, which had been 
 overlaid and smothered for a time by her spasmodic 
 access of passion for the artist, began to reassert 
 
 178
 
 THE' HUMAN INTEREST 179 
 
 itself. As the train passed easily through stations 
 and scenes familiar, the domestic campaign of the 
 immediate future took form and shape in her mind. 
 
 All that was now possible ! She arranged it hope- 
 lessly, drearily, but as satisfactorily as might be under 
 the gods' dispensation. The door of Paradise was 
 closed to her, she would make purgatory endurable. 
 She had known the poetry of life, now for its prose. 
 But dramatic and artistic fitness demanded that there 
 should be no loose ends, no rough edges, no interfus- 
 ing and overlapping of incompatible and discordant 
 periods of existence. Her month of soul-fruition was 
 to be a thing apart, a memory, complete, perfect, 
 enshrined in her heart for ever and kept entirely clear 
 of entanglement with the squalid phase of life that 
 she was going to take up again. She was a reluctant 
 but resolved Eurydice returning to the grey neutrali- 
 ties of the Hades from which Orpheus had so nearly 
 rescued her. 
 
 Ch farb! She knew the song. What would 
 Orpheus do without Eurydice? 
 
 Alas ! in her shrewd heart of hearts she knew that 
 Orpheus would do very well. Orpheus loved his 
 Eurydice, but even the legend is compelled to admit 
 that he went harping about the world; and Rivers 
 would go on painting noble pictures and would soon 
 forget her in his work, which even in the heyday of 
 her influence had been paramount with him. 
 
 She did not allow herself to lose sight of that fact. 
 She knew in her humility and consequent clearness of
 
 180 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 perception that the idyllic month in the Brignal woods 
 had been her epoch his episode. Propinquity and 
 a vague sense of responsibility had led him to propose 
 to her. 
 
 She wished he had given her a ring a sketch 
 anything, as a memorial of then* sojourn together. 
 She had literally nothing of his but a stump of pencil 
 which he had lent her the day before, and which she 
 had forgotten to return. It was only a stump she 
 must never permit herself to use it ; it must last her 
 her life. She laughed at herself for thinking of this. 
 
 Rivers would certainly approve of her plan. He 
 had not allowed himself to preach at her, but he 
 would of course wish her to make the best of Morti- 
 mer and be a good wife to him henceforward. She 
 would try but the very thought of Mortimer brought 
 one of her headaches ! 
 
 Driving up Grey Street from the station, she 
 caught sight of various members of her little society. 
 Miss Drummond was picking her way through the 
 perennial mud of this unromantic city, and the poet 
 was holding an umbrella over her. This looked like 
 love like an engagement ! Had they got it settled 
 during her absence? She was disposed to be kind to 
 all lovers, but preferred them of the distressed variety ! 
 She would have liked something left to her to do! 
 But there were other lovers and other people in the 
 world. She would begin her Friday "At Homes" 
 again and her friends would muster and she would 
 give them tea, and they would wonder why sho
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 181 
 
 looked "different." There would be a look in her 
 eyes which no one would remember having seen there 
 before, a kind of "Love among the ruins" look, and 
 she would not be able to smile quite so freely. 
 
 The thought awakened her own ready sympathy 
 for herself and there were tears in her eyes and a 
 flush on her cheek when she stood on her own door- 
 step and rang the bell of her own house. 
 
 A new parlour-maid she could not help starting 
 though she must have known on reflection that this 
 would be the case opened the door and stood look- 
 ing politely receptive. 
 
 Mrs. Elles saw the comedy of the situation and 
 laughed gently. Then she put a florin into the girl's 
 hand, and, bidding her pay the cabman, brushed 
 past her into the house and into the dining-room. 
 
 The room was empty, unchanged, a little untidier 
 than it used to be in her day. A sour look came over 
 her face as the accustomed horrors smote her sense, 
 fresh and undulled by previous contact with them. 
 
 "If he has dared to touch my drawing-room!" she 
 muttered and, opening the door of that apartment, 
 surveyed it. 
 
 It was just as she had left it, a passably pretty and 
 tasteful room. She went up to the wall and instinct- 
 ively set the frame of a picture straight. 
 
 "Bring tea at once," she ordered peremptorily of 
 the astonished maid, sitting down in her own especial 
 place at the corner of the sofa. "Where is Mrs. 
 Poynder?"
 
 182 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "Oh, Miss, did you want Mrs. Poynder?" said the 
 servant, with obvious relief. "Mrs. Poynder is away. 
 She went into Yorkshire yesterday. Mrs. Elles is 
 away too." 
 
 "I am Mrs. Elles," said that lady calmly, judging 
 that the comedy in the maid's case had lasted long 
 enough. "You are the new parlour-maid, I suppose. 
 What is your name? "When do you expect Mrs. 
 Poynder back?" 
 
 "Mrs. Poynder only went for the night, Miss 
 Ma'am. She expects to be home for dinner." 
 
 "What an extraordinary thing for Aunt Poynder 
 to do!" said Mrs. Elles, speaking aloud. "Now go 
 and get tea. I am dying for it." 
 
 The girl went. Then her mistress gave one de- 
 spairing look around the room and hid her face in the 
 sofa cushion. Sorrow's crown of sorrow had come 
 upon her suddenly the contrast between her own 
 drawing-room and the little ascetic room at Rokeby, 
 that spoke so clearly of its inmate, had come across 
 her mind with cruel poignancy. 
 
 "Oh; God, if it is going to be like this!" she mur- 
 mured, choking with sobs. Only a few hours ago, in 
 the plain bald room that was Paradise to her, and 
 now here among all these pictures, photographs, 
 books, symbols of the tedious domesticity she had 
 been prepared to take up, but which struck her now 
 as horrible, so much more horrible than she had 
 anticipated ! 
 
 "I hate you!" she said to the grandfather over the
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 183 
 
 mantelpiece. She kicked the early Victorian 
 embroidered footstool at her feet savagely away. 
 
 The door opened a little and she wearily raised her 
 eyes. Her little cat came wandering deviously in, 
 having pushed the door open for itself, and, purring 
 for joy of seeing her again, rubbed its head against 
 the footstool and the foot. She looked down with a 
 sudden fiendish instinct then seized the creature and 
 kissed it and buried her face in its soft fur and let it 
 lick away the tears that coursed down her cheeks 
 uncontrollably. 
 
 There was a crash of sticks in the hall how well 
 she knew that sound ! Mortimer ! In spite of the 
 comedy of the situation Mrs. Elles turned pale. It 
 was the first time in her life that her husband had 
 had that effect upon her. Through the chink in the 
 door that the cat had made for itself, she saw a ver- 
 tical slice of her husband. In a moment he would 
 enter the room and the comedy would have to begin. 
 She put down the cat and dried her eyes on the 
 muslin chair-cover. 
 
 Very rarely did Mortimer enter the drawing-room. 
 If she had only thought of that ! He did not enter it 
 now. He walked into his study and closed the door. 
 
 Now he had made her feel foolish another rare 
 occurrence. The only thing for her to do now was 
 to go and "dig him out," in pursuance of her plan 
 of making things go smoothly. She would do it, for 
 once. And if she could only bring herself to put her 
 arms round his neck and kiss him, also for once,
 
 184 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 domestic peace would be fully ensured, for a season 
 at any rate. 
 
 The memory of Rivers' farewell kiss that morning 
 assailed her and she sat heavily down again, strug- 
 gling, striving, gathering up her resolution. No, she 
 could not kiss Mortimer, but she could be nice to 
 him, and she would. 
 
 She presently rose and with an assured step went to 
 the study door and opened it. 
 
 Mortimer was standing with his back to her, in 
 front of a case of liqueurs that he kept there, and was 
 in the act of pouring himself out a glass of brandy. 
 Kiss him, indeed ! Under these conditions she could 
 hardly be expected to go up to him and say 
 "Peep-bo!" or "Guess who this is!" as she believed 
 was done in the best bourgeois circles. 
 
 She merely said "Mortimer!" as jauntily as she 
 could. 
 
 He turned. His face expressed no emotion but 
 surprise, and he took a gulp of brandy from the glass 
 he held before answering. 
 
 She shuddered with disgust, but remarked in a 
 lively tone: "Well, Mortimer, here I am and so 
 much better for my little change. I simply had to 
 go, and quickly too, or you would have had me break 
 down on your hands. I hope you realize that but 
 men never do!" 
 
 Mortimer said nothing and she began to get a little 
 nervous. 
 
 "You don't seem to take much interest in my
 
 185 
 
 travels, so I won't enter into particulars; but you can 
 imagine the sort of thing for yourself perfect rest 
 and quiet, and away from Aunt Poynder. By the 
 way, where is Aunt Poynder?" 
 
 "Haven't you seen her?" the man asked, with grim 
 intention. 
 
 "No. How should I?" she replied innocently. 
 "Jane Mary whatever you call the new one 
 said she had gone into Yorkshire for the night. 
 What a funny thing for Aunt Poynder to do ! What 
 possessed her? Perhaps she has gone away for a cure, 
 like me." 
 
 Mortimer here made an inarticulate sound and his 
 wife was quick to interrupt him. 
 
 "Oh, please don't begin to question me! Don't 
 you see I am still rather nervous? Take me when 
 you have got me, and be thankful. Are you not one 
 little bit glad to see me?" 
 
 "God, Phoebe, what a liar you are!" ho exclaimed, 
 making a step forward. 
 
 "Really, Mortimer!" 
 
 "Read this!" he said violently, taking a crum- 
 pled sheet of notepaper out of his breast coat pocket. 
 "Read it, and then perhaps you'll know where your 
 aunt is if you don't know already, which of course 
 you do!" 
 
 Mrs. Elles took the note out of his hands. 
 "Don't, Mortimer, look at me as if you hated me!" 
 she added deprecatingly. 
 
 The address of the letter The Rectory, Greta
 
 186 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 Bridge was the first crowbar levelled at the fabric 
 of the pose she had been keeping up so valiantly. 
 Her knees shook under her. 
 
 "Dear Sir," (the letter ran) 
 
 "Will you excuse a perfect stranger for writing 
 to you, but I fancy you will perhaps care to hear what 
 I have to tell you. A young lady, who bears the 
 address to which I write engraved on her umbrella, 
 is staying here at the inn of this village under circum- 
 stances which impel me, as the wife of the Vicar of 
 this parish, to give you at least a hint of her where- 
 abouts, so that you may exercise the powers of a 
 guardian over her. The only other inmate of the 
 'Heather Bell' is a single gentleman of the name of 
 Rivers. The young lady calls herself Frick, a name 
 which is not borne out by the initials on her objects 
 of personal use. I may mention that she and Mr. 
 Rivers share the same sitting-room. 
 
 "Yours faithfully, 
 
 "Florence Popham." 
 
 Mrs. Elles raised her eyes, full of angry fire. The 
 fighting instinct was aroused in her. 
 
 "Silly meddlesome creature!" she said scornfully. 
 "Why may I not stay where I like, and call myself 
 what I like, and what is it to me or to you either who 
 happens to be staying in the same inn?" 
 
 "That's all bluff! We'll hear what your aunt 
 has to say about that!" 
 
 "My aunt! What on earth has she to do with
 
 THE HUMAN INTEEEST 187 
 
 it?" And again her accent was truly surprised and 
 therefore convincing. 
 
 "You're a damn good actress, Phoebe! ... By 
 Jove! Here is your aunt! . . . Stay where you 
 are!" 
 
 He seized her wrist with some violence just as Mrs. 
 Poynder flung open the door of the room and stood 
 aghast at the sight of Mrs. Elles. Then she banged 
 her reticule, a strong, black, noticeably shabby one, 
 down on the table, and Mrs. Elles 's eyes fastened 
 on it. 
 
 "You got a bit start of me, Fibby!" she said 
 grimly, "but no matter. The old woman will be a 
 match for you before she's done!" 
 
 Mrs. Elles slid her wrist out of Mortimer's grasp, 
 which tightened disagreeably when he gathered her 
 intention of escape. 
 
 "No violence, please, Mortimer," she said stagily. 
 "I almost think I will leave you to discuss me with 
 Aunt Poynder!" 
 
 She left the room with no signs of unseemly haste, 
 delighted to feel the grasp of her husband's fingers 
 literally smarting on her arm. Cruelty! She had 
 heard of that. 
 
 She went straight upstairs to her own room and 
 locked herself in. It had been a sudden and brilliant 
 inspiration of hers to leave them. She wanted very 
 much to hear what it was that her aunt had to say 
 to her husband, but still more she did want time to 
 think. The ground had been cut beneath her feet.
 
 188 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 She felt like Alnaschar when his basket of eggs was 
 rudely kicked away from him. A completely new plan 
 of action was imperative, and how could she act when 
 she was so dreadfully in the dark and so puzzled by 
 her husband's constant allusions to Mrs. Poynder, 
 whom she had not seen since she left Newcastle? 
 
 But stay! In her hurried glimpse of Mrs. 
 Poynder she had realized that that lady was wearing 
 a black dress, trimmed with little shining things, as 
 Rivers had called them, and that the black bag that 
 she had slammed down on the table was the one that 
 Rivers had described as belonging to the unknown 
 visitor at the Heather Bell on that summer night that 
 seemed so long ago and was only last night. And 
 the face seen at the window at the very moment 
 when she had fallen into her lover's arms, for the 
 first and only time ! All these things came crowding 
 into her mind ; a bewildering vision of what had been 
 rose before her eyes, with the damning significance 
 in ears inimical of all the little foolish foolhardy 
 things she had done in the innocent audacity of her 
 unreturned love and she realized how she and 
 Rivers had been betrayed ! 
 
 She must find out how much and what Aunt Poyn- 
 der had seen before she committed herself by a single 
 word. She must be clever and diplomatic to the full 
 extent of her powers. Her excitement grew as she 
 sat there on the edge of the bed thinking out a plan 
 many plans, and she bounded to her feet when 
 there came a very ordinary knock at the door.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 189 
 
 "Come in!" she cried, forgetting that she had 
 locked it. 
 
 There was a furious rattling and "How can I?" 
 came in Mrs. Poynder's angry voice. 
 
 Mrs. Elles had taken her line. 
 
 "Oh, I forgot," she said, insolently. "Well, you 
 can say what you want to through the keyhole. I 
 shall hear you well enough." 
 
 "Do you want all the servants to hear what I have 
 to say?" 
 
 "I haven't the slightest objection, if you haven't," 
 said Mrs. Elles, airily. 
 
 "You're quite shameless, then?" 
 
 "Perhaps, Aunt, you had better take care what 
 you say, for your own sake." 
 
 "For my own sake, says she! Jane Poynder has 
 nought to be ashamed of. But I should have 
 thought, after what I saw last night with my own 
 eyes " 
 
 "Through the keyhole?" interrupted her niece 
 impertinently. 
 
 "Through the window, woman! the window of 
 the hotel where you were living with " 
 
 "Hush, Aunt," Mrs. Elles interrupted again this 
 time really for the sake of the servants and common 
 decency. And then there was nothing fine, dramatic 
 or romantic about this discussion; it sickened her. 
 Not so should a husband accuse his wife of infidelity : 
 through the mouth of a vulgar, foul-mouthed 
 beldam. How different from Hero's "Let me but
 
 190 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 know of what man I am accused" ! Still it behooved 
 her to listen and learn, if she could, from Aunt Poyn- 
 der the precise terms of the indictment against her. 
 
 "And I saw you in his arms," continued the old 
 lady, "and the girl Jane Anne saw you walking hand 
 in hand out in the public street! Don't attempt to 
 deny it!" 
 
 In point of fact Mrs. Elles said nothing, but Mrs. 
 Poynder thought she did, and her fury rose. 
 
 "You have the face ! Well, it's more than 
 
 your man has. He turned as white as a leaf when I 
 was giving him a piece of my mind this morning. 
 He'd nothing to say for himself except that your room 
 was the common room. " 
 
 "So it was!" 
 
 "Tell that to me! I know what's what. It's I 
 that made him promise to marry you, when all's said 
 and done. But, Lord! trust him! He'll not 
 touch you with a pair of tongs! Men aren't so 
 fond of marrying the women they have disgraced. 
 Mercy, what's that?" she added in extreme pertur- 
 bation. 
 
 "Only the dinner gong, Aunt," said Mrs. Elles, 
 spitefully smiling on the other side of the door. She 
 had learned what she wanted. "I can't come down, " 
 she said decidedly. "Tell Mortimer to come up here 
 and speak to me after he has dined." 
 
 "You give your orders, my lady!" grumbled the 
 older woman. "What's to say that Mortimer's going 
 to condescend to even speak to you?' '
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 191 
 
 "Give him my message," said Mrs. Elles peremp- 
 torily. 
 
 Mrs. Poynder's footsteps creaked on the stairs as she 
 withdrew, and her angry mutterings were like a heavy 
 ground swell at sea as she went downstairs. How 
 her niece loathed her ! And the man whose comfort 
 and well-being she placed before every other earthly 
 consideration had been exposed for at least half an 
 hour to that malign influence. She realized the full 
 horrors of the scene at the Heather Bell which her 
 aunt had only faintly adumbrated, and most of her 
 thought was for him. 
 
 "I must get him out of this," she said to herself, 
 "at all costs! I used to think myself clever I shall 
 be clever if I manage this. I don't care a pin for 
 myself, but for him! If I only knew something 
 about it all how they set about these things. What 
 can be done? What is possible? If only I could look 
 it up somewhere." 
 
 A vain glance at the little bookcase stocked with 
 Ibsens and Merediths did not help her. 
 
 "What is the good of yon?" she said, apostrophis- 
 ing them violently. "You are no good when it 
 comes to the serious crises of life. Even a common 
 old 'Enquire Within' would be better. I don't 
 know what it is I am in for what it all means. Can 
 Mortimer divorce me straight away? What is the 
 formula?" She wrung her hands. "If only I could 
 keep his name out of it?" 
 
 She unlocked the door of her room and went out
 
 192 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 upon the landing and looked down over the banisters. 
 Mortimer was dining! "Though empires crumble," 
 she murmured to herself. She heard the clatter of 
 knives and forks; through the long well-like slip 
 between the banisters she could see the parlour-maid 
 carrying dishes. Mortimer was dining well, and 
 intending to divorce his wife ! 
 
 She was too frightened to properly enjoy the an- 
 tithesis. She went back into her own room and lay 
 down upon the bed, shakiug in every limb. She had 
 eaten hardly anything that day. 
 
 She must have dozed a little. She woke with a 
 start, to see a broad shaft of light coming in from the 
 doorway, and her husband, a stout undignified sort 
 of avenging angel, standing on the threshold. She 
 sprang into a sitting posture. 
 
 "Make some light!" he said impatiently. 
 
 "Why bother?" she said languidly. "You can see 
 to scold me quite well enough in the dark!" 
 
 "Scold!" he said, in an accent of contemptuous 
 reproach, coming nearer. He was flushed, but quite 
 sober. She wondered if he really had had the heart 
 to dine. 
 
 He enlightened her. "You don't seem to realize, " 
 he said, "the position of affairs. I have been quite 
 unable to eat any dinner." 
 
 "What about me? But, however, that is neither 
 here nor there. The point is" assuming as vira- 
 goish an air as she could "will you please tell me 
 what you can have meant by allowing Aunt Poynder
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 193 
 
 to come up here as your emissary and abuse me, your 
 wife, and say awful things out loud for all the house 
 to hear?" 
 
 "You are begging the question, Phoebe," her hus- 
 band said, and in his earnestness and sincerity he was 
 almost dignified. "You must know how serious all 
 this is ! What have you to say in explanation of the 
 charges which Aunt Poynder brings against you, and 
 that woman's letter to me which I showed you?" 
 
 "What are the charges?" she asked valiantly and 
 without the flippancy with which she had thought fit 
 to characterize all her previous remarks. 
 
 "Wait!" he said, and she gave a little frightened 
 cry, and clutched his arm. 
 
 "What are you going to do, Mortimer?" 
 
 "I am going to look at your face while you sit 
 there and lie to me!" he said, striking a match, and 
 lighting the gas. It showed her countenance 
 frightened and pale, his reddish and set. Even in 
 her agitation she was struck by the expression he had 
 used. It was the second time she had been taxed 
 with the mendacious habit. She began to think 
 there was something in it. It was, however, the 
 first time Mortimer had permitted himself to allude 
 to it so roundly. She was nonplussed by his atti- 
 tude ; she had expected him to bluster and be ridicu- 
 lous. He was dignified even to a tragedy. The 
 thought crossed her mind that he still loved her, 
 which would make it difficult for him to adopt the 
 point of view she was intending to put before him.
 
 194 THE HUMAN INTEEEST 
 
 "Mortimer," she said, raising her eyes to his 
 with an intentional effect of extreme and busi- 
 ness-like candour, "what Aunt Poynder tells you 
 she saw she did see, but the inferences she draws are 
 fake." 
 
 "Explain yourself more clearly." 
 
 "I mean" she strictly persevered in her steadfast 
 gaze "that it is not true that I have been unfaithful 
 to you." 
 
 "Not !" 
 
 "I swear it," she said simply, "but I do not expect 
 you to believe me. Are you going to divorce me?" 
 
 "What and leave you free to run off and join 
 your lover!" roared Mortimer in a spasm of jealous 
 rage. "I'm " 
 
 "I have no lover I wish I had!" she interrupted. 
 Her sad sincerity had a convincingness her husband 
 was too angry to apprehend. 
 
 "Mortimer," she went on, clasping her hands, 
 "could you possibly divorce me I know nothing of 
 these things without having a co-respondent at all? 
 I do so hate having him dragged in!" 
 
 The solicitor stared at her. 
 
 "Mortimer, isn't it possible? You are a man of 
 business, you ought to know about these things. We 
 do get on so badly together, don't we? It is quite 
 hopeless our trying to get on. Isn't there there 
 must be some sort of arrangement by which hus- 
 band and wife can agree to live apart because they are 
 unsuited to each other, without dragging in a third
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 195 
 
 person? There isn't a third person, I do assure you, 
 and I know how he would hate it. This poor man 
 Aunt Poynder saw is a painter a hater of women. I 
 bored him really, only I laid myself out to please him 
 and plagued his life out ! I interfered terribly with 
 his work. You would not understand how. He 
 wanted to be left alone. Artists are like that. He 
 did not know I was married, and when he found I had 
 compromised myself against him that's the only 
 honest way to put it he proposed to me because he 
 was a gentleman and thought he ought. It is I who 
 am to blame, for trying to make him like me. I 
 kissed him, not he me! ... I am a wretch, I 
 know, but if only you knew how miserable my life is 
 here with you! We ought never to have married. 
 Let me go ! I am sure you will be happier without 
 me, believe me ! Let me go quietly let it be between 
 you and me! Don't let all' the world in! Don't 
 ruin an innocent man's life over it for it would! 
 He is a Eoyal Academician and might be President 
 some day, and if he is forced to marry me he will lose 
 that and his position in the world, and it is such a 
 good one. Besides, he is engaged to be married to 
 another woman he really is!" 
 
 She paused breathless, and caught hold of his 
 hand. He shook her off. 
 
 "Lies! Lies! Lies!" he said. "I don't believe a 
 single word you have been saying, Phoebe. And as 
 for a judicial separation between us, which is what 
 you seem to want, I say 'No, thank you.' The laws
 
 196 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 are made to enable a man to get completely rid of 
 such a woman as you!" 
 
 He left her and she heard him leave the house. It 
 was exactly nine o'clock.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 She knew what she had to do. She composed her 
 features and covered them with powder, and rang the 
 bell. 
 
 It was the cook who answered it, not the new 
 parlour maid. The cook, whom Mrs. Poynder 
 worked hard and bullied, was in consequence a firm 
 ally of the young and far niente mistress of the house, 
 who preferred pleasant and nattering looks even to 
 good service. 
 
 "Mary," Mrs. Elles said urbanely, "come and help 
 me! I want to catch the night mail for the south." 
 
 They pulled open drawers and dragged in trunks. 
 Mrs. Elles was not sure that she was not leaving her 
 husband's house for ever, and she did not mean to go 
 without her things. The two women worked hard, 
 carrying on a fragmentary conversation the while. 
 
 "How has your master been while I was away?" she 
 asked of the cook, proud of being able to show that 
 amount of good feeling. 
 
 "He's not been to say sae well. The doctor's been 
 in once or twice, to please the missis Mrs. Poynder, 
 I mean. But the master doesn't seem to hold with 
 doctors much." 
 
 "No, I know he hates them," said his wife, care- 
 197
 
 198 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 fully controlling her surprise. It was natural that 
 Mortimer should have given way a little during her 
 absence, partly through temper, and partly for want 
 of her supervision, but still a little fit of excess did 
 not seem to indicate so important a step as the calling 
 in of doctors. "But I wonder why I have not heard 
 anything of all this except through you?" she added, 
 forgetting to be prudent. "What was it?" 
 
 "Oh, just a fainting fit like. Missis Poynder found 
 him in his study a day or two back, and it took a fair 
 half hour to bring him round." 
 
 "Why wasn't I telegraphed for?" 
 
 "Eh, ma'am,. ye were away for your health, and so 
 Missis Poynder thought she wouldn't go for to agitate 
 ye. It's all passed off, but the doctor he says as 
 Master behoved to be car 'ful." 
 
 "Heart?" murmured Mrs. Elles, with the inter- 
 rogative inflexion, not liking to ask a direct question. 
 She was really a little anxious. She did not positively 
 hate her husband. 
 
 "Yes, that's what doctor said. Avoid excite- 
 ment sperrits the worst thing!" 
 
 Everyone in the house knew that this prohibition 
 was by no means unnecessary. 
 
 "Well, Mary, you must look after him while I am 
 away. I am going up to London on business. See 
 that he has what he likes." She pressed five shil- 
 lings into the cook's hand, feeling the glow of accom- 
 plishment of the whole duty of a married woman and 
 picturesque forgiveness of insult and injuries.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 199 
 
 Her packing was done. It was half-past eleven. 
 She had a whole hour before her. 
 
 Of the laws of her country she had about as much 
 practical knowledge as most women that is to say 
 none at all ! She was full of the proposition she had 
 made to Mortimer, of a bloodless duel, an amicable 
 separation, a social catastrophe which should affect 
 herself only, leaving Rivers untouched. The engage- 
 ment between Rivers and Egidia, which she was going 
 to London to suggest, would surely tell very much in 
 favour of her plan, but she must neglect nothing, 
 leave no stone unturned for the accomplishment of 
 his salvation. She had made up her mind to work 
 this thing for Rivers, to be his diplomatic angel, and 
 that her heroic plan involved the surrendering of him 
 to another woman only added to the sublimity of the 
 act. 
 
 She went down to her husband's study; she knew 
 he was out; she hoped she would not have the ill 
 luck to meet Mrs. Poynder. 
 
 The house was perfectly still. There stood the 
 row of collected legal wisdom, dusty, dull, abstruse, 
 but full of vital truths for her at this moment. In a 
 few minutes she was deep in law, and covered and 
 daubed with its dust. 
 
 She found no hint of a previous engagement of the 
 co-respondent being considered as a circumstance 
 invalidating the divorce, but she saw that she and 
 her husband must on no account sleep under the 
 same roof to-night. That was why he had gone out.
 
 200 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 He probably did not intend to return. It was a pity 
 he did not know that she was going to take the 
 initiative and leave him, and could not see her boxes 
 at that very moment standing in the hall, strapped 
 and corded and mountainous. 
 
 She stood there, taking down one volume after 
 another, feeling the thief of knowledge, since it was 
 from her husband's own books that she was gleaning 
 the wherewithal to discomfit him when the time came. 
 At any rate they would start f air ! About on a level 
 with her hand, she noticed a Blue Book on the Laws 
 of Divorce. She eagerly took it down from the shelf. 
 It seemed clearly written and fairly explanatory. 
 
 "There is no divorce by mutual consent of husband 
 and wife." 
 
 She saw that she had been talking nonsense to 
 Mortimer upstairs. How he must have laughed at 
 her absurd proposition ! 
 
 "The Causes of Divorce." This seemed a useful 
 heading ! She read on eagerly. 
 
 "Attempt by one of the parties on the life of the 
 other, either personally, or by an accomplice." 
 
 But she had not attempted Mortimer's life, nor had 
 Rivers attempted that of Mortimer, and though she 
 had heard of cruelty, she had not thought of this 
 definition of it. 
 
 "I had no idea the laws of my country were so 
 absurd!" she exclaimed, laying down the blue book 
 in a pet. Then a glance at its cover showed her that 
 the volume she held referred to the Laws of Foreign
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 201 
 
 Countries, and this was the procedure of the Argen- 
 tine Republic that she was looking at! 
 
 She gave that up, and reached down Stephen's 
 Commentaries, and tried to find some hint there that 
 would be useful to her. 
 
 She read on it for a good quarter of an hour, bnt 
 the legal phrases puzzled her, the scantiness of details 
 left her uncertain, the heavy volumes tired her hands 
 to hold. She was no wiser, and a good deal wearier. 
 
 The door opened behind her. Instinctively she 
 turned round. 
 
 "Oh, Mortimer, what is a femme sole?" 
 
 She laughed to herself, as the train sped southwards 
 through the night, when she thought of her last sight 
 of her husband as he stood in the doorway, apparently 
 transfixed by her extraordinarily indiscreet question. 
 His abrupt volte face and retreat reminded her that 
 an injured husband is not to be used as an Encyclo- 
 paedia Britannica. Henceforth she was as a noxious 
 animal, to be got rid of, not argued with. She 
 laughed, and then she cried, but finally her offended 
 dignity won the day, and the train deposited a hero- 
 ine, rugless, hopeless, comfortless, but still a heroine, 
 every inch of her, on the platform at King's Cross in 
 the early dawn. 
 
 She took a room at the Great Northern Hotel and 
 waited in all the day till the calling hour, except for 
 a little excursion to a jeweller's shop near the station, 
 where she sold her one magnificent diamond ring for
 
 202 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 about a third of its value. At four o'clock she 
 dressed herself beautifully and took a hansom to 
 Queen Anne's Mansions, where Egidia lived. She 
 made sure of finding the novelist at home ; she had 
 heard her say she was at home on Fridays ; if she was 
 not alone she would outstay the other callers. As she 
 drove along she looked at herself critically in the 
 little glass in the corner of the cab. 
 
 "Talk of the empire of the mind over the body, it 
 is nothing to that of the mind over the complexion!" 
 she said to herself, but was pleased to see that two 
 sleepless nights had only made her eyes larger and 
 her face more interesting. Looks are the sinews of a 
 woman's war and, though she was not going to 
 quarrel with Egidia but merely give up her lover to 
 her, her prettiness would serve to mark and accentu- 
 ate her heroism. 
 
 It was five o'clock when her cab drove under the 
 archway and pulled up at the big door which is the 
 portal to so many homes. Egidia lived very near the 
 top, but she preferred to walk up, she was afraid of 
 the lift. On the threshold of the door which was the 
 novelist's, as the boy who rang the bell for her 
 informed her, she caught her dress in the mat and 
 stumbled as the maid opened the door. 
 
 "It means something!" she said to herself. 
 
 It meant that she was nervous. She was going to 
 do an absurd thing ; make a most curiously intimate 
 proposition to a woman she hardly knew ! It was like 
 a scene in a novel. If only Egidia would not be too
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 203 
 
 matter-of-fact, would consent to stay in the picture, 
 as it were ! As a novelist she would be apt for irregu- 
 lar situations, and able to enjoy and employ them. 
 
 The parlour-maid mumbled her name, which she 
 had mumbled to her. Egidia, in a red teagown, like 
 a handsome velvet moth, rose from a low seat to 
 receive her, and Mrs. Elles felt like a frivolous butter- 
 fly in the somewhat freakish, bizarre habiliments in 
 which she elected to express her personality. 
 
 "Oh, it is you!" exclaimed the novelist, her lips 
 breaking into a kind smile and her eyes diffusing 
 cordiality, as she held out both hands. 
 
 A tall figure rose from his seat on the other side of 
 the fireplace, and Mrs. Elles 's eyes were fixed on him 
 while Egidia was speaking. 
 
 "So you have found your way here at last ! Where 
 are you staying? Let me introduce Mr. Edmund 
 Rivers Mrs. Mortimer Elles!" 
 
 Why should he not be calling on Egidia? It was 
 the most natural thing. Mrs. Elles had never 
 thought of this contingency, and yet she would not 
 have had it not happen for the world. She was not 
 a woman who would go out of her way to avoid situ- 
 ations. She bowed he bowed; and then Egidia 
 seeming by her manner to prescribe a greater inti- 
 macy, they shook hands. Oh ! why was it so dark? 
 She could not see his face. 
 
 "Will you ring the bell, Edmund, please, for 
 another cup. Mrs. Elles, you must have some tea!" 
 
 "Thank you, no. I think I won't " began
 
 204 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 Mrs. Elles. To calmly sit down and drink a cup of 
 tea at a juncture like this ! It was not to be thought 
 of. 
 
 "Oh, but you must. North country people can't 
 do without their tea, I know that. Only in London 
 we don't have sweet little cakes like yours. What do 
 you call them girdle cakes?" 
 
 So Egidia ran on, putting her visitor into a chair 
 and pouring out a cup of tea and looking after her 
 comfort in the most solicitous manner. Mrs. Elles 
 felt that, considering "everything," this made her 
 look ridiculous but then Egidia could not be 
 expected to know about "everything"! Rivers 
 would surely not have told her about what had hap- 
 pened in the woods of Brignal. That was their affair 
 hers and his. Egidia would never have received 
 her like this had she known. She felt a warm glow 
 of pleasure on recognising the bond between her and 
 him of a common secret. 
 
 But he was very cleverly neutral in manner. As 
 he handed her the cake his eyes met hers with a 
 curious look, searching but impenetrable. It discon- 
 certed her. It seemed to take her all in, but it gave 
 nothing out. But she was at least positive that there 
 was no love in it, no pleasurable excitement in a loved 
 mistress refound. Under the oppression of this idea 
 she took a draught of hot tea that scalded her and in 
 the access of pain that ensued persuaded herself that 
 she was glad of the counter-irritant. 
 
 "Look, Mrs. Elles, at this little sketch Mr. Rivers
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 205 
 
 has just given me for my birthday," Egidia was Bay- 
 ing, as she held up a framed water-colour drawing 
 lovingly. 
 
 Mrs. Elles looked at it. The rush of recollection 
 was not so blinding as she expected, but poignant 
 enough. 
 
 "Where is it?" she asked, for form's sake. She 
 knew well enough. 
 
 "May I tell her, Edmund?" 
 
 He made a little nod in the affirmative. 
 
 "Well, he could scarcely try to keep that Knowl- 
 edge from me," Mrs. Elles thought to herself. 
 
 "It is Rokeby," Egidia went on, "Scott's Eokeby 
 that place where Mr. Rivers works so much. 
 Rather near your part of the world, I believe." 
 
 "I know it well," Mrs. Elles said. 
 
 Rivers was standing abstractedly a few yards away 
 from the two women. Mrs. Elles resented his lack 
 of emotional interest. 
 
 "It is quite charming!" she said, raising her voice. 
 "And is that a little figure I see on the edge of the 
 stream? Some village girl you got to stand for you, I 
 suppose?" 
 
 It was no village girl, and she knew it. It was 
 herself, done by her own desire. She had begged 
 him to put in some human interest for once, and he 
 had indulgently agreed to do so, on condition she 
 supplied it herself. She had posed for twenty min- 
 utes under a broiling sun, and had refused the gift of 
 the sketch when it was done. She had somehow
 
 206 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 wished that the memento of her should be retained by 
 him, not her. 
 
 No, he could never have cared for her, or he could 
 never have borne to give away that sketch to another 
 woman ! Her lips stiffened and then quivered. Had 
 she known what was actually the fact, that the cir- 
 cumstance of her posing for that particular sketch 
 had completely lapsed from the painter's memory, 
 would she have been less distressed? 
 
 "That is the very reason I chose it," Egidia said, 
 taking the drawing out of her hands. "Mr. Rivers 
 gave me my choice of the Rokeby sketches, and out 
 of a whole quantity of them in his studio I chose this 
 one because it had a little human interest in it. I 
 like people, you know. I should feel the world so 
 cold, so dull, without them. I can't think how you, 
 Cousin Edmund, manage to do without them so 
 nicely!" 
 
 The painter actually laughed from an excess of 
 nervousness, Phoebe Elles hoped. 
 
 "Do say that I may bring Mrs. Elles to see your 
 studio one day? I am sure she would like to see it!" 
 
 "I should be delighted," he said, "only you know 
 a landscape painter's studio is not much to look at. 
 Now Tadema's " 
 
 "Ah! but then Mrs. Elles is not blasee on the sub- 
 ject of studios as yet, are you, Mrs. Elles? She wants 
 to see a little bit of everything now that she is here, 
 don't you? You remember our conversation in New- 
 castle? We must go about a little together and see
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 207 
 
 the sights. I don't mean the Tower and the Monu- 
 ment you are of course far above those. You might 
 ask us to tea in your studio," she ended, turning, 
 suddenly appealing, to Eivers. 
 
 "She wants to show off her intimacy with him," 
 Mrs. Elles thought bitterly. 
 
 "I will," said Rivers gravely. "You must write 
 and name your own day. It will have to be when I 
 come back from Paris." 
 
 "Oh, are you going to Paris?" Egidia exclaimed, 
 obviously surprised and completely uninstructed in 
 his movements. 
 
 "I think I shall have to, on business ; but I will let 
 you know when I come back, and I will try to get a 
 few interesting people to meet you and your 
 friend!" 
 
 Mrs. Elles had to make what she could out of the 
 slight hesitation. He smiled, forcedly she was sure 
 it was forcedly. 
 
 Egidia 's face was wreathed in kindly natural smiles 
 as he bade good-bye so was hers. It was pathetic. 
 Mrs. Elles, with her superior knowledge of "fearful 
 consequences, yet hanging in the stars," felt as if 
 they were all dancing on a grave treading a volcano. 
 She knew well enough that she would never go to tea 
 with him, never touch his hand again perhaps, as she 
 gave hers, and dreamt of the accustomed thrill of 
 pleasure that the mere contact used to give her. It 
 did not now. Was it that she was too nervous, too 
 frightened to be receptive, or was it that his mag-
 
 208 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 netism had ceased to flow for her, as a consequence of 
 his indifference? 
 
 He raised the heavy portiere, and the light seemed 
 to go out of two women's lives as it fell to behind 
 him. 
 
 "Well," said Egidia, complacently, "that will be 
 the first tea party my cousin has ever given in his 
 studio in his life, to my knowledge ! I do hope it 
 will come off, for I want you two to be great friends. 
 You will you are the veritable antithesis of each 
 other." 
 
 Mrs. Elles interrupted her with a sudden burst of 
 hysterical laughter. 
 
 "Friends!" she said. "Friends! And my hus- 
 band is going to make a co-respondent of him!"
 
 CHAPTEE XII 
 
 Egidia laid her head on her hands. The tale of 
 Brignal Banks had been told. "Good God!" she 
 Baid passionately. "And it is to Edmund Bivers that 
 this thing has happened!" 
 
 She thought of the poignant tale of love and 
 disaster only as it affected the man. It was natural ; 
 Mrs. Elles had expected that she would do so, and 
 yet she was a little aggrieved at not being treated as 
 the central figure of any romance that happened to 
 be forward. She valiantly stifled her feelings on this 
 occasion, however, and rising from the low prie-dieu 
 chair from which she had delivered her confession, 
 knelt at Egidia's feet, and gently pulled her hands 
 down from her face. The gesture was pretty and 
 appealing, but at this juncture it irritated the other 
 woman almost beyond endurance by its dash of 
 theatricality. Thus behave erring heroines of melo- 
 drama when they reveal "all" to their mentors. 
 Egidia sat and stared at the little flushed face oppo- 
 site her with an almost unfriendly gaze, and listened 
 but coldly to the trickle of her excitable speech. 
 
 "But it must not happen!" Mrs. Elles was saying. 
 "It must not! It must not! You can save him, if 
 you will, and that is why I have come to you. I 
 
 209
 
 210 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 have travelled all night, and I have not slept for 
 two. If I tell my story badly, that's why. There's 
 an iron band across my forehead, And I have had 
 nothing to eat for ages. But I knew that you and he 
 had always been great friends, to say the very least, 
 
 and that it would be so easy for you You must 
 
 forgive me, and understand that I did what I could. 
 I acted for the best on the spur of the moment. I 
 thought it was the only way to save the situation " 
 
 "What, in the name of Heaven, have you done?" 
 exclaimed the other. "Do, please, tell me exactly." 
 
 "I used your name " began Mrs. Elles, hesi- 
 tatingly. 
 
 "Please go on!" 
 
 "I am afraid I told my husband straight out, when 
 he pressed me, that Mr. Rivers was engaged to you!" 
 
 "To me! Mr. Rivers! What possible author- 
 ity " 
 
 Egidia rose to her feet, and Mrs. Elles perforce rose 
 too. 
 
 "Have I done such a mischief?" she asked suppli- 
 catingly. "Stay ! the lace of my dress has got caught 
 in yours!" 
 
 She disentangled it, while Egidia stood, a prisoner, 
 shivering with impatience, and some disgust. 
 
 "Surely," Phoebe Elles went on, "you are very 
 fond of each other? I always thought so, from the 
 way he spoke or rather did not speak of you. 
 With some men reticence about a woman is the sure 
 sign of their feeling keenly about her. Indeed, I was
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 211 
 
 quite jealous of you sometimes!" she added ingenu- 
 ously. 
 
 Egidia's face had stiffened into the very haughtiest 
 expression a proud face can assume. She was a 
 woman who could curl her lip, and she did it now, 
 but Mrs. Elles was too tactless and too much excited 
 to notice. 
 
 "So you see that I am doing this entirely for his 
 sake quite against the grain, I assure you, but it 
 seemed the only way and I thought you would want 
 to do anything to keep him out of it!" 
 
 "Keep him out of it!" exclaimed the other, point- 
 ing down towards the basement of her own house, as 
 to the depths of an imaginary Divorce Court. "I 
 should think I did ! But how could you suppose that 
 such an absurd lie as that could do him any good?" 
 
 "Couldn't it? I thought it could. And I seem 
 to be always being scolded for telling lies now!" 
 sighed Mrs. Elles, "but I really thought I was splen- 
 dide mendax this time ! And though it was a lie, of 
 course, you can make it true to save him, don't you 
 see?" 
 
 Egidia recovered herself. What was the use of 
 being angry? 
 
 "But supposing Mr. Rivers did care for was 
 engaged to me I don't see what possible difference 
 it could make?" 
 
 She succeeded in smiling almost indulgently on this 
 sweet simpleton, who was to be suffered gladly, for 
 the sake of Rivers.
 
 212 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "Well, of course, I don't know much about these 
 things," Mrs. Elles said, plaintively, "but I thought 
 if the co-respondent " 
 
 "Please don't use that word," said Egidia, shiver- 
 ing. 
 
 "It is the word, I know that much. Well, if the 
 man is already engaged to someone else at the time 
 that the accusation is made it surely makes it less 
 likely that he would wouldn't a jury think better of 
 him? He would have to marry her at once, of 
 course, and send the slip of the Times containing the 
 announcement to my husband " 
 
 She looked so serious, so innocent, so like the fair 
 Ophelia, "incapable of her own grief," so utterly 
 woe-begone, that Egidia's mood changed. She 
 laughed, and sat down, and took her visitor's little 
 soft, incompetent, feverish hand in her own cool firm 
 one, and held it. 
 
 "My dear Mrs. Elles, have you been all these years 
 married to a solicitor, and know BO little of it all as 
 to suppose that a jury would be affected by such a 
 detail as the one you have mentioned ! No, no, we 
 must get your husband to stay proceedings alto- 
 gether. I hope it isn't so bad as you think in fact, 
 I am sure it isn't! Your husband could not, I think, 
 possibly divorce you merely on what you have told 
 me and perhaps you have even exaggerated that a 
 little? You are very tired " 
 
 "I am not hysterical!" exclaimed Mrs. Elles 
 angrily.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEKEST 213 
 
 "Forgive me, but your voice and your eyes belie 
 you. Besides, you said yourself you were ill. Of 
 course you are, naturally, after what you have under- 
 gone!" 
 
 "It was pretty dreadful!" Mrs. Elles owned, 
 mollified. 
 
 "To-morrow," Egidia continued, with a little 
 imperceptible shudder, "you must go over it all again 
 to me. After you have had a night's rest, you will 
 be able to think and marshall your facts more clearly. 
 I ought to know exactly where we stand. Meantime, 
 will you send for your things from the Great North- 
 ern Hotel and pay your bill?" 
 
 "But I must live somewhere!" exclaimed the other 
 in a sick fright. "You surely don't want me to go back 
 to Mortimer, when I have just run away from him?" 
 
 "No, but you must write to him, and tell him you 
 are staying here with me. Though literary, I am 
 supposed to be respectable." She smiled. She had 
 taken her line. "And, by the way, I have a dinner 
 party here to-night, and I want you to enjoy it and 
 look nice." 
 
 "I have an evening dress in my box at the Hotel," 
 said Mrs. Elles, eagerly. 
 
 "Well, then, we will get it here in time for you. I 
 will send at once." 
 
 She rang the bell, gave her orders, and then turn- 
 ing, stopped and kissed the little bit of thistledown 
 who stood there, grateful and apprehensive. It was 
 an effort, the whole scene had been one long effort,
 
 214 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 but she flattered herself she had come out of it well, 
 and had not betrayed herself. In the exercise of her 
 profession she had studied the feelings of others and 
 their development and outward manifestations so 
 closely that she had grown almost morbidly desirous 
 of not showing her own. 
 
 "Please call me Phoebe!" her visitor had murmured 
 as she led her to her room and left her there. 
 
 Yes, she, a simple, honest, unsophisticated woman, 
 would do anything, dare, contrive, and practise any- 
 thing that might deliver Edmund Eivers from the 
 consequences of his accidental connection with this 
 miracle of indiscretion, this butterfly, who, unfortu- 
 nately for others, took herself so seriously. 
 
 He should not, if she could help it, have to rue the 
 day when he had allowed the human interest to come 
 into his life, and occupy even a portion of his mental 
 foreground. That was all he had done ; he had never 
 flirted with her, Egidia felt sure. "Love plays the 
 deuce with landscape!" he had once laughingly pro- 
 claimed, to excuse himself from marrying. No, he 
 should not be forced, by the stain of the courts, the 
 horrors of imputation, to take on himself the shackles 
 of the marriage tie, with which the little woman who 
 had played the part of his evil genius, would so care- 
 lessly invest him ! 
 
 "She kissed me, but all the while, she would like 
 to scratch my eyes out," Mrs. Elles in the silence of 
 the spare room was saying to herself. She was not
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 215 
 
 spiteful oh no, that was not her character at all 
 but she had studied and could not help knowing 
 human nature ! There was no misprision of motive 
 in her mind; she was perfectly aware of Egidia's 
 reasons for being kind to her. That lady had taken 
 her rival to stay with her because, as the saying is, 
 she preferred to see mischief in front of her she 
 would keep her safe under her own roof the better to 
 control her. It was all for the man's sake, not for 
 the woman's at all! 
 
 The welfare of Edmund Eivers was the object of 
 Phoebe Elles too, she must not forget that, and she 
 must consent, for his sake, to be the creature of his 
 cousin's bounty. It must be so, but it was very 
 hard. Egidia, perhaps unconsciously, assumed 
 proprietary airs. Her visitor stamped a little modest 
 stamp of the foot at the thought, and was assailed by 
 a wild desire to prove to Egidia and the world the 
 genuineness of Eivers' love, by purposely losing her 
 case, and letting him marry her ! 
 
 But would that prove it? 
 
 "Les hommes sont la cause que les femmes ne 
 s'aiment pas!" Mrs. Elles murmured to herself, as 
 arrayed in her prettiest dress, and conscious that she 
 became it, she went to dinner, in the big public 
 room of the Mansions, where Egidia mustered all her 
 famous little parties of twelve. 
 
 This was Mrs. Elles 's first taste of London 
 society. She had thought of it, dreamed of it,
 
 216 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 yearned for it for years. Now it had come to her, 
 like a draught of heady champagne, vivifying after 
 the two nights of waking misery and anxiety she 
 had undergone. Only two nights ago, she had 
 stood, a shaking, quaking figure in the dark passage 
 of the inn at Rokeby, hearing the clock tick, and the 
 rustle of the heavy leaf screen against the pane out- 
 side the door of her lover's room, whence no sound 
 came no voice of pardon. Here in the successful 
 novelist's pretty electric-lighted rooms all was gaiety, 
 easy, social merriment, facile smiles and light-hearted 
 repartee. She was made for this. She held her 
 own. She smiled and retorted with all but the last 
 touch of up-to-dateness, and her hostess put her for- 
 ward, and gave her every opportunity of shining. 
 Mrs. Elles thoroughly appreciated her generosity, 
 and, woman-like, was far more deeply touched by 
 Egidia's kindness in this instance, than by her 
 greater charity in so ardently espousing her cause in 
 the matter of the divorce. 
 
 She for a time forgot the Damocles sword that 
 hung over her head. In a few months, perhaps, 
 nobody would care to speak to her ; now they were at 
 any rate glad enough to do so. She went in to 
 dinner with Mr. St. Jerome, the popular novelist, 
 and he seemed to think her interesting. She had 
 intended at first to try to sink her disqualification of 
 country cousin, but by the time they had got to the 
 first entree, decided otherwise, since the assumption 
 of mundaneity prevented her asking questions, and
 
 THE HUMAN INTEKEST 217 
 
 she did so want to know so many things. She would 
 make conversational capital out of it instead. 
 
 "Is every one here a celebrity?" she asked. 
 
 "So much so, that they are all trying to hide it," 
 St. Jerome answered. "Did you ever see a more 
 modest looking set of people, calmly eating their 
 fish, and saving their good things for their books?" 
 
 "Are you doing that too?" she asked with the 
 sweetest of smiles. She knew he wrote novels. She 
 allowed a little time to elapse before she removed the 
 sting, then "Because, if so, you succeed very badly. 
 You have said several things I shall feel obliged to 
 use again in the provinces. But forgive me, I am 
 like Pope's definition of a mark of interrogation " 
 
 "You want to know who that is?" he said briskly, 
 indicating a dark, bearded man, with impressive eyes, 
 who sat next Egidia. 
 
 "How quick you are!" 
 
 "Not at all. Everybody wants to know who Dr. 
 Andre is!" 
 
 She felt snubbed ; he went on. 
 
 "He is the celebrated occultist and oculist. The 
 first is his business, the second his pleasure. But he 
 works the two together with great success. I don't 
 know if he quite succeeds in taking in our dear 
 Egidia; she is very shrewd, for a woman novelist. 
 Andre's theory of ocular practice consists largely of 
 the due relation of the state of the eyesight to gen- 
 eral health, and thence to hypnotism, do you see? 
 People are unkind enough to call him a quack,
 
 218 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 but I think that very unfair, for he is quite amus- 
 ing!" 
 
 Mrs. Elles did not know if St. Jerome was amusing 
 or not ; she was sure he was spiteful. She felt that 
 his flighty and casual manner suggested some disre- 
 spect towards the Lady from the Provinces, but per- 
 haps that was London's way? She meant that 
 London's way should not by any means astonish or 
 perturb her, so she went on calmly. 
 
 "If I were not afraid of your thinking me con- 
 ceited, I should say that I think the hypnotist is 
 looking at me!" 
 
 "Of course he is. He is trying to mesmerize you. 
 That is his little game. He boasts that he can make 
 anyone in the world cross the whole length of the 
 room to him if he has a mind and yet he lives only 
 three floors down, in these very Mansions." 
 
 Mrs. Elles again suspected Mr. St. Jerome of 
 making fun of her. 
 
 "I hope he won't care to thoroughly exercise his 
 powers just now," she said, "for I am a very impres- 
 sionable subject. I might get up, and go to him this 
 very minute, and that would be awkward. Intro- 
 duce me after dinner, and I will tell him that I 
 once wore blue spectacles for a month without 
 stopping." 
 
 "That is why your eyes look so bright!" said St. 
 Jerome, lightly. As a matter of fact he suspected 
 her of taking morphia. 
 
 "Oh, I had a better reason than that!" she said,
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 219 
 
 impatiently. "Tell me, do you know an artist called 
 Rivers?" 
 
 "Was he your reason? And a very nice reason 
 too!" 
 
 "Mr. St. Jerome, you are chaffing me, and it is 
 not fair, as I come from the provinces! Besides," 
 she explained, beginning to be terrified at the possible 
 consequences of her imprudence, "I hardly know 
 Mr. Eivers. I met him here for the first time at 
 tea." 
 
 "Of course you did!" 
 
 Mrs. Elles inferred from this speech that Rivers 
 was a constant visitor at Egidia's tea-table, which is 
 perhaps what St. Jerome intended her to do. She 
 was piqued. "I that is we are going to tea with 
 him in his studio, one of these days," she remarked. 
 
 "I congratulate you! Rivers is not a quiet tea- 
 party man at all, and enjoys the reputation of being a 
 misogynist. I have long tried to acquire it in vain. 
 Naturally all your sex are devoted to him. He takes 
 it very well, I must say, and shows no signs of being 
 unduly puffed up. A lady's man sans le savior!" 
 
 "There are a good many people like that!" 
 remarked Mrs. Elles, though in her heart of hearts 
 she thought there was but one. But she wanted to 
 draw the polite and analytical novelist, and lead him 
 on to discuss the man she loved. 
 
 "Yes, and all the women adore them, confound it! 
 They mistake ; they see the man full of energy and 
 spirit, making for a given point in life, and allowing
 
 220 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 nothing to distract his attention from it, like a horse 
 with blinkers on. They naturally want to remove the 
 blinkers, and divert a little of that force and energy 
 into a more useful channel, i. e., love-making. They 
 take no account of the correlation of forces; they 
 don't see that what a man gives to one thing he can- 
 not give to another, that dominated as he is by an 
 abstraction, charming concrete objects" he looked 
 at Mrs. Elles "have no chance at all!" 
 
 "You are making Mr. Eivers out a mild kind of 
 Robespierre!" 
 
 "Oh, well, I don't go so far as to suppose that he 
 would wade through seas of blood to his ambition 
 let us say the painting of the most perfect landscape 
 in the world; his easel is not a guillotine, and besides, 
 he has more or less realized his ambition, he has 
 everything he wants, name, and fame, and money, 
 and the right to be as misogynistical as he pleases. 
 He is no curmudgeon, but he is eminently unsociable. 
 I have never even been in his studio myself, for he 
 doesn't go in for the vulgarity of a Show Sunday, 
 and he is away in the country half the year, pro- 
 pitiating the deities of woods and streams. I meet 
 him now and then at the Athenseum young women, 
 you know, are not admitted there, only bishops and 
 so on!" 
 
 "Isn't it a great honour to belong to the Athe- 
 naeum?" 
 
 "Yes, especially if you are elected under Rule II. 
 Rivers is a great swell. I shouldn't be surprised if
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 221 
 
 they made him President some day that is, if they 
 ever make a landscape painter President of the R. A., 
 which they have a natural prejudice against doing." 
 
 Rule II. of the Athenaeum Club the limitations of 
 landscape painters as Possible Presidents of the Royal 
 Academy it was all Greek to Mrs. Elles, but still 
 she managed very well. Her eyes sparkled, she was 
 gay and sympathetic; the two things that London 
 wants. There was no denying it, she was happy here, 
 happier than she had ever been, dining in the lonely 
 inn with the man of her heart, though she would not 
 for worlds have admitted such a truth had she been 
 taxed with it. She would have liked Rivers with her 
 here; she would have been friends with God and 
 Mammon. Love, and the World! Rivers and she 
 were true incompatibles ; but that again she would 
 not have owned. 
 
 Looking down the table, she sometimes caught 
 Egidia's deep-set, serious eyes fixed on her, and 
 immediately composed her own face to a decent 
 semblance of mental distress, subdued and controlled 
 by the dictates of social standards of gaiety. 
 
 Egidia smiled sweetly at her now and then, as a 
 mother might at a promising debutante daughter. 
 She herself was feeling it an effort to sustain her own 
 reputation for brilliancy and repartee. Her spirits 
 were so leaden ; she had received such a shock. She 
 could think of nothing but the painter's affairs, and 
 the crushing blow that was so soon to fall on him. 
 Edmund Rivers, a very Galahad of stainless life, a
 
 222 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 knight sans peur and sans reproche ! The social fall 
 of such is always the severer, since the eager hounds 
 of envy are so glad of an excuse to worry a name that 
 has heretofore stood high. "What though the asper- 
 sion was so utterly false, it would be cast all the 
 same ; the mud would be flung, and some of it would 
 stick. And she who would lay down her life to save 
 him a moment's annoyance must endure to look on 
 the little enemy of his peace, sitting opposite her, 
 careless, irresponsible, drinking in flattery and 
 champagne, flashing her bright eyes about, and wav- 
 ing the little fluttering hands that held the future of 
 a man worth twenty such as she, in the might of his 
 art and intellect J 
 
 However, that Phoebe Elles should thoroughly 
 enjoy her dinner party was necessary for the further- 
 ance of a plan of action that Egidia had conceived 
 one of the many plans that she had conceived. The 
 better pleased Mrs. Elles was, the better would the 
 particular plan work, but though Egidia was an 
 authoress, she was human, and presently found her- 
 self actually avoiding her guest's laughing eyes. 
 
 Looking round at her own neighbour, she noticed 
 the mesmeric eyes of Dr. Andre fixed on her guest, 
 and knew that he had singled her out for his partic- 
 ular line of experiment. Egidia was "apt now at all 
 sorts of treasons and stratagems," and a new idea shot 
 through her brain. She was no believer in hypno- 
 tism, except in its extraordinary power over a certain 
 kind of silly woman, in the way of suggestion.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 223 
 
 She turned round to Dr. Andr6. 
 
 "I see you are considering the little lady who was 
 the occasion of my wild appeal to you to come and 
 dine in a hurry. Do you think she would be a good 
 subject for hypnotic suggestion?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Too clever?" 
 
 "She could never succeed in making her mind a 
 blank, I fancy. She thinks all the time nothing 
 particularly worth thinking, I daresay. Still, she is 
 so pretty, I should like to try. She is not a London 
 woman?" 
 
 "How do you know that?" 
 
 "Oh, she is beautifully dressed. It isn't that," he 
 said smiling. "The dress may be Paris, but the soul 
 is Newcastle." 
 
 Egidia started. "You are really a wonderful man, 
 Dr. Andre, or else you have the luck of coincidences !" 
 
 He smiled, with the fatuity of the occultist. 
 
 "You are right, she does come from Newcastle, 
 but let me tell you that when I introduce you, you 
 will find her quite au fait of all the latest London 
 fads. She makes it her business to be. These illus- 
 trated papers do a great deal to prepare the provincial 
 mind for the more startling developments of our 
 civilization. Mrs. Elles has looked on the Medusa 
 head of certain aspects of society through the medium 
 of 'Black and White,' and the 'Ladies' Field.' " 
 
 "How you hate her!" said Dr. Andre. 
 
 Egidia wore mental sackcloth and ashes for the
 
 224 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 rest of the evening, conscious that she had for once 
 allowed herself to be drawn to the very verge of the 
 fathomless gulf of feminine spite. 
 
 "Did I look nice? Did I seem too dreadfully 
 provincial?" was what Mrs. Elles said to her hostess 
 when the door had closed on the last guest. 
 
 Egidia had sunk into a chair, and sat staring at 
 vacancy. Mrs. Elles's voice recalled her from her 
 reverie. 
 
 "Not at all I mean provincial. You and the 
 Doctor seemed to get on? Did he propose to 
 mesmerize you?" 
 
 "Oh, yes!" Mrs. Elles answered eagerly. "Soon. 
 May he? Here in your flat?" 
 
 "Certainly!" Egidia replied, feeling now a little 
 apprehension of the consequences. "But you must 
 not believe in him too much. You must not let him 
 get an influence over you!" 
 
 "I shouldn't mind. I am sure he would not use 
 his power for harm against me or any woman!" 
 
 "Oh, no, he is a good old thing!" Egidia said 
 condescendingly. "And this little social trick of his 
 amuses people, and makes him a personage, and 
 asked out a great deal!" 
 
 "I believe very much in hypnotism as a serious 
 force in life," said the other sturdily. "I can't 
 laugh at it. And I think Dr. Andre is a most inter- 
 esting man who could give one a real glimpse into
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 225 
 
 one's self and into futurity, if he chose, and one 
 turned out to be a good subject." 
 
 "And he thinks you a very pretty woman he told 
 me so." 
 
 "Oh pretty!" said Mrs. Elles, as much as to 
 imply that she did not wish to stand on anything so 
 trivial as good looks in the seer's good opinion. 
 
 "At any rate, you enjoyed yourself?" 
 
 "Enormously! I mean, that I did not want to be 
 a blot on your party, so I screwed myself up, and 
 was gay!" 
 
 "You mean you were acting a part?" Egidia 
 answered, coldly. 
 
 "Well, partly," Mrs. Elles replied; then she added 
 with the pretty smile that leavened so many of her 
 little insincerities, "but I confess I forgot every 
 now and then, and let myself feel as if nothing had 
 happened, and I was a girl again, beginning life the 
 life I always wanted, the life I was made for, I think. 
 Oh, don't you see how hard it all is for me, this 
 course I have to take that I must take for his sake?" 
 
 With a comical little twist of the mouth, she went 
 on: "Some are born virtuous, some are something 
 or other what is it? and some have virtue thrust 
 upon them! I know that I must defend this 
 wretched case for the sake of other people, but I 
 can't help thinking that if Mortimer did win it and 
 get his divorce, it would be the very thing for 
 me!" 
 
 "I confess I don't understand "
 
 226 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "Mr. Rivers would marry me," she said, wist- 
 fully, "and then I should live in London!" 
 
 Egidia laughed she could not help it! This, 
 then, was the net result of her carefully arranged 
 plan for indoctrinating her guest with the pleasures 
 of respectability and the advantages of a defined 
 social position. 
 
 "My dear woman, forgive me!" she exclaimed. 
 "Have you the very remotest notion of what you are 
 saying? You cannot have the most elementary 
 knowledge of social laws if you imagine that a man 
 having married a divorced woman divorced on his 
 account could take her out, and expect his friends 
 to call on her ! On the contrary, you and he God 
 help you both would have to forego all society. 
 You would have to live abroad in some shady place, 
 and be thankful for the company of blacklegs and 
 second-rate women, or else make up your minds to 
 live entirely apart from the world. He would not 
 mind that ; he is used to it ; but you ! What would 
 you do without life, movement, and, above all, con- 
 sideration? That is what I was asking myself when I 
 looked down the table to-night, and saw you happy 
 and gay " 
 
 Mrs. Elles demurred. 
 
 "Well, pretending to be happy and gay though I 
 really and truly believe you were. As you have just 
 been saying yourself, you were in your element. 
 And I thought what a volcano it was that you were 
 standing on, and how, if the worst came to pass, how
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 227 
 
 different a life yours would be from this you coyet 
 and all the time you were thinking that the very fact 
 of your divorce would entitle you to it all! Good 
 Heavens! Instead of sitting there, gay and impor- 
 tant, admired and attended to, with people taking the 
 trouble to mesmerize you and analyze you and take 
 your soul to pieces for you, you would be hidden 
 away in some little foreign town Boulogne, say? 
 cut, snubbed, and penned up for life with no other 
 society but that of the man you have dragged down 
 along with you, and involved in your ruin, and who 
 would end by hating you in consequence." 
 
 Mrs. Elles cried out, outraged. "You forget you 
 forget that he proposed to me when he thought I 
 was free!" 
 
 "I beg your pardon " Egidia said, vaguely. 
 
 "No, don't beg my pardon, you meant to be kind 
 
 but " She stopped, and her whole manner 
 
 altered as the humiliating suggestion took root in her 
 mind. "Tell me you must mean tell me in so 
 many words you must mean to say that he never 
 really cared for me? For God's sake, speak out!" 
 
 "If you ask me to speak out honestly, then I don't 
 think he really did! He is not what is called a 
 marrying man. . . . Now you will of course 
 never be able to forgive me. . . . Let us both 
 go to bed now at any rate I am quite worn out!" 
 
 She turned aside wearily, and passed through the 
 portie're, letting her hand drag after her, as she went. 
 Mrs. Elles 's vexation at her plain speaking died
 
 228 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 before a more generous instinct of gratitude to the 
 woman who had befriended her in her need. She 
 caught hold of the fugitive hand 
 
 "Oh, don't leave me like this; indeed, you are my 
 best friend. Thank you, thank you for telling me 
 the truth. I ought to know it." 
 
 "It is only my opinion!" said the other, suffering 
 herself, however, to be drawn into the room again, by 
 the insistent tenderness of her rival, which touched 
 her, and made her feel a brute. 
 
 "Yes," Mrs. Elles went on sadly. "Only your 
 opinion, but you have known him so very much 
 longer than I have." She would have been equal to 
 the mental sacrifice of adding, "and so much more 
 intimately," but hardly dared, lest it was taken, not 
 as a compliment but as an impertinence. "I only 
 saw him for a month, and even in that time I could 
 not help loving him adoring him. . . . How 
 could anyone help it? Could you?" 
 
 "No," Egidia murmured under her breath, too 
 much moved to resent the question. 
 
 "It is just those very silent men whom every one 
 adores," the other went on. "But he always pre- 
 ferred his art to me. I knew it at the time, only I 
 was so blinded. Then when he realized that he was 
 compromising me, he did the honourable thing, and 
 proposed. Of course I don't suppose he thought me 
 quite impossible, he felt it would be just bearable to 
 be married to me, if he had to be married, but he 
 had never meant to be married, as you say. But you
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 229 
 
 must see, that if I come to think that, how very 
 much more humiliating it makes it for me how 
 painful to have to think that one was only proposed 
 to out of pity and a sense of duty!" 
 
 She turned her face away, sobbing. 
 
 Egidia put her arm round her. She could unf eign- 
 edly sympathise with the very real sorrows of wounded 
 vanity. She felt she had spoken plainly with full 
 conviction and honest intent, it was true, but still 
 plainly and perhaps brutally. She was conscious that 
 her care had been all along for the man, and not the 
 woman. 
 
 "My dear, my dear," she said, drawing Mrs. Elles 
 close to her, "there is another thing I see that saves 
 it a little a good deal, I think!" 
 
 "What?" asked Phoabe Elles. 
 
 "You don't really love him either!" 
 
 "What, not love him?" 
 
 "No, you think you do, you would die for him, of 
 course, but you don't love him. You happen to have 
 chosen him for an emotional centre, every woman, if 
 she is a woman, has to find an emotional centre, but 
 she does not always choose well. Edmund, like all 
 geniuses, is self-centred without being selfish; you 
 understand me ; he is to be regarded as exempt from 
 the ordinary responsibilities of humanity, morally and 
 otherwise. He is quite willing to be worshipped 
 what man is not? but ho has no time to worship, or 
 be aux petits soins with anybody. He could not, if 
 he liked, make any woman happy, certainly not a
 
 230 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 passionate woman. She could never exist long in the 
 rarefied spiritual atmosphere into which dear Edmund 
 would want to lift her, where he lives and flourishes. 
 He can feel, of course, the big things, but he has, as 
 it were, no small change of emotion at any one's serv- 
 ice. And he doesn't, on his side, ask for anything. 
 He is sufficient unto himself. Did you not observe, 
 when you were with him, how he accepted your devo- 
 tion, but made no demands on it!" 
 
 "He let me rub his colours for him!" Mrs. Elles 
 said, laughing. 
 
 "Do you mean to say you did not feel the curious 
 sense of aloofness, of want of sympathy with poor 
 humanity, that the consciousness of a mission even 
 an art mission seems to bring with it? Not for 
 humanity's woes; no one can be kinder than 
 Edmund, if you are in real trouble, but he is the 
 kind of man who would never notice if you had cut 
 your finger, or had got a new frock on. Now woman 
 wants more than that here below at least I think 
 so!" 
 
 She laughed, Mrs. Elles was wondering how she 
 could talk like this about the man she cared for. 
 
 "I am being very didactic, I fear," Egidia said 
 suddenly. "And boring you." 
 
 "No, no," said the other vehemently. "I love 
 discussing people. I have noticed all you say in Mr. 
 
 Rivers, but still And do you know," she went 
 
 on eagerly, "all the men who speak of him seem very 
 fond of him, so is it only women he snubs?"
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 231 
 
 "Oh, men like him and respect him, bat they 
 don't slap him on the back, and confide their pleas- 
 ant weaknesses to him ! He is manly enough, but I 
 don't know how it is, he is quite out of it in the 
 smoking-room. " 
 
 "He is very much at home in a woman's boudoir, 
 at all events!" said Mrs. Elles, a little bitterly. 
 
 "You mean mine," the other replied with her 
 usual directness. "Well, he is my cousin, and he 
 knows I like to hear him discuss the only subject he 
 cares to discuss art. He tells me his ideas for new 
 mediums and the experiments he is making. He 
 laments the volatility of the prettiest colours, such as 
 aureoline, and the impracticability of Nature as a 
 model. We never talk of anything more personal 
 than that, and all he condescends to look at here ia a 
 sunset over Westminster as we see it from my win- 
 dows." 
 
 "Do you like that sort of subject best yourself?" 
 Mrs. Elles said wistfully, going out of herself for 
 once, into the other woman's mind, and realizing the 
 bitterness of renunciation that informed the words so 
 laughingly spoken. 
 
 "Oh, I well, I am a woman, and no wiser than 
 the rest. That is why I have been telling you all 
 this, because if you once realize that I have been 
 there myself, in short you will more readily let me 
 help you and him. You see, though I am hopeless 
 absolutely hopeless" Mrs. Elles stared; this 
 strange woman might have been talking about cooks,
 
 232 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 for all the emotion she showed "I am not even 
 miserable about it. I know so well that if Edmund 
 came to me and went down on his knees to me to 
 marry him, I should refuse, he could not make me as 
 happy as he makes me now. If I were a wife, I 
 should not care to be second to anything, not even to 
 Art, nor would you. I have realized the finality of it 
 all, and so must you. But now, you must trust me, 
 ploase, and not think, when I talk to you of your 
 affairs and Edmund's, that I am fighting for my own 
 hand, and mean to secure him for myself, in the end, 
 as soon as I have helped him to get clear of his 
 entanglement with you. You see I speak quite 
 plainly.'* 
 
 Mrs. Elles's eager disclaimer of any such interpre- 
 tation of Egidia's behaviour was not so much the 
 outcome of an emotional confidence in the woman 
 who had so bravely, so wildly, so foolishly committed 
 herself, as of the strong conviction which her words 
 carried. She was secretly a little overcome and 
 puzzled by the spectacle of so much single-minded- 
 ness and bonhomie in the unveiling of a soul's 
 tragedy, such as she conceived Egidia's to be. She 
 herself could not have been anything but tortuous in 
 the telling of such a piece of secret history. The 
 novelist's methods were not hers. They went with 
 the whole character of the woman, with the honest 
 eyes, and shrewd, fine, but uncompromising mouth.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Egidia used her novelist's privilege of supposed 
 social emancipation sometimes, and braved conven- 
 tionalities. She went once or twice to see her 
 cousin in his studio. It was obviously impossible for 
 her to receive him in her own house, while Mrs. Elles 
 was an inmate of it. 
 
 Mrs. Elles had now been her guest for some 
 months. She had written at the outset, in obedience 
 to Egidia's instructions, a letter to her husband, long 
 and reasonable, announcing her present whereabouts, 
 and laying the circumstances and facts of her stay in 
 Yorkshire fully before him. His only reply to her 
 had been a curt communication through his lawyers, 
 informing her that he was determined to proceed with 
 the case, and would even consent to defray the cost 
 of her defence by a suitable firm of London solicitors, 
 whose name and address he mentioned. 
 
 "He pays to get rid of me!" Mrs. Elles had com- 
 mented bitterly. She had up to the last moment 
 believed in the existence in Mortimer's heart of a 
 latent love for her. She was a woman before whom 
 every man must necessarily bow the knee, even her 
 husband. She was now a little disillusioned. 
 
 "Such a man should be glad to have such a wife as 
 233
 
 234 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 me, on any terms!" she observed to Egidia. "It is 
 worse than quarrelling with one's bread and butter; 
 it is quarrelling with one's culture, as well!" 
 
 But it was painfully obvious that Mortimer Elles 
 did not now set so high a value on the Muse who had 
 for ten years honoured his fireside. 
 
 These were the things that amused Egidia, and 
 indemnified her for the trial of housing the delin- 
 quent, and being the recipient of her oft repeated 
 confidences. She always thought, and spoke to 
 Eivers, of Phoabe Elles as of a wayward foolish child, 
 whose material interests they both had at heart, and 
 of the impending divorce case as of a mere legal and 
 technical difficulty into which the indiscretion and 
 imprudence of this particular child had plunged her- 
 self, and her friends. 
 
 "Pooh!" she said to Eivers, in an off-hand manner 
 that was half assumed. "You don't know what 
 Love is, either of you! She talks of it, and you 
 don't, but you are both alike!" 
 
 Eivers still used his old habit, the one Mrs. Elles 
 had noticed, and suffered from, that of refusing to 
 take up other persons' speeches unless positively 
 called upon to do so. He was working now against 
 time, standing intent, mahl-stick and palette in hand, 
 under the pale white globe of electric light, which 
 dimly lit the whole vast studio, and concentrated 
 itself upon his head, that was not so dark as it used 
 to be. 
 
 "The little fiend! She has managed to turn his
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 235 
 
 hair grey!" Egidia said to herself as she stood near 
 him, but not near enough to interfere with the free 
 play of his brush-arm, and talked softly, and in a way 
 calculated to make no direct demand on his attention. 
 Mrs. Elles had learned that art, too, in the glades of 
 Brignal. Eivers never looked round at Egidia, but 
 continued to lay on touch after touch with unerring 
 precision and mastery. He now and then stepped 
 back a few paces, and glanced at her, just enough to 
 avoid jostling her in his backward walk, but that was 
 all. 
 
 "Do you like Dr. Andre?" she asked suddenly. 
 
 "Yes, well enough why?" 
 
 "Because I think he admires Phoebe!" 
 
 "Does he?" was the indifferent reply. 
 
 "She is probably with him now or at her 
 lawyer's." 
 
 Egidia spoke tentatively, as if she were consulting 
 him as to her own line in countenancing the intimacy 
 between the two. Perhaps a desire to ascertain 
 Rivers' own personal feelings on the subject of the 
 little flirtation unconsciously influenced her. 
 
 "There is no harm in Andre," said Eivers decid- 
 edly. "And, poor little thing, it does her good to be 
 taken out of herself!" 
 
 "Nothing ever really does that!" Egidia rejoined. 
 Inwardly she said, "Oh, no, he can't care for her." 
 And her face, unconsciously to herself, took on a joy- 
 oua expression. She went on, with a manner of 
 detached criticism :
 
 236 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "I never, in all my literary life, met any one who 
 lived in herself so completely. Keats speaks of a 
 woman who would have liked to have been engaged 
 to a poem and married to a novel, but Phoebe goes 
 one better, she is her own poem, her own novel. No 
 spectacle, no literature in the world interests her as 
 much. She is always pulling herself up by the roots, 
 as it were, to account for her moral or immoral 
 growth, and telling one all about it." 
 
 "And does it bore you?" asked he. 
 
 "On the contrary, it interests me deeply. And to 
 do her justice, she is a charming companion, so gay, 
 so lively. No one would imagine what she is suffer- 
 ing. The Merry Martyr, I call her." There was the 
 very slightest touch of mockery in her tone. 
 
 He made no remark, and she continued : 
 
 "I gave her that drawing you gave me the one 
 that had a sketch of her in it. She did want it 
 so badly, poor girl, and after all, she sat for it, and 
 had a better right to it than I !" 
 
 "I will give you another!" said Rivers. 
 
 "Will you really, Edmund? That is nice of you." 
 She flushed with pleasure. "Now I must go back to 
 my young woman of the sea!" She laughed. 
 
 "Be kind to her!" said Rivers, "but you are, I 
 know. You are a good woman !" 
 
 "Am I? But I get very angry with the lady some- 
 times, when she talks as if this divorce of hera was a 
 sort of smart tea-party she was going to in the imme- 
 diate future. "
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 23? 
 
 "But that is the right way to look at it," said he, 
 "and a tea party that won't come off either!" 
 
 Egidia stared at him ; she wondered if this was the 
 flippancy of bitterness or indifference? 
 
 "They won't be able to prove what is not true," 
 the artist went on, with some fire, but at the same 
 time carefully laying and mixing burnt umber and 
 madder brown on his palette. "There isn't really 
 the ghost of a case, as I told the old woman, her 
 aunt, when she came and made me a scene. It will 
 be all right. Elles will abandon the charge, or we 
 will get it squared out of court. It isn't worth think- 
 ing about." 
 
 He applied the mixture he had made with a firm 
 square touch. 
 
 "Oh, I see," said Egidia, "that is why you are 
 able to paint away so composedly ! I was wondering 
 I had thought that in the face of such a possible 
 horror you would have not been able to do anything. 
 That is why I have distressed myself so much about it 
 all. Are you sure you are not pretending that you 
 are not more disturbed than you care to own?" 
 
 "I don't let it trouble me," he said, adding with a 
 certain intentional deliberation, "I am an artist 
 before all!" 
 
 Egidia said she must go home. Rivers unyoked his 
 palette from his thumb, and laid it down carefully. 
 He led her out of the studio, downstairs, past walls 
 covered with framed diplomas, and medals, and all 
 kinds of memoranda of a life spent in the service and
 
 238 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 honor of Art. His house in Bedford Square was pre- 
 eminently a bachelor's house; an indurated, deeply 
 ingrained celibacy was suggested by the presence of 
 many articles of furniture, and the absence of others. 
 Rivers was of the orderly description of bachelor, of 
 all kinds the most inveterate. Egidia, in her mind's 
 eye, could not see the little Elles throning it here, 
 her trivial prettiness overwhelmed by the grandiose 
 style of decoration appropriate to the mansions of 
 Bloomsbury, her eyes resting on high wall spaces 
 hung with old masters, her footsteps treading stair- 
 cases whose angles were filled with yellow casts of 
 heroic statues. There was never a bit of drapery, or 
 a Tanagra figurine to reduce the scale a little. It 
 was all the difference between the atmosphere of the 
 British Museum, and a Louis Seize Boudoir. Egidia 
 felt happier at the definition of this anomaly between 
 the tastes of Rivers and Phosbe, and went away hav- 
 ing absorbed some of the contagion of Rivers' confi- 
 dence in a renewed term of celibacy for himself. 
 
 Mrs. Elles had not yet returned when she got home, 
 but came fluttering in presently, and touched her 
 shoulder as she sat over the fire shivering with the 
 chill depression of thoughts that would rise, in spite 
 of the consoling visit she had just made. 
 
 "Cheer up!" said Sirs. Elles. "I have brought 
 you a little present, nothing particular, only to show 
 that I love you. A little gold lucky bean. Will you 
 wear it to please me?" 
 
 She sank down on the hearthrug, and laid her
 
 THE HUMAN INTEKEST 239 
 
 hand, and for the moment her head, on Egidia's 
 knee. This was one of her "caressing little ways," 
 to which Egidia was ashamed of objecting. 
 
 "Where have you been?" she said coldly. "With 
 the Doctor or the Lawyer?" 
 
 "Lawyer. Eight away down to Holborn. Of 
 course, I got there too soon. I generally do. I am 
 so eager to hear what fresh news they have. A 
 divorce case is so exciting. But then I have to wait, 
 in the lobby, among all that barren brownness of 
 cheap varnish, and trodden oilcloth and japanned tin 
 deed boxes stacked up to the very horizon. There I 
 am on one of an awful row of bulging leather chairs, 
 where the crowd of witnesses sit I mean the grimy 
 people that keep coming in, wiping their cuffs across 
 their mouths, and sit down apologetically. They are 
 to be examined in this or that disgusting case, as 
 Jane Anne will be in mine. I watch the com- 
 missionaire adding up figures inside his queer hutch 
 of a desk, and read up all about Salmon-Fishery Laws 
 on the walls and see the little bow-legged clerks hop 
 off their stools, and run about with sheaves of papers. 
 Why can't they make lawyers' offices prettier?" 
 
 "Divorce," said Egidia, "would really become too 
 attractive if it were run in connection with a restau- 
 rant or a manicure establishment. " 
 
 "And then," Mrs. Elles went on, "when I do see 
 Mr. Lawler, I cannot help thinking that he is laugh- 
 ing at me. He treats me like a child " 
 
 "Instead of an erring woman!" said Egidia.
 
 240 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "Well, you should not wear your hats so terribly on 
 one side. The dignity of crime " 
 
 "Yes, I must really get something plainer!" Mrs. 
 Elles returned, taking her literally. "I nearly cried 
 to-day, and it did not go with my hat at all." 
 
 "Why did you cry?" 
 
 "Because I can stand a good deal but when he 
 repeated all the awful things that woman was pre- 
 pared to swear against me, I nearly gave way. The 
 whole case, they say, stands on her evidence, and it is 
 false, outrageously false. She always hated me, she 
 cared for Mr. Kivers herself. It was notorious that 
 she did." 
 
 Egidia sneered a little, almost in spite of herself. 
 "Who next?" she said. 
 
 "She was very nearly a lady," Mrs. Elles said 
 apologetically, "and he was kind to her, but he never 
 flirted with her of that I am convinced. But if the 
 jury believe her, Mortimer will get his case, to a 
 certainty!" 
 
 "Did they tell you the details of what she was 
 going to say?" asked Egidia, shyly and awkwardly. 
 
 Mrs. Elles told her, at some length, but without 
 much hesitation. 
 
 "Oh, she can't realize!" thought Egidia, brooding. 
 "She can have no imagination!" 
 
 Her own conjured up so vividly the horrors of the 
 scene in court the scene that must come now, in 
 spite of Rivers' pathetically confident assertions. 
 
 "She can't love him, or know or care one little bit
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 241 
 
 what he suffers or is it that she thinks that she will 
 get him herself in the end? And so she will, for he is 
 a man of honour. Ah, but she shall not, if I can 
 prevent it. It will be the best plot I ever invented, 
 if I can pull it through, and then I suppose I must 
 take the veil, to show the purity of my intentions ! 
 
 . . God forgive me, if he loves her! But he 
 does not ! . . . He is an artist before all. He 
 said so himself, this very day. And no man loves 
 disgrace, and such disgrace would kill love, if ever it 
 existed!" 
 
 "What are you thinking of?" asked the other pres- 
 ently. "You look like the tragic muse, or Althea, 
 before she put the burning brand back into the fire 
 again. You have a very strong face, do you know? 
 It is a pity Mr. Rivers isn't a figure painter, then he 
 could paint you." 
 
 "I wish somehow you would not talk of Mr. 
 Rivers." 
 
 "Why not? I am always thinking of him." 
 
 "That you are not." 
 
 "You think me very frivolous?" Mrs. Elles sighed 
 out. "But I only laugh that I may not weep I go 
 about trying to kill thought. If I did not, I should 
 go mad with what is hanging over me! And the 
 worst I have to bear almost is the thought that 
 though I am thinking so constantly of him, he is not 
 thinking of me except as a disagreeable incident a 
 burr that has somehow got stuck to him, and that he 
 cannot shake off!" She got up and walked about a
 
 242 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 little, evidently a prey to real mental perturbation. 
 Then she turned suddenly. 
 
 "Egidia, I want you and him if possible to know 
 this, that I shall not marry him, even if I am di- 
 vorced for him. I could not, after what you said." 
 
 She spoke pettishly, like a child or a schoolgirl, 
 but all the strength and sadness of renunciation was 
 in her eyes. She evidently meant what she said. 
 Egidia realised this, but the complication of her 
 feelings about this little Helen kept her silent awhile. 
 She took her hand, however, and held it, in sign of 
 amity. 
 
 "I want, Phcabe," she said presently, "to go out of 
 town for two or three days. Do you think, if I did, 
 that you could amuse yourself and keep out of 
 mischief?" 
 
 "You speak to me as if I was ten!" Mrs. Elles 
 said. "I am not sure if I mind? What is mischief?" 
 
 "Oh, you know things that might prejudice you 
 in your new position. I need not mention them 
 you know the kind of thing?" 
 
 "Can I go to see the Rembrandts with Dr. Andre?" 
 
 "The poor man's in love with you but there 
 would be no harm in your going to the Rembrandts 
 with him, I think," Egidia answered easily. 
 
 By ten o'clock of the next day she was gone. 
 
 Mrs. Elles felt a really irresistible impulse, to do 
 what she did. "It was as if something called me!" 
 she said afterwards. "I felt that I had to see him."
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 243 
 
 So two days after the day on which her friend had 
 left London, the dreary gas lamps of Bedford Square 
 fluttered, and the black mud shone prismatically 
 under the feet of a little woman, wandering without 
 judgment or system, round and round the square, 
 enquiring of nodding applewomen, of burly police- 
 men, of scurrying street arabs, and honouring them 
 all with the gracious smile of drawing rooms, the 
 way to No. 99 in that region. 
 
 "Why, there, Missie, under yer nose," said the 
 last of the policemen, pointing to the number, written 
 black and jagged over the fanlight of the house near 
 whose very doorstep she was standing. He thought 
 the young lady a little touched in the head; there 
 was indeed a wild look in her eyes, born of the con- 
 sciousness of her own audacity, and the wild joy of 
 seeing Rivers again. 
 
 She rang the bell, and a grim, demure -looking 
 Scotch servant Eivers' staid old housekeeper, of 
 whom she had often heard answered it. 
 
 "Can I see Mr. Rivers?" she asked. 
 
 "Mr. Rivers doesn't paint figures, Miss," said the 
 woman kindly, and with the manner of one deliver- 
 ing an oft repeated statement. "But Mr. Brandard, 
 over the other side of the Square, is always glad for 
 us to send models over to him." 
 
 'I am not a model," said Mrs. Elles, vexed and 
 ashamed. "Here is my card. Will you take it to 
 Mr. Rivers, and ask if he will see me?" 
 
 The perfectly civil Scotchwoman took it, with a
 
 244 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 blank neutral face. She showed the visitor into a 
 half vestibule, half room, on one side of the passage. 
 It was perfectly ordered and arranged, there were 
 no landscapes on its walls it was, she knew, a fad of 
 the painter's not to hang his own pictures. There 
 were other people's pictures, etchings, engravings, 
 with flattering inscriptions, "A mon ami a mon 
 confrere hommages" signed with some of the great- 
 est names in the land. A sense of the worldly 
 importance of this man whom she was going to drag 
 through seas of disreputability grew in her mind, 
 and affected her more deeply than Egidia's hints and 
 lectures had done. She was literally a burr hanging 
 on this great name, and she ought to kill herself 
 sooner than let herself be associated with it in men's 
 minds. It was then that the idea of suicide first 
 came to her. 
 
 The servant came back. 
 
 "Air. Rivers is very sorry indeed, Ma'am, but he is 
 not able to see any one to-day." 
 
 "He " Her lips trembled; her whole body 
 
 shook at the blow. She turned, lest the woman saw 
 her face. 
 
 "Is there any message I can give, Madam?" 
 
 "No, thank you, no message," she answered, with 
 her face still averted, and drifting out into the street. 
 
 She leant against the palings of the Square, and 
 sobbed. Was it love, or vanity or shock? 
 
 "How brutal how brutal!" she repeated to her- 
 self.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 245 
 
 The policeman on his beat turned his bull's eye on 
 to her. 
 
 "Are you going to tell me to move on?" she asked 
 him, plaintively. 
 
 "No, Madam," he replied, and she was a little 
 assuaged. At least he saw that she was a lady. She 
 dried her eyes, and crossed back to the pavement, 
 and down a side street. As she passed a little 
 postern-like door in the wall Rivers' happened to be 
 a corner house it opened, and the artist came out. 
 He still had her card in his hand. 
 
 They stood and faced each other. 
 
 "Oh, my God, how ill you look!" she exclaimed, 
 "and it is all my fault. Won't you even give me 
 your hand?" 
 
 "Are you mad?" he said, contemporaneously with 
 her speech. "Good God! was there ever a more 
 idiotic thing for a woman in your position to do?" 
 
 He seized her arm, almost roughly, and led her 
 away from the door. 
 
 "What are you going to do with me?" 
 
 "Put you in a cab, of course! You must not be 
 seen here with me, on any account. I could hardly 
 believe my eyes when your card was put into my 
 hands." 
 
 So saying, he tore it across with a rancour that 
 pierced her heart. 
 
 "You are most unkind!" she complained, follow- 
 ing him in his great angry strides down the street, 
 "and unnecessary. It is quite dark, no one could see
 
 246 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 me, or recognise me, and I do so want to talk to you. 
 If you must take a hansom, choose one without a 
 lamp. Egidia is away, for two days. I don't know 
 where she has gone. I felt I must see you, do you 
 hear? It is a month since I have been in London a 
 month of agony. . . . Did you hail it?" she 
 asked nervously, as a cab drew up along the kerb- 
 stone. 
 
 She put her hand appealingly on his arm. 
 
 "I won't get in, unless you promise to come with 
 me, so far. I must I must talk to you." 
 
 "You are behaving like a child." 
 
 "I know I am," she said, "only because you are 
 behaving like a " 
 
 What was she going to say? She did not know 
 herself, only that a crushing sense of estrangement, of 
 inevitableness, had come over her; the prop of an 
 unacknowledged hope that had stayed her for so 
 many weeks had been rudely withdrawn. The man 
 she loved was a stranger ; she had surely never lived 
 at his side, day in, day out, through the summer that 
 was past? A wave of despair overwhelmed her, black 
 as the mud she looked down on, as she stood, her 
 foot on the step, prepared to abandon her point, and 
 go back alone. 
 
 But she had gained it. 
 
 "Anything sooner than a scene in the street!" she 
 heard Eivers say wearily to himself, as he got in 
 beside her. 
 
 "How cruel you are how inconsiderate! Surely
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 247 
 
 I have the right to a few words with you ! I will 
 never perhaps speak to you again in this world!" 
 
 He sat, stiff in his closely-buttoned overcoat, like 
 a statue beside her, and spoke no word. 
 
 She took his hand, as it lay on his knee. 
 
 "Forgive me do forgive me! I am so sorry so 
 dreadfully sorry!" 
 
 "What for?" he said, gently. 
 
 "For bringing this on you this this disgrace. 
 And you cannot forgive me, that is just it. I 
 realised it when you refused to see me just now, and 
 sent me a message by a servant." 
 
 "I had to. Think, yourself! You must really 
 not be so unreasonable!" 
 
 "I am reasonable quite, quite reasonable; and 
 saying good-bye to you, if you only would let me! 
 Yes, you never cared for me much, and now the little 
 ghost of love is laid forever. This threatened dis- 
 grace and exposure has killed it. But it was there 
 don't take that from me a little love, and the rest of 
 it pity. Egidia says so, and I believe her. . . . 
 Stop, stop, I am not asking you to say anything I 
 had rather you did not protest. . . . Oh, look 
 at that great red Bovril sign flaring out ! It looks as 
 if the whole street was on fire. It must frighten the 
 horses. . . ." 
 
 Her voice broke into a sob of hysterical terror. 
 
 "Dear " began Eivers, clasping her hand more 
 
 tightly. 
 
 "How nice of you! It hardly sounds at all per-
 
 248 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 functory! And yet I know it is. Don't try any 
 more. Let me tell you that I don't mind this for 
 myself, but only for you, and I mean to defend 
 myself tooth and nail, only for your sake. I know 
 what it means for yon. If Mortimer and his paid 
 accomplices can succeed in lying me away from him, 
 then the world will expect you to marry me." 
 
 "Yes," he said, "and I will!" 
 
 u Ah, but it takes two! "she replied, in tragic 
 accents. "You can't marry me against my will. 
 Supposing I am not there?" 
 
 He allowed the usual empty threat of suicide to 
 pass unheeded. 
 
 "I shall ask you to, at any rate," he said, doggedly. 
 
 "Oh, yes, you will ask me!" She was playing so 
 well that she almost enjoyed it. "Oh, yes, you will 
 ask me, because you are a man of honour and I 
 shall refuse, because I am a woman of honour. I 
 will not be behind Egidia, whom you respect, in that. 
 You are right. She is strong and good. And she 
 loves you." 
 
 "Please don't." 
 
 "Surely you and I have no need to mince words? 
 She loves you, and if you marry any one, it ought to 
 be Egidia. She is devoted, she is an angel, and she 
 would rather see you dead at her feet, than married 
 tome!" 
 
 She never looked round, or she would perhaps have 
 realised the exquisite annoyance she was inflicting on 
 her helpless victim, penned up as he was beside her,
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 249 
 
 powerless to prevent or avoid the stream of tactless 
 heroics she was pouring on him. His forehead was 
 contracted, his hands were clenched together over the 
 doors of the cab. 
 
 "We are coming to the more crowded streets now," 
 he said suddenly, "and it is really very dangerous for 
 you to be seen with me. Had you not better let me 
 get out, and leave you to go the rest of the way alone?" 
 
 She replied, with desperate and intentional 
 incisiveness, "I permit you to leave me, since you 
 wish it." 
 
 He put up his arm, and raised the trap door. 
 Mrs. Elles raised her hand to intercept his, but let it 
 fall hopelessly down again, on a glance at his set 
 face. The cab stopped and he got out, and standing 
 half on the pavement, and half on the foot-board 
 of the cab, held out his hand. 
 
 "Good-bye!" he said, "for the present!" 
 
 The reservation was kind in intention, but she 
 would not accept it. 
 
 "Good-bye forever!" was her answer, as her 
 hand, gloveless, out of her muff, went forth to meet 
 his. 
 
 "How cold you are!" he said, as he took it. "I 
 am sorry. But it is better I should leave you now, 
 isn't it? Forgive me for being such a bear, but I 
 have to think for both. I will write if I may?" 
 
 "You needn't," she whispered, retreating to the 
 corner of the cab, like a wounded animal. "Tell 
 him to go on!"
 
 250 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "Is there anywhere you can tell him to go some 
 shop and then discharge him and take a new one? 
 It would be safer!" 
 
 "Tell him to go to the New Gallery!" she said, 
 defiantly, and Rivera accordingly did so, and left her.
 
 CHAPTEK XIV 
 
 DP. Andre 1 was waiting for her in the dim-lighted 
 halls of the New Gallery, where large-eyed solemn- 
 faced women, some of them so like Egidia, as she 
 thought, looked down from the walls on Mrs. Elles in 
 her somewhat elf-like prettiness, as of a picture by 
 Tissot. All she had in common with them, was her 
 large wide-open eyes, eyes without depth or mystery, 
 and with unresting lids that had perhaps never 
 drooped to hide an emotion worth the name, or a 
 secret worth the keeping. 
 
 "I was afraid you were not coming after all!" the 
 hypnotist said, in his soft, authoritative voice. 
 
 She sank on to a red leather causeuse, and blinked 
 pathetically. 
 
 "Don't speak to me for a moment!" she whispered, 
 throwing back her head and turning her profile only 
 towards him. 
 
 "You have a headache?" Dr. Andre asked 
 sympathetically. 
 
 She shook her head, and in that nugatory shake 
 strove to indicate the region of her heart, as the seat 
 of her uneasiness. He had the tact to hold his 
 tongue, and presently she remarked, with a little 
 sigh, "What nice pictures!" as a hint that conversa- 
 tion might begin. 
 
 251
 
 252 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "You don't care about pictures to-day," he said, 
 laughing. "You are terribly upset, I can see. 
 Have you had bad news? Have you been fighting 
 with wild beasts at Ephesus?" 
 
 She was pleased at his way of putting things. He 
 was alluding to her interviews with lawyers : of the 
 circumstances in which she found herself he was now 
 quite au fait. 
 
 "Wild beasts!" she said. "Well, not quite that, 
 but people are very odd, and never behave exactly 
 as one has a right to expect them to?" Her accent 
 was slightly interrogative. 
 
 "Most men will bully a woman if they get a 
 chance!" said he, looking at her keenly. 
 
 The butterfly did look a little crushed, a little 
 subdued, as if she had only very recently been 
 brought face to face with some of the crude realities 
 of life of which she was always talking. 
 
 "But it is against all my theories," he continued. 
 
 "I believe in people too much," she went on. 
 "And the consequence is, I give myself away, and 
 make a fool of myself." 
 
 "You don't say so?" said Dr. Andre, politely, and 
 tenderly. 
 
 He was not one who looked for wisdom in women ; 
 it was on charm that he insisted. He admired Mrs. 
 Elles extremely. She reminded him of Heine's 
 famous definition of a latter-day Venus "a cross 
 between a dressmaker and a duchess." The little 
 touch of red on her cheek that was not rouge, but
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 253 
 
 which gave her the faintly meretricious air beloved of 
 decadents, pleased him; her large eyes, fuller at this 
 moment of tears than of expression, were bent on him 
 sadly and consciously appealing. By what art she 
 avoided the vulgar catastrophe of falling tear-drops 
 he did not know, but the brilliant result he could 
 fully appreciate. He was a poseur himself, and her 
 assumption of pose on his account flattered him. 
 
 "I wish I could help you," he said, wondering if 
 he would dare to take the little white hand stiff with 
 rings that lay ungloved on the red-covered ottoman 
 beside him. "Dare" was not the word Andr6 was 
 a determined flirt, and would dare most things, but 
 would it be advisable? He cared for her enough not 
 to want to frighten her. 
 
 "Yon know I would do anything for you!" he 
 confined himself to saying, and in spite of himself 
 there was the strongest ring of sincerity in his voice. 
 
 "I know you would," Mrs. Elles replied with 
 pretty assurance. She knew that though he imagined 
 he was only flirting, he was more nearly loving than 
 he was himself aware. That was the way she liked it 
 best ; if he were to begin to think himself serious, he 
 would begin to be tiresome, and she would have to 
 discourage and snub him, and "see less" of him, as 
 the phrase is. She did not want to lose him. Her 
 intercourse with the distinguished hypnotist had 
 acted as a derivative during this troublous period of 
 her life. She hardly realized his uses, in that 
 capacity, but Egidia did, and set no impediments in
 
 254 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 the way of their frequent meetings. Phcebo was a 
 fool, but Dr. Andre was a gentleman. 
 
 After having been scolded and bullied, as Mrs. 
 Elles conceived herself to have been, by her ascetic 
 and frigid lover for the last hour, it was sweet to be 
 sympathized with, respectfully petted, and made of 
 much account by Dr. Andre, who was willing to act 
 as a souffre douleur. And though he was not nearly 
 so handsome as Edmund Rivers, yet his face had a 
 great deal more expression. Though his eyes were 
 not deep like Rivers', they were mesmeric. His soul 
 was willing, nay anxious, to go forth to meet hers; it 
 did not, like that of Rivers, obstinately remain hid 
 in its fastnesses of reserve, to baffle and disappoint 
 her, who was always on the look-out for the evidences 
 of spiritual and intellectual communion. 
 
 She rose from the ottoman, giving herself a little 
 shake. She tried to imagine herself in a world that 
 knew not Rivers, or Egidia, or Mortimer. They 
 were not here, what had they to do with her? Did 
 they live? Her senses were not aware of them. Why 
 then should she take them into account? "What was 
 this thing that was troubling her? Had she any 
 present evidence of its existence? Did it exist, 
 then? 
 
 Trying to solve this intense problem in meta- 
 physics, she went round the Gallery with her accom- 
 modating cicerone, who kept up a running 
 commentary of wise, witty, and educational remarks, 
 without, however, in the least expecting her to take
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 255 
 
 in or appreciate them. He knew exactly the kind of 
 woman with whom he had to deal. 
 
 Suddenly they came on a representation of the 
 Parcae, three dreary, terrible old women sitting 
 huddled up in a cowering circle, weaving, shaping 
 and cutting the thread of the destinies of men. Mrs. 
 Elles stopped and pondered deeply. There was a 
 thread, yes, and many destinies were interwoven with 
 the one. No man or woman stood alone. She had 
 given a promise that had not been accepted, that 
 day, but still she had made it ; she had promised to 
 cut the thread of her own life, so as to leave that of 
 Rivers free. It was all very well: she stood there 
 ostensibly her own mistress in that room, beside Dr. 
 Andre, but the thread of her fate was hopelessly 
 entangled with the fates of two other persons, her 
 husband and her lover. The divorce hung imminent 
 over their heads, the machinery of which they had 
 set in motion, and which now could not be averted. 
 
 She turned to Dr. Andre, and looked mysterious. 
 
 "Shall I tell you what had always been one of my 
 nightmares a suicide manque ! If a person wishes 
 to commit suicide, he should arrange to do it neatly 
 and completely. Instead of that, he contrives to 
 make it a hideous and ridiculous fiasco, and generally 
 goes on humbly living after all!" 
 
 "Because intending suicides have as a rule got 
 themselves worked up to such a state of nerves before 
 they think of killing themselves, that having decided 
 on it they are not fit to conduct such a ticklish enter-
 
 256 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 prise. They are so agitated, so upset, they are in 
 such a hurry to get out of the world, when once they 
 have screwed themselves up to the point of resolution, 
 that lest that resolution waver, they rush it, and so 
 muff the whole thing!" 
 
 "Yes, but what I mean is that if I wore perfectly 
 calm and not in the least agitated, I should still 
 'muff' it, as you say, through not knowing how to set 
 about it the mere technique of the business would 
 escape me!" 
 
 "I shall have to publish a little manual, at your 
 service, 'Suicide Made Easy!' " 
 
 "You must not make fun of me. I am serious." 
 
 "I deeply regret to hear it!" he said, still laughing. 
 
 "No, but don't you know to a nervous woman 
 like me, it would be an immense consolation to know 
 that I could, at a given moment, get out of it I 
 mean life decently and in order." 
 
 "If you must go, why stand upon the order of 
 your going?" 
 
 "But that's just it. I should hate to do it 
 clumsily, ungracefully, grotesquely. I believe certain 
 poisons make you die quite hideously !" She shivered. 
 
 "Nearly all!" he said, teasing her. "But I might 
 mesmerise you and never wake you up again!" 
 
 "You are just as unkind and unsympathetic as the 
 others!" Mrs. Elles exclaimed, pettishly. "Let us 
 go home." 
 
 "Must we?" he said. 
 
 "Even if I didn't want to," she said, "they want
 
 THE HUMAN INTEKEST 257 
 
 to be rid of us. Look, they are putting out some of 
 the lights!" 
 
 "That is nothing. You want to punish me!'* 
 
 "Oh, no, I am not cross with you. I only am 
 disappointed in you," she replied, wearily. "You 
 can see me home if you like. I want to walk, it 
 might drive my headache away." 
 
 "I shall be delighted. Besides, as we live in the 
 same house or block my way is yours, in a literal 
 sense, at any rate." He led the way to the door, 
 and got her her umbrella. "I live so near," he went 
 on, as they turned down Eegent Street, "that when 
 the burden of life becomes really too hard to bear, you 
 can send for me to come in and turn you off neatly." 
 
 "I hate that word 'neatly'!" was all she vouch- 
 safed to reply. He spoke of other things and she 
 answered absently and jerkily. As they drew near 
 Westminster, she said, looking up at him: 
 
 "I do wish you would trust me!" 
 
 "Of course I do trust you, in what may I ask?" 
 
 "You might trust me not to use anything you might 
 give me. I should just keep it by me, the means of 
 Death, as a man keeps a sleeping draught by his 
 bedside, and the knowledge that one can put an end 
 to wakefulness at any moment makes it possible to 
 stand it, don't you see? I could bear my awful life 
 better oh, so much better if I knew I could get 
 out of it at any moment ! But nobody understands 
 me no not even you." 
 
 The accent she contrived to throw on the last
 
 258 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 words touched him a little. He looked at her keenly 
 but said nothing, and she continued defiantly : 
 
 "Well, if I am left to my own devices, there's 
 always the six chemists, and a fourpenny worth of 
 laudanum at each! Oh, I know what one does. 
 I've read novels." 
 
 "Too many! They are such a perversion of real 
 life. Well, I will see what I can do," he said slowly. 
 
 She turned and caught hold of his hand. 
 
 "You can put it in an envelope, and seal it with/ 
 black sealing wax ! It will be a bottle, won't it? A 
 tiny bottle?" 
 
 "I shall put it in one of those little Venetian tear 
 bottles," Dr. Andre said, smiling. "It will be what 
 Browning calls 'a delicate death.' But" his tone 
 was as serious now as she could wish, "you must promise 
 me faithfully not to use it ever ! I should be your 
 murderer, do you know? Do you want to hang me?" 
 
 She promised, smiling at his simplicity. She took 
 his hand more than cordially in the lift that stopped, 
 and deposited him, on a lower floor than hers. 
 
 "Is it possible that a magnetical rapport can be 
 established between a man and a woman who loves 
 another man?" she thought. "That would explain. 
 At any rate he is kind to me far, far kinder than 
 Edmund." 
 
 She dined alone and cried. Late that night a tiny 
 little parcel was sent up to her from Dr. Andre. She 
 shivered when she looked at it, and locked it up 
 under two keys.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 Egidia got out of the train at Barnard Castle, as 
 Mrs. Elles had done, months before. She took a fly, 
 and drove four miles to Greta Bridge. 
 
 She knew every inch of the ground from the 
 description which Rivers and Phoebe had at different 
 times given her of it. 
 
 She was full of purpose. Jane Anne Cawthorne 
 was the worst enemy of the two that she had taken 
 under her protection Jane Anne Cawthorne was pre- 
 pared to swear falsely Jane Anne Cawthorne 'a 
 mouth must be stopped. 
 
 Egidia thought she could do it, fairly and squarely, 
 and without this girl's evidence, so she gathered 
 from the lawyers, the case against Rivers and Phoebe 
 would fall to the ground. 
 
 It was Jane Anne Cawthorne herself who came 
 forward civilly when she alighted at the door of 
 "Heather Bell," and asked for rooms. Egidia was 
 as urbane in manner as she could be towards the 
 woman who cared for Rivers, and was yet prepared to 
 testify falsely concerning him. 
 
 "A low type!" she thought to herself, "a potential 
 villain, but still susceptible to moral influences. 
 They have bribed her, but all the same, she is doing 
 
 259
 
 260 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 this thing par depit amoureux. Therefore an apt 
 subject for diplomacy. How low I feel! But if I 
 can only get him out of this, I don't care what I do." 
 
 She secured the very sitting-room that Rivera and 
 Mrs. Elles had shared together, and derived a melan- 
 choly pleasure from the idea that it was so. There 
 was the very rose-strewn table-cover, stained and 
 splashed with the dabbling of the artist's brush; there 
 was the piano on which Mrs. Ellea had played to him. 
 But outside, in the wintry garden, the dark dank 
 earth lay heavy upon all the flowers and verdure that 
 had gladdened the eyes of the lovers. For in spite of 
 Phoebe's frivolity and Edmund's asceticism, she 
 could read through Phoebe's admissions and falsifica- 
 tions, that for a brief space they had been lovers the 
 woman in her had been genuinely stirred, the man in 
 him. It had not lasted, but it had been. But now 
 it was winter, "the days dividing lover and lover, the 
 light that loses, the night that wins," the season 
 when no man can paint, and loves that are ephem- 
 eral die down and are buried under the wrack of 
 autumn. There was no frost as yet, the December 
 air was mild and subdued, with only a prescience as 
 it were of the snows and disasters of January. 
 
 Egidia made a sad little pilgrimage to the scenes of 
 this romance that grieved her so. Brignal Banks 
 under their winter aspect reminded her somehow of 
 a young and pretty woman after a long and devastat- 
 ing illness. It was the same, and not the same, the 
 warm tones had gone out of the green, the ragged
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 261 
 
 boughs seemed blotted in upon the sky ; the moist 
 sides of the cliff, that no glow of sunset irradiated 
 now, showed hard and chill behind the streaky lines 
 of the leafless creepers that still hung on them. The 
 water still bubbled and splashed over the stones, but 
 with an empty merriment. So it seemed to the sad 
 woman who stood by the river bank and looked at the 
 bridge of stones made by human labour, that was no 
 longer continuous. There had been a storm or two, 
 and the rains had flushed the river bed, and the added 
 flood had washed the stones away. She would never 
 dare to confess it to Rivers and Phosbe, but she was 
 at immense pains to gather up a heavy stone and try 
 to drop it into a place between two remaining ones, 
 and thus make the bridge passable. She would add 
 her mite to Rivers' bridge too. Phoebe Elles should 
 not be the only woman who had helped him. 
 
 She came away from there a prey to terrible depres- 
 sion, and resolved to visit no more "mouldering 
 lodges" of a past in which she had no share. 
 
 A fate seemed to be hanging over the whole world ; 
 to the sad Egidia, all the inanimate things that he 
 had seen and touched seemed instinct with the fore- 
 boding of the particular disaster that threatened one 
 man. And Jane Anne, too, who waited on her 
 entirely now, at this dull season, when the personnel 
 in the inn was necessarily diminished was Jane 
 Anne sad, or was it only the accustomed heaviness of 
 the lonely, empty-lived, country girl? 
 
 Egidia had written her name, Miss Alice Giles,
 
 262 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 very clearly in the hotel book, and, in brackets, her 
 nom de guerre, which had a world -wide reputation. 
 She committed this solecism with a distinct purpose. 
 Had her name as a novelist reached Jane Anne's ears? 
 That was the point she meant to work from. 
 
 Jane Anne certainly was full of the little civilities 
 and attentions which that name generally evoked 
 among the celebrity hunters of superior rank among 
 whom Egidia's ways were cast. Of taciturn habit 
 though the landlady's niece unmistakably was, she 
 yet beamed on the authoress on every possible occa- 
 sion, and lost no opportunity of insinuating herself 
 into her good graces as far as was consistent with 
 perfect deference and civility. 
 
 At the close of the second day she spoke and asked 
 a question. 
 
 "If you please, ma'am," she said, "might I ven- 
 ture to inquire if you are going to make a book about 
 this place? So many do." 
 
 "But tell me why you think I am likely to?" asked 
 Egidia, with the elaborate indulgence of the con- 
 spirator. 
 
 "Because, ma'am, I happen to know that you are a 
 writer. A gentleman that comes here sometimes, ho 
 gave me one of your books once, and oh, I do like it 
 so ! I got him to write my name in it, and who it 
 was from! So I got his too. May I bring it out and 
 show you?" 
 
 With the gracious permission of the authoress 
 Jane Anne fetched the book. It was Egidia's last
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 263 
 
 novel but one, and on the flyleaf was Edmund Rivers' 
 signature. The book had the peculiar sodden appear- 
 ance of a volume much and carefully read. 
 
 "The gentleman gave me lots of books, " Jane Anne 
 went on. "And I have read them all over hun- 
 dreds of times. But I like none so much as this. I 
 am so fond of novels! And if it was one written 
 about here, why then I should like it all the better." 
 
 "But this is such a very quiet place. I should not 
 think that anything ever could happen here?" 
 
 "Oh, ma'am, don't be too sure! Last summer 
 now, something happened here, that if you was to put 
 it into a book, no one would believe it ! And I am in 
 it too leastways I shall be!" 
 
 "Tell me about it, if you have time," said Egidia, 
 "and then perhaps I could work it into something." 
 
 "It is something very serious," said Jane Anne, 
 her heavy brows coming together. "It is a divorce 
 case. I don't know as I ought to tell it." 
 
 "A divorce case is known eventually to all the 
 world!" said Egidia sententiously. "Besides, you 
 need not tell me the names!" 
 
 "Oh, no, I needn't then," said the girl, relieved, 
 "but they are sure to slip out in the course of conver- 
 sation. But then that won't be my fault, will it?" 
 
 "No," said the other, concealing her amusement at 
 Jane Anne's morality. "It will be mine I hope. 
 Come and sit down here, if you are not too busy, and 
 tell me about it!" 
 
 Jane Anne was a little thrown off her majestic
 
 264 THE HUMAN INTEEEST 
 
 balance by the distinguished authoress's condescension. 
 She sat down, awkward, handsome, interesting even, 
 as a study, but 
 
 "This creature presumes to love Edmund too!" 
 Egidia thought, and hated the mission she had set 
 herself to accomplish, which involved converse, and 
 an assumption of intimacy with her. 
 
 "You see, ma'am, it is like this," began Jane 
 Anne, too humble and modestly conscious of the 
 capacity in which this interview had been granted 
 her, not to begin on it at once. "There is a gentle- 
 man, the gentleman who gave me that book, he 
 comes here every year and paints he always has done 
 he is not married, leastways we think not ! he is 
 what they call the co-respondent." 
 
 She said correspondent, but it was not her mispro- 
 nunciation that made Egidia wince. 
 
 "Well, then," Jane Anne went on, "last summer 
 there comes a lady leastwise a very funny lady, to 
 be a lady to call herself one, I mean she was a 
 foreigner, with painted cheeks, and something she 
 did to her hair, and she nivver let our Mr. Rivers 
 alone! He didn't run after her, he really didn't, 
 but she had made up her mind to have him, and she 
 did. She was married!" 
 
 "This is very interesting, and extraordinary!" 
 ejaculated Egidia. 
 
 "But she nivver telled him so, nor none of us. 
 She called herself Miss Frick, and first of all she wore 
 a pair of blue spectacles, but trust her, she couldn't
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 265 
 
 stick to that long, because, you see, he couldn't 
 rightly see her face while she wore them, and so one 
 fine day, she went and left them off! That's why 
 Mrs. Popham will have it that she was a spy! A 
 spy! What for? She didn't want to spy anything. 
 She just wanted Mr. Rivers, and she got him! 
 They used to go jaunting into the Park at all sorts of 
 hours of the night, and loverish things like that!" 
 
 "Oh, then it is your opinion they were lovers?" 
 
 "Yes, ma'am, I do, and I am going for to say so. 
 It is me that knows best, the lawyer says so." 
 
 "Whose lawyer?" 
 
 "Mr. Mortimer Elles's lawyer! He's been down to 
 see me times out of number. Aunt was dreadfully 
 fashed; she said it put me out with my work!" 
 
 "And this man the lover is he a nice man?" 
 
 "Oh ma'am!" 
 
 "Very nice?" 
 
 "The nicest gentleman I ever saw, or ever shall 
 see. I would have done anything for him!" 
 
 "And she is she nice?" 
 
 "Oh ma'am!" 
 
 "You don't like her so well, I see!" 
 
 "Ma'am, I should like to take and run this darn- 
 ing-needle into her. Brazened painted-up creature, 
 so rude spoken, too and great staring eyes, with 
 black saucers round them " 
 
 "Whatever she is, he will have to marry her now!" 
 Egidia remarked carelessly. 
 
 "Ma'am!"
 
 266 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "Oh, yes, as a man of honour, he is bound to, if 
 she is to be divorced on his account. Did not the 
 lawyer tell you that? How very clever ! Perhaps he 
 did not realise how a man of honour would feel under 
 the circumstances. The lover is a man of honour, is 
 he not?" 
 
 "He's a real gentleman, ma'am," replied Jane 
 Anne, translating Egidia's description into her own 
 language. 
 
 "Well, then, I am sorry for him!" 
 
 "But, ma'am, I don't see why? She is a married 
 woman; she carries on with him, her husband doesn't 
 like it he can't separate them, so he calls in the law 
 to help him." 
 
 "Very nicely reasoned, Jane Anne! But the law 
 only helps the husband to get rid of the woman who 
 has betrayed him, he has nothing to do with the 
 other man, who is of course bound to the woman who 
 has lost her position through him. If the man you 
 speak of is a gentleman, he will do what is usual, you 
 may be sure of that!" 
 
 The girl was quite speechless with emotion for a 
 moment, then said, solemnly and sadly: 
 
 "Shall I be the one to force him to that, ma'am?" 
 
 "What do you mean? What have you to do with 
 it?" 
 
 "Because the lawyer young gentleman says it is on 
 my evidence they chiefly rely, to prove the case 
 against him!" 
 
 "Oh, then, you may consider that you have
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 267 
 
 married her to him, when the divorce is over ! But 
 what is your evidence?" 
 
 "I saw them," stammered Jane Anne, "the lawyer 
 says I must tell what I know, and not swear falsely." 
 
 "Certainly you must tell what you know to be 
 true." 
 
 She looked insistently at the girl, but not too 
 insistently, lest she roused her suspicions. 
 
 "But I should make as light of it as I could, if I 
 were you, and wished the man well, as you say you 
 do!" 
 
 "Then if nothing is proved against him, he won't 
 have to marry her?" inquired the girl eagerly. 
 
 "Obviously not. Her husband will have to take 
 her back!" 
 
 "Oh," said Jane Anne, "and Mr. Eivers be just 
 where he was before?" 
 
 "Oh, is it Mr. Rivers? I know him slightly." 
 
 "Do you? Do you? Ma'am, then if you know 
 him, will you tell him that Jane Anne Cawthorne 
 is his friend, and wishes him well. Why, I would 
 like to die for him, I would indeed!" 
 
 "Then you had better lie for him a little!" 
 
 She looked keenly at the girl as she spoke, and 
 with ever so slight an accent on the word whose first 
 letter she had altered, and she had the satisfaction of 
 seeing Jane Anne redden. 
 
 "Understate rather than overstate, you know!" 
 
 She now ventured to say this, seeing by the girl's 
 confusion that the latter course was the one she had
 
 268 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 intended to take, or had perhaps even been suborned 
 by a lawyer over-zealous in Mortimer Elles's behalf to 
 do. 
 
 "Nothing extenuate but naught set down in 
 malice!" she went on. "Don't deny anything, or 
 hold back anything, but make as light of what you 
 did see as possible!" 
 
 "I think I hear my aunt calling me!" Jane Anne 
 exclaimed suddenly. "I will just run and see what 
 she wants, and be back in a moment." 
 
 Miss Giles admired Jane Anne's method of gaining 
 time. Did she really go to attend on her aunt, or 
 did she simply stand outside the door for a while? 
 In five minutes she came back, looking somehow 
 quite a different woman, and said simply : 
 
 "I want you to tell me how I can help him, 
 ma'am?" 
 
 "Say simply what you know, and no more!" 
 
 "Then," said Jane Anne, her eyes downcast, "I 
 had better write to Mr. Perkins!" 
 
 "Who is he?" 
 
 "The lawyer gentleman who came here and saw me. 
 He took down what I said on a piece of paper." 
 
 "Perhaps in what you said then you exaggerated 
 a little did not you?" 
 
 "Yes, ma'am, I did," replied the girl, hiding her 
 eyes in the apron she wore, and bursting into tears. 
 "I was so angry with her and with him, because he 
 would not even speak to me that last day, but shook 
 my hand off his sleeve, that I said the worst I could.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 269 
 
 And truly I never saw no worse than him and her 
 walking up the Broad Walk yonder hand in hand. 
 It was the old lady saw him kissing her through the 
 window, and standing by his bedroom door in the 
 middle of the night. I didn't see that, but I was 
 there in the garden before, it was I who took her to 
 the window of his room, but I didn't look, I couldn't 
 bear to. But I invented worse, and all I said, I told 
 the lawyer I would swear to in Court." 
 
 "How very awful!" said Egidia. "But if you 
 write and say that you are not prepared to swear this 
 then the chances are that the case will fall to the 
 ground, and you will not have to appear in Court at 
 all." 
 
 "But then I shan't even see him!" exclaimed Jane 
 Anne. 
 
 "See him no, not then, but if there isn't any 
 trial, you will have him back here painting as usual 
 next spring, I should think." 
 
 Jane Anne seized Egidia's hand and kissed it. 
 
 "Oh, ma'am, ma'am, you know I never wanted 
 nothing but that. I knew well enough he could 
 never be anything to such as me, but I didn't want 
 him to marry anyone else." 
 
 "I did not expect him to marry me, but oh, I could 
 not bear him to marry any one else!" 
 
 That phrase of the country girl's was in Egidia's 
 ears all day as the train bore her southwards, her mis-
 
 270 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 sion accomplished, and Phoebe Elles and Rivers for 
 ever divided, by her means. 
 
 She had done it, and for what motive? Now that 
 it was done, the spirit of self -analysis tormented the 
 woman of letters skilled in the art of heart-searching. 
 The happiness of Rivers was her object, and that she 
 had been convinced lay in his continued celibacy. 
 She herself had nothing to gain by it, wished to gain 
 nothing by it. "I do not, I do not, if I have to go 
 into a convent to prove it!" she said out aloud, in the 
 solitude of the railway carriage. "I am glad we are 
 cousins!" she added, mentally. "All women are 
 dogs in the manger, when the man they love is con- 
 cerned!" was her reflection with reference to Jane 
 Anne's pathetic speech. The devotion of the servant 
 for the artist revolted while it touched her. "I 
 wonder how many more there are of us?" she won- 
 dered bitterly. "And his method indifference, and 
 innate incapacity to make any woman really happy. 
 Those are the men who are beloved. . . . 
 Phoebe Elles is saved but she won't think so. So is 
 Edmund but he won't adjiit it, perhaps. At any 
 rate, I do not profit. If I did, I would kill myself 1"
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 She drove up to Queen Anne's Mansions in the 
 dusk, and was whirled up in the lift and deposited in 
 front of her own door. She inserted her little latch- 
 key gilded, but practical into the key -hole. The 
 drawing-room, she saw, glancing through the irides- 
 cent panes at the side of the door, was lighted up. 
 
 "She is at home, then." she thought to herself. 
 "Dear, sweet, tiresome little thing that she is. 
 Entertaining Dr. Andr6 with strong tea, and weak 
 philosophy, no doubt. But now that I have got her 
 out of this mess, I intend to wash my hands of her 
 and her amatory affairs. I am sure I hope I may 
 never again see a situation so at first hand. I pre- 
 fer to invent them myself. It is less wearing in the 
 long run." 
 
 But there was no one with Mrs. Elles, the servant 
 said, Mrs. Elles had been at home all day, had eaten 
 hardly any lunch, and had just sent off a telegram. 
 
 "Some new folly, I suppose?" thought Egidia. 
 "Luckily, it does not matter now." 
 
 She opened the drawing-room door. 
 
 "Well, Phoebe," she said in jubilant tones, 
 before she had passed the porti&re, "congratulate me! 
 I have saved you at least I think I have.'* 
 271
 
 272 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 Phoebe Elles was sitting there, staged, as it were, 
 most effectively on a red draped sofa. She was 
 dressed in white, and her face was as white as her 
 dress, except for the famous spot of colour on each 
 cheek. Her eyes were not as bright as usual ; they 
 seemed a little glazed, but she smiled sweetly though 
 faintly when she saw Egidia, and raised her hand, in 
 a deprecating way. 
 
 "Yes, I have saved you, Phoebe, do you hear?" 
 went on Egidia, full of her subject. "I have com- 
 pletely killed off the Jane Anne Cawthorne you were 
 so afraid of and her evidence, and I venture to pre- 
 dict that your husband will now have nothing better 
 to do than to withdraw his absurd petition in conse- 
 quence!" 
 
 "It matters so little now!" said his wife, closing 
 her eyes. 
 
 Egidia was hurt at this little show of gratitude for 
 the three arduous days' work she had done for her. 
 
 ""Why, what is the matter with you?" she said, 
 coldly. 
 
 "Nothing! Everything!" Mrs. Elles flung her 
 arms along the back of the sofa with a despairing 
 gesture, and the lace sleeves of her elaborate tea- 
 gown fell back from them, disclosing a pretty girlish 
 arm. 
 
 "That is a ridiculously thin gown to wear if you 
 have got a chill, or a touch of influenza, as I suppose 
 you have," Egidia said testily. "Let me recommend 
 you to go to bed at once, and throw it off."
 
 "Oh, please, Egidia!" came the moan of the 
 wounded pose. "Please! You can't think how it 
 all sounds now ! You tell me to lie down I shall 
 lie down soon enough!" 
 
 "My dear Phoebe, you are rather maddening, are not 
 you?" said the novelist, mildly. "I am sure I do not 
 know what you want to be at, but if you are not ill, 
 and don't want to lie down, then sit up, and give me 
 some tea ! I have been travelling since exactly nine 
 o'clock this morning!" 
 
 She rang the bell, and ordered tea for herself, 
 while her guest regarded her with lack-lustre eyes, 
 and did not speak, though she held her lips a little 
 helplessly parted. 
 
 "Cheer up! You look very pretty!" Egidia said 
 to her soothingly, taking off her hat and flinging it 
 on to a chair. "Bather like Frou-Frou in the death- 
 bed scene. Poor little Frou-Frou !" 
 
 She sat down beside Mrs. Elles on the sofa and took 
 her hands. 
 
 "Don't you really want to hear what I have done?" 
 
 "Yes, dear, I know that you have done something 
 kind, and like you. I want to hear, I do indeed, but 
 I can't somehow, understand properly my brain 
 seems clouded. . . ." 
 
 "Have you been taking things morphia?" asked 
 Egidia, sternly, as the suspicion crossed her mind. 
 
 "Morphia no," Mrs. Elles answered, with a wan 
 smile. "Surely morphia is no good it is only 
 temporary in its effects, isn't it?"
 
 274 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "Morphia, only temporary? Do please explain 
 what you mean?" 
 
 "Dear Egidia," the other woman said appealingly, 
 "do you mind waiting till Edmund comes? I have 
 sent for him, and then you will know all. He is 
 sure to be here directly." 
 
 "Mr. Rivers won't be such a fool as to come to 
 this house, I should hope!" Egidia exclaimed angrily, 
 and her use of the formal prefix alone showed how 
 angry she was. "He knows what a piece of folly that 
 would be, even if yon don't!" 
 
 "He will come this time, Egidia. Don't be cross 
 with me, or you will perhaps be sorry afterwards. 
 Egidia, I want to thank you I want you to forgive 
 me for all the trouble I have caused you the annoy- 
 ance I have subjected you to. And I know you have 
 done your best for me about Jane Anne Cawthorne, 
 I mean but but I have settled it another and a 
 shorter way, you see. . . . Edmund! " 
 
 She rose from her sofa as Rivers came in, and it 
 was then that the sceptical Egidia noticed for the 
 first time how weak she seemed to be, and realised 
 that it was not all acting, and that the young woman 
 had really gone through some veritable emotion. 
 She looked as if a mighty wind had blown her, tossed 
 her, and had scattered all her energies. 
 
 "Edmund!" she was saying, in a faint voice, her 
 fingers clutching the lapel of his coat. "Edmund! 
 You did come! I knew you would. And I don't mind 
 now Dying is the only way to make you nice to me. "
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 275 
 
 "You should not have come here," said Egidia to 
 Edmund, quite violently, in her anger and bewilder- 
 ment. Even now, she found it quite impossible to 
 take Phoebe Elles seriously; she had cried "Wolf" so 
 often, that the very accents and circumstance of 
 tragedy in her connection inevitably suggested farce, 
 or at any rate drawing-room comedy. 
 
 "Mrs. Elles sent me an urgent telegram, bidding 
 me come here at once on a matter of life and death," 
 said Rivers simply, "so of course I came." 
 
 "It is a matter of death," Mrs. Elles said, totter- 
 ing back to the sofa. "Listen, both of you. I have 
 done this because I was so miserable, and my life 
 seemed of no use to any one rather the reverse, in 
 fact. I saw so well, that if I lived, I should live only 
 to disgrace you, Edmund. People have explained to 
 me what it was that I should be doing to you, injur- 
 ing you, preventing you from ever being President, 
 forcing you to liv*e abroad, and ruining you generally. 
 I saw the thought iri your eyes that last time that I 
 was with you, and that you almost hated me I repre- 
 sented disgrace arid shame to you ! Oh, don't deny it ! 
 I am quite sure that you do not love me, or you would 
 have loved through it all, and been willing to go through 
 it all gladly for the sake of getting me. Men do 
 some men! So I took the only way I took poison!" 
 
 She allowed herself to fall back exhausted. 
 
 "Tchk! Tchk!" came from Edmund or Egidia. 
 The Nemesis of Pose still pursued her votary. They 
 neither of them believed in her.
 
 276 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "Now look here, Phcebe!" said Egidia, speaking 
 to her severely, as to a spoilt child. "Look here! 
 What tricks have you been playing with yourself? I 
 insist on knowing." 
 
 "And I want to tell you," Mrs. Elles replied 
 plaintively, "if only you would let me! I never 
 thought people treated people like me like this! 
 It isn't even kind." 
 
 So speaking, she clearly signified her annoyance at 
 the complete failure of this scene, as a scene, though 
 she knew that she had the trump card of death up 
 her sleeve, and that in less than ten minutes the 
 inherent tragedy of it all would be proved to both 
 these scoffers in the most effectual way. 
 
 "Listen," she said to them again, and her voice 
 was very poignant and low. "I will tell you. I 
 asked a man, who had promised me that he would do 
 anything in the world for me, that I might ask him 
 to do, to give me the means of death in an envelope 
 sealed, so that I might use it if the burden of life 
 became too great for me to bear. I told him that 
 the mere knowledge that I could end it at any given 
 time would help me to bear it. I did not tell him 
 that I meant to use what he gave me at once, I per- 
 haps did not quite but this morning in the fog I 
 felt it all so hopeless so sad and the future as black 
 as the present, that I drank it off all at once. That 
 was an hour ago and in another hour I shall be dead. " 
 
 "Who do you say gave it you?" Rivers asked 
 quickly, when she had finished.
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 277 
 
 "Dr. Andre. Now please don't bother me any 
 more." She sank back she had literally grown 
 ashen. 
 
 "Quick! Go and fetch him ! Three floors below!'* 
 said Egidia to Rivers, in a frenzied whisper. 
 
 "But he can't have been such a devil!" she ejacu- 
 lated, as the door closed on Rivers. Mrs. Elles's strange 
 and indubitable pallor it was that frightened her. 
 
 In ten minutes Rivers came back again, followed 
 by Dr. Andre. The latter was smiling, and his smile 
 did not fade away, when confronted with the serious 
 face of Egidia, and the prostrate form of his victim. 
 Mrs. Elles had not spoken a word during Rivers' 
 absence, she appeared to have sunk into a state of 
 coma. "When Dr. Andre entered she opened her eyes 
 wide, and it was on him, not on Rivers, that her gaze 
 fell. 
 
 "Dear lady!" he said, going up to her, and taking 
 one of her little helpless hands. "Forgive me! I 
 have betrayed you!" 
 
 "What?" she said, and her voice had sunk to a 
 whisper. "I have taken what you gave me. Tell 
 them. ..." 
 
 "All right!" he said, in his foreign accent, gently 
 stroking the hand which she abandoned to him. "I 
 have given you a mauvais quart d'heure, I admit, but 
 I have not killed you. Could you or any one else 
 seriously imagine that I should be accessory to send- 
 ing a sweet woman like you out of the world?"
 
 278 THE HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 "You have very nearly frightened her out of it!" 
 Egidia, to whom the doctor's flowery language did 
 not appeal, remarked. 
 
 "I acted for the best," he said earnestly. "Mr. 
 Rivers will explain it to you. I gave Mrs. Elles 
 something to take when she asked me, knowing that 
 if I were to refuse her, the obstinate lady would have 
 recourse to some other person less scrupulous than I. 
 But what I gave her could not possibly harm her. 
 A little bromide and water. The symptoms exhibited 
 here are actually the result of sheer apprehension. 
 Most curious ! But she will not die, but live to be 
 grateful to me." 
 
 "Or to hate you for having made her ridiculous," 
 said Egidia, bluntly. 
 
 While the doctor had been speaking, he had begun 
 to make mesmeric passes in front of Mrs. Elles, and 
 it was quite certain that she did not hear the con- 
 clusion of his speech, or Egidia 's answer. Her eye- 
 lids closed, she began to breathe regularly, she lay 
 back, but no longer in an attitude of tension. She 
 would have been pleased to know how exquisitely 
 pretty and helpless she looked, and how plainly Dr. 
 Andre's face showed that he thought so. Even 
 Egidia was touched, in spite of her annoyance at the 
 little trick she had played on them all. But then it 
 had failed so absurdly, so lamentably ! 
 
 "Poor little thing!" she said thoughtfully to 
 Rivers. "It is curious how comedy dogs her wher- 
 ever she goes, and whatever she does. It is very hard
 
 THE HUMAN INTEREST 279 
 
 to seek the sublime always and achieve the ridic- 
 ulous. I must be more gentle with her. I am hard. " 
 
 "No, you are very good!" said Rivers kindly. 
 
 As he spoke there was a ring at the outer door, and 
 a pink envelope was put into Egidia's hands. 
 
 "For her!" she said, indicating Mrs. Elles. 
 
 "Shall I bring her back?" said Dr. Andre". 
 
 "It is only something from her lawyers,'* said 
 Egidia. 
 
 "Why bring her back to worries?" 
 
 "But it is a telegram Immediate. You must 
 take the responsibility of opening it." 
 
 "I will," said Egidia. "She empowered me to 
 open all her letters and telegrams once, in a moment 
 of confidence." 
 
 She opened it. An expression of intense relief 
 flooded her countenance. 
 
 "Thank God!" she cried, almost hysterically, put- 
 ting the paper into Rivers' hands, "he can't divorce 
 her now, can he?" 
 
 "Hardly!" said Rivers, smiling at the clever 
 woman's naivete. "He died this morning at half- 
 past nine. Poor fellow, though I don't know him!" 
 
 Had the widow heard? She opened her eyes at 
 that moment and smiled sweetly at Dr. Andre, as his 
 hands passed to and fro in front of her face. With 
 characteristic tact, he left her in her happy trance a 
 little longer, dreaming, perchance, of fresh woods and 
 pastures new. 
 
 THE END
 
 PRINTED BY R. R. DONNELLEY 
 AND SONS COMPANY AT THE 
 LAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO, ILL.
 
 H ?. E .? IONA1 - LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
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